Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. Feel free to back out if need be.

Author's Note: I'm binging on House MD and now I've got a hilarious series of events stuck in my head.

Edit Note: Fixed the hospital name. Audio processing disorder struck again.

Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 15); MC4A (Year 4)
Individual Challenges: Best Stories (Y); La Vie Boheme; Fix-It Felix; Medic MC (x2); Neurodivergent (x2); Rian-Russo Inversion (x2); Small Fry; Claimed; Ship Sails; Hold the Mayo; Zed Era; Old Shoes (Y); Fresh Fandom High (Y); New Fandom Smell (Y); In a Flash; Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon; Greatest Gift
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 15 – Assignment 02
Subject (Task No.): n/a
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Fantastic Beasts [56](Someone hiding in plain sight); 365 Prompts [348](Coworkers); Scavenger Hunt [32](Healer)
Other MC4A Challenges: SuB [4A](Riot/Protest); AU [5E](No Powers/Magic); Chim [Xylit](Protection; "Don't Fear the Reaper" by BOC); Hunt [Su Con](Jello)/[Su WD](Severe Allergy); Garden [Chores (Drinking/Eating); Behind Green Eyes (Food/Drink); Behind Green Eyes (Protection); Behind Green Eyes (Found Family); Personal Favs (Harry Potter); Blood & Water (Mother & Son)]; Fire [x3](All About Family; Minimalist; Shields Deployed);
Representation(s): Allison Cameron/Robert Chase; Desi Harry Potter; Team as Fam; BC Use
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: For the Vine; Lovely Coconuts; Creature Feature; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; White Dress; Found Family; Nontraditional; Sneeze Weasel; Nightingale; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice); Chorus (Pocky Pockets; Wabi Sabi; Bee Haven; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; A Long Dog; Larger than Life; Unicorn); Demo 1 (Muck & Slime; Queen Bee; Under the Bridge); Demo 2 (Abandoned Ship)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Terse; Thimble); SN (Rail; Intercept); O3 (Olivine); War (Obstruction; Sanctuary)
Word Count: 486 words

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House & Homes
Squeaks
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The ER was utter chaos. That wasn't usual for it. Most shifts were busy, as Princeton-Plainsboro was one of the larger hospitals in the city. Even if most of the cases were nothing like Allison had gotten used to with House, they made up for it in sheer volume.

The nurses' strike just added to that chaos.

And in such chaos, the priority would always be the most pressing cases. There was a hierarchy to it, a way of sorting it. Obviously life-threatening cases got processed first—major wounds and unconscious patients. Then the less obvious ones that were still critical such as heart attacks or broken bones. Ideally, the least threatening would get processed in order of arrival after that.

Of course, there was always the rule about squeaky wheels.

So when an overweight man comes in with his stick-thin wife and equally overweight son, the complaint of throat swelling indicative of allergy gets him bumped up to the second tier. Their British accents reminded Allison of Robert's Australian accent. It would have been a small bright spot in her shift, something greatly desired as exhaustion seeped into her, except for grumpy all three of them were.

It actually made her long for House's brand of arrogant assholery. House didn't care about social boundaries except how he could use crossing them to keep people at arms' length. Even then, he was rarely a jerk just to be a jerk. He was prickly, jagged around the edges. Everything about him screamed his desire to be left alone.

This little family were just angry, even down to the four-year-old who had thrown a tantrum at being denied a fourth sucker.

Allison was so glad to see the back of them as they left after the husband had been treated for the unexpected allergy and told to follow up with an allergist. The relief of not having to deal with them any longer lasted only a half minute before another critical case arrived and she was off running.

She gave a hurried apology to a different man, a husband of one of the nurses protesting outside. He had already been waiting for hours. He just smiled jovially, accepting the fate of still waiting. His wife fretted a bit beside him but was equally understanding.

In the chaos, Allison didn't even notice the small Indian boy curled up in a waiting room chair, watching everything with bright green eyes. The boy was already very good at being perfectly quiet and pretending that he didn't even exist. Allison wouldn't have thought anything of it, even if she had noticed him. He was not a squeaky wheel, after all, and she had bigger priorities at that moment.

Allison also didn't notice when House noticed the boy, slipping him a jello cup gotten from who knows where. Nor did she notice when the boy slipped away from the ER to the elevators.

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To Be Continued
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