Author's Note: Of course I killed House. Magical recuperations are so not my thing. But, he's not gone. Not by a long shot ;-). Last update for a few days.

By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes

Open locks whoever knocks

--William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I am the proper person to describe this burial because I have seen enough of them to be able to become immune to the haunted feeling that stays with you after the funeral is over.

House didn't have many friends while he was alive. People, he suspected, would put up with him if they wanted to; if they didn't, it wasn't his problem. But now he's dead and it is said that when you die, you find out who your true friends are.

Surrounding the hole in the ground are the usual suspects. Wilson (his wife and he are on the outs again and she is somewhere in Jamaica; nurse station gossip is a passion of mine), Cameron, Cuddy, Foreman, Stacy, some of his old and healed patients, and myself. There's also a priest Cuddy has taken the time to coerce into doing this ceremony. She plans things with a severity and linear quality that makes the rest of cringe at how efficient it is. She doesn't ask for our help; she doesn't need it. Maybe she mentioned a detail or two to Wilson, but Cameron, Foreman, and I were left out of the planning.

This is one of the nicer funerals I have attended. I concede that it is small, but it's not the quantity that makes this nice. House didn't have many friends, but the one he did have showed. At my mother's funeral there were 200 guests who showed to keep appearances. Not one of them cried.

But here, this is different. Cameron sobs quietly into a handkerchief (I think Wilson gave it to her during the service.) Cuddy wipes tears away from her eyes at regular intervals. I offer her a tissue, but she refuses; she doesn't cry.

Stacy has this stunned look of disbelief on her face. She gropes for my hand every once and a while—human touch sometimes quiets the grief.

Foreman and I aren't crying, but Wilson's face looks like it will deteriorate into tears any minute. He stands next to Cameron and every once and a while he whispers something into her ear.

Foreman tells me his suspicion that Cameron and Wilson have something going on together. I laugh at him, but he looks pointedly at me every time they whisper to one another. In fact, they are standing quite close to one another…

It's a pretty cemetery—oak trees surround it and there are some other gravestones around House's burial place. Cuddy informs us beforehand that House has no living family, and thus this place is pretty and will do. Wilson delivers the eulogy; it's a nice goodbye to a friend.

We never attach ourselves to patients. It's not good. Once you become emotionally involved, things go wrong. But how can I not attach myself to House? He made my life miserable, but he's an example from whom to learn. He made the mistakes that we should never repeat.

His casket is covered in flowers as we bid our goodbyes. Cuddy has arranged that his body will be lowered into the ground with only she, Wilson, and Stacy supervising. Spectacles were never House's thing anyway.

I file past after Stacy and before Foreman. We are all under Cuddy's watchful eyes. But this is my time to say goodbye, to reflect on a man who wasn't necessarily kind to me.

So it ends here. I respected you as a doctor, sometimes as a man, and always as a human being. Take care—don't give God too much grief.

It's my silent goodbye and I join the others in the march towards the waiting cars. House will go to Heaven as much as he contends there is no such thing. He must. The group that trudges around me is a mixed bag; I remember some of the patients, but not others.

When we're all over at the cars and saying our thanks and goodbyes, I notice Cameron standing by herself looking towards the spot where the casket is being lowered into the ground. She treated him first, and it must have really scarred her because I spent some time with her last night and she was just so…out of it. Neither Foreman nor I could rid her of her daze. She keeps repeating, that it is all her fault. She tells us that she wanted to meet House at that bar at that time. She refuses to tell us why.

But as I shake hands with John Henry Giles the jazz musician, I see someone walk up to her. Giles walks off and I stick my hands in my pocket. The woman is dressed in knee-high black boots with a black skirt that has no place at a funeral. Cuddy's final joke to House? Bringing a hooker to his funeral?

I watch, though, and see Cameron's face darken and brighten at the same time with the recognition of this nameless woman. The woman shakes her hand and mouths some words. It is only when this woman hands Cameron a cane that it makes sense. So, this was the hooker he saved.

Cameron breaks down into tears and bends over like she has a stomachache. The woman rubs her back gently. Foreman and I exchange glances; should we help her?

This is the cane Cameron has spent the last six days mourning over. She misses House. She can't walk into the conference room without picking up his coffee mug and shattering into tears. But she keeps going back to that damn cane. I wish I had his cane.

It reminds me of the movie, Citizen Kane, where Kane's last word is "rosebud." It is a mystery why a powerful man repeats the word "rosebud" when he is about to die. But this is even stranger. House has (had) many canes to walk with—why is this one so different?

I see Wilson's head turn from where he, Cuddy, and Stacy are standing. He sees Cameron and he tells Cuddy something. She looks back and nods affirmatively to whatever he has asked. He runs a hand over her back before running up the hill to where Cameron stands crying with the woman.

This whole thing is a strange dance in melodrama. Wilson holds Cameron while she clutches House's cane. It's everything I can do not to scream, what the hell are you crying about? He never said he loved you! He never treated you the way you know you should be treated!

I walk over to where Foreman is saying goodbye to various funeral goers.

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"What?"

"That Cameron is so worked up over this whole bloody affair."

"Well, she must have really loved him."

Love is a concept that escapes me at times. Foreman raises his eyebrows.

"What I want to know is what Wilson and Cameron have going on," he tells me.

"You think…"

"I think a lot of things. As House would say, it doesn't make them right."

Cuddy and Stacy walk up from House's grave together and converge on where Wilson is standing with Cameron and the cane. Cuddy smiles gently, but there are thin lines on her face that are too taut and she looks miserable. Stacy frowns and wants to go somewhere. I know she has no idea where, but she is dying to be free of here.

I do not put much stake in funerals, having attended enough of them. Funerals are brief pauses in time to remember those that we'll remember whether we want to or not. All of us will remember House even if he is dead. But we don't need a funeral to say goodbye because most of us here will never fully come to grips with his death until we miss his quips and his comments.

Long lives the king.

End Part I