Meanwhile, Greg House sat in his office growing increasingly frustrated with each passing second. He was bored, hadn't had a case since before the shooting, and there was no Wilson there to annoy as a distraction. And, on top of that, he just couldn't seem to get Wilson out of his mind. Although, this time such thoughts were triggered by worry and concern – a feeling House was definitely not use to. Wilson had the immune system of a god. He couldn't even remember the last time the younger man was sick. It was always House that had the grave misfortune of coming down with some painful, otherworldly illness, and Wilson was the one who had to play doctor. House decided, as he pulled out his prescription pad and began filling out scripts for James, that he liked being the one getting taken care of way better. That way he got to miss work, usually longer than necessary with his friend's help, and there was no one to worry about but himself.
Tearing the prescriptions off the pad, House stood and left his office, heading straight for the pharmacy. He really needed a distraction. As he rounded the corner, however, he felt something solid slam into him, and suddenly he was flying backward. As he was still not completely steady on his right leg, he had to fling out both arms quickly and turn to catch himself on the wall.
"Oh, Dr. House! I didn't –" began the young nurse who had just so graciously attempted to trample him. He ignored the intended apology.
"Jesus Christ, lady! Where's the fire?" he all but yelled as he steadied himself, releasing the wall.
"I'm sorry, doctor. I didn't see you –" she continued to stammer nervously.
"Next time use your eyes instead of the top of your head. God gave them to you for a reason. Don't you think it'd be an insult not to use them to their maximum potential?" House persisted, his mood not improved by the annoying confrontation.
"I said I was sorry," the nurse defended.
"Tell that to the little old lady you find inexplicably trapped under your tires in the near future," House didn't care if she was sorry. It still happened.
"But, doctor –" she maintained.
"Apologies are useless, especially if you don't mean them. You wanna make up for it? Make it a point to not plow me down in the hallway," House replied arduously then finally made his way around the corner, giving the nurse no time to respond.
Eleven minutes and forty-two seconds after his not so pleasant encounter with Nurse Klutz, House had finally managed to make it to the middle of the line at the hospital pharmacy. He'd tried to cut directly to the front, he was a doctor after all, but the pharmacist refused to fill his prescriptions unless he quote, "waited in like just like everybody else." Jerk. What the hell were so many people doing in line for the pharmacy at 11:30 in the morning anyway?
"Hey, can we hurry it up a little?" House called out as loudly as he could toward the front of the line. "I've got a sick puppy at home, and, unfortunately, no amount of my admittedly limited TLC can quite measure up to goof old-fashioned legal drugs!" the pharmacist eyed him angrily as he handed a middle-aged blonde her prescription, but did not reply. However, in front of him, House heard an elderly lady whispering to her husband.
"If his dog is sick, shouldn't he be at a veterinary hospital?"
"Just ignore him, Marge. He's probably one of those headcases from upstairs," her husband replied quickly as the line moved up. House smirked and counted it as a victory.
The smirk was short-lived, however, as he spotted Cuddy approaching his current position at an alarming rate. Not at all in the mood for a lecture, he swiftly turned his back to her and began walking away.
"House!" she called out, catching him before he could complete his third step. Left foot still hanging in mid-air, he crossed it over his right and used it to pivot a full 180 degrees in one swift move.
"Dr. Cuddy! Sorry, couldn't see you through the blinding wall of stupidity standing in front of me," he quipped lightly.
"Why are you here?" Cuddy ignored his comment.
"Well, don't tell anyone, but there's this unbelievably foxy doctor in administration, and when I talked to her this morning, she was so desperate to get her hands on me, she was practically begging me to come in!"
"Why are you in the pharmacy? You detoxed while you were in your coma. I thought we kicked the vicodin habit," still she did her best not to lose her temper.
"Relax. I'm afraid Wilson is the lucky recipient of these little beauties," House waved the prescription in front of her face.
"And you absolutely had to get them now?" she questioned warily.
"Yep. It's almost lunchtime. I should be able to run these home real quick and be back here by dinner," he replied while pretending to check his watch.
"No. You will give me that," she snatched the paper from his fingers, "and I will call your mother so she can come and pick them up. Meanwhile, you can march you're little love-sick butt over to the clinic and practice with their runny noses and aching muscles." She grabbed his shoulders loosely and began walking him toward the clinic.
"But my puppy's all alone with my insanely overprotective mother!" House whined, dragging his feet like a small child.
"Oh, stop sulking and get in there. If you stay for three hours, you can go home. How's that?" Cuddy suggested as they walked through the doors. House planted his feet into the ground and turned swiftly to face her, eyeing her suspiciously.
"Why?" he asked, tilting his head slightly to emphasize his uncertainty.
"Because you're a doctor and he's you're patient. And because the concerned boyfriend act," she paused, "It looks good on you."
One hour, seven minutes, and thirty-two seconds after Cuddy left him standing, confused, in the middle of the clinic, House kicked out his seventh patient of the day – a six-year-old with a fairly bad case of the chicken pox. The boy had made a point of coughing in the unsympathetic doctor's face a good nine times in a five-minute period. As soon as the boy and his young mother stepped out the door, House slammed it shut and turned the lock. Sighing with relief, he closed the blinds, climbed onto the exam table, stood, stretched until he found the easiest way to reach the quadrangular ceiling tiles, pushed the one stained with red ink up and out of the way, reached in, and pulled two vending machine bags of chips and his mini television. Grinning smugly, he quickly replaced the tile and jumped down.
In hindsight, it turns out that this last move was not a particularly brilliant one. On impact, a sharp, violent pain ripped through House's right leg. Muffling a shout, he leaned over and clutched at it in an almost desperate move. Deep down, he knew this was an overreaction. This pain had nothing to do with the infarction. It was burning, hot and cold at the same time, beginning at the bottom of his foot and radiating up. It was the kind of pain that came from landing awkwardly after a long jump. But that didn't stop the fear from seizing his chest, forcing the air from his lungs.
In an effort to calm himself before anyone possessing a key could barge into the room and catch him in such a state, he allowed his mind to drift back to the night of what he considered to be his very last first date. He had gone to long without using his cane before his leg was ready, and the muscles had seized up in an unrelenting vice. Blind panic had overwhelmed him then – the threat of the ketamine wearing off still fresh in his mind. Then there were hands on his; a soft voice in his ear. He remembered how Wilson had touched him; the tone of voice in which he had spoken to him. It was alien to House, and yet oddly familiar. He remembered the way these actions had made him feel. They'd reminded him of just how much just how much he missed that part of his life – the days when he didn't come to a cold empty house, the days when being close, intimate, even in love with someone wasn't something to hate or fear or avoid. It seemed strange yet only fitting that Wilson would be the one to do this to him.
He'd always gone to Wilson for comfort and a break from his truly pathetic excuse for a life. It really was a shame that neither of them had realized what these feelings meant sooner. It probably would have saved Wilson a fortune in alimony and House a big chunk of thigh muscle. Then, much to his surprise, the pain in his leg began to dull on its own fairly quickly. House was beginning to really like this new turn in the House and Wilson relationship. If just thinking about it was such an effective painkiller, who knew what else it could do. Maybe they really could rule the world. Oh, what a wonderful world that would be.
"Dr. House!" came the voice of the always irritating and oddly masculine voice of Nurse Brenda. "Open up! I know you're in there! Stop locking the exam room doors! You have a patient!"
"Dr. House isn't in right now, but if you'd like to leave a message, please do so after the beep," he replied in a mechanical voice.
"House, I am not messing around!" Brenda pounded her fist into the door.
"Beeeeeep!" House responded.
"Fine! You stay in there and lounge in your little world, this kid can continue to bleed all over the clinic floor, and I will go and get Cuddy to smoke you out!" Brenda threatened. House knew she wasn't bluffing. They'd done this whole song and dance many times before. Forgetting about his hurt leg, he moved quickly to the door, unlocked it, and swung it open.
Brenda stood outside with her arms crossed in front of her chest and her foot tapping restlessly on the floor. She reminded House of his grandmother on Sunday mornings when he would purposefully take too long getting ready for church.Next to her stood a teenage girl with her left hand wrapped tightly around the bottom of her right first finger which was bleeding rather profusely all over what was probably a very expensive navy blue sweater. Her hair was a deep shade of chocolate brown and cut short to what was not quite a boyish look, but not one that belonged to a girl either. She was fairly tall for a girl, probably about 5' 11", her cinnamon eyes matched her hair, but her skin seemed to be just a shade too pale to blend with her darker features.
"See, Brenda, I told you Emo music is poisoning the minds of our youth," House indicated the girl's bleeding finger.
"Witty, but I didn't do it on purpose," the girl replied. "I cut it on a kitchen knife while I was fixing dinner."
"You do know that 'finger food' isn't a literal term, right?" House continued.
"Hey, if you had the munchies as bad as I did, you'd eat anything that even remotely resembled something like food," the young brunette smirked. House hesitated momentarily before smirking back.
"Right this way, Miss," he snatched the file from Brenda's grasp, "Wright." He moved his hands in an invitation. The girl eyed him warily but entered without another word. House followed close behind with a little wave to Brenda. The nurse gave that made him wonder if she had ever done hard time before slinking back to her lair.
"So," House said as he closed the door behind himself and began gathering the necessary equipment. "You got the munchies and decided to make yourself a gourmet dinner."
"Nah, I just said that to annoy Nurse Satan," the girl shrugged.
"An adolescent after my own heart," House smirked as he numbed her finger.
"She reminds me of my crazy Aunt Wanda," Miss Wright told him as he put the first stitch in. "And if there's one thing that really gets her going, it's even the tiniest hint that I might be doing drugs."
"Are you?" House asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Nah, my mom was into that stuff. Overdosed when I was twelve," she told him, disturbingly casual.
"I'm sorry," House replied, meaning it. The girl shrugged once again.
"I'm over it. It's been almost six years. Didn't really know her anyway. She took off when I was five. I saw her occasionally when she would try to bum off my dad. The whole thing's one epic Greek tragedy. Lucky for me, a daily dose of lithium and cigarettes helps me to not give a damn. Whoever invented those two should start their own religion. It'd be bigger than Christianity after a month tops!"
House smirked but didn't look up from his work. He was really starting to like this kid. "Cigarettes? Those things can kill you, ya know."
"So can being an asshole to everyone you meet, but that doesn't seem to stop you."
"Touché. So, if you weren't flirting with Mary Jane, or whatever you kids call it these days, how did you really earn such an impressive battle scar? "
"I really was making dinner. My parents both had to work late, and I thought it'd have been a nice surprise," she explained.
"Parents?" House questioned. "Got a nice step mom to make you clean the chimney and be friends only with the little mice living under your bed?" The girl smiled awkwardly.
"Something like that," she replied. House didn't bother asking what she meant.
"So, how long until they get here? They have all sorts of fun papers to sign," he said instead, finishing his work and cutting away the extra thread.
"A couple of hours. They work pretty far away," she replied, raising her finger to eye level in order to examine the damage.
"Excellent," House said deeply. "How about chips and a movie?" He tossed her one of his chip bags. She made and expert left-handed catch, and he wondered vaguely if she might be left handed. She looked like a lefty.
"Don't you have more work to do?" she questioned curiously.
"Not while I'm with a patient I don't," he sat the mini TV on the counter and switched it on. "Now scootch over," he demanded lightly, hopping onto the exam table next to her.
One hour, forty-six minutes, and seventeen seconds later, House and the patient he now knew as Kendra Wright sat in the same positions, munching on potato chips and chugging bottles of Mountain Dew after having their snack supply replenished by a very unwilling Cameron. Judging by the shade of red her face had been, House guessed they'd drug her away from something very important.
"Who's hotter: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, or Antonio Banderas?" Kendra asked as the movie went to commercial.
"Antonio hands down," House answered immediately, popping another chip into his mouth. Kendra looked up for a moment, surprised that he'd actually answered the question.
"You talkin' real life or just in this movie?" she continued.
"Both," House replied, looking thoughtful. "Although the vampire thing does give Brad and Tom some bonus points, Antonio just has that irresistible Latino charm and such dreamy brown eyes!" He responded in a purposefully teenage girlish manner. Kendra giggled at this.
"You sound just like my dad," she told him, still snickering in a way that made her appear much more innocent than she probably was.
"I'm assuming that's a good thing?" he questioned. She smiled sweetly.
"Yeah, definitely."
"Well, then thanks, I guess."
"No problem," she gave him one more small laugh. They fell into silence once more as Eva Longoria attempted to sell them mascara that would instantly transform them into a Latina beauty just like her.
"So, do you have any kids?" Kendra asked cautiously, looking up at House. He turned his head toward her quickly.
"Peculiar subject change. I don't suppose Attention Deficit Disorder is on your rather impressive list of personal dramas?" House responded sardonically. Kendra sighed heavily.
"I take that as a no."
"How did you get no from that?"
"So you do?"
"No, I was just curious about your obviously affective deductive skills," House ate another chip. Kendra sighed again.
"I guess it just made since. What with you having a boyfriend and all…"
"Wait, I never said I had a boyfriend," House stopped her.
"Like you needed to," Kendra nearly laughed. "We've been here for almost two hour hours and every other sentence out of your mouth has the word 'Wilson' in it. If you're not doing him, you really should start immediately. It's no wonder everyone avoids you, it'd drive me nuts after the first thirty days as well."
"So I talk about him a lot. He's my best friend. What else do I have to talk about?" House wasn't really trying to defend himself, just arguing for the sake of it. Kendra smiled knowingly.
"You can't lie to me," she responded. "You're in love."
"Am not," House continued his unconvincing mock defense.
"Your eyes get brighter when you talk about him. They sparkle," Kendra sealed her argument. Damn. Did they really?"
"Fine," House conceited after a moment's hesitation. "But my eyes do not sparkle."
"Yes, they do," Kendra argued.
"No, they don't," House continued.
"Do," Kendra insisted.
"Not!" House threw a chip at her.
"Do!" Kendra threw one back.
"Not!" House's turn.
"Do!" Kendra's turn.
"Dr. House!" Brenda knocked on the door once again.
"With a patient!" he responded.
"I know. Her parents are here," the nurse continued, her voice much more polite while in such close proximity to paying customers. House hopped off the table, shut off the television, then walked to the door.
"Not," he said as he turned the handle and opened the door. Kendra smiled, and when he turned to face the new arrivals, he was decidedly surprised to find two men, both in their mid-thirties, standing in the doorway with concerned expressions on their faces.
"Hello, I'm Thomas Wright. I'm Kendra's father." The man who spoke reminded House of Kendra only because he was her complete opposite, if that makes any sense. His hair was light blonde, his eyes were crystal blue, he was fairly short for a man, maybe about 5' 9", and his skin appeared to naturally be a shade too dark for the rest of his features. Kendra's mother had definitely provided her coloration. Mr. Wright's facial features, however, were definitely Kendra's. It was uncanny really.
"Greg House," House said as he shook the man's proffered left hand.
"Hey, dad. Hey, poppa," Kendra waved from where she sat inside the room.
"Hey, baby, are you okay?" Mr. Wright's companion asked worriedly.
"Yeah, it's not as bad as it looks. Just a nasty scratch," she assured him. Both men looked to House for confirmation. He nodded reassuringly.
"She's right. No biggy. We just needed someone over eighteen to fill out all of the exciting forms that Brenda will now be providing you with." Both men looked over at Kendra as if asking with their eyes if it were okay to leave.
"It's okay, guys. I'll be fine."
"She survived the last two hours without you. I don't think another five minutes will hurt anything," House backed her up, doing his best not to degrade them for being so worried about something so trivial. Parents in general annoyed him. But he liked Kendra, so he figured it was the least he could do.
"You really should, ya know," Kendra commented out of the blue once daddy and poppa were out of sight. House gave her a questioning look.
"Have kids," she elaborated.
"Nah," House replied. "Parents annoy me. They're stupid and irrational and do things like going into full blown panic mode over a bloody finger." Kendra smiled.
"They're parents. It's not their fault. Everyone worries about their children."
"Only because they choose to. Having children ruins people. It messes with their heads. I've seen enough of it to know. I'll never understand why so many feel the need to do such a thing to themselves. It isn't logical."
"Not everything can be explained, House. Some things are just meant to be." House looked up at her then, an indescribable look in his eyes, before he turned and walked out the door.
"Hey! Where are you going?" Kendra called after him.
"To make a baby!" he called back over his shoulder. "Nice meeting you, kid!"
"Hey! House!" Kendra ran to the door. He stopped and turned to look at her. "Do!"
Yay! Chapter 10 is finally up! I apologize for the delay. Life is simply unpredictable. Thank you all for your encouraging comments! They keep my muse alive! Chapter 11 will be up much quicker than this one. Promise!