Chapter 1: The Interview - A Test of Wits and Will
The office smelled like stale coffee and old paper. A dying printer hummed in the corner, next to a stack of medical journals that threatened to slide onto the floor. Dr. Gregory House leaned against his desk, his weight on the cane, and studied the girl in the chair.
Rosalie sat as if her spine had been fused. Her hands were folded in her lap, knuckles white. She was young, maybe twenty-five, dressed in a sensible blouse and skirt that probably cost more than his monthly cable bill. A nervous smile flickered and died on her lips.
“So,” House said, not moving. “You want to play doctor.”
“I want to learn from the best diagnostician in the country,” she said, her voice steady despite the tension in her shoulders.
“That’s a terrible idea. I hate people. I especially hate eager people. You’re practically vibrating with eagerness. It’s nauseating.” He pushed off the desk and began to circle her, the rubber tip of his cane tapping a slow, irregular rhythm on the linoleum. Tap. Shuffle. Tap.
She didn’t turn her head to follow him. She kept her eyes forward, on the whiteboard covered in his chaotic scrawl.
“Forty-two-year-old male,” House said, his voice a low rumble. “Presents with sudden onset photophobia and uncontrollable laughter. His wife says he giggles at funerals. MRI is clear. Go.”
Rosalie blinked. She hadn’t expected the test to start the second she sat down. “Wilson’s disease,” she said after a beat. “Copper deposition in the basal ganglia can cause psychotic symptoms, including inappropriate laughter. The photophobia could be Kayser-Fleischer rings in the corneas. You’d need a slit-lamp exam and serum ceruloplasmin.”
The tapping stopped. House moved into her line of sight, his head tilted. “Too fast. You memorized a list of weird presentations. Try again. Wrong answer.”
Her composure cracked for a second, a faint line appearing between her brows. She took a quiet breath. “Wrong? Okay. Pseudobulbar affect. But that’s usually secondary to ALS or MS, and the MRI was clear. So… a parasitic infection? Toxoplasmosis can cause psychiatric symptoms, but photophobia isn’t a hallmark.”
“Warmer,” House murmured. He enjoyed this, watching the gears turn. Most of them froze. She didn’t.
“Autoimmune,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Limbic encephalitis. Anti-Ma2 antibodies. It can manifest with seizures that look like laughing fits, and hypersensitivity to light.”
House didn’t smile. His eyes, however, darkened with something like interest. He leaned in, close enough for her to see the faint stubble on his jaw, the weary lines around his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I have just ordered the antibody panel?”
“Because you’re a jerk,” Rosalie said, the words escaping before she could filter them. She flushed immediately.
A short, sharp bark of laughter escaped House. “Finally, a diagnosable trait. Honesty. It’s rare. Usually fatal around here.” He straightened up and limped back to his desk, grabbing the vial of Vicodin. He shook two pills into his palm, dry-swallowed them. “Your file says you aced your boards. Top of your class at Johns Hopkins. Chase thinks you’re a prodigy.”
He said Chase’s name like it was a bad taste.
“Chase is a good doctor,” she said, carefully neutral.
“Chase is a pretty face who knows which end of the scalpel to hold. He’s impressed by shiny objects.” House dropped into his own chair, the leather sighing under him. His gaze was a physical weight on her. “You’re a shiny object, Rosalie. The question is, are you just shiny, or are you actually useful?”
“I guess that’s for you to decide.”
“Damn right it is.” He steepled his fingers. “Second case. Twenty-two-year-old female, vegan, marathon runner. Presents with vertigo and a craving for chewing on sponges. Labs show microcytic anemia. Her boyfriend says she’s been irritable, says she yelled at a barista for misspelling her name on a cup.”
“Pica,” Rosalie said instantly. “The sponge craving. Iron-deficiency anemia. Common in young female athletes, especially vegans. The vertigo and irritability fit.”
“It’s never the common thing,” House snapped, slapping his hand on the desk. The sudden noise made her jump. “If it was just iron deficiency, her primary care would have handed her a supplement and sent her on her way. She’s in my hospital. Ergo, it’s not iron deficiency. Think.”
She was silent for a full minute. House watched her think, watched her eyes lose focus as she looked inward, scanning the vast, ordered library of her knowledge. He liked the view. Most brains were messy, cluttered places. Hers, he suspected, had color-coded shelves.
“Celiac disease,” she said finally. “Malabsorption leading to iron deficiency, leading to pica. Neurological symptoms like ataxia and peripheral neuropathy can sometimes present as vertigo. The irritability could be from undiagnosed gluten exposure.”
House didn’t move. The hum of the printer filled the room. He took another Vicodin, just one this time, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger before swallowing it.
“You’re good,” he said, his voice devoid of its earlier theatrical malice. It was flat. Analytical. “You’re very, very good. And you know it, which is a problem. Knowing you’re good makes you cautious. You go for the logical, textbook answer. You’re afraid to be wrong.”
“Being wrong gets patients killed,” she said, her own voice hardening.
“Being slow gets them killed faster.” He leaned forward, his blue eyes piercing. “I’m not looking for a textbook. I’m looking for someone who can look at a man laughing at a funeral and think, not ‘what disease causes laughter,’ but ‘what disease makes a funeral funny?’ There’s a difference. One is medicine. The other is understanding the break in the human machinery.”
Rosalie said nothing. The rigid posture was still there, but the fear was gone, replaced by a fierce, concentrated attention. He had her full focus. The realization sent a familiar, possessive thrill through him. This wasn’t like the others. Foreman, with his ambition. Cameron, with her guilt. Chase, with his daddy issues. This one was pure, uncut intellect. A brilliant, skittish racehorse.
And she needed a rider.
“Chase can’t teach you that,” House said, a slow, deliberate edge returning to his words. “None of them can. They’re all following the maps. I draw them.” He gestured vaguely at the chaotic whiteboard. “It’s a messy process. It requires disobedience. A certain… abandonment of propriety.”
He saw her absorb the words, saw the conflict in her. The part of her that wanted the pristine career, the respected specialty, recoiled. The part of her that lived for the puzzle, the pure, hard answer, leaned in.
“What would you have me do?” she asked.
House smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “For now? Sit there and look decorative. The real test starts when a body crashes through the doors. We’ll see if you can think on your feet when there’s blood on the floor and everyone is yelling.” He paused, letting the image hang. “If you run, or cry, or quote a textbook, you’re done. If you freeze, you’re done. The only way you stay is if you do something useful. Or something stupidly, brilliantly wrong.”
He dismissed her with a flick of his hand, turning to his computer monitor. The audience was over.
Rosalie stood up, her movements slightly stiff. She walked to the door, hand on the knob.
“Rosalie,” House said, not turning around.
She stopped.
“The laughing man. It was glioblastoma. A tiny, evil tumor pressing on the temporal lobe. The photophobia was a migraine aura. Two separate problems. The textbooks hate that. Life’s messy.” He finally glanced over his shoulder. “Chase would have missed it.”
She held his gaze for a second longer than was comfortable, then gave a single, sharp nod and left, closing the door softly behind her.
The office was quiet again, just the hum and the smell of dust and pills. House swiveled his chair, looking at the closed door. The ghost of her perfect posture, her nervous hands, lingered in the space.
A protege was a risk. A responsibility. A pain in the ass.
This one, though. This one had fire underneath the ice. She needed someone to break the ice, to stoke the fire, to channel the heat. She needed rules, and someone to grant her the freedom to break them. She needed, though she would never admit it, a firm hand.
He picked up his cane, a dull ache throbbing in his leg. The Vicodin haze was settling in, smoothing the sharp edges of the world. He thought of Chase’s easy smile, the way he’d undoubtedly try to take her under his wing, show her the nice way to practice medicine.
Over his dead body.
The game was on. And for the first time in a long time, House felt the stirrings of something that wasn’t boredom. It was the keen, sharp anticipation of a hunt. And the peculiar desire to keep the prize, once caught, all for himself.