A/N:To those how have reviewed, thank you so very much. Here is the next chapter. Please enjoy, and remember, reviews make the world go round, and cause writers to ignore papers and presentations to come up with new chapters for you.

Chapter 4

Thump, thunk, thump, thunk; Wilson followed the noise to House's office, not knowing if he wanted to know what was going on inside.

Glancing through the glass, he smirked to himself; House was throwing his oversized tennis ball at the wall lacrosse style and catching it with the hook of his cane. At least, he thought, House isn't hurting anyone yet this week, but just to be sure as he walked into his friend's office he rapped his knuckles on the pseudo-wood door frame.

For once, House didn't notice, or rather didn't pretend to notice Wilson, as the oncologist walked toward him. His mind was fully occupied with what he had begun to call in his mind "the Mystery of Cameron," her file had reveled little actually. Only that there had been a surgery, and that it had taken place at George Washington, which made sense, after all apparently she had been born and raised in the District of Columbia, and had been there at the time. GWU had the best trauma medicine program and so for her treatment to be there was logical. But the file had reveled nothing about the nature of the surgery. Only that it had been long and both her lungs had collapsed, there was no reason given for why she was in surgery, and there was no reason given for the consultations with a man named Stanley Keyworth. The name was completely unfamiliar to House and a Google search of the name had come up more questions. One of the holders of that name was a psychiatrist with the ATVA, a smaller group associated with FEMA. The man was apparently a trauma victim psychiatrist.

The question was why would Cameron need to see such a man? The possibilities didn't fit the profile of her that he'd built since the beginning of her fellowship. It was Cameron, she was damaged yes, she had to be, for her to work so hard to go to med school and do as well as she did being damaged was a foregone conclusion. But he had interpreted her damage to be that she was attracted to dying or otherwise ill men, or at the very least men like him, crippled. But major surgery, consults with a trauma shrink, the pills, and her reaction to her nightmare, her unfocused eyes and inability to tell where she was, that spoke to something else…..something more damaging. He had to wonder now if her damage wasn't simply a matter of wanting to fix everything and everyone, he now had to wonder if maybe, just maybe, she was more damaged than he was.

MD

Wilson stood in the middle of House's office, wondering if this was a new annoyance technique or if his friend really was so deeply involved in something that House hadn't actually noticed him. If House had had a patient, then Wilson would have automatically assumed that to be the case, but the oncologist knew that the Diagnostics Department had no case at the moment, and still House had not bugged him all day. True, House had still avoided the Clinic, but he always did that. For the life of him James Wilson could not think of anything that could cause this behavior in House. Even when Stacy had been around, either time really, and House had been thinking about her or contemplating some part of their relationship he'd never appeared to be thinking quite so hard or so involved in the apparent problem.

If it wasn't a case it had to be a person, Wilson decided. He knew it wasn't him, Cuddy had not seemed to be on the warpath nor had she come to complain about whatever it was House was doing now. That left the "ducklings" as House called them. Foreman seemed fine when he's seen the neurologist in passing that day. Chase had seemed all right as well. It also took a lot for House to care about either of those two. If either were sick then House might give a damn about them, but otherwise they were simply pains in House's…leg, Wilson thought, smiling at his own pun, even if he knew it was bad. Of course, if it wasn't the male two-thirds of the ducklings that left the female third. Wilson tried to think if he'd seen Cameron around at all, but it was after 2 in the afternoon and he hadn't heard or seen anything of the pretty immunologist. But she was the last person who House could be contemplating, and if it was her, and House was thinking that hard about her, it could only mean trouble.

Wilson had nothing against her, she was nice enough, even if she was still very raw and open with her emotions. She was incredibility good at her job, and managed to work well with House, usually. If she had a problem with him the whole department had a habit of nearly falling apart though. Still, Wilson was unsure about the idea of her and House together, she simply didn't seem strong enough one minute and the next she had the capability, the potential, to turn into Stacy. It was that potential that worried him. He wondered at what Cuddy had said, that Cameron wasn't as delightful as she, meaning Cameron herself, thought she was, he wasn't sure Cameron thought herself delightful at all. But that woman was a master at secrets, hardly anyone knew anything about her, and what people did know was what she allowed them to know. It was odd behavior for a person who was so open with her emotions. And it worried him. With the pain back in full force, Cameron now had even more potential to push House over the edge. And Wilson worried that all she would have to do for House to fall, was leave.

MD

Huck walked quickly through the glass doors of the hospital. It amused him that the place AJ had chosen was made of glass, after all she had always said that transparency was a true republic or democracy's gift and its curse. Once long ago he'd tried to argue that it was not a curse but a gift, then he'd grown up. And fully learned about his father's choice and the fallout of that choice. It had taken him years to understand, but he had, with Uncle Josh's help. When he'd been a kid Josh Lyman had been at least a demigod in his eyes, his own father had instilled too much respect for and, in a way, love of religion for even Huck-the-child to view a person as a god. But if anyone could come close, it was AJ and Noah's dad. Other White House Staffer's got tired and burnt out, but not Josh Lyman. It had seemed as if he fed off the all consuming energy that emanated from the West Wing.

Now he knew better. Now he knew that it had been Mrs. Lyman who had enabled Josh to withstand the pressures of the job. Without Donna, Josh was no more a demigod than anyone else, it was she who made him what he was, and in turn Josh had given her what she gave him.

Briefly he wondered if AJ and Brian would have been that way. He thought so, after all Brain Cameron had been the love of AJ's life. But he also hoped against all hope that it was possible for a person to have two loves of their life. His experience, and the examples of the Lyman's, his own parents, the Young's, the Santos's, the Seaborn's, and especially the Bartlett's, told him no. But he still hoped. After all it wasn't fair to AJ that she'd had to bury the love of her life at 21. Bu then, in a way they had buried AJ that day too.

Pushing these thoughts out of his head he squared his shoulders and walked up to the young woman sitting at the desk outside the office labeled, Lisa Cuddy. Thanking genetics that he's inherited his mother's height and not his father's he smiled at the young woman, also thankful for years of smiling for cameras as the Congresswoman's and then Senator's son.

With a bit of charm, and the sly dropping that he worked at the White House, and maybe he could take her on a private tour, he got in. Somebody it seemed, hadn't told the hospital he was coming. He didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but it was a thing.

MD

"House, you have a case," Lisa Cuddy said as she walked into his office. It was the one good thing about the glass walls, she could see if he was in his office or not before she did something stupid like walk into a room talking to nobody.

Not even bothering to turn his chair around to face her, House used the best method he could think of, say nothing. After all she had interrupted his thought process. Not that he'd gotten any farther into his, or rather Cameron's problem.

"House, unless you've suddenly developed deafness or the ability to hibernate, turn around, NOW."

Smiling slyly, he suddenly spun the chair around. And started signing. He nearly lost control when Cuddy's jaw dropped, she hadn't known that he knew American Sign Language. The man with her though, took it in stride, and nearly mad House's jaw drop as well.

He started signing. And accurately translating what House was saying as well as simultaneously translating his own words.

"Look, Dr. House….House….whatever it is you prefer to be called, I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to fight with you. Actually I have other things to do, the only reason I am here is because for some reason you actually managed to impress somebody. So now I have to make sure you don't do what the entire medical community has been waiting for, kill a patient who doesn't deserve or want it, and thus don't completely screw over our foreign relations for the next 50 years or so. Read this, you'll want this case," Huck spoke and signed at the same time. From the look on the man's face he was surprised, he hadn't expected anyone to be able to communicate with him by signing, or to know what he'd said. Huck tossed the medical file and the notes he'd taken from the phone calls onto the House's desk.

Glaring at the tall stranger House glanced at the legal pad filled with notes, and at the unopened file, "Why should I? In case Dr. Cuddy here hasn't told you, my deal with the hospital board is that I only take the cases I want."

"You don't have a choice on this one. The….family, has requested you."

"And whose the family? Another mob family, cause I've been there and done that," House smirked.

"Hardly. In this case the family, is the North Korean government. Your patient is their dictators grandson. Favorite grandson in fact, and they want you for some reason. So you don't have a choice."

"Last time I checked we all have a choice. Like I have the choice to ignore you, to take two Vicodin, or to kick you out of my office. Which is it? Because I have a choice and I'm not interested."

"Take a look at the file, you will be."

"Ah, no. Remember I have a choice here."

MD

Just then Cameron walked by, heading originally to the conference room and her own desk, but even just glancing at his back and some of his profile was an instant identifier. Huck Wyatt-Ziegler was in her boss's office, with Cuddy. This was so not good on any number of levels. She vaguely felt like a superhero who was about to be exposed on national tv, or at least to the love interest, although why she felt that last one was buried deep in the back of her mind. She didn't want to think of House as the love interest to her soon to be exposed secret identity. She wanted House to be nothing to her, but that was a failing theory. Not that the fact that it was failing and had been since about 3 seconds after she'd told him that she had jumped on the bandwagon and hated him, meant anything. She was clinging to a sinking ship and she knew it, but that knowledge was the only thing keeping her going. Sighing, she decided to head off any identity reveling problems at the head. If she was exposed, well then she would do it herself, so with utmost care she opened the door just a bit and slipped into House's office without anyone knowing. After all she had slipped in through the front door and currently Cuddy and Huck's bodies shielded her from House.

She hadn't meant to speak at all, but when House had said that he had a choice about whether or not to treat a patient, it was an automatic response. But when Cuddy and Huck turned to look at her, and from behind his desk, House's piercing eyes pinned her to the floor, she still found, from years of living, eating, breathing, and absorbing power politics, the ability to answer him when he asked what she had just said. "You set the leg. You don't get a choice here House, you took an oath, much as you seem to pretend you didn't sometimes. That means you don't get to choose the patient, you treat the one in front of you. There is no choice here, you set the leg."

Fighting back a rare smile, Huck nodded at her, "Allison."

Still staring down House, Cameron smiled, not her normal smile, it was instead a variant of her father's smirk. Sometimes, mainly because of her brother and the fact that she had chosen another path, people forgot that she was in many ways, her father's daughter. With looking at him, she replied just as calmly as if she saw him every day of the week, "Huckleberry."

For the second time both Cuddy and House's jaws dropped to the floor. But neither knew if it was because of Cameron, the fact that she was standing up to House as if she stood up to him everyday, or her familiarity with the man who was a stranger to them, or perhaps it was because of his name.

In the end, House simply couldn't resist, it was way to good to pass up, "Huckleberry? What'd you do in utero to get saddled with that?"