Chapter 23: The Interview Gauntlet
The air in House’s office was stale, thick with the ghosts of old sandwiches and resentment.
Y/n leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, her shoulder blades pressing into the cool glass that overlooked a mercifully quieter ER. The first candidate, Dr. Anya Sharma from Hopkins, had been a burst of eager light in the doorway twenty minutes ago. Now she was a crumpled figure in the chair, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue House had tossed at her with a detached, “You’ll dehydrate.”
“So your paper on ribosomal frameshifting in atypical pathogens,” House said, spinning a pen between his fingers. “You co-wrote it with Dr. Cheng. Who did the actual work? Be honest. I can smell academic padding from here.”
Anya stammered, her brilliant thesis now a minefield. “We collaborated—”
“Collaboration is what people call it when one person has the idea and the other does the typing. Which were you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You present confidence, but your voice cracks on syllabic emphasis. You’re used to being the smartest person in the room and you’re terrified that here, you might not be. The fear’s understandable. The lip tremble is just pathetic.”
That was the kill shot. Anya fled, the door clicking shut with a sound of finality.
House popped a Vicodin, dry-swallowing it. “Next.”
The second candidate, Dr. Mark Russo, was older, solid. A decade in emergency medicine in Detroit. He had a handshake like a vise and eyes that had seen too much. He lasted twelve minutes.
House circled him, a shark. “Divorced, recently. Two kids, girls. Living with the ex in Trenton. You took this interview on a Tuesday, which is a standard visitation day. Missed seeing them to be here. That’s either dedication or a stunning lack of priority. Which is it?”
Russo’s jaw tightened. “My personal life isn’t relevant.”
“Everything’s relevant. The divorce was her idea. She cited ‘emotional neglect.’ Was she right? Do you save all your empathy for strangers, Dr. Russo? Because this job requires you to have none for anyone.”
Russo stood up, his chair scraping back sharply. “This isn’t a diagnosis. It’s a performance.” He left, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the whiteboard markers.
“Waste of my time,” House muttered, scribbling something illegible on a file. “Emotional neglect. Please. He probably forgot their hamster’s birthday and she went nuclear.”
Y/n pushed off the wall. “You’re not hiring a diagnostician. You’re conducting stress fractures for your own amusement.”
“I’m weeding out the weak. The job breaks them anyway. Saves us all the paperwork.”
Before she could answer, the door opened a third time.
Dr. Rachel Kim was small, quiet, with watchful dark eyes that took in the room’s chaos in one swift, calm sweep. She didn’t offer a hand. She just sat, waiting.
House leaned back, intrigued by the lack of fawning. “Rachel Kim. Internal medicine, Columbia. Fluent in Korean, medical Spanish. Published… ah, a single paper on granulomatosis with polyangiitis. Not exactly a prolific output.”
“The cases were noteworthy. The disease, not the page count,” she said, her voice even.
“You worked under Dr. Lee in Seoul for a year. Why’d you leave?”
“The fellowship ended.”
“Fellowships end. People beg to stay. You didn’t. Why?”
A barely perceptible tightening around her eyes. “I chose to return to the States.”
House smiled, a predatory flash of teeth. He opened his mouth, undoubtedly to eviscerate her circumspect answer, to find the bruised truth beneath it.
Y/n spoke first. “House. A word. Now.” Her tone brooked no argument.
He glanced at her, annoyed, then shrugged at Kim. “The tyranny of nepotism. Don’t go anywhere. Try not to touch anything.”
He limped after Y/n into the hallway, shutting the office door behind him. The relative silence of the corridor was abrupt.
“What?” he snapped.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
“They’re my interviews. My team.”
“And you’re trying to hire a version of Cameron who won’t have the moral compass to object when you cross a line, or a version of yourself who’s even more of a bastard. Neither exists. You broke the first one. She’s gone because of you.”
House’s eyes narrowed. “She’s gone because she’s a romantic who thought medicine was about holding hands and singing Kumbaya. She finally saw the job.”
“She saw you,” Y/n fired back, her voice low and fierce. “The constant contempt. The ethical shortcuts you dress up as genius. She cared about you, and you used that as a lever. It’s what you do. It’s why you’re alone in that office except for the ghosts of people you’ve picked apart.”
He studied her face, the anger there, and his expression shifted into something colder, more knowing. “You like her.”
Y/n froze. “What?”
“Cameron. You like her. This isn’t about my hiring practices. This is about you being pissed I scared off your…” He waved a hand, searching for the word. “Your friend.”
The word hung in the antiseptic air, absurd and dangerously close. Y/n felt a flush of heat crawl up her neck. It wasn’t true. It was camaraderie, professional respect. The solidarity of two people navigating House’s gravitational pull.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, but the denial lacked its usual razor edge.
He saw it. His smirk was insufferable. “Oh, this is rich. The ice queen melts. Well, don’t worry. Your little crush isn’t my problem. My empty chair is.”
He turned to go back inside, to finish dissecting Rachel Kim.
Y/n’s next words stopped him. “Then fix your chair.”
He glanced back.
“You want a candidate who can do the job? Fine. But you created the vacancy. You at least owe the person who left the courtesy of a conversation. Go talk to her. Today. After your shift.”
He laughed, a short, harsh bark. “And say what? ‘Sorry I exposed the fundamental hypocrisy of your chosen profession, please come back and enable me some more’?”
“Say anything. Or say nothing. Just go. Or this,” Y/n gestured to the office, to the carnage of the interviews, “is just you throwing a tantrum because someone finally called you on your crap and walked away.”
For a long moment, they just stared at each other in the humming hallway. The unspoken things between them—their shared history, their mirrored intellects, their chosen forms of isolation—vibrated in the space.
House looked away first, tapping his cane once on the linoleum. “Fine.”
The concession was so quiet she almost missed it.
“After shift. I’ll go. Happy?” He didn’t wait for an answer, pushing back into his office.
Y/n stayed in the hall, breathing in the cool, sterile air. Through the glass, she saw House sink into his chair, regarding Rachel Kim with a new, slightly fatigued calculation.
“So,” he said, his voice muffled by the barrier. “Granulomatosis with polyangiitis. Tell me about the patient you lost.”
Y/n watched Kim’s composed face, saw the slight inward flicker of pain before she began to speak. This one, Y/n thought, might just last a week. Maybe two.
She turned and walked down the corridor, the echo of her brother’s single, grudging “Fine” the only victory she was going to get.