Appropriate disclaimer applies.
MARATHON
The patient was about fifteen years old, had hazel eyes, light brown hair, and fair skin with a few freckles spattered across her cheeks. Looked well and in good humor despite the fact she was hospitalized for seizure and breathing difficulty, making small talk with the nurses and a few jokes with the doctors.
She had been allocated to House because she had no history of epilepsy or asthma, tested negative for any drugs, and presented with no infection. An MRI had revealed a slightly enlarged spleen, though not seriously enough so to cause alarm. It was not a fascinating set of symptoms, nor had they yet reached the point of desperation usually required to turf someone to the diagnostic department, but it was the day before Thanksgiving, after all, and most respectable staff were home with their families.
The staff that remained was mostly needed to handle the traditional assortment of pre-holiday injuries – car accidents from increased road travel, college students who had taken an inability to get home as an opportunity to drink themselves into alcohol poisoning, newly single dads with cooking-related injuries, and the goofballs who had fallen off roofs getting an early start on Christmas decorations. No one was convenient to take more than a few minutes to really study the teenaged girl, though someone had drawn blood earlier and she'd been promised a turkey sandwich if she was still around the following day. It was generally concluded that she'd end up in House's department anyway so she might as well go now, and House himself folded rather than involve himself in an extended confrontation with Cuddy.
Besides, the longer she stayed in his office the longer it would be before she went home, and he'd gone to such trouble to fill her sneakers with toothpaste.
House, down to one fellow for the holiday, didn't much care whether he had a patient or not. She wasn't acute and she wasn't interesting, but it would give Kutner something to chip away at for the next few hours and those were therefore hours House could have to himself.
Kutner, unfortunately, was in the lab fetching the bloodwork results, since the place was practically deserted and a rather tart telephone exchange between House and the overworked nurse had not produced the desired results. This required the surly doctor to actually visit the patient, since his other option was to trust the intake nurse's history, and he would have jumped through a fiery hoop before he trusted more than a small – and dwindling – group of people, and he would have eaten the hoop before he admitted to trusting that many.
On the other hand, Cuddy had given him partial – she stressed the partial – use of Cameron and Chase to compensate for the brain drain caused by missing three quarters of his staff. Cameron had seen the patient in the ER and Chase had been looking after her since then, but neither had volunteered any information. Ah well, he had ways of making them talk…
"Miss…Hall. I don't see your first name on my chart – see, I knew there was a reason I was mean to the nurses."
"It's Tammany."
House actually stopped playing with his sucker.
"Your name…is Tammany Hall?" His voice rose a half a note higher, as it usually did when sarcasm collided with disbelief.
The girl nodded, oblivious.
"Kutner!" House bellowed at full volume without a single change in position or facial expression.
Kutner, looking duly harassed, swung in around the door. "You know, they've invented these little boxes, you type a number into it and it beeps, so you don't have to call at me like a dog."
"Girl says her name is Tammany Hall."
"So?"
"Cameron!"
Cameron entered, looking reproachfully at her pager as if surely it had malfunctioned for a doctor to be yelling through the halls.
"This girl says her name is Tammany Hall, and this guy doesn't see anything wrong with that," House gestured to each offending individual with his lollipop.
Cameron smothered a smile. "Well…it is an unusual name…"
House rolled his eyes. "For god's sake explain how we know she's a big fat liar."
"Tammany Hall was the name of the Irish city hall under Boss Tweed in New York in the 1900's," she obliged pleasantly, and wrote the name on the chart because House would not.
Kutner looked annoyed. "Now seriously, how was I supposed to know that?"
"Uh, study your history, dude," House affected a high schooler's bored tone. "Even Chase knows that."
"Know what?" Chase asked, tossing the question across the sterile floor of the hospital room towards his former boss but offering no other acknowledgment of the relationship three years of working together should have fostered. The intensivist checked a few IV drips and excused himself to the patient before putting a hand down to palpate her abdomen.
"Know what Tammany Hall is." Kutner couldn't quite keep the sulk from his voice.
"Irish city hall under Boss Tweed in New York in the 1900's," Chase recited easily, wording identical to Foreman's and accent at odds with the American history. He winked at his patient – who smiled the slightly goofy smile of the overly trusting – and left Kutner stewing. Somewhere along the line House had imparted to his former minions a few of his lesser parlor tricks, useless against House himself but endlessly amusing directed towards his new pets. Foreman preferred to crush the younger blood under the formidable impact of his superior intellect but Chase and his dry sense of humor weren't above a cheap shot like the apparent mind-reading, which came only from a quick glance at the patient chart, a snippet of overheard conversation, and a perfect deadpan delivery.
AN: As promised, I return with the new season! I have been reluctant to write anything for the new team because I was in denial that they were a permanent fixture in the show, for some reason I don't relate as well to them. Have compromised by writing them in a bit at a time, since one or two new characters at a time is more than enough for anyone. Hate Kutner least, so started with him, will work the rest into future stories. Sorry this section doesn't have an exciting ending, I don't write it in chapters and there wasn't a good place to break it up, but hope you enjoy!
