079. Genius
Keeping Secrets
Gregory House was a genius though this was not something he liked to either think about or acknowledge. He'd always learnt quickly and absorbed every lesson which had damn helpful considering the way they bumped around from base to base when he was a kid. He'd always been able to adjust to the new schools academically though the same could not always be said socially. He'd never been one to make friends easily, something that was always exacerbated by their constant shifting.
He'd always suspected he was a genius when he was younger but it had been hard to tell with the constant moving. His theory had always been that if wasn't a genius it would have been harder for him to keep up with his school work and get the grades that his father always seemed to expect. It wasn't until he got to college that he was actually able to answer the question to his own satisfaction. Staying in one place, able to settle in and devote his time to advancing his studies rather than constantly playing catch-up had shown him that not only was he a genius, he had a remarkable memory as well.
Both of these things served him well now. His memory and his genius meant that he could remember the symptoms of hundred of different diseases, syndromes and complaints. They allowed him to diagnose on the fly in the clinic and come up with different options with his real patients. They also allowed him to hide the fact that he was a genius with a great deal of ease. Oh, everyone acknowledged that he was intelligent but most thought his ability to come up with the correct diagnosis often without even seeing the patient was just luck and surreptitious searching in the medical texts without ever knowing it was because he was instead searching the huge repository of information in his own brain to find what fit the symptoms.
As far as he was aware, no one had ever seen through his façade. Cuddy certainly hadn't; he rather successfully distracted her with his occasionally juvenile and obnoxious behaviour and she never really bothered to look deeper as long as he eventually managed to heal his patients. His ducklings certainly hadn't worked it; in fact he was fairly sure they thought a lot of his successes were the result of guesswork and luck. More fool them; they eventually learn that expanding your knowledge and reading everything you could get your hands on was the only way to succeed in diagnostic medicine. But Wilson was the one he often wondered about. Most of the time he was sure he'd fooled his friend but every now and then Wilson would say or do something that made him think that Wilson knew. He'd occasionally thought about asking but if Wilson didn't know that would just lead to question he didn't want to answer. In the end he decided it didn't matter. If Wilson did know he seemed willing to keep House's secret and that was all he ultimately cared about.