A/N: Another quick update. Next up, we will get House and the egglings, followed by the showdown with House and Foreman about objectivity in the other direction. Then, but probably not in the same chapter, lunch with the foursome (Houses and Wilsons) and a talk between House and Cuddy. Thomas and her parents are also coming up before too long. This story certainly has a few packed days in it. For those wondering, it ends fic time on Wednesday night (it's now late Tuesday morning), but there are many chapters to go first.
This chapter overlaps in time with the last one, so back up the clock a little before you start reading.
(H/C)
"So where are you from originally?" Hollingwood asked as she and Ramirez headed for the ICU.
Ramirez looked sideways at her as if taking a visual x-ray. "Here and there," she said finally, in a tone that firmly closed that door.
Hollingwood obligingly switched ground but persisted. "Why did you decide to study medicine?"
"Why does it matter?"
"Just being friendly. We might as well talk about something on the way down, and it will give us a microbreak before hitting the case again. That helped sometimes in residency."
Ramirez shrugged. "Why did you decide to go into medicine?" she said, neatly inverting the question.
"I got fascinated with it when I was a child and I was in and out of the hospital for a few years. Watching the doctors and the nurses gave me something to do. I enjoyed picking out the different ones, how the approaches varied. I would give them private nicknames." She looked thoughtful. "One thing that really interested me looking back later is that the ones with the best bedside manner didn't always seem to be the ones who were the best doctors or the most professionally respected. Ideally, it went together, but there were several who were stronger in one side than the other. I've decided since, if I had to pick just one for a doctor to treat me to have, I'd go with the raw skill." She smiled. "Of course, I'm shooting for both myself. Who says you can't be both top notch and nice, too?"
Ramirez privately thought that the universe often hammered that point home, but she was being pulled into this conversation in spite of herself. "I've noticed that, too, about which ones were respected or which ones you learned most from. Then there's House."
Hollingwood nodded. "He really is a class by himself. I knew this trial period would push me, but what an opportunity for education, even if it's just for a couple of weeks and he decides on somebody else."
Ramirez looked at her curiously. "You're counting on losing?"
"No." That came out surprisingly firmly. "I want to win this. I'll try as hard as I can to. But if I don't win, it's still not a wasted couple of weeks, and it will still help my career. I've already learned a lot, especially yesterday and today. This is past skill into genius. House cares more than he shows on the surface, though."
"I've picked up on that." Ramirez remembered him examining Kutner yesterday morning. But the idea of seeing benefits even if you lost at something in life was a bizarre concept to her. She studied the other woman more closely. "Why were you hospitalized so much as a child?" Hollingwood looked fiercely healthy and so annoyingly bright that it was easy to imagine her hardest challenge in childhood being stubbing her toe, complete with parents immediately there to soothe her and wipe the tears away.
"Neuroblastoma," Hollingwood replied.
Ramirez' eyes widened. "What risk stage?" It made a big difference in outcome statistics.
"High. It was late being diagnosed. I was already six by the time they got the answer and started treatment." Hollingwood smiled at her. "I beat it. With a lot of help from my family and some good doctors. And the nurses, of course. I've always admired them. They make a lot of difference for patients."
"No long-term effects?" Ramirez was looking at her clinically now.
"No. Not so far, at least. We think it might have cost me a few inches in height, comparing me to my parents, but nothing worse than that."
Which made Hollingwood a statistical anomaly indeed. Late-presentation neuroblastoma was aggressive, difficult to treat, and often left its permanent mark on the survivors. She would also remain at greater risk for development of new cancers, even all these years later. "Bet you'd have trouble finding an upside to that if they do develop. At least it probably gives you a few extra points with House as an interesting case study."
"He doesn't know," Hollingwood replied.
"But you told me," Ramirez countered.
"You asked. He hasn't. I'm not hiding it if it comes up in the flow of conversation, but I'm not asking for any benefit from it. I want to win this. As a doctor. I already won as a patient; that's over with."
Ramirez shook her head at the lost points (might as well get some upside from it), but there was a hidden edge of envy in her thoughts. How the hell could a battle that large be accepted, dismissed, and moved on from that easily?
They entered the ICU at that point, both of them promptly refocusing on the case as they went into the room that held Kutner. Julia was at his head, speaking to him, but the tone of voice and the droop of her shoulders told the two doctors that he was still unconscious even before they had a chance to inspect the patient. Richard was standing at the foot of the bed fidgeting with something in his pockets. He was the first to hear them, and he turned quickly.
"Dr. Hollingwood." She was the one who had talked to them extensively last night when she and House had the first questioning session. They had seen the other doctors but not interacted with them near as much. "Have you come up with anything yet?"
"No, but we're working on it." Hollingwood stepped over to the chairs, inviting them to join her and move away from the bed a little. "Could I ask you a few more questions while Dr. Ramirez examines him?"
"Of course. Anything that might help, but we've told you everything we could think of." Julia released her son's hand with a final anxious look back. Ramirez stepped up to Kutner, glad of the working space. Part of her tracked the conversation behind her, but the other part was studying Kutner, trying fiercely to match this to anything in the textbooks.
Totally unresponsive. She tried pressure on his nail beds herself. That was deeper this morning than yesterday. His fever was steady, though. Response to one of the antibiotics? But what about that normal white count? She went over him carefully. His skin tone was a little better today; she could tell that the dehydration was being reversed.
House. She remembered wondering about the dialysis yesterday when he first mentioned it, but she hadn't wanted to question him, still a little awed by his reputation. Yet he had listened to Foreman later, even though he got mad at him at the same time. She had to remember to bring up everything, as he'd said. She could do better than she had yesterday.
She finished the exam and stopped for just an overall summary look at him, and something tickled at the back of her mind. He seemed worse this morning than yesterday, but he didn't seem worse right now than he had based on Hollingwood's first phone report from the nurse's station. That was encouraging following the initial downward course, though an hour or two wasn't quite a fair trial. Was he starting to stabilize? And if they were doing something right, which something was it? House had him on everything but the kitchen sink.
She finally turned back to the conversation. Dealing with families had been her least-favorite part of residency, but she knew it went along with the job. Julia was in mid memory at the moment. "We told him to call us Julia and Richard, but it was always Mr. and Mrs. Kutner up until his 9th birthday. We gave him a chemistry set, and that day, all at once, he started calling us Mom and Dad." She trailed off, realizing that Ramirez had turned around. "Anything?" It was a plea as much as a question.
A nurse came in behind them to do a direct check, and Ramirez moved over a little, not quite joining the parent group but freeing access to the bed. "No." She debated, then went on, pulled in by Julia's tone in spite of herself. "I'm not positive, but he seems like he might be stabilizing a little." Hollingwood looked from her to Kutner, her eyes going clinical. Ramirez hurried to add a disclaimer. "Sometimes, illnesses can do that, pause for a while and then resume course. But he was getting worse last night. He's not in the last few hours. Maybe the medicines are starting to help a little."
The nurse exited, and Hollingwood resumed the questions. "Was there anything he ever said he wanted to do related to his birth parents and their death? Even if he hadn't had the chance yet? Old places to go to? Things they had shared?"
Richard and Julia both shook their heads. "We've tried thinking through this all night," Richard repeated. They looked like it, too, Ramirez thought. The stress was getting to them, and she doubted either one of them had had done more than restless cat napping.
Hollingwood turned toward Ramirez, inviting her to throw her oar in this discussion if desired. Ramirez was tempted to turn back around to the bed, but she made herself try to think up anything new. "Is he in touch with anybody from his past? Maybe a comment came up just recently with information that he hadn't known, something that sent him off on a trip."
"There were a few childhood friends, of course," Julia said. "But they wouldn't have known his parents better than he did."
"What about their parents?" Hollingwood asked. "They could have been friends as well as their kids being friends."
Richard jumped in his chair. "There is somebody new. I'd forgotten totally about that. Remember, Julia, back in January, he said he'd bumped into an old friend of his parents on Facebook."
"Who?" Ramirez and Hollingwood asked together.
He sighed. "I don't know the name. Don't think he mentioned it. It would have meant nothing to us; we didn't know his parents ourselves. Maybe it's on his computer." The two doctors looked at each other, all but hearing House's snarl of frustration at that. He'd spent a few hours by this point trying to crack that laptop.
Hollingwood's cell rang, and she pulled it out. "Templeton." She moved away a few steps for a more private medical conference without the Kutners' participation, and Ramirez pushed on, starting to feel that she was onto something potentially big.
"Did he mention anything this friend said? Was there anything that upset him? Anything he said he hadn't known? Even if it didn't seem that big a deal at the time."
"He just said they were talking. He didn't seem upset by it," Julia replied. She looked over at her son. "There is nothing from the last few months that seemed like a big deal to him."
"Apparently, there was." Richard said it before Ramirez could. He sighed. "I don't understand why he didn't talk to us. He could always talk to us. Why would he lie about last week?"
"Maybe he didn't want to face questions on it," Ramirez suggested. "Or maybe he knew you would offer to go along, and he needed to do it alone."
"And he knew you'd be worrying about him if he told you that," Hollingwood added. She pocketed her cell phone. "They found his passport. Nothing from last week, but he made a 1-day trip to India a month ago."
The Kutners were totally baffled. "To India?" they echoed.
"A 1-day trip?" Ramirez asked. What could you do in India in one day besides get sick?
"Yes," Hollingwood said to all of them. "He didn't mention that either?"
"No," said Richard.
"It does raise some new possibilities. We can look at diseases that aren't usually found in this country and with a different timeline."
"But why didn't he go to India last week if he wanted to?" Julia asked. "He would have had a lot more time with the vacation. If it involved his parents, he could have gone then for the anniversary."
"Because last week was already booked full of significant things before whatever was in India came up?" Ramirez suggested. "Or there was some kind of timeline that wouldn't wait until last week?"
Hollingwood moved back toward the bed. "Dr. Ramirez, unless you have any other questions right now, why don't we get some blood and go down to the lab? We can start running through tests for all diseases from India that might fit."
"Good idea." Ramirez would be glad to exchange the parents for the lab, though it had been a useful conversation. She collected a few tubes of blood herself as Hollingwood said something reassuring in farewell to the Kutners, and then they headed out of ICU.
No personal background questions along the way this time. "So he lied to his parents about this twice, counting India," Hollingwood said.
Ramirez grinned. "I'd bet money that he's lied to them a lot more than twice." House was right; Hollingwood wasn't cynical enough.
"Those two things have to be connected. India and last week."
Ramirez agreed with that much. "What could you do in India in a day?"
"Meet somebody? His biological parents were immigrants themselves, even though Kutner was born here. Maybe he was visiting relatives back there." Hollingwood objected to her own theory before Ramirez could. "Not for just one day. Not unless there was another time limit involved. We'll have to ask if he'd ever been to India before, too, and how long he was there if he did go."
Still debating, tossing ideas back and forth like a volleyball, they entered the lab and switched from trips and motives to diseases, making suggestions to each other. Shortly later, with the positive blood smear under the microscope as proof, they had it.