------------------------------------------------------------
"House, a word," Cuddy called as he limped past her toward the elevators. She was glad to have caught him before he made it upstairs. She'd been busy with a board of governors meeting and the paperwork for all the new interns and had worried she wouldn't catch him.
"I got paged upstairs," he protested. "I'll be back down to finish your precious clinic hours just as soon as I deal with whatever Chase needs. Don't worry, you'll get your time out of me."
"Look, House," she told him with a sigh, "just do your job. That's all I ask of you."
House stopped dead in his tracks, staring at her. "You didn't," he stated flatly.
"You have three over-qualified fellows working for you and, much as it pains me to admit, you are one of the best…"
"You did," he said, cutting her off.
"Don't freak out. I really don't need you in my office five minutes from now, yelling at me." She'd had enough yelling at the board of governor's meeting to last her a lifetime.
"Right, because the mere sight of an intern is enough to send me flying into a panic. I don't spend my time trying to avoid patients. I spend it hiding from the sight of those short, white coats." House faked a shudder and resumed his walk toward the elevators.
"Just don't freak out," she repeated firmly, slapping a file into his chest and moving on down the hall."
"Incidentally," he called after her, turning to watch her walk away, "those short coats look much better on women than the do on men. You don't think that's sexual discrimination?"
She ignored him completely.
------------------------------
"What's your specialty?" House demanded irritably as he pushed open the door. The four younger doctors were sitting around the table making small talk, a fresh pot of coffee brewing behind them. "I've already got a neurologist, an immunologist, and an intensivist. All I need now is a partridge in a pear tree." He'd known better than to argue with Cuddy over assigning him an intern, especially so fresh after Vogler's threat against the whole department. But the lack of argument didn't mean he was pleased with the assignment.
"Internal medicine, sir," she replied politely, standing to greet him.
"Internal medicine," House repeated, sticking the file beneath his arm and fishing out his ever-present bottle of pills. "Now, Miss Verhoeven… Or wait… Is that Fraulien?" he mused, knocking back a pill dry. "No, that's German, not Dutch. How silly of me!"
"Mevrouw," Verhoeven offered helpfully.
"Hmm…" House drawled. "That wasn't quite the answer I was expecting. Woudn't the correct title have been 'doctor,' in whatever language you might have chosen?"
She was visibly taken aback for a moment, but managed to recover herself enough to stammer, "To introduce oneself using a title when it is not strictly necessary is generally considered poor form." She hesitated for a moment before adding, "Or at least it is if the Dutch convention is followed. Besides, sir, you had asked."
"Had I?" House asked in mock surprise. "I don't recall having asked. But maybe I just forgot. The drugs could be playing tricks with my memory." He rattled his Vicodin bottle for emphais.
She started blushing right up to the roots of her blonde hair. Trying valiantly to reclaim any shred of her lost dignity, she offered her hand out to him. "Although it is quite apparent that you are already aware of the fact, I am Katrien Verhoeven. Doktor Verhoeven, spelled with a k and not a c, if you would like the Dutch."
With a resigned sigh, House limped across the room to shake her hand. "Doctor Gregory House, apparently your attending. Only in one language, and not willingly."
The three fellows sat in uncomfortable silence as he took the final steps across to her. They were anxious to see how he would react to what they'd already seen, but didn't dare draw unnecessary attention to it. "What the hell is that?" he demanded, stopping and jabbing with his cane. He'd only made it half-way across the room before his sharp eyes picked it up.
Her face flushed even redder as she awkwardly let her hand drop back down to her side, mumbling some sort of an explanation that no one could hear. But it didn't matter because House was already leaving, furiously heading off in search of Cuddy.
------------------------------
"I suppose that you had some kind of twisted logic," he snapped, bringing his cane down on Cuddy's desk with a bang. "What was it? 'Let's stick all the cripples together so that they're out of everyone else's way!'"
"You're overreacting," she declared calmly, lifting her head from the paperwork to glare at House. She couldn't resist a glance at her clock: four minutes. She'd overestimated him earlier. "She's well-qualified and has an interest in epidemiology that I thought you might find useful."
"Not only is she a cripple, but she's also a liar," he stated. "She told me she was an internist."
"Why do you sound surprise? I thought you assumed everyone lied as a matter of principle," Cuddy snapped back. House stood before her, fuming silently. "She is an internist," Cuddy sighed after a moment. "She has an interest in epidemiology and infectious diseases but she couldn't get accepted to do any of the fieldwork programs. Your little dream team was the closest match anyone could come up with."
"So I'm stuck with her?"
"Think of it as a learning opportunity."
He didn't bother to reply, storming out without another word.
------------------------------
"What'd you do?" House demanded brusquely, gesturing to Verhoeven's elbow crutch as the two rode the elevator together down to the clinic. "Car accident? Hip dysplasia?"
"Polio," she supplied reluctantly.
"Wow. You don't see that one much anymore."
"Outbreak in 1978 amongst a group who had refused vaccination. I had a play-date with one of the children."
"If you caught it, you couldn't have been vaccinated either," House noted. "But you still talk about it like an 'us' versus 'them' thing."
"Streptomycin allergy," she told him with a sigh.
"Unless you skipped out on that lesson in med school, you should know that there are two kinds of polio vaccine," House reminded her. "The oral vaccine doesn't have streptomycin."
She sighed again as the elevator door slid open. "It had to be ordered especially from Amsterdam. But the time it had arrived, it was already too late."
"Bit of a touchy subject, is it?"
"You haven't exactly been forthcoming yourself," she replied, trying to avoid any further questions.
"I'll take that as a big, fat yes," he declared, starting off down the hall toward the clinic. He was more cheerful now that he had someone to torment, so long as he didn't dwell on the fact he was stuck with her for longer than he cared to think about.
She hesitated for a moment, standing alone in the elevator, before following him unwillingly down the hall.
"Look," he said, wheeling around when he didn't hear her following him. "I don't' like it and you obviously don't like it, but we're stuck with one another regardless. I'm going to ask you questions you're not going to want to answer. I could just look in your personnel file or pull your medical records for the information, but right now, that just isn't as much for me."
"Yes, sir," she replied stiffly.
"Good, now that we understand one another, we're about to enter the circle of hell that even Dante couldn't bear to write about. You're going to see patients; I'm going to sit in the back of the exam room and amuse myself. If you need help diagnosing some kids' runny nose – it's probably a cold, just so you know – there are two other doctors on clinic duty that you can call in for a consult."
------------------------------
"Shouldn't you be, you know, seeing patients?" Wilson asked, shaking his head as he came up on House sitting in the hallway outside an exam room with his portable TV. A tall, gangly youth in a short coat trailed behind the oncologist, a chart clutched in his hands.
"You mean sitting inside the exam room instead of outside it?" House inquired. "I get better reception out here, and I have an intern who can see patients for me."
"You have to co-sign their orders," Wilson reminded him.
"She brings the charts out to me and I sign them. If it's a commercial break, sometimes I even read them first."
Wilson sighed and rolled his eyes. "This is Duncan Brown," he said, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder to the intern behind him.
From inside he exam room came a loud crash and a metallic bang. House grinned as the door to the exam room swung open. "That is Katrien Verhoeven," he replied, "and she doesn't like it when the nurses move things around while her back his turned."
She caught the tail end of the introduction, nodding her head to Wilson and looking more than a little harried as she thrust the file toward House. "Seven-year-old presenting with an ear infection," she began.
House waved off any further explanation and scrawled an initial next to her observations. "She doesn't always look behind her before she starts walking somewhere," he explained to Wilson, not bothering to look at the girl. "That's the fifth time she's knocked that stand over. She missed it once, but I think the nurse felt sorry for her and left it too far away. I started paying them more after that."
With a frustrated sigh, she snatched the chart up from him and disappeared back around the corner into the exam room.
"I think we're getting along well," House said with more than a little amusement.
"Why don't you go start with the next patient," Wilson suggested to Brown. "I'll be there in a few minutes." The younger man nodded and hurried off down the hall.
"You know, they're not students anymore," House observed. "They can do things on their own without someone standing beside them to hold their hands."
"They were considered students until this morning when they reported for work. It's their first day, in a new hospital for most of them, and they don't know where anything is. I figure that for the first day, it's just as easy to treat them like students and ease them into things before the residents get a chance at them," Wilson told House. "You have different plans?"
"There's no sense coddling them. It's a dog-eat-dog world. They'll either sink or they'll learn to swim."
"Aside from the fact that you mixed your metaphors there…"
"Doctor House," Verhoeven called from inside the exam room.
"Remember what I told you?" House yelled back to her with a sigh. "If she can't handle an ear infection on her own, she at least has to come out to me," he explained to Wilson. "Privilege of rank."
"Are you sure you're not playing the cripple card again?"
House looked up at Wilson critically. "You think that I would do something like that?"
"Why not? You've done it to students before without even blinking. Have you suddenly found a sense of…"
"Nope, I'll use it again."
"Then why not with this one?'
House didn't bother to answer, instead watching for Wilson's reaction as Verhoeven made her way into the hall to speak with them. Coming all the way out into the hallway so that she could speak with House out of hearing of those in the exam room, she again nodded polite acknowledgement to Wilson. "Three-year-old with a positive Babinski and nystagmus," she told House, who looked disappointed as Wilson kept a carefully neutral expression on his face, avoiding more than an initial surprised glance down at her crutch. "His temperature is normal," Verhoeven continued, "but his sister said that he had been running a fever last week. Negative Brudzinski and Kernig signs, so there is no indication of meningitis."
House lowered his TV as his interest was piqued. "You're sure it was positive?" he asked.
Verhoeven bit her lower lip a little uncertainly, but she nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Wait a minute," Wilson said. "There's a seven-year-old and a three-year-old here with a sister and not a parent?"
"It's a single-parent household and the mother is at home with a migraine and the two other children," she reported. "These two are here with their twelve-year-old sister."
House quirked his head with some interest and picked up his cane from where he'd rested it against the wall. "It appears as though enforced hand-holding may have some benefits after all," he noted.
"Yes, well, I should be catching up with my own intern," Wilson replied, hurrying off down the hall.
------------------------------
"You admitted a kid without parental consent for a fever that's gone away?" Foreman asked, surprise evident on his face.
"No," House answered, rolling his eyes. "I admitted a kid for classic signs of an unidentified neurological disorder. You're the neurologist, Foreman, I thought you would have been on this one like white on rice." He started scrawling the list of symptoms up on the board.
"Nystagmus, positive Babinski, history of fever," Cameron read out. "Possible ties to inner ear infections and maternal migraine headaches."
"The uncontrolled eye movements could be residual from an inner ear infection," Foreman pointed out. "Which, coincidentally enough, is exactly what the brother was just diagnosed with."
"And the Babinski?" House demanded. "Are you just going to ignore that one?"
"Are you sure it was positive?" Foreman inquired. "I mean, we all made some pretty stupid mistakes back when we were interns and the kid is only three."
"I repeated the test," House told him, "and unless you think that I'm incompetent enough to make the same mistake and want to go and repeat it for yourself…"
"What about the other kid?" Cameron asked, cutting House off in an effort to keep the peace.
"Couldn't find anything but an ear infection. I sent him home with the sister, but they'll probably be back soon with the mother," House answered.
"You think the ear infection might be related to whatever this kid has and you still let them go home?" Cameron questioned in surprise.
House shrugged. "Maybe it's related. Maybe it's not."
"There were no indications of meningitis?" Chase questioned.
"Negative Brudzinski and Kernig," House reported. "But I'm pretty sure I said that already. Can we move on now, or do you need me to say it again?" He paused for as second, then added, "Good. If you need me, I'll be down in the clinic, hand-holding."
------------------------------
"You're actually leaving the three of them alone to figure this one out?" Wilson questioned, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sinking down into one of the other chairs in the oncology lounge.
"And you left your intern unattended for long enough to drink a cup of coffee," House observed sharply.
"He's getting a late lunch up in the cafeteria," Wilson admitted.
"Giving an intern a break for lunch," House mused, "what a novel idea!"
"Why? What's your intern doing?"
"Catching up on all the clinic house I missed this month," House answered. "What? Someone's got to do it and it isn't going to be me."
"You've had her in the clinic since she started four hours ago," Wilson said, looking down at his watch. "You weren't planning to give her a break? Maybe a tour of things?"
House shrugged. "Depends how generous I'm feeling. I stopped paying the nurses to move the trays, if that means anything."
"Did you get bored with it? Or did you just run out of money?"
"I'm hurt," House replied. "Although it was amusing, I wasn't doing it for my own enjoyment.'
Wilson rolled his eyes in disbelief. "I'm sure your reasons were entirely altruistic."
"Why else would I have kept doing it after Cuddy gave me permission?"
"Cuddy gave you permission?" Wilson repeated in surprise.
"Well, first she came out to yell and make me explain exactly what I thought I was doing. Then she gave me permission to continue. Sort of."
"She actually gave you permission to torment your intern?"
------------------------------
"Where's Cameron?" Foreman asked, looking up from the journal in his lap as Chase returned to the office from examining the boy.
"The mom's still not here," Chase answered. "The little boy is scared and Cameron stayed in there with him."
"It's been like an hour and a half," Foreman noted. "Where's the mom?"
"It's been more like two hours since the other kids were sent home," Chase corrected. "Even if they had to go across town and back on the bus, someone still should have been here by now."
"Maybe the mom's trying to find a babysitter for the other kids?" Foreman suggested.
"She sent a twelve-year-old here with a three-year-old and a sick seven-year-old," Chase reminded him. "You don't think it's strange that someone's not here?"
------------------------------
"The mom's still not here."
"Which mom would that be?" House asked. "And more to the point, why do I care?"
"The three-year-old you admitted earlier. His mom's still not here," Cameron told him.
"And this is supposed to concern me?" House inquired, turning another page in his magazine.
"It's been close to three hours since we admitted him."
"And?"
"You don't think it's strange that a mom wouldn't rush to the hospital to be with her three-year-old?"
"You don't this it's strange that a mom would send her kids to a walk-in clinic under the care of a twelve-year-old?" House countered, flipping another page.
"I tried calling," Cameron said, "but the number was out of service. I called the phone company and they're doing repairs to the lines in the area."
"And you want me to do what about it? Fix the phone lines myself?"
"I…"
House rolled his eyes and folded up his magazine. "Go track the mother down," he instructed, pushing himself to his feet. "Take Foreman and Chase with you."
"What about Peter? He's alone and he's scared. We've been in there playing games with him."
"I'm ready for another break," House told her.
"You're going to go and sit with a patient?" Cameron asked in surprise.
"No," House answered. "I'm going to go hang out in the cafeteria. Verhoeven can sit with him. She's already caught me up on my clinic duty this month and I don't want Cuddy to start assigning Verhoeven her own hours yet."
------------------------------
"I feel sorry for her," Foreman said as the three fellows walked through the parking garage toward his car. "I mean, he's miserable to us most of the time, but…"
"But we just work for him?" Cameron finished.
Forman nodded.
"I'm surprised he didn't just pass her off onto one of us," Chase observed.
"Yeah, but then she wouldn't do his clinic hours for him," Foreman replied. "We'll have to do the stuff he doesn't want to do"
"We'll definitely have to supervise the overnight rotations," Chase answered. "When's the last time you saw him here all night with a patient?"
"The last time we paged him in for an emergency," Foreman laughed. "He's got tenure and he's got us. Unless he's really interested, why would he need to be here at night?"
------------------------------
"Come on," House said, sticking his head into the exam room. "Enough clinic duty for today."
"I'm almost…"
House looked the patient up and down, interrupting her. "What's your problem?" he demanded bluntly of the patient.
"My feet hurt," the man complained.
"Any new exercise programs?"
"Not lately."
"Spend a lot of time on your feet?"
"No."
"Any exercise at all?"
"Not lately, but I just got…"
"Do some exercise and buy a new pair of shoes. Those ones are too tight and they're cutting off the circulation to your feet; that's why they hurt," House stated. "Now, Doctor Verhoeven, you're with me."
She obeyed, wordlessly following him out of the exam room. "Doctor House," she said softly once the door had closed behind them, "he has a family history of both diabetes and heart disease, either of which could cause decreased circulation and foot problems."
"If he was diabetic, he'd be in ketoacidosis by now," House countered impatiently. "He had two empty candy wrappers sticking out of his jacket pocket and he gets no exercise. Did you smell ketones?"
"No, but…"
"No diabetes then. And as for heart disease, did you use that fancy stethoscope of yours? Or does it just make for a good accessory with the lab coat?"
"Good breath sounds bilaterally," she reported. "And no abnormal heart rhythms."
"His fingers showed no signs of clubbing and he wasn't complaining of any chest pain or tightness," House told her. "He might have heart disease, but it won't kill him yet. We can't diagnose something if we don't have any signs. Remember that."
"Yes, sir," she replied.
"And don't be so polite," House noted. "I can't decide whether the constant deference is a refreshing change or just irritating."
"I'm sorry, sir."
"Okay, that's just irritating," he decided as they passed out through the man clinic doors out into the hall.
"I'll keep that in mind," she answered quietly.
"Hmm, sass from the new girl. Now that is a change, refreshing or otherwise."
"I'm…"
"Remember what I just said about irritating?"
------------------------------
"This is the kid we admitted earlier. I sent everyone else off to find the mother, but the kid is scared and someone needs to sit with him," House told her, stopping outside he boy's room.
"You would like me to sit with him?" Verhoeven asked. House had had her shuffled from patient to patient in the clinic all day so far. Sitting down was something that she'd almost given up on.
"Well, Cuddy might get suspicious if I'm checked into the clinic for more than three hours than what I was scheduled," House relied. "And although it'd be great to have you finish off all my hours for the month right now, there's still another week left to go."
"So I am just to sit with him until his mother arrives?" she repeated, still looking for the trick. She couldn't believe that it would be that easy.
"Essentially," House told her. "We can't really do anything until the mother arrives and gives us permission."
"All right."
"Oh," House told her as he turned to start walking away, "and while you're sitting with him, you might as well start a work-up. You wouldn't want to get bored."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm going to watch the big TV in the cafeteria," he interjected. "As soon as the mother gets here, get the kid in for an MRI right away."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, and you'll probably want to get a lumbar puncture. Get a nurse to hold the kid down if the mother doesn't get here in the next half hour or so," House directed, continuing on his way. "If anyone asks, it's to rule out meningitis."
"Should I page you?" she questioned.
"Only if you find something interesting," he called back over his shoulder.
------------------------------
"Mommy?"
"She is on her way," Verhoeven assured the boy as she came into the room. "But until then, I'm going to stay with you and check a few things. Is that okay with you?"
"I want Mommy."
"I know," she told him, sitting down at his bedside, "but until she gets here, how about I stay with you? My name is Katrien."
He sat, studying her and playing with his stuffed animal while he considered it. "I'm Peter," he said after a moment. "How come you got a cane?"
------------------------------
"I don't think it's nystagmus."
House sighed and turned around to stare at Verhoeven. "Commercial break is in two minutes. You couldn't have waited until then?"
"I don't think it's jus nystagmus," she repeated. "He fell asleep a few minutes ago and the twitching continued. If it were simple, the movement should have stopped when he fell asleep."
House sighed and turned away from the cafeteria TV screen. "Since it's obvious that you're not going to wait until my show is over, you might as well talk."
"Nystagmus wouldn't…"
"You said that already," House broke in impatiently. "If it's not nystagmus, then what is it?"
"It could be localized mild continuous seizures," she suggested uncertainly.
"Kozhevnikov's," House mused. "That's a nice zebra you've got there." He paused for a moment, thinking.
"Or it could…"
"No," House said. "I like it. What do you want to do about it?"
She bit down on her lower lip for a moment, thinking.
"Hadn't quite gotten that far yet?"
"The treatment depends upon the underlying cause," she stated softly. "I guess we would begin with an MRI, an EEG, and a CT scan."
"Good for starters. What else?"
"CBC, chem-7, and a tox screen," she said.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" House questioned, turning back to catch the last few minutes of his soap.
------------------------------
"Not the greatest neighbourhood, is it?" Chase observed, looking around at the shabby townhouses crowded together.
"What do you expect from a single mother raising five kids alone?" Foreman demanded. "Can't be an easy life."
"This is the address," Cameron interjected, trying to cut off the impending argument. "217-B," she read, checking the paper one more time.
"What are we waiting for?" Foreman asked, starting up the stairs toward the door.
"Keep an eye out for anything unusual," Chase cautioned him. "Might save a repeat trip back, because you know he's going to ask."
"You mean that it might save me from having to break in later?" Foreman joked caustically, knocking on the door. There was no answer, so he knocked harder, turning around to look at the other two standing at the foot of the stairs. Still nothing.
"You think they could have left already and we just missed them?" Cameron asked.
"Maybe," Chase said. "Or maybe the entire family is collapsed on the floor dieing."
Foreman sighed and rolled his eyes. "You're just dieing for me to jimmy the door and find out, aren't you?" he demanded. "But before I commit yet another break and enter in the name of medicine, I'm at least going to phone the hospital and find out if the mother's shown up." He dug out his cell phone and dialed the number.
"Foreman?" House questioned as he answered the phone. "Where the hell are you? You left an hour ago."
"We got stuck in traffic," he explained, rolling his eyes. "But we're at the house now. There's no answer at the door, so we were wondering if…"
"No sign of anyone yet. But the eye thing has potentially become more interesting. Get the mother here so we can start testing."
Foreman sighed and flipped his cell phone closed. "He hung up," he reported testily to the others. "But only after telling me to get the mother so that he can start testing."
"Still no answer at the door," Chase reported, not bothering to hide his amusement.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Foreman demanded without humour. "Let's send old Foreman off to break into the place." He dug into his wallet for a credit card. "We'll try it this way first and figure something else out if this doesn't work."
"Wouldn't it make more sense to try the knob first?" Cameron suggested, raising her eyebrows.
"Why would he door be left open in a neighbourhood like this?" Foreman scoffed, shaking his head. "I don't leave my doors unlocked and I live in a building with a doorman."
"Fine, I'll try the door then," she stated, pushing through and grabbing the doorknob. It turned freely and the door swung open. "How about that?" she laughed, turning to gloat.
Foreman shook his head and put his credit card back in his wallet. "Hello?" he called into the dim hall, brushing past Cameron. "Anyone home?"
"Doesn't sound like anyone's home," Chase observed, looking down at the darkened hall.
"Yeah, but we've got five pairs of shoes and a space left for the missing one," Cameron said, pointing out the row of shoes neatly aligned along the wall near the door.
"Trust the woman to go for the shoes," Foreman quipped, continuing on down the hall to the first doorway.
"Hello?" Chase called again, opening a door to an empty room.
"Shh…" a quiet voice called as a door opened further down the hall. "Mommy's sleeping."
The three doctors hurried down the hall. "We're doctors from the hospital where you brother is," Cameron explained. "We really need your mom to come down to the hospital."
There was a slight scuffle and the first child disappeared back into the room as an older girl appeared in the doorway. "You're not the same doctors as before," she stated suspiciously, standing with her hands on her hips and blocking the doorway. It was obvious she was the same girl that had come to the hospital earlier.
"No," Chase told her, "they're both still at the hospital with your brother, but we came here to get your mom. We need her to sign some forms before we can start figuring out what's wrong with your brother."
"She took some of her pills," the girl reported, "and she's sleeping. She gets sick when we wake her up. I was going to tell her and we were going to come in as soon as she woke up. I got the little kids dressed and ready to go and everything."
"It's really important that we wake her up and bring her to the hospital," Chase stated. "Either you can go wake her up, or we can."
"I'll do it," the girl said, sliding past the three doctors and down the hall. As soon as she was gone, the other children in the room crowded around to peer out the doorway at the three strangers suddenly standing in their hallway.
------------------------------
"Why isn't Mommy here?" the boy whimpered, staring down at the needle in his arm as blood filled the tube. Tears rolled down his face.
"She is on her way," Verhoeven assured the boy, trying to distract him so that she could finish drawing the blood they needed for the tests.
"You said that before an' she's still not here," the boy cried, hugging his bear tightly to him with his free arm. "Why isn't she here?"
"She is coming as soon as she can," Verhoeven repeated awkwardly, switching out one vial for another.
"I want Mommy," he sobbed, trying to pull away.
"I know," she assured him, grabbing his hands to stop him from pulling out the needle.
"What's your bear's name?" she asked, hoping to distract him.
"He's Peter, like me," he told her, still trying to squirm away from her. "So he doesn't get mixed up."
"How would he get mixed up?" she inquired. The vial was almost full; she just had to get him to sit still for another couple of minutes.
"They take him away," he sniffed, wiping his tears on his bear's head. "His name's the same as mine so he 'members to come back."
"And does he?"
"Mm-hmm," Peter said, crying harder as she removed the vial and pulled out the needle.
------------------------------
"It's been five minutes," Chase noted, looking down at his watch. "Do you think we should go see what's going on?" The three doctors were leaning against the wall out in the hallway while the kids played, still watching the strangers carefully. The oldest girl, having returned from waking the mother, was quite clearly watching them, making no pretence at doing other things.
"I got us in," Foreman pointed out quietly. "One of you can go."
"Actually," Cameron corrected, "I got us in. But I'll go anyway."
"Hey," the girl called, seeing Cameron heading off down the hall, "where's she going?" She jumped to her feet, ready to race off after Cameron.
"She's just going to see how your mom's doing," Chase explained. "She wants to make sure that she understands what's going on with your brother. It's really important."
The girl reluctantly sat back down, unable to argue with that. "Is Peter really sick?" she asked quietly. "He was okay when we left."
"Nothing's happened since you left," Foreman assured her, "but he's sick and we're not sure what's wrong. But we can't start figuring it out until your mom gets to the hospital."
"I was going to bring her as soon as she woke up," the girl repeated. "But if we wake her up when she's taken her medicine, then she gets sick." She sounded miserable and guilty. "She was supposed to take Michael to the clinic today, but then she got one of her headaches. And Michael wouldn't stop crying 'cause his ear hurt."
"It's okay," Chase assured her. "It's good that you brought them in. If you hadn't you might not have known there was anything wrong with Peter.
"Okay," she sniffed, but it was apparent that she didn't quite believe him.
------------------------------
"Did you stop off to get a burger or something?" House demanded irritably, having been forced to phone Foreman to determine where they were.
Cameron, who'd answered the phone so that Foreman could keep his eyes on the road, sighed. "We got stuck in traffic again."
"How long before I can finally start running tests on the kid legitimately?"
"We're pulling into the parking garage now," Cameron informed him, looking down the block at the hospital. So what if they weren't quite there yet. The extra few minutes wouldn't mean anything.
"Then go and get me a burger before you come back," House directed. "No pickles."
"What?"
"You can't bring the mother in here now," House answered, listening to the little boy's cries through the glass door. "Give us another ten minutes. Tie her up with paperwork if you have to."
"Why?"
"If you would have shown up when you were supposed to, we wouldn't have had this problem," House snapped. It was taking two nurses to hold the terrified kid down and immobile. "We just started a spinal tap."
"Okay," Cameron said, conscious of the mother in the front seat and the kid sitting on her lap. "I'll make sure we fill in that paperwork downstairs right away then."
"You idiot!" House burst out. "Cuddy's downstairs. If she sees you, she'll know I'm doing tests I'm not supposed to."
"Fine," Cameron sighed. "Your office?"
"Just don't bring her anywhere near Paediatrics until I page you," House ordered, hanging up on her.
"Are you sure she needs to fill them out immediately?" Cameron questioned, feigning the conversation for the sake of the mother. "Okay, I know you'd rather have her in to see him right away, but…"
"Yeah, thanks for trying," she went on as Chase stared at her in disbelief, peering around the kid in his lap. "Bye," she added, finally hanging up her end of the call.
"House?" Chase had to ask. He'd been sure it was House from the first exchange, but then that last bit hadn't sounded anything like House.
"Yeah," Cameron answered. "Ms Parker, unfortunately we're going to have to take you to fill out a bunch of paperwork before you can see Peter. There's admission paperwork and permissions for testing that we have to get right away."
"And I can't even see him first?" she demanded.
"He's…"
"He's already been admitted for a few hours and these papers should have been filled out then," Chase supplied, trying to help Cameron out. "We'll get you in to see your son as soon as we possibly can."
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"Took you long enough. Did you get it?" House demanded as Verhoeven finally emerged back out into the hallway.
She nodded tightly, holding up the vial of fluid. "It took three tries," she told him, her voice choked up as she listened to the whimpers still coming from the room behind her.
"Get it to the lab. The mother finally got here ten minutes ago."
"Where is she?" Verhoeven asked. "He was terrified; it would have been much easier for him had she been in with him."
"How would you feel if you came in and saw nurses holding your screaming kid down while a doctor poked uncertainly around his spine with a big needle?"
"We could have waited, put off the procedure for a few minutes."
House shrugged. "We'd already waited too long if he does wind up having meningitis. She's filling out paperwork or something equally as useless. I'm sure there'll be some sort of a joyful reunion when she's finally let up here."
"This should get to the lab," Verhoeven said softly, looking down at the vial in her hands and not meeting House's eyes.
"Well, what are you waiting for then?" House sighed, rolling his eyes.
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"What did you find out?" Foreman asked, watching through the glass walls as the family crowded around the boy's bed.
"Don't you even care about the boy?" House questioned in return, looking at Foreman in feigned shock.
"His name is Peter, by the way," Cameron informed House.
"His name is actually Peter Parker?" House couldn't help but laugh.
"Hey," Chase couldn't resist quipping, "'with great power comes great responsibility.' Maybe we should check him for spider bites." Since the whole Vogler thing, he'd been trying to fly below the radar as much as possible. It was only now, after a few months had passed, that he was finally starting to come out of his shell and back to his pre-Vogler self.
Cameron rolled her eyes. "I think it's cute. I bet he has Spiderman pyjamas at home somewhere."
"Cute?" House repeated, wrinkling his forehead in disgust. "Could something 'cute' go head-to-head with someone like Doc Oc?"
"Or the Green Goblin?" Foreman questioned.
"Don't forget Venom," Chase added.
"Mysterio."
"The Lizard.'
"The Hobgoblin."
Cameron stayed out of it, rolling her eyes again as the three men eagerly traded the names of comic book villains back and forth, acting more like children than doctors.
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