-----------------------------------------
"Did Doctor Chase go home?" Verhoeven asked, rubbing her eyes tiredly as she saw Foreman coming down the hall toward her.
"Yeah, we switched off an hour or so ago and he went home to sleep," Foreman answered sipping his coffee. "Any change?"
"For Peter? None, sir," she told him. "But the other patients up and down the hall have been much more demanding." She sighed and shook her head. "I think that I could settle for a little boredom."
Foreman laughed. "I remember that feeling. And don't bother with the 'sir.' It makes me feel like I'm sixty."
She smiled half-heartedly at him, smothering a yawn. "I should check on Peter" she said. "Despite my best efforts it has been a few hours since I've had the chance."
"He's right across from the nurses' station," Foreman reminded her. "And the nurses keep a pretty close eye on things. Don't worry about it so much. It's your first night on-call, unfortunately you're supposed to be completely overwhelmed."
"I don't know whether that is reassuring or not," she replied.
"You're doing okay," Foreman assured her.
She nodded and started toward Peter's room, but she didn't get much more than two steps before her pager went off. "I think Doctor House must have told the nurses I was to cover this floor," she noted. "There is overflow for both post-surgical and paediatric cases and I have yet to see anyone from either service."
"Well, I'll check on Peter while you answer that page," Foreman told her, setting his cup down on the nurses' station and heading toward the boy's room.
---------------------
"Your daughter's temperature is normal," Verhoeven assured the anxious mother with a sight as the young girl rolled over and went immediately back to sleep. This was the fourth time she'd been paged here to take the same girl's temperature. Apparently the mother didn't trust the nurses.
"Are you sure?" the mother asked, wringing her hands anxiously. "You didn't even use a thermometer."
"Her temperature is completely normal," Verhoeven repeated, starting to back away toward the door. "Right now, even if she did have a bit of a temperature – which she doesn't – it would be better for her to get some rest and recover some of her strength."
"Are you sure?" the mother questioned again, smoothing her daughter's hair back from her forehead.
Verhoeven was saved from having to reassure the mother again by the page. "I am sure," she said simply as she checked the display. It was Peter's room.
She hurried down the hall as fast as she could manage, swinging into Peter's room. "What's wrong?" she demanded breathlessly.
"He's seizing," one of the nurses told her, holding Peter rolled onto his side. "Started about a minute ago. What do you want us to do?"
Verhoeven hesitated, frozen. "Did you page Doctor Foreman?" she questioned. He'd checked on Peter about an hour ago and then had gone up to grab a snack from the vending machines in the cafeteria.
"He's aspirating," the second nurse announced, grabbing the suction tube and slipping it between Peter's lips. "Doctor, what do you want us to do?"
Verhoeven stood with her eyes round, watching Peter's limbs twitching. "Doctor!" the first nurse said firmly.
"Phenobarbitol," she said after another second. "Draw fifty milligrams of phenobarbitol."
The first nurse stepped away from Peter to draw the medication, handing the needle to Verhoeven. "Fifty milligrams phenobarbitol," the nurse told her crisply.
With another slight hesitation, Verhoeven pressed the needle into the open IV port, depressing the plunger and sending the medication into the little boy's body. "Phenobarbitol onboard," Verhoeven reported, tossing the syringe onto the empty bedside table and moving to press her fingers to his carotid, wishing that he'd been hooked up to heart leads. He hadn't needed them before, so manually was the only way to track his heart rate at the moment.
"Coming up on about two minutes," one of the two nurses declared.
"Page Doctor Foreman again," Verhoeven ordered, completely losing track. All she knew was that for the moment his heart was still beating. "And another fifty milligrams of phenobarbitol. Stat." This time her order was more confident.
The drug was hurriedly drawn as the seizing continued. "Please work," Verhoeven muttered, sending the drug coursing through into the boy's veins.
Hurried footsteps came down the hall as the seizing finally slowed, Peter's formerly twitching body relaxing limply to the bed. "What happened?" Foreman demanded, appearing in the doorway, his pager going off in his hand.
---------------------
"What are you doing?" House demanded, barging into the dim room. "You didn't answer my page."
"My pager hasn't gone off, sir," she protested, twisting to look at him, but keeping her legs stretched out along the couch, a blanket covering them.
"Fine," House admitted, flipping the light on. "I hadn't paged you yet. It's actually what I was coming in here to do."
"Is there something wrong?" she questioned immediately, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the suddenly increased light levels.
"No," House told her, coming into the room and settling himself on a chair. "But no one had seen you in twenty minutes and I wanted to make sure you hadn't slipped off somewhere to sleep."
"No sleeping, sir," she assured him with a smile.
"And no coming to attention," House observed, watching her carefully. "Not even when you thought there might be something wrong with Spidey."
"Is Peter alright?" she questioned.
"No change," House replied dismissively. "What interests me more at the moment is why you've suddenly dispensed with one of the formalities and why you vanished into a dark room instead of going to eat lunch."
"Maybe I just don't like cafeteria food," she proposed.
"Occam's Razor," House told her, fishing out his bottle of Vicodin. "The simplest explanation is usually the best. The two things are related, the only question is how." He thoughtfully shook a pill out into his hand, tossing it back and swallowing it dry.
"I don't like cafeteria food, sir," she asserted.
"I wasn't disputing that fact," House replied. "Nobody really likes cafeteria food, and especially not the stroganoff. But that's not the real reason. After all, you were here almost all night and all of yesterday without eating…" He was just warming up to the subject and would have continued, but his pager went off, interrupting his train of thought.
Verhoeven's pager went off the next minute and she twisted to reach the pager off the table in front of the couch. As she did, the blanket slipped down, landing in a pile on the floor.
"Labs are finally in," House read, getting to his feet and glancing over at Verhoeven. "Nice legs," he remarked, making no effort not to look.
Verhoeven blushed deeply at the comment, tugging the hem of her skirt down lower, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she awkwardly swung her legs off the couch and clipped the pager back to the waistband of her skirt.
"Catch," House said suddenly, tossing his bottle of pills across the room to her. She fumbled the catch and the bottle landed on the couch beside her, causing House to roll his eyes. "Take one, give it a few minutes to kick in, and bring the bottle back to me," he directed. "I'll be in the lab."
She picked up the bottle, but continued to her feet, slipping her arm through her crutch and limping the few steps toward House, leaning heavily on the crutch and holding the bottle out to him. "I'm fine, sir," she asserted stubbornly.
"Sit down and take the damn pill," he growled, ignoring her and striding out of the room. "I don't want to see you again for at least another ten minutes. And I know how many are in the bottle."
She sighed, obeying his directive to sit a little too quickly to feign reluctance.
"The brace is a nice accessory, by the way," House added just before the door closed behind him. "Goes well with the crutch."
---------------------
"His white count was up, so he either has an infection or has had one recently," Chase said. "Spinal fluid was negative for meningitis. Lyme disease, maybe?"
"No sign of a rash," Cameron replied, flipping through the lab reports. "So it can't be Lyme disease."
"Lyme disease is as close as we get to Russian spring-summer fever here," Chase pointed out. "That's the major cause of the continuous seizures."
"Encephalitis can cause Kozhevnikov's too," House reminded them. "Besides, as last night proved, it's not just Kozhevnikov's but also full blown seizure activity."
"Lyme disease can cause acute disseminated encephalomyelitis," Chase asserted. "And that explains everything."
"Echo 11 and cat scratch cause ADE too," Foreman told him. "And most cases never have a cause pinned down."
"So we don't treat the underlying cause," House declared. "We treat the symptoms. Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis… Chase, start him on IVIG. Four hundred milligrams per kilo for five days."
Methylprednisolone is a more effective treatment," Foreman said.
"Yeah, but what interferes with methylprednisolone?" House questioned. "Anyone?"
"Phenobarbitol?" Verhoeven said uncertainly. After the ten minutes proscribed by House, she'd made her way to the lab, finding the four older doctors already actively engaged in diagnostic speculation.
"Right in one. And what did we give the kid to stop the seizures? Phenobarbitol. Besides, methylprednisolone can cause seizures, which is the last thing we want to do in a kid already having them. Chase, start the IVIG."
"Aren't we going to try and find out what's behind the encephalomyelitis?" Verhoeven questioned. "If it was contagious, his brothers and sisters could have caught it."
"Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis can take up to two weeks to develop," Cameron noted.
"Fine," House said. "Chase, start the IVIG. Cameron, you and Foreman examine the rest of the kids and see what you find."
The three stood up, hurrying out of the room on their different tasks. "Verhoeven," House started.
"Yes, sir?" she replied.
"You ordered the phenobarbitol last night, right?" House asked.
"Yes, sir," she answered softly, her gaze drifting to the floor.
"Why not diazipan?" he inquired sharply. "It should always be the first call for stopping grand mal seizures unless there's some underlying condition."
She blushed deeply as she admitted, "I couldn't remember the paediatric dosing for diazipan, sir, but I knew it for phenobarbitol." She was clearly apprehensive, not sure what to expect. It was a big mistake and one that she shouldn't have made.
House stayed silent for a moment, staring at her and letting her worry. "Learn it," he directed her sternly after a moment.
"Yes, sir," she responded immediately, her relief showing on her face.
---------------------
"Doctor House," Cuddy stated, coming up behind him, "shouldn't you be catching up on your charting, seeing as you're here on a Saturday?"
"I'm taking a break," he declared, turning from his pyramid of fruit cups to glare irritably at her.
"So I see," Cuddy replied. "But when I asked, 'Shouldn't you be catching up on your charting?' I wasn't really asking so much as I was…"
"Pontificating?" House suggested. "Analyzing? Bloviating?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of haranguing," she snapped.
"Of course, I would love to detail every second of my clinic duty, healing the sick and dealing with their whiny parents, but unfortunately I'm busy," House told her.
"Building towers with fruit cups stolen from the cafeteria does not count as busy," Cuddy informed him irritably. "And you're three weeks behind on your charting."
"Four," House corrected. "I haven't done any this week either."
"Do it," she ordered, turning on her heel.
"Or what?" he challenged. "You'll pull me off clinic duty? I don't know how I could live without the validation the clinic provides. It would just make me feel…"
"How about you do it or I pull your authorization again?" Cuddy countered, facing him with a steady glare.
"Goody, if you did that, then you could take away my intern too. There's no sense in keeping her around if you won't let me do anything."
"Not that simple," Cuddy replied, crossing her arms over her chest. "If I pull your authorization, I'll triple your clinic time, just so that you can make sure your intern isn't bored."
House turned back around to stack the last of the fruit cups on the top of his structre. "Magnifique," he stated, stepping back to evaluate his masterpiece. "Now that I've finished the tour des fruits, where's the tower of charts?" he questioned with a heavy sigh.
---------------------
"We finished examining the rest of the Parkers," Cameron told House, entering the office and crossing immediately over to refill her cup from the coffee pot.
"And?" House prompted, throwing down his pen, eager to abandon his charting.
"The previously diagnosed inner ear infection and not much else," Foreman replied, joining the two in the conference room. "Mom has a history of migraines and two of the kids should be checked out for minor cases of asthma."
"No family history of seizures, epilepsy, or anything else," Cameron added.
"Everyone has a family history of something," House declared. "What's she lying about?"
"We pulled the medical records for all the kids before we examined them," Foreman said. "If there's something in the history, it's not in those files."
"What about the father?" House questioned.
Cameron shook her head. "Also clean so far as we can tell."
"Someone's hiding something," House restated. "But why? And, more interestingly, why?"
"It doesn't matter," Foreman told him. "Chase said that Peter's already responding to the IVIG."
---------------------
"When did the elevator go out?" House questioned, concentrating more on the up and down motion of his yo-yo than on the answer to his question.
"I'm not sure, sir," Verhoeven answered. "It was out when I arrived at six. But Peter seems to be responding well to the IVIG. His EEG from last night showed normal activity."
House didn't bother to reply. On a Monday morning, the answer wasn't worth even a nod. Midway through treatment, they expected Peter to be responding; they would have changed the treatment if he hadn't been. The question about the elevator had been small talk about an excuse to still be upstairs when he should have been in the clinic seeing patients. And for a change it was an excuse that Cuddy couldn't argue with; it was her hospital and her broken elevator.
The two waited for another moment or two in silence, prematurely employing standard elevator etiquette. "Katrien?" a voice carried down the hall to them.
Verhoeven looked confused for a moment before turning her head to look down the hall in the direction of the voice's origin. But then it only took her a second to recognize the figure hurrying towards them. "Doctor Griffiths?" she questioned, almost as if she were unwilling to trust what she was seeing. "What are you doing here?"
"I could be asking the same question of you, my dear," the older man replied, greeting her warmly, "but I can see by the coat and the overall air of exhaustion that you must be doing your internship here."
"This is Doctor Gregory House," she told the older man politely, gesturing slightly to House with the tip of her crutch, "my attending."
"Ah, Doctor House," Griffiths said, not allowing her to finish with a formal introduction. "It is a pleasure to put a face to the reputation." He looked at the yo-yo and the crutch but didn't offer his hand. He nodded instead, making it clear that he knew more than just House's medical reputation.
House nodded vaguely in reply, not taking his attention off the yo-yo, almost as though the up and down motion of the toy would hurry an empty elevator towards them.
"It's been too long since you've been into the office," Griffiths noted to Verhoeven. "But I can well remember the demands of medical school. Perhaps while I'm in town we can have something arranged so that you don't have to make the trip all the way out to Baltimore."
"There's the elevator," House interjected, pocketing his toy in one practiced motion. "You said your name was Griffiths?"
---------------------
"What do you know about Griffiths?" House demanded, leaning on his cane and regarding critically.
"Is this a trick question?" Wilson asked, looking up from his charts and appearing completely unsurprised to see House suddenly appear in his office doorway.
"No, I just want information. He's in Baltimore, so he's probably out of Hopkins," House elaborated. "What do you know about him?"
"Alistair Griffiths?"
"This conversation works much better if you would just answer my questions with – oh, I don't know – answers," House snapped.
"The man's a giant," Wilson replied with a sigh. "I'd be surprised if he weren't retired by now."
"Not helpful."
"I've only met him once," Wilson told House, "at an oncology conference a couple of years ago. He was lecturing on referred pain."
"I didn't ask for your personal history with the guy," House protested.
Wilson rolled his eyes. "He's a specialist in nerve damage and recover, among other things," he informed House. "He's done a lot of work with PPS patients and came up with the over-taxed nerve theory. But, like I said, I'm pretty sure he's retired by now."
"Wait a minute," House drawled, narrowing his eyes. "Is he the one that you and Cuddy tried to convince me to see after…"
"Yeah," Wilson cut him off. "He was one of the many that you were too stubborn to visit."
---------------------
"He's looking good, Ms Parker," Chase told her, folding his stethoscope and slipping it into the pocket of his lab coat. "He's responding well to the treatment, and none of the other children are showing any signs of the encephalomyelitis."
"That's good?" she questioned, stroking Peter's hair back from his forehead.
"That's very good," Cameron assured her, making a small note in Peter's chart. "Once he's done the treatment on Wednesday, we'll keep him overnight for observation, and he should be able to go home on Thursday."
"What about the seizures?" she questioned worriedly.
"We think they were caused by the inflammation," Chase answered. "He hasn't had any since the medication started taking effect and we discontinued all of the anti-convulsives late Saturday."
"So he'll be fine?"
"We have no reason to think that he won't be," Foreman spoke up, running his finger up the sole of Peter's foot and noting the reaction. "All of his tests are coming back normal."
---------------------
"Foreman," House called, "where are you going?"
Foreman sighed, rolling his eyes as he backtracked down the hall. He'd been hoping to slip out early and run some errands. "I was on my way home," he answered. "Cameron is on tonight, Peter's latest set of labs won't be back until morning, and…"
"And there's a Lakers' game on TV," House finished.
"Right," Foreman shot back. "I'm black, so I must love basketball."
"I saw you checking the Lakers' schedule last week," House replied calmly. "Although I'm not entirely sure of your reasons for liking…"
"Watch it," Foreman cautioned.
"I was going to say the Lakers," House protested, trying to assume a look of innocence. "The Knicks are a far superior team."
"What do you want?" Foreman demanded.
"You're a neurologist. What do you know about Alistair Griffiths?"
"He experimented with inducing neuron re-genesis for a while," Foreman answered. "He hadn't had much luck and then the funding for stem cell research was cut off. There hasn't been anything out of his lab since."
"What do you know about him as a doctor?" House asked after a slight pause.
Foreman shrugged. "He has an MD."
House rolled his eyes. "Brilliant observation. Now go away."
---------------------
"Has House seemed weird to you lately?" Foreman asked, taking a bite out of his sandwich.
"You mean weirder than normal?" Chase inquired, eyeing the rest of Foreman's fries hungrily. He usually packed his own lunch, not trusting the cafeteria.
"Yeah," Foreman replied, "weirder than usual."
"I think it's just because he has someone new to torment," Chase speculated. "He seems different to us because his attention is diverted."
"He was asking me questions about Alistair Griffiths," Foreman revealed. "Griffiths works with nerve damage."
"What do you think it means?" Chase questioned.
"Maybe he's looking for a consult on Peter," Foreman mused, noting Chase's gaze and putting a protective hand around his fries.
"Doesn't sound like House, unless it's some new way to get at us," Chase countered.
"I couldn't think of any other reason," Foreman admitted. "Why else would he want to know about Griffiths?"
"He's a nerve guy," Chase repeated thoughtfully. "Maybe House is looking for a consult."
"So it's a stupid idea when I suggest it, but when you do, it's a good one?" Foreman demanded.
"Not for Peter," Chase corrected. "Maybe it's for him."
---------------------
"Verhoeven," House called.
"Clinic?" she guessed.
"Cuddy's been on my back about regulations and the amount of time you've been spending here lately," House told her, rolling his eyes. "I keep telling her that I'm not forcing you to be here. But, more importantly, she's also getting suspicious about the timely and uncomplaining completion of my clinic hours."
"So what would you like me to do, sir?" she inquired.
"There's this little deli about ten blocks from here," House told her. "The cafeteria isn't serving anything I like to eat, and I usually go there."
"Reuben, no pickles," she recited, swapping her lab coat for a rain jacket. It had been pouring rain all day and an umbrella was hard manage with a crutch when other things had to be carried as well.
"Keep it dry," he instructed, looking at the rain coursing down the windowpane. "But don't worry about keeping it warm."
Once she'd left the room and disappeared down the hall, it took all of two minutes for House to empty all the pockets of Verhoeven's lab coat onto the table so he could go through them better.
"What are you doing?" Wilson asked from the doorway, looking on in shock as House poked through the various things he'd pulled out of the pockets.
"Spying," House replied, rolling his eyes. "What are you doing?"
"I came to see if you wanted to go to the cafeteria for lunch. They've got that pizza you like."
"I sent Verhoeven out to get me lunch," he informed Wilson.
"Why?"
"So that I could search her pockets," House answered. "Duh."
"Why?" Wilson repeated, taken aback.
"Chase has the thing with his dad and the double-cross with Vogler thing. Cameron has issues with her dead husband. Foreman has the criminal record…"
"Juvenile record," Wilson corrected. "None of which is any of your business, by the way."
House shrugged. "I wanted to find out what was up with this one."
"You mean aside from the obvious?" Wilson inquired.
"Are you going to help me or what?" House demanded. "I only have so much time here and I don't know what I'm going to find."
"I'm going to the cafeteria," Wilson answered, continuing down the hall. "Unlike you, I'm not driven by a morbid need to know everything about everyone I encounter."
House shrugged and returned to the pile of stuff. Interns seemed to carry around a disproportionate amount of stuff with them. Although most of it wasn't of any interest, there were a few intriguing papers tucked away between the pages of her various reference guides. And, of course, he had to open them all – patient notes, a few undecipherable lists written in Dutch, and…
"Pay dirt," House declared, pocketing the square of paper and hastily shoving the rest back into some semblance of order in her pockets.
---------------------
"What are you doing here?" Wilson asked. "I thought you were violating your intern's privacy."
"I've been done with that for a while. I'm waiting for you," House replied. "What else would I be doing sitting in your chair?"
"I don't know, but when have you ever needed a reason to do something you felt like doing?"
"Good point," House said. "Maybe I'll just stop bothering to come up with reasons for doing things. It'll save me the time to actually do them."
"What are you doing here?" Wilson questioned. "Aside from the obvious."
"I need you to write me a script."
"I wrote you one last week!" Wilson protested. "You can't be out already."
"It's not for me," House sighed, rolling his eyes.
"Then why can't you write it?"
"Because I'd need someone to prescribe it to," House answered. "Duh. Besides, it's better if my name is on the label. I need a reason to be carrying it around."
"That makes perfect sense. You need a prescription that's not for you, but that has to have your name on it," Wilson reiterated. "I understand completely. Especially the part where you can't just prescribe it for the person it's for."
House rolled his eyes again. "Just write the damn prescription. 50 mg tramadol."
Wilson reluctantly reached for his prescription pad. "Why the sudden switch in meds?"
"I told you," House protested, "they're not for me."
"Then who?" Wilson pressed.
"Verhoeven."
"You're prescribing yourself pain medication to give to your intern?" Wilson questioned, freezing in place.
"Write the dam prescription," House barked. "And I'm not prescribing them. I'm filling her standing prescription under another name."
"Aside from the legal implications… She has a standing script for tramadol?"
"That's what I just said. Now, are you going to write this or what?"
"If she has a standing script, then why do you need one?"
"Because she doesn't fill it."
"Is this one of those 'If they don't want treatment…' things?" Wilson asked, scrawling the order but looking as though it went against his better judgement.
House sighed and rolled his eyes again. "Just gimme."
"Not until you explain what's going on."
"She has a standing script for tramadol, has for years, but she's never filled it."
"And?"
House rolled his eyes. "And I'm doing a public service."
"You?" Wilson questioned with a laugh.
That earned the oncologist a piercing glare. "I haven't actually done any clinic work since she started and my last Vicodin hasn't started wearing off yet."
"So this is like moving the trays," Wilson noted, handing over the piece of paper. "Ostensibly for her own good, but really just for your personal amusement."
"What am I getting out of this, other than the third degree? Which, by the way, isn't exactly amusing."
"Why are you doing it then?" Wilson asked, crossing his arms over his chest and looking seriously at House.
House sighed. "You're the one who wrote the script," he said as he stood, intending to leave and hopefully avoid any further questions. "Why'd you do it?"
"Curiosity," Wilson admitted.
"You dispense pain meds every time you get curious?" House inquired. "I've got to get you curious more often."
"Come on, Greg," Wilson pleaded.
"Ooh, pulling out the first name," House remarked, stepping around Wilson and putting his hand on the door. "You shoulda tried that one earlier, Jimmy."
---------------------
Foreman wheeled Peter's chair out toward the taxi waiting at the curb. "Just keep a close eye on him for a few days," Foreman told her, "and bring him in for a check-up next week."
"Thank you so much," Ms Parker told him. "And all the other doctors too. Doctor Cameron was so nice about making sure the other kids had something to do. And Doctor Chase was so good with Peter. And Doctor Verhoeven was always only a call away."
"I'll make sure I tell them," Foreman assured her, shaking his head as she turned away to hand Peter's small bag to the cabby. Aside from the initial evaluation in the clinic, House hadn't had to see the patient the entire case.
---------------------
"I see you checked your patient out yesterday morning," Cuddy noted to House. "Not quite a week. That has to be a record for you."
"It wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be," House told her. "Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis presenting with Kozhevnikov's seizures. Cleared right up with a round of IVIG."
"You know, most people would find that a challenging case," Cuddy told him. "Most doctors go their entire careers without seeing a single case of Kozhevnikov's."
"Are you trying to compliment me?" House demanded. "Or are you attempting to gently point out that I'm easily bored." He reached out to knock over his latest pyramid of fruit cups.
"I was just making an observation," Cuddy protested. "Just like I'm observing that although you're still checked into the clinic, you're nowhere near it."
"I'm taking a break," House replied, restacking his fruit cup tower again and adding a few Jello cups to the base for interest.
"How many of those have you stolen from the cafeteria?" Cuddy questioned.
"None."
"None?" Cuddy repeated in disbelief. "Then where did you get them from?"
"I stole these from the patients," House told her with a grin.
---------------------
"It's been three weeks since anything interesting happened," House complained, blowing the wrapper off his straw at Wilson.
"It's only been four days sine you checked out your kid with the seizures," Wilson reminded him.
"That wasn't interesting," House declared, petulantly shoving his straw into his juice box.
"How old are you?" Wilson asked. "Five?"
House rolled his eyes. "I'm bored," he stated.
"The fruit cups aren't holding your attention anymore?"
"Cuddy took them away."
"And you're letting that stop you?"
"She said that for every fruit cup she caught me with that I wasn't actually eating, she'd give me another hour of clinic duty a week," House whined. "I tried building towers with them once the tops had been opened, but the tension in the wrapping was gone. And the empty containers were too light and fell over when anyone opened the door."
"Why do you care about clinic duty?" Wilson questioned. "You haven't actually done any since Verhoeven was assigned to you."
"Yeah, but sooner or later Cuddy is going to figure out my diabolical scheme and then I'll have to start doing my own hours again."
"Doctor House?" Verhoeven's soft voice floated in from the hall behind the two. "I was wondering if I could have a moment."
"Can't you see I'm busy?" House sighed.
"It's the Parkers," she told him.
"Ma or Pa?" Wilson quipped, motioning for Verhoeven to come in and take a seat.
"Peter again, sir," she answered, easing herself down into the offered seat. "His mother brought him in. He has a rash and is having trouble breathing."