House had paced his living room for two hours before phoning Catherine Harrington's service. It had been two a.m. and he knew he wouldn't get Harrington at her office at that hour. And he had regretted making the call by the fourth ring. He had almost hung up. But the service had picked up.

"It's not urgent. She can phone me in the morning. I need a consult regarding a patient." His voice had been even, professional, as he spoke to the answering service. But the truth was, he was edgy as hell. Why on earth had he told Cuddy anything? But she was gone. Home by now, asleep in her bed surrounded by downy comforters and silk sheets. Much better than the paltry offer he had made her. He tried to focus on her. Cuddy: her jet black hair splayed across her pillow. Bad idea, that. Not a place he wanted to go right at that moment.

More pacing, He was certainly going to get no sleep that night. He turned on the television and settled on an infomercial about insomnia. Talk about speaking to your demographic, he mused sardonically. House closed his eyes only to see her—tears streaming down her cheeks as she told him about the rape. The violence of it incongruous with the pastoral setting of the park. He hadn't known what to do, how to act; what was expected of him. So he simply let her cry. He'd offered no solace, no comfort. He knew there was none to be had. "What if all we've done is make a girl cry?" he'd wondered aloud to Wilson and Cuddy.

His leg was worse tonight. He mentally noted the number of Vicodin he'd consumed in the past 24 hours. Maxed out. His last blood tests had been slightly alarming. No more Vicodin till morning.

As for his own disclosure, memories only barely remembered in the Byzantine maze of his brain returned in shattered images that came and went as flashbulb pops in his head. He knew that if he slept the images emerge more fully formed to haunt his dreams. Sleep was not something he craved, despite his fatigue.

More pacing. Every step was agony, but he knew that even if he stopped, the pain wouldn't retreat, but would just as likely intensify. He began to casually eye the room for his rescue kit. The next day was Saturday and he wasn't expected in. A morphine injection seemed a rather attractive prospect on many levels.

His pager went off, vibrating against his hip. "Got your message. Didn't want to wake you if you were asleep. Call if you want to talk. I'm on call anyway. Harrington."

"I need a professional opinion." House threw as much "doctor" behind the request as was able.

"I'm free at 10:15 tomorrow morning. Meet me in my office on six."

"Fine." Silence.

"Look, Dr. House, I'm awake anyway. Do you want to meet now? I mean… We can meet at the Sunrise Café."

"I'll meet you there in half an hour. That OK?"

"Sure." Click. House downed two Vicodin, certain that he'd never make it even to his bike without the drug in his system. The café was only five minutes away, but he needed time for the pills to work their magic and ratchet the pain down from intolerable to merely agonizing before venturing out of the apartment.

By the time he'd reached the café, House was less tense and regretted making the call in the first place. It two thirty in the morning, his leg hurt like hell, and he was beyond exhausted. A consult. How long would it take Harrington to see through that? On the other hand he did want to know her opinion. He still didn't know if he had done the right thing with Eve. He also didn't know why it still gnawed at him so many hours later. Maybe it was the fatigue; the pain.

Catherine had arrived first and sat in a back booth in the deserted café. She took him in before House saw her, observing the agitation still apparent; his gait, which wasn't good. She wasn't surprised at that. She hadn't been happy with his choice not to allow the morphine pump, nor the gabapentin. Vicodin had been a poor choice, therapeutically. They both knew it. But House had argued that stronger meds would have too great an effect on his ability to think; to analyze. Vicodin would dull the pain, yet leave his faculties intact. It was a tradeoff he was willing to make.

"How was your first day back at work, Dr. House?" Catherine had to admit her surprise that House had contacted her so soon. She half-expected to never hear from him again, writing him off as skeptical of therapy, at best, if not downright hostile to the very idea.

"Like I said," he replied, sitting heavily on the padded bench. Catherine cringed a bit, thinking that he might have been more comfortable sitting at a table in a chair. "I need a professional opinion."

"OK." She waited, trying to keep the sleepiness from her eyes, but intrigued. "What's up?" He stared back at her in reply before looking down at the table, intensely studying graffiti scratched into the laminate surface. It was only his first day back. Catherine was a growing a bit alarmed.

"I had a patient," he began awkwardly. "Does it help to talk….I mean…She was a rape victim…" Catherine had heard through the grapevine about a rape victim who had OD'd in the clinic. Right in front of Claire Stone.

"Slow down, Dr. House."

"Sorry." House sighed, frustrated with himself, with Harrington, with Cuddy for getting him into this situation in the first place. He began again. "Do you really believe that bullshit that 'talking about it' is a good thing? Always? I mean if you didn't, generally, anyway, you're in the wrong specialty. I get that. But is it always the best course?"

The earnestness in his voice and the lateness of the hour suggested that this patient really got to him. An idea that ran counter to everything she knew about him and his reputation. But not so out of line with what she believed was beneath his defensive shields. "If I believe that it's good, it's not bullshit. Not to me, anyway. I know it's not what you believe. But yes, in general, I think it's healthy for a patient to talk. Suppressing feelings about psychological or physical trauma isn't usually a healthy thing, but you know I feel that way. I suppose there are situations where something is so painful, maybe not dealing with it better in the short run, anyway. My question to you, and you know I never answer anything without asking a question myself, is why are you asking me?. And why in the middle of the night?"

"Well, that's two questions, Dr. Harrington. I…this patient. I got her 'to talk.' Did all the right things. Followed all the rules. I just don't know if it was the right thing to do."

"Why were you with a rape victim?"

"Clinic patient." So, why hadn't he handed her off to psych. "Tried to take myself off the case. I'm not exactly right doc for a rape victim." He tried to avoid sounding bitter.

"Why do you say that?" House scowled.

"Yeah. Not exactly the touchy-feely type. Ask anyone. I flunked 'bedside manner 101' in med school."

"So why didn't you get Cuddy to release you? I can't imagine that she would put a patient through…"

"Cuddy put in a psych referral. Stone." House figured that by now Harrington would have heard about the Stone's fiasco. House fidgeted, watching her make the connections. He observed the realizations spread to her eyes.

Catherine sighed. She could think of no worse a patient for House on his first day back. He was still emotionally raw from his experience in rehab, admit it or not. No wonder he had been ravaged by dealing with her. No wonder he was second guessing himself, hours later. She was suddenly less concerned about House's patient than she was about House.

"Can I get you anything?" The server had been patiently standing beside their table in the nearly deserted café.

"Cinnamon dolce latte, no whip. Skim; decaf."

House smiled. "I'll go for elegant. Coffee; high octane. Black. Sure you want decaf? I thought you…You're not on call are you? You lie to all your patients?"

"I thought you wanted a consult, not a session. So, technically…" Actually, she was pretty sure that the consult was a smokescreen, anyway. But he didn't have to know that either.

"So you just lie to your colleagues." Catherine was too sleepy for semantic games.

"You got her to talk. Pretty good for an unsympathetic jerk like you, huh? What'd you do, threaten her?" It was a half-hearted attempt at best, but it was as good as she was capable of in the middle of the night. She thought she had a pretty good idea as to what happened. Under all the bullshit, House was as empathic as they came. He'd fight it, deny it, try to push it under a rug, but in the end, there it was. His woundedness would have been a beacon to the girl, if she was looking through the right prism.

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"You OK?" She knew he wasn't, but she had to ask anyway. He looked as if he wanted to say something, like there was some other thing bothering him. "You know, you may have saved her life."

"I doubt that." His voice was somber.

"I heard she was suicidal. You turned that around."

"She wasn't suicidal. It was a tactic."

"Still, you don't know…"

"That is the point, isn't it."

"There is no right or wrong answer, sometimes. I know you don't believe that, but sometimes we just have to do the best we can and let it go."

"But that's not…"

"I know, but it's all we have. Sometimes. Your leg bothering you tonight?"

"It's fine."

"Right."

"I'm looking into some other things. I know you're not too happy with me being on the vicodin."

"Evidently your not, either. What other things?'

"Some experimental stuff. There has to be something." He sounded frustrated, defeated.

"I can ask Kwan to keep his eyes open if you want… You really want to find an alternate therapy for your leg?"

"Not a therapy. A cure. I'm tired of living like this. I can't live like this." She arched an eyebrow. House picked up on her concern immediately.

"Not what I mean. Don't worry. I'm not going to go home and slit my wrists. I just mean that I want as normal a life as I can have. Whatever that means for however long that means."

"How'd you get her to talk to you."

"We just talked. That's all. Religion, politics, philosophy. You know, the usual."

Catherine smiled. "Nothing about you is usual. You got her to open up by chatting?"

"Believe me, it wasn't intentional. Not at first."

"I can only imagine."

"No. I mean…I told her some things…a strategy. I figured I share; she would share."

"And you told her a story. One that wasn't true. And she saw right through it."

"It wasn't a total lie."

"But enough of one to break her trust. OK, so clearly that wasn't what worked."

"We walked. I took her out to the lake in the middle of campus."

"The jogging park? That was a good strategy. Taking her away from the hospital. Nice. That get her to open up?"

"Eventually." He stopped. There was something else he wanted to say, she knew it. But she knew he wasn't ready. He was already feeling too exposed, she thought, just having brought her out in the middle of the night. He didn't want to turn it into a session; make her think he was in some sort of crisis. He knew too much of the process to let himself be carried away by it. At least not tonight.

"You did the right thing. I'd heard that Stone got called on the carpet by the Psych department chair. Totally embarrassed the department when she had to be bailed out by some attending in the clinic. Tall guy with a cane, I heard. Rescued the whole situation. It probably wasn't a good case for you to handle on your first day back—not for your well being , anyway. Patient benefited from it though. I'm glad you called me. Always happy to consult with such an esteemed colleague. Or just talk with you."

"Thanks, Dr. Harrington."

"Catherine."

"Yeah."

House was still a bit edgy when he got home, but not quite so bad as before. The vicodin and conversation had relaxed him a little as it dulled the pain in his thigh. The sour images of his childhood had faded back from vivid to sepia. At least for the moment, they might be kept at bay. He flopped himself on the sofa as the earliest moments of dawn leaked through his window. He opened the latest issue of Topics in Pain Management, hit the remote on his stero system and settled into the new day.