Chapter 37 – Three Times for the Holy Ghost

"Done."

I pushed out House's computer chair, folding my hands behind my head and throwing my feet up on his desk. I wore a satisfied smile, and felt a kind of lightness in my chest. Something that felt an awful lot like relief.

House looked up at me, having hunkered down in his Eames chair with his DS. "Done with what?"

I grinned. "School."

With the final words typed of my senior project essays, and the entire document promptly emailed off to my 'instructional supervisor' (who in all reality did very little supervising), my high school career had finally, mercifully given up the ghost. True, I wouldn't be an official graduate until June, but I was done with any actual work.

I mean, I was signing up for med school, which was infinitely more work than high school could ever possibly hope to be, but I'd been assured up and down by every human being with a college degree I had come in contact with that yes, college was, in fact, a thousand times better than high school. Worth being tens of thousands of dollars in debt? Debatable. But definitely better than high school.

"Congratulations," House said in a monotone. "Would you like a stuffed bear?"

"That, or you could buy me dinner tonight. Either or."

House snorted and went back to his game. "Graduate med school, and then we'll talk."

I closed my eyes. "Always so hard to get your approval. You're lucky my ego isn't fragile."

"No, from what I've seen so far, it's rock solid. They call me arrogant, but I've got nothing on you. You literally think you're God. I only think that in a metaphorical sense. Seriously. You're an inspiration to egoists everywhere."

"Shut up, House," I said serenely. "You're harshing my mellow. And I don't think I'm God."

"Funny how you keep trying to control everything that happens according to your whims, then..."

"Can we not have a philosophical debate right now, please? I only have four days between now and my interview with Princeton. I want to enjoy my ninety-six hours of not having to care about school to the absolute fullest."

"Hmm. Might be hard, without your favorite eye-candy running around."

I opened one eye. "Come again?"

"Chase originally put in for six weeks of leave in June. Wanted to go to Gstaad. And yet, today, he comes to me, all dewy-eyed, and asks to take his six weeks now... and he wants to go to the land down under."

I sat up straight. "He's going home." To be with his father. While the end of the sentence was unspoken, I knew that House had heard it loud and clear. "You gave him the time off, right?"

"I'd rather him be off in Oz downing Victoria Bitters with his dying daddy than back here moping around and possibly killing my patients. Really cuts into my profit margin." House's statement would have been funny, if Chase's grief over his father hadn't actually killed someone in canon.

"Wow. He's basically going to be gone until summer." It was hard to imagine not seeing Chase for that long. Back in my own world, I'd 'seen' him on a daily basis, and now, I rarely went more than a few days without talking to him. Six whole weeks... damn. I was going to miss him, but I knew he needed this time with his father. It would give both of them a chance to heal, hopefully... and say goodbye before the inevitable end.

"Maybe he'll write you," House mused. "Ever seen The Notebook?"

I glared at him. "Don't make it weird."

"You're the one who's crushing on the Wombat."

"I am not crushing on Chase," I insisted. "Having a crush on a character in a TV show and having a crush on them in real life are wildly different things."

"No, they're not," House chimed in a sing-song voice.

"House, I had a crush on pretty much every character on this show at one point or another. Now that I'm actually here, actually dating any of you is the absolute last thing on my mind." I rose from the chair, stretching my stiff limbs. I'd been working at finishing up my senior project all day. "I'm going home, and I'm going to take a long, hot bath, and then I'm going to binge-watch Buffy and make sure to accomplish absolutely nothing with the rest of my afternoon. Peace out."

And so I left House alone with his game, and tried hard not to think about the fact that I probably wouldn't see Chase again for a month and a half.

"So..."

"Go on," I told Zach as I restocked our supply of coffee filters. "I know you've been dying to ask."

"Who was Mr. Australian Male Model?" Zach asked, leaning back against the counter. The two of us were pulling another closing shift with Carol. I couldn't tell if Carol purposely had the schedule set so we inevitably ended up working with her, or if we were just the only two people willing to stay this late on a daily basis.

"He works with my dad. His name's Chase. He's a friend," I explained succinctly. "He's going through some stuff right now. I'm trying to help."

"Stuff?"

I looked up at Zach. "Dying parent. Depressing stuff."

Zach turned away from me. "Yeah, I know how that shit goes."

That caught my interest. Morbid interest, granted, but interest all the same. "Oh?"

"Dad split when I was a kid. Mom died a few years back. Wasn't exactly a fun time."

Yikes. I'd been working with Zach for pushing six months, and he'd never mentioned anything about being more or less an orphan. Then again, to be fair, I knew almost nothing about Zach, save for his age. He wasn't exactly the most open person I'd ever met.

To be fair, neither was I, if we were looking at things objectively. It's not like I could talk about ninety percent of my old life. Or, you know, the whole "from another universe" thing. That didn't tend to sit well with people.

If I went around being open with people, I'd likely end up in Mayfield instead of House. Hello, irony.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I told him honestly. "I didn't realize."

He shrugged, slipping past me to go take an order. "It's in the past."

People say that like it's so simple, like it's a cure-all. But in the past is barely even a Band-Aid. I know that from experience.

I busied myself with a vanilla iced coffee that some woman had just ordered, probably our last order of the night, when the bell rang to signify someone else entering. Zach cleared his throat, catching my attention.

"Hey, Anya. Your male model is back."

I glanced up, and yes indeed, there was Chase. We made eye contact, and he gave me a weak little smile. He made his way up to the counter. I saw a taxi waiting on the curb outside.

"You're not drunk this time," I said, smooth as ever. I smiled back, though, if that counts for anything.

"Clear and sober."

I handed off the iced coffee to Zach, not sure what to say to Chase. "So... uh. I hear you're going back to Australia with your dad."

Chase nodded. "Yeah. I think it would be good for me. And him. Hopefully." He seemed equally unsure of what to say at the moment. "I couldn't find you at the hospital earlier, figured I should say goodbye before I head out."

That warmed my heart a bit. Honestly, I'd looked for him earlier before I left the hospital, but I couldn't find him anywhere. With Gabe on the mend, Cameron had been doing clinic duty, and Foreman and Chase were nowhere to be found. I could only assume that Chase had been searching for me after I'd left PPTH.

"I hope you find what you're looking for over there, Chase. I wish you and your father the best," I said seriously.

Chase nodded, mouth pursing into a straight line. He extended his hand to me, and I grabbed it. He gave my hand a brief shake. "Thank you."

This was kind of awkward and unexpected, but to be fair, those two elements seemed to be the primary features of my friendship with Chase. I released his hand. "I'll see you when you get back."

Chase headed for the door, but I called after him, stopping him just short of leaving.

"And Chase? Send me a postcard."

He looked over his shoulder and flashed a grin at me. "Will do."

The next couple of days passed by far too fast, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye, I'd reached the morning of my interview.

I had, of course, been in the midst of a seemingly constant anxiety episode the night before, and had scraped together perhaps forty-five minutes of sleep. I was a wreck of nerves, and had managed to spill not one, not two, but three bowls of cereal so far, too twitchy and overwhelmed by subtle terror to even accomplish the most basic of tasks. I worried my shower would end with me slipping, cracking my head on House's handicap bar, and thus slipping into a coma and missing my interview entirely.

It was six-thirty in the morning, and House wasn't awake, so it was just me, Bowl of Cereal Number Three, and my more-troubling-by-the-minute thoughts.

I can't fuck this up.

I'm going to fuck this up.

I can't fuck this up.

I couldn't go into this thing a stammering, nervous wreck, or I'd be sure to be rejected for both admission and the scholarship. Doctors had to be cool under pressure, which meant I had to be cool under pressure. Which typically, I was. I mean, I'd handled getting thrown into my favorite TV show pretty well, right? No mental breakdowns, no straight jackets and padded rooms. I'd even managed to avoid a few horrible eventualities.

I ate my cereal and continued to give myself an increasingly annoying pep-talk. Shower was next on the list, and thank you God, I did not in fact fall and crack my skull open.

I went through five outfits before deciding on a short-sleeve white blouse and black sweater vest, which I typically wore to church, complimented by dark jeans and sensible flats. Eyes can deceive, smiles can lie, but the shoes always tell the truth. It had been one of House's stranger pieces of wisdom, but one I had followed dutifully since the moment I'd heard it.

Okay. Seven. The university was about fifteen minutes away, I wanted to be there early... why not leave now?

I went for the door, but hesitated.

I'm scared. I don't want to do this alone. Not all of it.

It would be stupid to wake House up, and I knew he would probably just tell me to fuck off and let him go back to sleep, anyway, but... well, it would at least be good for me to talk to him before I left, even if it was just for a second. Hopefully he would say something to level me out, if only a little.

I went to House's door and knocked. Waited. No response. I knocked again. When I was once more met with silence, I decided to just push in. I opened the door and poked my head through. I was surprised to see House wasn't in his bed. Weird. I knew he'd come home last night... had he left so early I'd missed him? What could possibly get House out of bed that early?

I was about to close the door when something caught my eye. A few somethings, actually.

Truth be told, I'd never actually been in House's room. Had I seen it from the living room? Yes. But I'd never stepped foot inside, being far too concerned with violating House's inner sanctum. But in for a penny, in for a pound... I went inside and made a beeline for his desk, which was where the items that had caught my eye sat.

His desk was covered in books. Nonfiction, and not even remotely medicine-related.

I sifted through the titles. Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos... Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics... In Search of the Multiverse...

I stared at the texts. Every single one of them had to with alternate or parallel universes, the theories behind them, and how they may or may not be connected to our own world.

Most of them were heavily dog-eared, with colored sticky notes visible within. They all looked weathered and heavily read, and there was a pile of a few spiral notebooks to the side, pages heavy with ink and edges worn with use. I picked one up, curiosity getting the best of me. I flipped open to a random page, recognizing House's messy scrawl immediately.

String theory smoothes out the mathematical inconsistencies that currently exist between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, posits that the entire universe can be explained in ST terms — 10 or 11 dimensions? — dimensions we can't see. If it exists, could explain literally everything in the universe — from subatomic particles to the laws of speed and gravity. Within string theory, strings aren't the only entities. Allows membrane like objects, 2D surfaces. We may be living on one of those gigantic surfaces, and there can be other surfaces floating out there in space. Breach between the two?

I couldn't make much sense of most of the notes I glanced at, the quantum physics and relativity mumbo-jumbo going pretty clear over my head, but the overall idea was clear: House was trying to figure out how the hell I had gone from my universe to his, and how my universe existed at all.

And by the look of it, he'd been digging into the matter for a long time.

In all reality, probably since the day I'd climbed out of the university fountain and into his life.

I didn't know why I hadn't expected this. With House's insatiable curiosity and the natural skeptic within him, it only made logical sense that he would be digging as deep as he could into the mind-boggling scientific inconsistency that was my presence in the House MD universe. And, unlike me, he wasn't willing to accept "because God willed it" as a valid explanation.

I knew there was more to it than that, but I'd long ago reconciled with the fact that I would never truly know how I'd gotten here. House, evidently, wasn't so content to leave the mystery be.

I wondered if I should talk to him about it. Maybe he'd found something? Maybe he could give me a rundown of how a trans-dimensional portal might have opened up in my swimming pool? Then again, if House had found anything worth sharing, he most likely would have, if only to poke holes in my more Christian version of events.

If he finds anything, he'll tell me.

I set the notebook back down, trying to clear my head. I had more important things to worry about, right now. It looked like I was going in solo to my interview, since House was nowhere to be found. I knew that I'd have to face the admissions officer alone, but it would have been nice to have someone to sit with while I waited.

A knock came on the apartment door. Surprised, I exited House's room and made my way over. I squinted my eye, peering through the peephole, and saw Wilson standing there with two cups of coffee in hand.

"Anya? Can you let me in?"

I smiled and opened the door. "Auntie Wilson. Always so supportive of me." I pointed to the coffee. "I don't suppose...?"

"Six cream, six sugar, hazelnut," he replied dutifully, handing over one of the coffee cups. "I figured I'd give you a ride over, seeing as how you're down a car."

House was gone, and had taken the car with him. Suspicious, but once again, something I would have to deal with later.

"Do you know where House is?"

"Not a clue." He nodded towards the apartment complex's front entrance. "Want to get going?"

I took a deep sip of my coffee, hoping it would wake me up instead of just make me horribly jittery. "No time like the present."

I followed Wilson to his car, and before long, we were on the road. All of my effort went into trying to stay calm, but my leg bounced up and down relentlessly, and by the time we hit our first red light, I'd nearly bitten my tongue in half.

"You'll be alright," Wilson promised. "It's scary, I know. But once you get in there, you'll realize you didn't need to worry about anything. This isn't an interrogation. They just want you to talk about yourself."

"It'd be easier if I had been the one to write my admissions essay. And it would be easier if 'myself' wasn't pretty much just an elaborate cover story," I replied shakily. "I feel like I'm gonna throw up."

"Let me know if I need to pull over. I just got the interior reupholstered."

I glared at him. "Thanks."

Wilson smiled at me. "I puked twice before I talked to my AO. My father had to give me a sedative. He thought I'd have a panic attack in the waiting room."

That, admittedly, made me feel a little better.

Much too quickly, we were pulling into the visitor parking lot at the university, and I was choking down a few mints from Wilson's glove box so I didn't have coffee breath.

"Ready?" he asked, looking at me.

I took a deep breath. "As I'll ever be."