An introspective piece. I wanted to find out why House would compliment his med student by saying she'd make an exceptional doctor after many long episodes of negative reinforcement.
No this isn't supernatural. "Ghost" is a (derogatory) term for a med student: largely invisible, absent during difficult situations, silent when asked for volunteers, uses stealth to avoid hard work, etc.
Precedes 7x19 "Last Temptation". Also, this is a work of fanfiction. It makes typing noises.
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What makes a doctor? A good one? A great one?
The knowledge? Oh yes. The power? Of course, it's fun. The salary? Unimportant. The ability to do lab tests? That's what techs are for. The intuition?
There is no substitute for intuition. Combine the intuition with knowledge and you have a beautiful combination, the thing all good doctors are made of.
Knowledge makes a doctor. Knowledge and intuition make a good doctor.
But what makes an exceptional one?
House tossed his lacrosse ball at the glass wall of his office as he contemplated excellence. Most people would say compassion makes a good doctor, even an exceptional one. Certainly any of Wilson's surviving patients would agree. But House knew better. Compassion makes for a burnt-out shell. He should know, he could smell the char around Wilson's mind, smell it in the antidepressants, the desperate relationships, the willingness to bet on chickens for fuck's sake…
Compassion does not make an exceptional doctor. The best compassion could ever hope for was to make a great doctor, a great doctor who didn't last long.
But then what?
House let his mind wander, trusting his own intuition to guide him.
Ah yes, the ghost. The med student, Masters. A socially inept introvert unlikely to grow close enough to anyone to ever develop compassion. She had the knowledge, she was made of it. She showed the faintest glimmers of intuition, a skill underdeveloped but present. She would make a good doctor if only she had the right instruction…
But there was more, more than just being 'good'. They were all good doctors but they all had their flaws. Foreman had his ego, Chase was a 'yes-man', Taub and Thirteen had yet to work past their compassion. They were all good doctors. House would even venture that Taub was a great doctor for the same reason Wilson was a great doctor. But they would never be more than that.
Diagnosing the impossible required an exceptional doctor. House pulled his bottle of vicodin, contemplated it. Excellence couldn't be taught, couldn't be learned, couldn't be mimicked. It could only be. Every exceptional doctor had their own excellence. His fellows, they would never find theirs. They believed they already found it, like Foreman, or gave up long ago, like Thirteen, or never knew they needed it, like Chase, or kept looking after finding it and passing it by, like Taub.
Masters hadn't even started looking. He couldn't find it for her, couldn't help her, couldn't teach her to find it. He could only show her she needed it, that she could be exceptional.
House clicked a few links, punched a few keys, brought up the form that would offer an internship.
He couldn't force his ghost to be an exceptional doctor. But he could show her how to take it for herself.
Masters would be an exceptional doctor. Even if House had to destroy her first.
End