Having greeted the kids, helped Cuddy and Kasumii feed the trips, entertained Aiko while she waited for Kasumii to get her food and then fed the said food to her, House took Aiko into his flat. He had a phone call to make and he figured Aiko might be of help there. Eric answered almost immediately.
"Is everything alright?" were the first words out of Foreman's mouth.
"Yes," House replied. "And I'm impressed that you would have my number still on your speed dial."
"I did consider deleting it," Foreman wasn't happy. "But then I thought that I'll still need it for Aiko's sake."
"Well, Aiko's here and wants to have a word with her uncle Eric," House told him and put Aiko on the phone. He tried hard not to listen to Foreman going all mushy on his phone – he figured he would need to wipe it clean of all the sugar and spice once the call was over. Aiko knew her Uncle Eric's voice and babbled into the phone with earnest enthusiasm. She looked cute enough to make even House smile. After a few minutes House said: "Ok, Aiko, say bye-bye to Uncle Eric, Daddy needs to talk to him." Aiko did as asked and House took over the conversation again. "Cameron is leaving me next," he told Foreman as he set Aiko down on the couch with some toys she promptly started handing to him and then taking back.
"I know," Foreman replied. "I even know what finally pushed her into seriously applying for a position elsewhere."
"I should have known," House sighed ruefully. "She must have emailed you pages and pages of outrage over my latest show of insensitivity and political in-correctness."
"I have to say making fun of the Holocaust is probably the lowest you have gone," Foreman said.
"Arbeit macht frei is the name of a novel by Lorenz Diefenbach published in 1872," House pointed out. "Is it right to avoid speaking of it just because the Nazis liked it? I mean, Hitler liked Wagner but nobody's boycotting Der Ring des Nibelungen. Well, except Israel."
"Fine, whatever you say," Foreman gave up. He would never understand House and his idea of humour. "You didn't call to discuss Cameron's reasons for leaving did you?"
"No," House acknowledged. "That would be too much like trying to get in touch with my feelings (Foreman could practically hear him shudder). No. What I want is for you to help me get her replacement."
"Surely you're not suggesting that instead of taking the position as the future Head of Neurology at PPTH I should return to you?" Foreman wasn't sure what to think since that definitely was something House could do, but would he? After all, he was the one who had told them to leave in the first place.
"No, I've got all from you that you can give," House dismissed the idea.
"Or want to give," Foreman was beginning to wonder why he didn't just hang up on House. Only he would probably call back and keep on calling till he got what he wanted.
"I understand there is a Dr S. Chandrakanta working for Marty," House pronounced Marty with the usual derision.
"Siva, yes," Foreman agreed cautiously.
"Siva?" House scorned. "Is that what you call her?"
"It's her nickname," Foreman shrugged. "Marty has always called her that."
"Of course he has," House scorned. "Him being such a friendly fellow; though I'm not so sure that it's very friendly to give someone a nickname just because you're too lazy to learn her real name. And to be called Siva, of all things! You do know that Siva is a male deity in Hinduism?"
"But her name is really difficult," Foreman pointed out. "And had she objected to the nickname surely she would have said so."
"I doubt that," House thought back to the interview he had had with Dr S. Chandrakanta two years before when she had originally tried to become Cameron's replacement. She had been the epitome of traditional Indian upbringing where you didn't say boo to an authority figure, especially a male one. It was rather surprising that she had actually even become a doctor in the first place and, if her file had been anything to go by, a very good one to boot. "Though I suppose Chandrakanta is a rather difficult name to pronounce so she is used to having it changed. It's not like she works with people who have spent years to learn to say difficult words like, I don't know, Psychoneuroimmunology or Neurodegenarative or Typomastigote."
"I think we could manage Chandrakanta," Foreman explained a little patronisingly though he had to pronounce the name very carefully to get it right. "But Marty wants to call people by their first name and the one that the S stands for is more difficult than her last name."
"But Sivaramakrishnan which is what the S stands for is the last name. It's a patronymic," House patronised back. "She comes from South India. They don't have last names there, mostly just patronymics which are added to the front of the personal name and almost invariably shortened to just one letter. I'm surprised nobody in Marty's friendly practice has bothered to find that out. All they needed to do was ask Dr Chandrakanta."
Foreman was quiet for a moment, swearing in his mind. House had taught him to get the facts for himself, and he hadn't. He had taken Marty's word for it. Ok, it wasn't about a patient, but having worked side by side with Chandrakanta for over a month now he should have at least checked. He had also forgotten that House spoke Hindi. So much for trying to patronise his old boss. He sighed. "Ok, now that we have got that out of the way," Foreman ground through his teeth. "Could you get to the point of this call?"
"Dr Chandrakanta applied for a fellowship with me two years ago," House got serious. "The first time Cameron left. At that time I was determined to get Cameron back, so I didn't take the interviews seriously. However, the situation has changed and based on what I saw of her three years ago, I want her. And you will deliver."
"How," Foreman laughed. "Am I supposed to paint her a rosy picture of working for you? I can't do that; I'm not that good a liar. Besides you just want her for her secretarial skills."
"How do you know she has those?" House asked curiously. "Or do I even need to ask? Good old Marty is already treating her as his secretary."
"Not secretary, he has one already, a Personal Assistant, maybe. And he is at least polite about it," Foreman cursed himself silently (again) for forgetting how much House knew and could deduce from tiniest clues. "You wouldn't even thank her."
"Of course not," House scorned. "If I thanked her it would mean I actually care if my mail gets sorted and the consultation requests get answered. I didn't give the job to Cameron when she started with me; she chose to do it. If Chandrakanta doesn't want to do it, then nobody's making her."
"But you will make her do everything else," Foreman stated. "You'll use her as a drudge, just like all your fellows."
"Exactly," House totally deflected the criticism. "Just like all my fellows. And she will learn more than she ever will with Marty. She is stagnating right now both as a doctor and in her career. She needs a kick and you know nobody kicks like me."
"She's happy here," Foreman tried to say. "Not all are that ambitious. You're not. She probably wouldn't even be interested in working for you now."
"She was two years ago," House reminded him. "And nobody is so un-ambitious as to turn down the most prestigious fellowship in the country. Tell her she starts on Monday."
"What?" Foreman was gasping with so many things he couldn't even analyze them. "Am I supposed to just walk to her and say something like: remember that interview with House you had two years ago. He has finally decided to hire you. You start on Monday, go home and pack?"
"Short, blunt, to the point," House itemised. "Yeah, sounds good to me."
"And how am I going to make her believe me in the first place?" Foreman wanted to know. "Anyone with half a brain would think I was joking, and believe me she has more than half a brain."
"You obviously tell her to call me," House said. "Sure, I could just call her myself, out of the blue, but you know me. I rather let someone else do the sweet talking for me. Besides, she might decide it's a prank call if she has no warning first."
"She has a contract with Marty," Foreman tried to stall for more time. "She cannot just start on Monday."
"Once you tell her of my offer what is the first thing she will do?" House queried.
"She will go to Marty to ask for his opinion," Foreman replied a little puzzled.
"And how will Marty react?" House asked.
"He will tell her to do as she thinks is best," Foreman sighed. "And he will do it in a way that will make her think she has insulted him mortally and that he never wants to see her again. Of course, he just wants to guilt her into staying, but that won't work with Si-Chandrakanta. She takes these things too deeply and since she will need to start moving immediately if she wants to be in PPTH by Monday, Marty won't have time to do anything to correct his mistake. I can't do this for you, House. You'll crush her."
"Maybe," House didn't sound too worried. "And maybe I'll make her stronger. However, you will tell her that she has till Monday to get the fellowship. You know how that would affect her career. You don't need to lie but you will tell her. And then she will make up her own mind about it."
"If, and that is a big if, I do tell her about your offer," Foreman knew he could really not not-tell her about it. The opportunity was once-in-a-lifetime kind. "I will also tell her exactly what accepting it would mean."
"Fair enough," House accepted. "By the way, how is she at making coffee?"
"Even better than Cameron," Foreman revealed. "Why?"
"I don't think I better let Gilmar make the coffee anymore, not if I'm going to drink it," House mused ruefully before just hanging up on Foreman. He turned to Aiko who had crawled to rest against his thigh some time ago and fallen asleep. "I think I need to get you to your own bed now."
--------------------------------------
Late that night – after having done his best to get her into a good and forgiving mood – House and Cuddy cuddled up in House's bed.
"What were you thinking," Cuddy wanted to know. "Your reputation is bad enough; you really don't need people believing that you don't take the Holocaust seriously."
"I don't care what people think," House shrugged.
"Do you care what I think?" Cuddy asked.
"Yeah. You matter," House acknowledged.
"So why did you do it? Only to test Dr Gilmar?" Cuddy wanted to know.
"Pretty much," House said. "I might have chosen some other way, but this sort of presented itself."
"So tell me about Uncle Jozef," Cuddy invited. "I didn't want to ask your Mother."
"You could have," House shrugged again. "We neither one of us ever met him, so we feel no inherited guilt. Nor do we think we have inherited any credit from Uncle Gerben."
"Uncle Gerben?" Cuddy hadn't heard of him.
"Right, I only told Gilmar about him," House remembered. "Gerben was Jozef's brother. A priest in a small coastal village. He tried to find ways to smuggle Jews out of the country to Sweden or England over the sea. He was shot for it during the German occupation."
"Oh, I suppose you could say one brother cancels the other," Cuddy mused.
"I seriously doubt that Gerben managed to save as many as Jozef destroyed," House pointed out.
"How did Jozef become a Nazi," Cuddy wondered. "Wasn't he Dutch?"
"Yes, but he went to Germany to study in the university of Heidelberg," House explained. "He married a German girl, got citizenship and joined the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei in 1930 something. He was tall, blond and had startlingly blue eyes so he was a very welcome poster boy for them."
"Do you know how his family reacted to that?" Cuddy probed.
"By the time Jozef joined the Nazi party Grandmother was already married and living in the States," House told her. "So she didn't know what the initial reaction was, but by 1939 at least, her father had disowned Jozef. Not that it really mattered apparently, since Jozef didn't come back home again. He died in Königsberg – or Kaliningrad as it is now called - in 1945."
"Your grandmother told you all this?" Cuddy asked.
"Oma? Yes, she did," House nodded. "She didn't think it needed hiding. In fact she believed that I needed to know – that everyone needs to know – how people from the same family could take very different paths. She never did believe this never again mantra that people started after the War. And she was right. People have created the Holocaust over and over again since then; they just haven't used that name. Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia you name it. It's still homo homini lupus."
"Man is a wolf to man," Cuddy translated. "It's not the Holocaust you trivialize is it? It's the hypocrisy surrounding it that makes you sneer. You know the evil it was, but you see the same evil happening still, even if maybe in a smaller scale."
"Except when it happens in a larger scale, like Darfur," House sighed. "Mind you, I may scorn it, but I'm not exactly out there trying to battle for a better world."
"True," Cuddy agreed snuggling closer and getting ready to sleep. "But in a way you battle it right here, in Princeton-Plainsborough Teaching Hospital. One patient at a time. And you teach other doctors to do the same."
"Yeah, that reminds me..." House looked down and saw that Cuddy was nearly asleep already. "Never mind, you can yell at me tomorrow," he finished in a whisper.