A/N: A MILLION thanks for this chapter to my awesome beta and friend, ItsTimeToDance, for her ideas on the differentials!!
Chapter Nine
Taub and Thirteen returned to the differential room several minutes later after filling Cuddy in as much as they could on the situation, their lab coats rumpled from their tangle with Wilson. House's raised voice reached them as they took their seats at the table. Shamelessly eavesdropping, they watched through the glass wall as Cameron, looking absolutely miserable, seemed to shrink smaller and smaller, and House loomed above her, shouting angrily.
"That was a colossally stupid thing to do!" he yelled. "What the hell were you thinking?!"
"I just—"
"This is exactly why I'm glad you're not on my team! You always let your emotions take over your rationality and it always ends up hurting the patient!" Thirteen and Taub thought they had never seen House so furious, and their jaws dropped slightly as he drove it home, hitting Cameron right where she was most vulnerable. "Dammit, caring about everybody so much is not going to bring your husband back!" he roared, his face turning an unusual shade of red. Cameron cowered even further. "Because of your idiocy, Kutner now has broken wrist, and Wilson – if he gets better – will be lucky to keep his job here!"
"I'm sorry," Cameron whimpered, barely audible.
House's electric blue eyes flared, and he pointed his finger accusingly at her, his voice dropping to a growl as he enunciated every syllable. "Stay away from my patient."
She bit her lip to stop it from trembling, then turned and walked out as fast as she could, hiding her face in her hands.
House limped into the conference room, his face slowly restoring its normal color. "Okay, what have we got?"
"It's…six o'clock," Thirteen ventured. "Your shift ended an hour ago."
"What, you never heard of working late?" House deflected. "I repeat: what have we got?"
"Amber went to South America," Taub said, re-opening their late colleague's history on the table in front of him. "Two summers ago. A trip to the jungles of Peru for three weeks. I called up her parents; they said it was a big birthday present."
"Does it matter why she went?" House asked. Without giving Taub time to answer, he continued. "Anything she could have gotten there?"
"Even if she had, it wouldn't make sense. The disease is progressing way too fast," Thirteen replied. "She and Wilson only met six months ago; if she'd caught something in Peru, she'd have been sick long before then."
House sighed heavily. "What are we missing?" he said, his frustrated words punctuated by a few hard beats of his cane on the floor.
"What about diabetes?" Taub suggested. "You brought it up earlier."
"Diabetes can cause malnutrition, seizures, even insomnia and bradycardia," Thirteen agreed. "But I don't think these particular psych symptoms or the bleed could be caused by something metabolic. Aggression, sure, but dementia? And what about the fever?"
House's brow knit together and, as his two minions threw their ideas back and forth, he drowned out their conversation with thoughts of his own, sorting through each and every move Wilson had made in the last two days.
"House? You still with us?" Taub brought him back to reality a few minutes later.
He didn't respond right away, instead scratching his stubbled chin and turning to stare out the window, looking at nothing in particular. "It's not dementia," he said quietly.
"What?"
House turned around, speaking louder and faster now that he was more sure of his sudden realization. "He doesn't have dementia."
"House, he's ripped out his IV, attacked us—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, he's crazy," he interrupted. "But it's not dementia. Dementia affects the brain in very specific areas; mainly the memory and the ability to think logically. And now for my big finish…" House paused dramatically, erasing dementia from the whiteboard. "Wilson is still thinking logically."
Thirteen's jaw dropped slightly. "Are you sure your memory's working?" she asked incredulously. "You want me to bring you a mirror?"
"I'm not about to forget that I have six inches of gauze taped to my face," House countered. "Despite the fact that Wilson is, yes – at the moment – crazy, he can still think pretty damn well for a crazy person. Didn't you notice that when he was trying to make his getaway downstairs that he went for the gap between you two?"
Taub responded, "Yeah, we noticed; what exactly does that have to—"
"At first glance, the two of you are the weakest out of the team. Taub, you're middle-aged and tiny, and Thirteen, well, let's face it, you're a woman. Wilson, having never been in a fistfight with any of you, would naturally assume this and try to break through the wall where the bricks seem to be crumbling. Making sense?" House paused to make sure they were following before continuing, speaking more rapidly than before. "When Cameron goes in to check on him, he knows that she's the wimpy one and takes advantage of it. Again, crumbling bricks."
House didn't bother to further highlight his discovery by mentioning that Wilson had also hit him right where his wall was crumbling. As the extreme nonconformist that he was, he rarely had any reason to be guilty, but when he did…
"So…the fact that he attacked me and Hadley over Foreman and Kutner, and took advantage of Cameron's stupidity…means that he's not crazy?" Taub summarized doubtfully.
"In a nutshell, yeah."
"Okay, well, if it's not dementia, what is it?"
House hesitated, a rare behavior. "I have no idea."
"Yowch," Kutner winced, sucking air through his teeth as Foreman poked and prodded his bruised forearm.
"I'm being as gentle as I can," the neurologist assured him.
"I know, it just hurts," Kutner grimaced.
"Well," Foreman said, standing straight again and casting another glance at the x-ray he'd taken earlier of Kutner's injury. "It's definitely broken."
"Dammit."
"Hey, at least your insurance is covered by the hospital," Foreman reminded him.
A hint of a smile crossed Kutner's face. "Yeah, I guess. Still, how the hell'd he get out?"
Foreman shook his head. "Beats me. The nurse probably didn't tighten one of his wrist shackles all the way; he knows how to unfasten them, and once one hand is loose…"
"Taub was the one who put the cuffs on, not a nurse," Kutner said. "He knows how to tighten them."
Foreman shrugged. "Then maybe he made a mistake."
Kutner sighed, pulling himself off the exam table. "I don't suppose it really matters how he got out; the damage is done. Come on, let's go put a cast on this thing." As they headed for the ER, Kutner mused aloud, "Hey, you think I could get Thirteen to do all of my paperwork until the cast comes off?"
Chuckling, Foreman replied, "I would've tried to pull the same thing on Cameron. She already did all of House's charts in addition to her own, what's one more stack?"
Kutner changed the subject, and with it, the mood of their conversation. "What do you think Wilson has?"
The neurologist frowned and was silent for a few moments. "I…don't know. There's no way it could be any of the ones we've come up with. Rabies, no. Insecticide poisoning, no." He sighed heavily, giving his head a shake. "I've never seen this before. And…the fact that it's Wilson makes me very nervous," he admitted.
"Because he's a friend?"
"I wouldn't exactly say that Wilson is a friend; he's more of a close colleague. Or a mentor. Whatever," Foreman flapped a hand. "It doesn't matter. Anyways, no, it makes me nervous because I know he's House's friend, and it's obvious that House can't quite work at his full capacity because of that."
"Oh." Still maintaining his rookie status, Kutner hadn't yet learned to read the subtle signs that his boss unconsciously gave as to what was going on in his head, and he hadn't noticed what Foreman (ever the senior team member) had seen almost clear as day. "What do you suppose will happen if he can't figure it out?"
"I don't want to know," Foreman replied gravely. "Let's just hope that we never find out."
A/N: Sorry it took me so long to update this, I was having trouble with the differentials. This chap is mostly a filler, but it'll speed up again real soon. Review!!
