Chapter 57—Youth

Thank you to Rubyia, jaz7, BrySt1, Fernix13, GahMarques, OldSFfan, SoleFaith, HeatherSS1, wsmith, and lizonia for their reviews on the last chapter!

"Stop fidgeting, Anya."

"Sorry, Foreman."

Yes, literally any breathing doctor in the clinic could have tended to me and Zach's stitches, but Foreman had insisted. He waylaid me that morning when I'd been heading to find House and Wilson for breakfast and told me to meet him in the differential room with Zach after we signed in for our appointment. He'd been our attending given our head injuries, so I suppose he wanted the last say as to whether we were all fine and well to return to business as usual.

"I'm almost done. Two more," he told me, pulling another stitch free of my skin. The tugging sensation along with the sharp pain was massively unpleasant, but I was just relieved to finally have them out. Then the only reminder of my kidnapping experience would be the jagged (but mercifully small) scar along my hairline, and Lola. The Corvette certainly helped to ease my suffering.

Zach sat on the differential room table directly next to me, his stitches having come out first. He'd taken it stone-faced, not wincing once. Clearly he was made of sterner stuff than I.

Foreman swiftly pulled the last stitch free of my skin, and I practically melted in relief. "Thank God that's over."

"You worried about the scar? I can recommend you a plastic surgeon," Foreman said, returning his tools to a small suture kit.

"Nah. It's kinda cool. I mean, the experience wasn't—but the scar itself is. Gives me an aura of mystery," I waggled my eyebrows. "Plus, now Zach and I are twinsies." I nudged Zach in the side.

Well, we weren't quite twinsies. My scar ran along my hairline for about four inches on the left side of my head. Zach's peeked out in the middle of his forehead, but most of it was in his scalp and could be covered by his hair as long as he brushed his blond locks a certain way.

"Why get matching tattoos when we could get matching bodily deformations? That's true friendship," Zach piped up.

"Precisely," I replied with a grin.

"You guys have both recovered well, but you're gonna have to be careful from now on. And yes, getting abducted by the mob is not your fault, but it does mean that you've got a weakness in your skulls that you didn't have before. The human body is pretty resilient, but rattling your brain around too much can go really bad really quick," Foreman advised us, rising from his seat and going to the coffee maker.

"Good thing I don't skateboard anymore," I remarked idly. "Foreman, can I have a cup?"

"I thought you hated coffee?"

"I do, but I'm exhausted." I hadn't been sleeping well lately. While my conscience was pleasantly clean, my newfound unsurety about my future was enough to keep me tossing and turning into the wee hours of the morning. I had taken the foundation out from under myself, the holy "dream" I had dedicated most of my living, breathing moments to since...as long as I could remember. Always one thing: I want to be a doctor.

That wasn't an option anymore.

So...what now?

That seemed to be the ever-present question haunting me, but I'd told myself to let my mind rest for a week or two. Nothing had to be figured out right this second. There wasn't a time-stamp on deciding my new direction for my future. But, I could tell my mind to rest all I wanted—didn't mean it was going to listen.

Foreman set a half full cup of coffee down in front of me, along with the entire bottle of creamer. He knew I was a lightweight. "If you need someone to run you through your options now that you've pulled out of Princeton, let me know," he told me evenly.

I blinked in surprise as I dumped a great deal of hazelnut creamer into my coffee. "Thanks, Foreman. Not today, but...soon." I was more grateful for his polite offer than he could know. I knew full well that Wilson or the other ducklings would help me if I asked them, but there would be too much pity from them for me to be able to deal with it. I didn't want to be looked at like that, "oh poor Anya, she'll have to settle for mediocrity now." No. That was the last thing that I needed. Never mind the fact that I didn't want to even explain to Cameron and Chase precisely why I'd withdrawn. As far as they knew, I'd just puzzlingly changed my mind.

I think Foreman had connected the dots by himself. He was good at that.

Before he could say more, a brief alarm blared over the PA: "You are in a quarantined area. Please remain calm and stay in line. A doctor will see you shortly. When you see a doctor, you will receive a blue or yellow form. Patients with a blue form must immediately enter the parking lot. Patients with a yellow form must go to the second floor ICU for further treatment."

"I'm gonna say that's not a good thing," Zach said with mild concern.

"Sounds like it's more directed at the bottom two floors than us," Foreman said, glancing up at the PA. "Some kind of outbreak."

"Virulent bacterial meningitis." Chase pushed through the differential room doors, a pack of white respirator masks under his arm. He already had one fixed to his face. He frisbee'd the opened pack at Foreman, who snatched it out of the air. "Judge at the university pool collapsed. We've got to push 2500 people through here. Cuddy says all hands on deck."

Ah. So Kids had started. How many episodes did that leave us in season one? Just Love Hurts, Three Stories, and Honeymoon. I had to admit, I longed for season one to be over. It had been exhausting to say the least—due in no small part to the fact that it had been a hell of learning curve, the future knowledge thing. After a summer hiatus, I felt as though I'd be refreshed and ready to face season two.

Foreman groaned. "Does she want us on second or first floor?"

"First. Thermometer duty in the clinic," Chase explained. "Cameron's already down there."

Foreman passed masks to both Zach and I. "I'd strongly recommend finding something to do in the office until this gets sorted out. It's gonna be a madhouse down there."

Zach and I quickly nodded and put our masks on. Chase stepped closer, brushing my hair away from my forehead. "Scar's not bad at all. With your bangs over it, no one will ever even notice."

I blushed, because I suck. "Uh—yeah. We both got lucky. Zach's is pretty much hidden under his hair too."

Chase withdrew from me and looked at Zach. He extended his hand. "We haven't exactly formally met—"

"Mr. Australian Male Model," Zach grabbed his hand. "No, I'm pretty much used to seeing you drunk in my coffee shop in the middle of the night."

Foreman shot confused looks between the two of them. "Wait, what?"

Chase cleared his throat and released Zach's hand. "Technically I was only drunk once."

Zach shrugged nonchalantly. "Whatever works for you, brother. It's Chase, right?"

"Yeah. And you're Zach."

"Yup."

"Am I missing something here?" Foreman asked, clearly lost.

"Nope. C'mon, we've gotta get downstairs," Chase said, beckoning Foreman out of the room. Foreman pulled on his respirator and tailed after the surgeon, leaving Zach and I alone.

"That was weird. Why was that weird?" I asked Zach immediately.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Maybe 'cause I called him a male model? I meant it as a compliment. Or a come-on." He bounced his eyebrows. "That's up to him." He jumped off the table, stretching languidly. "So what, there's no way we can get out of here?"

"I mean, we could go get processed in the clinic and get our blue slips, and then we'd be allowed to leave, but that would take for-fucking-ever. Never mind the fact that going down where the potentially sick people are doesn't sound ideal," I said, already heading for House's office and his TV. It was going to be a boring afternoon, but going near the meningitis nightmare downstairs? No thanks.

"I didn't really mean get out in the legitimate way," Zach responded, following after me. I narrowed my eyes at him since he wouldn't be able to see my frown past my respirator. "You've been knocking around this place for months. You don't know any secret back exits?"

"They've probably got guards posted at every single way out, just in case someone gets exactly that idea—and then we'll have to be processed, whether we like it or not," I replied.

"We could try," Zach said, and I could tell that he was smiling. "It could be fun. And you're House's daughter, it's not like you'll get in any trouble."

"Still involves us going where the meningitis is..."

Zach tapped his mask. "We'll be fine. Now just humor me. If you were going to try to get out of here without security stopping you, where would you go?"

I sighed, falling into House's Eames chair. "I mean, there's a fire door in the clinic that the nurses always keep propped open so they can dip out and smoke, but given the circumstances that will probably be closed, meaning we'll set off an alarm if we open it. There's two doors that lead out of the cafeteria, but those'll be guarded for sure..." I frowned. "If we were particularly good at climbing we could go out House and Wilson's shared balcony and like, scale the side of the building, but I'm sure as hell not athletic enough for that."

"I know there's a feasible possibility hiding in here somewhere."

"Uhhhhh..." I tilted my head back. There had to be someway to get out, right? "There's the ambulance bay, I guess. There's a chance it wouldn't be guarded, and I'm sure PPTH is gonna start redirecting ambulances to Princeton General now that we've got the meningitis clusterfuck."

"There we go, then."

"The trick is getting there without getting caught by someone who knows me or getting stopped by security when they see we're trying to go somewhere that isn't the parking lot, the second floor, or the clinic," I warned him.

"We'll use the crowd to our advantage. Just follow my lead." Zach headed for the door, and with a weary shake of my head, I followed behind him. At least this gave us something to do. Day-time television in the early 2000s was not a blast, and YouTube had literally just been invented, so there wasn't much up besides low quality cat videos. Internet on flip phones was laughable—mind-numbing distractions were a lot harder to come across.

We slipped down one of the back stairwells, and pressed ourselves to the wall once we were in the ER. It was all abuzz—nobody was paying attention to us, luckily. "Which way?" Zach asked.

I pointed wordlessly in the general direction of the nurse's station, and with a swift movement, Zach was off. I rushed to catch up with him. He weaved in and out of the patients buzzing through. I held my breath on impulse. I'm sure the amount of people in the hospital who were actually infected was an incredibly minute number, but I couldn't really control my paranoia.

"Okay, just to the left here..."

We made it into the ambulance bay. Zach quickly dragged me behind a trashcan. "EMT," he muttered to me. A quick glance around the corner of the large trash receptacle confirmed this to be true. When he'd left into the EMT on-call room, we rushed out from our smelly hiding spot, past the nearest ambulance, and out the side door. We made it street-side without any real trouble.

But we'd hit a bigger problem.

"They've got a check-point set up. You've got to flash a blue slip to even get off this part of campus," I said, gesturing at the wall of cars lined up outside of the main parking lot. "Jeez, this is a nightmare."

"So, we get to the other side of campus."

"Lola's in the parking garage."

Zach crossed his arms. "Well...shit."

I felt a large hand settle on my shoulder. I looked up and behind me. It was one of the security guards I sometimes saw milling around in the general vicinity of Cuddy's office, Joe. He was tall and bald, an excellent target for House when he was in the mood to chuck things at people off the lobby balcony. "You two want out of here, you need to go through processing just like anyone else. Being related to a doctor does not get you a free pass."

I pouted. "It should."

"It doesn't. Come on. You can complain to your dad all you want once he checks you out in the clinic."

Zach and I had a fleeting meeting of the eyes composed of pure misery. Well, we'd given it our best. "Can I at least have a smoke first?" Zach requested tiredly, pulling out his Marlboro's.

Joe didn't seem pleased about it, but he gave consent. "I'll just wait out here till you decide to head back in," he said, leaning against the garage door to the ambulance bay.

"Right, right," Zach made to get out his lighter, then looked at me and whisper-shouted, "Run!"

Zach pelted off towards the opposite end of the university campus. Joe stared after him, as did I. "I think I was supposed to follow him," I admitted with a tilt of my head.

"Yeah, I think that's what he was going for," Joe agreed, with a hint of humor. "You're not going to, I take it?"

"I'm not a fast runner. Do you think you can catch him?"

Joe checked his watch. "Suppose it's fair now. I did give him a head-start." Joe rushed off without another word, and he gained on Zach with shocking speed. Zach was fast, sure, but he was also a big guy all around, and that slowed him down. Joe was more fleet on his feet. I turned away and headed back inside. I knew a losing battle when I saw one.

Back in the ER, it didn't take long for a nurse to usher me into one of the zig-zagging lines of panicking people that crossed from the Emergency Room over into the clinic. More than a few people asked me where I'd gotten my respirator from, and I politely told them my father worked at the hospital. One middle-aged woman went so far as to ask me if she could get me in to see him. I laughed aloud, and she didn't speak to me again after that.

I finally reached someone with a thermometer, and it was Nurse Brenda. "Hi Brenda," I greeted in pure monotone.

"Hi Anya. You're stuck here too?"

I nodded miserably in response. It had taken me an hour and a half in line to reach this point.

"Your father and his people are MIA. Doctor Cuddy's on the warpath. You may want to avoid her if you see her," Brenda warned me. Ah, so House had already met his patient and decided the meningitis outbreak was too boring to put up with.

"Thanks for the heads up."

"No problem. Now open up."

I obediently did so, and she tucked a thermometer into my mouth. A few moments passed, and Brenda took the thermometer back out. "Hmm...99.8. Sorry girly. You're going up to second floor." She tore off a yellow slip and handed it to me.

"You've got to be kidding," I said, a flutter in my stomach. "That's only one degree difference. I've got allergies. The pollen gets to me in the spring."

She handed me a small paper cup with two tablets of what I assumed to be Rifampin, then another paper cup with water. "We can't be too careful, not with something like this. ICU for you. You're gonna need at least a CT scan."

I fucking hoped it was only a CT. I'd have a full-blown meltdown if I needed an LP. Something about needles in the general vicinity of my spine...ooh. Nope. Didn't like that. "Do I have to?"

"Yes. Now go on. I've got about a thousand other people who need either good or bad news from me." Brenda shooed me off. I downed my pills and dragged my feet up the stairs to the second floor, where I was stopped in another line before I could even reach the landing. We shuffled our feet at an excruciating rate, and it was long before I actually saw the ICU proper.

About five minutes into my next wave of waiting, I saw Foreman pass by, a file tucked under his arm. I called out to him, and he skidded to a halt.

"Anya? What are you doing here?"

I waved my yellow slip. "My allergies have been mistaken for meningitis. Care to rescue me?" I arched an eyebrow at Foreman.

Foreman dithered for a moment before issuing a swift nod and beckoning for me to follow him. I dipped out of line with a grin under my respirator and tailed after the neurologist.

"How high is your fever?" Foreman asked.

"99-point-something. I feel fine."

"Any neck pain?"

"Remember that mob-related car accident? Wrenched things up a bit. My neck's been hurting for weeks."

Foreman frowned at me as we weaved our way out of the ICU. "You've got two out of three indicators—"

"I'm fine. And no rash."

"Your dad's gonna want to look at you," Foreman told me when he rounded a corner and started pounding down the stairs. "Let me see your slip."

I passed it to him. "CT. I'll happily do it—but I'm not going to stand in line for the next seven hours. Where are we going, anyway?"

"Your dad's hiding from Cuddy. He paged us all to the first floor men's bathroom," Foreman explained before folding up my note and sticking it in his pocket. "Keep the respirator on. None of us are looking to get meningitis, if you do have it."

Just as we passed by the information desk, Chase and Cameron rounded the corner, nearly crashing into us. "The men's bathroom?" Cameron grimaced. "Cuddy's going to catch him eventually."

"He certainly can't outrun her," I put in.

Chase tilted his head. "I thought we told you to stay upstairs?"

"We tried to escape. Failed. Or at least I did—Zach made a run for it, but I'm pretty sure Joe caught him and dragged him back," I explained tiredly. "I've been in and out of different lines for hours. I've been adequately punished for my transgressions."

"Did you get your blue slip?" Cameron asked.

"Uh...not exactly."

"We can worry about that in a second. Come on." Foreman led the way to the bathroom, and we formed a line behind him, trailing in to find House washing his hands at the sink.

"We—" Foreman began, but House cut him off immediately.

"Are you sure it was an absence seizure?" he demanded, drying off his hands.

"Absolutely," Foreman confirmed.

"She was totally unresponsive. No awareness of what was going on around her," Cameron supplied.

Someone in one of the stalls groaned in agony. Cameron and I exchanged disgusted eye contact with one another. This was better than being in line, but not by much. House limped away from the sink and shouted over his shoulder, "Do you mind? We're trying to work."

"We should get back out there," Chase said, "Cuddy's going to go ballistic if—"

"She can look, but she won't find," House interrupted.

"House, they're already short-staffed, we need to help—"

"Am I the only one interested in saving this poor, innocent child?" House asked in a high-pitched voice with faux distress. "Did you do an EEG?"

"Seizure frequency's increasing. They're almost constant now. Five in the last half hour," Foreman answered.

"So it's definitely in her brain, and it's definitely getting worse," Cameron surmised.

"And?" House pressed, before whirling around to shout at whoever was currently experiencing the world's most painful BM. "Good Lord, are you having a bowel movement or a baby?" House flicked his eyes to me. "Well, you're never gonna be a real doctor now, but we can play pretend, right? What do you think?"

"Barbiturate withdrawal," I offered with a shrug.

Chase shot me a confused look. "You haven't even seen her file."

"Uh...intuition," I offered unconvincingly.

House smirked. "Crystal ball is murky. Try again later. They test the kids at every meet they compete at. But..." House's eyes glazed over somewhat. "A bleed in the brain could cause seizures."

"Rat poison?" Chase offered. "Could also cause the neck pain."

"Do you think she's been eating off the floor in a basement somewhere...?" Cameron asked slowly.

"She doesn't have to be," House said in a monotone.

It took Foreman a moment to grasp what House meant. "Who would poison a twelve-year-old?"

"Well, let's see now, there's the eighteen year old has-been she beat out to make nationals, the has-been's parents, jealous siblings, sociopathic swim fan, and then there's just your plain old garden variety whack-job." The toilet flushed, and a boy of about twelve or thirteen emerged from the only occupied stall. He passed by without washing his hands, and House snapped out a "Hey!" before he could leave the bathroom. "Do you know what a hemorrhoid is?"

The boy blinked up at him. "No?"

"Google it! And try eating some Raisin Bran instead of donuts." House turned the nearest sink on with his cane and looked pointedly at the boy, who obediently went to wash his hands. He turned back to the team and myself. "We're gonna do a CT scan. Check for intracranial bleeding."

"There's no chance. Radiology's got a waiting list a mile long," I told him.

House narrowed his eyes at me. "And how do you know that?"

Foreman handed the folded yellow slip to House. He took it and scanned his eyes over it quickly. "Does your neck hurt?" House demanded immediately.

"My neck's hurt since..." I bounced my eyebrows.

House caught my meaning immediately. "Rash?"

"Nope."

"Your fever's only a degree up. You've got pollen allergies," he said. I didn't know how House knew I had allergies, but I decided not to question it. "If our patient's bleeding into her brain, she's gonna be dead in eight hours," he continued, crumpling up the slip and tossing it into the trash can. I hoped that meant I was off the hook for getting a CT.

"She could be. But a meningitis patient will be without a CT scan," Foreman countered.

"I mean, if you guys need to do a CT without a CT, why not use the uh...the thing that was before a CT..." I thought for a moment. What was the old ultrasound called that Chase had suggested in the show?

"A TCD?" Cameron guessed.

"Yeah, that."

"Hmm. Ancient, but if there's enough bleeding, it might work...okay," House seemed faintly pleased. "Do what the two girls who didn't specialize in neurology said. And take her with you," he said, gesturing to me.

"Wait, why?" I asked.

House smirked. "Because you're getting one too."

"This is dumb. I didn't sign consent forms for this," I whined.

"If you want to go argue with your father about it, you're more than welcome to," Foreman said, running the ultrasound wand over my head. "But he's my boss. He says check you out, I check you out."

"I'm hungry. It's almost six o'clock—"

"Anya, for the love of God, I'll buy you a burger in the cafeteria after this is said and done, but can you please shut up for a second?" Chase begged from beside Foreman, where he was taking another round of blood from Mary. Cameron was taking samples of her hair, as well as another urine draw. They'd found significant bleeding in her brain, in the temporal lobe.

She'd gotten the ultrasound first, obviously. She was in and out of awareness the entire time, taken repeatedly by absence seizures. She was very young. Too young to have to be going through any of this. I should've just told House she was pregnant to save her from this. I was kind of pissed at myself, to be honest. I'd been so caught up in myself that it hadn't even occurred to me that I had the power to spare a child from pain.

I'm pretty shit at this 'saving people' gig sometimes.

They were going to drill into her brain next. I knew that much.

"Hey, quit squirming—" Foreman griped.

"If you were gonna see something from me, you'd have seen it by now. Never mind the fact that the chances of you detecting meningitis on a transcranial ultrasound are next to nothing. House is just doing this to fuck with me. I have an idea about Mary."

Foreman sighed, but he did draw the wand away from my head. "You're definitely your father's daughter, but if he hasn't figured out what's wrong with Mary yet, I don't think that epiphany's gonna hit you first."

"Who's your dad?" Mary croaked, surprising me.

I tilted my head to look at her. "The guy in charge of your doctors. House."

"But you're not a doctor?"

"No. But I know a thing or two." Being considered a child prodigy because I'd spent too much time watching a television show never failed to amuse me. "Guys, just...check her, you know. Baby area."

"Her—" Chase shook his head in disbelief when he figured out why I was asking. "Anya, she's twelve."

"And lives on the road with her team half of the time," I pointed out, still looking at Mary. "Mary, I know you don't want your parents to find out, but if you've been having sex, your doctors need to know."

A micro-expression of fear passed over her face. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please. I don't want you to have to get brain surgery. It's scary, it's painful, and recovery time is a bitch. The faster you get better, the faster you get back to diving. Okay? So, you know what I'm gonna ask."

"I don't even get how that can have anything to do with this," she said, low panic in her voice.

Cameron already had the tube of ultrasound gel out. "Mary..."

"Just check," Mary stammered out, turning her head to stare up at the ceiling...an admittance all by itself.

Cameron nodded her head, and Foreman sterilized the ultrasound wand before taking up at Cameron's side with it. Chase watched on in faint horror, several fresh plastic tubes of blood clutched in his hands.

A quick check confirmed what I knew to be true. The ducklings stared on, all gaping, all clearly disturbed.

"Pregnancy causes all kinds of weird changes in your body. Sometimes, the weird changes are too weird. TTP—it stands for thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Your blood clots like crazy, clogs your vessels in your brain and kidneys. It ends up shredding your red blood cells," I explained to her.

"How the hell—" Chase burst out.

I hopped off of the bed the team had managed to apprehend from the nurses. "Be shocked later, talk to House, not me. Blue slip, please!" I held out my hand to Foreman. He stared at me in unabashed shock, but he granted my request, signing off on it.

"Anya—" Cameron tried to stop me as I scampered off.

"Bye, guys!"

When House arrived home far later that night, well past midnight, I was sat at his piano, letting my fingers drift over the keys. I'd gotten home awhile ago, after driving Zach home. He had, unsurprisingly, been apprehended and dragged into the hospital to procure a blue slip. He'd been waiting at the Corvette for me when I'd bailed on the team. Lucky, allergy-less bastard, he'd been given the all-clear long before me.

After hanging his coat and kicking off his sneakers, House hovered behind me for a few moments.

"Can I help you?" I asked politely.

"Is that St. James' Infirmary?" he asked. "Little before your time."

"Have I or have I not happily listened to your old school blues and jazz stuff with you before? Time is fake, anyway. That's why it's okay to eat breakfast in the middle of the night," I said with a grin.

"Is this you trying to convince me to go to Denny's with you?" House asked, settling down next to me.

"Do I even have to convince you? And for your information, the first time I heard this song, it was a cover Hugh Laurie did."

"The guy who played me."

"Yep. Very talented gentleman." I continued to play, finishing out the intro and bursting in with, "I went down to St. James Infirmary...saw my baby there."

House surprised me by joining in halfway through the first verse, and added some additional keystrokes here and there, dancing around my fingers with his. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face the whole time. When we finished, I swung my legs around and crossed them, staring at House's profile in the semi-darkness of the apartment. "We should do that more often."

"Get better at piano first." House rose with a wince, hand automatically flying to his leg.

"Bad pain day?" I asked quietly.

House didn't respond, instead limping towards his liquor cabinet. He'd quickly replaced the scotch and bourbon that Zach and I had liberated from him after the cardiology conference. "Why did you tell my team my patient is pregnant?"

"To save her from having to go through brain surgery. That was your next step, right?"

"We had to do brain surgery anyway, genius. She still had a bleed in her brain. You were a few hours late on that one." House pointed his cane at me. "What's more interesting than that is...you always let me have my fun before. Even when kids were involved. What changed now?" House challenged, pouring himself a glass of bourbon.

"I don't know. I'm just trying to be more proactive. I want to do more. Taking my hands off the wheel didn't go so well before. So if I could save a twelve year old girl from going through something that scary..." I shrugged my shoulders, knowing that I wasn't explaining myself well. "I thought I did something worthwhile today. I wasn't fast enough, though. That's on me."

"Mitts off my cases from now on, if I'm not gonna kill anyone. The team thinks your Doogie Howser now. More so than before," House criticized, carefully seating himself on the couch. He propped his leg up, drained his glass of bourbon, and immediately poured another one. "Also, keep messing with things, and you'll lose whatever control you do have over this timeline—assuming you really have any at all."

"You think I haven't thought of that?" I challenged.

"I think you've thought of that a thousand times. I think you overthink everything and overcorrect because that's who you are. You never take the simplest route, the route that makes sense. I never thought I could meet someone who thinks in a less-linear way than Wilson, but congrats, the throne is yours."

"You're saying the way you think is linear?" I said, incredulous.

"Anything that operates entirely on logic is," House countered, watching me over his glass.

"You do not operate entirely on logic, no matter how much you think you do," I bit back. "Logic dictates that if I know what's wrong with one of your patients, I should speak up. Emotion towards you, towards not wanting you to be deprived of your puzzle-solving fix, now that's illogical."

"So the big gooey soft part of you on the inside tells you to let small children go through a battery of painful invasive tests, but that hard, logical side finally took over in the end? After she'd already had her bone marrow aspirated?"

House had, unsurprisingly, honed in on my insecurities and dug a knife in. "I...I didn't know how fast the episode was gonna move. She'd already had the bone marrow aspiration before I met up with Foreman. I was late on damage control."

"She didn't die in the show, did she?"

"No, but—"

"Interfere when I start killing people. You told me the diagnosis for my last case, too. Let me do my job," House insisted, and I could tell I'd really irritated him by revealing Mary's pregnancy, but I couldn't bring myself to apologize.

"Yeah, and interfering last time made it so Naomi could hold her child before she died. Forgive me if I'm not overwrought with guilt." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Look. I'll play it by ear. I'm not making any promises," I told him. "Also, I'd like to go to bed, so can you pass out in your room instead of on the couch?"

"But I like the couch."

"Then I'm sleeping in your bed," I said bluntly. "And given how intense about keeping people out of your bedroom you are, I'm guessing that idea doesn't thrill you."

House sighed and rose to his feet. I headed to the couch, happy I'd convinced him to sleep in his own bed. He stopped me before I plopped down. "You're still a virgin, right?"

"Do you—why the fuck would I ever answer that?" I stammered, taken aback.

"So you are. Okay. Good. I don't need fake grandkids on top of everything else," House said, slipping past me.

"House," I called over my shoulder. He halted, but didn't look at me. "I'm not like Mary. It took me a long time to grow up. I'm still growing up. I wanted to stay a kid as long as I could. So, I just...didn't do that."

"So you're saying you still want to be a kid?" he asked, and I sensed genuine curiosity from him.

"Not necessarily, but...I don't want to rush anything," I answered feebly.

"You think we get to choose when we grow up? Do you think my patient chose?" House cornered me. Oh great. He wants to argue. This is what I get for taking his 'I solved a case' high.

"I think if we're lucky we get to choose. I don't think she chose. When you're twelve, consent is...a lot different. That's why when I was twelve I was playing Yu-Gi-Oh! instead of...that."

"You can't even say that and you're a full-grown adult," he scoffed.

"Excuse me if I attach some kind of stigma to a sexually active twelve year old!"

"You attach stigma to it period. Your cheeks go red if anyone so much as mentions sex. Other than your pathological fear of failure, nothing terrifies you like vulnerability, and you have this image in your head of a beautiful storybook romance that for some reason requires total emotional honesty before penetration. Sex scares you because you think of it like a child, because you are a child," House ranted in typical fashion, and I just threw myself on the couch, defeated.

"What's your point, House?" I mumbled into the pillow.

"You're a child making adult decisions. You're a child that decided to make an adult decision that will affect you for the rest of your adult life," House's voice was rising steadily, and finally, finally, I realized what this conversation was actually about.

I lifted my head to look up at him. "I wondered when this was coming. You didn't freak out nearly enough when I first told you. Did you get bored of respecting my decision?"

"I respect decisions that deserve respect," House snapped, looking down at me, his glass of bourbon forgotten on the coffee table. "99% of what you know about medicine came from a fucking medical drama, but you have the instincts. You have what it takes, do you know how rare that is? What a tremendous waste. And what, you'll become an MA? A nurse? A receptionist in a private practice—what's the point of any of it, if it's not what you really want?"

"Because I didn't earn it," I sat up, bristling. I'd done this mostly for him, and while I certainly didn't expect gratitude, I expected at least...well, silence preferably. But apparently I wasn't getting that lucky. "Because you paid my way into that school and as long as Vogler was here, you were gonna keep paying for it. Never mind the fact that I'll never be able to get things back on track if Vogler has you as his puppet. I didn't get sent here to go to medical school, House. I was sent here for you."

"And when your eight years of future knowledge is up, then what?" he asked roughly. "What do you have for yourself? Nothing."

I have you. I was surprised to feel tears building in my eyes. "I don't know, House," I replied in a small voice.

He stared at me for a long moment, everything seeming to drag on into infinity. Eventually, he turned away from me, limped into his room, and shut the door without another word.