Disclaimer: In a world where I can pull the wings off of fairies, I own everything. Sadly in this world, I own nothing.
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"Why are you setting up a computer on my conference table?"
The woman House was speaking to looked up at him. "Because I'm afraid that if I set it up in your office, something will fall on me." She paused. "Intentionally." With a sickeningly sweet grin, she went back to hooking up the monitor.
Wilson hid a grin, knowing she was probably right. He leaned on the doorway to watch, wondering if this poor woman knew what she was in for. Cuddy had warned House this would happen. Records was sending someone up to do House's paperwork themselves, since he was so far behind. House had figured she was only saying that since everyone knew the dragon lady in charge of the department now had yet to leave her cave, preferring her victims to come to her.
House grimaced and moved closer to tower over her. She leaned back a little to look him in the eye. "Talk to Dr. Cuddy about it." She said before he even opened his mouth. "All I have to say is you brought this on yourself." She set a pack of bright pink sticky notes next to the computer.
House stared at them for a moment. He knew those notes. Every week or so since the new department head in Records had started, one would appear on his desk on top of a new stack of the paperwork he never did. Usually with some sort of snippy message about where was some form or other. "You're Dr. Russell? Huh. I always pictured you as some middle aged woman with a schoolmarm bun, thirty cats and no life." This woman was more Wilson's age, and while the bun was there, it was more haphazard than prim.
Russell smiled at him again, walking around him to set up a stack of file boxes. "Allergic to cats and I gave up my life to devote all my time to cleaning up after you." House snorted a little, turned and left the room to complain to Cuddy.
Wilson moved aside to let him pass, still trying to hide his smile. He'd felt sorry for her being stuck with House, but now was wondering if that should be the other way around.
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"Well, if you did your paperwork like every other doctor here, she wouldn't be there."
House thumped his cane on the floor. "I've been busy. Besides I know for a fact that Benson in Radiology hasn't been doing paperwork either."
Cuddy rolled her eyes. "That's because she's out on maternity leave and hasn't had any paperwork." She went back to her computer. "Why don't you go do your clinic hours if you don't want to deal with Dr. Russell?"
House grimaced and decided to try another track. "How about if I do the paperwork? Course, it'll take a while, so I won't be able to be in the clinic." He gave her one of his most charming smiles.
Cuddy didn't even look up. "Because first of all, you'll just get one of your fellows to do it, and second Dr. Russell has already given me a schedual which will allow her to get your files sorted in a decent amount of time and still do her clinic duty." She sighed and looked at House again. "And she's the only one who was willing to spend that much time around you without combat pay. I figure since she used to work in Psychiatry, she'd be able to deal with you."
House harumphed and left.
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A disgruntled House came back a half-hour later. He leaned over her again as she sat sorting her first stack. "So, you worked in psych. Why'd you give it up? Not enough people wanting to sleep with their mommies? If you're going to be breathing my air while you're here, not a word out of you when the real doctors are working."
Russell shrugged, still as calm as ever. "Just think of me as office equipment." She reached around him for some of her sticky notes. "You'll forget I'm even here."
House looked at her for a moment, slightly thrown off that so far she hadn't even gotten irritated, only slightly amused. With a sudden evil grin, he turned and limped to his office. If she was going to play like that, he'd find a way to make her flinch first.
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"I'll bet you that not only will I get her to leave, I'll make her cry too."
Wilson shook his head and reached for another slice of pizza. The sounds of 'Amazon Women on the Moon' went largely ignored since House was busy trying to think of ways to torture Russell and Wilson was trying to think of ways to stop House from said torture. "If that warm greeting you gave her didn't even rate a lip quiver, I highly doubt she's the crying type."
House rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Which will make victory that much sweeter. What do you say, Jimmy? Fifty bucks."
Wilson grinned a little. From what House told him he'd had found out about Russell so far, she could have been House's sister as far as stubbornness went. "Make it a hundred."
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For the next few days, House tried to think of what he could to upset the seemingly unshakable Russell. Sure, she made better coffee than any of the Ducklings ever could. Okay, she kept her mouth shut while they were working. But that still didn't excuse the fact that not only was she here against his protests, she refused to even pretend to be bothered by him.
He started simple by bouncing his ball off the window between his office and the conference room, the sound echoing loudly in both rooms. Every time she stifled a sigh and had to hit the backspace, House gave himself a point. After a few days of this, he realised that she was getting better at tuning it out. He decided to change tactics.
Next came the bugs. Not real ones, he didn't want Cuddy deducting for exterminators from his pay. He found realistic fake ones. Aside from a squeak when she found the first one and a scream from Cameron since it was flung in her direction, she merely started shaking out the folders before she opened them. House had to admit the sight of Cameron almost flying across the room screaming was fun, though.
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"Foreman, quick, what's the most annoying thing you can think of?"
Russell was off on clinic hours, Chase and Cameron were doing tests which left House and Foreman the only ones in the conference room. House figured this was a good time to get another opinion.
Foreman raised an eyebrow, not even looking up from his newspaper. "You mean besides you?"
House groaned. "Seriously, OTHER than me, what's the most annoying thing." He leaned forward as if it was the most important thing he could ever hear.
Foreman frowned a little. "When the car next to me has its music so high, it shakes my windows." He looked at House. "Why?"
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The next part of the plan involved him playing music. Loud enough that Wilson complained that it was shaking things off the walls and Cuddy was reminding him that 'Hospital Quiet'. All Russell did was pull out her own IPod, put the headphones on, and go back to work.
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"She's still there."
House grumbled and grabbed Wilson's chips as he sat down. "I know she's still there. I even tried gluing all her stuff to the table." He grinned. "She didn't do anything, but Cuddy turned an interesting shade of red when she found out she needed to replace the table."
Wilson sighed, trying to save his sandwich from House's wandering hands. "It's been a month already. Why don't you just admit she's there until the job's done?"
House gave him a shocked look. "I never thought of that." He grinned and Wilson got a sick feeling in his stomach.
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Russell came into work the next morning and stood there. Every scrap of paper was gone, including her pink stickies. She sighed and shook her head.
House sat in his amazingly bare office and grinned. When Russell leaned on his office doorway with her arms crossed, saying anything, he just shrugged. "Guess you finished it all. No wonder they put you in charge of Purgatory, I mean Records."
Russell looked at him for a minute more, her shoulders shaking slightly. Then a grin broke out on her face and she started laughing. "Why do I feel sorry for Dr. Wilson suddenly?"
House's mouth dropped open. How the hell had she guessed?
Wilson opened his office door and stared. His entire office looked like a recycling center. He sighed and shook his head.
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"House, can I please get MY paperwork done?"
House rolled his cane between his hands as he sat in Wilson's office. "There has to be something that will work." He leaned his chin on his hands.
Wilson shuffled a few things around. "You know, you could maybe help her do her job instead." He gave a frustrated groan. " Have you seen my staples? Ever since you decided to hide your office in here, I haven't been able to find my stuff"
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He started waiting until she left to eat or do her clinic hours, then he'd move her files around. Sometimes he'd switch the labels only, or hide things. At first he thought maybe he'd finally gotten her, at the least sending her complaining to Cuddy. But she was refusing to play along. All she'd do is grin and shake her head, and then hunt up whatever was missing and put things back how she had them.
When she seemed to get used to that, he started adding other things to the piles of papers she was sorting. Pieces of paper with nonsense on them, strange pictures he'd found on the Internet, jokes of questionable taste. He knew that wasn't working anymore when a Playboy he'd hidden in one of the folders turned up on his desk. Attached was one of those sickeningly pink sticky notes.
I like a nice rack as much as the next girl, but if you're going to give me eye candy, I prefer male.
Russell
He sighed and went to the door. "What will it take to get you to leave my conference room and return to the bowels of Hell you call 'Records'?"
Russell peered over the top of her computer. "You to keep up on your paperwork."
"Great. I'm stuck with you forever."
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House sat in his office, watching his fellows as they killed time waiting for test results. Foreman was reading his paper for the second time while Cameron was reading email. Chase was doing yet another puzzle and kept rolling his eyes whenever Cameron would try to draw him into conversation.
"I'd like to do my puzzle in peace, please." Chase snapped, getting up and leaving the room, while Cameron went back to the computer with a hurt look on her face.
House got a thoughtful look.
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"Go find out and find out what's bothering Russell."
Cameron stopped in the doorway and turned to House in surprise. "Why do you say something's bothering her? Aside from you that is. And since when do you even care?"
House shrugged. "Her silence is different. More moody." He waved his hands to shoo Cameron off. "Go find out if it's PMS or if there's something else going on. This way she's not here longer because her mood swings are slowing her down."
That was the start of House's next plot. He watched as Cameron sat down near Russell and started talking. Russell glanced at House's office, but gave the other woman a smile. House suppressed a grin when he could see faint tension start to settle in the Records Head's shoulders.
During the next few days, House had it quietly spread that Russell was a sympathetic shoulder and willing to talk while she worked. Even though it meant more people invading his conference room when they thought he wasn't around, House was pleased to notice that not only Cameron was still sitting and talking to her every day, but other's would as well, Russell seemingly too polite to turn them away. Even Wilson was said to be stopping in when House was not around. This bothered House for some reason. He could almost swear he was jealous. After all, what could Wilson tell her that he couldn't tell House?
Once that started, House noticed that Russell would put in a few extra hours depending on how many people stopped by. He took it as a signal that his plan was finally working.
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"She is going to leave eventually."
Wilson rolled his eyes. For two month's now, whenever he and House ate together, House started the conversation the exact same way. "She hasn't yet." He answered and pushed his fries over, already having lost most of them to House anyway. "Why does it bother you so much?" Wilson actually liked the subject of the conversation. She was good to talk to and she didn't offer advice or criticism unless you really wanted it. She merely listened when he'd come in, usually while House was busy elsewhere. It gave him someone to vent to about things he figured House would just tease him over, plus he'd managed to get a few things clear in his head that being around House only confused more.
House shifted in his seat. "She's taking away part of my protective cover. How am I supposed to hide in a glass office without the mounds of paperwork I can pretend to be doing?"
Wilson just shook his head and grinned.
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For a week following that conversation, House decided to create even more paperwork for her. Useless requisitions, reports with more detail than they needed, anything to increase the volume of paper. Okay, the downside being that it meant he had to do more work, but hopefully she'd see it as an endless task and beg to be let off from it to go back to her little corner of the Netherworld.
During all this, House noticed that other people would still stop by, both for the coffee, and to talk. Wilson especially. House felt a twinge of...something and started teasing him about chatting up wife number four. Wilson would blush and mumble something or make a joke then change the subject. He started making comments of how she must be everyone's favourite shrink since they seemed to be coming to her with their problems. House reluctantly admitted to himself that he liked talking to her. But he still wanted her out of his conference room.
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"She cleaned up my desk drawers!"
Wilson put his pen down with a sigh. "Patient, House." He smiled an apology at the couple sitting in front of him.
House growled a little and went back towards his office, grumbling. "She alphabetized my porn."
Wilson put his head in his hands and apologized again to his patients.
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After that, he started leaving messages on her computer whenever she'd leave the room. Sticky notes on the screen at first, then, once he'd figured out her password, voice messages. He had to wonder if she was making her passwords easy on purpose because everytime she changed it, he figured it out again after a day or so. Then he started playing with the music she had saved on it. That came to an abrupt and painful halt when one day he logged on to it and suddenly disco started blaring out of her speakers. Everything he tried would not shut it off so he finally had to pull the plug.
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Figuring it was time to up the stakes, House limped into the conference room, once his hearing returned and his stomach settled, and did what he figured she'd find the most annoying. He started talking to her.
When ever there was no one else around, he'd sprawl out in one of the chairs and complain loudly and in great detail about the clinic patients, different staff members, and just about everything else, smirking whenever she'd give the slightest reaction. A sigh was worth one point, a pause two. If he got a grin or an eye roll, something that was a bit harder to get, five points, and if she had to delete anything with any of those, bonus points. Russell would never comment on his tirades, only answering direct questions with a distracted tone.
After a month of that, when one of her answers almost made him choke on his coffee, House started asking her the most personal questions he could think of. Questions she seemed to be answering honestly.
"Why do you work in the clinic? I admit, most of them probably need a shrink, but you're not even practicing anymore." House asked her one day as she prepared to leave.
Russell shrugged and finished packing up her bag, on her way to cover those very hours. "I'm still technically a psych fellow. Dr. Cuddy asked me to fill in with Record until they find a new head and we decided on me keeping the job. I do clinic hours because it's in still my contract."
House's eyes narrowed a bit as a thought occurred to him. What if Russell was here to really do a psych eval? Cuddy had mentioned one. He watched her go as he mulled the thought over. He shook his head and chuckled at his own paranoid thoughts. Cuddy might be that devious to think of it, but somewhere along the way, either she or Russell, or even Wilson if he were part of it, would have given it away. Not to mention the gossip mill would have said something back when she showed up. With a shrug, House went to his office and played with his Gameboy.
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"Maybe she has a higher tolerance to you than most people."
House drained his beer and set the bottle down. This time 'Santa Claus versus the Martians' was being ignored. "You gave her pointers didn't you? During all those visits you make to her. "
"Yes, House, I gave her the crash course on 'How not to react'." Wilson sipped at his beer. He pulled on the label, not wanting House to know the real conversation was more like 'How do I not let House know I've fallen for him?'. "Maybe it takes something major to shake her. Other than having a joy buzzer put in her seat."
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"I'm in love with Wilson."
House figured that if nothing else would work, then he'd have to try for the greatest shock value he could. His own jaw nearly hit the floor when she looked up at him blandly and said. "I know."
A few minutes went by as they looked at each other. Then he turned and went back into his office.
He sat at his desk and watched her as she went back to work. Then he got up again and went back out. "How do you know?"
Russell smiled at him, "How come he doesn't know?"
House looked out the window for a second, then back at her. "I don't know if he should or not." He turned away once more and this time closed the door behind him.
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One Friday, they sat around the conference room, House included for a change, doing what they usually did to pass time while waiting on test results.
Chase chewed on his pencil while he stared at his puzzle. "Two words, fifteen letters. Used to explain superposition."
"Schrodinger's cat." When four sets of eyes stared at Russell, she looked up from her paperwork. Since she'd been there, she very rarely said anything when there was more than one of them present.
Chase looked at her puzzled. "Is that a disease or something?"
Russell shook her head. "Erwin Schrodinger came up with a theory that used a cat as an example." She sorted some more papers while she talked. "Put a cat in a steel box with a vial of hydrocyanic acid and a hammer, set on a spring with an atomic timer. If even one atom decays while it's in the box, the hammer will break the vial killing the cat." She looked up again. "Until the box is opened, in theory anyway, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time since there's no way to know if the vial was broken. Part of his question was, do you leave the box closed, pretty much having things stay as they are and never knowing, or do you open the box and find out for certain?"
Chase gave a small nod and wrote in the answer. House raised an eyebrow at her and she grinned, going back to her work.
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House came to work that Monday, heading straight towards the coffee maker. He stared at it as he realised that it was empty. He turned toward Russell and stared again, the end of the table she'd occupied for five months as empty as the coffee. With a frown he limped to his office, intending on calling Cuddy to find out where she'd gone. The dreaded pink sticky note was on top of a stack of folders.
I've finished the last of it and have returned to the bowels of Hell, as you called it. I will be up Friday to pick these up, please have them signed by then.
Russell
P.S. Re: You and Dr. Wilson
Schrodinger's cat.
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Wilson looked up and saw House outside, staring of into space. He frowned a little and joined him, leaning on the wall that divided the two balconies. He saw the sticky in House's hand, twisting his head a little to read it.
Wilson raised an eyebrow at the note. "What is this? Someone wants to give me a cat?" He looked at House. "Or is this some sort of new porn slang I'm not aware of?" He paused, trying to quell the butterflies in his stomach as House's hand lightly rested on his. "House, what are you doing?"
"Opening the box."
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Russell opened the folder, and stared. Inside was a Playgirl magazine and a pink sticky note.
The cat is alive