AN-I know, I do an author's note everytime I post one of these things. I apologize in advance for the poor medicine in this ficlet. And poor anything else while I'm at it. ^^)

Scare

John was okay. Blythe sank back in her chair and breathed a sigh of relief. The young doctor who had taken over John's care had settled beside her and was studying her closely. She'd spelled out John's condition; the heart arrhythmia, the slight damage done to his heart as a result. Blythe was silent for a long moment, her head spinning with all the information she'd been given.

"But he's going to be okay?" she asked again.

"He has a good prognosis. We'll continue to monitor his condition, and see how his heart rate stabilizes. And as soon as we can, we'll take him into surgery to remove the aneurysm. We'll know more by this time tomorrow. Is there anyone I can call for you?" she asked sympathetically, and Blythe smiled at her for the first time.

"I should call my son."

"I'd be happy to talk to him for you." She said, rising to her feet. "I can explain everything we're doing for your husband, if you'd like."

"Oh, that would be wonderful. My son is a doctor, too. I'm sure he'd appreciate hearing it from you. I can never give him enough information."

"I'd be happy to do that." The doctor rose to her feet, and Blythe accompanied her to a small conference room. Blythe dug out her cell phone, and scrolled through the numbers before selecting one. She entered it into the speaker phone, and waited patiently while it rang, and rang, and rang.

"Let me try his office at the hospital." Blythe scrolled through her phone again until she found the number she wanted and held it out for her to see.

"Princeton-Plainsborough Teaching Hospital?" she asked absently while she dialed.

"Yes. My son is the head of Diagnostic Medicine." Blythe said proudly.

The young doctor hung up the phone abruptly, and turned to stare at her in astonishment. "Your son is Dr. House."

"Yes!" Blythe was beaming. "Do you know him?"

"No, I've never met him. But he's very well known. I've read most of his articles." She began to dial again, heart pounding.

"I'm sure he'll be happy to talk to you about them." Blythe smiled sadly as the phone rang once-and was abruptly snatched up before it could ring again.

"Hello?" a voice whispered, and Blythe beamed.

"James! It's Blythe. How are you?"

"I'm okay, is everything all right? How did you know to call here?" James was whispering.

"I need to talk to Greg. It's about John. He's had a heart attack. I tried calling him at home but he's not answering."

"Is John okay?"

"Yes, but the doctor has some things she needs to tell Greg. Is he there?"

"Yes. House—Greg's sleeping. He's been up the last two days straight with a patient." James was still whispering, and Blythe smiled. "Give me a couple minutes, and I'll get him up for you."

"Okay." She said softly.

James set the phone down, and moved to rouse his friend. Blythe could hear low murmuring in the background, and Greg's grunt when he got out of his chair and put weight on his bad leg. She could hear his shortened steps to the phone and then his familiar voice was in her ear.

"Mom? What happened? Are you okay?" his voice was gravelly, and while Blythe regretted waking him, she felt relieved to hear his voice.

"I'm fine, honey. Dad had a heart attack."

"Is he okay? Where are you?"

"We're at the hospital in Clearwater. I'm fine. Dad's….well, his doctor can explain it all much better than I can, I'm sure." Blythe nodded at her, and the young doctor smiled bravely.

"Dr. House—I'm Michelle Kelley. It's an honor to talk to you."

"Yeah, yeah. What's happening with my dad?" he demanded impatiently.

"He suffered a myocardial infarction. According to the EMTs he was tachycardic before flat lining. We were able to restart his heart. He's doing as well as can be expected, however, we'll need to do a bypass. Is there a history of aneurysms in your family?"

There was a long pause, and then Dr. House spoke again, faintly. "Yes. I suffered an infarction ten years ago. As for extended family, I don't recall anyone else. Is he conscious? How extensive was the damage?"

"Not at this time. He's intubated, and awaiting the first OR. We're not sure how extensive the damage is at this time, but I can tell you there is close to ninety percent occlusion to the coronary artery."

Dr. House sighed deeply, and she fell silent. "What time is he scheduled for surgery?"

"Six tomorrow morning. It was the first OR we could book. He is stable for the moment." she reiterated.

He sighed again, and Blythe sniffled, despite her best effort not to. "Let me get my patient stabilized and I'll be on the next flight out. Is Aunt Sarah around, Mom? Can she stay with you until I get there?"

"Yes, I'm sure she'll come."

"I'll be there as soon as I can." He promised gruffly, and then he hung up.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Gregory House was a world renowned diagnostician. Respected, if not well liked, he was infamous for his ability to think outside the box. Most people considered it one of life's ironies that House had been misdiagnosed repeatedly with his infarction. The kind of medicine he argued so vehemently against was that which had cost him his mobility. Kelley could remember hearing about House; his practice, his articles, his contributions to medicine. For years now, House had been sought at the highest price for conferences and consultations. But now, only the patients with the most unique cases were ever seen; he never went to conferences, and rarely published any more. Kelley studied him as he limped slowly down the hall. She had no doubt that if his parents hadn't lived in her small little town she'd have gone the whole of her career without ever seeing him. She was proud of her accomplishments; she'd worked hard to become a doctor. She was humble enough to admit to herself that her small ER practice was simply not going to attract the attention of a world-renowned diagnostician.

Unless his parents lived in the same town, she admitted wryly to herself.

He seemed tired, she decided. Of course, even without a medical degree someone could put together a man who hadn't slept in two days wouldn't look very good. His deep blue eyes were red-rimmed and half-lidded, and he leaned very heavily on his cane. Another man walked beside him, carrying two duffle bags, a backpack and two laptop cases. His dress shirt was rumpled and his hair was mussed. A fellow, perhaps, she thought to herself. And it hardly seemed as though Dr. House could carry his own luggage with the cane. Her theory went out the window when the other man stopped to hug Blythe, and she kissed his cheek fondly before turning to her son and hugging him as well.

"Are you Dr. House?" she asked, and he nodded, impatiently. The man beside him spoke up, holding out a hand.

"James Wilson. I'm a—friend of the family."

"I'm Dr. Kelley." She shook James' hand warmly and smoothly handed Dr. House his father's chart. His blue eyes widened, but he took it wordlessly and limped over to sit on one of the couches. His mother joined him, watching anxiously as he flipped through the pages of labs, the EKG and the MRI. He read through the ER report as well, bouncing the cane absently. His pager beeped, and he pulled it off his belt and held it out to the man beside him without looking at it.

"Tell me they have good news." He said in a low voice.

"It says: US confirmed."

Dr. House looked annoyed as he reached for his cell phone and threw that at his friend as well. "Call them and tell them they can go home."

"Anything else, master?" he asked dryly.

"Tell them I'm putting you in charge of the DDX."

"Me? Why me?"

"Because very shortly she's going to be your patient."

"You came to that conclusion because of a positive ultrasound? That you didn't order?" Wilson looked incredulous. Kelley felt much the same way; she'd been right on both counts. So it was Dr. Wilson, then.

"No, I came to that conclusion because they only would have done an ultrasound if the CT had been negative. She has uterine cancer." Dr. Wilson opened his mouth to say something, only to find his cell ringing.

"Wilson." He said calmly. "Yes, I know. He just told me. Well, since I don't have the chart in front of me….let me check. Is she terminal?" he asked bluntly.

"How insensitive do you think I am?" Dr. House pretended to be mortified. "Besides," he added in a falsely conciliatory tone, "I'm not an oncologist. I can hardly be expected to interpret the results and figure out if a patient is—"

"No." Dr. Wilson told the caller while glaring at his friend. Kelley hid a smile. "I don't think she's terminal. I want Andrews to take her case. Tell him to talk to Cameron, and get her moved up onto the floor." He hung up abruptly, and tucked his phone back in his pocket. Kelley was certain that there were a lot of things he wanted to say to his colleague, but he settled for throwing his pager back at him. Sighing, Dr. House caught it reflexively and clipped it to his belt again before returning his attention to the file. He looked up, meeting Kelley's eyes with his own piercing blue gaze. "He's in recovery now?" he asked sharply, and she nodded tightly.

"The surgeon had no trouble removing the clot. He's been stable, and the arrhythmia seems to have corrected itself. If anything, he's a touch bradycardic. We're continuing to monitor him, and we're correcting the imbalance with electrolytes." Kelley watched as Dr. House rubbed his eyes tiredly. He'd been awake for two days, she knew, and dealing with his father's heart attack was probably the last thing he'd wanted to do.

"Good." He said simply, and squeezed his mother's hand. She smiled then, looking relieved.

"Have you slept, Blythe?" James asked.

"No, I haven't been able to sleep. I want to see John again before I leave." She looked teary, and James smiled reassuringly.

"It'll be a few hours until he's out of recovery." Kelley spoke up, smiling herself. "There are some pretty comfortable couches in here, and there's a bunch of vending machines down on 2nd floor." She rose then, and grinned as Wilson dropped his luggage on the nearest couch. "I'll let you know as soon as he's ready to go back down on the floor."

"Thank you." James called, and she nodded warmly as she slipped from the room.


Six hours later, she wound her way back down the hall to the lounge. She'd managed to find enough time on her own to mainline some coffee and she'd closely monitored her patient's condition. John House's surgery had gone well; he had responded well to the post-op questions, and seemed fully oriented. She'd even gone so far as to supervise his transfer from the post-op room back to a private on the cardiac floor—unprecedented, she supposed; but justified given his son's reputation in the medical community. The cardiac surgeon had railed against her presence, but he'd been paged away in the end and she'd considered the matter settled. She looked forward to telling his wife—and son, that he was going to be just fine. Pushing the door to the lounge open, she grinned to see Dr. Wilson sitting Indian-style in one of the chairs with a laptop on his knees. Looking up, he caught her eye and smiled, just a little. Dr. House was sprawled on his left side on one of the couches, he was clearly exhausted. His right knee was propped up on a couple of pillows. He was breathing slowly and shallowly, but she couldn't tell if he was asleep or not. Blythe House was on the couch opposite her son; she looked up with hope in her eyes when Kelley entered, and she couldn't stop herself from smiling.

"He's awake, and doing very well." She said, and watched as Blythe rose to her feet. "He's been moved to room 312."

Dr. Wilson rose as well, setting his laptop on the table. "How is the bradycardia?" he asked quietly.

"His potassium levels are still a little on the high side." She confessed. "We're still giving electrolytes by IV to try and correct the imbalance."

"I think you should go see him, Blythe." Dr. Wilson told her quietly. "I'll get House up and moving, and we'll meet you down there."

"Maybe Greg should sleep." Blythe looked worried; he hadn't moved at all since Kelley had come in and he was normally a very light sleeper.

"He will, after we've seen John . We'll get some breakfast and go back to your house and sleep all day." He grinned at her, and Blythe smiled back. "Go on down, I need to talk to Dr. Kelley here for a moment."

Blythe nodded and walked quickly into the hall. When he was certain she was out of earshot, spoke in a low voice.

"Have you run a PET scan to see if he's potentially got another clot?"

"No, he's on Warfarin and clot busters. His cardiac status doesn't warrant any further investigation for the--"

"He's stable?" Dr. Wilson interrupted, and Kelley decided that he hadn't slept in two days either.

"He's stable." She repeated, and touched his shoulder gently. "We'll take good care of him."

Dr. Wilson smiled sheepishly, and nodded. He slowly moved over to Dr. House and shook his shoulder. "House. Your dad's out of recovery."

Dr. House woke with a start, shifting on the couch and giving a pained grunt that he couldn't entirely suppress. He didn't try to get up, and Dr. Wilson sighed deeply before he rummaged in a crumpled jacket pocket for an amber pill bottle, which he tossed to the other man.

"Giving me drugs, Jimmy?" he asked coldly. He eyed his friend cautiously before popping the top and tapping out two pills. He threw them in his mouth and swallowed them dry, snapping the lid back on. Kelley watched, uncomfortably aware that she should leave but unable to do so. Luckily, neither seemed to notice.

"Muscle or nerve?" Dr. Wilson asked coolly as he began packing his laptop back into the bag. He held his hand out, and Dr. House tossed him the vial.

"Nerve." Dr. House grimaced as he sat up, using both hands to swing his leg to the floor.

"Rating?"

"Eight."

"See if the Vicodin touches it."

"It doesn't." Dr. House sighed shakily, and rubbed a hand across his face.

"Then you'll have to wait 'til we get to your mom's. You'll crash if I give it to you now." Dr. Wilson said shortly. Dr. House was struggling to get to his feet with his cane gripped firmly in both hands. He rose unsteadily and balanced awkwardly for a moment before trying to take a step. Releasing a shaky breath, Dr. House eased his foot forward tentatively; looking relieved when he didn't immediately topple over.

"Where's my mom?" he asked wearily.

"I sent her down to see him. Told her we'd be right behind her." Dr. Wilson slung the straps to the duffle bags over his shoulder and headed for the door. "We'll see him, and then we're going out for breakfast. You're buying." Wilson told him as they left the lounge.

"Why am I buying?" Dr. House demanded breathlessly. "I don't need breakfast. I need to lie down."

"You'll live 'til we get to their house." Dr. Wilson prophesied as he disappeared around the corner without looking back at his friend. Kelley winced as she watched Dr. House's expression change from pained to resigned. The change was more physical than emotional as he shifted the cane in his hand and balanced himself over his good leg. He limped slowly forward then, head bowed in exhaustion and defeat as he vanished from her sight. When they'd come in earlier that morning, she had assumed that James Wilson was first a fellow only to find he was a friend. She'd thought him a very good friend, too; helping carry everything for his disabled friend and accompanying him to the hospital on short notice. Now, she decided, he wasn't so much a packmule as a jackass.