Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or House MD. All original characters belong to me. Any similarities to real life persons, in name or description, are strictly coincidental.

3.

"The clinic isn't that far away. What took you guys so long to get here?" House was sitting at the head of the conference table as the four doctors trickled in from the hallway.

"We weren't in the clinic," retorted Foreman, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite House.

"Well, I wouldn't expect you to do my dirty work, but them?" He gestured to Chase, Thirteen, and Taub. The three were silent as they sat down, and Foreman just shook his head, dismissing the whole conversation.

"New patient?" Taub questioned, referring to the file that sat in front of House.

"Yup. Interesting too." He slid the folder across the table, and Thirteen picked it up. As she read, the expression on her face became one of confusion.

"What are you talking about, House? These symptoms aren't interesting at all; she has pneumonia."

"That's only what the inept ER doctor said." Chase scoffed at this remark, but House ignored it. "And I'm not talking about the symptoms; I'm talking about the patient."

"What's so interesting about the patient?" said Foreman, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. What was House up to now?
"She's an FBI agent," replied House, almost sounding smug, for some reason.

"So, you browbeat the ER doctor to get his patient because she's an FBI agent?" Chase said, a tone of surprise tugging at his words. Although, he should've expected like this to come from House. "What are you going to say to Cuddy once she finds out your patient only has pneumonia?" House waved his hand, as if he could physically shoo Chase's question away.

"Cuddy won't care as long as I'm busy with something-"

"I somehow doubt that," muttered Thirteen. House shot her a dirty look before continuing,

"-and pneumonia is only what the ER doctor said she has. He could be wrong-"

"-or this could all be an elaborate plan to annoy Cuddy," interjected Taub. The four doctors flinched as House loudly slammed his cane on the edge of the table.

"Will you all stop interrupting me!" He glanced at their faces, and satisfied that their mouths were shut, he said,

"And she has neurological symptoms."

"And what's that?" snorted Foreman.

"Well, mister neurologist, she has a headache."

"House! Are you kidding me? A headache is nothing. Give the patient antibiotics, and send her home to rest." House shook his head.

"Get a chest x-ray and an MRI of her head. Then we'll go from there." Chase, Thirteen, and Taub all turned their heads to look at Foreman expectantly. He ran a hand over his head, and with a sigh, said,

"Fine. But when it turns out she really does only pneumonia, you will send her home without any further tests. FBI agent or not." And with that, he pushed himself away from the table and stomped out of the room.

"Does House really think there's something seriously wrong with the patient, besides the pneumonia?" Taub wondered aloud as the four doctors strode down the hall towards the patient's room.

"No," huffed Foreman, "he's fascinated with the fact that she's an FBI agent, so he's going to keep the poor woman here. And he's going to think up whatever he can to keep her here as long as possible." He handed the file to Thirteen. "Test her blood, and get House his x-ray and MRI." He turned towards the opposite direction of where they were supposed to be headed.

"Hey!" Chase exclaimed. "Where're you going?"

"To talk to Cuddy."

"House is in trouble," snickered Taub, watching Foreman's figure slowly growing smaller as he made his way down the hallway, towards Cuddy's office.

"I don't understand why I'm here," grumbled Emily. She felt foolish; dressed in the skimpy hospital gown, lying in a bed with Hotch sitting beside her in a plastic chair. "A neurological problem now; great."

"Don't tell me you're afraid of doctors, Prentiss," chuckled Hotch, in an attempt to lighten the mood a bit.

"No, no. I'm just sick of hospitals." That was true. It seemed like almost every other week, for some reason one member of the team ended up in the hospital. And it seemed as if she had drawn the short straw, because this was the second time in a span of two months she had taken a trip to the hospital. First, the car accident, now an illness. Hotch had been in the hospital recently, as well as Reid, Garcia, and JJ. The BAU team didn't have the best luck, but a job in the FBI always came with the threat of injury, which made it all the worse when any of them had to be in the hospital for non-work related reasons.

And, even if she had been able to leave the hospital, she would've been allowed to work. Hotch made sure Emily knew that. But sitting safe at home was a terrible feeling when she knew there was an UNSUB out there, raping women and then strangling them to death before dumping them into a lake. Hopefully the suspect they had been chasing before she had been brought to the ER would turn out to be their UNSUB.

The glass door slid open, and three doctors entered the room. That struck both agents as odd; where was Dr. House?

"SSA Aaron Hotchner," Hotch introduced himself, standing up and holding out his hand for the doctors to shake. The three looked surprised at his formality, but accepted the gesture. "I'm SSA Prentiss's boss."

"I'm Dr. Taub." The doctor who looked to be the oldest out of the three spoke. "These are my colleagues, Dr. Hadley," –he pointed to the pretty, young brunette, "and Dr. Chase," and the short-haired, blonde man. Emily decided to voice her query.

"Where's Dr. House? He was the one that admitted me." The doctors glanced at each other, before Dr. Chase replied, surprising Hotch and Emily with an Australian accent.

"House doesn't normally interact with the patients much. We're his diagnostic team." Hotch returned to his seat, and laced his fingers together.

"The ER doctor said Agent Prentiss has pneumonia. Why is there a team of diagnostic doctors in here?" he said. Again, the doctors all looked at each other with a look of unease before Dr. Hadley replied this time,

"Dr. House has reason to believe that Agent Prentiss might have something more serious than pneumonia." Emily frowned.

"More serious?"

"We're not positive just yet about that," offered Taub in an effort to qualm the obvious worry she and Hotch both displayed. "It is still possible that this is just a simple infection. That's why we're here. We're going to do some tests to find out what's wrong with you."

Hotch had to move out of the way as Thirteen situated herself next to Emily's bed so she could take some blood. Taub and Chase left to schedule the MRI and chest x-ray. As she inserted the needle into her arm, Emily, surprisingly, didn't even flinch. Thirteen noticed the thin scar that ran the length of her forearm. It looked as if it had happened pretty recently. The neckline on the gown dipped down, revealing a small scar on her chest as well.

The woman certainly was no stranger to pain.

"So, you guys work for the FBI, right?" It was Taub who finally broke the awkward silence. The three doctors, along with Hotch, were off to the side of the MRI room, behind the monitors. Hotch stood off behind them, his arms crossed. He hadn't said a word since his question; not even uttering a sentence throughout the whole chest x-ray that had taken place before this.

"Yes." Well, one word answers certainly weren't going to further the conversation, but Taub pushed forward.

"What department do you two work for?"

"The Behavioral Analysis Unit. The building where we're located is in Virginia, but we're here working on a case."

"Just you two?"

"No, no. We work with a team of agents. The rest of them working on the case right now. Agent Prentiss and I were actually in the middle of chasing down a suspect before we came here, which was what brought on her coughing fit." It seemed as if his works had sparked something inside Emily, because as he finished his sentence, the four of them heard her begin to cough.

"Agent Prentiss, I know it's hard, but I need you to try and be as still as possible," instructed Thirteen through the microphone that sat on the desk next to the computer monitor. "If you move, it could mess up the image." Emily cleared her throat, then said,

"Sorry." Hotch shifted anxiously behind the doctors.

"Is she going to be okay?"

"That's what we're going to find out," Chase murmured, peering at the screen. Taub again tried to spark up a discussion.

"What does your Behavioral Analysis Unit do?" Chase raised an eyebrow and tried to, not-so-successfully, subtly elbow Taub's arm.

"What're you doing?" he whispered, leaning closer to the older man. "Trying to suck up to House and find out info about the FBI?"

"No," countered Taub, keeping his voice equally as low, although he suspected the agent was probably wondering what they were whispering about anyway. "I'm trying to make small talk." Chase snorted, but didn't say anything else. Hotch continued as if he hadn't witnessed this exchange.

"It depends on the case. We've worked with serial killers and homicides, as well as hostage negotiations and kidnappings. Our department also works with the FBI academy teaching prospective agents about criminal profiling and psychology." Hotch shot off the information as if he were reading from a book. Hotch sounded detached, as if he weren't really listening to what he was saying, and was only focused on how his colleague was doing.

"Alright, we're done here," said Thirteen before Taub could try again to further the 'small talk' in which Hotch was not interested in the least. "We'll get Agent Prentiss back to her room, and get the results back to Dr. House."

"When will we find out what's wrong?"

"Sir, we still need to work up a differential diagnosis before we can determine exactly what's wrong," answered Chase, easing himself out of the uncomfortable plastic chair.

"Sorry." Hotch ran a shaky hand through his hair. "I'm just..nervous."

"It's understandable," said Taub, with a knowing look on his face.

Emily was already sitting up, now freed from the noisy tube of the MRI machine. Thirteen put a hand on her arm to steady her as she began to settle herself into the wheelchair that they, much to her chagrin, required her to sit in when being transported around the hospital. Thirteen frowned, and asked,

"You didn't have a fever when you were admitted, did you?"

"No.." Emily looked at the woman with a mixture of alarm and confusion.

"Well, you have one now."

"What does that mean?" Thirteen didn't answer right away, quickly debating over what information she should relay back to the patient, and decided on,

"Your infection might be getting worse."

Author's Note: Sorry about the lack of the BAU team in this one. I promise in the next chapter you'll hear a lot more about the case. But we're getting into Emily's case now as well.

Please don't forget to review, and thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. Tell me what you think about everything; I'm a bit anxious about keeping everyone in character, because I don't want to make anything OOC. The only thing AU about this piece might be something going on between Emily and Hotch, but we'll just have to see about that.

Next chapter should be sometime in the middle of this week, hopefully.

And one more note: The scar on Emily's chest that I wrote about; well, I don't know if she really does have that, but when she was beaten by Cyrus, I do remember her having a laceration on her chest from being smashed against the mirror. So, I presumed that it may have left a scar. I just wanted to clear up any confusion there may be; I'm not creating any scenarios that haven't happened on the show.