House learned some important things from her journal, things like how she hadn't slept well her first night on the road and had gotten up twice to soak in the bath. The next day she'd purchased an electric heating pad and later reported that it had helped. She alluded to the benefit of driving alone being that she could keep the AC on low and no one was there to complain. She talked about missing her water bed.

All of these things and the many more nuggets that may or may not have been directly related were reported to the team, who agreed that it spoke of a pre-existing condition she had developed coping mechanisms for without even realizing it. They talked at length about what had been responsible for the severity of symptoms they'd witnessed through the night, and speculated that the seizures she'd experienced while in their care may have played a part. They talked at length about many things. But not with him.

House had sequestered himself in his office, quickly shooing Thirteen away after making his report, ordering her to tell the others. He still had reading to do.

It was awhile before he came up for air. He'd found nothing to tell his team that wouldn't have been redundant, but he'd learned a great many more important things for his trouble. Things about her, certainly, things that troubled him and captivated him. But also things about himself, as she would address a passage directly to Mark and he would think of Wilson and Amber and have to work to push the hurt away. Her words were inadvertently uncovering in him a fragility and a guilt that he'd been confronted with after the accident but hadn't had the vocabulary to express or the interest in analyzing. He still lacked the interest, if only to protect himself, but now he had the words.

The last two pages humbled him and scared him. He was familiar with the format, as many times in her journal she'd profiled people she met. But to see HIMSELF laid bare in her neat cursive was almost too much. And yet she wrote with such...it was more than kindness. Was "grace" the word?

He had long closed the journal but was still lost in thought when he received a text.

*Read any good books lately?*

How do you respond to someone after you've seen them for who they really are? And who has seen you in the same way? But it occurred to him that to do what she had done, to give him this journal, must have felt like such a great personal risk to her. He vowed in that moment not to make light of her trust.

*Just finished one. Surprise ending.*

There was a long pause in which he imagined her trying to craft just the right response. He was surprised when all that came back to him was two words:

*Hot tub.*

In a flash he was on the phone with Foreman, who explained that at 10 o'clock they were going to get her settled in the sleep lab so they could monitor her sleep cycle in a temperature-controlled environment and see if they could keep her stable based on what they'd learned in their testing. It was 7:45 now, and they'd released her into the care of an orderly who would accompany her to the physiotherapy wing and keep watch while she soaked in the hot tub. It had been at her request, one they granted readily because it was probably the safest place for her to be.

House arrived there before Kelly did and found that someone had already laid out towels and prepared the water, which was reading 97 and change, her normal body temperature. He didn't sit but paced.

Not thinking. Just pacing.

It was only a few minutes later that Kelly, dressed in casual street clothes and looking tired and a little stiff, entered the room under her own power, a female orderly in tow. "Dr. House," she greeted demurely, purposely revealing nothing.

He nodded and addressed the orderly in no uncertain terms. "You can go."

"But I was told to -"

"If you're about to tell me that you're more qualified to care for this patient then a department head at this hospital, then maybe I need to have a talk with YOUR department head."

She'd sat under a few such onslaughts from him, and as this was by far the tamest the middle age orderly was less intimidated than annoyed. "Fine then, DOCTOR." She slapped the thermometer she'd been given into his hand. "I guess you know how to use this. I was supposed to have her to the sleep lab by 10." She huffed out of the room without another look at either of them.

And then they were alone.

She was quick to break the silence. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

"Liar." He was sure that a thought so absurd to him would be equally as absurd to her.

"No, really."

She wasn't looking at him. She walked towards the edge of the hot tub and set down the bag she was carrying, kicking off her sandals. He followed, leaning heavily on his cane. Watching her intently. Seeing her with new eyes.

Still without a look in his direction she pulled her shirt over her head, revealing the top of the bathing suit he had packed for her the night before. It was two piece, cropped to leave most of her stomach exposed. Her pants came off just as quickly, and she slipped into the water before acknowledging him again. "You coming in?" she asked hopefully without really thinking.

He hesitated. "I can't."

She didn't press him, knowing that her suggestion had been ridiculous. Obviously a male doctor wasn't about to lounge around in a hospital hot tub with a female patient for no good reason. It helped that she could so easily sense his desire to do the opposite of what he knew was necessary. And she was pleased when, without any verbal suggestion from her, he took it as far as he could by removing his shoes and socks and rolling up his pant legs, choosing a spot less than a foot away from her to sit with his feet and calves dangling in the water.

"How are you feeling?" he asked finally.

"Truthfully? Like I've had something stuck up my rear for most of the day."

That was exactly the right thing for her to say. The tension between them dissolved, and she told him about her day.

He was still quiet, as though there were things he wanted to ask and say about what he had read but he wasn't quite ready or able to yet. That was fine with her; she wasn't ready to have that discussion. Instead, she made the most of this time by trying to draw something out of HIM. "Would you tell me about your leg?" she asked during a lull.

He tensed internally but shrugged as though indifferent, which he most definitely was not. "It's kind of a long story."

"It seems you owe me a long story or two. You know lots about me, but I barely know anything about you."

Ducking his head, his reply had a distinctly sheepish tone. "I'd say you know me pretty well."

He was speaking of her journal, she recognized. It was not lost on her that just the night before he'd insisted the opposite. "Well," she began carefully, not wanting to embarrass him. "I'd like to know you better."

The game began again. And under her probing questions he held little back in spite of himself, about his leg, about Stacy. It was so very hard for him to just speak truth without covering how he felt about that truth with sarcasm or by hurting someone. And yet when he tried to lighten the story with his usual wit, she didn't call him on it but it sounded inauthentic to his own ears. So eventually he gave up. It made him a rather poor storyteller in comparison but she didn't seem to care.

Her questions were thorough, and just when he thought he had nothing left to reveal, she asked him, "Does it still hurt?"

"Yes," he answered immediately.

She turned so she could see his face, though he wouldn't look back at her. "I wasn't talking about your leg."

"Neither was I."

He fell silent, and she respected that. He was so far away in his thoughts that it took the beep of the thermometer to rouse him; at least one of them had remembered to monitor her temperature.

"97.8," she announced when she saw his mind had rejoined her. "That means I get to stay. AND that means I get to learn more about you."

She stuck to safe topics this time: What was he like growing up? Why did he become a doctor? What was his home like? Why did Dr. Cuddy yell at him so much?

And he felt safer. He was able to respond in his usual voice - ironic, cutting, deprecating and self-deprecating - with his listener just as attentive and engaged as before. And she laughed a lot; real, delighted laughter. It was that more than anything that drove a thought that had been tumbling around in his head to the surface with an abrupt awkwardness that would have made him blush if he'd been inclined to do so.

"So, are we, like, friends now or something?" No, he didn't blush, but he did certainly feel like a world-class tool.

She couldn't help but be a little teasing in her tone, as she was just as shocked as he was to hear something like that come out of his mouth. "'You had me at "vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry"', Greg House. Didn't you notice?"

His grin was embarrassed, but it was still a grin. "That's disappointing. I thought 'I had you at "hello"'; I'm losing my touch."

"I'm pretty sure you didn't SAY hello. And you CERTAINLY didn't have me at 'rectal parasites'." She stood and used her arms to pull herself up out of the water until she was seated next to him, not quite touching. She watched his eyes and was flattered but not threatened to see him take her all in. She'd worked hard over the years to stay in shape, but it had been a long time since she'd noticed someone ELSE noticing. "It seems like I might be here for awhile. If you're offering friendship, I'm taking it."

Sensing that this was delving too far into the sentimental for him to be even remotely comfortable, she waited for his nod and then got to her feet. "I'm going to grab a quick shower. Want to come make sure I don't have a seizure or catch fire or something?" She held out her hand to help him up, and after a moment he took it. Once he was upright she handed him his cane and he walked with her, carrying her backpack over his shoulder as she toweled off.

"Greg?" She assumed they'd just graduated to a first-name basis.

"Hmm?"

"Who's Wilson? I heard Dr. Foreman and Dr. Kutner talking about him today. Talking about the two of you. But I didn't understand."

House sighed. "That's a VERY long story."

"And not a happy one, I gather."

No response.

"A story for later, then?" She took his free hand in her own and gave it a quick squeeze, looking at him expectantly.

He squeezed back. "Later."