Disclaimer- Fanfiction is supposed to be a work inspired by the original, not the original work itself. Consequently, if you find this story to be in any way unlike the original series House, you are forewarned that it is my fault, and advised not to go mob the screenwriters of the show, since ignorance is not an excuse.

-Chapter Five-

Deus Ex Machina

- Exam Room Three -

House shooed a giddy couple out of the room, and glanced at his watch. Three hours and eighteen patients after he had started, and the clinic should finally be beginning to look empty. Picking up his crutches, he opened the exam room door, and stepped into the lobby, so deep in his thoughts, he didn't even look up. After speaking briefly with the secretary, he returned to the room, only to find a patient already there. It was a leather-clad man, with numerous tattoos, and enough body piercings to set off every metal detector in the New Jersey Airport. He was hunched over in the exam chair, sobbing into his hands.

House made his way over to a chair and sat, letting the crutches clatter to the floor beside him. "Hi. I'm Dr. House." There was no reply. "Hello? Are you there? Dr. House paging-" he flipped through the man's file, "- Zeke Rohet."

The man whimpered and looked up at House.

"I assume you're here for a reason."

Zeke pointed to one of his numerous piercings, which happened to be in a very embarrassing place. "It hurts…"

- Exam Room Two -

James Wilson handed a young woman a prescription, smiling back at her as she turned at the door and waved. "Good luck with your basketball game, Ms. Angelo. I'm sure you'll be better in time to play." He finished writing, and flipped a folder shut. His next patient shuffled in. He was covered in vivid bruises.

The man gave a weak smile at Wilson's interested look. "No, I know that look. These," he gestured, "are old. My hand is what I'm worried about."

Wilson peered at a deep, angry weal on the man's hand. "It's infected."

"I kind of guessed that. Dumb, huh? I was having a fight with my ex's boyfriend. The one she cheated on me with. I punched him in the mouth, and split my knuckles open-"

"-On his teeth." Wilson finished. "I know. I can see the tooth marks. That needs to get cleaned up. There are quite a few diseases that can be transmitted through a bite, so we're going to need to test you so we can be sure he didn't give you anything worse than an infection."

"Should I have come earlier?"

"Well, it wouldn't have hurt, but no, this looks easily fixed. Will I be seeing him soon?"

"Uh…"

"I, personally, am hoping that you won't hit him again. It can get you in a lot of legal trouble," Wilson said with an inward grin. "not that experience has taught me that."

"You probably won't see him." the man conceded.

- Exam Room Three -

House peered through the blinds. "Damn." he muttered to himself. The clinic was as full as it had been when he had started diagnosing patients. Muttering assorted swears, he prepared for his next patient. This contest had suddenly lost its fun.

The first thing House noticed about this patient was that he walked with an odd, shuffled gait. After the man had handed him his file, House stared at him for a full half minute. "What did you do to it?" he finally asked, obviously trying not to smile.

"Do to it?" the man echoed.

House nodded. "I've seen some pretty unusual and stupid things people have done. So, what did you do to it?"

The man hesitated for a minute. "I stuck it in a bottle."

"And now you can't get it out. It's a beer bottle, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

House gave up trying not to show his amusement, and slumped back in his chair, chuckling. "It wasn't your first beer either. Was it a dare? Or just a dumb idea?"

The man looked up, his face a bright shade of red. "You don't need to know that, do you? You think this is funny."

House, still grinning, made a note in the man's file. "So you did this to yourself. And no, I didn't need to know that. I still think it's hilarious, though."

The man stood up, attempting to show an air of injured dignity. Not too surprisingly, he failed.

"Don't go," House called out to the man. "I'll treat you."

"With respect?" the man replied.

"That's pushing it."

- Exam Room Two -

Wilson was handing a prescription to a patient when his pager went off. He glanced down at the message, then strode off into the clinic. Pausing by the desk to drop off some papers, he checked his watch, and then walked over to Exam Room Three. He knocked, and stepped back.

House opened the door. "Hey, Jimmy!" he pointed at the patient sitting on the exam bench behind him. "It's another bottle job!"

"Oh, I believe it. But as interesting as that is, I came here to tell you something. Foreman's back."

"Back from where?"

"He had a patient who went into a grand mal seizure. Seemed fascinated by the lights."

"Photosensitive epilepsy. Did she have defined T-C stages?"

"Yeah. Turns out she was in the tonic state. Went clonic when he asked her what was wrong."

"Wait a minute… Foreman left, and nobody told me?"

"I paged you. Twice."

"No doubt I would have responded, if I actually had my pager."

"I wouldn't have tried to page you, if you had actually told me you lost it."

"I didn't lose it. It broke."

"Okay, how'd you break it?"

House sighed. "It jumped out the window with me."

Wilson nodded, his face a perfect mask of mock solemn-ness. "Oh, I get it. When you jumped out the window, you broke your leg. The pager doesn't have any legs, so when it jumped, it just broke."

"No. It slipped off my belt when I fell. But I like your version better." He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. "It's so sad. But we have no time to mourn it. We must valiantly go on, diagnosing patients."

Wilson grinned. "Well, you know," he said, motioning towards the poor man in the clinic, "you can treat that guy first."

"Why treat him, when I can refer him? I believe he falls under Dr. Miko's profession."

"That works too. Do you refer everyone who comes in?"

"Despite popular opinion, no. He'll be the third." House turned and handed the patient a written note. As the man left the room, House reached into his pocket, and pulled out his bottle of Vicodin.

"Greg." Wilson's voice was serious, the levity gone from his voice. "Stop."

House paused. "What?"

"When was the last time you took one?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does. At three o' clock, I saw you at the pharmacy. You received thirty-six Vicodin. That bottle doesn't have thirty-six in it anymore." In one swift motion, Wilson swiped the prescription bottle from House's hand, and spilled its contents on the counter in the exam room.

"Hey!"

Wilson ignored House's protests, and quickly counted them out. "Thirty-three. In four hours, you've had three Vicodin, starting on your fourth. They should be taken four hours apart. You need to wait."

House turned on him, wincing, as the sudden movement sent a shot of pain up his leg. "I just need to get through today. Once I get home, I'll feel a lot better."

"And what? You'll keep taking the pills?"

"When I need to."

"It's seven-twenty. I want you to stop yourself from taking a Vicodin until ten-thirty."

"I don't care. My leg hurts-"

"You should care! You're taking way too much."

"I broke my damn leg! I have a right to take the pills!"

"You don't have the right to kill yourself!"

House fell silent.

"You're the nephrologist. You know what it'll do to your kidneys if you overdose."

"Dammit, Jimmy. You and your logic. While you've been standing there yelling at me, you've wasted almost all of the time we have left. Fifteen minutes isn't enough time to diagnose more than two patients."

The desk nurse tapped Wilson on the shoulder. "Excuse me." She brushed by him, and held out a folder. "Dr. House, your next patient is outside. You need to go out and see him."

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- Exam Room Three -

"I'm not going outside. Someone brought the file in. I'll talk to them, but I won't go outside." House waved the nurse off, and sank down in the exam chair. For a moment, a look of exhaustion and pain showed on his face, but it was immediately replaced by the look of bored annoyance he usually wore. He looked up at Wilson. "So…" he sighed, "If I hold off on the pills, will you make dinner tonight?"

Wilson allowed a smile to slip back onto his face, erasing the angry look that was so unlike him. "Well, I guess so. What do you want?"

"Chicken parmesan. No… Lasagna. We do have the makings for lasagna, right? You'd know. I don't go grocery shopping."

"Sounds okay. You really should learn how to shop, you know."

A motion at the door caught House's eye. A woman was standing by the doorway, obviously waiting for him to get up and go talk to her.

"Excuse me." Wilson got up, and walked out into the lobby.

House motioned for the woman to come into the room. "So who won't come in, and why?" The woman leaned over, and murmured something in his ear. He looked slightly shocked, and hoisted himself up onto his crutches, propelling himself out into the clinic lobby. He maneuvered his way through the crowd of patients, and flagged down a nurse. "Bring me a bottle of saline, and some noseplugs. No, better yet," he showed her the file, "escort this patient to Exam Room… Two."

Once the nurse had departed, House made his way through the crowded waiting area to Wilson's exam room.

Wilson looked up from his patient, and sending her out, turned to House. "What are you doing here? I thought you had resigned yourself to healing the masses."

"No, the oncologist gets to heal the masses. I heal patients. I need your room."

"For a patient?"

"That's the most logical explanation for my asking, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but… Why? Is the patient unable to fit in just one room?"

"Do I have to tell you why?" House maneuvred his way over to a wheeled swivel chair, and sat down, his crutches slipping from his fingertips and hitting the floor. "Oh, and I need saline."

"Top cabinet, left side."

"Can you get it? It's a little hard for me to walk right now."

Wilson rolled his eyes, but complied, handing the container of fluid to him.

"Thanks." House said, pushing against the wall with his left foot and gliding across the room. He stopped at the medicine cabinets, grabbed the counter edge, and pulled himself upright, reaching for something inside the cabinet. He drew his closed fist back, and turned away from Wilson.

"Hey… Do you smell something?"

"No." House chuckled, "Don't smell a thing."

"How can you not smell that?" He stepped out into the lobby, and glanced around, his eyes open wide with shock. The clinic was half empty, with many patients filtering out through the sliding doors. In the center of the clinic, was a man in a wheelchair, who, Wilson saw, was weeping profusely with the agony of his own odor.

"Got sprayed by a skunk." House called out to the oncologist.

Wilson stared at the now-empty clinic, then turned back to House. "You'd do anything to win this contest. I bet you hired that guy."

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Cuddy strode into the clinic, her triumphant smile fading as she saw Wilson, House, and Foreman standing in the middle of the clinic with not a patient to be seen. "I can't believe you managed to do this. I'm actually impressed." She glanced around the clinic. "Where is the staff? And what is that smell?"

"Dr. Cuddy," House called out, "surprise. Do we get our respective prizes now?"

She smiled weakly. "It's do-able." Foreman and Wilson looked shocked, as she handed each of them a hundred dollars, and turned to House. "They get their money, you get your month off of clinic duty. And someone, get maintenance down here. Stat." Cuddy turned, and retuned to her office, with as much dignity as her empty wallet would allow her.

Wilson watched her go. "We accomplished the impossible. You'd think she'd be more cheerful."

"Well, this ruins my evening," House remarked bitingly. "Well Aenas got her stable clean. But it still stinks. Hercules is leaving now."

Foreman shook his head. "Dr. Cuddy isn't the only one who thought we couldn't do this. I didn't think we could do it."

House grabbed his crutches and left the clinic. "I'm going home. Olympus calls."

Wilson turned to Foreman. "Deus ex machina."

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Author's Note- Well. Another chapter up. I do have to apologize, though. Things didn't progress as far as I thought, so obviously, no 'Gamecube, junk food and confusion' in this chapter. Sorry to say, it's gonna be about three chapters before that comes up. Besides that, though, 'Aenas and the Aegean stables' is a classical reference to the Labors of Hercules. Basically, it's about a mile-long stable, and a guy who has to clean it up in a day. Pretty fun. Also, during this chapter, I found myself writing yet another fiction. So now I've got two to update. Yay. Well, I can promise that in the next chapter, I'll explain the 'Kevin incident' a little more fully.