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This Is House
by lunagrrl74
This is House.
By lunagrrl74@yahoo.com
I make no money from this and neither do I own any person that appears in this piece.
House. MD belongs to Fox, I swear, I just borrowed him for a little while, took him for a drink.
This is House, in the ninth grade.
He's smarter than most everyone he meets, including his teachers.
They persist in going on and on and on about facts, and memorization.
He remembers things he looks at.
His retention level is stellar.
Inspiration is what is missing.
My god, he thinks, when he learns the latin root. I've been missing breath. Air.
Challenge me, he thinks in his self-centered ninth grade way. Give me something to fucking chew on.
Is it not enough that I know that answer. I know the fucking answer, okay?
Give me a reason to know why I should or shouldn't?
Is it always this hard to break through?
Then he discovers music - it's his math teacher that introduces them:
Hello Greg, this is my friend, piano, she's got 88 keys. Some are black and some are white. She's got the potential to make music and so do you, why don't you give it a whirl.
Music is to math is what medicine is to the world.
House thinks that maybe he had chance, sometime, when he was in high school.
Music or something important?
But music lost
But he's been music's bitch forever.
Music is a hell of a muse.
This is House in the first year of medical school. Memorization is never a problem for someone with a photographic memory, he doesn't have the burdens of parents who are doctors or being a woman in a man's field.
He is House. He is brilliant and unstoppable.
He plays the piano while the other med-students cram and pop Dexedrine.
Bennies.
Smoke pot to come down and sleep.
Or take a prescription sleep-aid.
Or chug Ny-quil, because if they don't sleep, they will FUCKING die.
House muses on these people, these cases of his aquaintance in the first year of medical school.
In four years, these people are nothing but memories and not even sad ones.
House has a piano, he has a beeper.
He has knowledge.
This is House as an intern.
He knows all and sees all.
He knows more than the attending because he fucking listens to the fucking patient.
My god, the woman who had a broken arm did not fucking fall down the stairs!
Look at her chart. Look at her.
She cowers before everyone, even the fucking orderly. This is an abused woman.
But.
She's white.
She says she fell down the stairs, that this is her first visit to an ER since she was 12.
Her husband nods, an all-powerful kinda guy. With suits and cologne and a gold watch.
She huddles next to her husband even as fresh tears squeeze out of her eyes.
And then House knows.
People lie. Patients lie.
This is a revelation.
Why would somebody delay the help they need? Why would they lie to someone who is trying, admittedly, in a sleep-deprived and dysfunctional way, trying to help them?
Are they masochists?
Are they damaged?
A few more months and House knows the answer: People are just as stupid as he suspected all along.
So he plays the piano. Music is his friend.
He goes on rounds, he takes boards.
He aces every fucking test that the powers throw at him.
He know what is what, how to tell your asshole from your elbow inside a damp paper bag in a darkened room.
He's still fucking smarter than anyone he knows.
He's House, a guy with a lot of brain, a lot of sarcasm.
He's a doctor, finally.
The Hippocratic oath is something of a problem for him, in some unusual ways.
First, I shall do no harm.
Now, that's a little bit of silliness, isn't it?
He thinks, as everyone else around recites the words like they are on Mao's hit-list.
A doctor is not somebody who does not harm.
A doctor is the person who tries to decide what kind of harm a person as suffered and how to fix it.
Sometimes, you've got to break what's not broken in order to fix the harm.
Greg House, MD. Throws his cap up in the air as his classmates do.
He may not be the kind of doctor that they are or will be.,
But he's still a doctor.
This is House, MD.
The End
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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 Fox Television, 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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