Hearing the knock at her door, Cuddy sighed. As painful as getting through this report was, she'd never manage it if people kept interrupting her. Remembering House's earlier clinic hours and strange mood, she braced herself when she saw it was Brenda.

"What can I do for you?"

"It's House," Brenda said with a scowl. "He yelled at another patient this morning. She and her husband are back and want to talk to you and file a formal complaint."

Cuddy nodded wearily, but felt an odd sense of relief. House's cheerful attitude and early arrival at the clinic this morning had frankly scared her. As annoying as dealing with this situation would be, at least she didn't need to worry that House had been replaced by a pod person or was introducing another drug to his addiction.

"Do you know what happened?"

Brenda shook her head regretfully. "We all heard the shouting, and there was something about personal responsibility and animals not being old-school iPods. We don't even try to make sense of him anymore."

Animals? Cuddy rubbed her forehead, remembering House's bizarre comment about a dog waking him up. What on earth was going on? Maybe her relief was premature. "Send them in, I'll deal with it." Brenda gave her a sympathetic smile and walked out to send the couple in.

Sitting at her kitchen table, Belle sipped her coffee forlornly and wondered if it was too early in the day to spike it with some Jamesons. She was such an idiot. Why couldn't she ever manage to be suave or, hell, at least composed in front of handsome men? Instead it took about a nanosecond for her to regress into the awkward, tongue-tied teenager she'd once been. She might as well still have coke-bottle glasses, braces and the bad 80s-style haircut that she'd struggled for years to psychologically repress.

She picked up his business card again and stared intently at it. "It's not a magical talisman, Belle," she muttered to herself, "and you are going to have to call him." She forced herself to glance at the phone and cringed. As ridiculous as she knew it was, as much as she'd struggled for years to overcome it, she hated to make the first call. Belle much preferred the certainty that the man was pursuing her, that any intial contact wasn't just a fleeting, easily forgotten whim. "I don't even deserve to live in this century."

He had just stopped by. Surely she couldn't call him quite yet. What was today, Wednesday? Hrm. If she wanted to see him this weekend, she should call soon. But would that seem desperate? Maybe. Maybe it would be smarter to wait until next week, act like she was busy…

He knows you just moved here and hardly know anyone yet, she thought to herself, polishing off the coffee. Don't push it. It was totally out of the blue and went great. He wouldn't have given you his number if he hadn't wanted you to have it. Now, stop mooning and get to unpacking!

Belle got up and rinsed out her cup. She glanced out the window in the direction of her surly next-door neighbor's house. She hoped all was well and that she hadn't made a gigantic mistake. James had said he wasn't a pet person. Still, there had been something in his eyes when he mentioned his dead pet rat…well, time would tell. And if she just happened to see Dr. James Wilson's car over there again, she could conveniently walk out to check the mail…or go for a walk, or …something.

Foreman walked up to the office from his own clinic hours, and smiled at Cameron as he walked in.

"Where's Chase?" he said, taking off his coat.

"Haven't seen him yet today, I thought he was doing clinic hours," Cameron said, smiling and looking up from the magazine she was reading. It was another slow day at the Diagnostic Department.

"Nope," said Foreman, strolling over to pour himself a cup of coffee, "House was down there earlier, got some couple royally pissed at him as per usual, but I didn't see Chase."

"Uhoh, what'd House do this time?"

"No one seems to know," Foreman stirred sugar into his coffee and moved to sit down. "They just stormed out in a huff and Brenda had to run damage control again. I think they're in talking to Cuddy. You mean House hasn't come back up here yet?"

"No sign of him," said Cameron. "I'm starting to wonder, between the dead rat the other day and him leaving early. Do you think he's overmedicating or something? Adding something else to the mix?"

Foreman's brow creased in thought for a moment. "I really don't think so," he said slowly. "For House, an erratic state is essentially normal. Frankly," he smiled, "I think that losing his pet might have affected him more than he's ever going to let on."

"Really?"

"Sure, why not? He lives alone. He doesn't have any friends other than Wilson, and admittedly Wilson has lots of time to hang out now that he's divorced, but there's still a lot of hours in the day to fill. I don't know exactly why or what motivated him to get that rat, but something must have. And now that the rat's gone, he's probably realizing just how nice it was to have a companion around like that." Foreman looked satisfied with his own explanation.

"I hope you're right," Cameron said with a worried look in her eye.

Foreman noticed the worry. "What's up?"

Cameron bit her lip and looked at Foreman. She hadn't seen Wilson yet that morning to ask how it went, and she wasn't sure she should say a thing about the kittens until she knew for sure that House didn't take them to the pound or drown them or something. Still, Foreman's theory seemed to get at the heart of her own worries about House, so she told him the whole story.

While they were engrossed in the tale, and speculation about what on earth House would do with two kittens, they didn't notice Chase walk up to the office door with two young women. When he walked in, they looked up.

"Morning, Chase," said Cameron.

"Are we going to do some training today since we don't have an active case?" asked Foreman, thinking that medical students looked younger every year.

Chase grinned. "I don't think so," he said, "unless they dropped the admissions age for med school a lot since I was there. No, these two young ladies are here to see House. Dr. Foreman, Dr. Cameron, let me introduce Melanie and Maggie Cross."

Foreman and Cameron stood up and shook hands, shooting Chase puzzled looks.

"They are looking for Dr. House," Chase said, looking like a cat who'd scored a whole packet of people tuna.

"Is there something we can help you with while you're waiting?" asked Cameron, taking an instant liking to the nervous-looking young women. They were both of medium height and build, one with short brown hair and the other with long curly reddish-brown locks. They both had piercing blue eyes that seemed familiar, somehow. They were clearly twins, and no more than seventeen years old.

Melanie spoke up first, "Oh, no thank you. It's not really anything you can help with." She ran her fingers through her short hair nervously.

Maggie seemed the more relaxed of the two, and she took a seat when Chase offered. "We have business with him, personal business," she noted. Chase's grin got wider.

Cameron nodded, more puzzled than ever. Foreman glanced surreptitiously at his watch and said, "Hey Chase, I'm going to head down to the cafeteria for an early lunch. Want to come along?"

Chase saw his opportunity. He was clearly bursting with some sort of news. "Sure, good idea. Can we pick anything up for you ladies?" he asked the room.

Cameron could tell something was up, but she knew she should stay in the office with the girls until House returned from wherever he'd gone. She nodded and said, "Could you bring up some fresh croissants, and a few of those green tea bags they sell down there? Melanie, Maggie, would you like anything?"

The girls looked at each other and Maggie, clearly the bolder one, said "Sure, a couple of Cokes?" They were reaching for their wallets but Cameron waved them off, handing some of her money over to Foreman for the food.

Foreman said, "Okay, we'll be right back," and he and Chase took off. As soon as they were out of sight of the office Foreman said, "Chase, what is up? You look like the cat that got the cream."

Chase grinned even wider and said, lowly, "You know who those girls are?"

"We've established they're not students…come on Chase, quit playing. You know I have no idea who they are."

"They are – or at least they say they are – House's daughters." Chase looked pleased with himself.

Foreman stopped dead in his tracks. "They're WHAT?"