9

Chapter 2

Hi Honey, I'm Home

Expecting the new lodger, House had waited around for an hour. The doorbell finally rang while House was making a chunky peanut butter sandwich in the kitchen. He opened the door and saw this strange looking woman staring out from under a large backpack. He looked around to see if the lodger was with her.

"Dr. House?"

He was amazed at her firm voice."Yes?"

"I'm Kenna Palmer." She said, but he looked blank. "I'm renting your room." Kenna summed up the house as a 1940's two-story mixture of brick and wood siding.

He did a double-take, dumbstruck. He gave her a look of exasperation and barked, "Crap. I had expected a guy...I'm not sure I can rent to a girl."

She was trying not to collapse under the weight of the backpack so she began to un-strap it to keep from falling over. "Your ad with the housing department didn't specify male."

House thought about it. "Yeah, maybe. But that doesn't change the fact that I like to let my boys air out every once in awhile and it's hard to do that with a woman running around."

Kenna was starting to panic and her face revealed it. "I don't know what to say, I really need a place to stay," her voice started to waiver.

House wasn't happy; it wasn't like he was staring at the next Kathy Ireland. He couldn't really tell between her ball cap, straggly hair, sweat pants, baggy t-shirt and Nikes whether there was anything worth keeping. Still, he had already spent her $250 rent money on two tickets and hotel room in New York to see Pink Floyd's "Momentary Lapse of Reason" tour. He had asked the hottest nurse in the hospital and she had said yes. There was no way he was going to let this opportunity to get his paws on the nurse slip through his fingers.

House stepped to the side and motioned for her to come in. She hesitated, "Where can I leave my bike?" She asked.

"Take it out back and you can chain it to the porch posts for now. We can figure out something else later." He grabbed her back pack and threw it inside the front door while she walked around back, locked up her bike and then came in the back door. Handing her a key, her said as her tiny fingers took it, "That's the key to the front and back door, you can use the kitchen and refrigerator as long as you clean up after yourself. The washer and dryer are in the basement. Your room is this way."

They went through the living room-dining room combination, down the hall and up the stairs to the landing where there were four doors. Two of the doors were bedrooms, one was to the water closet and the last was the bathroom.

"This is your room." He opened the door closest to the bathroom. Inside was a stripped twin bed, a night stand, and a small maple desk with an old oak chair. On two sides of the room were bay windows and on the wall with the door was a closet with drawers underneath and cupboards on top. It was a pleasant room and Kenna was pleased. It was also right next to the bathroom and water closet which meant she didn't have to go far to take her shower.

Kenna turned around to him and said, "It's nice." But she wasn't sure what to make of him. She didn't really respond the same way to men as the girls at school did. Kenna saw a tall guy, blue eyes, long face, long ears, long fingers, angular nose, good symmetry to all of his features all in a thin frame. His hair was brown, but occasionally she caught glints of red in it when the light fell on it. One thing for sure, he was pretty somber and on top of it he looked bored. The information on the housing list said he was a doctor who could be contacted at Johns Hopkins Infectious Disease Department or at home. He must be smart; Johns Hopkins takes only the best.

"Any questions?" He asked, yawning as he stretched.

"I don't think so at this point. Maybe later. I have to figure out how to get my stuff over. I've got a few boxes stored in a garage a few miles away."

House suspected that she was fishing for him to loan her his car or worse, drive her over to get her stuff. But she was barking up the wrong tree. He could care less if she managed to move her stuff.

Asking House for help had never crossed her mind. To Kenna, he was an authority, not someone she would ask for favors. She thought that the Fortnams, the people that had rented her the room last year, might bring the stuff over for her. Kenna was a little nervous when she met new people and although her voice was steady, she had a hard time looking someone in the eye. She took a deep breath and almost whispered, "Dr. House, may I please use your phone?"

"Downstairs next to the front door."

"Thanks."

She went down and saw the phone with a very long cord sitting on a little stand next to the front door. Relief swept through her when the Fortnams agreed to load her stuff and take it over to the house. They wanted the room and were more than happy to get her stuff out of the way. There were only four boxes, none of them too heavy, and a few smaller bags of books. Kenna cycled over to help load the car and then cycled back and waited for them to drive over after dinner. They helped bring the boxes in and Kenna hauled them upstairs. She started to unpack and realized from the growling in her stomach that she hadn't eaten all day. Food—she stopped and thought for a minute. There were a couple of text books she had to buy, probably $100 each if she couldn't borrow them or buy them used. At the very least they'd be around $60 each. Pulling her wallet out, she had $198 to last for three weeks until her first paycheck for the semester. Still, she needed to eat. Getting on her bike, she pedaled over to the grocery store and found some Rice-a-Roni on sale, purchasing a couple of boxes along with half a chicken. She could live on two boxes for several days, at least until she could find out how much the books were going to cost. Back at the house, she locked up her bike and went into the kitchen through the back door.

Kenna approached the living room where she spotted House on the couch. "Dr. House, am I allowed to use your pots and pans, plates and cutlery?"

House looked up from the baseball game, "Are you as dumb as you sound? Of course, that's what it means for you to have kitchen privileges. Just clean up after yourself."

Kenna looked at him like a hurt puppy, "Yes, sir." No one, not a single person in her life, had ever called her dumb. Back in the kitchen, she found a paring knife and started to cut up the chicken in little pieces and salt and pepper it. Rummaging through the white country-style cupboards, she found a frying pan. She didn't have money for margarine or oil so she used the chicken broth and fat that was left in the skillet for th Rice-a-Roni. She took the pot and scooped out exactly half of the finished product and put it in a bowl. The other half was placed in a bowl, covered and put in the refrigerator. Kenna took her bowl up to the bedroom to eat and when she was done with the food, she took the dish down and washed up.

Greg House was still sitting on the sofa watching the television. It was 9:30 pm when she was finally ready for bed. Dressed in her pajamas and fluffy robe, she shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water and started back up the stairs. "Good night Dr. House."

He said nothing but nodded his head. What's with the outfit? Long sleeve pajamas and a fluffy robe and slippers? What, is she ten? He watched her go up the stairs and thought that she was thin, maybe too thin. She had long light reddish hair that seemed scraggly and unkept. It framed a petite face with freckles and blue eyes. She was definitely not his type.

Game over, House realized he was hungry. In the refrigerator he found a bowl of flavored rice. Opening the clear wrap, he grabbed a fork, ate two large forks full, covered it back up and put it in the refrigerator. House looked around for something else and realized he had some Coco Puffs in the pantry. Pouring a bowl, he went back to watch television.

Kenna cycled into town the next day, making her way over to Campus Books where she paid $132 for her two text books, one for Human Anatomy and the other for Principles of Immunology. Her courses also included Mathematical Methods of Engineering II, but she already had the text. After purchasing the books she had almost $65 to last three weeks until she got paid, or a little over $20 a week. It was going to be a breeze, she had lived on less. Cycling home, she opened the refrigerator and looked in the bowl of Rice-a-Roni only to see that half of it was eaten. She ate the rest, but was still hungry so she poured a glass of ice water from a pitcher in the kitchen before going upstairs to start reading her texts. After an hour the hunger was too much so she went back down and made the second box, setting aside a large bowl of Rice-a-Roni in the refrigerator.

All week long Kenna would make food and find large portions of it gone. Since she was living on one meal a day for the next three weeks, that one meal was important to her. It had to be Dr. House, but she didn't want to give him an excuse to ask her to leave so she kept her mouth shut. She started leaving earlier in the morning to pedal down to the St. Vincent De Paul homeless center where she asked for a piece of fruit. She offered to help out, but the nun just smiled and shoed her away, saying, "Sweetie, you're too skinny, you need to eat." Kenna was kept afloat by the kindness of nuns. She vowed that after her doctorate was over, she would donate a dozen crates of fruit to the homeless center.

Kenna's courses and thesis were kicking her butt. In order to obtain her doctorate she had to conduct original research and describe it in a dissertation. She was trying to develop electrocorticographic (ECoG) spectral analysis as a method for mapping brain function, in order to minimize functional deficits during brain surgery for epilepsy. These methods could also being applied to electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings in normal subjects so that they may be used to noninvasively study the brain mechanisms of human language and other higher cognitive functions. It was especially difficult because in 1991 computers were barely more than word processors.

Kenna was spending late nights in the lab with other doctoral candidates. It was a little nerve-wracking for Kenna because they were all males, mostly nerds, but male nerds, and spending that amount of time with mostly single males made her feel inadequate as a woman and nervous. She knew that there was something wrong with her and her ability to relate to others, but she didn't know what she was suppose to do about it. The men seemed to ignore her as if she was just a blip in the lab. Sometimes they would ask questions about her research or her job, but it was typically polite conversation meant to make her feel more comfortable or to encourage her to give them help on their projects. More than anything Kenna wanted to be able to relate to people.

It wasn't easy, but she managed to make it to payday. In addition to her paycheck, her parents sent her $75 to help her out. On October 1st, she put the $250 in an envelope and left it on the dining table for House before leaving for school. Greg came downstairs in his shorts and saw the envelope and its contents and smiled, "Cool." There was a note in the envelope, "How much do I owe you for utilities?" House figured $50 would do, so he just wrote $50 on the note and then went on with his business. Saturday night, Greg House's only friend at Hopkins, Doug Madison, stopped by to watch a video with House. Doug liked House because Doug liked people with personalities, even strange personalities. Collapsing on the couch, Doug setted back. The quiet was broken when the new lodger burst in and immediately made her way upstairs without saying a word, not even hello.

"Is she always that unsocial?" Doug asked.

House looked over at the blond surgical resident and shrugged his shoulders. "I could care less. She pays on time, hibernates in her room from dusk to dawn, and if we're in the same room at the same time, which is rare, she keeps her eyes glued to the floor in deference to my superiority. Even better, she doesn't pee on the floor next to the toilet, hasn't brought in any drunk sailors...or anyone for that matter, and she's afraid of her shadow. More important, when I eat her food she keeps her mouth shut. She's the perfect tenant."