Chapter 29 – How High the Moon

A/N: Could it be? Yes, yes it is! A timely update! MIRACLES DO COME TRUE! Thanks for the warm welcome back, folks. I love you all. xoxo

"Ow. Ow!"

"Quit twitching. Do you want me to break your other finger, too?"

"It hurts," I whined.

I sat cross-legged on House's desk while the diagnostician splinted my middle finger. We'd been playing a new game House had devised – exam table tennis – and I'd unfortunately gotten just a little bit too aggressive during our last match. I'd dived for the tiny ping pong ball, makeshift paddle (a plastic spoon from the cafeteria) gripped tight in hand, and had ended up not only bashing my face off of the floor, but also getting what House determined to be a hairline fracture on the middle finger of my left hand.

Great. No guitar for me for a few weeks.

"Want a vicodin?" House offered amicably as he finished the splint. He unceremoniously pushed the medical supplies off of his desk and into the trashcan beside it.

I glared at him.

"It's not poison," he said, slipping his bottle out of his pocket. "Look." He emptied a pill out onto the desk, broke it into thirds, and then broke each third in half. He offered me one sixth of the pill, sitting it in a little halo of white dust in the center of his lined palm. "It's good for what ails you."

I didn't stop glaring. In a dead tone, I said, "I'd sooner swallow hot knives."

He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes at me. "You think a sixth of a pain killer is going to turn you into me?"

"That's not what I'm worried about." Rationally speaking, there was nothing inherently wrong with vicodin. It was intended to help people in pain, and it wasn't like taking one would suddenly turn me into an addict... but I had way too many negative associations with the pill to even contemplate taken one, throbbing finger or not. "I'll stick with ibuprofen, thanks."

House just shrugged. He scooped up the remainder of the diced up pill and tossed it into his mouth, dry swallowing. He didn't take his eyes off of me as he did it.

"You should make one of those scare films for the kids," House commented. "Vicodin Madness instead of Reefer Madness. Better hide the axes from me."

Before I had the chance to retort, someone knocked on the door to House's office, a boing-boing-boing knuckles meeting glass.

"What?" House called, tapping his cane on the floor and switching his attention from me to the door that led from the differential room into his office. Foreman entered. He looked somewhere between anxious and sheepish. I rotated slightly in my seat to get a better look at him.

"Dr. House," Foreman greeted with a respectful nod of his head. His eyes briefly flicked to me. "Is it alright if I talk to you in private?"

"Anything you can say in front of me, you can say in front of my precious bundle of joy," House remarked mordantly.

Foreman didn't seem pleased, but he continued with, "I wanted to talk to you about earlier."

"I should probably warn you ahead of time that he doesn't care much for apologies," I told him, absent-mindedly fussing with my splint and trying to ignore the hot drumbeat of pain in the tip of my finger.

"What the midget said. You can go," House tacked on.

"I didn't know you were standing there when I said that," Foreman said, seemingly genuinely contrite. "It was completely rude."

I had to cover my mouth with my good hand to stop myself from laughing. God, throwback Foreman was hilarious. He was actually worried about being rude to House.

House stared at Foreman for a few moments, then leaned forward, interest sparking in his eyes. "Did you mean genuine humility, with all of the self-doubt and the self-questioning, or Hamilton's polite, patronizing, aw-shucks humility?"

"You're both excellent doctors," Foreman said, a complete non-answer.

"That wasn't what he asked," I chimed.

"Dr. Hamilton's humility is genuine humility," Foreman argued.

"See, now that's where you're wrong," House said. "Hamilton plays the nice guy. He's polite, he's perfect, he whitens his teeth at the same time every Tuesday and he makes you think that he really cares, and that he's just so humble, so honored to be in the position of holding someone's life in his hands... but he's not. He does it for the six figure paycheck, the country club membership, the 401k. He's going through the motions."

House pushed himself out of his chair. He limped towards Foreman. House only had a few inches on Foreman, but from where I sat, House seemed to practically tower over the neurologist.

"Humility is an important quality... if you have a tendency to be wrong, which I don't."

Foreman's shoulders straightened, and he looked House dead in the eye. "You've been wrong every step of the way."

Silence. One of those smirks that could barely be defined as such touched House's lips. House stared Foreman down. Foreman dropped his gaze, seeming to deflate.

Give it a few years, Foreman, I thought, watching the face-off with interest. Unfortunately, House and Foreman's beeping pagers cut through the tension in the room. House withdrew his, glancing at the screen.

"We gotta go," he said. Foreman nodded, checking his own before making for the door.

"I'm guessing me coming along is out of the question?" I called after House. He rushed after Foreman without granting me a response. "Right. Okay. I'll just stay here, then."

Pilot

Paternity

Occam's Razor

Maternity

Damned If You Do

The Socratic Method

Fidelity

Poison

DNR

Histories

Detox

Sports Medicine

Cursed

Control

Mob Rules

Heavy

Role Model

Babies and Bathwater

Kids

Love Hurts

Three Stories

Honeymoon

I stared at the white board, tapping the dry-erase marker against my bottom lip. I was fairly sure I'd gotten all of the episodes in the right sequence, though I may have put Cursed and Sports Medicine out of order...either way, it felt good to create some kind of order to the chaos in my head. I had a timeline in front of me of what was coming, and if I started making plans now, maybe I could make the correct changes.

Poison, avoided, as far as I could tell.

Histories, much the same.

I didn't think any of the other Patients of the Week died over the course of season one, but I wasn't sure. My main problem, as I saw it presently, was the Vogler arc. Mainly, how to alter it, or if it needed to be altered at all. Granted, everything turned out fine in the end, but the ride to the inevitable semi-happy ending was not pleasant for anyone.

Well, I better make up my mind... and fast, too.

"What's all this?"

Fuck. I whirled around. Chase was standing in the doorway of the differential room, eyes scanning over the episode list on the white board. I flipped it over to the other side as swiftly as I could without seeming sketchy as all hell. Pretty sure I failed on that account, if the suspicion that crept into Chase's expression was any indication.

"Nothing," I covered fabulously. "Just uh..." I couldn't think of any explanation to save my life. "Long story. Thing for school. Where's House?"

"He told me to meet him here," Chase said slowly. "Apparently John Henry's arm is healed...and his legs, too."

"That's...weird. But good. Fantastic." I slipped my hand behind the board and casually tried to rub away most of what I'd written. "Must've been something House put him on. Guess it isn't ALS!" My voice had ratcheted up so many octaves it sounded like I'd sucked in helium.

"I suppose not," Chase said. He pointed at me. "You're hiding something."

"Me? Ha. No, no. Nothing to hide here. You know me. Open book." I let out another nervous laugh. I was slowly learning the art of lying and the art of being around Chase without making an idiot of myself, but I definitely hadn't yet mastered the ability to do both at the same time.

Luckily, my hero came to my rescue before I sank deeper in my own quick mud.

"This is the way medicine evolved," House said as he burst into the differential room, Cameron trailing along dutifully in his wake. "Patients sometimes get better. You have no idea why, but unless you give a reason, they won't pay you." He snaked a folder off of the differential table, a list of the medications he had John Henry on. "Anybody notice if there's a full moon?"

"You're saying he just spontaneously got better?" Cameron asked.

"No, I'm saying let's rule out the lunar god and go from there," House replied, pushing into his office.

"Something he's on is working," Chase stated, losing focus on me and instead following after House and Cameron. I breathed an audible sigh of relief when the door drifted shut. I wiped off the remainder of the whiteboard.

I have to be more careful.

After an eight hour shift at Ryan's that left me dragging and exhausted, I caught a taxi back to PPTH. Only a faint remainder of the sun was left in the sky, outlining the hills in violent reddish-orange hues. My feet beat the familiar path to the diagnostic offices. The differential room stood empty. It looked like the ducklings had already gone home for the night.

The light was still on in House's office.

I opened the door, poking my head through. House sat at his desk, reclined fully in his office chair. His legs were crossed on his desk, his cane leaning against his knee. He tossed his overlarge tennis ball in the air, caught it. He repeated the process several times, not acknowledging my presence.

"Hey," I eventually said. "How's John Henry?"

House caught the ball, and instead of chucking it again, he held onto it. His gaze was still fixed on the ceiling.

"Intradural arteriovenous malformation. It was compressing his spine, hiding behind its own swelling. He's in surgery now. Everything goes well, he'll be walking in no time." He tossed the ball from hand to hand. "But you already knew that."

"Yeah. But that doesn't mean I'm not happy to hear it." I wandered over to the chair in front of House's desk. I sat down.

"How's the ibuprofen treating you?"

"Fine, thanks."

House just snorted.

"Did you talk to Foreman?" I asked.

House nodded. "Oh yeah. Big heart to heart. We both cried and hugged it out. You know, we're getting matching tattoos on our thighs next Thursday."

I rewarded the joke with a little smile. "I've got a question."

"Are you going to ask it?" He threw the ball at me. I leaned, managing to just barely snatch it out of the air with my good hand.

"When you talked to Foreman...were you just telling him what he wanted to hear? Or did you mean that stuff?" The conversation between House and Foreman towards the end of DNR was possibly one of my favorite season one scenes.

"That's the difference between him and me. He thinks you do your job, and what will be, will be. I think that what I do and what you do matters. He sleeps better at night. He shouldn't."

House had seemed downright passionate... the closest I'd ever seen him to idealizing his profession. He made it sound like more than a puzzle. He made it sound important to him on more than an intellectual level.

"I think that what I do and what you do matters."

"House?" He'd been quiet for so long that I was half-sure he hadn't even heard me.

"I didn't tell him what he wanted to hear," House eventually replied. "I told him what he needed to hear."

"You get a kick out of being cryptic, don't you?" I turned the ball in my hand. "I never understood it. Why you go so far out of your way to act like you don't care."

"I don't care," House emphasized. "At least, not in the way I'm expected to. You've got two kind of doctors. You've got your Marty Hamiltons, the doctors who are so good at pretending to care that you can almost believe that, wow, they really are that genuine. They find out your kids' names, they call to check up on you, they pat you on the back and tell you everything is gonna be alright."

"That's not you."

"No, it's not. Then you've got your second type of doctors. They clock-in, they do their jobs, they clock-out. Cases blend together, their secretaries keep their appointments. They do what they were taught to do in med school, and sometimes they even do it well, but they don't even pretend to have a bedside manner. They're bored. They're short. You get through the exam room door, they take one look at you, scribble down a prescription, and send you on your merry way."

The ball stilled in my hand. "But that's not you, either."

House inhaled deeply. "And therein lies the problem. In diagnostics, you can't be either. I can't be, and my team can't be."

"And what if your team...can't, can't be?"

"Then they don't belong on my staff," House said bluntly.

I watched him intently. "What kind of doctor are you, House?"

A flicker of a smirk passed over his lips. "The cryptic kind." He picked his cane up from the bottom and used the handle to scoop the ball out of my hands. He rolled it down the cane's length and into his weighting palm. He placed it back on his desk. "Let's go home. Desperate Housewives is on tonight."

"You don't wanna see John Henry?" I asked.

House rose from his seat. "You see, if I did, that would make me the first kind of doctor." He limped out of the room, throwing his book bag over his shoulder along the way. I caught up with him as he left the diagnostic offices, my footsteps matching his.

"When is John Henry gonna be discharged?"

"A week or so."

I grinned.

"You know something," House accused.

With a practical skip in my step, I said, "I always know something."

There's a special quality about the sound of a well-played trumpet. It hits something human, deep in your chest, the urge to move, to do something. Good music can drive you, and solid brass pumps the momentum up like no other.

I sighed happily as I walked through the McCormick Wing three days after John Henry's spinal surgery, the crisp clear shout of a trumpet reverberating throughout the halls. This half of the second floor ICU was more or less deserted, being the hospital's more private ICU. I doubted the other tenants would've complained anyway. It lifted the grave atmosphere that sometimes permeated the hospital in its quiet moments.

I stopped at John Henry's room. I watched him through the glass, his cheeks puffed out and his eyes closed in evident bliss as he blew into his horn. Trying not to feel creepy, I stood there and watched him for a few moments.

I've always liked live music; nothing's better than seeing someone playing an instrument and loving it.

A few minutes passed like that. When he stopped, he lowered his trumpet, and took a deep, satisfied breath. The hard lines of his face softened, making him look years younger.

He looks like House does after he solves a case.

Parallels, parallels.

John Henry's eyes flicked to the door. I gave him an awkward little wave, feeling like I'd been caught. He didn't seem surprised to see me. He beckoned me in with his now-functional arm. Hesitantly, I slid open the door to his room. I took a few steps in, closing it behind me.

"Hi Mr. Giles," I greeted. "Sorry, I couldn't help myself."

"Ain't nothing wrong with listening," he told me.

"What you were just playing...that was Take Five, right?"

He seemed pleased by my knowledge. "Don't expect most kids your age to know it," he admitted. "You got a favorite jazz tune?"

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. "And pretty please, kid, don't say one of mine."

Good thing he stopped me, because I was just about to name one of his tracks. I won't even pretend I'm not a suck-up. "How High the Moon?" I tried instead.

He grinned at me and raised his trumpet. And then, he played.

I visited John Henry every day after that, until the following Saturday when he was discharged from the hospital, deemed healthy enough to continue his recovery at home. I'd grown fond of John Henry over the course of his stay at PPTH. Hell, I was even a little sad to see him go.

I'd just finished a shift at work. I idled at the curb outside the hospital's main entrance, not parked, just waiting for House to come out. Hopefully he wouldn't take too long, or I'd be forced into one of the parking garages.

When the diagnostician emerged from the hospital's entrance, he was walking (or rather, limping) side by side with John Henry, their canes hitting the ground in time with one another.

I smiled to myself. House had a trumpet case held in his free hand.

Have I mentioned yet that I really like DNR?

"Good luck, Doc," John Henry said. He extended his hand to House. House leaned his cane against the side of the car and grasped his hand, to my surprise. "You hold onto your things, now."

"Thought you said I only had one," House replied, dropping his hand after a brief shake.

John Henry's attention flicked to me, shooting me what felt like a conspiring smile, a secret passed between the two of us, and he said, "Well, maybe two...if you play your cards right."

House showed no reaction, other than perhaps a slight narrowing of his eyes that I might very well have imagined. John Henry tipped his hat to House and I, and without another word, he limped away, his cane tap-tapping against the pavement.

Well. I wasn't sure what to make of that.

"Get out."

I looked up at House. "Why?"

"I'm driving."

I suppressed an eye roll. House never let me drive when we were in the car together. I'd called him a control freak a few times, but I knew he wasn't going to budge on the matter.

We switched seats, and House pulled away from the curb. His old beater trundled down the snow-laden street, and the heater wheezed. I stared out the window, occasionally stealing a sideways glance at House. He barely seemed to be paying attention to the road, blue eyes far-off and distracted.

"You're thinking. What're you thinking about?" I asked.

For a long moment, House said nothing. I wasn't really expecting a response, but he eventually just shook his head and muttered, "And you say I'm cryptic."