I Should Have Known Better

(Scene Three: "H5N1")

A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to get this up. In response to LonelyWord, yes, I do know that Cameron's first name is Allison, and, no, it's not a coincidence that it's also the name of John's girlfriend. I'm glad you caught that. You're the only person to have mentioned it. There's greater importance to it, I swear. Well, I've kept you waiting long enough: go! Read!

Disclaimer: House is not mine, and I'm not pretending it is. I'm just having a bit of fun.

"Not SARS?" Chase asked.

Cameron scrutinized the whiteboard. "The symptoms aren't really - "

"Definitive?" House interrupted.

"Both tests did come back negative," Foreman added.

"Yes, but the PCR test, given the state of the specimen and the stage of the infection, isn't always - " Cameron started.

"Definitive?" House interrupted, yet again.

Cameron glared daggers at House. Honestly, sometimes he could such a… such a pain in the ass!

"So if it's not SARS, what is it?" Foreman asked.

"Oh, I dunno, a nasty cold?" House said.

"This isn't just a nasty cold," Cameron said. "You said so yourself, these symptoms are also in very close correlation with flu strains, sometimes even pneumonia."

"What was that, Miss Definitive?"

Cameron made an exasperated noise deep in her throat. It was one thing to patronize her in private; it was a horse of a whole different color to patronize her in front of her colleagues.

"So it's the flu, then?" Chase asked.

"Nope," House answered.

"Then what is it?" Foreman said.

"No idea."

"You're treating a possible SARS patient and you haven't contacted a single Plague Center?" Dr. Lisa Cuddy accosted House as he made his way, slowly, down the halls of Princeton-Plainsboro.

House wheeled to look at her. He was surprised that flames weren't shooting out of her nostrils, or steam coming out of her ears. He was also surprised to find Stacy following Cuddy's stride.

"You fink!" House turned his attention to Stacy.

"You knew!" Cuddy's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline as she turned on Stacy, whose face was etched with sheer panic.

"Whoops," House said, and he turned to go, that was until he felt a vice-like grip on his elbow.

"Where do you think you're going?" Cuddy said.

"Oh you know, around, maybe check out the gift shop, I hear it's nice."

The look in Cuddy's eyes told House, however, that he was going nowhere.

"Look, if you two can't work together, that's fine," Cuddy started out, gesturing to House and Stacy, it seemed almost like a surrealist painting of a mother scolding her children. "But then act like adults about it. I'm sure if there are serious issues we can work them out. In order to do that, though, we all need to be mature about this." Her eyes came to rest on House.

"Immature, who, me?"

"One more episode like this, House…" Cuddy's voice trailed off in a menacing fashion.

Cuddy walked off, leaving Stacy and House standing in the middle of the hallway, looking, for a brief moment, like they had just been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

"Damn it, Greg!" Stacy regained use of her faculties first. "Can't you do anything that someone would expect you to do?"

"Like what? Follow procedures, fill in medical charts, and actually go to clinic duty?"

"Yes!"

House shrugged. "Where's the fun in that?"

"Greg, if you can't deal with me being here then just say so," Stacy's voice was low, serious, and, to House's ears, a bit dangerous. He knew this voice.

"I can deal with you being here," House said, his voice low and serious as well.

"Good. The maybe you can start to act like a professional - "

"Stace…" House reached forward and held her wrist lightly.

There came the sound of a clearing throat just behind House. He quickly let go of Stacy's wrist and turned to face Cameron.

"I think you need to see this," Cameron said.

"Chase is sick?" House repeated for the third time. Even after all his years of being a physician it still seemed amusing to him that a doctor could, in fact, fall ill.

"Yes," Cameron said, her voice flat.

"And you've put him in a quarantine room?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He was treating John - "

"The SARS patient?"

"I thought you said he didn't have SARS!"

"You can't rule out everything," House said, stopping to pop a few Vicodin. "Besides, we have a new factor now."

"What?"

"No, who."

"I'm a factor in the SARS case?" Chase asked, sitting up in bed in his hospital room that looked very much like John Evans'.

"I thought you said that it wasn't SARS," Foreman said.

"Well, now, we can't rule out everything, especially if the tests aren't definitive," Cameron said, with a smirk at House. He scowled in return.

"So now you think I have SARS?" Chase asked, attempting to bring the focus of the conversation back to a way to diagnose him.

"Nope," House said.

"What?" Chase, Foreman, and Cameron asked together.

"I think that you've been infected with whatever it is that John has - "

"Which you still think could be SARS," Foreman interrupted.

House turned to him. "Shh, daddy's talking,' House turned back to Chase. "Where was I?"

"Me being sick."

"Oh, right. So, whatever has been causing symptoms in John is now going to be causing the symptoms in you. Probably."

"Probably?" Chase asked.

"Well, we can't just expect this be a happy accident that you've been infected with the same disease as our patient."

"Happy accident?"

Cameron's brain kicked into gear. "John's symptoms only began to show up last night, according to what he told me."

"Which means that you two aren't all that far apart as far as course of the illness is concerned," Foreman said.

"Exactly," House said.

"So we monitor Chase and John, and compare their symptoms and progression of the illness," Cameron said.

"Um, hello?" Chase said. House, Foreman, and Cameron turned to look at him. "What about finding a cure for me."

"Gee, that sounds like a great idea," House said in that patronizing tone of his, "but I think we need to figure out what's wrong with you first."

Chase fell back onto his hospital bed. "What happened to this being a simple case of SARS?"

"Chase's PCR test came back negative," Cameron reported, walking into Diagnostics where House was examining the white board. The board was now split down the center, John's symptoms on the left, and Chase's on the right.

Cameron came to stand by House, looking at the symptoms herself.

"Any change in either of our patience?" House asked.

"No, both of their conditions are stable."

House nodded.

They both stood there, in silence, staring at the white board. This was a puzzle. A puzzle was that becoming increasingly more difficult to solve.

There was a knock at the door. House turned to look at the open doorframe, and saw Stacy standing there.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?"

House grabbed his cane from the whiteboard, where it hung, and hobbled out of the room, following Stacy's lead.

"Are you ever going to report this SARS case? I've got Cuddy breathing down my neck now. I'm not sure if she thinks I'm incompetent at my job, or if she thinks I'm covering for you," Stacy said.

"There's nothing to report," House said, his voice flat.

"Greg…"

"It's not SARS."

Stacy stopped walking and turned to face him, a puzzled look on her face. "Then what is it?"

House stopped himself from smirking at her. He loved that expression on her face. The way her forehead scrunched up and she bit her bottom lip slightly. It was the expression she made whenever she asked him a question that she was sure he could answer. He knew that she was unaware of this fact.

"I don't know," he said truthfully, with just a hint of desperation in his voice.

"You'll figure it out," Stacy smiled at him. "You always do." She patted him on the arm and turned to leave. He grabbed hold of her arm. She turned to face him.

"Thanks," he said.

"Your welcome," Stacy smiled at him again, knowing exactly what he meant. Sometimes it still surprised her that she had ever cracked the puzzle that was Gregory House. She turned and made her way down the hall.

House stood there.

"Hello!" came an overly loud and emphasized greeting.

House rolled his eyes and turned to face Wilson. He had the look of that damned Cheshire cat on his face again. House was in for something. He walked straight past Wilson, in the direction of his office.

"So…" Wilson said.

"Are you trying to make a point, because if you are, I think you ought to make it fast before I decide to - "

"Stacy, huh?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

House turned into his office. He attempted to close the door on Wilson, but he managed to squeeze through anyway. Damn.

"I think you do know what I'm talking about."

"Are you saying that I'm omnipotent and can read your thoughts all the time?" House said. "I know you have a high opinion of me, Wilson, but please, a man's got limits."

"You really are a narcissistic jerk, aren't you?"

"Why, yes, how nice of you to notice."

"Come on, House. I'm your best friend. I know you better than you think. You want Stacy back, and it's killing you that you can't have her."

House sat at his desk in silence. Wilson was right, of course. They'd discussed this once before, when he had treated Mark.

"She's married, House."

"You think I don't know that. I saved the husband's life, in case you forgot." The biting tone he had hopped for came out as merely annoyed.

House rubbed his eyes with the heals of both hands.

"I'm the guy," House said, remembering the conversation he and Stacy had had on the roof of the hospital, not so long ago.

"What?"

"Dr. House!" House's head jerked up to see Allison McGraw standing in the doorway of his office, her eyes wide in panic. "John needs help!"

House flew down the hall as fast as he could, cursing his leg all the way. He, Wilson, and Allison ran into John's quarantined room just as Foreman and Cameron did.

"He can't breathe!" Cameron said. "He's gone into acute respiratory distress."

"He needs to be intubated!" Foreman said, moving quickly to do it himself.

In a mater of seconds John was on a respirator and his vital signs were stabilizing. There was a sheen of sweat over his entire body, but he was freezing to the touch. Allison was clutching his hand, tears streaming down his face.

"W-what's wrong with h-him?" she managed to ask.

"Chase…" House said. Quickly he hobbled out of John's room and into a room across the hall.

Chase was asleep. House banged on the glass. Chase stirred and groaned.

"How do you feel?" House asked in an urgent voice.

"A bit groggy," Chase answered.

"Is that all?"

"No, I feel like I've got the flu or something. Whatever I've got, it's enough to make me not want to wake up for a week."

Then, just as abruptly as House entered Chase's room, he left. He made his way past John's room, where he could hear Cameron consoling Allison, and back to Diagnostics. He heard rapid footsteps behind him. It was Foreman.

"What's going on?"

House turned into Diagnostics and grabbed a marker from the table. He quickly wrote something on an empty space on the whiteboard and circled it.

"A H5N1 virus strain?" Cameron said, having just entered the room.

"The Bird Flu?" Foreman asked.

"Exactly."

A/N: More to come, and soon, I hope. I know how I want everything to fall into place, I've just got to get it into writing. Please drop me a line and let me know what you think.