Chapter 13 — Stranger in a Strange Land

"House, I really don't think that woman enjoyed your advice," I said as House finished with yet another patient, who was even more disgruntled than the last five he'd offended the living hell out of.

House slapped the file down on the desk before checking his watch. "God, we've been down here two hours. It's lunch time," House declared. "And if she doesn't want to run out of breath walking up the stairs, then maybe she should stop shoveling Big Macs down her throat."

"Well, I'd give you some speech about sensitivity and telling people that they're morons in a nice way, but I've learned from watching eight years of Wilson trying to do it that lecturing is generally lost on you."

We headed towards the hallway on the ground floor that led to the cafeteria. "Now, if only he would learn that," House grouched. "Speaking of the Oncologist Boy Wonder, he's probably in the cafeteria now."

"Well, thank goodness. Who knows what you would do if you didn't have Wilson there to steal food from." House snorted in response. Before he could say something else, I decided to bring up the shopping thing I had observed yesterday. "Um, hey, I was wondering...could we go shopping sometime tomorrow, maybe? The cupboards are kind of bare," I ventured, glancing at House.

"We would imply that it's not just my money that's being spent."

"I'd apologize again for freeloading, but last time you said something about me not grasping sarcasm," I replied dryly. "Seriously though. I don't even think there's anything in the apartment to eat for dinner."

"That's what takeout's for," House responded evasively.

I suppressed a sigh. I was going to have to bring up the reason I thought House did so little shopping. "Listen, House..." I nervously scratched at the back of my neck, trying to figured out how to phrase this right. "If you want, you can just give me a list, and I can go to the store so you don't have to..."

"Don't have to what?" he asked sharply.

"Well...your leg..." House didn't look at me as we continued our way down the hallway. I decided to just go about it in true House fashion. Blunt and straightforward. "Okay, screw this. House, I would imagine that it probably makes your leg hurt walking around, pushing a shopping cart for that long. Now that I'm here, there's no reason to give yourself the extra pain. If you don't trust me with the car, I can just take a bus and pick up whatever groceries you want—including real food—and then ride the bus back to the apartment."

There. I said it. I waited anxiously for House's reaction, knowing that there was really only one thing House was even close to sensitive about:his leg.

"You do realize you don't have a license in this universe, right?"

"I seriously doubt I would get pulled over. I drive like an old woman, and even if I did get pulled over, I'm pretty sure I could charm my way out," I said with a shrug.

House let out a long breath through his nose before addressing me again. "Fine, whatever. But if it's green, I'm not eating it," he warned.

And success!

Stepping into the cafeteria, we saw that as House had predicted, Wilson was in a booth in the corner, working his way through what appeared to be a tuna melt and a basket of fries.

House reached into his pocket and produced a few bills, shoving them into my hand. "Get some lunch," he told me before limping quickly over to Wilson and leaving me behind.

"Uh...okay," I stammered, even though House was already out of earshot. I hazarded a guess that House wanted a little alone time with Wilson before I came and sat down...most likely to talk about me.

I was tempted to eavesdrop, but I knew House would catch me at it, so I made my way to the line to stand behind a pink-clad nurse. As the line moved, I couldn't help my eyes wandering to House and Wilson's booth. House had predictably taken the other half of Wilson's sandwich and was talking through a full mouth, Wilson listening attentively.

I grabbed up a chicken finger basket and apple juice box and brought it to the cashier, who I noticed wiped her nose with her sleeve as she told me how much I owed. I was suddenly hit with a flashback of sorts that caused me to zone out for a moment.

"The lady back there, who made your egg-salad sandwich? Her eyes look glassy, did you notice that? Now hospital policy is to stay home if you're sick, but if you're making eight dollars an hour, then you kind of need the eight dollars an hour, right? The sign in the bathroom says that employees must wash after using the facilities, but I figure that somebody who wipes snot on a sleeve isn't hyper concerned about sanitary conditions."

Oh God. That was in the pilot, wasn't it? Right around this time...and the chick tallying up my order looked awfully familiar...

"Err, on second thought, take off the chicken and just give me a bag of pretzels." The woman gave me an annoyed glance before exchanging the hot food for the bag of munchies, and I handed her a few dollars and told her to keep the change.

I headed over to House and Wilson's booth and slid in next to House, feeling incredibly awkward. I felt like I had just gone in a room with a 'boys only' sign taped on the outside.

"Hi, Wilson," I greeted the oncologist.

"Hey. Going light today?" he said, gesturing at my small lunch.

I shrugged. "Cafeteria lady's sick. I really didn't feel like eating anything she prepared."

House narrowed his eyes at me. "How'd you know?"

I smirked at him. "In the original timeline you got into an argument with Foreman, and you used her as an example that implicit trust is foolish by pointing out the sickly cafeteria lady who came to work anyway," I informed him, tearing open my pretzel bag.

"Why didn't it happen in this timeline?" Wilson asked, thick eyebrows furrowed.

"Because I interfered and Rebecca got cured three or four days early," I told them as I began sipping my juice box.

"You screwed up a chance for me to lord my intelligence over Foreman?" House snorted. "Some guardian angel you are."

"What a tragic loss," Wilson said sardonically. "What will House do if you keep stealing his opportunities to be an asshole?"

I stared at him for a long moment, thoughts stalled out. Wilson just said asshole.

House waved his hand in front of my face. "What, you can swear like a sailor but Uncle Jimmy has to keep it clean?" House asked as he finished off his half of Wilson's sandwich.

"Sorry...just keep in mind, you guys generally had the eight or nine o'clock time slot on Fox, so your language had to be kept fairly clean. The worst I ever heard out of you mouth—" I indicated Wilson with a finger. "—was dick. I mean, you guys said ass and bastard all the time—" I looked pointedly at House. "—but you could never say asshole, shit, fuck, etc."

"Well, welcome to the FUCKING real world, kid. No censors. I can pants Wilson and prove that nothing's blurred out either, if you want," House joked.

Wilson rolled his eyes. I imagined my face probably turned a very interesting shade of crimson. "I'm never going to get used to this," I muttered, munching halfheartedly on the end of a pretzel.

"You're adjusting surprisingly well, considering," Wilson commented. "You're at least faking calm well."

"Heh. On the inside, I've been on the verge of hysterical fangirl tears and/or fainting for the past few days," I told them honestly. Although I was getting slightly used to being around House, a lot of times I found myself looking at him and just resisting the urge to let out a loud, high pitched scream and give him a hug.

My rational side had so far managed to stay in control. But I knew that could potentially end at any moment.

"I suck at trust falls," House warned me.

I laughed as I finished off my bag of pretzels, crumpling it up and tossing it into a nearby trashcan.

Wilson just shook his head. "Don't you have clinic duty to be doing?"

"My union mandated lunch break is only half over," House replied. "I'm milking every last minute before Mistress Cuddy hunts me down and drags me back to the Dungeon of Never Ending Boredom."

"I've got a department meeting in about ten minutes, so I've got to go," Wilson said, scooting out of his booth and tossing us a wave. "I'll see you guys later."

"Pizza and bad movies tonight?" House asked, a hint of a smirk forming on his face.

"Your place, I'm assuming?"

"I said pizza and bad movies, not pizza, bad movies, and your bitchy wife."

"Your place it is," Wilson acquiesced before heading off in the opposite direction and out of the cafeteria.

House poked at my foot with his cane, jerking his head toward the door Wilson had just gone through. "Move it," House said, and I quickly evacuated the booth and gave the diagnostician a wide enough birth so he could stand. "I'm going to go—"

"To Coma Guy's room and play your DS?" I finished for him.

He paused for a second before nodding. "It will at least take another hour or two of peace and quiet in the clinic before Cuddy realizes I'm not there."

"Okay. When are you leaving tonight?" I asked as we made our way to the door.

"Five."

"I'll meet you in the lobby around then. Do you care if I go explore?" House gave me a look that expressed how ridiculous the question was without words. "Right. Of course you don't." I gave House a small smile. "See you later."

He grunted something in response that could have been some form of goodbye, but I wasn't quite sure.

It wasn't that I didn't enjoy being around House, I did. But the perpetual state of nervousness I felt around him had set me on edge, along with the fact that I was fully aware of House's loner tendencies. If I could give him a break from my presence to make the change of suddenly being saddled with a teenager easier, I'd be happy to wander around for a few hours.

So, I was left with a whole host of ways to spend my day. It was a bit like being in a theme park for the first time. I knew all of the attractions, but I couldn't decide which one to go to first.

I decided to just explore. It looked like I would be spending a lot of time at PPTH (better there than House's apartment) so it seemed like a good idea to familiarize myself with the layout. I made my way down one of the adjacent corridors, swinging my head around, trying to recognize certain spots from the show.

The east side of the ground floor was as to be expected; lobby, switchboard, registration, gift shop, security, cafeteria, all of the administrative offices and lecture halls. To the west, the free clinic, the ER, and the first floor ICU. To the north was Princeton Plainsboro Surgical Care, the post-anesthesia care unit, the OR proper, and the Central Processing Department.

I hadn't realized just how absolutely massive the building was until now; I suppose it made sense. It was one of the leading teaching hospitals in the country, it had the money to be enormous.

I investigated the basement floor next, finding maintenance, environmental services, biomed, the medical library, employee gym, and of course, the morgue. I couldn't get into a lot of areas, only able to look through door windows and hope no one noticed—many doors were guarded by locks, keypads, or card swipes. I should've asked House for his hospital ID before I went wandering.

First floor was pathology, histology, phlebotomy, outpatient and inpatient physical therapy, and radiology. MRI, CT, X-Ray, Mammography, whole nine yards. To the west was the second floor ICU, and then there was a ward known as 2 North, with about thirty patient rooms.

Up to second floor. Oncology, cardiology, hyperbarics, and wound recovery covered one end, with the other end being another ward of patient rooms, a shitload of doctor's offices, and the resident's lounge.

Third floor held the GI lab, pain clinic, New Life Unit—a fancy way of saying maternity—and pediatrics, which I found mostly by accident. After turning a corner, I found myself staring at about thirteen children. The younger ones were laughing at a nurse who seemed to be doing an impromptu trick of pulling a quarter out of her ear and the others, closer to puberty or passed it, looked bored out of their minds.

I noticed a guitar sitting off to the side, and another nurse waiting with a concerned look on her face outside the nearby men's restroom. The woman doing the trick looked at me, and I lifted a hand.

"Hi," I greeted. "I didn't mean to interrupt, I'm just exploring."

"Welcome to pediatrics," she said, stepping away from the kids and offering me a hand. "I'm Brandy."

I shook it. "Anya. Is everything okay? The kids look kind of..."

"Restless?" I was going to say bored, but sure.

"Yeah," I replied.

The nurse, Brandy, sighed. "We have a local musician, Jon Reynolds...he comes in and plays guitar for them on Saturdays, but he must have eaten something that didn't agree with him." She winced as I now heard the sound of someone retching coming from the bathroom. "It's one of the highlights of their week. He plays for them for about an hour, but halfway through the first song..." she grimaced and motioned towards the bathroom.

"Playing guitar isn't really easy to do if you're projectile vomiting," I said, frowning at the woman and not sure what I was supposed to do. I brushed my hair out of my eyes, and the woman narrowed her own at me.

"Do you play, by any chance?" I didn't know if Brandy was just desperate enough to give the kids some kind of entertainment that she would ask a random teenager, or if there was just something about me that screamed that I knew how to play. The fact that I was low-key eye-sexing the sick musician's abandoned Martin may have been a bit of a giveaway.

"Well, yeah, but I've never really played in front of people before..." I told the pediatrics nurse honestly. The only people who ever heard me play or sing were my family, and that wasn't my choice, but a consequence of proximity. It's not that I was uncomfortable playing in front of people, I just had never really attempted it or felt the need to.

"Please, I don't want to disappoint them. Anything you can do is better than nothing," Brandy pleaded with me, and my arm seemed to move without my consent as I moved forward to grab the neck of the gorgeous acoustic.

"Alright, I'll try my best."

The woman smiled at me gratefully, and I walked slowly to the stool set in front of the small crowd of children. I saw kids from the age of four all the way up to kids probably only a year or two junior to myself. Some had no hair. Some were in wheelchairs. Some seemed perfectly fine, though I knew they weren't.

Human suffering. I'd never been a fan. This is why I wanted to be a doctor. I couldn't stop the tide of sickness and misery, but I could at least try to stem it. Make this crowd of sad kids a little bit smaller. But for now, all I could do was play them some songs. It seemed a pitiful offering, but it was the best I could give them. I settled down on the stool and smiled at the tiny crowd in front of me.

"Hey guys," I greeted. "Jon's not feeling too good, so I'm going to play you some stuff, I guess." Shit, do I even know any kind of child-appropriate songs? "So, err, here we go..." I picked the first tune I could think of that didn't have any swear words, and fell quickly into the opening melody.

The children were perfectly silent, the ideal audience. Polite but full attention.

"I stood alone, upon the platform in vain...the Puerto Ricans, they were playing me salsa in the rain, with open doors and manual locks...in fast food parking lots..."

I was more nervous about my guitar skills than my vocal skills. I had always found that my voice was a much easier tool to hone than the guitar. After all, you could sing at anytime, endless opportunities for practice. I couldn't exactly bring the guitar into the shower, now could I?

"I headed west, I was a man on the move. New York had lied to me, I needed the truth. Oh I need somebody, needed somebody to trust...and I don't gamble, but if I did I would bet on us."

It appeared that I still had the rapt attention of the Pedes unit, so I continued on, my confidence slowly growing with each note.

"Like the dead sea...you told me I was like the dead sea...you'll never sink when you are with me, oh Lord, like the dead sea..."

I realized that I was singing yet another song that hadn't even been written yet. Dead Sea was released in 2012...eight years from now. If anyone asked the name of the song, I would just have to deflect and say I didn't quite remember, because I certainly wasn't going to take credit for a song that I hadn't written myself.

I continued on, and the eyes of the audience were either focused on my face or my fingers, and I did my best not to disappoint their expectations, though I didn't know what said expectations were. I finished off the song with the final lines, and overall, I found I was satisfied with my performance. I smiled at the crowd nervously. I was surprised by the return of my smile along with several bouts of applause. Cool.

I looked at Brandy. She nodded, silently beseeching me to continue. She said that Jon typically played for an hour...could I even do that? Did I know enough songs? I guess it didn't really matter; I was about to find out.

So that's how I spent my day. I wiled away the afternoon playing whatever tune struck my fancy to the pediatrics kids, and they, ever the cordial audience, listened and seemed to enjoy themselves to some degree. The few genuine grins I saw left a feeling of warmth in my chest.

The sun was starting to head towards the horizon when I finally settled my hands on the neck of guitar, thoroughly out of songs, my arms and fingers aching from playing for so long. Brandy seemed to notice this, and patted me on the back with a pleased smile.

"How about we thank Anya for playing for us, guys?" Brandy asked, and all the children did the classic schoolroom echo of "Thank you, Anya."

"Uh, you're welcome," I said, smiling awkwardly. "You guys were fun to play for."

I gingerly handed the guitar I had been using to Brandy, for her to return to Jon later. Jon was now in the ICU, having been diagnosed with a severe gastrointestinal virus. I felt bad for the guy, he had to have two nurses help him out of Pediatrics, and he had been sweating up a storm.

"Thank you so much," Brandy told me in a quiet voice. "If you ever want to come back, let me know. The kids loved you. Do one of your parents work at the hospital?" she asked me, causing me to pause for a second before answering.

"Err...yeah. Yeah, my father works here." I had to suppress a wince.

"Great, remember—anytime," she told me once more before strolling away to herd the kids back to their rooms.