January 13th

"Thirty-six year old male presents with hemolytic anemia and cola-colored urine." Chandler hunches over the file as if it's her job to protect it.

"And why should we take this guy?" Greg can't resist the question, though it's a legitimate one anyway. Chandler glares at him. It's plain she's gotten up on the wrong side of her narrow, empty twin bed today. She looks tired, though she's as neat and tidy in a dreary sort of way as ever.

"He's been to half a dozen doctors," she snaps. "None of them have a single damn clue beyond those two symptoms."

"You could say that about most of the cases we get," Chase points out. He sips his coffee. "What makes this one special?"

Chandler looks uncertain but determined. "I don't know," she says, but there's something in her tone that belies her statement. She's not quite sure that's true. Well, he can't let her get away with that; time to instill some wisdom. Socrates, eat your heart out.

"Not good enough," he says aloud. "Still, I've decided to be gracious because I'm in a good mood." He and Roz had pretty decent sex off his morning wood a few hours ago; the team's heard him brag enough times at this point to know why he's so good-natured. "You have thirty seconds to come up with three valid reasons for us to take this guy on."

To her credit, Chandler doesn't waste time in protest. "One, of the dozen doctors he's seen, no one has the slightest idea what's going on," she says. Her dark eyes gleam with the light of challenge. "Two, his symptoms are just bizarre because he doesn't seem to have any beyond the anemia and the dark urine, but something is clearly very wrong. And three . . ." She pauses. "Three, um . . . I . . . I really want to help him."

"Ooooohhh, so close!" Greg heaves a dramatic sigh. "Missed it by this much," he holds up his thumb and forefinger; their tips just barely touch. Probably only Singh has watched enough TVLand to get the reference. Sure enough, Sandesh hides a smile. Chase and Chandler give him blank looks.

"Oh, balls," Chandler says. She hangs onto the folder, refuses to give it up, literally or symbolically. "My wanting to work on it is a valid reason."

"For you," Chase says. "Just because you're obsessed doesn't mean the rest of us are."

"I'm not obsessed! I just think we have a good shot at helping this patient!"

"'We'?" Greg says in a mild tone. There is a brief, charged silence.

"Yeah, we," Chandler says finally. "We're a team, aren't we?"

"Glad you understand that," Greg says, still in that mild voice. "But let's get something straight. You, Apu and the Aussie are a team. I am your dictator, a despot, a proud monarch sitting alone and aloof on his mighty seat of power, which is not the toilet in case that's what you were thinking, and I say no, we are not taking this guy on."

"You're saying no just to say no," Chandler shoots back. "So give me a valid reason beyond your power of veto."

Oh, this is fun. This is why he hired her, at least in part—the endless entertainment value. That, and her tenacity. "You think I owe you an explanation, some kind of rationale for my behavior," he says. Chase leans back, his expression one of wry amusement; he's been on the receiving end of this speech on numerous occasions. He knows what's ahead.

"Yeah, I do," Chandler says. Greg leans forward.

"No," he says. "Next case."

"Oh, come on!" She stands up, with the folder clutched to her sad little excuse of a bosom. "Fine, if you won't take it on I will."

"In your capacious spare time?" Greg mocks.

"Since you've left me no choice, yes."

"You always have choices," he says. "Fine. You can work on this outside your regular hours. Stay up all night, sleep in the kitchen, but it can't affect the time you spend with the case the rest of the team chooses to work on."

"You said 'case'," Chandler points out. "Singular, not plural? So you admit mine is worth—"

"We have room for two patients, that's it," Greg says. "Reading more into a gesture than was intended explains so much about you and that acrid desert in which you've decided to exist."

Singh shakes his head. Chase winces in mock sympathy. Chandler stares at Greg like he's lost his mind. "You . . . you have no right to say that," she mutters finally. "You can't say that to me!"

"Why, because it's the truth? Pffft." He flaps a hand at her. "Move on. Next candidate."

Singh takes the hint. He opens his file and says, "Fifteen year-old female presenting with pupil constriction, drooping eyelid and anhidrosis on the left side—"

"Tumor, has to be," Chase says. "It's that or a bulging artery pressing on the nerves around the eye."

"Tests indicate nothing out of the ordinary," Singh says.

They argue back and forth while Chandler pouts, her expression pinched, sullen. It's clear she has no intention to participate, so Greg decides to call her on it. "Nothing to add, oh champion of the downtrodden patient?" he says.

"They've covered it all," Chandler says. He narrows his eyes at her.

"Seriously? Because from where I'm sitting, your job description includes actual participation in differential diagnoses."

"What's the point? You're just gonna shoot me down anyway," Chandler snaps. Greg offers her a bright smile, though it probably looks more like a snotty smirk to her.

"Never know till you try," he says. She gives him a suspicious glare, then glances at Chase and Singh, both of whom just look back at her.

"Okay, well," she says with caution, "maybe we should test again for a tumor near the eye—"

"Gee, that's a great plan, I'm totally in favor, let's do it!" Greg says with every bit of fake enthusiasm he can muster, and stands up. "Get this patient admitted and do it now before you waste any more of their time and mine with this idiocy." He heads out of the conference room and into the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee and finds McMurphy with the carafe in hand as she scrubs it clean.

"Any time you want to get around to brewing a new pot it would be appreciated—and I use the word 'brew' advisedly, considering your true vocation as resident witch. Actually that's spelled incorrectly, but you know how English grammar rules are. W in place of b in public conversations," he says. McMurphy shoots him a look that can best be described as inimical.

"If you want a constant supply of caffeine, I suggest you stop leaving a tablespoon of the old batch behind to cook into tar," she says in that dry way he's come to expect, and maybe even relish a bit already.

"Your assumption I'm the guilty party says more about you than it does about me," he retorts. "Though I have to say that your rule about the person who takes the last cup making a new batch is easily thwarted when that last person leaves oh, say, a little coffee for someone else to drink."

"If I may point out the elephant in the room, why does it only happen when you're here?" she asks. "Just for that I'm reimbursing myself from the petty cash for the last two weeks of buying stuff at the bakery."

"Cheapskate!" he calls after her, and takes another doughnut from the box on the counter. They're all covered with hideous neon-pink icing and yellow sprinkles, a passive-aggressive revenge for the snow fort complete with towers built in her parking space. He'd only done it because she had forgotten to get Jake, the local snow maintenance guy, on contract and both Chase and Singh had bitched for ages about being sent out to shovel his space and everyone else's. He'd told them to get creative with the piled-up snow . . .

An hour later, while surfs for inventive positions he, Roz and his right quadriceps can try out, Chase sticks his head in the door. "Everything's set," he says. "I'm off to pick up our patient."

"Thought it was Singh's turn at chauffeur duty."

"Yeah, but his youngest has a recital tonight." Chase shrugs. "It's not as if I'm doing anything anyway."

"What, no hot date with a posse of local cheerleaders?" Greg sits back, amused. "Finding the pool of available talent a bit lacking?"

"Chase tilts his head. "Gosh, I didn't know you cared."

"I don't. Not since I got my own anyway." Greg puts his hands behind his head. Chase smiles a little.

"She's a good catch, your Roz," he says. "She have any sisters, cousins, best friends?"

"No. Off you go," Greg says, and dismisses his minion with a wave of his hand.

"When do I get my money back from the last time I drove? I kept the receipts."

"Can't hear you!" Greg says loudly. "Don't spend too much time trolling the fleshpots of Syracuse! Bye bye!"

Chase rolls his eyes and departs.

It's noon now, give or take a few minutes, and he's officially run out of things to keep him occupied. There's no point in any further delay; might as well go home, maybe stop on the way to pick up some things for the game tonight. Roz usually makes sure there's plenty of chips and beer on hand, but right now he craves pretzels, the kind you get in those big barrels in the party aisle, and maybe some pizza rolls, and another six-pack of that local pale ale Gunney discovered a month or so ago.

He's in the store, just gone past the dairy section when his phone rings. The caller is an unexpected one however. "Doctor House," Mandy says. She sounds scared but determined to stay calm, even though her voice shakes a little. "I think something's wrong. Jason got taken out of class earlier this morning, it was his—his dad, his biological father. Jason didn't want to go, but the teacher made him—" She stops, then continues. "He hasn't come back. I tried to call him but it went to voicemail. I called Doctor Sarah too, but no one's answering at the house and I got voicemail on her personal number too."

"You called just now?" Greg says sharply. A cold little worm of foreboding burrows into his belly.

"A few minutes ago, when lunch started."

"Did Jason say anything to you?"

"He tried to, but they took him out of the room too fast . . ." Mandy falls silent and Greg gives her credit—she hasn't freaked out, though she wants to.

"Talk to the teacher, see if you can find out anything. Call me back if you do." It's not like Sarah to not answer her phone. She usually goes in early to work at Lou's for several hours of food prep and to help out with the lunch crowd, but she keeps her cell turned on. "If anyone gives you a hard time, tell them to contact me."

"Okay." Mandy sounds a lot younger when she speaks again. "I'm afraid Jason's dad will hurt him."

There's no answer to that; Greg hangs up and abandons the cart, moves at high speed out of the store and down to the little hole in the wall police station.

"Okay, we'll check it out," Matt the cop says. "I can go by Dave Bramble's place, see what's what. God knows I won't have to look up the address, we're out there every coupla weeks for something or other." He gets up and puts on his jacket. He wears a gun; Greg wonders if he's ever used it for anything besides shooting mangled half-dead roadkill deer.

"I'll be at Lou's," Greg says with reluctance; he'd love to hand all this off to someone else, but at the moment he is that someone else. "You'll be getting calls from people with more information as it comes in. We'd better trade numbers."

"Got it," Matt says. They do so and he heads out, calm and unflappable in his winter gear.

Lou's place is busy but there's no sign of Sarah. "She didn't come in," Lou says. "I called the house and no one answered. Her phone went to voicemail. I thought I'd close for an hour after lunch and check on her." He gives Greg a look that goes right through him. "What's going on?"

He wants to be flippant but he can't, not about this. "She might be in trouble."

Lou doesn't hesitate. "What do you want me to do?"

"Dunno, still trying to figure out what's going on. If Roz calls—" Shit. He flinches and pulls out his phone.

"Hey amante," Roz says when she answers. "What's up?"

He tells her, makes it plain and simple. She doesn't interrupt. When he's done she says "I think I know where Dave might be headed. If I'm right it's going to be tough to find him and anyone he has with him."

"You mean the summer cabins at the lake," he says, as his heart sinks.

"And the ones higher up on the mountain," Roz says quietly.

"You need to let the cops know," Greg says. His mouth is dry. That's a huge area to cover; it'll take days.

"I'll call Jake. I'm on my way, see you shortly. Love you," and she's gone. Greg starts to put his phone away when it rings again. It's Mandy.

"The teacher said Mr. Bramble told the principal he had permission to take Jason to a family gathering." She is outraged. "I bet she didn't even check to see if it was true!"

"That idiot needs to be drawn and quartered and then fired," he mutters. "All right, I'll tell the police." He makes a quick call to Jake. When he hangs up he is aware his heart pounds, and an odd feeling flutters around his brain. Panic, he realizes. He pushes it down with an expertise he hasn't used in a while, and assesses the situation. Have to call Gunney. Gene is in Albany, due back tomorrow. With a sigh he hits speed dial.

"I'll be there in three hours. Give me updates," is all Gene says before he hangs up. Greg puts his phone in his pocket and goes back to Barbarella. All he can do now is wait for the various elements set in motion to produce results. It strikes him then that this situation is much like an initial diagnosis, with the team sent out to get a history and set up tests . . . but never before have the results mattered so much.