Chapter 2

Taub walked in to the Diagnostics Office Tuesday afternoon, having spent the entire morning in the clinic treating patients with cuts and scrapes from the crane collapse yesterday. Sitting down in the outer office at his usual place, he thought maybe House had gone home. After all, the lights were off, the blinds were closed and so was his office door. It wasn't unheard of for House to go home early, Taub smiled to himself. Chase and Foreman joined him in the outer office, pouring coffee and talking about their patient – the crane operator. "I guess House got up off the floor Ok," Foreman said. "House was on the floor?" Taub said with incredulity. "Where?" "Oh, he fell in front of the elevator. You know how he is. If we'd have offered him a hand getting up, he'd have ripped it off. I guess he's Ok", Chase said.

"Well, he did have a fairly big gash in his shoulder from the crane accident yesterday. I guess we'd better check on him." Foreman said as he and Taub made a move for House's office.

The blinds over the sliding glass door between House's inner and outer offices were closed. As Foreman and Taub slid the door open and parted the shades, they sprang into action and shouted "Chase, get in here! We need a hand, quick!"

House was lying in a small pool of his own blood. His shoulder wound had reopened when he hit the corner of his desk during the fall. He had no other apparent injuries and was awake and mumbling something about sciatic nerves. "Took you all long enough," he said weakly to Foreman.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier that something was wrong?" Foreman asked.

"Didn't figure it would take a rocket scientist to figure out something's wrong when you saw me lying in the middle of a public hallway and not making any attempt to get up. Thought maybe you geniuses might have figured it out without my having to S-P-E-L-L it out for you. Since I have to spell it out, listen up closely. I am not going to repeat myself. I must have injured my left sciatic nerve yesterday. I've fallen three times today. I can't get up by myself and I can't walk. I'm fine otherwise. Just get a wheel chair in here, move my cane over where I can reach it, and I'll figure out what to do after that." House's voice was getting stronger the more embarrassed and angry he got.

Foreman stayed with him while Taub called Wilson and Chase ran out to find a wheel chair. "Taub, hang up the damn phone. Wilson doesn't want to hear about me. I don't live there anymore, and I don't need him. I can handle this by myself after I get up off the floor. Hang up the phone now," House commanded.

Chase came in with the wheel chair. Unfortunately Wilson saw Chase out in the hallway, and Sandy had already told Wilson that House fell in front of the elevator and wasn't able to get up on his own. The nightmare continued as more and more people found out, through the hospital grapevine, that Chase and Foreman had been involved in some kind of a scene with House out in public on the fourth floor. Of course Cuddy found out, and immediately put the blame on House for the HIPAA violation, for failing to keep his team under control. Now she had angry visitors lined up in front of her door, accusing "some doctors on the fourth floor" of blabbing all kinds of patient information in public and causing some kind of a scene apparently. Nobody mentioned the fact that one of them was flat out on the floor.

It was the talk of the town. Even Blue the janitor got involved, because House's cell phone could be heard incessantly ringing at the bottom of the elevator shaft and someone was going to have to get it out. Blue shut the power off to the elevators while he tried to figure out how he was going to get the cell phone out, and visitors waiting for the elevators got angrier and angrier.

House, meanwhile, had no idea that by now the entire hospital knew something was wrong with him. Cuddy was on her way back up to his office with a pile of complaints about whatever she thought happened, and she wasn't in a forgiving mood.

Cuddy burst into House's office with her arms full of written complaints from clinic patients and visitors about whatever happened on the fourth floor, about the rude doctor who snapped at them when they were "just trying to help", the long wait time in the clinic, about the elevators being off. She was loaded with ammunition and ready to hunt bear. "House, what the hell's going on?" she shouted. "If you were hurt that badly, you should have stayed home and called me AHEAD OF TIME. Now people are complaining that apparently some kind of scene happened with a bunch of doctors up here in public in front of the elevator, and I can only guess that somehow or another you were involved. I don't want to hear what happened. Get your team under control. If I hear another complaint about you or your team blabbing about patients in public, or you screaming at strangers, I'll fire you." House just stared at her and wondered how she could remain apparently oblivious (or at least uncaring) about the fact that he was STILL on the floor, saying nothing, and balled up in a fetal position with blood oozing from his shoulder.

Blue paged Dr. Cuddy. She called him back. "Dr. Cuddy, we found House's cell phone in the elevator shaft and I just now turned the power back on to the elevators."

"His cell phone was at the bottom of the elevator shaft? How'd you find out?" Cuddy asked Blue. "A bunch of visitors called the maintenance department complaining that something was making a loud beeping noise inside the elevator. We looked everywhere and couldn't find it, but when I shined a light into the elevator shaft, we saw the phone. It was no big deal to get the phone back out. I figured whoever it belonged to would need it." Blue was hoping for a note of thanks from Cuddy, but she just clicked her phone shut and walked with a purpose back into House's office.

"House, Blue found your phone at the bottom of an elevator shaft. He's bringing it up now. How about telling me what happened?" Cuddy said a little more calmly. Chase was parking the wheel chair and House's cane where House wanted them.

House said "Cuddy, I have more important things to deal with now; specifically, how I'm going to get up off the floor. I don't want to do this in front of a crowd. I've already fallen enough in public today to feed the hospital gossip mill for an entire year. Please don't make this any more embarrassing for me than it already is. I just need to get up off the floor. I don't need your help and I don't need an audience. Please just go back to your office. If you still think you need to yell at me more about whatever you think happened today, you can continue yelling at me later. When you came in and yelled at me earlier, I asked you to move my phone closer to where I could reach it, and you stormed out of here. I fell when I got up trying to get to my office phone. I must have injured my left sciatic nerve yesterday. My left leg gives out every few steps. Crawling through rubble and having part of a building fall on ya will do that to a cripple. It'll be fine when it heals. I thought you'd need help in the clinic today. That's why I came in, even though I shouldn't have. After I walked in the doors I knew I wouldn't be able to stay on my feet long enough to do any good in the clinic. I didn't say anything to you because I knew you wouldn't believe me. Hell, normally I wouldn't believe me either. I hoped that today I wouldn't have to spell it out for you, especially since you saw me fall the first time. Well, don't feel so bad. I had to spell it out for Foreman and Chase too, after they saw me on the floor for the second time in front of the fourth floor elevators. This marks the third fall today. I still don't need your help. I just need to get up off the floor and I don't need you for that. Bye."

Considerably more chastened, Cuddy said softly, "Ok," and walked out of his office.