12:54 PM
Ovidia
It all started with watching this episode of "House" on DVD this weekend.
It's called "Histories." In it, a woman comes into House's hospital dying, a homeless woman we learn had, at one point, a husband and a baby and what might have been an idyllic middle-class life. But she had been driven to the brink of insanity even before she got sick by her guilt over the car accident in which her husband, Paul, and son had died - an accident in which she survived -- and was driving.
I saw this episode last spring when I was at the brink of insanity myself. Normally I watch House to soak up the character's acerbic wit and lust after Hugh Laurie, but I was too sick and too crazy and too enmeshed in a major depressive episode to do anything but let the tears slide down my cheeks, right up until one of the last scenes. Then the sobs came.
In the scene, Dr. Foreman comes to the woman's bedside as she lies dying. He sits down on the bed and takes her hand. "James," she says, thinking he is her baby son. "No," replies Foreman, "It's Paul."
She starts to cry. "You've come to take me."
"No," says Foreman, "I've come to forgive you."
She gasps with pain and joy at those words. "It's not your fault," continues Foreman, who continues to hold her hand and reassure her as she weeps "I'm so sorry" over and over in an agony of remorse and love ... and hope.
Here is a link where you can watch the episode:
