"So you what... want me to kiss it better?" House looked down at the young boy sitting in front of him with a skinned knee, his mother sat beside him, cooing soft words of encouragement and promising him a big present afterwards for being so good for the doctor.
"It hurts." The boy said smartly.
"Yes well, usually flying off of a skateboard and landing in a pit of gravel does hurt a little, I don't know though. I've never tried, It's on my to-do list."
"I think it needs to be cleaned." The mother said.
"Uh... huh." House leaned on his cane for a moment and stared at the woman, then back to her son, back to the mother and then the son once again.
"And... you want me to kiss it better?"
"It needs to be cleaned." The mother repeated again, slightly agitated by House's confusion towards what she believed was a very simple request.
"And, you couldn't do it at home, why?"
"I have no medical experience!" The mother said, "I could cause damage!"
"By what? Poisoning him with peroxide? Jamming a swab so deep into his knee cap that it would cause a blood clot which would suddenly burst forth and move towards your very foolish sons heart and kill him?"
There was a very long pause, one which House had experienced before, he knew one of two things would happen, one the woman would completely miss Houses's sarcasm and say that she had, in fact, been thinking that. Or two, she would call him a very mean doctor.
"Yes, that's exactly it!"
'One' He smiled to himself before rolling his eyes, "Listen, your son had a wipe out on his skateboard, he didn't go cliff jumping down the Grand Canyon without a safety harness. Of course, I could be wrong, the infection of the dirt and grime currently inside his knee could slowly be seeping into his blood, infecting each cell. As mitosis occurs each new cell would be infected, in a matter of minutes your son could be infected with anything..." House leaned in closer to the woman, eyes wide, he whispered, "Anything!"
The woman looked thoroughly horrified by what House had just told her.
"But... then you have to do something!"
"Actually, the hospital is trying an experimental treatment for such cases," He walked over to the counter and pulled a few cotton swabs out of a jar, followed by a rubber glove and three packets of peroxide swabs. "It's called Occupational Parental Curesone." He lied through his teeth, quite proud of making up a new treatment just like that. "It's where the parent of the patient uses love, care, and medical supplies to heal their loved ones and bring them to a full recovery. It's had marvellous results thus far, you should try it." He tossed her the supplies, "I'll be back in ten minutes, I need to...do something not here."
He left the exam room and heaved a sigh, an hour and a half of those morons, now he desperately needed a ten minute break. House hobbled out of the clinic and through the front doors into the streaming sunlight of day. It was Summer, just past noon, residents strolled through the campus on their lunch break, enjoying the fresh air one last time before being forced back in the building to deal with patients who really weren't that grateful anyway.
The sound of someone being sick in a garbage can hit House, he peered around the corner out to the open area covered with the odd oak tree and benches. A young girl, the young girl from the elevator and the clinic was stepping away from the garbage can and practically falling back onto one of the benches. House knew Cuddy would be looking for him in a matter of minutes, he didn't feel like spending his break dealing with another possible patient. Still, he did have some morals, and it seemed only appropriate that he, a doctor, make sure she was all right.
"You okay?"
The girl didn't look up at first, she just sat on the bench, huddled over her knees, breathing deeply, after a moment she looked up and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"You should see a doctor..."
"I'm not sick."
"The contents of your lunch would disagree." House said as he peered into the trash can, "Which appears to be a cucumber sandwich and a pudding cup."
"I'm fine," the girl said again, getting rather irate by this nosey man. "Just a bit of food poisoning."
"Well, if it's just food poisoning then I guess I won't bother you any more." House shrugged, "Aren't you supposed to be inside?"
The girl looked up at House again and a lightbulb went off in her head, she recognized him. "You're that doctor from the elevator, the one who called me angsty!"
"You're that teenager... the angsty one!"
The girl rolled her eyes and leaned back on the bench, suppressing the sick feeling in her stomach once more, determined to not let him see her throw up again.
"Don't you have some patients to be rude to?"
She had obviously heard all about the legendary Doctor House and his patient avoiding ways.
"You're a bit defensive for someone who just finished losing her lunch to the garbage can." House said as he hobbled closer to the girl, regretting immediately trying to engage her in conversation.
"I'm defensive because nosey one legged doctors seem to enjoy going into my business even when I want to be left alone!" The girl immediately got a pained look on her face that told House she was genuinely sorry for what she had said. She did not apologize, instead she held her head in her hands once more and tried to hold back the sickening feeling in her stomach.
"Come on kid, I'll get you some Gravol in the clinic. Maybe I can get out of duty."
The young girl seemed quite wary at trusting the man before her, he didn't seem like a doctor, quite the opposite in fact. There was a long silence before she sighed heavily and stood up slowly.
"Okay,"
Forty-Five minutes later
"So how's your stomach now?" House asked without looking up from his video game.
"Better." The girl replied simply, "Thanks."
"Anytime, it's what I'm paid to do."
"You don't seem to enjoy it a whole lot."
"On the contrary," House snapped the game shut and looked up at the girl who was sitting on the exam room table, still not looking any better. "I do enjoy it, I just hate the patients."
"Why?"
"Why not?" House replied, "They're loud, noisy, think they know everything, when I tell them they have something they deny it, they lie, they make stupid choices..."
"Okay, I get it." The girl put her hands up in defense, "You don't like patients, patients are stupid."
"I don't hate every patient," House explained, "Just most of them, every so often you get one that really is sick, tells you the truth and doesn't deny that he or she has a problem."
"You're a man full of love," The girl muttered darkly as she swung her legs back and forth in the air.
"And you're a kid about to make a big mistake," House pointed out, "Running away isn't the smartest idea in the world."
The girl looked at him sharply with a glare in her eyes, "And eavesdropping isn't a good personality trait to have, what-."
"I don't care what your problem is," House said firmly, "But whatever it is, I'm sure it can't be solved by running away from home with some guy, who probably wants to just get in your pants." He added.
There was silence for a moment while she shifted uncomfortably and tried to make sense of what was going on... Someone knew her secret, someone knew her secret, her only way out. She opened her mouth to snap a reply when the door to the exam room opened and Wilson entered, "Are you Nurse Corbin's daughter?" He asked.
She nodded.
"Your mothers off the wall looking for you, Better get up to peds right away."
"Great." The girl hopped off of the exam table and turned to House, "Are you going to-."
"No," he replied simply, "But we're going to continue this conversation before Wednesday."
The girl heaved a sigh before walking past Wilson and out of the exam room, obviously unnerved that someone knew her secret, let alone a doctor who worked with her mother. House watched the empty spot where the girl had disappeared for a moment, a look of great concentration on his face. He knew that there was something more to this girl than he could see, some secret which she had taken great time and effort to hide from the rest of the world.
"What's with you?"
"I'm pondering the meaning of life," House replied without skipping a beat, "I also have the Monty Python sperm song stuck in my head."
"The two go hand in hand, what was with the kid?"
"Sick stomach."
"Cuddy was looking for you."
"I was with a patient."
"She checked the chart," Wilson replied with a sly smirk, "I had to take the heat, she was ranting on about how a kid with a sick stomach doesn't take forty-five minutes to treat."
"I wanted to make sure she didn't have an allergic reaction."
"Tell that to Cuddy, you've got a one way ticket to the firing range, and you're the target."
House simply shrugged, he wasn't too worried about Cuddy, he was more curious about the girl and her mother.
"So... who's that kids mother?"
"Nurse Corbin," Wilson replied as he leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed in the same manner they were whenever he knew House was up to something, "She's been on pediatrics for five months now."
"Didn't we hear a Corbin at the bar last night?"
"Yeah, that kid on stage... what, was that her?"
"I think so," House replied, "Didn't catch her name."
"You treated her... and you didn't get her name?"
"I hardly think giving her a glass of water and a Gravol pill counts as 'treating'." House made quotation signs in the air, "Besides, she looked like the kind of kid who really didn't want to tell me much, I was actually getting somewhere when you barged in."
"You... talking to a patient?"
"Yes..."
"About... their lives?"
"Yes."
"How much Vicodin have you taken?" Wilson asked.
"Funny," House muttered as he pocketed his game and stood up, "Like an inner ear infection."
"What the hell were you thinking!" A sharp pain jolted across Jenny's face as she was thrown to the ground. A man stood over her, his fist raised again, ready to attack. She did not move from her space on the cold cement floor, She couldn't, her body was too weak.
"It wasn't my fault..." She whimpered, "I-I was sick, and he saw..."
"You should have just walked away!"
"I tried... I couldn't. Please..."
"You're making this very difficult, Jenny." The voice was low all of a sudden, almost sickly sweet. "If you talk to that doctor again, or any doctor, there will be hell to pay." He chuckled slightly as the sound of a raging cough erupted from above them. "Your mother's sick again, I'm going to deal with her. Be ready in a half hour."
Jenny kept her eyes closed tight, blocking out the image of the man above her, she instead listened to his foot steps as they became more distant, the old wooden stairs squeaked beneath him as he reached the top of the flight, opened the door and then slammed it shut again. She lay there in the silence for a moment and, like every night of her life, prayed to be taken away from the terrible place she called home. She had forgotten about the bus ticket to New York, pressed gently in between the pages of her book, the Gravol the doctor had given her was wearing off.
She vomited quite violently into a garbage can, feeling the pain as her stomach desperately tried to squeeze out food that was not there.