A/N: Short interlude scene. Next chapter is Wilson meeting Thomas (with side appearances by Jet). Thanks for reading!
(H/C)
After a long interval, they finally broke apart, though still holding hands, and moved toward the couch. Both of them were feeling a little wobbly now.
House turned to Cuddy as they settled back into the cushions, side by side. "You are hot as Mama Bear. I wish I had a recording of that speech at the end. Fun rewatching late at night."
Recordings reminded Cuddy of Thomas recording his confrontation with the defense attorney last summer. House had told her about that visit by now, though only he had heard the actual encounter. "I'm proud of you, too," she told her husband. "And Greg, what you said was true. Thomas would leave if you really asked him to."
He dodged away. "I was just trying to convince your parents that we weren't being held hostage in our own home here. They weren't going to buy it without hearing something straight from me."
Cuddy hid her smile. "It's all right to like him, Greg. He likes you, too."
Feeling trapped, he flipped the spotlight back around. "You need to talk to Patterson about this morning. Lots of session work in there."
She sighed. "I know. Let's make a deal, okay? Neither one of us mentions sessions or my parents for the next hour. I'm too tired to think about them more right now." She knew he himself was.
He still had to play with her a little, though. "What do I get for taking this deal?"
"You get a little respite, same as I do, and we both need it." She looked into those incomparable blue eyes and couldn't help relenting. "Maybe there might be another bonus benefit later, at home tonight or tomorrow, sometime when the girls are sound asleep."
"And no other relatives around, either," he agreed. "I like it. Okay, Lisa, you've got a deal. For the next hour, we aren't going to talk about - what was that again?"
She laughed and started to give herself permission to relax. "What do you want to order in for lunch, Greg?"
They settled on pizza, half and half on the toppings, and she made the call. As she turned back to him after ordering, she caught him rubbing his leg surreptitiously. She didn't say anything but shifted around for better access and reached for it herself, her hands next to his. After a moment, he let go, and she started massaging the offended half thigh. It wasn't cramping right now, simply hurting, but she knew that her hands usually helped him anyway.
He leaned back and watched her work. Speaking of legs . . . "I got the x-rays on the kitten by email this morning," he said.
She looked up to face him, though her hands didn't still. "Did the vet fix it right?"
"Yes. Looked like a good job. He wasn't an idiot, at least, but they'll have to pull the hardware pretty quick, soon as the leg can stand it. He needs to finish growing, and he can't all bolted together. No choice right now with that bad a break, but we're fighting the clock on the other end, too. And I got pictures of the splint. Looks interesting."
"You could go over and examine him yourself any time you want to. I'm sure Thomas wouldn't mind."
"Got to return that book, anyway," he replied. She looked like she was fighting laughter, but at least she didn't make a point of his interest. It was a fascinating medical study; no reason why he shouldn't be interested. "Those x-rays were useful, too. I printed them off and ran them by the egglings."
She laughed openly there. "Trust you to make a lesson out of everything. What did they think? Did they realize this was a cat?"
"Taub got it first, but he didn't say anything. He knew it was for them. Templeton was first out of the three, but he thought I was pulling some kind of trick on them."
"You were pulling some kind of trick on them, Greg."
He shrugged. "Irrelevant. He should have spoken up anyway. He just stayed quiet with this 'whoever you're going to make a fool of here, it isn't me' look. He's got street smarts. Maybe too many street smarts; needs to learn to balance them. Hollingwood got all distracted on the fact that it's a torquing break with force behind it. Short of catching one leg on a merry go round while your others stayed rooted to the spot, it would be hard to have this happen accidentally. She was asking about background and if this case had been investigated, was the victim okay, any charges. All the touchy-feely stuff."
"But she did notice the mechanism of the fracture," Cuddy said, slicing through the disgust in his tone.
"Yeah. She got that but then got lost halfway. Stopped at mechanism but didn't go on clear to species."
"The mechanism is medically relevant, Greg. We're mandated reporters."
"We aren't mandated to report on cats," he countered.
"Just saying it wasn't a completely invalid answer, even if it wasn't quite the one you wanted. Did Ramirez know it was a cat?"
He nodded. "She knew it wasn't human, at least. Took her a bit to work it out, and then she hesitated for a minute after she knew that much. She finally did ask if this was a person, but I could tell she was wondering if this was the answer I wanted." He shook his head. "I want any answer from them. Stop worrying if it's the right one. Even wrong ones help."
"So Hollingwood won that round."
"But she didn't read the species. Ramirez at least spoke up, even if she delayed. And Templeton had the answer before the other two; he just didn't trust what I was doing."
Cuddy was getting fascinated at this inside look at his thinking process on the selections. "Is there anything else they did this morning that was interesting?"
"Well, after the kitten, we analyzed Star Trek forums." She rolled her eyes. "It was medically relevant, Lisa. That's the problem with most of the world's doctors, too comfortable in their standard, med-school-supplied doc box. Ramirez spent last night going back to the forums where her friend had asked if anybody at the Star Trek convention last week got sick after coming home."
"But Kutner didn't wind up going there."
"Yes, she had noticed that. She just wondered if some other bug went instead of him. It wasn't a bad question, actually. Shows a little original thinking. Mostly routine bugs plus some suggestibility. She did diagnose one case of appendicitis and posted to send that one off to the ER. So much for what she did last night. But she didn't print off the full threads to bring in today, just gave me a summary. Once we got the whole text of all the replies, we went over those together."
"What did she miss?" Cuddy asked.
"Three STDs who didn't realize yet that was the problem."
"Of course, you enlightened those forum users after the differential was over."
"Yes." He gave an exasperated sigh. "I tried to sign up as Captain Kirk so I could post. Unfortunately, Kirks are taken as user names up through Kirk126."
"What user name did you wind up registering as?"
"The Man," he said. His eyes went distant, and she could tell he was no longer thinking of the forums but of something more personal.
Cuddy didn't push him. The pizza should be here pretty soon, and he was obviously tired. "Are you any closer to deciding on the candidates?"
His eyes snapped back to focus as he returned from his mental side trip. "I've got ideas forming here and there. This afternoon, when I'm not juggling Kutner, we're going to go through the email consult requests for the day, and I'll watch them chew on some actual patients. I printed those off earlier this morning, too."
The administrator in her couldn't leave that one totally alone. "You ranked x-rays on a kitten and Star Trek forums ahead of actual case consults that really were sent to you?"
"I did look through the requests myself first thing. Nobody is critical. Nobody that interesting, in fact. Jet was a better unique case study to test them, and as for Star Trek, I didn't know what was there in detail. Might have even been a poster who was ticking down the minutes and needed attention first. On basic triage, the email consults could wait."
It made sense in a way, but she still was glad she wasn't trying to explain those priorities to the board. At that moment, the intercom sounded. "Dr. Cuddy, your pizza is here."
"Thank you," she called. She released her husband's leg and stood up, heading for the door. He didn't get up to follow her this time. While eating lunch, they talked about their daughters.