Chapter 40 – There's No Secrets This Year

"Well, at least you took my advice when it came to staying out of sight. Hiding in orthopedics? Really?"

House's head turned when I called out to him. He looked at me briefly, eyebrow quirking up. "That's your angry walk."

I came to a halt at his side, glaring up at him. "I don't have an angry walk."

"Yes, you do. You swing your arms more, move quicker, and you put more weight on the balls of your feet. I should know, I always seem to be the one you're angry at."

I gave him a wry look. "That's part of your charm. And I'm not angry, I'm confused."

"And being confused makes you angry."

Okay, he had me there. It wasn't like I was personally insulted that House had lied to me. I wasn't naive enough to expect that I was going to get the full truth out of him one hundred percent of the time...or even half the time, really. House was a self-professed liar when it suited his needs, and I didn't think that would change. He'd lied to me before, and he would lie to me again.

But what I didn't understand was why. Why did he tell me he was sleeping with Cameron? What mysterious purpose did it serve? What was he really trying to cover up from the morning of my interview?

House peered past me, as if he was waiting for someone. He'd been leaning against the wall in the main orthopedics hall, casual by all appearances, but I could tell he was thinking a thousand miles a minute.

"We need to talk," I pressed, trying to regain his attention, but it was looking more and more like that was going to be a lost cause.

"Can it wait? I'm doing clinic duty."

"If it could wait, I wouldn't have spent the past hour searching the hospital up and down for you. And what do you mean, you're doing clinic duty?"

It was at that moment that Dr. Simpson rounded the corner, discarding his scrub hat into a nearby waste bin. I'd seen him around the hospital a few times. House didn't harass him too often, so I didn't encounter him very much.

"Dr. Simpson!" House greeted him cheerfully. "Did you hear? New management."

Simpson looked less than pleased to see House...which was a reaction both he and I were all too familiar with.

"I'm thinking of switching to orthopedics," House continued with a thin smirk, stepping out to block Simpson's path. I hung back by the wall, not sure what House was planning. "How much do you guys get for a massage, now? Without the happy ending?"

Simpson sighed. "Dr. House, what do you want?"

"Do you remember a guy named Van Der Meer? Not a big talker. You fixed his ACL."

"No, not according to my medical malpractice premiums."

Oh, okay. I remembered Van Der Meer. The mute dad that House low-key cured, while letting him still keep his million dollars. So that's what this is about.

Simpson marched past House, but House tailed him. I followed at House's heels, tuning out the rest of their conversation and resigning myself to patiently waiting to talk to House. Unfortunately, House was quite the talker when he actually gave a damn about something, so it was another few minutes before he finally let Simpson slip away.

I pushed open the door to an empty exam room and pointed wordlessly inside. House rolled his eyes. "Oh, this should be good." Nevertheless, he filed into the room.

I closed the door behind us. Turning on him, I jumped straight into it: "Why did you lie to me the other day?"

House seated himself on a nearby stool, twirling his cane and looking at me disinterestedly. "You'll have to be more specific than 'the other day'. I lie to you on a daily basis."

I silently prayed that he was kidding. "You're not sleeping with Cameron."

"What, do you want a sex tape as proof? I'm sure I can put one together."

Please no. "Well, if you are sleeping with her, then you're the first to know about it. When I brought it up to Cameron, she looked at me like I'd gone insane."

"She's protecting herself. HR isn't going to care as long as we sign the right forms, but Vogler's going to be looking for ways to make a show of power. Firing the Big Bad Doctor's favoritest little employee, that could be his gold ticket. She's not going to admit to it, not to you. Not to anyone."

Anyone else would have bought the lie. But not me. I crossed my arms. "Bullshit."

House watched me with narrowed eyes, waiting for me to say more. I didn't. "Is that all I get? 'Bullshit'?"

"I just want you to tell me the truth. You wouldn't go to that much effort to hide something from me unless it was really bad."

House screwed his face up in mock thought. "What's the old saying? Knowledge is bliss? Wait, no, that's not it..."

"You're telling me I'm better off not knowing?"

House went quiet, and when it came to House, quiet was generally not a good thing.

"This doesn't make any sense. If you're not telling me, that means it would upset me. But when have you ever cared about upsetting anyone?"

House shifted off of the stool and checked his watch. "Are we done here? I got a thing."

He went to move past me, but I stepped in front of him. "What are you so afraid of?" I demanded, trying to sound authoritative, but there was a waver to my voice. House was hiding something big, and the big things he'd hidden over the course of the show's history had me worried.

Hopefully season one was too early for experimental rat meds. I'd just cleaned the bathroom yesterday, and dried blood was a bitch to get out of porcelain.

God, I really am picking up House's sense of humor.

House stepped around me, knowing full well that I wasn't going to stop him. He left the exam room, the door swinging shut behind him and leaving me alone. I sank down on the stool the diagnostician had just vacated, taking a deep breath and running both hands through my hair.

If House didn't want to tell me, I wasn't going to know. It was as simple as that. But people finding out things the hard way seemed to be a recurring theme in House's life.

And I was terrified of what 'the hard way' was going to be.

I decided to let House's big secret rest for awhile, confident that I couldn't wiggle it out of him. Wilson, on the other hand, might know, and might be more malleable, but I had no idea where he was at the moment, and pulling him away from work for this did seem a teensy bit on the selfish side.

It would've been nice to be able to go back to the apartment and de-stress, but no. I wasn't that lucky.

Because I had to be Chase.

A fact that House apparently picked up on when I'd sprinted my way to the last differential. When he ambled into the room, I was seated on the surface of his desk, Foreman and Cameron hovering nearby. He had something gold and hairy tucked under one arm. It only took me a moment to figure out what it was.

House set a blond wig on top of my head, tugging it over top of my brunette locks. "For you. My favorite wallaby."

Cameron narrowed her eyes at House. "Where did you get a wig from?"

"Oncology." I hoped he was lying. "Seeing as my precious bundle of joy wants to so badly be our missing Australian male model, she might as well look the part. I think, therefore I am, right?"

"House, this wig itches," I complained.

"ANYWAYS," House said loudly, ignoring my whining. "It's not an inflammatory process, the angio says it's not a clot, and it's not cancer, because her tush is perfect." House rounded his desk, grabbing the angio off of the mountain of papers at my side. "So, begs the question: why is our patient drowning?"

"The fluid is going to the lab now," Cameron provided. "It should be back in a few hours."

"She may not have a few hours," House replied, sticking the angio up on the screen. I knew that this time around, he wouldn't find anything strange about it; the proper leg had been examined. No two left feet.

"After the thorocentesis, she stabilized," Foreman said. "But I don't know how long that's going to last."

House stared at the angio, then turned away from it, eyes glazing over. This seemed...off. Like things were out of order. I realized why after a moment; without having to redo Chase's botched angio, the progression of the episode had been thrown to the wind. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there hadn't been another differential for the rest of the episode. House had figured Carly's psych issues out on his own.

So, I had absolutely no idea where this conversation was going to go, and my input would likely be utterly worthless. After all, I already knew the diagnosis, so anything I offered up, I would offer up knowing that it was wrong.

"How about CPE?" I suggested, counting on House to shut me down immediately. "Theoretically it could cause paralysis and a max out on the pain scale, if the right arteries were choked off–"

"Angio. Clean," House said immediately. "No genius insight today? Must've lost your script."

I gave him a "what the fuck" look at making such an obvious allusion to my otherworldliness in front of Cameron and Foreman, but other than two confused glances, neither of them commented.

"Guillian-Barre fits the rapid progression," Cameron pointed out.

House shook his head. "No skin ulcers."

"What about sarcoidosis? Granulomas in her lungs could explain the acute pulmonary edema," Foreman said. "A chest x-ray wouldn't take long. It's better than sitting around, waiting for pathology to finish up with the lung fluid."

"Do it," House ordered. Foreman and Cameron filtered out to do as they were told. House departed his office for the differential room. After taking the blond wig off of my head and placing it on top of House's computer, I followed after him.

House was in the middle of erasing everything on the white board. Once her physical symptoms were gone, he scrawled out psych symptoms in his messy handwriting.

Clearing my throat, I pulled my list back out of my pocket. "Ready for Items Five, Six, and Seven?"

"Does my breath smell bated to you?"

I didn't respond. After brief consideration, I refolded the paper. He hadn't figured out Carly's exact diagnosis just yet. I sidled up next to House and slipped the paper into his pocket.

He glanced down at me, brow twitching in annoyance. "What are you doing?

"When you figure out what's wrong with her – and you will, soon – read the next three. If you read it now, it'll spoil the surprise."

Yes, a woman's life hung in the balance, and I was treating it like a game...but when dealing with House, you had no option but to treat it like a game, and fortunately or unfortunately, it was a game that House had made the rules for. The best chance I had of getting him to listen to me was letting him have his 'fun', then stepping in and trying to do damage control.

The less suspicious Vogler was of him, the better. House putting Carly on the transplant list before the MUGA and heart echo were completed looked really shady, not to mention how evasive he was once he was sitting in front of the transplant committee. Along with that, Chase finding the Ipecac...it had made House's attempts at deception look transparent at best.

If anything had gotten Vogler on his trail, it was that. House's obvious manipulation of the transplant committee. Which meant that this time around, he had to be more careful. And Items Five, Six, and Seven detailed just how he could go about doing that.

Yeah. I needed to find a more subtle way to keep House from being a total ass at inopportune times. But I could worry about that later. The main thing I was worried about now was whether House would actually listen to me or not.

"You're still not wearing the lab coat," I said quietly.

His lips almost, almost bent into a smirk. "It itches."

I sighed heavily, backing away from him. "I'll see you later, House."

He didn't reply, instead turning his full attention back to the board, and his puzzle.

House arrived home late that night, so late that I was already curled up on the couch and asleep. However, he spared no noise in entering the apartment, so after he slammed the door, kicked off his shoes, and turned the lights on, I was very reluctantly back in the world of the waking.

"Mmfmmn," I said intelligently, trying to express my displeasure at being awakened. I blinked open one eye to watch House. He stripped off his jacket, hung it up, then dropped his backpack on the armchair. I was surprised when he gingerly sank down by my feet, rubbing his thigh with a wince.

I propped myself up on my elbow as the tired muddle in my brain started to clear. "House?"

His gaze flicked to me. "She's on the transplant list. I have a meeting with the committee tomorrow." He removed my list from his pocket, and read, "Item Seven: be specific when you lie. When they ask about any exclusion criteria, make sure to indicate that there is absolutely nothing wrong with her in any way, shape, or form. Don't avoid the questions. Answer them directly, or it'll look suspicious."

"I have nice handwriting, don't I?" I asked with a weak smile.

"Remember seven months or so ago, when you seemed to think your moral high ground was utterly incorruptible? Like, nosebleed incorruptible? And now you're telling me to lie." He mockingly wiped a non-existent tear from his eye. "I've never been so proud to call you my fake daughter."

"Oh, my nose is still bleeding. But I'm not an idiot. If you don't lie, Carly dies. You're sinning either way; might as well choose the lesser of the two."

"And so the saint tells the sinner to keep on sinning," House snorted. "How am I supposed to do a St. Augustine worthy 180 if you keep being such a bad influence?"

I let myself collapse back down against my pillows, puffing out an exasperated breath. "Can we save the philosophical debates on the nature of goodness and redemption for tomorrow morning, maybe?"

I closed my eyes. House fell silent, but remained where he was. I was surprised he hadn't gone for the liquor cabinet, or headed to the bathroom to draw a bath, or even just gone off and flopped into bed.

I'd almost fallen back into the sweet embrace of sleep when House spoke again: "You ever cut yourself?"

Fine, I'd talk to him, but I was so not opening my eyes. "No, House. I never cut myself. I'm too much of a wimp for self-harm."

"Any eating disorders? You didn't feel pretty enough, or the cute boy down the street was only going to be impressed by a size zero..."

I buried myself further into my pillows. "There've been plenty of times I haven't felt pretty enough. But there were no cute boys down the street, and no eating disorders. No unhealthy coping mechanisms at all, really...except your favorite."

"Scotch and narcotics?"

"No. Avoidance." I curled my arm underneath my head, facing the back of the couch. My heels were resting against House's back. "If something bad happened to me, I'd go home, and find some way to not think about it. Generally by watching House. Not really an option anymore, so I guess it's a good thing you have plenty of instruments lying around, 'cause that's my next go-to after medical dramas."

"You're boring." I wasn't sure whether he was joking or not.

"Just because I'm uncomplicated doesn't mean I'm boring," I replied.

"You're not boring because you're uncomplicated, you're boring because you are complicated, but not in the fun ways. You're stuck in a different universe, never to see your friends or family again, you've got the whole dead brother thing, the people-pleasing complex mixed with a God complex and a pathological fear of failure...but no crippling drug addictions. No latent self-hatred. No out of control rage fits or chronic depression, no disturbing hidden hobbies...nothing. Not a bad habit in sight. Just sunny optimism and compassion," he said the word like it tasted bad in his mouth. "People like you shouldn't exist."

"People like me, huh?"

"People who are screwed up without being screwed up."

This was a deeper conversation than I was mentally prepared for at...well, however late it was. Too late, I knew that much. "If I try to deal with my problems by doing shitty things, it's just going to make my life shittier," I muttered. "Maybe bottling things up will come back to haunt me, but if it does, it'll be one breakdown. A few hours, maybe a day. And then I'm okay again." I shrugged. "It's how I've always done things. It works."

"What are you going to do if it ever stops working?" House questioned.

Huh. That was a damn good question...one I began to construct an answer for, but halfway through my thought process, my mind gave up, letting blackness creep in.

The last thing I registered before sleep took me was the feeling of a blanket being thrown over top of me.