Thank you, prinnie, BlkDiamond, ADASakura,addicted2coffee, ScarlettScribble, and Ibreak4CSI for your enthusiastic and generous reviews. The feedback is much appreciated!

Part Three—Curriculum Vitae

There was a long, pregnant silence.

Lisa tried to refocus on the task at hand, but the sharp, steel-blue gaze of the man in front of her was absurdly distracting. Damn him, those eyes hadn't changed.

She picked up the copy of his CV that she had been reading earlier. As her eyes gradually locked upon the neat rows of typing, she began to regain her confidence and her sense of purpose. The document was a touchstone: a reminder of her purpose and a link to reality.

"You did your premed at Johns Hopkins," she said, following the format of a typical interview. "And three and a half years of medical school."

"Three years and seven months," House corrected dryly. "Do you have early-onset Alzheimers? Or have you been lying about your age all this time?"

She favored him with a taut smile. "Why didn't you finish your degree at Hopkins?"

He writhed in a parody of an errant schoolboy. "Aw, lady, do I hafta answer?" he whined. Then his expression hardened. "We both know what happened," he growled. "You win. You come from the most generous school in the country."

Cuddy smiled a little malevolently. "Humor me," she said. "Why didn't you finish your degree?"

He looked her straight in the eyes. "I cheated on a biostatistics final," he said. "I was expelled for academic dishonesty."

Interesting, Cuddy thought. He was telling the bald truth: no equivocation, no lies. She wondered if this was his policy—he had had interviews enough to have developed one by now—or if he was just being forthright because he knew that she knew the whole story. "So you were accepted as a transfer student at the University of Michigan, and completed your final semester and two-year residency there."

"And met you," House added. "So you see it wasn't all sunshine and roses." He paused. "Or maybe it was," he reflected. "The sun gives you cancer, and roses have those pokey things on them. Horns? Thrones?"

"Thorns," Lisa corrected automatically, glancing at the CV again. "What was your residency in?" she asked.

"Nephrology," he told her boredly. "Maybe your remember me? The intern with the great body—the one who wouldn't let you get away with murder?"

"I remember a self-important ass who loved to throw his weight around," she mused. "Not much of a people person."

He grinned toothily. "Aw, you remembered," he cooed.

"It says here that after that you had a two-year Nephrology fellowship at Columbia," Cuddy went on. "Under… Beymer and Giles."

"Amos and Andy," House muttered. "Giles was an idiot. Beymer was a blood-sucking, back-stabbing weasel, but at least he knew a nephron from a nipple." This comment was accompanied by a leering stare that landed on Lisa's breasts and made her wish that she wasn't too proud to cross her arms over them.

"That aside," she went on; "you finished that fellowship… and went on to a four-year in Infectious Diseases at M.I.T. Why not go straight into practice?"

He put on a melodramatic face. "Aw, Mommy, I wasn't ready to be a big-boy nephrologist yet!" he whined.

"And what makes you think you're ready to be a big-boy diagnostician?" Cuddy retorted. "Your first independent job was with Erstmeyer in Nephro at Coney Island Hospital. You lasted… ooh! Nine whole months!"

"I figure I did pretty good!" House told her blithely. "You know, at the end of nine months some people are fathers?"

Cuddy's eyes narrowed. "Tell me why Erstmeyer fired you," she said firmly.

A guarded look sifted into the startlingly blue eyes.

"He didn't," House growled. "It was Baxter."

"The head of the hospital." Cuddy knew Baxter: he was a capable, efficient and jolly man. She wasn't sure she could imagine him firing anyone.

"Bastard Baxter," muttered House, and suddenly the concept didn't seem quite so impossible. "Well, it happened like this…"