Chrysalis (An old story that I published on different site four years ago...)

by gorblimey2

Copyright Brogan 2007 Chrysalis

Chapter 1 –

Cocoon

Housing in Baltimore was difficult to find but Greg House had rented the two-story house with the intent to sublease a room to a student or resident at Hopkins. House was pleased when a young med student agreed to rent the room for $250 a month plus utilities. House thought it was all in the bag until the disgruntled student, upset that Hopkins would not accept his previous coursework thus requiring him to retake the courses at exorbitant tuition, took a hacksaw to the beautiful Magnolia tree in front of his organic chemistry professor's house and, when the professor came outside, the med student tried to dismember him too. Just two weeks before the fall semester was to start, House was surprised when the med student called from a lockdown facility.

"Youre in jail for sixty days?" House screamed into the receiver. "No, I will not hold the room for you, I'm not a charity." House was pissed when the student asked for the deposit back. "You want your deposit back?" House started to laugh. "You're delusional. That was non-refundable." He listened for a second and then screamed, "Hey, it said it right on the lease, non-refundable!" There was a pause and House screamed just before the hung up, "Yeah, life's rough and then you die." There was no way he was going to give him back the deposit, mainly because House had already blown it on the horses.

Having been kicked out of Johns Hopkins when he was a med student, it had taken House five years to convince the hospital Trustees to let him come back to do his infectious disease residency under Dennis G. Maki, MD. He was properly warned that it would take very little in the way of a grievance against him for House to be escorted out the door. House made the Trustees promises regarding his behavior that he knew would be difficult for him to keep.

A Resident's pay sucked, so House, well known among his friends and co-workers for penny pinching, was desperate to rent the room out. Driving over to the student housing office at Johns Hopkins, he pinned a notice on the bulletin board and filled out an availability form at the housing department itself. House received two responses. One was from a young man who said he could pay $200 a month but no more. The other came from Kenna Palmer, who said nothing about the rent but asked if House smoked cigarettes because of her tobacco allergies. House wrote back that he did not smoke tobacco in the house and if Kenna sent him the first month's rent then he would hold the room for Kenna.

Kenna had been named after the McKenna side of her family, an Irish family from Galway that came to the country as indentured servants in 1858. Growing up in Bright, Indiana, Kenna was a local celebrity there. She had finished high school at the age of 14, her bachelor's degree at 17 and her master's at 19. She was in her second year of her doctoral program in Neuroengineering at Johns Hopkins. She was about to return to Hopkins when informed by the couple she rented a room from that their son was coming back to Baltimore and she would have to move out. Kenna's parents, Clarence and Floie Palmer, were unhappy with this turn of events, because it gave Kenna such little time to find a place and it would make it impossible for them to check the room out before she rented it. Their worry wasn't without basis, Kenna was a naive nineteen year old. She had lived in the shadows of her parent's authority for so long that she didn't realize that, at her age, she was sanctioned by the state of Maryland to make her own decisions. All her life, Kenna's parents had decided everything for her and, as a result, Kenna had experienced some difficulties when she arrived in Baltimore two years ago.

It had been hard adjusting to the fact that she alone decided where she went, what she ate, who she met or how she spent her time. Learning how to manage her own affairs without her parents was a difficult lesson fraught with many mistakes. Unfortunately, because of the overbearing nature of her parents, no male had ever gotten close enough to Kenna for her to go on a real date. In fact, Kenna had never had a crush on a boy or knew how to function as a woman in the real world. She did know how to spend hours on research, study and academics. She had always been the admired child prodigy, but she had been lonely, having few friends in her life.

Kenna was getting her doctorate in Neuroengineering and had a part time job in the Biomedical department doing research. She made a whopping $6.30 an hour. She had a scholarship from Johns Hopkins but it did not include her living expenses, texts or school supplies. She worked with Dr. Geocadin, doing research in the field of critical care medicine with a focus in acute neurological diseases. Geocadin's laboratory research focused on the development of novel neurophysiological-based measures for the early injury detection and monitoring. Kenna worked 20 hours a week, no less, no more. Between the rent and utilities, she had budgeted $300, leaving her approximately $50 a week for food, supplies, texts and anything else that came up. Her parents were dairy farmers and unable to give her much money because her brother, who was 2 years younger, was in college at MIT and they were paying for his room and board.

At the end of the previous year, the couple that Kenna rented from offered to store her belongings in their garage, so Kenna was trying to make arrangements to move her stuff over to her new lodgings. She packed as much as she could in her back pack and rode her bicycle the four miles to her new lodgings and to meet her new landlord, House.