"So Cuddy agreed to let your father stay in the hospital?" Wilson asked as he and House were watching a soap on the small TV House had – once again – brought to the clinic. This time there actually were no patients waiting in the waiting room, but Wilson suspected House would still have done what he was doing.
"Yes," House answered, "at least as long as none of your patients need a parent staying in. There is room in the quest quarters so she agreed after I had laid it a bit thick on how my father was too old to sleep on a couch and I was too pathetic to give up my bed for him."
"Would you have given up your bed if you weren't pathetic?"
"Hell no!" House replied. "I have no desire to have my Dad anywhere near my apartment, let alone actually staying over."
"Why are you so against him?" Wilson was puzzled. "He seems like a perfectly normal, pleasant man."
"He is," House agreed. "They are both perfectly pleasant people. And as far as I can tell he has been a perfectly fine husband. It's just as a father that he sucks."
"What did he do?!"
"You don't seriously expect me to explain to you my childhood trauma? To open up to your psychobabble? If you want soap, we are just watching one, you don't need to try and find any in my life."
"I'm just curious what your father could possibly have done to make you hate him," Wilson insisted.
"Well why don't you just go and read some Freud, I'm sure he has some interesting insights into the Oedipal tendencies boys have about their mothers," House griped.
"Problem with that is, had Freud ever met you, he would have needed a shrink himself to just get over the experience. Your brain is way too twisted for something as simple as a Freudian reading."
"Anyone's brains are too twisted for shrinks, that's why they are so useless."
"Which are useless? Brains or shrinks?" Wilson wanted clarification.
"All shrinks, most people's brains," House elucidated.
"Fine, have it your way then," Wilson conceded. "So when is he arriving?"
"Tomorrow. Round noon, I think."
"You're going to meet him at the airport?" Wilson asked.
"No, I have clinic duty," House pointed out. "I'm sending Cameron."
"You are going to do clinic duty when you have a perfectly good reason to avoid it?"
"Lesser of two evils," House pointed out, "by far!"
"I ... I don't think I know you with your parents around," Wilson wondered.
"What's to know?" House asked. "You know I hate people interfering in my personal life and you don't get much more personal than parents."
"I suppose," Wilson agreed. "So this means your Vicodin intake is going to increase dramatically for the next week or so?"
"Probably," House admitted, "so do you have your pad ready for prescriptions?"
"Have you even looked into other ways of pain management?" Wilson sighed exasperated.
"Well there's Ingrid," House drawled.
"I suppose I ought to be grateful that we found her, at least. But that is not enough. Your Vicodin intake is increasing to a point that is unhealthy. And you are getting immune to it. Soon you will need something stronger, and frankly, I don't think you really need it. Most of your pain is psychological!"
"Is that what you tell you patients, too?" House snapped. "It's all in your mind, get over it?"
"My patients have cancer; it's NOT all in their mind!" Wilson exclaimed.
"But my nerve-damage is?" House questioned. "You have done MRI and other tests on my leg, you know what was done to it, and you still decide that it is all on my mind."
"Not all, just some of it." Wilson tried to placate him. "I know you have chronic pain, but it increases when you have psychological problems! You know it does."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dear Doctor, I have read your play, Which is a good one in its way, Purges the eyes, and moves the bowels, And drenches handkerchiefs like towels With tears that, in a flux of grief, Afford hysterical relief To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses, Which your catastrophe convulses. I like your moral and machinery; Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery!"
"Oh, shut up House," Wilson huffed. "No need to go all Byron on me, just because you think you have heard all this before."
"Well I have heard it before and on a regular basis, too," House threw back at Wilson. "Has it ever occurred to you that this is more about your addiction than mine?"
"What are you talking about?" Wilson stared at House. "I have no addictions."
"Come on!" House rolled his eyes. "You are addicted to need. You need this to be addiction because then I need you. I need you to either save me or to enable me. Both work for you, though saving me would be preferable. If I'm just genuinely in pain, there is nothing you can do but watch from the sidelines."
"Oh, go to Hell, House!" Wilson gave him a disgusted look. "That is just sick. Just because I worry about you does not mean I'm addicted to looking after you."
"I see," House mused. "It's ok for you to psychobabble me, but I cannot psychobabble you. Now how is that fair?"
"Fine, I shut up," Wilson agreed finally. "You can come to me when you need a new prescription. But don't think we are not returning to this subject once your parents are gone."
"I never thought otherwise," House said. "You return to this subject on regular basis anyway, no matter where my parents may be."
"Anyway, how is your mother?"
"Don't know," House admitted. "The ducklings went to see her about an hour ago, and Foreman ordered a whole battery of tests. I don't think they have any results yet and I made myself scarce before they returned to talk the differential."
"You really are going to stay out of it?" Wilson was stupefied. "It's your Mother!"
"Which is why I have to stay out of it."
"Nothing ever makes you stay out of anything!"
"Ordinarily that is true. But she is the only person in this world that I cannot be objective about, no matter what. I need to stay out of it, if my team is to find out what is wrong with her."
"But you are a brilliant diagnostician!" Wilson exclaimed. "Surely your team wants your input."
"They may want it, but they are better off without it," House said. "I always obsess about my cases. I want to solve them, and sometimes I come up with totally outrageous ideas – only they fit! They work and they are nearly always right. This time I don't know if the ideas I have in my head work because they do fit or because I want them to fit – or even fear them. I still have too much influence on my ducklings. I cannot interfere because they would trust me, and they might miss something important because I cannot trust myself."
"Hmm, that does make sense in a weird way," Wilson had to agree.
"You know weird works for me," House pointed out.
"Don't I know it!" Wilson sighed. "But what do you mean with still having too much influence? Are you expecting them to start disbelieving you or something?"
"Eventually the ducklings will grow up. They may even end up as swans. That is the nature of things. And they will move on, leaving me behind. They may still respect me, but they no longer trust me blindly, because they have learned to see things for themselves. And they will have learned to trust themselves – even when they disagree with me. My opinion will cease to matter, because they will know themselves and know that that is the only significant opinion to have: what you think of yourself."
"That's philosophical!" Wilson noted.
"I get that way sometimes," House said sheepishly, "usually it means I haven't eaten anything in a while. I think I go and get a Reuben from the cafeteria."
"I'll join you. But I will not be paying this time!"
"Of course not," House said, "when have I ever made you pay for my lunches."
"Only all the time," Wilson punched him. "Shall we stop in your Mother's room on the way?"
"Might as well," House agreed, "though I don't know if she is in there. I'm sure Foreman has her scheduled for MRI at least if not CT and angiogram as well."
"At least he is going to be thorough!"
"Apart from the fact that he wouldn't dare be anything else with my mother," House pointed out, "it is also in his nature. He will make a fine Head of Neurology one of these days."
"You don't think he will be a diagnostician then?" Wilson asked.
"No. Not him," House stated.
"Not him? Who then? Cameron?"
"Cameron? I'm not sure about her yet, but I doubt diagnostics will be her forte. No it's Chase I expect to follow in my footsteps, so to speak. If he ever steps out of his shadows and decides to become a doctor, that is."
His statement earned him a very puzzled look from Wilson. Chase? Hmm, that was an unexpected idea. Wasn't Chase just a tad immature? But obviously House knew him better; after all he had been with House the longest of the three ducklings. Still, maybe Wilson needed to take a closer look at the Aussie.
