One Sort of Resolution: Late Nights, Tea and Videotape    The House Fan
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  One Sort of Resolution: Late Nights, Tea and Videotape 
 by Wayland  

 

The corridors of the hospital were quiet in the small hours. Dim lights
showed here and there; the low hum of equipment leaked through ventilator
grilles and from time to time hushed voices with an urgent undercurrent
cut through the general stillness. A door closure snapped open and shut
again; heels squeaked against the polished flooring.

 Inside the sterile walls of the clean room a young boy's life teetered on
the edge. A wildly improbable diagnosis had been confirmed; treatment
commenced; all that was needed now was that indefinable determination on
the part of the patient to cling to life against the odds. That, and maybe
the obstinacy of the medical team whose refusal to give up on him was
responsible for his survival so far and was still keeping them here when
their minds and bodies cried out for rest.

 The rigours of medical training and long years of inadequate sleep
accustomed them to cope but neither Chase nor Foreman demurred when House
nodded his dismissal. A two am departure, following three solid days with
little but snatched naps in the conference room and reheated coffee for
fuel, seemed little enough to be grateful for, but Cameron was still
toiling in the lab and House obviously was going nowhere until the Fates
decided: life or death. Had she been asked, Cameron would have pointed out
that this was exactly why House was more than just `about the puzzle'. The
puzzle was solved but the outcome was not yet clear. He did care about his
patients; you might just need to spit roast him over a slow fire before he
would admit it. Careful observation revealed his `tells' far more than
anything he said. However, House's reputation as a brilliant but
best-avoided (even slightly crazy) s.o.b. meant that no-one canvassed her
opinion.

She finished re-checking her results, not bothering to stifle her yawns as
she gathered up the scattered printouts to place them in the patient file.
Whatever happened to the boy in the next few hours, she was satisfied that
her work was above even House's reproach. Cameron used the elevator to
whisk her to the Diagnostics floor. Alone, she generally took the stairs.
Not at this ungodly hour; she was beyond exhaustion.

 The office and conference room were in darkness. Cameron poked her head
around House's door in case he had fallen asleep but the room was empty.
At that moment her pager went off and she immediately retraced her steps
to the elevators. Tiredness and thirst seemed to burn a hole in her chest
and throat; her legs and feet moved, she felt, as though she were an
automaton. Resentment at House for calling her away just as she was within
reach of the conference room refrigerator died as she saw the man propping
himself up against the wall of the clean room.

 If she was in dire need of sleep, then he, an insomniac at the best of
times, was close to collapse. Exhaustion stripped away what little he used
in the way of good manners; without meeting her glance he simply held out
his hand for the file, skimming over the carefully-prepared results with
eyes as keen as ever despite their reddened rims. "Hmm". He rubbed his
hand across his jaw. "Increase the dosage and risk liver failure or...?"
"It might buy him a few more hours. He should be dead already. What choice
is there?"

"Tiredness suits you. Makes you cut to the chase." He grinned tiredly at
the pun and the way she reacted to the extra meaning behind his words.
Although he had never explicitly condemned that brief ill-conceived
liaison, Cameron knew that in some way it irked him. She and Chase had
long ago put it behind them. Why didn't he?

House directed the intensive care staff to increase the drug and announced
his intention to wait around to see if there was any improvement in the
boy's condition. "I need a drink. God knows when I last had one, but first
I must sit down before my damn leg makes me fall down." Leaning heavily on
his cane, he limped slowly and with evident discomfort to the area used
during the daytime by patients' relatives. It had recently been
refurbished by Cuddy with comfortable couches and low tables. "The Boss's
sucking up has its uses", said House, carefully lowering his tall frame
into the angle provided by two long couches placed together, and gripping
his right leg with both hands, he swivelled around to position it , with a
barely audible sigh, along the length of the couch. 

He dry -swallowed two vicodin, tilted back his head and closed his eyes as
if to sleep; then, with some irritation, said, "Why are you hovering?
Surely you have a home to go to? Even I am not unreasonable enough to keep
you here any longer. I can take things from here. It's not worth my going
back to the apartment now." Unspoken was the knowledge that after the way
he had punished it over the last few days, his leg would not tolerate the
trip home right now. Cameron was fully aware of this and also that he
would resent any sign from her that she understood, so she ignored the
last part of his speech and merely said she needed a drink, had been on
her way to get one when he paged her and would he like her to get one for
him while she was about it?

"Not that sludge from the Nurses' station. Otherwise, yes. Please," he
added as an afterthought. Cameron returned from Diagnostics a few minutes
later with her own and House's red mug, brim full of mint tea. Coffee had
seemed like a bad idea, neither thirst quenching nor needed for its
stimulant effect right now. Besides, the entire team seemed likely to
suffer from caffeine poisoning after the hours they had worked on this
case.

It seemed that House was already asleep when Cameron stopped in front of
him. She gingerly perched herself on the edge of the couch away from his
outstretched limb and quietly placed the red mug on the glass- topped
table nearest to him. She sipped at the steaming hot liquid in her own
mug, her thirst making her prepared to risk scalding her mouth in the
effort to quench it. "So where's mine, then?" demanded her boss, "and
what's that smell? I hope it's not that stuff you gave me when I had a
cold; walnut and whatever." "Ginger" said Cameron, "and you said it was
nice." "I lied", he said, struggling to sit upright among the deep
cushions of the couch without disturbing his leg from its vicodin-induced
somnolence. Cameron huffed with as much energy as she could muster, which
was very little by this stage and without further comment handed the mint
tea to her apparently ungrateful superior. While he drank the tea in slow
gulps, barely awake, Cameron took stock of the man beside her. Lack of
rest as well as the ever-present pain had etched the fine lines around his
eyes and across his forehead more deeply than usual and his pallor showed
even through the heavily stubbled jaw. The eyes through which he seemed to
see everything were almost shut, allowing her to examine him in a way she
would not normally attempt, knowing that a blast of sarcasm would push her
back to a safe distance, his defensive perimeter intact and the `keep off'
signs freshly painted.

Now his trademark fidgeting was stilled for the moment, his cane tucked
alongside his bad leg on the wide couch. His tension, which fizzed around
him at all times like some kind of electric field (and which, thought
Cameron wryly, accounted in no small measure for his ability to mesmerise
those around him into doing things against their better judgement) was
lowered sufficiently to count him as `relaxed'. Not a word one usually
associated with House. The red mug wavered. Cameron leaned forward and
removed it from his grasp before the remaining liquid emptied itself down
his T-shirt. Sitting back more comfortably on the couch and tucking her
legs underneath her, she decided to wait one more hour to see if their
patient's crisis passed before going home. Meanwhile, House could have his
nap.

The faint squeak of a cart's wheels along the corridor brought Cameron
back to consciousness some hours later. The great hospital was stirring
for another day. Two sensations struck her simultaneously: one, that her
neck was stiff from the awkward posture she had assumed while asleep and
two, that she was more or less pinned in position by a large heavy object
lying in her lap and dangling across her bent knees- a large, warm and
breathing object; in fact, the head and shoulders of her prickly boss. 

Cameron stared down at him, furiously trying to collect her
thoughts....how to wake him...the awkwardness, at least for her, of him
finding himself burrowed face down in her lap, with his right arm around
her knees. She shifted slightly to ease the circulation in her cramped
legs, feeling the onset of pins and needles. This was enough. House
stirred a little, snuggling further into her slight frame, so that she
could feel the rasp of his stubble through the thin fabric of her suit
pants. She could feel a small damp patch where his mouth, half open in
sleep, had dribbled slightly. Suddenly her burden tensed and froze. After
a pause which seemed interminable to Cameron but was probably no more than
five seconds, House said in his usual tone "This is one hell of a bony,
rumbling cushion. I must complain to Cuddy" and hauled himself upright.

Cameron attempted to match his manner. "Cushions lose their stuffing if
unfed. I need my breakfast." She switched topics. "I'll look in on Guy. He
must be stable at least or they would have woken me-us." She looked a
little self- conscious at this last, never able to conceal her feelings as
well as this man of masks. However, she was not deceived. She knew how
carefully he crafted his persona of indifference and invulnerability but
even he could not completely quash the faint tinge of colour visible above
the neck of his T shirt. He was quite definitely embarrassed.

As she had assumed, Guy, the young patient, was finally responding to
treatment and Cameron had the pleasure of telling his parents on their
arrival that he would eventually make a full recovery. Her somewhat untidy
appearance at this early hour told them that she had been up all night.
They were full of praise for her and for the team. They enquired after Dr
House. She had explained in layman's terms the great intuitive leap which
had enabled the diagnosis to be reached at the eleventh hour (two minutes
to midnight really) and they wanted to thank him personally.
Unfortunately, Allison said, that would not be possible. He had an urgent
appointment (with a shower, in fact, as soon as he saw them approaching)
but she would be sure to pass on their thanks.

House entered his still darkened office and grabbed the bag in which he
kept shower stuff and a spare set of clothes for occasions such as these.
It wasn't just the overnighters; clinic patients could puke on you, or if
you were really lucky you could be baptized in a patient's piss. Cuddy
would no doubt point out that this was what a white coat helped to avoid
but for him the lack of a traditional doctor's garb marked him out as
different; `one of the awkward squad' as his father would have put it.

 Leaving the office without a further glance, House was oblivious to
certain small changes that had been made to an everyday but essential
tool. He made his way to the locker room, hoping that a long hot shower
would in some way restore his mental acuity and wash away the awkwardness
he felt (he had to admit it to himself) waking up to find himself drooling
into his young assistant's crotch. Thank God Wilson would never find out!

Alas for certainty. At that moment, every computer in the hospital had a
new screensaver. Gone was the tasteful, reassuring motif of leaves,
together with the legend Princeton Plainsboro' Teaching Hospital. Instead,
stretched out on an equally tastefully chosen couch, lay the Head of
Diagnostic Medicine, to all appearances dead to the world, clasping his
very attractive immunologist, also clearly fast asleep. The on screen text
read: Beauty and the Beast: or When the Lion lay down with the Lamb.

From the mortuary to the top floor, early birds had a nice juicy worm of
gossip to chew on. Hospitals lived on talk, and a chuckle at someone
else's expense to start the day-especially a sarcastic bastard like House,
who had pissed off most people at one time or another- was a great moment.
Fewer people knew Cameron. Those who did first wondered at her ability to
withstand the constant barrage of wit, sniping and sometimes downright
nastiness coming her way from her boss, then realised that her slender
person concealed an inner strength that was belied by her apparent navet
and her tendency to wear her heart on her sleeve. Those who did not know
her well, the majority, assumed that she must be hard as nails to work
with that team. Her quiet, rather prim manner with other members of the
medical staff got her the label of stuck-up with some. She had learned
early in her career that with her looks, she had to work hard to be taken
seriously, so if she had to appear stuck-up, so be it. House's "Nice piece
of art in the lobby" remark still made her grind her teeth, four years on,
and he hadn't meant it.

Walking past the Clinic nurses' station to her office, Cuddy was aware of
a slight buzz in the air, a change to the usual early morning atmosphere
of her great Ship of Fools. Her high heels clicked with her usual
determination and efficiency. Something was afoot and she would know it
before her first coffee arrived, or else.

Twenty minutes later, House stood in front of her desk, yelling. He was
absolutely enraged to the point, for him, of incoherence.
"Unprofessional....bringing disrepute to the hospital...doctors couldn't
do their jobs...surveillance...embarrassment to a junior colleague" and a
whole lot more. Cuddy swept away his intemperate words with a wave of her
hand. "Quit yelling at me. I'm already on to it, House", she said. "In
half an hour it will be rectified and the culprit punished." "Chase, was
it Chase?" demanded House. "It would fit that sly wombat." "No, I rather
think it was the temporary janitor you insulted the other day. He's the
son of Bob Jamieson, the paediatrician we recently appointed and he is
doing a summer job here before college." "Was doing" stated House in
steely tones. 

"He will certainly be unpopular with his father when the news gets out"
Cuddy replied calmly." Look House, if this had not been you, you would
have been the first to mock. No real harm has been done. See the funny
side. Cameron did." 

 "Cameron has seen this?" House groaned inwardly. "I thought she had gone
home." "Not only has she seen it, she suggested that your little spat with
the Jamieson boy was the motivation for this. Apparently he went into the
lab yesterday on some errand and showed an interest in the equipment she
was using." "I'll bet" growled House. 

"That's how she knew he would be capable of tinkering with the hospital's
computer system, and how ticked off he was with you" she continued,
ignoring his interruption "And yes, Cameron has gone home-to change-and I
suggest that you go away now and let me do my job." She shuffled the
papers in her hand and turned her chair towards the monitor. "If young
Jamieson was able to get such a shot of you while simply walking past the
relatives' room, what will the c.c.t.v. footage show?" An unmistakeable
look of panic crossed House's features for a fleeting moment; then he
turned and walked away, as fast as his bum leg would carry him, in the
direction of Security.

Everyone in Security knew House, or rather, knew of him. He was the guy
that got shot twice, in his own office, too, while the guards on duty
played poker in their cramped cubbyhole. That had been the rumour, anyway.
How could a guy tell if someone was carrying a concealed weapon? It was
not as if there had been metal detectors at the hospital entrance. There
still weren't, but there were, as a consequence of the shooting, an
increased number of state of the art security cameras in strategic
locations. One had been intended for outside House's office but he had
protested vigorously at the idea that more than one of his supposed former
patients or their loved ones would want to off him.

 His co-workers may have suspected that he did not want a record of
exactly what work he did or did not do inside the glass walls of his
office but they kept their mouths firmly shut on the matter and he had had
his way, as usual. The now spare camera was mounted high on the wall of
the relatives' lounge area, presumably to monitor the bickering of
families under stress. It was this camera, or more accurately its tape,
House was anxious to neutralise.

With his wallet $50 dollars lighter, House emerged from the stuffy room
clasping the tape in his free hand. The lazy sons-of -bitches had not gone
over the night's tapes yet, he felt sure. On the day shift they were
supposed to monitor the cameras in real time. This wasn't possible at
night, with fewer guards on duty.

Back in his office, he threw the tape into a drawer and turned to enter
the conference room. His neurologist and intensivist were obviously
sharing a joke at his expense. He heard Chase say "I don't know about the
lion bit, but she's certainly no lamb". Foreman raised a quizzical eyebrow
at his boss but said nothing. Chase's grin fled before a glacial stare. He
muttered his excuses and left for the Clinic. House returned to his
office, plugged his ipod into his ears and settled down to all appearances
to doze.

By midday the mischief maker, offered a choice between a personal apology
to House and Cameron or quitting, had chosen the latter. Normality
returned and Wilson, with a shrewd understanding of his friend's highly
contradictory attitude towards his immunologist, (indeed to most things)
and more sympathy towards him over the morning's events than he was
prepared to show, dropped into the Diagnostics office and offered to buy
him lunch. Initially House refused, then on thinking about it obviously
decided to get it over with. "Lunch is always crap on Thursdays", he
grumbled. "Well it's Friday and as nine times out of ten you have a
Reuben, what the hell does it matter?" rejoined Wilson. He was eager to
see which way House would play it in the bustling dining room when his
entrance was noticed; a leer and a joke, or the death stare. The death
stare it was. "Ouch" thought Wilson; he is too bothered by this to throw
it off with humour. He must have a word with Cameron. 

At this precise moment Cameron was in House's office, sorting the mail as
she always did. With similar reasoning to her boss, she had decided to be
seen around the hospital that afternoon. Any comments would be made,
endured and then quickly forgotten. She lacked House's weapons of mass
destruction in the form of his eyes and his wicked tongue but she had been
the object of comment once before and had survived. She knew who she had
to thank for that; Stacy Warner, or rather House via Stacy. Reaching into
the desk drawer for a new pack of envelopes to send out what House called
his "Go away, boring" consult response letters, Cameron's hand came across
unfamiliar contents in the shape of the tape earlier tossed in by House.
She drew it out, her momentary puzzlement erased by the label which stated
clearly, in an unsophisticated hand, `Footage 3rd floor lounge 8/24/07
1.00-9.00 am. Realisation struck her. House must have got hold of this,
but why?

Back in ICU that afternoon, Cameron was talking to her young patient while
overseeing his removal to one of the non-critical rooms. It was remarkable
how ten year olds bounce right back, she thought. No-one, seeing him now
would have believed just how critically ill he had been a few short hours
ago. Sure, he still had a long way to go to full recovery but he was able
to smile weakly at her and respond to her questions about his family and
his dog which he missed. She told him he would not be going home for a
week or so. "You really had us worried for a while there." She smiled
reassuringly.

 "I guess I did. You were here last night weren't you, with some guy? When
I woke up? You were over there." He indicated with his head where the
glass walls of the clean room showed quite clearly the couches in the open
area across the corridor. "I thought you were asleep .Is he your
boyfriend?" The word "No!" was on the tip of her tongue when he said "Only
he was sort of stroking your hair." Misunderstanding Cameron's expression,
he added hastily, "It wasn't gross or anything".

 Pulling herself together, Cameron was for once grateful that House's
passion for solving puzzles didn't often require his actually stepping
into the room to meet their originators. She teased Guy that he must have
been dreaming and he let it go at that, asking if he would be allowed to
watch the football game on TV. As soon as she was free to leave her
patient, Cameron hurried back to Diagnostics, a woman with a mission.

Cuddy, meanwhile, having noted and been intrigued by House's reaction to
her throwaway comment about c.c.t.v., had ploughed with even greater than
usual concentration through her piled in-tray and numerous e-mails. Busy
as she was, she was determined to have a little chat with Wilson, who was
bound to have some insight into his friend's behaviour. It was the kind of
day where mini-crisis followed impending major crisis, followed lawsuit-
in -the -offing and it was well into the afternoon before Lisa checked
that Wilson was free of patients and went up to Oncology on the pretext of
some urgent business or other.

Ever since their disastrous if well-meant scheme to curb House's wilder
flights following his shooting and the ketamine experiment, Cuddy and
Wilson always felt a little self-conscious discussing him, as if they were
guilty all over again of some plot against him. The fall-out from that
time had lasted many months and Wilson in particular wondered if their
relationship would ever again be on quite that footing of trust which it
had been before. House had not spelled it out, but then he did not need
to; it had been in every line of his body, in every flicker of expression,
that unspoken hurt, as of betrayal. "I would not have thought it of you."
In House's eyes, Cuddy had been partly complicit in Stacy's overriding his
expressed will over his leg and consequently saw her more recent behaviour
as part of the same pattern. For that reason, it stung less.

"House", began Cuddy, before Wilson could do more than look an enquiry.
"He's annoying enough when he's bent on doing something that will land
this hospital in its biggest ever lawsuit or when he's destroying million
dollar items of equipment to prove a point but when he starts to lecture
me, me! about bringing the hospital into disrepute and his professional
dignity (or maybe it was Cameron's but I stopped listening at that point),
I felt I was losing my grip on reality and that he had finally driven me
out of my senses."

"Ah, the screensaver. I was sure he was more bothered by it than he let
on. His demeanour in the cafeteria was that of Darth Vader with toothache.
We had no trouble in finding a table."

"He only shut up when I mentioned the c.c.t.v. footage. He stomped out of
my office like a man possessed." Cuddy paused, as enlightenment dawned on
them both. "I wonder if that tape is good for getting some more clinic
hours out of our boy Gregory?"

"Leave it with me", said Wilson. "If I know anything, that tape will no
longer be with Security. House has his rituals. I'll be able to find it."

So it was that when Cameron re-entered House's office, fighting the
feeling that she was about to do something oddly voyeuristic, the desk
drawer no longer held the (presumably incriminating) tape. Thwarted, she
went through to the conference room and tried, not very successfully, to
continue working up a recent case for publication. The trying work- load
of the past few days and the surreal quality of the hours spent last night
with House, combined to give her a thumping headache. It was no good, she
thought, surely the tape must be there. Perhaps it had got lodged at the
back of the drawer if House (a great rummager) had been looking in there
for something while she was with Guy.

Thankful that Foreman was down in the clinic and that Chase had taken the
afternoon off while things were slack, Cameron slipped into the next room
and reached out her hand to open the drawer. "It's not in there. Damn, and
I was sure you had it." Cameron jumped guiltily at the sound of House at
his driest, coming from the floor beyond his desk. In the subdued light
cast by the drawn blinds, she had not seen him stretched out there, his
right leg propped on a cushion. It was a sure sign that either he or his
leg felt bad.

It was entirely typical of House that while completely ignoring the
subject of their mutual embarrassment he nevertheless expected her to
understand precisely what he meant. Cameron decided to pretend ignorance,
explaining to an openly sceptical House that she had merely been startled
to be spoken to in an apparently empty room. "Does it matter, anyway? "she
asked with entirely false unconcern. "After all, what can the tape show
that hasn't already been broadcast across the entire hospital?"

House eyed her narrowly. "You seem to be taking this very calmly" he said.
"Gossip soon dies down where there's no substance to it, otherwise you and
Dr Cuddy would be second only to Ayersman and Nurse Cutler in the extra
curricular activities log." 

With this, Cameron shot House a sideways look to gauge his reaction. His
expression was now unreadable; all the walls in place, yet she was
convinced he would not be satisfied until that record of the previous
night was back within his grasp. 

She was as intrigued to see it as he was obviously determined to discover
its whereabouts. She did not for a minute think that it would reveal any
thing "gross", to use Guy's word. Weird might work for House but she could
no more imagine him pawing her while she slept than his declaring undying
love for her in front of the throng of patients in the Clinic waiting
room. "It's five o'clock. I'm going home, House". Cameron interrupted his
pondering. "And I'm going to see Wilson". House recalled his hasty
departure from Cuddy's office that morning. There was no way Lisa, smart
girl that she was, would have missed a big clue like that, and who would
she have shared that with-why, Wilson!

Dr James Wilson, the `Boy Wonder Oncologist' as House sometimes taunted
him, was no longer such a boy that he could work a long week, call his
ex-wives to see that they were ok, date his latest needy girlfriend and
respond to his misanthropic friend's frequent and often unreasonable calls
for support, that he could sit down in the late afternoon after a heavy
lunch, with the latest medical journal, or even, in this case, a rather
blurry videotape, without occasionally nodding off. 

The tape had proved tedious in the extreme. If he had ever thought about
it before, which was doubtful, he could now understand why the security
people looked so disengaged, sitting in front of their screens. The camera
panned from the empty corridor to the empty couches on one side of the
rest area and back again to the couches later occupied by Cameron and his
friend. He fast-forwarded an hour or so, saw the two of them move from
outside the clean room to the couch, saw Cameron disappear and then return
carrying drinks of some kind. Fast forwarding again, he saw House's
awkwardly positioned body slide sideways along the cushions and come to
rest closer to Cameron, who was sitting bolt upright, her head tilted
backwards. The sleeping pair slept on and very soon so too did Wilson., so
he did not hear the side door to the balcony he shared with House open
stealthily, as House limp-crept inside.

 House fixed his eyes on the TV screen just as the moment he feared might
have been captured by the camera was clearly displayed to justify his
anxiety. It was nothing, and yet for him it was something, and anyone who
knew him would know it too. He stopped the tape, once again marvelling at
the oncologist's obliviousness , remembering the adolescent prank-one of
many -he had played on Wilson during their last home-sharing bout, and
having removed the incriminating evidence from the machine, went back out
the way he had come, unobserved. Did House really believe that Cameron was
so uninterested in the tape he had been at such pains to recover that he
made no serious attempt to hide it, or for goodness' sake, destroy it-a
simple enough task? The sort of psychologist of whom House was
particularly scornful would probably have had an answer. Whatever one may
speculate about the state of that erratic genius's subconscious, it was
certainly the case that when Cameron arrived at her accustomed early hour
the following morning, and began to sort her boss's mail, she spotted a
familiar shape half buried beneath a welter of journals, medical files and
the toys with which House kept boredom at bay. Despite the curiosity
gnawing at her, Cameron did not dare to touch the tape until her two
colleagues had arrived and had their morning ritual of coffee and carping
about House. By 8.30 they had teased her a little about yesterday's events
, and, getting bored with her tolerant if fixed smile, had left the
Department; Foreman to an inter-departmental meeting dumped on him by his
boss and Chase to the Clinic. House would be ages yet; Cameron made her
move. Slipping the video into the player beneath House's ancient TV, she
sat down in his chair to see what he had been trying to conceal.

A few minutes later Cameron was still absorbing the image frozen on the
screen, when House appeared at her elbow. She cringed inwardly, as much
for him as for herself. He would really hate this exposure of his
feelings. It might raise her spirits sky-high to see the man who never
initiated physical contact outside his professional role, who actively
spurned even a handshake, trace the outline of her cheek with his finger
and gently move the strands of hair which had fallen in front of her eyes,
but then she had been sure once before. That had ended in humiliation for
her, deserved humiliation and she was determined not to make the same
mistake again. Chase had said at the time that if she wanted House, she
should jump him and that was what she had done; not physically but
emotionally, mugged him. This time, he had to make the first move, however
tiny. She would not crowd him and if he was unwilling to give her even the
smallest signal that he wanted more than the sometimes uneasy working
relationship they had, then she would have to settle for that.

"Touching, isn't it?" jeered House as she rose from his chair to face him.
Cameron did not answer. She was trying to formulate some innocuous reply
which would at the same time let them both off the hook, looking for clues
in his defiant eyes. Suddenly his gaze shifted downwards, while his cane,
always an indicator of his mood, jerked restlessly in his hand as he
muttered "You're not stupid. I guess I've blown my cover." Not the most
dramatic of declarations, but then House was only comfortable with drama
when he was playing all the parts himself. Cameron, much cannier now than
three years ago, merely smiled at him. "Idiot", she said, without
emphasis, and planting a light kiss on the most conveniently reached part
of his tall person, the `v' of his open necked shirt, she grabbed a
completely unneeded folder from the desk and made a completely unnecessary
journey all the way down to the lab. Inwardly overwhelmed, she knew that
the moment she made any assumptions about House's intentions, he would
take fright or at least come up with a thousand reasons why this was
doomed to failure and it would be better not to begin. She would need the
patience of a horse whisperer to overcome his mistrust.. The awful pun
came to her mind and she began to giggle.

Left alone in his office, House having removed the tell-tale evidence from
the player and tossed it into the trash, uncharacteristically tidied his
desk, fidgeted with the various items collecting dust on his shelves and
finally stretched out on his favourite chair where he brooded over the
events of the morning. He diagnosed in himself both relief and
anticipation. Relief and some surprise that Cameron had spared him the
kind of scene he had been dreading. After maintaining the lie that he had
no interest in her for the best part of four years, he'd supposed he had
that coming. Still, time for that yet, he thought. 

Anticipation; well, what heterosexual male wouldn't indulge himself with
that? What she saw in him only the God he did not believe in knew. He was
by far the cleverest person he had ever met. Why deny it? That was a plus.
He had an international reputation for his diagnostic wizardry and almost
as widespread a reputation as a misanthropic bastard. A plus and a minus.
He did not suffer fools gladly, hell he didn't suffer the merely
intelligent gladly. He had a caustic and witty tongue. Some women found
that a turn-on. Stacy said he made her laugh and annoyed her in equal
measure. She could give as good as she got. Cameron could now hole him
below the water line occasionally but he felt her heart wasn't in it. Then
there was his leg. Minus, minus, minus. And his vicodin habit. Another
minus. And then he was too old for her....damnation, he had been through
all this before. He knew the numbers would come out the same.

He fingered the spot on his chest where Cameron's lips had so briefly
touched him. It had tickled slightly. Very few people knew that he was
ticklish; Stacy had clocked it in about five minutes but then she was a
very hands-on kind of woman. Self-confident , assertive, not afraid to
grab what she wanted, their relationship had been an intensely physical
one. In hindsight he had not understood her at all. He could comprehend if
not forgive her going against his absolute will over the debridement of
his leg; he long ago accepted his culpability in the break up of their
affair. What had hit him in the belly with the force of a truck was the
realisation of her essential selfishness. Faced with a choice between
husband and former lover, she chose-both.

At least Cameron's husband was dead. That was a point in his favour.
Although, maybe , by being dead this tragic youth had acquired a standard
of perfection which no living man could match, leave alone a middle-aged
cripple.( In this, House was way off base, as even a short conversation
with Cameron or indeed Wilson at some point over the last four years would
have ascertained.) 

Given the way his thoughts were veering it was just as well that James
Wilson put his head around the door at that moment. Meeting his friend's
unresponsive stare, Wilson said cheerily "Your mood seems somewhat out of
sync with Cameron's. She passed me on the stairs with a positively
beatific smile. I 'd assumed it was a done deal."

"What do you know" glowered House. "All you do is poke your nose in where
it isn't wanted."

"Cold feet already? She's perfect for you, haven't I always said that? She
can stand you for a start; she even likes you for Heaven' sake. She
understands how you live. How you hate change-" "Yada, yada, yada," said
House . "That doesn't begin to cover the fact that I am too old for her,
am her boss...it's an inappropriate relationship."

 "Look around you, House. How many of your contemporaries on the staff are
on to their second or third marriage? How many of them are hitched to
pretty airheads half their age? I'm not saying they should be; I'm just
stating the facts. And Cameron is not only not an airhead but she is not
half your age. Okay, fourteen, fifteen years is a gap, there's no denying
it and she looks younger than her years but you can't expect any woman
over twenty-five to regret that. As far as the boss part goes, so what, if
you can make it work? I'm sure Cuddy will fall on Allison's neck if your
being together means she can wring another half hour's attendance out of
you each day."

"In twenty years I shall be an old man and Cameron..." "will be no spring
chicken ." finished Wilson. "If you fall off the perch before she loses
interest , she can find herself a toy-boy to even things up." Silence
fell. House's long fingers squeezed the life out of his grey and red ball.

"So let me get this straight," said Wilson, screwing up his eyes and
pinching the bridge of his nose with the index finger and thumb of one
hand in a familiar gesture of exasperation and disbelief, "you are
prepared to turn down the prospect of twenty or thirty years of sex with
the lovely Dr Allison Cameron on the grounds that it's unlikely to be
forty or fifty? How very you." "Put that way," said House with a faint
grin, "it does seem rather unreasonable. Even perverse."

He tried one last throw. "I'll show up badly against the sainted dead
husband. Her family will hate me and that's always bad news." "Sainted
husband ?" scoffed Wilson. "Shows how little you know. Our Cameron likes
bad boys, hadn't you realised?"

Leaving House to chew on this, Wilson set off to report the latest state
of affairs to Cuddy. He met Allison by the elevators. She had no doubt as
to where he had been. Was nothing private?. There may as well have been
news updates in the hospital entrance. She sighed resignedly. "On your way
to see House?" asked the oncologist. She nodded. "Good. He's feeling a bit
jittery. Needs careful handling .Make an excuse to get him out of here is
my advice."

Moments later Cameron stood in front of House asking if he could drop her
at her apartment on his way home. Her car was in the shop (true) and the
cab fare in to work extortionate (not quite so true-but then House never
paid for one). "I suppose this is another dig at your allegedly piss-poor
wages. You're in a poor position to be asking favours",he said. "I clearly
remember you calling me an idiot earlier." "But I did soften the blow",
said Cameron.

They collected their things together and made their way to the elevators.
As they waited, House said abruptly "I'm too old for you, you know. Chase
would be a more suitable choice." Cameron put down her laptop in order to
take up her characteristic hands-on -hips stance. "First you are not that
ancient-I have a brother your age- and second I had to be high on crystal
meth and the fear of HIV to jump Chase. There was never any chance it
would happen again. He's just not my type." As the elevator doors opened
on to a conveniently empty car, House was asking , although he was pretty
sure he knew the answer, "Who is?" Their hands met as they simultaneously
reached for the red `stop' button on the control panel.

Down in the lobby Nurse Brenda saw the elevator alarm flash and called
maintenance. It was the third time that week that particular one had
developed a fault. Within a few minutes though, the elevator began to move
once more. The doors opened and out stepped House and Cameron. It was
noticeable to a discerning eye that both were slightly dishevelled. It was
more difficult to tell with House, of course, but the tail of his shirt
was rucked up underneath his jacket. He looked positively cheerful.
Cameron wore a small smile. Those who disliked her would have described it
as smug.

Cuddy's sixth sense had her in the lobby at this moment. She saw the
elevator apparently repair itself and she was not deceived. "I'll make
sure Maintenance bills this callout against the Diagnostics budget" she
threatened, as the pair crossed her path. House came to an exaggerated
halt. "We have a budget? Nine years in this job and you've been holding
out on me all this time?"

"You do realise that I'm going to mess this up" said House, making this a
statement rather than a question, as he crossed the parking lot with
uneven gait, Cameron in his wake. "Forgive me if I try not to co-operate
with you on that one" she said, briefly raising her eyes to the heavens,
"Especially before I've even had a chance to part you from that tatty pair
of jeans." "See", wailed House in mock despondent tones, "out of the
building less than two minutes and already you're trying to change my
wardrobe. My mother always warned me against bottle brunettes." Privately
he found this sexually confident Cameron a big turn on. She had made a few
comments over the time they had worked together which suggested she was
less prim than the neat rather androgynous pants suits and little-girl
blouses would indicate. And then there had been the fundraiser about
eighteen months ago. That red dress really blew his socks off. Luckily he
had turned his genuine reaction into an overblown theatrical `Wowww'
before anyone spotted it.

"How did you know...?" Cameron was about to finish her question when she
realised that of all people House would notice a little detail like that.
She had begun to subtly darken her reddish blonde hair years before, in
med school, when it began to dawn on her that even in this so called
enlightened age blondes might have more fun but were taken less seriously
in class and on the wards. She worked towards being less physically
obtrusive. It had succeeded, up to a point, but up until her appointment
on House's team, she sometimes felt that she had disappeared altogether.
Her naturally gentle personality, subdued for a long time by the loss of
her lively, irreverent young husband, was tempered on the anvil of House's
abrasive wit. Either you were re-formed or you shattered. Amazingly, she
had withstood all that he could throw at her.

Her gentleness concealed both considerable obstinacy and a degree of
self-righteousness of which she was partly aware, even before Foreman and
Chase had taken her to task about it, as they did frequently in the early
days of their fellowship. House had once called her moral compass
"insane". Pots and kettles, thought Cameron. He was frequently an
unblushing liar and could be equally as passionate scamming a free meal
from the cafeteria as scamming the transplant team over the suitability of
his patient for a new heart or liver.

"I seem to know everything, except where I left my car. This is obviously
your fault; distracting me from the Clinic, running up repair bills,
causing me to bribe Security..." "Your devotion to the Clinic is well
known throughout the hospital" agreed Cameron, "and I did help you stop
the elevator, but bribery?" 

"Fifty dollars" grimaced House. "For the tape."

"To protect my reputation or yours?" asked Cameron, impressed. "Mine,"
said House. "Yours is not worth that much." He dodged adroitly as Cameron
aimed a blow at his ear. "Practice" he intoned, much in his manner of
chiding the Fellows for not getting the diagnosis (his diagnosis) correct.

It felt very odd to Cameron for a minute Here they were, still mentor and
student in their professional relationship and yet suddenly that awkward
distancing, always both more and less than a mere employer-employee
formality (House couldn't care less about that) had lifted. It was as
though there had been a kind of silent war going on and he had decided not
only to concede defeat but dismantle the barricades without delay. She had
not expected this, thinking she would have to inch her way into
acceptance. Yet Stacy, she remembered, had told her of her one disastrous
date with House and then moving in with him within a week. This of course
was long before the infarction. Cameron knew very little about what
followed until she showed up with Mark and had no intention of asking. She
just devoutly hoped he had finally got her out of his system.

House unsurprisingly found his car where he had left it that morning and
with Cameron and her laptop and his knapsack, was soon speeding in the
direction of her apartment. Once there he seemed to take it for granted
that he could come in and possess himself of her couch and her remote.

If he was still occupying that same spot twenty four hours later, it was
nobody's business but their own. They had after all, worked together for
almost four years; it was hardly a first date. There had been awkward
moments, of course, and Cameron had for the first time realised just how
morbidly self-conscious he was of his damaged leg but the clumsiness of
their first union had not discouraged further, much more satisfactory
attempts. It seemed, in that at least, they were compatible.

Cameron kept to her decision not to crowd House with personal questions.
He seemed to have no such inhibitions and in a few hours was educating
himself on her history as if to satisfy himself that the assumptions he
had made about her from day one of his hiring her were correct. What about
this brother she had mentioned; was he really the same age as himself?
Cameron said "Yes". She had denied being an only child, but House had a
point since she was the youngest by ten years. A change of life baby, her
two older brothers had protected and spoiled her. Her parents were older
than House's. Her father had been fifty at the time of her birth.

House could not resist the subject of her dead husband, whose youthful
image smiled down at them both from the wedding photo on a nearby shelf.
"Puppy", thought House. "Wilson told me you liked bad boys," he said.
Cameron's gaze tracked up to the photograph and back to a quizzical House.
"He wasn't really bad. He was clever, self-confident and reckless. His
parents were very strict religious people and after he was caught with
drugs a couple of times they effectively threw him out. My parents said he
would either make millions of dollars or end in jail."

"So no parental blessing then?" "Mom and Dad went along with my marriage
because they knew it couldn't last. Six months, we were told and six
months it was. Dr Wilson couldn't have been more accurate." "You must have
known he was ill long before that." "He knew. Yes," said Cameron. "He
didn't tell me until he couldn't hide it any longer." Seeing the
expression on House's face, she said "It wasn't selfishness-he just could
not accept that he was going to die."

House kept his thoughts to himself for once as Cameron sighed and said
"Make no mistake, I was crazy about him. It was like sitting next to the
bad boy in class: all the fun but none of the blame." "Hmm. I believe you
are the patron saint of lost causes." "Saint wasn't the word you used back
there" Cameron jerked her head in the direction of the bedroom. "And the
only lost cause I can think of is keeping this a secret. What do you
think?"

She sensed a slight withdrawal on the part of House. OK she thought, so
this is his boundary at the moment. What's between us stays between us.
She looked at him squarely and gave his knee a reassuring squeeze.
"Understood. Monday morning-business as usual."

And so it was. House bribed or threatened Wilson to keep his mouth shut
and for once the oncologist's desire to see his best friend if not happy
then a bit less miserable overcame his love of gossip. Inevitably there
were times when the pair said or did something that would have roused
suspicion in an observant colleague. Chase was certainly that, but his
main concern was that House did not ride him unnecessarily; if Cameron and
his boss were screwing, he didn't care. Foreman took too little interest
in House other than in a professional capacity to notice any subtle
changes.

Part Two

It was entirely predictable that House suspected that Cameron was pregnant
even before she did. His uncanny sensitivity to the fluctuations in
appearance and behaviour of the women with whom he worked and his
consequent knowledge of their menstrual cycles had freaked out even as
prosaic an individual as Lisa Cuddy. So when Cameron said worriedly to him
one morning as they set off for the hospital, "House, I'm late," he merely
said "Seems the old House DNA wants another shot at immortality."

Climbing on to the back of the bike, Cameron was at a loss for words. In
the eighteen months they had been together, the subject had never been
mentioned. She took her contraceptive pills; House saw her take them. She
was as careful about this as everything else in her life-except- House
would say-her choice of men.

"Ninety-nine percent effectiveness is just that. We got the one percent. I
expect I'll get used to the idea .Hold on." The bike sped away, along its
usual route with its usual riders but everything else in flux, it seemed
to Cameron. You could argue that it was absurd to assume at this stage she
was even pregnant but he had a habit of being right. She also remembered
the bout of sickness she had picked up some weeks ago from a child in the
Clinic. That could do it, she thought. What really surprised her was
House's apparent calm acceptance. Was this just shock? Would resentment
flood in as soon as the full realisation of the choice struck him? He knew
that if she proved to be expecting a child there was no way she would
terminate the pregnancy. If he was unwilling to accept her decision then
it was an end to their relationship. Cameron clung on to House as if
hoping she could read his thoughts through the thick jacket he wore.

House, if asked before this situation had arisen, would have disavowed any
interest whatsoever in fatherhood. His own experience as a child was
discouraging. He was a card-carrying misanthropist. There were already too
many children in the world and too many useless parents. With Stacy, there
had been no question of the subject even arising. She had as much maternal
instinct as Medea. Cameron now; well she was different. He'd once
suspected her of losing a child when she'd been so upset over a patient
but he'd been mistaken. He knew full well that she would suppress any
desire to have a child for his sake. They never made plans, talked about
the future. He felt comfortable the way things were. They had their
moments, of course, when things niggled but they read each other too well
to let it get to the explosive stage very often. 

Now though, everything could be, would be, turned upside down. Wilson's
visits, poker nights, the occasional over- indulgence in good whisky and
better cigars, all this would be curtailed if not cease altogether for the
benefit of a yowling bundle. He couldn't even make the usual male excuse
of sleeping through the night-time feeds since Cameron knew he slept like
a cat. The least disturbance would wake him And he was just about to
not-celebrate his fiftieth birthday.

It was hardly surprising that with these thoughts circulating in his head
it was a sombre looking House who removed his helmet in the PPTH parking
lot and stared down at his passenger. She had been prepared, he knew, as
he met her returning gaze, for him to say that he could not accept a
child. She would not have argued with him; she would merely have moved
out. She was hoping that his need for her was greater than his reluctance
to take on this commitment. Without ever articulating it, he knew it was.

The pregnancy confirmed and a few congratulatory back-slaps later from the
bolder of his male colleagues (Wilson was particularly annoying), House
settled into the final phase of his extended freedom from family
responsibilities. He left Cameron speechless by saying that they should
tie the knot. She wasn't at all sure about his motives.. As far as she was
concerned a piece of paper would not alter how she felt or how she would
behave and House didn't care about convention. "As we're going through
with this we're pretty much stuck with one another for the next twenty
years one way or another, right?" She nodded her assent. "So why make my
child a legal bastard when it doesn't have to be? Genetic inheritance will
probably make him or her the other kind "he added with a smirk.

In truth House had been contemplating this step before Cameron's
pregnancy. The idea had certainly not been planted in his mind by his
old-fashioned father's gruff comment about "making an honest woman of her"
but more by his mother's gentle observation that "Allison is so good for
you dear. I hope you don't let her slip through your fingers." There was
always in him, beneath the outrageous speech and superb self-confidence,
the fear that she would wake up one morning, see him as the ageing,
crippled, jerk that he was and wonder what the hell she was doing there.

Cameron imagined that the two of them would marry in the quietest possible
fashion, even with a couple of strangers off the street as witnesses, but
no, House wanted the ceremony, though small- (how many friends did he have
after all and how many relatives could he tolerate) -to be no
surreptitious affair. Wilson would be best man; he had plenty of
experience, and Cameron could choose a maid of honour from among her
friends. Both immediate families made it to the wedding and House was
relieved to see that Cameron's parents were indeed as elderly as she had
claimed. Her father addressed him as "My boy", so at least he didn't
confuse him with House senior.

Blythe had taken to Cameron immediately on their one previous get-together
as someone with her only child's best interests at heart and she did not
underestimate the stamina needed to keep up with her difficult son. She
was thrilled about the baby. House's father on the other hand, much
preferred Stacy. She was smart, no-nonsense, could stand up for herself.
He blamed his son entirely for the break-up of their relationship. He was
a damned fool to make that leg of his such an issue. This girl was
certainly a looker and at least was going to make him a grandfather. He
thought his son had left it rather too late to embark on fatherhood.

The pregnancy went smoothly, as did the birth, which was rather protracted
and gave House the opportunity to be impressed by the fluency and range of
his partner's curse-words. The child was a girl with the trademark blue
eyes and a few wisps of red-gold hair. An exhausted Cameron watched House
intently as he held the bundle competently in his long fingers. She saw it
at once. He was absolutely smitten. She had always suspected, if truth be
told, that she took second place to Stacy in the not very capacious organ
that served House for a heart. Now, in an instant, Stacy had been squeezed
out and she didn't mind coming second at all.

They called the baby Blythe after his mother and Emily after hers. After
some wrangling, both with House (whose infatuation with his daughter did
not translate readily into practical assistance) and the hospital
authorities, Cameron was able to return to her job in Immunology on a
part-time basis. She had transferred there a year previously, after even
Cuddy's administrative creativity had failed to stretch the three year
Fellowships any further. House now had three new underlings "Even more
useless than you, Foreman and Chase were", he told Cameron. She had to
agree that they appeared more callow than she remembered the old team
being at the beginning but then she recalled how terrified she and Chase
had been of fouling up before House's barbs. Even Foreman was not quite as
confident as he appeared.

In four years, Cameron looked set to take over her department, and her
daughter, the hospital. Its corridors and clinics were as familiar to
Blythe as her own home. She spent much of her time there between day care
and her parents' departments, not to mention unannounced visits to Drs
Cuddy and Wilson. She was utterly fearless, irrepressible and
self-possessed beyond her years. She was, in short, her father's daughter.
With all his curiosity gleaming in her eyes and a head of unruly copper
curls, she got away with murder; part hospital mascot, part holy terror.

How had House taken to parenthood? There was much speculation and some
amusement among his peers when the news had got out. His relationship with
Cameron had long since filtered through into the general consciousness but
this was a bigger deal. Would his eternal childishness and often juvenile
behaviour be neutered by having to deal with the real thing himself?
Cameron could have answered this at once. "No". Those behaviours were all
part and parcel of the man's genius; his never- stale take on what ever
his eyes fell on and his brain fed on.

Instead of sobering him up, Blythe's arrival if anything refreshed House's
immature streak. His disability meant that he could not run with her in
the park or play some games very easily but his facility with languages
and her sharp brain meant that by the time she was three and a half she
could lisp some delightful insults in several foreign tongues, to her
mother's consternation and his unconcealed glee.

Cameron was the main disciplinarian but even House had some boundaries. He
did not want her running wild. One morning Blythe was down in the Clinic
holding court amongst the nurses on duty in the moments before it opened
for the day. Seeing her father approaching, she announced to the assembled
patients; "My daddy has a cross leg". Seeing a thunderous scowl on the
face of the tall, rather grizzled man limping heavily down the hall
towards the Nurses' station, some of those waiting began reconsidering the
urgency of their visit. "I told them" she said, looking up at him "it was
a cross leg day". This was a kind of shorthand the three of them had
developed to explain the times when the pain from House's leg was
particularly hellish and his patience consequently short.

"Great. Now go away". Hardly the words one would have expected to hear
from a devoted father. He was scarcely more demonstrative with her than
with the world at large. They understood one another well. An exchange of
blue glances, a brief tug at the knee of his pants and she was gone,
skipping up the hallway to annoy, with any luck, Cuddy. As he had
foreseen, Blythe's comment meant that every one of the patients he saw
that morning gave his right leg a pitying look, while one woman, bolder
than the rest, began to enquire after it until she saw his expression and
changed her mind. 

"Keep the brat out of the Clinic can't you -at least on my mornings"
grumbled House at lunchtime, as he told Cameron what she had done. "She
was trying to protect you -or maybe it was the patients" said Cameron,
amused. "You were more than usually cantankerous this morning." "With
reason," he groaned, downing another vicodin. "Steve McQueen was a lot
less trouble." "House!" she protested. "Comparing your firstborn
unfavourably to a rat!" "Firstborn?" queried House nervously. Am I missing
something here?" "No, No", laughed Cameron. "We'd better find a decent
school for her-another six months and she'll be trying out medical
procedures. She gutted all her soft toys long ago." "Another year and I'd
swap her for one of my Fellows. That reminds me, I really need you in on
this case...any chance of a consult?"

A little later, Lisa Cuddy settled herself back comfortably in her chair.
A small figure, obviously protesting, was being walked away from her
office hand in hand with one of House's newer acolytes, a bright but
rather ineffectual floppy- haired young man called Edwards. Another Chase
clone, thought Cuddy. How that man hates change! The Great Man had been
too busy mastering the latest bit of games wizardry to fetch his daughter
himself. He had pleaded urgent medical business but she knew better.

Cuddy looked at the corner of her impressive desk, where a pot plant stood
in for the photographs of nearest and dearest usually positioned there by
the possessors of such high-achiever furniture. She sighed a little. She
thought back to the time when she and Wilson had been desperate to
re-engage House with life, not only so that he would actually be earning
his not inconsiderable salary but also to stop him going further down the
road of isolation and addiction.

As far as he was concerned she just told him she wanted him to do his job.
He had quoted `the philosopher Jagger' to her and told her "You can't
always get what you want". She had found the remainder of that lyric and
responded "But if you try sometimes you may find you get what you need."
Well, he had tried, reluctantly, and others had tried for him. He had not
got what he wanted; his leg restored and freedom from pain, or even,
perhaps, Stacy, but he seemed to have got what he needed in Cameron and
Blythe.

She shook herself out of her reverie. If she had asked what she had been
intending to ask House in his office that day shortly before the shooting,
a Blythe -type small person might be in second grade right now. She had
made the right call. She had always found House a very attractive man,
limp or no limp and he was still, rapidly thinning hair and all but she
could never, unlike Cameron, have accepted all the baggage that came along
with him. As for Blythe; Cuddy made a quick calculation and came to the
conclusion that she would just about be out of PPTH and sunning herself on
some exotic beach by the time that young lady began wreaking Housian havoc
as the med student she was genetically destined to be!

Postscript

So, what of the other characters in this drama, you may ask, if you are
still with me at this late stage?

Chase briefly thought of returning to Australia at the end of his
Fellowship but he had no real family there. His step-mother sent him a
card at Christmas and on his birthday when she remembered it and that was
that. His friends from med school were pretty much scattered across the
globe by now. He finally settled on a post in California where the climate
was much more to his liking than New Jersey. It was a good position. House
had given him a surprisingly generous recommendation, though not of course
to his face.

With him went Pat, a paediatric nurse of Irish Catholic descent he had met
and worked with at PPTH. Before too long they had blonde floppy-haired
twin boys. House snorted rudely when Cameron showed him the pictures of
the toddlers in diminutive cricket outfits but secretly he was rather
pleased. He had always had a soft spot for Chase.

Eric Foreman had set his sights high and his career path was keeping to
its planned trajectory. He had been the first of the Fellows to leave
despite being the last to arrive. He became more and more restless under
House's regime and less and less patient with the latter's wayward
approach to the diagnostic process. He was a man who liked structure and
rules. As a teenager his rebellion against them had almost ended his
prospect of a decent life let alone a career such as his. He had learnt
from House, yes, but he had learnt enough. He was ready to move on.
Knowledge of whose tutelage he had been under for three or more years was
sufficient to interest several high profile institutions and his
impressive academic achievement and professional demeanour did for the
rest. House had put in a word for him too, but as this was at a certain
establishment he had been kicked out of twenty years before it is
uncertain whether this was a help or a hindrance. He was still unattached.
He had a string of short-term relationships but had yet to meet the person
who fitted in with his idea of himself.

What of James Wilson, long-suffering (and didn't he love it) friend and
counsellor of House? Shortly after House and Cameron got together, he was
on marriage number four. The difference this time was; it looked as though
this one might stick. His wife, a psychologist at the university, was not
at all needy but her extensive family were all basket cases, as Wilson had
explained in decidedly non-pc language to his friend. That probably
explained her choice of academic discipline. They had met literally on the
freeway after James had rammed the back of her car in a rainstorm. The
pair of them seemed quite happy, trying to manage the crises of her
various relatives, a task it seemed would take them through the
foreseeable future together. Wilson and Sarah, for this was her name, saw
a good deal of Cameron and House. She was immediately fascinated by James'
many tales about House. "PTSD" she volunteered on one occasion. Wilson
though, was not having his friend picked apart, even by her. "Must have
been born traumatized then", he said and his tone and his look warned her
off.

Lisa Cuddy's desire for a child remained unfulfilled. One moment of
madness in House's office could so nearly have changed everything. Luckily
for her sanity and the good of PPTH (where would it be without her?) she
changed her mind. "The hospital is her baby" said House, and so it was.

Finally to young Jamieson, the temporary janitor whose act of revenge
manoeuvred House into a situation he had never intended. Cameron heard
through the hospital grapevine that in his fourth semester at Yale he had
been involved in an accident which had severed his spinal cord and
confined him to a wheelchair. He was contemplating a future in stem cell
research. Cameron was saddened by this news and even House managed a
slight facial twitch which the generous- minded could have interpreted as
sympathy. 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 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.