So here's chapter two. Sorry it took so long. As always, read and review :D And if you feel bored, you can always go check out the other fic I recently wrote "Ode to Wilson." I promise you will laugh.

Oh and on my profile page I have a poll up on the ships of House. Go vote for your favorite!

Dislaimer: I still don't own House.

Foreman, Kutner, Taub and Thirteen sat around the glass table that was cluttered with paper in the conference room discussing what could be wrong with House. So far they have not been able to deduce any problem that could cause House to lose his hearing but they had many theories. However, none of the probabilities could be explored because they had not seen House since the incident this morning nor have any conclusive tests to prove their theories. Since then, the four had been working furiously to uncover this mystery.

Kutner held up a result from a MRI to the light and squinted. When Taub saw this, he let out an exasperated sigh.

"Is that House's MRI from after the crash?" Taub asked.

"Yeah," Kutner said without looking away from the film.

"What, you think that a test from three months ago is going to help us now?" Thirteen asked.

"Not if you think you can get House into a MRI, but otherwise yes." Kutner scowled and leaned across the table putting the film in the middle of the table. "He cracked his skull open and then the crack was widened after the deep brain stimulation. The crack went all the way down to his ear canal," Kutner said, tracing the white mark that ran through the picture of House's skull and then looked up at the others. "That could possibly cause hearing loss."

Foreman shook his head. "The ossicles would have had to be broken. And from this, it doesn't look like it-,"

"But we don't really have a clear view of it," Taub pointed out. "It could have been damaged and we just didn't look for it three months ago because we were more worried about his brain bleeding."

"He would have other symptoms like dizziness-," Thirteen began but Kutner cut her off.

"House is coming," he said, gathering House's medical files into a pile. Just as House pushed open the door, Thirteen had placed a plain manila folder on top, hiding any evidence that they were secretly diagnosing him.

House stopped mid-limp, staring at his fellows that sat at the table, who were looking back at him with suspicious, fixed gazes, making it feel like they were watching every move he made.

"What?" House spat.

Thirteen shrugged and shook her head, while Kutner blurted out, "We didn't do anything."

"Saying you didn't do anything is always an indication that you did do something," House explained. "So what was it? Did you catch Cuddy in a compromising situation?"

"No. There's nothing. Really," Kutner said, trying to seem as innocent as possible.

"Deny, deny, deny." House shook his cane at Kutner's direction with emphasis on every word. "Denial won't get you anywhere."

"Yeah, you should know," Foreman muttered under his breath, testing to see if House could hear his soft-spoken comment.

House, who had not been looking at Foreman, did not react to Foreman's remark. The other fellows quickly glanced to Foreman before looking back at House.

"Taub!" House yelled.

Taub jumped slightly in his seat. "Yes?"

"Don't be afraid. I'm not going to bitch slap you again."

Taub nodded, knowing this was as close to "I'm sorry," it got for House.

Skimming over the personal matters, House threw patient files on to the table. "Our new patient." He limped over to the white board and hung his cane on the top.

Each of the fellows took a file and opened them and pretended to read them, but they were really waiting to but their plan into action. House finally turned his back to them and began to loudly ramble about symptoms and scribbling them onto the board.

"He's talking louder than normal. That's a classic sign that someone is losing their hearing," Kutner whispered.

"You don't have to whisper," Taub stated in a normal voice. "We're seeing if he can hear sounds that are on a normal level."

The four fell silent and looked over at House, who was still talking about their current patient; the one that wasn't their boss.

"…Blood pressure falling at a steady declining rate. Last year she was admitted to-,"

Apparently House had not heard them talking behind his back.

"He could be ignoring us," Thirteen suggested.

"I don't think so," Foreman said.

"Me neither," Kutner agreed. He then took a deep breath and said, "House sucks."

They held their breath waiting for House to turn around and reprimand Kutner, but he continued scribbling notes onto the board.

"Really? Is that the best you could come up with?" Taub asked Kutner. Taub turned to House's direction and clearly said, "House fights like a girl."

"House smells like a girl."

Thirteen, Foreman and Taub looked at Kutner with odd expressions.

"I bet you were never that good at come backs on the playground," Taub said.

"No, not really," Kutner admitted.

"House wears tighty-whities."

Now it was Taub's turn to have his co-workers stare at him. Taub shrugged, and Thirteen sighed with frustration.

"Spouting insults trying to make him react isn't working," she said. Indeed, House still was facing the white board, which now had many different symptoms written on it with ideas that he had deemed as incorrect crossed out with a blue marker. House had no idea that his employees were mocking him behind his back.

"But it is fun," Kutner said with a huge grin, however it faded after a displeasing glare from Thirteen. Suddenly, his face lit up like it did when he had one of his creative, ingenious solutions to a problem. "I have an idea."

Kutner pulled out his cell phone and began pressing buttons as the others looked on with curiosity.

"What are you doing?" Taub asked.

"Have you ever heard of those mosquito ring tones?" Kutner asked. "The ones that are high frequencies-,"

"And are screechy and annoying? Yeah," Foreman said.

"Well, we can use it as a hearing test. If we can hear it and House can't...,"

"We would know that he has hearing loss," Taub said, finishing Kutner's idea.

Kutner nodded and began to say something else, but was cut off by House.

"And?" asked House, who was now facing the occupants of the table. Not sure what House was referring to, Foreman gave an ambiguous answer.

"You…want our opinion?"

"Well, that is what you're here for. Medical stuff. Diagnosing the ill," House quipped.

Kutner looked uneasily across the table at Foreman. Ironically, House's remark could refer to their ploy of diagnosing himself. However, Kutner believed that House was still clueless (a rare occurrence) to their scheme.

"Come on, I don't have all day. She could die," House mockingly urged, motioning with his hand for them to speed up their thinking process.

Taub stole a quick glance at the symptom-covered board, reading as much as he could, trying to compensate for not listening to House when he had been explaining the case.

"Amyloidosis seems likely," Taub blurted, not totally confident with his diagnosis.

"Sarcoidosis? Are you stupid?" House looked back at the board. "There's nothing that would suggest that-,"

"Taub said amyloidosis, not sarcoidosis," Foreman said. At first, House made no indication of hearing him, so Foreman shouted it louder this time.

House looked over his shoulder. "Huh?"

"Amyloidosis is what I said. Not sarcoidosis," Taub said.

House looked mildly confused for a second, but then nodded. "Oh. That makes more sense." Trying to draw attention away from what had just happened, House looked to Kutner, who still had his cell phone open in his hand. "What are you doing?"

"Oh!" Kutner had forgotten about the idea that he had had. He pressed a button on his phone, letting a shrill sound fill the room. Taub, Thirteen and Foreman tried to not make any recognition of the sound so they would not let clue House into faking that he heard it too, but they could not help but react at the annoying sound coming from Kutner's phone.

"Why is your face contorted into that awful frown Foreman?" House asked.

Foreman stole a quick glance to his colleagues before looking back to House with a concerned gaze. "You can't hear that?" Foreman asked, nodding towards Kutner's phone.

"Maybe." House's eyes shifted to Foreman, to Kutner who was resting his elbow on the table and holding his phone in the air, and back to Foreman. "What should I be hearing? The sound of your annoying voice?"

"More like the sound of cats being killed," Taub said.

"Oh. Yeah, there it is." House acted as thought he understood what they were talking about and tried to change the subject. "But, how about this case? It sounds deadly with-,"

"You can't hear it," Thirteen said bluntly.

"Of course I can," House retorted.

"You don't even know what we're talking about." Kutner shut his phone, ceasing the screeching sound it was emitting, and then shoved it into his lab coat pocket.

"Yes I do. It was your phone."

"Obviously, by the fact that I motioned to it earlier." Foreman tilted his head to the side and examined House's expression. It was a mixture of confusion and frustration and a slight blush was spreading across his face. Foreman guessed that they were on the right track. "You know you can't hear," Foreman declared, and his assertion was proven correct when House's had a look of recognition in his crystal blue eyes, which was closely followed by House tearing his gaze away from Foreman.

"It's nothing," House admitted.

"Nothing? You can't hear us when your back is to us…like now," Taub said, his voice falling on the second half of his sentence when he realized that House was facing away from him.

Foreman stood up and walked the distance between himself and House and placed a hand on House's shoulder. "House," Foreman said, a little louder than usual, "I know it's scary but-,"

"I'm not afraid." House shrugged Foreman's hand off of his shoulder. "And you don't have to yell, I'm right here."

"But you can't-,"

"So?" House turned around to see Taub, Kutner and Thirteen standing behind Foreman with concerned-filled faces.

"So? You have major hearing loss. It can get worse," Foreman said.

"And who knows why it's happening," Taub added.

"I'm getting older," House snapped. "I know I may seem like it, but I'm not spring chicken."

Thirteen, ignoring House's remark, took a step closer to House. "We need to run some tests. We looked at your MRIs from the wreck but there wasn't anything-,"

"Because there isn't anything!" House yelled.

"Yes there is!" Kutner argued. "You can have something deadly that could have happened after, like a-,"

"I know. I'm a doctor too." House pulled out his signature orange prescription bottle and poured some of the white pills into his hand, the fellows didn't see how many, and popped them into his mouth, swallowing them dry.

"Look," House said. "It's nothing. I can still carry a conversation-,"

"Only if you are looking at us so you can read our lips," Thirteen objected.

"It works, and I can still hear you, just enough to annoy me. It's probably just an infection, I'll take some antibiotics and it will get better-,"

"Or it's not an infection, and you'll die," Foreman said firmly, crossing his arms across his chest. "You're not going to walk away from us on this."

House stared at the neurologist for a second, as if he was considering what he had said, but then he laughed.

"Watch me," House said, and pushed past Foreman and limped away out of the room.

The other doctors stared as their boss walked away.

"That didn't go according to plan at all," Taub muttered.

Foreman chuckled to himself. Yeah, thanks for pointing out the obvious.

Kutner, however, was more worried. "What are we going to do?"

Foreman shrugged. Whether it was something simple or something complex, whatever was causing House's problem could not be tested if he refused to cooperate. House, no matter how great of a doctor he was, was also a horrible patient. Foreman feared that this was going to be the most difficult situation he had ever to deal with House, and that was saying a lot.