Chapter 4
A Matter of Curiosities

The day expired into evening well before House left the hospital for the night. The intense brainstorming session that took place between the time he left the observation room and the moment he crossed the threshold of his home explored more options than many other diagnosticians ever saw in all the cases of their careers. And it had only been one afternoon. With nothing else left in his mind to ponder, House dumped his stuff in a corner, grabbed a drink from the kitchen, and crossed immediately over to the piano. Music filled the room and he let his mind wander through the notes and melodies. There was no sheet music for him to look at; he either created it on the spot or browsed the impressive repertoire he mentally compiled over his many years of playing.

No more than fifteen minutes passed, and a hand pounded his door. House easily recognized the irritating sense that Wilson was near. "Enter at your own peril!" he shouted over the piano. He heard the door open and close and footfalls upon the floor slowly approaching, but Wilson still stayed well away from him. Before he could be accused of anything, House said, "He isn't a nutcase."

"So I hear," Wilson replied. "It's grand of you to stoop down to the conclusion that everyone else came to a long time ago. It almost touches a fuzzy place in my heart." The sarcasm could not have been more plain.

"If you're going to start talking about fuzzy places, I'm going to play louder." And, to prove his point, he pounded the keys as Wilson tried to speak again.

"Alright! Alright!" the oncologist was finally able to get out. "We won't go there. I'm just curious as to what changed your mind."

House held a chord even though the original score called for no fermata and asked, "You came here because of a curiosity?"

Wilson paused. "You would do the same thing if it was really bugging you."

"So the real question here is why does it bug you?" House countered.

"You're still trying to avoid the subject. I would've thought you would have been a little more open about it by now," Wilson said, turning around to head back out the door.

"Why? Just because I changed my mind about one thing; a thing that wasn't even that big of a deal to begin with?"

Wilson rounded on him and spat, "But it is a big deal! Before you had two ideas and you completely blew off Foreman's idea because it didn't fit in with your view of the kid and now-"

"Hold on. Foreman whined to you?" House inquired.

"First off, he didn't whine, and anyway it doesn't matter if he did or didn't. The point is, since you've changed your mind the number of theories has sky-rocketed through the roof! This is a big deal, House! No, no, it's not big; it's huge! This kid's finally looking at getting some serious help!"

House took in a deep breath and played at a quieter dynamic as he muttered, "Here it comes."

"But you being the egotistical cripple you are, you made an assumption which could have cost him his life!"

House pulled his hands away from his keys and faced Wilson. "Oh that's crap. He wasn't going to die because I thought he was a nutcase. He was going to die because we didn't have anything to run off of."

"So, you got absolutely every bit of useful information for this case from watching him scream in agony and yell at Foreman? You learned nothing from all the tests you ran?"

House lowered his gaze a bit. "We didn't learn anything new from the tests; we just got confirmation on certain bits and pieces. This kid has had almost every test known to man run on him and everything has turned up just as useless as everything else. It's almost as if whatever he's got doesn't want to be found."

Wilson, his temper somewhat quelled, sighed and answered in a quieter voice, "Or he doesn't want it to be found."

"Then why would he have threatened me with my own cane and asked me if I thought I could fix him? Why not just continue to refuse treatment?" the diagnostician asked, staring off to the side before looking back at Wilson.

"What if he wasn't asking you if you could fix him as a plea, but rather as a dare?" A short silence followed, and Wilson stepped closer, hands raised in a gesture. "What if instead of asking for help he was stating a challenge?"

House raised his head, his eyes off in the distance. Then, he grabbed his cane, abandoned the piano bench and snagged his keys and jacket. As he limped for the door, Wilson asked, "Where are you going?"

"Suddenly I'm curious," he answered.

"Your team is running ragged, have been all night, doing all of the work you so willingly dumped on them and you're going to go back simply because of a curiosity?" Wilson asked.

"You came out here because of a curiosity," House retorted. "Am I to assume that I shouldn't be able to do the same as you? Or does that egotistical assumption risk my patient's life?" At Wilson's silence, House nodded. "Lock the door on your way out." He turned and left his friend in silence.

Wilson remained motionless for a moment, waiting for the familiar sound of House's car driving away. He released a sigh, glanced around, and left the residence of Dr. Gregory House, deciding that following the man wouldn't be as fruitful this evening as he had originally thought.