This is a crack!AU inspired by DreamsofSpike's "Dark Redux". Assuming I can keep it up, there's going to be one chapter per episode, based on the episode. When I'm done with season one, I'll declare CollarRedux a complete story... and move on to CollarRedux2, second season stories. This may look like H/S for a while, but the overall story is always going to be House/Wilson... just like the series, lololol.

1.21 Three Stories

He's so thin.

She'd even wondered if she would recognize him. She'd had some bad dreams about that. Lisa Cuddy had said, the only time they'd spoken since the bad time, He's changed. You wouldn't know him.

He was thinner than before. Just as tall. Walked with a cane. She knew him.

"House," she said.

He had been heading towards the lecture-theater doors, bypassing the clinic. He stopped when he heard her voice, turned, and stilled. His eyes were very wide in his thin face, and there were lines that hadn't been there before. There were tiny streaks of grey in his hair. He looked at her as if she was about to hit him - as if she had already hit him - and she thought, as all the bad dreams ran away on meeting reality, that she would have known him anywhere.

"Hi, Stacy," he said.

She walked up to him. He was resting both hands on his cane, planted in front of him. His wary look did not change.

"How're you doing?" The words came out of her mouth automatically. She wanted to weep and she wanted to hold him.

"How am I doing?" House echoed her words. He didn't smile. "Well, the last five years have been like... you ever see those 'Girls Gone Wild' videos?"

"Your life's been like that, or your life's been spent watching them?"

Ten years ago, she had fallen in love with him when they both laughed at the same moment, at something someone else had said that no one else seemed to think was funny, including the person who said it. Five years ago, she'd fallen in love with Mark in a shared laugh. The shared laugh had whittled down to a shared smile, but they still had it.

"I have missed you," she said.

House went tense. "Is that why you're here?"

She had known she couldn't have House and Mark. She'd chosen Mark: the most rational and most painful decision she'd ever made. Not coming back to see House had been an act of self-preservation. She would never have come back just because she missed him.

She shook her head, not knowing whether that would hurt him more, but she couldn't lie to him. "I need your help." She handed him the bundle of papers and films, the essential information for Mark's life. He had to shift his stick to one hand to take them. The free clinic's reception counter was a few steps away: he went over to lay the records out on the desk, and she watched him walking.

When Cuddy had tried to persuade her to come back, she had said they had removed a large piece of dead muscle from his right thigh. He was still lame five years later. He used the stick on his right side, an odd balancing act that looked strangely graceful: he was still an athlete, even crippled.

She saw his head begin to turn, and joined him at the counter.

"Who am I looking at?" he asked.

"My husband."

His face was impassive. His voice had an edge of pain in it that he couldn't disguise. "Who is suffering abdominal pain and fainting spells. No sign of tumors, no vasculitis. Could be indigestion, or maybe a kidney stone. A little one, can pack a lot of wallop."

"There is no kidney stone, no indigestion. Three hospitals, five doctors, not one of them found anything."

House turned away from the files spread out on the counter. He looked at her. "Well, maybe there's nothing to be found."

"Right, you suddenly trust doctors, love puppies and long walks in the rain."

He shook his head. She was standing between him and the lecture-hall doors: he stepped to one side to get round her. "The walks are out."

It took a moment to gather the records up again, and in that moment, he'd managed to get surprisingly far across the foyer. Stacy caught up with him and stood in front of him again. He turned his head away.

"I was around you long enough to know when something s not right. Mark's had personality changes, he's acting strange, disconnected..."

"Interesting," House said. He was still looking across the foyer, not looking at her. "It means there's either a neurological component or he's having an affair."

"No affair, no nothing!" Stacy wanted to grab him, shake him, but - all his body language was defensive. Scared. As if he expected her to do that. "He's sick! I'm asking you a favor."

"I understand that." House looked at her, seeming to drink the sight of her in. "I'm not sure I want him to live." He set off towards the lecture-room doors, adding, briefly, as he passed her "It's good seeing you again."

A security guard was standing at her elbow. She realized she had been standing, staring, watching him go, with her eyes full of tears, in the middle of a crowded foyer.

"Ma'am, are you all right?"

"Yes," she said, automatically. The guard must be since her time. He was even taller than House, forcing her to look up at him a long way, but he sounded kind.

"Did you want to lay a complaint?" he asked. He jerked a hand at the lecture-room doors, and she saw House had reached them and was about to enter. "He say something inappropriate?"

"No," Stacy said. She supposed she should go see Lisa Cuddy. But putting the request for Diagnostics services on a formal level meant ... technically, it meant House had no right to refuse. She'd never done that to him before. She didn't want to do it to him now. If he was filling in for one of the lecturers, he'd be done in an hour or so. She could wait. "No," she said. "He said nothing that wasn't ... appropriate."

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

Doctor Riley had missed five lectures so far this academic year: his replacement was, three times out of five, the skinny white doctor who walked with a cane.

Diagnosing from leg pain was the theme of the lecture: a couple of the front-row students were arguing with him about the right way to handle a patient, claiming huge pain, who appeared to be doing it for Demerol.

"No," the lecturer said, "you did exactly what his attending did."

"And that was the proper way to handle the case?"

"Yeah."

"The guy used him as a dealer!"

"You're going to see a lot of drug-seeking behavior in your practice, and there's a reason: it works. In this instance, when the hospital looked into this guy's work record, they decided he might have reasons to want to get high right then, and they gave him two days off work with bed rest and a heat pad so that if there was a muscle strain it could get better, and whether or not there was, he could get bored. Let's move on to the farmer - "

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

"Doctor Cuddy, Stacy Warner is here," her PA said.

"Well, send her in," Cuddy said. She was doing paperwork, and would have been glad of an interruption.

"She's not here to see you. I think. She's just waiting in the lobby."

"Waiting? For who?"

"According to Nurse Previn, she tried to show Greg some patient records. They exchanged a few words, and then Greg went on to give the lecture."

There were hospital rules about non-staff non-patients non-relatives who spent too long in the lobby: someone just hanging about was a concern for the security staff. None of those concerns applied to Warner, who was presumably just waiting for Greg to finish the lecture, but Cuddy didn't like to just decree that rules shouldn't apply.

"Ask her if she'd like to see me in my office," Cuddy said. "If not, ask her if she'd like to wait in the staff canteen."

If there was a patient Stacy wanted diagnosed, she would have to talk to Cuddy sooner or later.

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

"...drug addicts are stupid."

"I'd call the cops."

"Good for you. A lot of doctors wouldn't risk their careers on a hunch."

The white student at the front sounded confused. "It's not a hunch, I mean, I know he wants drugs."

"I believe drug addicts get sick," the lecturer said. "Actually, for some reason they tend to get sick more often than non-drug addicts. Luckily, you don t have to play your hunch, there s a faster way. Actually, there are several. My preference is urine testing."

"But you already know he has drugs in his system."

"That s not what you're testing for." The lecturer shifted a little in his seat. "What this hospital's practice is, with walk-ins or slaves who claim they're sick and there's good reason to assume they're lying to get drugs, is to test their urine at source with a catheter up the urethra into the bladder, without anesthetic. If a person can handle a rod through the urethra for half an hour, they're really sick."

"Or really jonesing."

"There's easier ways to get hold of drugs."

The lecturer had been crayoning a spot on a piece of paper: he held it up to the class. It was ugly: a brownish, orangish blob.

"What would you call that? That's tea-colored, right? The guy who we thought was just after the drugs... what's the differential diagnosis for urine that s tea-colored?"

"Kidney stone," one of the other front-row students said.

"Kidney stones would cause what?"

"Blood in urine."

"What color is your pee?"

"Yellow."

"What color is your blood?"

"Red."

"What colors did I use?"

"Red, yellow and brown."

"And brown. What causes brown?"

"Wastes." The front-row kid was sounding increasingly anxious, because this lecturer's pattern was to ask obvious questions with obvious answers that were mostly right until the last one was wrong and the lecturer blew up. That was why back row was a good place to sit in Riley's class, at least until he stopped being sick all the time.

So far none of the answers had been wrong.

"Which means the kidneys are shutting down. Why?"

"Trauma."

"None that his history would indicate."

"Could be damage done by the self-injection of the Demerol."

"Treatment?"

"Heat and rest - "

"Other possible causes."

"Infection."

"Start him on antibiotics. What else?"

The front-row student hesitated. The lecturer's voice was ramping up, indicating he was on the verge of a blow-up, but so far all the answers had been obvious and right.

"Come on, come on!" the lecturer said, nearly exploding.

"I - I don t know," the kid said.

"You're useless," the lecturer said. "But at least you know it. Blood tests show elevated creatine kinase, what does that tell you?"

The white student who'd argued said "The trauma diagnosis is right. He takes it easy for a few days, he'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"The elevated CK rules out infection - "

"You know what's worse than useless? Useless and oblivious." The lecturer looked at another front-row student, the brown-noser. "What are they missing?"

"You know, it's kind of hard to think when you're in our face like this - " This was something everyone in the class had wanted to say to skinny white cane-guy at some point: it was hard to think when he blew up, and he blew up at least once a class.

"Yeah? You think it's going to be easier when you've got a real patient really dying?" He looked at the whole room, seeming to take in every student. "What are you missing?"

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

The woman in the staff canteen with a pile of papers and films in front of her wasn't on the staff: she was beautiful, and she was crying. She looked familiar, though Wilson couldn't remember where from.

Wilson had been dealing with tears from Julie every time he went home, angry tears, exploding rage, tearful rows - Julie couldn't get over her husband hiring a PI to prove she was having an affair, she kept coming back to it, the lack of trust, the betrayal, the humiliation of being shown the photographs by her own lawyer -

This woman was crying about as little as someone in a public place could be crying. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she blotted them carefully with a napkin.

A empty cup with a teabag in the saucer stood in front of her. When Wilson got to the cash register, he ordered a tea and a coffee: they had carrot cake, and he chose a slice.

"Excuse me," Wilson said, "I noticed you'd finished your tea." He put the fresh cup, and the plate with the cake, in front of her. She looked up, startled, and he saw the name on one of the papers: WARNER. She was the woman in the photograph Greg had kept.

He'd meant to nod and walk on. He really had.

"Sorry," he said. "I work here - I'm one of the doctors on staff."

"I used to work here," she said. Her voice was hoarse. "A few years ago."

"Doctor Wilson. I'm head of oncology." He held out his hand.

She shook it; "Oh yes. Doctor Martin must finally have retired."

"Last year."

"It took him that long?" She smiled, briefly. "Good to meet you. I'm Stacy Warner - I'm a lawyer."

"James Wilson."

"James? Or Jim?"

"James. Thanks for asking."

"I used to know a guy who hated being called 'Gregory'," she said, as if that was an explanation.

Wilson shrugged with a little frown, as if he hadn't heard the name. He picked up his coffee cup and made to move on.

"Do you want your cake?"

"I bought it for you," Wilson said, turning back. He smiled at her. "I don't know if your problems are beyond cake, but I thought it couldn't hurt."

"Oh, let's share it," Warner said. "I shouldn't eat a whole piece of that."

Wilson collected a second plate, a knife, and another fork: with dexterity, he managed to get half the slice on to the second plate.

"You know, they served carrot cake like this five years ago," Warner said. "I think they get it from a local bakery. I never tried to find out. I used to buy myself a slice, and then a... friend would come by and he'd eat easily half the slice. From my plate."

"I would have told him to buy his own cake," Wilson said. (Greg?) He was lying: he could see Greg doing that, and, like Warner, he would probably have enjoyed watching Greg stealing mouthfuls of cake and fingerfuls of cream frosting.

Warner half-smiled and shrugged. "How long have you worked here?"

"For two years," Wilson said. "I was hired with a view to Doctor Martin's retirement. Are you coming back to work here?"

"No," Warner said. "I left ... I never planned to work in New Jersey again."

"Whoa. Trouble with the Mafia?"

Warner laughed. "You could say I was getting away from ... a friend."

Wilson looked at her. "Is this the friend who used to steal your cake? Moving state seems a rather drastic way of dealing with a cake-thief."

She was still smiling, but tears were overflowing again. Her voice was controlled, a little hoarse. "I met someone else. Someone I had a future with. I thought ... a clean break was best. I heard he'd been hurt, after I left, but I just saw him... "

"And you came in here in search of tea," Wilson said sympathetically.

"Yes," Warner said. She drank the tea. "Thank you."

Wilson ate his half of the cake, and drank coffee. Greg was lecturing this morning. Doctor Riley was off sick. Greg was wary and careful around Wilson, but Cameron wasn't the problem: Greg had been delivered back to the hospital in good time, and claimed his oxycontin tablets from the pharmacy, hours after his usual time.

Cameron was an idiot. Cameron was a fellowship holder. Cameron wasn't the problem.

If Warner still meant anything to Greg, she was a problem.

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

Warner had said explicitly that she didn't want to see Cuddy, her PA reported on return, but she'd gone to the canteen readily, and he'd settled her at a table with some tea.

"When Greg's done with his lecture, bring him here. Not urgent."

Maybe Vogler had been right. Maybe letting Warner tag Greg had been a bad move. But for five years, it had worked. Greg had worked hard, seemed happy, seemed contented.

Maybe when Warner had left they ought to have put Greg under strict discipline immediately. But it had seemed natural enough that Greg would react badly, it had seemed unreasonable to whip him for acting out grief and loss. When he complained of leg pain, to one of the other clinic doctors, Cuddy would have assumed he was using muscular strain as an excuse to get high on something stronger than he could access himself.

When it was clear he was really, genuinely sick, Cuddy had tried to get Warner to come back - and Warner had said no.

Cuddy picked up a pen and played with it. She never had said to Warner explicitly, "He could die: come back if you want to see him while he's still alive." Greg was a slave. Warner had never known him when he was free.

Technically, he had died. The millions of dollars he was worth, the hundreds of thousands they had invested in him at that point, had very nearly all turned into a carcass worth an interesting dissection and a complicated insurance claim, given their insurers could claim it was carelessness on the part of his owner that had killed him. According to the nurse on duty, Greg had demanded more calcium gluconate to stave off white count complex tachycardia, and had still been arguing with her about whether she could give it to him when he crashed.

But it would certainly have been useful to have someone whom Greg trusted on the hospital staff, to explain the hospital's decisions to him. Warner hadn't even started her new job. She could have come back. "Clean break," she'd said, and refused.

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

"The patient suggested muscle death and asked for an MRI," the lecturer said. "None of the other doctors thought of it, just as none of you thought of it. After four days of extreme pain, the MRI of his leg showed an infarction. The four-day blockage of blood flow had caused muscle cell death. The dead cells had released cytokines and potassium."

"None of the other doctors?" the front-row kid asked. "Was the patient a doctor?"

"Yes."

"I thought you said he was a slave."

"Slaves can be doctors, if they got a medical licence before they got enslaved. The patient suggested restoring the blood flow instead of just lopping off the leg above the infarction site."

"The amount of waste that would get washed back into the patient's system could kill him." - "The post-operative pain alone could kill him."

"Yes," the lecturer agreed. "At one point in the recovery period, the patient had cardiac failure and was technically dead for over a minute. The patient preferred the hazards of this course to an amputation: the patient's owners considered the costs of a prosthetic limb and agreed to the cheaper course."

"Isn't that immoral? Front row kid waved her hand. "We're supposed to care equally about all our patients. Free or slave."

"When you graduate, if you work for any institution that owns slaves, you will find that your right to care equally about your patients that are the property of the institution, is governed by the institution's right not to go bankrupt caring for them. It's illegal to kill a slave. It's illegal to deny a slave medical treatment so that they die. It's not illegal to balance costs and value and pay only for the treatment that will keep a slave functional. This is a class on diagnostics, not medical ethics."

"But - " front row kid tried to interrupt, but the lecturer kept talking.

"To keep the slave alive and functional, the slave's owner decided the safest course was to debride the dead muscle tissue from the damaged leg. Because of the extent of the muscle removed, utility of the slave's leg was severely compromised. Because of the time delay in making the diagnosis, the slave continues to experience chronic pain, requiring an expensive maintenance program of painkillers to keep the slave functional. Eventually, the cost of the maintenance program will exceed the value of the slave, at which point, the utility of keeping the slave functional will be compromised."

He stopped, and the front-row students started to argue. The back-row student, who had noticed some time ago that the polo-neck the lecturer always wore concealed a collar, remained silent.

"So the prosthetic leg would have been the better choice."

"What the patient wanted should have been the better choice."

"But the slave could have died, and if he was dead, he wasn't worth anything."

"They knew he didn t want the surgery."

"The surgery saved his life!"

"Well, we don't know that. Maybe he would have been fine - "

"It doesn't matter. It's the patient's call."

"Not if he's a slave, and anyway, he's an idiot!"

The lecturer half-laughed. "They usually are." He glanced at the clock. "I overran. You guys are going to be late for lunch. Go."

*House*MD*House*MD*House*MD*House*

The rush of students that came out, talking noisily among themselves, sounded like it had been a successful class. House came last. He was walking slowly, not looking up.

He passed her and stopped. He didn't look at her.

"I don't have a patient right now. Get him to come in tomorrow at ten. Doctor Cameron can take a history. I'll see him when I'm done with clinic hours."

"Thank you," Stacy said.

"Make sure your husband isn't late."

The security guard appeared. House looked over at him. "I think I'm wanted," he said, without expression. "If I'm not available tomorrow, talk to Cuddy."

*tbc*

Not sure when... but the next episode is season finale and then I get to move on to the next season! for a while I never thought I'd get there...