CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – The Verdict Is In

"Are you out of your mind? Where in the hell did you get that idea from?" House asked Cameron. "I can't love anyone, remember?"

House quickly stood and left Kathi's left, leaving Cameron behind. He was tired and his leg started to hurt and all he wanted to do was go home, take his trusty morphine and sleep. Sleep, for hours – to forget the past few days and ignore the feelings that he had towards Kathi. But he had to go back to the hotel room to pick up his things, most importantly the morphine he'd hid under the bed.

An hour or so later House was seated on his couch with the syringe set on the coffee table and he was about to put the rubber tourniquet around his left arm when he heard a voice coming from the bathroom. "House…"

It echoed softly throughout his apartment. He looked down the hall towards the bathroom and heard it again – his name. He ignored it, tightened the tourniquet around his upper arm and inserted the needle in the vein on the inside of his elbow. He sat back and waited for the opiate to wash over him.

"House!"

Something hit him hard on his right arm but he didn't feel any pain. He felt his eyes grow heavier and reveled in the pain slowly edging away. Suddenly, something sharp jabbed him in his right leg. He sat up on the couch so fast that although his body stopped, it felt like his body would continue until it hit the floor.

"House, wake up!" It was Stacy's voice that was hollering at him.

"What the hell did you…hit my leg for?" House screamed as he rubbed his right leg.

In his dream he bolted up from his couch, when in reality he was seated in a chair around a conference table with 11 angry pairs of eyes staring at him. He was in the jury deliberation room and his memory slowly came back to him. The last thing he remembered was the dinner with Kathi in the restaurant after the first day of the trial, but his dream continued it for him. Kathi wasn't dying of PKD; she had never been in the hospital. She had never turned him down for another date.

"House, this is no time to be sleeping - again! We have to decide on a verdict and none of us wants to be here longer than we have to," Stacy continued.

"He's not guilty," House said as he stood and walked to a smaller table where coffee and bottles of water were.

"Oh, you've slept the other day during the initial deliberations and now you've been asleep the past 45 minutes and you think he's innocent?" Keys, the foreman, asked.

"Yeah. I do my best thinking when I'm asleep," House answered without turning around. He felt someone close to him, at his side, just barely touching their body with his, too close for his comfort. "I'll be finished in a …oh, it's you," House said as he turned to see it was Kathi standing next to him.

"Greg, we've been back and forth with three of the jurors who we finally got convinced the defendant is guilty. To make it stick we need your deciding vote. And a lot of people are pissed at you."

House smiled softly and said, "That's nothing new. If no one was mad at me, then I'd worry." House took his coffee back to the table and sat down.

Keys took a few minutes to review what House had missed. He finished it off when he asked, "What makes you so sure that the defendant is innocent?"

"Because of the lights at the intersection," House answered, not bothering to explain more, and especially not that it was the same reasoning in his dream. House never paid attention to his dreams but those he did remember ended up meaning something.

And his leg was really starting to bother him, more than ever when he didn't take his vicodin on time. He rubbed it as hard as he could and saw that Kathi was watching him with a concerned look on her face.

Keys looked at House blankly, as did the rest of the jurors. "You'll have to explain a bit more before we buy that you find him innocent." Keys told him.

House turned to Stacy and asked, "Is there anyway we can visit the intersection of the accident?"

Stacy frowned and hesitated in her answer. She knew that some jurors were taken to scenes of certain crimes, but this wasn't as big a deal as House thought it was. "I think so."

"Dr. House, we don't want to have to take a trip out there," another juror said in frustration.

"Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand it correctly I have the right to ask for certain things to help in my decision, right?" House asked as he looked at Stacy.

Stacy returned his stare then to the other juror and said, "He's right. He does have that right."

House smiled in triumph as he took his seat at the table.

"Greg, can you at least show us why you think he's innocent? If we don't make a decision by 9 pm tonight we'll just be here all day tomorrow. I'm sure you want to go home, right?" Kathi asked.

"We all do…" echoed in the room from some of the other jurors.

"Where's my white board? I need my white board," House whined as he looked around the room as if one would be sitting in the corner.

"No white board but here's paper," Keys said as he slid a notebook towards House.

House drew a very sloppy and child-like diagram of an intersection, with 'moron1' for the plaintiff, 'moron2' for the defendant and moron3 for a pedestrian then started to explain.

"Okay, moron1 approached the intersection at what he claims is a green light. Moron2 also approaches the same intersection and also says he has a green light. The catch is there was a pedestrian, moron3, who had hit the button to cross the street at moron1's stop."

House looked up at the group thinking that explanation was good enough and that he'd won his argument. What met him were the same 11 pairs of eyes that stared at him blankly.

He sighed heavily and continued to explain. "If you've ever sat and watched an intersection's lights functioning the way they should be, you'll notice that when a pedestrian is present the changing of the lights are different than they are normally, by about eight seconds."

Again, blank stares. Around the outside of the intersection diagram he drew 11 stick people and entitled the group 'morons4.

"Okay, pretend you are watching this. Moron1 claims Moron2 ran the red light, but he didn't have a red light – it was green. Moron1 was the one that had the red light – he was the one that ran the red light."

"And where did you get your proof from, Greg?" Stacy asked, very curious as to how he came to that conclusion.

"Proof schmoof!" he snickered. "Ask the baliff to take us to the intersection and I'll watch you all as you come to the same conclusion that I did."

HOUSE MD HOUSE MD HOUSE MD

Two days later, the jury is seated in their box on the left side of the wall.

"Has the jury reached its verdict yet?" Judge Sasser called out.

Keys, the forman of the jury, stood and said, "Yes, your Honor." The baliff took the paper, gave it to the judge who read it, handed it back to the baliff who handed it back to Keys.

"If you will please read your verdict to this court."

Keys looked at the defendant, a 16 year old girl that looked so young, pure and innocent, like a member of the Amish community in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He then looked at the plaintiff, a man of about 55 seated in a wheelchair with his right leg in a cast and wearing a neck brace.

"We, the jury, find the defendant……..

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Cliffhanger!!!!! That's for those that didn't review! Hehehe

Yes, I am evil and sadistic like that…but you'll just have to wait and see what the verdict is!

Heheheheeeeeeeee doing witch cackle