Chapter 19.

I briefly thought about telling Cuddy my plan to travel to Florida with Jess Giordano, but decided the less she knew, the better. Instead, I checked with the airlines and found that Jess and I could fly out from Newark the next morning, arriving in Orlando at around eleven A.M. The last-minute tickets were expensive, but what the hell, it was for a good cause.

I called Jess back to let her know what time to meet me at the airport. "I'll be there," she said. That was all. I stared at the phone after she closed the connection.

I had a few hours before I left for the day. The most important thing I could do with the time was to review all of the results we'd gotten so far. The complete genetic testing wasn't finished yet, of course. That took days. But I examined the blood analyses for Chris, his mother, and grandmother. I was interested to see that he had blood type A, whereas Ellie and Willa were both O.

I got up and went to the lab. "Do we have any results on the blood samples from Jess and Nina Giordano?" I asked the tech at the desk.

"I'll check." She typed something into her computer, then printed out a couple of sheets. Handing them to me, she asked. "Anything else?" She sounded a little impatient.

Well I was too. "How about Pat Cleary?" I asked, glancing quickly at the analyses of Chris' aunts' blood. For Ellie to be 'O', she had to inherit 'O' alleles from both her parents, so I expected Pat would be 'O', too, but he could be 'A' or 'B' with 'O' recessive.

She printed one more sheet, handed it to me, and I nodded, walking away.

I read the sheets and reread them. No one seemed to have the same blood type as Christopher. At least no one we'd tested so far. Both of his aunts were AB, and his maternal grandfather was O, as I expected. All the more reason to find Petey, and to test Petey and his father. If Chris got his A type blood from his father, who knew what other genetic traits he got from him.

As I walked back to my office, I saw Foreman sitting in the conference room, deep in thought. I just couldn't let him think too long like that, so I walked in and dropped my cane on the table, breaking the silence and his concentration. "Have you done your scans yet?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "There's a back-up in radiology. I won't be able to do them until this evening. But they'll get done."

"You still think it's Degenerative Central Nervous System Disease?"

"Seems likely to me," he replied.

"Says the neurologist."

"Just because I know a lot about the nervous system and brain doesn't mean I ignore the rest of the body," he protested.

"Yeah, OK. Just let me know what you find. I'll be leaving in the morning with Jessica Giordano, but I'll have my cell phone and a computer with me."

"Better you than me," he said.

"You can say that again!" I walked off, intending to visit Christopher and his mother one more time before I left, but I was waylaid by my boss. Someone had leaked word about my impending trip and she didn't seem too happy about it.

"What are you up to now, House?" she demanded.

"I need to find the baby's daddy," I replied.

"In Florida? How do you know he's there?"

The truth was I didn't. But Jess' reasoning that he was seemed logical to me, and anyway, besides Foreman, who wouldn't want a trip to Orlando? "I hope you don't think I'm going for my own enjoyment," I told her.

"I wouldn't put it past you," she said. "What about the baby? You were intent on treating him yourself up until now."

"I still am. But I think I can trust my team to handle things for a day or two and to keep me informed. That's why they invented cell phones. Now, if you don't mind, I want to take one last look at Christopher before I go home and pack." I started to walk away.

"House," she called after me. I turned to see what new order she had for me. "I hope you find him." I knew she was going to say something else, but changed her mind at the last minute.

I nodded, and continued on to my patient's room.

I wasn't too surprised to find Chase there. He was talking to Ellie and trying to get the baby to laugh by tickling him.

"Dr. House," Ellie said when she caught sight of me. "Dr. Chase has been telling me about some of the tests he and the others will be doing while you're gone."

I looked at Chase, who was smiling more than I'd seen him smile since before the Dibala incident. "I've told Ellie that we can release her and arrange for a place for her to stay while Christopher is here," he said.

"With you?" I asked, beginning to notice what the vibe between them might mean.

Ellie blushed.

"No, with Remy," he said.

"Just as bad an idea," I said.

Ellie was surprised. I'd never refrained from divulging anything private about my staff before, but this time I hesitated. I knew Chase was watching and waiting for me to say something more, but instead I offered an alternative. "The hospital sometimes has rooms available for parents of our more critically-ill children."

Chase nodded. "I'll go check whether there's anything available right now."

"Before you go, there's something you should know about the blood tests," I told him, and then explained the blood type differences.

He nodded. "If he inherited his blood type from his father, and it seems likely, there may be other traits they share."

"That's what I'm thinking. OK, go check on the room for Ellie," I said. "I'll be going home soon, but I'll keep my cell phone on."

"That'll be a first," he said with a smirk. "No, I take that back, what would surprise me is if you'll answer it."

"Just call if anything comes up. I'll answer."

"Will do."

I took one last look at Christopher. He seemed more alert than he'd been, but I attributed that to all the attention he was getting. My team was in and out to examine him, of course, but the nurses had also taken a shine to the baby and came up with all sorts of excuses to visit.

"We'll get to the bottom of this," I promised Ellie. "None of us will give up until we do."