Draco gave me the following drabble challenge: "Any one of the characters in Fruits Basket affected by the curse visits America, discovers that s/he is allergic to Kraft cheese, and has to go see House M.D."

Obviously that was just a little bit much for a drabble. ;;; Here's a fic in which, in defiance of all reason and possibly several laws of the universe, I do all of the above and then some. If you don't know Fruits Basket it will make no sense. If you don't know House it may make sense, but this is primarily a House fic.

I will state upfront that I have left several medical loopholes. And certainly any Souma would make up a creative excuse to not be treated by members of the opposite sex, but if we do that there's no plot--we'll just say that Ritsu was too sick and his mother was too crazy. At some point we have to accept that (1) this was done at 1:00 am, and (2) sometimes, the medical stuff is just not the point. Sometimes, we put together a plot just to see if we can. And in that spirit:

Monkey Business

They had been at this for days.

It was past the point when anyone but House would have admitted defeat, and his haggard staff were barely on their feet anymore. Chase hadn't slept in 48 hours and his accent was getting less comprehensible every minute. Foreman had actually threatened to bite a med student who jumped the line in the cafeteria. Even Cameron was starting to forget to be sensitive and understanding—the patient's mother was so insufferable that her near-inexhaustible sympathy was dangerously close to running out. It was the constant apologizing that did it. If she had to hear the translator relay "I'm sorry for troubling you with my son's horrible disease" one more time, she might commit violence.

House let them just start to doze off at their conference table before pounding his cane on the floor hard enough to make all three jump. "Come on! Differential diagnosis, people! What are we missing? Something's making the patient sick."

"We exhausted all the sane possibilities sometime Tuesday evening," said Cameron.

House raised his eyebrows expectantly. "Well then, give me some more insane ones. Patient is a 20-year-old Japanese male vacationing in the U.S. First complained of severe fatigue, headaches, and high fever. While being examined by one of our wonderful clinic doctors, patient began vomiting. Other symptoms since then are..." He tapped his cane on the board—a meaningless act, since they'd all long since memorized the list. "Diarrhea, abdominal and chest pain, and a sore throat. CBC returned a low white count. Soon after admission his blood began to clot, coming close to tanking the liver and spleen on several occasions. He also suffers from conjunctivitis. But—and this is the really fun part, people—since the clotting began, the patient has temporarily gotten better five times. Hence they called our department. Oh, and let's not forget the fascinating fact that everyone on the sixth-floor nursing staff for some reason swears he's a monkey. Personally, that's my favorite part."

"I don't think delusions count as a symptom unless the patient is the one having the delusions," said Wilson, closing the office's glass door behind him and plunking himself down on an extra chair.

"Oh, look who's decided to join us. Don't you have somewhere to be? Like, I don't know, home?" House asked.

"But you all seemed like you were having so much fun in here," replied the oncologist, unperturbed.

"Okay, the esteemed Dr. Wilson would like us to forget the monkey business. Let's humor him for a minute. What would cause the symptoms the patient has?"

"Look, we've been over this," sighed Foreman. "No disease accounts for both the declines and the recoveries. It's medically impossible."

"Oh, sure," said House. "Medically impossible. That explains why it's happening. Nobody's told the patient, that's all. We'll just explain to him that he can't have what he has, and he'll be fit as a fiddle in no time." He popped a Vicodin, and after a short pause popped another one just for good measure, before fixing one of his more evil looks on his neurologist. "But just in case that doesn't work, got anything else?"

"All right, fine! What do you want! The patient was abducted by aliens. No, the patient is an alien."

"Actually I believe we said the patient was a monkey," put in Wilson helpfully. Foreman glared.

"You're the one who said to ignore the monkey thing," said House. "Dr. Cameron? Got anything that will match the stunning brilliance of Foreman's alien theory?"

"We've said all week that it looks most like a virus, but that hasn't gotten us anywhere useful yet. Neither has anything else. So...the mother said he was allergic to Kraft cheese somewhere in the middle of some long apology about how he couldn't eat American food. I'm going to go with a deadly case of Kraft Cheese Syndrome."

"Well, Chase? Aliens or deadly cheese?"

Chase, eyes glassy and only half-open, mumbled something with so many broad vowels that for a moment everybody in the room merely blinked at him.

"What did he say?"

"I think he said 'Maybe he really is a monkey,'" decided Wilson. "There was a part I didn't catch any of before that, but it sounded profane. And a part after that which might have been about cheese, but it could also have been 'skis' or 'sees' or possibly a request for beer."

"Somebody hit Chase over the head with his coffee mug," said House. "It'll either wake him up or knock him unconscious."

"Maybe if you hadn't given him three other cases to cover at the same time—"

House put a hand to his ear. "I'm sorry, for a second it almost sounded like someone was talking to me just now."

"Right. Look," said Foreman, "we're not getting anywhere. We're not going to get anywhere. His symptoms when he's actually symptomatic could be a few different things, none of which they can actually be, because he can't have any of the normal progressive diseases with those symptoms or he wouldn't get better and then worse again. You just don't get better and worse that many times with none of the factors changing! It makes no sense."

"Well obviously one of the factors did change," said House. "We must be doing it."

"We haven't done anything! Chase has been managing his fluid and electrolyte balance, but that's about it. Nothing's changed unless you believe the nurses who change his bedsheets that he really does turn into a monkey."

House's expression turned suddenly thoughtful.

"Wait," said Cameron slowly. "If you ignore the times when his condition improves, symptoms are consistent with a viral hemorrhagic fever, right?"

"Oh, okay, we'll just ignore those times."

"No," muttered House, beginning to pace the room with his hobbled gait. "Keep talking."

"Hemorrhagic fevers would cause all the symptoms he's had so far, from the initial headaches to the conjunctivitis to the clotting. It would also predict that if one of these times he doesn't get better, the patient will begin bleeding internally and externally, probably dying of shock before he has a chance to bleed out from every orifice," said Cameron, her speech picking up speed as she went on. "Granted in this case the disease progressed almost like it had decided how to do so by doing cursory internet research on itself, but what I'm saying still holds. The only thing that isn't consistent with a VHF is the getting better part. But..." she hesitated.

House made expectant gesture. "Yes? But? Come on, don't be afraid of sounding crazy. Chase sounds crazy and drunk, so you're still ahead. Embrace the craziness."

"Well, I was just thinking that he always seems to take a downturn just after the nurse has changed the bedsheets."

"And accused him of monkeying around," added Wilson. It was becoming obvious why he was following this particular case.

Strangely, Cameron just nodded. "Exactly. The nurse goes to change the bedsheets and then comes running into the hallway shrieking that he's turned into a monkey. By the time someone goes to look he's taking a downturn."

"And Chase is never in the room when that happens?" Foreman said, glancing at his colleague. Chase had finally passed out, his head resting on an open medical text in front of him.

"He probably takes the opportunity to visit the facilities," said House. "Go on."

"His condition worsens for awhile, but then before it hits the irreversible point he seems to suddenly upswing. But the funny thing is that during the upswing all his symptoms disappear except for the flu-like ones."

"Aha," breathed House. He stopped his pacing and turned a penetrating gaze on his beautiful young minion. "And that reminds you of...?"

"Well," she said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "Ebola Reston has sometimes been accused of causing flu-like symptoms in people."

Wilson broke the silence first. "The symptoms do fit Ebola, but...Ebola Reston only produces Ebola-like symptoms in..."

"Monkeys," said House, with obvious satisfaction.

"You people are all crazy," said Foreman.

"Ah, but who's crazier?" asked his department head. "The crazy man, or the man who turns down lucrative offers from other places in order to work for the crazy man? Now, pay attention, kiddies. And wake up Chase."

Foreman sighed but joggled the Australian's shoulder, causing him to sit bolt upright and mumble, "Wha? I'm on it! Amiodarone 300 mg, rapid push!"

"Good morning there, Sunshine. You're just in time for the best part. Ebola Reston, as the good people at Hazleton Research taught us, is only deadly in monkeys, in which it behaves pretty much like Ebola Zaire. In humans, it feels like a touch of the flu. We've got a patient on our hands who behaves pretty much like he's got Ebola Zaire, except when he's only got the flu. Cameron here testifies that somewhere in all that apologetic whining, he and his mother both denied his participation in any of the exchanges of bodily fluids or unsanitary practices we associate with Ebola. Which as evidence isn't worth a damn except for the fact that we haven't heard any word of an Ebola outbreak on the Channel 6 News. But we do have some reason to believe that Ebola Reston can be spread through the air. Dr. Cameron, did you happen to ask Mommy if she and her son had visited the zoo lately? And whether the monkeys at that zoo seemed to be ailing?"

There was a pause.

"I'll check," said Cameron, pushing back her chair and heading for the door.

Chase blinked very slowly. "So you're saying..."

"He is a monkey," said House. "Sometimes."

Chase pinched himself.

Initially they had a little trouble with Cuddy over not changing Ritsu Souma's bedsheets, not letting him have spongebaths, and suspending a list of other normal nurse functions, but halfway through House's explanation ("See, whenever the nurse changes the bedsheets he turns into a monkey, and his disease is deadly in monkeys, so strategically we need him to stay not-a-monkey as much as possible until he recovers his...") she cut him off and began rubbing her temples. "No, stop. Just...stop. Is she going to sue?" she asked the translator, nodding toward Mrs. Souma.

There was a brief conference, the upshot of which was "Please, I apologize, let me change the bedsheets!" and "I'm sorry for making you think that I would sue you!" before the poor woman had all she could take and burst into a fit of noisy tears.

"See?" said House, pulling a bottle of Vicodin out of his pocket. "She's been hanging around your office for a week, I would think you'd have figured this out by now. You know, come to think of it, you look a little frazzled. All this cultural exchange stressing you out?"

"Give me that," said Cuddy, snatching the bottle from his hand.

"Hey!"

Ignoring him, she shook out a pill, popped it dry, and then after a moment's consideration gave Mrs. Souma one as well before letting House snatch the bottle back.

"Now I want you to take this woman and leave my office, and I don't want to hear another word about this case unless it's 'The patient is happy, healthy, and on his way back to Japan.' Got it?"

"Well, I think I can manage at least two of those things, but if mental disorders are genetic—"

"You're still in my office," said Cuddy.

A few hours later the patient was stable and being monitored by Foreman, his other minions had been sent home to sleep it off, and he was lying on the floor of his office, propping his bad leg up on his chair and grooving out to the White Album on his iPod.

"So," said Wilson, quietly slipping into the office and coming up to stand by his desk. "Did you find proof that contact with nurses turned your patient into a monkey?"

"All the nurses on that floor are female," House said casually. "And Cameron's been running the lab work and the research end of things; she never did anything to him directly except maybe draw a vial of blood. I sent her home."

"Uh-huh. So women turn him into a monkey, is what I hear you saying."

House just smiled at the ceiling.

"And you didn't try to gather any proof at all. Why do I think that doesn't sound like you?" asked Wilson, skeptically.

"I don't have to know about every strange affliction every patient happens to be cursed with."

Wilson's silence was eloquent.

"Oh, you know how it is," answered his friend, in a voice that very clearly said Give up, I am not going to tell you why I backed off. House trusted Wilson with his life, but there was no way he was going to share the details of his little interview with Ritsu Souma. (Please don't ask, he'd said through the interpreter. Please. Something terrible will happen.)

And anyway, it's not like anyone would believe Gregory House if he said he'd backed off because some twenty-year-old kid had looked scared.

"Right. Sure I do." After a pause, Wilson sighed. "Well, I guess women make monkeys out of us all."

"Some of us more than others, Mr. Breasts Cause Me Temporary Tunnel Vision."

"Come on, House, I'll take you home."