House, MD is the property of David Shore, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Heel and Toe Productions, and NBC Universal. I claim no ownership to any parts or characters.

Chase exhaled bitterly as he trudged toward his car.

Of all the days to have been running late and forced to park in the damn parking garage two miles away from campus, it would have to be today. He was tired, more so than usual for a day at work, but he supposed it could have been from the fact that he couldn't remember having been able to get off of his feet for more than maybe twenty minutes.

He'd had ER rotation that day and had been scheduled to get off at seven that evening until a multiple vehicle accident had quite literally smashed through that idea. An SUV with a blown tire had smashed into the side of a freeway overpass and three compact cars had collided trying to dodge it. Ten people were brought in with serious injuries ranging in severity from a middle-aged male with three cracked ribs to a four-year old with a face sliced so deeply from glass fragments that a reconstructive team was probably still working to keep his nose attached. To say he was looking forward to his bed would have been putting it mildly.

It felt like it took hours for him to finally, finally, come within viewing distance of his car at last. He was perturbed when he found that digging into his coat pocket produced no keys and frowned as he began moving toward his jeans.

A sudden crash of breaking glass that sounded like it was coming from right next to him made him jump almost two feet off of the ground. It was immediately following by the shrill shriek of a car alarm that nearly burst his ear drums.

The close proximity of the noises more than shocked him and he stood frozen for a moment without being able to help it as adrenaline surged through his veins. He fingered one of his keys into a fist defensively as he looked around the semi-darkened garage, his heart pounding frantically.

It was easy to spot the source of the obnoxious racket. His eyes were immediately drawn to the back end of a silver car, with taillights flashing in rhythm with the alarm, and against his better judgment began to cautiously step toward it. He kept his key in a tight hold ready to draw out of his pocket if need be.

Seeing a figure suddenly stagger into view from the front end of the car shocked him even more. His fist dropped the keys before he even realized it and he immediately quickened his pace.

______________________________________________________________________________

"Doctor Wilson?"

The frantic voice had an unmistakable accent. He knew before he had even reached the bumper of the Volvo who was rushing toward him with shoes slapping the pavement.

That was about the only thing that Wilson could make sense of at the moment. He dumbly reached out a hand to the side of the vehicle and felt surprised when he felt it under his palm.

"Are you alright?"

There it was again, the voice, but now it was next to him. He knew who it was but was still confused when turned his head up around and found himself staring slightly up at Chase. The young doctor had one arm hooked around his back, practically lifting him from the ground, before Wilson's muddled focus could recognize that he was being supported.

"Are you alright?" he repeated. His face appeared immensely concerned and surprised. "What happened?"

Wilson shook his head to compose himself but it apparently produced the opposite effect because in the next second he felt his shoulders being pushed solidly down. He immediately began to resist, embarrassment flooding his cheeks as he regained his sense of what was happening, and found himself unmatched against a surprisingly strong colleague. He was down and propped against the back tire of his car before he could formulate a word otherwise.

"Don't-" He attempted to get to his feet anyway, tried to wave off the assistance. "It's fine, I'm fine-" Hands steeled against his shoulders to stop his progress, startling him at their effectiveness in keeping him down. Annoyed, his tone became edgy. "Chase-"

"Hold still," Chase said without preamble. Wilson was shocked into silence when the man took off his jacket and pressed it against his face. "You're bleeding."

The younger man pulled began speaking into his cell phone rapidly. Wilson hadn't even seen him pull it out.

"This is Doctor Chase," he said. "I need a wheelchair brought out to parking garage C immediately."

When he began to sit forward in protest, Chase fixed him with a firm stare. He sighed and sat muted with surprise while the other doctor put pressure on a spot near his left eye, lifted after a minute then put pressure on a spot near his temple. This was repeated at least four times in various different areas and all the while Wilson still was trying to piece together just what the hell they were doing there.

Holding the jacket tightly against Wilson's head, Chase sat back on his haunches to look him in the face. "What happened?" he asked again.

"I…I don't-" Dazed, Wilson shook his head. "I was just…in my car. And then my back window shattered. I don't…" He trailed off and shook his head again.

Chase rocked upwards slightly with a disturbed expression. "I'd say," he remarked, looking at the back end of the Volvo, "that it looks more like someone took a baseball bat to it,"

"What?" Wilson got to his feet incredulously despite the look of disapproval from Chase and went behind the bumper. His face scrunched angrily and he pounded his hand on the trunk when he saw the damage. "Damn it!"

The back window had been smashed in the center, leaving a gaping hole and cracked glass all along the side edges of the rest of it. He could only imagine how hard something could have been slammed into the window to make the sound that he had heard and cause glass to fly all the way into the front.

"Did you see anyone around when you were getting into your car?" Chase asked, having stepped up beside him.

He opened his mouth to answer but was cut short by the arrival of three nurses, all wearing alarmed expressions. One of them was pushing a wheelchair. He shot an annoyed look at Chase and turned toward them.

"I'm fine," he said quickly, holding his hands out toward them. "A wheelchair isn't necessary. I'm okay."

"You haven't stopped bleeding," Chase interjected. His voice had an authoritative tone as he came around Wilson's side. Wilson looked at him warningly but the younger man just leveled the expression right back at him. "We don't know how deep the glass cut you or exactly where. You could have damage to supraorbital veins or occipital tributaries." When Wilson began to balk, he raised his eyebrows threateningly. "Either you get in the wheelchair or we're carrying you back inside."

Wilson scoffed in disbelief and shook his head. But then he looked at the young man's firm stance and flexed forearms and realized that, damn it, Chase could actually do it. He grudgingly walked over to the wheelchair.

"You've been around House too long," he grumbled, sitting down angrily and glaring up at Chase.

Chase smiled cheekily as they turned back toward the hospital.

______________________________________________________________________________

It was two hours earlier than she normally arrived and Cuddy was not happy as she came through the front doors. She didn't think that she was wearing a menacing expression but judging by the speed of which everyone seemed to be hurrying out of her way as she went to her office, it must have been pretty close.

Getting a call from the head of security for the hospital had not been part of her routine the night before as she was getting into bed. Being informed that an act of vandalism had occurred on hospital property made her edgy enough, but hearing the details of the incident had made her downright cataclysmic.

She had paged the clinic in seconds and once she had gotten through had demanded to speak to Wilson immediately. He told her that he was fine, that it wasn't a big deal, and that there was nothing more to it than just plain bad luck. She told him to take the next day off and then promptly made him give the phone to Chase so she could find out if he really was alright.

Needless to say, her sleep hadn't been particularly restful that night. She had managed to doze for a few hours but had still been awake long before the alarm. Thinking about what would need to be done now because of what had happened browbeat her into getting up instead of trying to sleep some more, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

Cuddy nursed an extra-large cup of coffee as she took off her jacket and settled behind her desk. Her thoughts were everywhere and she had no idea where to begin.

She definitely needed to send a memo to everyone on staff about the incident, not intended to give details but making sure they began to take extra caution when leaving the building. She would have to move more security officers to the front lobby at night to provide walking escorts for anyone who so desired and-

Damn it! Outraged thoughts were triggered of their own accord in the middle of organizing. Just where the hell was security last night, anyway? If they're patrolling the hospital grounds like they're supposed to be, there's a good chance this might not have happened. What if someone had been hurt, for God's sake?! That's the whole reason for having them here!

Well, that mixed up her plan. She supposed that before she could send a hospital memo, she was going to have to meet with the hospital security team and work out details for new assignments. She might even have to deal with human resources to get more officers added and wouldn't that just be a barrel of fun.

And somehow she had to make time to do all of this while maintaining the normal insane amount of work required to keep the hospital running smoothly.

Cuddy groaned and rubbed her temples. She downed a huge mouthful of coffee.

I don't get paid enough for this.

______________________________________________________________________________

"We shouldn't rule out cancer yet, either," Thirteen said from his right side as she and the other two tried to keep pace with him going down the hallway. They were headed back for the whiteboard after having just had the current patient begin bleeding internally during an MRI. "Test the blood for abnormal white cell count."

House paused at the corner and turned toward Wilson's office while the fellows continued to the conference room. He turned the doorknob while barreling forward into the door like he always did and was annoyed when his body was blocked solidly. He jiggled the locked doorknob obnoxiously.

"I know where you sleep.…" he droned in a loud dramatic impression of a robot with a bad deep accent.

No response. He began banging on the door but got no answer. His eyebrows furrowed indignantly and he headed straight to his office. Taub spoke as soon as he came through the door but House ignored him as he made a beeline for the balcony door. Wilson was going to damn well let him in whether the man liked it or not.

"Wilson's not here," Kutner called out just as he was stepping out.

He looked over anyway and was perturbed when he saw a dark office that was minus one oncologist. Scowling, he turned back inside and went into the conference room. He glared at Kutner.

"Since when have you two been going over each other's schedules?" he growled.

The younger man stared back at him with a face so naïve that it made House want to deck him. It wasn't any fun when his target was still at the sucking-up phase and not yet experienced enough to react when prodded.

"Cuddy gave him the day off," Kutner replied. When House continued to look at him blankly, he elaborated, "Because of last night."

House's expression indicated that his words were the stupidest he had ever heard. "Did he run over someone's puppy or something?" he asked mockingly. "Get into a fight with the transvestite nurse?"

"You don't know?" Taub's voice from the other end of the table sounded surprised. His eyebrows were raised in genuine disbelief. "Wilson didn't tell you?"

He was beginning to get pissed and it showed in his dark glare at Taub.

Wilson keeping something from him always angered him. But having his fellows thinking they had one-up on him was not an option. Hell no.

Taub's intelligence appeared to prove more useful than his physical stature did. He spoke again before House could snarl at him.

"Someone bashed in the back window of Wilson's car while he was leaving," he said. "He got some cuts from the glass but nothing serious. They patched him in the clinic." Seeing House's affronted expression, he added, "Cuddy sent out a memo this morning about it."

House was immediately suspicious. "Cuddy wouldn't give details like that out around the whole hospital," he countered. He raised his eyebrows warningly but then became slightly stricken. "Wilson talked to you?"

He wasn't kidding about the warning. Being kept in the dark by Wilson made him mad….finding out that Wilson had kept him in the dark while letting his fellows in on it would equal DEFCON 1 mode on Wilson's ass.

"No," Kutner piped up. "Chase told us. He was walking to his car when it happened and took Wilson to the clinic."

Yeah, right. One of his former employees talking to one of his new employees about something that had happened with his best friend that Wilson hadn't even told him about? There were too many things wrong with that to even begin dissecting, so House went with the most obvious piece of bullshit first.

Instead of bothering to respond to Kutner, he leveled a glare at Foreman. Foreman just rolled his eyes without even needing to decipher it.

"Chase told me when we passed this morning," he said in exasperation. "I told them about it."

House scowled to cover up his involuntary surprise at the words. Damn. Foreman reserved his tone of reproach for times when he was actually right and knew the information would only piss him off more.

The three fellows looked at him with expressions half-intrigued and half-wondering. The only thing he hated more than Wilson sending him in circles and Foreman being right was being looked at like that- that open, probing look that indicated someone was trying to understand him, trying to empathize with him.

And damn it, Cameron had probably taught them that. The six of them probably had secret fellows-society meetings when he wasn't around and traded war stories from working under him.

"Go stick needles in the patient," he said snippily. "See what kind of funk is building up inside of her that might cause bleeding out of her orifices."

Kutner, Taub, and Thirteen left the room but Foreman remained sitting and simply looked at him in amusement. House turned around to kill his satisfaction.

______________________________________________________________________________

He bit back a frustrated sigh as he skirted around his friend again.

"Move," Wilson said with annoyance. He closed the file and placed it with the others on the nurses' station counter. "I have to finish these charts."

He turned around toward the other end of the counter again and almost ran smack into House. The other man was still standing in the exact same spot, right in his path. He clenched his teeth and shook his head.

"House," he said, moving around him again. "I'm-

House just kept on pressing as if he hadn't even said anything and didn't budge. "And what the hell," he went on angrily. "Conspiring with my underlings behind my back? Why would you-"

"Because I didn't want anyone to make a big deal out of it," Wilson shot back hotly. He had managed to get back over to where the pile of charts was sitting and looked over at House with irritation as he opened one of them. "And I knew that you would just mock me and start hiding in the parking lot at night so you could scare me when I'm getting in my car."

House pouted but smiled wickedly. "My influence has rubbed off," he said. He donned an exaggerated tone of wistfulness. "You make me so proud."

Wilson rolled his eyes as he scribbled notes in the file without looking up but House gaze had narrowed already, his demeanor returning to its normal brusqueness. He looked over Wilson's face warily.

"Did you put that bandage on yourself?" he asked curtly. It came out as almost a command and House didn't really care about an answer. His hands were already working their way underneath the adhesive. "It looks like it was done by a five-year old."

Wilson attempted to push him away with an incredulous grunt but House didn't move. The words were as short and cynical as they always had been, but the hands were surprisingly gentle against his skin when House removed the bandage covering the cut on his temple. He even rested his fingers on Wilson's temple between the bandage and his skin so that there wouldn't be any pain of having the adhesive stick while pulling it off.

"Chase did it," Wilson retorted. He tolerated the other man in his personal space for about a half second more and then had it. "Get off." When House continued to probe the area after the bandage was removed, he scowled and knocked him back again lightly with a scowl. "Quit. Leave it alone."

"You're an idiot for even letting him look at it," House said snidely. "Good thing you didn't need surgery. God knows what you would have come out looking like with Chase at the helm."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "I kind of need that," he said sarcastically, reaching to snatch the bandage away from House.

The other man tossed it to the side before he could get it. When he looked at House indignantly, his friend just gave him the look that meant he had found something interesting to explore and started towards him.

He held out his hands in warning. "House," he said. "Whatever it is you're thinking, forget it. I'm not-"

House gave him a condescending, disgusted glare. "Quit being such a drama queen," he roused. He began shoving Wilson's shoulder toward the hallway. "We're in the clinic, moron. Lucky for you, there's a qualified doctor with nothing to do who's willing to cover those cuts the right way." Wilson balked and tried to duck out of his grasp. He pushed his back so that he couldn't. "Just shut up and come here."

"House-" Wilson warned.

The rest of his threat was cut off by House pushing him into an empty exam room with exasperation.

______________________________________________________________________________

Foreman narrowed his eyes. He brought the scan closer to his face in scrutiny.

"Look at that small spot near the left side of the hippocampus," he said. He laid the scan down on the table within reach of the others. "Shadow or abscess?"

The other three around the table leaned in to examine the scan as well. Taub scrunched his face warily.

"It's an odd shape," he said critically. He peered closer. "I think it's an abscess."

Thirteen opened her mouth to speak and was cut off when three different variations of sound began emitting from their pagers. Everyone checked their waists.

"Patient's flat lining," Kutner said grimly, getting to his feet. He hurried toward the door with Taub and Thirteen trailing him.

Almost the moment he emerged into the hallway, he collided with a man who was walking inside with a ladder. Kutner yelled in surprise and they both bounced back slightly from the force of impact. The other two doctors stopped short in shock when they saw what had happened.

"Aw," Kutner said anxiously. He immediately went back toward the man in concern. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't see you. Are you alright?"

Taub and Thirteen came up beside Kutner quickly, ready to help. The man looked embarrassed.

"It was my fault," he insisted. "My fault entirely. I'm installing new bulbs into all of the lights in the hospital and I had to go get another size." His expression was sheepish. "I wasn't even paying attention when I-"

"It's fine," Thirteen interrupted. She looked at the other doctors. "I'm sorry, but we have an emergency. We have to go right now."

"Oh, sure. Sure." The man stepped to the side quickly. "Excuse me."

Taub hurried past him without a word. Thirteen nodded at him curtly as she did the same. Kutner hung back for another minute.

"Sure you're okay?" he double-checked.

"Absolutely," the man assured.

Kutner nodded and took off down the hallway in the same direction as the others. The man hefted the ladder in his hand and continued into the conference room. Foreman looked at him warily.

"Maintenance," he said, nodding toward the ceiling.

Foreman nodded at him and returned to his study of the scan.

______________________________________________________________________________

He sighed when the credits began to play. Yawning, House shoveled another spoonful of the Velveeta shells and cheese pasta into his mouth from the saucepan resting on his lap. He flipped the channels through the lineup once and found nothing worthy of attention.

He scrolled through his endless TIVO list. Everything was crap. Crap…crap….more crap-

"Yes," he said victoriously. He stopped on the listing for TG Motocross that he'd recorded a few days ago. "That's what I'm talking about."

He stretched his pajama-clad leg out along the couch and settled against the side couch cushion. Almost like clockwork, his cell phone rang the moment he was comfortable. He cursed in fury.

The phone lay within reach on the coffee table. Every fiber of his being encouraged him to ignore it. He knew, he knew, that it was either going to be Cuddy or one of the team members telling him something that was going to make him have to go back in. He was tired and was not going to do it. No one could make him.

He returned his attention to the television and tried to focus on the motorcycle race.

But the phone just kept ringing.

And ringing.

And ringing.

Good God… he finally snatched it up when it continued to ring after thirteen times.

"What?" he all but yelled into it.

"House."

Wilson's voice carrying over the line extinguished his anger quickly. He relaxed and smirked into the receiver.

"Wilson, seriously," he said sardonically. "I don't care if you just had a hooker with tits bigger than Mount Rushmore over. Tell me about it tomorrow, I'm watching the motocross race of the century."

"House-"

"Ooh! Damn!" A spectacular crash sucked his interest to the television and he spoke into the phone as if Wilson was watching it at the same time. "Dude, did you see that?" He became more excited when the slow-motion replay highlighted spectacularly on the driver of the bike flying into the air. "Holy shit! That guy just-"

"House!"

Wilson did yell into the phone, sounding unnecessarily high-strung. He scowled and seethed when Wilson's voice made him miss what the announcer had said about the impact.

He got back on the phone. He was going to light into the other man like nobody's business.

"Damn it," he hissed. "I just missed the most awesome crash in the history of motocross because of you! What the hell do you want?"

______________________________________________________________________________

House's sniping verbal attack was nothing but white noise in his ear as he continued to stand in the hallway right outside of his apartment doorway.

The lights were on through the open door because he had flicked them on while coming inside like he always did and he could see through the entire front half of the place. Wilson just kept staring in, as he had been for the past…..he had no idea how many minutes.

His briefcase had been set on the ground beside his feet a little while ago when he had stopped before entering his apartment. He was still in the same spot. He hadn't even given a second thought when he was pressing the speed dial for House's number. He just stared.

The words his friend was grumbling came into his awareness after trying to get his attention for the third time. He clenched his teeth.

"House, shut up," Wilson finally managed to say, breaking into the man's flow of bitterness. He swallowed and spoke again before his friend's angry retort could come. "My apartment has been broken into."