Chapter 1: Clinical Manipulation

Greg House limped through the halls of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital as fast as he could, trying to avoid the nagging tones of Dr Cuddy rambling on about clinic duty for another day.

"House!" Cuddy yelled as she spotted Greg heading for the exit.

Busted, House stopped and turned around. He gave Cuddy a very fake smile. "There you are! Been looking everywhere for you."

"Clinic. Now." She told him in a stern voice.

"Ooh, will you cane me if I don't?" House teased her.

"No, but that cane of yours will need to be removed surgically if you don't get down to the clinic." Cuddy told him folding her arms.

House continued down the hallways towards the exit. "As much as I'd love to help you, because as you know that's my mission in life, I have to get home."

"To what?" Cuddy said with a smirk.

"Ohh, saucy." House mocked her as he headed out into the cold.

Cuddy watched him go. Then she got an idea. "Grace has been down there for three hours." She called after him. House stopped. He turned around and looked at her with a slightly confused look. Well, as confused as House could look.

"You gave her the job." House realized. His daughter Grace was seventeen and had been bugging him for months to work at the hospital with him. He'd refused, so she had gone straight to Cuddy.

"Grace not only inherited your 'I don't give a crap' attitude but she wants to be a doctor, too." Cuddy told House through the open doors of the hospital, ignoring looks she got from the people walking by who were obviously annoyed that they were letting the cold air in.

House finally gave in and came back into the hospital. He walked up to Cuddy. "You think you can use my daughter to manipulate me into the clinic?"

"Yep." Cuddy grinned. She turned on her heel and walked away, faintly hearing the sound of House's can hitting the hospital floor as he walked towards the elevator. Cuddy smiled to herself at a job well done and went back to her office.

xxx

Grace was sitting behind the nurses' station down in the clinic. Her first day on the job was going well so far, at least she was in a hospital. She was only seventeen, she wasn't aloud to distribute medications or make diagnosis' or treat patients, but she was aloud to do paperwork. Nurse Hamilton, a twenty-something who hated her job, took advantage of Grace at first, sending every piece of useless paperwork for her to be filed thinking it would keep her busy for a few hours. But when Grace breezed through it all in twenty minutes, Nurse Hamilton backed off. She still didn't talk to Grace, but she didn't care. All the other staff were quite welcoming. And, unlike her father, Grace appreciated their company.

She'd been told that she was a lot like Greg while being completely different. She assumed that they meant she had his 'who cares?' demeanor while being quite charming as well. She often wondered if her father had been like that when he was younger.

She loved her relationship with her father because it was unconventional, the epitome of Greg House. She stood up to him, she challenged him and she took care of him. All qualities she'd inherited from House. Which is why they could be laughing one minute and screaming at each other the next. They were very close and Grace liked it that way. She was too mature for her age to be worried about the teenage social ramifications of being such good friends with a parent. Not that House couldn't tell her off when he needed to. He was the one person who could keep Grace in line, and in return, she was the one who could do the same for him.

Off in her little dream world, Grace realized she'd been standing in the middle of the nurse's station for a couple of minutes doing nothing. She snapped out of it and got back to work. Then she heard a familiar voice ring through the clinic.

"You enjoy this, don't you?" House said as he limped over to the nurse's station, leaning on the counter.

"What's that?" Grace asked innocently.

"Having Cuddy tell me off." He told her.

"Oh that." She said. Grace looked up at him. "Yes I do."

"When were you planning on telling me about this?" House asked.

Grace drew in a breath. "Well, Cuddy knows, Wilson knows, Cameron knows, Chase knows, Foreman-"

House held up his hand. "I get the idea."

"I figured one of them would tell you. Apparently not. Lucky me." Grace smiled at him.

"School." House stated simply, in a way that told Grace he thought that would solve the problem.

"Three days a week I leave school at three. Get here at four. Work until seven." Grace answered almost robotically. "Cuddy and I sorted it out."

"Cuddy's not your father." House told her. Grace didn't answer. House sighed. She was a good kid, really. She wasn't rebellious or immature, on the contrary she had the mind of an eighty year old. He supposed having her mother leave when she was so young had something to do with having to grow up so fast. House had done the best he could on his own and everyone he spoke to told him he'd done well. Actually, the phrase most often used was 'In spite of you, she's turned out great.'. Grace was one of two people in the world House trusted, the other being James Wilson. More than that, though, Grace was his friend. And House had them in short supply. Which is why that day in the clinic looking at Grace's face, he had to relent.

"Fine. Work here. Enjoy the ambience of the clinic." House said, turning.

"Uh-uh-uh." Grace halted him.

When House turned, he saw she was holding out a file to him. "Cuddy told me to give you this when you came down." Grace said with a wry grin.

"When I came down?" House asked suspiciously, taking the file.

"There's a boy in room one with some kind of stomach flu. His mother is a self-confessed hypochondriac." Grace said with a happy grin. "Enjoy."

xxx