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You Can't Get Blood From A Stone
by mad poet
You Can't Get Blood From A Stone
Wilson hoped he would never get used to cases like this. His patient would loose her leg to cancer and there was no way he could save it. He could only hope this drastic action was in time to save her life from the disease, hope that he had not let either her parents' or his own sympathies delay the amputation too long. He reviewed her file one more time, checked in again with the surgery team, then headed for Kara's room for the few minutes of encouragement he could offer her and her parents before the sedative, then the staff, did their work.
"Good afternoon, Kara," he greeted his patient first, even if she was only five years old. "Bob, Catherine, it's good to see you."
Bob and Catherine Knowles were a brave, solid couple, with a brave, optimistic little girl. Of the three faces that met his, there were tears only in her parents' eyes. Kara seemed as much excited as apprehensive as she faced the life-changing, life-saving surgery. As had become her habit with her doctor, she almost immediately demanded a story. Wilson had used quick, simple stories to encourage her appetite, to make needles and pills less scary, and to turn hospital johnnies into runway fashion. He had used stories to explain her disease, her tests, even what it could mean to loose a leg. Catherine had earlier remarked that, should he retire from medicine, he could have a great career as a children's author.
Right now, however, Wilson's muse was quiet. He checked the IV drip and the chart's notations of dose and time and wondered what he could say to fill the next ten minutes.
"You know, Kara, I don't have a sleepy time story ready for you right now--"he had always believed in honesty, even with his younger patients. He looked her right in the eye as he spoke; absorbing her hurt and disappointment was the least he could do. He was peripherally aware of her mom's anxious fidget, disguised as a quick reach for the Kleenex box.
"It's not really for me, Dr. Wilson," Kara said solemnly, as if to excuse his failing and her own dismay. "It's for my mom. She's crying a lot."
Wilson had just enough time to glance at the Knowles--at Bob's hand on Catherine's shoulder, at Catherine's shaky smile and nod of understanding to the physician--before an angel, or perhaps a devil, threw open the door.
Dr. Gregory House, a haggard looking man in a rumpled lab coat, leaned into the hospital room. Like a Vaudeville actor, he hissed a too-loud "hey, Wilson" and waved at the attending physician to join him in the hallway.
Dr. Wilson tried to neither wince nor cringe in front of the curious family. With his own heart pounding in anxious anticipation, he offered House the universal `in a minute' raised hand.
"If you would both excuse me for a moment--"Wilson began, but not speedily enough to satisfy his colleague.
House pushed his way into the hospital room with no preamble and even less delicacy. At least the lurching gate and obvious limp explained the thumping clatter of his arrival, but there was no excuse for the interruption.
Years of experience warned Wilson to expect the worst when any of his patients met this man, and he grit his teeth hard behind a neutral expression. He hoped his warning glare was hidden from the family but was enough to caution House.
"I'll wait," the newcomer announced grandly, heedless of Wilson's dismay.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw House scoop the patient file from the bureau and open the folder. Desperately, he held onto the fading hope that the older man was there to see him, and would therefore leave with him, just as soon as Wilson could gracefully, or even not so gracefully, get away from Kara and her parents.
"Mr.and Mrs. Knowles, this is Doctor House. It seems I may be needed elsewhere for a moment--"Wilson tried to use his tone and body to nudge House towards the door.
The scruffy older man, caught up in the story of Kara's medical history, was oblivious to Wilson's maneuverings as well as her parents' concerned appraisal.
Kara had her own agenda.
"Do you know a story, Dr. House? Dr. Wilson doesn't have one and I always get a story before I go to sleep."
"Oh, you do, huh?" The words could have been sarcastic if House had spoken with more energy. Bob Knowles looked from the interloper to his daughter's doctor, lips pursed in question.
Wilson quietly `ahem'ed under his breath, trying to pull House out of the case file. While working out a medical puzzle, House was incredibly focused and unbearably rude; Wilson wanted the man as far from his patient as he could get him. The Knowles' emotional well being could depend on it, just as Kara's health could depend on whatever the caustic genius was evaluating.
After comparing the chart and the wall clock's timings, House reached for the nearest unoccupied chair. He fixed critical blue eyes on the man he considered a friend. "You can't come up with a six minute bed time story? Really? You talk my ear off every day in the caf."
The oncologist ignored the bald faced lie, trying instead to summon up some sort of polite way to manage a private consult in the hallway.
"So could you tell me a story, Dr. House?" Kara wanted to know, sitting up even though she'd been told to lie down, focusing bright green eyes on the haggard face of the newcomer.
The attending physician looked from his patient to the diagnostician, the question as obvious as he could make it without alarming her parents.
House took the seat with the alarming scrape and solid thud of a barely controlled fall. Catherine gasped, Bob flinched, Wilson frowned, and the crippled man didn't seem to notice. "I tell pretty good stories," he told her matter of factly. "Just ask Wilson, here. A bed time story should be a piece of cake."
"Super duper!" Kara declared in celebration, sitting straight up and giving the man her rapt attention. "I hope it's a good one."
That's it, Wilson realized. She's far too alert for someone with at least half a dose of sedative already in her veins.
Hooking his cane over the bed rail, the newly commissioned story teller appraised the hovering Oncologist. "Isn't there something you wanted to check at the nurse's station?"
Nurse's station. Med log. Med cart. Yeah, there is; but that sounds as suspicious as any bed time story I can imagine from the likes of you. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Bob and Catherine, expressions worried, watched the pair of doctors. Catherine nervously crumpled another tissue. Kara, unperturbed, clapped her hands excitedly to begin the command performance.
"You'll have to lie back down," House told her, "and don't do shi--stuff like that. Clapping and bouncing and crap. Okay?"
"Okay!" Kara gave an elaborate snuggle into the hospital mattress and thin blankets, her eyes never leaving her new storyteller.
In a quiet whisper to her parents, Wilson said, "I'm concerned that she isn't more tired right now. I want to check on a few things before we proceed."
"Will she be alright? Is there a mistake with her medication?" Bob asked, also sotto voice.
"I don't see any evidence of a problem, but Dr. House will keep a close eye on her for the few minutes I will be gone." Wilson put every confidence in his voice, even said the last part loud enough for House to hear. Carefully, he added, "Dr. House is a leader in his field."
Passing House, he spoke in an even quieter whisper. "Behave."
House grinned brightly at his friend. "I know the rules; every story at her age has a happy ending, right?"
"Right," Wilson agreed, knowing that House's definition of `happy ending' probably would make a coroner cringe. The man's sham of a smile did nothing to reassure him. He kept an eye over his shoulder as he left, unable not to doubt.
Dr. Gregory House took to his role as story teller with surprising relish, rubbing his hands briskly together before putting one hand lightly on the girl's thin wrist, his long fingers atop her pulse point. He watched the rise and fall of her small chest as he seemed to gather his thoughts. "Where to begin, where to begin. . . "
"Once upon a time," Kara chirped expectantly," a long time ago."
"In a galaxy far far away, yeah, I know that part," House interrupted in a tone that surprised her parents with its sharpness and would have astounded his colleagues for its gentleness. "Am I telling this story or are you?"
"You," she told him.
"Good. Here are the rules. I tell the story and you don't interrupt. Clear?"
"Yup."
"And you have to lie still and imagine what I'm telling you in your head, okay?"
"Okay."
"Eyes closed."
"Okay." She obediently squished her eyes as closed as she could, her wide grin making the expression especially comical. House rolled his eyes.
"Once upon a time," Kara prompted.
"There was a little boy," House began.
"What was his name?" Kara wanted to know. When there was no immediate answer, she opened her eyes to study her benefactor. "Was his name Billy?"
"You are supposed to have your eyes closed, "the doctor reminded her irritably as he scribbled a note on the chart in his lap. "Don't interrupt. He's just a little boy, a little taller than some little boys, smart kid, long eye lashes, that kind of thing."
Kara giggled. Bob Knowles cleared his throat and made a gesture towards the file. House dismissed his concern with a quirked eye brow and rough glower, and then returned to his story.
"He started out a nice enough kid, but he was sick inside. Head hurt. There was tinnitus, that's a ringing in his ears, and vertigo, that's dizziness. Neuropathy made his fingers tingle and sometimes colors changed while he was watching them."
"Cool!" was Kara's assessment, although this time she kept her eyes closed when she spoke.
"Not really," House snapped with, for him, unusual quietness. Catherine still jumped, alarmed. The doctor ignored her as he went on. "All those symptoms together made the little boy clumsy. Bull in a China shop. He dropped things, broke things. Broke his grandmother's tea pot, an ugly china thing shaped like a spaniel. Broke his mother's flower vase that had had been a wedding present. Broke the glass in the framed picture of his dad's army buddies."
Kara, who had started to giggle at the spaniel shaped tea pot, squinted up at him.
"You're supposed to be falling asleep, remember?" he admonished the patient. "Or did you forget already?" He used long fingers to swat lightly her forehead above those watchful green eyes, earning another giggle, and a chance to assess her skin with a quick touch to forehead and cheek. He seemed unaware of Catherine's loud tug on the tissue box or of the sharp squeak of Bob's chair.
"Anyway," he went on, apparently satisfied that he did not need to make further notes in her file. "His parents got mad at him for braking shi--dropping stuff, I mean. They told him he wasn't careful enough with other people's things, told him that if he would just pay more attention to what he was doing than he wouldn't hurt people's feelings anymore. Called him lazy."
In the pause that followed, all three adults looked closely to see if the child was sleeping. Kara made it clear that she was not. Eyes still carefully closed, grin still lurking far too energetically behind her words, she piped up again. "Did they take him to a doctor? A doctor like Dr. Wilson?"
"This is my story, remember?" His students wouldn't have recognized the watered down admonishment is his voice, but this time both parents glared at this stranger-doctor keeping watch over their daughter. "Yes, they took him to a doctor. And they found out that the little boy had a problem. He didn't have a crystal in his heart."
That got a delighted squeal as Kara's green eyes flew wide open. "Hearts don't have crystals in them, silly!" she crowed, then stopped. "Don't they?"
House sighed dramatically. "I am a doctor, you know. Besides, all hearts have crystals in them in fairy stories."
"Fairy tales," Kara said. She had now successfully corrected the great genius Gregory House twice more than anyone else who had ever met him.
"Right. So the little boy needed a crystal for his heart. He hadn't gotten one when he was younger--"
"Why not?"
"'Cuz that's part of the story, that's why not," he told her with more of his usual impatience. "Isn't that how these fairy tales go?"
"Uh-huh," she agreed, "but you're supposed to put that part in at the beginning."
At three corrections, she was truly in a league of her own.
In a much quieter voice, a confessional tone, he admitted, "I haven't told this story in a long time, Carri--Kara. Bear with me."
"Okay."
"Eyes?"
She obeyed immediately. "Okay."
House repeated his earlier assessment of her skin, pulse and respiration under the guise of remembering the details of a forgotten story. He scribbled a note as he resumed speaking; his gruff expression keeping her parents' questions at bay.
"These crystal things were all shiny sparkly clear diamondy-things that held all of the love and happiness that that person was ever going to have. Compassion, smiles, laughter, kindness--all that shi--stuff, okay? So it was important to have one and to keep it in your heart so's you could feel all that chick flick horse shi--hocky."
Kara squirmed with the effort not to giggle louder or open her eyes again
House frowned, glanced back at the door as if that would hurry Wilson's steps.
"Dr. House--?" Catherine began hesitantly. Her own daughter interrupted her.
"So what happened to your--I mean Billy's--crystal for his heart?" Kara asked eagerly.
"She's certainly cognizant," House muttered. "Coherent enough for the Brothers' Grimm second cousin." He considered her file as he continued. "It's pretty obvious what happened, isn't it? The little boy's really nervous when he goes in to get his crystal. His hands are sweaty and he's shaking a little--"
"Does he have butterflies in his stomach?"
"Butterflies in his stomach, cotton mouth, cold sweat, the whole nine yards. So when they hand him his crystal, with all those good things he's ever gonna feel his whole life--"
"He drops it!" Kara crowed, her gaze and smile both happy and wide with the victory of her guess. "That's what happens, isn't it?"
"Kara--"Catherine's word was for her daughter, but her outraged warning was for the man she had hardly met. While House met the parent's dismay with his own icy glare, the little girl kept talking. No one acknowledged the door as it swung quietly open.
"It's okay, Mom," she said. "Something really bad has to happen in a story so that something really good can happen later--right, Dr. Wilson? Like I'm going to loose my leg today cuz it's sick but later when I'm not sick anymore, I could be the first person with a fake leg to win a gold medal in gymnastics. Right?"
Wilson, slipping back into the room in time to hear some of the exchange, pointedly ignored his colleague's pained eye roll at the gold medal reference. He took the folder House pushed at him and studied the new scribbles. "That's right, Kara. You remembered the story."
"I like stories," she announced, completely forgetting about keeping still and lying down. She pointed at House. "He tells really good stories!"
As the orator opened his mouth to protest her jabbing finger, Wilson spoke quickly.
"How are you feeling?" Wilson asked his patient, hoping his best Compassionate Doctor voice would remind the older man that there were proprieties to be followed. He circled the chair to get to the IV line, managing not to stumble over the cane tip and avoiding bumping the crippled leg. "Are you getting sleepy yet?"
"Nope. I want to hear the rest of the story."
Carefully, Wilson began to adjust the IV line, watching both the medicine drip and his patient's demeanor. He felt Greg's sharp blue eyes tracking his every move and wondered if and when the man would speak up in unnecessary public critique. The oncologist asked another question in a professionally neutral tone that belied a heart heavy with anticipation. "What is the story about?"
"Billy's a little boy who never got a crystal for his heart," she explained. "Without a crystal he can't be happy and when he's finally given one he drops it `cuz he's sick inside and it shatters in little bits all over the floor so's he can't ever be happy." She dropped her voice into a conspirator's tone. "It's a fairy tale. We don't really have crystals in our hearts, not really."
Wilson smiled at Kara, gave a reassuring, everything's okay nod to her parents and tried not to stare too hard at House.
Kara settled back onto the bed, carefully and deliberately folding her arms and closing her eyes. "I'm ready. What happens to Billy next?"
"Oh, you're not going to finish this story? You're already ahead of where I left off," House told her, careful to avoid Wilson's gaze.
"I am?"
"Yes. I mean, think about it. Compassion and hope and love and shi-stuff like that are pretty strong. One fall isn't going to make it, and I quote, `shatter into little bits all over the floor.'" It was the gentlest correction Wilson had heard the man speak in eleven years, but he had other reasons to doubt Greg's sincerity.
"It's not?" Wilson's words were half challenge, half prompt.
House glared at him. "Of course not. The little boy's crystal cracks inside, and some of the sparkly pointy bits brake off, but he still has a crystal."
"And does he put it in his heart and carry it around so he can feel happy like he's supposed to?"
It might have been Wilson's imagination, but he thought the little girl's voice was less energetic. Just a tad, not by much, but a tiny bit less bouncy. She had so much enthusiasm, now. He hoped --
"No," House told her.
"Does he put it in a box under the bed, so's nothing else bad happens to it?"
"Nope."
"The closet?"
"Is this your story or mine?" House snapped.
"I just want you to finish it." This last was in a tired little whine, guaranteed to put the gruff doctor's teeth on edge. Wilson did the math quick and flashed his fingers at the man, begging for five more minutes of civility. House huffed out a breath like a disgruntled bear.
The quiet was gone in a heartbeat.
"Whadd'dhe do?" Kara wanted to know. As their daughter persisted, her parents waited, watching in concern as House considered the girl.
When the story resumed, House's rough voice was strange in its rounded softness. He was looking towards the patient, but Wilson was sure he was not seeing Kara.
"This little boy I'm talking about, he's stubborn. Very stubborn. And he really thinks he wants to have people love him and to love people back. As if love is a good thing. So he tries to have the crystal fixed. He saves his allowance, takes a paper route, mows lawns, shovels snow- anything to make a buck. And it's hard, `cuz he's till sick with the vertigo, the tinnitus. And he carries the crystal with him, too, `cuz he wants to be happy. But--there's always a `but', isn't there?-but since he can't keep it safe in his heart, and since he's still got the neuropathy -or maybe it was Reynard's, I don't remember, now-he drops it a few more times. More sparkly bits brake off and it gets smaller and smaller, until it's so small he can carry it in his pocket. "
"I had a worry stone, once," Kara announced. "I losted it. It was black with white blotches on it." The corners of her eyes were relaxed, smooth. The sooner she slept, Wilson thought, the sooner he could set them all free of the story's spell, maybe even free the teller himself.
"Snow flake obsidian," House named the stone.
"Did you--did Billy loose his crystal `cuz it was so small?"
Wilson heard the slip and looked sharply at House.
House pointedly ignored him. "By then the little boy -his name is not Billy, by the way--the little boy had quite a bit of cash. And what he did was he took all the money he had and went to the jeweler in town and asked this fat old jeweler guy to make a setting for his crystal. . . Do you know what a setting is? like for a stone?"
Kara frowned, but didn't bother to look at the adults crowding her room. "Like fra ring `r som'thin'?"
"It's the metal arms that hold a stone together," Wilson explained gently, and compared her lucidity with the drip's speed.
"This is my stor--Do you both you guys need a memo, for Chri--geez." House shifted awkwardly in the straight backed chair.
The small crumple of Kleenex in Catherine's hands was by now quite large. Her eyes on House were no longer sharp, although her husband's were.
"Well, the Jeweler in town thinks the little boy must've stolen this ratty old beat up crystal and calls the police. And the police don't like the little boy--it's hard to like someone who doesn't have any good feelings in his heart-- but because they can't prove that he stole anything, they have to send him home. The little boy is upset that now everyone thinks he's a thief as well as careless and thoughtless and cruel so he takes his tiny, broken little crystal, with all that's left of any good stuff in it, takes it and throws it into the woods behind his house. He throws it away as hard and as far as he can."
There was a quiet murmuring from the patient.
"I think she's drifting off," Bob whispered. Beside him, his wife stuffed the tissue ball back into the box. She rested her hand against her husband's thigh and he clasped it.
Kara tried to correct her daddy. "Wanna hear th'res'," she whispered. "This's whenth' good stuff happens."
All eyes but Kara's turned expectantly to House. House watched the young girl, seemingly oblivious to everyone else in the room. "The little boy didn't have any friends because of whom and what he was, but there's this one guy, this one idiot that's just as stubborn as he is. This fool is trying really, really hard to like him. And when this guy hears what has happened, he comes over to look for the crystal."
The story stopped. The room was quiet for a long time as all attentions went from the crippled doctor in the disheveled lab coat and the small, sleeping girl.
"Finally," House announced. He glanced towards the door where the transporters were just arriving with a gurney. "Right on time."
"Aren't you going to finish?" Catherine asked hesitantly. "What if she's still listening? What if she can still hear you?"
The doctor's expression was unreadable as he answered. "Wilson tells better stories than I do. Your turn, Boyo--I sat too long." He began the laborious process of getting out of the way by gouging at the smooth floor tiles with the cane tip, trying to help himself stand.
Wilson reached to steady him. A sharp glower turned his attentions to her parents. As he directed them to the side of the room out of the way of the gurney and attendants, he was aware of the clumping cane and footsteps that carried House to the opposite wall. The attending physician glanced back to see the team in place to transfer the girl and his colleague leaning heavily on the bureau. The way was clear to load Kara and get her on her way without further interruptions, but Wilson felt the unfinished story tugging at him in her parents' eyes. So, as he helped transfer his patient himself, he continued the narrative.
"Billy's best friend worked all night with a flashlight going over every inch of the back yard," He was glad for the transporters' experience, Bob and Catherine's cooperation, and Kara's own light weight frame as he worked. One quick look showed him he had Greg's rapt attention. "Just after daybreak the next day, he found Billy's heart crystal. It was still big enough to be found. He knew Billy was a good person. And together, they had enough money to pay the jeweler for a beautiful setting, all made of gold, that wrapped around the crystal and made it strong. So everything was okay and the little boy could be happy and knew how to love."
They were out the door by then, and Wilson stepped aside as the transport team directed the gurney to the oversized elevator. Kara looked even smaller than she had in her room.
The oncologist turned to the anxious parents. "I'll see you in the waiting room to keep you updating on our progress," he told them. "I don't foresee any problems."
"The IV--"Bob began.
"I needed to adjust the setting," Wilson explained. "She had the correct medication at the correct dosage--the computer scanner on the bottle and her wrist confirm that she got what she should have, it simply wasn't entering her body at the speed I had ordered. I've informed the anesthesiologist. That won't be any problem."
"Thank you," Catherine began, only to be interrupted by Dr. House as he cane-clumped into the hall after them.
"Thank him when he does something," House told them. Instead of pursuing his original conversation with Wilson, the haggard older man turned away.
Catherine puzzled at the retreating doctor. She reached out as if she might speak, but said nothing. Bob took her arm and guided his wife to follow him. "We'll see you soon, then, Dr. Wilson."
As soon as the polite reassurances and dismissals were over, the oncologist followed the determined lurchings of his colleague. He caught up with House just in time to join him in an elevator.
In the privacy of the elevator car, Greg gave him the critical snarl he used with his students. "What kind of lame-ass ending for a story was that? God, Wilson, that was Hallmark clap trap sappiness in all its inept glory. I need a shot of insulin just for being near enough to hear it."
Wilson leaned against the car wall, watching his friend. House wouldn't look at him again and was tapping his cane with an energy usually reserved for fights with board members or lawyers. For just a moment, Wilson considered using the name `Billy' to tease the other doctor--it was great to see the egotistical, self-possessed jack-ass off balance--but he let that moment pass. It was all too rare to hear the self destructive genius address his pain at all, and Wilson could not ridicule him for it.
Instead, very carefully, Wilson chose his defense. "The way I see it, Billy and his friend both won. Billy got a crystal he could put in his heart so he could know what love was, and his best friend, his only friend, got to be part of that. The only other solution would be for the idiot guy to sacrifice his own heart, give Billy everything he had. Have nothing left for himself. Then there would be only one winner. . . I like my ending, House."
"Moron," House proclaimed, punctuating the slur with a sharp tap of his cane on the floor. "Didn't they teach you anything in med school? Or is your license from a cracker jack box?"
"What am I missing?"
"Neither ending is any kind of answer," House argued, and his tone had turned ugly, hurtful. "It doesn't matter whose crystal the little boy has at the end of the story because neither one could do him any good."
"Oh?"
With a twisted expression, a dark glare, House used the cane tip to strike the `car stop' button on the elevator panel. As they shuddered to a halt between floors, Wilson automatically looked at his watch. He knew Cuddy would demand explanations for a commandeered elevator on a busy afternoon.
House whirled on the pivot of his cane, advancing on the younger man, his anger almost palatable. "What is the first thing they taught you in your first AP class, Jimmy boy? The first ten dollar word they made you scribble into your notebook that very first day?"
Before Wilson could muster any kind of answer, House continued. "Homeostasis! The body always works to maintain itself, adapt, compensate, adjust however it has to, whatever insane bullshit trauma we do to it, to stay alive--right?!"
It was the fundamental principal of medical inquiry. Every doctor depended on the known and understood mechanisms of the body's systems to fight disease and create healing. The oncologist could only nod.
"So this little boy, he doesn't get a crystal when he should, he goes most of his life--his whole life up to this point--with a hole in his heart that's not supposed to be there. No one can live with a basketball-sized hole in their heart, Wilson, even you know that."
With effort, Wilson managed not to point out that human hearts were the size of human fists and that a basket ball was totally out of scale. It was easy to meet House with the venom and sarcasm he habitually slung at those around him, but the moments of self revelation were shooting-star rare, and Wilson was a friend because he listened for them. Encouraged them.
"How did the little boy's heart adapt to the hole?"
"It calcified, you idiot," the story teller explained, nose to nose with his colleague. "Turned to stone. Hard as a rock. Filled the hole with calcite. The heart keeps beating because it can't feel enough to know it should stop."
The notion of a calcified heart continuing to beat was as ludicrous as a basket ball-sized hole in a heart to begin with, but the point was clear.
Turning away, House used his cane to jab the elevator back into motion. The car renewed its decent in silence.
Finally, just as the car landed, Wilson found his voice. "There are breakthroughs in medicine all the time, Greg, actually and metaphorically speaking. . .more research, better techniques, better protocols--"
House replied with a caustic snort. "'Actually and metaphorically?'" he mimicked, "'Research?' `Techniques'? Do you even remember English Comp 101? or wasn't communications a graduation requirement?"
After eleven years, the turbulent mood swings and acidic insults could still catch him off guard. Stunned, Wilson let the moment pass. He was sad to think that small window into his friend's troubled and troubling brilliance was already closed.
The doors opened and House gave him one final glare. "You can't get blood from a stone, you imbecile. It's dead already. Let it go."
With that, the doctor clumped and lurched away in such a hurry that when he knocked into Cuddy he didn't acknowledge his boss at all. Still in the car, Wilson watched him go. When the doors closed again, Cuddy stood beside him, trying with sweeps of her hand to correct the fall of her skirt and set of her hair.
"Well, he's in fine form," she commented dryly. "I wonder what new lawsuit is on my desk to explain that?"
Wilson was still lost in thought. "What?" he asked her. Looking down, as she was shorter than he was, he saw that she was peering at him quizzically.
"So I take it he hasn't made you resign again yet?" The contrast between the two men at that moment amused her and she smiled.
"Ummn, no, I--"
As Wilson stumbled, her smile faded into her first concern. "Do you know what's got him so wound up this time? He didn't assault someone else, did he?"
"No," Wilson answered. "I can at least account for his last half hour, Lisa, and this time the only person who was hurt was himself."
stone 14
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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