A/N: Second attempt at posting a House MD story.
I actually enjoy writing this one better because it just felt more natural and right with the current season. Yes, this is a crossover with Silent Hill. Hope to put up most if not the entire story by month's end, to keep up with the mood. As with SH tradition, there will be multiple endings, depending on what you, the reader, would want the story to end, not by House's actions.
House, characters (c) Fox; Silent Hill (c) Konami
The day started out unusually foggy, even by Dr. Greg House's standards. New Jersey was always covered in a light blanket of smog and said atmospheric phenomenon but that day; it just seemed heavier than normal. Must be a cold front coming in…guess I'm taking the bike today…the renowned diagnostician thought while popping a Vicodin pill into his mouth and putting on a leather jacket.
The motorcycle trip to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital was even stranger; there was a nearly null level of activity of people and cars bustling the streets and sidewalks. The TV sets inside the shops were static-ridden; channels were incoherently switching from one signal to another. Even the Starbucks where House got his daily breakfast routine was devoid of human interaction save for the scrawny adolescent clerk. "Morning."
The clerk's voice was a little shaky as he replied the greeting. "T-the u-usual?" "Black and put in a Reuben while you're at it." Nitpicking the young man's rather sloppy workmanship, even a monkey could tell that he was nervous.
"What? Is your regional manager coming over to see how you butcher a perfectly simple order?" House snapped. "Get your act together and fix my sandwich; it's getting a little runny around the left side." The clerk quickly finished the transaction and faster than House could come up with a complaint, he was gone. Total customer satisfaction my ass.
As the diagnostician exited the store, he noticed the fog had become even heavier. He also noticed the clerk running out the back door, hoping onto a motorized scooter and speeding off into the streets. A loyal Starbucks employee abandoning his post, God forbid there should be lunch rush hour… House thought as he took a sip from his cardboard cup. He almost had the urge to spit it out but quickly remembered that this was twenty times better than the sewerage served at the hospital. That kid owes me 3.15 for a crappy cup of coffee.
--
Never once until he arrived at PPTH did House find the day's circumstances unnerving; not the emptying streets, not the lack of car movement at the ever-changing traffic lights (irritating the man to no end) or the fact that the Starbucks employee had no taste in the fine art of making an overpriced drink and would rather run away.
Just like the streets, the hospital was full of cars but no people. It was a massive labyrinth of Mercedes-Benz, Hondas, Toyotas, an occasional Volvo and, of course, ambulances whose state varied from brand-new to near collapse. But House was more interested in who had the nerve to park on his space.
"I'm going to kill Foreman," he growled as he contemplated the guilty car. As much as he wanted to vandalize it, House held off his urges and climbed on to his motorcycle once more. After a couple of minutes of parking hunting; he finally found one close to the center of the massive lot, meaning he'd have to continuously limp at least 10 minutes just to get to the hospital's main entrance. Even worse, the fog had now become so damn thick that he couldn't see more than ten feet in front of him. House took another Vicodin and readied himself for a long and winding walk.
