I had planned to post this sooner, but our Christmas party interfered. Cause, trust me, nobody can party like the librarians! But here this is, at last.

And thanks for the reviews.

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After the trip to the cafeteria House walked slowly back to his mother's room. His father was still there, but obviously his mother had had a talk with him as he didn't launch on his lecture the moment House walked in. The atmosphere was still stiff, but not enough to scare Foreman, who came in to check in on his patient before she was prepared for surgery.

"Morning Blythe, Mr. House, House," Foreman greeted them nodding at each. "I just came to see if everything is ok, and if you have any more questions before the surgery."

"Not on the surgery, thank you, Eric," Blythe responded. "You were very thorough with your explanations yesterday."

Foreman looked at House, who shook his head – again causing confusion in his underling. John House, who was obviously very worried about his wife, did want to talk, so Foreman had to set aside his puzzlement.

"What I would like to know is," John asked, "do you know what is wrong with my wife. You danced around the subject rather vaguely yesterday."

"I believe I told you that her test results for MG were positive," Foreman stated. "It is true, we don't know yet if it is affecting only her eyes, or if it is the generalized version. Once your wife has recovered from the surgery we must do more tests to determine that. We are fairly sure it is the generalized MG because of the thymoma and her hands. But at this point the most important thing is to find out for sure if the thymoma is cancerous, though – as I said last night, it has all the appearance of being benign."

"Greg," John turned to his son, "You don't seem to have anything to say about your mother's condition."

"Foreman is her doctor, not me," House replied fairly calmly.

"And why is that?" John asked. "Everybody keeps telling me how you are the best doctor here, but when it comes to your mother, you have nothing to say. Are you such a hot shot that you cannot even take care of your own mother now, but just leave it to your underlings?"

John ignored Blythe's attempts to shush him. House did not reply, he just limped to his mother, gave her a kiss and told her that he would see her after the surgery. Then he started to leave. Foreman could not stay silent.

"Mr. House, it is not a good idea for a son to be his mother's doctor if there is a choice. It's unethical."

"If there is a choice, but if my son is supposed to be the best, then shouldn't my wife have the best?" John grumbled.

"She has the best," House said from the doorway having stopped for a moment. "She is being taken care of by the best team in this country," having said that he left. And once again Foreman considered keeling over with shock, but as he was with a patient he decided against it. This one neither Chase nor Cameron were going to believe!

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Blythe House was ready for her surgery. She lay on the operating table under the glaring lights, asleep, unconscious, waiting for the knife to cut her skin. Chase and Foreman had both scrubbed in to observe, but Cameron was waiting with John House – per Greg's request. None of the three knew where House was, and that suited House just fine. He was standing in the shadows at the back of the observation deck looking through the windows into the OR.

House was a silent, unmoving carving from a stone. He had every "no trespassing" sign up and Wilson didn't dare go near him, though he, too, was observing the operation. Cuddy had walked in, taken one look at House and walked out again. She felt like an intruder. So did Wilson for that matter, but he still wanted to be there, just in case. He did, however, keep his distance from House and stood as far away from him as he could, just in front of the glass. However, it was no accident that he had chosen a place that would block the view to House from the OR, should anyone happen to look up.

They were doing a transcervical thymectomy and the first cut the surgeon made was a curved line close to the base of the neck. Wilson did look back when the knife descended for that cut, but could not see any reaction from House, yet something did vibe in the air. Maybe the slightest of sighs?

Thymectomy was not that dangerous an operation. But it was still surgery and things could always go wrong. Previously undiscovered allergies, unexpected reactions, slip ups, post-operative stress, the list was endless. And being a doctor you knew every item on that list. And there she was the source of your life, lifeless, nearly inanimate and in danger from it all.

House watched the violation of his mother's body. Surgery was always a violation, it was an unthinkable invasion of privacy, and any doctor who didn't see it that way, had no business to be in business. On the other hand, any doctor who was not willing to invade the privacy of his patient any which way was necessary to find the cause of an illness, had also no business to practice medicine. The knife that cut into Blythe House also cut into her son. This was the body that had given him life and to see it there, unconscious, at the mercy of others was painful.

House knew that the knife that was cutting into his mother could also cut his father out of his life. The only thing that John and Greg House had in common anymore was Blythe. If she was gone, House knew he would probably never see his father again, either. Not that John would cut his son out of his life, not at all. He would keep on trying to be a father as best he knew how. The problem was that he had never known how to be a father to a son like Greg, and without Blythe there to mediate Greg would avoid his father as best he could. And his best was very good!

House knew that his father had been there when he was growing up. True, career in the military did mean that duty often took his father away, made him miss many important occasions in his son's life, but John had been there whenever he could. Only House could not remember him. He had seen the family photos where he had been happily playing catch or whatever with his father. He had many memories of childhood outings and occasions where he knew his father had to have been with them, but he couldn't remember. Blythe did often say that when Greg was a child he and his father got along just fine, but House could not remember it. He knew it was his mind doing tricks. Once the relationship with his father had gone sour, his mind had edited John out of his memories. How Freudian was that? He had killed his father – if only in his mind.

Blythe had done her best, trying to mediate between her son and husband. But for a woman who hated confrontations it had not been easy. Greg's whole life was one big confrontation. That was how he saw life. John House didn't like confrontations either, but for a different reason than his wife. John was a military man through and through. If an order was given, you obeyed, instructions were followed to the letter and yours was not to question why. That was really what had gone wrong in his son. Gregory House never did anything without questions. Why was actually his first word, though his mother could still not understand where he had learned it from! Reportedly his father had thought it funny at the time – he did not find it half as funny later on.

John House lived in a black and white world. Authorities were to be respected, not questioned. People who had lived longer knew better. Children respected their parents, no matter what. What was right was right and what was wrong was wrong it did not change when situations – or countries – changed. And there were no shades of grey at all.

His son, however, lived solely in the shades of grey. Everything was relative. Everything came with conditions. Everybody lied. And yet, amidst all this grey, these different shadows that blurred your vision, that confused you, you still needed to find right and wrong. Because they did exist! People just didn't want to know. People wanted easy, not simple. Because truth often was very simple, once you got all that grey out of the way. But it was also difficult, and often painful. This obviously was the reason, why people hid it under all that grey. Oddly enough, the only person who understood the struggle of life as House saw it was his mother. Blythe House, who had married the most unimaginative man she could find, could well understand her son, who could imagine only too well.

The surgery was going as expected. House was almost fascinated by the dance of the surgeon's hands, how precise, how practiced, how knowing. You could almost forget that it was a living human being under the green sheets. His mother. Suddenly he felt fission of alarm go up his spine! Right at the same time Chase became alert, said something to the team and three seconds after that the monitors started peeping. Blood pressure was down, heartbeat off, something had gone wrong. House ceased to breathe. His hands were strangling his cane. A minute, two minutes and they had the situation under control. Everything was fine again and the surgery proceeded as expected. He had been right about Chase; his wombat did have the instincts of a doctor. He had sensed what was happening even before it had happened, and he had been on top of it right away. Possibly that hadn't made any difference here, but it was an instinct that would save many a life in the future – if Chase finally made up his mind to be a doctor.

The rest of the operation was uneventful and Blythe House was taken into the recovery room, where her husband waited with Cameron for her to wake up.

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Chase and Foreman walked out of the OR feeling exhausted. More so than after any other surgery they had attended, or that was what they felt like. And their exhaustion was not helped by the fact that they saw House waiting for them in the corridor. They exchanged a look, trying to silently decide which one of them – if either – was going to tell House about the touch and go moment in the OR. Neither was willing to open their mouths and bring that up, even if all had ended happily.

"Nice catch, Chase," House told him, revealing that he already knew about the incident. Chase assumed that Wilson had already told him, as the oncologist had been observing. "Saw you realise that something was wrong even before the monitors reacted," House said, disproving Chase's guess. Both Chase and Foreman felt their eyes widen as they realised that House had been watching all the time. "That is a good instinct to have as a doctor," House went on tilting Chase's world completely off its axis. House then turned to leave, but threw one more thing at Chase over his shoulder: "Nice work."