sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-11 05:38 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-11 05:38 pm
Entry tags:
Unfinished Business (House/GA crossover)
Title: Unfinished Business (House/Grey's Anatomy crossover, incomplete)
Rating: PG for language.
Summary: House wreaks havoc in Seattle Grace Hospital.
Notes: This was jossed violently by the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy, so I'm posting what I have. I don't intend to finish it. Write your own ending, it's fun and enjoyable! :D
Warnings: None.
"Guess what I just did."
Richard Webber (MD, Chief of Surgery, bucking for his very own ulcer) looked up from his paperwork. It was rarely a good thing when a surgeon asked you to guess what he'd just done. That was like a four year old coming up to you and pre-emptively saying, "I didn't do it."
Still, Shepherd didn't look guilty. In fact, he looked happy. He might even have looked radiant.
"What did you do?" the Chief asked, still wary.
"I got you a keynote speaker for our pain conference," Derek said, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet. He grinned irrepressibly. He did this many times a day. It was enough to drive a Chief of Surgery to drink. "Guess who it is."
Richard sighed.
"Gregory House!" Derek announced, before he could speak. "He's agreed to speak on the short and long-term neurological effects of Ketamine-induced comas on chronic -- "
"YOU GOT WHO?" Richard demanded loudly.
Derek paused.
"Gregory House?" he ventured, hesitant now.
The Chief let his head fall to rest on his desk.
It was going to be one of those days.
***
"YOU DID WHAT?"
Allison Cameron was unperturbed by House's histrionics; she'd grown used to them.
"This is why you should reply to your own email," Foreman said, crossing his arms.
"I told Dr. Shepherd that you'd present a paper on Ketamine comas at the Seattle Grace Pain Conference," Cameron said. "We've all seen you working on the paper, I know you have it ready."
"In SEATTLE?" House demanded.
"Cuddy says you have to give at least three conference presentations a year. They want you to be keynote speaker. Chase is already presenting on Electric Shock Boy."
"Medical conferences are equal parts masturbation and lukewarm wine," House snarled.
"Sounds like fun to me," Chase pointed out.
"If you want anything of substance, read a damn journal."
"Well, there's no point in shouting at me, I do read journals," Cameron fired back. "Take it up with Cuddy if you want to get off the hook."
"Don't think I won't," House retorted.
***
Four weeks later, Greg House walked -- or rather, shuffled -- down an airport corridor in Seattle, heading for baggage claim.
His whole body ached, his leg like a familiar flare and the rest of him from tension about the pain and the flight and the fact that if he was nasty to people they'd arrest him as a terrorist. Even with a doubled-up dose of Vicodin, he was feeling the effects of several hours in a pressurised cabin. And he hadn't sprung for first class. And you couldn't sit in an exit row with a cane.
Ahead was the prospect of a quiet hotel room where he could die in peace, but first there was purgatory: baggage claim. People were already crowding around the edges of the carousel like idiots, as if somehow your bags would magically disappear if they had to go around more than once. House sat down on a bench and subtly massaged his leg. He could wait.
"Excuse me. Dr. House?"
House looked up at a man who embodied the term gravitas. He had never met someone who defined a Latin adjective before, but this man was definitely it. He was tall and solemn, with keen eyes and a deep, even voice.
And yet, that little self-destructive four-year-old in House couldn't just let things go.
"No, I'm Mbubu Nfangi, deposed Nigerian dictator," House replied. "Got a bank account I could use?"
The man just smiled. And not a stupid smile, either; a smile of tolerant comprehension.
"I'm Dr. Burke," he said, offering one hand. House shook it. "I'm here to take you to your hotel."
A flag went up in House's encyclopedic brain.
"Preston Burke, Cardiothoracic?" he asked.
"I see you've done your research. My intern O'Malley is collecting your luggage -- "
Even as Burke spoke, a young man with a floppy fringe of dark hair approached, pushing a cart with a suitcase and backpack on it.
"Is this everything, Dr. House?" he asked enthusiastically. House wondered if Cameron had a half-brother named O'Malley she'd never told him about.
"I travel light. Just the essentials -- ball gags, riding crops..."
The young man looked uncertainly at Burke, who was still smiling faintly.
"This way, Dr. House," he said, and House pushed himself up from the bench. "Dr. Shepherd sends his regrets he couldn't come meet you himself, but he was held up at the hospital."
"Not really interested in meeting more people than I have to," House replied as they exited the building. Nearby, an SUV gunned its engine and abruptly jerked forward, stopping in front of them. It nearly took out O'Malley's luggage cart.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to meet one more person," Burke said.
"She's really more like three," O'Malley added.
The door popped open and a fresh-faced young woman in jeans and a scrub shirt smiled eagerly at him. "Dr. House, I'm -- "
"One of our other Surgical interns, Cristina Yang," Burke said. "Cristina, in the back with O'Malley."
"But -- "
"I'll drive."
"But Burke -- "
"Don't mind the cripple," House said. "I'll just wander off to the taxi stand. Faster that way, probably."
The young woman bolted out of the front seat, nearly colliding with O'Malley, who was loading House's luggage into the back. Burke took the wheel smoothly and House hitched himself up into the shotgun seat, leaning back and closing his eyes.
"Dr. House, I was wondering if I could ask -- "
"No," House said, before Yang could get another word out.
"It's just I was -- "
"I didn't realise that "no" meant "please keep talking" this far west of the Mississippi," House said.
"Cristina, shut up," he heard O'Malley whisper.
It was going to be a long week.
***
"So...what's he like?" Izzie asked.
She was baking muffins, because if hundreds of doctors from all over the Pacific Northwest were going to descend on Seattle Grace for a conference, Izzie Stephens was going to be prepared. Most of the available surfaces in the kitchen were covered either with baked goods or with their components.
"Oh, you know," George sketched a vague, meaningless gesture in the air. "He's, you know."
"Nazi Junior," Cristina said promptly. George helped himself to a spoonful of chocolate batter. "No, not even junior. He might even out-Nazi the Nazi."
"McNazi," George suggested agreeably.
"Yeah, I've heard horror stories," Izzie said, "But you know how people exaggerate. They say he hit a guy in the stomach just to rupture a parasite cyst."
"Badass," Cristina said. "Are those cranberry?"
"Cranberry-ginger," Izzie corrected. Cristina tore one open and dumped honey on it.
"Well, if I was a doctor with a cane, I'd be pretty miserable too," George said.
"That's kind of prejudiced," Meredith put in, wandering into the kitchen. "Izzie, can you please leave at least a little milk for my cereal?"
"I'll buy you some more," Izzie promised.
"It's not like that," George said. "Just, you know, it must really suck to be a handicapped doctor. Who's going to want to be treated by someone who can't even fix themselves? Who'd listen to a doctor with a cane?"
"Do you really think McNazi has any trouble being heard?" Cristina asked him.
"Okay, maybe not," George conceded.
"McNazi?" Meredith asked.
"He's definitely not dreamy. Or steamy," Cristina said. "He's kinda scruffy. We could call him McScruffy. Oooh! Oooh! McGimpy!"
"Cristina!"
"Dude, I never said I was PC," Cristina replied.
"We can't call him McGimpy, that's just wrong," Meredith declared.
"I'm just gonna stay out of swinging distance of his cane," George said darkly.
***
The hotel room was quiet, and dark, and peaceful. It had a nice chair he could sit in. The bed seemed decent. He'd requested, and recieved, a room a long, long way away from all the other doctors in the hotel. It was a nice hotel, in fact. If he called down to the concierge he could probably deliver a hooker to his room without batting an eye.
A nice, quiet, dark, peaceful hotel room did, of course, mean one thing and one thing only:
Ten minutes after arriving, House was bored out of his skull.
He'd inspected the entire room like a cat exploring new digs, listened through the walls for any interesting activity on either side of him, inspected the Gideon Bible (annotating a few mistranslations in Song of Songs) and was now sitting near the window, cellphone cradled between ear and shoulder, waiting for someone to pick up on the other end. He was hoping for Cameron, because she was the most fun to poke, but it was Foreman who answered.
"We don't have any patients," he said, by way of greeting. "Cuddy has Cameron doing your Clinic hours and I'm alphabetising your books."
"Long-distance ass-kissing. Nice," House remarked. "Someone in that hospital must need diagnosing."
"Cellphone diagnosis is notoriously annoying. Goodbye, House," Foreman said, and hung up.
He didn't have to be anywhere until the opening banquet tomorrow night. Chase had booked a later flight out than he had, so right now the Australian was somewhere over the midwest and safely out of House's reach. He supposed he could call Cameron's pager and ask her to find him someone to diagnose in the Clinic, but that smacked of desperation. And Wilson --
Well, he wasn't going to push any boundaries with Wilson just now. They were on thin enough ice as it was.
He glanced at his laptop, then reached over to the table and clicked the Google hotkey in the corner of his web-browser. The familiar spartan design of the search engine popped up and he leaned forward, typing in his terms. Seattle +motorcycle +rental ought to find him something. If he was going to have some spare time, he might as well see the sights. At very high speed, as they whooshed past.
***
When Chase arrived at the hotel one of the first things he did was ask what room Gregory House was staying in. Cameron and Foreman would have called it kissing arse -- well, they would have said kissing ass -- but Chase genuinely liked House. Most of the time. Except when he punched him in the face. Anyway, Chase had been called a teacher's pet all his life for liking his teachers and he might as well check up on the old man and see how he was. House's room was a long way away from his own, but he left his bags in his room and made the trek.
A handwritten note was scrawled on a piece of hotel stationery and attached to the door with two pins from the complimentary sewing kit. Never let it be said that House couldn't improvise.
Gone Fishing.
Chase chuckled and knocked, fairly sure that this was House's way of saying DO NOT DISTURB. When he got no answer, he called through the door. Then he leaned back and studied it for a moment.
Maybe House really had gone fishing.
***
No one could really ever say that the area around Seattle Grace Hospital was peacefully silent, but in the early hours after the dawn drunks and before the morning heart-attacks it could be almost serene. Meredith was enjoying it; the sun was out (for once) and she was sitting on a bench outside the hospital with her coffee, drinking in the peaceful twitter of the birds. Izzie, always a manic presence, was eating a muffin on her right, and George was catching a last-minute nap on her left. Rounds would start soon, but they were already dressed and had gone over their prep and now they were just...resting.
The noise was shattered, suddenly and violently, by the machine-gun rat-a-tat of a motorcycle. Meredith, who had grown up with stories of the Donorcycle, waited -- as she had since she was a small child -- to hear the screech and crash she always associated with them. Instead, the noise got louder. And louder. And louder --
She opened her eyes and stared as the motorcycle, now well down the parking lot, skewed to a sudden halt, describing a perfect thirty-degree arc into a handicapped spot not ten feet away. She had a bad feeling about this.
"Hey!" she shouted, over the roar of the engine. "That's a handicapped spot! You can't park there!"
The man on the bike glanced at her, or at least turned his helmet in her direction, cut the engine, and reached into his inside pocket. For a terrible moment she thought he was going to take out a gun, but instead he took out a handicapped placard with an odd little locking mechanism on it and locked it around the handlebars of the bike.
"Oh crap," George said.
"What?" Meredith asked.
"That's House."
"Oh crap," Meredith said.
The helmet came off and was laid on the handlebars while Dr. House, still straddling the now-silent machine, pulled a cane out from a strap on his backpack like some kind of Scottish warrior's Claymore. He didn't give them a second look as he dismounted and walked inside.
"Good going, Mer," George sighed.
"How was I supposed to know! How many handicapped people do you know who ride motorcycles? Anyway, weren't Cristina and Burke supposed to go pick him up?"
"We'd better go inside," Izzie said, polishing off the last of her muffin.
***
Knowing that he was probably going to need a lot of pills to get through this, House had not only secured an emergency stash before leaving Princeton-Plainsboro but had also gotten Cuddy to write him a scrip he could cash in at the pharmacy at Seattle Grace. In fact, he'd already called the order in and just had to pick it up, which he was doing with all alacrity because this morning his leg had woken him and insisted in no uncertain terms that they were not flying anywhere together ever again. He was seriously considering taking the train back to Jersey.
The three interns he'd seen loitering around in the parking lot, patrolling the handicapped zone, had followed him inside at a cautious distance. He debated whether engaging battle this early in the day would be worth the pleasure of crushing their tiny souls. He had learned, as an intern and from a very good source, that interns existed primarily to be abused. He picked up the pills and was just turning to leave when someone called his name.
"Doctor HOUSE!"
House didn't even pause. If you kept walking, people often assumed they'd got the wrong cripple.
"DOCTOR HOUSE!"
A short, pugnacious-looking woman ran past him and circled around, blocking his hasty exit. He looked down at her. Too self-assured and a little too old to be an intern, not quite old enough or confident enough to be an attending. Resident, probably. Surgical, from the look of it.
"I'm taller, and I've got a blunt instrument," House said.
"I'm meaner, and I bite," the woman replied.
"So do I."
"I bite lower."
House considered this with a cock of his head. "Fair enough."
"I'm Dr. Bailey, surgical resident at Seattle Grace," she said. "You emailed me."
"I'm high most of the time," he replied, shaking the bottle of pills. "What did we talk about?"
"Rounds?" she said, in a tone that indicated it wasn't actually a question. "You're supposed to be leading rounds this morning. Dr. Burke was about to go pick you up."
"I'm very independent," House replied, while mentally he was totting up all the possible ways of humiliating Cameron in return for this.
"Good for you. Here's your schedule. The interns can show you where to go," she added, as two more showed up. The girl from yesterday -- Chang? -- and a tall, squareheaded man who looked like he should be in a wrestling ring.
"I'm not really into Rounds this morning," House tried, but here was a match for him, and he knew it. And she knew it, which was worse.
"Have fun," she said, with a small, funny smile. "It's a real honor, having Greg House lead rounds. Isn't it, boys and girls."
The interns muttered various shy forms of thanks.
"That's Yang, O'Malley, Stephens, Karev, and Grey," the short woman said. House had already forgotten her name. "Yang needs to be smacked with a newspaper once in a while and Stephens has to ask permission before doing anything."
House glanced at the statuesque blonde, who cocked her hip and rolled her eyes discontentedly.
"They're all yours, Dr. House," the resident said. She turned to the interns with a look that clearly said Don't embarrass me and walked away. House looked at them, then down at the rounds schedule. They were watching him with such hope in their eyes. It did, on some level, appeal to his ego. House enjoyed things that appealed to his ego.
"Boring...boring...boring....boring...mostly boring...boring," he said, reading his way down the schedule. "Where can I get coffee?"
The enthusiastic intern from yesterday held out a cup. He saw she was carrying two.
"Asskiss," the tall jock muttered.
House sipped it. Pure, straight-up black coffee. Good girl.
"Where's the cafeteria?" he asked.
"Oh, we're going up to -- " she began, but House wandered over to a directory on the nearby wall and looked it up for himself. "Dr. House, the elevators are -- "
"Do I look like I can walk rounds with you people?" House asked, stalking off as best he could. They followed, a very worried knot of scrubs. "Have some compassion for the cripple, here."
"I told you to shut up, Cristina," he heard the Irish one hiss.
***
"What are they doing?" Derek asked, arms crossed over his chest. He was watching as his keynote speaker, who was supposed to be leading rounds, tucked into a breakfast burrito. "They're supposed to be on rounds."
"Dr. House is...independent," the Chief replied. The scorn in his voice was nearly a tangible object. "He doesn't have much use for hospital regulations."
"He seemed normal enough in email," Derek said.
"Derek, I am guessing that whoever you spoke to in email, it probably wasn't House," Richard sighed, and walked away.
***
"Our patients are kinda expecting us," George said, trying not to sound reproachful. Dr. House bit into his burrito, chewed, and swallowed leisurely before replying.
"Rounds have two purposes, making interns look unprepared and making patients feel like someone's actually looking after them. In no way do they actually help the health of the patient," he said. The rest of the interns considered this. "That's what nurses are for. If one of the patients on your rounds actually needs you, hell will have frozen over. Or, your pager will go off."
"So we're...having breakfast?" Cristina asked.
"I'm having breakfast. You idiots didn't order anything," House replied. He waved his hand at the cafeteria, which was at the height of its morning breakfast rush. "First person to tell me who in this room has Crohn's disease gets a bite."
George looked around, bewilderedly. "You can't tell just by looking at someone -- " he began, but Meredith interrupted.
"Her," she said, indicating a woman at a nearby table with a tilt of her head.
House, amazingly, offered her the burrito. She waved it off.
"I don't have cooties, I swear," House said, taking another bite. "You're dismissed to buy your own damn breakfast if you want it."
"I had a muffin," she replied. They'd all had muffins, but the breakfast burrito did look good.
"You can't know that she has Crohn's," Izzie protested.
"Yeah, but someone does," Meredith replied. "And she's eating low-grain, non-dairy."
"And she has a prescription for Prednisone sitting next to her plate," House added.
"That's cheating," George said.
"Medicine isn't a game with rules," House replied. "If it gets you the answer faster it isn't cheating."
George saw Meredith do a double-take, but he wasn't sure why. House jerked his head at someone who was carrying a plate of food to a table.
"Diagnosis, people," he said. All five interns focused intently on the man, until Izzie smiled and leaned back.
"Cirrhosis," she said.
"Why?" House asked.
"I'm his prep."
George grinned.
"That's cheating," House protested sardonically.
Halfway through one of the most educational breakfasts George had ever experienced, though he suspected House's bedside manner could use some work, Meredith's pager went off. She bolted from the cafeteria with peculiar speed.
"What are the rest of you waiting for? This is where we actually do rounds," House said, nearly shoving George off his chair with his cane. They followed the beeline Meredith made. House could make pretty good time when he felt like it.
***
[this was supposed to be part of a longer scene. D'oh.]
George saw House studying the patient curiously from the corner of the room, his jaw set. The only time he'd ever seen anyone look that intensely focused before was during surgery. He knew how much energy it took to sustain focus while operating, and he realised suddenly that House sustained it all the time.
***
Meredith didn't really have time for a long visit, which she told herself was okay. The fact that most of her visits with her mother weren't very long was nicely excused by the fact that she was a surgical intern with a grueling schedule. And she had come by more and stayed longer since the Chief had stopped visiting.
"Your mother's with a visitor right now," the front-desk nurse said. "But I'm sure he'd be happy to see you too."
"I'm not so sure about that," Meredith murmured.
She guessed her mother would be in the west sunroom, where she normally liked to sit in the late afternoon. Lingering in the doorway, she could see her mother's bright hair, her head bent in conversation with a man who was definitely not the Chief, as Meredith half-thought he might be.
It was Dr. House.
She passed through another doorway and tried to get closer from another entrance while still keeping back in the shadows. From the sound of it, her mother was doing most of the talking. At least half of what she said was coherent, which was some small comfort.
Then her mother looked up and saw her, and gestured her forward.
"Meredith! Meredith, stop lurking in the corner. Meredith, you remember Dr. House..."
House looked up at her sardonically.
"Yeah, mom, I -- yeah," Meredith said, as her mother hauled her forward and sat her down on a chair next to House.
"Greg is such a bright man," her mother said approvingly. House bowed his head and rubbed his neck uncomfortably. "So ambitious and direct."
"Is that so," Meredith asked, a little amused.
"How old is your daughter?" House asked Ellis Gray.
"Oh, how old are you now, ten?" Ellis asked Meredith. It had what she saw was the desired effect: it reminded her that she wasn't the one with the power in this situation.
"You didn't need to say that," she said to House.
"No, but it was fun," House replied.
"Why are you here, anyway?"
"Honey!" her mother reprimanded. "I asked Gregory to dinner. Look at him, he hasn't had a decent meal in weeks."
"I was your mother's intern at the Mayo Clinic," House said to Meredith quietly. "Apparently I left an impression."
"You generally do," her mother added. Meredith, watching her mother watch House, wondered if she had just discovered her mother's rebound man after the Chief. The thought was so horrifying she actually hallucinated herself telling Izzy and George how horrifying it was. "What was it you said to that man today -- oh, you know, the one who kept insisting dialysis would help him lose weight?"
Meredith watch the man's brow furrow as he tried to remember. "That he was an asshole," he said finally. Her mother giggled. It was so horrible. He glanced sidelong at Meredith and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand with his left.
"That was a great dinner, Dr. Gray," he said. "But I've got to get home."
Her mother fell immediately into the assumption that they'd eaten, which might go hard on the nurses later. "Glad you enjoyed it," she said. House got to his feet and took his cane from where it lay propped against the chair's arm.
"I'll show him out, mom," Meredith said. Just as well to escape now.
House walked quietly to the front door without once looking at her, so that she had to run to get in front of him and stop his progress.
"You're tiny," he said critically. "So unless you're a black-belt, get out of my way."
"Why did you come to see my mother?" she asked, blocking him when he sidestepped her.
She heard the thump before she felt the pain, but soon it blossomed up her leg from her ankle, and she gasped. He'd hit her. With his cane.
"Warned you," he said, making his way down the handicapped-access ramp. She limped down the stairs and blocked him again at the bottom of the ramp. This time she caught his cane before he could hit her.
"Why did you come to see my mother?" she asked.
"Why do you ask obvious questions you know the answer to?" he replied.
"What, because you were her student? I think I've heard enough about you to know you don't go in for sentimental reunions," she replied, adrenaline from the pain in her leg making her angry.
"I'm a diagnostician. She has an unusual diagnosis. For Ellis Gray's daughter, you're not the sharpest scalpel on the tray, are you?" he asked. She stared at him in shock. "Your mom's sick. Life sucks. If you expect me to treat you like a delicate rose, just hold still long enough for me to hit you again."
"Are you some kind of nut job?" she asked, feeling almost hysterical.
"Duh," he replied, grinding the single syllable directly against her ego. It should have sounded stupid; in his mouth it was the kind of horrible schoolyard taunt that you wanted to ignore and couldn't get away from. "Now get out of my way."
"Not until you tell me why you came to see my mother," she said, gripping his cane. He let go suddenly, and she stumbled backwards. But she didn't fall, and now she had his cane. He saw what she was thinking.
"Taunting a cripple. Nice," he growled.
"Tell me," she said. He rolled his eyes and supported himself with one hand on either side of the ramp's retaining walls.
"Your mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers, which is ideopathic. Do we know what ideopathic means, class?" he asked.
"No known cause," she said.
"Nothing is absolute; the word only exists as a short way of saying 'we're fucked if we know'," he continued. "Disease masquerades, that's what it does. Goes door-to-door in the bodily systems, swiping candy and soaping windows. Our job is to chase it down and rip off the Batman mask."
"Huh?" she asked, mometarily lost. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Wilson's presents as Schizophrenia. Celiac presents as Arthritis. Lupus presents as Cirrhosis."
Meredith stared at him. "You think...my mom doesn't have Alzheimers?"
House sucked air in through his teeth. "Not after meeting her again. She's classic, grade-A crazypants Alzheimers. She's much nicer this way, though."
Meredith felt the cane whoosh through the air before she was even conscious she'd taken a swing.
"You bastard!" she shouted as the cane described a slow-motion arc towards House's head. About the same time, his hand jerked up and caught it. She tried to pull it away, but he gave the cane a quarter-twist and slammed her hand, still holding it, into one of the walls. She let go as sparks of pain raced up her arm.
And then he walked away.
He walked away. She might have had a broken arm (she didn't, but he couldn't know that) and he just walked away.
"No wonder she liked you," she called after him, vengefully. "You're just as big an asshole as she is!"
"Stating the obvious," he replied without looking back. She saw him bend down to speak to a driver at the taxi stand, and before she could come up with another suitable reply he'd climbed in. The taxi roared to life and sped off, leaving her cradling her bruised arm and battered ego.
Rating: PG for language.
Summary: House wreaks havoc in Seattle Grace Hospital.
Notes: This was jossed violently by the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy, so I'm posting what I have. I don't intend to finish it. Write your own ending, it's fun and enjoyable! :D
Warnings: None.
"Guess what I just did."
Richard Webber (MD, Chief of Surgery, bucking for his very own ulcer) looked up from his paperwork. It was rarely a good thing when a surgeon asked you to guess what he'd just done. That was like a four year old coming up to you and pre-emptively saying, "I didn't do it."
Still, Shepherd didn't look guilty. In fact, he looked happy. He might even have looked radiant.
"What did you do?" the Chief asked, still wary.
"I got you a keynote speaker for our pain conference," Derek said, bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet. He grinned irrepressibly. He did this many times a day. It was enough to drive a Chief of Surgery to drink. "Guess who it is."
Richard sighed.
"Gregory House!" Derek announced, before he could speak. "He's agreed to speak on the short and long-term neurological effects of Ketamine-induced comas on chronic -- "
"YOU GOT WHO?" Richard demanded loudly.
Derek paused.
"Gregory House?" he ventured, hesitant now.
The Chief let his head fall to rest on his desk.
It was going to be one of those days.
***
"YOU DID WHAT?"
Allison Cameron was unperturbed by House's histrionics; she'd grown used to them.
"This is why you should reply to your own email," Foreman said, crossing his arms.
"I told Dr. Shepherd that you'd present a paper on Ketamine comas at the Seattle Grace Pain Conference," Cameron said. "We've all seen you working on the paper, I know you have it ready."
"In SEATTLE?" House demanded.
"Cuddy says you have to give at least three conference presentations a year. They want you to be keynote speaker. Chase is already presenting on Electric Shock Boy."
"Medical conferences are equal parts masturbation and lukewarm wine," House snarled.
"Sounds like fun to me," Chase pointed out.
"If you want anything of substance, read a damn journal."
"Well, there's no point in shouting at me, I do read journals," Cameron fired back. "Take it up with Cuddy if you want to get off the hook."
"Don't think I won't," House retorted.
***
Four weeks later, Greg House walked -- or rather, shuffled -- down an airport corridor in Seattle, heading for baggage claim.
His whole body ached, his leg like a familiar flare and the rest of him from tension about the pain and the flight and the fact that if he was nasty to people they'd arrest him as a terrorist. Even with a doubled-up dose of Vicodin, he was feeling the effects of several hours in a pressurised cabin. And he hadn't sprung for first class. And you couldn't sit in an exit row with a cane.
Ahead was the prospect of a quiet hotel room where he could die in peace, but first there was purgatory: baggage claim. People were already crowding around the edges of the carousel like idiots, as if somehow your bags would magically disappear if they had to go around more than once. House sat down on a bench and subtly massaged his leg. He could wait.
"Excuse me. Dr. House?"
House looked up at a man who embodied the term gravitas. He had never met someone who defined a Latin adjective before, but this man was definitely it. He was tall and solemn, with keen eyes and a deep, even voice.
And yet, that little self-destructive four-year-old in House couldn't just let things go.
"No, I'm Mbubu Nfangi, deposed Nigerian dictator," House replied. "Got a bank account I could use?"
The man just smiled. And not a stupid smile, either; a smile of tolerant comprehension.
"I'm Dr. Burke," he said, offering one hand. House shook it. "I'm here to take you to your hotel."
A flag went up in House's encyclopedic brain.
"Preston Burke, Cardiothoracic?" he asked.
"I see you've done your research. My intern O'Malley is collecting your luggage -- "
Even as Burke spoke, a young man with a floppy fringe of dark hair approached, pushing a cart with a suitcase and backpack on it.
"Is this everything, Dr. House?" he asked enthusiastically. House wondered if Cameron had a half-brother named O'Malley she'd never told him about.
"I travel light. Just the essentials -- ball gags, riding crops..."
The young man looked uncertainly at Burke, who was still smiling faintly.
"This way, Dr. House," he said, and House pushed himself up from the bench. "Dr. Shepherd sends his regrets he couldn't come meet you himself, but he was held up at the hospital."
"Not really interested in meeting more people than I have to," House replied as they exited the building. Nearby, an SUV gunned its engine and abruptly jerked forward, stopping in front of them. It nearly took out O'Malley's luggage cart.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to meet one more person," Burke said.
"She's really more like three," O'Malley added.
The door popped open and a fresh-faced young woman in jeans and a scrub shirt smiled eagerly at him. "Dr. House, I'm -- "
"One of our other Surgical interns, Cristina Yang," Burke said. "Cristina, in the back with O'Malley."
"But -- "
"I'll drive."
"But Burke -- "
"Don't mind the cripple," House said. "I'll just wander off to the taxi stand. Faster that way, probably."
The young woman bolted out of the front seat, nearly colliding with O'Malley, who was loading House's luggage into the back. Burke took the wheel smoothly and House hitched himself up into the shotgun seat, leaning back and closing his eyes.
"Dr. House, I was wondering if I could ask -- "
"No," House said, before Yang could get another word out.
"It's just I was -- "
"I didn't realise that "no" meant "please keep talking" this far west of the Mississippi," House said.
"Cristina, shut up," he heard O'Malley whisper.
It was going to be a long week.
***
"So...what's he like?" Izzie asked.
She was baking muffins, because if hundreds of doctors from all over the Pacific Northwest were going to descend on Seattle Grace for a conference, Izzie Stephens was going to be prepared. Most of the available surfaces in the kitchen were covered either with baked goods or with their components.
"Oh, you know," George sketched a vague, meaningless gesture in the air. "He's, you know."
"Nazi Junior," Cristina said promptly. George helped himself to a spoonful of chocolate batter. "No, not even junior. He might even out-Nazi the Nazi."
"McNazi," George suggested agreeably.
"Yeah, I've heard horror stories," Izzie said, "But you know how people exaggerate. They say he hit a guy in the stomach just to rupture a parasite cyst."
"Badass," Cristina said. "Are those cranberry?"
"Cranberry-ginger," Izzie corrected. Cristina tore one open and dumped honey on it.
"Well, if I was a doctor with a cane, I'd be pretty miserable too," George said.
"That's kind of prejudiced," Meredith put in, wandering into the kitchen. "Izzie, can you please leave at least a little milk for my cereal?"
"I'll buy you some more," Izzie promised.
"It's not like that," George said. "Just, you know, it must really suck to be a handicapped doctor. Who's going to want to be treated by someone who can't even fix themselves? Who'd listen to a doctor with a cane?"
"Do you really think McNazi has any trouble being heard?" Cristina asked him.
"Okay, maybe not," George conceded.
"McNazi?" Meredith asked.
"He's definitely not dreamy. Or steamy," Cristina said. "He's kinda scruffy. We could call him McScruffy. Oooh! Oooh! McGimpy!"
"Cristina!"
"Dude, I never said I was PC," Cristina replied.
"We can't call him McGimpy, that's just wrong," Meredith declared.
"I'm just gonna stay out of swinging distance of his cane," George said darkly.
***
The hotel room was quiet, and dark, and peaceful. It had a nice chair he could sit in. The bed seemed decent. He'd requested, and recieved, a room a long, long way away from all the other doctors in the hotel. It was a nice hotel, in fact. If he called down to the concierge he could probably deliver a hooker to his room without batting an eye.
A nice, quiet, dark, peaceful hotel room did, of course, mean one thing and one thing only:
Ten minutes after arriving, House was bored out of his skull.
He'd inspected the entire room like a cat exploring new digs, listened through the walls for any interesting activity on either side of him, inspected the Gideon Bible (annotating a few mistranslations in Song of Songs) and was now sitting near the window, cellphone cradled between ear and shoulder, waiting for someone to pick up on the other end. He was hoping for Cameron, because she was the most fun to poke, but it was Foreman who answered.
"We don't have any patients," he said, by way of greeting. "Cuddy has Cameron doing your Clinic hours and I'm alphabetising your books."
"Long-distance ass-kissing. Nice," House remarked. "Someone in that hospital must need diagnosing."
"Cellphone diagnosis is notoriously annoying. Goodbye, House," Foreman said, and hung up.
He didn't have to be anywhere until the opening banquet tomorrow night. Chase had booked a later flight out than he had, so right now the Australian was somewhere over the midwest and safely out of House's reach. He supposed he could call Cameron's pager and ask her to find him someone to diagnose in the Clinic, but that smacked of desperation. And Wilson --
Well, he wasn't going to push any boundaries with Wilson just now. They were on thin enough ice as it was.
He glanced at his laptop, then reached over to the table and clicked the Google hotkey in the corner of his web-browser. The familiar spartan design of the search engine popped up and he leaned forward, typing in his terms. Seattle +motorcycle +rental ought to find him something. If he was going to have some spare time, he might as well see the sights. At very high speed, as they whooshed past.
***
When Chase arrived at the hotel one of the first things he did was ask what room Gregory House was staying in. Cameron and Foreman would have called it kissing arse -- well, they would have said kissing ass -- but Chase genuinely liked House. Most of the time. Except when he punched him in the face. Anyway, Chase had been called a teacher's pet all his life for liking his teachers and he might as well check up on the old man and see how he was. House's room was a long way away from his own, but he left his bags in his room and made the trek.
A handwritten note was scrawled on a piece of hotel stationery and attached to the door with two pins from the complimentary sewing kit. Never let it be said that House couldn't improvise.
Gone Fishing.
Chase chuckled and knocked, fairly sure that this was House's way of saying DO NOT DISTURB. When he got no answer, he called through the door. Then he leaned back and studied it for a moment.
Maybe House really had gone fishing.
***
No one could really ever say that the area around Seattle Grace Hospital was peacefully silent, but in the early hours after the dawn drunks and before the morning heart-attacks it could be almost serene. Meredith was enjoying it; the sun was out (for once) and she was sitting on a bench outside the hospital with her coffee, drinking in the peaceful twitter of the birds. Izzie, always a manic presence, was eating a muffin on her right, and George was catching a last-minute nap on her left. Rounds would start soon, but they were already dressed and had gone over their prep and now they were just...resting.
The noise was shattered, suddenly and violently, by the machine-gun rat-a-tat of a motorcycle. Meredith, who had grown up with stories of the Donorcycle, waited -- as she had since she was a small child -- to hear the screech and crash she always associated with them. Instead, the noise got louder. And louder. And louder --
She opened her eyes and stared as the motorcycle, now well down the parking lot, skewed to a sudden halt, describing a perfect thirty-degree arc into a handicapped spot not ten feet away. She had a bad feeling about this.
"Hey!" she shouted, over the roar of the engine. "That's a handicapped spot! You can't park there!"
The man on the bike glanced at her, or at least turned his helmet in her direction, cut the engine, and reached into his inside pocket. For a terrible moment she thought he was going to take out a gun, but instead he took out a handicapped placard with an odd little locking mechanism on it and locked it around the handlebars of the bike.
"Oh crap," George said.
"What?" Meredith asked.
"That's House."
"Oh crap," Meredith said.
The helmet came off and was laid on the handlebars while Dr. House, still straddling the now-silent machine, pulled a cane out from a strap on his backpack like some kind of Scottish warrior's Claymore. He didn't give them a second look as he dismounted and walked inside.
"Good going, Mer," George sighed.
"How was I supposed to know! How many handicapped people do you know who ride motorcycles? Anyway, weren't Cristina and Burke supposed to go pick him up?"
"We'd better go inside," Izzie said, polishing off the last of her muffin.
***
Knowing that he was probably going to need a lot of pills to get through this, House had not only secured an emergency stash before leaving Princeton-Plainsboro but had also gotten Cuddy to write him a scrip he could cash in at the pharmacy at Seattle Grace. In fact, he'd already called the order in and just had to pick it up, which he was doing with all alacrity because this morning his leg had woken him and insisted in no uncertain terms that they were not flying anywhere together ever again. He was seriously considering taking the train back to Jersey.
The three interns he'd seen loitering around in the parking lot, patrolling the handicapped zone, had followed him inside at a cautious distance. He debated whether engaging battle this early in the day would be worth the pleasure of crushing their tiny souls. He had learned, as an intern and from a very good source, that interns existed primarily to be abused. He picked up the pills and was just turning to leave when someone called his name.
"Doctor HOUSE!"
House didn't even pause. If you kept walking, people often assumed they'd got the wrong cripple.
"DOCTOR HOUSE!"
A short, pugnacious-looking woman ran past him and circled around, blocking his hasty exit. He looked down at her. Too self-assured and a little too old to be an intern, not quite old enough or confident enough to be an attending. Resident, probably. Surgical, from the look of it.
"I'm taller, and I've got a blunt instrument," House said.
"I'm meaner, and I bite," the woman replied.
"So do I."
"I bite lower."
House considered this with a cock of his head. "Fair enough."
"I'm Dr. Bailey, surgical resident at Seattle Grace," she said. "You emailed me."
"I'm high most of the time," he replied, shaking the bottle of pills. "What did we talk about?"
"Rounds?" she said, in a tone that indicated it wasn't actually a question. "You're supposed to be leading rounds this morning. Dr. Burke was about to go pick you up."
"I'm very independent," House replied, while mentally he was totting up all the possible ways of humiliating Cameron in return for this.
"Good for you. Here's your schedule. The interns can show you where to go," she added, as two more showed up. The girl from yesterday -- Chang? -- and a tall, squareheaded man who looked like he should be in a wrestling ring.
"I'm not really into Rounds this morning," House tried, but here was a match for him, and he knew it. And she knew it, which was worse.
"Have fun," she said, with a small, funny smile. "It's a real honor, having Greg House lead rounds. Isn't it, boys and girls."
The interns muttered various shy forms of thanks.
"That's Yang, O'Malley, Stephens, Karev, and Grey," the short woman said. House had already forgotten her name. "Yang needs to be smacked with a newspaper once in a while and Stephens has to ask permission before doing anything."
House glanced at the statuesque blonde, who cocked her hip and rolled her eyes discontentedly.
"They're all yours, Dr. House," the resident said. She turned to the interns with a look that clearly said Don't embarrass me and walked away. House looked at them, then down at the rounds schedule. They were watching him with such hope in their eyes. It did, on some level, appeal to his ego. House enjoyed things that appealed to his ego.
"Boring...boring...boring....boring...mostly boring...boring," he said, reading his way down the schedule. "Where can I get coffee?"
The enthusiastic intern from yesterday held out a cup. He saw she was carrying two.
"Asskiss," the tall jock muttered.
House sipped it. Pure, straight-up black coffee. Good girl.
"Where's the cafeteria?" he asked.
"Oh, we're going up to -- " she began, but House wandered over to a directory on the nearby wall and looked it up for himself. "Dr. House, the elevators are -- "
"Do I look like I can walk rounds with you people?" House asked, stalking off as best he could. They followed, a very worried knot of scrubs. "Have some compassion for the cripple, here."
"I told you to shut up, Cristina," he heard the Irish one hiss.
***
"What are they doing?" Derek asked, arms crossed over his chest. He was watching as his keynote speaker, who was supposed to be leading rounds, tucked into a breakfast burrito. "They're supposed to be on rounds."
"Dr. House is...independent," the Chief replied. The scorn in his voice was nearly a tangible object. "He doesn't have much use for hospital regulations."
"He seemed normal enough in email," Derek said.
"Derek, I am guessing that whoever you spoke to in email, it probably wasn't House," Richard sighed, and walked away.
***
"Our patients are kinda expecting us," George said, trying not to sound reproachful. Dr. House bit into his burrito, chewed, and swallowed leisurely before replying.
"Rounds have two purposes, making interns look unprepared and making patients feel like someone's actually looking after them. In no way do they actually help the health of the patient," he said. The rest of the interns considered this. "That's what nurses are for. If one of the patients on your rounds actually needs you, hell will have frozen over. Or, your pager will go off."
"So we're...having breakfast?" Cristina asked.
"I'm having breakfast. You idiots didn't order anything," House replied. He waved his hand at the cafeteria, which was at the height of its morning breakfast rush. "First person to tell me who in this room has Crohn's disease gets a bite."
George looked around, bewilderedly. "You can't tell just by looking at someone -- " he began, but Meredith interrupted.
"Her," she said, indicating a woman at a nearby table with a tilt of her head.
House, amazingly, offered her the burrito. She waved it off.
"I don't have cooties, I swear," House said, taking another bite. "You're dismissed to buy your own damn breakfast if you want it."
"I had a muffin," she replied. They'd all had muffins, but the breakfast burrito did look good.
"You can't know that she has Crohn's," Izzie protested.
"Yeah, but someone does," Meredith replied. "And she's eating low-grain, non-dairy."
"And she has a prescription for Prednisone sitting next to her plate," House added.
"That's cheating," George said.
"Medicine isn't a game with rules," House replied. "If it gets you the answer faster it isn't cheating."
George saw Meredith do a double-take, but he wasn't sure why. House jerked his head at someone who was carrying a plate of food to a table.
"Diagnosis, people," he said. All five interns focused intently on the man, until Izzie smiled and leaned back.
"Cirrhosis," she said.
"Why?" House asked.
"I'm his prep."
George grinned.
"That's cheating," House protested sardonically.
Halfway through one of the most educational breakfasts George had ever experienced, though he suspected House's bedside manner could use some work, Meredith's pager went off. She bolted from the cafeteria with peculiar speed.
"What are the rest of you waiting for? This is where we actually do rounds," House said, nearly shoving George off his chair with his cane. They followed the beeline Meredith made. House could make pretty good time when he felt like it.
***
[this was supposed to be part of a longer scene. D'oh.]
George saw House studying the patient curiously from the corner of the room, his jaw set. The only time he'd ever seen anyone look that intensely focused before was during surgery. He knew how much energy it took to sustain focus while operating, and he realised suddenly that House sustained it all the time.
***
Meredith didn't really have time for a long visit, which she told herself was okay. The fact that most of her visits with her mother weren't very long was nicely excused by the fact that she was a surgical intern with a grueling schedule. And she had come by more and stayed longer since the Chief had stopped visiting.
"Your mother's with a visitor right now," the front-desk nurse said. "But I'm sure he'd be happy to see you too."
"I'm not so sure about that," Meredith murmured.
She guessed her mother would be in the west sunroom, where she normally liked to sit in the late afternoon. Lingering in the doorway, she could see her mother's bright hair, her head bent in conversation with a man who was definitely not the Chief, as Meredith half-thought he might be.
It was Dr. House.
She passed through another doorway and tried to get closer from another entrance while still keeping back in the shadows. From the sound of it, her mother was doing most of the talking. At least half of what she said was coherent, which was some small comfort.
Then her mother looked up and saw her, and gestured her forward.
"Meredith! Meredith, stop lurking in the corner. Meredith, you remember Dr. House..."
House looked up at her sardonically.
"Yeah, mom, I -- yeah," Meredith said, as her mother hauled her forward and sat her down on a chair next to House.
"Greg is such a bright man," her mother said approvingly. House bowed his head and rubbed his neck uncomfortably. "So ambitious and direct."
"Is that so," Meredith asked, a little amused.
"How old is your daughter?" House asked Ellis Gray.
"Oh, how old are you now, ten?" Ellis asked Meredith. It had what she saw was the desired effect: it reminded her that she wasn't the one with the power in this situation.
"You didn't need to say that," she said to House.
"No, but it was fun," House replied.
"Why are you here, anyway?"
"Honey!" her mother reprimanded. "I asked Gregory to dinner. Look at him, he hasn't had a decent meal in weeks."
"I was your mother's intern at the Mayo Clinic," House said to Meredith quietly. "Apparently I left an impression."
"You generally do," her mother added. Meredith, watching her mother watch House, wondered if she had just discovered her mother's rebound man after the Chief. The thought was so horrifying she actually hallucinated herself telling Izzy and George how horrifying it was. "What was it you said to that man today -- oh, you know, the one who kept insisting dialysis would help him lose weight?"
Meredith watch the man's brow furrow as he tried to remember. "That he was an asshole," he said finally. Her mother giggled. It was so horrible. He glanced sidelong at Meredith and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand with his left.
"That was a great dinner, Dr. Gray," he said. "But I've got to get home."
Her mother fell immediately into the assumption that they'd eaten, which might go hard on the nurses later. "Glad you enjoyed it," she said. House got to his feet and took his cane from where it lay propped against the chair's arm.
"I'll show him out, mom," Meredith said. Just as well to escape now.
House walked quietly to the front door without once looking at her, so that she had to run to get in front of him and stop his progress.
"You're tiny," he said critically. "So unless you're a black-belt, get out of my way."
"Why did you come to see my mother?" she asked, blocking him when he sidestepped her.
She heard the thump before she felt the pain, but soon it blossomed up her leg from her ankle, and she gasped. He'd hit her. With his cane.
"Warned you," he said, making his way down the handicapped-access ramp. She limped down the stairs and blocked him again at the bottom of the ramp. This time she caught his cane before he could hit her.
"Why did you come to see my mother?" she asked.
"Why do you ask obvious questions you know the answer to?" he replied.
"What, because you were her student? I think I've heard enough about you to know you don't go in for sentimental reunions," she replied, adrenaline from the pain in her leg making her angry.
"I'm a diagnostician. She has an unusual diagnosis. For Ellis Gray's daughter, you're not the sharpest scalpel on the tray, are you?" he asked. She stared at him in shock. "Your mom's sick. Life sucks. If you expect me to treat you like a delicate rose, just hold still long enough for me to hit you again."
"Are you some kind of nut job?" she asked, feeling almost hysterical.
"Duh," he replied, grinding the single syllable directly against her ego. It should have sounded stupid; in his mouth it was the kind of horrible schoolyard taunt that you wanted to ignore and couldn't get away from. "Now get out of my way."
"Not until you tell me why you came to see my mother," she said, gripping his cane. He let go suddenly, and she stumbled backwards. But she didn't fall, and now she had his cane. He saw what she was thinking.
"Taunting a cripple. Nice," he growled.
"Tell me," she said. He rolled his eyes and supported himself with one hand on either side of the ramp's retaining walls.
"Your mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers, which is ideopathic. Do we know what ideopathic means, class?" he asked.
"No known cause," she said.
"Nothing is absolute; the word only exists as a short way of saying 'we're fucked if we know'," he continued. "Disease masquerades, that's what it does. Goes door-to-door in the bodily systems, swiping candy and soaping windows. Our job is to chase it down and rip off the Batman mask."
"Huh?" she asked, mometarily lost. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Wilson's presents as Schizophrenia. Celiac presents as Arthritis. Lupus presents as Cirrhosis."
Meredith stared at him. "You think...my mom doesn't have Alzheimers?"
House sucked air in through his teeth. "Not after meeting her again. She's classic, grade-A crazypants Alzheimers. She's much nicer this way, though."
Meredith felt the cane whoosh through the air before she was even conscious she'd taken a swing.
"You bastard!" she shouted as the cane described a slow-motion arc towards House's head. About the same time, his hand jerked up and caught it. She tried to pull it away, but he gave the cane a quarter-twist and slammed her hand, still holding it, into one of the walls. She let go as sparks of pain raced up her arm.
And then he walked away.
He walked away. She might have had a broken arm (she didn't, but he couldn't know that) and he just walked away.
"No wonder she liked you," she called after him, vengefully. "You're just as big an asshole as she is!"
"Stating the obvious," he replied without looking back. She saw him bend down to speak to a driver at the taxi stand, and before she could come up with another suitable reply he'd climbed in. The taxi roared to life and sped off, leaving her cradling her bruised arm and battered ego.