A Case of House and Holmes

By Michael Weyer

My first (and thankfully only) prior meeting with Gregory House was at a medical conference about three years earlier. He had already been building a reputation with his rather…unorthodox methods and I was interested in hearing what American doctors were discovering.

I had approached him just as he was telling the head of the children's medical department that he might as well drown the younglings in the Thames rather than subject them to the treatment the man proposed. Rather than see the obvious warning, I introduced myself and was subjected to several comments I shall not repeat regarding everything from my weight to hair to even my methods. Quite naturally angered, I marched away before asking him any questions.

The man did not appear to have changed all that much in the last three years. He still was unshaven, dressed in dark pants and shirt with a dark jacket over them and still had the same cane to lean on. His eyes looked Holmes and myself over, frowning as he saw me. "Hmmm…I know you from somewhere…Not the morgue, although you would be a good candidate for it."

"House," Dr. Cuddy broke in patiently. "This is Sherlock Holmes and his friend, Dr. Watson."

Holmes nodded. "Dr. House. I am sorry for the inconvenience. I must imagine it is difficult to rouse yourself from your study of the business section of The Times."

House seemed to show no surprise over Holmes' observation. "Yes, well, with the end of horse racing to wager upon, not much else to read. Of course, I could always attempt to bring in my copies of The Pearl but for some odd reason, the management takes a dim view of reading erotica in the middle of a hospital."

Holmes pursed his lips. His reaction did not surprise me as, while certainly not a prude, he does not exactly lean toward such unorthodox reading and certainly not in public. He was about to speak when House turned to Dr. Cuddy. "Lisa, my darling, didn't I tell you I don't need anyone's help on this?"

"House," she stated in what I knew was a tone she had to use often with him. "I already explained that we need an outside opinion of these deaths. Why do you have a problem with that?"

"Because people are idiots?" he stated as if it was a clear fact. "And Englishpeople more so." He turned to us. "Sorry but it's true. All you had to do was give us an even break with the taxes and we would still be a colony." He turned and started to limp away.

"Where are you going?" Cuddy demanded.

"On my rounds," House stated. "I need to see just what my wayward wards are up to now before we rack up a higher body count." He looked to Holmes and myself. "Feel free to follow if you want, your friend might learn something about how medicine really works."

Holmes looked over to me. "Is he much the same as the first time you met him, Watson?"

I sighed. "Actually, he appears to be more personable now."

"What a frightful concept," Holmes muttered as we followed him down the hallways.

House entered a small room and broadly announced. "Avast, you scurvy knaves! Your captain has returned and is anxiously awaiting your report!"

The room appeared to be a conference room of some sort with a trio of young men and one woman seated or standing around, all jumping slightly as House entered. I'm sure Holmes could instantly tell the exact origins of each one but I could only observe the basic appearances.

One was a young man with dark hair and boyish features, clad in a dark coat with a standard hospital smock. His companion appeared to be a bit younger with light blonde hair and a thinner build. I was surprised to see their colleague, also in a doctor's coat, was black-skinned. I was aware black doctors were becoming more accepted in America following their civil conflict but it was still rare to see one in London.

The final member was a woman, a rather attractive young one, dressed in the uniform of a nurse. Her hair was tied in a dark brown bun, offsetting her rather attractive face which wore a more patient expression than her colleagues.

The black man looked to us, then to House. "Who are they?" he asked in a deep voice.

"I assume the chattering is intended to be a question of some sort," House intoned flatly as he walked to a table in the corner. "That is Sherlock Holmes and his rather rotund colleague, Dr. Watson."

"Sherlock Holmes?" the blonde haired-man stated in what sounded like an Australian accent. "The detective?"

"No, Sherlock Holmes, captain of her Royal Majesty's Navy," House sardonically stated. "Yes, the detective, you moron!" He motioned to the man. "This is Dr. Robert Chase, an intern whose father has insisted I babysit, much over my objections. Ignore most anything he says, Lord knows I do."

He pointed the cane toward the black man. "James Wilson, the center of a new experiment in which they try to discover if monkeys can learn medicine before being able to type the works of Shakespeare." The man glowered but seemed to take the rather insulting statement in stride.

The other man stuck his hand out to me. "Hello, I'm Dr. Eric Foreman. You'll have to excuse House, the weather makes him crankier than usual."

"Doesn't explain how he was the same way when we were traveling through Virginia in June," Wilson muttered.

Foreman nodded to the woman. "This is Allison Cameron. She recently joined our little group and is working on her medical degree. Until then, she has to settle for the title of nurse."

"And yet she refuses to give me a sponge bath when I ask, very unprofessional," House stated as he picked up a pot from a Bunsen beaker and poured a black liquid into a cup. "Coffee? Oh, wait, you're tea people, even when we dump it in our harbor." He turned and sipped his drink. "So what do we have?"

"Still no signs of any poisons, or traces that anyone caused the deaths," Chase calmly stated.

"See, when I ask, 'what do we have,' I mean what do we have," House stated impatiently. "You are telling me what we don't have. I already know what you don't have, which is concise thinking skills, do you want me to start talking about that all the time?"

"You do that anyway," Foreman stated dryly.

"If I may interrupt," Holmes stated. "Is there any collation between the victims?"

"None," the young woman named Cameron answered. "They're of different ages, genders, backgrounds, there's no link between them that we can see."

"Rarely are things so obvious when you first look upon them," Holmes observed. "Do you still have the bodies?"

"Only the last three," Cameron answered. "Two were buried before we realized there was a pattern and the families have recovered the others."

"I assume there were autopsies?" I asked in a professional tone.

Foreman nodded. "And as we mentioned, we couldn't discover the exact cause of death. It appears they all simply suffered some sort of respiratory failure in their sleep and died."

I stroked my chin. "Hmm…Do you have any files?"

Foreman moved to a desk and held up some papers. "Right here." I reached to study them as Holmes spoke.

"How did you become aware of this pattern of deaths?"

"Ah, you know how it is," House intoned. "You're going along, used to your routine and then someone has the gall to die on you and shake everything up." He shook his head. "It's damn annoying."

Holmes frowned. "I must say, sir, your attitude toward your own patients appears to be lacking in empathy."

"Empathy is a waste of time," House said. "I only care about getting at the problem, not the little entanglements in my way."

Holmes sniffed as he reached to take one of the folders I was studying. I was surprised as he began to study it as he usually allows me to handle the medical side of cases. Still, I learned a long time ago that Holmes' talents are more far-reaching than I suspect. "Hmm…I see the lack of colleration between the victims."

House rose to his feet and began to limp toward the door. "Let's continue this on the walk. I need to make my journey of the damned which Dr. Cuddy refers to as my rounds."

"Sir, I still have questions," Holmes piped up.

"Then give Wilson a banana and let him answer," House retorted as he walked away. With a glance, the rest of his group followed him and Holmes and I fell in line. House made his way to a room holding a half dozen people in beds, four men and two women. "Greetings, ailing masses," he announced. "I'm Dr. Gregory House and I shall be seeing what is wrong with you today."

"Been coughing up some black stuff," an elderly man in the clothes of a chimneysweep said. "Not sure------"

"Black stuff, you say?" House looked him over and sniffed. "Here's a bit of free advice. Stay out of chimneys when you're suffering from a cold. That way, you won't be snorting up soot every five seconds."

"But it's me livelihood!" the man protested.

"And it'll be your deathhood if you don't take a break which means we'll have to handle your autopsy and that is such a drain on our resources." He moved to another bed where a young girl was lying with an older woman, presumably her mother, sitting by. "And what do we have here? Another urchin from the factories?"

"She's been running a fever the last two days," the mother said in a worried tone. "I wanted to give her some herbs from a woman on the street…"

"But then common sense shone through," House said as he checked the girl's head and eyes. "Good show for once among the lower class." He faced Cameron. "Looks like a mild flu, not to serious but give her the solution anyway."

"Solution?" I asked, curious. "Don't tell me you've found the cure for the flu."

"If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't be working here," House snorted. "I'd be living it up in New York on a very nice fortune. We do have a few new tricks to combat it with some drugs and a hearty dose of good old chicken soup."

I frowned. "That does not sound very proactive."

"A hundred years ago, you were still cutting people open to let them bleed out and thinking that would do the job," he dryly observed. "So forgive me if I don't exactly leap to the idea of you being able to dictate the right methods in dealing with a disease."

As I sputtered in outrage, Holmes decided to get things back on track. "Dr. House, in your professional opinion, what caused these deaths?"

"How the hell should I know?" House replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "Frankly, I'm a little more inclined to pay attention to the live patients rather then dead ones. They're more interesting cases by far."

Holmes pursed his lips. "But you must surely have theories."

"Sure, I have theories. So far, I'm thinking the Invisible Man came in and suffocated them in their sleep. I'm also leaning toward the Grim Reaper shifting up his methods."

Holmes thinned his lips. "I prefer to think in more rational terms than that."

"Rational, rational, that's the problem with you Englishmen, always so rational." House ran a hand through his hair. "If you'd thought a little more irrationally, you might have beaten us."

"Rational thought is a key to solving a crime," Holmes argued. "As Watson has related to readers, my philosophy is that once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth."

House nodded as if absorbing his words. "Well," he finally spoke up in a calm voice. "That's a pretty stupid philosophy."

Holmes' eyes widened a bit. "I beg your pardon?"

"No need to beg, I know I'm no god, although I can understand the confusion," House dryly went on. "Ask anyone who's known me and they'll tell you one thing." He paused to consider his words. "Well, they'll actually tell you two…no three things. But after that, they'll tell you that my success rate has proven quite a few medical impossibilities to be all too true."

He whirled to me. "A few years ago, you'd think it impossible that a paralyzed hand was connected to a lump in a person's brain, right? First thing I was do is look at what's impossible and see if it's true. A handy little trick you should consider trying."

He turned to look at another patient. "This is already a waste of my time, gentlemen, so if you don't mind, how about you let me do my job and just be on your way? I'm sure Chase will help you find the exit. Of course, Cameron is going to have to help Chase find it first…"

He limped away toward another bed. I glanced to Holmes and I must admit, despite my innate dislike of Gregory House, I could not help but feel a small amusement at seeing Holmes given (if you'll forgive the phrase) a taste of his own medicine.

Holmes simply shook his head as he turned and led me out of the room. "Up to today, Watson, I believed there were only two men on Earth who could be so aggravatingly arrogant. One is my brother and the other is George Bernard Shaw." He motioned to the man leaning on his cane. "But now, a new player has made them a trimunative."

I fought my best to keep a smile off my lips as we headed back to Baker Street to go over our findings. Little did we know that we would be returning to House's presence much earlier than we expected.

A bit of a cliffhanger there, I'll admit. Thanks for all the good comments, keep them coming and I'll try to update when I can.