A/N: My thanks to Alice11… I aim to please! I realize I said I would keep to canon as much as possible, but Under My Skin has made that impossible... anyway, waiting for the finale with bated breath:D
Still the previous day
Sairah slowly approached the glass office in the middle of the fourth floor and watched as Greg paced the conference room to a table of doctors. On the white board, written in shorthand, were symptoms and their progression. He caught her eye and motioned her to enter. That took barely thirty minutes, he thought.
"The next person who says lupus is going to be fired," he warned.
"But it fits!" A brunette argued from her seat at the table.
"Lupus fits everything, doesn't mean everything is lupus! Come on, people, I don't pay you to look pretty."
Sairah hung back near the doorway, the doctors too busy in their differential to notice a foreign presence. Greg finally turned to her and extended a hand.
"Sit. Make yourself useful." She did as he asked, but not before going to the coffee pot to pour herself some coffee.
"I need to see the file, please," she requested, once she settled in to her seat. House motioned to the African-American doctor seated at the end of the table, who tossed her his copy of the case file.
"Blood work?"
"As soon as we rule out some things," the same doctor answered.
"Symptoms?" House nodded to another short, balding doctor.
"Headache, rapidly worsening nausea and vomiting, upper abdominal pain, tenderness on the right side. Oh, and female, thirty one years old, twenty seven weeks pregnant."
"Options?"
"Foreman thinks it's hepatitis, Thirteen thinks it's gall bladder disease, I don't agree with either, but I'm not allowed to talk since I haven't come up with a better idea."
"Do me a favor, get another ultrasound," she said, sitting back into the chair and getting into doctor mode. "And while you're at it, liver enzymes, and a platelet count, and look at the blood through a microsope." She directed her comments at Greg.
House stared her, and cocked his head before smirking.
"Should have known you'd join the gyne- squad," he said amusedly.
"Yeah, you know, on account of life being all puppies and rainbows and pink things over there," was the reply.
His eyes crinkled at her in amusement before he turned to his team.
"You heard the lady," he said. They scrambled out of their chairs before the pretty brunette stopped and turned around, causing the other two to stop as well.
"Remy Hadley, internist, but everyone calls me Thirteen," she said. Sairah rose, smiling at the other doctor and extending her hand.
"Sairah Khan, OBNN," she began, "pleasure, Dr. Hadley. I don't have any interesting nicknames, but everybody calls me either Sairah or Khan."
Reluctantly, the two men hovering in the doorway came back in to introduce themselves.
"Eric Foreman, neurologist, future diagnostician." That one earned a snort from House and a grin from Sairah.
"Chris Taub, ex-plastic surgeon," was all the other one said.
"Fabulous, we can build a camp fire at dusk. Go run the tests!" House snapped, causing them to walk into the hallway.
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He turned to the young woman across the room.
"Hey, kid."
"Hey, Greg." She walked back to her place on the table and looked at the man in question. He crossed the rest of the distance, placing a hand on her back to guide her back into the office. He offered her a seat in his yellow chair, grinning as she promptly divested herself of her shoes and tucked her feet under her.
"Go on," she said. "Ask me."
"Khan?" The first question was asked.
"Long, angsty version, or short, sweet version?"
"Long and angsty, please," he requested.
"I wanted to change my name. Sairah sounded better with Khan anyway, and you know it was Dadajaan's last name, and…"
"And? You changed your name into your mother's maiden name because…"
"Because whether he is aware of it or not, he and I didn't part on the best terms, and I just didn't want to be associated with him anymore. I was graduating med school, and I just wanted a blank slate."
"Not to be associated with your father personally."
"And professionally."
"Are you ever going to tell me the whole story?" He asked, receiving a sigh in reply.
"Eventually," she conceded, and he nodded to her. Fair enough, for now.
"Next," she declared, smiling wryly.
"What, when, where, why and how?" That earned him a laugh.
"Let's start with med school. Oxford, like you couldn't tell already. Graduated fall after turning 16; slightly behind schedule, but whatever. Why, because I met a Dr. Stabler in London, and… it just clicked, for me. She helped me get the double specialty when complete tools like Read wouldn't let me into an OR…" He cut her off.
"Read… you were a surgical resident? Since when are you into mindless butchering?" Her jaw dropped and she started laughing.
"Excuse me? There are other equally noble ambitions other than Nephrology and Infectious Disease, Greg! I was, am, very good, thanks so much. Yeah, you might think so, but I did my surgical residency under Stabler for neo-natal surgery, and care in general. How, well, if it weren't for her, I wouldn't have been able to do my fellowship in high risk obstetrics." He raised his eyebrows. No wonder she had an interview here.
"So Cuddy scoped you out?"
"I guess… they're apparently forming an OBNN department, and they needed a right-hand bird for the NN bit."
"Board certified gynecologist?"
"Damn straight!"
He chuckled. She had done so well, his bright little girl. He had always hoped, when she expressed a desire to join the family business, so to speak, that she would forsake Pediatrics and Psychiatry in favor of Nephrology, or maybe even just Infectious Disease. But she went and picked something totally different, in usual Sairah style.
"Sai…" Her head snapped up at the tone of his voice. "How have you been, kid? I mean how have they been?"
"The years, you mean? Just as fabulous as yours seem to have been," she said, laughing.
"Do I look that bad?"
"You're still thirty five in my head, PG." He laughed at the familiar nickname and his face softened. "Dare I ask," she questioned, pointing to his cane.
"Infarction, rectus femoris, vastus intermedialis, parts of medialis and lateralis." Her brows furrowed in thought before it dawned on her.
"You wouldn't let them amputate."
"Sairah."
"I wouldn't have either." That stopped all the thoughts in his head and the scolding he was about to dish out. He swiveled to move out of his chair and limp into the balcony.
He tilted his head without looking back and waited until she was resting her lower arms on the banister next to him.
"You remember Stacy don't you?" His lips quirked at the immediate expression of distaste that had settled on her face.
"Yeah," she said.
"I thought you liked her…"
"I was nice because I had to be. I hated the Southern belle act, I hated the hair, and mostly, I hated that you didn't visit nearly as often, and when you did, it was like a top secret mission."
"Was not…"
"Was too!"
"I did visit just as much, kid, she came with me."
"Excuse me if those don't count in my mind." He smiled before straightening and setting a hand on her head.
"I'm…" She smiled, letting his hand travel down her head. He tried to communicate that he was sorry, that he regretted not spending alone time with her (post-Stacy) so much over the years. What he ended up doing was stepping closer and wrapping an arm around her, kissing the top of her head.
"Forgiven." He marveled at her ability to read him, and smiled, knowing that even though she thought she had forgiven him, it would resurface, if genetics were anything to go by. Alia Khan had been a champion grudge holder.
He felt her sigh against his chest before turning her head up.
"Why did we bring her up again?" Now it was his turn to sigh. Ignoring his instinct and staring at the street below, he spoke.
"Well, she was my medical proxy. And it took two days for somebody to diagnose the infarction; correction, for me to diagnose the infarction, and a big chunk of the quads were damaged, and I wanted to induce a coma and just de-clot."
"I feel a 'but' coming on…"
"Stacy consulted Cuddy, they talked, and after I went under, she gave consent for debridement."
"That must have gone well."
"To say the least."
"She…"
"Left."
"Ah."
"And you…"
"Pain defines my life, kid, and Vicodin defines my persona. I've changed. A lot. I'm a bitter old man, now, not the spring chicken that lives in your head," he said, prompting a laugh from her.
"I'm sure the nurses think you're sexy."
"When they're not homicidal."
"Not that it's your fault they are," she scoffed. She finally stepped back and looked up at him, eyes suddenly welling with tears. His hand came back to rest on her head.
"This is probably the last thing you want to hear, but I'm so, so, sorry, Greg. You don't deserve it. Any of it."
"I'm not a saint either." He felt an irrational twinge of guilt at her tearful whisper.
"I know, but still."
"Thank you." Her head came back to rest on his chest.
"Anytime," came out cloaked in a sigh. Neither of them noticed Wilson stare from his office. She tilted her head up once more.
"You said something about lunch?"
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They went to the cafeteria, at her insistence. House had showed her all of the "important" places in the hospital from the parapet wall above the lobby, then moving to show her actually important places, like the morgue, the "veggie" ward, the cafeteria, the locker room, the exam room with the cushiest table, the lab, and of course, the OB lounge.
"Go away, House," one of the residents greeted him. House raised his eyebrows and stepped aside to let Sairah look around.
"Niiiiiicceeeee," she drawled, eliciting a grin from House.
"Right!?"
"Uh, excuse me, who are you?" The resident's mood was rapidly moving from irritated to full-on huffy.
"Unless they make a separate lounge for NN, I'm in the right place. Sairah Khan, newly hired supervisor for the Neonatal Division." She extended her hand and raised an eyebrow, sizing up the resident.
"Dr. Cuddy didn't send us any memo," she continued, ignoring the proffered hand.
"Give it a couple hours. Dr. House, I believe you were leading me to your patient's room?" House raised an eyebrow, but stepped back to open the door for her. As she passed, he whispered something that made her stop in her tracks and do a u-turn.
"Dr. Chen, I believe I'll see you at the department staff meeting tomorrow." The resident started and turned around.
"Yes, but will I be seeing you?"
House had his oh, snap face on.
"Great first impression, soldier." She turned around and walked out, hanging back for House to catch up to her. He grinned. She was completely composed, aside from the vigorous flaring of the nostrils. He watched as her shoes pounded on the linoleum and winced in sympathy for the pain that would cause. Poor kid.
"Can you power the generators too? We could go green." He flinched as she stopped in her tracks and whirled on him. She was smiling, but not in any conventional sense of the word.
"You want to know how they've been, Greg? This is how they've been. I've been the fricking water boy for eight years. The one that comes up with all the plays and gets nothing in return except for sweaty pads. If it's not for being a woman in a man's world, it's for being a child in an adult's profession, or a Muslim in a redneck's domain. This is how it's been, ever since I've left Oxford." His eyes widened, and he wisely stopped himself from commenting on the lack of mention of the other six years from the mini-outburst. House placed a hand on her back, marveling at the easy, pleasant tone of her voice.
It's a gift.
House guided Sairah to the elevators after suggesting cautiously that they find her future office.
Foreman entered on the third floor, and handed a file to House.
"Hemolytic anemia, check, elevated liver enzymes, check, low platelet count, check." House turned and grinned at the young doctor to his left, who smirked back. Foreman, for the first time, seemed to really look at her. He gave her a once over, sizing her up.
"It's HELLP Syndrome, confirmed." He spoke to no one in particular. House handed the file back. "It's Dr. Khan's patient, now. Clear it with Cuddy."
"I don't start for a fortnight, but you should schedule a C-section sometime soon, preferably next week. I'll swing by and do an ultrasound, though."
"Another one?" Both chorused. She smiled patiently.
"Yep. I'd just like to be there, if you don't mind."
"Uh.. no, not at all. I'll talk to Cuddy." The elevator dinged, and Foreman got off on the fourth floor, but not before sending a measured glance to the new young doctor. Huh.
"Score one for the water boy."
"Damn straight," she laughed, and rapped knuckles with him.
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They cruised by the seventh floor, and House pointed out the NICU, the ORs, and the now-empty office of the recently retired NICU attending.
"Come on, kid. I'll use you as an excuse to go home early."
"You wanna supervise the unpacking?" Pegged, he thought as he grinned at her.
"Deal."
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Come on, peeps. Press the pretty button! Comments, questions, concerns, criticisms, lyrical waxing and odes to my awesomeness... anything. Oh, and anybody who cares: the next chapter goes back to where the previous one left off. (Do you want to meet her?) Yeah, I have chronology issues.