Chapter Eleven

Nicole strode around the back of the house, looking to climb in the same window she had the first time over. Chase followed her, his brisk pace making his shoulder bag jump against his hip, almost knocking him off balance. He carried the masks and gloves this time. And, this time, there was enough for both of them. As the latex slid over her hand, Nicole turned to the window and tried to wiggle her fingers underneath once more. Nothing. The window had been closed shut. From the inside.

"Fuck!" She yelled, banging against the glass with her fist. "That damn intern."

Chase took a step back, knowing enough not to get in her way when she was fuming. "Let's just find another way in."

"There is no other way, the kid doesn't have an extra key. I would know. I looked." But as the words left her mouth, something sparked in Nicole's memory that sent a smile spread across her cheeks. "I take it back." The window upstairs was left open. She remembered seeing it the first time she was here, but mentally disposed of the information when she found the window on the first floor. Once again, she was set up for the task of scaling the tree.

With Chase hoisting her up to the first branch, Nicole continued to intricately place her hands along the settled bark, making her body stay as close to the trunk as possible. "How's you learn to climb like that?" Chase observed, shielding his eyes from the blaring sunlight.

"Let's just say there was no fence that could hold me out . . ." She grunted, pulling herself up higher until she was level with the window. It was cracked open on the bottom, just as she remembered. She took a moment to adjust her mask on securely, just in case it really was something in the air and not just Nicole's hopeful wishing.

She straddled the last branch, inching closer to the windowsill until she could stretch out her arms and feel the painted wood. Thrusting her arms upward, the window opened smoothly. As Nicole placed one foot into the opening, she happened to startle a mouse that was conveniently lounging on one of Kie's tables. Nicole shrieked and kicked at it, sending it scurrying into the adjacent room.

Chase yelled to her from the roots of the tree, a hand gently placed on the trunk and ready to climb if she needed help. "I'm fine...I just saw a mouse." She waited until her feet were firmly planted on the ground next to him to continue. "Jeez...you'd think I wouldn't be afraid of a little mouse..."

Chase cocked his head upwards, squinting his eyes as he stared into the sky. "Did you say mouse?"

"No...when I said 'mouse', I really meant asparagus." Okay, maybe now wasn't the time for sarcasm. "Yeah. A little gray one. Why?"

He flipped his cellphone open and pressed it against his ear, a familiar busy signal echoing through the air. "Is there any droppings on the floor?" Nicole tightened her face at the question.

"I don't see and I am NOT looking."

"Fine. Just open the back door and let me in."

- - - - - - - - -

House found himself turning his cellphone off when the LCD read 'Wilson' across it. This was one mystery he was planning on solving on his own. In a single moment, all their conversations from the past month flashed through his memory, piecing together everything that could have been relevant to why Dr. James Wilson had been absent.

Foreman ran in to the room, "House! Kie just spiked a fever of 105 and rising. It started an hour ago, and the nurses can't get it down."

"And what am I supposed to do? I'm not God, you know..." His irritability was coming back. Damn.

"He's also showing signs of dementia. It's meningitis. It has to be." Foreman's arms folded across his chest.

"We've been treating him for meningitis and he's not doing any better... ergo..."

"Ergo, it's an advancing case of encephalitis."

House spun on his heels to see where the diagnosis had come from. Jessica. She was standing in his doorway, a confident smile placed on her shallow cheekbones. "It's not encephalitis." He put emphasis on the 'not'.

Jessica strode over to him with large, no-nonsense strides. The confidence was just irradiating out of her, and House was finding it more and more irritating with every passing second. Cameron had now entered the room behind her. "What about a STD? He is a porn star, after all."

House grumbled something under his breath before stating, "Porn stars are usually MORE careful than others."

"Let's at least consider it. This kid could have only hours to live, and do you really want another mystery death on your hands?" Cameron seated herself at the table, and Jessica sat next to her.

"It looks like meningitis and isn't..." She started to argue.

House gave a sarcastic laugh, "How observant of you. Someone's been paying attention for the past two days."

"Encephalitis fits. Almost perfectly, if not."

Cameron shook her head, "Herpes simplex virus."

Foreman sighed from the other end, "Meningitis. We just have to find another way to treat it."

House leaned back in his chair, throwing his head to the ceiling. The three started stating their arguments to each other, battling for House's approval. Jessica above all. His head was starting to hurt, but he couldn't find his vicodin in his pocket. His ears pricked with every whiny sentence. His thigh pricked and throbbed. He was in some sort of pain-filled, annoying hell.

He stood from his trance and wobbled to the glass partition, securing the door behind him and closing the blinds. Just when he was about to slip into what he thought would be a form of heaven - including clouds filled with pain killers and continuous Journey concerts - his office phone began to ring. It was from Nicole's cellphone. His finger slammed the "speaker phone" button as he barked an angry, "What?!"

Nicole's voice hit his ears with a certain melody that made his headache seem to disappear, "lymphocytic choriomeningitis!"

"What?" It was calmer than before.

"There are mice everywhere. Kie had a really bad rat problem. They... did their business... in his air vents, and Kie has central air conditioning. Both number one and two." House found a smile forming on his lips at her discomfort talking about a rat's excretory things.

The smile left as he hung up the phone, making his way back into the room with his arguing ducklings. Well, two ducklings and one... nuisance. "Lymphocytic choriomeningitis." they continued to fight until he repeated himself for a second time with a louder volume.

"But... shouldn't he be getting better on his own, then?" Jessica stammered, tears almost welling in her eyes because she so desperately wanted to impress him.

"You get worse before you get better, right? And since it's only been... two days... and since LCM takes fifteen to twenty-one days to cure itself... you can see where I'm going, right?" He turned his back to them, erasing his whiteboard. "Test him to be sure, then make sure the infection doesn't spread to his nervous system. Wouldn't want it to be fatal now, would we?"

- - - - - - - -

Nicole let herself into Kie's room one last time, thirteen says later. "Leaving already, huh?"

Kie smiled at her, flashing her his pearly whites. "Thanks. For everything." She blushed a little, allowing herself to sit in the chair and talk to him while he packed up his things. "So... in real people talk... what was really wrong with me?"

She shifted in her seat before answering, "I'm not your doctor, but Dr. Chase is down the hall if you really want to..."

"It seems to me," Kie interrupted, "that you have to know something about medicine. Dr. Chase told me that you were the one to diagnose the Darier's disease, and later the LCM."

Nicole cocked her head at him in amusement. "I was a med student once. And Dr. Chase helped with the latter diagnosis. It seems to me, though, that you know a lot about medicine, too. Pronunciations, at least."

Kie hopped onto his bed with a boyish skip, "Only what they tell me. So...what about you and Dr. Chase?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, please! I simulate enough fake love to realize the real thing," he paused a second to cough, a symptom that his body was relieving itself of the virus. "I see the way you look at him... they way you say his name."

Then Nicole let something pass through her lips that she had wanted to admit for what seemed to be ages, but was only a day, "We're engaged." With that, she left Kie to finish getting his things together and to find Chase and tell him what he wanted to hear. "Yes." Even telling it to herself was satisfying.

Behind her, she could hear Kie yelling something after her. "And tell House that I do play the 'sneaky little devil'!"

Nicole giggled to herself, Someone must have told him...

- - - - - -

It had been almost two weeks since House had talked to Wilson, trying to figure out what his best friend was pulling. "Who does Wilson think he is?" House asked himself while pacing his office. "Going out of town and not telling me what he's really up to..."

"Did you ever think that maybe I just wanted some alone time?" Wilson kidded, stuffing his hands in his pockets and laughing at House's surprised look.

"You shouldn't sneak up on people like that!"

"Your door was open."

"Doesn't mean I wanted you to come through it."

"So you really want to know where I went?"

"Just the why. Details are just a waste of brain space."

"There actually was no 'why' this time. I just...had to get away from here for a while."

"Get away from here, or get away from someone. And when I say 'someone', I mean someone other than me."

Wilson shrugged his shoulders. "I was trying to me more spontaneous."

"Please... spontaneous is for people who date." Then the lightbulb over House's brain clicked. "The girl in radiology?"

"Brittany."

"Are we in grade school? She's like, what, twelve?"

"Twenty-four. And she really liked the long weekend."

House frowned, "It was almost two weeks."

"Looooooong, long weekend." Wilson chuckled, leaving House to reveal in the information.

and with that, i bid you all farewell for a while. i have another in mind... so don't fret! it's going to be less on the medical side, and more on the drama side though. i like drama. it makes everything so...non boring.

anyhoo... hoped i gave enough closure on all the characters.

ta!

Ruby