Kelly had done a lot of nodding while Kutner had done a lot of explaining. When it seemed he was winding down, she thanked him and asked if she could have a few minutes to make a phone call. He stepped into the hall where House and Foreman were making arrangements with the floor nurse to have Kelly moved.

House excused himself when the phone in his pocket began to vibrate. "House."

"I really prefer our hot tub parties to all this high tech mumbo jumbo, don't you?"

He smiled in spite of himself. "We'd end up permanently pruned."

"You didn't answer my question."

And he wouldn't. "Are you okay?"

"I figured that if they were keeping a mean bastard like you around it must be because you're a brilliant doctor. So I was just hoping you would come back with a diagnosis and a cure."

"You in a hurry to get away from me?"

"Considering your team is going to be all over me until they figure this out, from what I've gleaned I'm guessing it's unlikely I'll be seeing much of you," she answered knowingly.

"Well," he started, but then found himself at a loss for words. The truth was that in any other case she would be right, but why he knew she was now wrong wasn't something he was prepared to give voice to.

"Dr. House, it's okay." She sounded sincere, and that irked him. "I appreciate all that your team is doing to figure out what's wrong with me. I'll go along with whatever you think is best."

He sighed, not quite loud enough for her to hear. "I WILL see you later."

And he did. He was there where she was taken to another floor into a small, clear-walled quarantine room that could be strictly climate controlled. At this point there was little they could do but try to draw the most accurate picture possible of the symptoms in the hopes it would point to the cause. Their plan for today was to run a variety of tests involving altering the room temperature to see just how much her surroundings were affecting her condition. From these results they would try to devise a way to keep her stable (and so prevent any further damage to her organs), buying them time to follow their plan to map the functions of her hypothalamus. If they were unable to stabilize her, if her condition was that severe, they might have no choice but to operate. And brain surgery was something they hoped to avoid until they knew the reason they were doing it.

House couldn't help himself, and made sure he was the one who gave her the news about how her core temperature would be monitored. He was sure to call her "ma'am" just as icing on the cake.

And so she spent the next many hours laying on her side or her stomach, usually alone and being monitored from the outside; no one else was able to handle the heat. They explained a lot as things went on, talking about the importance of the hypothalamus and thermal equilibrium and the significance of her skin temperature and more.

It wasn't that she didn't have the intelligence to understand, but she simply didn't care all that much. It was information that was meant to be used to solve a puzzle that as a person educated in the social sciences rather than the medical sciences she couldn't possibly have all the pieces for, and she had learned a long time ago to leave the details to the professionals and focus on the people. So that's what she did.

From inside the enclosure she could see them always and hear them sometimes; when their interactions weren't too private or likely to scare her they left the microphone on so she wouldn't feel lonely. And so she watched them work, watched them interact, and purposely and purposefully interacted with them to see what they were like. They were always there in pairs; she'd heard them say that the other two were off making contacts with the places she had stopped and stayed during her trip. They'd switch off every few hours for a change of scenery.

Kelly didn't have that luxury. When she wasn't watching or interacting she dozed. She read. She wrote in her journal, which she'd asked to have returned to her. And she counted how many times House had managed to find an excuse to be there. She heard him ask what she perceived to be lame questions and to give redundant instructions. And though she couldn't know for sure that he was there just for her, it made her feel warm inside.

Of course, that could just have been the ridiculous heat she was being exposed to. As she explained to the team when asked, she felt very aware of the room temperature and could feel her own temperature rising and falling even though her body would neither sweat or shiver in response. And so she was very uncomfortable for most of the afternoon and into the early evening as the testing continued.

House entered the room only once, late-afternoon during a period of cold testing. It was the first time she'd seen him in a lab coat, and imagined correctly that he was only wearing it to keep warm.

"Ma'am," he began. His back was to the others, so he had the luxury of answering her rolling eyes with an small but wicked grin. "My team has been working on a timeline of your trip here, looking at the weather for the places you were passing through." He went on to explain that while they couldn't imagine a condition like this had just appeared in the last day, they also couldn't imagine that she had made it all this way without incident. They were looking for clues about how she would have coped with her body's responses to climate changes as she travelled across the country.

"I could try to tell you, but frankly it was a long trip and everything just kind of blends together." She put her hand on her journal. "It would all be in here, though. Didn't you...?" She stopped when he shook his head. "But -"

"I just skimmed through and pulled out the whats and the wheres. I didn't..." He paused and put his hand over the microphone, lowering his voice to a rarely used tone and lowering his eyes to cover his discomfort in using it. "It seemed very personal. I... I didn't want to invade your privacy if I didn't have to."

Kelly sighed and rewarded him with a smile. In actual fact she was relieved; all day she'd been looking at him as someone who'd rifled through her secret thoughts and was treating her based on his reactions to that. And so when he seemed extra friendly and teased her, she'd felt affirmed and validated, and when she'd perceived him clamming up she felt judged. "I appreciate that. A lot. Thank you." And after a moment, she handed him the journal and smiled again when he was unable to completely hide his look of surprise. She carried on matter-of-factly for the benefit of the microphone and to cover her own sudden bashfulness. "If there's anything else you need to know, I may be able to fill in some blanks. But I think you'll find this very detailed."

"Baffled" was the only way she could think to describe him in that moment as he opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. As though he wasn't used to having people trust him with things that really mattered beyond life and death, which she realized sadly was probably true. As though it MEANT something to him that he was having trouble defining, let alone dealing with. And it was for that reason that she didn't grab the journal back when she remembered that not long before he'd entered the room she'd put some thoughts to paper about HIM.

Instead she grabbed the sleeve of his lab coat and gave it a tug. She spoke two words to dismiss him, words so quiet he barely heard but that she sensed he had no trouble understanding.

"Bye, Greg."

What flickered in his eyes for the split second before he'd instinctively closed himself off was enough to convince her that she'd made the right decision: he'd recognized the sentiment of saying a proper goodbye to someone she was starting to care about, and it had meant something to him. And despite the cold she felt warm again.