Dobson. Henry. Your presence is required in classroom 7 at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital on July 12 at 10 am. Bring nothing but your wits. And try to be more interesting than your name.
Henry Dobson -- or Dobson Henry, as he now occasionally thought of himself -- listened to the voicemail for the tenth time that day and wondered what he'd gotten himself into. He'd submitted the application for a Diagnostics fellowship on a whim -- a way to fill the empty hours of his retirement -- never expecting to hear back. It was a crazy pipedream. But then Gregory House had a reputation for doing things that others thought insane. If he was going to roll the dice, this was the table to play. Even if the House always had the advantage.
When he found himself in a classroom with 39 other applicants, vying for just three spots, he knew the advantage had shifted to him. Everyone else in the room was staking their professional careers on a spot. He was searching for a dream. He had nothing to lose and nothing to fear. Except being unmasked.
There were a dozen or so Columbia graduates on staff at Princeton-Plainsboro, but it was unlikely any of them would remember a non-faculty staff member. Still, he made a list of people to avoid if at all possible. From what he'd heard, House kept his consults to a minimum, preferring to use his team for all tests and procedures. Unfortunately, the single exception was on his list.
"Who's that?" 39 pointed across the cafeteria to where House was eating with another doctor. "And is he willingly talking to House?"
Henry didn't think he could make a definitive judgment on willingness, but the other man didn't react when House picked up half of his sandwich and started eating.
"That's James Wilson. Head of Oncology." Of course 24 knew who he was. She had probably compiled dossiers on every doctor, nurse, and orderly in the hospital, colour coding them for their degree of usefulness. "He's House's best friend. No indication of any other neurological problems."
That was not good. James Evan Wilson, class of '94. Undergrad at McGill University in Montreal. Early acceptance with an MCAT score in the top five percentile. Gave generously to the alumni fund and mentored prospective students and new graduates from the Princeton area. Henry leaned forward for a closer look, but Wilson looked like any number of handsome, clean-cut, conservative doctors he'd seen pass through Columbia in three decades. Looks could be deceiving, though. In Henry's experience, the kind of doctor who made department head before forty didn't willingly associate with a maverick like Gregory House. He would need to keep a careful eye on James Wilson.
He managed to avoid any tests or diagnoses that would bring him in contact even briefly with the oncology department, but it was harder to avoid Wilson himself. House and Wilson's offices were connected by a divided balcony, and the chances of encountering Wilson while reporting test results or new symptoms to House were too high to risk. Naturally, the one time Henry wasn't able to avoid delivering the information himself, Wilson was just leaving House's office. He stopped to hold the door open and smiled pleasantly.
"I don't think we've met," he said, holding out his hand. "I'm James Wilson."
"I'm 26," he replied, finally glad for House's impersonal identification system.
"More like 62," House shouted.
"If you want to know how old I am, read my application." He was reasonably sure that the one way to guarantee House wouldn't do something was to tell him to do it.
"That would be cheating. I'm not interested in any information you volunteer."
Wilson was frowning slightly. "It's Dobson, right?"
"How many other old-age pensioners did you shortlist?" House scoffed.
"You were supposed to shortlist," Wilson retorted. "I gave you forty promising candidates to narrow down and interview."
"That's what I'm doing," House said. "I'm just not impersonally eliminating them based on whatever lies they wrote in their application."
Henry tried not to flinch visibly. This was not a conversation he wanted to be anywhere near. But both House and Wilson seemed to have forgotten he was there, and he realized that for House, at least, baiting Wilson was just another part of the game.
Wilson was apparently used to playing along. "There's nothing personal about this process. It's just safety in numbers for you. You won't deal with them one on one, you won't address them by their names, because if you do, if you make a personal connection, it'll be harder to let them go." He looked as though he were about to settle in for a lecture when his pager went off. "Patient's coding. Gotta go." He shook Henry's hand quickly. "Good luck, Dobson. Though I'm not sure for what." He pointed at House as he backed out the door. "Stop screwing people around and hire a team."
"Dun, dun, dun. Another one bites the dust." House feigned innocence at the disapproving expression Henry didn't even try to hide. "What? He's an oncologist. The only things that die faster than his patients are his relationships." He gestured for Henry to hand over the test results. "Or our patient, apparently. Back to the drawing board. Gather the troops in the war-room for the next briefing."
Henry hurried away before House thought to question him further. The patient might be running out of options to keep her dream alive, but he still had control of the dice. At least until the next roll.
When House held him back after culling the applicants to ten, Henry had a feeling his streak was coming to an end. House had been suspicious when he'd let 13 do the trans echo, and a suspicious House was a danger to anyone keeping a secret.
But House kept him on. After the initial disappointment, he realized House was right. He was too old to play Man Friday to an egomaniacal lunatic, but now that his secret was out, he could sit back and enjoy the ride while it lasted.
It meant he could stop avoiding Wilson as well. He assumed House had told Wilson that he wasn't a real doctor -- one of the first things he'd noticed was that House told Wilson everything, whether Wilson was interested or not. And yet, Wilson treated him with the same mixture of amusement and consideration that he did the other candidates, even went out of his way to drop a helpful hint about House now and then.
Curious, he stopped by House's office to test a theory. "Was it really the trans echo that tipped you off?" he asked. He knew House prided himself on building conclusions from the slightest shreds of information, but he also knew House hadn't called Columbia to check on him. He would have heard if anybody had pulled his doctored file. "Or did a little birdie whisper something in your ear?" He glanced pointedly across the balcony to Wilson's office and smiled when House scowled.
"You knew he knew?"
"I'd hoped he didn't. I recognized his name, of course, but not his face. There was no reason to believe he would recognize mine."
House snorted. "You're talking about elephant man. Wilson never forgets a face." He stepped out onto the balcony and picked up a handful of pebbles. "Wilson!" he shouted, tossing the pebbles one by one at the sliding glass door. "Get out here and apologize to Scooter for ratting him out."
The door slid open and Wilson stepped through. "Do you have to do that?" he complained. "One of these days you're going to chip the glass." He half-smiled apologetically at Henry. "I am sorry for spilling your secret, Dobson."
"Call me Henry." He'd never liked being called by his last name. It smacked of private schools and Ivy League lines he'd never been able to cross. "And you did what you had to. I'm just wondering how you knew."
The other corner of Wilson's mouth twitched up. "I remembered you from the admissions office," he admitted. "You sat and talked to me while I waited for my interviews. Kept me from completely losing my mind. I've always been grateful for that."
Henry tried to summon the memory, but he'd talked to thousands of nervous young applicants over the past 30 years.
"Fine way you have of showing it," House accused. "Turning him into the man."
"Except he didn't, did he?" Henry realized. "He told you, but he didn't tell Dr. Cuddy. If he had, I'd have been escorted off the premises by security."
Wilson just shrugged. "I thought that House deserved to know he couldn't actually hire you as a doctor. But that doesn't mean you can't contribute in other ways. You audited my second-year pathophysiology class. You asked intelligent questions, had a lot of insight. I thought you had something to offer."
Now Henry remembered him. Most of the students had viewed him as a threat or a joke when he sat in on their classes -- at least until they realized he wasn't really competition -- but a few had welcomed and actively included him. "You lent me your notes whenever I had to miss a lecture," he said, smiling. "You had terrible handwriting, so I knew you'd be a great doctor." He mentally thinned out the face and lengthened the hair and the memory slipped into place. He was surprised he hadn't seen it before. In the right light and angle, the lingering lines of Wilson's youth were written clearly on his features.
"Now that we've had old home week, you can answer a more important question for me," House interrupted. "What was Wilson's MCAT score? He refuses to tell me, so it must have been pretty pathetic."
"I don't think you want me to answer that question," Henry said, winking at Wilson. "The Director of Admissions at Hopkins is a good friend of mine, so I know what your score was. In fact, I know your medical school history better than you do."
"Well, that explains why he's not intimidated by you," Wilson commented. "I know better than to ask you what House's score was, but I'll just assume from your reaction that I kicked his ass."
In fact, their scores were exactly the same. One day, he might let that piece of information slip to Wilson. In the meantime, he had a game to play and his own dice to load.