When Doctors Chase, Cameron and Foreman entered the conference room three weeks later they got more than they bargained for. Sitting at the table, poring over a patient file was Amy. She was dressed in black bootcut pants and a tight-fitting black t-shirt. This, matched with her dark hair; twisted into a half-bun, gave her a sophisticated look. Cameron recognised her easily but Chase and Foreman could only guess that she was the mysterious daughter the whole hospital had been talking about. She had been strangely efficient at only visiting at stupid hours of the night and Cameron had been irritatingly secretive. Amy looked up from the file and a smile flickered over her face.
"Hi." Was all she managed to say before House walked into the conference room from his office. He reached underneath Amy's elbows and pulled the file away from her. He held it open in one hand; saying "We have a new patient."
Chase and Foreman sighed, clearly House was going to ignore the blatantly obvious and pretend like this kid, his daughter, had always belonged there.
The three doctors spent the morning running tests on their patient, a seven-year-old girl, while Amy and House spent the morning in his office, listening to his iPod. He had sat on the couch, rather than at his desk, while she had assumed a cross-legged position on the floor, surrounded by various medical textbooks. Foreman had been surprised when, walking into the conference room he heard them both laughing. Then he had heard her voice alone, scolding her father. "I'm telling you, it's Horner syndrome. She has all the symptoms." House just laughed but Foreman, staring down at the MRI results was speechless. She was right.
The first chance they got to talk to her was when House went to lunch with Wilson. Unlike Chase and Foreman, Wilson had met Amy several times and when he dropped by the Diagnostics Department she greeted him with a friendly smile. She was sat at one end of the table in the conference room, filling in a medical journal crossword. Chase and Foreman were at the other end; catching up on paperwork from the Horner Syndrome patient, and Cameron was sat across from her, typing away on her laptop.
"Good first day?" he asked her, looking through the glass wall at the textbooks still spread on the floor.
"It's been fun." Amy answered, her English accent still sounding strange to Chase and Foreman. "I think every nurse in this hospital must have had an "errand" to run on this floor today...I feel like an animal in the zoo!" Wilson laughed.
"House around?" Wilson asked to no-one in particular.
"Office, General Hospital's nearly finished." Amy answered, filling in 9 Down - "hypoglycaemia". Wilson smirked and walked into the office without knocking. House was seated at his desk, his portable TV propped in front of him. The credits were rolling and he flicked the off switch, grabbing his cane from where it was propped up against the table. Despite the Ketamine treatment he still needed it sometimes. They returned to the conference room, where Amy was making a cup of coffee.
"Hey." House said and she turned around, lazily stirring her coffee. "Bring you back a salad?" he half-asked, half-told. She nodded and House and Wilson left the conference room. Amy smiled to herself and returned to her crossword, sipping her coffee. A few minutes passed, 13 Across and 21 Down were answered ("paralysis" and "metatarsal") and then she set down her pen, the noise of the plastic touching the glass reverberating in the near-silent room.
"You're dying to ask so someone might as well spit it out." She said. It was as if a fog had lifted somehow and Doctors Chase, Cameron and Forman all seemed to breathe easier. Foreman was the first to speak.
"Didn't it bother you? Him pretending you didn't exist?" Amy pushed her chair out slightly and pulled her knees up to her chest, sandwiching herself against the table.
"Start with an easy one why don't you?" Amy smirked. "He didn't know I existed until I was 12."
"Seriously?" Chase asked incredulously,
"My mum was barely older than me when she found out she was pregnant, and they'd only been together for a few months. She left, got the first plane back to England where she'd been brought up."
"That explains the accent." Foreman mused.
"We lived there until mum got sick. By then my grandparents had both died, and she didn't want to leave me in the hands of strangers. So we moved back here. The plan was for me to live with him after...well, that didn't exactly work so I found a really good school in Boston. And I've been his dirty little secret ever since."
"And that never bothered you?" It was Cameron asking this time.
"It did to begin with. Majorly. I actually set fire to his couch one time." Cameron and Chase looked shocked, Foreman impressed. "But we were both going through some stuff; me with my mum and...well you know what happened with Stacey; we barely knew each other...it wasn't practical living together. But contrary to what most people seem to think, he's a good dad. Really. Calls twice a week, emails most days and he comes to visit. So no, it doesn't bother me."
"I just don't get how he managed to keep you such a secret. No-one knew?" Chase asked,
"No-one. You know he took six months off after his infarction? Everyone thought he became a recluse, but I stayed with him and we got to know each other. The couch thing was the first week, and an accident by the way...by the time he was due to start back at work I had a place at a school in Boston. My decision, not his."
All three doctors had more questions to ask, which they were sure but they were interuppted by a salad bowl sliding it's way down the table, coming to a stop in front of Amy. The four of them turned and looked at House, stood leaning gently on his cane. He wasn't looking at them, but was staring at Amy's crossword.
"You left 3 Down blank...?"
"Echinococcus. Nasty." Amy reached out and took her salad. "Can I use your computer?" she asked him. He nodded and gestured towards his office door. She gave him a tiny peck on the cheek, as thanks, and snuck past him into the office. House stared at his doctors and they instantly returned to what they had been doing before. He grinned to himself. Wait until they found out that she was going to be here permanently.