Thank you times a million for the splendid reviews!

Just FYI:
Item 1: I'm not a doctor, therefore, if I'm making huge mistakes in this chapter with the technical stuff, please don't use excessive amounts of punctuation, lots of big letters, and curse words. If I've made mistakes (which I probably have), be gentle. :) And any issues with the medical facts in this story are, of course, the results of my poor interpretation of my mom's medical books.
Item 2: I'm not a cheerleader, either, as I'm sure you'll come to find once you get far enough into this chapter. I don't mean to offend anyone that is one, because there are lots of cheerleaders that are nothing like the stereotype in which I've portrayed them...I'm not sure where they are, exactly, but I know there must be some. :)

And, in case you didn't remember, I don't own House. Are you shocked? I know I was...

But enough from me.

Chapter Four:

At ten past four, my medical team is assembled in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine's lounge. They line the table like fine china, just waiting for their opportunity to shine. I try not to let on that I think this, but I'm actually quite proud of them. Even if one is overly stubborn, one is a whiny snitch, and one is recovering from a devastating infatuation with me, they're all good at what they do and getting better every day. Of course, they have me to thank.

I drum my fingers on the table to build the suspense, just for kicks. Then, "Cameron."

She snaps to attention. "Yes?"

"You have the best hand-writing out of all of us," I admit. "Since we shouldn't be wasting time deciphering what we write down, I suggest you take notes on the white board." She stands up and walks silently to the board, glancing at the markers. "Be sure to use a pretty color," I remind her anxiously. She chooses blue.

Becca Donahue, she scrawls in big bubbly letters. "Now what?"

"Oh, that's right, I forgot," I say. "You've only been doing this for a few years; of course you can't remember that we state what we know first."

She glares at me, then starts scribbling furiously onto the white board.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I interrupt. "Slow down. Maybe one of us has a suggestion."

"We don't know much," she says.

Chase, Foreman and I all start talking instantly.

"She's fifteen…"

"Dirty blonde…"

"105 pounds…"

"Five foot four…"

"Sleeps around…"

"Has a twin…"

"Cheerleads…"

"Has the I.Q. of a fruit fly…"

"Loves the show 'Survivor'…"

Cameron stopped writing around the mention of her height. "Something that might actually help us diagnose her," she all but growls. "We have next to nothing there."

I shrug. "We know she's had one heart attack and one fainting spell since she came here."

"We also know that she might be –" Foreman begins.

"She's not," Chase interrupts. "The test came back negative."

"What about her medical history? Has she had any of these fainting spells before?" I ask.

"No," Cameron says.

"Any trouble breathing? Conditions like asthma?"

"Nothing like that." Cameron begins to write this down.

I stand up and walk to the white board. Cameron bequeaths the marker without being asked, but whines, "I thought I was writing."

"This must be what it feels like to teach a teenager to drive," I comment. "You think they're going to floor the accelerator, but once they get out there, they drive slower than Grandma leaving church on Sunday. I wanted readable handwriting, not calligraphy." I finish the word she'd started and try to convince myself it's comprehensible. "Let's narrow this down. What kind of condition could it be?"

"STDs," Cameron chimes in, recovering quickly.

I write it down. "What else?"

"I doubt it's bacterial," Chase comments.

I jot this down on the no-side with a line through it.

"It could be a clot," Foreman contributes helpfully.

This goes down on the board as well.

"It's probably not genetic," Cameron says.

"Very good," I reply. "If it were genetic, Isabelle would probably have it too." I record this. "Come on, what else? Anything, give me the first word that comes to mind."

"Put 'fungal' on the no-side," Chase says.

"What a brain," I mutter. "I wish I had gone to his medical school. I want to be that smart."

"It could be an allergy of some sort," Foreman adds, but he sounds doubtful.

I feel my face scrunch up, the unlikely suggestion flailing helplessly in my mind as it attacks it with questions. "If it were an allergy, she would have to have already been exposed to it before coming here. Her body couldn't react like that without knowing what it was reacting to."

"Allergies develop over time after constant exposure, even when the patient interacts with the allergen regularly," Cameron says. "It's unlikely, but possible."

"I don't like it," I protest, but my dominant hand doesn't agree. Before I know it, allergy is noted on the white board.

"What about some sort of toxicity?" Chase asks.

I write this down as well. "Anything else?" I inquire. They shake their heads. "So here we have it: STDs. Clots. Allergies. Toxins. Everybody take one to research, narrow down, and test for. That way we can all laugh as we pick off the losers. I call clots."

"Allergies," Cameron claims.

"I'll take STDs," Chase says.

Foreman groans. "Toxins?" he says exasperatedly.

"They're more likely than clots," I offer helpfully.

"Then why did you pick them?" Cameron wonders out loud.

"No research, no narrowing," I reply. "One simple little scan and my work is done. I call first dibs on the patient." I flounce out of the room…or at least what constitutes as flouncing under the limitations my bad leg lends. The makings of my holy medical trinity tiredly pull out my mini-library of medical books and begin to read.

"This thing is gonna take pictures of me?" Becca asks incredulously.

"Cool, huh?" I say, giving her an injection of contrast. "If you think you're cute now, wait until you see all of your internal organs."

"Gross," she says. "Like my guts and stuff?"

"I'm only going to be looking at your heart today," I reply, wondering if maybe I should search for something that would pass for a brain as well, just to make sure she has one. "Alright, you're going to go inside of this machine –"

"And get an MRI."

"Oh, good, you remembered," I say. "The next thing I know, I'll be working for you."

Becca smiles. "I'm not going to be a doctor."

"Why not? It's fun. When you meet people you don't like, you get to stick them with needles to draw blood and pretend you missed their vein." That's the fun part of it for me, at least.

She frowns. "Is that why Dr. Chase had to try three times before he was able to get blood?"

Oh, crap. "No, no, nothing like that," I assure her quickly. "Dr. Chase just doesn't see very well sometimes."

"Oh," she says. "Okay."

I continue. "You're going to hear something that sounds like banging. It's just the machine taking pictures, so don't hit the call button unless you feel sick. I'll be taking a series of scans to make sure I don't miss anything. Any questions?" I don't wait for her to answer. "Good. Try to not to move after I put you in."

I press a few buttons, and she's off. Once out of the room, I sit down at the computer and watch as the MRI begins to snap shots of her heart. "This first scan is going to be twenty seconds…"

One hour and fifteen minutes later, Becca's MRI is complete. When she appears from the abyss of the machine, my heart skips a beat as I see her eyes are closed and she is still. "Becca?" I say, shaking her violently. "Becca?"

She stirs and blinks tiredly. "Are we done already?"

I mentally kick myself. Patients fall asleep in the MRI all the time…at least the ones that aren't claustrophobic. "Oh," I say. "Yes, we're done."

"Can I see the pictures of my heart?" she asks eagerly.

"They're not developed yet, but sooner or later you can," I promise.

"What's wrong with me?" she asks. "Do you know?"

My God, do you ever shut up? "I'm not sure yet," I reply, bored of all the questions. "Sometimes it's not always clear and you have to look at the scan for a while to see the problem." I glance at the door, looking for the nurse I paged nearly two minutes ago to get a wheelchair to take Becca back to her room.

"That's why I can't be a doctor," she confides suddenly, sitting up on the table.

"Why?" I ask.

She shrugs nonchalantly, staring at her pink-painted toenails. "I'm not smart enough," she replies.

"Of course you are," I lie. "You'd be surprised at all the idiots who get their medical license, and trust me, you can run circles around them." The sad thing is, this part is true.

Becca shakes her head, not seeming to mind. "No, I'm not. Doctors have to be really smart, like, geniuses, and they need to work really hard, and go to school for a really long time. And if you do something wrong, someone dies because of it. I don't think I could stand that kind of pressure." Then, just as I'm beginning to think that this girl might just have an at least partially functional brainstem, she adds, "Anyway, I don't want to be a doctor. I want to be a model."

"Oh, do you, now?" I say, feigning interest.

"Yeah," she says, smiling. "But I'm such a fatty. I need to lose, like, ten pounds at least."

Her limbs are so painfully thin they'd snap like a twig under any amount of pressure. Her cheeks look like they're caving in, and her collarbone is so sharp and pointed I'm afraid it's going to pierce through her skin. "You know, you're beautiful just the way you are," I tell her, feeling far too much like a t.v. dad for comfort instead of the brilliant-minded physician I am.

After what seems like a year, the nurse finally shows up with the wheelchair. "Cuddy's going to hear about this," I hiss into her ear as she sets Becca up to be whisked away to her room. "Don't think I won't tell her."

"Then I guess someone doesn't plan on getting a lollipop from the goodie jar after he puts in his clinic hours anymore, does he?" she asks in a low voice, smirking at me.

"Don't threaten me with Dum-Dum deprivation," I warn her as we step into the hall. "Or I'll tell Cuddy about all those little rendezvous you had with Dr. Wilson in the janitor's closet during your breaks last month."

"I never did anything like that," she says, surprised. "I don't even know who Dr. Wilson is."

"First Lesson in Blackmailing 101," I say, striding into the elevator with them. "As long as you're convincing enough, nothing you say has to be true."

The nurse rolls her eyes but says nothing, which takes the fun out of the whole conversation. The second floor is slow in coming, but finally we reach it. We step into the hall in order to go our separate ways.

I am three feet from my office when I hear the most obnoxious sound I have ever heard in my life coming down the hall. I'm not the only one who has noticed. Everything stops and goes motionless and silent as we listen to an insufferable chant coming from Becca's room.

The first one to move, I stomp down the hall, good and annoyed, to see what the hell is going on. I turn into Becca's room and find her clapping her hands to the beat of what is possibly the worst cheerleading assonance ever written.

"Give me a B!" cries the ringleader.

"B!" chorus the girls.

"Give me an E!"

"E!"

"Give me a C squared!"

"C squared!" Are they in too much of a hurry to spell her name out the right way?

"Give me an A!"

"A!"

"What's that spell, ladies?"

I half-expect them to break their stance and go into full-thinking mode, they're all so typically blonde. "Becca!" they cry gleefully. "She can do it, she's not sick, she's a really healthy chick! Woohoo!" They burst into a fit of giggles and swarm around Becca, smothering her in hugs, pom-poms, and flowers.

"Aren't they adorable?"

I glance in the direction of the voice to see the Donahues, complete with an extremely irate Isabelle, sitting in the corner.

"You have such lovely friends, Becca," Mr. Donahue says, eyeing the girl who led the chant hungrily. This is when I notice that they all happen to be wearing rather revealing little cheerleading skirts and corset-tight tank-tops. I wonder if it constitutes a violation of the dress-code, even though the school paid for the damn things.

"So how are you feeling?" one of the girls asks as Becca climbs into her bed.

"Really good, now that you guys are here," she says happily. All five of her friends climb up and sit down around her. "They just took an MRI. It's like a picture of my heart."

They ooh and ah at the concept and immediately move on to more interesting topics of conversation, if one considers who got suspended for fighting whom at school that day and the price of upper-lip waxing at the new salon on the corner interesting.

"Becca, we're going to go home for a little while, okay? Unless you want us to stay," Mrs. Donahue says.

"I'll be fine, Mommy," she coos. Her parents kiss her on her head and Isabelle gives her an awkward hug. Isabelle peels away from her sister slowly as her friends stare at her like she's a leper. One makes a comment about Satan-worshipping and they all burst into unladylike giggles.

"See what I mean?" she whispers as she passes me on her way out. "Reason number 103 why my sister is stupid: look at her friends."

I nod slowly, then enter the room to check Becca's vitals one last time. The chatter rises up amongst them like a thick fog of words, and they don't even notice I'm there. "Your sister is such a weirdo," chimes one girl.

"I can't even believe you're related to her," comments another, flipping her blonde mane of hair all over the place, including up my nose and over my eyes. "You're just so different."

"In a good way," comments the head cheerleader, obviously Becca's best friend. "For you, at least. Isabelle's definitely lame."

For a moment, I look at Becca and think she's going to defend her sister. She catches my gaze and holds it, but stares through me like I'm nothing but thin air. She turns back to her friends and replies frivolously, "Isabelle's the lamest."

I sense another presence in the room, and I turn to the doorway. Isabelle is standing there, motioning silently at the chair in which her mother had been sitting. Forgot her purse, she mouths at me, taking a step into the room.

I grab it hurriedly and move to bring it to her. I don't want her to hear this…

"Like, I hate sharing a closet with her, because I'm afraid her freakhood will rub off on my clothes," she says. They all burst into loud, cackling laughter. Isabelle's jaw drops, but her sister still doesn't see her. "My sister is so uncool."

Isabelle glares at her, but I catch a faint tremor in her lower lip as she icily retorts, "I might not be cool, but don't think that makes you any 'hotter.'"

The head cheerleader calls her a female dog and commands her to go to the fiery underworld where Satan bases his operations. I am torn between using one of about a dozen creative comebacks that come to mind and duct-taping Isabelle's ego back together. I have to choose fast, because she's moving down the hall at at least 500-horsepower. Maybe more.

I make up my mind, making a mental note to deal with the slut squad later. I stumble down the hall, unable to move quite as fast as she is. I take my last resort: calling out her name. "Isabelle," I say.

"What do you want?" she asks irritably, but thank God, she stops.

I catch up with her. "I'm sorry you had to hear that."

She rolls her eyes and lets out a humorless laugh. "After years of hearing those ditzes verbally bash me every chance they get, I guess I should be used to it by now."

"I know you don't give a damn about them," I say. "Your sister's the one that's being unusually nasty."

"I talk about her plenty behind her back," she protests, more to herself than to me. "I have no right to feel insulted."

I try to think of excuses for her, but unfortunately enough, she's right. "Well," I say carefully, wondering what I could say that wouldn't intensify the problem. "Two wrongs don't make a right." Isabelle stands in front of me, head held high, lips pursed. Her pride is splintered, and she'd rather choke on the pieces than admit it. "I say we crush up laxatives and put them in her applesauce for dinner. We'll see how hot she feels when she's crawling to the bathroom every three minutes come bedtime."

Isabelle laughs, high and appreciative. "Nice try, but she'd probably write you a thank-you note for getting rid of those last ten pounds she needs to lose before her modeling debut."

"I could argue for a catheter," I suggest. "Those are pretty damn painful."

"Put her in diapers," Isabelle says. "I want her humiliated, not writhing in pain."

"Diapers usually require that the patient be incontinent," I remind her, "which brings us back to the laxatives."

She considers this for a moment. "Do it," she says finally, a grin breaking out on her face.

I grin too, but it's a tainted grin, spoiled by my professional responsibilities. "It's illegal for me to do that, you know," I admit somberly.

"I know," she says, coming down from the exhilaration of the prospect. "But thanks for pretending." A low hum rises in the air, and she glances into her purse. "Damn it, Mother," she grumbles. "My parents are calling me. They probably think I got lost."

"Tell them the elevators broke," I offer.

She flashes me another grateful smile as she walks away. I savor it and decide that maybe using my jerk powers for good once in a while isn't such a horrible thing. Heading back to my office, I revel for a moment in the illusion that maybe I'm not a complete bastard after all.

And that was Chapter Four, m'dears.

(Shiver) I'm taking the SATs after I post this. Leave lots of sycophantic reviews so I'm pumped for the test. :) Okay, okay, I'll settle for honest ones. If you really, truly insist...

More to come soon.