Where are you Mrs. Chapman? I know you're here somewhere.
Normally, the morgue wasn't so populated but, hey! heavy fog and a pilot turning left across the active runway. They'll be dying to get in all night.
This you? Oops, don't think so.
Its was still black outside, but House was down in the morgue at the behest of the nagging voice in his brain that, all night, had been sing-songing you-missed-something-obvious. He hung the chart back on the drawer. Reached for another. Decided to forget it. He trusted the little voice but it had given him no sleep and the pain was at its worst in the morning. Coffee. Hot coffee. Vicodin. There'd be time later for humiliating the Scoobies.
Thunk!
Or, maybe, more of a muffled Thump.
Like someone knocking against the inside of the drawer he'd just hooked the chart on. The drawer in which reposed, according to that chart, the recently, dreadfully deceased Mr. John Doe.
Two softer, more deliberate thumps.
Like someone was trying not to make a whole lot of noise, but really wanted out of that drawer.
Contemporary morgue design made no allowance for drawers needing to be opened from the inside. No bells to ring to prevent premature autopsy, no buzzer to alert the night shift attendant, who was out trying to score some caffeine after a long night, that someone wasn't quite dead. Because the medical profession doesn't make mistakes like that. Any more. Much.
House didn't believe in vampires, or zombies for that matter, although, he observed his hand shaking as he turned the drawer's handle. Just turned it sideways, not pulling, because interns will sleep anywhere.
At first, nothing happened. Then, with a listening apprehension, the drawer cracked open about a dime's thickness. House retrieved the chart and took a few steps back, holding his breath as the big spender went for the whole two bits. Finger tips appeared and pressed out on the drawer above.
Slowly, silently, warily, the drawer began to slide open.
Slowly, silently House inhaled.
Then, loudly, he said, "You're dead."
There was a sharp crack and a yelp. Someone had banged something inside on the shelf above. House yanked the drawer open all the way and a man sat up naked, glaring furiously, releasing a smell of chemical char into the ice box room.
"You're dead." House delivered the line with the scalpel edged precision that rarely failed to impress.
This was one of those rare times.
"I think it I'd know if I were dead."
Doe swung off the drawer slide, arched his back, stretched and shook out the kinks. He bent over to remove the toe tag on his right big piggy. House glanced at the chart and Doe's uncrushed spine, noting that where it wasn't black and greasy, Doe's skin was a healthy pink, particularly on the arms and left leg he wasn't supposed to have.
Not an intern.
Doe straightened. "Got a towel?"
Wordlessly, House pointed to door of the processing room. Mr. Doe turned his back and walked out. House made a face at the unfortunate chart, flipped through a few more pages. Then he unclipped the papers, dropped the clipboard in the drawer and stumped after.
There were towels and germicidal soap in the processing room. Doe had found both and was briskly sluicing himself with the hose that hung over the autopsy table, sooty water escaping down the drain in the floor.
"You are, in fact, so dead the only way they'd be able to ID you is by your dental records. Except," House said, shaking the papers for emphasis, "it says here, you never had a cavity in your life!"
Je Accuse!
The dead man had eyebrows, too.
"Avoid sweets?" House said.
"I'm, obviously, not dead."
"Oh, no, you're dead. I'm a doctor, I know these things."
"When it comes to that, so am I. And, I say, I'm alive. Telephone?"
House pointed to the wall and was able to observe a nice display of well-developed muscle on back and haunch as Doe went and picked up the receiver and punched numbers. Hung up, punched in more numbers, hung up, turned and looked to House. The front was well-developed, too.
There was more play with eyebrows and some heavy squinting.
House sighed, gave up the authorization code and Doe worked the phone again. Waited. Glanced up at the clock on the wall, frowned and punched more buttons. This time he got the AT&T operator.
"Adam Pierson." Well it wasn't likely that his name was Doe, was it? House found himself straining to hear the phone ring and shared the sudden relaxing of tension as, somewhere, a receiver was picked up.
"Dawson? Dawson!" Someone was certainly over reacting at the other end of the line. "Joe! It's me. I'm all right." The explosion had been all over the 11-o'clock news. "I know. Where is he?" Pierson scrubbed through damp hair with the hand that wasn't holding the phone and briefly shaded his eyes before looking up at the clock again. "That's 40 minutes. When he calls, tell him I'm at…?"
That was a look in House's direction.
"Princeton-Plainesboro."
"Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital."
There was more listening, and then softly, "I know, Joe, but by now you know that only the good die young. I'll wait for him."
Pierson hung up and they stood staring at each other.
"You've got a lot of nerve," House said.
"Borrow some scrubs?"
"Why not?" House pivoted on the point of his cane. "Come on. I need a cup of coffee."
