Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

6 AM. What the hell kind of time was that. House grabbed his alarm clock and dragged it forward to the length of its cord, inspecting it for signs of demonic possession. He found instead a small pinhole button on the back labeled “reset.” It was depressed. He must have accidentally pushed it last night when setting the alarm for a normal nine AM. And apparently, this was what the absolute masochists working in the alarm industry believed to be a good neutral reset time. Fucking monstrous.

He chucked the vindictive little machine back from whence it came and tried to fall back asleep with the vengeful intent to remain unconscious until the hour hit double digits.

In downright impudent contrast to this directive, his phone was the next technological marvel to scream from his bedside table.

“What?” House asked of the phone once he decided to graciously accept the call (after swearing loudly enough that his upstairs neighbor started stomping recriminations on the floor).

“Our new, apparently stable-for-now patient almost suffocated to death,” Chase announced without a hello. “Atelectasis. Nurses thought it was pneumothorax at first, but there was no air surrounding the lung.”

“Cool,” House jammed a thumb into his eye socket and rubbed, “I assume you reinflated the lung and started her on oxygen. Or I really will have to start using you as a footstool.”

“Yes. To the oxygen, not the footstool.”

“Good, then we can move on and address the much more interesting question of why you’re at work so absurdly early that I’m getting this phone call from you, instead of that pneumothorax-challenged night nurse.”

“They’re fumigating my apartment building,” Chase answered shortly.

“And so you’re sleeping on the breakroom couch? Gee, I thought I paid you more than that.”

“I’m staying with Foreman. And he—” Chase cut off his own explanation but House had already gleefully latched on.

“Oh, I see! Did he only give your hair ninety-nine brushes instead of the one hundred required to maintain its shine?”

“Hanging up now.”

“That reminds me, how does Foreman hang—”

The click of the line brought a smile to House’s face. It really was the little things.

House rolled into an outfit fresh from three-days-ago-still-in-the-dryer (why put things away just to take them back out again?) and made peanut butter toast while he flipped the TV on for the weather.

“Record snowfalls expected starting mid-afternoon, major highways are looking at closures and several small airports have preemptively cancelled today’s roster of flights following Newark’s announcement of the same. Travelers are strongly urged to postpone trips until the roads are cleared and the storms have passed, expected to be the case by early tomorrow morning.”

Great. At least House didn’t have to worry about going anywhere—the hospital was just a few minutes’ ride and there was a 24-hour pizza joint a couple blocks over. He’d survive on existing rations just fine.

Flakes were drifting sweetly down as he shambled out of the apartment at a truly brutal 6:56 in the AM. He’d showered, eaten, stared at a wall, contemplated the nature of life, contemplated the measurements on his favorite 1998 Playgirl bunny, stared at the wall some more, and finally concluded that avoiding the hospital had switched over to the ‘less interesting’ track. At least if he was at the hospital, he might scrounge up a new clue about why his patient was so determined to kick the bucket from what seemed like a textbook lung infection.

A blur of muddy yellow crossed his peripheral vision and he moved his cane instinctively to block it. This meant he smacked a tarnished-gold cat on the nose and earned a sharp hiss for his trouble. He quickly shut his door behind him before the hallway interloper could make it inside. “Too slow,” he admonished, shuffling carefully around the presumably stray cat, just in case it carried any diseases it now had a mind to share with him.

Despite the increasing precipitation, House managed to roar into the parking lot on his bike without any new debilitating injuries. He did a quick survey of familiar parking spots and was mildly disappointed to find that he’d managed to beat Wilson in to work but not Cuddy. Only 50% mocking potential about being a lazy tardy slob now, and the less responsive half at that.

The more responsive half gave House an approving nod as he slunk through the lobby doors with disgusting punctuality. He pretended Cuddy was nodding at some other, invisible personage and wiped the ice off the foot of his cane with painstaking care.

“TGIF!” A shiny new staffer at the front desk greeted House as he passed. He could tell she was shiny and new because she 1) spoke to House and 2) said that.

“I don’t thank god for anything,” House replied with a suitable dosage of scorn, “Definitely not for days of the week, no matter what he says about owning the patents.”

He stalked off from that teachable moment with an elevated opinion of himself.

His office and conference room were empty when he arrived. This gave him an opportunity to settle in and make it seem like he’d been there for a while when Foreman and then Cameron arrived in quick succession a few minutes later. He pretended to peruse test results and enjoyed the expressions of his fellows as they spotted him, checked the clock, and then checked him again.

‘Oh, wow, he really is a god among men with the stamina of a great and terrible beast,’ he imagined Foreman was probably saying.

‘It was the worst mistake of my life not taking that lay when I could get it,’ would be Cameron’s natural response.

Deciding he’d given them enough time to applaud his timeliness (and godliness) among themselves, House flung open the dividing door with a big awful smile. “Good morning, my doves! Isn’t this a beautiful day?”

“We know you only manifested here before noon because Chase said ‘atelectasis’ three times in a mirror,” Foreman deadpanned.

But getting them off the topic of House’s ridiculously attractive responsibility-consciousness was Foreman’s mistake.

House sprawled in a seat at the table next to Cameron, affecting his best gossipy pose, “So, has Chase spilled the deets yet about what Foreman’s packing? Because Chase is zipping his lips—probably the only time in the last twenty-four hours that he didn’t open wide—about the whole bromantic sleepover sitch.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Foreman asserted with his usual tired disdain and a little spark of unusual concern.

“We always have time for dong talk,” House corrected.

“Not today,” Chase cut in as he burst through the doorway, “Patient’s lung is still partially collapsed. There’s no obvious blockage, she just can’t breathe.”

“I hear that breathing’s pretty popular these days,” House commented.

“She’s already on pure oxygen,” Cameron reviewed the fresh file, “which not only risks some serious side effects long-term but means that if she gets worse, there’s nothing more we can give her.”

“Then we’d better figure out what’s wrong before she gets worse, or the side effect might be death.” House heaved himself to his feet and went to the whiteboard. Popping open the marker produced the same tiny rush of excitement it always did. “Differentials, people. What causes ‘not breathing’?”

“She’s got a recent history of pneumonia,” Chase started, and conveniently offered his own critique of the suggestion, “But she’s been on antibiotics since she got here.”

“LP to confirm infection and chest CT to find out if there’s a fluid build-up hiding somewhere,” House ordered. “But we can’t rely on that. She’s a teacher, she’s probably got a dozen different infections from those nasty little germ-factories at any given time. We need to find out why she’s gotten so susceptible to so many, so fast. And that means…”

House pointed to Cameron just as she said, “Auto-immune!”

“And we wonder why stereotypes persist. Yes, the recurrent infections aren’t great, but we can’t just jump to conclusions. Right, Foreman?”

“She’s reported hallucinatory episodes. She says they all coincided with fevers from the infections, but that could just be confirmation bias obscuring a—”

“—neurological problem, jeez, we’re all really running to mommy today. Speaking of which, did anybody see Cuddy’s shoes? Six inch heels don’t seem like a practical choice in blizzard conditions—”

“The patient was seeing a pulmonologist for almost a year before she got to us. He had her on a bunch of different asthma medications, there could’ve been interactions or side effects,” Chase mused, “And she was using a specialized inhaler to deal with mucus build-up, the device could’ve malfunctioned or collected some sort of infectious material through improper storage or cleaning.”

House added on (silently mourning that no one else was interested in interrogating Cuddy’s inappropriate sartorial decisions), “The chronic bronchiectasis could also be caused by some kind of fungus or toxin, not to mention those antibiotic-resistant bacterial buggers. Sounds like we need to take a closer look at that mucus-machine when we do the home search. And by ‘we’ I mean…” House pointed the index finger of each hand at Chase and Foreman respectively, “our resident lovebirds.”

“It takes two people to break into an old lady’s house, now?” Foreman protested.

“I just thought you’d want back-up. And if you want your back-up to back dat ass up…”

Chase rose, “Let’s just get this over with.”

“I assume that’s what he said last night,” House looked innocently at Foreman, who scrunched up his face in discomfort but otherwise didn’t reply. Interesting. Avoiding the lady-doth-protest-too-much callout or just not protesting?

“I’ll run the tests,” Cameron joined her colleagues in their retreat, “let you know if the CT shows anything.”

“Hopefully it will show her lungs,” House called helpfully after them.

In a beat of beautiful timing, the elevator that arrived after swallowing his fellows contained the next target of his attentions.

“And what sort of slovenly time do you call this?” House shouted to Wilson as he wandered drowsily out of the elevator. Wilson froze, made a show of looking at his watch, and then at House.

“Did I step through some sort of temporal anomaly, or are you actually at work on time?”

“It’s the new me,” House preened.

Wilson waited a beat, then said, “No.”

House held the pose for a second, then gave up and slumped with his usual rubber-band-limbed disinterest through Wilson’s office door, “My alarm malfunctioned and then my patient crashed.”

“That I believe.”

“But I’ve got something a lot more salacious than patients trying to die without my permission…” House mocked up a drumroll on the edge of Wilson’s desk as he got comfy in his preferred chair and Wilson peeled off his winter coat, scarf, and gloves like the cozy boy-scout he was. He waited until Wilson had sat down on his own side of the desk before leaning in and imparting the juicy goss, “I think Chase is trading Foreman sexual favors in exchange for a roof over his delicate head.”

“Hmm,” Wilson played along, “Curious if you can get the same payment plan?”

“You angling to be my landlord?” House shot back with the appropriate eyebrow action.

“I think you’ll find my rates a little steep for your affection bracket.”

“You must go right for the really filthy stuff. Handholding if I want a parking space, public use of pet names for on-site laundry…”

“Imagine what I ask for access to a garbage chute.”

House affected blushing like a Victorian maiden, which meant Wilson was biting down a grin as his new assistant cracked open the door and told him, “Hettie Cornwallis is here early. And verging on a meltdown.”

“Of course, she is,” Wilson sighed, “Give her a tissue and bring her in once I’ve cleared him out.”

House pointed with exaggerated shock to himself, “Me him?”

“You him,” Wilson confirmed, and made a shooing motion.

“Well,” House huffed up at the assistant, “Thanks a lot, Jacob.”

“Janice,” she corrected.

“Haggis,” House tried again.

“Just ignore him,” Wilson counseled.

“Sure,” Jacob-Haggis quirked her mouth in something both amused and irritated, “You did warn me why I’m getting hazard pay.”

House considered investigating just how much of a hazard he could be for this kid (were the employees getting younger or was House just getting more distinguished?) but pursuit meant intersecting with The Cornwallis and he had no desire to get cancer tears on his new shoes along with all the slush.

He retreated to his office for a good long think.

About seventeen discarded theories later, Wilson turned up for a late lunch. House spent all fifty-nine minutes of it stealing Wilson’s food and cracking incredibly witty jokes, earning him several small, repressed smiles and at least two eyes-crinkled-shut big ones—a good haul all in all.

His luck turned south when he got back to find his fellows poring over a bunch of inconclusive test results.

“There’s definitely fluid on the chest CT,” Cameron reported, “which isn’t a surprise considering the infections.”

“And the amount of phlegm she’s still got coming up,” Chase added.

“So many sputum samples, so few sputum answers,” House coined a phrase.

“Just compared to the X-rays her primary took last week, there was a marked deterioration,” Foreman lifted the images and gestured, “fluid accumulation around the lungs is significant but not enough to be causing the atelectasis, not on its own.”

“More likely co-symptoms than a cause,” House agreed, “So, does anybody have a cause they’d like to suggest, or are we just gonna keep repeating the pneumonia symptoms we already covered? I guess that would be easier…”

“Scan also revealed swollen lymph nodes,” Cameron suggested tiredly, “Why don’t you go ask Wilson to play?”

“But we just got back from a date! Don’t like to use him up so early in the day. Besides, all he could say is ‘it might be cancer. Do a biopsy.’ And—”

Shouting erupted from the office next door. House perked up. “Well, never mind, I think we may be getting a surprise visit from the man himself.”

Wilson stormed down the corridor, glistening slightly from some glossy, gritty substance. He threw open the glass door and the occupants all fell back coughing at the assaultive odor.

“What the fuck, House!” Wilson swore, making like he wanted to strangle House, but catching sight of his own goo-ridden hands distracted him from the task.

House just grinned, and then coughed because P.U.

“What did you—” Wilson tried, stopped to catch his breath and also cough, and then geared up again with a loud, “Why did you—” that also died off. Probably because he knew the “why” when it came to House was always pretty much the same.

“You smell…” House wafted Wilson’s newly acquired stench towards his nose with the standard lab-safety hand-waving technique, “Like an evil pickle recently released from solitary confinement.”

Wilson let out a very entertaining guttural, rageful noise. He jabbed a finger in House’s face and declared, “I’m going to burn something you love.”

Then he turned as primly as he could under the circumstances and stalked off. Presumably to destroy his clothes and take about twelve showers.

“What did you do to him?” Cameron asked, face creased in a paroxysm of pity and horror.

“Sauerkraut,” House answered simply. “Now, what are you all lollygagging about for, don’t we have a patient?” He scooped his hands up low from his waist, palms raised, like a big yellow earth mover, “Go forth! Find something to biopsy.”

Recovering quickest, Foreman clarified, “The lungs?”

“Well, you could do the feet, but I don’t think it would tell us much.”

“Her lungs are already on the verge of collapse, the danger—”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve had this fight before. Can we skip to the part where you agree that I’m brilliant and obey me unquestioningly?”

“We can biopsy the lymph nodes to test for cancer, run an ANA to knock out the major autoimmunes, and get an MRI to rule out neurological involvement and make sure the repeated infections haven’t spread.”

“Great. Let’s all just stick to our specialties, I’m sure the illnesses will play fair and stay inside our favorite wheelhouses. Chase, do you wanna put a tourniquet on the patient, just to round it out?”

“I think…” Chase’s eyes darted to his colleagues and then back to House, “the patient is uncomfortable but stable and there’s no reason to risk an invasive lung biopsy yet.”

“Because waiting to take risks until things are worse makes so much sense,” House complained, but he was letting the kiddies take this win. He wanted more data himself—may as well allow them their useless tests in the meantime.

“We’ll get started on those tests and prep her for the lung biopsy if we don’t find anything,” Cameron proposed diplomatically, and House sent them on their way with a regal flip of his fingers.

Bothering Wilson was off the table—he’d maxed out that source of entertainment for twelve to twenty-four hours with the kraut fiasco (worth it). Bothering Cuddy seemed premature when he’d probably get to take her on later in the day over some bizarre and dangerous but life-saving procedure for his patient. This left House to marinate in half-baked theories in the goldfish tank of his own office.

Cuddy turned up of her own accord to do him the favor of delivering her daily beratement of his laziness, sloppiness, and all-around badness in the comfort of his own quarters. He let the laundry list of complaints wash over him without interest, eyes narrowed and analyzing the absurdly sharp lines of her shimmery gray pencil skirt and combining and recombining this data with her exceptionally nasty temper.

“This bad mood of yours has clearly been cooking for hours, which means it couldn’t be about me, because I haven’t gotten to do anything really fun yet today. Well, not involving you.”

“I heard about Wilson’s misfortune.” Cuddy decided to add a physical element to the comedy, picking up a nearby medical journal and rolling it up to bop House on the head with it, “Bad doctor.”

“Bad friend,” House corrected, “An important nuance. Now why don’t you tell me who pissed in your skim milk Bran Flakes so I can buy them a nice candlelit dinner?”

Cuddy unrolled and rerolled the journal like she was wringing House’s neck, but said in tightly manic tones, “I think I left the iron on.”

“The iron?”

“Yes. For clothes. I’m aware you’ve never used one yourself, but I thought you might be familiar with the theory.”

“One even lived in my home for a while,” House reflected, “but that doesn’t explain why you’re letting an inanimate object ruin my day.”

“It could burn my whole damn house down!” Cuddy burst out, the violence of the confession knocking House back a few inches in his chair, “But I can’t go home and check it because I have to be here keeping you in line, and running this whole hospital, and doing everything for everyone without any thanks! And to top it all off, we’re getting a fucking blizzard dropped on us, so if I tried to go home and check on things real quick, it pretty much guarantees that I’d skid out on black ice and crash my car into a snowdrift, and then I wouldn’t be here to organize the storm casualties that could be rolling in any minute, because god forbid I do anything for my own sake!” She snipped the rant off abruptly, pressing her lips together in an angry line, her curls vibrating with righteous outrage.

“You’re being very rational about this,” House replied mildly.

Cuddy did one of those ‘looking to a higher power for assistance, or at least a handy blunt object’ gestures with both palms and her head tilted back that House witnessed so often in her company. “Why do I bother?”

House shook his head in bafflement. “I don’t know. We were just talking about what a bad friend I am.”

“We,” Cuddy gestured between them with the journal, “are not friends.”

“Choir,” House pointed to himself, then to her, “preacher.”

“Just…” Her shoulders slumped and House was very bored with the sad little domestic trifle the mini-mystery had turned out to be. An iron. Please. “Don’t commit any felonies until they plow us out of here.”

“So I can escape freely over the border, or so you can?”

“Maybe both. But different borders.” She turned and walked out, wrestling a little with the door handle, then having to come back in and throw the mangled journal in House’s direction when she realized she’d walked off with it.

At least her visit cleared House’s mind. He enjoyed spinning out some increasingly and intriguingly exotic theories without his fellows around to puncture them. It wasn’t until the winter sun set over afternoon, bleeding into evening, that his beeper went off.

“Shit,” he muttered to himself. Somehow, this didn’t feel like a day for miraculous saves.

By the time he got there, Cameron was already pulling up the sheet.

“She projectile vomited and then collapsed,” Chase reported solemnly, “They brought in the crash cart, but cardiogenic shock had already set in. Total, severe, congestive heart failure.”

“But no heart attack,” Foreman added on the tastiest detail of the scene, bent pointer finger propped against his chin in thought. “CPR and paddles did nothing.”

“Interesting.” House moved forward to twitch the sheet back for a peek but Cameron blocked his path.

“We can’t touch her.”

“Uh, yes we can,” House jabbed at the cotton-covered thigh just in reach, “See?”

Cameron looked like she really wanted to bat his wrist away but was wise enough to know she wouldn’t win in a slap-fight. “If you cared about the patient or ever listened to anything we say, you’d know she has—had—strong religious objections to any tampering with her body after death. Her son will be here soon, and if he finds out you went against his mother’s wishes and tried to autopsy—”

“—He’s a marine,” Chase informed House, “He’ll put your head through a wall.”

House waggled his cane, “I’m feistier than you give me credit for. Plus, most momma’s boys don’t make a habit of punching cripples.”

“His momma just died unexpectedly in your care,” Foreman pointed out sensibly, “he’ll make an exception.”

House sank back on his heels. “Mommies, that reminds me…”

He burst into Cuddy’s office, “Let me cut open the dead chick.”

“No,” she said without looking up.

“Do you even know which dead chick I’m referring to?”

“Doesn’t matter, if you’re coming to me, then you’re not supposed to do it. So, no.”

“She was my patient. I called dibs.”

Now, Cuddy glanced up. “The one with the persistent lung problems? I thought she was stable.”

“So did we. Then her heart gave out and all the kings’ horses couldn’t do jack shit. This is what we in the trade call ‘mysterious.’ Which is why you need to let me crack her open and find out what happened.”

Cuddy chewed her lip and shuffled her papers in a telling way that had House gearing up for round two before she even spoke. “I can’t authorize an override on explicit patient wishes regarding disposal of their remains—”

“—unless there’s a clear and present danger to the hospital or public health. There’s both!”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. If I don’t get to use the rib spreaders on her, then I’m gonna start roaming for targets in the general populace.”

That didn’t win him even a subdued, wry grin. “House. Give me evidence that she’s got an infection that’s about to take out the whole county, or accept that you’ll have to look for your answers in the samples you’ve already got.”

“If the answer was in the samples I’ve already got, then she wouldn’t be on a slab heading for the back exit.”

Cuddy picked up her phone and started dialing. Cuddy-ese for ‘get out before I get nasty.’ “I’m sorry about your patient’s death, House. Less sorry that you’re gonna die of curiosity next.”

Wilson was only marginally more sympathetic (even though he no longer smelled of rotten cabbage). “I’m sorry, House. Not sorry enough to help you break into the morgue to desecrate an innocent woman’s remains, but sorry.”

“Some pal you are. To think I was gonna make us matching friendship bracelets.”

“Your kids haven’t found anything in the samples they took from her home?”

“Nope,” House popped the P loudly, “Zilch. And too many hits from the school she worked at. Staff, strep, even some Legionnaire’s for interest. But none turning up positive matches in what we got from her and none developed enough to have been the original cause of her long-term decline.”

“You could try talking to the son? See if he’d let you do a minimally invasive investigation?”

“Eh. Ever since being shot myself, I feel that keeping a safe distance from trained firearm users is a good strategy.”

“That’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever said. Seriously, I’m gonna print you out a little certificate or something. ‘House learns the art of self-preservation.’”

“I’ve always been an old master at taking care of myself,” House leered.

“Yeah,” Wilson sighed, “It’s boundaries you’ve got issues with. Speaking of, I had to hit pause on my revenge plan for your kraut offensive because I feel this human emotion called pity. But know that it’s still…” Wilson wiggled vague fingers, “It’s out there. It’s in the offing. It’s coming for ya.”

“I’m sure.” House admired the sight of post-kraut Wilson. His hair still curled with leftover moisture from his sudden need to shower mid-day and he was wearing a spare set of blue scrubs under his usual lab coat which had (unfortunately) been spared in the attack. “Well, I’ve had what the poets call a shitass day. Beer and movie night?”

“Beer and movie night,” Wilson agreed, standing to gather his things with open suspicion. “You…are giving up on the autopsy thing way too easily. What’s your angle?”

House’s mild smile grew milder and more smile-y. “You wanna know or you wanna keep your deniability?”

“I never have deniability when it comes to your crimes.”

Quirking two fingers, House gestured for Wilson to come closer, which he did with extreme caution. House imparted in a whisper, “Let’s just say I have friends in low places.”

“Ugh,” Wilson wiggled some distance back between them, “You’re gonna get that mortician with the unsettling hair piece to let you in, aren’t you?”

“I’ll owe him unspeakable favors, but yes, that’s the plan. On Saturdays the morgue is his sovereign domain. I come by tomorrow at 10 AM, find the door mysteriously unlocked, and do a little pre-grave digging. Get my answers. It’s as easy as waking up.”

6 AM

The blaring alarm jerked House out of sleep with all the finesse of a frying pan to the face.

Making indignant hissing noises, he scrabbled at the black plastic until it ceased its unholy din, then dragged it closer for a thorough examination. His first stop, the reset button he’d very carefully ensured had not been pressed again yesterday was—pressed.

Well, fuck him, apparently.

He hurled the alarm in the general direction of the bedstand and was not upset to hear it miss its target and hit the ground with a fatal sounding crunch.

Jamming his face back in the pillow, he consoled himself that minus a living patient, he surely would not be expected on hospital grounds any time soon.

Then the phone rang.

Eyes still shut, House felt unseeing along the table’s surface until his fingers closed over the landline. He brought it to his face and pressed the braille-identifiable call button and said, quite calmly considering the hour, “Hello and fuck off.”

“Hi, and good morning to you too.” Chase’s voice. Was this Chase’s new hobby, calling House before sunrise? A petty little revenge? House was almost impressed. Then Chase said, “Our new, apparently stable-for-now patient almost suffocated to death. Atelectasis. Nurses thought it was pneumothorax at first, but there was no air surrounding the lung.”

House opened his eyes. He sat up. “…Is this a joke?”

“No?” Chase asked with equal question in his voice, “Our patient is on oxygen and we’ve managed to reinflate the lung for now.”

Chase sure didn’t sound like he was joking. And there was no punchline in replaying the hours before their patient’s untimely demise, at least, not one any of House’s fellows would willingly perpetrate.

Déjà vu?

House squinted down at the digital red date blinking sadly out of the broken alarm clock. It was Friday. The same Friday as yesterday. Except, maybe not, the stupid machine was halfway to the afterlife now, it probably couldn’t even get the year right—

House had retrieved the clock and was shaking it violently when Chase decided to try and carry on the conversation one-sided, “We’ve done what we can but this is a stopgap solution. Are you coming in?”

“Well, you’re already in. And awfully early. Let me guess: you ran to work in the wee hours because they’re fumigating your apartment and Foreman’s couch is lumpy.”

“Not on the couch,” Chase replied automatically. House could hear the following silent eyes-shut ‘shit’ moment through the phone.

“Ah.” House loaded the syllable with menacing understanding. “Afraid if you were there when he woke up, you’d have to service him for his generosity?”

“Okay. I’m assuming you’re gonna come in and not let our patient die. Bye.” Chase hung up with a nervous click.

House looked at the phone in his hand. He’d correctly predicted the reason for Chase ringing him rather than an early-shift nurse, which implied that his memory of Friday already happening wasn’t just a souped-up case of déjà vu or a Vicodin-induced hallucination. Unless House was so brilliant that he’d deduced that little factoid from clues yesterday (Thursday-yesterday) and had indeed dreamt a version of this day (Friday, apparently) and was now waking up from that strangely intense and detailed imagining on the actual day (Friday, for realzies).

It was possible.

House completed his usual lazy morning routine with a paranoid edge. He often wore the same clothes until they actively smelled, so the uniformity of his wardrobe meant nothing. He didn’t remember the exact fullness of his peanut butter jar enough to gauge whether it contained any more or less than it should. His dirty mags were vintage on purpose, nothing there to compare dates to. With a reluctance he didn’t know how to name, he finally flicked on the TV and navigated to the weather.

The exact same weatherman gave the exact same description of the oncoming snowstorm as he remembered from yesterday/dream-Friday.

Which, was par for the course when it came to weathermen. House could write that script in his sleep, and maybe he had. Fuck.

He went to leave and froze with his hand on the door. Peering around it, he cracked the edge and observed the hall. Nothing. He slipped out and aha, there it was! A cat the color of powdered ginger came streaking towards him as he jammed the door shut against his back. Except. If one of his neighbors had a loose cat yesterday, then it wasn’t odd to imagine they still had a loose cat today. Fucking fuck.

Still lacking conclusive proof, House revved up his bike a little before seven to head to the hospital. He parked in his same spot and swung through the doors with his same attitude. Cuddy greeted him with the same nod of approval she had yesterday (if yesterday had happened). He headed towards her.

“TGIF!” the inappropriately cheerful staffer repeated her hail from yesterday—or, not yesterday.

“Don’t you mean TGIS?” he replied, “Which admittedly doesn’t have the same ring.”

“Oh, I wish,” she giggled, “But it’s not Saturday yet!”

“We’ll see about that,” he muttered, and grabbed Cuddy by the shoulder before she could disappear into the clinic. “Hey. What day is it?”

“Friday,” she replied. “Are you hungover?”

“No. I don’t think so.” House did a quick internal systems check—nope, all cylinders firing. At least as far as his own diagnostics could determine. “But…seriously, didn’t you give me the ‘oh, isn’t it so sexy of you to show up for work really early’ nod yesterday too?”

“No, that’s not what the nod meant, and no, you rolled in around 2 PM yesterday, if memory serves. And then only because I had your fellows calling you every five minutes about your new case. Which, I assume, is what has brought you out here at such a sexy time,” she drawled.

“Yeah,” House agreed distractedly, “Because she’s not dead. Yet.”

“And…you’re gonna try and keep her that way?” Cuddy raised her eyebrows for confirmation.

“Uh. Yeah. Try, definitely. No guarantees.”

“There never are.”

“Seriously, though, don’t put down any money on this one.”

House left then, before Cuddy could decide to catch hold of his arm and interrogate this sudden, uncharacteristic lack of confidence.

He found his office Chase-free, as yesterday, with Foreman and Cameron just putting their things down in the conference room.

“Hey,” House stuck his head in through the door and made them both jump, “I’m here early. Praise me.”

“We know you only manifested here before noon because Chase said ‘atelectasis’ three times in a mirror,” Foreman said in his trademark better-than-you deadpan.

“Wasn’t funny yesterday, definitely not the second time,” House waved away the criticism. Foreman looked to Cameron who just shrugged. “I am, however, still interested in hearing about whatever ill-advised dick-ventures Chase has going on with Foreman.”

“That sounds like an unusual approach to differentials,” Cameron replied wryly.

House was about to explain why, actually, it would be extremely beneficial to the field of DDX more broadly if he knew exactly how long and how often Chase had been taking Foreman’s thermometer if you know what he means, but the subject of his interrogation returned with a creased expression and fresh patient reports.

“Patient’s lung is still partially collapsed,” Chase announced, passing around the latest in Not Breathing Weekly, “There’s no obvious blockage, she just can’t breathe.”

Cameron frowned, “She’s already on pure oxygen, which not only risks some serious side effects long-term but means that if she gets worse, there’s nothing more we can give her.”

“Do I need to remind a bunch of doctors that being alive with some side effects is better than being dead without?” House wondered, “We don’t need to worry about paper cuts when the patient is bleeding out. Metaphorically. Or maybe not. No,” he muttered to himself, “That doesn’t make sense. We need to find something that makes sense.” Then more loudly, to his audience, he announced, “We’ve got her X-rays from last week, another chest CT will show more of the same—fluid building up, swelling in the lymph nodes. We need to stop playing defense. Bronchoscopy.”

“That’s a pretty invasive procedure to attempt before we’ve even done more scans,” Foreman pointed out.

“Right. You wanna wait until after her lung collapses? Oh, wait…”

“A lung collapse is serious but manageable,” Chase cottoned on, “the bronchoscopy could set off a reaction in the airways that we can’t fix.”

“One night with Foreman and you’re agreeing with him instead of papa? Wow, he must know all the moves. Do the bronchoscopy.” House slammed his cane on the ground. “Do it, take a good look at the airways, clear the lungs, and get a biopsy while you’re at it. Then we can actually test for cancer instead of just twiddling our thumbs and wondering.”

The trio started to make tracks and House stopped them with an atypically tentative, “And…watch out for the heart.”

“The heart?” Foreman raised a curious eyebrow, “We haven’t seen any signs—”

“I know, I know. Probably it was—will be—brought on by the long-term lung issues, just the first system to give out from the lack of oxygen. But…I think this will end in the heart.”

“Is that a medical hypothesis or are you getting in touch with your feelings?” Cameron ribbed gently, intrigued by the guesswork.

“Shut up,” House replied without any heart (somewhere in the universe, stage cymbals rang out in a ba dum tiss) and went to go harass a newly arrived Wilson about whether he’d gotten an extra Friday in his lunchbox too.

“Did I…what?” Wilson blinked at House from over his desk’s daily dose of deathly paperwork.

“You know, get a double Friday. There was Friday 1, and now we’re on Friday 2, electric boogaloo. Someone upstairs screwed up and accidentally gave us weekday leftovers instead of the Saturday they were supposed to be serving.”

“No, House. I didn’t get two Fridays. This is Friday one, sequel to Thursday, prequel to Saturday.”

“Yeah, I get that’s how it usually works, but it didn’t today! This is definitely the same day. Or else I’m having a seriously out-there opioid side-effect of sudden onset prognostication.”

“Or…the less out-there side-effect of hallucinations.”

“Could a hallucination have told me…” House scrunched his face up and chewed his lip as he scrabbled for some key trivia from his first Friday go that could conclusively prove this was a rerun. Nothing came to mind. Nothing he could verify. There was only medical information which he could have gleaned from his usual method of deduction, and the upcoming prank on Wilson, which he’d orchestrated months ago and could’ve imagined the results of without issue.

“This could all be in my head,” House confirmed out loud. It was actually a relief.

“Yeah.”

“But if it’s not,” House advocated for his personal devil, “then my patient only gets to keep breathing—however pitifully—until sunset.”

“Then I guess you don’t have a lot of time to waste dealing with the side effects of long-term Vicodin overuse.”

“Nope,” House agreed, grateful for the reminder that it had been a few minutes since his last dose and he really shouldn’t put the next one off so long. Wilson’s new assistant opened the door and House snapped his fingers in remembrance.

“Mrs.…something something sounds like an English village…she’s here early and she’s whining!” he bestowed this knowledge like a cat dropping a dead bird at his owner’s feet.

“Mrs. Cornwallis is here early, and she is pretty upset,” the assistant confirmed with a confused twist in her plain features.

Wilson responded with the enthusiasm due this metaphorical tweety corpse, “Yes, thank you, give me a second and then show her in. House, this proves nothing, except that you at some point half-listened to something I said. Go save your patient. Come to me tomorrow if, you know—”

“There’s no tomorrow?”

“Exactly.”

House didn’t make it all the way until tomorrow (assuming it arrived) to bother Wilson again. When his thought process became circular and tangled up in his own little wrinkle of potential time travel, he sought out and rescued the weary oncologist from the Cornwallis and her ilk for a lunchtime getaway. Not that they got any further than the cafeteria, but still, at least it smelled less like bleach. It was the same food as always (utterly inconclusive) and Wilson only really laughed at the best of his rapid-fire jokes (also situation normal).

House’s patient’s results got back not long after he did.

“Bronchoscopy was successful, in that we removed most of the mucus blocking the airways,” Cameron said.

“And it was unsuccessful…?” House prompted.

“Because it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know,” Chase confirmed, rubbing at his eye. House wanted to make a ‘Foreman keeps his boytoys up late, huh?’ comment but his patient’s life was just fractionally more important than mocking his employees.

Foreman completed the report, “Biopsy came back clean. No signs of cancer, no unusual growths, no damage or swelling or anything other than the expected effects of a simple case of pneumonia.”

House chewed his cheek irritably, “A simple case of pneumonia doesn’t stop a healthy fifty-year-old’s heart.”

Shouted curse words drifted through the wall connecting the conference room and Wilson’s office, interrupting this train of thought. House smiled, a little dreamily. “Oh, I like this part.”

“What happened?” Chase asked, leaning back in his chair for a better vantage point as Wilson burst out of his office, barreled down the hall, and locked on to House.

“Well,” House settled into story mode, “Many moons ago, Wilson had this silly idea that he was gonna start going to the gym after work—”

Wilson blasted into the conference room, “What the fuck, House!”

“—and I knew he was never going to do that,” House gamely continued, leaning around Wilson’s enraged and incredibly noxious form.

“What did you—”

“—so I found the drawer where he was keeping his so-called ‘gym clothes’—”

Wilson saw the air quotes and his ensuing, “Why did you—” came out even squeakier and more furious than before.

“—and put a nice jar of sauerkraut in there to ripen. If he’d actually gone to the gym like he said, he would have found it quickly and there wouldn’t have been time for it to really build up pressure and ferment. Alas…” House gestured from cabbage-splattered toe to trembling nose.

Like a tea-kettle left on high long after it boiled, Wilson made a wordless noise of fury and pointed dangerously at House. “I’m going to burn something you love.”

He turned and left, House shouting after him, “Gotta find something I love first!”

The fellows shook their heads in experienced dismay, waving away the lingering gamey odor as House leaned back in his chair with satisfaction. The contentment of a job well done melted away in the face of his continued inadequacy when it came to his paid job (admittedly, not as spiritually fulfilling as pranking Wilson, but medicine had its place).

“So, we’re back where we started. What are we missing? We keep focusing on the lungs and they give us nothing. What else is there?”

“The chief complaints are all respiratory,” Chase said, like the bimbo he was.

“We assumed all the other symptoms stemmed from the lung issue, but maybe the lungs are just symptomatic too?” Cameron guessed.

“I think that’s what I just said,” House grumbled, writing on the whiteboard, “Chronic exhaustion. History said she was previously very active, daily walks and chasing after kids and a Dancerobics class and everything. Now she’s taking multiple naps just to get through the day. If that doesn’t only follow from the difficulty breathing, what does it tell us?”

It told them very little, and House sent the lackeys out to do another battery of tests he felt quite sure wouldn’t bring him anything useful.

Cuddy arrived in her own bad mood to match House’s.

He took one look at the angry lines of her posture and said, “Leaving your iron on, what are you, a swingin’ single girl in 1966? Get some more interesting hang-ups.”

She narrowed her eyes and set her jaw. “How did you know about that?” Her gaze flicked down to her outfit, “Did you deduce it from the cut of my skirt or something?”

“Or something,” House agreed, “That skirt does say ‘I’m a harried perfectionist obsessed with appearing both professional and sexy and thus failing at both.’”

“I take your nastier than usual disposition to mean you still don’t know what’s wrong with your patient.”

“No. And trust me, this isn’t nastier than usual. Nastier than usual will leave you shaking with fear in the fetal position.”

“Can’t wait,” Cuddy rolled her eyes and swung back out the door, “Keep me updated.”

House waved a disinterested hand after her retreating figure. He needed facts not figures, no matter how appealingly hourglass.

“What are you hiding?” he asked of the obnoxiously clean biopsy results, the inconclusive sputum samples, the unrevealing scans from the patient’s last pulmonologist visit.

They didn’t tell him their secrets. And when the sun began to set, House was unsurprised to feel the low rumble at his hip that just preceded the full volume beeper alert.

He went slowly to his patient’s room. Dead was dead was dead, after all.

As in his memory of the-day-that-may-or-may-not-have-happened, Cameron was covering the cadaver with a sheet and Chase met him at the doorway to explain, “She projectile vomited and then collapsed. They brought in the crash cart, but cardiogenic shock had already set in. Total, severe—

“Congestive heart failure,” House finished tiredly, “Yeah, yeah. No heart attack?”

“No,” Foreman confirmed, sparing House a glance, “They were standing by with the paddles, it didn’t matter. The heart just…stopped.”

House snuck closer to the body he knew—guessed?—would be forbidden to him. “Tell me what happened before she kicked the bucket. Exactly what was going on.”

“We’d been draining some of the fluid off her lungs. She was laying back down, she started groaning and clutching her chest. Then…” Cameron gave an eloquent gesture to the self-evident scene.

“The pain…it got worse when she laid down?” House asked, taking another step.

“I—maybe,” Cameron hedged, “I don’t think the change in position caused the heart failure—”

“No, that’s not the point. The point is the heart. The heart.” House squeezed the grip of his cane, resisting the urge to throw a whole-ass tantrum. (Maybe later.) “I assume she had some annoying legal paperwork refusing us the right to do an autopsy, because that would be too fucking sensible?”

“Uh, yeah,” Chase’s eyes were wide with amazement, “We were going to tell you…how did you know?”

“Stupid has a scent,” House snarled, turning on his heel.

This time, he was going to talk to the son. He couldn’t rely on his unholy alliance with the weekend shift mortuary attendant to find out what happened. Tomorrow wasn’t soon enough and may never turn up at all.

The man in question stood with career-appropriate stoicism outside his mother’s room. He barely glanced up as House lurched into his personal space.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” House trotted out the old standby and then segued immediately into, “Now let me autopsy your mother’s corpse.”

The son-marine (House perhaps should have listened when Cameron mentioned his actual name) just blinked at House. “Excuse me?”

House, catching the brunt of Foreman’s judgmental eye, tried to fake just a little humility. “We don’t know why she died. And that’s on us. But if you let us do just a teeny-tiny itty-bitty post-mortem we can get you those answers.”

“It was her heart,” the son said bluntly, “That’s what they told me.”

“Yes, but congestive heart failure contributes to one in nine deaths in the US. It’s not a diagnosis, it’s just a common last stop before the freezer.”

Now, the grieving son morphed properly into the soldier. Spine stiff, shoulders back, chin up. “You’d better watch what you say. Sir.”

“I say what I mean. We don’t know what caused the heart failure—it could’ve been some super-bacteria, a genetic weakness, something we haven’t even considered because we don’t have all the facts. The point is: we don’t know! And the only thing stopping us from knowing is you and your outdated, backward belief system.”

Anger was easy and comfortable and they both reached for it like the last cookie in the jar.

“My belief system,” the son repeated, “is my mother’s. She didn’t want her body carved up like an animal, and I’m certainly not going to let you do it just to satisfy some sick curiosity of yours!”

“What’s sick is letting other people die because you think an invisible man in the sky won’t let you into his secret cloud-club if your dead body is disturbed on earth. Like it isn’t bad enough to believe in a higher power, your version of it is a fucking snob! Who cares if your meat gets messed around with once you’re done with it? Your mom is in heaven or she isn’t and either way, an autopsy here or that won’t affect the outcome.”

“I think you should go,” the son said, very slow, very cold.

“I think you should get your head out of your ass!” House exploded. “Because if what happened today happens again tomorrow, then there won’t be a tomorrow, and today’s autopsy could save your mother’s life when it starts again tomorrow!”

The punch that had been building in the stocky son’s anguished features petered out. “You’re…crazy, doc. Seriously. Get some help.”

Oh, House had things to say in response to that, but fortunately for House’s nose (which would remain unbroken for the time being) the son turned to leave and Chase dove in to physically restrain House from following.

Somehow, House ended up in Wilson’s office. “To simmer down,” Foreman had said meaningfully, at the same time as Cameron said, “To work through your feelings.” House intended to do neither.

But as he ranted and paced, leaning heavily on his cane as his leg threw out fresh clots of bubbling pain, Wilson’s calm, gentle, affectionate disinterest in the diverse ways he was going to murder this muddle-headed marine for standing in the way of science and medicine and all things rational ground his tantrum down into something manageable.

“It’s just so stupid. It’s meaningless. It doesn’t have to happen again. Because I saw it happen before, Wilson.” House tried to make Wilson understand what he didn’t understand himself. “I saw her body. She died of foolish, senseless, useless heart failure and I let it slide and I woke up just for it to happen again. It’s fucked up and it’s—it’s on me to fix it.”

“You can’t fix death,” Wilson said simply.

“Not usually. But this time... For some reason, it seemed like I could have. But I wasn’t smart enough to do it.” House collapsed into one of Wilson’s patient chairs.

Wilson finally let House have his full attention. “You’re brilliant, House. But if you could solve every single case you ever saw, then your ego really would be unbearably huge. We’d have to renovate the whole hospital and frankly the budget just can’t take it. So…” Wilson shrugged. House’s mouth quirked up.

“If a few patients have to bite it to keep my overinflated sense of worth in check…”

“Small price to pay. I mean, have you seen what architects charge these days? Criminal.”

House scratched at his stubble, propping his chin on his hand. “I don’t know if what I remember really happened. But if it did, then it could happen again. What am I supposed to do if I wake up tomorrow, and it’s today?”

“Do what you always do. Solve your case. Save your patient. Be grateful you’re getting a second chance.”

“Third,” House corrected.

Wilson whistled, “Generous. So, beer and movie night?”

For the first time in that day of uncanny repetition, the familiarity of the phrase settled warm in House’s chest. “Yeah. Beer and movie night.”

After Wilson left for the evening (still wearing those post-kraut hand-me-down blue scrubs that honestly really did something for his figure), House puttered around his apartment in discomfited reluctance to retire. Maybe if he didn’t go to sleep…

No. Sleep deprivation would only exacerbate the issue if it was an internal medical flaw, and if it was some bizarre universal mechanism giving him an overdose of Fridays, then surely staying awake like a stubborn child on New Years Eve wouldn’t stop it in its tracks.

House sat on the edge of his bed for a moment, then stood back up to rummage through the first aid kit perched atop his tallest bookshelf. He extracted a scalpel. The sharp edge glinted in the dull lamplight. He brought it carefully down to the middle of his left forearm, perpendicular to the bone, and pressed about two millimeters into the top layers of epidermis. He drew the blade down so the resulting cut ran the full length of the soft, pale underbelly flesh. He inspected the wound dispassionately and concluded it was definitely too deep and too long to heal overnight without supernatural intervention.

He neglected to dress the cut and instead lay down in bed with the fresh slice bleeding freely onto his tope sheets.

6 AM

He opened his eyes. Reached out an arm to slam the alarm clock into silent submission. Used those eyes to inspect said arm.

No scalpel cut. He shoved himself upright and flicked on the lamp. A thumb ran forcefully enough down the flesh of his forearm to turn it white found nothing—no scar, no mark, no residual pain to indicate there had ever been anything there.

Okay. There was officially some fucked-up cinematic sci-fi shit going on.

Or: he was being given a third chance to get this day right. And hell, House hated the use of the passive voice there. Who or what was giving him that chance? He didn’t buy the god trick—too cheap. But events still implied the existence of a something that was focused and sentient enough to comprehend and care about concepts like “untimely death” and “inadequate physician” and “Friday.” Something powerful enough to make the same Friday happen at least three times in a row.

The phone startled House with its ring, which was ironic and thus pissed him off.

“Chase,” House preempted as he answered, “Shut your whore mouth and listen.”

He vaguely heard, “knew it was too early,” mumbled on the other side, but then an obliging silence. “I’m going to do what I should have done yesterday: address what I know is gonna kill our patient. Put her on beta blockers and a mild tranquilizer to protect the heart. Add in aldosterone inhibitors after a monitoring period to reduce the fluid retention.”

“But why—”

“Did I say it was Chase talkie time? No. Do as I say, I’m coming in.”

He arrived at the hospital slightly earlier than before, having foregone several key aspects of his morning routine (though swapping in a fair bit of pacing and muttering for the TV watching and pornographic magazine perusing, and still being forced to Irish-dance-step over that damn cat in the hall). Cuddy’s approving nod at his prompt arrival came from a different quadrant of the lobby, but the hideously cheerful staffer was just where he’d remembered, an eternal menace.

“TGIF!”

House winced at the greeting like it was a machine gun blast at impolitely close range. “It’s a persistent Friday, I’ll give your god that.” He left before the kid could untangle that obscure comment.

Cameron and Foreman arrived as House was tearing through their middling pile of test results and scans from the day previous.

“What kind of sorry fucking excuse for a chest CT is this?” he demanded, waving a bundle of paper, “It’s not actual imaging, it’s just some dipshit’s written analysis of what he thought was on the CT.”

“We were going to do our own today,” Foreman replied, “Even before she crashed. But it’ll probably just show the same—”

“—do not come at me with probablys, not today,” House warned, “I want to see those results myself. Actually, scratch that, I’m going to do it myself. No, scratch-scratch that.” He gripped his skull in both hands like he could force the thought out. “Transthoracic echocardiogram!” he shouted like the answer to a trivia question. “We need to stop fucking around with the lungs. Even you three dildos have enough collective brain power to read a CT, we wouldn’t have missed something this big two days running. We need to look at that heart. And don’t—” he held up a warning finger to the objection rising to Foreman’s lips, “ask me ‘why the heart?’ Because I said so. That’s a good enough answer, as long as you’re my employee.”

“The echo’s non-invasive,” Cameron stepped in diplomatically, “it can’t hurt to check the heart.”

Foreman offered one last restrained look of judgement, but filed out. Probably, he’d do the chest CT too anyway, but who the hell cared.

House continued rifling through useless past physicians’ notes and equally useless test results for some amount of time between two minutes and two hours. Long enough that he was discombobulated and developing an ache in his lower spine from hunching over his desk when his fellows filed back in.

Their faces wore a mix of impressed and depressed that boded well for House’s ego and ill for House’s patient.

Foreman, ever the big brother, started off the confession: “We did the echo. The ejection fraction was normal, it seemed the heart was pumping fine, and there were no obvious valve problems at first…”

“Until there were,” House guessed.

“Long-term restrictive cardiomyopathy,” Chase handed House a quick print out of the echo results and then, yes, that chest CT to confirm—focusing this time not on the lungs, but the heart.

“Goddamn it,” House swore without any passion, “It had nothing to do with the lungs. All those symptoms were her body trying to tell us that her heart was failing.” He was disgusted with himself. It was an unusual presentation, yes, but not so far afield that he shouldn’t have spotted it. He would have spotted it if he’d been looking anywhere but at her fucking lungs.

Never one to hoard all his anger, House offered a generous portion to each of his fellows, “And what, exactly, am I paying all of you to do? Not read scans, not notice obvious symptoms, not conduct your own tests or draw your own conclusions? Can your tiny brains only comprehend one organ system at a time? Did you even do a patient history? I think she might have noticed feeling like an elephant was on her chest.”

“We thought it was—”

House held up a threatening finger, “The next person to say ‘lungs’ in this office gets a syringe of something unpleasant right in the gluteus maximus.”

Cameron, at least, looked as miserable as House felt. Foreman looked about as angry as House felt. And Chase had his usual ‘daddy’s mad at me’ kicked puppy eyes, because he cared more about how House felt than about their patient, which usually either pleased or pissed off House, but today he just didn’t give a shit.

“I’ll tear you all your own special new one later,” House jammed the knuckle of his thumb into the headache forming just behind his supraorbital foramen, “After we get our patient out of the woods. If we can.”

“She’s already on beta blockers and aldosterone inhibitors,” Chase pointed out.

“And that means she hopefully won’t die today, but she might want to survive tomorrow too. Blood clots, irregular heartbeat, sudden death—we need to stock up against the big bads. And we can congratulate ourselves for figuring out her heart is what’s killing her all we like, but we still don’t know what’s been killing her heart.”

“This kind of cardiomyopathy is usually idiopathic—”

“Don’t use that kind of language here,” House slapped Chase upside the head, creating a fun spray of blond hair (he’d have to do that more often), “I’m the only one who gets to call things idio-anything. Our job is to diagnose, not write a fancy Latin word for ‘I don’t know’ on the death certificate. Cardiomyopathy can stem from lifestyle habits, check the history and see if she’s been sneaking a pack a day when her apparently tar-free lungs weren’t looking. Or it could still be from an infection, a metabolic disorder, hemochromatosis, granulomas in the ventricular muscle—you get the idea. The playing field is still wide open.”

“And treatment in the meantime?” The practical question from Foreman.

“Adjust the diuretics to combat fluid retention, add anticoagulants and cross all your fingers that she doesn’t clot. Prep her for a VAD—if she starts to head south, she’ll need a heart transplant, and implanting the device should keep her alive long enough to at least make it on the list.”

“Open heart surgery could kill her,” Foreman pointed out, and this time his practicality irked.

“Yes, that’s why I said ‘prep her,’ not ‘cut her open right now.’ If she starts to die anyway, you might as well try and put a fancy machine in her chest to stop that from happening. Now, go,” House shooed them away, “Get her stable and then come back for the rest of the DDX.”

House didn’t go for his whiteboard yet. Truthfully, he didn’t feel like he deserved the whiteboard. Self-pity might not help his patient, but it’s not like he could make her any worse.

Wilson, who had probably sorely missed the repartee House had neglected to bestow on this Third Round Friday, came sniffing around for a lunchtime companion.

“Cafeteria?” he asked, the single word all that was necessary to communicate.

“Not hungry,” House replied, absentmindedly picking apart a paperclip chain and reassembling it.

Wilson let the glass door close behind him as he moved in closer. “You know what they say about dogs and not eating. Are you dying?”

House gave him a half-power glare.

“Last I heard, your patient’s still alive, so I should be in the clear with the death jokes.”

“Not a matter of taste, just of time. As in, none to waste. Ironically.” House started smoothing out one of the paper clip’s bends, wrestling it into a straight line of galvanized steel.

“Tough one?” Wilson helped himself to one of House’s chairs.

“No. Stupidly simple. But we missed it, got caught up in the lungs, and now her heart’s trashed. But that can’t be it. Because she was past the cardiac point of no return long before today. I can’t fix the heart. So, it must be about figuring out why. Unless it’s just punishment for my being an absolute moron.”

“It sounds like the organ interaction obscured the real root cause, that’s a common misdiagnosis.”

“Common! Because there wasn’t enough salt in my wounds.”

“You can’t assume every person who comes in with shortness of breath is gonna end the day in heart failure. It’s just too frequent a symptom that can mean too many things.”

“Except it is the actual definition of my job to diagnose despite the banality of symptoms. And this was right in my wheelhouse—a classic zebra masquerading as a horse scenario. It’s why she was kicked up to me in the first place, it’s why I took the case, because there was something going on that no one else could figure out.”

“All your fellows thought the problem was in her lungs—”

“Ah, yes, the other ordinary failing I’m always falling victim to: listening too much to my underlings.”

“Did they miss the usual signs? Hypertension, swollen ankles?”

“Didn’t have them.”

“Oh, so I guess you don’t want me to tell you how this was an extremely unusual presentation. How she didn’t have the clues that would’ve allowed you to solve the case quickly. How it’s probably just a bad draw in the genetic lottery and not your fault. No use me saying any of that.”

“No,” House jabbed the sharp end of his new tiny weapon into his tennis ball, admiring how the ex-paperclip stuck into the thick meat of the fabric, “There’s not.”

Skipping lunch was never a good call, but House was in a hair shirt mood, so he survived on stale club crackers and the emergency stash of sour gummy worms Chase thought House didn’t know he kept hidden behind the thick book on lupus protocols.

The fellows returned with fresh test results—and House never thought he’d feel this way, but he was getting fucking sick of test results—that knocked out metabolics and hemochromatosis. However, they still harped on about infections and cancers.

“We biopsied the lungs for cancer,” House waved a dismissive hand, “and we’d have seen infectious matter on the bronchoscopy. If we go down those roads, we can’t waste time on the first tries. We need to get freaky.”

He looked up to find his kiddies unified in confused disbelief. “House, we…didn’t do any of that. No biopsy, no bronchoscopy.” Cameron said it very gently, like maybe House was gonna start crying if he thought he’d dreamed up some tissue samples.

“Not today,” House said in his favorite, ‘no shit, dumbass’ tone, (it hadn’t gotten enough exercise lately), “But I know what the results would be if you did them today-today.”

“Today-today?” Chase repeated quietly, glancing at Foreman, who just shrugged.

“Listen, her heart may be stable for now, but it’s gonna tank or set off the same cascade of system failures unless we can figure out what’s causing it and tailor the treatment. We need to skip the part where you don’t listen to me and get right to you doing fresh tests for unusual infections and unexpected cancers and probably some other things I’ll think of if you give me another minute.”

“You want us to skip doing medically indicated testing because you have a feeling it’ll come back negative?” Foreman pressed.

“More than a feeling, I know. I know!” House cast around for something to prove his point, or maybe just something pointy he could jab at the ducklings until they complied. His gaze landed on the clock, and he did a quick memory check. “Okay. Okay, I can prove that I know what’s going to happen today. Because in exactly…two minutes,” (that was a guess, it’s not like he’d been keeping an eye on the second hand last time), “Wilson is going to open the dusty bottom drawer of his disused back file cabinet. When he does, the ill-sealed jar of homemade sauerkraut I’ve been fermenting in there is gonna take badly to the change in pressure and explode its rancid contents in his face. Wilson will not be pleased. We’ll first hear a loud yell. Then a bout of colorful language. Then he’ll come stomping over here—because obviously, he knows it was me—and he’s going to ask what the fuck I was doing. Usually Wilson prefers the more tasteful ‘hell’ when he questions my actions, but when put under severe pressure—not unlike that sauerkraut—he is moved to deploy the most forceful F-bomb in his armory.”

“That’s…extremely specific,” Chase allowed. He ducked another glance at Foreman for confirmation.

Foreman was a harder sell. “Just because you’ve set in motion a chain of events that results in Wilson getting pranked, you want us to believe you can predict the future? You made that future.”

“Aha, but I know more than just the general. Wilson will make a small speech about his ordeal that runs as follows.” Adopting a high, angry tone, he recited, “‘What the fuck, House!’ That’s me,” House pointed to himself, “Then, ‘What did you—,’ pause for indignant rage, ‘Why did you—,’ another pause, this time because he realizes he already knows why. Finally, he’ll make a noise like a cheap bike motor trying to catch and stick a righteous finger in my face as he swears, ‘I’m going to burn something you love.’ Which is a shitty revenge promise because we both know I don’t love anything. And then he’ll turn around and stomp away, all adorably fluffy hair and pink ears.” House sighed, a little fondly. “Okay. Any questions? Ready for the rehearsal?”

It was more like five minutes later that Wilson walked in, which didn’t exactly add credibility to House’s claims of prescience, but nor did it totally scuttle them. What pushed him back over to the winners’ side was that as soon as Wilson opened his mouth to shout, “What the fuck, House!” he was met with a precise chorus of the fellows mimicking his exact words.

He shot them a startled look, but bravely kept on with the tirade, “What did you—”

His pause was not just indignant but baffled, as there had once again been background singers supporting him. Trying again, he started, “Why did you—okay, what the hell are you guys doing?” He turned on the fellows and stuck slightly slimy hands on hips to glare down their wide-eyed, horror-tinged countenances.

“Just…what we were told,” Cameron admitted.

Wilson gave them one last grimace before turning to House to finish out his original speech, “I am going to burn something you love.” He didn’t catch Chase mouthing the words silently as he said them. Then, he stomped off with his rage just slightly adulterated by confusion. Even the ever down-to-earth Foreman would be hard pressed to deny that Wilson’s ears were pink and his hair was fluffed out in anger, though Foreman wasn’t qualified to evaluate the adorable-ness of the state.

“How did you know?” Chase asked. Oh, Chase. Always so unsuspecting.

“He obviously set the whole thing up with Wilson,” Foreman said, though he didn’t sound even half-convinced of his own argument.

“No way Wilson let House do that to him willingly,” Cameron countered, “not just for some stupid joke on us.”

“It’s true,” House contributed, “Wilson would lie, cheat, steal, kill, and die for me, but even his buddy-love draws the line at that kind of stank.”

“Then how…?” Chase repeated.

“I knew what he was going to say because today, I am omniscient. I am the god of this day and there is no tomorrow, so bow down and run the fucking tests or be skewered by my righteous lightning.”

Foreman glared furiously back. Then he declared, “Bullshit,” at the same time as Chase whispered a terrified, “Holy shit.”

“Eh,” House shrugged, “Fifty percent noun agreement. It’s a place to start.”

He waved them off with a list of specific zebras to net in the lab. Foreman left quickly in order to not be around House, and Chase followed, most likely in order to be around Foreman.

Cameron remained behind and carefully silent. House watched her lips part and predicted gentle censure, probably something between Chase’s gullible (if actually correct) belief and Foreman’s hostile disregard. She’d tell House off for doing something terrible, while her eyes said she didn’t think it was terrible at all and if he wanted to take off and explore his godhood in a more private setting…

Maybe he was embroidering what he saw in her eyes, just a touch.

Then she said, “What does Wilson burn?”

“Huh?” House was still thinking about worshipping (fucking) the divine (him).

“You claim to know what’s going to happen. So, what thing do you love that Wilson’s gonna burn?”

“Oh. He doesn’t do anything. Our patient tanks and dies horribly and I’m all, you know, wracked with masculine pain and regret. He takes one look at me and shelves the burning-of-beloved-objects for a more appropriate time.”

“Then why aren’t you bringing him in on this case?”

Again, House was on the wrong foot. “Because…there’s no evidence that it’s cancer.”

“I don’t mean as an oncologist. I mean as your friend. If you’re becoming a time god, or whatever, I would’ve thought you’d want him with you.”

House tried to oil away from the insinuations he barely understood. “I’ve tried. He doesn’t believe me.”

“Huh. Excuses. Interesting…”

Cameron left and House yelled after her retreating back, “What excuses?”

She didn’t answer.

House pouted. Then, he went to go talk to his friend, or whatever, it was no big deal, fuck off already.

When House entered Wilson’s office in his usual knock-less manner, he found its occupant trying to dry his hair using a shitty hospital-grade washcloth with pipe dreams of being an actual towel.

Glaring from beneath extra-dark brows, Wilson grumbled, “Are you here for the gloating? Or have you deposited your sorry ass here so I can kick it?”

House presented his rear. “Go on.”

“Forgot my paddle at home.”

“I’m sure Cuddy will let you borrow hers.”

Turning away, Wilson adjusted the hang of his borrowed scrubs, accidentally revealing a crescent of pale back. House spotted soft skin and dimples at the base of his spine and was crafting a clever riddle along the “I see London, I see France” line of comedy when Wilson whipped back around and propped his hands on his hips to emphasize the seriousness of his annoyance. “Seriously, haven’t I paid my dues of daily House irritation?”

“My patient’s dying,” House explained. He tossed his legs out on the couch and reclined, “And I do some of my best thinking while irritating you.”

Wilson worked his jaw, a little bit of cow-chewing-its-cud action but cuter and angrier, and then sighed. He sat at his desk and pulled a stack of his perennial paperwork backlog closer. “Glad to know my torment produces a positive externality.”

House didn’t mean to, but he smiled.

He was lying with his back on the floor and his legs kicked up on the couch, spitballing infectious possibilities while Wilson wrote prescriptions, when Chase knocked on the door.

“Kidneys failed,” he supported succinctly. “She’s stabilized, but—”

“—but multiple system failure is never good news. Unless it’s a clue, in which case, hurray!” House spun his legs down and shoved himself to his feet, barely managing to balance on his cane. “To the whiteboard,” he ordered in a Batman voice, marching out of Wilson’s office without a goodbye.

The sun had set and she wasn’t dead yet. That had to go in the plus column, House figured. Yeah, she’d need dialysis for the rest of her life (assuming she still had a rest-of-her-life) but living was what counted in his book.

“We have another symptom,” Foreman stated the obvious, forefinger thoughtfully tracing the silhouette of his sharply trimmed beard.

“Or do we? The kidney failure could be another red herring, like the lungs. Just another organ system reliant on the heart to pump blood getting caught in the crossfire. Or…yeah, it could be another symptom.” House wrote it on the board in black, and then drew a cartoon red heart around it, just in case. “Alright. So, what fucks up the heart and kidneys? Besides the number four special at Wilson’s favorite diner.”

House kept his minions at the hospital well past midnight, dismissing them only when their exhausted responses stopped being intelligible. He didn’t even bother feeding Foreman a line about Chase being too tired to put out, in fact, he only noticed they’d actually gone when Wilson knocked on his office door and he glanced around to find the moon at its height and the security lights sending a cool glow up Wilson’s monochrome outfit.

“Hey.” Wilson pushed open the door to lean on the jamb. “You going home tonight?”

“Don’t see why I should bother,” House cracked his neck and winced, “I’ll wake up there anyway. Might as well work until the switch point. Figure out when it is. Two birds.”

“Huh. That didn’t make any sense,” Wilson said mildly, “You sure you don’t want to sleep on this?”

“I want to sleep. My patient wants to live. You see the problem?”

“Yeah, that you can’t save anybody if you’re half-crazed from sleep deprivation. Why don’t you let me take you home.”

“Doctor Wilson!” House half-heartedly affected shock, “My goodness, what all those nurses say about you is true.”

“Go home, House. You can figure this one out tomorrow.”

A shiver of genuine revulsion wracked House’s frame. “Ick. Consider that word banished from your vocabulary until further notice.”

“What word?”

“The day-that-comes-after-today word.”

“Uh…why?”

House initiated full Ignore and Internalize procedures, locking down external inputs to retreat totally into his head for deduction, murmuring as he shuttered the gates: “Doesn’t matter. You won’t remember t-o-m-o-r-r-o-w anyway.”

6 AM

Despite never going to sleep, House woke up in his bed. As expected.

He picked up the phone halfway through the first ring and answered, “The patient’s lung collapsed, you gave it a temporary fix, and you’re fucking Foreman.”

A scandalized gasp and then, “Am not!”

“Alright, getting fucked by Foreman. Sorry, I’m not up on all this PC language.”

“You…are a bad man,” Chase countered inadequately, before hanging up the phone.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” House said into the dial tone, “Seriously, tell me!” He waited a minute, and then the phone rang again.

Chase sighed. “Do you have any orders for the patient?”

“Give the woman with the apparent lung problem beta blockers, aldosterone inhibitors, and an anticoagulant of your choosing. Her heart is at Defcon-4 and we need to figure out what’s causing it or she’s gonna be dead or at least down a few organs before the day’s out.” Then, House hung up on Chase, just to even the cosmic scales.

He stepped on the hallway cat’s tail and sprayed slush in several pedestrian’s faces before finally lurching through the hospital doors. He’d been chewing on a nice little thiamin-deficiency theory throughout breakfast but shot it down on his bike ride in. Spotting Cuddy’s ‘wide birthing hips’ as he’d described them exactly once (the joke wasn’t funny enough to risk being slapped that hard again) sparked an inspired possibility as he tramped through the lobby: pregnancy complications.

“Goddammit,” House swore as he dug through the once-again-extremely-limited patient file. She’d had a negative pregnancy test last week, mandatory for all pre-menopausal people with uteruses before engaging in certain procedures—thank you, misogynistic medical control over people’s own fertility, for shooting down a really delightful hypothesis.

His mood did not improve as he went through the same damned argument with his fellows again, eventually convincing two-thirds of them to attack from new quarters while Foreman stubbornly insisted on first proving the heart issues with a CT.

House’s books, his databases, his own mind, they’d all let him down. Should he go talk to the patient herself?

Sounded pretty fucking drastic.

The next best thing was to actually read the full notes of her string of incompetent physicians. This, at least, involved minimal human contact.

He instantly regretted reading anything beyond the test results he always gave a cursory glance. These so-called doctors gave ‘incompetence’ a bad name. There was far more about wrangling insurance in those files than there was about medicine—this type of imaging isn’t covered by your policy, you’ll have to first spend six months proving you live like a monk before we’ll even consider doing another round of testing, oh, you can barely walk the length of your living room, then you should lose weight, you’re killing yourself you know.

In the end, it was the tiniest thing. Quite literally, almost unspottable in the terrible grainy photocopy of old-fashioned handwritten doctor’s scrawl. It was a single line added by the patient’s PA, the first person she’d gone to for help when the chest pain and breathing troubles started. In cramped handwriting, outside the computer-mandated tick-boxes and lined descriptions, a quick unrelated referral: OT for carpal tunnel. House gave the paperwork a quick check, but no, the patient had never made it to the occupational therapist. Probably because she couldn’t catch her breath long enough to make a phone call, so difficulty holding a pen seemed like comparatively small potatoes.

House smiled.

He burst into the patient’s room already gesticulating with his cane. “Carpal tunnel! Incredibly common condition in our office-drone world. Not to mention the masturbation casualties—that’s why ambidexterity is so important, I always say.”

“House,” Foreman bit down on the syllable, “Are you trying to undo the effects of the tranquilizers on purpose?”

“Just trying to lighten the mood,” House hooked his cane over his forearm, circling and stretching his wrist with exaggeration as he approached the bed where the patient—she almost certainly had a name, but he couldn’t remember everything—lay supine and pale. “Do your part, you laze-about. Stick out your tongue.”

The patient just blinked at him.

“Seriously, stick out your tongue,” House repeated, prompting the action with a prod to her jaw.

Reluctantly, she complied. House’s grin grew when he saw the tell-tale rippling edges indicating a swollen tongue.

“Amyloidosis,” House crowed. “Specifically, the wild-type, which everyone knows is my favorite type.” He winked at his patient. “Carpal tunnel is a common side effect of this particular kind of amyloid over-production.”

“Damn,” Foreman muttered, more likely from getting called on his ineptitude than from the impact of the diagnosis on their patient.

“We’ll do some tests to confirm, but it explains everything. Finally.”

“Can you fix it?” the patient asked in hushed tones—whether from awe or just continued lack of oxygen, he chose to believe the former.

“Patients, always jumping to the outcomes and life expectancy. Don’t you know how cool a solve this was? I mean, freaking carpal tunnel and a tongue—”

“House,” Cameron chastised, which was one of her least sexy qualities.

“Right, fine. Short answer: no. We can’t cure it. Your liver is making the normal TTR proteins, it’s just that they’ve formed harmful deposits. But that’s actually a good thing, because it means if we get you a new heart, your chances of experiencing another fatal build up in the years you have left is pretty minimal.”

“What Dr. House is saying,” Foreman cut in as the patient started to look like she wanted to hyperventilate and simply couldn’t due to structural restrictions, “Is that your long-term prognosis is good. Now that we understand the cause, we can fine tune your medication and get you on the transplant list. You’re healthy and young—”

House snorted.

“—compared to many other transplant seekers,” Foreman ground out, “and the fact that your disease doesn’t have a genetic basis increases the chance you’ll be rated highly as a potential recipient.”

Chase jumped in to talk through the surgical experience and House loped happily towards the door. His job was done.

“Oh, it’s the jarhead!” he said too loudly as he nearly collided with the son on his way out, “Figured out what’s killing your mom. Doctor Cameron can tell you where to send the chocolates.”

The son, baffled and not recognizing this brand-new-to-him doctor, just waffled in the doorway. House breezed past him, thought briefly back to their encounter of days previous, then turned around and hauled off. He punched that square jaw with all the wiry strength in his frame. The surprise, if nothing else, sent the son skittering on his ass.

House laughed one inexplicable, “ha!” before fleeing the scene with a skip in his step.

Cuddy cornered him in his office an impressive fifteen minutes later. “You solve your case and then punch the patient’s son?” Her hands were splayed out in flat disbelief on either side of her form-hugging silver pencil skirt, “For absolutely no reason?”

“It just felt right,” House sighed dreamily. “Besides, he’s not pressing charges, is he?”

“No,” Cuddy drawled, “The mom-life-saving wasn’t enough at first, but the cripple card saved you again.”

House lifted his cane and pressed a wet kiss to the wood shaft.

“I just want to know, for my own peace of mind, if this whole ‘socking innocent bystanders for the hell of it’ trend is going to continue. I might start distributing mouth guards. Or tasers.”

“Just the one punch,” House promised, “I figured I owed him. For all the times he denied me autopsy rights.”

“For…what?”

House waved her off, “Never mind, either tomorrow will come and it won’t matter, or tomorrow won’t come…” he trailed away as the possibility that he hadn’t actually broken the loop with his solve started to sink in, “…and it still won’t matter.”

Cuddy waited a moment to see if the passage of time would illuminate his meaning. When it didn’t, she performed a fluid eye-roll shoulder-shrug combo and left with the firm guidance: “Go home, House. At least there you can only hurt yourself.”

Now, House was rattled. He considered going home but nixed it on account of it seeming too close to ‘compliance’ or ‘taking good advice.’ He next considered starting up the day’s Wilson-bothering. He was seriously behind on that front, but was now too caught up in contemplating skin-crawling claustrophobic paradoxes to think about practical jokes or repartee.

In the end, he trudged up to the hospital roof.

“I did it!” House shouted up at the steel-gray cover of unbroken snow-rich clouds. He had no evidence to indicate that whatever power was pulling his strings set up shop in the metaphorical heavens, but “old man shouts at sky” was a trope comfortable in its familiarity whereas “old man yells into a patch of topsoil” or “old man tells off a suspicious potted succulent” seemed less desirable. Though, admittedly, equally plausible. He’d have to keep an eye on all the miracles of nature for possible collaboration with the enemy until this ordeal had passed.

“I know what the problem is! I solved the case!” House considered for a moment before amending, “And she’s alive! She’ll stay that way for a decent interval! That’s what matters!” he impressed this last with a taste of desperation, because what if that wasn’t what mattered? He had no rules, no playbook.

Still, he was hopeful as he lived his fourth sequential Friday that Saturday’s blessed light awaited him on the other side of sunset.