I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
- Hippocratic Oath
******
The prospective fellows sat impatiently in the lecture theatre, waiting for House to show up. They began to get antsy and fuses grew short, many started arguing amongst themselves. "This is ridiculous," hissed Emily, "He was supposed to be here hours ago and we're stuck waiting for him to show."
"While we've been sitting here, someone could have easily targeted him," Morgan added, "This was a stupid plan, we aren't around enough to protect him because we're off playing his stupid games."
There was a small commotion as Amber once again brought on the theatrics and pulled off her number. "He's obviously not coming. I'm going home," she declared as she started walking away.
It was clear the same thought was crossing the mind of several of the others. "Nobody follow her!" JJ warned loudly, "She pied-piper'ed nine people right out of a job last week." Amber stared daggers at her, but said nothing.
House chose that moment to make his beyond fashionably late entrance, slamming the door emphatically to open it, a large stack of files in his arms which he promptly started handing out. "New patient. Thirty-seven year old male, suffers from severe ascending muscle weakness."
"Why were you late?" Cole challenged.
"To see who'd put up with it," House shrugged.
"So, you mean if we'd left, we'd have been fired?" Reid asked.
"No, I was going to fire everyone who stuck around, but since everyone stuck around..." With everyone now scanning the file, he continued, "Twenty-eight percent curvature of the spine has caused reduced lung capacity and has reduced bone mineral density."
"Patient has spinal muscular atrophy, it's genetic, incurable. This is not a diagnostic mystery," 13 pointed out.
"You have just given state secrets to the enemy," House whispered conspiratorilly.
Now everyone was intrigued, if only for show. "What enemy?" 13 humored him.
"New patient, new rules. Today, you're going to split yourselves into two teams. The first to figure out what's threatening to deprive the patient of the twenty or so miserable years he's got left with SMA gets to keep their jobs." The fellows exchanged various looks, some challenging, some suspicious, and yet others thrilled by the competition. "Take off your numbers," House snapped, "You look stupid." He paused, about to leave the room. "And I think I know who you are by now."
"Wait," Kutner said, "How do you want us to split up?"
House turned back, "Good question..." He paused for a moment, lost for an identity, before making one up, "Overly Excited Former Foster Kid. There's sixteen of you. I was thinking... six against six? No, wait..." He sarcastically pondered for a moment.
Figuring if they were going to be facing off, may as well make the competition interesting, Emily suggested, "How about women versus men?"
"Excellent suggestion, Overly Ambitious Daddy's Girl," House said, "More interesting than evens versus odds, less interesting than shirts against skins. If your sex organs dangle, you're the Confederates; if your sex organs are aesthetically pleasing, you're the Yanks." Once again he turned to leave.
Amber interrupted, "Dr. House?" He paused and turned back. "I'd like to be on the men's team."
House eyed her with suspicion. "Do your sex organs dangle..." Again he paused to think of a name, before deciding on the one that everyone had been silently calling her since day one, "Cut-throat Bitch?"
"Not yet," she shrugged, "You've never hired more than one female on your team before; if you're going to purge an entire gender, it isn't going to be the danglers."
"Sounds logical," House said, "If you don't think about it for more than three seconds. But I just told you that if the danglers lose, they're out... So I can only assume you're hiding the real reason." He eyed her speculatively, trying to work through her reasoning. "You don't think the women will be aggressive enough, will be good enough at science. They'll be too emotional."
Amber impatiently interrupted his verbal thoughts, "Can I switch teams?"
House shrugged, obviously not caring, "If the danglers are okay, I'm okay." This time he actually made it out the doors.
The fellows followed shortly after, both teams purposefully attempting to segregate Amber. She was attempting to keep pace with the men, trying to convince them of her position. "We're not okay," snapped Dobson, formerly known as number 26.
"I get it," Amber placated, "You don't like me because maybe I'm a little bit..." She searched for the right word, "Competitive."
"Manipulative," Morgan said under his breath, but fully intending for her to hear.
"Cut-throat Bitch is your official title," Kutner added.
"It's a game, you can either play for fun or play to win. If you want to win, you want cut-throat."
"No thank you," Rossi said, attempting to be polite, but entirely of the same sentiment as the others.
******
Emily was on her way through the clinic, running to the pharmacy for her team to pick up the ivermectin to treat their theory when suddenly the lights flickered sharply as if the power grid were malfunctioning. She stopped in her tracks as House emerged from one of the exam rooms, shouting for a crash cart. As she peered around him into the room, she noticed an unconscious body slumped on the floor, a switchblade protruding from an electrical socket in the wall, scorch marks licking the plaster. She looked back up to House, not at all liking the look on his face as he studied the electrocuted body. But she said nothing, continuing towards the patient's room.
"Killed by an assistive device," the patient was remarking as she slid the door shut behind her, "At least my death would be ironic."
"I think when you went to Thailand you picked up a threadworm called strongyloides. They usually go up through your feet," 13 explained their theory.
"I didn't do a lot of walking on the beach," the patient commented wryly. Obvious, considering he was confined to a wheelchair and required a service dog. His dog, Hoover, seemed to feel the need to comment on that, barking as if to emphasize the point.
"But I assume you did have someone lay you down on the sand. Bare back, bare legs – increases exposure tenfold over bare feet," Emily reasoned. She set the pill cup on his bed tray. "Two pills, you'll be all better."
******
Amber strode purposefully into the lab where the entirety of the male team was busy running tests, working by the less subtle means of running as many tests as they could think of. "Got a diagnosis yet?" she asked briskly.
"Get out of here," Taub snapped.
She didn't bother to follow the terse command. "I give you a move House will love, straight from one of his former fellows and you let me join your team," she bartered.
"You're too late," Morgan shrugged, transferring vials between machines, "We already have our diagnosis."
"He's lying because he wants you to go away," Cole explained, adding curtly, "So do I."
"How do we know you're not a double agent?" Hotch asked, "Find out what we're thinking, then go back to the women?"
"Because I don't care what you're thinking. You know why I want to be on your team? Because you're idiots. If I can get the women out of the competition, I'm in... And so are two of you."
That seemed to strike a cord with the men, it was, after all, a competition. Taub nodded his agreement before turning to the others to take a silent vote. Split down the middle, Dobson and Brennan noncommittal, Cole and Kutner agreeing. He turned to Hotch, Reid, Rossi, and Morgan; they shrugged, not really getting an opinion since they weren't actually in it to win the job. Taub turned back to Amber, giving in.
******
Reid pulled his messenger bag over one shoulder, cramming the last test results into a file; he had drawn the short straw and been elected to wait for the last test results, the ones that took hours to run, meaning that everyone else had long since departed for the hotel. As he headed for the doors he heard a hurried clicking of heels on the linoleum. He turned around to see Amber hurrying after him. Internally he let out an exasperated sigh, he didn't want to be mean, but she really was a difficult person to get along with.
"Dr. Reid," she called, "Wait up." He stopped and waited for her to join him. "I was wondering if you wanted to grab some dinner with me?" She must have sensed his hesitation, because she added, "I wanted to discuss the case."
Reid nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Isn't that something we should really be doing as a team?"
She raised an eyebrow and studied him. "We don't need them," she said dismissively, "We work together to come up with an answer, save our team, we're both in. We have no competition..."
Reid looked towards the doors and back at Amber, "I was kinda supposed to meet someone..." He wasn't lying, the team was supposed to be starting a rough profile of whoever was threatening House, based on House's personality. "Consult on another patient," he lied. She eyed him suspiciously, but didn't press the issue, standing back to allow him to leave.
******
The women left the lecture theatre to put the patient on a tilt table to stress his system, anxious to prove that they were right about the strongyloides. The men plus Amber continued to sit there, House standing before them, glaring at them like naughty school children. "Ten against six," he said, "Two of the men are going to have to join the women's team." All of the men quickly raised their hands, volunteering to get away from Amber, who sat there scowling. "On the other hand," House shrugged, "One of the men isn't an actual doctor, so... I guess it's pretty fair."
Most of the men looked about appalled, as if they could visually determine who was the fraud. Reid, Rossi, Morgan, and Hotch all exchanged a surreptitious nervous glance, wondering which one of them had been discovered.
"Men, you're in the penalty box," House announced.
"Who's not the doctor?" Taub asked.
"Glad you asked that," House said, but just as quickly blowing past it with no real intention of answering, "Reason I'm penalizing you is time management. In diagnostics, you're always working against the clock. The women came up with a theory and they treated the patient. You just sat around in a lab, hoping a series of blind tests would give you a theory. You wasted the patient's time, now I'm going to waste yours."
******
The men all sat around House's office, out of their minds bored. "Who the hell isn't a doctor?" Taub asked again, apparently fixated on the question.
"House said we can't talk," Reid reminded.
"He meant we can't talk about the case," Taub snapped.
"House is just jerking us around, that's what he does," Dobson insisted.
"You're not curious?" Taub asked, "There's only one reason you wouldn't be curious..."
Amber piped up, ever one to bend the rules, "We should talk about the case. We're being punished for wasting time, maybe we shouldn't be wasting this time."
"Close that door," Brennan snapped, "You're going to get us all fired."
"We need to find a link between fainting and trouble swallowing," Amber narrated, looking directly at Reid as if speaking only to him.
"We need to know if it's dysphasia or full-blown achalasia," Taub said.
"Paraganglioma," Reid suggested.
Taub looked at him as if he were dense, "How would a neoplastic growth in his abdomen..."
"Not his abdomen," Reid cut him off, "In his neck. A carotid body tumor causes trouble swallowing. Food presses against the vagus nerve and causes the fainting." Amber smiled and nodded, seeing the sense in the idea. Anything to prove the women wrong and keep her job.
"So, if this guy has cancer, we get to keep our jobs and if he's healthy, we're fired?" Cole asked incredulously.
"We need the CT to prove it," Amber said.
"And we need the women not to figure it out while we're sitting here," Rossi remarked, more to himself than the other fellows.
"Does House's computer have a built-in microphone?" Kutner asked suddenly, gesturing towards the webcam that was directed towards them.
Amber smiled deviously and slowly crawled under the desk, keeping out of sight of the camera, and making her exit onto the balcony to go run their test.
******
Sixteen bunsen burners jetting blue flame into the air sat upon the table at the front of the theatre while the fellows waited to see what this was leading up to. House stood before them, a dew rag on his head and a staff in his hand. "Thank you all for coming to Tribal Council." He looked out at the two teams and realized one player was missing, "Where's your team's tenth man?" he asked the men.
"She went rogue, broke the rules," Cole explained.
"You have also sinned," House reprimanded, "The rules said no talking."
"I told her not to talk," Cole shrugged.
"We were trying to save a man's life," Taub piped up.
"Key word being trying," House said, "Tilt table test confirmed that you guys were wrong. You're fired." The women's team began celebrating and the men cast into disappointment as Amber burst through the door. "The prodigal son returneth," House said, "You're also fired."
Amber debated the strongyloides diagnosis with House, insisting that the patient has scleroderma. Emily turned to JJ and whispered, "How the hell are we supposed to do this on our own? We need the rest of the team, Lord knows we don't know what we're doing..."
House, clearly finished arguing with Amber, turned back to the women, "You ladies have the honor to give the patient a feeding tube, discharge him, and show up for work tomorrow. The rest of you..." he said, turning to the men, "You're a disappointment. You make me want to stop dangling."
******
JJ and Morgan made their way through the halls, JJ venting about Amber. "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her! She has no regard for rules or authority. She refuses to accept that she's been fired and does more tests to prove that she's right because everyone else is a moron... She's a -" She paused, searching for the right adjective.
"Cut-throat bitch?" Morgan supplied. "Listen, Jayje, you need to lay off Amber. Yeah, she's hard to get along with, but if she hadn't been so determined we never would have found out about the green blood and we wouldn't know that his kidneys were shutting down. She could very well have saved the patient's life. Not to mention saved the case, now that the men have been unfired, it would have been next to impossible to catch the unsub if it were just you and Emily."
"So just because she found something, it's okay to break the rules?" JJ hissed.
"Jayje, chill out," Morgan repeated, "Need I remind you that you don't actually want the job... So what do you care if she gets hired."
"She could be the unsub," JJ insisted, "Narcissistic, unscrupulous, no regard for rules..."
Morgan cut her off before she could convince herself that Amber was the unsub, "No, she wants this job more than anyone, if she kills House, she doesn't get the job."
JJ glared at him and was about to say something more when Amber came sprinting down the hall past them, heading for House's office. "Speak of the devil..." JJ whispered.
All of a sudden there was a blinding flash of light and once again the electricity jumped for several seconds. Amber, Morgan, and JJ all stood frozen before House's office, staring in horror at the tableau before them. House slumped on the ground unconscious, a switchblade sticking out of a wall socket, the acrid tingle of smoke filling their noses, burn marks infiltrating the wall and his hand.
Amber was the first to break free, with a cry of, "Dr. House!" She ran to his side, shortly followed by JJ and Morgan. She checked his pulse and started CPR with Morgan's help. JJ dashed to the nurse's station, calling for a crash cart.
******
Despite their 'boss's' alleged suicide attempt, the teams were forced to continue focusing on their real patient, seeing as they no longer had any legitimate theories. Under Wilson's guidance, they switched him onto medication for eosinophilic pneumonia.
"I don't think it's working," the patient insisted.
"Try and relax," 13 coaxed.
"You must be wrong." He continued to struggle for breath for several more moments before asking, "Could you get Hoover?" Emily carefully lifted the dog from the sofa and laid him down on the bed. The dog curled up beside his master, whining sadly. "Can you put my hand on his head?" the patient asked. Emily obliged. "It's okay," the patient reassured the dog, "Don't worry, I'm not scared."
He struggled to breath, each breath getting harsher and raspier until he stopped altogether. The monitor flat-lined, producing a constant wail.
"Time of death?" 13 asked.
As she and Emily went about tidying the body before it was taken to the morgue, House came hobbling into the room, still wearing his hospital gown. "What did we miss?" he asked.
"If we knew, he wouldn't be dead," 13 said sadly.
"So that's it?" House asked, "You're just gonna give up?"
"No, we were defeated," Emily reminded, "It's over."
"Patient presented with syncope," 13 humored him, "We thought it was threadworms, gave him ivermectin."
"The patient didn't respond to antibiotics or steroids," House continued.
Emily didn't bother to play along, out of answers. She moved over to where the dog was lying, seemingly sullen and depressed. She shook him gently, trying to get him to stir. "You okay, boy?"
Suddenly, House was interested. "What's wrong with the dog?"
Emily felt for a pulse under the dog's foreleg. "He's dead," she said quietly.
House became tense with realization. "Did you watch him take the pills?" he asked Emily, who looked at him blankly, "The ivermectin, did you watch the patient put them in his mouth and swallow them?"
"I don't know, I think so..."
House began moving things, searching for something. He thought aloud as he did so, "The dog's an English shepherd, has the MDR-1 gene. If you give a dog with the MDR-1 gene ivermectin, it'd be fatal..." He stopped as he uncovered the object of his search.
Emily picked up the chewed pill cup, a horrified look on her face as she absorbed the enormity of what she had done.
"Look familiar?" House asked, "I think the last time you saw it, it didn't have that dead dog's teeth marks on it."
"I just put it on the bed tray to get him some water..." Emily explained.
House's tone became sharp, "When I asked you if you watched the patient swallow the pills, the right answer was 'no'."
******
Emily sat vigil beside the patient's body in the morgue as House quietly entered the room. She waited until he was beside her before speaking, "As soon as the pathologist cut into the lungs, we saw the threadworms." She sighed heavily. "I keep replaying it in my mind. Did I drop the pills when I put them on the bed tray? Did I knock them over when I turned to leave?"
"You know he'd be alive, his dog'd be alive..."
"I know."
"You forced us to act on a false assumption," House told her.
"I know," she repeated listlessly.
"Everything we built from that step on, every test, every theory, every treatment..."
Emily's temper finally flared and she whipped around to meet his gaze. "I know! Forget the lecture and fire me already!"
"If I was going to fire you, I wouldn't be giving you the lecture. I know you're not going to let anything like this ever happen again. I'll see you tomorrow."
Emily sighed heavily and left the morgue as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. When she burst through the doors, Morgan was there waiting for her. "How are you holding up?" he asked quietly.
"I didn't get fired..." she said, avoiding the question.
Morgan studied her for a moment before finishing her sentence, "But you wish you did..."
She turned to face him, tears glittering in her eyes, "I can't do this! I killed a man and his dog because I was careless, because I was stupid..."
"You're not," Morgan insisted, "You simply made a mistake, any one of us could have done the same, even a doctor. But you're not one, you couldn't have known..."
"You're right," she said, heat in her voice, "I'm not a doctor and I don't want to keep pretending to be one if it means that more people might die because of it." Tears trickled down her cheeks and her breath hitched in her throat. Morgan pulled her into his arms as she broke down sobbing.
A/N: Okay, I know, there's been a lot of attributing things the fellows said to members of the team and totally switching around events, but trust me when I say it's necessary. And even though House fired most of the women's team in the episode, in this one he didn't fire anyone.