Who: Amber Volakis and James Wilson When: Backdated; June 16, 2013 Where: An oncologist's office What: She's dead, he's possibly got cancer. What happens next? Rating: PG-13
As a rule, Amber Volakis didn’t do nervousness. It slowed her down, it distracted her from the problem in front of her, and it was utterly useless as an emotion because it gave her nothing in return. Shaky fingers, sour taste in her mouth - all that she’d tossed away sometime in high school after a particularly ruinous piano concert had gone wrong. Nervousness had plagued her the next time she’d needed to play in front of people, but following a fight with her mother and a martini glass, Amber had swallowed her fear and parked herself on that piano bench in the spotlight and banged out her piece. So what if she’d screwed up? She’d get back on the stage and she’d own everyone, not because she was a better performer but because she wanted it the most.
It’d served her well in medical school, although many disliked her boldness and blunder. After a while, she no longer recognized nerves for what they were, but waiting in the Potts Tower lobby for the man she’d died wrapped up in had a way of inspiring all sorts of emotions that she’d rather not have dealt with. She’d been halfway to work when she’d seen James Wilson’s post on the network, and it showed in her sensible heels and skirt. She looked a little formal for New York’s streets, but Amber liked it that way. She was better than the streets.
She saw him exit the elevator and she took three large, frank steps, head held high, face a mask of efficiency, but as she took in his familiar face, his hands he was holding awkwardly, the way he did a double-take at what appeared to be the She-Hulk coming in from a morning run - her step faltered, just a little. Enough for her to realize that she had no idea what in the hell she was doing.
She took a breath and continued her path, stopping just in front of him like she was trying to sell him a car. Nothing like the reunion she’d pictured in weaker, whiskey-spiked moments. “Ready to go?”
Five hours ago, Wilson had been contemplating the most efficient way to snag a turkey-and-swiss sandwich from the cafeteria whilst evading the pilfering hands of one Gregory House. Having texted Kutner and ascertained that the thief in question was purportedly hosting a differential diagnosis in the MRI room, he’d ventured into the cafeteria line in the interest of quickly procuring his lunch. In an extraordinarily cruel turn of events, the Tesseract had apprehended him just as he’d reached for the tray, depriving him of not only his home universe, but of a cure to the hunger pangs that twisted his stomach.
Aggravating as it was, he supposed that it was for best. Approximately one hour later, he’d lost his appetite altogether when he’d learned that he was apparently dying of cancer. Had he eaten beforehand, he might have lost his lunch.
Outwardly, Wilson had accepted that he’d magically been transported into another universe at the whim of a particularly luminous blue MacGuffin, but a vestige of doubt still lingered in the back of his mind. Said vestige momentarily seized the spotlight when an attractive woman with green skin jogged by, necessitating a double -- no, a triple -- take. After watching her disappear into the stairwell, he lifted his hand to his face and rubbed his tired eyes, willing reality back into focus. When he opened them again, he was struck by a markedly more familiar figure. Struck, because Amber approached him with all the subtlety of a mack truck and zero patience for pleasantries.
No wonder House had fired her. She was honing in on his craft.
“Yes,” Wilson answered reflexively -- not unlike a monkey who was accustomed to being carried away by a force of nature. He was suddenly aware of how light her eyes were. Fumbling for his lost composure, he tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks and cleared his throat, still dressed in his work attire (save for his discarded labcoat.) “Ah, shall we?” He gestured awkwardly to the doors, instinctively walking ahead of her to open one -- only to realized too late that they slid open automatically. Thwarted in his gallantry, he stood uncharacteristically uncomfortably in the open air and waited for her to catch up. The last time that Wilson had been this thrown off by a woman, he’d still had pimples on his cheeks.
Amber noticed his attempt to open the door and met the gaffe with a smile she tucked away in a drawer for later. Being overly friendly and reassuring had never been in her skill set; she met her saddest cases with a brusque competency that never softened into pity, and that was what she’d decided she needed to do here. In some ways, the strangest part of this situation wasn’t that she and her not-yet-boyfriend were in New York City checking up on his not-yet-cancer: it was the absence of House. For as little as she liked the man, he had been a constant shaping their relationship more than she would have wanted to admit, a force of pushing and pulling, of defense and offense. And now that the tension was gone, she was left with a Wilson just as aimless as she.
The air outside the tower met them both with a blast of humidity, and Amber almost commented on it before deciding that discussing the weather was a new low to which she was unwilling to sink. “What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked, her steps long as they headed to the nearest subway stop. “If you’re from November, House’s little Survivor Island was dwindling down.” The fact that he hadn’t chosen her still rankled somewhere inside her, but she covered the irritation with procuring a subway ticket for Wilson. “I assume you have no cash.”
Uncertainty lingered in the air between them, but Wilson fell into a rhythm beside her. Walking helped him regain some of his bearings; it was something to do -- something to focus on other than the fact that he had a cancer growing inside of him and the knowledge that he’d seriously dated the woman who’d told him. To the oncologist who’d had a front row seat to the inner workings of the gamemaster’s mind, Amber had only ever been “the bitch.” In the privacy of his own office, he’d unthinkingly accepted the epithet and referred to her in kind. He’d never imagined that he would have a sufficiently intimate conversation with her to make him feel guilty about validating the nickname, and yet here he stood. For one astronomically idiotic second, Wilson considered apologizing to her. Mercifully, he stopped short when he realized that it would be incredibly rude to inform his would-be savior that he’d referred to her in such an insensitive manner. Instead, like so many other trespasses in his life, he tucked it away in the back of his mind to feel intolerably guilty about later.
“The last thing that I remember at all, or the last thing that I remember about you?” His reply was punctuated with question mark, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “You treated a magician who lost consciousness in a water tank and started bleeding from his nose. House suspected a bad blood transfusion and had the bright idea to inject it into himself.” The mere mention of the common force in their lives grounded Wilson enough to permit a distinctly dry inflection. “When his symptoms failed to mirror the patients, he obstinately refused to have his blood tested, so Thirteen drugged him in retaliation for having drugged her to make her paranoid about her genetic predisposition to Huntington’s. House and I had a deeply philosophical conversation about the significance of his being a universal recipient and my being a universal donor -- which, I might add, he could only know if he’d surreptitiously tested my blood -- which somehow inspired him to run off and conclude that he finally had his first case of lupus. In the meantime, you tried to win House’s immunity challenge by passing off your underwear as Cuddy’s, but Big– Dr. Cole was ultimately fired when House found out that he’d been conspiring with the devil herself.”
The gentleman in him silently protested when she paid for his ticket, but he was forced to concede her point. “I have a hundred-dollar bill in my wallet for emergency bets,” Wilson offered with a small smile, “But I don’t think they take anything over twenties.”
Amber ran her ticket and stepped into the metro, listening to his recollections. It was strange hearing him speak of incidents that she remembered only hazily as if they were just a step away. They were, for him. Remembering the madcap times of working for House tugged both at a withered husk of nostalgia as well as annoyance - really, House always inspired annoyance, one way or another. “I still want to know how he knew even then they weren’t Cuddy’s panties.”
Dear God, she hoped that statement was clearly rhetorical. A side-glance as they boarded the metro out of the corner of her eye: here she could ask anything she wanted, she felt, and he’d answer. She would have seized the opportunity in the Before, back when she hadn’t loved James enough that she hadn’t cared to compete in the custody battle with House over him. But all her questions tasted too bitter in her mouth, too unfair given that he hadn’t let her steal his McGill sweatshirt yet, he hadn’t teased her about her inability not to shower immediately after sex, he hadn’t held her while she slept and while she went to sleep for the final time. It wasn’t fair to him, and it had been a shitty day, what with the interstellar travel and cancer and all...
So instead of asking anything particularly evil, she said: “Last week, Waldo was here and no one could find him.”
Wilson opened his mouth to answer, but mercifully stopped short and thought better of it. He could have provided a plausible explanation; God knew that House had recanted the caper in intimate detail. Their Lord and Savior also knew that Wilson had hung on House’s every word like an enraptured schoolboy. James Wilson was a great many things -- an excellent doctor, a gentleman, and a good man at heart -- but he was no more immune to the allure of women’s underwear – or the revelation that two women in their workplace had, at some point, gone without it – than any other man of his species. Women were beautiful, mysterious, and frequently bewildering creatures. Respect and consideration were reasonable expectations, but it was too much to ask an ordinary man not to think about lingerie in the privacy of his own office.
At the mention of Waldo, Wilson glanced at Amber, before doing a double-take a few seconds later when her meaning registered. “Where’s Waldo?” He asked incredulously. “What did he look like -- a life-sized cardboard cutout?”
As he spoke, the subway car jolted into motion, and Wilson instinctively reached out to place a steadying hand on the small of Amber’s back. It was the kind of courtesy that he would have extended to a complete stranger, but the knowledge that they’d been together -- would be together, if he ever went back home -- was sufficient to redden his cheeks slightly. Clearing his throat, he let his hand fall away and gestured to a pair of empty seats further down the car. “Would you like to sit down?”
“He was a pervert,” Amber answered succinctly, having no fondness for the individual who could appear unannounced pretty much anywhere, thwarting SHIELD’s best attempts. “A pervert with Harry Potter glasses and a stupid hat.” As the train jostled and Wilson steadied her, Amber’s hands tightened around the pole she was holding, her lips pressing into a thin line, stalwartly refusing to acknowledge the gesture. It was classic Wilson - gentlemanly to the end and she knew he didn’t mean anything by it - but there were too many volumes of memory between them for her to take it innocently. “I’m dead, not weak-kneed.”
The declaration earned her a look from a mother a few seats down. Amber cleared her throat and tried not to attract any more attention for the rest of the journey.
Dr. Vankenini’s office was only a short ride away; she had been a fan of the show when Amber had met her a few months ago. Her office was bright and small; Amber grabbed a handful of terrible-looking magazines and started to sit when “Dr. James Wilson” was called from the desk to go into the examination rooms which wound along the back of the building. And then she couldn’t help but cringe when she realized:
“...hey, I can... come along if you want. You know, if you want someone with you.”
Not that she held any illusions about her abilities (or lack thereof) of comforting, but some things seemed like they might be easier to go through with someone there. Even if that someone was a tactless pre-girlfriend.
Wilson wasn't sure that smiling was the appropriate response to Amber's apparent disdain for a walking children's book, but it was hard not to be amused by the soundness of her dismissal. Lest he offend her, he made an effort to keep his smile to himself. Only the offhanded mention of her death undermined his dimples, eyes softening and brows furrowing in unvoiced concern. He couldn't fully grasp how it must have felt to lose her without the memories of their life together, but ten minutes in her company was enough to make his heart ache at the thought.
As they neared Dr. Vankenini's office, Wilson found himself struggling against his natural instincts yet again. This time, he resisted the urge to tuck a hair behind her ear when a gust of wind blew it astray, but only just barely. Instead, he ended up tucking his hand into his pocket and looking at her a little too long. He'd meant it when he'd said that her looks weren't her defining quality, but it was impossible not to notice how beautiful she was -- knowing what he knew now. It was a sufficiently distracting thought that he fell out of step with her when they rounded a corner, forcibly disengaging from the strange sense of pre-emptive deja vu to catch up with her.
He'd barely had a chance to sit down before the nurse called him, and he was entirely prepared to go alone until Amber's voice awkwardly caught his attention. Her execution couldn't have been any less smooth -- or any more different from his bedside manner when addressing prospective cancer patients -- but the fact that it didn't come naturally only touched him more deeply. Managing a small, but meaningful smile, he nodded his agreement.
"Thank you. I'd appreciate the company,” Wilson said sincerely. Beneath his brave face, his stomach was silently in knots. Where his chivalry had failed to best the sliding doors back at the Tower, it succeeded here; when the nurse started to walk into the back, Wilson held the door for Amber.
If Amber’s heels clicked more-loudly than usual on the floor it was because she was attempting to cover up a (deeply unfair) annoyance and not get a little testy because she was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to screech something along the lines of “MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MIND” right before a cancer screening. Stress and support and being a basic human being and all that. It wasn’t James’s fault that he was here before they’d gotten together. It wasn’t her fault that she had been operating under the assumption that she’d never see him again. It wasn’t their fault, but it was someone’s fault, and the entire situation was making her more and more irritated.
Still, seeing the sterile office and equipment was enough to sober her up. She wasn’t needed, not really, but she hovered along the side while Dr. Vankenini and her nurse worked, not wanting to get in the way or seem overly eager to find out what exactly was going on with James Wilson. The only time she left was during the necessary x-rays for safety precautions. Which really was a laugh, she thought, given both their fates.
“So what’s the poison, doc?” she asked when she was almost certain that the tests had to be done. “What’ve you got for us?” Belatedly she swore to herself for saying ‘us’.
It was at once familiar and surreal. Wilson had been in a room like this a thousand times -- shook a thousand hands, pressed a stethoscope to a thousand chests, smiled a thousand reassuring smiles. Had Dr. Vankenini not already been in the room when they’d entered it, he would have instinctively sat down on the doctor’s stool rather than the edge of the patient bed. He patiently followed Dr. Vankenini’s orders and answered every question that she asked, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was wrong, somehow. He was a doctor, not a patient. He was an oncologist, not a cancer victim.
He was practiced enough at hiding his nerves that the doctor didn’t seem to notice, but he failed to consider the likelihood that Amber knew his tells. In all likelihood, she could distinguish a real smile from a nervous one, a genuine itch from an anxious excuse to scratch the back of his neck -- an understanding look from a faintly terrified one. And yet, while he failed to consider her ability to see right through him, he was deeply grateful for her presence. Aside from the tests that couldn’t be conducted in the patient rooms, she’d never left his sight. Mid-way through the wait for the test results, he’d reached out to squeeze her hand, appreciation glinting amid the myriad of conflicted emotions in his eyes. She was nothing like his ex-wives, but it was increasingly easier to understand why he’d dated her.
When Dr. Vankenini’s assistant handed her a file, Wilson’s heart practically beat out of his chest. She examined it closely for a long moment, before looking up and reassuring him with a small smile. “The good news is that there’s nothing conclusive. The bad news is that there’s nothing conclusive.” Out of respect for the fact that he was an oncologist, she pinned the PET scan image up to let him see for himself. “This area here could be the beginnings of abnormal cell growth, but it’s too early to tell. Thymoma is a very slow-growing cancer, but you’re four years ahead of the ball. If this is a very early precursor to what you will one day develop, routine testing should catch it well before it poses a problem. It’s also possible that we’re seeing what we want to see, and it may not develop for two years. Only time will tell.”
Instinctively reaching out to squeeze Amber’s hand again, Wilson breathed a sigh of relief. Rationally, it would have been better to have found a tiny, but identifiable tumor and perform relatively routine surgery with a good margin, but emotionally, he was happy not to be diagnosed with cancer. “I’ll take the good news,” Wilson answered, smiling first at the doctor and then at Amber. “When should I come back for a re-test?”
James Wilson had a very nice smile that got him all sorts of places with patients, cops, and shop keepers alike, but Amber was mostly immune. It was good news, but in the sort of way that now it was hanging over their heads as a possibility for the future at any given time. It would spring, she was sure of that - but now they had to wait. Amber had never been very skilled with waiting; she snatched the papers from the doctor’s hand and went over them herself, the corner of her mouth twitching up in what probably passed for a smile if one was particularly optimistic.
“He’ll come back on the minimum side of the recommended time-frame,” she inserted, not waiting for Dr. Vankenini to give a sliding scale. There was no way she was going to let a reassuring scan cause them to miss the thing that put James in the dirt with her. “Isn’t that three months?”
“Five,” the Dr. corrected gently, but wrote down three months regardless in her notes. “Get with the front desk, and they’ll set you up with something that works with your schedule.”
Ten minutes and a great deal of insurance confusion later and they were out on the street. Although it was a hot afternoon, Amber wore her coat, her mouth still quirked to the side. “So you’re not dying actively right now,” she said, which was about as positive as could be expected for her. “So we’ll watch it, and if that ‘nothing conclusive’ ever gets aspirations, we’ll squash it.”
Belatedly she realized that she’d used the ‘we’, and decided not to analyze it, as much as the habit annoyed her now. “Back to the Tower? How’re you feeling?” There was nothing wrong with him, sure, but that didn’t mean that being on the wrong end of a cancer consultation had been stress-free. She studied him openly, her arms crossed over her chest, swaying a little from side to side so as not to keep still. “Do you need like... a hug or something? Something being coffee?”
As Wilson stepped out of the office and wisely let Amber deal with the paperwork, he was struck by how unreal this all seemed. It had been mere hours since he’d arrived in this strange, new world, and he hadn’t really had a chance to process the absurdity of his circumstances before he’d learned that he was potentially dying of cancer. Bracing a hand on the counter while Amber informed the receptionist that they would be accepting his insurance, he seized the sorely-needed opportunity to take a long, steadying breath. He was an intelligent man, but there was only so much that you could process at once without slowly going insane.
When they finally left the office, Wilson composed himself enough to have a coherent conversation with her, though he was still visibly shaken by the overwhelming flood of disconcerting information. He managed a small smile at her pronouncement that he wasn’t dying yet, only to be charmed by her declaration that they would make short work of the cancer if it got any bright ideas. It was easy to imagine Amber literally stomping on the abnormal growth. That mental image, coupled with the sincerity of her slightly awkward inquiry, made Wilson want nothing more than to sit down for coffee with her and get to know her and...
No.
It was tempting. It was incredibly tempting. Even lacking her memories, it wasn’t hard to see why he’d liked her -- how he’d fallen in love with her. In an unfamiliar world with virtually no social support, it would have almost been natural to lean on her and pick up where they’d left off. The trouble was that confusion was not a valid basis for a relationship, and he knew that he would regret it if they got involved and he couldn’t say that it hadn’t been because she’d helped him in his time of need. The last thing he wanted to do after three broken marriages was embark upon a relationship with muddled motivations.
And so, with great effort, he rubbed his forehead and sighed. “I won’t say no to a hug, but I think I could stand to lie down. This is all...” Wilson gestured errantly. “Bewildering. Thank you for everything that you’ve done,” He said sincerely. “I just need a little time to decompress.”
Amber wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. Some strange combination of the two bubbled up and hit her between the eyes, and she stared at him, dazed, for just a moment. She wasn’t used to rejection, however politely phrased it was, but on the other hand she could hardly blame him for needing some time to himself. A lot had been thrown at James Wilson in the past few hours, some of which she’d tossed herself. It was fine. And so she smiled and made it so.
“I need to get to work,” she agreed, and stood a little straighter. “Can you make it back to the Tower on your own? It’s not hard; just take the red line uptown.” She guessed that’s what it was called; she missed Boston in that moment. She would’ve been able to be more specific.
Belatedly she realized that he’d asked for a hug - back before her arms had grown stiff, before her elbows stuck out like weapons as the crowded New York streets swirled around them. She’d guarded herself without thinking and now she was pretty sure a hug coming from her would be the crappiest, weakest thing ever. Or too hard - weak was never her problem.
Still, she tipped herself forward in her shoes and wrapped an arm around his back, her fingers resting on his shoulder-blades. For just a minute she let her eyes close, she allowed herself one breath to pretend it was another universe and other circumstances, and then she pulled back and took a step away. “See you around!” She called over her shoulder, hoping to God this didn’t look like a retreat.