Creative disclaimers are too hard to come up with, so I'll just admit that I don't own House and move on.

Here's the latest chapter for your enjoyment!

Chapter Ten:

We saved Becca's life. Again.

And somehow, I don't think buying her a few more hours will do us any good unless we figure out what's wrong with her. We're stuck, like flies in tomato soup, possibly just as helpless as the Donahues are as they wait with Becca. It took longer to bring her back this time; we can only imagine what the loss of oxygen has done to her.

My team and I sit in a heavy silence, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for an answer to pop into our minds. None, however, is showing up, and we each count the minutes that pass, knowing that the higher the numbers get, the higher the risk of losing Becca gets.

At fifteen minutes, twenty-one seconds, Cameron speaks. "I give up."

"Not yet," I say.

"There's no answer to this one, House! No condition accounts for all of these symptoms; nothing explains why an active, healthy fifteen-year-old girl is having heart attacks! We lost this one. She's eventually going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and have another attack. Then she's going to die. There's nothing we can do about it!"

"No!" I shout. "Our theory was working!"

"Was working, House. You were listening to them; you know that Becca didn't have a care in the world when she had that last attack. Your primitive understanding of drama and stress and teenage girls doesn't explain anything. Just give up! We can't help her. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to the clinic. I've been wasting my time here, spinning my wheels, looking for a condition that just doesn't exist."

"This is your job. I didn't hire you to take my clinic hours and answer my mail."

"I know; you were too busy thinking how great I'd look in your office," she says dryly.

This is true, I admit silently. "You're the one who's always saying that you're better than that. Prove it. Diagnose the patient no one else can. Or aren't you the great mind you claim to be?"

"Don't place the responsibility on me because you're not jumping in with all the answers at the right moment. What happened to you? Why aren't you trying harder?"

"I'm already doing my best! Every one of you is taking one look at her and deciding it's impossible."

"We've run the tests and done the lab work. We don't even have any clues except what she came in with," Chase protests. "It's unsolvable."

"I like you guys, most of the time, but when it all comes down, you make some pretty crappy detectives," I mutter. I glance at each of them as I rattle off the things they're good at. "Making a good cup of coffee, or breaking into houses, or…or…" What does Chase have a talent for? "Or selling out your boss to multi-millionaires is all well and good, but Becca isn't getting anything out of it. What are we missing?"

"Nothing!" Foreman explodes. "We've been over this case with a fine-toothed comb a hundred times, and there's nothing left to be seen, tested, or analyzed. We're done."

"Oh, she's all better now, is she? Good, I'll draw up the discharge papers, and you guys can arrange for the wheelchair. Meanwhile, Cuddy should probably hold a press conference about the latest medical phenomena: the patient that got better without even finding out why she was sick."

"You're making it sound like we don't give a damn about her! That's not fair!" Cameron says, pouting. "We tried."

"You didn't succeed. Try again."

"What else can we do?"

I look her straight in the eye. "Don't fail."

Cameron shakes her head, grabs her papers, and heads in the direction of the clinic. Foreman and Chase follow her silently. When the door shuts behind them, I sink into my chair and sigh. If all four of us couldn't figure this out, how am I possibly going to go it alone?

Thirty minutes later, I still haven't gotten any closer to a diagnosis. I've tried looking at the case from every possibly angle, but nothing I see makes any sense. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm crazy, if Becca's crazy, if this is all some sick joke or bad dream. (Except, I notice with dismay, it can't be a bad dream because I'm not waking up even as I repeatedly pinch myself.) Finally giving in to my frustration, I pull out my yo-yo and begin to warm up.

Unfortunately, Isabelle walks by at that very moment and sees me lackadaisically playing with my toys. She stomps into my office and demands, "What are you doing?"

"Trying to remember how to walk the dog."

"Where is everybody else?"

"In the clinic, treating the walk-in patients."

"Are you running any tests?"

"There are no tests to be run."

She blinks at me disbelievingly. "What about my sister?"

Lost cause, I think. "We're taking a breather."

Isabelle makes a strange noise, half-snort, half-sob. "Don't you think Becca would like to take a breather too? Well, she can't. She's lying on her bed, not even moving, hooked up to so many machines I can't even see her past the wires. I can't tell if my sister's actually still residing in that body or if it's just an empty shell. Every breath she takes could be her last, and what are you doing? Playing with a yo-yo!"

"Awww, how sweet. Did your parents teach you how to make that spiel sound almost genuine?"

"I didn't want this to happen to her!"

"You wanted her taken down a notch, and look! You got what you asked for."

"I never asked for this!"

"Then God must be stepping up his game, because this is what happened. We're doing our best."

"You're not doing anything!"

"That's because there's nothing left to do." It startles me when I realize how much I sound like Cameron. Have I given up too?

Isabelle blinks rapidly, dangerously close to crying. "So that's it, then? We're just going to let her lay there and die?"

"We're going to treat the symptoms until another clue comes along." Essentially the same thing, but it sounds better.

"And if it doesn't?"

I do my best to sound positive. "You'll be an only child pretty soon."

I watch as Isabelle sinks, totally uninvited, into a chair and begins to cry. Black eye make-up bleeds down her face. Realizing that she is transforming into a raccoon, Isabelle begins to swipe furiously at the sludge dribbling down her cheeks. Her hands are clammy, her nails blue. It's almost like…

Oh.

Oh.

God, I'm an idiot.

I can't believe the answer has been staring me in the face this whole time.

"Would you like a tissue?" I offer politely, doing my best not to smile.

Isabelle sniffs and stands to retrieve it. When she touches the tissue, I reach out and grab her wrist. Figuring I'm just being a pain in the ass, she sighs and tries to get away, but I'm just too strong. I slowly examine her hand – it's ice cold, like a dead person's – and ask, "Refresh me: have we taken your medical history?"

"No," she says, staring at me strangely. "And there's no reason to. I can't even remember the last time I had a cold."

"Well, all that's about to change." I release her and stand. "I need your blood."

"What for?" she asks warily.

"You wanted me to run more tests, didn't you?"

"On my sister, not on me!" she protests. "I'm not the sick one!"

"I wouldn't be too sure," I inform her coolly, just like a TV doctor, and that shuts her up.

Really, scaring her like that was only for my benefit. If this is what I think, Isabelle doesn't have a thing to worry about. Her sister, on the other hand, may be in for a rude awakening…

It's brilliant. There's not a chance in hell that I could be wrong. I'm breaking down the walls of conventional diagnostics, taking a strike for a new breed of doctor, changing the very world we live in! Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. House has done it again!

These are the thoughts running through my mind as I, with a shaking hand, dial Cameron and tell her to find Chase and Foreman. I instruct them to meet me in my office, stat, because I've solved the case. It's amazing, but she sounds almost bored as she agrees, as if she was expecting me to figure it out all along. (Either that, or she thinks it's another false alarm. Is she going to be in for a nasty shock if that's the case.)

Four minutes later, my team is seated in my office, staring at me expectantly. I pace a little bit, as time is no longer of the essence, and watch as their anticipation builds. Chase wiggles uncomfortably in his seat, Foreman looks increasingly anxious, and Cameron even looks up from examining her nails in an ostensibly bored manner. When I can tell that I've finally captured their full attention, I launch into the speech I've been spinning in my head for the past few minutes.

"We are taught, from the moment we enter pre-school, that no matter how different we are on the outside, we are all the same inside. It's bullshit. Every body is unique, even the ones that look exactly the same. Down to the tiniest cell, you are a world away from the guy sitting next to you, your 3rd grade teacher, even your supposed identical twin sister."

Their minds catch on that one little word. "'Supposed?'" Cameron repeats. "You mean…"

"Ladies, gents…" I fix my gaze on the Aussie and watch him squirm. "Chase. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are fraternal."

"That's impossible," Foreman sputters. "They look exactly alike!"

"If only it was that simple." I spin my cane, seeing the molecular magic play out in my mind. "We've been real asses. We assumed that when the duo from hell's parents hooked up, there was one egg and one sperm that came to form the Isabelle and Becca we all know and love. What actually happened, though, was a double date going down in Mommy's fallopian tubes. Two eggs, two sperm, two kids."

"But the chances of them being fraternal and looking so much alike are practically nothing!" Cameron blurts.

"But it's happened before," Foreman reminds her. I almost thank him out loud for having my back, but catch myself just in time. Maybe I'll give him a secret raise.

Well, let's not get carried away.

"What made you think of that?" Chase asks wonderingly.

"Isabelle," I say, enjoying the moment, "has a mild case of Reynaud's. Becca doesn't. It's just as good as if their eyes were different colors."

"But Reynaud's –"

"Is caused by all kinds of different things," I interrupt. "In this case, it's genetic. Without any apparent difference between the girls and no need to make sure, there was no reason to even suspect that they were fraternal."

Foreman shakes his head disbelievingly. "That should have been the first thing we checked."

"Oh, but then it wouldn't have been as fun," Cameron mutters.

"Ah, a joke," I observe. "You haven't made one of those in a while."

"You're sure about this?" Chase asks doubtfully. "It's fantastic, but still a bit of a long shot."

"'Oh ye little of faith,'" I say. "'Don't be afraid; just believe.' Or, if you'd rather, go check the results of the blood I ran on them. And while you're at it, check the test I ran for a little condition called Long QT Syndrome."

I love it when I'm right.

It's all I can do not to gloat as we go to inform the family of our findings. I put on my sober doctor face and deliver the news as Cameron, Chase, and Foreman back me up.

"Long QT Syndrome," Mrs. Donahue. "What is that?"

"It's a genetic condition in which the heart's electrical system is abnormal. This causes an arrhythmia, which in turn can cause anything from a simple fainting spell to death. It tends to present in the teenage years," I explain. "There can be triggers, like stress –" I shoot a meaningful glance at Cameron, who is taking Becca's vitals – "but sometimes, it strikes without warning."

"What do we do about this thing?" Becca's father asks. "It sounds…serious."

"It is," I admit. "This case is a statistical miracle. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed a patient with this condition could have survived so long undiagnosed."

"How do we treat it?"

I rattle off the usual suspects: beta blockers medications, pacemakers, surgery. In truth, it may require a combination of all of these to keep Becca alive. But at least we know now.

"Why isn't she waking up?" Isabelle asks in a dead voice.

This is one question I can't answer from a memorized passage of text and, consequently, is the hardest to hear the answer to. "That last attack was the most severe," I say. "Without her heart pumping blood, her brain was being denied oxygen. It's possible that the loss was too much for her body to handle."

Isabelle looks at me with tearful, pleading eyes. "Are you saying she's going to die?"

I hate it when they ask me that. Families always sound so defeated when they pose the question, yet they inflate that caustic three-letter word with just enough hope to make it painful to answer, as if I hold the power to change the fate of a loved one.

I have a medical degree, more years of practice than I'd care to admit, and a natural talent for saving lives, but I am still only human. I like to play God, except when it turns out that even he can't answer prayers.

"I don't know," I admit.

We watch as Isabelle turns back to Becca. Her ghostly hand grips her sister's moisturized, polished, pink one so hard that they seem to fuse into one. I don't think she even realizes that she's started calling upon any god that happens to be listening to please help her.

If love like a sister's can't save a life, how can miracles or medicine?

I follow my team out of the room, knowing that we've done all we can.

The next (and last - can you say finally?) "chapter" should be posted soon. I plan on making it nice and short, though. I've tortured you enough. :) So it's just a tiny epilogue, when it all comes down.

As always, reviews are so appreciated.