It all starts with an MRI.
Or more, it starts with the thick file of a little, and rather round, Japanese man by the name Hiro Nakamura shoved unceremoniously into his hands by a stern looking Cuddy, who warns him he will take the case without grumbling if he wants the remote possibility of getting anywhere in the hospital other than the clinic in the near future. Apparently his new patient's deceased father had some major pull at Princeton-Plainsboro before his untimely death a few years back, being a major charitable donor.
All of which really just means Cuddy is irritated she's expected to be kissing undead ass while juggling running a hospital, being a mom and new fiancée, and tossing it down the food chain to her least favourite little lapdog, him.
He gives her a long suffering sigh, grousing as he flips open the meticulously ordered file.
Patient admitted to PPH last night presenting with the following symptoms: long-term headaches, dizziness, nosebleeds, and… severe delusions of saving the world?
Shutting the folder he just stares at her, the cogs already spinning in his head.
"It isn't April Fools, so I'm just going to ask what exactly I did to piss you off. Forget to buy you flowers for your engagement? Tell you how stunning your cleavage looks today?"
Cuddy wordlessly crosses her arms, emphasizing said aforementioned cleavage, and plants her foot in a stance he knows so very well means there is absolutely no way he is ever getting out of this, so he just sighs again, before actually looking at the MRI he already knows the answer to.
"Glioblastoma, which means this case is Wilson's. Can I go home to watch telly? I mean, unless you want to give me some Head of medicine, well, I believe the term used by young folks is 'head' before that marriage is finalized?"
"It's Dean of Medicine, hell no, and you need to actually see the patient," Cuddy replies, taking his elbow and guiding him to the elevator like a wayward child. "We already know Hiro has an inoperable brain tumor. The case file was a formality. I said you'd take his case because he's here asking to see you."
"Sorry. You forgot the golden rule. I buy hookers, not parade around here as one like you. My services aren't available to the highest bidder."
"You work for me, House," she reminds him with a tight-lipped smile once they reach the elevator. "Which means you are my hooker. If I like the number on the table, you get the case. I liked the number a lot."
"I'm starting to like this role-playing scenario, Cuddy. Tell me more naughty things happen."
"Go, House," she sighs, but he can tell she's still faintly smiling.
.
.
To House's immediate dislike, Hiro Nakamura is a disgustingly cheerful specimen of the human race, smiling widely and politely despite his obviously inoperable tumor, thanking all of his doctors and nurses for even the slightest thing. He'd get along great with Wilson, that is if he wasn't being constantly hovered over by a less polite and cheerful, taller Asian man named Ando (who he is amused to occasionally catch checking out Cuddy's spectacular rack) who gives the air he's in a witness protection program of sorts.
The case is cut and dry, his team doesn't even confer for a possible differential since the case file is more than comprehensive.
He's in Wilson's hands now, not his, since there are no mysteries here for him to solve other than the persistent nagging question of why a dying man flew all the way from Japan to ask for the Head of Diagnostic Medicine instead of an oncologist (and why Cameron is so interested in helping Wilson on this case).
He gets one of his answers when everyone finally clears out of the room and he lingers a moment longer than necessary, as the small man grips onto House's cane with surprising strength.
"Doctor House," he says in thickly accented English. "I have come from the future to warn you about a man named Sylar."
Oh, brother… He nearly forgot about the part in the file with the delusions of grandeur.
He checks his phone (no messages), checks his pockets for his game boy (absent), pops a few vicodin for his bum leg, turns on the patient's telly to General Hospital and sighs, stretching his leg out and relaxing in the visitors chair before stealing the unopened cup of pudding on Hiro's tray.
"Alright Spock, you get five minutes to explain yourself before I decide you're drinking the purple kool-aid crazy."
.
.
And he's definitely looney tunes, purple kool-aid crazy. A super villain who lobotomizes people for powers on the loose?
Must be all those comics they read right to left in Japan.
.
.
This isn't a happy story this time around. There is no miracle differential that shows it's a just a swelling or an MRI malfunction. What happens is Wilson and Cameron do what they can to treat him and manage his pain, and Hiro gets sent back home to Japan with his inoperable tumour. House dismisses his stories as the fantastic delusions of a sick patient, and life at Princeton-Plainsboro goes back to as it was before the two odd Japanese men set foot in its halls.
So there's vicodin, toying with the ducklings, toying with Wilson, more vicodin, imagined sex with Cuddy, a rehab scare, more vicodin, normal, normal, normal, until one day he's brushing his teeth and the next thing he knows he's standing in Chicago in his underwear for exactly three seconds before blinking and being back safe in his apartment.
He briefly wonders if the hallucinations are back, and detox really is a good idea, but he doesn't see the ghostly specter of Amber lingering anywhere r telling him to kill anyone, so he dismisses it and finishes brushing his teeth.
And then John Doe is admitted to the hospital and all that well deserved normalcy goes straight to hell.