This is the fourth installment in the Susan Chronicles series. The timing of the story is sometime in the middle of season seven, although "Family Ties" has not yet occurred. I hope you enjoy the story and if you don't mind to leave a review from time to time, that would be most welcome.

Disclaimer: I don't own House or any of the House characters. Those belong to David Shore and company. I do however own all the OC's.

Lessons Learned

By clp66

Chapter One:

House poured his concentration into the textbooks open on his desk. Open on his computer desktop was an article in JAMA. House read a couple of paragraphs in the text book, turned back to the article displayed on the computer and then back to the text. He heard a noise and looked up as Susan walked in his office. She shook her head no as she sat down in the chair in front of his desk. "Damn," he said. House took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair in exhaustion. He had been up for over 36 hours trying to solve his patient's puzzle.

"You need to get some rest," Susan said, "You're too tired to think straight."

"The answer is here, I just have to find it," he said. "You go home; I'll see you in the morning."

Susan shook her head, "I'm part of the team. As long as the team is here, I am too."

House was about to retort when Chase walked in the door, "The patient just crashed again. We've stabilized him for now, but I don't think it will last for long. Masters and Foreman are monitoring the patient."

"What are we missing?" House asked nobody in particular. Chase and Susan fell silent as Taub entered the room having stopped at the nurse's station outside the patient's room to document the patient's chart.

Several moments passed when Susan broke the silence, "Have we figured out what he is lying about?" As all eyes turned to her she continued, "It's your mantra – everybody lies. Either the patient is lying or the symptoms are lying," she paused then continued, "Maybe not every symptom is related to whatever is making him sick. What do you have if you eliminate symptoms systematically?" When nobody said anything Susan apologized, "I'm sorry – I guess I'm just talking to hear myself talk. Let me know if you need me to do anything," she said as she got up to leave.

House stared after her as she walked out the door. After she left the office, House got up from his chair and walked into the conference room; Taub and Chase followed and sat down around the table. He pulled out the white board from where it was stored in the corner. He drew three lines top to bottom and a horizontal line through the middle of the board making a total 8 boxes on the board. In the top left box he listed all the patient's symptoms. In the next box, he wrote all but the first symptom. In the next box he wrote all but the second symptom and continued in this manner until each box was filled with the patient's symptoms minus one and then sat down. Foreman and Masters walked in the room joining House, Chase and Taub at the conference room table, all of them staring at the white board. After several moments Foreman suggested a disease for the third set of symptoms – House got up and wrote it in that box. Taub and Chase simultaneously suggested another disease that fit the symptoms in the 5th set. Foreman suggested another for the symptoms in the 4th set and Masters had an alternate theory for that same set of symptoms. The team continued in this manner until each set of symptoms had at least one condition associated with it. After a time, the team fell silent having exhausted every idea. House started going through the various conditions one by one, eliminating as many as possible and eventually narrowed down all the possibilities to two and Foreman pulled out his phone.

"Seriously? – that's all you need ran?" Susan said after Foreman requested the test. "OK, I'll have the results in about a minute, do you want to hang on or shall I call you back?" Susan hung up the phone and pulled the most recent serum specimen she had pulled just two hours earlier from the patient out of the refrigerator. She programmed the instrument to run the test and within 30 seconds had a result. She couldn't believe that all they needed was the most recent sodium level to make the final diagnosis after everything they had struggled with. She called Foreman back with the results which confirmed the disease.

Foreman hung up the phone having conveyed the results and the rest of the team filed out of the office to start treatment. Later in the locker room as they were getting ready to leave Martha said, "That was an interesting analysis. I would never have thought to start systematically eliminating symptoms," she said.

"None of us did, sometimes we get so focused on everything we are seeing that it's hard to look outside the box to other possibilities," Foreman said.

"It's a good thing that House thought of doing that or we likely would have lost the patient tonight," Martha added.

"House didn't think of it either, he had a little help," Taub interjected.

Foreman nodded his head having figured out where House received his epiphany. "If he's not careful, she's going to end up replacing Wilson as his epiphany source."

"Nah, I don't think anybody will ever replace Wilson for that," Chase said.

MDMDMDMDMD

Susan unlocked the door to her apartment and went inside for the first time since the she left yesterday. Too tired to even fix herself anything to eat, she made her way to her bedroom to ready for the night. As she walked in her room, she looked at the empty king size bed and sighed. She missed his presence. She would have loved nothing more than to fall asleep in his arms tonight after such a long day. She supposed she should downgrade her bed to a double, she certainly didn't need a king size bed for just her, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. As she looked down at her left hand at the wedding ring she still wore, she wondered how long it would be, if ever, that she would get over the pain of his death. Guilt gripped her as she remembered a particularly rough patch in their marriage where she contemplated how much easier it would be if he just wasn't there anymore. Susan and Jeff had been married for over twenty years and of course she knew that all marriages had ups and downs, but about halfway through their marriage it was all she could do not to walk out the door for good. The only thing that kept her from doing it was her personal beliefs in regard to divorce and of course, she did not want to put their daughter through that kind of anguish, so she persevered and eventually things did improve somewhat. Now he was gone and she was alone. Well, not really alone – she had her daughter and her new/older brother – but she didn't have anybody to come home to on really long days. There was nobody to talk to about her day, nobody to hold her when she needed held, nobody to caress her and whisper sweet nothings in her ear, nobody to love her romantically. Romantically? She was deluding herself. There wasn't a romantic bone in Jeff's body, but she still missed him so much. Of course, if he were still here, she wouldn't have moved to New Jersey and she wouldn't have met Greg. She wouldn't trade her brother for anything. A lone tear made its way down Susan's cheek with all the conflicting thoughts and emotions running through her mind as she lay down to sleep. Tomorrow she told herself, tomorrow after work she would go shopping for a new bedroom suit. It was time.