Thank you for your reviews.
I was hoping to have been further along with this story by now, but "they" control me more than I them, and they refused to be hurried along! I'm going away from my computer for about two weeks in the beginning of July – and of course, the weekend when Harry Potter comes out, I'm not doing anything House. Sorry – but House is not my only addiction. But I will try to update as much as I can before then and as soon as those things are out of the way, I will concentrate on this story again. But for now, here's the next chapter.
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After the Monday House went back to his old routines; he got to work late – as he had all the time, but Sheridan had been under the impression that it had been a temporary arrangement because of Aiko. He avoided his clinic hours (with great success since it took a while for Sheridan to figure out that he really had to physically find House to get him to the clinic and once he realised that, he still had to find House). When he did get to the clinic, he insulted nearly every patient and half of them stormed to see Sheridan demanding an apology – so far, Sheridan hadn't found a way to make House to apologise.
Sheridan had tried to make House toe the line. He had actually suspended House's right to order procedures, but as House hadn't had any patients at that time it was a futile gesture. All it did was give House one more reason for not doing his clinic hours: what would have been the point as he couldn't even order any tests? Sheridan had to rescind his order without gaining anything. It also meant that he had already wasted his most powerful weapon (and he didn't even know it!) and had nothing to show for it. And it was highly unlikely he could use it again with any credibility. The odd thing was that until the ban had been lifted, House had demanded an almost ridiculous amount of tests on all his clinic patients before he could possibly come up with a diagnosis! After, he went into his speed-diagnosing mode and went through ten patients in half an hour – no tests needed.
Ms Forbes was having her share of difficulties, too. It seemed that Anna had given her chilli-chocolate receipt to every other nurse in the hospital and every piece of chocolate that Janelle snatched brought her out in blotches. It took her till Thursday to figure out that stealing chocolate was not a good idea. In addition to that, she found out that she could not make Anna do her work for her, but she actually had to do it herself. Not that she wasn't capable of doing it - she did have a good education – it just meant that she didn't have time to do anything else at work but work. No long lunches (if they had been lunches) with Sheridan anymore; no leaving early to go shopping (and it had been shopping); no nipping down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee every half an hour (she had to learn to use the coffee machine – and Anna wasn't telling her how!); none of that: just work. And she was not a happy camper! Had she known that the only reason why Anna didn't share her receipt of chilli-sandwiches, chilli-salad-dressing, chilli-cookies and numerous other chilli-receipts with others was because Janelle actually did the work when she couldn't shift it to someone else instead of just leaving it. So her life could have been worse.
House was somewhat grumpier that week than he had been for a long, long time. But once he got used to seeing Aiko only for lunch during his workday (and once he worked a short session of muscle relaxing exercises into his day with Grey) he got better; not nearly as mellow as when Aiko was around (which made everybody miss the baby even more than they missed her just for herself), but better. Besides, he was able to do a lot of Sheridan-bating at work and now that Rawls had caught on to what was going on, he wasn't quite as easy game as at first, so House was even able to keep things interesting – at least for now. The team was desperately seeking for a new patient before House ran out of amusements because a bored House – with no Aiko to distract him – would be very bad news for them!
On Friday House left work early as he didn't have a patient and even Sheridan-baiting couldn't interest him enough to keep him at work. Not when he had a week-end at home to look forward to. He hadn't even been able to spend much time with Dr Higa, who had been busy with the workshops launching Cuddy's international programme. True, House had been involved with them as well, though not much, but he hadn't skipped his duties there, because he had promised Cuddy and he was still demonstrating both to the board and to Sheridan that Cuddy knew how to deal with him (besides, it was true! She had found out that House felt just enough guilt about having knocked her up with triplets that she could use it to extract a few promises from him).
As soon as House got home he went into the main house to find Aiko, Cuddy and Dr Higa. His mother had come home with him, so she was already accounted for. Kasumii and Grey were in the kitchen, too, with the rest of them. For some reason the kitchen had become the unofficial gathering ground for them all at the end of a day. Quite often House found his team and Wilson in there as well, with the people who actually lived in the house (Grey didn't officially live there, yet, but he might as well – or so House regularly grumbled to him). Having greeted everyone, and especially Aiko, House sat down with Aiko on his lap.
"So Cuddy, how have you really handled your first week out of work?" House asked.
"You make that sound like I was unemployed or something," Cuddy said.
"I would imagine that that is how you see it," House assumed. "After all, someone else is doing your job!"
"And not very well from what I hear," Cuddy huffed. "I'm sure you haven't done more than three of your clinic hours all week and even those you did only to be able to send people to Sheridan to complain about you!"
"Hey! Are you telling me I should obey Sheridan?" House gasped dramatically. "That I should treat him the way I treat you? Because if you do, I have to tell you, he does not have the cleavage and I really couldn't bring myself to sexually harass him. Now if you want me to sexually harass Wilson, I could consider that."
"He doesn't have the cleavage either. Besides, there's enough speculation about you two as it is!" Cuddy exclaimed. "Leave him alone. And I wasn't saying that you should start obeying Sheridan, but if things go the way they are going now, I won't have a hospital to return to."
"It's not that bad," House denied. "Sure, it could get that bad, since there is a certain atmosphere of anarchy currently going, but you have your appointment with Dr Jordan next week and you can round up the department heads then and threaten them with fire and brimstone if they take things too far while you're gone. Just tell them in your best Terminator impression that you'll be back. You usually scare me witless when you do that."
"If only!" Cuddy appealed to higher powers. "But I think I better do what you suggest. As long as they know that they will have to pay for every excess they have committed during my absence, the heads will probably stay reasonably well in line. The only exception to that is probably the head of Diagnostics. He can be a bit of a problem."
"You could try to bribe him," House pointed out. "I hear he is a sucker for sexual favours."
"Mind your manners with Aiko here," Kasumii took a moment away from her talk with Grey to admonish House.
"I covered her ears!" House defended himself (and he actually had done that).
"I'm sure that works well enough now that she is so little that you pretty much always know where she is," Dr Higa deliberated. "But once she's older, you won't always know when she is around. And once there are four of them, you will run out of hands anyway."
"Was that your roundabout way of telling me that you agree with Infant?" House looked like he had bitten into something a little sour.
"You know that a statement once let loose cannot be caught with four horses," Higa pointed out. "If you say something you shouldn't within the hearing of the children, you cannot stop them from hearing it. Better not say it at all."
"You know, had I known how much trouble she would be I would have told you to keep her," House grumbled at Higa.
"Well, your father has suggested several times that you should give her back," Higa stated mildly – opening his arms suggestively.
"Fat chance," House said succinctly earning a wide smile from Higa. "Besides, my mother would disown me if I did that. And Cuddy would fire me, Wilson wouldn't talk to me ever again and my team would totally rebel."
"Does seem like you have to keep her," Higa observed with mock sympathy.
"Yeah, dirty job, but somebody's got to do it," House smiled giving Aiko a kiss on the top of her head. Right then Aiko decided that she really wanted the interesting spoon on the table, but as she couldn't quite reach for it she turned to her Daddy for help.
"Dada!" She demanded getting everybody's attention, not just her Daddy's.
"Yes, Little Love?" House recognised a demand when he heard one. Aiko pointed towards the spoon and House gave it to her. "Was this what you wanted?" Aiko beamed at him and expressed her appreciation by saying "Dada," again. Then she started to bang the table with the spoon making a very satisfying noise.
"That's it?" Cuddy stared at House with utter indignation. "She says her first word and all you do is give her a spoon!"
"Well, she wanted it," was House's bewildered response.
"She called you Dada, and ... aren't you elated, or ... ANYTHING!" Cuddy spluttered.
"She is at an age where she forms random two syllable words, like dada, mama, baba, even byebye," House shrugged. "She has been saying mummum and things like that all the time and nobody's been interpreting them as Mum or anything else. Why go ballistic now?"
"Because she was clearly talking to you," Cuddy pointed out. She also looked around for support. Kasumii nodded emphatically to support her – but was willing to let Cuddy do the talking. Grey backed out of it all; and Dr Higa was just smiling his enigmatic smile refusing to show what he thought about the argument.
"She has been talking to me for weeks," House pointed out. "Just because she now said something that the rest of you think you understand too, makes no difference. Besides, why do you think she meant me with that Dada? She could have meant the spoon or maybe she wanted to say gimme that."
Cuddy gave up. She sighed in exasperation: "Why do you always have to do things differently from everybody else? Can't you react just once, I mean just once, like a normal person? Why must you always be so... so ..."
"Unnatural?" House supplied.
"No, I can't really use that word," Cuddy denied. "You look too natural with Aiko in your arms. It's like she has always been there. No, unnatural isn't the word for you. But darn if I know what is."
"Are we going to have a philosophical discussion about words and names and their power in defining man's fate and character?" Higa asked. "Because if we are, we need tea."
"No, I think not," House refused. "Not now, but we can certainly make it the theme for our next tea ceremony. We are due to have one soon anyway."
"But before we have that, there is something I wanted to tell you," Cuddy remembered. "David wanted to take us out tomorrow evening. Be ready by seven."
"Me?" House frowned. "You promised that I would be there, too? Just like that."
"Yes," Cuddy nodded. "Your mother didn't feel like coming, so she is staying with Aiko – and we won't be staying out too long, I'm still pregnant. Your team said yes as did Wilson and Dr Higa agreed to come, too. Besides, I didn't think you would object to free food."
"There is that," House had to admit. "Well, I suppose I'll have to come. I mean somebody has to keep an eye on those two." House nodded towards Kasumii and Grey, who were standing side by side waiting for his answer. "They are getting far too cosy with each other."
"Your own fault," Grey pointed out. "You introduced us and you're the one who brought up the possibility of me moving in at some point."
"At some point," House stressed. "You have been practically living in here as long as the rest of us."
"No I haven't," Grey denied. "I only stay overnight during the weekends. Sure I visit often enough during the week, but if you take that as moving in, then your team and Dr Wilson have moved in, too."
"And so they have," House was in the mood to complain. "I swear I see them more often here than at work!"
"Stop complaining House," Cuddy admonished him. "You know that it's good for Aiko and you will never make me believe that you really resent anything that is good for her."
Before House could respond and start complaining even more, Aiko decided to run interference. She turned to her Daddy again and offered him the spoon saying "Dada."
"And that is definitely Daddy, and she is so saying her first word," Cuddy concluded the argument standing up and heading for the bathroom – again. "And just for the record, pregnancy sucks and I really hate you House for doing this to me! And don't even try to tell me that it was all my own idea!" The last sentence was thrown at House with a deadly glare so House shut up.