Chapter 17
A/N: As always, thank you all for the feedback and love, you're the driving force behind this fic, and thank you to my beta Wolfpack pride for helping lower the suck factor of the story. Also, sorry for the delayed update! RL is a little nutty right now.
Disclaimer: Anya is mine, but the rest belong to David Shore and Katie Jacobs.
"Yes!" I jumped up and down as I slammed the phone down onto the receiver. "I am victorious!" I promptly began doing a happy dance, which was an odd pairing of the chicken dance and the electric slide. House eyed me like I was absolutely insane from where he sat on the living room couch.
"What are you so happy about?" he asked.
"I got the job at that adorable little coffee shop about a block from here, Ryan's," I explained, a grin plastered to my face. "I've got my first job. I feel so accomplished right now."
"You didn't find the cure to the common cold, you just turned in an application," House pointed out, taking a sip of his beer. I gave him a withering look as I settled down on the other side of the couch. Living with him for the past week and a half aside, I still didn't want to invade House's personal space.
"Thank you, I needed someone to send burning meteors towards my parade," I grouched, settling my legs on the coffee table. "I start next Monday, same day I start cyber school. I'll be working three to eight to start out, four days a week. If I do well, they'll take me on full time," I smiled broadly in spite of myself. "I've got a job!" I declared in a sing-song voice. House opened his mouth to say something, but I held up a hand to cut him off. "No. No more negative waves."
"Was that a Kelly's Heroes reference?" House asked, raising an eyebrow at me. I nodded. "I didn't peg you for the movie type, other than that stupid poetry movie you made me watch that alternate-universe Wilson was in."
"Okay, one, Dead Poets Society is not stupid. It's perfection. And two, there are lots of things you don't know about me, House." I said, crossing my legs underneath me as I pretended to stare at the TV, while I watched House out of the corner of my eye.
"Please. You're an open book. You don't have the ability to lie, so you're not afforded much room for secrecy." he snorted derisively.
"I believe it's been said that it's those that appear most honest that are often the exact opposite," I retorted, although I definitely didn't fit that saying. I was honest. If asked something directly, I almost always told the truth. That didn't mean that I wasn't a private person. I loved talking about somewhat shallow things, my hobbies and interests, or my friends and family, but I didn't discuss things from my past. I didn't discuss bad experiences. I pushed them to the back of my mind.
Of course, I really didn't want House to know that. He was stunningly uninterested in my life, a fact that I was perfectly okay with. If he thought that I had some evil, dirty secret or some other skeleton in my closet, he'd press me for details. I already had him hounding me for future information every five minutes;I didn't want to add to it.
House cast me a curious look, but to my great relief, he said nothing more.
On Friday, I managed to swindle House into letting me come to work with him. I mostly just bopped around the hospital, exploring and trying to memorize what wards were on what floor. It was enjoyable. Although the fangirl in me had settled down quite a bit as I adjusted to life in House's world, she wasn't dead yet. Every time I saw something I recognized from the show, or a particular moment played in my head because of my proximity, I had to suppress an embarrassing squeal.
I let House do his own thing throughout the day. House's patient Brandon was growing more critical by the minute, and I didn't want to distract him. We had eaten lunch together in the cafeteria, along with Wilson, but after that had gone our separate ways, much like last week.
I had seen Cuddy during my aimless wandering, and although she had glanced at me with a hint of disapproval, she hadn't stopped me, and to my knowledge she hadn't spoken to House. Hell, she may have looked at me like that just because I was related to House. In the early seasons, Cuddy seemed to have a distaste for House. And by distaste, I mean actually distaste, not unresolved sexual tension thinly disguised as distaste. Having watched the show from the beginning, I would have never expected them to end up together.
Around two thirty, I found my way to House's office, my legs tired and my mind numbed from hours without any human contact. Although pacing around the hospital was interesting, it did eventually wear on me. When I arrived, I saw that House and Wilson were sitting in House's office, so I guessed that House couldn't be incredibly busy at the moment if he had time to shoot the breeze with Wilson. Of course, that's never stopped him before, has it?
I pushed into House's office, catching the end of what Wilson had just said. "Beauty often seduces us on the road of truth."
"Oooh!" I exclaimed as I stopped beside House's recliner, which Wilson was currently occupying. "I remember this scene." Wilson raised an eyebrow at me, and House cast me an appraising look. "What? You've got some great quotes in this episode!" I pointed a finger at House. "Next you'll say, 'And triteness kicks us in the nads'".
"So true," Wilson commented, and House seemed apparently less-than-happy that I had taken the words out of his mouth. He turned his eyes away from me, focusing on Wilson as I leaned against the glass wall separating the differential room and House's office.
"And this doesn't bother you?" he asked, directing the question at Wilson. Although I remembered the more memorable lines of House and Wilson's current conversation, but I didn't remember what it was about, or where they were at in the episode at this point.
"That you were wrong? I'll try to work through the pain."
"I was not wrong. Everything I said was true. It fit. It was elegant," House said, leaning back in his office chair with a smirk playing on his lips.
"So..." Wilson trailed off.
"Reality was wrong," I finished for him.
"Reality is almost always wrong," House said, removing a bottle of vicodin from his pocket. As he unscrewed the cap, he glanced sideways at me. "You know what's going on, I take it?"
"Sort of. The cough medicine did something, right?" I asked. I remembered that distinctly from the season one episode, the cough medicine, that and the opening where Brandon fucked his girlfriend's brains out. However, I tried to block that part out. At the time I had watched the show, it had thoroughly disturbed and confused my nine-year-old mind. Okay, maybe I was a little too young for House during the first couple of seasons, but it didn't end up damaging my psyche too much... at least I didn't think that it did.
"Aggravated his condition, it's spreading. It must be in his blood," House answered, popping a handful of vicodin into his mouth, dry swallowing as usual.
"Lymphoma?" I questioned.
"I can't think of anything else it could be," Wilson responded. I remembered blearily that Brandon had originally been his patient in the clinic.
"Well, we foolishly ruled out lymphoma because his CT scan showed no adenophathy, CBC showed a normal diffen smear, bone marrow showed no-"
"Screw the tests, do an exploratory laporotomy and find out what's in there!" Wilson encouraged. I blinked, surprised by his response. I was forgetting that Wilson was a little more... I didn't really know the word for it, but Wilson was definitely different in season one in comparison with the other seasons. More reckless, definitely. Maybe it was just that he was younger, a little less worn down. He hadn't gone through his third divorce, his long stint living out of a hotel room, losing his girlfriend, and then subsequently watching his best friend destroy himself.
I wondered if Wilson would change as much if I managed to cut some of the tragedy out of his life. Obviously he and Julie were already doomed to fail, but the rest I could definitely try to interfere with. Especially the events at the end of season four.
"He's got no blood pressure, no immune system, and his kidney function is down the toilet. If we do surgery, he's dead," House argued, shoving his pill bottle back in his pocket.
"Yeah, you're right," Wilson said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Stick with the wrong pill theory." There was a long pause as House stared at Wilson, fingers drumming on the side of his cane. A moment later, he took his phone off of the receiver and dialed a number. A few seconds passed, and whomeverHouse called picked up.
"I want you and Foreman to run an exploratory laporotomy on the patient," he ordered, and I guessed that the person on the other end was Chase, if my memory was serving me properly. "Oh, really? I had no idea. He's going to die either way. If we don't take this chance now, hewon't have a chance." A brief pause. "Go. Do," House said with some finality, hanging up the phone. Wilson looked satisfied.
"Risk taking always has been your specialty," Wilson pointed out.
"That and crocheting," House muttered sarcastically. At that moment, his pager went off, and House rolled his eyes. "Wonderful. I'm off to see the wizard." He glanced up at me. "I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that you want to tag along?"
After I realized he was referring to the clinic, I replied. "I wouldn't mind," I admitted sheepishly.
"I think you might actually be House's polar opposite. Christian. Kind. Truthful. You love clinic duty," Wilson mused. "I don't know how you two are surviving living together."
"It's been an interesting experience so far," I said slowly, looking sideways at House, who was rising from his chair, handing going immediately to his thigh. "We haven't killed each other yet, so that's something, right?"
"'Yet' being the relevant part of that sentence," he emphasized, moving towards the door. "Come on, assistant. The mouth-breathers are waiting for us." I bade Wilson goodbye with a wave as I tailed House out of the office. A few minutes later, we found ourselves in the clinic.
"There's a patient waiting for you in exam room two," Nurse Brenda provided, and House groaned.
"Wonderful. Come on," he jerked his head towards exam room two. I followed behind dutifully, grabbing a spare clipboard I saw on the nursing station's counter, so I looked a little more official. I was surprised that no one questioned my presence, but I supposed that most of the nurses and doctors in the hospital had learned just to leave House to his own devices.
We headed into the exam room, and a nervous looking young man sat on the exam table, fiddling with the corner of his shirt. "How're you doing?" House asked, settling himself down on his usual stool, taking his Gameboy SP out of his pocket. I peered over his shoulder. Metroid Fusion. Good game.
"Okay," the patient answered carefully.
"Great. I'm doing good, too. I get to knock off an hour early today. Know why? Because I kissed my boss' ass. You ever do that? I think she just said yes because she wants to reinforce that behavior. Wants me to kiss a lot of other people's asses, like she wants me to kiss yours. What would you want, a doctor who holds your hand while you die, or a doctor who ignores you while you get better? I guess it would particularly suck to have a doctor who ignores you while you die," he rambled, eyes fixed on his game. I remembered the quote at the end, one of the more memorable House sayings, but I still didn't remember the clinic patient.
"I should go," the man said quickly, making a move to get up. House waved him down.
"You think it's going to come out on its own? Are we talking bigger than a breadbasket? Because actually, it will come out on its own, which for small stuff is no problem. Gets wrapped up in a nice soft package and plop! Big stuff, you're going to rip something, which speaking medically, is when the fun stops," House advised, and the man's eyes widened in horror. Mine did too, but for completely different reasons.
Oh, no, God! Oh, dear God in heaven! It's the MP3-player-up-his-ass-guy, isn't it? A recurring theme in House seemed to be the fact that people tended to shove things in their orifices that most certainly did not belong there. The most notable being a zucchini, a D-cell battery, the cat, firetruck, and policeman stuck up a child's nose, and of course... the MP3 player.
"How did you...?" the man trailed off in shock.
"You've been here half an hour and haven't sat down, that tells me its location. You haven't told me what it is, that tells me it's humiliating. You have a little birdie carved on your arm, that tells me you have a high tolerance for humiliation, so I figure it's not hemorrhoids," he paused for a moment, finally looking up at the bewildered young man. "I've been a doctor for twenty years, you're not going to surprise me."
"Oh, I wouldn't count on that," I said quietly, and House shot an exasperated glance at me.
"Who is she?" he asked nervously.
"My assistant. Now, come on. What's vacationing down south?" House asked, his patience draining.
"It's... it's an MP3 player," he whispered, lowering his head as his cheeks flushed red. I cleared my throat awkwardly as House stared at him.
"Is it… is it because of the size? Or the shape? Or the pounding bass line?" House asked, and I face-palmed. The man quite obviously didn't address the question, but he did respond.
"What are we going to do?" he asked worriedly. That's interesting. He used 'we'. I don't recall House or myself shoving an MP3 player where the sun didn't shine. House glanced down at his watch.
"I'm going to wait."
"For what?" the patient asked. I sighed, the entire conversation finally coming back to me.
"He's going to wait," I glanced at the clock on the wall. Two fifty-five. "until three o'clock, and then he's going to leave you to his boss, in what I suppose is some juvenile form of punishment."
House continued playing his game, seemingly unfazed. "Don't worry. You'd rather have her than me anyway," he looked up at the patient and waggled his eyebrows. "Supple hands. Like a baby's bottom."
I gagged.
The next five minutes passed by as House pointedly ignored the patient, who was nervously glancing at the clock every fifteen seconds, and I pondered on how to go about asking the guy why he would shove the MP3 player up his ass. I finally decided just to take the House approach, just as the clock hit two fifty-nine.
"Okay. I have to know. Why?" I asked, directing the question at the young man. He looked at me for a long moment before sighing.
"It was a dare," he said. "My buddies and I got kind of drunk last night, and we played truth or dare... and..." he motioned to his hind-end. "I don't even remember half of what happened."
"Oh. Alright. Well, that's a significantly less disturbing explanation than I thought I was going to receive," I admitted.
"It's also probably a lie," House said, standing up and grabbing his cane from where it leaned against the nearby counter. "Regardless, we're out of here. Have fun with Dr. Cuddy. Give her my best." He gave the patient an exaggerated wink before departing the room, and I followed close behind, shooting a sympathetic look to the guy before the door closed.
"You know, something just occurred to me," I told House as he made his way back to the nursing station.
"Okay, it's three o'clock, I'm off. Tell Dr. Cuddy there's a patient in exam room two that needs her attention," he instructed Brenda, handing her the patient's file he had taken earlier. "And the RIAA wants her to check for illegal downloads," he cracked, smirking at his own joke. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "And what, pray tell, occurred to you?"
"Why does Cuddy make you do clinic duty? All you do is piss people off, and you could be accomplishing a lot more doing pretty much anything else. I get that she's short handed, but with the amount of law suits, bad PR, and human resources disasters you manage to create in here, it would make more sense to keep you as far away from the clinic as humanly possible," I reasoned. Why had I never thought of this before? I supposed I never put much thought into it. On the show, House's clinic duty was kind of the comic relief - but now that I was living, I realized how asinine it was that Cuddy had him down here.
House scoffed in response. "Hell if I know. I've been telling her the same thing for years. I think she forces me down here just to remind me that she can," he said, grabbing a red lollipop from the jar on the counter, promptly popping it in his mouth. I opened my mouth to say something, but was cut off by the arrival of an out-of-breath Cameron.
"Brandon's not ready for surgery," she said without preamble.
"Okay, well, let's leave it a couple of weeks. He should be feeling better by then. Oh wait, which way does time go?" House retorted sharply.
"He crashed during prep. He's also experiencing pain in his fingers. I think some bug may have gotten in the clean room. I think we should double his dosage of GCSF to temporarily boost his blood cell count," she suggested, worry creasing her thin brow. GCSF... what does that stand for again? I was drawing a blank.
"Pain in the fingers. Right," House sighed, withdrawing the lollipop from his mouth, which had been reduced to a nub, and tossing it in a nearby trashcan. "Great. Here comes the fun part."
"Fun part?" Cameron and I questioned simultaneously.
"Oh yeah," he grunted, moving past the two of us and in the direction of the OR. "Now I get to tell his mommy and daddy that their precious little boy is doing drugs."