The Inconsistencies of Love

Concepts of love in seven parts: Chase, Cameron, Foreman, House, Wilson, Cuddy and Volger.

Love is a heavy handed emotion, but then how else would he think of it? A mother that cared more for a full gin bottle than her 8 year old son, a father that was cool and aloof. Perhaps that’s why PPTH felt so much like home. With House’s razor tongue and sharp claws, he was like a cat with Chase, all hissing and angry but a bit of shiny and he was off somewhere else. Chase knew he’d come back again, spitting his ire, and that consistency was enough to keep him there. No, Chase’s concept of love was a sharp edged tack, brutal and capable of drawing blood.

Love is soft and warm, solid, like a baby laying over one’s shoulder and breathing on your neck, but then how else could she think of it? Two parents that held her close when she needed it and let her free when it was time. A husband that died slowly, smiling the whole way, shrouded in love even in death. No, Cameron’s concept of love was gentle and soothing but somehow no less capable of hurt, it just left fonder memories after.

Love is the morning after, when bad breath isn’t enough to detour one from that first kiss. It’s tangible and measured by chemistry and scents, animalistic, but then it would have to be wouldn’t it? Nature with it’s need for a protective mother, teaching father, and provider husband, love was an evolutionary construct. Gallantry that is so ingrained it is encoded on his DNA. No, Foreman’s concept of love is easy and self evident, obvious to anyone that looks and he wonders how others don’t see it.

Love is chemical, bottled in tiny capsules that taste dry and bitter going down, but then how could he not think that? Love from people is unreliable and unpredictable. Vicodin is always there, smoothing the jagged edges of his world away, dulling the pain of his mind and his leg, and if it tastes bitter going down, then at least it’s an expected bitter. No, House’s concept of love is constant and dependable, and when it occasionally rings hollow House ignores it and swallows two kinds of bitter at once.

Love is swift, it flows like a river, huge and voluminous until a slight bend, making it meander into a trickle, but then Wilson doesn’t like to think of himself as a river. It’s apt though, how his love flows quick and steady, at the smooth even point where everything is running great. There seems to be no end in sight, never knowing that the next turn is full of rapids or even worse, a dry stream bed. No, Wilson’s concept of love is quick and swift like a river, but shallow, too. He follows it everywhere in fear of that dry stream bed, lest he end up like House, bitter and sarcastic with bottled love carried in his pocket. Sometimes very late at night or very early, he would think of House and how once upon a time his love had been an ocean, deep and slow to fade. Wilson wonders if he’s even capable of that, and the thought both frightens him and gives him hope.

Love is sterile, or more aptly a sterilizer it washes clean one’s soul, but then if that were really true no one would get sick in her hospital, not with how much she loves it. She loves more than the concepts, the idea of curing people, she loves the smell of it, the shine to the floors, everything clean, white and orderly. No, Cuddy’s concept of love is shiny and unpolluted, with everything in it’s place, even emotions. So when she feels an emotion out of place, she carefully ignores it until the world is neat and orderly again.

Love is money, or at least the winning of it. Volger has spent his life winning money and power. Love to him was something bought, like loyalty or respect. He was loved, respected and powerful because of his money. When House came along and didn’t acknowledge what everyone, even subtly sometimes without even realizing it did, he started to question what he knew. What he held so high, if money wasn’t love, fulfillment or anything but a way to buy objects, then what was his life? What did it all mean? It would make him a hollow man if that were true, but it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t let it be. What better way to make it mean something than to have House make him more money and show respect to him at the same time? No, Volger’s concept of love is hollow and empty like him, even though he dresses it so nicely in an attempt to make it seem more appealing than it is.