Monday morning found House at the hospital first thing, much to everyone's surprise. He thoroughly enjoyed the look of surprise on their faces when he strolled through the halls with his coffee at 7 a.m. Sidney had dropped him off after spending the entire weekend at Marius' house and he was feeling rested and ready to get started breaking in the new assistant. He dropped his backpack in his office, went in to put on the coffee pot in the conference room, knowing that the others would all be there early too, then retreated to his office.
The weekend had been a bit uneasy, learning that Lucius and Gaius had decided to merge the clans into one and that Gaius would now be the senior master. Both had assured him that this would change little and Marius had seemed pleased with the idea to make a larger clan, so he'd decided not to stress about it too much and talk to Nolan instead. It would add more people to the clan when all the households were together but he was trying to see that as a good thing. He like Gaius' household and he wanted to meet Marius' other household anyway. Come to think of it, he wondered why he hadn't met them already. They must have been notified about the accident. Had they come and gone while he was at work? He pulled out his phone and texted Sidney, since he was from the other household originally. A few minutes later his phone buzzed with the answer.
Yes, I called them myself. They have called him on the phone and video chatted on Skype but have not been here. Lucius spoke with Alexei and they agreed that too many people in the house wouldn't be good for Marius at first, or for you, since you hadn't met any of them yet. They thought you should meet under less stressful circumstances.
House sent a quick thanks, a bit disgruntled over the answer but he couldn't fault their logic. It would have been too much for Marius at first and definitely for him, though he would have liked to have been asked. Then again, Lucius didn't have to ask him anything. They'd all signed on for him to make big decisions for them. It didn't make it any easier sometimes but he decided not to get in a snit about it. It was old news now and he did agree with the decision.
The conference room lights went on as Chase and Foreman entered together, Foreman carrying the morning bagels. Foreman went directly for the coffee pot as Chase poked his head in the office.
"Morning. Thanks for the coffee."
"Welcome. Ready to break in our new assistant?" House asked as he stood up and followed Chase into the conference room.
"Definitely ready to pass off mail and email duty," Chase grinned, going to get a cup of coffee now that Foreman was seated. "Need another?" he asked, holding up the pot.
"Oh yeah," House agreed, holding out his cup for a refill.
"So are we going to give Celeste an orientation, go for sink or swim, or just jump right to trial by fire?" Foreman asked with a smirk as he fixed a bagel.
"Somewhere in the middle of orientation and sink or swim," House shrugged, grabbing a bagel. "I'm feeling magnanimous today."
Celeste came into the conference room just a few minutes before eight and smiled to see them all sitting there waiting for her.
"Good morning," she said, smiling at catching all of them chewing. "Perfect timing, I see."
House chuckled and finished his mouthful. "Well done. Coffee's already on, have a seat and grab a bagel."
Once Celeste was settled, House pushed a folder over to her. "This is all paperwork that needs to be filled out and dropped off to HR before 2 pm today. You can work on it later. This is the list of tasks we need done daily, weekly, and monthly."
She took the list and read it over. "As far as priority goes, which of these tasks are most important? And am I safe in assuming that your tasks take priority over the other doctors?" she asked House.
"Depends. If it's something for one of our cases, no matter who asks for it, that's priority. Otherwise work related, yes, mine first, that's why my name's painted on the office door, sorry ducklings. Then Chase and Foreman, then Hadley and Taub. Cuddy is last, don't let her convince you otherwise, although we'd like you to keep up with our billing enough to keep her off our backs."
"Of course," she smiled, making careful note of the order he grouped the other doctors. "Who should I direct questions about how to do things?"
"Chase, Dr Wilson's assistant if it's something about billing, then me. If none of us are here, Foreman, Thirteen and Taub can probably help you out too."
"Thirteen?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, looking over at Dr Hadley.
"It's a nickname he gave me that stuck," she answered with a shrug.
Chase sat down at the desk with Celeste, showed her how to get into the emails, what they did with the mail and how they had set up the screening.
"All requests for referral and consults for House come to the team first. If there's something we think he will take, we'll give it a go at convincing him. That's not an easy task, although it's been just a teeny bit better in the last few months. Mail distribution is around 10 a.m. from the previous days mail, you can give any outgoing mail to them as well. All the coffee and condiment supplies are in the cupboard under the sink, vending machines are left out the door in the alcove just past the elevators. If you need one of us, you can send a text to our phones. Here's the list of numbers," he added, handing her an index card. "If you're ever looking for House, check Wilson's office, the doctor's lounge, and the oncology lounge in that order."
"Dr Cuddy starts around the 25th of the month looking for billing. None of us are very good at that," he said with an apologetic shrug. "She knows we're behind by three months right now and she'll give you at least a month to try to catch us up. If you feel like she's pushing too much, too fast, let one of us know and we'll try to help or at least talk to her. If we can't get any relief from that, we'll let House know what's going on and he'll take her to task for it."
"Isn't Dr Cuddy the Dean of Medicine? How can he take her to task?" Celeste asked, confused by that.
"Long standing tradition between House and Cuddy. She tries to push him to do his work and add on more, he rebels against it and pushes back. They actually enjoy the give and take so don't feel bad about it," Chase grinned.
Over the next couple of days, Celeste found several practical joke papers mixed in amongst the mail and billing, that sent her asking questions to Wilson's assistant and Wilson himself only to be told that it was a joke. She took them in good humored stride, none were outright mean or set up to humiliate her and she had to admit that she liked seeing the mischief in the doctors' eyes when they knew she'd come across one. Wednesday morning started out with House arriving late, as Marius had come to the hospital to have an x-ray for his broken leg and then to have the cast removed as it showed that he had healed up quite well. House came into the office at noon and announced that Marius was just in a brace now and ready for some serious physical therapy to build up his leg strength again.
Only an hour later, diagnostics got a case referral from emergency and Celeste got to see her first differential take place. The patient was a ten year old child and despite a thirty-six hour marathon on the part of the entire department, they were unable to save his life. When Celeste arrived in the office on Friday morning, Wilson was there to greet her.
"Dr Wilson. Did they solve the case?" she asked, seeing the books put away, the white board erased, and no one else in the room.
" No, they weren't able to save him," Wilson answered sadly. "I wanted to be here when you came in to let you know what happened and to tell you it's unlikely you'll see any of them today, so call me if you need anything."
"Yes, I will. Thank you," she said and sat down at her desk staring around the room for a few moments, just trying to process everything. Finally she made some coffee and settled into the familiar rhythm of mail and email processing.
Much to her surprise, both Chase and House came around two in the afternoon. Neither said a word to her, though both nodded a greeting, grabbed a cup of coffee and went into House's office. She could only hear occasional words through the open office door, but picked up enough to realize that they were going through the autopsy report. After an hour, Chase announced he was going to the clinic for a couple of hours, leaving House sitting in his office, bouncing his ball off the wall and catching it. After fifteen minutes of this, Celeste stood up and came to the door.
"I'm going to grab something from the vending machine. Can I get you something?" she asked.
House looked at her and nodded, pulling out several ones from his wallet. "Coke and a crunch bar."
She came back with her juice and almonds, laying his snack on his desk along with the chain.
"Did you find the answer?" she asked after a moment.
"Too damned late to help, but yes. Autopsy confirmed it. Not that there was ever more than a slim chance to save him anyway but…" he shrugged, not finishing the thought, all of his body language broadcasting defeat.
Celeste was about to say she was sorry about that but some instinct told her that was the wrong thing to say. "Can I get you anything else right now?" she asked instead.
He pursed his lips and looked up. "Got another case in the consult or referral requests? Best cure for a loss is a win."
"I'll bring them in for you," she replied with a smile.
House went through the requests although most of them he rejected and tossed aside. He kept six and brought the rest back to the conference room with a post it note for the team for them to send back suggestions.
"Once the team has had a chance to make suggestions, send them back along with our standard rejection letter. Should be right in the documents file," he said then headed back to the folders he'd kept. He was still going over them and writing emails back to the doctors handling the cases when Chase arrived back in the conference room. He grabbed a cup of coffee and dragged the pile of folders over to start flipping through them and making notes on them.
At five o'clock, Celeste was ready to go home but unsure about whether to leave them here alone or not. She decided to stay a little longer and called a local pizzeria to send up a pie and an antipasto for the three of them. Neither noticed her still quietly working on the billing until the food arrived. Fresh, hot pizza got their attention, she noticed with a smirk as she paid the tab and went to get plates and napkins from their supplies.
"Wow, what's the occasion?" House asked emerging from his office still wearing his reading glasses.
"I'm hungry and thought you guys might be too," she said, sitting down at the table.
"Chase, go get us some coke," House ordered as he took a seat and grabbed a plate.
"Right. Be right back," Chase said, shaking his head and heading for the vending machines. He was back with three cans in a jiffy and soon all three of them were smiling and chatting over their meal. Wilson stopped in on his way home.
"Hey. Didn't think you'd be in today," he said.
"Just me and Chase. We're on the hunt for another case right now," House answered around a big bite of pizza. Before Wilson could say anything else, House's phone rang.
"Hey. Yeah, probably be a couple more hours. We're looking for another case. Me, Chase, and Celeste. No, we've got pizza and antipasto here, we're good. Okay. See you tomorrow morning. Bye."
"Marius?" Chase asked as he grabbed another slice.
"Yeah, checking up on me. Want a piece, Wilson?" House asked seeing as he was still standing there.
"Sure," he said, taking off his tie and sitting down with them. They spent another hour lingering in each other's company, Wilson making some suggestions on the team consult files, and Celeste felt much better about heading home now.
"Well, I'll see you all on Monday morning then. Have a good weekend," she said, grabbing her things. The three men waved goodbye and she was gone. Wilson left next, wanting to get home to Sam.
"You alright?" Chase asked House after a long minute of silence.
"Mostly. You?"
"Mostly. This helped," he said, gesturing at the folders and the remains of the meal.
"Yeah it did. She's a good fit. Didn't say 'I'm sorry' when she found out what happened or any other useless platitudes. Didn't look outraged when I wanted to find the next case."
"She is a good fit. I don't know why you decided to finally hire an assistant, but I am glad you did and we got her. You want to go for a beer?" Chase asked.
House looked over at him thoughtfully. "Okay, sure."
They cleaned up the trash and got the lights, heading down the elevator together, deciding to head to the favorite watering hole but found too many other doctors there from PPTH and didn't want to deal with questions tonight.
"Come over to my house, I've got beer," House offered.
"You sure? We could try someplace else. Maybe even Marius' pub?" Chase countered.
"Yeah, my sofa is calling my name. Come on."
Twenty minutes later, he let Chase into his apartment and grabbed his collar. "Go grab a beer, I'm going to get some sweats on." He started down the hall then stuck his head back out in the living room. "I've got clean extras if you want."
Chase stared at him, unsure although he clearly wanted to accept.
"I'll put a set in the bathroom for you," House said, making the decision for him. Likely it would mean Chase spending the night at his place and surprisingly, he was alright with that.
Ten minutes later, both were in sweats and a t-shirt, beer in hand, and a cheesy action movie on TV that they enjoyed mocking but before the movie was over both were fading fast toward sleep.
"I should go home," Chase muttered, scrubbing his face with his hand to try to wake up.
"No, you shouldn't. Seriously, you're half asleep now. The bedding for the sofa is in the hall closet. Make yourself at home. I'll get the coffee maker set up for morning, and there's still waffles for breakfast in the freezer."
"Sounds good," Chase agreed after a moment. He didn't really want to leave anyway. He was tired, lightly buzzed, warm on the sofa, and sure didn't want to face his dark and lonely apartment.
"Night, Chase."
"Night."