April

"House, stop complaining and just help," Cuddy sighed, handing him a chart. "The ER's short-staffed, full of patients, and we've had to go on bypass. Just help us clear a few and I'll let you off clinic duty next week."

House sighed. He wasn't going to object, getting out of a week's clinic duty was worth a couple of hours in the ER, especially given he didn't actually have a patient at the moment. In fact, he'd just been headed out the door for home when Cuddy had grabbed him and side-tracked him. He was now regretting both his decision not to leave via the back entrance and his uncharacteristic moment of altruism in sending his team home early. If he hadn't done that, they could be doing this instead of him and he could be home with a whiskey and afternoon television.

"Obese girl in curtain two with stomach pains, suspected appendicitis," Cuddy prompted, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the clamour of staff, patients and visitors in the crowded ER.

"Great. It's probably not appendicitis at all, she probably ate the family car and is about to vomit shredded velour and brake fluid all over me."

Cuddy didn't dignify that with a response.

House walked into the curtain area and shook his head at the sight of a large woman sitting beside an even larger teenage girl lying in the bed. The girl was obviously in pain, her face a grimace, but House wondered how he was even going to find her appendix amongst the rolls of fat.

"I'm Dr House," he said abruptly, causing the mom to start and turn to him immediately.

"I think it's her appendix, Doctor, – the pain just started suddenly a few hours ago and she has been vomiting too," the mother said quickly.

"Well seeing as I actually went to medical school, how about we leave the diagnosing to me?"

He asked a few routine questions, what she'd been eating, what she'd been doing when the pain first started, whether she was sexually active. The girl seemed happy to let her mother do the talking, but the mom was seriously offended by House's last question.

"My daughter's only fourteen, she's never had sex!" she protested.

"Yeah, yeah," House muttered, heroically restraining himself from making a comment that given her size and thereby dramatically reduced lifespan, she should probably get a move on. He began to palpate the patient's stomach, testing for the typical rebound tenderness in the lower-right hand section of her abdomen indicative of appendicitis. As he pressed, the girl groaned, and House immediately felt what the problem was.

Jeez, maybe I should have taken the clinic duty instead.

"I need a nurse and a portable ultrasound in here," he said, pulling the curtain aside and calling out. "I have to do a pelvic exam on your daughter," he said to the mom.

"Oh, do you think it could be an ovarian cyst?" the mom asked, wringing her hands. "I had one of those a couple of years ago. Is something like that genetic?"

House ignored the question and stood back, pulling on gloves and waiting while the nurse who'd appeared organised the appropriate sheets around the girl. She was just positioning the girl's dimpled knees when she took a sudden, shocked, step back. "Jesus!"

House stepped to the end of the bed. "Christ!" he yelped, completing the nurse's blasphemy. "I need a catcher's mitt in here!"

"I'm sorry mommy." The girl sobbed, her first words since entering the ER, and threw her hands over her face.

House barely had time to support the baby's crowning head as the next contraction pushed its little body out into the world.

The nurse recovered from her shock and ran to get the necessary supplies and assistance, which meant, for a moment, House was alone with a brand new teenage mom, a very shocked grandmother and an obviously premature baby that didn't seem to be breathing. He grabbed a corner of the sheet to clean the baby's nose and mouth, the urgency of getting the little boy to breathe overcoming any thoughts of using something sterile or waiting for the nurse to return with the right equipment.

"Come on baby, breathe." House patted the baby gently, unable to help the encouraging words from slipping out of his mouth. His encouragement was rewarded by a shaky breath in and then a weak cry, which grew louder as the baby's lungs responded to their new environment.

The nurse returned with equipment and an entourage – no matter how busy they were, the sound of a newborn cry always attracted an audience in the ER. House quickly cut the umbilical cord, handed the baby to the nurse to be checked and cleaned, and had one of the other nurses who'd appeared massage the girl's stomach to bring on delivery of the placenta.

"So, gonna call him Jesus?" House asked the girl's mother brightly.

The mom gave him a withering look before turning to her daughter and delivering a sharp slap to her face. Everyone in the room turned to look and even House was a little taken aback by her violence.

The girl put a hand to her cheek in reaction to the sting, but said nothing. Then the girl's mother dissolved into tears and gathered her bulky daughter into a hug.

"Oh my girl, my little girl," she said through her sobs.

House took the baby back from the nurse, double-checking his reflexes and breathing. The infant needed to be sent straight to the NICU to be monitored, House decided, but for now he seemed to be doing well. The little boy wrapped a hand around House's finger as House held him and House was surprised by the jolt he felt in response. To cover it, he quickly handed the baby over to his mother and grandmother and headed out of the curtained area to go clean up and change his shirt which was now covered with rather gruesome-looking gore from the baby.

I must be going senile in my old age, he decided.

--

"Well House, you handled that one," Cuddy said, sounding nonchalant. But House knew her well enough to know that she was praising him.

"Home run," he said, just as casual, but pleased nonetheless.

"Seeing as you're in the zone, how 'bout you look after this one too," Cuddy said, handing him a chart.

"Cuddy, since when did you end up as triage nurse?"

"Since our actual triage nurse refuses to deal with you."

House opened the file and, after a quick look, closed it and tried to hand it back. "Cuddy, despite my recent efforts, I'm not an OB. Call them."

"Funny, I did call OB for this case but they've got a baby epidemic up there and no one can be spared." A wily, devious look crossed Cuddy's face, the kind that immediately made House nervous – what did she know?

"One of the OB doctors actually suggested you might be able to be the OB stand-in here while they clear the boards. According to them, today's baby isn't the first for you this week. Apparently you delivered a baby on Monday? Some woman you picked up in the clinic as a patient?" Cuddy quirked an eyebrow, her curiosity clear.

Actually House had been wondering why she hadn't mentioned it before now. "Well Cuddy—"

"It's a rather interesting thing for my head of diagnostics to be doing, wouldn't you say? And I didn't see it on your billing," Cuddy continued. "Then again, if you were even remotely up to date with your paperwork . . ."

House sighed and pulled the chart back, turning and heading for the curtained area as a way to escape Cuddy's rant about his administration skills as much as anything. He'd expected the OB guys were going to exact payback for his scam to use their lounge at some point, and he didn't need eyes in the back of his head to realise that Cuddy would be gloating at his capitulation. Still, a few hours acting as the OB stand-in in the ER was probably worth the months of lounge use he'd scammed. He'd find a way to get them back anyway. Two can play at that game.

"What are you doing here?" The woman in the bed demanded as House pulled aside the curtain that had been pulled around her for privacy and walked into the cubicle, still looking down at her chart. As he looked up, she pushed her hair back from her face and he was torn from his revenge fantasies with the shock of sudden recognition. The hair was longer, her face was flushed and a little rounder than he remembered, and of course the pregnant belly was new, but it was unmistakably Lara. Beautiful, sexy Lara-from-the-wedding who'd said she would call and never had.

"Lara," he said, both shocked and pleased to see her again, his brain automatically replaying the time they'd spent together; it registered as both the worst and the best sex he'd had for at least a year. The only night of sex he'd had for at least a year. Looked like the same couldn't be said for Lara.

"Oh God, Larissa called you, didn't she?" Lara suddenly looked close to tears. "I told her not to."

House held up the manila patient folder in his hand. "I'm a doctor, remember? I work here."

For some reason that news didn't have the calming affect he'd expected. Instead, Lara went pale. "Oh, God," was all she said, giving him a look of pure horror. And then she curled onto her side, gasping with the pain of a contraction.

For someone as sharp as House, when he looked back later, he was embarrassed at the length of time it took him to process what he was seeing, connect that to what he was thinking, and look at the dates on the chart.

Lara was in premature labour, seven weeks early. She was in the ER so a determination could be made about whether or not to attempt to stop the labour chemically, or continue with the birth. Ostensibly that was what his job was – to make that call, prescribe the meds, or send her up to Labour and Delivery. Either way, as an ER patient she was destined to be his problem for a very short period of time.

Except.

Lara's contraction eased and she shifted in the bed. It took her a while to look at him again, and when she did, her eyes were filled with guilt, pain and sadness. If he hadn't just worked things out himself, her remorseful eyes would have told him everything.

House had no idea how to respond, no concept of what he should be doing. The only response he could find was to follow his ingrained medical training. So he continued with the exam as if his world hadn't just been turned on its axis.

"So when did the contractions start?" he asked, head down, making unnecessary notations in the chart, not moving an inch from his position barely inside the curtain.

"A few hours ago," Lara answered, a little breathless. "They were irregular and not very strong, I thought it was Braxton Hicks, but they've been getting stronger and more painful in the past hour. I also think my water might have broken. There's been no gush, just a fairly constant trickle, but I don't know what else it would be. That's why I came in."

Lara's matter-of-fact response helped House continue to live in his delusional world a little longer, pretending they were still doctor and patient. He flicked through the pages on the chart, noting that Lara had done all her prenatal care at PPTH with a Dr Boyd. He was amazed that they'd never run into each other, even by accident.

"According to this everything seems to have been going well up until now?" He still couldn't bring himself to look at her while she answered. Which was not at all like him – House liked to glare at patients as they answered his questions, all the better to ensure they might attempt to tell the truth.

"Yes, everything's been fine."

House swallowed hard, trying to remember what his next question should be, knowing that he needed to do an ultrasound to check the foetus's lung development, and yet desperately not wanting to.

Lara cleared her throat. "Do you think you should . . ." She took in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Should you get another doctor?"

"Yes." House nodded curtly, pleased that at least one of them was still thinking logically, and turned and walked out of the curtained area without a glance back. He located Cuddy and pushed the chart into her chest before she could do more than utter a surprised, "House!".

"Patient wants a female doctor," he said, improvising wildly, "and that means I'm done in the ER for today." He walked briskly towards the corridor, which lead to the elevators, which led to his office, which contained a nicely concealed bottle of fifteen-year-old Glenmorangie. All that he could think about was how good the blissful burn from the whisky would feel as it made its way down his throat.

"But what about," Cuddy looked down at the folder she unexpectedly had in her hands, "Lara Thompson?"

"Her labour's too advanced to stop now," he called over his shoulder, "membranes have ruptured, so risk of infection's too high. Get her up to L&D and tell them to make room in the NICU."

--

Lara was relieved that she'd mentioned feeling nauseous when she'd been admitted, because they'd left a bowl next to her bed that came in handy when she threw up violently as soon as House left.

The noise attracted the attention of a passing nurse and within moments she was cleaned up, sipping water and trying to keep her focus simply on breathing in and out. Lara knew her indecision over the past months would come back to haunt her. She just hadn't expected it to be now. But then she guessed that was the thing with procrastination – you put things off in the delusional belief that the consequences might never happen.

But, of course, they always did.

Over the next hour, Lara managed to push away thoughts of House as other things happened quickly around her. Her OB, Dr Boyd, appeared briefly looking hassled and annoyed, peered between her legs and then suddenly Lara was in a wheelchair being moved to the labour ward. It didn't seem to matter how much she protested that her birth coach, Larissa, was on vacation with her husband, and that they had to understand: she just couldn't have her baby right now. The midwife laughed at her.

Larissa and Paul had planned their vacation so that they would be around when the baby was born and to help out afterwards. They'd both helped Lara through the pregnancy, and Larissa had been to prenatal appointments and Lamaze classes with her which, thankfully, they'd done early. Paul was the backup, if for any reason Larissa couldn't make it, he promised to be there. Initially Lara felt it would be strange to have her best friend's husband at her baby's birth, but he was a doctor – although she guessed oncologists probably didn't have that much to do with vaginas – and he did work at the hospital she intended to give birth in, so it was a practical decision if nothing else.

The fact that the baby's father was also an employee at the same hospital was another of those minor details Lara had managed to brush away. Over the past few months she'd had a number of occasions to marvel at her own powers of self-deception.

Another gripping pain held her and Lara gasped. She felt sick with anxiety. Of course, she'd felt anxious for months now, but this was an entirely new level.

What had she been thinking?

She was terrified of the prospect of giving birth without Larissa there to hold her hand. And that was the easy part! She'd signed herself up for a lifetime of being another person's sole provider, protector and parent.

What on earth had she been thinking?

Lara was settled into a rather bland-looking room with an intimidating amount of equipment lining the walls. Dr Boyd reappeared, still looking hassled. She quickly did an ultrasound and started talking to Lara about lung development and something called surfactant but that, at thirty-three weeks, the baby had an excellent chance of doing fine.

It was only then that it really sunk in to Lara that the baby coming early meant more than an inconvenience to hers and Larissa's carefully made plans. Lara's natural bookish nature had only increased in pregnancy. She'd read just about everything ever published about having babies, and that was quite a lot. She knew about lung development and about all the risks, diseases, infections and challenges a premature baby faced – somehow she'd just forgotten it all for a moment.

"Oh no," was all she could think to say.

Dr Boyd patted her arm. "Things look okay. Stay positive for now. I'll come back and see you when you've progressed further."

Lara felt like she was about to throw up again, but then another contraction hit and she cried out, not that it was really that painful yet, but something inside her needed to be let out and it wasn't just the baby. A midwife hurried in and grasped her hand, murmuring something comforting and Lara hung on to the words as if they were a lifeline.

A good mother would have been immediately worried about her baby, Lara knew. Instead, her first response was to feel worry and fear for herself. Then she'd seen House and, well, she still didn't want to think about what that meant yet. She knew how juvenile, how immature, she was being. Had been, all along, really.

Now her baby was paying the price for her procrastination.

Because Lara was sure this was payback.

--

In his office, House drank his whisky and stared out the window and tried to rationalise what had just happened. He was regretting handing the chart back to Cuddy, wishing he had something tangible to focus on, instead of sitting wondering if his child was right at that moment being born somewhere in the hospital.

Of course, he had no way of knowing for sure that it was his. The dates were probably about right, but he and Lara had had a one night stand – well, one night and one day. And if she'd had casual sex with him, who knew how many other guys there had been? House hated the fact that that idea was at first comforting and then made him feel deeply miserable. His overactive imagination couldn't help envisaging Lara with other men.

No, it wasn't so much the dates as Lara's reaction that had convinced him. She'd said she'd told Larissa not to tell him. Why would Larissa Kimble be banned from telling him that Lara was pregnant, if there wasn't some reason behind it? And that look in her eyes . . .

House realised he was grasping desperately for some kind of way to deny what he knew in his gut was true. He just needed to hear Lara say it. He downed the remaining whisky in one mouthful and rose from his desk, the final rays of the afternoon sun slanting across the floor.

In L&D, it didn't take long for House to find which room Lara had been taken to. Fortunately, having a reputation for being abrasive and unpredictable generally meant people let him do what he wanted to do without interfering. And his recent OB patient also meant that the sight of him loitering in a labour ward, leaning against a wall outside a patient's room, didn't provoke any reaction.

Dr Boyd was in there, doing an ultrasound, no doubt checking the baby's lung development. House had a good vantage point, they hadn't closed the blinds of her room yet, so things obviously hadn't progressed too far. He could see the ultrasound screen and the readouts from the other equipment without being immediately visible to the people inside the room. If Lara leaned forward, or Dr Boyd turned around, he'd be spotted, but for now he was safe.

He wasn't close enough to be able to clearly make out the baby's lungs on the monitor, but Dr Boyd didn't seem overly concerned. She seemed to be reassuring Lara and reached down to give her arm a squeeze. A midwife walked past House, barely giving him a glance, and opened the door. He quickly took a few sideways steps to shield himself from view and heard Lara cry out before the midwife hurried inside and the door closed again.

House sighed and realised that he'd probably not timed his visit particularly well. If he wanted answers from Lara, he probably should wait until she'd squeezed the kid out. It had nothing to do with empathy, sympathy or basic human decency, he'd just been around a few women as they gave birth and he knew their minds were usually pretty occupied with what was going on between their legs.

Dr Boyd exited Lara's room with one last smile that House felt was entirely patronising.

"How long til the baby gets here?" House asked Boyd abruptly.

"House? Why do you care?" Boyd kept marching at a brisk pace and as they passed the nurses' station House noticed that L&D definitely did have a full board, Cuddy hadn't been lying. Boyd was no doubt on her way to spread her special brand of condescension to the next poor woman.

"Clinical trial," House invented on the spot. "I need pre-term newborns. When can I get consent from the mom?"

Boyd gave him a suspicious look. "I haven't heard anything about a clinical trial."

"Well obviously," House said condescendingly. "It hasn't started yet. I haven't got consent."

Boyd rolled her eyes. "A while yet. She's only four centimetres dilated."

"And the baby's lungs?" House told himself he was asking that as part of his cover story – he could make up something about lung development being part of the trial's protocol.

"They're still a little underdeveloped, but at this stage I don't expect any serious complications."

"Right." House spun on his heels and headed for the elevator.

Back in his office, he looked at his watch. It was almost six. The smart thing to do would be go home, get a good night's sleep and deal with Lara in the morning.

"House? Saw your light was on. I thought you were going home?"

Wilson took a few steps into House's office.

"Want one?" House offered. He'd been about to pour himself a fresh whisky.

Wilson sighed. "Sure, why not." He fell heavily into the chair opposite House's desk. "Celebrating?" he asked.

"Celebrating what?" House frowned as he handed Wilson the glass of amber liquid. Despite the fact that House knew Wilson couldn't possibly know about Lara's secret, he felt a stab of guilty anxiety.

"Cuddy told me about your unexpected delivery in the ER this afternoon. Two in one week!"

"Oh, that." House was deliberately casual.

"Yeah. Caused a bit of a fuss apparently. You've won a few nurses over, too; Cuddy says they were all aflutter seeing you with the baby. I heard someone say you seemed reluctant to hand it over to the mom."

House snorted inelegantly.

"It's the whole men and babies thing," Wilson said, waving his glass in the air vaguely. "Cheers."

"Were you going to have kids with any of your wives?" House asked, suddenly curious about something he'd never before discussed with his best friend.

"What? Delivering babies made you all clucky?"

"No. No. Definitely not. Just . . . curious." House wondered what on earth had come over him. Was Wilson right? He remembered the little boy he'd helped into the world that afternoon, the strange warmth he'd felt when the kid had held his hand. Had he got to almost fifty years old and suddenly developed a desire to reproduce? He didn't think so. In his own way, he liked babies – always had. They tended to be pretty straightforward, especially as patients. They couldn't talk, so they didn't lie. They complained when there was something to complain about: hunger, pain, a full diaper. He didn't think that necessarily meant he wanted one of his very own. He liked monster trucks too, but he didn't want to own one. Sure it'd pull in the ladies, but it would be a bitch to park.

Wilson seemed to think about the question and then simply shrugged. "I guess I always thought I would. It was always a yes when I talked about it with them but, to be honest, I never stayed married long enough for it to happen. Julie had a miscarriage, but things were already on the slide by then, that was just the final nail in the coffin."

"Oh." House hadn't known about the miscarriage, but it wasn't like he was going to tell Wilson that he was sorry.

The two men sat in comfortable silence for a while until Wilson drained his whiskey. "Well, time for me to go home."

"Yeah."

"Another day, another dollar," Wilson said in his cheesy way.

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?" Wilson's concern startled House out of the stare he'd settled into, gazing into the distance, unfocussed.

"Remember Kimble's wedding?" House asked suddenly.

"Yeah?" Wilson answered tentatively, starting to become concerned about where the conversation might be heading.

"Did you ever see that blonde again?"

"House, I was still married then!" Wilson spluttered, not very convincingly.

House gave his friend a doubtful look. "What, you mean you didn't go up to her hotel room that night after she invited you?"

Wilson's blush was as good as an affidavit. "Well . . ." He shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

"So? You slept together that night. Did you see each other again?"

"We went out on one date," Wilson finally admitted. "But it didn't really work. Why are you asking about that?"

"Lara, the chick I hooked up with, was in the ER."

"Ah." Suddenly the strange bent to the conversation made sense. "Is she okay? Anything serious?"

"Nah. She's fine. It was just weird seeing her again." House knew it was a lie. He just wasn't sure how big.