This story is rated Quadruple-Bypass X's. In Other Words, Adults Only!

(Contains mentions of rape and sexual assault, some violence, profanity, and medical issues surrounding drug abuse and American drug policy)

We wake up together, happy but bleary eyed at the prospect of rushing in for a full day at the hospital.
Once we get there, a couple of young pretty female doctors, maybe in their early thirties, smile and wave at him. "Hey," one catcalls. "You remember us, don't you?"
He nods, obviously embarrassed.
"Really wanted to thank you for paying our way through medical school! Excited to work here, maybe we'll catch you sometime for lunch in the cafeteria?"
"Sure, congrats, will look for you."

They walk off and he turns to look at me. "Old, uh, friends. Uh, classmates."
"It's okay. No judgement." I smile.
"Thanks. I always treated them nicely, and all that was a long time ago, back when I was younger and messed up. Was something I did to take my mind off of the patients we lost, and their crying families."
"Hey. Really. I understand. Look. You're human like the rest of us. And, how did you think someone living at home way out in St. Laurence could afford to run a major publication by herself?"
He grins. "Hey, I like you. You're not afraid of yourself. And no judgement for you either."
"Thanks. And don't worry, Doctor, I always used protection and got tested for diseases."
"Good for you."
"By the way, we prefer to be called sex workers. Although," I say with a flip of my hair, "I prefer the term 'professional courtesan.' Because many of us are professionals, or professionals in training. Social services will pay for, oh, maybe a bit of food and a room in a tiny apartment till you find a couple hours work here and there at a corner store. At least till the Tea Party has its way. But you don't get to have dreams and aspirations, or long range goals. For that...well, we both know what."

As we approach his office, Cuddy looks at him strangely. "You look happy today, what's up?"
Then she looks at me, head down, disapproving. "Oh."

He grins at me. "She's with the press. Visiting science journalist. You must have missed the memo."
"Yeah. Seems no one tells me anything these days. I mean, I'm just the boss, that's all."
She rolls her eyes, shrugs and walks off in a huff, before turning back to House.
"Well, even if you are with Miss Fancy Magazine Lady, whoever she is, you've got neonatal nursery duty today. Ten o'clock, don't be late, no crazy excuses this time."

"Psssssst. I'll take your baby duty today. I love kids, it'll be fun."
"Thanks, but you do kinda have to be a doctor. What if something goes wrong with a kid?"
"You've got a pager, don't you? I'll be in touch if anything happens. You go take two hours off, go have a whiskey sour, play Farmville or WOW, do whatever you want to do while I go in there."
"That's tempting. A bit too tempting. But what if Kristie needs you, and a baby dies while you're calling for her? Or the other way around?"
"She's in court today for her husband. No cellphones allowed till noon or they'll get confiscated."

"Ok. Pager number is XXX XX XXXX." He points to an unmarked door across the hall. "Spare white lab coats in there, you should find a stethoscope and clipboard too. Just keep your head down and stay busy, no one will ask who you are."

A few minutes later I emerge, professional and ready to go.
"Okay. Meet you outside the glass doors for lunch."
He turns to go. "Oh, by the way, thanks!"

I wander in, scanning the room and peering into each isolette. Each patient seems to be afflicted with terminal cuteness. Even the ones with funny-shaped heads and blotches and birthmarks and cradle cap. I help carry some children back to their parents, encouraging the families to breastfeed for proper nutritional balance and to pass immunities on to the babies, and reminding the women to take folic acid during subsequent pregnancies for optimum neural development.

Then, I turn around and see House, fumbling with a newborn with a sheepish grin on his face. He waves. I smile.
"Pick him up from the pits, cradle him in your arms," I suggest.
"Thanks, got him."

"I don't really mind babies. Just gotta tease the administrators here, ya know."
"I know. My father was that way about his beta blockers, for his cholesterol. But after awhile, he took them anyway."
"Cool. Is he okay?"
"Yeah, as much as you can be for a grouchy old suburbanite who listens to eight hours of talk radio a week. But healthwise basically ok."
"That's good then. By the way, I know this kid. He's sort of a miracle baby. A month ago we developed a way to do surgery on him in utero to correct spina bifida."
"They can do that?"
"Yes, but it's dangerous. Only done now in emergencies. Worked this time though, look at him, he's already almost ready to pitch for the Giants!" The baby stretches out his arms and yawns. These little tubes and monitors are soooo last week, I guess he's thinking. Time for big boy toys.

"I'd like to come in here and read to the kids, have baby storytime."
"Yeah, there are a lot of great books out there. Like the new Adam Mansbach one. Go the Fuck to Sleep!"
I laugh. "Yeah, I know the feeling. Anyone who doesn't laugh at that obviously never had kids. Or needy friends or relatives of any sort."
"I got that to read to Cuddy's kid. She didn't appreciate it though."
"Yeah, that's why that's usually in the adult section."
"Maybe I shoulda taken the hint. Oh well, water under the bridge."
"Yeah. But that little phrase comes in handy. Like, Kristie, stop fucking texting me for favors! Or, Mom, let me fucking finish a sentence!"
He laughs.
"You do know I really love Kristie very much, don't you, and that I'm joking, right?"
"Of course. I mean, Mr. Mansbach loves his toddler, he's just got to sleep sometime, that's all."

House looks pensive, then looks away before speaking softly. "Or, Cuddy, please come the fuck back into my life."
I gently take his hand. "I'm sorry," I whisper. "I've been there. And I wanted to see it work out for you too."

He's quiet for awhile, then says, "Wish I could just prescribe myself a pill for heartbreak. But not even the greatest doctor in the world can cure love gone wrong."

Over lunch, he tells me about life in the hospital and his favorite patients and their craziest diseases. It's a fascinating job, in a kind of morbid way.

I end up telling him about working with the magazine, about scientists with great life stories, with interesting research projects, who hijacked my interviews or droned on and on about their accomplishments. Then I tell the story of how I was raped near the St. Laurence BART station on my way home from a gallery cocktail reception.

Gave the guy a hand job just to hurry him up and get him out of my car so I could get home before my parents got worried. Cops came by to arrest us for indecent exposure and we cleaned up and got out of there before getting in trouble, but I never reported rape or sexual assault since I didn't want my parents saying I couldn't go out to events for the magazine because it wasn't safe. In St. Laurence women don't go out at night...they get off of their admin jobs at five and come home for stewed casseroles and coleslaw and sitcoms with their husbands. So I was weird and stuck up already for staying out late and starting a whole big nonprofit on my own, didn't want everyone to say that I'd just made the magazine as an excuse to meet men and sleep around.

"So, let me get this straight. Some crazy drunk bastard came on to you, and you fought him off and survived, and now people say you're the one at fault because you weren't willing to sacrifice your entire career and everyone and everything you believed in so that he could have a small chance of getting caught? What part of flyover country is this again? South Dakota?"

"Yeah, I know. Thanks for the support. Thanks awfully. But I can see some of what they're saying. That the ends don't justify the means and that I'm contributing to a social climate where rape's okay and all kinds of vulnerable people around the world can get attacked. That nothing's more important than my life and I should have sacrificed for the rest of the world."

"No cause's more important than your life? Gee, tell that to all the families of dead veterans and paramedics! And look. That creep's next stop's not the Congo. But your money's next stop might very well be, if you can keep enough freedom to get out and network your way into an actual job outside of St. Laurence so you can donate to international relief. Think of how many innocents you'd be sacrificing if you limited your horizons to a St. Laurence corner store."

"Thanks. You can see why I never told anyone for many years."

"Yeah, no wonder. In a civilized part of the country, you'd have been allowed and encouraged to develop a career and move out on your own by maybe 25. Hence, eliminating these types of moral dilemmas."

"Yes, I wouldn't be 38 and still living at home. I do wish I could have reported the rape though, just to make the streets safer for everyone."

"Well, we'll come up with something," he says. "Anything other than a lovely, determined woman like yourself throwing her life away as a martyr to St. Laurence!"

We get up and head upstairs back towards the offices. On the way, he turns to me. "You know, have you ever considered becoming a doctor? I think you could do it. If you're tough enough to endure sexual assault so you can spotlight and campaign for research you believe in, you're certainly determined enough to get through medical school."

"Wow. Thanks. Don't know if I have the dexterity though, I'd hate to receive a shot from myself. Took anatomy in high school, dissected frogs and fetal pigs and eventually cats. I memorized the locations of all fifty of the important muscles, but the teacher walked by and looked at our cat and said it looked like a hawk had dragged it in from the yard!"

We laugh. "You could go into diagnostics, like me." Then he shrugs. "It's fascinating, you have to keep up with all the different fields of medicine and draw upon everything you know." Then his face darkens. "Not an easy career though. Gets hard to take very easily. People die on you all the time, in front of their families, or all alone...you feel like a failure every time, blame yourself. You can't have a normal life, end up bringing your work home psychologically."

"Maybe that's why I became a journalist and magazine editor. To support and foster all the things I like and want to learn about, but to keep enough distance so I can function."

"Yeah, and maybe that's why Cuddy left. Because I couldn't handle it." He sighs and looks away before speaking again. "Wait. Come in here, and close the door behind you very quietly." He points to an unlabeled door that looks as if it leads to a storage closet, and I follow.

Inside is a hospital bed, with a patient lying motionless under a pile of bedsheets. He or she is not hooked up to any life support equipment, and the sheet's not rising or falling. The person must be dead, I realize.

He pulls away the sheets with a dark grin and a flourish. "And, my lovely, may I now present, your little martyr-girl!"

We both look into the face of a fresh corpse.

"Her name's Michelle Jones. She's 33, no siblings or children, her husband died years back in Iraq and her parents are both serving the Lord as missionaries to Bolivia."

He opens a brown paper lunchbag and retrieves a cucumber and a scalpel. Then, he proceeds to violate the corpse. Stabbing, penetrating, basically ravishing her in the worst possible way. Fresh blood leaks out and mingles with the smells of bleach and formaldehyde.

"What are you doing?" I grab his hand. "You've gone crazy, her family's going to be upset!"

"Trust me. There's always a workaround. And this is a relatively ethical one."

"What?"

"Michelle here's going to report your rape and live up to all your supposed responsibilities. She was in St. Laurence not long after you were, and she's got less to lose than you do."

"But what about her family?"

"They're missionary doctors. Whole family's donating their bodies after death to medical science, and this is as good a way to do it as any. Getting the rapist off the streets while simultaneously keeping you out and about as a science journalist." He smiles gently before handing me the cucumber. "Your turn."

I start small, tapping and fingering her body, before finally releasing years of stored feelings.

"Yaaaaahhhhh! Baby girl, you're gonna suffer now! No more life or dreams for you...you're stuck safe home in St. Laurence for the rest of your life. Get to it girl, it's gonna be agony for you. Gotta take one for the team, martyr yourself for everyone else. I've got morals now, ya bitch. Ya hear me? Morals! Nothings more important than that." I dig the cucumber deeper and deeper into her privates, twisting it while imagining her screams.

Finally, panting, cackling, and giggling, I pull the rapist's forgotten baseball cap out of my satchel and place it on Michelle's chest. DNA evidence.

"Did I scare you?"

"Nah. In my field we don't scare easily. And that was fun."

I glance over and stare up into his eyes for several moments.

"I'll put in a call to the St. Laurence cops tonight. Report new evidence of an old crime. So now, you go out and own the night, like a firefly, whatever you do, and the streets will still be safe thanks to you."

"FireWORK," I correct. "But firefly works, too." I smile.

We collapse together, bloodied and tired, in each other's arms underneath piles of paperwork, wheelchairs, and blood pressure cuffs.

"Wow. That was amazing."

"Yeah. For me too."

"I mean, not that mutilating a corpse is amazing. But you know, that was the first time in a long while that I've been able to express anger in a way that wasn't passive-aggressive or self-destructive."

He looks away and thinks for awhile before speaking again, very softly. "Me too."

I take his hand gently, staring up at Michelle's ravaged body, sacrificed for us. "You know, I actually kind of understand necrophilia. In a way."

He turns to look back into my eyes. "Not the blood and guts and gore. But the sense of completion, finality. I used to love funerals and memorial songs as a child even. It's that you've done all you could for someone, tied up all the loose ends. Such a sense of relief, you don't have to rush around anymore dealing with complications. Can just be present with them, remembering the positive and forgetting everything ugly, and deliriously grateful that everything's finished, that you'll never again have to watch them go through something you can't fix for them."

"I suppose. As a doctor, for me death feels like the ultimate failure. That's what happened to Michelle Jones."

"She broke her neck in a car accident. Nearly DOA. That's not your fault."

"Yes. But I was already working with her. She got weak and drowsy at times, others thought it was just stress, but I was convinced it was something else. Some rare syndrome. She changed doctors when she moved back to your side of the country, so I lost her as a patient, till now when she came back to see a friend and came back into Emergency. I still blame myself deep down, could have done more."

"Don't. You can't drive yourself crazy. She and her parents wouldn't want that."

"Thanks. I know. But, I would like to make you deliriously grateful," he says, pulling me toward him with a wicked grin.

We make love effortlessly, whispering to avoid catching the attention of passing nurses or security.

"All my professional study of anatomy has paid off, eh?"

"Yes...and mine, too," I say, grateful for a lover who doesn't freak out or stop at the mention of my past employment.

...

We head upstairs, finally, for afternoon hours in the walk-in clinic.

"Warning, boring diseases ahead," he says.

"It's okay. Maybe we could use a breather till you get off work."

"I know. I just don't want to fall asleep on the job. But I can't miss this. It is my turn, and anyway if I'm not there, Cuddy will roll her eyes at me."

I stop on the steps and take his hand and whisper to him. "Just between us," I say, "she wasn't worth it."

"Wasn't worth what?"

"Everything you went through with her. Trying so hard and groveling for her and beating yourself up over thinking that it's your fault that patients died while you were giving her all your mental energy. And, you know, wrecking her place with Wilson's car."

He sighs. "Yeah...I know. Believe me, I know now. Served time in jail over that, finally pled guilty to disturbing the peace and had to relocate to San Francisco to reinvent myself. But I still miss her. Just can't stand to come home to an empty house anymore. Does something to a man to have to be alone with all his old demons."

I take his hand. "You don't have to be alone anymore."

"Aw." He grins. "You're sweet. You know that?"

"Thanks. Whatever happened with the artist patient?"

"She changed her mind again. Her little boy-toy assistant dumped her for a hipster chick whom he'd met at one of her openings, so she said she didn't want the treatments after all. No one to stay alive for, so she might as well go out with her logical thinking capacity intact."

"So, she died?"

"No...she looked online and found some natural remedies and ways to strengthen her brain. She started the treatments a bit late and asked all her Facebook friends to serve as her personal secretaries to take care of all the practical stuff so she could devote her brainpower to her art. She's still around, taking things slow for now, but she remembers me and sends me New Year's cards. And she moved to the Mission District, and is exhibiting at 111 Minna. I may go see her."

"Nice of her. And good for her."

We enter the walk-in clinic. People are already lined up out the door. Women in sweats with teeny kids, men in suits, women in suits, college kids with colds and flus from studying and partying too hard. Even someone from the Marina District with a pet baby purse-leopard in a stroller who couldn't be left alone.

He looks around before muttering under his breath. "Here I am, the almighty Dr. House, at your service, ready for the whole world to expect me to perform miracles."

I pull my phone out of my purse. 27 texts in all caps. "God, I know the feeling. Be back in a few."

A little Noe Valley family approaches with a five year old son and a baby in a stroller. The boy walks up to House, showing off his right arm. "Doctor, I have a bruise and a bump on my arm."

He says, "Sir, you have a contusion and a sebaceous cyst. Totally harmless, although you might want one of these scary dinosaur bandaids, just in case."

The dad nudges the mom. "That's fancy educated-speak for a bruise and a bump. You mean we waited two hours in line just to have the doctor tell us that?"

"Yes, because now we know it's harmless!"

"Ow, Ow My Arm!" the boy cries, and his parents rush to comfort him before realizing he's just pretending the dinosaur's eating his arm off.

Purse leopard lady takes several minutes of persuading that plastic surgery on her forehead is not an emergency, and he gives her a shot of Botox. "Shooting botulism toxin into your face! What we go through for our looks," he mutters out of her hearing.

An old dude with white hair from the Tenderloin walks his bike into the clinic. He needs dental surgery, and gets referred to another department. "Hey, I know you! Room 23A from detox!"

"Yeah...just do me a favor, willya, and keep that on the down low in front of my colleagues?"

"Yeah, it's cool. By the way, they're gentrifying Market Street. All the art brings all the hipsters and high rent. Sucks."

A perky middle-aged woman with clipped-hair and toned muscles approaches. "Oh Doctor," she moans. "I totally passed out today, right in the middle of Jazzercise."

"Hi Celeste," I wave. "Well, I see you got your chance to meet House!"

"You know her?"

"Yeah, and I probably have a clue as to her diagnosis."

"Oh don't tell me. Spoils the fun. Let me figure it out." He limps off into his office and pulls out his whiteboard and starts doing a differential.

"Let's see. Rheumatism. Nope. Too young. Scarlet fever. Nope. Vaccinated. Multiple sclerosis. Nope, her primary care doctor would have caught that. Unfortunately, that leaves our most dreaded diagnosis...Decaf Coffee!" He circles the words in bright neon green.

Wilson starts to sing, "They tried to make me drink some decaf, but I said no, no, no!" before getting shushed by a nurse.

"Okay, will watch my drinking in the future. By the way, Doctor...has anyone ever told you that you look like Hugh Laurie?" she says with dreamy eyes.

"Oh, only about fifty times a day," he mutters, before turning to her and thanking her.

Then, he pulls me over. "Oh my God, who do we have here? Borat's sister?"

I turn to see an Eastern European lady, middle aged and chubby, with black curly hair, glasses and a heavy fake-sounding accent. She's engaged in animated conversation with Wilson, Taub, Thirteen, Foreman, and Masters, and several nurses, all of whom seem to have known her for quite some time.

From what I can see from across the room, she seems to be desperate for a prescription of a controlled substance. Thirteen wants to help her out, but Taub and Wilson are conflicted about getting reported to the government and losing their jobs. Masters is threatening to report her right away.

"No matter what, you have to follow the rules. We can't destroy social mores just to help one patient, and hard cases make bad law - and bad medicine!"

Thirteen shoots back, "We're diagnosticians! We're in the business of treating hard cases uniquely. Social mores gave Socrates a hemlock cocktail. Besides, an extra script a month from us is better than her risking heart damage from going off Adderall, or crashing her car into a vanful of kids during a narcolepsy attack, or her buying speed on the streets."

"Hey, a coupla cups of strong coffee might help! And some giddyup exercises!" Celeste opines.

"Thanks for the advice, but I think she needs a little more than that," House says, just as Wilson speculates that she might be taking her Adderall on an extra side trip to Hacking, and Taub starts eyeing one of the cute nurses.

House beckons for Foreman to come follow him back into the offices.

"Hey, could you do me a favor?" he says, handing him his nametag. "I've got a long line of patients here. Can you go help Ms. Borat out?"

"Sure, but what should I do?"

"Look, just pretend you're me for a few minutes. I authorize you to do whatever I'd do."

Foreman immediately struts about with an awkward limp and shouts, "I AM THE SMARTEST DOCTOR IN THE WHOLE HOSPITAL! COME OUT WITH YOUR GOWNS DOWN!"

"I guess you aren't doing subtlety or diplomacy today," House says. "Someday please let me know how you really feel, ok? Anyway, my psych says I'm driving myself crazy and need to learn how to delegate. So I trust you. Just go and come up with some kind of creative way to take care of that poor lady."

Foreman takes the Eastern European patient into a private exam room, removes her wig, glasses, extra stomach padding, and the peasant dress on top of her sweater and jeans. "Hi Kristie," he says, shaking her hand. "It's okay. No more need for disguises. You're among friends here."

She thanks him profusely, and proceeds to explain how she has an unusually bad case of both narcolepsy and ADHD, both real, legitimately diagnosed and biologically based illnesses. Unfortunately, she requires more than the maximum legally allowed monthly dosage of Adderall to treat her conditions. Passed in order to prevent people from obtaining piles of medication to sell on the streets for a cheap high, the drug laws only took into account the medical needs of the average patient, not unusually sick people such as herself. She'd kept herself limited scrupulously to twice the legal dosage for years, and was a loving wife, mother, and church and animal shelter volunteer, but in the eyes of the law, is viewed no differently from the common meth dealer.

So, basically, our society consigns a certain percentage of its disabled members to chronic illness and pain in the name of maintaining law and order. And she lives in Marin, so this isn't even just backward St. Laurence or anything, it's the whole damn state.

Foreman looks at her. "Years ago I took the Hippocratic Oath. To care for the patients and do no harm. And that comes first. You come first. Not the city, not the state, not the DEA, not even my boss."

She thanks him once more and shows him pictures of her happy children smiling and wanting their Mommy to get well so she can win custody of them back.

"Although," he explains, "with MY boss, I know for a fact that he'd completely understand and have absolutely no problem with what I'm about to do now."

He fills a large black garbage bag with stockpiled Adderall pills, and presents it to her, winking, along with a spare janitor's outfit. "If anyone stops you, you're just taking out the trash."

They both walk out, and run into House, who asks what happened. Upon hearing the story, he quotes from George Sand's introduction to her novel Indiana: "When the God-given impetus to protest an unjust society becomes so strong, I find myself acting creatively..."

"See, I'm not that much of a Philistine. I can appreciate great novels."

House takes her aside and asks for one more favor, in return for the Adderall.

"Sweetheart, we're always happy to help. Just don't ask your journalist friend for any more favors today, okay? Let her have a night off to sip blueberry martinis and read French literature. If you want to call her to chat, fine, but she's earned a rest."

"I know. Sometimes I just get flustered and need help though."

"I understand. Believe me, I really do. I'm disabled myself and I've been there. So here," he says, handing her a card with some phone numbers and a list of websites. "Here's where to find your own Hella Pretty Army, just like Fran...and it's not an army of one."

"Thank you. God bless you! What's your email address? I'll send you some happy songs and a Precious Moments Jesus card when I get home."

House stands there, very politely, and gives it to her. "What the hell, Mr. Atheist?" asks Taub. "Are you in love or something?"

"Or something," he replies, looking earnestly in my direction. I give him a playful little slap.

"Hey," he gestures towards the crowd. "Tell them all to drink two cups of black Irish coffee with their apples and call me in the morning, willya? I've had a long day and should, uh, escort the lady home."

Everyone nods to agree, smiling deep down to see their boss finally so healthy and happy. I'm pretty much in a state of bliss, too...after all, a girl can dream, can't she?

Much love to the world,

Elena Romanescu