Chapter 7

Cameron, Chase and Foreman sat in the conference room, waiting. They'd had no new patients since they cured the little girls, and blessedly, House had kept his torture tactics at a tolerable level. In fact, Cameron felt like she'd gotten off easy. After those first few days, he merely sent her a thousand pointless emails from home, knowing of course that she would have to at least glance at each one to make sure it wasn't important.

Wilson, on the other hand, was looking a bit frazzled. None of the ducklings new it, of course, but Wilson and House weren't exactly on the best of terms right now. Cameron suspected House had actually taken her suggestion and begun torturing Wilson when he was bored. Chase and Foreman assumed pretty much the same. They couldn't understand why Wilson put up with it, although Cameron could sympathize. Once you let House in, he was tough to shake.

House took his time making his way into the hospital that morning. Truthfully, he was thrilled to be back at work, even clinic duty would be better than sitting around the apartment alone all day. Even Shark Week had brought him no joy this year. Wilson was so fed up with him by the time it started, that he refused to come over to watch with him.

Of course, he had no intention of letting anyone know he was happy to be back. In fact, he was more determined than ever to make sure everyone knew he was the same old House, cane or no. With the possible exception of Wilson, he intended to give everyone a welcome back snark, just to be on the safe side.

Funny thing about that Wilson, he'd been getting more and more edgy the longer House was home. In fact, just three or four days ago, when House had called him about getting a refill on his Vicodin prescription, Wilson had hesitated a good long time before agreeing. Something was going on there, and House didn't like it. He'd backed off the last few days, which was the only reason Wilson was even able to function at the hospital, but House was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

"Good morning, my minions" House announced as he entered the conference room.

"Morning?" Foreman scoffed, "It's nearly lunch time."

"Why the sad face?" House retorted. "Now that the big bad boss man is back, you're all afraid you won't be able to throw all those wild parties I keep hearing about from the nurses? Not to worry, as long as the food and booze are free, I'm there."

Chase groaned, and Cameron rolled her eyes. He was certainly in fine form this morning.

"So, any interesting cases?" House asked. Now that he was back, he was dying to get into something really bizarre.

"Don't you think you'd know if we had something?" Chase asked, irritated. He wasn't exactly thrilled to see House back. Of course, he hoped it meant no more 2am calls to check if he was sleeping, but it wasn't as if he'd actually missed him.

"Gosh, there's all sorts of fancy titles and letters after my name, but I don't think mind reader is among them." House replied, feigning stupidity.

Cameron let out a huff of exasperation. She really wasn't in the mood for this today. She'd spent the last few weeks trying to prepare herself for his return to work, mentally coaching herself to just let the sarcasm fly by her, and now, after her appointment this morning, she just didn't have the energy.

"Well, since we don't have any cases, I'm due to see…" Cameron stopped short. " uh, Dr. Mitchell in a few minutes." Dr. Mitchell was the head of the Immunobiology Research Department. It was perfectly sensible that she would be seeing him, except it was obvious to House that was not where she was headed. He turned to say something, but she was out the door before he had the chance.

"I think I'll go down to the clinic," House announced, and made his way out the door.

Chase and Foreman stared at each other incredulously. House, going to the clinic voluntarily?

Actually, he wasn't going to the clinic at all. He wanted to follow Cameron and see where she was really going. It wasn't like her to lie, and since he didn't have a case to solve, he wanted to see if he could make some sense of this little mystery.

He followed her as closely as he could without being seen, only to find her stepping into Dr. Wilson's office.

Curious, House thought.