I know this is short...I'll post more when you catch up! Thanks for the reviews!

Chapter 16

Pack Out

I got word on the Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving that I had the job at Mass General if I wanted it. On Wednesday I discovered that Carter had overruled me when I ordered a patient quarantined. I spent an hour chasing him down.

"Are you a friggin' moron? When those tests come back, you're going to discover that he's got pneumonic plague you idiot. Even the CDC quarantines for that. Your ass is going to be hanging out and I'm not going to lift a finger to give you toilet paper."

Carter clenched his jaw and growled back, "House, you are so far out in left field on this. This guy has simple viral pneumonia."

I couldn't believe that he had managed to come up with that diagnosis for someone who obviously had the plague. "I'm sorry, did I just call you a moron? What an insult to the morons of this world...Carter, you represent the Peter Principle to the nth degree. I guess intelligence wasn't a criterion where you went to med school."

"That's it House, go home. You're on suspension and this time I'd start packing if I were you."

They found out that the guy did have pneumonic plague, but it didn't save my job. This was the second time I had been suspended by the Trustees at Hopkins. I wanted to tell Kenna but she seemed so nervous about her first big med test on Tuesday and spent all of Wednesday cooking, I just couldn't. The truth is that I felt guilty-guilty that I couldn't control my mouth and keep my job so that we could stay together. I wasn't going to make Kenna share my excommunication to Boston. She had a great deal going at Hopkins and besides, she had warned me from the beginning that she wasn't in love with me. So it didn't matter how I felt about her.

Still I worried about telling her. I put the stuffing in the refrigerator and the beer cans in the recycling and turned off the lights downstairs. Making my way up the oak stairs, I felt like my limbs weighed a ton. After getting ready for bed, I climbed between the sheets and slipped over to her side, putting my arm around her little arm and waist. I wanted to smell and feel her as long as I could.

I woke up the next morning to see her sitting up in bed looking down at me. "So you're moving to Boston? When do you leave?" She sounded very matter of fact.

There was no emotion in her face, it was blank. I couldn't get a read on how she felt, but I know I felt panicked, sick to my stomach. I looked in her eyes. "The job starts the first of the year."

I thought I saw her flinch. "Tell me about your job."

I gave her the details of the job, the interview, and what had happened at Hopkins. She seemed to take it well.

"Would you be willing to transfer the lease into my name so I can keep the house while I go to school? I'll get a renter in to help with the costs… I should be ok."

So, the decision had already been made, she would not come with me. "Of course."

She smiled and said, "Thanks," before getting out of bed and going downstairs.

I sat up on my elbows and stared at the door, wishing she would come back and beg me to take her, but I could hear her downstairs in the kitchen making breakfast. I felt m whole body tingle with an achy feeling, as if I was coming down with something, but I wasn't sick…at least not sick from some virus.

The following week I was let go from Hopkins for the third time in my life. I started packing my things up almost immediately. Kenna got home from school around 4:00 p.m. and immediately noticed the packed boxes. She put down her things and started helping me pack, taking a box into the kitchen where she packed the dishes, silverware, pots, pans, dish towels, and all the crap I had accumulated over the years along with the crap my tenants had left behind.

I looked in one of the boxes and pulled out a pan. "I was going to let you keep some of this."

"Don't worry. I have $150 saved. What I can't get cheaply at Wal-mart, I'll buy at the thrift store. I'll be ok."

"I'm not taking much of the furniture. You can keep it or give it away. I'll be making enough to buy new furniture, furniture I actually like, not hand me downs."

"Are you sure? I could pay you for it?"

I looked at her with disappointment. "Kenna, please don't act like this. Besides, I'd just throw it out or give it away. Anyway, we'll need the double for when I come down to visit."

She was quiet, too quiet and I felt my muscles tense. She finally turned around to me and I thought she might cry but she didn't. "Greg, please don't visit. If people know you come back to see me, then no one will ask me out on a date. They'll think we're still a couple. It wouldn't be fair to me or to you to try and keep up some pretense of a relationship. I hope you understand. You know how fond I am of you. I hope we can stay in touch, maybe see each other at conventions, but we need a clean break. Don't you agree?"

I guess I had thought we would spend weekends together until she got out of med school and then she could come up and do her internship in Boston. I looked at her, hoping she would say, "Gotcha." But she was dead serious.

"Sure. I understand. I was hoping you would say something like that. Thanks for understanding and letting me off the hook." I said with all the bravado of a casual lothario.

She nodded and then turned back to her packing. When we went to bed that night I crawled over to her side and started to put my hand up her pajamas. Kenna didn't stop me but there was something different in the way she responded- not as enthusiastic. I continued by pulling her cotton pajama bottoms down and unbuttoning her top to expose her breasts. God, I was going to miss those pretty, pert breasts with the little pink nipples. I kissed each of them and licked them lightly. When I looked into her eyes she smiled back but it was a forced smile. I went down and used my tongue to bring her to orgasm and then I entered her. She had a hard time looking at me as I made love to her. She wouldn't hold me. When it was over, she rolled away from me and I guess she went to sleep. It was the last time we made love before we went our separate ways.