Chapter 38 – You've Got Spirit, Kid

A/N: My knowledge in regards to med-school, pre-med, college, college admissions, and college interviews is shallow and provided almost exclusively by the Almighty Internets (and some anecdotes here and there). So, this is just a disclaimer to let you all know that I don't know what I'm talking about. But I tried. Feel free to call me out on any BS.

Also: In regards to the end of this chapter, all is not as it seems.

Thanks as always for the support and feedback, guys. It means the world to me.

"Anya, I need that hand."

"Oh. Sorry."

I'd been clutching Wilson's right hand in my left, nearly snapping most of his fingers over the past twenty minutes I'd been waiting for my name to be called. I had never been so anxious in my entire life. And being me, a person particularly prone to anxiety, that was quite the statement.

I hadn't thrown up yet, though. So that was a bonus.

"Deep breaths," Wilson murmured, trying to keep his voice down. We weren't the only ones in the waiting room. Four other candidates for the Smitty scholarship were scattered around. I sized up the others, hoping it would calm me. After all, while all of us might be accepted into Princeton, the scholarship would only go to one of us, and the guaranteed seat in Princeton med once we'd finished our pre-med curriculum that came with it.

Yes, I'd done my research.

Two WASP-y looking type guys with polo shirts and designer khakis that probably cost more than I made in a week. Douchebag trust fund babies, I quickly assessed. While they probably had enough extracurricular to put me in the ground, I probably had them on passion.

Next up: tall blond guy, glasses, plain white dress shirt and a blazer. He was on his phone, tapping away. I couldn't get a read on him.

Last up was a girl who looked about as terrified as I felt, with mousy brown hair and eyes that seemed a bit too big for her face. While I was shaking in my boots, I was at least not showing it outwardly. AO's can smell fear – at least, according to House – and she would get eaten alive in there.

Huh. Sizing up my competition actually made me feel better.

"Langdon Alcott?" the clerk at the admissions desk called out. One of the WASPs rose, a cocky smile on his face. He was led into the AO's office. And so it began. I was likely next, if they were going in alphabetical order. Pity my last name wasn't Zolanski, or something.

"Wilson," I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Say something encouraging."

"You'll do fine," he soothed. "You want this more than anyone here. You know that."

As always, Wilson told me exactly what I wanted to hear. He was really good at that.

All too quickly, Alcott departed the office (looking much less cocky than when he went in, might I add) and my name was called next: "Anya Carhart!"

I went through a veritable litany of prayers in my head. Like a robot, I rose to my feet.

"Good luck!" Wilson said, smiling up at me.

God knows I'm going to need it.

Gathering up every ounce of courage I had, I headed for the waiting clerk. The ten feet between me and her seemed wider across than the English Channel. Once at her side, I gave her a smile that I hoped said, "I'm ready for the next thirty minutes that will ultimately decide my future!"

She opened the door and guided me in to meet the AO I would be speaking to.

I nearly fainted when I saw who was sitting at the desk.

"T–" I choked his name off halfway through; I couldn't lose my cool now. I had to pretend I didn't know him, and I hoped he hadn't read the obvious recognition in my eyes.

"Hello, there!" My voice may have ratcheted up a few dozen octaves.

My AO rose from his desk, then came around the side and extended his hand to me, along with a cordial smile. "Hi, Anya. I'm Dr. Taub."

Yes. Yes, you fucking are.

Numbly, I shook his hand. "It's nice to meet you." As if I don't already know you.

Seriously, what the hell? Also, Taub with a full head of hair: way too weird.

My mind struggled to process the fact that I had run into Chris Taub over three years earlier than expected. And how had he ended up working at Princeton as an admissions officer when he was a career plastic surgeon? However, as the clerk left us and we seated ourselves on either side of his desk, the pieces began to slide together... sort of.

Taub had, after all, been the one to interview Masters at Johns Hopkins. That was around 2008... had he started out in Princeton, doing admission interviews there? Was he part of the staff, or outsourced for things like this? Either way, there was a canon precedent for Taub performing college interviews. Once the shock had worn off, the whole premise didn't seem so ridiculous.

Still. Talk about a blindside.

Taub's expression was perfectly pleasant, and I could see he was wearing his "professional" aura. The one he'd dropped working for House almost immediately. Let's be honest; "Gregory House" and "professionalism" did not go together in a sentence unless the words "is the sworn enemy of" are between them.

"How are you, Anya? Are you nervous?"

I laughed a little at that. "Ah, I'm fine. It's just my future, right?" Actually, the prospect of having Taub interview me was becoming more appealing by the second. I knew what Taub would like in a candidate, and what he wouldn't like. I knew he would get my sarcasm, and might even appreciate it. Not to mention, I was naturally more at ease around the guy than I would've been around a complete stranger. After all, I'd had five seasons-worth of pseudo-knowing him.

This might just work out in my favor, after all.

"Well, let's get right into it. Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?"

Standard lead-in question. The same one I'd been asked at Brown back in my own world. They expected you to answer with information other than what had been in your personal statement and essays; they didn't want a long list of your scholastic and athletic achievements. They wanted to get a sense of who you actually were.

I was betting a lot on being honest and being myself, just like I had with Brown. Here's hoping that method didn't fail me when I most needed it.

"My name's Anya Bethany Carhart. I'm eighteen years old. I'm a Scorpio, I like long walks on the beach, sunsets, and full-ride scholarships." I grinned at Taub, who seemed amused at the comment. "Hmm... I've always wanted to be a doctor. It's my dream, definitely. Aside from that, I'm a musician when I can be, an amateur video game enthusiast, and I love bad movies and even worse Chinese food. When I'm not shaping up to be the World's Best Doctor, I like to annoy my dad, go to church... I work at a coffee shop. I make a mean latte."

Short. Sweet. To the point. Both House and Wilson had warned me not to ramble.

"I can appreciate a good latte," Taub commented with a thin smile.

He continued on with a few more cursory opening questions, childhood, upbringing, my high school career. I answered these by rote, like he was administering a test and I was delivering what I'd memorized. While I did share some of the same background with my House MD 'verse self (we'd both been born in Harrisburg, our mothers had the same names) I had to leave out anything about my real father and brother, and my actual school history. That took a lot of my actual life out of the game.

After that, Taub gave me a heavy hitter.

"What's the hardest thing you've ever had to go through in life?"

With so many to choose from, that wasn't an easy question to answer. Patrick was what my brain immediately went to, but that was a no-go. Same with, "Adjusting to living in my favorite TV show and therefore losing all else that I once held dear."

"Losing my mom," was option three, and that was exactly what came out of my mouth.

A quick glance at the paperwork on his desk, and Taub said, "She died just this past October, didn't she?"

"Yeah. In a car crash." Lie. But I had lost my mom, and who knew if I would ever see her again? "Losing my mom was... impossible, to me," I started, somewhat haltingly. "It's like my whole world got taken away from me overnight. It's not like I saw it coming. I went to bed one night, and she was alive, and when I woke up the next, she was dead... and I was alone. I couldn't process it. I think, if I hadn't found my biological father through her death, I would still be in that really dark place. I dealt with my grief over my mom by trying to build something with him, trying to understand him."

"Are you and your father close?" Follow-up questions. The unpredictable part of the interview, the reactive part.

"I don't know," I admitted. "He's not easy to figure out. The only one that could answer that would be him, and emotional honesty isn't exactly his thing."

After that were a few more inquiries as to what I'd been through in my life. A time I made a mistake and what I did to remedy it, one time I collaborated on a successful group project and what that experience was like, one time I had to make a compromise, etcetera. Standard stuff. Taub was staying pretty much inside the lines, no curveballs. With luck, it would stay that way.

"Where do you see yourself in ten years?"

I hadn't expected that one, even though it wasn't unusual to hear one like that. I just... my own future wasn't something I put a whole hell of a lot of deep thought into, anymore. Yes, being a doctor was on the agenda. Beyond that, my future revolved largely around everyone else's future.

"I'd like to work at Princeton-Plainsboro," I shared. "I'd like to do my residency with Dr. House specifically. I really enjoyed shadowing him." Shadowing, yeah. That was what my essays and House's recommendation letter had said. "My own apartment would be nice. A significant other." A nervous chuckle escaped me. "Or a cat. A cat's fine, too."

Taub scribbled something down in his notes, and I would've killed to know what he was writing. "What is your definition of success, Anya?" he asked, looking up at me with a neutral expression.

I had to think on that one, too. "My definition of success..." Mine had a lot more requirements than most people, but I didn't want to turn my answer into a rant. "Not living in fear of what's coming tomorrow," I decided. "And being financially stable, doing something that matters to you, being surrounded by people who love you," I tacked on, for good measure.

He seemed satisfied with that response.

Next were a slew of questions surrounding me "shadowing" House and Wilson. The official story was that I'd spent two months with Wilson and three with House, and Cuddy had authorized it. I could only hope to God that House had taken the necessary precautions so that said story didn't fall apart the second anyone did any genuine investigating.

It still didn't sit well with me that I'd gotten here through House's good graces and ability to manipulate and lie his way into whatever he wanted to accomplish. Nevertheless, the interview was all me. It was up to me to make or break my Princeton career.

We were into the meat of things, now.

"What are you considering for specialties, once you finish your pre-med curriculum?" Taub asked.

"I was thinking immunology or infectious disease," I replied. "Or maybe a double-specialty."

"That's ambitious."

"Not really ambitious, so much as they both interest me enough for me to want to specialize in them."

Taub leaned forward, giving me a searching look.

"Why choose being a doctor over another career in medicine, like research?"

Shit. I shouldn't have said 'interest'. Makes me seem too detached.

"The human aspect. People. Sure, I could be a researcher stuck in a lab somewhere, working on the cure to cancer, but... that's one mystery. One thing to solve. Being a doctor, on a day to day basis, I meet people. Every person is a puzzle. Every person who walks into my office, I want to be able to help them. Or at least give them an answer. I want each day to be different, to surprise me. To amaze me. And, I've found that people are a lot more amazing than anything I'd find in a lab."

Taub nodded like I'd given the right answer. Hopefully I had. I knew what was coming next.

"Why do you want to be a doctor?"

To help people.

House's handwriting flashed in my mind's eyes: WRONG

That isn't anybody's honest answer.

"Because..." Shit. "Because it isn't easy."

Taub seemed surprised by that. I continued, trying to follow my own thought track without stammering like a moron.

"Because, yeah, I could put twenty dollars into the church coffers each Sunday and tell myself I'm a good person. I could find other ways to help people. But this... being a doctor, that's not easy. It's not something I can just decide to do one day. I have to dedicate my life and everything I have to it. And it's not always going to be glamorous. It's hard. It's miserable. I'll have to tell people they've got three months to live. I'll have to look someone in the eye, and tell them their father is dying. I'll see misery, I'll see pain and human suffering on a level most people don't even want to wrap their heads around."

I took a deep breath. "It isn't easy. And that's why it means something. To me. To the people I'll treat. It's hard, it'll never stop being hard, but it means something. I want to wake up every day and know my life means something."

Taub's eyes were inscrutable. He didn't let me have a break before he pressed on. "What is the most important thing you?"

"What's the most important thing to you? That thing that gets your heart beatin'? That thing that's always in the back of your thoughts, first thing you think of before bed, first thing when you wake up?"

I should've said being a doctor. I should've made it clear that above all, I wanted the chance to become a doctor more than anything in the world.

But that wouldn't be the truth. And so much of my life had become a lie lately, I wanted to cling to what few scraps of honesty I had left.

"My... Dad, I guess. Because he's my family. My only family." I shrugged. "I love him."

That admittance had a certain kind of weight to it. Yeah, loving House was a given. We all love our favorite characters. And while I had proudly and enthusiastically proclaimed that to every single person I'd had more than ten minutes of contact with back in my own universe, here, it was... different.

Saying it here, in this universe, where it really mattered... that was different, too.

"Alright, I think that about ties things up." Taub closed his notebook, seeming... pleased, maybe? Or I was just seeing what I wanted to, who knew. "Between you and me, Anya, I think you'd be a good fit at Princeton, scholarship or not. Is there anything you'd like me to convey to the admissions committee?"

I laughed. "Give me the scholarship? Pretty please? With sugar on top?"

Taub smirked. "I'll make sure to pass the sentiment on."

I shook his hand again and bid him farewell. He told me that the university would be in-touch soon. As the door closed behind me, I wondered how long it would be before I saw Taub again. Would we not cross paths again until The Right Stuff, in season four? It had been awhile since I'd met a 'new' member for the House cast, since I'd had that trippy surreal feeling. It was yet another reminder of the fact that no matter the life I was slowly trying to build for myself here, I would always be other.

Back in the waiting room, I was surprised to see Wilson was no longer alone: House sat next to him, looking bored out of his mind.

"Alexander Everett!" the clerk called. The tall blond kid passed by me, and I made my way over to House and Wilson.

"You're here," I observed. "I couldn't find you earlier."

"Crack of dawn hooker run. Figured you wouldn't be interested." I had the distinct feeling he was lying, but I didn't feel like starting an argument at the moment. "How did it go? Did you cry? And more importantly, is there taped evidence of it?"

"I'm sure she did just fine," Wilson said, giving me a tight but supportive smile. "You can tell us all about it over lunch. My treat."

"Sure, cool."

The three of us went outside. The sun was out in full force, and it was shaping up to be a beautiful spring day.

"Chinese?" I asked. "Lin's?" It was the same Chinese place we so often ordered takeout from, and the same place I'd gone with House and Wilson on my first day here.

House and Wilson agreed. We had to split up, since House's car was there. I decided to go with House, if only to glean some further clues as to what exactly he was up to this morning.

Argument? Not in the mood. Snooping, however...

"Hookers," I mused, looking out the window. "Right."

House snorted. "You say that like it's out-of-character for me. You're the one who said I wasn't allowed to have them in the apartment anymore."

"I did not say that. I asked you to please not have prostitutes in the house while I was there, because it creeps me out."

"Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Does she creep you out?"

"Oh, come on. Trying to turn it into a religion thing? Weak evasion. You're off your game today."

House stared ahead at the road, an air of unusual seriousness settling over him.

"Just tell me where you were," I prodded further. "How bad could your top-secret early morning outing be?"

Silence, then...

"I was with Cameron."