Chapter 35
Get Over It
After the presentation, all hell broke loose and we couldn't get out of the hall without a police escort. We were taken back to our hotel room where we decided to stay in for the night, just to be together before we took off in the morning. We went up to our room and turned on the TV to watch a movie. While Greg was surfing through the channels he landed on CNN and there were huge headlines and Wolf Blitzer showing over and over our photos and my introduction of Greg at the presentation. "Just In - controversial neurosurgeon and researcher, Kenna Palmer weds her patient, Gregory House, M.D."
The phone rang and Greg answered it much to my dismay, "I was wondering when you would call." There was a pause and Greg responded, "If that's the way they want it, fine, I'll go home with Kenna to Mexico." He looked annoyed while he listened to the caller. "Why should I?" There was a longer pause while he listened. He sighed and said, "I'll be there." He handed the phone to me. "Cuddy wants to talk to you."
"Hello Lisa."
"Congratulations, I guess. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes." She took a deep breath before continuing, "I just got a call from the AMA. They've just heard from the U.S. government that you've been offered a job in China."
"Yes, a very lucrative job in China."
"Well, the President and the Surgeon General are going to go on record tonight that the President is going to pardon you for any felonies that you may have committed so that you can come home and lead the USA into a 'new medical frontier.' Those were their words. They finally realized that you are the majority owner on each of the patents that you used in the process to save Greg's leg and that if you go to China, you can take the research with you. Stupid idiots, they should have thought of this before. The President is recommending to the AMA that they reconsider the eight year suspension."
"I thought something like this might occur. I didn't think the USA would want this research to get away from them. It would be a political nightmare for the president and the AMA if it did."
Lisa and I talked a few more minutes and then hung up.
"What did Cuddy say to you?" I asked House.
"You go first."
I shook my head and said, "I asked you first."
"The Board of Directors wants to suspend me two weeks without pay for disobeying their wishes and contacting you. I told Lisa fine, I would go with you to Mexico. She said that it was likely that you would be coming back to the USA and she wanted me back in Princeton to finish my interviews to replace Thirteen. Okay, so what did she tell you?"
"She said the President of the United States is pardoning me and he's going to ask the AMA to reconsider their suspension."
Gregg sat up on his elbows and smiled. "You're coming back to Princeton?"
"Not sure. I don't think I committed any crimes for which I need to be pardoned! We'll see what the AMA offers."
-xoxoxo-
Later that evening, the phone rang and Greg answered, "Hello?"
"Is this Dr. Gregory House?"
"Yes?" Greg said.
"Stay on the line please for the President of the United States," a male voice said.
"Dr. House? This is the President of the United States. I want to congratulate you on your marriage. Is Dr. Palmer there?"
Greg looked over at me and said, "Do you want to take this call?"
"Who is it from?" She asked as she started yawning.
He answered without bothering to cover the receiver, "He's says he's the President of the United States, but I suspect he's another one of your boyfriends."
Kenna sat up straight and grabbed the phone from him. "Mr. President? This is Dr. Palmer."
The President was chuckling, "Dr. Palmer let me start off by saying congratulations on your marriage. I also want to let you know that I just signed a pardon for you. We consider it in the best interest of the United States that you come home to conduct your research. Your country needs leaders like you. Can we entice you to come back home?"
"What about my license to practice medicine?"
"We've talked it over with the AMA and they've agreed to suspend your license for six months and you will have to take a course on medical ethics."
She looked over at Gregg and smiled widely. "Well sir, in that case I'd be glad to come home. I think my husband would like to have me back in Princeton too."
"That's great. The arrangements have all been made. We'll have someone provide you with all the details and paperwork. And thank you doctor, you're a great asset to this country. Goodbye Doctor Palmer."
"Goodbye sir." Kenna turned to Greg and grinned as she grabbed his crotch. "Oh boy, all that power in one phone call, come on baby, drop your drawers, I need to feel some of your power."
"Ok, baby...I'll give you the big guns tonight! But you have to call me, Mr. President, when you come."
The next morning, Kenna flew back to Mexico to get her ducks in a row. House flew to Princeton, meeting up with Cuddy the next day.
"You'll finish the interviews today and you're suspended as of tomorrow." She looked at him and saw that he had a Cheshire grin.
"I don't think so. First, did you ever think how ludicrous it is to suspend me without pay? My wife is rich...it's like you're giving me a two week vacation. Second, my wife doesn't want me suspended and since the President of the United States is personally bringing her home, she could go anywhere in the USA to do her work after her contract is up here. All she has to do is demand I go with her as part of her new contract and we could be practicing in San Diego or Honolulu."
"You'd use Kenna to bribe your way out of a suspension?" She looked at him like he had just sunk deep into the mud of life.
He looked at her, gave her a look of innocence and responded, "Well, now that you put it like that...Yes. I'd be an idiot if I didn't use it to my advantage. So, this is how it's going to go, I'll finish the interviews and you talk to the Board." He raised his eyebrows as if he expected an answer to a question.
She realized that he had her by the gonads. "Okay, I'll make some calls." She paused and shook her head, "You know House, you're the reason God made a middle finger, now get out of here."
"Oooo...don't get testy!" He turned and smiled, he just married a free ride.
-xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo-
One month later Kenna arrived in Princeton with her things and moved in with House. She didn't have much but she still found it hard to find room. It didn't bother her too much because Kenna had never really cared much about decorations or possessions. She had spent too much time at home when she was a kid and didn't want to be cooped up in a house or apartment. Despite her desire not to want to accumulate things, she did have fun going through House's possessions.
When she first started going through drawers and closets he would grab his stuff out of her hands. "Why are you going through my stuff?"
She looked up, wiggled her ring finger and said, "Because I can." Giving him a smile, she grabbed it back.
House thought that not even Stacy had been so curious or intrusive, but Kenna couldn't be stopped. No letter, no photo, no paper, no book, no piece of music was too innocuous for Kenna to scrutinize. She slowed down when she found the box buried in the back of the hall closet. When he returned home one day there were no happy hellos as usual. House looked around and shook his head; she was going through the 'Stacy box.' He looked down at her and saw red circles around puffy eyes. Her nose was red and she had tiny tears on her eyelashes.
"Jesus Christ, now what?"
She held up some of the cards he had exchanged with Stacy, the ones she had left them behind when she moved out claiming they were too painful to read. There were several that were very sentimental with declarations of love inside. Then Kenna held up photos which clearly told the story of a couple very much in love.
She sniffed and her lip quivered. "You've never said these things to me. You love her more than you love me."
"Kenna, you're proof that God has a sense of humor...stop this hormonal drivel. Yes, I loved Stacy, we had four good years, six months of so-so and six months of hell. But that's in the past." He sat down on the sofa and picked up one of the cards. He read it and realized why she was so upset. The cards were pretty explicit and sometimes downright corny. "Come here." He motioned for her to join him.
"No...I want to wallow in my drivel. Leave me alone," she said, tears dripping from her eyes into the box.
He got up and went into the kitchen to get a beer and realized that dinner wasn't even made. He took the pizza menu from the drawer and ordered one. Walking back into the living room, he picked up the remote and watched television, occasionally sneaking a glance at her while she continued to go through everything in the box.
Sometimes she would stop and ask him about an article in the box, "What's this?"
"A program from our first concert together."
"This?"
"A ribbon she wore in her hair when we went to Hawaii."
She didn't bother asking again, she simply held up a piece of gum and lifted an eyebrow. He shrugged and explained, "My six month anniversary gift. I gave her a gift, but she forgot to get me one so she pulled that out of her purse and told me it was gum, so it would keep us together."
Kenna threw everything back into the box and plopped down in the arm chair. He watched the tears flow and flow and flow.
Sighing, he shook his head. "I take it you haven't gotten to the box behind that one have you?" He got up and opened the closet and started picking his way to the back retrieving a brown cardboard box and carrying it out to the living room. He opened it, pulled out the little program from the Hopkins' Spring Fling. Holding it up he simply said, "First date." He pulled out a wishbone. "Wishbone from our first Thanksgiving dinner together." House displayed an invoice from the hotel in New York. "New York...22nd birthday." He pulled out a pair of cotton panties. "Self-explanatory." Then he handed her the box and said, "You should have seen Stacy when she found this. She cried like you're crying. I told her that we had never been in love, that we were just really good roommates. She told me that only a man in love saves crap like that."
She looked through the box for a minute, put it down and went over, crawling up into his lap, still crying.
"Why are you still crying?"
"Because you kept me all these years. You didn't throw me out even though Stacy found the box, you kept me. Thanks."
"I had to hide that box at Wilson's after Stacy found it. I told her I threw it out." House looked at her little face and kissed her. He held her close to him until the pizza arrived. When the doorbell rang he said, "This is all very nice, but get up, I'm starved." They ate pizza and watched television with Kenna's head in his lap.
The next morning Kenna handed him the Stacy box. "Just keep the Stacy box at work or somewhere else, ok?"
He chuckled and nodded.
At the hospital, House looked at the box, grabbed a couple of photos out of it and threw the rest in the trash. Stacey had Mark, he had Kenna. He didn't need the past anymore. It was funny how the two most significant women in his life marked the beginning of his darkness and the end of it. At noon, House drove down to Hallmark and bought every soppy card he could find for every occasion. He started filling them out and each day for three months Kenna received a card. The first was a birthday card. Kenna's birthday was in July and it was the first week in November. "Happy Birthday Kenna, I'm in Boston, I'd love it if you would forget Hopkins, pack your stuff and come back to me. It's lonely without you. I'll always love you. Greg, 1993." The next was a Christmas card, "I remember how sick you were and how pathetic you looked in the bedroom with your paper Christmas Tree. I hope you have a tree now and always...Merry Christmas My Love, Greg 1993." The next card wasn't really a Valentine's Day card but it had a couple on the outside and inside it said, "You Mean the World to Me." He wrote, "Happy Valentine's Day Kenna, I see couples and flowers and hearts and think of you...always you. Greg, 1994." This went on until he had covered every holiday up until the current ones. Kenna looked forward to coming home every day and receiving a card from him. It worked out well for House because Kenna served him all of his favorite dinners and he had sex at the mere mention of the word.
Kenna demanded that Thanksgiving be held at their apartment despite the lack of space. They invited Cuddy, Rachel and Chase along with two research doctors from Germany that worked in Kenna's lab. Wilson had gone home to his parents for Thanksgiving. Kenna stuffed and roasted the turkey and Chase bought the Honeybaked Ham and brought it to dinner. Everyone had a great time and at the end of the dinner Kenna saw House grab the wishbone.
"Come on, pull-long end gets the wish, short end gets married first." She looked at him like he was nuts because logically they had been married at the same time. House let her get the bigger end and she wished that Greg's leg would continue its improvement.
"You're a moron; you should have wished for something else, my leg is already fine as far as I'm concerned."
It was Chase who finally addressed the elephant in the room, "Kenna, we've all been wondering if you're pregnant."
Kenna frequently forgot she was pregnant, she was so involved with getting a protocol approved for the synthetic nerve growth that the pregnancy took a back seat. She looked down at her belly and then up at House. They exchanged a smile. "Yes, I'm four months pregnant."
It was Cuddy who did the math, "Wait, you two weren't together in August, your math must be wrong."
House grabbed Kenna and pulled her onto his lap. "My wife knows how to use a turkey baster better than you...maybe she can give you tips."
"You mean the baby was artificially inseminated?" Cuddy asked.
"Yes, it's an artificial baby with a Dad who has artificial nerves and a mother who is just artificial..."
"It's your baby though?" Chase asked House.
Kenna sighed. "I had five blastocytes left from the stem cell line I created from his sperm and my eggs. I implanted one."
"Without my permission I might add." House gave her a phony look of disapproval.
Christmas shopping was fun for Kenna this year because she someone to buy presents for. On the Friday before Christmas, Kenna took the day off to shop and was returning from the outlet stores via Quaker Road north when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. A large creature jumped into the road. Kenna screamed and swerved to keep from hitting the buck. Her tires failed to get traction after hitting a patch of black ice, causing her to lose control.
There was a split second when Kenna knew the car was out of control and she was facing her mortality. It felt as if she was traveling in slow motion, but in reality, the car flew off the road into the large maple tree which stood guard at the side of the road. House's car was an old model, large, but not equipped with airbags. Although wearing her shoulder belt, Kenna flew up and into the steering wheel with her head whipping forward at 40 mph, striking the windshield and shattering it. The front of the car collapsed like an accordion and the engine was pushed back into the back of the dashboard, causing the dashboard to smash back into Kenna pinning her inside. It didn't take long for an ambulance because twenty cell phones dialed 911, but none of those standing by able to pull her from the car. It took the firefighters two hours to extricate her from the pile of metal that once was a car.
One of Kenna's lab techs had gone home to get his spare set of keys after locking his primary set in his car. Running into slow traffic, he could see the whirling lights of the emergency vehicles and knew there had been an accident. Passing by, he was shocked when he recognized House's car and Dr. Palmer inside. He immediately dialed the lab before stopping to help, telling Dr. Franz who then called Foreman.
"Does House know that Kenna has been in an accident on Quaker Road? My lab tech says that they haven't gotten her out of the car yet and they've been working on it for an hour and a half."
"Jesus! I don't know. I'll tell him." Foreman went running downstairs into the office where House was standing at the white board writing symptoms. Bursting in he cried out, "House, Kenna's been in car accident, a bad one on Quaker's Road. They haven't been able to get her out of the car for over an hour."
House stopped what he was doing and looked down at the floor. Pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed Kenna. It kept ringing. Finally a man answered, "Kent Whistler."
House swallowed hard, "I'm Dr. Gregory House, the woman trapped in the car is my wife, what are her vitals?"
"Dr. House, we haven't been able to get all of them yet, she was lucid when we arrived, but she's unconscious now. She lost some blood but we've controlled the external bleeding, her head hit the windshield even though she had her shoulder belt on...she's got several cuts, but we suspect most of her injuries are internal. Her pulse is weak and thready, we have her on saline and platelets...sorry that there isn't more to tell you. We're going to take her to Princeton General as soon as we get her out."
"No! Take her to Princeton Plainsboro! It's only two more minutes away. Can you give this phone to the paramedics and ask them to call me when she's on her way?"
"Yes, I will."
House put the phone in his pocket and nodded thanks to Foreman. He looked at Chase and Thirteen and said, "Ok, we have cough, rectal bleeding..."
Foreman couldn't believe it, "House, aren't you going to go over there? Be with her?"
House looked at him with the expression of a little kid, "Do you think they'll let me use the Jaws of Life if I do?" House rolled his eyes. "She's unconscious, weak pulse, and trapped. What can I do if I get there? Should I just abandon this 16 year old kid who has multiple organ failure and run off to an accident scene so that some cop can hold me back and keep me out of the way?" House turned back to the Fellows. "Come on people, what does this tell us?"
Foreman was pissed. "You could be there if she dies."
That was it. House lunged at Foreman and pinned him up against the glass wall, looked him straight in the eye and said, "She's not going to die."
Foreman realized that this was House's way of handling bad news, to just keep on working. "Hey man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
House looked at him and realized what he had done. He lowered his hands from Foreman's arms, turned around and walked back to the white board. Half an hour later, House received a call on his cell phone. Kenna was free from the car and on her way to Princeton Plainsboro.
Grabbing his cane, he rushed to the emergency room, but the trip to the emergency room seemed to take forever. Once downstairs, he walked through the crowded waiting room and into the fluorescent lit hallway, back to the examination area. The area bustled with patients screaming and complaining about the wait. He hadn't realized how grim it was down in emergency. Waiting by the emergency doors for the ambulance, he was surprised to see Wilson walking towards him.
"I just heard. Do you know what her injuries are?"
"No, I just know that she was unconscious at the scene, thready pulse, some bleeding and definite internal injuries."
"What about the baby?"
"I don't know." House looked up and saw the ambulance making its final approach to the parking lot. He stepped back so that they could swing the doors open to get the gurney through. They pulled her out of the back of the ambulance and started racing into the emergency room. House strained to take a look at her. Kenna was draped in a bloody sheet, had a saline drip and her face was bruised and cut. As she was wheeled past him he reached out and grabbed her arm, continuing to walk along with the gurney down the corridor and into the emergency room. As the emergency doctors crowded around her, he looked down at her little body and touched her cheek.
"Dr. House you're going to have to leave, we need all the room we can get. We'll let you know how bad it is in a few minutes." The doctor looked up at Wilson and nodded towards the door. Wilson came over to House and gently grasped his arm, pulling him towards the waiting room.
House left with him. "Jesus Christ, I can't believe this. What was she doing driving when it's so icy? She's such a moron sometimes. I told her that she if would wait until tomorrow I'd go with her to do the driving. I always worry about this happening. Every time she goes out the door after it's snowed or there's sleet I think about this happening. She can be such an idiot." House felt helpless and out of control. It reminded him of being a child and unable to control what went on around him.
There are three more chapters...I hope you have enjoyed this and I really want to thank you for the reviews...it's the nicest part of writing these stories.