just a comment...last night's episode was way creepy. genius on so many levels...but all these characters hooking up (or possibly hookin up, in House and Cuddy's case) is just freakin me out... although, i think Cuddy and Wilson would be good together for some reason. hmmm...

anyway, onto the next chapter.

please review.

Ruby

Chapter Ten

Nicole walked into Kie's room, sliding her feet across the floor so not to have the chunky heels of her boots make any noise. The twenty-four-year-old was looking positively deadly. He was sleeping, slumped over to the right side of his bed and his hand was almost grazing the floor. His bed sheets, once white, where now stained from his night of vomiting and crumpled around his knees.

Gingerly, she walked over to his bedside and sat next to him. Taking some aloe lotion from the bag she had strapped around her shoulder, she squeezed some from the bottle and lightly dabbed it on the cracking skin around his "horns". She pitied this man, although he probably didn't want to be pitied. As she finished her own personal treatment, Kie began to stir as his head rolled on his pillow. Weakly opening his eyes, he blinked his vision back to look at his visitor. "I know you?" His voice was low and raspy. But Nicole could tell it was once proud and deep.

"I work with your doctor. Dr. House."

"Right," he shifted in his bed for a moment, "You took my medical history."

"Yeah." She smiled at him, trying to be comforting while hiding her other emotions. "I came to ask you if you knew you had Darier's disease?"

"Most of my life." He coughed. Nicole winced as he breathed on her. His breath was that bad, but her bedside manner happened to be quite strong.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I thought it was in my medical records."

Nicole shook her head as she approached a vertical base again. "There was nothing there. It showed me that you had poor medical insurance, which is really the only reason my boss's boss is letting us treat you. So that means that you probably went to a free clinic to get diagnosed. A lot of times some free clinics are so overrun with patients that they really don't worry about paperwork too much."

Kie nodded and began closing his eyes once again. "What's wrong with me, then?"

Nicole took a deep breath through her mouth and slowly exhaled through her nose. Questions like these were the hardest to answer. "I'm not a doctor, but I can say that we're doing everything humanly possible. My boss is amazing at this sort of thing You'll be okay." She had let the words slip from her tongue before she could even comprehend of what she was saying. Clamping a hand over he mouth as she exited the room, Nicole walked until she found a deserted hallway and found a good wall to lean against. Sliding down said wall, until she was sitting, both her hands met on her forehead and she stared into her empty palms.

She shouldn't have said that. She shouldn't have said anything. If he died now, she was going to feel guilty. Worse, she had given him a false sense of comfort. If he was going to die, he wasn't going to know it. And that, in her opinion, was the worst way to die. Not knowing.

Chase had been walking back from the elevator, coming back from redoing some tests he had done on samples that Nicole and Jessica had taken from Kie's home. He held a clipboard in his hands tightly, wringing the wood without cutting his hands. Everything was inconclusive once again.

He was about to rejoin everyone in the conference room until he just happened to glance down the hallway where Nicole was sitting. He looked to the nurse's station - where everyone was talking medical jargon and whatnot - then back to the collapsed figure against the wall. Slowly, not taking his eyes off the nurse's station so no one would notice him coming this way, he sauntered towards her.

She picked her head up as the noise from his shoes met her eardrums. Surprised, she whipped the tears that were forming in her eyes - pushing them back - and stood. Dusting off her bottom, she was surprised when he embraced her instead of yelling at her. Nicole thought he would have been mad after this morning. Hell, she was mad at herself.

He pulled back, holding her at arms length with his hands resting on her shoulders. "Are you okay?" His words became softer with every syllable.

"I'm going back to his house." She mumbled, nodding her head.

"What?"

"There's nothing in the samples, right? It must be something airborne. Something we missed. A virus, a respiratory infection. Something. We need an air sample."

- - - - - - - -

House watched Cuddy pace in her office with a pained expression. He knew that Jessica was right behind him, watching over his shoulder and breathing down his neck. It gave him goose bumps.

Glancing at Cuddy's new male assistant (she seemed to going through them like flies nowadays), he quickly concocted a plan. "Hey...you...Max..."

"My name's Charlie."

"Right, Chuckie. Listen. Take this girl here to the records room and show her all the cases that I've solved so far." He turned to his intern, "Research. You never know if something could relate to the present case." She took him seriously and almost giggled when Charlie led her out the door.

Rolling his eyes at the admiration he was getting, House lowered his head and turned the handle to Cuddy's office.

Cuddy was startled when he entered, almost "jumping out of her own shoes". So to speak. "Don't you ever knock!?"

"Was that a question? Because I think we both know the answer to that."

Cuddy took her turn to roll her eyes at him. Again, another sex joke that she didn't fully comprehend. "If you don't mind, I'm in the middle of something."

"The faster you answer one of my questions, the faster I leave."

Cuddy mentally threw her hands in the air, taking control over House's bad mood yesterday. She walked to her desk and plopped down in her seat, rubbing her forehead while feeling an oncoming headache. "What?"

"Where's Wilson?"

"How should I know?"

House bobbed his head from side to side, feeling quite a rush of amusement coming over him. "Oh, please! Wilson never takes time off, which he claims he did. If he really did, then I trust you would be curious enough to at least ask where he's going. And, since he's such a sucker as he is, he would have told you. Then again, if he didn't really take time off, then you'd absolutely know where he is. Either way, you could answer my question without making this thoroughly difficult for you. I will find out eventually."

"Don't you think that having you as a best friend is taxing as it is? Then there's being a doctor. A cancer doctor, to that. Maybe he just needed some time off to relax." For a minute, Cuddy was thinking of putting her feet on the desk in order to truly get comfortable. But remembering she was wearing a skirt, and who her present company was, she decided against it.

"We both know that 'relaxing' to Wilson would be spending an afternoon on my couch. And I pretty sure that's he's not there. So, where is he?"

"Fine," she really was, for some reason, in no mood for this. "He went to visit his father."

House shriveled his nose in curiosity. "Wilson hates his father."

"Noooo... you hate your father. Can I get back to my work now?"

"One more question." He picked up his cane and headed towards the door. "Do you get paid to pace? Cause if you do, I want in on that sweet deal..."