Beautiful (It's The Inside That Counts)

Wilson comes back to the hospital in early spring, just after the snow begins to melt and right before the trees begin to flower. It’s time, she knows. She’s ready now.

Cuddy greets her on her way in. “Welcome back,” she says.

“Thank you,” Wilson says. She licks her lips, the waxy taste of the lipstick strangely reassuring. She hadn’t worn it since she changed back, even after the surgery. It had felt like cheating, somehow.

“You look good,” Cuddy says. “Better than when I last saw you.” The last time Cuddy saw her was when she was asking to go on sabbatical, when she just started the hormones, when she was still feeling that soul-deep ache. It’s still there, but it’s faded. The pain isn’t quite sharp.

“I feel better,” Wilson says, smiling. They walk down the familiar hallways together, and Wilson likes hearing the matching clack-clack-clack of their heels.

“That’s good,” Cuddy says, “because you’ve got a mountain of paperwork in front of you.”

It’s so normal, Wilson knows it’s entirely for her sake, a kind gesture on Cuddy’s part. “I’m on it,” she says.

When her breasts first started reappearing, it felt strange, unnatural. They were too small, too sensitive, too uncomfortable. She spent a lot of time touching them, reminding herself that they were real. Some days it almost wasn’t worth it, when her body would feel too foreign from herself, when it wasn’t even the maleness, but the in-betweenness that made her miserable.

The hormones didn’t give her voice back, and she still needed to shave in the mornings, just more reminders of what she had lost. Half the time, she could barely even stand it. (She had taken to staring at herself in the mirror in the mornings just before getting in the shower, inspecting the thinning hair on her chest, the fat that had begun to collect on her hips, watching her body change in slow motion.)

To make herself feel better, she liked to imagine what House would say.

(Probably something like, “You should listen to that incredibly crappy Christina Aguilera song and sob like a teenage girl until you believe you’re a special snowflake again.”)

Strangely enough, it helped.

She had her first surgery a year after Richard was born, and what she remembers best is the hospital gown, white smattered with blue dots, and the stale smell of filtered hospital air. The nurse was brusque, competent but impersonal, and Wilson felt queasy from the nervousness, hands clenched into fists at her sides.

They say doctors make the worst patients, and it’s true. Wilson has seen House hospitalized enough times to know it’s true. Sitting in the hospital bed, alone, she thought that maybe it shouldn’t be so bad, she had done surgeries before; she knew how it all worked. But then again, she also knew how it all worked, still remembered all those lectures from med school about all the ways things could go wrong.

The doctor had a kind smile, though, and when she said everything would be okay, Wilson believed her.

Afterwards, her doctor woke her and asked, “How are you feeling?”

Wilson was in a hospital bed again, the blanket scratchy against her skin, the ceiling tiles above her were white, smattered with black splotches. It took her a moment to get her voice back, still fuzzy from the drugs. It wasn’t the same, but her body felt less foreign to her, less strange. The weight between her legs was gone, for good this time. It was hard to resist the urge to reach under the blankets and just touch, feel the strangeness and familiarity of it under her fingers, but there would be time for that later.

“Better,” Wilson said, closing her eyes. It was the most like herself she’d felt in a while.

Her ten A.M. is Theresa, who was just starting the chemo when Wilson left, and she does look skeletal, hollowed out by the treatment, but there’s a life to her eyes, a strength. She had been quiet before, always fiddling with the cuffs of her sweatshirt and biting her bottom lip, less alive then than she was now. Now, she looks Wilson in the eye, even laughs from time to time. It’s amazing what hope can do to a person.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says, her voice steady and soft, after they discuss her progress. “And I’m glad you seem more comfortable with yourself.” She reaches out and touches Wilson’s arm, her hand gentle on Wilson’s lab coat. Her head is covered in a brightly-colored scarf, a striking contrast from the paleness of her skin.

A lump rises in Wilson’s throat. It’s both harder and easier being back. “Thank you,” she says, smiling from the corners of her mouth.

Theresa smiles back in a way that makes the wrinkles around her eyes seem deeper.

Her mother visited when Richard turned four months old, flying in from Chicago and insisting that she stay in the guest room of Wilson’s newly bought apartment.

Generally, Wilson’s glad to have her around, enjoying the way she fusses over her, even though Wilson pretends to find it annoying. This visit, though, was nerve-wracking, because Wilson had been edging around the truth for over a year now. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal, at first, because it had seemed like a temporary thing, being female, but it wasn’t anymore. Wilson still didn’t know how to break it to her.

She had a taxi pick her mother up from the airport, because it was hard to miss the physical changes, and there were conversations that were not meant for public spaces.

When her mother finally asked to be buzzed up, Wilson had rearranged the stack of medical journals on the kitchen counter five times, checked the baby monitor to make sure it was still working seven times, and tried to stop herself from fidgeting more times than she could count.

By the time her mother knocked on the front door, she was trying not to bite her nails, a bad habit she’d kicked in seventh grade, and after she worked up the nerve to actually answer the door, her mother stared at her in surprise. “James?” she said.

Wilson tried to smile. “Yeah, it’s me, Ma.”

Her mother’s face softened. “What happened?” she asked.

And Wilson told her everything, her hands shaking, her voice faltering at parts, but it spilled out of her, impossible to stop.

After she finished speaking, her mother drew her close and said, “Oh, James. Oh, my baby,” as she kissed Wilson’s cheeks, her nose, her forehead, her hair. It made Wilson feel five again, her mother’s arms surrounding her, keeping her safe.

“I’m happier, Ma,” Wilson said against her shoulder, because it was true. “I really am.”

“Good,” her mother said, pulling back, wiping her eyes, and regaining her composure. “Now I want to meet my granddaughter.”

Wilson took her to Richard’s crib, lifting her daughter gently so that her grandmother could see her face. Richard was awake, her eyes wide and unblinking.

“She’s beautiful,” Wilson’s mother, said, taking Richard from Wilson’s arms. “She has her father’s eyes.”

Wilson didn’t respond, but she did watch as her mother rocked Richard back and forth, cooing. She looked the same as she did, all those years ago, holding Issac to her chest, except Wilson can see the gray in her hair (at the roots, because she dyes it every few months), the wrinkles on her fingers. It made her feel nostalgic, suddenly. All those years were so far away.

“She reminds me of you when you were younger,” her mother said, not looking up. “So quiet. Your brothers would cry at the drop of a hat.”

“She likes you,” Wilson said, and it was strange, because it always felt like something was being taken away from her when anyone else held Richard, but family was different. Family went deeper.

When her mother left, she kissed Wilson’s cheek. Wilson hugged her tight, and for the first time, she really believed that everything might turn out okay.

Wilson will never know why she was lucky enough to have Richard, lucky enough to get a chance that so many like her would never have.

Wilson’s loved a lot of people in her life, her parents, her brothers, her wives (even House, somewhat), but it had never filled her like this, until her heart could barely contain it. Richard’s hands are so small, her blue eyes so big, her brown hair so soft. Everything about her is delicate. All Wilson wants to do is take care of her.

Every night, she tucks Richard in, folding the blanket up to her shoulders, and kisses her good night. “I love you,” Wilson whispers against Richard’s skin.

When Wilson’s feeling tired and irritable, she lets herself wonder what it would have been like, if she hadn’t changed at all. Would it have been easier? Would it have been better? (She has permanent dark rings under her eyes from lack of sleep, and even being a resident hadn’t prepared her for this.)

It’s hard to regret anything, though. Wilson can’t unlearn the things the experience has taught her, wouldn’t even want to try.

“I didn’t want you, at first,” Wilson says to Richard one night, holding the baby bottle to her lips, “but I made the right decision that day.”

Richard gurgles, a soft, strange sound, and Wilson likes to take it as a sign that she understands.

House visits her on her right after lunch, barging into her office like nothing’s changed. “You left the name on the door,” he says.

“I’ve gotten attached to ‘James’,” she says, rearranging the piles of paperwork on her desk. “And besides, it’s practically a family tradition at this point.”

House lingers a moment too long in her doorway. “Foreman sucks at pranks,” he says. “I’m glad it’ll be less dull around here with you back.”

It’s an ‘I missed you’ and an apology all at once, and Wilson says, “Come here.”

She knows House well enough to know that this is still dangerous, that he knows all the ways to hurt her, but as House comes closer, she feels fearless, completely unafraid. He freezes when she stands up, curls a hand around the back of his neck, and slides her lips across his. It’s the sweetest kiss they’ve shared.

“You okay with being the guy dating the tranny oncologist?” Wilson asks, after she pulls back. He’s an asshole and a bastard and he’s prone to self-sabotage when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but Wilson can deal with that. She’s used to dealing with that.

House grins. “I think it’ll add nicely to my mystique,” he says. “They were getting too used to the hooker references.”

Wilson laughs, a warmth spreading through her chest. Maybe this isn’t the happy ending she thought she’d have (back when she was still trying too hard to be something she wasn’t), but maybe it’s happy enough.

FIN.