Title: The Most Eligible Man in Princeton Plainsboro
Author: hwshipper
Prompt: enbfest prompt: Evil Nurse Brenda meets Wilson for the first time.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Heel and Toe Films, Shore Z Productions and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with Universal Media Studios.
Summary: Nurse Brenda's the new girl at PPTH. She's already got the crankiest doctor in the hospital as her patient. What will she make of his best friend?

Beta: the ever-wonderful bornbeautiful
A/N: Written last, but actually a prequel or prologue to the whole House Wilson Radiology Betting Pool series.

The Most Eligible Man in Princeton Plainsboro

"Dr. Wilson's back!" The rumor raced around the nurses' locker room. Brenda Previn perked her ears up.

"I've never met Dr. Wilson," Brenda remarked to the nurse standing next to her. "He's been away at that secondment in Stanford the whole time since I started working here."

"You've never met Dr. Wilson? Oh, you're in for a treat," her neighbor exclaimed. "He's so cute."

"Really?" That sounded promising. Brenda had been working at Princeton Plainsboro for a couple of months now and had already concluded that there was a severe shortage of cute doctors around. "How come he's back already? I thought he had a few more months to go."

"He does," another nurse chipped in. "He'll have come back early to see House. They're best friends, you know."

"Ah." This was good; Brenda was stationed on the corridor where House was a patient. She'd get to see Dr. Wilson without having to manufacture an excuse to be there. She turned to address a nurse putting on a coat, going off-duty. "Any change on House today?"

"No, just the same," the nurse in the coat said. "But Stacy was in this morning. They had another blazing row and she left in tears."

There were murmurings of oh dear, not again, at this. Since House had woke up after his second operation, he and Stacy had not been getting along.

Brenda arrived at House's room to join a small cluster of nurses that had gathered outside. Another nurse left House's room and came up to the gaggle.

"I left the blinds open just a crack," she said proudly. They could just barely see inside the room. House was asleep but shifting around restlessly. He had been like this pretty much constantly for the last few days.

Then came the distinctive clack of Cuddy's heels echoing down the corridor. The nurses scattered, each trying to look busy, none moving very far. Cuddy and Wilson rounded the corner and came into view.

Brenda glanced up from a random chart she'd grabbed. Whoa. The word on the street was right, for once. Dr. Wilson was cute. His floppy hair was in disarray, his forehead was wrinkled with worry lines and his big brown eyes were ringed with fatigue; but he had just come straight from the airport after a three thousand mile trip, after all. She wouldn't have known he was a doctor if she hadn't been told who he was; no white coat, no stethoscope. He was wearing jeans, which fit snugly, and a sweatshirt, which hung too large and baggy on him.

"Dr. Wilson in casual clothes. Just kill me now," the nurse standing next to Brenda whispered.

Cuddy and Wilson went straight into House's room. The gaggle of nurses craned their necks to peer into the room. Wilson had grabbed the chart at the end of the bed and was reading it rapidly, firing questions at Cuddy. Cuddy stood with her arms folded, answering him. After a few minutes Cuddy glanced up, then she stepped towards the window and tweaked the blinds shut. The nurses sighed in unison.

"Well," someone said. "How about him, Brenda?"

"He single?" Brenda asked, affecting a deliberately casual air.

"Divorced. Twice, people say," a nurse was quick to inform.

"He was dating one of the ER nurses a while back, but that ended before he went off to Stanford," someone else contributed.

The conversation was interrupted by Cuddy leaving the room and shutting the door firmly behind her. She glared at the nurses and demanded, "Haven't any of you got work to do?"

They scattered hastily.

Brenda lingered; she was on duty here, after all. She figured give it five minutes and she could go check on the IV. Four minutes and fifty-nine seconds later, she went into House's room. House was still in the same state of shallow useless sleep, tossing and turning. Wilson was sitting by the bed, not touching House, just looking at him, eyes not wavering from House's face. She couldn't read his expression.

"Sorry to disturb you, just checking--" she began.

"I'll let you know if he needs anything," Wilson interrupted politely but firmly. He then looked at her, and spoke apologetically.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. I'm a doctor here." He looked at her a little more closely. "I don't think we've met?"

"No, I'm new," Brenda explained. "Brenda Previn."

"James Wilson. Pleased to meet you." They shook hands. His grip was firm. He went on, "I work in oncology. I've been away on secondment, just flew in this morning from Stanford." He hesitated. "House is a friend of mine. I'll probably be here for a while."

"Just give me a shout if you need anything," Brenda said, and backed out of the room. She was impressed. He wasn't just cute, he was nice.

There had to be something wrong with him.

Over the next couple of weeks Brenda made it her business to do lunch with two people she hadn't met properly before. She introduced herself just as she was: the inquisitive new nurse with the unenviable job of looking after one of the most notoriously difficult doctors in the hospital (she hadn't appreciated it initially, but there was a reason why she--the new girl--had ended up with him); who was now intrigued by the sudden arrival of the best friend on the scene.

First up was Nora, oncology department secretary. Brenda had met her before, but not had a proper conversation with her. Nora was a matronly woman of mature years, obviously not one to gossip, but keen to hear any news on how House was doing. Brenda was able to tell her that since Wilson's arrival House had started sleeping properly at last, and was consequently starting to improve. Cuddy was finally able to start easing back on the morphine, which was a relief to everyone.

In return, Brenda asked all about Wilson. Nora had nothing but praise and loyalty for Wilson.

"My husband is a patient of his," Nora explained, a trifle hesitantly. "So I get to see him from both sides. He's an excellent doctor and an exemplary professional colleague." She paused, and continued, "Dr. Collins will be retiring as head of oncology in a couple of years time... I think Dr. Wilson has as much chance as anyone of succeeding him."

"Surely he's way too young for that?" Brenda said skeptically. She dunked a cookie into her coffee.

"He certainly would be," Nora agreed. "But he's a favorite of Dr. Cuddy's, too, you know. It was her decision to send him to Stanford, get him experience and contacts elsewhere without actually losing him to this hospital." She blushed suddenly. "I shouldn't have said that. That was very indiscreet of me."

"I am the soul of discretion," Brenda assured Nora.

The second person Brenda did lunch with was Wilson's last girlfriend at Princeton Plainsboro, an ER nurse named Rita. It transpired they'd dated for several months, but had started drifting apart before Wilson had been posted to Stanford, and the secondment had formed a convenient reason for them to part company. Their split had been very amicable and Rita was happy to chat about him.

"How did you two get together?" Brenda asked, munching a club sandwich.

"It sounds really silly," Rita said with a laugh. "I live with my mother, and she has a few health problems so I'm her caretaker, really. She was going through a bad patch and I was having a hard time. I was feeling really down one day when I bumped into James--Dr. Wilson, and he noticed I was upset, took me off and bought me coffee, made me talk about it, it helped a lot. And we kind of started seeing each other on the back of that. He's a very supportive man, you know. Very kind, very sensitive. Really helpful with Mom."

She paused; picking at her salad, then went on.

"After a couple of months Mom was on the mend again, which was great. But he didn't seem to be around so much, and by now I was in a better place myself, and by the end we just weren't even meeting very often. When the Stanford thing came through, there was just no point carrying on. I was a bit sorry about it, but mainly--" her voice dropped conspiratorially--"for the sex."

Caught by surprise, Brenda spluttered out a piece of bacon. "Uh, sorry. You were saying? ..."

"Everything you hear about him being good in the sack is true," Rita declared, but wouldn't be drawn any more.

So Brenda had learned that Dr. Wilson wasn't just handsome and nice. He was kind, sensitive, highly regarded by staff and patients, good at his job, had excellent promotion prospects, and to cap it all, he was good in bed. Wow. He had to be the most eligible man working at Princeton Plainsboro.

A natural pessimist, Brenda was sure there had to be a downside to this somewhere. She just hadn't found it yet.

In the meantime, she began to consider how to get a date out of him. She had too much dignity to flirt as obviously as some of the other nurses did, and in any case she could see he was used to this and knew how to deal with it. Always charming in return, but never actually rising to the bait. Instead, she made an effort to be around when Wilson was visiting House, which was often, and found that Wilson noticed efficiency and appreciated it. Unlike many doctors (such as House), Wilson also made a point of remembering names. He greeted her punctiliously initially as 'Nurse Previn,' and then, at her suggestion, as Brenda.

She looked into House's room one day when she was worried and stressed; it had been a long shift, now mercifully at an end. And she'd had a really difficult meeting at her daughter's school that morning; they were worried about her daughter's behavior, talking about possible suspension.

House was snoozing. Wilson was sitting reading a medical journal. He looked at her, expressed concern at how tired she looked, and asked if she was okay.

She was about to say everything's fine. Having a daughter was not normally a helpful factor to mention when talking to an eligible man. But then she remembered Rita's sick mother, and on impulse, she took a punt on a different approach.

"Oh--it's my daughter. She's going through a difficult phase. I'm a single mom, you know, it's very hard to cope with it all sometimes."

Wilson looked sympathetic. "I'm sorry to hear that." He glanced at his watch. "Would you like to go get a coffee or something, if you can take a break? You can tell me all about it."

Brenda quashed the urge to shout BINGO! and instead said casually, "I'm just going off-shift, actually, so that would be nice. If you're sure you don't mind?"

"Of course not," Wilson said, standing up and stretching, and she moved to finish what she was doing. Wilson headed out of the room, and she followed.

She realized as she stepped out of the door that she'd left a chart on the table, and turned around to get it. An unmistakable beady blue eye was staring at her.

She stared back, unblinking, then shut the door behind her.

Over coffee, she found another merit to add to Wilson's list; he was a good listener. A perfect listener, actually. He hit just the right balance of looking interested and periodically making sympathetic remarks. She found herself warming up, smiling a little, telling him more about her daughter's problems at school than she meant to.

And then, just as she had started to think about ways to get a dinner invite out of him, they were interrupted by a loud BEEP; Wilson's pager. He whisked it out, and Brenda saw him go pale.

"House," he said abruptly, and was up and out of the cafeteria faster than Brenda would have thought possible. She abandoned her dregs of coffee to follow. She might be off-duty now, but House was one of her patients, after all.

She arrived at House's room to find House sitting up in bed with wide eyes, a couple of nurses standing by looking uncertain what to do, and Wilson standing reading a print-out with a huge worried crease across his forehead.

"...felt my heart rate just start to soar, so I hit the panic button," House was finishing a sentence. "I don't know why. Didn't feel like there was anything to cause it."

"Well, something happened, your heart really started pumping really hard all of a sudden." Wilson turned the print-out towards House and pointed at a sharp peak on the graph. "But only briefly; it's practically normal now. Are you sure nothing happened? Didn't you feel anything? No pain in the leg?"

"Of course I've got pain in the leg. Muscle death will do that," House said, with some acerbity. "But it's no worse than the usual fucking unbearable pain every damn day."

"We'll have to keep a closer eye out for possible triggers." Wilson looked at the print-out again, then sat down next to House's bed. "Were you going to sleep, perhaps?..."

House shook his head, and Wilson continued to question, covering the possibilities. Brenda stood in the door listening. The other nurses drifted away, crisis over.

And then briefly, only very briefly, House glanced at Brenda, and in that moment she knew. House had faked that heart rate, faked it to set off that alarm. She didn't know how he'd done it--given himself a shock somehow, jabbed himself with a needle, perhaps--but House had deliberately sabotaged her coffee with Wilson.

She knew House was sick, lonely, bored, angry, aggressive and obsessive; but even so--her mind boggled.

She left the room quietly. Wilson hadn't even noticed she was there.

Brenda decided to do lunch with Nora again. Like last time, Nora was willing to chat in order to hear about House's progress. Brenda was able to tell Nora that House was doing much better. They now thought it very likely that he would walk again, although he would require many months of physical therapy. The physical therapists at Princeton Plainsboro were all competing to try and avoid House becoming their patient.

This time Brenda didn't just ask Nora about Wilson, she asked about House and Wilson, remarking that she was impressed by the amount of time Wilson put into seeing House.

"They must be really good friends?" she asked.

Nora was a little circumspect and Brenda got the impression she was being discreet. Yes, House and Wilson were best friends, had been for a long time. The two of them and Stacy had hung out together a lot before Wilson had been sent off to Stanford.

"How long have they known each other?" Brenda was curious.

Nora hesitated. "Well, I don't know. But before either of them came to work here."

"Really?" Brenda didn't think that was common knowledge. People tended to assume House and Wilson had become friends at the hospital.

"Oh yes," Nora explained, a trifle diffidently. "House was working at Princeton Hospital down the road when Wilson came to work here. He used to drop by to see both Wilson and Stacy. Then House got fired from there, as everyone knows, and Dr. Cuddy offered him the Infectious Diseases job here, so they all ended up in the same place."

Interesting.

"How is Stacy, by the way?" Nora asked, clearly deciding she had said enough.

Brenda shook her head and told Nora how House was refusing even to speak to Stacy right now. Wilson was trying to reconcile them, but without much success. Nora expressed sorrow at this news.

Brenda had a healthy sense of self-preservation, and after mulling over her chat with Nora, Brenda's eventual conclusion was that she should cool off here. House had faked a racing heart rate to interrupt her coffee. God only knew what he might do if she managed a dinner invitation, let alone anything more.

And she just couldn't afford to have a relationship at work go bad on her, not right now. She was new, still on probation, couldn't risk losing her job. Needed the money, for the sake of her daughter. Brenda was also ambitious and knew she could go far at Princeton Plainboro if she kept her head down and worked hard, and if she wasn't under the shadow of a possible disastrous relationship with one of the doctors.

So she backed off. She was still perfectly friendly to Dr. Wilson, and was sure he didn't notice any change in her behavior.

The same was not true of Dr. House, who noticed everything. House said to her one day as she was plumping his pillow, "You're not interested in fucking Wilson any more?"

Brenda felt a twinge of irritation, but tried not to rise to his tone. She diagnosed boredom. You didn't need to be a diagnostic specialist to see that House was immobile and frustrated, and didn't have enough going on around him to exercise his brain. Sometimes he just poked at people, as if with a sharp stick.

"I never was," she replied briskly.

"Balls. Everybody's interested in Wilson," House continued to poke. "It's not like he's getting any anywhere right now. Catch him at the right moment and you could bang him in a broom cupboard, no problem."

She smiled through clenched teeth.

"Play your cards right with your difficult daughter, and you might even get a date," House continued.

Now that was too much. The fucking cheek of him.

Brenda leaned over and said to House in a low voice, "I've got more common sense than to go screwing around with your long-term fuckbuddy."

She expected House to be surprised, insulted, or laugh at her. Instead, just for an instant, she saw a flash of shock in House's blue eyes. It was swiftly replaced with feigned indifference, but not quickly enough. Brenda knew she'd inadvertently hit on something; there was some truth somewhere in what she'd said.

And House wasn't sure if she'd been kidding or not. She left him hanging. Give him something to think about while he was festering in bed.

As it turned out, he never mentioned Wilson to her again; Brenda liked to think he didn't dare.

"Hi," said Brenda to the Radiology secretary, putting a 20 bill down on the desk. "I'm Brenda Previn. I'm here about the betting pool?"

"Sure," said the secretary, and handed over a book. "Don't think we've met, are you new?"

"Yeah, I've been working here a bit more than six months now." Brenda flipped through the book, mused for a few moments, then picked a date and wrote her name and 20 next to it.

The secretary glanced at it and raised her eyebrows. "You've gone very early."

"Just a guess," Brenda said carelessly. She closed the book and handed it back to the secretary.

Brenda noticed the title on the cover as she did so, and smiled at it: The House/Wilson First Fuck Radiology Betting Pool.

END

A/N: The story of House's infarction is told from Nora's POV in Memoirs of an Oncology Department Secretary - chapter 2: link from my username