A Midwinter Nightmare Chapter 6 (of 8)
Sep. 14th, 2010 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingratAct 3, Scene 2
Puck: [...] in that moment (so it came to pass)
Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3 Scene 2]
11 p.m.
House was leaning against the wall twirling his cane when Wilson rounded the corner of the corridor outside the ER. He straightened up and limped alongside Wilson.
“She’s in a real frenzy. Thinks he might have had a stroke.” Wilson rubbed his hand over his face. “I should’ve told her it’s just Rohypnol.”
“You don’t know it’s Rohypnol. You’re assuming it based on my telephone diagnosis.”
“That’s even worse. I know he’s drugged, but I don’t know what it is, and to top it, I’m letting Cuddy believe it’s a seizure or a stroke.”
“I doubt he’d be running to tell anyone what it was if he’d managed to drug you,” House pointed out with impeccable logic.
“Good point. So you think I should stoop down to his level.”
“Think of it as cruising below your usual flight altitude to evade the enemy radar.”
"And why,” asked Wilson as they entered the elevator, “can’t we tell Cuddy that it’s probably or possibly Rohypnol?”
“Because I’m trying to save a life. The longer Cuddy is distracted, the greater my chances of doing so.”
“How would you have played this if Lucas hadn’t done you the favour of causing a diversion?”
“Oh, I probably would have drugged him myself. Or Cuddy. Although sex with her wouldn’t be half as much fun if she couldn’t remember it afterwards.”
“House!”
“On the other hand, the sex I hallucinated with her was terrific, even though she can’t remember that either.” He cast a sideways glance at Wilson. Wilson hated it when he talked about his hallucinations; his fear that House might disclose a delusion featuring Amber and some sort of sexual activity stood between them unspoken, yet tangible.
“Why am I going to your office with you?” Wilson asked instead.
“You want to know why Lucas tried to spike your drink. I take it that the question slipped your mind in the agony of having to prevaricate to Cuddy.”
Chase, Foreman and Thirteen were in the conference room, Foreman reading the inevitable medical journal, Chase solving a sudoku, Thirteen drumming on the table with her fingertips. House rolled his eyes as he passed outside the conference room, preferring to bypass it and enter his office. He leaned over his desk, pulled open the second drawer from the top and extracted a video tape that he tossed at Wilson.
“Cafeteria: Febuary 2, 2010,” Wilson read. “What ...oh!” He turned it over a few times a though that enabled him to see the contents. “Are you going to show it to Cuddy?”
“No. But Lucas doesn’t know that.” House snatched the tape back.
“I see.” Wilson closed his eyes for a moment, bringing his hands up to his head at the same time. House watched, knowing that an outburst was imminent. The hands came down, palms parallel to each other, all fingertips pointing at House in an accusatory manner.
“Why,” enunciated Wilson, “do my transgressions get plastered all over the hospital while Lucas gets off scot-free?”
House put the tape back in the drawer. It shut with a resounding snap.
“It’s not because you care about Lucas’s feelings. Nor do you care about an escalation in your little mating rituals if you’re prepared to drug him.” Wilson regarded House through narrowed eyes. House avoided eye contact. “You don’t want Cuddy to get hurt,” Wilson surmised.
House didn’t answer. He turned towards the conference room. “Gotta face the lions,” he quipped.
“Oh, by the way,” Wilson added as an afterthought, “I talked Foreman out of taking that teaching post at UW Medicine. He’s bothering Cameron about the diagnostician opening at her hospital, St. Luke’s.” House turned around, the look on his face anything but delighted. Wilson felt the need to elaborate. “That means you get to keep Thirteen, Chase and, if you sweet-talk him a bit, possibly even Foreman.” House’s silence was beginning to grate on him. “I’m not expecting you to kiss my feet or even thank me, but try to be, well, not nice, but ... human to them for a change.”
House found his voice. “Wilson, you idiot!”
Oberon:
What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite
And laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3 Scene 2]
House limped into the conference room. “Nausea, blurred vision, altered mental state, inhibited head movement. Go!”
“Why doesn’t Taub have to be here?” Thirteen asked, her tone aggressive.
“He isn’t worth the bother calling.”
“Why? He lives as close as any of us.” Thirteen was clearly not in a conciliatory mood.
“His humble abode might be close, but the fancy restaurant he’s taking his wife to is in New York.” House looked up to find all three fellows staring at him. “I heard him make the reservation. No matter, Ethan Hunt’s team didn’t feature a long-nosed dwarf either. Now go!”
“Where’s the patient file?” Foreman asked.
“Haven’t got one.”
“Why does the combination of Mission Impossible allusions and no patient file give me a very bad feeling?” Chase mused.
“Any signs of trauma?” Thirteen asked.
“He fell off a bike ...”
“Concussion. No case.” Chase shot out.
“It’s not concussion. Would I be talking about this case if it were concussion?” House remonstrated, bending forward to emphasize his point.
“You would, if it got you out of clinic duty tomorrow,” Foreman stated.
“Are you trying to con Cuddy?” Chase asked, amused.
“No, I’m trying to save the boy’s life,” House bit out. “It would be concussion if he had the slightest signs of trauma at the head. But his hair-do was as impeccable as Chase’s, there wasn’t a scratch on his head, no dirt, no snow, nothing. He’d taken the fall with his left leg and hand. I doubt his head as much as touched the ground.”
“It could be meningitis. Could he nod his head?” Thirteen asked.
“Cuddy threw me out of the ER before I could do a conclusive test, but it didn’t look like it. Meningitis it is.”
“Broad-spectrum antibiotics and a lumbar puncture,” Foreman said.
“Exactly. Thirteen, get everything ready for a lumbar puncture. Page me as soon as you’re ready. Chase, come with me.”
He limped towards the elevator, a reluctant Chase trailing behind him.
“Who am I in your metaphor: Tom Cruise or Jean Reno?”
“Right now you’re Prince Charming. Go to the nurse in ER and tell her Cuddy wants Arun Chatterjee’s file.”
“Why can’t you do that?” Chase asked petulantly.
“Why exert myself when the man whose pretty face bags him twenty chicks’ telephone numbers in two hours works for me?”
House positioned himself on a bench outside the ER, moodily bouncing his cane on the floor while Chase disappeared into the ER. He came out again moments later, twirling a blue file, the sound of feminine giggles fading as the door of the ER slammed shut behind him. Chase proffered the file.
“You make me feel like Dorian Gray,” he muttered.
House glanced up at him for a moment. “Be happy. People look at you and assume the best.” He reached up to take a pen from Chase’s lab coat.
“Only until they get to know me,” Chase continued his own train of thought. “I can’t live up to the illusion I create. When people get to know me, they get disillusioned and ...”
“... they leave you.” House completed the sentence for him. He made a few notes in the file and signed it with a flourish. “So to pre-empt them, you file for a divorce before they can. Or should I say, ‘before she can’? Here!” He held out the file to Chase. “What did you see in Cameron when you married her: a lonely girl, bereaved of her husband, rejected by her mentor?”
“What are you trying to say?” Chase’s eyes never left House as he took the file.
“Nothing.” House’s eyes slid away.
“Hey, you’re the master of rejection!”
“Yep. I practically coined the word.” House pushed himself upright so that he looked down on Chase. His voice was laced with sarcasm as he continued, “As you see, it worked just great for me.” He sighed. “Cameron wasn’t the only one who entered that marriage wearing blinders. Once you’ve got him on IV antibiotics bring him up for the lumbar puncture.” He turned towards the elevator and proceeded to punch the button with his cane.
Chase examined the file. “House, this doesn’t look like Cuddy’s signature at all!”
“I’m relying on your charm to sneak that past the nurses.”
Hermia:
Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse.
For thou I fear hast given me cause to curse.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3 Scene 2]
House ran smack into Cameron as he left the elevator. She cornered him at once, practically pushing him up against the wall next to the elevator as she surveyed him grimly.
“Whoa, careful, mind the cripple!” House protested.
“Are you encouraging him in this?” Cameron asked forcefully.
“If you mean Chase and the divorce, then the answer is no.” He tried to move past her, but she moved with him.
“I don’t believe you.” Her chin was set.
“What do I stand to gain by the disintegration of your marriage? Contrary to your belief, I’m not interested in you.”
“I want him to come to St. Luke’s. There’s a fellowship for diagnostics that he could apply for.”
“He’s free to do so and resign his fellowship over here.”
“You stopped him before,” Cameron accused House.
“I did not. He’s a free man. He chose to stay.” He stepped around her and continued on his way to his office.
She looked after him with her hands on her hips, her lips pressed into a tight line. “You’re a bastard,” she fired at his back. He shrugged.
Cameron marched into the conference room where Foreman was making coffee. “Where’s Chase?” she asked.
Foreman studied her before he returned to doling out two teaspoons of sugar into his mug . “With a patient. Coffee?”
Cameron paced up and down hugging herself, barely nodding an answer to Foreman’s question. Foreman placed a steaming mug on the table at the place where Cameron had sat when she’d been on the team. He waited until she sat down.
“Cameron, you’ve got problems. I can see that. But patting you on the back isn’t going to help you.”
“Helping you to get a fellowship at St. Luke’s won’t help me either, so excuse me if I can’t get my mind round to your issues just now!”
“Wishing that Chase will resign to go with you won’t make it happen.”
“Make what happen?” asked Chase, who’d entered the room unnoticed by either of them. Surprisingly, he neither questioned Cameron’s presence nor seemed to resent it.
“We were talking about the vacancy in diagnostics at St. Luke’s,” Cameron explained. Her hands on the mug tightened.
“Oh, yeah. You mentioned it. I ... was thinking of applying for it,” Chase said.
Foreman’s eyebrows rose. Cameron swivelled to look at Chase, doubt and hope mixed in her features. “Why?” she asked.
“You want me to, don’t you?”
“Three hours ago you wanted to teach neurology at Johns Hopkins,” Foreman growled.
“I didn’t ask to do it. I was okay with it, that was all.”
“So what changed?” Foreman dug.
“I changed my mind, okay? What’s bitten you?” Chase was mystified.
“When I want the position you change your mind. Are you messing with me?” Foreman challenged him.
“Who’s messing with whom?” Chase’s good-natured face darkened. “Three hours ago you wanted to teach at Johns Hopkins with Thirteen, in case you don’t remember. Then my wife turns up, and suddenly Johns Hopkins and Thirteen are forgotten.”
He leaned with both hands on the conference table, glaring at Foreman, who bristled, rose and glared back.
Cameron’s eyes darted from one to the other. “Is this some sort of a sick joke?” she asked.
Thirteen came in. “Everything is ready for the LP. ... Did I miss something?”
“Did you know that Foreman wants to take a job as diagnostician at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York?” Chase asked, not moving his eyes from Foreman’s face.
“No...” Thirteen was nonplussed. “We’re going to UW Medicine. At least, that’s what I thought,” she added uncertainly as she scanned Foreman’s face.
Foreman sat down again, breaking the eye contact with Chase. “I’ve decided against teaching.”
“You’ve ... decided against teaching,” Thirteen repeated, her eyes closing briefly. When she reopened them she registered Chase’s aggression, Cameron’s confusion and Foreman’s front of indifference. She pivoted to face Cameron.
“Look, if your newest ploy is to make Chase jealous, that’s fine, but leave us out of it!”
“I didn’t ...”
“She didn’t ...” Cameron and Foreman said simultaneously.
“I want to stay in diagnostics, that’s all,” Foreman said. “I’m sorry if it affects your plans, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay and hold the course at Johns Hopkins. I’ll leave you my notes.”
“Your notes,” Thirteen echoed blankly.
“Children, stop fighting, or daddy will get annoyed.” House popped his head in from his office. “I hate to interrupt your dramatics, but we do have a patient. As long as I have no resignations on my desk, you are still my employees.”
“We don’t have a patient,” Chase contradicted. “The parents have refused to consent to an LP without Cuddy’s express approval. They want to talk to her first.”
“Don’t tell me that you let them get to Cuddy!” House practically yelled.
“No, they haven’t talked to her yet,” Chase appeased him. “She’s kind of busy at the moment.” He grinned slightly, as did House after a moment.
“Don’t move,” he instructed his team. “The case isn’t out of our hands yet.”
He swung past Wilson’s office. Wilson was packing up for the night, placing files into his briefcase.
“Wilson, let’s go!”
“I’m not coming with you. I’m finally done over here and I’m going home. Unlike you, I have every intention of being here at eight am, so I need to get to bed. I don’t know what you’re up to, but it’s not my problem.”
“It is.”
“And that would be because?”
“Because you doped Lucas.”
Wilson paused. “On your orders.”
“Do you think Cuddy will care?”
“You wouldn’t tell her ... would you?”
House smirked.
“Oh, all right.” Wilson slammed the briefcase shut, but left it on the desk. He followed House out of his office, meticulously turning off the lights and locking the door. “What are we doing and why?”
“You are getting a signature from Cuddy for me. It saves my patient’s life. An added bonus is that it keeps you away from my team, reducing the likelihood of further complications brought on by your uncalled for interference.”
“Hey, I saved Thirteen for you,” Wilson objected.
House rounded on him. “Yeah, but for how long, pray?”
“What do you mean, ‘for how long’?”
“How much longer do you think Thirteen can work for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then open your eyes! Even Cuddy has noticed.”
“So pushing her into leaving helps her ... how?” Wilson asked in his usual manner.
“Teaching doesn’t require her to stick needles into delicate organs.”
“You could get the others to do things like that,” Wilson said reasonably.
“Patients don’t want doctors whose hands tremble uncontrollably, whose limbs jerk, who have to call their colleagues every time they need to do an invasive procedure.”
“Since when do you care what patients want?” Wilson enquired. “You’re not doing this for the patients, you’re doing this for her. You want to spare her the humiliation of having to resign because she can’t cope with the procedures, the long working hours or your crass demands any more. And you’re pushing Foreman out ...” He paused to ponder on that.
“Foreman will leave sooner or later, no matter what I do. He wants his own department.”
“... so that Thirteen won’t be on her own. If they left for UW Med together, he would take care of her.” Wilson continued undeterred.
“But you had to interfere!” House groused, giving up the attempt to fool Wilson.
“My bad. So now what?”
“You can make up for it by getting my patient out of Cuddy’s clutches.”
Titania:
Come, sit thee down on this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4 Scene 1]
All hopes of getting to Arun’s bedside without being spotted by Cuddy were dashed when they got to the ER. The curtain screening Lucas’s bed off was ripped aside as they passed. House threw back his head and waited for the inevitable. It didn’t come. Instead:
“House, thank God you’re still here! Could you come here please?” There was no mistaking the pleading note in Cuddy’s voice.
“I’m always glad to be of service, mistress mine,” House riposted. “But to do the deed right here in front of your present lover, who seems to be in some state of consciousness,” Lucas’s eyes were open, even if they seemed fairly blank, “seems slightly kinky, even by your standards.”
Cuddy ignored his innuendos. “House, the doctors here say it isn’t a stroke, but so far they have no clue what it is.”
House cast a cursory glance at Lucas. He was definitely conscious, but drowsy and apathetic. “It’s no wonder you’re frustrated if he’s always like that in bed.”
“House, please!”
“It’s such a turn-on when you beg for it.” House hooked his cane over the foot of the bed, picking up the case file instead. He opened it, stepping over to Wilson as he did so and mouthing, “Get the boy’s file.”
There was nothing noteworthy in the charts, so House switched his attention to Lucas, checking his vitals although he didn’t expect to find anything extraordinary there.
“Have you done a drug screen?” he asked.
“Lucas doesn’t do drugs,” Cuddy bristled.
“Do a drug screen,” House advised.
“House, he doesn’t ...”
“You say you trust my medical opinion,” House interrupted her, holding her gaze.
She locked eyes with him for a long moment before she dropped hers, expelling a long breath. “Fine. We’ll do a drug screen.”
Wilson returned with Arun’s file. House grabbed it, filled out a few lines and then turned to Cuddy, who was fussing over Lucas.
“Cuddy, I need your consent for an LP.”
“An LP?” As she looked at Lucas her eyes filled with fear. “What do you think ...”
“Not for him. For my patient.”
Cuddy lost interest immediately. She snatched the pen he proffered, signed the form and thrust the file back at House in one smooth movement.
“That was easy,” Wilson remarked as they made their way back to the elevator. House scrunched up his face in thought.
“House, you aren’t thinking of drugging Lucas every time you want to perform a risky procedure, are you?”
“Nah. It’s effective, but it’s more fun when Cuddy puts up a fight.”
House popped his head into the conference room. “Patient, lumbar puncture, go get! No, not Chase this time.” He closed his eyes as though considering a difficult question. “Foreman.”
“Why me?” Foreman asked.
“I’ve got Cuddy’s signature this time, so your aura of medical competence beats Chase’s charm.” Foreman frowned, but left for the ER to get the boy.
“Why are you going along?” Chase asked curiously as House turned to follow Foreman.
“Donor kid, hence he’s the apple of Cuddy’s mercenary eye. It behoves me as a senior member of her staff to attend to him personally.” He winked as he disappeared.
Foreman, wheeling his young patient into the room Thirteen had prepared for the lumbar puncture, stopped short on seeing House perched on a stool blowing up a surgical glove. House let the air out with a squeak.
“Go ahead,” he said, stretching the glove’s middle finger. When he released it, it bounced back with a resounding pop. Foreman pursed his lips in disapproval, but turned the boy onto his side without any comment on House’s activities.
“Fellow for diagnostics at St. Luke’s,” House commented politely. “A bad choice for your career. So why would you do it, I wonder?”
Foreman swabbed the area around the spine in silence.
“It’s a win for me,” House continued as though unaware of Foreman’s black mood. “I get to keep Thirteen. Now I know you feel a deep sense of obligation to me for all the things I’ve taught you, but such selflessness on your part moves me deeply.”
He peered at Foreman as though expecting a response. Foreman picked up the needle and syringe for the puncture. “It’s a good thing that you have no obligations towards Thirteen. It would be awkward if you were still in a relationship – you could hardly hold a job in New York while keeping an eye on her in Princeton, ...”
“Try to hold still,” Foreman told the boy.
“... not once the disease progresses further. Huntingdon’s progresses in her, you progress in your career. You get a fellowship and probably a department in a few years. She gets jerky movements and dementia.” The stool squeaked in protest as House spun around on it. “It’s not a nice ailment for family to have to deal with. Like Alzheimer’s.”
Foreman paused, needle in hand.
“But you know all about that. Your mother had Alzheimer’s, didn’t she?”
“House!” Foreman warned.
“Yes, it’s more comfortable to be at a distance so as to be able to determine one’s own degree of involvement, than to be in close proximity, having to face the disease’s progression, the patient’s rage and humiliation, the decline into dementia.” He tailed off, only to recommence worrying the surgical glove.
“That’s not why I’m opting for the fellowship in diagnostics!” Foreman insisted.
“You could have fooled me. Do you know why you’re doing the LP?” House asked Foreman.
“Because you’re the boss, so you get to decide,” Foreman recited like a schoolboy quoting lines from a poem.
“Wrong. I’m the boss, but the boss’s boss has decided that Thirteen does no more invasive procedures on patients.”
Foreman put the needle down. “Does she know?” he asked in a low voice.
“Nope. I didn’t want to deprive you of the pleasure of telling her.”
“I’m not telling her,” Foreman said, his voice firm, but his eyes held a hunted look.
House twanged the stretched finger of the rubber glove. “No? Next you’ll say I should wait to tell her till you’re fixed at St. Luke’s. You can choose: either you tell her or I will do so with my best bedside manner.”
“You bastard!” Foreman stomped out of the room, not bothering to take off his surgical gloves or his scrubs.
House sighed, pulled on a fresh pair of surgical gloves and picked up the discarded needle.
“You’d better not try out that word on your parents,” he remarked to Arun, who grinned weakly. “Deep breath and hold still.”
House wasn’t surprised to find only Chase and Cameron in the conference room when he returned with Arun’s spinal fluid. He waved the syringe under Chase’s nose. “Take it to the lab and confirm meningitis before Cuddy bites off my nose. ‘Nose’ being a metaphor for ...” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
Cameron rolled her eyes. Chase rose and left.
Cameron was still on the warpath. “Not even a confirmed diagnosis of meningitis is likely to appease her. Foreman and Thirteen have gone to her to ask for a quick release from their contracts. Foreman was really pissed off.”
“Did he say anything?” House asked nonchalantly.
“Only that you were a self-serving jerk and that he wouldn’t wait around for a position in diagnostics to materialize. He practically begged Thirteen to join him at UW Med.” She eyed him speculatively. “I’d say he’s trying to sabotage you as much as possible now that he’s leaving.”
“Schadenfreude doesn’t become you,” House remarked. “I assume you’ll be telling me next that Chase is resigning so as to join St. Luke’s.” He returned to his dark office to sit behind his desk, leaving the door to the conference room open. Cameron, considering that enough of an invitation, followed him to take up a position in front of his desk staring down at him provocatively.
“Would that bother you?” she asked.
“It should bother you. It’s an admission of guilt on his part where there’s nothing to feel guilty about.” He started up his laptop.
“In what skewered universe is killing a man not a crime?” Cameron flared.
“I’m not talking about Dibala. That’s between him and his conscience. I’m talking about your marriage.” House leaned back in his chair with only the light from the laptop screen illuminating his face. “He told you he killed Dibala, so you pounced on that, happy to have something to fix. You decided how to fix it for Chase. It’s too bad that he has a mind of his own that wants to decide for itself how to deal with the Dibala issue.”
“I’m not trying to dictate to him how he should work through this issue, as you call it. What I want is for him to get away from this place, from you, so that he realizes how shallow and rotten he has become.”
“Fool yourself if you want to,” House shrugged. “But remember that Chase is the son who let his abhorred father make a phone call to get him this job, the employee who brown-nosed Vogler to secure that job. Chase never was the innocent lad you chose to see in him. He’s a man with faults just like everyone else. Take him as he is or leave him, but don’t expect him to live up to some ideal that you’ve concocted in that rigid mental system of yours.”
House returned his attention to his laptop indicating, not for the first time that night, that from his point of view the conversation was closed. Cameron stared down at him uncertainly.
“So what do I do if he doesn’t join me at St. Luke’s?” she asked. Suddenly realization dawned on her. “You want me to come back!”
House looked up, shrugging. “From what you tell me, I figure that I have a couple of vacancies.”
“So this isn’t about Robert or what’s good for him. This is about filling your inconvenient vacancies with as little trouble or change as possible.”
House steepled his fingers. “Those vacancies aren’t ‘inconvenient’, they are calculated. I needn’t have pissed Foreman and Thirteen off, yet I did. Go figure.” He swivelled around in his chair to pick a journal off the shelf. “You can work for me if you want to. Just don’t get the idea that I axed them in order to get you back.”
Puck: [...] in that moment (so it came to pass)
Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3 Scene 2]
11 p.m.
House was leaning against the wall twirling his cane when Wilson rounded the corner of the corridor outside the ER. He straightened up and limped alongside Wilson.
“She’s in a real frenzy. Thinks he might have had a stroke.” Wilson rubbed his hand over his face. “I should’ve told her it’s just Rohypnol.”
“You don’t know it’s Rohypnol. You’re assuming it based on my telephone diagnosis.”
“That’s even worse. I know he’s drugged, but I don’t know what it is, and to top it, I’m letting Cuddy believe it’s a seizure or a stroke.”
“I doubt he’d be running to tell anyone what it was if he’d managed to drug you,” House pointed out with impeccable logic.
“Good point. So you think I should stoop down to his level.”
“Think of it as cruising below your usual flight altitude to evade the enemy radar.”
"And why,” asked Wilson as they entered the elevator, “can’t we tell Cuddy that it’s probably or possibly Rohypnol?”
“Because I’m trying to save a life. The longer Cuddy is distracted, the greater my chances of doing so.”
“How would you have played this if Lucas hadn’t done you the favour of causing a diversion?”
“Oh, I probably would have drugged him myself. Or Cuddy. Although sex with her wouldn’t be half as much fun if she couldn’t remember it afterwards.”
“House!”
“On the other hand, the sex I hallucinated with her was terrific, even though she can’t remember that either.” He cast a sideways glance at Wilson. Wilson hated it when he talked about his hallucinations; his fear that House might disclose a delusion featuring Amber and some sort of sexual activity stood between them unspoken, yet tangible.
“Why am I going to your office with you?” Wilson asked instead.
“You want to know why Lucas tried to spike your drink. I take it that the question slipped your mind in the agony of having to prevaricate to Cuddy.”
Chase, Foreman and Thirteen were in the conference room, Foreman reading the inevitable medical journal, Chase solving a sudoku, Thirteen drumming on the table with her fingertips. House rolled his eyes as he passed outside the conference room, preferring to bypass it and enter his office. He leaned over his desk, pulled open the second drawer from the top and extracted a video tape that he tossed at Wilson.
“Cafeteria: Febuary 2, 2010,” Wilson read. “What ...oh!” He turned it over a few times a though that enabled him to see the contents. “Are you going to show it to Cuddy?”
“No. But Lucas doesn’t know that.” House snatched the tape back.
“I see.” Wilson closed his eyes for a moment, bringing his hands up to his head at the same time. House watched, knowing that an outburst was imminent. The hands came down, palms parallel to each other, all fingertips pointing at House in an accusatory manner.
“Why,” enunciated Wilson, “do my transgressions get plastered all over the hospital while Lucas gets off scot-free?”
House put the tape back in the drawer. It shut with a resounding snap.
“It’s not because you care about Lucas’s feelings. Nor do you care about an escalation in your little mating rituals if you’re prepared to drug him.” Wilson regarded House through narrowed eyes. House avoided eye contact. “You don’t want Cuddy to get hurt,” Wilson surmised.
House didn’t answer. He turned towards the conference room. “Gotta face the lions,” he quipped.
“Oh, by the way,” Wilson added as an afterthought, “I talked Foreman out of taking that teaching post at UW Medicine. He’s bothering Cameron about the diagnostician opening at her hospital, St. Luke’s.” House turned around, the look on his face anything but delighted. Wilson felt the need to elaborate. “That means you get to keep Thirteen, Chase and, if you sweet-talk him a bit, possibly even Foreman.” House’s silence was beginning to grate on him. “I’m not expecting you to kiss my feet or even thank me, but try to be, well, not nice, but ... human to them for a change.”
House found his voice. “Wilson, you idiot!”
Oberon:
What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite
And laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3 Scene 2]
House limped into the conference room. “Nausea, blurred vision, altered mental state, inhibited head movement. Go!”
“Why doesn’t Taub have to be here?” Thirteen asked, her tone aggressive.
“He isn’t worth the bother calling.”
“Why? He lives as close as any of us.” Thirteen was clearly not in a conciliatory mood.
“His humble abode might be close, but the fancy restaurant he’s taking his wife to is in New York.” House looked up to find all three fellows staring at him. “I heard him make the reservation. No matter, Ethan Hunt’s team didn’t feature a long-nosed dwarf either. Now go!”
“Where’s the patient file?” Foreman asked.
“Haven’t got one.”
“Why does the combination of Mission Impossible allusions and no patient file give me a very bad feeling?” Chase mused.
“Any signs of trauma?” Thirteen asked.
“He fell off a bike ...”
“Concussion. No case.” Chase shot out.
“It’s not concussion. Would I be talking about this case if it were concussion?” House remonstrated, bending forward to emphasize his point.
“You would, if it got you out of clinic duty tomorrow,” Foreman stated.
“Are you trying to con Cuddy?” Chase asked, amused.
“No, I’m trying to save the boy’s life,” House bit out. “It would be concussion if he had the slightest signs of trauma at the head. But his hair-do was as impeccable as Chase’s, there wasn’t a scratch on his head, no dirt, no snow, nothing. He’d taken the fall with his left leg and hand. I doubt his head as much as touched the ground.”
“It could be meningitis. Could he nod his head?” Thirteen asked.
“Cuddy threw me out of the ER before I could do a conclusive test, but it didn’t look like it. Meningitis it is.”
“Broad-spectrum antibiotics and a lumbar puncture,” Foreman said.
“Exactly. Thirteen, get everything ready for a lumbar puncture. Page me as soon as you’re ready. Chase, come with me.”
He limped towards the elevator, a reluctant Chase trailing behind him.
“Who am I in your metaphor: Tom Cruise or Jean Reno?”
“Right now you’re Prince Charming. Go to the nurse in ER and tell her Cuddy wants Arun Chatterjee’s file.”
“Why can’t you do that?” Chase asked petulantly.
“Why exert myself when the man whose pretty face bags him twenty chicks’ telephone numbers in two hours works for me?”
House positioned himself on a bench outside the ER, moodily bouncing his cane on the floor while Chase disappeared into the ER. He came out again moments later, twirling a blue file, the sound of feminine giggles fading as the door of the ER slammed shut behind him. Chase proffered the file.
“You make me feel like Dorian Gray,” he muttered.
House glanced up at him for a moment. “Be happy. People look at you and assume the best.” He reached up to take a pen from Chase’s lab coat.
“Only until they get to know me,” Chase continued his own train of thought. “I can’t live up to the illusion I create. When people get to know me, they get disillusioned and ...”
“... they leave you.” House completed the sentence for him. He made a few notes in the file and signed it with a flourish. “So to pre-empt them, you file for a divorce before they can. Or should I say, ‘before she can’? Here!” He held out the file to Chase. “What did you see in Cameron when you married her: a lonely girl, bereaved of her husband, rejected by her mentor?”
“What are you trying to say?” Chase’s eyes never left House as he took the file.
“Nothing.” House’s eyes slid away.
“Hey, you’re the master of rejection!”
“Yep. I practically coined the word.” House pushed himself upright so that he looked down on Chase. His voice was laced with sarcasm as he continued, “As you see, it worked just great for me.” He sighed. “Cameron wasn’t the only one who entered that marriage wearing blinders. Once you’ve got him on IV antibiotics bring him up for the lumbar puncture.” He turned towards the elevator and proceeded to punch the button with his cane.
Chase examined the file. “House, this doesn’t look like Cuddy’s signature at all!”
“I’m relying on your charm to sneak that past the nurses.”
Hermia:
Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse.
For thou I fear hast given me cause to curse.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3 Scene 2]
House ran smack into Cameron as he left the elevator. She cornered him at once, practically pushing him up against the wall next to the elevator as she surveyed him grimly.
“Whoa, careful, mind the cripple!” House protested.
“Are you encouraging him in this?” Cameron asked forcefully.
“If you mean Chase and the divorce, then the answer is no.” He tried to move past her, but she moved with him.
“I don’t believe you.” Her chin was set.
“What do I stand to gain by the disintegration of your marriage? Contrary to your belief, I’m not interested in you.”
“I want him to come to St. Luke’s. There’s a fellowship for diagnostics that he could apply for.”
“He’s free to do so and resign his fellowship over here.”
“You stopped him before,” Cameron accused House.
“I did not. He’s a free man. He chose to stay.” He stepped around her and continued on his way to his office.
She looked after him with her hands on her hips, her lips pressed into a tight line. “You’re a bastard,” she fired at his back. He shrugged.
Cameron marched into the conference room where Foreman was making coffee. “Where’s Chase?” she asked.
Foreman studied her before he returned to doling out two teaspoons of sugar into his mug . “With a patient. Coffee?”
Cameron paced up and down hugging herself, barely nodding an answer to Foreman’s question. Foreman placed a steaming mug on the table at the place where Cameron had sat when she’d been on the team. He waited until she sat down.
“Cameron, you’ve got problems. I can see that. But patting you on the back isn’t going to help you.”
“Helping you to get a fellowship at St. Luke’s won’t help me either, so excuse me if I can’t get my mind round to your issues just now!”
“Wishing that Chase will resign to go with you won’t make it happen.”
“Make what happen?” asked Chase, who’d entered the room unnoticed by either of them. Surprisingly, he neither questioned Cameron’s presence nor seemed to resent it.
“We were talking about the vacancy in diagnostics at St. Luke’s,” Cameron explained. Her hands on the mug tightened.
“Oh, yeah. You mentioned it. I ... was thinking of applying for it,” Chase said.
Foreman’s eyebrows rose. Cameron swivelled to look at Chase, doubt and hope mixed in her features. “Why?” she asked.
“You want me to, don’t you?”
“Three hours ago you wanted to teach neurology at Johns Hopkins,” Foreman growled.
“I didn’t ask to do it. I was okay with it, that was all.”
“So what changed?” Foreman dug.
“I changed my mind, okay? What’s bitten you?” Chase was mystified.
“When I want the position you change your mind. Are you messing with me?” Foreman challenged him.
“Who’s messing with whom?” Chase’s good-natured face darkened. “Three hours ago you wanted to teach at Johns Hopkins with Thirteen, in case you don’t remember. Then my wife turns up, and suddenly Johns Hopkins and Thirteen are forgotten.”
He leaned with both hands on the conference table, glaring at Foreman, who bristled, rose and glared back.
Cameron’s eyes darted from one to the other. “Is this some sort of a sick joke?” she asked.
Thirteen came in. “Everything is ready for the LP. ... Did I miss something?”
“Did you know that Foreman wants to take a job as diagnostician at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York?” Chase asked, not moving his eyes from Foreman’s face.
“No...” Thirteen was nonplussed. “We’re going to UW Medicine. At least, that’s what I thought,” she added uncertainly as she scanned Foreman’s face.
Foreman sat down again, breaking the eye contact with Chase. “I’ve decided against teaching.”
“You’ve ... decided against teaching,” Thirteen repeated, her eyes closing briefly. When she reopened them she registered Chase’s aggression, Cameron’s confusion and Foreman’s front of indifference. She pivoted to face Cameron.
“Look, if your newest ploy is to make Chase jealous, that’s fine, but leave us out of it!”
“I didn’t ...”
“She didn’t ...” Cameron and Foreman said simultaneously.
“I want to stay in diagnostics, that’s all,” Foreman said. “I’m sorry if it affects your plans, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay and hold the course at Johns Hopkins. I’ll leave you my notes.”
“Your notes,” Thirteen echoed blankly.
“Children, stop fighting, or daddy will get annoyed.” House popped his head in from his office. “I hate to interrupt your dramatics, but we do have a patient. As long as I have no resignations on my desk, you are still my employees.”
“We don’t have a patient,” Chase contradicted. “The parents have refused to consent to an LP without Cuddy’s express approval. They want to talk to her first.”
“Don’t tell me that you let them get to Cuddy!” House practically yelled.
“No, they haven’t talked to her yet,” Chase appeased him. “She’s kind of busy at the moment.” He grinned slightly, as did House after a moment.
“Don’t move,” he instructed his team. “The case isn’t out of our hands yet.”
He swung past Wilson’s office. Wilson was packing up for the night, placing files into his briefcase.
“Wilson, let’s go!”
“I’m not coming with you. I’m finally done over here and I’m going home. Unlike you, I have every intention of being here at eight am, so I need to get to bed. I don’t know what you’re up to, but it’s not my problem.”
“It is.”
“And that would be because?”
“Because you doped Lucas.”
Wilson paused. “On your orders.”
“Do you think Cuddy will care?”
“You wouldn’t tell her ... would you?”
House smirked.
“Oh, all right.” Wilson slammed the briefcase shut, but left it on the desk. He followed House out of his office, meticulously turning off the lights and locking the door. “What are we doing and why?”
“You are getting a signature from Cuddy for me. It saves my patient’s life. An added bonus is that it keeps you away from my team, reducing the likelihood of further complications brought on by your uncalled for interference.”
“Hey, I saved Thirteen for you,” Wilson objected.
House rounded on him. “Yeah, but for how long, pray?”
“What do you mean, ‘for how long’?”
“How much longer do you think Thirteen can work for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then open your eyes! Even Cuddy has noticed.”
“So pushing her into leaving helps her ... how?” Wilson asked in his usual manner.
“Teaching doesn’t require her to stick needles into delicate organs.”
“You could get the others to do things like that,” Wilson said reasonably.
“Patients don’t want doctors whose hands tremble uncontrollably, whose limbs jerk, who have to call their colleagues every time they need to do an invasive procedure.”
“Since when do you care what patients want?” Wilson enquired. “You’re not doing this for the patients, you’re doing this for her. You want to spare her the humiliation of having to resign because she can’t cope with the procedures, the long working hours or your crass demands any more. And you’re pushing Foreman out ...” He paused to ponder on that.
“Foreman will leave sooner or later, no matter what I do. He wants his own department.”
“... so that Thirteen won’t be on her own. If they left for UW Med together, he would take care of her.” Wilson continued undeterred.
“But you had to interfere!” House groused, giving up the attempt to fool Wilson.
“My bad. So now what?”
“You can make up for it by getting my patient out of Cuddy’s clutches.”
Titania:
Come, sit thee down on this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4 Scene 1]
All hopes of getting to Arun’s bedside without being spotted by Cuddy were dashed when they got to the ER. The curtain screening Lucas’s bed off was ripped aside as they passed. House threw back his head and waited for the inevitable. It didn’t come. Instead:
“House, thank God you’re still here! Could you come here please?” There was no mistaking the pleading note in Cuddy’s voice.
“I’m always glad to be of service, mistress mine,” House riposted. “But to do the deed right here in front of your present lover, who seems to be in some state of consciousness,” Lucas’s eyes were open, even if they seemed fairly blank, “seems slightly kinky, even by your standards.”
Cuddy ignored his innuendos. “House, the doctors here say it isn’t a stroke, but so far they have no clue what it is.”
House cast a cursory glance at Lucas. He was definitely conscious, but drowsy and apathetic. “It’s no wonder you’re frustrated if he’s always like that in bed.”
“House, please!”
“It’s such a turn-on when you beg for it.” House hooked his cane over the foot of the bed, picking up the case file instead. He opened it, stepping over to Wilson as he did so and mouthing, “Get the boy’s file.”
There was nothing noteworthy in the charts, so House switched his attention to Lucas, checking his vitals although he didn’t expect to find anything extraordinary there.
“Have you done a drug screen?” he asked.
“Lucas doesn’t do drugs,” Cuddy bristled.
“Do a drug screen,” House advised.
“House, he doesn’t ...”
“You say you trust my medical opinion,” House interrupted her, holding her gaze.
She locked eyes with him for a long moment before she dropped hers, expelling a long breath. “Fine. We’ll do a drug screen.”
Wilson returned with Arun’s file. House grabbed it, filled out a few lines and then turned to Cuddy, who was fussing over Lucas.
“Cuddy, I need your consent for an LP.”
“An LP?” As she looked at Lucas her eyes filled with fear. “What do you think ...”
“Not for him. For my patient.”
Cuddy lost interest immediately. She snatched the pen he proffered, signed the form and thrust the file back at House in one smooth movement.
“That was easy,” Wilson remarked as they made their way back to the elevator. House scrunched up his face in thought.
“House, you aren’t thinking of drugging Lucas every time you want to perform a risky procedure, are you?”
“Nah. It’s effective, but it’s more fun when Cuddy puts up a fight.”
House popped his head into the conference room. “Patient, lumbar puncture, go get! No, not Chase this time.” He closed his eyes as though considering a difficult question. “Foreman.”
“Why me?” Foreman asked.
“I’ve got Cuddy’s signature this time, so your aura of medical competence beats Chase’s charm.” Foreman frowned, but left for the ER to get the boy.
“Why are you going along?” Chase asked curiously as House turned to follow Foreman.
“Donor kid, hence he’s the apple of Cuddy’s mercenary eye. It behoves me as a senior member of her staff to attend to him personally.” He winked as he disappeared.
Foreman, wheeling his young patient into the room Thirteen had prepared for the lumbar puncture, stopped short on seeing House perched on a stool blowing up a surgical glove. House let the air out with a squeak.
“Go ahead,” he said, stretching the glove’s middle finger. When he released it, it bounced back with a resounding pop. Foreman pursed his lips in disapproval, but turned the boy onto his side without any comment on House’s activities.
“Fellow for diagnostics at St. Luke’s,” House commented politely. “A bad choice for your career. So why would you do it, I wonder?”
Foreman swabbed the area around the spine in silence.
“It’s a win for me,” House continued as though unaware of Foreman’s black mood. “I get to keep Thirteen. Now I know you feel a deep sense of obligation to me for all the things I’ve taught you, but such selflessness on your part moves me deeply.”
He peered at Foreman as though expecting a response. Foreman picked up the needle and syringe for the puncture. “It’s a good thing that you have no obligations towards Thirteen. It would be awkward if you were still in a relationship – you could hardly hold a job in New York while keeping an eye on her in Princeton, ...”
“Try to hold still,” Foreman told the boy.
“... not once the disease progresses further. Huntingdon’s progresses in her, you progress in your career. You get a fellowship and probably a department in a few years. She gets jerky movements and dementia.” The stool squeaked in protest as House spun around on it. “It’s not a nice ailment for family to have to deal with. Like Alzheimer’s.”
Foreman paused, needle in hand.
“But you know all about that. Your mother had Alzheimer’s, didn’t she?”
“House!” Foreman warned.
“Yes, it’s more comfortable to be at a distance so as to be able to determine one’s own degree of involvement, than to be in close proximity, having to face the disease’s progression, the patient’s rage and humiliation, the decline into dementia.” He tailed off, only to recommence worrying the surgical glove.
“That’s not why I’m opting for the fellowship in diagnostics!” Foreman insisted.
“You could have fooled me. Do you know why you’re doing the LP?” House asked Foreman.
“Because you’re the boss, so you get to decide,” Foreman recited like a schoolboy quoting lines from a poem.
“Wrong. I’m the boss, but the boss’s boss has decided that Thirteen does no more invasive procedures on patients.”
Foreman put the needle down. “Does she know?” he asked in a low voice.
“Nope. I didn’t want to deprive you of the pleasure of telling her.”
“I’m not telling her,” Foreman said, his voice firm, but his eyes held a hunted look.
House twanged the stretched finger of the rubber glove. “No? Next you’ll say I should wait to tell her till you’re fixed at St. Luke’s. You can choose: either you tell her or I will do so with my best bedside manner.”
“You bastard!” Foreman stomped out of the room, not bothering to take off his surgical gloves or his scrubs.
House sighed, pulled on a fresh pair of surgical gloves and picked up the discarded needle.
“You’d better not try out that word on your parents,” he remarked to Arun, who grinned weakly. “Deep breath and hold still.”
House wasn’t surprised to find only Chase and Cameron in the conference room when he returned with Arun’s spinal fluid. He waved the syringe under Chase’s nose. “Take it to the lab and confirm meningitis before Cuddy bites off my nose. ‘Nose’ being a metaphor for ...” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
Cameron rolled her eyes. Chase rose and left.
Cameron was still on the warpath. “Not even a confirmed diagnosis of meningitis is likely to appease her. Foreman and Thirteen have gone to her to ask for a quick release from their contracts. Foreman was really pissed off.”
“Did he say anything?” House asked nonchalantly.
“Only that you were a self-serving jerk and that he wouldn’t wait around for a position in diagnostics to materialize. He practically begged Thirteen to join him at UW Med.” She eyed him speculatively. “I’d say he’s trying to sabotage you as much as possible now that he’s leaving.”
“Schadenfreude doesn’t become you,” House remarked. “I assume you’ll be telling me next that Chase is resigning so as to join St. Luke’s.” He returned to his dark office to sit behind his desk, leaving the door to the conference room open. Cameron, considering that enough of an invitation, followed him to take up a position in front of his desk staring down at him provocatively.
“Would that bother you?” she asked.
“It should bother you. It’s an admission of guilt on his part where there’s nothing to feel guilty about.” He started up his laptop.
“In what skewered universe is killing a man not a crime?” Cameron flared.
“I’m not talking about Dibala. That’s between him and his conscience. I’m talking about your marriage.” House leaned back in his chair with only the light from the laptop screen illuminating his face. “He told you he killed Dibala, so you pounced on that, happy to have something to fix. You decided how to fix it for Chase. It’s too bad that he has a mind of his own that wants to decide for itself how to deal with the Dibala issue.”
“I’m not trying to dictate to him how he should work through this issue, as you call it. What I want is for him to get away from this place, from you, so that he realizes how shallow and rotten he has become.”
“Fool yourself if you want to,” House shrugged. “But remember that Chase is the son who let his abhorred father make a phone call to get him this job, the employee who brown-nosed Vogler to secure that job. Chase never was the innocent lad you chose to see in him. He’s a man with faults just like everyone else. Take him as he is or leave him, but don’t expect him to live up to some ideal that you’ve concocted in that rigid mental system of yours.”
House returned his attention to his laptop indicating, not for the first time that night, that from his point of view the conversation was closed. Cameron stared down at him uncertainly.
“So what do I do if he doesn’t join me at St. Luke’s?” she asked. Suddenly realization dawned on her. “You want me to come back!”
House looked up, shrugging. “From what you tell me, I figure that I have a couple of vacancies.”
“So this isn’t about Robert or what’s good for him. This is about filling your inconvenient vacancies with as little trouble or change as possible.”
House steepled his fingers. “Those vacancies aren’t ‘inconvenient’, they are calculated. I needn’t have pissed Foreman and Thirteen off, yet I did. Go figure.” He swivelled around in his chair to pick a journal off the shelf. “You can work for me if you want to. Just don’t get the idea that I axed them in order to get you back.”
