35, Forever Blowing Bubbles, PG-13
Title: Forever Blowing Bubbles
Author: violet_quill
Rating: PG-13 (some language and sexual innuendo)
Words: 5500
Prompt: 36. A new patient at PPTH is a famous movie actor or actress from the 1940's. Wilson is star struck, idolizing him or her. House gets jealous.
Disclaimer: not my characters, if there was ever any doubt
Notes: This fic is rather heavy on the medical side of things, and I am no doctor - so if I've gotten things wrong, just chalk it up to artistic license.
The emergency room nurses were immediately buzzing, whispers propagating back and forth among the staff, making their way to the other departments from nurse to secretary to janitor, and the occasional doctor.
By lunchtime, nearly everyone in the hospital knew that Jimmy Donovan was a patient at PPTH. What they didn't know was what was wrong with him - because the doctors in the emergency room couldn't quite seem to decide. After all, he was old, and old people rushed to the hospital with things like joint pain, dizziness, and blurred vision was not an uncommon thing. Especially when that person's daughter informed the doctors that he'd been living on a steady diet of pastries and sweet tea for the past several years.
Of course, when his blood sugar tested at normal levels, they were stumped again. And the last thing they could do with someone like Jimmy Donovan was send him home with a pat on the back and no diagnosis, no matter how old he was. So they checked him into a private room, and Cuddy looked in on him herself before heading to the clinic to fetch his new doctor.
His new doctor, however, was not so keen on being fetched.
"Can't you see I'm busy?" House asked. And he was. Very, very busy trying for the fifth time to beat the Tetris high score that some punk kid in the waiting room had put onto his Gameboy. Maybe he shouldn't have left it sitting on the nurse's station while he'd seen a patient, but it was okay, he'd gotten the kid back. Told his mother he was smoking pot. It was probably even true; all the kids were doing it these days.
"There are patients out there, House," Cuddy sighed. "But I'll give you a break. Here." She shoved the file at him. "Everyone in the hospital's been clamoring for this one but I'm giving it to you. You can thank me later."
House frowned as the little blocks filled up his screen, then tossed the Gameboy onto the bed and snatched the file from Cuddy. He scanned it. "Clamoring. Right. I'm sure that a seventy-eight year old man with diabetes is terribly fascinating to everyone."
"He doesn't have diabetes," Cuddy said. "Blood sugar's normal."
House held the file back out to her. "Okay, so maybe it's gout and a touch of the flu. Honestly, you waste my talents. Old people are boring."
"House, you're taking this case."
"What, is this the vice president or something? I mean, I know he's old, but if he can still shoot straight..."
"House!" Cuddy jabbed her finger to the label on the file. "It's Jimmy Donovan!"
"Jimmy who-avan?"
"Dono - you really don't know who he is?" Cuddy frowned.
"No, I really don't know who he is," House said irritably. "Big donor or something? Because really, Cuddy, he's old. He'll be donating his organs instead of the big money soon anyway..."
Cuddy sighed and looked down at House as if preparing to scold a small child. "Jimmy Donovan is a screen legend. He was huge in the forties. Was in all the musicals, probably bigger than Fred Astaire... you do know who Fred Astaire is, right House?"
"Right, dancer or something. I don't trust men in tutus."
"Oh, for Christ's sake." Cuddy put her hands on her hips and looked furtively around the room as if she didn't want anyone to bear witness to what she was about to say. "Okay. No clinic duty while you're on his case."
"Not at all? The whole time he's here?"
"The whole time he's here."
"Well!" House cradled the file to his chest. "In that case, let's make sure the old guy stays alive for quite a while, shall we?"
*****
The symptoms were already neatly - well as neat as House's handwriting got anyway - laid out on the whiteboard when his staff arrived.
joint pain
minor swelling of the ankle
blurred vision
dizziness
itching
high cholesterol
"Oh yeah," House said as soon as they sat down around the conference table, "and he's old."
"How's his diet?" Foreman asked, frowning. "If his cholesterol's high..."
"It sucks," House said. "He's about forty pounds overweight. But it's not - "
"Diabetes?" Chase suggested helpfully.
"Very good, Chase. Like I said. Not diabetes. Besides, if it had gone untreated for this long he'd be in much worse shape than he is now. He probably wouldn't have ankles to be swelling."
Cameron was already flipping through the file. She paused on one page and read something again. "This is interesting," she said. "Apparently he's lost about ten pounds since his last physical. And his cholesterol's down, too."
"Mmmm." House tapped his cane on the floor. "Swelled ankles, dizziness, itching, weight loss... And what if he's had some more unpleasant symptoms that he didn't want to tell his daughter? Or ones that he didn't notice? Say... bloody stool, fluid retention, degraded mental function?"
"You think it's his liver," Foreman said after a beat.
"Cirrhosis," Cameron murmured at the same time.
House waved a hand dismissively. "Somebody go find out just how much our resident screen legend's been hitting the bottle since he got too wide for widescreen."
Cameron's made a small noise of surprise and flipped the file shut to look at the label. "This is Jimmy Donovan? I heard he was here!"
"Does everyone know about this guy but me?" House rolled his eyes and looked back up at the whiteboard, pleased with his diagnosis.
"I've never heard of him," Chase chimed in.
"Believe it or not, House, there's more to pop culture than videogames and The L Word," Foreman said with a snort.
"Touché. But you forgot Nurses Gone Wild. Now why isn't anyone raiding his liquor cabinet yet? Go!"
All three of them had filed out and House was about to settle down with Tetris again when Wilson walked in.
He paused in the doorway, a look of disbelief on his face. "You got Jimmy Donovan?"
House looked up and frowned. "What, you know him too? Don't you people have better things to do than watch old movies with men dancing around in tutus?"
"Tutus? What the hell are you talking about?" Wilson crossed the room to House. "He's a singer, House. Not with the dancing so much, but he did that, too. Sort of like Elvis' movies where there was always an excuse for him to sing." He paused, and then added childishly, "You do know who Elvis is, right?"
"Sure do. Used to sit beside him on the bus. He likes pastrami on rye."
Wilson rolled his eyes. "Well, you do watch TV. You know those new Volkswagen commercials that - "
"Don't watch commercials. Tivo."
"House, I know for a fact that you watch the commercials during baseball season because you prefer it live."
House looked shifty. "Okay, yeah. Volkswagen. The ones with that gay song in the background?"
Wilson hesitated. "Uh... yeah. I mean, no! It's not gay, House. It's 'Forever Blowing Bubbles'. That's Jimmy Donovan's version. In the commercial. It was in one of his films."
"Oh, great, now I really hate the guy."
"Hey, he sings better than you," Wilson said defensively. "I'm a fan, okay? I really like his films."
House narrowed his eyes. "Let me get this straight. You blow dry your hair, you paint your toenails, you know how to cook, you like old movies with songs like 'Forever Blowing Bubbles' in them, oh, and three divorces..."
"Cut it out, House."
House threw up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm just saying. What, have you got a crush on the big movie star, Jimmy? Aww, that's so cute. You do realize that he's old, fat, and bald now, right?"
"Oh, go to hell," Wilson muttered, turning to go.
"Hey, don't be too jealous that I got the case!" House called after him as Wilson left the conference room. "If it's not cirrhosis, my next guess is cancer - you might get a shot at him yet!"
*****
It wasn't cirrhosis.
"What do you mean it's not?" House sighed and let his head loll back in his chair.
Foreman had been the one elected to bring the news. "I mean, it's not. Did a CAT scan. The liver is slightly enlarged, but there's no scar tissue. True, it could be in the very early stages, but in that case the other symptoms wouldn't have surfaced yet."
"CAT scan? Did I say to do a CAT scan? I said to find his booze!"
"I asked his daughter. She said he doesn't - "
House groaned loudly. "Please. She's lying!"
"And that's why I did the test." Foreman looked at him evenly.
"Tests schmests! Tests lie too." House grabbed his cane and pulled himself to his feet.
"Where are you going?" Foreman asked, sounding surprised.
"To talk to the daughter, you schmuck! She's a big fat liar!"
Well, she may have been a liar, but as House discovered shortly, she was a young, thin, and pretty one. The first thing he did was blink in surprise and say, "Jesus Christ, how old was he when he got it up to make you?"
The woman stiffened. "Excuse me?"
"Come on, how old are you? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? That man is older than my father. He must have been nearing sixty when you were born!"
"My mother was his third wife," the woman conceded, looking behind House as if she expected some men in white coats to drag him to a padded room. Or perhaps some policemen. "Are you a doctor?"
"Yes, I'm your father's doctor. And in my medical opinion he'd probably be a lot healthier if he hadn't been banging women a third of his age. But that's not really relevant at the moment. What's your name again?"
"Louise Donovan." She looked behind him again.
"Hey Louise, there's no one there. I'm it. So." He put a hand on his cane and leaned forward a little. "How long's your dad been knocking back a dozen cocktails every night?"
"What?" She looked genuinely offended. "He's done no such thing! My father is not an alcoholic. I don't know what that other doctor told you, but..."
"Does he still live with your mother?"
"No, they divorced when I was twelve. But I live with him now, to help him, and I would know if - "
"Does he have his own room?"
She blinked. "Of course. But - "
"Uh huh, okay. We're done here." House ignored her protests and just started walking, finally limping into Jimmy Donovan's hospital room.
He was surprised to find that Donovan had a visitor. Wilson.
"What the hell are you doing with my patient?" House snapped.
Wilson looked up from where he was sitting in a chair by the bed, blinking in surprise. "I thought I'd keep him company while you were interrogating his daughter. Is that okay?"
"Of course it's okay," the old man said pleasantly. "Dr. Wilson was just telling me - "
"That he's a big fan. Right." House scowled at Wilson. "Now it's his turn to be interrogated. Go."
"He could stay - "
"I could stay - "
House's scowl deepened. "May I have a word with you, Jimmy?" He grabbed Wilson's arm, and looked at the man in the bed. "No, not you. Look, your biggest fan has your name, too. Isn't that adorable?"
Wilson grudgingly allowed himself to be dragged to the doorway. "Why do you care if I'm here?"
"Because I'm about to find out all his dirty little secrets, and he's not going to spill them in front of someone who's looking at him with big puppy dog hero worship eyes."
Wilson hesitated. "Okay. I guess."
House sighed. "Oh, just go to your office. I promise I'll come by later and let you know how he's doing. Okay?"
Wilson nodded and then looked back to the bed. "I'll come by and see you later, Mr. Donovan. Don't worry, Dr. House here is a great... doctor."
House waited for Wilson to shut the door behind him, then limped back over to the bed. "So," he said with mock cheerfulness, "pretty good at hiding your booze, huh?"
Donovan looked up, confused. "What?"
"Hi, I'm that great doctor your number one fan was just talking about. Now tell me how much you like your scotch."
Donovan hesitated. "I - I don't - "
"Yeah, yeah, look, I'm not your daughter. I'm not the press. I'm not an adoring fan. Hell, I'm not a fan at all, I haven't even heard of you. I'm just the doctor trying to save your life. Now spill it."
*****
"It's not cirrhosis of the liver!" House announced cheerfully as he limped into the conference room where his staff was already waiting.
"I know," Foreman snapped. "I already told you that."
"Well, sure, but you cheated. You got a CAT scan. And you got the wrong information. Our Mr. Donovan is one of those alcoholics so talented that not only can he hide all of his booze from his daughter, but he can hide his doctors visits as well." House leaned against the counter and pulled a yoyo out of his pocket.
"There wasn't any recent medical history in his chart aside from a physical last year..." Cameron murmured, flipping through it again.
"Don't be an idiot, Cameron. Who do you think gave that medical history?"
"Oh. The daughter."
He swung the yoyo down and caught it. "Bingo. So let's assume for a second that our sweet old bubble-blowing patient was so worried about his daughter and his fans finding out about his drinking problem that when the doctor at that physical told him his liver was slightly enlarged, he begged him not to put it on his chart, swearing that he'd go see a specialist."
"Are we really just assuming, or did he tell you this?" Foreman interrupted.
"Hush, I'm telling a story." Down came the yoyo again. "So let's say that when Jimmy Donovan said 'specialist' he meant any hack doctor that would accept cash and treat him without keeping records. And when this hack doctor sees this slightly enlarged liver, he chalks it up to minor liver stress. Which is great for him because he can recommend a course of treatment that doesn't require a prescription - you know, those messy things that leave records and whatnot." He paused, then added, "And also keep in mind that his cholesterol has randomly gotten better without specific treatment."
Chase, who had been chewing on the end of his pencil, pulled it out of his mouth and said, "Vitamin B? Some idiot doctor saw a real problem with his liver and did nothing except give him some Vitamin B?"
"Lots and lots of Vitamin B," House corrected. "Now, with that new piece of information, anyone want to have another look at the whiteboard?"
Cameron's eyes widened a little. "Gout and diabetes-like symptoms. That could be - "
"Niacin overdose," Foreman interrupted, warranting a glare from Cameron. "He'd have to get an awful lot of B3 for..."
"He's old," House groaned. "He probably doesn't know his suppository from his dentures, not a stretch to think he'd take too many pills if his daughter's not doling them out for him."
"But that sort of overdose isn't life threatening," Cameron pointed out. "It would eventually just flush itself out of his system after the initial symptoms."
"And he's been here for less than a day, hasn't had a chance to yet. So treat him for the gout and get him lots of fluids."
"That's it?" Chase looked at House skeptically.
"The guy was never dying," House said with a roll of his eyes. "The only reason I got this piddling little case was because he's a celebrity. And now I've solved it and now it's done. Except I think we should keep him here for several days for observation."
After all, no need to rush back to the clinic.
*****
While his underlings kept an eye on that patient, House was in his office later that day working on another diagnosis. This time he was scrawling symptoms into a legal pad (even though he'd been tempted to use the whiteboard, he'd resisted).
blow dries hair
paints toenails
likes old musicals
three failed marriages (to WOMEN)
can cook
far too pretty for a straight man
"Differential diagnosis," he muttered, and tapped the end of his pen almost violently onto the pad. He was sitting in the chair by the door, so he kicked his feet up on the ottoman.
"I thought you said you were going to come by my office."
House nearly jumped out of his skin when he looked up and saw Wilson standing in his doorway. "Jesus Christ, don't you knock anymore?"
"What, like you knock when you come see me?" Wilson frowned and crossed the room as House tried to figure out how to hide the legal pad. He finally decided that plain sight would be the least suspicious, so he just continued to hold it on his lap.
As it turned out, that wasn't the best plan.
Wilson looked down. "Did you get Mr. Donovan's test results back?" he asked. "I thought you were going to keep me informed." And with that, he snatched the pad away from House.
And read it. And then read it again, his eyes bulging even wider.
"House!" he finally blurted, "what the hell is this?"
House shrugged, trying to look innocent. "They're symptoms. Suggested diagnosis, Doctor?"
"Oh, cute," Wilson snapped. "Very cute." He threw the pad back at House, narrowly missing his head. "If you think I'm gay, maybe you should just ask me instead of mocking me behind my back."
House blinked. That thought hadn't really occurred to him. "Well are you?"
"You're the big shot diagnostician, why don't you tell me?" Wilson still looked pretty pissed. "I'm surprised you weren't going through my things while I was staying at your place. Maybe you would have found my porn collection." Looking disgusted, he started back towards the door.
House looked back down at his list, then called after Wilson just as the glass door started to close, "Hey, were you serious about the porn thing?"
*****
House frowned down at his pager as it started to beep insistently. Luckily he didn't have to wait too long to figure out why he was being summoned, because Chase ran into his office.
Pausing to catch his breath, Chase blurted, "Donovan had a stroke."
"What?" House pulled himself to his feet. "A niacin overdose wouldn't cause a stroke."
"I know." Chase fell into step beside him as House limped out of his office towards the elevator. "It's not the Vitamin B, House. He hasn't been getting better at all. In fact, I'd say the stroke makes him decidedly worse."
"How bad was it?"
"Not bad. It was a small one, and his daughter was with him so they caught it right away. Doesn't appear to be any permanent damage."
In the elevator, House pushed the button roughly with the end of his cane. He did not like being wrong.
Chase looked like he was about to say something, then had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. At least, until they got out of the elevator and he realized that they were on the wrong floor.
"Uh, House? Donovan's room is on the - "
"We're not going to see Donovan, we're going to see Jimmy."
Chase looked confused. "But - "
"Not that Jimmy. My Jimmy." Okay, bad choice of words, perhaps. "He's on clinic duty."
Chase just sighed and followed him, right up to the point where House glanced at the board over the nurse's station and then burst into the room where Wilson was seeing a patient.
"House? What the - I'm with a patient!"
"I see that." House glanced at the teenaged boy sitting on the examining table, his head tilted back with a kleenex sopping up a nosebleed. He took a few more seconds to take in the rest of the scene: a condom-shaped bulge in his pocket, the Freemont High Varsity Wrestling tshirt. Then he leaned forward and sniffed. The kid gave him an alarmed look.
"You probably believe that old wives tale about how getting sexually excited leads to a nosebleed," House said with a roll of his eyes.
He looked at Wilson and said flatly, "Your junior bodybuilder here has been supplementing his diet with too much fish oil. If he was a little older he'd probably be having a bleeding stroke instead."
Wilson opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and took a breath. "If you'll excuse me for just a second," he said to the kid, and then practically hauled House out of the room. "What do you want?" he hissed when they were safely outside.
"Hey, don't thank me or anything for doing your job for you."
"House."
"Okay, fine. I want you to tell me about Jimmy Donovan."
"What about him?"
Chase, who was standing at a safe distance, piped in, "He just had a stroke."
Wilson looked alarmed. "What? Is he okay?"
"Yes, he's okay," House said irritably. "But who knows if he'll stay that way if I don't figure out what's wrong with him. Focus."
"Oh, please. You don't care if he gets better or not, you're just pissed that your diagnosis was wrong."
"Just because you've got some sort of man-crush on the guy - "
"A what? For the love of - he must be nearly eighty years old!"
"Yeah, well until recently I thought I knew your type pretty well, but it seems I might have been wrong about that."
Chase cleared his throat.
The back of Wilson's neck went red, and there was a beat of silence before he answered. "Okay, House. Tell me what you want to know."
"You've been visiting him. I want to know if he has any symptoms, maybe less obvious ones, that we haven't noticed." Leaning heavily on his cane, House shoved his left hand into his pocket and pulled out his bottle of Vicodin.
"I... no. You know I'd tell you."
"Maybe you're just not noticing the right things." House twisted off the lid and palmed one of the pills.
"I'm a doctor too," Wilson snapped.
House started to retort, then seemed to reconsider and kept his voice level. "Anything at all. Psychological, even. What do you talk about?"
Wilson sighed. "I don't know... his career, the things he's seen. He's lived a fascinating life."
"Blowing bubbles," House muttered. When he saw the look Wilson gave him at that, he added quickly, "And nothing weird at all? He doesn't seem obsessive or forgetful, anything like that?"
"No, he's extremely lucid for a man his age. I'd say if anything stands out about him, it's his modesty."
"Modesty?" House frowned.
"Well, yeah... I mean, he seems embarrassed by praise. He blushes a lot."
Something about this last statement made House pause. Finally he said, "How much blushing? Like, all the time, or just when you compliment him?"
Now it was Wilson that was blushing. "Well I haven't seen him that much, and I may be a bit gushing with my - "
House interrupted by turning to Chase. "What about you? Notice blushing?"
"Well... yeah, but I thought it was because he's embarrassed by medical procedures. I mean, the only times I see him I'm changing his catheter or something."
"And the only time I talked to him I thought he was ashamed by his drinking problem," House muttered. "Damnit. Go round up Cameron and Foreman."
He started to head back towards his office, then hesitated and turned back to Wilson. "You can come if you want."
As he limped out of the clinic, he heard Wilson telling one of the nurses to get the kid with the nosebleed an icepack and tell him to lay off the fish oil supplements.
*****
As soon as everyone was gathered in the conference room, House looked sharply at Cameron. "You! When you did Donovan's initial blood work, how were his blood cell counts?"
Cameron shrugged. "White cells were up, but I assumed that was because of the gout. Fighting the inflammation."
"And hemocrit? Platelets?"
She blinked. "I didn't notice. I'm not sure if we checked, we thought it was his liver - "
House tapped the end of his pen on the whiteboard where the original list of symptoms was still scrawled.
joint pain
minor swelling of the ankle
blurred vision
dizziness
itching
high cholesterol
He crossed out the cholesterol, muttering, "He's old and eats too much pie." Then he added crossed out joint pain and swelling and replaced them, then added a few more symptoms to the bottom of the list. Now it read:
gout
blurred vision
dizziness
itching
enlarged liver
blood clot (stroke)
red coloration (facial)
increased white blood count
He turned back to his audience. His staff were seated around the conference table and Wilson was standing in the back. House jabbed his pen at the second to last symptom. "I don't think Jimmy Donovan is modest, embarrassed, or ashamed. I think his face is red because it's got too much blood in it. All the time."
He saw Cameron's eyes light up in recognition at the same time Wilson dropped his head a little and said, "Shit."
"Polycythemia," Cameron said. "His bone marrow's producing too many blood cells."
"The increased cell turnover causes the gout," Foreman added, rubbing his temples.
"And half of patients with Polycythemia have an enlarged liver or spleen," Chase added after a moment.
House glanced back at Wilson. "It's a slow progressing disease. He's probably been having symptoms for years and just chalked them up health problems due to his drinking."
"And now it's gotten bad enough to start causing blood clots," Wilson sighed.
House nodded, then looked down at his staff. "Check his red blood cell count and arterial oxygen level. Schedule a bone marrow biopsy as well. We want to be sure."
House knew he was right this time, and apparently everyone else agreed with him because Cameron, Foreman, and Chase filed out without further discussion, and Wilson crossed the room with a downcast expression and a hand on the back of his neck.
"You want to be sure," he said quietly, "because you think for someone his age, phlebotomy won't be enough to treat it."
House shook his head. "With his health, we wouldn't be able to draw enough blood at regular intervals to keep up with the progression of the disease."
"So you're going to put him on myelosuppressive agents."
"Right. They'll suppress the production of red blood cells and platelets."
Wilson sighed. "And triple his chances for getting leukemia."
"It's either that or he dies in the next six months from a heart attack or a stroke." House shrugged. "Life's a bitch. The poor guy was better off when we thought it was a Vitamin B overdose. But even if he does get leukemia - "
Wilson looked at him sharply. "What? Seventy-eight is too old to still be alive anyway?"
House lifted an eyebrow. "Actually, I was going to say, at least he'll have a good oncologist."
"Oh." Wilson relaxed. "Right. Just... damn. I wish we had better news for him. Well." He looked at House. "At least you solved your puzzle."
"True." House yawned a little, then said, "I should go see Cuddy and give her the update on our resident celebrity. You want to come over tonight? I think you left some of your porn stash at my place."
Wilson's mouth dropped open. "House - "
"Relax, I'm joking. But you should come anyway. Bring Chinese, I've been jonesing for shrimp lo mein."
Wilson hesitated. "Sure. I've got a meeting with my lawyer this evening; I'll come by after."
"You're almost free, huh?" House said with a smirk. "Free as pretty bubbles in the air?"
Wilson rolled his eyes and left, and House found himself humming the stupid song to himself.
*****
That night, House still hadn't gotten the stupid song out of his head, and he was sitting at the piano picking out the melody when Wilson arrived. He didn't hear the knock, so when the other man let himself in, he was still sitting there singing just under his breath.
"Pretty bubbles in the air
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky
Then like my dreams, they fade and die
Fortune's always hiding
I've looked everywhere..."
Wilson shifted on his feet when he was standing right behind House, and the sound of the bags of Chinese food rustling were what alerted him.
"Jesus Christ," House muttered, spinning around on the piano bench, "don't you knock anymore?"
"What, like you knock when you come to see me?" Wilson said with a smirk. He walked over to the coffee table and sat down the bags. "You've got a nice voice, by the way. I tried to get Mr. Donovan to sing it for me, but he said his voice has gotten too scratchy in his old age."
House sighed. "Just swear you'll never tell anyone you heard me singing that song."
"Cross my heart. But I might ask you to sing it again after dinner."
House rolled his eyes as he grabbed his cane and pulled himself to his feet, then crossed the room and sank down onto the couch in front of the food.
Wilson settled in beside him, and as he started to pull out containers, said casually, "So did you ever solve your other case?"
"My other - oh." House looked at Wilson, surprised. "I was under the impression you'd prefer I drop that one."
Wilson shrugged. "Just curious."
"Well in that case, I'd say your obvious man crush on Jimmy Donovan was the nail in that coffin," House said irritably.
Wilson lifted an eyebrow. "First of all, it's not a crush. Second of all, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were jealous."
"Good thing you do know better then!"
Another shrug. "So how is he?"
House opened the container of lo mein and plunged in a set of chopsticks. "As well as can be expected. I was right, his red cell and platelet count are through the roof. Once the biopsy comes through they'll start the bloodletting."
"You make it sound like they're using leeches."
"Or vampires."
"Ew."
They ate in silence for a few more minutes, until the nag of House's unfinished diagnosis was just too much for him to bear.
"Okay," he finally said, "so let's say you were gay. Would someone like Jimmy Donovan be your type?"
Wilson looked at him evenly. "What do you think?"
"Hell if I know! Your taste in women sucks too, obviously."
"You're right there." A pause. "Though I think my taste in men would suck even worse."
"Why's that?"
"Well, because Jimmy Donovan wouldn't interest me, I don't think. Not even back in the day, when he was young and handsome."
"He was handsome?"
Wilson rolled his eyes. "Yes, fifty years ago. But yeah, I don't think I'd go for him. I think I'd need someone who would challenge me more." He looked into the carton of pork as he spoke, keeping his eyes steadfastly away from House. "Intelligent, witty, sarcastic. Uncompromising, talented, unapproachable." He wet his lips. "Tall. Scruffy."
House turned his head and just looked at Wilson for a second. "Huh," he finally said. "You're right. Your taste does suck."
Wilson smiled sheepishly. "Told you. So." He hesitated. "What about you? If you liked men, I mean."
House looked thoughtful for a moment as he twirled a noodle around his chopsticks. "I think I'd like a man who blow dries his hair," he said after a moment, "paints his toenails, likes old musicals, can cook, has a few failed marriages, and of course... is far too pretty for a straight man."
Wilson put down his carton of food and stared at House blankly, as if trying to figure out if there was a punchline. "If you liked men," he repeated.
"Right. If I liked men." House shrugged. "Though while we're being so honest with one another, I guess I should tell you that the last hooker I hired was named Derek."
Wilson's face was suddenly a startling shade of pink. "Is - is that so?"
"Uh huh. Made him wear ugly ties."
Wilson swallowed, and stared down into the carton of pork. "Hey, Greg? I think there's something I'd like you to do for me after dinner."
"James, I am not singing that stupid song for you. No more bubbles. Ever."
Wilson met his gaze. "Actually," he said, "I was thinking we could skip the bubbles and go straight to the blowing."
And this time, it was House who blushed.
Author: violet_quill
Rating: PG-13 (some language and sexual innuendo)
Words: 5500
Prompt: 36. A new patient at PPTH is a famous movie actor or actress from the 1940's. Wilson is star struck, idolizing him or her. House gets jealous.
Disclaimer: not my characters, if there was ever any doubt
Notes: This fic is rather heavy on the medical side of things, and I am no doctor - so if I've gotten things wrong, just chalk it up to artistic license.
The emergency room nurses were immediately buzzing, whispers propagating back and forth among the staff, making their way to the other departments from nurse to secretary to janitor, and the occasional doctor.
By lunchtime, nearly everyone in the hospital knew that Jimmy Donovan was a patient at PPTH. What they didn't know was what was wrong with him - because the doctors in the emergency room couldn't quite seem to decide. After all, he was old, and old people rushed to the hospital with things like joint pain, dizziness, and blurred vision was not an uncommon thing. Especially when that person's daughter informed the doctors that he'd been living on a steady diet of pastries and sweet tea for the past several years.
Of course, when his blood sugar tested at normal levels, they were stumped again. And the last thing they could do with someone like Jimmy Donovan was send him home with a pat on the back and no diagnosis, no matter how old he was. So they checked him into a private room, and Cuddy looked in on him herself before heading to the clinic to fetch his new doctor.
His new doctor, however, was not so keen on being fetched.
"Can't you see I'm busy?" House asked. And he was. Very, very busy trying for the fifth time to beat the Tetris high score that some punk kid in the waiting room had put onto his Gameboy. Maybe he shouldn't have left it sitting on the nurse's station while he'd seen a patient, but it was okay, he'd gotten the kid back. Told his mother he was smoking pot. It was probably even true; all the kids were doing it these days.
"There are patients out there, House," Cuddy sighed. "But I'll give you a break. Here." She shoved the file at him. "Everyone in the hospital's been clamoring for this one but I'm giving it to you. You can thank me later."
House frowned as the little blocks filled up his screen, then tossed the Gameboy onto the bed and snatched the file from Cuddy. He scanned it. "Clamoring. Right. I'm sure that a seventy-eight year old man with diabetes is terribly fascinating to everyone."
"He doesn't have diabetes," Cuddy said. "Blood sugar's normal."
House held the file back out to her. "Okay, so maybe it's gout and a touch of the flu. Honestly, you waste my talents. Old people are boring."
"House, you're taking this case."
"What, is this the vice president or something? I mean, I know he's old, but if he can still shoot straight..."
"House!" Cuddy jabbed her finger to the label on the file. "It's Jimmy Donovan!"
"Jimmy who-avan?"
"Dono - you really don't know who he is?" Cuddy frowned.
"No, I really don't know who he is," House said irritably. "Big donor or something? Because really, Cuddy, he's old. He'll be donating his organs instead of the big money soon anyway..."
Cuddy sighed and looked down at House as if preparing to scold a small child. "Jimmy Donovan is a screen legend. He was huge in the forties. Was in all the musicals, probably bigger than Fred Astaire... you do know who Fred Astaire is, right House?"
"Right, dancer or something. I don't trust men in tutus."
"Oh, for Christ's sake." Cuddy put her hands on her hips and looked furtively around the room as if she didn't want anyone to bear witness to what she was about to say. "Okay. No clinic duty while you're on his case."
"Not at all? The whole time he's here?"
"The whole time he's here."
"Well!" House cradled the file to his chest. "In that case, let's make sure the old guy stays alive for quite a while, shall we?"
*****
The symptoms were already neatly - well as neat as House's handwriting got anyway - laid out on the whiteboard when his staff arrived.
joint pain
minor swelling of the ankle
blurred vision
dizziness
itching
high cholesterol
"Oh yeah," House said as soon as they sat down around the conference table, "and he's old."
"How's his diet?" Foreman asked, frowning. "If his cholesterol's high..."
"It sucks," House said. "He's about forty pounds overweight. But it's not - "
"Diabetes?" Chase suggested helpfully.
"Very good, Chase. Like I said. Not diabetes. Besides, if it had gone untreated for this long he'd be in much worse shape than he is now. He probably wouldn't have ankles to be swelling."
Cameron was already flipping through the file. She paused on one page and read something again. "This is interesting," she said. "Apparently he's lost about ten pounds since his last physical. And his cholesterol's down, too."
"Mmmm." House tapped his cane on the floor. "Swelled ankles, dizziness, itching, weight loss... And what if he's had some more unpleasant symptoms that he didn't want to tell his daughter? Or ones that he didn't notice? Say... bloody stool, fluid retention, degraded mental function?"
"You think it's his liver," Foreman said after a beat.
"Cirrhosis," Cameron murmured at the same time.
House waved a hand dismissively. "Somebody go find out just how much our resident screen legend's been hitting the bottle since he got too wide for widescreen."
Cameron's made a small noise of surprise and flipped the file shut to look at the label. "This is Jimmy Donovan? I heard he was here!"
"Does everyone know about this guy but me?" House rolled his eyes and looked back up at the whiteboard, pleased with his diagnosis.
"I've never heard of him," Chase chimed in.
"Believe it or not, House, there's more to pop culture than videogames and The L Word," Foreman said with a snort.
"Touché. But you forgot Nurses Gone Wild. Now why isn't anyone raiding his liquor cabinet yet? Go!"
All three of them had filed out and House was about to settle down with Tetris again when Wilson walked in.
He paused in the doorway, a look of disbelief on his face. "You got Jimmy Donovan?"
House looked up and frowned. "What, you know him too? Don't you people have better things to do than watch old movies with men dancing around in tutus?"
"Tutus? What the hell are you talking about?" Wilson crossed the room to House. "He's a singer, House. Not with the dancing so much, but he did that, too. Sort of like Elvis' movies where there was always an excuse for him to sing." He paused, and then added childishly, "You do know who Elvis is, right?"
"Sure do. Used to sit beside him on the bus. He likes pastrami on rye."
Wilson rolled his eyes. "Well, you do watch TV. You know those new Volkswagen commercials that - "
"Don't watch commercials. Tivo."
"House, I know for a fact that you watch the commercials during baseball season because you prefer it live."
House looked shifty. "Okay, yeah. Volkswagen. The ones with that gay song in the background?"
Wilson hesitated. "Uh... yeah. I mean, no! It's not gay, House. It's 'Forever Blowing Bubbles'. That's Jimmy Donovan's version. In the commercial. It was in one of his films."
"Oh, great, now I really hate the guy."
"Hey, he sings better than you," Wilson said defensively. "I'm a fan, okay? I really like his films."
House narrowed his eyes. "Let me get this straight. You blow dry your hair, you paint your toenails, you know how to cook, you like old movies with songs like 'Forever Blowing Bubbles' in them, oh, and three divorces..."
"Cut it out, House."
House threw up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm just saying. What, have you got a crush on the big movie star, Jimmy? Aww, that's so cute. You do realize that he's old, fat, and bald now, right?"
"Oh, go to hell," Wilson muttered, turning to go.
"Hey, don't be too jealous that I got the case!" House called after him as Wilson left the conference room. "If it's not cirrhosis, my next guess is cancer - you might get a shot at him yet!"
*****
It wasn't cirrhosis.
"What do you mean it's not?" House sighed and let his head loll back in his chair.
Foreman had been the one elected to bring the news. "I mean, it's not. Did a CAT scan. The liver is slightly enlarged, but there's no scar tissue. True, it could be in the very early stages, but in that case the other symptoms wouldn't have surfaced yet."
"CAT scan? Did I say to do a CAT scan? I said to find his booze!"
"I asked his daughter. She said he doesn't - "
House groaned loudly. "Please. She's lying!"
"And that's why I did the test." Foreman looked at him evenly.
"Tests schmests! Tests lie too." House grabbed his cane and pulled himself to his feet.
"Where are you going?" Foreman asked, sounding surprised.
"To talk to the daughter, you schmuck! She's a big fat liar!"
Well, she may have been a liar, but as House discovered shortly, she was a young, thin, and pretty one. The first thing he did was blink in surprise and say, "Jesus Christ, how old was he when he got it up to make you?"
The woman stiffened. "Excuse me?"
"Come on, how old are you? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? That man is older than my father. He must have been nearing sixty when you were born!"
"My mother was his third wife," the woman conceded, looking behind House as if she expected some men in white coats to drag him to a padded room. Or perhaps some policemen. "Are you a doctor?"
"Yes, I'm your father's doctor. And in my medical opinion he'd probably be a lot healthier if he hadn't been banging women a third of his age. But that's not really relevant at the moment. What's your name again?"
"Louise Donovan." She looked behind him again.
"Hey Louise, there's no one there. I'm it. So." He put a hand on his cane and leaned forward a little. "How long's your dad been knocking back a dozen cocktails every night?"
"What?" She looked genuinely offended. "He's done no such thing! My father is not an alcoholic. I don't know what that other doctor told you, but..."
"Does he still live with your mother?"
"No, they divorced when I was twelve. But I live with him now, to help him, and I would know if - "
"Does he have his own room?"
She blinked. "Of course. But - "
"Uh huh, okay. We're done here." House ignored her protests and just started walking, finally limping into Jimmy Donovan's hospital room.
He was surprised to find that Donovan had a visitor. Wilson.
"What the hell are you doing with my patient?" House snapped.
Wilson looked up from where he was sitting in a chair by the bed, blinking in surprise. "I thought I'd keep him company while you were interrogating his daughter. Is that okay?"
"Of course it's okay," the old man said pleasantly. "Dr. Wilson was just telling me - "
"That he's a big fan. Right." House scowled at Wilson. "Now it's his turn to be interrogated. Go."
"He could stay - "
"I could stay - "
House's scowl deepened. "May I have a word with you, Jimmy?" He grabbed Wilson's arm, and looked at the man in the bed. "No, not you. Look, your biggest fan has your name, too. Isn't that adorable?"
Wilson grudgingly allowed himself to be dragged to the doorway. "Why do you care if I'm here?"
"Because I'm about to find out all his dirty little secrets, and he's not going to spill them in front of someone who's looking at him with big puppy dog hero worship eyes."
Wilson hesitated. "Okay. I guess."
House sighed. "Oh, just go to your office. I promise I'll come by later and let you know how he's doing. Okay?"
Wilson nodded and then looked back to the bed. "I'll come by and see you later, Mr. Donovan. Don't worry, Dr. House here is a great... doctor."
House waited for Wilson to shut the door behind him, then limped back over to the bed. "So," he said with mock cheerfulness, "pretty good at hiding your booze, huh?"
Donovan looked up, confused. "What?"
"Hi, I'm that great doctor your number one fan was just talking about. Now tell me how much you like your scotch."
Donovan hesitated. "I - I don't - "
"Yeah, yeah, look, I'm not your daughter. I'm not the press. I'm not an adoring fan. Hell, I'm not a fan at all, I haven't even heard of you. I'm just the doctor trying to save your life. Now spill it."
*****
"It's not cirrhosis of the liver!" House announced cheerfully as he limped into the conference room where his staff was already waiting.
"I know," Foreman snapped. "I already told you that."
"Well, sure, but you cheated. You got a CAT scan. And you got the wrong information. Our Mr. Donovan is one of those alcoholics so talented that not only can he hide all of his booze from his daughter, but he can hide his doctors visits as well." House leaned against the counter and pulled a yoyo out of his pocket.
"There wasn't any recent medical history in his chart aside from a physical last year..." Cameron murmured, flipping through it again.
"Don't be an idiot, Cameron. Who do you think gave that medical history?"
"Oh. The daughter."
He swung the yoyo down and caught it. "Bingo. So let's assume for a second that our sweet old bubble-blowing patient was so worried about his daughter and his fans finding out about his drinking problem that when the doctor at that physical told him his liver was slightly enlarged, he begged him not to put it on his chart, swearing that he'd go see a specialist."
"Are we really just assuming, or did he tell you this?" Foreman interrupted.
"Hush, I'm telling a story." Down came the yoyo again. "So let's say that when Jimmy Donovan said 'specialist' he meant any hack doctor that would accept cash and treat him without keeping records. And when this hack doctor sees this slightly enlarged liver, he chalks it up to minor liver stress. Which is great for him because he can recommend a course of treatment that doesn't require a prescription - you know, those messy things that leave records and whatnot." He paused, then added, "And also keep in mind that his cholesterol has randomly gotten better without specific treatment."
Chase, who had been chewing on the end of his pencil, pulled it out of his mouth and said, "Vitamin B? Some idiot doctor saw a real problem with his liver and did nothing except give him some Vitamin B?"
"Lots and lots of Vitamin B," House corrected. "Now, with that new piece of information, anyone want to have another look at the whiteboard?"
Cameron's eyes widened a little. "Gout and diabetes-like symptoms. That could be - "
"Niacin overdose," Foreman interrupted, warranting a glare from Cameron. "He'd have to get an awful lot of B3 for..."
"He's old," House groaned. "He probably doesn't know his suppository from his dentures, not a stretch to think he'd take too many pills if his daughter's not doling them out for him."
"But that sort of overdose isn't life threatening," Cameron pointed out. "It would eventually just flush itself out of his system after the initial symptoms."
"And he's been here for less than a day, hasn't had a chance to yet. So treat him for the gout and get him lots of fluids."
"That's it?" Chase looked at House skeptically.
"The guy was never dying," House said with a roll of his eyes. "The only reason I got this piddling little case was because he's a celebrity. And now I've solved it and now it's done. Except I think we should keep him here for several days for observation."
After all, no need to rush back to the clinic.
*****
While his underlings kept an eye on that patient, House was in his office later that day working on another diagnosis. This time he was scrawling symptoms into a legal pad (even though he'd been tempted to use the whiteboard, he'd resisted).
blow dries hair
paints toenails
likes old musicals
three failed marriages (to WOMEN)
can cook
far too pretty for a straight man
"Differential diagnosis," he muttered, and tapped the end of his pen almost violently onto the pad. He was sitting in the chair by the door, so he kicked his feet up on the ottoman.
"I thought you said you were going to come by my office."
House nearly jumped out of his skin when he looked up and saw Wilson standing in his doorway. "Jesus Christ, don't you knock anymore?"
"What, like you knock when you come see me?" Wilson frowned and crossed the room as House tried to figure out how to hide the legal pad. He finally decided that plain sight would be the least suspicious, so he just continued to hold it on his lap.
As it turned out, that wasn't the best plan.
Wilson looked down. "Did you get Mr. Donovan's test results back?" he asked. "I thought you were going to keep me informed." And with that, he snatched the pad away from House.
And read it. And then read it again, his eyes bulging even wider.
"House!" he finally blurted, "what the hell is this?"
House shrugged, trying to look innocent. "They're symptoms. Suggested diagnosis, Doctor?"
"Oh, cute," Wilson snapped. "Very cute." He threw the pad back at House, narrowly missing his head. "If you think I'm gay, maybe you should just ask me instead of mocking me behind my back."
House blinked. That thought hadn't really occurred to him. "Well are you?"
"You're the big shot diagnostician, why don't you tell me?" Wilson still looked pretty pissed. "I'm surprised you weren't going through my things while I was staying at your place. Maybe you would have found my porn collection." Looking disgusted, he started back towards the door.
House looked back down at his list, then called after Wilson just as the glass door started to close, "Hey, were you serious about the porn thing?"
*****
House frowned down at his pager as it started to beep insistently. Luckily he didn't have to wait too long to figure out why he was being summoned, because Chase ran into his office.
Pausing to catch his breath, Chase blurted, "Donovan had a stroke."
"What?" House pulled himself to his feet. "A niacin overdose wouldn't cause a stroke."
"I know." Chase fell into step beside him as House limped out of his office towards the elevator. "It's not the Vitamin B, House. He hasn't been getting better at all. In fact, I'd say the stroke makes him decidedly worse."
"How bad was it?"
"Not bad. It was a small one, and his daughter was with him so they caught it right away. Doesn't appear to be any permanent damage."
In the elevator, House pushed the button roughly with the end of his cane. He did not like being wrong.
Chase looked like he was about to say something, then had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. At least, until they got out of the elevator and he realized that they were on the wrong floor.
"Uh, House? Donovan's room is on the - "
"We're not going to see Donovan, we're going to see Jimmy."
Chase looked confused. "But - "
"Not that Jimmy. My Jimmy." Okay, bad choice of words, perhaps. "He's on clinic duty."
Chase just sighed and followed him, right up to the point where House glanced at the board over the nurse's station and then burst into the room where Wilson was seeing a patient.
"House? What the - I'm with a patient!"
"I see that." House glanced at the teenaged boy sitting on the examining table, his head tilted back with a kleenex sopping up a nosebleed. He took a few more seconds to take in the rest of the scene: a condom-shaped bulge in his pocket, the Freemont High Varsity Wrestling tshirt. Then he leaned forward and sniffed. The kid gave him an alarmed look.
"You probably believe that old wives tale about how getting sexually excited leads to a nosebleed," House said with a roll of his eyes.
He looked at Wilson and said flatly, "Your junior bodybuilder here has been supplementing his diet with too much fish oil. If he was a little older he'd probably be having a bleeding stroke instead."
Wilson opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and took a breath. "If you'll excuse me for just a second," he said to the kid, and then practically hauled House out of the room. "What do you want?" he hissed when they were safely outside.
"Hey, don't thank me or anything for doing your job for you."
"House."
"Okay, fine. I want you to tell me about Jimmy Donovan."
"What about him?"
Chase, who was standing at a safe distance, piped in, "He just had a stroke."
Wilson looked alarmed. "What? Is he okay?"
"Yes, he's okay," House said irritably. "But who knows if he'll stay that way if I don't figure out what's wrong with him. Focus."
"Oh, please. You don't care if he gets better or not, you're just pissed that your diagnosis was wrong."
"Just because you've got some sort of man-crush on the guy - "
"A what? For the love of - he must be nearly eighty years old!"
"Yeah, well until recently I thought I knew your type pretty well, but it seems I might have been wrong about that."
Chase cleared his throat.
The back of Wilson's neck went red, and there was a beat of silence before he answered. "Okay, House. Tell me what you want to know."
"You've been visiting him. I want to know if he has any symptoms, maybe less obvious ones, that we haven't noticed." Leaning heavily on his cane, House shoved his left hand into his pocket and pulled out his bottle of Vicodin.
"I... no. You know I'd tell you."
"Maybe you're just not noticing the right things." House twisted off the lid and palmed one of the pills.
"I'm a doctor too," Wilson snapped.
House started to retort, then seemed to reconsider and kept his voice level. "Anything at all. Psychological, even. What do you talk about?"
Wilson sighed. "I don't know... his career, the things he's seen. He's lived a fascinating life."
"Blowing bubbles," House muttered. When he saw the look Wilson gave him at that, he added quickly, "And nothing weird at all? He doesn't seem obsessive or forgetful, anything like that?"
"No, he's extremely lucid for a man his age. I'd say if anything stands out about him, it's his modesty."
"Modesty?" House frowned.
"Well, yeah... I mean, he seems embarrassed by praise. He blushes a lot."
Something about this last statement made House pause. Finally he said, "How much blushing? Like, all the time, or just when you compliment him?"
Now it was Wilson that was blushing. "Well I haven't seen him that much, and I may be a bit gushing with my - "
House interrupted by turning to Chase. "What about you? Notice blushing?"
"Well... yeah, but I thought it was because he's embarrassed by medical procedures. I mean, the only times I see him I'm changing his catheter or something."
"And the only time I talked to him I thought he was ashamed by his drinking problem," House muttered. "Damnit. Go round up Cameron and Foreman."
He started to head back towards his office, then hesitated and turned back to Wilson. "You can come if you want."
As he limped out of the clinic, he heard Wilson telling one of the nurses to get the kid with the nosebleed an icepack and tell him to lay off the fish oil supplements.
*****
As soon as everyone was gathered in the conference room, House looked sharply at Cameron. "You! When you did Donovan's initial blood work, how were his blood cell counts?"
Cameron shrugged. "White cells were up, but I assumed that was because of the gout. Fighting the inflammation."
"And hemocrit? Platelets?"
She blinked. "I didn't notice. I'm not sure if we checked, we thought it was his liver - "
House tapped the end of his pen on the whiteboard where the original list of symptoms was still scrawled.
joint pain
minor swelling of the ankle
blurred vision
dizziness
itching
high cholesterol
He crossed out the cholesterol, muttering, "He's old and eats too much pie." Then he added crossed out joint pain and swelling and replaced them, then added a few more symptoms to the bottom of the list. Now it read:
gout
blurred vision
dizziness
itching
enlarged liver
blood clot (stroke)
red coloration (facial)
increased white blood count
He turned back to his audience. His staff were seated around the conference table and Wilson was standing in the back. House jabbed his pen at the second to last symptom. "I don't think Jimmy Donovan is modest, embarrassed, or ashamed. I think his face is red because it's got too much blood in it. All the time."
He saw Cameron's eyes light up in recognition at the same time Wilson dropped his head a little and said, "Shit."
"Polycythemia," Cameron said. "His bone marrow's producing too many blood cells."
"The increased cell turnover causes the gout," Foreman added, rubbing his temples.
"And half of patients with Polycythemia have an enlarged liver or spleen," Chase added after a moment.
House glanced back at Wilson. "It's a slow progressing disease. He's probably been having symptoms for years and just chalked them up health problems due to his drinking."
"And now it's gotten bad enough to start causing blood clots," Wilson sighed.
House nodded, then looked down at his staff. "Check his red blood cell count and arterial oxygen level. Schedule a bone marrow biopsy as well. We want to be sure."
House knew he was right this time, and apparently everyone else agreed with him because Cameron, Foreman, and Chase filed out without further discussion, and Wilson crossed the room with a downcast expression and a hand on the back of his neck.
"You want to be sure," he said quietly, "because you think for someone his age, phlebotomy won't be enough to treat it."
House shook his head. "With his health, we wouldn't be able to draw enough blood at regular intervals to keep up with the progression of the disease."
"So you're going to put him on myelosuppressive agents."
"Right. They'll suppress the production of red blood cells and platelets."
Wilson sighed. "And triple his chances for getting leukemia."
"It's either that or he dies in the next six months from a heart attack or a stroke." House shrugged. "Life's a bitch. The poor guy was better off when we thought it was a Vitamin B overdose. But even if he does get leukemia - "
Wilson looked at him sharply. "What? Seventy-eight is too old to still be alive anyway?"
House lifted an eyebrow. "Actually, I was going to say, at least he'll have a good oncologist."
"Oh." Wilson relaxed. "Right. Just... damn. I wish we had better news for him. Well." He looked at House. "At least you solved your puzzle."
"True." House yawned a little, then said, "I should go see Cuddy and give her the update on our resident celebrity. You want to come over tonight? I think you left some of your porn stash at my place."
Wilson's mouth dropped open. "House - "
"Relax, I'm joking. But you should come anyway. Bring Chinese, I've been jonesing for shrimp lo mein."
Wilson hesitated. "Sure. I've got a meeting with my lawyer this evening; I'll come by after."
"You're almost free, huh?" House said with a smirk. "Free as pretty bubbles in the air?"
Wilson rolled his eyes and left, and House found himself humming the stupid song to himself.
*****
That night, House still hadn't gotten the stupid song out of his head, and he was sitting at the piano picking out the melody when Wilson arrived. He didn't hear the knock, so when the other man let himself in, he was still sitting there singing just under his breath.
"Pretty bubbles in the air
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky
Then like my dreams, they fade and die
Fortune's always hiding
I've looked everywhere..."
Wilson shifted on his feet when he was standing right behind House, and the sound of the bags of Chinese food rustling were what alerted him.
"Jesus Christ," House muttered, spinning around on the piano bench, "don't you knock anymore?"
"What, like you knock when you come to see me?" Wilson said with a smirk. He walked over to the coffee table and sat down the bags. "You've got a nice voice, by the way. I tried to get Mr. Donovan to sing it for me, but he said his voice has gotten too scratchy in his old age."
House sighed. "Just swear you'll never tell anyone you heard me singing that song."
"Cross my heart. But I might ask you to sing it again after dinner."
House rolled his eyes as he grabbed his cane and pulled himself to his feet, then crossed the room and sank down onto the couch in front of the food.
Wilson settled in beside him, and as he started to pull out containers, said casually, "So did you ever solve your other case?"
"My other - oh." House looked at Wilson, surprised. "I was under the impression you'd prefer I drop that one."
Wilson shrugged. "Just curious."
"Well in that case, I'd say your obvious man crush on Jimmy Donovan was the nail in that coffin," House said irritably.
Wilson lifted an eyebrow. "First of all, it's not a crush. Second of all, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were jealous."
"Good thing you do know better then!"
Another shrug. "So how is he?"
House opened the container of lo mein and plunged in a set of chopsticks. "As well as can be expected. I was right, his red cell and platelet count are through the roof. Once the biopsy comes through they'll start the bloodletting."
"You make it sound like they're using leeches."
"Or vampires."
"Ew."
They ate in silence for a few more minutes, until the nag of House's unfinished diagnosis was just too much for him to bear.
"Okay," he finally said, "so let's say you were gay. Would someone like Jimmy Donovan be your type?"
Wilson looked at him evenly. "What do you think?"
"Hell if I know! Your taste in women sucks too, obviously."
"You're right there." A pause. "Though I think my taste in men would suck even worse."
"Why's that?"
"Well, because Jimmy Donovan wouldn't interest me, I don't think. Not even back in the day, when he was young and handsome."
"He was handsome?"
Wilson rolled his eyes. "Yes, fifty years ago. But yeah, I don't think I'd go for him. I think I'd need someone who would challenge me more." He looked into the carton of pork as he spoke, keeping his eyes steadfastly away from House. "Intelligent, witty, sarcastic. Uncompromising, talented, unapproachable." He wet his lips. "Tall. Scruffy."
House turned his head and just looked at Wilson for a second. "Huh," he finally said. "You're right. Your taste does suck."
Wilson smiled sheepishly. "Told you. So." He hesitated. "What about you? If you liked men, I mean."
House looked thoughtful for a moment as he twirled a noodle around his chopsticks. "I think I'd like a man who blow dries his hair," he said after a moment, "paints his toenails, likes old musicals, can cook, has a few failed marriages, and of course... is far too pretty for a straight man."
Wilson put down his carton of food and stared at House blankly, as if trying to figure out if there was a punchline. "If you liked men," he repeated.
"Right. If I liked men." House shrugged. "Though while we're being so honest with one another, I guess I should tell you that the last hooker I hired was named Derek."
Wilson's face was suddenly a startling shade of pink. "Is - is that so?"
"Uh huh. Made him wear ugly ties."
Wilson swallowed, and stared down into the carton of pork. "Hey, Greg? I think there's something I'd like you to do for me after dinner."
"James, I am not singing that stupid song for you. No more bubbles. Ever."
Wilson met his gaze. "Actually," he said, "I was thinking we could skip the bubbles and go straight to the blowing."
And this time, it was House who blushed.