A/N: To those who have asked about Thomas, Jet, the Cuddys, the other main plot line/problems, etc., we will get updates next chapter on many of those, and there is a Jensen chapter coming in about three chapters, I think, for some time with him. We will check in and out of the other characters from here on now that both main plot lines are in motion, but the majority of scenes in the story will be tilted toward House wherever he is. Much as I love Jensen and Thomas, House is and will remain the main character. But tune in next chapter. It's even in large part already written down, because there were a few stressful times in the last couple of weeks where I had only about enough mental energy for what I call a "purr" scene but not for drama. Not that the next chapter is devoid of drama, but it contains plenty of purrs, too. :)

About the Kutner plot, remember that this series split off from canon halfway through the Greater Good. Therefore, any information given on Kutner after that is fair game for me to use as is or to change as I wish. For instance, in the episode where Kutner committed suicide, House commented that his password for at least his work email was Kutner. That is not his password to his computer in this story. Enjoy 25!

(H/C)

Kutner had been rewritten at the top of the whiteboard, this time in green marker instead of black. Beneath that was a line of symptoms in black.

FEVER

AKI - DEHYDRATION OR MORE?

DELIRIUM

UNCHARACTERISTIC STUPIDITY.

Delirium had an arrow from it to the other half of the board, expanding lines going to three points.

"I did it."

"Hard mission. Knew that, but had to go."

"Dead, Jim."

In the lab, tests were being run. Supportive care was still in place, and the expanded team had gathered back in Diagnostics to try to fold their new information into the big picture. House stared at the board until it seemed that his eyes might burn clear through it. "He was trying to tell me something," he said.

Foreman shook his head. "He also thought you were Captain Kirk. I think the most obvious message that he was conveying to you is that he has a fever of 104."

"He was trying to tell me something," House insisted. "He knew me. Or part of him did. Almost. So what if he had the title wrong; he knew me. Never even glanced at Ramirez."

"It certainly sounded like he had Star Trek on the brain, even if he didn't go to that convention," Ramirez said.

"He's obviously a fan. His apartment had several sci-fi things," Templeton pointed out. "It might make sense that he'd fall back on that when he was delirious. But there wasn't one new piece of memorabilia from New York last weekend." Templeton was annoyed as he reiterated the results of their search, though he tried to hide it. Hollingwood had been handed the same information on a platter that he had been working toward as a deduction, and she had called House first, stealing his thunder by only a few minutes.

"If he's such a big fan, what's bigger than actually meeting Captain Kirk?" Ramirez mused. "That might tie into the last point."

House tapped the last point on the board. "Uncharacteristic stupidity. Unlike him to let himself get that sick without realizing it. He should have noticed." He started to pace on a short tether right in front of the board, and he flinched as he took a step too hard, sending a white-hot poker of pain up his leg. In the next second, he looked toward the table, seeing which of them had dared to notice that bad step, even silently. Templeton was looking at the symptom list, his expression perfectly professional. Too perfectly professional. Ramirez was looking away. Hollingwood alone was watching him, and he glared at her. To his surprise, she held the look for a moment instead of fleeing, just steady assessment in her eyes, not pity. Then, she looked back at the board.

"Did he have any bigger interests? Something else that might have distracted him from listening to his body? Anything major going on in his personal life lately?" she asked.

House started to deny any personal issues, then hesitated and looked to Foreman and Taub. Kutner barely even seemed to have a personal life. Of all of the team, he most shared House's enthusiasm for the work and could get most lost on a puzzle. But had that been deceptive? Was House only seeing what he wanted to see and ignoring other clues? Had Kutner actually had a crisis situation that he'd taken vacation to deal with, and House never caught it?

Foreman considered the question briefly, then said, "Not that he'd mentioned."

Taub gave it longer thought. "He hadn't said anything. He really was excited about that convention, or at least claimed to be."

House sighed. Damn it, why hadn't he probed a little deeper into those vacation plans. Kutner wasn't a good enough liar to carry one off under extended interrogation. "While we're waiting for his parents to call with more information, and while I keep working on cracking that laptop when I get a minute, we can't forget the medical relevance. The only reason we care where he went last week is what he caught there."

Templeton replayed those words mentally. "How do we know he caught it there?" he asked. "Is it possible he caught something a few weeks ago that's been incubating, and all this mystery is a coincidence of timing?"

House looked at him, and for the first time, Templeton saw a spark of respect in his hopeful boss-to-be's eyes. "Not bad," House said, and Templeton with satisfaction awarded himself a few points that were all his, not shared with Hollingwood, as House turned to add a new line to the symptoms.

INCUBATION TIMETABLE

"Back to testing and treatment," House said. "CSF is being tested but looked okay on initial appearance. We're running Legionella."

"Or it could be plain pneumonia neglected for a few days," Hollingwood offered. "He's dehydrated enough that that might not show up clearly on chest x-ray yet."

"I like that answer. Don't think it's right, but I like it." Nice, standard, community-acquired or even hospital-acquired pneumonia, which should hopefully respond quickly to the antibiotics they were loading Kutner with. But no, his instincts told him it wasn't that easy.

"Flu?" Ramirez suggested. "H1N1 can be severe."

"We'll add that test." House dropped down a symptom from fever to the AKI. "And we'd better contact Vascular to get temporary dialysis access put in. We can't let his kidneys go too much longer."

"Wait a minute," Foreman protested. "It's only been a few hours. He could just be that badly dehydrated, especially if he's been lying there sick without drinking enough fluids for the last two days. I think we should give the fluids more time; dialysis is jumping the gun."

"We have to stay on top of this." House's speech picked up a little in tempo, and he underlined AKI with a vicious slash on the whiteboard. "Dialysis could make a big difference for him."

"And it would complicate the antibiotic situation. Acetaminophen dialyzes out, too, so the antipyretic effect we're trying to give him there would be lost again."

House turned away from the board to face Foreman, his voice sharp. "Not all antibiotics dialyze out."

"But some of the ones he's on right now do. Do we really want to switch drugs around before we even have cultures or a positive test? Give the fluids time to work, House. And the current antibiotics before we change meds blindly."

"We can't just let the kidney function go," House snarled.

Foreman held his ground. "But we're not just letting it go. We're going to be watching it on labs while waiting to see what fluids alone do. That itself could help us know if the dehydration alone is the culprit or if the kidney function is tied to the main diagnosis. I don't think we need to jump to the most aggressive treatment off borderline labs at this stage. Watch them carefully, yes. Go straight to dialysis in one jump, no." He paused, then pushed on. "Would you be considering that step this early if this were just any routine patient?"

"Are you questioning my objectivity?" House challenged, his whole body language daring him to say yes.

Foreman cringed a little in front of the blue fire, but he held firm. All House could do was fire him, and he had another job in the wings anyway. Too late for House to recant his recommendation to UCLA. "Yes," he said simply.

The room was dead silent for several moments. Beneath the resentment and reflex denial, House couldn't help analyzing that statement with part of his mind. He called back up that first lab work mentally, reviewing the numbers again. Bad. But not drastic. Why did he feel so strongly about the dialysis? Turning quickly and again hurting his leg doing it, he fired a question at Ramirez. "What was your first reaction to seeing those numbers on the kidney function?"

"Pretty bad, probably from dehydration," she answered. "Heading toward failure."

"Heading toward as in not there yet? Would you have suggested dialysis? If it were totally your decision, what would you say?"

"Not yet," she replied.

House smacked the surface of the conference table hard enough that the coffee in a cup sloshed over a little. "Then why the hell didn't you say so down there in the room at the time?"

"I . . ."

He cut her off. "You chickened out. You didn't want to challenge me. News flash: I need people who will tell me what they're thinking." He looked across the egglings. "If something occurs to you, speak up, damn it. Even if you're wrong. Sometimes wrong comments can lead to right answers by making me answer them." He faced the board again and sighed. Foreman was right. He was jumping the gun here. But he was also going to sit like a hawk on those kidney functions through this afternoon and tonight.

"Dr. House?"

He turned back to Ramirez, still annoyed at her but listening. "What?"

She nodded toward the list of quotes. "Something I'm thinking looking at what he said. I didn't mention it a minute ago when I thought it because it looked like it wasn't relevant anymore, but if you want . . ."

"Oh, get on with it," he snapped. "What were you thinking?"

Ramirez didn't watch Star Trek herself, but as her friend and roommate for a few years in college had lived and breathed it, a few things had crept in by osmosis. "That last quote is incomplete. My friend had that on a T-shirt, and it was 'He's dead, Jim.' Kutner might have just clipped it off because he was sick, but could the beginning of the sentence have been intended to be different?"

House grabbed the ball and ran with it, immediately excited again and dropping the irritation like shedding a jacket. Once more, he was on the chase. "He was trying to tell me something, no matter where he was last week," he reiterated. "Could it be she's dead? Amber, maybe? Or they're. . ."

His cell phone interrupted him, and he snatched it out, checking caller ID. Richard Kutner. He quickly stabbed the button. "Mr. Kutner?"

"Is this Dr. House? We got a message about Lawrence. What's happening?"

"Your son is ill. We found him this morning in his apartment when we went to check because he was late to work. When was the last . . ."

Richard Kutner cut him off anxiously. "How ill is he? Is he in the hospital?"

"Yes. He's got a high fever. We're still in initial testing, trying to work out the diagnosis."

"Julia and I will come right away, but it will take a few hours to get to Princeton. We're leaving now. You're his doctor yourself, aren't you? He speaks so highly of you."

"Yes." House looked at that AKI line, and again, a small voice inside repeated Foreman's worry. Was he able to be objective on this case?

"We're on our way, Dr. House. We should be there by late this evening."

Richard was signing off, and House snapped back to himself. "Wait a minute! Before you hang up, it would really help us to have the answers to a few questions. He was on vacation last week, so we're trying to work out exactly when he got sick."

"We talked to him last Thursday morning, and he sounded fine then. Sad, of course, but . . ."

House jumped on the two words like a cat on a mouse. "Why of course?"

"That was the anniversary of his biological parents' murder. Last Thursday."

House stared at the two words, the incomplete phrase on the whiteboard. ". . . dead, Jim." They're dead. Something about his parents. That had been Kutner's mission last week, the mission that some part of his fevered brain knew that House needed to know. "Mr. Kutner, do you know exactly what your son was doing that day? Did he have anything special in mind to remember the occasion?"

"Yes, he did." House was poised on the edge of the phone, waiting. Watching him, everyone around the table, even Foreman, had sat up a little straighter, waiting as well. "He wanted something to distract himself and take his mind off everything that day, so he was already in New York City for a 4-day Star Trek convention."