Chapter Ten

Jason brought the stained slides to Susan's old lab and paged Dr. Taub to meet him there. Together they looked through the slides, Taub pointing out areas of interest for Jason. As Taub was explaining what he was looking for, Jason's phone beeped with a text. He pulled it out of his pocket, it was his mother. "Heard there was a storm, you OK?"

"Yes" he returned the message. Having received that message, he tried to call Susan's cell phone. Maybe now he would be able to get through. It was crackly, but it was ringing, "Hello?" he said when the phone stopped ringing, but there was no sound. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the display, "Call Failed". He tried again with the same result, but this time there was no ringing.

Taub was trying House's cell at the same time, but was still not getting through.

"Well, maybe it'll start working soon," he said. "I got more out of it this time than anytime previously."

"I wish we could get through, I'd really like to run our theories by House before starting treatment, but I may not have an option," Taub said.

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Susan's cell phone vibrated and House picked it up to answer. He thought he heard a voice on the other end briefly, but he couldn't be sure. He tried to call the hospital, but was unsuccessful. He tried from his phone, but it didn't work either. There was still no dial tone from the land line. This sucked, but it could be worse. He put the phones back down and continued reading the journal while Susan slept.

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David and Phillip walked into the airport terminal from their plane at Chicago O'Hare and looked at the displays to see where they would meet their connecting flight to Philadelphia which as it turns out was on the opposite side of the terminal. They turned and headed that direction. There was a three hour layover, so they weren't in any hurry as they made their way. "I'm hungry," Phillip announced.

"Me too," David said. As they neared the central area of the airport, they found a small restaurant and went inside. They were quickly seated and provided a dinner menu. Phillip sighed as he looked through the choices. "What's wrong son?"

"There isn't much for me to choose from," Phillip said. "I miss mom's cooking; at least she makes a variety of things and I'm not stuck with just salads."

"She is a good cook and she enjoys the challenge of finding recipes that will work with your diet restrictions and at the same time not get boring."

"The ladies at the camp should take lessons from her," Phillip said. "I didn't think I could ever get tired of oatmeal. At least mom puts fruit in it."

"They were at a bit of a loss to know what to do for you," David admitted. "Next time, I'll ask Susan to send ahead a few recipes. It wouldn't hurt those boys to have something besides hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza at camp anyway.

David reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He turned it on and noted that he had three missed calls and one voice mail. He hit the button for the missed calls and saw that Laura had tried to reach him. The voice mail was from her, "David, I've been trying to get in touch with mom and I can't get through. I guess the storm has knocked out the phone lines or something. I just thought I would check with you and see if you've had any luck. I'm sure she's fine. Talk to you later."

Phillip had heard the voice mail since he was sitting so close, "Dad, how come Laura doesn't call you dad, if I call Susan mom?"

"It's a little different son. You're still a kid and you don't remember your mother. Laura was raised by her dad and had a very good relationship with him; besides, she's an adult. She might call me dad in time, but it doesn't bother me that she doesn't. I understand and I would probably feel the same way." David tried to call home again and still was unable to get through, so he called Laura. "Hi Laura, I haven't been able to get through either. I know that House is staying with her and that there isn't any electricity, but that's all I know at this point." He paused for a moment listening, "No, we're still several hours out. We're in Chicago and will fly to Philadelphia in a couple of hours. I'm driving the rest of the way." He paused again, "I will." He hung up the phone.

They placed their order and ate their meal in relative silence while they waited for their flight. Both were anxious to get home, but they were still at minimum 6 hours out. David had every intention of getting home tonight. It would be very late or very early tomorrow when they walked in the door, but they would at least be home.

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Susan woke up and looked around, "What time is it?" she asked.

House looked at his watch, "5:10"

"Why did you let me sleep so long?" she asked.

"Why, think you're going somewhere?" House asked. Susan looked annoyed at him, "There wasn't any reason to wake you up and after that stunt; you needed your rest. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," she answered.

"Good, 'cause I'm hungry," he answered.

Susan sat up and stared at the fire for a moment and then got up and padded to the kitchen. She rummaged around her cabinet and found some egg noodles and canned concentrated vegetable broth. She didn't have much meat in the house these days since Phillip had been diagnosed with his condition. She had bought what she needed for the lasagna they'd eaten last night. The sausage she had used this morning was left over from the lasagna ingredients. She didn't think Greg would be satisfied with just noodle soup. She thought about the contents of her refrigerator. She didn't want to open it until absolutely necessary. There was left over lasagna, but she didn't know how to heat it up over the fire without burning the bottom of it. When this was over, she should invest in a fireplace oven for just such emergencies. There were eggs and some fresh vegetables, other than that the refrigerator held mostly condiments and pickles. Greg wasn't much of a vegetable guy and he sure didn't like pickles. Well, he'd just have to do with soup tonight. She had a package of beans, so she'd soak them tonight and have them cook over the fire all day tomorrow if the electricity wasn't on by then. She had the ingredients for corn bread, but once again wasn't sure how to bake it over the fire. Maybe she could fry the batter up like a pancake. She knew there were recipes for that sort of thing, but she hadn't ever gone looking for them before; she'd have to think on that overnight. Tomorrow might just be a day of edible experimentation. She pulled out her stock pot and put the ingredients together for noodle soup and then lugged the pan into the living room. She placed the pot on the fireplace grill to start it cooking.

It was starting to get dark outside and as a result dark in the house. House gave up reading and meandered over to the piano. He didn't need to see to play. Susan gathered candles from around the house and brought them to the living room to provide a little extra light over what the fireplace was providing and busied herself cleaning up the mess they had created. He played a few songs while Susan straightened things up, "Why don't you stop cleaning for a minute and come over here," he said.

Susan walked his direction, stopping by the soup to stir it, and then stood by the piano.

"Sit down and play me something," he said. "And not a hymn; I've already heard you play several of those through your door yesterday."

Susan sat on the bench and House scooted over to give her room. She thought for a moment, "I don't have a large repertoire of memorized pieces." She thought for a few seconds longer and then turned up on corner of her mouth as she thought of something upbeat and light. Her right hand started with a very familiar melody, and then added her left hand. Before long her hands were dancing all over the keyboard playing Elite Syncopations by Scott Joplin.

When she finished, she looked over at House, "Satisfied?"

"Don't ever tell me that you're not any good again. You play very well."

"I just enjoy Scott Joplin, so I worked on that piece for a very long time. I can't hold a candle to you or Laura and I can't improvise anything. If it's not written down, I'm toast," Susan said. She got up to stir the soup. "I gave Laura lessons myself from the time she was three until about ten years old. After that, I wasn't comfortable with my skill level to keep teaching her and found a professional."

"Why do you play so many hymns?" he asked.

"The same reason you play so much blues, I suppose," Susan said. "The music speaks to me and I had to play for the congregation every Sunday and Wednesday when I was growing up, so the old hymns are very much stuck in my head." She stirred the soup one last time, and then went to the kitchen to get a ladle and a couple of bowls. She also brought back some bags of decaffeinated tea and a tea pot full of water to heat; her experience earlier having only reinforced her disgust of the taste of coffee.

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Taub looked at the final test results that Jason had provided and crossed off the last diagnostic possibility on his list, "We really need to conference with House."

"At least the swelling has gone down in his hand," Adams said.

"But it'll come right back if we can't find the cause," Park added.

"I guess for now, we'll just keep treating the symptoms," Taub said. "Switch him from topical steroids to intravenous. Maybe by the times the roads are cleared, he'll be well enough to go home and then he can come back for a full work up when House is here."

"So you're giving up?" Jason asked.

"No, we're treating him and we'll keep looking, but I'm out of ideas for the moment. I need to do some reading," Taub replied.

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Phillip practically ran down the stairs to the baggage claim area while David followed behind more slowly. David smiled at his son; it was still fun for him to watch the bags come out of the chute like magic. He walked up behind his son and then looked around. The car rental place was less than 20 feet away. He could stand in line and still watch his son from there, "Phillip, why don't you watch for our bags while I stand in line to rent a car. As soon as you have our bags, come join me in line."

"Okay," Phillip said happy to take on this responsibility alone.

David walked to Avis to stand in line and turned around so he could still watch Phillip. The baggage started coming out of the shoot and traveled around on the conveyor. Phillip looked at each bag as it passed by. People pushed around each other to get to their bags, but Phillip held his ground his attention focused intently on getting their luggage. Soon he saw his duffle bag and he waited for it to travel around to him. He picked it up as it started by and waited patiently for his dad's.

David inched up in line, still watching his son. He saw him reach for the second bag and head his direction.

"Got'em dad," he said when he joined David in line.

"I see that," David said.

"How long will it take us to get home?"

"In good weather, an hour, but don't be surprised if it takes several. It all depends on the roads," David answered.

"Where are you headed?" asked the neighboring person in line.

"Princeton," David answered.

"Oh, well you're in for a time then. The interstate is slow going, but fairly clear up to Ewing, but they haven't made much progress past that. You better rent a 4x4," she advised.

"That's what I was hoping for," David agreed.

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Jason was on his assigned sleep break from the lab, but was unable to rest. He wandered down to the cafeteria and discovered that the staff had prepared an unlimited array of sandwiches free of charge courtesy of Dr. Foreman who was trapped at the hospital with everybody else. Jason went through the line and picked up a couple of sandwiches with chips and a drink and found a table. It wasn't long before he was joined by a couple of night shift lab techs that he generally only saw during shift change. Of course the conversation very quickly latched onto Susan and her pregnancy, "You see her more than we do Jason, do you know how far along she is?"

"No," Jason said.

"I'm guessing about five months," one of the ladies said drawing from her personal experience.

"I wonder if she knows what it is?" the other one asked rhetorically.

Jason rolled his eyes with exasperation, "Excuse me," he said and left them to their gossip taking his plate with him. He wandered up to the conference room and sat down to finish his meal. Taub was sitting with several text books open around him. Jason pulled one of them over and started looking at the pages that Taub had open. He didn't get the correlation between the text and the patient's condition, so his eyes wandered to the white board that still had on it listed the tests and the accompanying diseases, "Doesn't House normally work through the symptoms to come to his conclusions?"

"Yes, but since he already has an idea, I thought it would work better to figure out what he was thinking when he ordered all the tests," Taub said.

"He obviously had a number of ideas because his testing requests were all over the board ruling out a lot of conditions," Jason argued. "I think we need to start over by listing the symptoms the way he usually does and go from there." Jason got up from where he was seated and using his phone, took a picture of the board. He erased the board and started listing out the symptoms that House had written previously and then sat down.

Taub got up and listed out the symptoms that appeared after House had left the hospital.

Park walked in the room and sat down with a veggie sandwich. She watched Taub write out the new symptoms as she took a bite. The conference room phone rang and she reached over and pressed the button to answer it, "Hello?"

The voice over the intercom was crackly and there was a lot of static, but it was obviously House, "You morons come up with anything for our patient yet?"

"Good to hear your voice, where are you?" Taub asked.

"Doesn't matter, how's the patient?" House asked.

"Much better," Park said. "We've been giving him steroids and he says he feels better than he has in a long time, and the swelling in his hand is gone."

"Of course he feels better, he's on steroids. What's the diagnosis?" House asked.

"We still don't know," Taub said. "We've been running through the tests you ordered to see what your ideas were."

"My ideas?" House asked. "That's not how you run a differential, you morons. Examine the symptoms."

"There haven't been any more symptoms; he's feeling better," Taub said.

"Because you're masking any additional symptoms with the steroids; wean him off and watch him. Call me when he changes," House ordered and hung up.

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Susan watched as House hung up his cell phone noting his frustration with his team. She was still not able to get through to David or Laura, but Greg had managed to get through to the hospital in a brief window of connectivity. "Do you want some more soup?" she asked. He handed her his bowl. She re-filled it and handed it back.

"Those morons were trying to figure out what I was thinking by running through the tests that I ordered instead of working through the symptoms," House said.

Susan lifted her eyebrows, "Really….that's an interesting way to do a differential."

"It's no way to do a differential. All that does is differential my brain," House complained, "Morons."

"Pretty dangerous venture," Susan said.

"What?"

"Differentialling your brain," Susan answered.

"Funny," he said.

Susan grinned at him and left for the kitchen. She came back with six brownies, 10 Nutter Butter cookies and 10 Oreos with several paper towels. She set them down on the table and divided everything up equally and put a paper towel between them. House reached for a brownie, "Uh uh," Susan said lightly slapping his hand. "Eat that and you won't have anything to bet with." She pulled out a deck of cards and shuffled, "What's your game?" she asked.

"Brownies and cookies?" Greg asked.

"You don't think I'm actually going to gamble with real money do you?" Susan asked.

"Well, yeah if you want it to mean anything."

"It doesn't mean anything, it's just a game," Susan said. "Besides, I don't have any cash on me at the moment and it's not like I can run out to the ATM. So, either brownies and cookies, or we find something else to do until we crash for the night."

"So what's their value?" House asked.

"Well, obviously the brownies are worth the most because I made them," Susan teased. "Which do you like best, Nutter Butters or Oreos?"

"Oreos, of course."

"OK then, Oreos have the second highest value," Susan said. She dealt out the hand and waited for her brother to make his first bet.

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"About how much longer do you think it will take to get there?" Phillip asked his dad.

"We're about half way in distance son, but there's no telling about time. The closer we get to Princeton, the worse the highway is getting," he said as he passed yet another abandoned vehicle on the side of the road. The number of abandoned cars was steadily increasing the closer he got to home. The storm had been over for nearly 24 hours and the road crews were working frantically. He'd been following a snow plow at a safe distance for the last half hour. He hoped it stayed on the highway so he could continue to follow it, but it was more likely that it would exit off to go the opposite direction when they hit the next county line. "Why don't you try to call home again?"

Phillip picked up his dad's cell phone and dialed the home phone number, "It's still just that fast busy signal dad."

"Try mom's cell," David answered.

"It's ringing!" he said.

"'bout time you called," the baritone voice said on the other end.

"We've been trying to call a lot Uncle Greg," Phillip said. "This is the first time we got through."

"Put the phone on speaker," House said.

Phillip pulled the phone away from his ear and punched the button to put it on speaker, "Ok Uncle Greg, it's on speaker."

"Where are you?" he asked.

"We're just now getting into Ewing," David said. "It's still quite slick on the interstate, so we're taking it fairly slow. Do we have electricity yet?"

"No," this answer came from Susan. David was relieved to hear her voice. "Hey babe," he said. "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," Susan said. "We're camped out in the living room close to the fireplace and I'm currently taking Greg for all he's got. Hey! Eat your own winnings," she exclaimed to House when he stole her Oreo.

"They don't taste as good," Greg's voice said.

David laughed; it seemed that everything was fine at home, "OK, sounds like all is well there. I don't know how much longer we will be. It's pretty slow going."

"Just be safe," Susan said.

"Mom?"

"Yes Phillip?" Susan answered.

"What are you fixing for breakfast in the morning?"

"I'm not sure," Susan said. "I know we're having beans and cornbread for dinner. What do you want?"

"I don't know; anything as long as it isn't oatmeal," Phillip answered.

Susan laughed, "OK, no oatmeal. I'll think of something. Let's hang up the phone now so dad can concentrate on the road."

"OK," Phillip said and disconnected the line. "I'm glad it worked this time."

"Me too," David said.

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"Beans and cornbread?" House asked.

"Well, beans and something made of cornmeal. I haven't quite figured out how to bake the cornbread."

"Well, at least there'll be plenty of fuel for the fire," a sound erupting from his body that only accentuated his point.

"Really?" Susan asked. She harrumphed in disgust, "boys."

"Hey, it's a natural body function," House defended

"There are lots of natural body functions; but we don't do them in front of people," Susan argued back.

"You didn't have a problem with that earlier today."

"That was different," Susan said.

"Oh yeah, how so?"

Susan glared at him, "I could barely move I was so cold; you were helping me. Do you think I wanted you to see me like that? I'm your sister, not your wife!" Susan tossed down her cards and got up off the floor and moved to the chair sitting on it sideways with her back facing House.

House watched her get up off the floor with a rather perplexed looked on his face. He was just teasing her like he usually did. There wasn't any reason for her to get all bent out of shape, "Are you quitting the game?" he asked.

Susan didn't answer and wiped a tear from her cheek that had escaped. House sat down his cards and leaned back on the couch continuing to watch her as another tear escaped down her cheek. "Susan, I was just playing with you. Why the waterworks?"

"Because I'm stupid," Susan said.

House remained silent waiting for her to continue. After a few moments, it was obvious that wasn't going to happen without a little prodding. "OK, why are you stupid?" he asked.

"Phillip's clothes fit me, I should have gone up and got his snow suit and then you wouldn't have had to see me like that. I wasn't thinking," she answered.

House smirked to himself, she was embarrassed and hormonal; generally not a good combination for keeping her emotions on an even keel. "If you don't get down here and make your bet, I'm going to eat all your winnings."

Susan sniffed and got up from the chair and moved back to the floor to pick up her cards, "I'll see your two oreos and raise you two Oreos and two Nutter Butters," she said placing the cookies in the center of the coffee table between them.

"I didn't see anything Susan, I closed my eyes during that part," House said softly as he stared at his cards. "Your dignity is intact." He studied his cards, "Call," he said putting down his cards and matching his bet with her raise. Susan put down her cards showing she had absolutely nothing, as he knew she was. She'd been trying to bluff him, but he knew her too well for that to work which rather ruined the fun of the game. He gathered all the cookies to his side of the table. "How about I show you an old fried cornbread recipe my mother learned when dad was stationed down south?"