The Magic House
A/N – Not many employees would survive the kind of pressure House puts on his fellows, and I thought it would be interesting to explore why he pushes their buttons so much. After re-watching "You Don't Want to Know" from season 4, I decided to write a fic based on that episode and explore his relationship with his fellows more. There probably won't be any OCs in this fic. The standard disclaimer applies that I don't own House or any of the characters from the show. Since this is purely a character study, it's entirely safe for kids. There will be angst down the road as I delve into House's obsession with games. Enjoy, and please review! Your reviews make my day!
Chapter 1
"Magic" – the claimed art of altering things either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science…". In a purely logical world, cause always precedes effect, but if one believes in magic, then the effect appears to have no cause. That's the wonder of magic. A successfully performed magic trick produces a visual effect for which there is no apparent cause. There IS always a cause. There is always an explanation. But it's the magician's job, it's the magician's art, to dissociate cause from effect; to make it appear that the visual effect his or her audience sees has no apparent cause. The big problem with being a magician, though, is that there is always someone in the audience hell-bent on finding the cause and proving you're a fraud.
Kutner and Big Love (Cole) went out one night on what House called a "Man Date". They wound up witnessing the near-death of the magician who had been attempting one of Houdini's old escape tricks – escaping from a tank of water after being lowered into the tank head first, bound and shackled. The magician suffered a cardiac arrest as soon as his head hit the water, without any evidence of drowning.
Next morning, with the magician still in Princeton-Plainsboro's emergency room, Kutner had a dilemma. A bad magician who screwed up that trick would suffer from a condition called a vaso-vagal response. This is what happens during drowning. Acute pressure changes in the chest cause the vagus nerve to make the heart slow down too much or even stop. This is why, if your heart is beating too fast, taking deep breaths will slow your heart rate down. The same thing happens as part of drowning.
Kutner's dilemma was that he was sure something else was wrong with the magician besides a simple case of vaso-vagal response, but he was equally sure that House would shoot him down. "Vaso-vagal response – BORING – discharge him and send him home with a copy of The Dummy's Guide to Magic Tricks. He goofed up the trick." Kutner was SURE House would say something like that; probably just before firing Kutner for tying up the diagnostics department's time with such a simple case. But Kutner was just as convinced that there was really something wrong with the magician. The trick was going to be getting House to take the case.
When House came cruising in to the lecture hall riding his scooter, it only reinforced Kutner's dilemma. "Aww – five eager doctors and no sick people…" House said. Clearly House was in the mood for games, and no matter who their next patient would be, it was also clear to everyone in the room that House was going to make a game out of the case. This did not bode well for Kutner, but Kutner dug in, stood his ground and told House about Mr. Finn the Magician. The expression on House's face was priceless. Dammit if he isn't persistent, thought House. I can't let Kutner see that I agree with him. Ever the Devil's advocate, House interrupted Kutner over and over again. House had pretty much already figured out there was something else wrong with the patient too, but he wanted to see how sure Kutner was of himself. How far would he need to push Kutner before he started to doubt himself? Either Kutner trusted his intuition or he didn't. House needed to know how confident his fellowship candidates were in their own intuition. There may be other ways of assessing their self-confidence, but House had always found the "button-pushing" technique to be a tried and true assessment tool.
House's goal for his diagnostics fellows was to help strengthen their own self confidence during their fellowship. To outsiders, House's treatment of his fellows and fellowship candidates appeared to border on being illegal, immoral, and possibly even insane. To those in the know, however, House's mission was pretty clear.
They might not know what is wrong with the patients I accept, but I need them to trust their own intuition even when the circumstances make them doubt their instincts. If they go on to become diagnosticians themselves, they will get plenty of cases where the effect has no apparent cause and the patient's circumstances may make them doubt their own abilities as doctors to FIND the cause. I need them to trust their own intuition.
For Kutner to pass the test, House could not let on that he believed Kutner's assertion that there was really something wrong with the patient. House pushed and pushed Kutner, but the more he pushed Kutner, the more Kutner stood his ground.
"Fine. Go run your tests. If you're wrong, you're fired," was House's challenge to Kutner. Kutner, rising to the challenge, replied "If I'm right, do I stay?"
House issued one more challenge: "If I say no, are you going to let your patient die?" Kutner responded by leaving the room to start the tests and House knew right then and there that Kutner had what it took to make a first-rate diagnostics specialist. Anyone with the balls to stand up for himself in response to this kind of pressure was aces in House's mind.
House's fellowship candidates ran the gamut from meek pushovers to insane, crazy jerks. The pushovers either didn't have the requisite medical knowledge to survive House's diagnostics fellowship program or else they didn't have enough confidence in their own abilities as doctors. Either way, House needed them gone quickly. The crazy jerks had too much self-confidence and would never be willing to admit that they might be wrong, to accept alternate theories. They had to go quickly, too. House wanted the ones in the middle, the ones like Kutner who knew that they might possibly be wrong, weren't afraid to admit they might be wrong, but also weren't afraid to stand up for themselves when they knew they were right. These were the fellows who knew they had a lot to learn but also could trust their own instincts. These were the prize candidates House was after.