In hindsight, he should have known who she was right off the bat. After all, even though she had grown up since he had last seen her, she still wore the same blunt bangs. Cuddy's influence he assumes. She had been cutting her hair in the same style for as long as he could remember, and it seemed that was the case even in her teen years. That, and upon closer inspection he sees the delicate chain hanging around her neck, a simple 'R' charm attached to it.
"So it was Mommy's money that got you here then? Well, if you came here to piss her off, I'm sure you more than succeeded."
She shakes her head, "She doesn't know I'm here."
Now that certainly gets his attention.
"I see, so where do I send the ransom note? Cuddy would pay a pretty penny to make sure you weren't within 100 miles of me."
It's the first time he's said her name in years, and each syllable burns as it rolls off his tongue. He had forgotten just how good it tasted to say the word, and he hates himself even more for wanting to say it again.
Rachel glares at him, a crack in the composed persona she had going and he counts it as a personal victory that he finally got her to break a bit.
"I came here because I need your help."
"My help? I don't owe you anything, despite what your mother may believe." It's a bit harsher than he knows she deserves, but he can't stop himself.
"Yeah, you don't own me anything, and maybe you don't think you owe her but I would say otherwise. But you're going to help me, not because you have a whole lot of debt to repay, but because my mom has become a medical mystery and you love nothing more than solving a puzzle no one else can."
He had stopped listening the moment 'medical mystery' escaped her lips. He finally understood why she was here. Cuddy didn't need help solving a medical mystery, Cuddy was the medical mystery.
"Are you listening to what I'm saying?" Rachel says, her worried voice cutting through his thoughts, "House, my mom is dying and I need you to save her."
He has no choice but to give her some credit; she had shown up with a stack of medical records and a wealth of knowledge on her mothers condition.
"And I made a list of anything in the house that could make her sick," she mentions, flipping open a notebook and pointing to the page, "Because it's going to be a little hard for your team to break into my home when it's a few hundred miles away."
The list itself is nothing spectacular. Household cleaners, a slew of old medications, any plant that they keep in the house. Nothing that he thinks would cause her to get sick, but it's more than he would have without searching her home.
"Hopkins," he notes, "Sounds about right, she's too pretentious to be treated anywhere else."
"It's the best." Rachel counters, lightly glaring at him though without the conviction as before.
"I'm the best." He retorts, "And I'm not there, so it's not."
"I know, that's why I'm here."
He pulls a manila envelope towards him and flips it upside down, effectively dumping it's contents on top of the table in a mess of chart notes.
"Hey," she says, grabbing a stack of papers and shuffling them back together, "I spent so much time organizing those for you."
He shrugs and yanks a piece of paper off of the table. Her medication list, he notes. "And most of this is going to be useless. I don't need to read any of the other doctors notes to know whatever they hypothesized was wrong. Clearly, since you wouldn't be here if they weren't. Her symptoms are what matters."
Rachel reaches for another file folder and slides it across the table his way, "There, a comprehensive list of her symptoms in order of when they presented. I also put her medical history-"
"I know her medical history." He interrupts, flipping the folder open.
Rachel rolls her eyes, "You don't know her recent history. Ten years is a long time to just assume. And no, I don't know how many sexual partners she's had between then and now, before you ask, you freak."
If he were nicer, he would give her credit for knowing what his next question would be. But he isn't, and he certainly isn't going to let her have the satisfaction of out foxing him before he even gets to ask. It crosses his mind that Cuddy must have spoken about him on more than one occasion. Rachel wouldn't know what his next step would be without being told beforehand.
And if there was one person who knew what his next move would be in any given situation, it was Lisa Cuddy.
"I prefer the time 'sicko', if you're going to call me names. Adds more to the image I project. Freak is just childish, and I know your mother taught you better than that. I don't know what image she's painted of herself, but she's no Mother Theresa. Woman has a foul mouth and temper."
Rachel snorts and brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear, "Yeah, I know. I went through puberty with her, I know how she can be when she's frustrated. So, her symptoms."
And just like that, she reroutes the conversation around him and back to her point. He can't help but note how much she's like her mother.
"Fever, nausea, headache, body aches. It's fall, it's flu season, and she works in a hospital. Probably was dumb enough to let some kid cough in her face and now she's sick." He tells her.
"They ruled out the flu, which you would know if you read the notes I brought."
"I don't waste my time reading something that isn't going to help me. And why we're on it, how'd you get these records, huh? I know your mother wouldn't hand them over willingly without suspecting you were up to something. So tell me, how'd you manage to get her entire history?" He asks her.
A sheepish look glosses over her features, and she runs a nervous hand through her hair, "Well, I may or may not have forged her signature on a record release, and dropped it off at the medical records department with explicit instructions to release all files to her daughter, written in her handwriting."
For a moment, he becomes weirdly proud of her. Perhaps all the training and cheating he did to get her accepted into preschool stuck with her some. How her mother must despise it.
"Sneaky and illegal. I like it. Keep going, what else has she been exhibiting?"
"Well, I know her white blood cell count is high but-"
"-She didn't respond to any standard antibiotics. Yeah, what else?"
"Um," Rachel pauses, "She developed skin lesions. And before I left she was beginning to have breathing difficulty."
"What did the lesions look like?" He questions.
"I don't know? They weren't like, big or anything. They looked sort of like blisters but not quite. I thought they looked infected but the doctors told me they weren't, and when I asked mom she told me she trusted what they were saying."
"Your mom is an idiot. And if she trusts them so much, and you trust her, why are you here?"
He's caught her, he realizes. There's a hesitation behind her eyes that is almost painfully obvious.
"She hates me, and I hate her. There's no reason you would risk her finding out you even spoke to me let alone met up with me. So, what's the real reason you're here?"
Her stupefied looks morphs into something he doesn't quite recognize; a cross somewhere between anger and defeat. He's seen Cuddy wear the same look and it makes him want to throw up.
"She doesn't hate you."
He lets out a dry laugh, "You're delusional."
Rachel shakes her head, "She doesn't. I think she tried to convince herself she did, but I know her, and I know she could never hate you. God, she never shuts up about you. For someone she claims to not like she sure brings you up a lot. 'House this', 'House that'. She's never talked about anyone like she talks about you."
"Lot of years to talk about, that doesn't mean anything."
"Well, sure, but she doesn't have to talk about you. So yeah, I am here because I want you to find out what's wrong with her, but I'm also here because if something were to happen, I wouldn't forgive her for just letting go without having the guts to ask to see the person she recounts as the love of her life."