readingrat | fic: Chimera — Chapter 1 (Reply)

chimera noun:

1 a capitalised : a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail b : an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
2 : an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable dream
3 : an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Chapter 1: House Invades Paris

He has two hours to kill. Two whole hours without tasks, duties, or obligations. He stands in the middle of his hotel room, remotely registering the noise of the traffic through triple-glazed windows, the slant of the afternoon sunshine on the pristine bed, the hum of the air conditioner. He supposes he could lie down; he didn’t get much sleep on the flight to Paris, so maybe he should get some shut-eye now. Or he could finish the book he started reading on the plane. Or he could explore the area around the hotel: the Champs-Elysées and the Tuileries are supposed to be within walking distance. He remains where he is, fidgeting indecisively. None of the three options appeal to him; they are too … meaningless.

He reminds himself that it has only been four weeks since his life started running according to a strict schedule. Surely he can shed the weight of responsibility for a few days and revert to — not a carefree existence, because he’s never been the kind of guy to take life lightly, but a more spontaneous take on life. Talking of spontaneity, he supposes he could give Joel’s caregiver a quick call, just to make sure whether everything is okay. He checks his watch and subtracts six hours. Ten o’clock in the morning: Joel will be taking a mid-morning nap. Esther should have the time for a short talk. He takes out his phone to dial, but then he reconsiders. He called Esther just before the conference’s opening event three hours ago. She’ll think he is hovering if he calls her again, and Cuddy will laugh at him.

So instead, Wilson takes his best suit, a clean white shirt and a blue-and-silver striped tie from his suitcase and lays them out on the bed. He showered before the opening session of the conference, but perhaps another shower will revive him sufficiently to get him through the conference dinner this evening. He wastes half an hour and a considerable amount of water under the shower, only stepping out and towelling off when the air is so thick with steam that he can hardly see the door of the bathroom. He returns to the bedroom with a towel around his waist and stares down at his conference get-up. He could slip into a pair of chinos and explore Paris, but he knows he won’t. He has placed his son in the care of strangers — okay, Esther has been looking after Joel for almost four weeks now, while he has known Cuddy for twenty years or so, but still! — in order to attend this conference, not to play hooky. He can’t justify leaving Joel for a week in order to indulge himself. So, he’ll get dressed, go downstairs to the banquet hall, and smile and make polite conversation to people he vaguely remembers (or maybe not) from earlier conferences.

His phone buzzes. He snatches it up from the table where he’d placed it before his shower, thinking that it might be Esther or Cuddy, but it’s House who has texted him: Wanna Skype?

Why not? He boots his laptop, and then starts Skype. He clicks on House’s avatar, a clown with a sinister grin; the Skype ringtone resounds through his hotel room. A second later House takes the call.

“Your laptop camera sucks,” House says by way of greeting.

“Good afternoon to you, too,” Wilson says. “Unfortunately the pittance I earn as an oncology consultant doesn’t cover the costs for a state-of-the-art computer like the one you …” He stops, frowning, his brain registering what his eyes are seeing on the screen in front of him. House’s laptop camera provides a sharply defined picture: House is lying fully dressed on a bed in a room that Wilson has never seen before, a room that has the unmistakable decor of a budget hotel. “Where are you?”

“In bed. Thought we could have Skype sex,” House says, waggling his eyebrows, “so I got all comfy already. Oh, wow, seems you had the same thought.” He leans forward until all that Wilson can see of him is his eyes peering into his camera over an artificially elongated nose. “The wet, fresh-from-the-shower look. Me like-y!”

Wilson tips up the lid of his laptop until his face is all that his camera catches of him. “No, I mean in bed where?”

“Aw, no! Buzzkill!” House pauses, but when that elicits no reaction from Wilson he leans back again, saying, “In a hotel. Unfortunately my meagre budget won’t cover a five star conference venue, so I have to make do with more modest quarters near Montmartre.”

“Mont- …? You’re in Paris?”

“Couldn’t miss James Evan Wilson fleeing the joys of domestic bliss to paint the town red, could I? Let’s see, I’ve got tickets for the Crazy Horse on Thursday and there’s a promising joint down the road from my hotel.”

“Why are you in Paris?”

House bats his eyelashes. “Snookums, you’re there, barely an hour’s flight time from London; how could I resist popping over to surprise you?”

Wilson pulls his fingers through his damp hair in despair; trust House to do something spontaneous and disruptive and confusing. “If you’d told me you were coming, I’d have organised a room for you in my hotel.”

“To be honest, I thought you’d chicken out at the last moment. Didn’t believe that you’d start neglecting your paternal duties after a mere four weeks,” House says.

Wilson thinks that House isn’t the only one to be surprised: he, too, is somewhat astounded to find himself here. “I registered for the conference long before I knew that I’d get Joel,” he says, “and Cuddy encouraged me to come anyway. I can renew old contacts here and get back into the subject matter. Besides, I submitted an abstract, so —”

“Yeah, yeah,” House says dismissively. “You don’t have to justify abandoning your babe in the woods. You are the one who has a problem spending a few nights away from him; everyone else is convinced that he’s better off without you fussing over him.”

“Everyone else, huh? You’ve been talking to Cuddy,” Wilson surmises. “Why are we Skyping if you’re in Paris?”

“Because you haven’t invited me up to your room?” House says with a suggestive leer.

In the little window at the bottom of the screen that shows what the laptop camera is capturing, Wilson can see that he has exposed half his torso to the camera again. He grabs his shirt and pulls it on, laughing nonetheless at House’s exaggerated expression of disappointment.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll skip the convention dinner. I saw a café down the road from my hotel; we can meet there. I don’t remember what it’s called, but you can’t miss it: it has red awnings and tables all along the sidewalk.”

He spends the next half hour reading up a few articles on developments in palliative oncology as preparation for the next day, telling himself that it’s not a penance for shirking the conference dinner. Then he pulls on his chinos and a polo shirt, slips into his loafers, and heads for the café. He is seated outside in the late afternoon sunshine with a cappuccino when House arrives and slides into the seat opposite him. It’s anyone’s guess what he’s thinking, because his eyes are hidden behind sunglasses that he doesn’t take off. He orders a café noir and a sandwich, and then leans back to observe Wilson.

“So what’s the deal?” House finally asks.

Wilson tosses him the conference programme in which he has been marking the sessions that he wants to attend. House takes it and holds it in one hand, flicking through the pages with the thumb of the other as though it was a flipbook. There’s no way he can see what sessions Wilson has marked, much less read the session titles or times. Well, he won’t have come to Paris because he has developed a sudden interest in the newest trends in palliative oncology, but whatever the reason for his presence, it would be nice if his agenda left Wilson with the time and the nerves to attend the major part of the conference. He doesn’t suffer from the delusional belief that he’ll be able to attend as many events as he planned now that House is here, but if he doesn’t attend the odd session here and glance at a few posters there, he’ll have spent a lot of money for next to nothing.

“I mean, with you and Lisa,” House elucidates, his sunglasses reflecting the awning’s stripes.

If Wilson had foreseen that he’d have to face an interrogation in Paris he’d have prepared a foolproof story, but he’d assumed that he still had a few days’ respite – until after the conference, to be exact. There’s a reason why he hasn’t told House about his Paris plans (other than attending the conference), the reason being that this is precisely the kind of conversation that he wants to avoid. Wanted to avoid. Hoped to avoid, because hope is the last thing that dies. It has just kicked the bucket in this little Parisian café.

Still, he can buy a few minutes while he tries to figure out what House knows, as opposed to what he merely assumes. So, he shrugs and says, “We’ll share a house, we work at the same place — if what I do at the moment can be described as ‘working’ — and we have dinner together most days. Most days that she’s there,” he amends, because Lisa isn’t there quite a number of evenings. She’s working hard trying to regain a foothold at the hospital. “And of course she takes Joel a lot, and in return I …” he puts in a rhetorical pause, “… do nothing, actually.” Which isn’t quite true; he has started cooking again, and on weekends he plans outings with Joel that Rachel can participate in so that Lisa has a bit of breathing space.

And now comes the tricky part. “Oh, and she’s coming here for the weekend. I invited her; it didn’t seem fair that she should be stuck with Joel for the entire week and get nothing in return, and she has always wanted to see Paris.” If House has talked to Lisa, then chances are that he knows this already. Telling him will give the impression of openness, of having nothing to hide.

“She isn’t ‘stuck with Joel’: you have a nanny who is looking after the poop machine,” House points out. His facial muscles haven’t moved. Those damn sunglasses hide the only part of his face that might show a reaction. Wilson wants to lean forward and tug them off, but doing so or even remarking on them would tell House that he is less than relaxed, which in turn would only fan the flames of his (justified) suspicion.

So Wilson has no choice but to accept that he’s facing a blank wall, with no way of gauging House’s reactions. “Esther is doing a great job and she’s staying overnight while I’m away, but I feel better knowing that Lisa is there to take Joel for a few hours whenever Esther needs a break.”

“Lisa?” House asks. “Since when do you call her Lisa?”

“You call her Lisa,” Wilson points out, cursing himself for slipping up.

“I’ve been calling her Lisa for as long as I can remember; you’ve been calling her Cuddy for as long as you can remember. What has changed?”

“Well, for one thing we share a liver,” Wilson says. “That’s sort of intimate, so I thought we could slowly switch to first names. Of course, if you think that it’s too soon, after twenty years of friendship …”

House changes tack. “Is Rachel coming too?”

“No, Julia’s looking after her.”

“Lemme see, you suggested to Lisa that she embark on an eight-hour trip each way in order to join you for a weekend in Paris, you extended your own stay for two days —”

“One day,” Wilson corrects. “The conference ends on Saturday, while we fly back Sunday night.”

“… leaving your kid at the mercy of a babysitter —”

“Julia’s coming to Philly to look after Rachel, so she’ll be there too.”

House’s head jerks up. “I thought she doesn’t want leave Mama Cuddy overnight anymore.”

Wilson bites his tongue. In his attempt to downplay the effort it cost him to leave Joel alone for an extra day, he has blurted out more than he intended. “Her husband is home at the weekend and can keep an eye on Arlene, just like he did when Julia spent the night just after Joel came to stay with me.”

“You mean, that time when Julia had to leave in the wee hours of the morn to make sure that hubby didn’t murder MIL before breakfast,” House says reminiscently, a thoughtful frown on his forehead.

“It’s not that bad,” Wilson says. “Arlene is —”

“Demented. Bats in her belfry. Gone to live in Alzheimerville.”

“She’s in the early stages: she recognises everyone and she’s still coherent; she just tends to wander off and get lost. As for the rest, she has always been that annoying, even if Lisa thinks she’s getting worse.”

“Doesn’t explain why Julia is prepared to enable her sister’s fun trip to the end of the world at the expense of her own limited spare time and presumably against the will of her long-suffering spouse. Unless both he and she think that the benefit will outweigh the cost.” Wilson doesn’t need to see House’s eyes to know that he is being nailed by a piercing glare. “And they’d think so if Lisa came back — with a husband. You’re going to propose to Lisa.”

“No! … I … Well … Yes, okay. … Okay! I’m going to propose to Lisa Cuddy,” Wilson says, trying to infuse his words with confidence.

House’s features are immobile; his sunglasses, aimed straight at Wilson, distort Wilson’s reflection so that it is compressed horizontally and stretched vertically, which makes him look as though he’s grinning. Which he isn’t. There’s absolutely nothing to feel amused about, not when he has just informed Gregory House, the man who takes decades to get over relationships gone wrong, that he intends to propose to his ex.

There’s no visible reaction from House, physical or verbal. There’s nothing at all.

“Unless you object, of course,” Wilson adds, hoping to get some sort of reaction from his friend, positive or negative. Okay, that was a stupid thing to say, an invitation to House to jerk him around. How exactly is he going to get out of proposing to Lisa after moving heaven and earth and half of Lisa’s family in order to get her to Paris for exactly that purpose?

House’s smile is humourless. “I’m not her father; you don’t need my blessing.” He tips his head to one side. “What happened to him?”

The sudden change in direction throws Wilson off balance. “Uh, he’s dead. Heart attack some ten years ago, I think.” Realising that House changed the topic on purpose, he changes it back again. “Are you okay with me proposing to Lisa?”

House finally (and surprisingly) takes off his sunglasses, tucking them into his shirt pocket. He leans forward, his blue eyes free of guile. “Sure. If you think you need to propose to every woman who looks after your sprog for you, go ahead. If Lisa shoots you down, you can propose to Esmeralda next.”

It takes Wilson a moment to make sense of the last sentence. “Esther,” he says. “Joel’s nanny is called Esther. And she’s married already. Besides, …”

He stops: House is side-tracking him again. He should have prepared a script for this conversation. And now that House has taken his sunglasses off, it strikes Wilson that it was a lot easier to argue convincingly as long he couldn’t see that penetrating gaze. “Are you okay with me marrying the woman you used to date?” he asks. That nailing-you-with-my-stare thing is a game two can play at.

“Two years ago we had an on-and-off, long-distance relationship for a few months,” House says. “More ‘off’ than ‘on’, actually.” He grimaces at his own words, tapping a rhythm on the table with the fingertips of one hand.

“In case you’re worried that I’ll drive a car through your nice new suburban home, I can assure you that I won’t,” he finally says. “I dated Gail for longer and with more, shall we say, intensity than I dated Lisa, but I neither stalked nor terrorised her after she broke it off. You can ask her.” His eyelids flutter bird-like as he drops his gaze to his sandwich, his cheek twitching uneasily.

It’s the first time since the collapse of his last relationship that House has openly referred to it. Wilson heard from Lisa, not from House, that it was over; all he got from House was the occasional oblique reference. That House is referring to his ex-girlfriend by name and actually letting slip a few details is a token of good faith, a gesture meant to show that House, for his part, is prepared to play with open cards. Sure, he’d rather Wilson didn’t approach Gail for information, but he wouldn’t make the offer if he feared negative consequences. In this age of social media and networking, Wilson could contact her without any effort at all and enquire of her whether House has been a nuisance recently. She mightn’t like having her privacy invaded, but in view of what is at stake, she won’t refuse to answer his enquiry.

“Besides,” House adds, lifting the top slice of his sandwich and peering at the contents, “you always contend that I wasn’t trying to drive into the house, but into the tree in front of it. Changed your mind, now that you’re joining the Dark Side?”

“Nope. And it isn’t Lisa’s safety I’m worried about so much as yours,” Wilson says. Driving his car through Lisa’s house was only the cherry on top of the sundae of self-destruction that House had concocted that summer, no more. Before that he had cannon-balled off a fifth floor balcony into a swimming pool, married a green card aspirant, assaulted another participant at a spud-gun contest, trashed Wilson’s office, and induced tumours in his leg by injecting himself with an untested drug. Those actions, irresponsible even by House’s admittedly low standards, had been either suicidal or liable to get him tossed into jail (or both). Nevertheless, they had mostly been directed against House himself or against third parties — House had probably hoped they’d assault him in turn — but not against Cuddy. Which is why Wilson believes that House’s stunt drive wasn’t directed against her either and that his own memory of that terrible afternoon — House aiming for a tree and swerving at the last moment when Wilson stepped in front of it — is not a false one born out of a need to see his friend in a benign light.

House’s eyes widen. Then, with that quick sideways jerk of his head that indicates he’s acknowledging a point, he says, “I’m touched. Don’t worry; I’m keen to keep my remaining leg intact.” He takes a big bite from his sandwich and says with a full mouth, “So, how’s the sex?”

“Fine,” Wilson says in a neutral voice. This is dangerous territory for more reasons than he has fingers to count them off on.

“Fine? Just fine? That’s all you can find to say about the bodily union with the woman whom you’re going to nail for the rest of your life?”

“That’s all I’m prepared to say to you.”

House’s eyes narrow. Then he grins. “You’re not sleeping with her,” he says, wagging a knowing finger at Wilson.

Wilson breathes in deeply, avoiding House’s gaze. “No, I’m not,” he admits, getting ready for the volcano of sarcasm that’s about to erupt around his head.

House leans back, scratching his chin and chuckling. “You’re about to propose to a chick who hasn’t even put out yet? That’s pitiful, absolutely pitiful!” He leans forward again, impaling Wilson with his stare. “Unless … unless you’re lying to me for fear that I’ll lose it and start planning vehicular assault strategies. … You are sleeping with her.”

“Fine, I am,” Wilson says. Whatever rocks House’s boat. A feeling of déjà vu washes over him: it’s as though they’ve had this conversation before — and they probably have, because House has always felt the need to pry every last detail out of Wilson, no matter how intimate.

House is nonplussed, which gives Wilson a short jab of satisfaction. “You are?” he asks.

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.” House leans back again, taking another bite from his sandwich. “You’re missing the smug look of the well-laid man who knows that in a few days, he’ll be getting seconds. And trust me, I know that she’s a great lay.”

There’s no way he can argue with this obfuscating, nonsensical drivel without getting into the kind of conversation that’ll have Lisa itching to amputate his balls, should she ever hear of it. And it’s a sure bet that she will, because House will quote anything he says straight to Lisa, complete with exaggeration, hyperbole and personal embellishments. So, Wilson doesn’t even try, but resigns himself to being the butt of House’s jokes for the remainder of the week. It could be worse, a lot worse, given that he’s aiming to marry House’s ex-girlfriend.

“Fine, I’m not,” he says amiably and continues straightaway, hoping to shut House up, “So, you’re really okay with me marrying Lisa?”

“I broke off the relationship with her, not the other way round, at least the time that I can remember,” House points out, “and I’ve never made an effort to revive it. You can rest assured that if you were foolish enough to invite me to your wedding, I’d happily screw each and every bridesmaid and the best man to boot.”

When Wilson opens his mouth to protest that of course he’ll invite House to the wedding, House raises his hand. “You can’t invite me, because there’s the small matter of the Cuddy clan to consider,” he says.

Wilson shuts his mouth again. He hasn’t thought that far ahead, although he has been pondering his plan for the best part of four weeks. Of course, he has avoided thinking about the complications that House adds to the matter, because … well, because.

“Besides,” House adds, “it’ll be a bit difficult to call it off, now that she’s coming here specially to be proposed to.”

“Oh, she doesn’t know,” Wilson says. “It’s meant as a surprise.”

House snorts. “How stupid do you think she is? If I figure it out within ten seconds, it won’t have taken her longer than … ten days.”

Wilson smiles, feeling very superior indeed. It took an effort to get everything sorted without arousing Lisa’s suspicion, but he feels that he handled it well. “I persuaded Julia to offer her babysitting skills before suggesting to Lisa that if she had the weekend off she might as well spend it in Paris with me.” He’d helped matters along a bit by dropping the information that House was due to visit again soon, leaving it to Julia and her husband Rob to figure out that Lisa, once safely engaged to him, Wilson, was unlikely to get entangled with her unsavoury ex again. Julia hadn’t been hard to persuade; on hearing of his plan she’d thrown herself into it with a vengeance, practically begging Lisa to allow her to spend some quality time with her niece, away from the demands of her own family (and her mother). “It was risky — she could well have decided to book into some wellness resort close to Philly instead — but it worked.”

House idly plays with his spoon. “I get what Lisa gains from the union: the nuclear family with Jewish doctor-husband and two kids that she’s been dreaming of since junior high. But what do you get out of it? She’s hot, but so are other women, younger women who’ll stay hot for longer than she will. Great ass, but those funbags are beginning to sag and her waist is thickening.”

Wilson is torn between agreeing — it is the truth, after all — and rising to the defence of his bride-to-be. That he actually hesitates is a sign of House’s pervasive bad influence. “I’m not discussing her appearance with you either,” he says. If he did and Lisa found out, he’d be road kill.

House continues undeterred. “She’s mothering your rugrat already; no need to propose in order to ensnare her into babysitting duties. And there’s no question of more little Jimmies: her biological clock has jammed for eternity and we nuked your sperm. Gratitude for her self-mutilating generosity? Doubtless. But she gave you her liver half a year ago. Why this belated outburst of emotion?”

Wilson uses the opportunity that House’s short pause gives him to get a word in edgeways. “She’s a wonderful person and we’ve got a great thing going, with the kids and the house, and it makes sense to make it official all the way.”

House points his spoon at Wilson. “You,” he says with slow emphasis, “have a great thing going. She doesn’t. She’ll be saddled with an alcoholic whose cancer could flare up again any day. She may choose to ignore that the way she ignores so many of life’s ugly sides, pretending that not seeing them will make them go away, but you wouldn’t do that to her. You wouldn’t saddle her with an additional burden if you couldn’t offer a reciprocal benefit. What can you give her that you believe will recompense her for your brokenness?”

Wilson considers pretending to be insulted at House’s insinuation that he isn’t worth the bother of marrying, but decides that it’s a waste of time. So he massages the back of his neck, not so much to release the tenseness in the muscles there as to avoid House’s eyes for a moment, because it’s hard to look House in the face when saying the words that need to be out in the open. “I’m living on borrowed time.”

The ten-year survival rate for thymic carcinoma, his particular and rare brand of thymoma, is crappy as it is. Add to that the fact that he’s on immunosuppressants to stop his body from rejecting Lisa’s liver, and he has the makings of a time bomb set for the not-so-far future: the immunosuppressants will suppress his body’s ability to fight the carcinoma, should it return.

He hears House say, “The appropriate course of action would be to sign your will, not a marriage certificate. That’s unless you’re trying to provide for your future spouse, but you can make her the beneficiary of your life insurance without entering wedlock. Besides, Lisa earns more than you ever will.”

“If …” Wilson says, then pauses to ponder whether he should change the ‘if’ to ‘when’. “If I die, Joel’s custody will probably revert to Amy. Lisa could try to come to some sort of agreement with her, but legally, she’d be no more than my housemate. She’d have no legal claim and little chance of proving that she was practically a mother to Joel. If she’s my wife, then maybe Amy will let her adopt Joel, in which case she won’t lose him when I die.” There, he has managed to insert ‘when’ without tripping over it.

He risks a glance at House. House’s face has a quizzical air. “Adopt?” he echoes with no intonation.

“Yes. Step-parent adoption. Legally, it shouldn’t be a problem, since she has already adopted a child. It would be an open adoption, of course,” he hastens to add. “Amy wouldn’t lose much.”

“When you die, Lisa will have full legal custody,” House summarises with his usual lack of tact and bedside manners. “Why would you want that?”

Wilson looks at House helplessly. He has understood everything else so far; why is he so dense with respect to Joel? Wilson is reminded of the time when Lisa was in the adoption process, first that other little girl and then Rachel. House had been ... obstreperous, lacking any kind of compassion and empathy. Maybe it’s the same kind of thing here, some form of sibling jealousy.

“I’m not sure whether Joel would be better off with Amy, although she’s his mother.” He flounders on, wondering how to put it without seeming insensitive to the rights of birth parents. “She loves him, but she’s … she’s young and she has her own issues to work through. Lisa is great with him and I’m sure she’d love to have him, and Joel is used to her and Rachel. It seems foolish to uproot him from the surroundings he knows …”

House isn’t listening. He’s fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers, unscrewing the lids and mixing the contents.

“Hmm?” House says when Wilson stops talking.

“Forget it,” Wilson says. “It makes no difference to you either way. Consider the upside: if I marry Lisa, you won’t ever have to deal with Joel again. I can leave him with her when I come to see you. I can leave him with her when you come to see me. Lisa won’t mind, especially if it gets you off her back.”

“And when you’re dead?”

Wilson stares. “You don’t care who ends up raising Joel when I’m dead. You’re not planning to play fairy godmother and look in on him, are you?”

House doesn’t answer the question, which doesn’t matter since it was purely rhetorical. Still, his habit of veering off at a tangent is as disquieting as it ever was. He says, “When you’re dead, then no matter what agreement you had with Amy, she’d have to re-negotiate everything with Lisa, because she’ll forfeit all her rights the moment she consents to an adoption.”

“She was on the verge of doing that anyway,” Wilson says, surprised that House of all people is standing up for Amy and more than a little put out about it. He’d thought that House, if anyone, would applaud his move to get Joel legally out of Amy’s sphere of influence and firmly into his own. “Four weeks ago she gave me a choice between taking full physical custody or signing the papers agreeing to place him for adoption.”

House is silent for a long moment, ostensibly busy building an edifice with their cups and saucers, his plate, and the silverware. Then he leans back, pulls his sunglasses out and puts them on again, which is pretty much useless because the sun has just disappeared behind the roofs of the surrounding houses. Finally he says, “Has it occurred to you that maybe you’re not the father?”

“It has,” Wilson says. He pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering how to explain this to House. Ever since he mentioned Joel, trying to get through to House has been like wading through a swamp. It isn’t worth the effort, he decides. “I don’t care. I love Joel. Whether he’s my son or not makes no difference.”

“Very noble, but what happens if the biological dad turns up?” House asks in a neutral voice.

“Nothing,” Wilson says, shrugging carelessly.

House’s eyebrows rise behind his sunglasses. Wilson supposes he’ll have to explain after all; House won’t let it (or him) rest until he gets behind this seeming indifference to Joel’s true paternity. “Amy says I’m the father, but I’ve done the math on this and — although it’s possible, it’s unlikely. So, let’s assume some other guy knocked her up. That’s okay. Unlike you, I don’t believe that nature programmed us with the instinct to solely protect our own offspring. Joel gives my life meaning and structure. That makes me responsible for Joel’s well-being. He’s my son now, and I’m gonna protect him.”

He shifts in his chair; anger has been brewing in him for some time now — ever since Amy handed Joel over like an unwanted pet. “Once Lisa adopts Joel, she will have full parental rights. Should it turn out that I’m not the biological father, I can then adopt him as a step parent.”

House is silent again for a long moment. “Only if the bio dad consents,” he finally says.

“In Pennsylvania abandonment is a reason to terminate parental rights,” Wilson says flatly, wondering when and how House has gotten so interested in the question of adoption. “Whoever he is, he has clearly abandoned Joel.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t know of his good fortune,” House interposes.

“Oh, you can be sure that if he exists, he knows of it. Amy is nothing if not trusting and naive. She must have run straight to him and told him all about the pregnancy, imagining that he’d share her joy. That she placed Joel with me means one of two things: either Joel is in fact my son or the real father is refusing to take responsibility.”

“Why don’t you do a paternity test? Then you’ll know whether he exists.”

Wilson takes a deep breath. “If I do a paternity test, I can’t ignore the possibility of a different birth father anymore and am legally bound to try and find him before Cuddy adopts Joel.” Oops, he’s back to calling her ‘Cuddy’. Maybe he should abandon the plan to call her ‘Lisa’ and just stick to ‘Cuddy’. House continued calling her Cuddy when he dated her at PPTH, and she hadn’t seemed to mind, so maybe it’s okay if he does so too.

House’s eyes behind the shades are invisible, but his brow is furrowed in thought or puzzlement. “You’ll purposely ignore the rights of Joel’s bio dad for your own convenience? Unexpected, that,” he says, pursing his lips. “I’d have thought you’d be all for Joel being allowed to explore his roots and making a qualified decision on who he is.”

“I would be — if his father had shown the slightest sense of responsibility. But he has forfeited all rights by allowing Amy to place Joel with me. I’m not going to have some joker who can’t be bothered to look out for his kid disrupting Joel’s life, either now or after I’m dead.”

“What’ll you do if he turns up asking for visitation rights or custody?” House asks.

“Smash his fucking nose!” This outburst is entirely uncalled for, he knows, but it has the gratifying effect of making House, who has been fiddling around with everything on the table throughout the entire conversation, freeze in his motions.

“O-kay,” House says slowly, putting down the much-abused salt shaker.

Wilson waits for the interrogation to continue but no more questions are forthcoming. House leans forward and picks up the neglected conference programme. He switches his sunglasses for his reading glasses and looks at the entries that Wilson has marked for the coming day.

“You’re gonna attend ‘Traditional Eastern Medicine and Pain Management’?” he asks, one eyebrow rising in amusement.

“Uh,” Wilson says. He hasn’t found anything better for the afternoon time slot, and he has a moral obligation to Joel (and Joel’s caregivers) to use his time to maximum benefit.

“Wilson,” House says, “you’ll be a better father if you return to Philadelphia rested and relaxed. You can read up about acupuncture, herbal remedies, and tantric massages afterwards in the conference proceedings. Though in the case of tantric massages I recommend a hands-on approach, because there’s nothing like personal experience to convince your patients of the efficacy of a remedy.”

Wilson is pretty sure that the authors of the paper on traditional Eastern medicine weren’t thinking of tantric massages or the Kama Sutra. “What do you want to do tomorrow afternoon?”

“There’s a wine tour,” House says and grins when Wilson rolls his eyes. “In deference to the sobriety sorority among us I’m prepared to make do with a culinary tour instead. Any alcohol they serve, I’ll drink your share too.”