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Novelty
by multicgypsy
The novelty of going away to college was having a plastic white board on your door. The
practicality was that when Lisa Cuddy pulled all-nighters studying for a lab the following
morning and pulled the phone cord out of the wall, her friends could still leave her
messages without a distracting ring. She would see on the way to the bathroom, the only
reason she left the room on these all-nighters.
Or she could write 'Gone Home back next week' so no one would knock and bother her,
or 'Died please feed fish' when her grueling overloaded schedule had sucked too much
life out of her to do much else besides persist with the studying.
At 4 am, Lisa finally stood up, cracked her back, sore from hunching over her desk, and
went out to the bathroom. On her way back, she noticed a haiku scrawled on her white
board:
'Drop a class, or two
Do you have a social life?
You have a nice ass.'
Two years ago, she would have suspected that whoever had written the note had mistaken
her board for someone else's. But she smiled knowingly, because she had worked hard for
that ass, and was grateful that people were noticing it, grateful that the repercussions of a
good body were but harmless haikus and the occasional catcall.
She uncapped her marker and wrote neatly beneath the poem: 'Studying; Come back when
I graduate.'
There was a message waiting for her when she returned from the next day's classes. 'That
long a wait? Damn. Good luck on the test.'
'Thanks. Cutting up livers was a blast.' She wrote below, but was uncertain that her
sarcasm would go unnoticed. Fearing whoever was writing her these notes would think of
her as some kind of geeky liver-chopping lover, she added the word 'sarcasm' to her note
and closed it with parentheses.
From the promptness of the first reply, she was disappointed to find her board unchanged
later that evening, when she left for dinner, having stayed in all afternoon to study. In fact,
she hated to admit it, but she was almost looking forward to another note.
Later that night, Lisa couldn't quite explain why, but she was pleased, so pleased, to come
home to a picture of a dead fish (with x's for eyes), followed by a question mark. She drew
a tank around the fish, and then a box labeled 'fish food' dangling above.
This innocent exchange went on for two weeks. It ended when Lisa, hearing the sound of
someone un-capping a marker, leaped from her chair like it was aflame and flung the door
open only to find that fourth year student who had humiliated her in front of an entire
lecture hall. She could feel her cheeks flushing as the memory rushed back into the
forefront of her thought process.
"Give me the marker, Greg," she demanded, snatching it from him before he had the chance
to refuse. He still held the cap, though, and she got black scribbles all over her palm.
Narrowing her eyes, she slammed the door on Greg's accomplished smile and threw the
marker into the garbage.
She was incredibly disappointed.
So when, years later, she found a receipt for one plastic white board on her desk at the
PPTH, she felt her face flush. There was also a note, stapled to the receipt, which read
simply, 'I expect to be fully reimbursed. Your hospital; my board.'
Cuddy then noticed just how tightly she had crumpled the receipt in her fist.
She pulled her drawer, telling her Id to reach for a scissor, but picked up a marker instead.
When House returned to his office after lunch with Wilson, he found a 20-dollar bill taped
to the glass door. On it, written in black marker, he read, 'You owe me $3.50.'
Amused, smiling, House pocketed the bill, and, ignoring Wilson's query, limped into his
office. He had no intention of paying Cuddy back, so he took a pen off his desk and
scribbled something on a post-it.
"Hey Jimmy, any plans of walking past Cuddy's office?"
Please post a comment on this story.
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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