Chapter Ten - House Call
The woman pushed a blood pressure monitor on a small rolling basket with a digital oral thermometer in her hand,she seemed distracted however and didn't look up from her implements until she was into the room. "Alright sweetie...lets get your vitals and your meds. How's your throat feeling now?" she started as she finally looked up then stopped dead seeing House in the visitors chair. "Oh...my I mean, Doctor House, I... I didn't realize you were in here." She glanced at Arin. "I just need to check this patient."
"Don't mind me," House replied, rising from his chair. "In fact, don't mind her either. I've got this. Why don't you go see the next poor soul on your list and I'll deal with this one." He paused and pulled a thermometer out of his pocket. "In fact I'll be doing all of Miss Rae's vital checks, so no need for you to disturb her again." He gave the kid a wolfish smile.
Arin for her part did not look happy about this idea. Her heart rate spiked again slightly and she blushed a dark red colour. The nurse blinked at him, "you'll be...but she is under observation as per your order...surely you'll need someone to do the night time checks..."
"Oh, don't worry about that, Miss Rae and I are going to have a little sleepover. I'll take care of it. Besides, It'll give us a chance to get to know one another," he turned to look at the kid, "isn't that right, Arin."
Arin and the nurse both stared back at him their mouths slightly agape. Arin shook her head as if this idea was the worst yet and looked between house and the nurse. Eyes wide, pleading with the woman not to leave her with him.
The nurse didn't seem to know what to do but with a small sigh she acquiesced to House's seniority and left the rolling basket where it was, put down on the table the cup of little white tablets and turned back to the door. "If you're sure." She said to House and with an apologetic look back at Arin she left the room again sliding the door shut behind her.
Now alone again Arin swallowed and looked at House. She didn't seem to be able to form words just mouthed soundlessly for a second before..."Sleepover?" she asked apparently dumbfounded. She cast around the room, looked at the basket and the wires and things it contained and felt her stomach drop as if she were on a rollercoaster. Stupid, she told herself, get a grip. She watched him, eyes fixed on the thermometer he now wielded with the expression of a caged animal.
Unfazed, House drank in the girl's now frightened appearance and had to hand it to himself. He really knew how to freak people out. Let's see how long she would refuse his lung function test now. He walked closer to her, waited a few beats before he spoke. "You didn't tell me your throat hurt," he said eerily, he clucked his tongue wagging his left index finger at her in a tisk-tisk manner. Then, looking her directly in the eyes, held up the thermometer and grinned, "We'll have to see about that, but first...open wide."
She closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down. She didn't comply however.
He waited a second as she seemed to struggle internally then opening her eyes looked at him then at the device he held, she swallowed again. With a deep shudder of a sigh she opened her mouth just wide enough for him to put the thermometer in. Like he was feeding a baby, House put the device into her mouth and lifted her chin up with his other hand until it closed around the plastic cylinder, metal tip under her tongue. "Good girl," he praised and gave her a gentle pat on the head.
Her eyes flashed darkly at him as her jaw clenched hard, a low soft growl of disapproval rumbling from her chest. She jerked back slightly away from his touch but did not spit out the thermometer despite the urge to do so.
"That stays under your tongue until I remove it," he warned. "Otherwise, I start again until you do. And if you keep doing it I'll have the nurse bring me an anal thermometer and I'll roll you. Understand?"
She scowled at him her expression set and stubborn but after a moment she seemed to collect herself again and gave him a curt nod to show she understood, the quicker this was over the better.
"So, now that we're friends and all, how about we talk about the head injury you neglected to mention to anyone since being admitted."
Arin frowned at him as if he were crazy. "Wha' oo 'hink am here..." she started to say.
"Hey, hey, hey, no talking around the thermometer. Didn't they teach you that downstairs? Besides, I'm not talking about today's head wound. I want to know about the one that happened when you were on your little ski holiday."
Expression totally blank, Arin looked at him again as though he had gone even more crazy than her encounters with him had thus far demonstrated. She started a reply then sighed as she caught herself and waited. The thermometer beeped and she reached a hand up to take it out if her mouth. "Ow!" she stated around the device as lightning quick House rapped her smartly across the hand with the tips of his fingers and removed the device himself. While he peered at the little screen Arin swallowed. "What are you talking about?"
House frowned. Her words and expression had come with such brutal honesty that there could be no doubt that she was telling the truth. She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. That only left him with two options. Either she genuinely could not remember the incident, always a possibility with head trauma, or the mermaid had lied to him. There was only one way to find out. "According to your little friend, you crashed while snowboarding last winter. Hit your head off a log, so she said."
While he waited for a response he glanced at the thermometer; 101°F. Her temperature had gone back up. His mind ran through the possibilities from infection to House inflicted. He would need more information before making an assessment. Pocketing the device he reached out his hands to take hold of her chin and lifted it with the intention of feeling her glands.
Arin's frown deepened. She winced as the action pulled at the more recent head wound. She cast her mind back trying to picture the event he was referring to. Last winter Zen, Robyn and herself had gone to aspen for Christmas and new year. Two weeks of fresh snow and mountain air, picturesque lodges...they had done the whole hot tubs, hot chocolate thing. A smile tugged her lips as she remembered a snowball fight with Zen that had resulted in them both rolling in the snow, laughing as they tried to stuff the cold mush into each others jackets. As House took hold of her chin and his fingertips began to push under in and along the line of her jaw she jerked back, both out of the memory and his grasp. "Ow, what are you doing."
"Checking your glands, duh," House replied. Although he had been slightly taken aback by her reaction. Nevertheless, he ignored her protest and leaning over her slightly, started again, this time intentionally pressing deeper, watching her for a reaction as he continued with the exam.
As House's finger tips reached for her neck and started prodding again she made a slight face as though the feeling was uncomfortable but not really painful. "I remember going snowboarding," she told him thoughtfully. "I remember hitting...something and losing balance..." her eyes had glazed over again, lost in thought. "I remember...I was really sore and tired. It was New Year's Eve and there was this...party..."
She looked mildly confused a moment then shook her head as if to clear it. Again, inadvertently this time, moving out of his grip. "Anyway, like I told you The life of Arin Rae according to Robyn is not a very reliable source."
Reliable enough, House thought. By the sounds of it, the kid had whacked her head good and proper. Only the adults had clearly been idiots or non-existent as his team had found no record of the incident. However, that did not mean that they wouldn't find anything now that he had somewhere to direct them to. "Where did you stay?" he asked.
"We have a lodge." She said then blushed.
"Of course you do," House said as he moved his hand and picked up her wrist. Shaking back the sleeve of his shirt and jacket, he stared at his watch. Her heart beat furiously under the pressure of his finger tips. Mildly tachycardic, but panic explained that. He made a mental note to stick around and see if the reaction was the same when one of his lackies did it.
"What else did she tell you?" Arin asked. She was taking measured breaths, the sort people did when facing something they didn't like but had to put up with and was looking directly at the chair he had just vacated, not at him or in his direction.
House said nothing as he waited for the minute to pass. When it finally did, he dropped her wrist and walked to the foot of the bed. Picking up the chart, he noted down his observations and gave the kid a moment's reprieve.
"Well? What else did she tell you?"
"Well, there was the time you went to Bonnie Scotland for a year, " House began, switching in and out of a Scottish accent without a pause. "And the time when she got gum stuck in her hair and you put her head in a freezer... the death of your parents and grandparents, " he finished, emphasising his last words.
Arin raised her eyebrows, "Grandmother, not grandparents plural." She said absently "and the ice makes the chewing gum firm and easier to remove. I didn't think she would sit still long enough for me to use WD40. Peanut butter oil was out too since her father has a peanut allergy and they don't keep any in the house." She shrugged.
She seemed very nonchalant about the death thing. He hadn't expected that. "Yeah, I know the gum trick too." As if to emphasise his point, House fished inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of chewing gum, tossed a piece up into the air and caught in his mouth. However, internally he made a note to try and limit the subjects she could deflect onto. "Meanwhile, back at the lodge in Aspen, you whacked your head off a log and didn't receive proper treatment. I'm adding an MRI to the list of tests you should have done. There could be anything going on inside that skull of yours."
"That was six months ago. I'm pretty sure I'm ok." She rolled her eyes. "Besides I didn't realise two tests constituted a list Doctor House."
House scoffed loudly and almost burst out laughing. Was this kid serious? Either she was an idiot or a bigger narcissist than even he was. "Wow!" he exclaimed, almost speechless. "Just... Wow! Do you have any concept about all the possibilities for internal damage you could have done to your head that might not show symptoms for months, or even years?"
Taking a deep breath as though she had enough of the conversation Arin said. "Well since I only have a vague memory of it and didn't really think about it till you brought it up I clearly had some sort of concussion or post trauma amnesia. But..." she paused as if she wasn't sure if she should continue or simply shut up. She gave him an appraising look, swallowed again and decided to keep talking. A slight sigh then...
"...Brain-imaging studies done by Metting and his team in 2001 of PTA, patients showed a positive long term prognosis." She swallowed and continued, "In fact he proved that most patients return to normal levels of functioning within 4 months of the original injury, despite the fact that some memory might be fuzzy and because the person often hears peers, family, and others discussing events surrounding the injury it actually makes it more likely that they will subsequently falsely report remembering more about the injury period. It's a poor measure of injury severity and as most people feel well by the 4 months mark I'm pretty sure that, as I said, I'm ok."
House tilted his head as he listened to the ensuing onslaught of... a well founded medical argument? Hang on a moment, wasn't that supposed to be his role in these conversations?
She flopped backwards into her pillow then as if this onslaught of information had robbed her of her strength. Her cheeks burned red, almost glowing in her pale face from what he would notice was embarrassment.
His icy blue eyes stared at her with intent as he watched her cheeks burn a brighter red than a piece of sodium tossed into a flame. She was embarrassed. But why? While he had deduced that she was, contrary to his own prior thought and the mermaid's testimony, not an idiot, the only suggestion at her level of intellect had come from the brief note Foreman had found in her psyche file. The psychiatrist had noted she was 'Clever' but that was a subjective term, he must have meant very clever, if he bothered to note it down in her file. However, knowledge of the medical field wasn't a new thing, every idiot with google now thought they could diagnose, but the obscurity and relevance of the research she had cited, no that could only have come from reading journals and it did not fit with her iatrophobia. People tended to purposefully avoid things associated with their phobias, not delve into current research. Then there was her clear embarrassment at having blown a proverbial gasket. Was it because it had been medical knowledge she had spouted or a more blanket issue with a display of intelligence? Perhaps she had even bought into the gentrys old mantra of, 'woman, know your limits!'.
The questions swirled around the inside of House's head as he did what he did best and slotted the pieces of the jigsaw together. The kid was too hot headed to hold to archaic views on women and he suspected she would deny her iatrophobia, so would more likely be insouciant about showing her understanding of medicine. That left him with the blanket option. He thought for a moment. He'd seen enough of her two friends to know they were idiots. And, from what he had gathered from the mermaid, they were both her only friends and sucky ones at that. He knew from experience that idiots reacted to intellectuals in the same way as villagers did to witches. If you wanted to move amongst them you had to act like them. And the longer you had to do it, the more you started to hate yourself for being a witch. To the point that any display of magic could leave you feeling embarrassed. Regardless of the company you were in.
As the silence stretched on Arin cleared her throat, pulled a face then reached again for her cup of water. She made another face as she swallowed and looked at the little paper cup the nurse had brought in with her. "Can I take the Tylenol the nurse brought please?"
The sound of the kid's voice drew House out of his musings. "Sure, why not, " he replied, realising that he was still holding her chart. He placed it back on the foot of the bed and limped round to the side closest to the door... just in case. "It might help bring that fever of yours down. Although I doubt it'll do much to quell the furnace that's burning behind your cheeks."
Arin scowled at him and again chose not to bite, "will you hand me them please?" She asked nodding at the table at the foot of the bed. Her eyes tracked his movements to the doorway side. "What? you expect me to run for it?" she asked.
House picked up the small paper cup and offered it to her. "You totally contemplated it after the nurse left."
As she reached out and took the cup he continued, "which reminds me. Let's have a look at that throat of yours, shall we?" He rummaged inside his pockets and procured a penlight and a tongue depressor. "Now, are you gonna be a good girl and open your mouth and say ahhh for me once you've swallowed those hospital brand supermarket tic-tacs?"
Arin frowned at him again, all this eyebrow work was irritating her wound, "Will you stop now?" She asked as she tipped the pills into her mouth and swallowed them with a sip of water. She acted calmly but the monitor beside her pitched in its heightened beep as if reminding them both it was still there as he produced the penlight.
"Of course, right after you open wide and say ahhh."
This guy made her tired she decided, she stared at him a moment longer as a slight shiver shot down her spine. "Fine..." she muttered in a defeated tone.
House resisted the urge to sweep the wooden stick into her mouth with an accompanying aeroplane sound. Instead, he simply placed it down on her tongue, clicked on the penlight and stared into the cavernous maw and its... Yowch! While at present her throat just looked red and slightly irritated, the battle scarring on her tonsils suggested a campaign that had lasted longer than the first, second and all fictional third world wars combined. It seemed the mermaid had been right about repeated bouts of tonsillitis. "Say ahhh," he repeated, tone serious as he continued peering at her with a frown.
Arin for her part seemed to become more and more uncomfortable as this went on. She did however do as he asked, "ahhh." She repeated, thinly veiled annoyance evident with just the sound.
House clicked his tongue, he really did feel a pang of sympathy for her, that must hurt whenever it became inflamed... a lot. If he were in charge of her medical care he'd have sent her for a tonsillectomy years ago. A brief thought crossed his mind pertaining to the criteria for such powers to default to her attending, but he quickly filed it away for later. There was a lung function test and MRI that took precedence.
The end of the "ahhh" sound she made caused her throat to constrict as a tickle welled up. She gave a slight cough then gagged as the reflex kicked in and tried to remove the offending stick from her mouth. She jerked back from him right to the furthest edge of the bed. Her breathing slightly erratic again as she visibly tried to control herself. "Ok...I need you to stop now," she told him honestly.
House gave her the most un-reassuring smile imaginable. "Don't worry, I'm not going after your tonsils just yet." He withdrew the stick and clicked the penlight off. "Are you aware of just how much of a mess it is back there?"
Arin tried counting to seven as she breathed in then let it out slowly for eleven, she did this three times before she answered him. She looked up at his face then away again to the floor "It's fine," she said, "it's sore just now since I came in here but it's not bad. It'll pass."
House rolled his eyes. There was just no getting through to this kid. She had a very warped sense of what fine meant. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out his recently scuffed phone and navigated to the camera function. Fortunately it had a flash.
Arin watched him warily, "what are you doing now," she almost cried. He was relentless and her nerves were now getting to their literal wits end.
When the kid next opened her mouth he stuck the tongue depressor back in and focused his phone until he had a clear shot. Click! The flash went off and the image soon appeared on the screen. While it would never make the cover of photographers monthly, it would serve its purpose. He withdrew the tongue depressor and tossed it into the trash can.
She gagged again as the stick violated her and the flash went off. As it's presence left her mouth she gagged once more and started to cough violently for a few seconds. "What..the hell!" She demanded between coughs.
House turned his phone around so she could see the screen. "Say hello to your battle scarred tonsils, Kiddo, " he said with a smug look.
Arin swallowed and rubbed her eyes as they watered from the coughing. "Are you insane I know what they fucking look like you madman." She gagged again and this time wretched slightly as if she were going to be sick.
House allowed her the time to seethe while he added this latest development to his mental whiteboard. To have accumulated such high levels of scar tissue, the kid must have had multiple bouts of tonsillitis and nasty ones at that. There was even the possibility of strep throat and all the suspects it brought to the table if it had gone untreated, which in her case it certainly would have. Alternatively, the whole lot could simply be secondary infections. Little buggers that had snuck in while the big daddy was busy lowering her immune system elsewhere. Her absence of any inoculations, as Foreman had suggested, added a whole host of other possibilities to the list. Hell, this kid could have something that was ultimately diagnostically boring, yet still present sufficient challenge due to the sheer number of things he would need to rule out in the process. He smiled to himself. It seemed that her jibe about two tests not constituting a list was about to backfire horribly on her, for his brain had already started to formulate a new plan of attack. Boy were the lackeys going to be busy once he'd extracted consent.
Arin watched him, resting her head on her hands again and her elbows on her crossed legs. She calmed slowly and tried again to work him out. He was like an infinite stack of brick walls, each time she successfully removed a brick from the one in front she found herself peering at another underneath. She wasn't used to this, normally Arin was a very good read on people, it made it easier to deal with them. She sighed and considered if this was all some sort of revenge for her outburst with his phone earlier. Stupid that she would let herself act like that. He was just another person, she told herself. He was a doctor yes but he was less starchy compared to the image in her head and weirdly his presence seemed to have the ability to work her up and bring her back down again.
"Why do you look so happy all of a sudden?" She asked and sighed. "You know you are honestly the weirdest person I have ever met. What's your glitch? Why are you so insistent on bothering me when I've clearly told you, more than once I might add, that I'd rather you just left me alone. What do you want from me House?"
"How about your boots, your clothes and your motorcycle?" House replied as he fetched the blood pressure cuff from the nurses trolley.
"You already have my boots, you'd have to ask Robyn for my clothes as the ones I was wearing are actually hers. That's two out of the three."
"Do you have a motorcycle?" he asked offhandedly as he ripped the cuffs velcro open with a satisfyingly loud noise.
"Somewhere... probably," she replied thoughtfully as if she didn't know really. She considered the numerous vehicles in the garage that had been collected by family members past and present. Her grandfather didn't seem the motorcycle sort but her great uncle Alfie...he had been a bit of a rebel. She looked at the cuff. "I really don't like that thing."
"Oh..,you don't? Well, in that case, I suppose we always could..." House said as a look of mock contemplation smeared across his face. "...oh, wait a minute, you don't get a say in the matter. So, hold out your arm."
She gave him a look that said do I have to but held her arm out.
House wrapped the cuff around her outstretched arm and fastened it tight, perhaps a little too tight for comfort.
When his hand came into contact with her arm she flinched as if he were burning her. The material of the cuff felt cool against her skin but as he tightened it the edges began to bite into the flesh uncomfortably. "Ow" Arin supplied helpfully.
House ignored the kid's discomfort and turned the machine on. "You forgot to add, quit it."
Arin closed her eyes tight as the cuff inflated and bit further into her arm. She bit her lip as though to stop herself making noise and turned her face away from him and it so she didn't need to look at it. However, she kept her arm unnaturally still, despite this slight movement.
House observed her discomfort, but left the machine alone until it had finished its cycle. He did not exactly enjoy watching her suffer, he was no sadist after all, however, he could not help but find her reactions intriguing. She genuinely was afraid of doctors, hospitals, medical implements... the whole shebang. However, he very much doubted that she would admit to it if he asked... only one way to find out. "You have iatrophobia, don't you?"
The colour drained from her, leaving her grey and washed out looking. As the machine finished its reading and deflated, releasing its grip on her arm Arin's eyes opened and she let loose a sigh of relief. She looked at House waiting expectantly for him to remove the cuff.
Glancing at the display on the machine, he made a mental note of the readings; her blood pressure was elevated. Firmly he took hold of her wrist and ripped the velcro of the cuff open. "You have iatrophobia, " he repeated, pulling the thing off of her arm and tossing it back onto the trolley.
Again she flinched as his fingers closed around her wrist. After it was free of the cuff she pulled her arm back from his grip. She made eye contact with him then and searched his expression for some sort of indication to his thought process. Looking embarrassed again she finally dropped her head slightly and looked at the covers and gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
"I think that's the first truly honest answer you've given me all day, " House replied, trying to inject some of that warmth that Cameron always banged on about into his tone. "The answer to your other question remains the same. I genuinely think there is something medically wrong with you that the ER doc didn't pick up. I'm a diagnostician, that's what I do."
Arin shrugged, "It's not exactly something you talk about since most people don't get it. And it's certainly not something you talk about with the source of the problem." She told her legs. At least that was over with for now. "I guess I should consider myself lucky then. Diagnostics is a very limited field in the US..." she started offhandedly and then stopped herself.
"And it's also not the sort of thing that you read journals about. At least not ones that aren't related to your phobia and how to best combat it," he added in a helpfully unhelpful manner. "unless..." he frowned slightly again and gave her another sweep with his blue penetrating gaze. "...unless you were trying to treat the phobia through immersive therapy." House took a moment to look genuinely impressed. It explained her random outburst of medical jargon. "You can't be in a medical building, but you can dive into as much theory as you like...the Internet will give you everything you need. How much have you researched?"
Arin looked at him."Does it matter?" she asked.
Again the frown, as if she was a rubix cube he had almost solved only to realise that the colours of the solved sides had changed on him mid-twist. "It matters because it's interesting. It's not normal behaviour." he said ponderously. "...it's clear you retained some of it....how much of it do you understand?" he asked.
She looked away, unable to bare the intensity of his gaze and asked her knees "Are you going to leave me alone now? You got what you came in for and probably a hell of a lot more to boot from Robyn. So now that you have me all figured out why don't you just leave me alone?"
"Yeah, " House sighed as the conversation steered away from the interesting and back to this, he was actually growing slightly tired of this circular argument. One, because it was boring and two, because he genuinely wanted her to answer his question. Did she understand any of what she had spouted at him? It appeared so, in part at least, otherwise the information wouldn't be contextually accurate. He sighed at her.
"Sure, Kiddo,I've got you all figured out. Except that I don't. I don't know what's going on inside your body. Which, given that I'm a diagnostician and all, is actually the most important part. That's the part I want. So, let me do my tests, figure out and treat what's wrong with you and then yes," he said almost grudgingly, "then I'll leave you alone."
His tone confused her, he could tell and she looked at him again and met his gaze. "And what? If I say no. You're going to stay here and play on the iatrophobia thing? do all of that again to me in a couple of hours, and then again a few hours after that until either one of two things happens." she swallowed "Either one, You break me down and I consent to get you to fuck off or two, I have some mass break down of panic and anxiety or stress and have a massive outburst or run from the room or something and end up getting sedated or something and somehow you get permission to test me in case I become some sort of danger to myself and others?" She asked eyes roving across his face as if trying to see deeper than the surface expression.
He gave her a sly smile, "well, I was hoping for option two, but I'll take the first if I need to. True iatrophobia is fairly rare. Well, rare enough anyway that if it presents itself as a big red button that I can justify pushing over and over, I am going to. Would telling you that it'll be every hour make a difference?"
She scowled at him as he no doubt had expected her to with such an answer. But Rather than threaten to tell, call him unprofessional or panic she said in a slightly shaky voice "Why every hour?" She asked. "The nurse was checking every 4 hours. By the time you do all that it's about 15 minutes. So technically what you're saying is every 45 minutes? I'm not sure you've got the staying power for the whole night at that rate." her eyes were wider, the slight pupil dilation obvious even in this light.
"Yep, just enough time to play The Dark Side of the Moon in." He gave another smile, the sort of smile referred to as a crocodile grin in some circles. "And I'll take that bet, Kiddo. I know where to get some seriously good coffee. Besides, I'll see your staying power bet and raise you the fact that you'll break long before I do. In fact, I have age, and the fact this is my home turf on my side, whereas you are a guppy treading shark infested waters." He gave her another look up and down. "I'd wager you'll break one way or another before I need to get out the takeaway menus." He thought for a moment before adding. "I can also add in a check of your lungs with a stethoscope and some other annoyances, if needs be."
She gave a shudder and he knew then that he was in her head now. "Fine. You can have your lung function test. That's it. Now go away."
House made three sharp clicks with his tongue before he spoke again, "oh no, no, no, no, no, " he admonished with another wolfish grin. "I'm playing for my lung function test, an MRI of your head, a throat swab and a hell of a lot of bloodwork. I've got every illness you would have been inoculated against if you had responsible guardians, strep throat, a multitude of brain and head injuries and practically every secondary infection known to man and some only to Klingons, to rule out."
Arin stared at him, her mouth slightly agape, she mouthed a few times and then stopped to collect herself. He waited, watching as she swallowed once or twice but didn't speak. He was just starting to grow concerned at her pallor when finally she seemed to find words. They weren't what he expected.
"Are you out of your goddamn Vulcan mind?" She said breathlessly as her heart hammered in her chest. She took refuge in the sci-fi come back for a moment to let her brain catch up.
House couldn't help but laugh. So the kid was a Trekker and an original series one at that. "If you set your emotions aside you will see that it is only logical, Doc... Oh wait, that's right, we already established that you don't have an MD. It's my way or the hard way, Kiddo. Sorry if you're not used to being told what to do by adults but this time you'll do as you're told."
This, was a mistake he realised as he said it, rather than drive his point home Arin's expression hardened, indignation clear in her face and tone when she next spoke. She crossed her arms and set her jaw with only the slightest quiver. "You get your lung function test or nothing House. I'm through playing with you. So either that's it and you accept or you get comfortable because I guarantee you are in for a long night."
Fair enough, House thought as he strode back to the chair, stopping only to note her blood pressure readings on the chart. He sat down and fixed her with a firm expression. The lines had been drawn. Pulling out his phone he dialed Cameron's number. It rang three times before the lackie answered.
Arin watched him with just as firm an expression of her own.
"House," Cameron breathed sounding relieved. "Where have you been? You've been gone for over two hours.we thought you'd gone home..."
"I'm on a House call with our patient. It seems that the rabbit hole is a lot deeper than we first imagined."
"What? All this time?" Cameron sounded sceptical
"I know, imagine that, " House replied, his voice brimming with sarcasm. "A doctor actually spending time with a patient. Perish the thought."
"Yeah but you...don't." She answered lamely.
"Then I guess you don't know everything about me. You know, maybe we should go out for dinner sometime. Get to know each other a bit better, " House replied, hoping Cameron would take the bait.
Cameron chose to ignore him, but her breath caught audiably over the line. There was a silence and the sound of her swallowing a few time as though her throat had constricted, "did...did you get consent for the test?" She asked finally.
While he enjoyed hearing the air catching in her throat, House felt disappointed that Cameron had not fallen into the pitfall trap. "Technically yes, " he said in a tone that hinted at there being a catch.
"That's great!" Cameron stated. "But?..." She asked
"We need to do an MRI, throat swab and a pile of bloodwork too. She's still holding out on that lot, but I think I can wear her down." he winked at Arin.
Arin made a "pffft" sound from her bed.
Cameron paused for a moment, "okay..." She said as she processed. "What do you need me to do?"
"Bring me my gameboy, a cup of good coffee with a donut and the takeaway menus we have in the office, just in case."
Cameron made a sort of affirmative noise and hung up the phone. The line played the dial tone as she went to do as he bid.
House hung up the phone and put it back in his pocket. He then turned to look at the kid. "Oh, sorry. I should have asked if you wanted something. How careless of me."
Arin said nothing. She pushed back into her pillows and stared at the ceiling preparing to ignore him for as long as possible and mentally preparing herself for his next onslaught.
House adjusted his position in the chair and stretched out his legs. He counted her respiration rate as he sat. Too quick, but not dangerously so. She was skating on thin ice and though clearly stubborn, to the point of being pig headed, he was certain that this was a true phobia and not simply a fear. Her physiological reactions that the stimulus of him and his Doctor-ness would wear down her already physically and emotionally exhausted body before the night was through.
In a rather impressive feat he spat the wad of gum directly into the centre of the trashcan before plucking an orange pill bottle from his jacket pocket. Popping the cap he tipped two pills out into his awaiting palm and dry swallowed them. Nothing like a little high to tide him over till his next attack. This was shaping up to be an interesting, if drawn out battle of wills. Pity for her, that this sort of situation was the exception to his not going to see patients rule. And he'd be damned if a kid was going to get the better of him. Yes