Little short chapter right now, simply because I do not want to break up the next one. Next one will be long enough to balance them out. :)

Thanks for the reviews.

(H/C)

"Great. Let me know if anything else comes up, otherwise add one more to our score card." House snapped his cell phone shut. "Patient is responding to conservative treatment. It's class B, not Class A, fortunately. Hopefully he can dodge surgery."

"It tastes better before it gets cold," Wilson pointed out. House picked up his fork. They were having a late lunch at Cuddy's before Wilson went to work and Cuddy, Rachel, and House headed for Middletown.

House's eyes were still glowing. "They would have missed that chest x-ray. Foreman even disagreed with me." The patient of the morning had been diagnosed at this point with a very subtle aortic dissection by MRI, with the further imaging insisted upon by House's reading of the chest x-ray. House thought that the mediastinum was very slightly widened, an opinion that no one else on the team shared, although Kutner of course was trying hard to see what his boss saw, simply failing to. Foreman had flat-out disagreed. The MRI had confirmed, though.

"Yes, you're an awesome doctor. We all know. But it still tastes better before it gets cold," Wilson insisted.

House rolled his eyes at him. "Cut me some slack. I've been away from medical puzzles for a week. I was going into withdrawal." He wolfed down a couple of bites.

"Speaking of chest x-rays, remember that yours still has a few infiltrates in the bases," Cuddy put in.

"Very faint infiltrates, hardly worth mentioning," House pointed out. "Compared to the one last Friday night, it's a whole lot better. This one's practically normal."

"Even so, I want you on oral antibiotics for the next 10 days, and by that I mean actually taking them on schedule. And I want you to rest and not push yourself. Full nights of sleep each night." Cuddy's tone was firm.

"I'm fine," House said. He really did look much better, and he was right, today's chest x-ray had been a world of improvement over the one from Middletown. He was clearly on the mend, but Cuddy intended to keep a close eye on him.

"Well, I'd better get to the hospital," Wilson said. He stood up, tickled Rachel under her chin, and pulled on his coat. "Have a good afternoon, everybody."

"You don't really have to take me," House insisted after Wilson left.

"Yes, I do," Cuddy said firmly. "I realize you're on an adrenaline high right now, but you are not back to normal yet, and you don't need four hours round trip of driving today. Save your energy for your mother."

"What are you going to do?" House asked. "Hanging around waiting rooms gets old fast."

"I thought we might go to a mall or something. Look through toy shops. I might get her a new bear." Cuddy stuck that last in just to insert the word into conversation, and sure enough, House tensed up instantly. What on earth was his problem with bears? And why on earth would he refuse to tell her, if it had nothing to do with his childhood?

"Good idea," he said softly after a moment, and he diligently applied his full attention to his plate. Cuddy watched him surreptitiously as she finished her own lunch, but he seemed totally lost in thought, not even aware of her glances.

She sighed mentally and stood up. "I'm going to run through the bathroom and make sure her diaper bag has everything I need. Keep an eye on her for a few minutes, okay?"

"Sure." House scooted his chair over closer to Rachel, whose carrier was on the table. "I can probably manage that as long as she doesn't really need anything." His words weren't sarcastic at all, just matter of fact.

Cuddy sighed again, wishing she could kick him out of the handicapped rut she herself had kicked him into. Having no words of apology other than those already offered, she headed back to the bathroom and then to the nursery. Maybe Jensen could talk some sense into him. She knew that House wanted to talk about strategies with his mother, but Jensen knew from her call Tuesday that this week also had had a few issues. Hopefully he would be perceptive enough to extract the story of yesterday as well as Tuesday morning and help House deal with it better.

When she came down the hall a few minutes later, diaper bag slung over her shoulder, House was trying to explain to Rachel the correct geometric name of each shape on her brightly colored shape string. Cuddy stood there for a moment smiling, and House looked up at her. "Never too early to start lessons," he said.

"I think she needs to start out with something like Mama before she progresses to parallelogram."

"I was not telling her parallelogram. Precision, Cuddy. It's a rhombus." House pushed himself to his feet, flinching.

"Did you . . ."

"Whatever you're about to ask, yes, I took it." He gave his pocket a hard pat, producing a rattle like a pharmacy. Rachel came to attention slightly and cooed. House rattled again, and she smiled. "Nope, kid, you can't have these to play with. There are better-tasting rattles available. Ask your mother for Tic-Tacs."

"Tic-Tacs aren't appropriate for the under-6-month age group," Cuddy stated drily. "Are you ready?"

"Let me go through the bathroom." He limped off down the hall, and Cuddy fished an actual rattle out of the playpen and offered it to Rachel. Rachel smiled at her. "Okay," House stated, coming back into the living room. "Only I call the front seat this time."

Cuddy smiled. House stood by rather helplessly while she collected purse, diaper bag, and carrier. With two sore arms, the better of which had to deal with his cane and support his worse-than-usual leg, he wasn't really able to carry much of anything at the moment. "I'll lock the door," he offered.

"Thank you." Cuddy headed out to her car, and by the time she had Rachel buckled into her car seat in the back, House was in the front seat. "You can take a nap on the way up if you want."

"Referring to her or me? Good idea for her, but I'm fine."

"You've just got a long day ahead still, between Jensen and your mother."

"I'm not tired," he insisted. She started the car, and House immediately started fiddling with the radio settings, changing stations every song. She left him alone, focusing on the fairly heavy traffic until they cleared the city limits. Once out on the highway, she looked over at him, planning to give her approval of the current radio station, which he apparently liked, too, as it had been on for several songs now.

He wasn't listening to it. He was sound asleep, his head leaning against the window, his mouth slightly open. Cuddy glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Rachel in a fairly similar posture in her car seat. "Nope, not tired at all, are you? Perfectly fine," she said, but her voice was soft.

With a smile on her face, she pointed the car towards Middletown.