House – My Episode Two, Part Two

So this time, there’s a original character mentioned. Yay for original character! And anyone who points out who the three doctors are that I highlight gets a cookie!

(Well, unfortunately, not really. Wouldn‘t that be cool, though? Passing real, fresh baked cookies through the computer? Course, it would get kind of sticky…)

House: Hmm… Not too bad, not too bad. I think I’ll move your number up from 100.

Me: Yay!

House: To 99 and a half.

Me: Jackass…

House: What, no blood this time?

Me: Not unless I’m making yours run!

House: Just get to telling the story. I can’t wait to deride how wrong you are at the end of the season.

Me: Just see how cocky you are when I steal your cane.

House: Hey, whoa, do you have any idea how much older than you I am? Quit with the ‘cock’-y talk.

Me: ::Sighs in exasperation and decides to stop talking::

Thanks for the reviews guys! I’m glad I’ve been in character with House and Cuddy. I hope I can continue it. I just want to let you know, the medical stuff that I put in here will be as accurate as I can manage. I’m going to try not to take any liberties with what actually happens to a person, so it’s gonna be realistic as possible. Therefore, the solutions and such will be fairly simple and have hardly any of the sense of urgency that the show actually does. I am, however, actually looking up medical maladies online and getting the symptoms and stuff. So, bear with me and let me know what you think of the medical things I come up with.

House went into his office and looked at the table where Cameron, Chase, and Foreman normally would have been. Funny how over two months later, he still expected them to be waiting for him…

He shook his head to rid himself of those thoughts and looked again at the file. A sore ankle and painful knuckles. This was what the career of the renowned Gregory House had come down to. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said this was a file for an eighty-four year old, diagnosed her with arthritis, and been done with it.

Oh, well. He shrugged as he hung his cane on the whiteboard and began writing symptoms. Time to call in the troupes for their first little test.

“All right. There are exactly sixty of you here. Divide yourselves into three groups of twenty and then take a number from one of these three piles. The red group, stand on the right side, the yellow in the middle, and the blue on the left.” After the group had done that, taking much too long for House’s liking, he continued. “I’ve made copies of our case for each group to look at. Pore over it. Diagnose what you think is wrong with the girl and then pick a spokesman to come forward and tell me what you think. Whoever has the most intelligent guess represents the group who will help me today. The other forty of you losers can go home until the next one pops up.” He looked at his watch. “You have ten minutes. Starting now.”

“House,” Wilson said, coming into the room four minutes and thirty-seven seconds in. “Cuddy needs you.”

“Why didn’t she come and tell me herself?”

“Because she’s with your patient. You know, where you should be.”

“I,” House began importantly, “am teaching these youngsters to appreciate the fine art of diagnosing before ever meeting a patient. Tell Cuddy I’m here. If it’s important, she’ll come to me.”

Sure enough, fifteen minutes and three diagnoses House was disgusted with later, Cuddy came in.

“You owe me an extra hour of clinic duty,” was the first thing she said to him.

“What did I do, Mommy?” House whined mockingly.

“Instead of taking two minutes to walk down and see what I needed to tell you, you avoided it and made me come to you, leaving a patient whose fever is spiking!”

“All right, all right. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. That is, of course, unless they’re in a bunch of my hand.” Eyebrows moved suggestively.

Cuddy rolled her eyes. “Just solve the damn case. I’m going back to talk to the family.”

After she left, House turned to the wanna-be assistants of his. “All right. Those suggestions for this kid were pathetic. Come up with something better in the next ten minutes, or you’re all going home.” He limped over to his whiteboard and added ‘fever’ in his familiar lettering.

Fifteen minutes later, a young Arab guy, a blond guy with friendly green eyes, and an attractive auburn haired woman stood in front of him.

“Okay, red team, what have you got?”

The blond guy stepped forward and gave his groups’ thoughts. House scoffed and sent him back to his group, proverbial tail between his legs. The same thing happened with the Arab guy. The woman, however . . .

“Chicken pox? That’s so absurd I’m actually willing to listen to why you arrived at it before I fire you.”

She didn’t flinch. “The girl has a high fever, and I went to see her. She has several splotchy, rash-like areas on her body, which could indicate the red marks of chicken pox.”

“Okay, except for the fact that 90 percent of the population in this country has had chicken pox by the time they’re ten. This girl’s missing the mark by four years.”

She nodded. “That’d be very true, if she’d had chicken pox when she was a child.” Shoving the girl’s medical history under House’s nose, the woman continued, “This girl never contracted chicken pox. Seemed she was home schooled until third grade, when most kids have gotten, and gotten over, chicken pox.”

House glanced at her, with something that, on another person’s face, might have been taken as admiration. Of course, this was House. “So test your theory. Find out if you’re right.”

She nodded again and turned away. “Hey,” House said.

She turned back. “Yes?”

“What’s your name?”

“Angela. Angela Cornall.”

“I’ll remember that.”

* * * * *

House caned up behind Wilson in the cafeteria, tapped him on the left shoulder, and as Wilson turned to look at who he expected to be there, House reached over his other shoulder and stole Wilson’s peach.

Sighing in exasperation and rolling his eyes when he realized he’d been duped, Wilson said, “You know, you could just go up to the counter and buy a peach like every other person in this hospital does.”

“Not as much fun,” House said, then took a big bite.

“What do you want, House?”

“What kind of kid grows up, never having chicken pox?”

“What?”

“My case. The kid never had chicken pox. You ever know anyone who didn’t have it when they were a kid?”

“Well, I was friendly with one girl who contracted shingles back

in–”

“Oh, spare me your romantic history!” House chided loudly. “All right, so one person with shingles. And what’s with the home schooling angle, anyway? Too many parents think they’re better than America’s teachers nowadays.”

“You know, it is possible to get just as fine an education–”

“Oh, gotta go. Cuddy’s coming, and she might try to trick me into clinic duty,” House interrupted, standing and scooting off.

Wilson sighed, shaking his head. He should be used to this by now. House using him as a soundboard and then rushing off because he didn’t want to hear what Wilson had to say.

“Wilson, House just ran off, didn’t he?” Cuddy said from behind him.

He turned around and gestured for her to join him. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say ‘ran,’ but yes, he was avoiding you.”

Cuddy sighed. “He’s so obsessed with getting out of clinic duty he thinks that’s the only reason I’d approach him. His patient was negative for chicken pox and shingles. He, or his posse, or whoever, was wrong.”

Wilson furrowed his eyebrows. “Want me to find him?”

“No. We can’t be chasing him all over the hospital. He’s got those twenty people working under him right now, so let one of them find him and tell him. We can’t keep enabling him. I’ve got more important things to do around here than humoring him and keeping him informed of his patient’s progress. Or lack thereof.”

Wilson nodded.

* * * * *

“Negative for chicken pox and shingles, huh?” House looked at the tests. “What else you got?”

As Angela and the nineteen others suggested, argued, threw out, and reformed ideas, House felt himself slipping back in time. He recalled Foreman staring at the coffee bag, not knowing how to open it after the brain surgery to figure out what was making him so sick. He remembered Cameron coming in with a letter of recommendation when she believed he was dying of brain cancer, and moving forward slowly, never taking her eyes off his, until their lips met. But the memory was spoiled by the knowledge that the kiss had been nothing more than a ruse, a botched attempt to get his blood to test him for the cancer he’d never had. He remembered Chase coming into the room, telling House, Foreman, and Cameron that one of their mother-patients would never be okay; her baby had just died.

“Dr. House?” Angela said, nudging his shoulder.

He shook his head. “What? Sorry, your mundane ideas and mumblings must have put me to sleep.”

She gave him a look that clearly said she didn’t believe him, but said, “Well, we have another idea. We want to test her for herpes and other STD’s that will cause rashes.”

“Fine, go ahead, good luck. Get out of here. All of you.”

Nineteen potential employees got up and left. Angela lingered at the door, appearing to want to say something, but when House gave her a sharp glare, she looked away, silently stepping out in the hall, the glass door closing behind her.

House let his head loll forward, looking at the carpet between his feet. He mindlessly tapped his cane on the floor, constructing a whiteboard in his imagination and mentally writing ‘House’ on it. Then, underneath he imagined — ‘Loneliness,’ ‘regret,’ ‘loss.’

“Well, only one thing can cure those symptoms,” he muttered to himself. “To forget about it. Because what have I got to regret? They left, except for Chase, of their own choice. Foreman couldn‘t deal with being like me; Cameron didn‘t want to be the only one left. It was their choice to leave. I‘ve got nothing to regret.”

He popped a couple vicodin in his mouth and threw his head back, swallowing. That would take care of his physical pain.

House stood and walked out of the room after scrawling a note. “I’ll be back. Need to get something. Tell Cuddy not to bother calling to yell.”