The next morning House turned up to the hospital early, his bleary eyes betraying the lack of sleep he'd had. He might as well have sat beside Lara and held her hand, he thought ruefully, for all the rest he'd managed. His brain had tortured him more than having his hand in any vice-like grip.

He had a patient, a thirty-two-year-old butcher with mysterious breathing difficulties, but they were still at that annoying early stage where he wasn't particularly critical and all the tests they needed to do were going to take the team all day. After a quick round up with them in the conference room, he sent his three underlings away to do his bidding and headed into his office.

House couldn't access the records of patients that weren't his, but he could see a list of names of patients who had been admitted to the hospital in the past twenty four hours. Sure enough, Baby Lara Thompson had been admitted – using the mother's name with the word 'baby' in front was the hospital's code for a newborn that hadn't yet been named – just a couple of hours ago at 7.37am. In a distracted way, House calculated that he'd seen Lara around two pm which meant she'd had at least a seventeen hour labour, but he didn't think to summon any sympathy for her. The new patient was female.

Lara had a daughter.

He had a daughter.

Shaking his head as if to dispel the idea, he reminded himself that he didn't know that for sure yet. He immediately got to his feet and headed down to maternity.

House opened the sliding door leading into Lara's room. She was sleeping, her hair lay plastered to her face, her cheeks still flushed from effort. He was annoyed with himself for still finding her attractive, but that was a minor thought. There were more important things to get sorted out. He leaned over her, deliberately making himself look as threatening as possible.

"Lara!"

Lara shifted in the bed, her eyes screwing up as if to deny reality. "Tired," she muttered.

"Lara, wake up!" House called again, his voice louder, sterner.

Lara opened one eye and obviously the sight of House looming over her came as something as a shock. She yelped, jolting awake, and her automatic reaction was to draw back away from him. Her yelp was quickly followed by a groan of pain as her body reminded her of what it had just been through and refused to make any movements of a sudden nature.

"No," Lara whispered, and closed her eyes again, seeming unable to cope with the multiple things her brain was trying process at once.

"Yes, Lara. Open your eyes. You will talk to me. Now!" House's sleepless night, his irritation with himself over how much this was bothering him, and his anger with Lara for keeping such huge news from him, all combined to make him want to punch something. The best he could do was clench his fists and yell.

Lara bursting into tears in response didn't help.

"Is she mine?" he demanded, unswayed by her sobs. "Is she? Should I expect lawyers coming after me looking for child support?" House wasn't really concerned about the money, but that seemed to be the easiest thing to focus on for now.

Lara shook her head, but House didn't know if it was a "no" or just a general denial of the situation. Then, through her haze, something seemed to come clear. She grabbed House's arm and clutched it to her chest. "Greg, I had a little girl. They took her, she was having trouble breathing. Find her, make sure she's okay." She looked up at him, pleading, her breath hitching with tears.

He had no intentions of going to see the baby, but then it occurred to him that the one way to solve this once and for all was a simple swipe of a cotton swab inside the baby's cheek. Then, in twenty-fours, he'd know for sure. He belatedly realised he'd never have trusted Lara's answer anyway: it wasn't like she'd proven herself to be particularly honest so far, and it wasn't as if he'd stopped believing that everybody lied.

House removed his hand from her grasp with a look of disdain.

Without another word, he turned and left the room.

The NICU was crowded, a side effect of lots of babies being born at the same time was the corresponding spike in sick babies born at the same time. It took him a minute, but eventually he found "Lara Thompson" on a name tag. His ingrained, automatic medical training noted several things. The baby was in an enclosed incubator against the wall towards the back of the intensive care area. The enclosed incubator meant that the baby was not intubated and, within the realm of the NICU, was not considered a critical care case – those infants were in open cribs where nurses and doctors could more easily get to them. The fact that she was against the wall also indicated that she must be reasonably stable, whatever breathing difficulties she'd had must be under control, because the more critical cases were in the centre of the room, around a hub of more sophisticated monitoring equipment.

House had collected a sterile test swab from a supply room along the way and he donned gloves before reaching into the crib to do the test, gently swiping inside the baby's mouth. He pocketed the result quickly, before anyone could see what he had done, but luckily the busyness of the NICU was helping cover his covert activities.

Intending to leave, House took one last look at the baby in the crib. She was lying still except for the rapid rise and fall of her chest, seeming as worn out as her mother from the process of entering the world. Her face, turned towards him, was screwed up, that look of protest that most newborns seemed to sport, but House couldn't help noticing her mouth – and how much it looked like baby photos he'd seen of himself. A thin upper lip and a flattened cupid's bow with a weak chin underneath. He thought it was a pity she'd got that from him, because she didn't have the option of growing a beard. Her eyes were closed but she had long dark eyelashes like Lara, and a wisp of dark hair over her head – not a trace of his gingery brown. It was a shock to see his own and Lara's features combined like that.

Without stopping to examine why, he put a hand back inside the incubator and gently rubbed the baby's stomach. She had on a tiny diaper and a number of monitor tabs were stuck to her torso, so the skin exposed to his touch wasn't that much, but House could have sworn her little baby face relaxed its scowl when he laid his hand on her. He stroked her gently, his mind carefully blank, the only thought that entered the deliberate haze of his brain was that at least she was a pretty-looking preemie; he thought some of her bunkmates looked like nothing so much as primate offspring with their hairy faces and skinny limbs. He stroked her cheek with the back of a finger and the baby stirred, her arms grasped blindly but managed to brush against his hand – not surprising really, given his hand was big enough to cover her whole torso. He quickly suppressed the smile that seemed to automatically rise as one of her tiny fingers briefly hooked over his.

"Nice job, daddy," a nurse said, smiling broadly as she came over to stand next to him, the baby's chart in her hand. "They love being touched."

House pulled his hand away as if he'd been stung. "What?" he asked defensively, aggressively turning on her.

The nurse visibly blanched.

"That's Doctor House, Alice," a voice called and Dr Boyd appeared a moment later. "He's doing a clinical trial." She turned to him. "And you should have your ID on display, House. Especially round here. You go anywhere with a baby without your badge visible and you'll be shot. Again."

"I have to do the baby's obs," Alice said, her voice small.

"Agency nurses," Dr Boyd sighed, seemingly having no concern for Alice's feelings. "This is what happens when it rains babies."

"Right," House said, uncharacteristically lost for words. The moment he'd shared with the baby, the nurse unknowingly calling him daddy, it had all been too much.

"And I still haven't heard any details about this trial of yours," Dr Boyd said, giving House a curious look. "Perhaps you could give me—"

House began edging his way between the maze of cribs and medical equipment, towards the door. "You'll be the first," he said over his shoulder. "I promise. Just putting the finishing touches to the paper now." He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and escaped quickly, wondering what the hell had come over him. He ducked into a nearby men's room to do his own swab, simply because he didn't want anyone else to see, and then stopped by the nurses' station to fill in the pathology paperwork and get the samples on their way.

The idea of going back to see Lara flittered across his brain. But now that he had the DNA, there really wasn't any reason to see her again until he got the results, and even then, only if they were positive. She was concerned about her daughter and had asked him to tell her how she was doing, but House was sure someone else would do that.

Setting his shoulders in preparation for twenty-four hours of hellish suspense, he headed back to his office.

--

Although she'd barely had a couple of hours of rest since the birth, Lara couldn't go back to sleep. When House didn't return after ten minutes Lara admitted to herself that she hadn't really expected him to. Why should he do anything for her?

She buzzed for a nurse and within minutes found herself in a wheelchair, seated next to her daughter's incubator. She reached inside and stroked her little body, overwhelmed by the feelings assaulting her. Despite her literary background, words honestly failed her. She had no way to explain to anyone how she was feeling. It was love, it was protectiveness, it was deep, gnawing anxiety wondering if she could ever be enough for the most beautiful, most precious little thing she'd ever seen.

"Lara?"

Dr Boyd appeared at her side. Lara found herself so besieged by emotion she couldn't speak, so she smiled weakly instead.

"How are you feeling?" Without waiting for an answer Dr Boyd grabbed the chart hanging from the end of the incubator and started giving Lara an update. "She's doing well. Breathing by herself which is the most important thing. We're still monitoring that very closely because sometimes these little ones have a habit of slipping backwards in the first twenty-four hours. We've also noticed that she's had the occasional irregular heart rhythm. I don't think it's anything to worry about just yet, it might something called a PDA which we can medicate her for, but I have booked her in for an echocardiogram tomorrow so we can take a close look at her heart and make sure there's nothing wrong. In the meantime we're keeping a close eye on that too."

Lara nodded, still feeling unable to speak.

Dr Boyd gave her a sympathetic smile and Lara figured she probably wasn't the first mute new mother Dr Boyd had encountered. "I'm going to keep a watch on her and Dr Hammond over there—" she pointed to another doctor across the room, "—is a neonatologist and he's going to be taking care of her too. Does she have a name yet?"

"Grace," Lara found her voice to say quietly. It was one of the girls' names she and Larissa had discussed, although they hadn't made a final decision. In the end, Lara had felt she'd know the right name when she finally met her baby, and it was true, she had, the little girl under her hand was definitely Grace.

"Grace Thompson," Dr Boyd repeated, writing the name on the chart. "That works well."

Lara nodded and smiled down at her daughter. A thought crossed her mind: Grace House didn't really work, the two sibilants were too much. But then she hadn't really been considering that when she'd been choosing names.

--

House was in his office a few hours later when Dr Boyd appeared at his door.

"Dr House?" she called out, her voice uncharacteristically tentative as she walked inside.

House cringed inwardly. No doubt she was there to find out more about his supposed clinic trial. House could bullshit with the best of them, but now that he no longer needed a free pass to the NICU, he wasn't interested in making the effort.

"Do you mind if I sit down?"

House made a noncommittal noise that Dr Boyd obviously interpreted as assent.

"I'm very keen to know more about this trial you're running. I've been interested in neonatal cardio-pulmonary disease for a while and I did a paper on it that was published by the AMA last year." She crossed her legs and leaned forward, touching the desk with one elbow. "I know that you only tend to accept the most exceptional cases, but I was wondering if we co-authored, I could . . ."

As Dr Boyd went on, House became aware of a few things. Firstly, Dr Boyd was a rather attractive female. Until now, House hadn't had the time or inclination to notice such a thing. Her hair was mousy brown and straight, but glossy and thick. He guessed she was in her mid-forties, but she'd aged well. She had blue-ish green eyes and long eyelashes which, when she looked out from behind them as she was doing now, gave her a coquettish and flirty look. Her rack, although hidden behind a sweater Cuddy wouldn't be seen dead in, looked decent. Her skirt revealed shapely legs and slim ankles. Secondly, he totally recognised the pose she was holding. It was the kind of submissive, obsequious position that came with job interviews or asking someone out on a date.

". . . so I thought if I look out for the cases and page you when we get one that fits the protocol, perhaps we could work together on it," Boyd finished.

"Uh," House stalled. He hadn't expected this. He'd expected bluster and demands for explanation, not a coy bid for credit on a non-existent study. The universe was obviously looking out for him, House decided, because before he could respond Chase burst into the office with test results from the MRI.

"House, you need to look at this," Chase began before noticing Dr Boyd in the room. "Oh, sorry."

"Show me," House said, rising and holding out a hand. "Can we talk about this later Dr Boyd?"

Boyd rose up with a smile. "Of course. Let me know when you're free." She lowered her voice, although Chase could still plainly hear. "And please, call me Chelsea. If you want, maybe we could discuss it further over a drink?"

House just barely prevented himself from spluttering. If the last twenty-four hours hadn't been enough, now he was being asked out on a date by an attractive OB who'd delivered what was possibly his baby? It defied belief.

"Uh, yeah, sure," House muttered, turning to Chase and taking the paper from his hand. At least he hadn't blushed, House thought, as Boyd closed the office door behind her. With a look that threatened Chase with a painful demise if he so much as blinked the wrong way about what he'd just witnessed, House got down to business, focussing on the test results.

--

The rest of the day passed without incident and that night House managed to get a reasonably decent night's sleep. He dreamt about Lara, his subconscious making him relive their moment at the wedding, only in the dream, suddenly he and Lara were the ones getting married and his father was his best man, whispering omens of doom about his fitness as a parent, as Lara made her way down the aisle towards them with a crying baby in her arms. House woke up in a cold sweat and looked at the clock only to find out he'd only been asleep for about an hour. After that he slept through the rest of the night without any further nightmare visions, figuring it was because he at least now had the security of knowing the test results would give him a definitive answer one way or the other. Worrying about the outcome was futile. At least, that's what he kept telling himself.

The first thing he did when he got to the hospital the next morning was check with pathology, where a rather hassled technician told him that he would get the results in twenty-four hours from when they had been submitted and that calling them to check the progress only delayed it further. House looked at his watch and figured that made it exactly 2pm – four hours away – and if it wasn't on his desk by then, they'd be learning what hassling was really like.

His first couple of hours were taken up with a differential with the team, and then Wilson stuck his head in the office to see if he was free for lunch. House figured anything that stopped him from looking at his watch every ten minutes had to be a good thing, so he agreed – on condition Wilson paid, of course.

Going to visit Lara crossed his mind regularly throughout the morning but House ignored the impulse, reminding himself that it was all about the results. When the results came through, that's when he'd deal with Lara. If he had to. It might well turn out that she wasn't his problem at all. House wasn't sure if he was just a born pessimist, but somehow he didn't think that was going to happen.

In the cafeteria, Wilson was boring him to tears with a story about that morning's board meeting when Chelsea Boyd came over to their table.

"Dr House!" she said, her voice excited. "You didn't answer my pages!"

House shrugged. She'd paged him a couple of times that morning, but he hadn't bothered answering, hoping she'd take the hint. Looked like she was the tenacious sort.

"I've got the best case for your trial."

Wilson frowned at House and House tried to dodge the look, knowing that Wilson fully understood that House was not, and never had been, involved in any trial.

"Really?" he asked, trying to sound disinterested.

"Yes, are you finished eating? Great, come with me." She put a hand under his elbow as if to help him get up from the table.

House gave her a withering look and she snatched her hand back with a muttered, "Sorry". But she didn't move away, and House could see she was almost trembling with excitement. "Seriously, you should come up to the NICU. We've got a preemie with polysyndactyly – with skull, atrial and ventricular defects."

Wilson let out a whistle, which was probably appropriate, House thought. It was extremely rare condition and the infant wasn't likely to live for too much longer. It wouldn't hurt to go have a look.

"Extra toes?" House asked.

Boyd nodded.

"Webbed fingers?"

She nodded again.

"Cool," House said.

Wilson sputtered about the appropriateness of the word "cool" to describe a baby's fatal condition, but House ignored him. He knew it would annoy Wilson if he went to spectate at the sick baby, especially given Wilson knew there was no study. He also thought Dr Boyd looked particularly attractive today, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of an unusual case – not unlike himself, House mused. Perhaps he might find time to have a drink with her after all.

Once he sorted out whether or not he was a parent, an annoying little voice inside him reminded.

"Let's go," he said, rising from the table and pushing thoughts of Lara to one side.

"What clinical trial are you doing House?" Wilson asked loudly, obviously intending to spill House's lie in front of Chelsea.

"Gotta run, Wilson," House said, grabbing Chelsea's elbow and steering them quickly away. "Tell you all about it later," he called over his shoulder.

In the NICU he took a cursory look over the deformed baby. Once Dr Boyd had filled him in on all the clinical details during their ride in the elevator his curiosity was satisfied. A quick look at the actual patient was more than enough.

House realised that he had conveniently forgotten that returning to the NICU meant returning to the room where Baby Lara Thompson was lying. Meaning adult Lara Thompson might be around too. He breathed a sigh of relief to find that Lara was not among the many parents littered around the NICU and he didn't want to seem to be giving one baby any particular attention, so he didn't walk over to the wall where he'd seen Lara's daughter yesterday.

"So, would you like to talk more about the study? About co-authoring?" Boyd none-too-subtly hinted.

House looked her up and down; her breasts were more on display today, a decent amount of cleavage peeking from a soft blouse. He looked back at her face and noticed she was blushing; she'd seen him check her out.

"Sure," he said. "Shall we get a drink? Tonight?" House figured they could have a drink, see how things went, and then to get out of the whole trial lie he'd just tell her that he lost funding or his grant wasn't approved, or something like that.

"Dr Boyd?" a nurse interrupted as House became aware of a shrill alarm sounding through the NICU. "We need you."

"Don't move," Dr Boyd said, smiling coyly at House. "I'll be right back."

"It's baby Thompson," the nurse continued. "Grace."

So Lara named the baby Grace. House inwardly shrugged. It was an okay name, probably not one he would have chosen, but then he hadn't exactly spent time thinking about it. He wondered if it was a name he would be saying a lot in the future, whether he wanted to or not. He stepped to one side so he could watch events unfold.

"Come on baby Grace, what's up?" Dr Boyd coaxed, and House noted that the baby had been transferred from the incubator she'd been in the day before into an open crib in the central hub of the NICU where she could be more easily monitored. That wasn't a good sign.

"Her heart rate's erratic," the nurse said, turning off the alarm and connecting Grace to a number of other machines.

"And the bradycardia?" Boyd asked, putting a stethoscope to her tiny chest.

"She's been pretty stable for the past hour, but there were a couple of incidents of A&Bs earlier this morning."

"Do we know the results of the echo yet? Does she have a PDA?"

"The x-rays looked normal," someone answered, "so she hasn't had the echo yet."

Suddenly a new and different alarm began sounding.

"V-fib!" the nurse called out.

"Start heart massage and charge the paddles," Dr Boyd said calmly. "Where's the mom? Lara?"

"She's been in here most of the morning, but she went to take a nap."

House watched, curiously detached, as the NICU team worked to restore a regular heart rhythm in the little girl. They worked efficiently, and stayed calm and quiet; no doubt the result of plenty of practice. He knew there was no reason for him to hang around, he felt sure that the conscientious Dr Boyd would follow up to confirm their date. But he couldn't help himself; he remembered the moment he'd shared with the baby the day before, and her tired-looking little face. He thought about Lara, about the evening of the wedding and how he'd found her such fantastic company. They'd talked about everything under the sun that night and the next day, and she'd been so funny and challenging and interesting. Not to mention hot as hell – he still remembered that plunging red dress she'd been wearing and how he'd had to work hard to remember to look at her eyes when they'd talked. And then later, how they'd made each other feel, in bed, in the bath, in the shower, and, once, both of them laughing at how ridiculous they were being, in the little lounge chair in the corner.

"Adrenaline."

"Still v-fib."

"Charge the paddles."

House had been genuinely disappointed when she hadn't called him as she'd promised she'd do once she returned from her work trip. He figured that he could have made enquiries, found her number, given her a call, but he decided that if she'd wanted to see him, she would have called.

"Clear."

"Asystole."

He guessed he knew now why he hadn't heard from her.

"Clear."

"More adrenaline."

House could see Grace as the team worked around her, lying very still, and he thought about when he'd touched her, in the incubator, and how her hand had tried to grasp his.

"Clear."

"There's no response, nothing at all."

"Flat line."

A moment of silence descended.

"Time of death, 1.23pm." Dr Boyd's calm voice announced, startling House back from his reverie. One of the nurses, he thought it was Alice, the one who'd possibly not-so-mistakenly called him "daddy", let out a little sob and another nurse put an arm around her.

After a moment's conversation with the nursing team, Dr Boyd walked back to House, looking shaken. "It doesn't matter how many times it happens, I never get used to that."

"What happened?" House asked. His voice was flat.

"We probably won't know until they do an autopsy. My guess is an aortic aneurysm from a PDA too small to see on the x-ray. We just couldn't get enough oxygen into her. Either that or a congenital heart malformation, especially when it happens so suddenly like that."

House nodded and then turned and walked out of the NICU. He had to walk past Grace to reach the exit and he deliberately avoided looking down at her little body.

"I have to go see the mother, but what time tonight?" Dr Boyd called out to him. "Do you want to call past my office and pick me up at six and we'll go round the corner to the tavern?"

House ignored her, walking out of the NICU, out of maternity, heading straight for the elevators, seeking nothing except the safe haven of his office.

As soon as he was there, his fellows surrounded him, each barking questions, suggestions, arguments. House felt like he was in a bubble, their crabby comments bouncing off and away from him. Before he knew it, their argument had resolved; they seemed to have discussed themselves into a conclusion. All three faces looked up at him expectantly.

"Sure," he said, waving a hand randomly. "Do it." He had no idea what he had agreed to or instructed, but at that point it didn't really matter to him.

Cameron was the only one to give him a funny look, but then all three of them turned and left to do his bidding and finally he was alone, in peace.

Sitting at his desk, the first thing he saw was the white envelope from pathology sitting on top of a pile of other papers. He checked his watch, one-thirty-seven.

Bastards were early for once.

And it was fourteen minutes since Grace had died.

Like ripping off a bandaid, House figured the only way to do it was to get it over fast. He tore open the envelope and quickly scanned the results.

So much writing on a page where only one word was important.

Positive.