readingrat | fic: The Kelpie - Part III Chapter 2 (Reply)

Part III: Philadelphia

Chapter 2: The Clouds Burst

Carried forward by her impetus, Lisa pulls up only a few inches in front of him. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

It is only then that a basic truth strikes him: Lisa must have known all along. Obviously. Because she (and James, too) worked at this hospital while he did. So that's what he used to do - he worked at PPTH as a diagnostician. It fits; he can feel the identity cling to him, covering him like a second skin. Not for a moment does he give in to the supposition that the man might be a doppelganger, for the little he knows about himself fits in with what he knows of gimp-legged House: a physician of doubtful repute, the kind of guy Lisa gets attached to, a shtik drek.

And Lisa has been aware of his identity all along.

You knew, his common sense tells him. There were hints galore that you chose to ignore. Lisa's practiced way of dealing with your disability, her knowledge of your sexual preferences, her dismay when you arrived in the USA, her blind acceptance of your medical authority when you diagnosed that kid in her clinic with anaphylactic shock, her routine way of dealing with your jackassery. She called you 'House' once in Bristol in a drowsy moment on waking up in your arms. She knew that you can play the piano. She even said that you reminded her of someone! You never questioned any of this; you never asked her, nosed around, or showed the slightest suspicion, because you didn't want to know. You preferred to believe that she was interested in you for your own sake, not because of some tenuous, ambiguous connection to your past.

He stares down at her, his brain barely grasping what this means, but finally his tongue kicks in again. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

She doesn't pretend not to know what he's talking about, nor does she show any sign of guilt. "Trust me, you didn't want to know."

"And that's your call to make, to decide what I want to know?"

James opens his mouth for the first time. "It's the call you made when you opted for a procedure that would erase your memory, covering your tracks beforehand to ensure you'd never find out who you are."

What James says confirms his suspicions, but he's not about to show either of them that he's aware that he caused his own misery.

The second elevator opens its doors with a ping, disclosing the three men who'd been sitting or standing around Lisa's table. The blond guy, Chase, says, "It is House!" upon which Lisa swings round to him, hissing, "Shush! You don't need to announce it to the whole goddamn hospital!"

The group starts towards him, surprise, doubt and warmth in differing degrees on their several faces. He gives them a quelling frown, for other than the sparse information he gleaned from Dr Cameron's presentation he has no idea who they are, and he does not want to be involved in PDAs with total strangers. But he needn't have worried; Lisa, rolling her eyes, moves towards the cluster now grouped in front of the elevator, opening her arms in an all-embracing shooing movement.

"I'm sure this is very exciting for all of you, but could we move this party somewhere else before the whole gala is moved up here to the balcony?" she says in a low, penetrating whisper, herding everyone into the room with the supplies. Two of Rick's student-workers are sorting empty bottles into crates; she points a thumb towards the door, and after one glance at her they straighten and scoot out of there double quick.

"How do we get him out of here?" James suddenly asks. He's very pale, supporting himself against the wall with one hand while massaging the bridge of his nose with the other.

Everyone looks at Lisa, who takes a deep breath. "I haven't got that far yet! I'm still processing his appearance here. At the moment all my efforts are concentrated on keeping his presence a secret. Or does anyone think we should take him down into the lobby and say, 'Look who we have here!' ?"

There's a general shaking of heads

"You ... know about him?" the neurologist, Foreman, asks, raising an eyebrow delicately at Lisa.

"No thanks to any of you!" Lisa snaps.

"We can take him to the ER, and out through the entrance over there," Chase suggests. He's got a bit of an accent - Down Under, or something like that. "It's probably the only one that's open, other than the lobby entrance."

He's beginning to have a very bad feeling about all this. His first impulse - getting out before anyone recognises him - was based purely on a gut feeling that being among people who all know him, but whom he doesn't remember at all could end in a PR disaster, but the longer he observes the group around him the more the certitude overcomes him that no one at this hospital is preparing to slaughter the fattened calf for him. This small clique comprising his former fellows may (or may not) have benevolent feelings towards him, but they seem utterly convinced that no one else does. Nonetheless, he has no desire to be hustled out of here, possibly with a hood over his head, before he has a chance to assess what exactly his connection to each and every person in this interesting bunch is. James has collapsed on the floor with his head back against the wall, breathing heavily. The dwarf is looking confused; everyone else is involved in a heated discussion on how to get him out by the shortest, least frequented route.

He sits down on a crate, pulls a bottle of beer from another one and knocks the cap off against the edge of the crate.

"Actually, I'm on duty till midnight," he says with deceptive calm. "Can't really leave yet, I'm afraid." He takes a long swig. "Why don't we get to know each other? I'm Peter Barnes - call me Pete."

Instantaneous, deadly silence. Four pairs of eyes bore into him - Lisa has closed her eyes and is probably counting to one hundred in her head. James is doing some sort of karate chop with his hands while trying to overcome what must be a bad stutter, for though his lips are moving, no words have as yet passed them. Mini Cyrano de Bergerac is looking totally confused, while the Australian is mostly astonished, though not in a bad way. Only Dr Foreman seems pleased - one might even say, paternally proud.

Finally the vertically challenged fellow says, "I'm probably getting rusty, but I have no idea what game we're playing. Do I get to be Dirk Nowitzky?"

"You get to witness a unique medical phenomenon," Foreman says with undeniable pride. "Total retrograde amnesia of the episodic memory induced by a planned procedure."

"This," says the wannabe basketball player, "is - interesting. How did you do it?" He looks at him, Pete, not at the previous speaker, which means that he, too, assumes that the victim of the procedure was also the perpetrator. Nor does he ask the question that comes to mind first, long before the 'how' of the procedure: he doesn't ask for a reason why. That means that to him the reason is clear.

"Thing about retrograde amnesia," Pete says drily, "is that one can't remember what one did."

The black guy steps forward. "Eric Foreman," he says. "An ex-fellow. I did the neurological procedure on you that erased your memory: electrical impulses targeted at the hippocampus. We started off with ...,"

"Please!" James interrupts. "Can we get back to the matter on hand?"

Pete takes a swig from the bottle, ignoring the hand Foreman is extending, and looks over at the short one with the long nose.

"That's Taub, also an ex-fellow of yours. He still works here," Foreman supplies.

"And his role in frying my brain?"

"None," Taub says. "The big boys wouldn't let me play with them." He tips his head at Foreman and Chase.

"You were on double paternity leave," Foreman points out.

"What about you, Dr Chase?" Pete asks the Australian.

If he's astonished at being identified correctly, he doesn't show it. "I chose not to play. Congratulations: so the EST worked as you intended. You did most of the planning yourself, so don't let Foreman take all the credit."

"We did the planning together, and I carried it out," Foreman interjects, giving Chase a very dirty look.

"Easy to say, since the main witness is suffering from amnesia," Chase retorts.

"Boys!" Lisa admonishes. "This is not the time to mess with each other's heads."

He sees her point, but all this is immensely interesting. "You were Watson?" he asks Foreman, remembering the signatures on the ambulance recording form.

Foreman smiles appreciatively. "No. I was Lestrade. Wilson was Watson."

James Wilson was involved in Operation Tabula Rasa? That's - unexpected.

He looks at him. James - maybe he should start thinking of him as Wilson, since he seems to have been on last name terms with everyone here - is sitting with angled legs, his face in his hands. He's coming apart, shaking slightly, but no one has noticed, not even Lisa, because he, Pete, is the focus of all attention. If he were a nice guy, he'd point out James's state to someone, that sheen of sweat on his forehead, the tremor in his hands. But at present he doesn't feel charitable towards a person who could have saved him a lot of time and effort simply by saying, 'Oh, hello, House!' a few weeks ago.

"What about our Irene Adler?" He looks at Lisa directly for the first time. She's pale, collected, withdrawn, standing next to the closed door of the meeting room, keeping almost the entire length of the room between herself and him. An odd place to be, considering the impact of tonight's revelation on him. One would think that as his girlfriend she'd be at his side to offer support and croon empty platitudes of comfort. Okay, she isn't one for platitudes or comfort, but he's pretty sure that she's got the support routine on her fingertips. There are two explanations that he can think of on the spur of the moment for her uncharacteristic behaviour: one is that unmasking his identity impacts James even more than it does him, so that her concern is now entirely directed at James. It has undoubtedly had a spectacular effect on James - is it possible that he, Pete, was the guy because of whom James drove his car into Lisa's house? Was his leg injury, the one Rachel remembers, a direct result of the attack, thus leading to the amputation? If so, does James now fear retribution?

The theory has two major loopholes: first, Lisa may show little inclination to do the 'concerned girlfriend' act for him, but she's showing even less concern for James. He doesn't even seem to register on her radar. Second, why on earth should he, Pete, have consented to a risky EST in order to erase the memory of James's misdeeds? Supplanting James in Lisa's bed may not have been the act of a bro, but it's certainly no reason for excessive self-flagellation.

The second explanation is that Lisa had some part in the brain procedure that she's now ashamed of.

Taub says drily, "If she'd been a part of this, you'd have ended with a lobectomy."

So much for that theory.

Lisa stiffens immediately. "He doesn't remember any of that," she says with the hint of a warning in her voice. The others look over at her, and again he can see differing levels of comprehension flitting across their faces. It irritates him no end, this memory apartheid that shuts him off from a knowledge base that the others can access.

"What don't I remember?" he promptly asks, his head tipped and his brows furrowed.

Foreman and Chase exchange glances. "The ER exit seems a really great idea," Chase says, holding out a hand to pull him up. "Dr Cuddy's right about taking this discussion outside. Your popularity wasn't at its zenith when you left the hospital."

Ignoring Chase's hand, he rises and walks over to Lisa, looking down at her as she stands leaned against the wall next to the door. She looks up at him without flinching, but in her glance there's no shame or embarrassment. Instead, there's sadness. She blinks away the tears in her eyes and says brusquely, "Shall we go?" Straightening, she breaks away from his penetrating stare, and turns towards the door.

Tears are not good news. She isn't the type to let fountains of joy spill from her eyes, so his discovery of his true identity must bear some grain of knowledge in it that affects her directly. The third theory that accounts for her standoffishness is one he hasn't quite worked out yet, but it has something to do with Bad Egg House.

"I'm the House Rachel remembers," he states.

"Yes," she admits.

"We were together - before this?" he asks just to make sure, gesturing between her and himself.

"Can we talk about this outside?" she says.

"You guys are ... together? Now?" Foreman asks. 'Disbelief' doesn't even begin to cover his reaction.

"Is that so surprising?" Taub asks. (Both Foreman and Chase stare at Taub aghast, so apparently it is.) "If people weren't stupid about love, mankind would have died out long ago," he explains.

"Well, you should know," Chase mutters, but he doesn't look convinced.

What is so tainted about him that the idea of his being Lisa's boyfriend is more reprehensible than Lisa still caring about the man who drove his car through her house?

He tries to disconnect himself from the scene and observe it from a distance: the ex-fellows, who seem to like him on some level, but who consider him besmirched on some other level; Lisa, who is teary-eyed because whatever he was affects her relationship with who he is now; James, whose decomposition in his unobserved corner is proceeding at a rapid rate.

And then he sees his mistake. It's a bit like an Escher picture, where people walk up and down winding staircases that never seem to end, but when one looks closely one can see where the artist inverted the perspective in order to connect beginning and end. Because that's what he did when he read about the car crash that wrecked Lisa's home: he took the end of the staircase labelled 'ex-employee with addiction issues' and attached it to James, which warped the perspective sufficiently to make the staircase he's walking down connect to its own beginning again. But now that he looks at the picture from a distance he sees where that end of the staircase really belongs, and when one fits it there the staircase just goes one way, ending in a deep pit.

He takes hold of Lisa's arm as she makes to go out the door and stops her. "I drove the car, didn't I?" he says so only she can hear.

She swallows, her Adam's apple bobbing, and then she nods. "Pete!" she says, placing a beseeching hand on his arm.

He clamps his lips together, straightening to put some distance between them. "Let's go," he says, echoing her words from earlier while he pushes past her, opening the door. His moody exit is ruined somewhat when he hesitates with no idea which way to go.

"Left," Lisa says behind him. Chase overtakes him and leads on. He limps behind him for all he's worth, preferring not to have to face Lisa and look in her face, his brain working madly to erase facts that had seemed chiselled in granite and replace them with the new ones he just learned, even as his eyes take in his surroundings: the ICU on one side, eerily quiet, its staff looking up in surprise as their group passes; three OTs beyond a door inscribed in large red letters 'Surgery staff only beyond this point' that Chase opens with his ID; a stairwell in functional concrete, at the door of which Chase stops, giving him a questioning look.

"How good are you with stairs?" he asks.

"Fine, if you're not expecting an old cripple to sprint down them."

Chase nods and leads the way down. At the bottom they exit the stairwell and turn left, only to halt in front of another large double door, the ER this time. Chase turns round to look at the others.

"It'll still be busy in there, and he's too large to hide," he says. "Get a wheelchair or something. Then he won't be so tall and we can surround him." The others nod.

"Is Wilson bringing the car round?" Taub asks. It is only then that the others notice what he, Pete, has been aware of all along: Wilson's absence. Wilson never left the meeting room with its stash of champagne and wine.

"He can't," Lisa answers. "I've got the key." Her face, already tense and tired, puckers up further as comprehension dawns. "Oh, crap!" she says, and then she sprints back towards the stairs as fast as her heels will allow her. "Get him out!" she instructs in parting. "Wilson and I will meet you in the car park."

"Wheelchair," Chase says.

Foreman holds out his fist. The other two roll their eyes, but a moment later all three wave their arms three times before opening their fists. It's some form of 'Rock Paper Scissors' that Chase promptly loses, so he disappears into the ER. There's an awkward silence, with the two remaining ex-fellows mustering him intently.

"Why?" he asks Foreman.

"Look, I don't think ...,"

He says sharply, "You may find it difficult to prove that I consented to the procedure, in which case you're risking your licence and possibly your freedom should I sue you, so again: why?"

"I made sure to get your written statement that you were apprised of the risks of the procedure and not only approved of it but expressly requested it, before I started planning it," Foreman responds. "So, no, you're not suing me. Or Wilson, for that matter."

"This is stupid," Taub says to Foreman. "Since when are you bothered about rubbing his past in his face?"

"Cuddy's not going to like it," Foreman argues.

"Too bad," Taub returns. "He's going to poke and pry in our lives till he finds out anyway, and I, for one, would prefer to keep him out of mine." He turns to Pete. "You were a vicodin addict who'd been dumped by his girlfriend. You lost your leg trying to kill her and your medical licence got trashed too, in the aftermath. You barely escaped a prison sentence and you had no future here whatsoever. Cu- ... The hospital didn't even have to ask for you to be blackballed: with your reputation, a record of domestic violence and no licence, you were professionally dead."

"But I didn't actually kill anyone?" he asks, just to be sure. "There's no open warrant for my arrest?"

"No and no," Foreman replies. "It was sheer luck that no one got killed. And you were acquitted thanks to Wilson's testimony; he claimed that you were trying to commit suicide, not murder."

"Then why the hell did I risk turning myself into a vegetable if I was in no acute danger of spending the rest of my life in prison?" he asks Foreman, the person who must know the most about his state of mind prior to the brainwashing.

Foreman shrugs. "Oblivion? Atonement by risking what is most valuable to you? You weren't exactly chatty Cathy when we discussed the procedure."

"So you messed with my brain on the off-chance that this was what I'd want in the long run, despite there being no concrete reason for such a radical measure?" He can't believe that this jerk used him as a guinea pig to test his theories on memory, cashing in on what had probably been a short period of deluded despair.

"House, you've messed with your brain and with your life for far less reason before this! You're accusing me of satisfying my professional curiosity at your expense. Maybe I'd have done that, but Wilson would never have aided and abetted any such scheme if he hadn't considered it beneficial to you."

Hearing himself referred to as 'House' is disconcerting; getting his brain around the fact that he's the kind of man who'd stalk an ex-girlfriend and try to harm her - the role he'd assigned to James Wilson - is more than disconcerting. When Chase comes back with a wheelchair, he's too immersed in his thoughts to put up as much as a token protest; he slumps down in it and allows himself to be pushed out through the ER into the parking lot.

Is what he has discovered (purely by accident, but that's neither here nor there) such a surprise? It isn't as though he'd realistically reckoned with the revelation that he'd been a model citizen, a loving son or husband, a grace to his profession, or a pillar of the church. He'd been reckoning with some criminal activity that would suffice to get him put into prison for an indefinite period of time. Now it turns out that although he may not have been a particularly well-loved physician, he'd been well on the legal side of the profession, and although his domestic activities won't bear a close scrutiny, there's no blood on his hands. Perversely, he isn't relieved in any way: murdering some stranger in cold blood somehow appears a lot more acceptable than nearly murdering Lisa in heated anger.

And that is precisely the problem. Regardless of what crime he was expecting to discover in his past, he'd been banking on its victims being cardboard cut-outs, blanks, no one to whom he'd have any sort of emotional connection in his present life, no matter how well he'd known them in his past one. In fact, this had been his only unwavering conviction throughout the quest for his past: that while the nature of his crime may have been abhorrent, its victims would never be more than shadowy figures to his present consciousness. He'd feel guilt and remorse on some level, but they would be abstract, not concrete memories in which his victims' fear or their suffering could come back to haunt him. He'd played out scenarios in his mind in which he ran into someone who used to know him, but while he'd pictured reactions ranging from angry or disbelieving surprise to delight - okay, the latter may have been wishful thinking - , he'd never envisaged an outcome where a person he'd come to know and trust turned out to be a victim of his misdeeds, a near-casualty of his rampant rage, her daughter crippled as a direct result of his destructive energy.

What Lisa sees in him that induces her to close her eyes to his past beats him, anyway. As long as he'd thought it was Wilson she was being a moron about, he'd been contemptuous of her idiocy, but he'd understood how she could delude herself: Wilson is good-looking, charming, attentive to Rachel, helpful, and so smooth that one can't help believing that he couldn't possibly have put a car through a house on purpose. (And now it turns out that he didn't, so appearances don't always deceive. He's even willing to admit that his refusal to believe the suicide theory with regard to Wilson was mostly based on a desire to think the worst of the man he believed to be Lisa's ex.)

He, on the other hand, is abrasive, a lousy dad, and a dick. He's exactly the kind of person one would consider capable of committing deeds of senseless, psychopathic violence. And whatever other salubrious effects EST to the hippocampus may have, altering a person's personality isn't among them. Nothing has changed; he's still the violent bastard he was four years ago, and if Lisa thinks that the years in England have taken off his edge and domesticated him, then she's a bigger fool than she looks. He hasn't a clue what turned him into a raging bull four years ago - he can't imagine feeling intensely enough about a woman to do more than brood and drink - but he's reasonably sure that whatever the problem was, amputating his leg and doing a 'format C:' on his memory won't have cured the basic problem.

Chase is pushing the wheelchair over the parking lot in a desultory fashion. "Any idea what car Cuddy drives?" he asks no one in particular.

"Stop here!" he orders, and Chase obliges, surprised, in front of his beaten-up Ford. He practically skips out of the wheelchair pulling out his car keys, but on second thought he abandons the idea of a quick escape. His three ex-fellows are still too surprised at his return to guard their tongues, but give them time to adjust and they will only say what suits their own agenda. "What happened between Cuddy and me, other than that I drove a car into her house?" he asks, deliberately using the name everyone here seems to use in order to lower their guard.

They look at each other. "I think you should talk to Cuddy about that," Foreman says. Okay, that's a guy who always guards his tongue. He's going to have to get them each by himself if he wants to milk them. Whatever it was, it must have been quite something, if the trio infernale would prefer Lisa to tell the story.

"What about Wilson?" he tries again. He still can't quite gauge his role in the whole affair.

"What about him?" Chase asks. "You've noticed his little problem, haven't you?" There's a hint of an accusation there, a 'you should have stopped him when he helped himself to the booze'. Well, he isn't Wilson's keeper.

"That's not what House means," Taub says. He turns to Pete. "You were best friends. I doubt you are now."

Best friends, he and that smooth-talking mother-in-law's dream? He hadn't thought that the night would bring further amazing revelations, but his chin literally drops for a moment at that one. But then, there's more to Wilson than the polite, seamless surface - a hard, granite core that he sensed at their first meeting. His first mistake lay in attributing to Wilson the role of addict-turned-ballistic, his second in assuming that Wilson was involved in his re-invention as Pete Barnes for Lisa's sake as her friend. This version makes more sense: Lisa, apparently, wasn't involved, which explains her confusion on first meeting him in Bristol, while Wilson ...

"What was his role in the EST?" he asks Foreman.

"I was responsible for the procedure as such; he arranged the logistics: a private clinic in England, a surgeon and assisting staff, your papers for afterwards."

Lisa appears in the brightly lit sliding doors, her arm hooked into the crook of Wilson's elbow, doing her best to make their exit look as though it was taking place in mutual agreement and perfect amicability. Wilson is looking picturesquely Byronesque with his sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened and askew and his hair fashionably messed up. Twenty years younger, and he'd be breaking teen hearts. Unfortunately, he is spoiling the picture somewhat by singing jovially and tugging Lisa backwards at regular intervals. How she manages to navigate the dark parking lot in those heels while propelling Wilson onwards is one of those mysterious feats of sheer will power that can't fail to impress him. When they reach the group in the parking lot Wilson forcibly detaches himself from Lisa, weaving to join them with a goofy smile plastered all over his face. Lisa rolls her eyes, but uses the opportunity to unlock her Volvo station wagon and open the passenger door. Then she skips back to Wilson and jerks him towards the car.

"In!" she orders.

"You're no fun," Wilson grouses.

"Nolan won't be either, when I get him back to you. You have craptastic timing, relapsing tonight of all nights!"

Pete can't help himself. "Yeah, really inconsiderate of Wilson, not to fit his relapses into your schedule."

He must have touched some raw spot there, because Lisa stiffens and bites her lip, while the three fellows give him the same sort of awed stare with which they favoured his announcement that he was Pete Barnes. Only Wilson remains unaffected, raising a hand and crowing, "High five!"

"You're sure he's got amnesia?" Taub says to no one in particular.

"Yes," Lisa snaps. "He has the unique gift of being a jerk without even knowing it!" She looks around challengingly. "Are you guys going to amuse yourselves at my expense or are you going to help me get Wilson into this car?"

"I'm-m spending the night wi-with Alla-Allison," Wilson articulates indistinctly, pointing in the general direction of the hospital. From there, unnoticed till now, the woman in red is approaching the group.

"Goddammit!" Lisa mutters.

Cameron, Allison, or whatever she's generally called, makes straight for Wilson and Lisa. Pete draws back into the semi-dark, interested by Lisa's present dismay and her earlier disapproval of Cameron's presentation.

"Wasn't I supposed to bring James back to Mayfield tomorrow?" Cameron asks.

"'James'?" Chase says in a mocking tone. Cameron ignores him.

"'S what I sh - said," Wilson pronounces triumphantly.

Cameron draws closer to him, her face falling. "Oh, no!" she says, placing a hand on his arm. It's the first gesture of kindness to Wilson shown by anyone since Lisa dragged him out onto the parking lot; everyone else has been indifferent (Foreman) or enervated (Lisa). "I thought you were keeping an eye on him," she says to Lisa accusingly.

Pete again can't help himself. "She got distracted," he says from where he's leaning against the trunk of his car, "by another bad boy."

Cameron pivots around at the sound of his voice. Then she steps up closer, mustering his face keenly. "House!"

She is not delighted to see him, he notes. The same can't be said for him. Up close, she's absolutely smashing in that dress, which emphasises all the right places and gives tantalising glimpses of well-rounded flesh at the cleavage and down her back. He whistles appreciatively (which earns him an eye-roll from most of the others present) and says, "So I'm told, Dr Cameron."

She steps right up to him, invading his personal space, her face set. She's a younger, less tense version of Lisa, but she matches her in determination and in relentlessness. "I can't believe that you've got the impudence to return here, of all places. You're not welcome here, House!"

He's slightly shocked at such unalloyed animosity, but it also challenges him. "What happened to 'regretting my absence today' and 'the hospital owing me a lot'? Tsk, tsk, such hypocrisy in one so young!"

Her eyes flash. "Your absence is regrettable insofar as you caused a need for it, and whatever debt the hospital owed you has been paid back with interest." She swings around to face the others. "Are you guys okay with him being here?" she asks indignantly.

Chase shrugs. Taub does a very good job of merging with the background. Foreman raises his hands defensively, saying, "I'm just a guest myself."

"I should have known better than to expect any of you to show the slightest moral fibre," Cameron says from between pressed lips, "but I would have thought that four years without him should be sufficient to open your eyes to your own responsibility; House could never have done what he did if you hadn't spent years supporting his delusion that he owes no one, least of all himself, any sort of moral justification for what he does."

"Are you blaming us ...," Chase ventures.

"I damn well am!" Cameron cuts in.

"Why not Wilson?"

"Enough!" Lisa barks. "House didn't want you to fix him - get over it!" she says to Cameron. "And you," she says to Chase, "stop messing with everyone! It's way past old."

Cameron now musters Lisa. "You don't care that he's here, drawing them all back in again?"

Lisa shakes her head tiredly. "He may be back, but he isn't drawing anyone into anything. He can't even remember who he is or what he did. Amnesia."

"How - convenient," Cameron says.

"You don't believe her," he states, inexplicably hurt.

Cameron is back in his personal space, looking him straight in the eye. "Oh, I do," she says. "Because that is totally you. Always ready to rub other people's weaknesses under their noses, but unable to look your own in the eye."

A/N: Check out: M.C. Escher, House of Stairs, Relativity, Ascending and Descending