A slightly shorter chapter here but I'm on a roll with this story and wanted to get the next part up and carry on writing – and it seemed to come to a fairly natural conclusion all on it's own so I felt that was a good place to leave it. I also want to take the time to do some research before I start spouting too many symptoms and medical technical jargon so it's probably a good thing to leave those to the next chapter!

Thanks to AliciA for the review – really glad you liked it and hope you enjoy where it's heading..

Once again, all reviews and constructive criticism gladly received.

In Self Defence – Chapter 2

Dr Lisa Cuddy surveyed the over-flowing clinic with exasperation. The waiting area was full to the brim and, surprise, surprise, there was no sign of House. She checked her watch – he still had another 2 hours before his clinic duty was done for the day. The clinic nurse saw her coming and didn't even wait to hear the question she knew would be forthcoming. "I'm sorry Dr Cuddy," the woman apologised, "I haven't seen him in over an hour and I've paged him twice – he hasn't answered."

Cuddy shrugged helplessly and the two women shared a look of mutual resignation that spoke of a shared experience of the frustrating Dr House. "Well," she sighed, "it certainly wouldn't be the first time he's ignored a page from the clinic." She reached for the pile of records filling up the in-tray on the desk. "Who was his last patient?" she asked the nurse as she skimmed through the pile. "Maybe he's stumbled across something rare and exciting and smuggled the patient off to diagnostics.."

The nurse flicked through the discouragingly small pile of completed case files. Then, frowning slightly, she checked through them again, more thoroughly. Cuddy looked up from the file she was reading as the nurse moved to the computer and brought up the clinic records. "What is it?" she queried.

The nurse's frown deepened as she checked through the computer records. "Well, this just isn't right," she muttered. Raising her eyes from the screen she explained, "The system shows six patients logged as having been treated by Dr House but I only have five files returned."

Cuddy frowned, "Must be a mistake in the records… unless he's found a patient with a Gameboy and they've spent the past hour hiding in a closet playing a link-up game.." she stopped halfway through that thought, rolling her eyes in exasperation as she realised she wouldn't actually be all that surprised if that was exactly what he'd done.

The clinic nurse had a thoughtful look on her face however, as she read through the computer records once more. "No," she said slowly, "I remember this last patient…" She grimaced slightly as she faced Cuddy, "To be quite honest, he didn't smell too great." she explained. "I remember I sent him to Exam Room 1 to wait for Dr House – and I'm sure I saw Dr House go in there. He definitely took the patient's file from the desk.."

Cuddy looked over her shoulder at the firmly closed door to Exam Room 1. She wouldn't put it past House to have stayed put in there for the last hour or more, reading magazines or watching soaps whilst the waiting area filled to breaking point. Granted he usually only did that to fill up the last hour or so of his scheduled clinic duty and avoid getting caught up in some tedious treatment that would make him late for… whatever the hell else he found more interesting than clinic duty. Which, she conceded, was just about anything. But House was nothing if not unpredictable and who was to say he hadn't changed tactics – probably just to annoy her.

She replaced the waiting patient files in the in-tray – she was damned if she was gonna cover House's clinic hours unless he left her with absolutely no choice – and asked one last question of the desk nurse. "Did you see his last patient leave?" The woman nodded slowly, "I'm pretty sure I did – maybe an hour or so ago?"

Cuddy gritted her teeth and strode purposefully across to Exam Room 1, her expensive heels clicking angrily on the cold tiles of the clinic floor – if she found House in there hiding from his responsibilities there was going to be hell to pay.

With a perfunctory knock she pushed the door open, mentally girding herself for the battle ahead, and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight that greeted her. Her immediate thought was chaos, utter chaos. The room looked like a tornado had torn through it – every drawer and cupboard was pulled open, the contents spilled across the counters, the floor. The mayhem was too much to take in all at once; bandages and latex gloves, sample boxes, medical gauze and water cups strewn everywhere - it looked like an explosion in a drug rep's office. How on earth could this have happened and no-one have heard the commotion?

She turned in the doorway to call the nurse from the desk, demand an explanation, and something caught her peripheral vision, snapped her head back around. She stepped further into the room and felt the air rush from her lungs as looked around the edge of the open door. For a second it felt like her brain couldn't process the enormity of the scene before her and she saw only a succession of snapshots, of detail, of minutiae; the walking cane abandoned in the corner of the room, the overturned stool, the clinic file lying open on the floor, the utter, utter stillness of the.. of the… and then it hit her like a sucker punch to the gut. That was House laying there on the floor of the exam room, surrounded by chaos and debris, his limbs loose and tangled like a puppet whose strings have been suddenly cut.

For a moment she was frozen in place as her mind tried to deny the reality of what lay before her but then years of training kicked in, her instincts as a doctor propelling her forward even as she struggled to comprehend what had happened. She almost fell to her knees beside the crumpled body on the floor, her shaking fingers feeling frantically for a pulse. The skin of his neck felt dry and cool to her touch and she was so aware of the pounding of her own pulse that at first she wasn't sure what she was feeling. But yes, it was there – weak and thready, but he had a pulse. "Oh thank God," she whispered.

Without moving from her place by his side she twisted towards the open doorway and screamed, "Get me some help in here!"

To be continued...