A/N: This is the product of a few too many late-night Hameron reading fests :P
He wasn't anything like she'd expected at all.
She'd been led to believe that Dr House was mean, bitter, cruel, arrogant and e- all of the above. Her friends couldn't understand why she wanted to work for him. They were content with reading articles about his cases, hearing rumours from other students; Allison wanted more.
The first time she saw him was at her job interview. The second one, anyway. The first had been conducted by a young Australian doctor- Chase, she thought his name was, who had told her House was too busy to run the interview today, so he was doing it. Too busy, my ass, Cameron thought. You just want to suck up to your boss.
However, two weeks later, when she'd almost given up waiting for a call, she got a letter asking her to return for another interview. Apparently the selection pool had been narrowed down and Dr House was interested in interviewing her personally. Signed Dr Chase. Stop it with the ass-kissing already, loser, Cameron thought.
She had butterflies the morning of the interview. Scratch that, the things in her stomach were more like eagles flapping around in there. She was a few minutes late as she hurried along the corridor of the hospital to his office, cursing herself for the bad impression this was likely to make. She reached his door (Glass. Odd.) and knocked. The man inside looked up and beckoned her in.
He was seated behing a cluttered desk and appeared to be working on some case file or charting.
"Dr Allison Cameron, correct?" He didn't look at her as he spoke.
"Uh, yes."
"You're late. Well done. Take a look at this."
Rather confused, she crossed the room and sat down on the other side of the desk. He passed the file over to her and her eyes automatically skimmed over the lists of stats and notes about prescriptions, treatments, failures and diagnoses.
"What do you think?"
She quickly realised this was some kind of test and grouped her thoughts.
"Oxygen sats indicate some kind of respiratory problem, but the low white count makes infection unlikely. Hm. Retinal bleed makes for an odd presentation of human transmitted growth-deficient alveolarmalignousmyopathy. That's incredibly rare, though. I would definitely confirm with a lumbar punture before going any further."
"Interesting." He finally looked up at her and she saw his blue eyes. She realised her friends were wrong.
He wasn't angry or bitter; just hurting and trying not to show the world.
"What makes you say that?"
"It's funny how a young, relatively inexperienced doctor would choose a zebra like HTGDA when any old horse like, I don't know, asthma coupled with diabetes, would fit the symptoms just as well."
"I think it's funny how a doctor who is notorious for taking the hardest cases in the world expects anything less of the people he's looking to hire. And I just want every avenue to be explored for the patient before they're discharged with an inhaler and a new diet, only to die in 24 hours."
"Congratulations, Dr Cameron. You've got the job. I'll see you at 8 o'clock sharp tomorrow." With that he turned away and picked up the phone.
She was stunned. "Is that it?"
"Yes. You can go. Provided you come back tomorrow. Now, I've got to call one Mrs Miggins about a possibly life-saving lumbar puncture."
Cameron smiled. He really wasn't anything like she'd expected at all.
