There was no other kind of awkward like standing in an elevator with a person you don't know. You're sure you'll never see this person again, and yet, here you are with them, alone in a very small room for about twenty seconds. You both have a common goal, obviously, but no talking gets done. Two figures stood in a certain elevator, their eyes focused forward, never saying or doing anything to make the other think they were the least bit interested in talking. One was tall, not very sharply dressed, and was definitely without a razor. He wore a t-shirt from some local band under a jacket, as if he begrudgingly took any thought into his appearance this morning. Perhaps the most interesting thing about him was his cane, or the way he seemed to glare at the doors of the elevator, as if whatever was troubling him was their entire fault. And it certainly did look something was troubling him.
The second stood about a foot away from him. She was much shorter, and much younger. Her hair was dark and long, like a straight board down her back, glistening in the florescent light from up above either because she had a natural glow, or it'd been a few days since she showered. Her eyes were much darker than the man's, and almond-shaped, like her two Asian parents before, and no doubt their parents as well. She was also less clothed than he was. She, too, had a t-shirt and some junky old pair of jeans, but she also lacked a hat and scarf, unlike the man to her left. Her skin was somewhat darker and finer than his, no doubt putting her at fourteen or fifteen. There the two of them stood, and after a moment, there the two of them stumbled backward.
The elevator came to a sudden stop, causing them both to lurch backward. The florescent lights from above flickered for a moment, and then went off for an even longer moment. The younger girl's deep breathing filled the darkness around them, and the older man finally let out a short, annoyed sigh. "Three, two, one…" He mumbled, and the lights flickered back on again. With a look over to the other, he hobbled over to the phone, picked it up. "Yeah, time to wake up," He said to the other on the other end, no doubt a maintenance man. "The elevator's stuck, what do you think? Just me, and a visitor." And with that, he hung up violently, his blue eyes going over to the girl. He frowned curiously, as she seemed to be scrunched up, but he didn't say anything to her.
The silence continued for about twenty minutes, when the phone rang. When it did, the girl gasped but then let out a sigh of relief, which the older man interpreted as her thinking they could get off now. "House," He said, and then smirked. "Well, if it isn't funbags herself. Plan go awry? It's a shame this isn't you and me in the elevator. I got stuck with some…what?" He frowned, looking definitively angry. "Are you kidding me?" After a moment, the older man hung up, and made the first contact with the younger girl. "Sorry, it'll be a while," He said, and shrugged, leaning against the wall and popping an oblong, white pill into his mouth while a thankful look spread on his features. And then for the first time the younger girl actually spoke.
"How long is a while?" She asked him, and seemed to relax a little. When the man shrugged, she frowned, and she looked down to her lap. "What, minutes, hours…days?" She asked, and her eyes went wide.
"No, not days," House repeated with a roll of his eyes, not taking his gaze from the door ahead of him, almost trying to will it to open. He frowned down at her for just a moment, and shook his head. "Probably in a half an hour, that's what happened the last time this happened. Of course, it took them weeks to get the blood stains from the walls," He said, obviously just trying to bother her, but he seemed to have done much more than that. He frowned, watching her curl up once more, her breaths becoming deep and quick. "Look, it was a joke, there was no--." He stopped when he saw this was not alleviating the situation, and he couldn't help but roll his eyes, and bend down next to her.
It was then he noticed the one thing that separated a patient from a visitor. The blue, plastic bracelet that was wrapped around her wrist contained her name, age, doctor, and just about everything else that the man needed to calm her down. "Ji…" He began, and then frowned at her name. There was no way he was going to pronounce that, or even bother to try. "Foreign Named Girl, put your head between your legs and take slow, deep breaths," The man said, in probably the calmest and concerned tone, which came out to him just lowering his voice. As she worked on calming herself down, his eyes went over to the bracelet again. He smirked with reasons only know to him, and a very nervous hand went to her back. He attempted to soothe her, but only ended up with a firm grip on her back that was not helping. The girl's hand flew up and she palmed his shoulder, causing the man to fall into the wall a little, and away from her. He frowned, and would have hit her back, had she not been going through a full-blown panic attack.
The girl's eyes were wide and her face was getting redder, but gradually her breaths became normal. Only a few tears had fallen (thankfully for the other man), and she was no longer packed so tightly. She gulped, a bead of cold sweat coming down from her forehead. After a moment she closed her eyes, and gained a little more control over her breaths. She vaguely heard him ask if he could check her pulse, and she willingly offered him her wrist, which was riddled with brown scars. She was obviously no longer ashamed of them, the man had concluded, and he proceeded to take her pulse. "You're going to be fine," He continued. After scaring a man into stroking, he supposed scaring a girl into a panic attack was all right. He heard her breathing become almost normal, and he was almost surprised she spoke.
"Jinny," She said to him, her voice hoarse, her eyes kept down on her feet and the red draining from her face. "My name's Jinny. And your name's Dr. House," She continued, tracing circles idly on the ground, and seemed to concentrate on nothing else. In the corner of her eyes, she saw him looking around for a nametag he may be accidentally wearing, or whether his wallet was still in pocket. "Two strikes…" She said with a small smirk, barely visible. She felt his eyes on her, then, and she frowned, looking over to the opposite wall. After a moment, she continued. "Dr. Gregory House, a Board-Certified Diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious diseases and cardiology." Jinny frowned, then, and shook her head. "No, nephrology. The kidneys, not the heart…" She mumbled, mostly to herself. "Currently employed in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital as Head of Diagnostics," She said, and then nodded.
House blinked. "How exactly…?" He asked, just staring at mostly her back and her somewhat greasy hair. "Well, I can't help but feel embarrassed. I mean, you've written a biography on me, and here I am with a name I can't pronounce," He said with a small shake of his head. How did she know all of them? He could see her smirking from back there, and it frustrated him greatly. Her behavior was not surprising, however. Given her doctor's name and the way she was dressed and unkempt, she was obviously a patient in the adolescent psychiatric wing. He couldn't diagnose anything just yet, however, as she'd barely said anything other than his American Medicine Association profile on the—He smirked. "The internet," He said to her, and he chuckled. "You looked me up on the internet? I'm surprised you went to the AMA website, there were so many cool porn sites you could have chosen."
"Good," Jinny said, as if she were just testing him. She moved a little towards his direction with a small chuckle, looking up and down his leg in the moments where he wasn't really paying attention. Her eyes seemed to go wide as she watched him, and she frowned a little when he did look down at her. She returned to facing away from him, her fingers flickering like she was playing a guitar, though it was obvious she was in thought. And then she laughed, which made the older man jump a little bit. He growled, and then he couldn't help but ask the question. "Why did you look me up on the internet?" He continued, his eyebrows rising as he looked over to her back.
Jinny sighed loudly and with a very frustrated tone before she answered his question. "Because the nurses were talking about you being in rehab once. Said your name, then they said that you were good. Real good. Wondered why you'd be there," She said quickly, and then frowned over to him, looking at his leg once more before she turned back around. "I mean, for addiction, obviously, but for…something…" And then her train of thought was lost. She was obviously focused on something else completely. Her fingers continued to trace the elevator floor while House watch her. She obviously got curious, he thought to himself. But why that curious, to sneak onto the computer to just look for me? It wasn't logical for her to have known about this elevator incident. He wanted to delve more into the thought when she said a word he knew only too well. "Infarction." His attention was now on her. "You have an infarction—h-had an infarction in your right leg," She continued.
House was not going to mask his shock. She had to be fourteen or fifteen, and not to mention he had never seen this girl in his life. How did she know about this? "You know, I normally try not to talk about my bum leg because it is, in fact, just a bum leg. But how the hell did you—!" He stopped when the bright red phone rang, and he rose up quickly, answering the phone with a small smirk. "Hello again, Cuddy. Say, just out of curiosity, have you ever been interested in phone sex?" He asked. "Or getting it on in an elevator? Cause this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to do both," He said with a laugh, though his eyes were still looking back down to the girl was now tracing circles, trying her best to get it just perfect. He looked back to the phone for a moment, and frowned down. "What do you mean, hours? That…that can't be right, put the mechanic on the phone. Put him on the damn phone!" There was a moment, and his yelling continued. "It takes you three to five hours to fix a--!" And then, he was silenced. "One of them is broken?" He seemed to be all ears, now. He nodded every once in a while, and then he shook his head, hanging up the phone after a while. He looked down at the younger girl who seemed to be interested in what was going on, but she gave no physical signs of interest. "Hours." She just repeated, and she shook her head, erasing her invisible circle with her palm before starting again. "Am I going to get to know, or am I just gonna sit here all day waiting for something to happen?" She asked, and then her eyes became a little wide. "Are we going to die?" There was no terror in her voice, but nor was there any sounds of happiness. It seemed to be genuine curiosity.
"One of the elevator cables is almost snapped. It's connected to the electrical wiring whatever, so when that snaps, so will the power," He explained grimly. "So they have to 'take extreme caution' in trying to fix it, but he's pretty sure the cable and electricity is going to snap."
"Who?"
"The electrician. And no, we're not going to die," He said in a bored kind of way, which didn't seem to bother Jinny. She had her circles, her squares, and the sound of her own breathing. She'd had less before, definitely. Not to mention the lights were still on, which mean that the air conditioner in the elevator was still working. She wasn't wearing much so she didn't have to take off when it did it overwhelmingly hot in there (which it would, that was just common sense), unlike Dr. House. She also had this man that she'd wanted to meet since she knew about him (thank goodness for gossiping nurses). And if he wouldn't talk to her, then she would still have her circles and squares.
"How did you know I had an infarction?"
