Hold On

Chapter 15

He wasn’t sure if it was the morning sun streaming through the window or the throbbing pain in his right thigh that woke him, but he realized he was awake and somewhere unfamiliar. As sleep left his mind, he remembered. He’d fallen asleep on Allison’s couch. With Allison. He looked down to find her still sleeping peacefully, using his left thigh as a pillow, the blanket still wrapped around both of them.

He fumbled in his pocket for his vicodin, and belatedly realized he’d left it in his coat, which was draped over the far end of the couch. He didn’t want to move. Moving meant disturbing Allison. She was comfortable; he didn’t want to wake her. She’d been having so much trouble sleeping. He reached for the coat, remaining as still as possible, and managed to snag it with the tip of a finger. He tugged it across the back of the couch towards him until he could reach into the pocket for his pills. He dry swallowed one and set the bottle on the side table, leaning his head back, closing his eyes and waiting for relief.

“House?” Allison opened her eyes and started to sit up, but the weight of his arm resting across her shoulder made her hesitate. “What time is it?”

“A little past sunrise, I think.” He knew his arm was probably keeping her from moving, but since she could easily get up if she wanted to, he didn’t move it. She was warm and soft and he was comfortable, and he didn’t understand why, but he didn’t want her to move. The thought was disturbing, but he was awake enough to realize that he was not awake enough for any kind of deep self-reflection at this point. “Go back to sleep.”

“But you can’t be comfortable like this.” She protested despite the obvious fog of sleep still in her mind.

“I’m fine, you’re fine, it’s a little past five a.m., and we’re both tired. Sleep.”

He felt the vicodin begin to take effect and again rested his head back on the couch as he felt her snuggle down into the blanket, her head back on his thigh. His hand gently stroked up and down her arm, listening as her breathing evened out into sleep, and his eyes closed as he followed her.

*****

He woke with a start to the ringing of the phone. Allison jumped, looked confused for a moment, and snatched the telephone off the side table. “Hello?” Her face paled as she listened to the caller on the other end of the line. “Yes, I see. But you know I don’t remember… I’ll be there… Goodbye.”

He watched as she slowly replaced the phone in the cradle and turned back to him, leaning against the cushions, eyes downcast. “They caught him.”

He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “They’re sure?”

“Officer Sullivan said they found him a few days ago. He waited to get the DNA results back before they called me. He wanted to be sure.” Although her words were directed at him, her eyes remained on the floor.

“So there was a match?”

She nodded. “They want me to go try to pick him out of a lineup. But I don’t remember! I told them I didn’t remember!” The morning sun turned her tears into drops of liquid gold as they slid down her cheeks. She turned a tearful face to him. “How do you not remember the face of the person who raped you?”

He felt an icy cold go down his spine. This was the first time he’d heard anyone say that word aloud, other than Dr. Westein, who was so clinical and professional that it really didn’t count. Everyone had been saying things like ‘the incident’ or ‘the assault’, rather than calling it what it was. A rape. He’d used the word himself a few times, but this was the first time he’d heard it from the mouth of another person about Allison, and it was Allison herself who’d said it. Rape. Hearing the word, hearing it from her, made it more real somehow.

“You know morphine causes memory loss.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. He’d given her the morphine, knowing that it would relieve her pain, but also knowing that it might make her memory of the events fuzzier. He’d thought that would be a good thing at the time, that maybe making the events seem more distant would make things easier for her. It seemed he’d only made them harder.

As if she knew his thoughts, her hands gripped his arms. “So do concussions.”

“Yes.”

“So there’s no way to know what caused the memory loss.” She pointed out, and he had to concede that she was right.

“They want you to look at a line-up?”

She nodded. “Four o’clock today.”

“I’ll pick you up at three.”

“House, you don’t have to - I mean, I haven’t been taking the vicodin. I can drive myself.” She protested weakly.

“Afterwards, you won’t be in any state to drive yourself home. Nobody would.” His tone left no room for argument.

She nodded. “I just don’t like you seeing me -“ her voice trailed off.

“Seeing you what?” he pushed.

“Weak!” she spat out angrily. “Look at me, all shaking and crying! It’s been three weeks! It happened. I’ve accepted that it happened! I shouldn’t be still crying about it! I’m stronger than this, damn it!”

“Allison, nobody’s stronger than that!” He found himself almost yelling at her. “Something terrible happened to you! You can’t just stand up and walk away. It doesn’t work like that!”

“I know that! Dr. Westein keeps telling me that ‘healing is a process.’” She parroted. “I don’t want a damned process! I just want to feel like me again!”

“You will.” He grasped her shoulders. “It just takes time.”