Fic: Iron & Irony, chapters 1 and 2
June 2008
Rating: PG-13 for some language etc
Category: Crossover, angst, drama, hurt/comfort, romance, suspense
Spoilers: Iron Man, the movie / House MD late season 4
Pairings: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Summary: An Iron Man movieverse / House MD crossover. When Tony suspects he's caught a mystery illness, he turns to the best doctor he can find. But can House solve this puzzle?
Chapter 1: "Can you get a cooler patient than this?"
Pepper Potts gazed anxiously at the sky. Tony had called an hour ago, he should here any minute now. The next minute, she scolded herself for being so anxious. There was hardly any reason for it. He'd only been gone for a week. He could manage a week without her. If he'd lose his passport or forget his social security number, he would call her - which he hadn't done, so everything must've gone well enough.
She understood perfectly why he hadn't taken her with him: though officially it had been a simple business trip to the Stark Industries office in São Paulo, his main reason for going to Brazil had been to check out SI's new biotech center in the Amazon. There'd been reports of some kind of trouble there, possibly Iron Man -sort of trouble. He was determined to keep her out of that kind of trouble, so he'd decided he'd go without her.
The fact that he was returning in the suit instead of his private jet suggested that he'd found such trouble. He had been very brief when he'd called, he'd just said that he's near and asked her to wait for him at the windows giving to the pool, which sounded silly, but, of course, she did as he'd asked.
There he was now, a small red and gold figure high up in the sky and approaching fast. Her worry doubled when she noticed he was flying unsteadily, swerving from one side to the other as if he wasn't completely in control or quite sure of the direction. Drunkenly. That was the best word to describe his flying. But he couldn't be - he did drink way too much, but he would never! She couldn't believe he would be irresponsible enough to wear the suit while under the influence.
As he got closer, she saw to her relief that the suit was perfectly intact. No bullet holes this time, nor scratch marks or burned spots or anything of the sort. But he still wasn't flying quite right, he was coming in pretty fast and where he was headed...
He covered the last feet so fast that she had just enough time to realize what was going to happen, and then there was a splash, as Tony Stark, alias Iron Man, landed quite ungracefully in his swimming pool.
She knew his suit had underwater capabilities, so she didn't panic quite yet, just stepped outside to be closer and waited. Sure enough, he climbed up from the pool and stood at the side for a while, unmoving, as if considering what to say. When he finally spoke, what he said took her by surprise.
"Miss Potts. Stay away from the pool. I want the whole thing decontaminated as thoroughly as possible. And don't come anywhere near me."
Pepper frowned, completely at a loss. Either he really was drunk, or this was some really weird joke, or, well, whatever else this might be, she knew she wasn't going to like it.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy marched through the lobby of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, moving as fast as she could while still keeping her dignity. She was worried that she'd been too slow and she'd be too late. She had to catch him before he left the building, because he might not answer his phone once he got home, and he absolutely had to take this case. It would be great for publicity, but only if they could handle it well enough, which meant solving the case, and he was the best man for the job. On the bright side of things, Cuddy didn't fear for one second that he wouldn't take it. He'd take the case with glee as soon as he saw what it was - if only she could catch him before he left.
He was just about to open the glass door leading outside.
"House! House, wait!"
Dr. Gregory House stopped, not even bothering to turn around to face her. "There's this really annoying buzzing in my ears..." he muttered, as if to himself, but loud enough for her to hear.
"House, I have a case for you."
"No you don't. I've done a good day's work. I spent the last two days on a difficult case, I solved it, I've even done some clinic duty, there is no excuse that you can use to keep me here."
"Oh yes, there is. You'll want this one. You'll regret it if you don't take it."
"No, I won't." His tone was still as unenthusiastic as before, but at least she'd piqued his interest enough that he actually let go of the door handle and turned around. "Nothing in the world can be more appealing to me than a cold beer and a 'Prescription Passion' marathon."
"I'd bet you a hundred bucks that this is, but you wouldn't pay me anyway so there's no point."
"You're just too afraid you'd lose. All right, I'll look, and then I'll go home and you can give this," he took the file from her, "to someone else who won't have to work overtime on it."
He skimmed the file, still no feelings registering on his face except for not-so-mild annoyance. "So, someone's even sloppier than me at writing these things. There's hardly anything here to work on, and none of that is even remotely interesting."
"You might want to read the name of the patient."
"I don't care what he's called," House answered instantly, then read it, and there, finally, she got the reaction she'd been waiting for. "Oh my God. You've got to be kidding"
"I wouldn't do that to you, now, would I?"
"Would you? You'd get high doing it! But no, you're not this creative. This has to be the real thing. So, where is he?"
Tony leaned his armored head against the back wall of the cleanroom. He was sitting on the floor, partly because he didn't feel nearly sick enough to be lying down, partly because lying down in the armor was pretty uncomfortable.
He was overreacting, that was all. This was nothing. He was overreacting, and he was going to be so embarrassed when they found out that this was just the flu. He'd get loads of negative publicity, and that'd affect his company, but he didn't mind that. The most important thing was not to put anyone else at risk, so he had to be a bit overcautious and neurotic.
He'd spent almost an entire day in Brazil in self-imposed quarantine, fitting his suit with high efficiency air filters, even though he hadn't even felt sick at the time. Now he was sitting in said suit in the hospital in pretty much complete isolation. If this was the worst case scenario and he really wasn't overreacting, he sure wasn't going to spread it any further, whatever "it" might be.
He'd been waiting for an hour or so when the airlock-like door finally opened and a figure in a protective suit stepped in. He was limping badly. Must be the man Tony had come to meet. He sat up a bit more upright.
"Dr. Gregory House, I presume?"
"Wow, the Invincible Iron Man actually knows me?"
"I know a lot of pretty nurses, and you've got a reputation."
The truth was, of course, that he'd asked Pepper to find him the best diagnostician there was, and everything and everyone had pointed to Dr. House. The man had convincing credentials, although he allegedly also was a complete pain in the ass. Tony was starting to learn the truth of those allegations already.
"I do? Hm. Maybe I should take up superheroing too. I could call myself 'Superdoc'! Or maybe, if that's too obvious, how about 'the Cane'?"
"Yeah, really catchy and masculine. The girls would love that. I can just imagine what your superpowers would be like."
"Who says I haven't got such superpowers already? Of course, I couldn't compete with your legendary exploits, Mr. Stark. And you can take the suit off, everyone knows your secret identity by now, since you were kind enough to share it with the press."
"Not going to happen. I might be carrying something genetically engineered for biological warfare. It could be unusually contagious."
"The psych ward is upstairs. You're clearly suffering from severe paranoid delusions. There's no way you'll infect anyone while in here, suit or no suit, and no way we're going to be able to diagnose, let alone treat you through that thing. Call me when you've cleared your head," House declared and took a few awkward steps towards the door.
"I'm not going anywhere. I can send readings from my suit's scanners directly to your computers, you can start from there. Plus, the local authorities in Brazil are still investigating the biotech center that might be where I got this from, so they may come up with something sooner or later. Until we've got some kind of an idea of what this could be, the suit stays on."
"You really want to make things difficult, don't you? Fine. Mark my words, we are not going to have a solid diagnosis before you get out of that suit and we can examine you properly. Before that, we'll do what we can, but just because I love a challenging puzzle, and because you're Iron Man and it's incredibly cool to be diagnosing you. So," House made his way to the bed and sat on it. "Is there some marvelous superheroic story behind this mystery illness of yours?"
Tony really wasn't in the mood for House's wit, he felt dizzy and his back was killing him, probably from spending so much time in the suit. "There's a story, but it's not the least bit heroic, there's no supervillain, no action scenes and no sex."
"Boring," House sounded almost genuinely disappointed. "But let's hear it anyway."
"Long story short: I went to Brazil on a business trip, spent a few days doing business, and then went to check on my company's new biotech center. I'd heard there was something weird going on, and yeah, there really was. The head researcher was there to meet me, but the place seemed practically abandoned. He offered some half-credible explanation about a local holiday. He then gave me a tour of the facilities, which ended in a laboratory where he pulled a gun and redecorated the place with his brains. The next few days I spent cleaning up the mess and trying to figure it out. I only started feeling sick this morning when I was returning home."
"Well, that's not all that boring, though it sounds more like the X-Files than a superhero tale. Any particular reason you're so sure that you've caught a super-disease of some sort, except for the fact that you're a superhero?"
"No one was working on anything infectious at the biotech center, if that's what you're implying, but the guy's last words before blowing up his head were 'I'm sorry, Mr. Stark'. I thought it might mean something. But I'll make this clear: I'm not sure. I just don't want to take any risks."
"You've already made that clear, Mr. 'I don't want to take this suit off, I'll rather stay undiagnosed and die a martyr'. So, have you got any explanation for what was going on there?"
"None. I searched all the computers and came up with nothing, I contacted some of the researchers and they couldn't tell me anything useful, and the local equivalent of the CDC didn't find any unusual pathogens while I was there, but as I said, they're still working on it," Tony explained.
That wasn't all of it, of course. He wouldn't tell all the details about the whole mess to some random doctor, since they couldn't possibly be medically relevant. Not to mention that he really didn't have any sort of a theory yet, he just had a lot of data to go through. He'd figure this out and catch whoever was responsible, but he wouldn't be able to do that before he was sure he wasn't a walking biological weapon.
"'No unusual pathogens'. Hmm. That sounds a lot like 'It didn't come from there!', so we might want to consider all other options. Brazil is a big place, we'll need to know all the places you visited, who you slept with, what you ate - and then, all the background: whether you've got any crazy relatives, evil twin brothers, et cetera, blah blah. I'll send someone to get a complete history with all the dull details I don't want to be bothered with." House got off the bed and limped out of the room.
Tony let the back of his helmet rest against the wall again. This was going to be a very long day.
"Symptoms so far include fever," House wrote on the whiteboard, "slight tachycardia and tachypnea which are most likely just situational, dizziness, headache, plus back pain and myalgias which are not surprising due to the fact that the patient has spent the best part of the last three days in a really cool iron suit."
House stopped for a while, studying his team. Nothing new or interesting there: Foreman looked skeptical, Taub mostly expressionless, Kutner excited and eager, and Thirteen was pretty.
House turned back to the whiteboard. "And let's add paranoia," he wrote below the rest. "The patient is in complete isolation but refuses to take off the suit because he's afraid he'll spread the disease anyway. That can't be healthy behavior."
Kutner couldn't contain his enthusiasm anymore, but chimed in, "We're really diagnosing Iron Man? Can you get a cooler patient than this?"
"Sorry to disappoint, Kutner, but I'm already convinced that no matter who he is, he's not going to be a very cool case. Differential diagnosis?"
"This could be anything!" Thirteen exclaimed. "The only symptoms that can't be explained away just like that are fever, dizziness and headache, and those could mean anything from the common cold to HIV."
"The common cold? But it cannot be!" House replied, though of course it was a very likely possibility. "The Iron Man can't have the common cold. At least it has to be the super-cold or maybe even the feared 'Titanium Cold'!"
"She's right and you know that, House," Foreman commented. "We'll need to check his blood for..."
House interrupted him. "Not possible as long as he refuses to take off the suit. This is all we're going to get. The good news is that we can get readings realtime from his suit's inbuilt scanners. The bad news is that all we've got is body temperature, respiratory rate, EKG and EEG, and whatever symptoms he can describe himself."
Foreman shook his head. "This is stupid. There's no way we can diagnose him based on nothing more than that."
"Oh really? I didn't know that!" House replied with his most ironic tone. "Of course we can't, and I already told him as much. I'm sure he'll take the suit off sooner or later, either when he stops feeling sick or when he gets too sick. We just need to wait. While we're waiting, humor me and come up with something that's more interesting than the common cold."
"He's been to Brazil, could be a tropical illness. Dengue fever?" Taub suggested.
"Realistic but not all that interesting."
"How about oropouche fever or chikungunya?" Thirteen tried.
"Good! Less common and with weirder names, so they're cooler. And both possible, too."
"Ebola?" Kutner put in.
"Let's not get too jazzy here. Last I checked, Brazil is not in Africa."
"No, but he was visiting a biotech center where they might've been working on infectious disease among other things, who knows what they've got there? And then there's the story about something weird going on there and a guy who apologized to Stark and then committed suicide?"
"Kutner, you're just humoring his paranoia. Though I'm sure he was lying his socks off when he told that Stark Industries has nothing whatsoever to do with biological warfare, I'd think he was telling the truth when he said that the local biohazard teams couldn't find anything like that at the complex. As to the story, all it means is that his company has some internal problems. I'm sure he hasn't told us even half of it and he's not going to, since it's medically irrelevant. So, let's just stick to the facts instead of fantasy."
"All these tropical disease are viral and there's no treatment anyway, so if it's one of them, waiting is still all we can do," Foreman pointed out.
"Yup. As I said, this is probably going to turn out a pretty dull case. The only reason Stark is here bothering us and not at home with the flu is that he's convinced he's the center of the world, and he's completely paranoid because of that. I'm going home. Let me know if something interesting happens."
After having seen Iron Man live, which admittedly had been pretty cool, House had gotten second thoughts about taking this case. Stark wasn't very interesting as a person, not much of a puzzle - he'd been on the news often enough that House was convinced he had the man completely figured out already. So far he had seen none of Stark's allegedly keen intellect, and he doubted there really was any. Stark's reported three month captivity in Afghanistan had probably been just a publicity stunt. Stark was an annoying egoistical jerk just like House himself, but unlike House, Stark had convinced everyone, maybe even himself, that he really was a superhero do-gooder on a quest to save the world, while all he really cared about were the glory and the girls.
Chapter 2: "You can't stay like this forever"
"You can't stay like this forever, Tony," Pepper told him, exasperated. She'd spent most of yesterday arranging the decontamination of Tony's swimming pool and its surroundings, and now she was standing in a full protective suit in his hospital room.
Tony had been here, in the hospital, in quarantine, in his suit, for almost a day now, and there'd been no change, no news, nothing. As annoying as House was, he had pretty much convinced Pepper that Tony wasn't seriously ill, just seriously overcautious.
"I'm still feverish," he replied, pointing at the computer display by his bedside. They'd set it up to show what little medical data they could get out of his suit. It showed his temperature was at 101.4. "I can stay like this until I'm no longer sick."
"You could just take the suit off, let them have some blood samples and whatever else they want, find out what the problem is, and then continue convalescing at home. If you're not seriously sick, it wouldn't change anything, and if you are, then hiding in the suit will just make things worse. I mean, can you even eat in that thing?"
"I'll survive a few days without eating, and everything else I've taken care of, I've got water in the suit, and, uh, waste-management. We've been through this twice already, Pepper, and I'm not about to change my mind. Besides, that nurse with big brown eyes is really pretty, and I'd hate to leave before I've gotten to know her better."
She shook her head, huffed indignantly and headed out of the room. Like every time she came here, she had to go through the meticulous process of getting off the protective clothing and decontaminating everything and herself. Leave it to Tony to make such a spectacle of being sick. If he'd just stayed at home, in bed, drinking tea and watching TV, like normal people did... Still, underneath the annoyance, there was still the tiniest hint of worry. He was right most of the time. What if he was right now, too, and everyone else was wrong? What if scolding him and trying to coax him out of the suit and the isolation were a huge mistake?
On his way to talk to Tony Stark, Kutner ran into the man's red-headed assistant, nearly knocking her over. She was really pretty, like all the girls Stark surrounded himself with, but right now, she looked cross.
"Please tell me you have some news," she said, sounding as irked as she looked.
"Sorry, no," he answered. "I'm just going to talk to him, in case he can come up with any details we don't know that might be useful."
"Good luck to you, then, I really wish you learn something. If he'd only listen to reason..."
"You don't think he's doing the right thing here, then?"
"What, and you do?"
"Well, I suppose he knows what he's doing, he's Iron Man, after all."
"Oh please!" she cried, and walked away, leaving Kutner staring after her, baffled - but wow, was she impressive, the way she walked with those heels!
Kutner gazed until she'd disappeared from sight, then returned to what he'd been about to do, getting into a protective suit and entering Stark's room. Boy, was it weird seeing Iron Man like this, in a drab, featureless room in all his gleaming red-and-gold glory. He was sitting on the bed, talking. Kutner frowned. There was no one else in the room, so who was Stark talking to?
"Yes, I've contacted Santos's next of kin, yes, all that's taken care of. No, I'm... sort of occupied at the moment, I won't be able to stop by anytime soon, I'm afraid. Maybe next week. I'll have Pepper schedule something when it's possible. Great. Let me know instantly if there's anything new."
Of course, Stark was on the phone! He had an inbuilt phone in his helmet. Wow. Kutner could guess he couldn't probably even imagine all the gizmos Stark must have in that suit. Of course he'd want to be able to answer his phone everywhere in the world. Cool.
Unwilling to disturb the billionaire-superhero, Kutner knocked on the wall to announce his presence. "Mr. Stark? If you're not too busy, I'd like to ask some questions."
"Sure. I was just talking to my representative in Brazil. They've still got nothing. What about you?"
"Well, we've got a lot of ideas, but we can't really know if any of them are close to the truth. How're you feeling? Still the same?"
"Pretty much, yeah. Definitely not better," he answered, and coughed a little, the sound coming through strange and metallic. "Oh, and this is new, I think."
Kutner wrote "cough" on the file on the clipboard he was carrying. Too bad it was yet another nonspecific symptom. "So, I thought I'd ask you a bit more about Brazil. That biotech center of yours, what sort of things are they researching there, exactly? They haven't publicized anything, as far as I could find out."
"They haven't, since they've only been in operation for a bit over a month. I already told House we don't do bio-warfare, they haven't got anthrax or smallpox in there. They do have some hazardous materials, but no infectious disease. The main projects have to do with nanotechnology, particularly ways to utilize it in medicine."
"Couldn't that be relevant to your situation?"
"I sure hope not, it's all pretty much theoretical so far, they have are no finished products and nothing that's even been tested on humans yet. Still - I'm starting to feel like a parrot here - they weren't working on making people sick. Not my company. I've killed enough people already."
"But you've saved many, too," Kutner remarked. "You're a superhero, after all."
"I think I've harmed more than I've helped," Iron Man bowed his armor-clad head. "People like you are the real heroes. The ones that get hardly any thanks and no attention, and save more lives."
Kutner was glad he wasn't the blushing type, because if he were, he'd surely have blushed at that. He was even more convinced now than before that House hadn't got the slightest idea about what Stark really was like. He really wasn't attention-seeking and self-centered, he was a true hero. "Thank you, Mr. Stark. And for what it's worth, I believe in you. I think you're right to be cautious. Don't mind House, he doesn't like anyone and he thinks all people are lying morons."
"I figured as much already, Doctor... what was your name?"
"Kutner."
"Thanks, Doctor Kutner. Glad to know there's at least one person here who doesn't think the old rustpot has gone off his rocker."
"I'm sure I'm not the only one. Anyway, where were we..." he muttered, glancing at his clipboard. "Right. I've got a few more questions."
Kutner seemed over-eager and naive, but Tony found talking to him a refreshing change. During the day he'd spent in this hospital, nearly all conversations had been either contests of wit (with House), clinical and impersonal (with House's subordinate Doctor Taub) or more or less aggressive disputes (with Pepper). It was nice to have a conversation where the other person didn't take him for an idiot, an object of study or a five year old.
The questions Kutner asked also helped Tony to shape the ideas and theories he'd been thinking over. After the young doctor left and Tony finally had some peace and quiet, he asked Jarvis to show him the data from the Amazon biotech center again.
He wasn't at his best, his thinking slowed by the fever, the dizziness and the nagging uncertainty of whether or not he was just on a mindless wild goose chase. Still, he'd been able to figure out things, and what he'd come up with was alarming.
Doctor Jose Santos, the late head researcher at Stark Industries biotech, was the man who had first contacted Tony about something weird going on. His first report had only mentioned some missing equipment, accompanied with computer glitches: someone had taken the stuff and removed any records of it, but Santos or someone under him had noticed the theft nevertheless. Later, Santos had sent a report concerning trouble with some of the personnel, who had lots of poorly explained absences from work on one hand, a lot of overtime at odd hours on the other.
Something had been going on, and Santos had known about it. And now Santos was dead - he was the man who had taken his life right in front of Tony's eyes. Why exactly, that was one thing Tony couldn't figure out. The most worrisome thing was, Santos' body had disappeared. Tony had had a very difficult time explaining it to the man's next of kin. It'd been taken right under his nose, because he had been at the biotech center all the time after the incident. He'd even talked to the guy whose job it had been to transport the body. This suggested that the enemy, whoever they were, had infiltrated the local authorities. If they had, then it was no surprise that the investigations there had lead to nothing. The bad guys had cleaned and covered their tracks.
There had also been another death, one that hadn't raised any suspicions at first. A younger scientist, a man by the name of Jonas Blakely, had died in a supposed accident on the river Amazon, two weeks ago. No one really knew what had happened, just that he'd gone canoeing and then his body had been found in the river. He had drowned, it had looked like a free time accident that had nothing to do with his work, but maybe, just maybe, he had found out something and someone had silenced him.
Or then Tony was just being paranoid and building theories on nothing. That was always a possibility. Still, the more he studied this, the more worried he grew.
He coughed a little. It didn't feel serious, but it'd probably been wise to mention it to Kutner anyway, because he hadn't had a cough before today. All in all, he thought he felt a bit worse, but then again, the longer he stayed in the suit, the worse he was bound to feel. He had designed it for sustained use, but this was pushing it. There were moments when he actually felt a bit claustrophobic in the thing, short of breath, as if there wasn't enough air inside the metal shell...
Ah, damn. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself and concentrate on the company trouble.
He'd had Jarvis go through the personnel records for any worktime irregularities, and it was easy to point out two scientists who'd clearly been up to something. Tony tried to contact these people, but not surprisingly, he wasn't able to reach either of them, and no one who knew them had been in contact with them during the last few weeks or so. There were a few others who were suspicious, but less clear. One of them actually answered his call - and he learned that the guy was a single dad with a little baby girl, which was why he had some trouble with his timetables. So, a false lead.
Tony re-read the files on the two missing scientists. A woman and a man, possibly friends, since they had graduated the same year from the same school, though with different disciplines. The man was a microbiologist, the woman specialized in nanotechnology. They had been working on different projects at SI biotech, he on ways to utilize biological components in nanotechnology, she on self-replicating nanotech. Neither of the projects had had anything even nearly finished and functional, and especially the former had been mostly theoretical. Still, combining the two added up to... Yeah, he didn't even want to think about it. Self-replicating half-biological nanobots?
Of course, it was unlikely that just two, or even four people (counting the other suspects) could come up with such a breakthrough, so Tony set Jarvis to search for any other missing scientists with similar specializations.
Tony sincerely hoped he was wrong about this.
House had had a busy and active morning of avoiding work, and after a modest lunch break of about two hours, he sat down in his office to waste a few minutes thinking about Stark. After all, he was House's only active case at the moment.
Kutner had interviewed the patient earlier, and had learned of one new symptom: cough. That told as little as the earlier ones. The flu was still a likely diagnosis.
"And, I just thought I'd say... I don't think you're being fair to him. He's not a bad person. He's not here to annoy us, he's here because he wants to protect others," Kutner had also told House. He smirked at the memory. Kutner was blissfully oblivious to the fact that the world wasn't all good and sunny, and that superheroes were just people, just like the rest of them, maybe even a bit worse.
"He's here because he wants it to look like he's protecting others while he's really just protecting himself," House had answered. "But I know that understanding such complex motives is beyond you, so don't even try, it might fry the few neurons you've got left."
House opened Stark's file on the laptop, checking the current situation - still feverish, respiratory rate and pulse still on the fast side, but not notably so. EEG showed beta waves, suggesting that he was thinking actively. Probably hitting on some nurse.
House scrolled the data backwards, checking the readings some hours ago, during the night and yesterday. Gazing at them gave him the intuitive hunch that he'd missed something important here. He hadn't had anyone actively follow the readings, just someone glancing at them every now and then to see there was nothing alarming. That might've been a mistake - but he'd been certain that there wouldn't be anything.
He scrolled back to the readings on admission, and then onwards again, towards the current moment. There was a trend. The respiratory rate was clearly higher now than before. House had thought the tachypnea was due to the fever, but that didn't seem likely anymore, since the patient was breathing faster now than yesterday. Combine that with the cough, and it could suggest a pulmonary problem. It might suggest that House had been wrong to take things for granted.
They really needed to get Stark out of that suit and start diagnosing him properly. House had spent enough time playing with Stark's insane rules. It was time to quit playing and get serious. He'd flood the room with an anesthetic to knock Iron Man unconscious and strip that suit off him, if that was what it took.
House picked up his cane and hobbled to Stark's room as fast as he could.
"All right, Stark. Your time is up. Get out of that suit, or I shall use my magical doctorly superpowers to get you out against your will."
"Ooo, I'm so frightened," Stark answered. The suit distorted his voice so much that House couldn't tell if he actually sounded out of breath. "To what do I owe the pleasure of you harassing me personally? I've already had Taub and 'Thirteen' tell me the same thing today."
"Obviously, they failed. I won't. You're sick, Stark. Think of all those cute little children and puppies who die and those bad guys who go free while you're stuck here, refusing to let us do our job," House told him in a mock accusing tone.
"So now you've noticed I'm sick? Well done, Doc! The fact that I'm in a hospital should've given you some clue about that."
"I could have you declared incapable of making decisions for yourself. I'm sure your secretary would back me up."
"No way she would!" Stark was starting to sound genuinely angry. "You leave her out of this."
"Oh, that struck a nerve. Do you treat all the girls you buy with such chivalry?"
Iron Man stood up, his menacing armored figure towering over House, but he didn't speak - instead, almost as soon as he'd gotten off the bed, he fell on his knees, and then toppled backwards and landed on the floor with a loud clank.
House glanced at the screen. Stark's vitals were stable but high, which wasn't a wonder since he'd been so ticked off. House knelt by Stark's side, took hold of his metal-covered shoulder, shook and yelled, "Hey! You still with me? Stark?"
He got no answer, the patient seemed to be unconscious. House's best bet was that it was simply a combination of too little food and water, slight lack of oxygen and the change in blood pressure when Stark had stood up. There was no way to confirm that since the suit readings didn't include BP or O2 sat, but if he was right, Stark was likely to come to very soon. House hadn't got any time to waste.
This wasn't exactly what he had had in mind, but it worked just fine. He called for help and began scrutinizing Iron Man's suit to find out how to open it.
Chapters 3 & 4
Rating: PG-13 for some language etc
Category: Crossover, angst, drama, hurt/comfort, romance, suspense
Spoilers: Iron Man, the movie / House MD late season 4
Pairings: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Summary: An Iron Man movieverse / House MD crossover. When Tony suspects he's caught a mystery illness, he turns to the best doctor he can find. But can House solve this puzzle?
Chapter 1: "Can you get a cooler patient than this?"
Pepper Potts gazed anxiously at the sky. Tony had called an hour ago, he should here any minute now. The next minute, she scolded herself for being so anxious. There was hardly any reason for it. He'd only been gone for a week. He could manage a week without her. If he'd lose his passport or forget his social security number, he would call her - which he hadn't done, so everything must've gone well enough.
She understood perfectly why he hadn't taken her with him: though officially it had been a simple business trip to the Stark Industries office in São Paulo, his main reason for going to Brazil had been to check out SI's new biotech center in the Amazon. There'd been reports of some kind of trouble there, possibly Iron Man -sort of trouble. He was determined to keep her out of that kind of trouble, so he'd decided he'd go without her.
The fact that he was returning in the suit instead of his private jet suggested that he'd found such trouble. He had been very brief when he'd called, he'd just said that he's near and asked her to wait for him at the windows giving to the pool, which sounded silly, but, of course, she did as he'd asked.
There he was now, a small red and gold figure high up in the sky and approaching fast. Her worry doubled when she noticed he was flying unsteadily, swerving from one side to the other as if he wasn't completely in control or quite sure of the direction. Drunkenly. That was the best word to describe his flying. But he couldn't be - he did drink way too much, but he would never! She couldn't believe he would be irresponsible enough to wear the suit while under the influence.
As he got closer, she saw to her relief that the suit was perfectly intact. No bullet holes this time, nor scratch marks or burned spots or anything of the sort. But he still wasn't flying quite right, he was coming in pretty fast and where he was headed...
He covered the last feet so fast that she had just enough time to realize what was going to happen, and then there was a splash, as Tony Stark, alias Iron Man, landed quite ungracefully in his swimming pool.
She knew his suit had underwater capabilities, so she didn't panic quite yet, just stepped outside to be closer and waited. Sure enough, he climbed up from the pool and stood at the side for a while, unmoving, as if considering what to say. When he finally spoke, what he said took her by surprise.
"Miss Potts. Stay away from the pool. I want the whole thing decontaminated as thoroughly as possible. And don't come anywhere near me."
Pepper frowned, completely at a loss. Either he really was drunk, or this was some really weird joke, or, well, whatever else this might be, she knew she wasn't going to like it.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy marched through the lobby of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, moving as fast as she could while still keeping her dignity. She was worried that she'd been too slow and she'd be too late. She had to catch him before he left the building, because he might not answer his phone once he got home, and he absolutely had to take this case. It would be great for publicity, but only if they could handle it well enough, which meant solving the case, and he was the best man for the job. On the bright side of things, Cuddy didn't fear for one second that he wouldn't take it. He'd take the case with glee as soon as he saw what it was - if only she could catch him before he left.
He was just about to open the glass door leading outside.
"House! House, wait!"
Dr. Gregory House stopped, not even bothering to turn around to face her. "There's this really annoying buzzing in my ears..." he muttered, as if to himself, but loud enough for her to hear.
"House, I have a case for you."
"No you don't. I've done a good day's work. I spent the last two days on a difficult case, I solved it, I've even done some clinic duty, there is no excuse that you can use to keep me here."
"Oh yes, there is. You'll want this one. You'll regret it if you don't take it."
"No, I won't." His tone was still as unenthusiastic as before, but at least she'd piqued his interest enough that he actually let go of the door handle and turned around. "Nothing in the world can be more appealing to me than a cold beer and a 'Prescription Passion' marathon."
"I'd bet you a hundred bucks that this is, but you wouldn't pay me anyway so there's no point."
"You're just too afraid you'd lose. All right, I'll look, and then I'll go home and you can give this," he took the file from her, "to someone else who won't have to work overtime on it."
He skimmed the file, still no feelings registering on his face except for not-so-mild annoyance. "So, someone's even sloppier than me at writing these things. There's hardly anything here to work on, and none of that is even remotely interesting."
"You might want to read the name of the patient."
"I don't care what he's called," House answered instantly, then read it, and there, finally, she got the reaction she'd been waiting for. "Oh my God. You've got to be kidding"
"I wouldn't do that to you, now, would I?"
"Would you? You'd get high doing it! But no, you're not this creative. This has to be the real thing. So, where is he?"
Tony leaned his armored head against the back wall of the cleanroom. He was sitting on the floor, partly because he didn't feel nearly sick enough to be lying down, partly because lying down in the armor was pretty uncomfortable.
He was overreacting, that was all. This was nothing. He was overreacting, and he was going to be so embarrassed when they found out that this was just the flu. He'd get loads of negative publicity, and that'd affect his company, but he didn't mind that. The most important thing was not to put anyone else at risk, so he had to be a bit overcautious and neurotic.
He'd spent almost an entire day in Brazil in self-imposed quarantine, fitting his suit with high efficiency air filters, even though he hadn't even felt sick at the time. Now he was sitting in said suit in the hospital in pretty much complete isolation. If this was the worst case scenario and he really wasn't overreacting, he sure wasn't going to spread it any further, whatever "it" might be.
He'd been waiting for an hour or so when the airlock-like door finally opened and a figure in a protective suit stepped in. He was limping badly. Must be the man Tony had come to meet. He sat up a bit more upright.
"Dr. Gregory House, I presume?"
"Wow, the Invincible Iron Man actually knows me?"
"I know a lot of pretty nurses, and you've got a reputation."
The truth was, of course, that he'd asked Pepper to find him the best diagnostician there was, and everything and everyone had pointed to Dr. House. The man had convincing credentials, although he allegedly also was a complete pain in the ass. Tony was starting to learn the truth of those allegations already.
"I do? Hm. Maybe I should take up superheroing too. I could call myself 'Superdoc'! Or maybe, if that's too obvious, how about 'the Cane'?"
"Yeah, really catchy and masculine. The girls would love that. I can just imagine what your superpowers would be like."
"Who says I haven't got such superpowers already? Of course, I couldn't compete with your legendary exploits, Mr. Stark. And you can take the suit off, everyone knows your secret identity by now, since you were kind enough to share it with the press."
"Not going to happen. I might be carrying something genetically engineered for biological warfare. It could be unusually contagious."
"The psych ward is upstairs. You're clearly suffering from severe paranoid delusions. There's no way you'll infect anyone while in here, suit or no suit, and no way we're going to be able to diagnose, let alone treat you through that thing. Call me when you've cleared your head," House declared and took a few awkward steps towards the door.
"I'm not going anywhere. I can send readings from my suit's scanners directly to your computers, you can start from there. Plus, the local authorities in Brazil are still investigating the biotech center that might be where I got this from, so they may come up with something sooner or later. Until we've got some kind of an idea of what this could be, the suit stays on."
"You really want to make things difficult, don't you? Fine. Mark my words, we are not going to have a solid diagnosis before you get out of that suit and we can examine you properly. Before that, we'll do what we can, but just because I love a challenging puzzle, and because you're Iron Man and it's incredibly cool to be diagnosing you. So," House made his way to the bed and sat on it. "Is there some marvelous superheroic story behind this mystery illness of yours?"
Tony really wasn't in the mood for House's wit, he felt dizzy and his back was killing him, probably from spending so much time in the suit. "There's a story, but it's not the least bit heroic, there's no supervillain, no action scenes and no sex."
"Boring," House sounded almost genuinely disappointed. "But let's hear it anyway."
"Long story short: I went to Brazil on a business trip, spent a few days doing business, and then went to check on my company's new biotech center. I'd heard there was something weird going on, and yeah, there really was. The head researcher was there to meet me, but the place seemed practically abandoned. He offered some half-credible explanation about a local holiday. He then gave me a tour of the facilities, which ended in a laboratory where he pulled a gun and redecorated the place with his brains. The next few days I spent cleaning up the mess and trying to figure it out. I only started feeling sick this morning when I was returning home."
"Well, that's not all that boring, though it sounds more like the X-Files than a superhero tale. Any particular reason you're so sure that you've caught a super-disease of some sort, except for the fact that you're a superhero?"
"No one was working on anything infectious at the biotech center, if that's what you're implying, but the guy's last words before blowing up his head were 'I'm sorry, Mr. Stark'. I thought it might mean something. But I'll make this clear: I'm not sure. I just don't want to take any risks."
"You've already made that clear, Mr. 'I don't want to take this suit off, I'll rather stay undiagnosed and die a martyr'. So, have you got any explanation for what was going on there?"
"None. I searched all the computers and came up with nothing, I contacted some of the researchers and they couldn't tell me anything useful, and the local equivalent of the CDC didn't find any unusual pathogens while I was there, but as I said, they're still working on it," Tony explained.
That wasn't all of it, of course. He wouldn't tell all the details about the whole mess to some random doctor, since they couldn't possibly be medically relevant. Not to mention that he really didn't have any sort of a theory yet, he just had a lot of data to go through. He'd figure this out and catch whoever was responsible, but he wouldn't be able to do that before he was sure he wasn't a walking biological weapon.
"'No unusual pathogens'. Hmm. That sounds a lot like 'It didn't come from there!', so we might want to consider all other options. Brazil is a big place, we'll need to know all the places you visited, who you slept with, what you ate - and then, all the background: whether you've got any crazy relatives, evil twin brothers, et cetera, blah blah. I'll send someone to get a complete history with all the dull details I don't want to be bothered with." House got off the bed and limped out of the room.
Tony let the back of his helmet rest against the wall again. This was going to be a very long day.
"Symptoms so far include fever," House wrote on the whiteboard, "slight tachycardia and tachypnea which are most likely just situational, dizziness, headache, plus back pain and myalgias which are not surprising due to the fact that the patient has spent the best part of the last three days in a really cool iron suit."
House stopped for a while, studying his team. Nothing new or interesting there: Foreman looked skeptical, Taub mostly expressionless, Kutner excited and eager, and Thirteen was pretty.
House turned back to the whiteboard. "And let's add paranoia," he wrote below the rest. "The patient is in complete isolation but refuses to take off the suit because he's afraid he'll spread the disease anyway. That can't be healthy behavior."
Kutner couldn't contain his enthusiasm anymore, but chimed in, "We're really diagnosing Iron Man? Can you get a cooler patient than this?"
"Sorry to disappoint, Kutner, but I'm already convinced that no matter who he is, he's not going to be a very cool case. Differential diagnosis?"
"This could be anything!" Thirteen exclaimed. "The only symptoms that can't be explained away just like that are fever, dizziness and headache, and those could mean anything from the common cold to HIV."
"The common cold? But it cannot be!" House replied, though of course it was a very likely possibility. "The Iron Man can't have the common cold. At least it has to be the super-cold or maybe even the feared 'Titanium Cold'!"
"She's right and you know that, House," Foreman commented. "We'll need to check his blood for..."
House interrupted him. "Not possible as long as he refuses to take off the suit. This is all we're going to get. The good news is that we can get readings realtime from his suit's inbuilt scanners. The bad news is that all we've got is body temperature, respiratory rate, EKG and EEG, and whatever symptoms he can describe himself."
Foreman shook his head. "This is stupid. There's no way we can diagnose him based on nothing more than that."
"Oh really? I didn't know that!" House replied with his most ironic tone. "Of course we can't, and I already told him as much. I'm sure he'll take the suit off sooner or later, either when he stops feeling sick or when he gets too sick. We just need to wait. While we're waiting, humor me and come up with something that's more interesting than the common cold."
"He's been to Brazil, could be a tropical illness. Dengue fever?" Taub suggested.
"Realistic but not all that interesting."
"How about oropouche fever or chikungunya?" Thirteen tried.
"Good! Less common and with weirder names, so they're cooler. And both possible, too."
"Ebola?" Kutner put in.
"Let's not get too jazzy here. Last I checked, Brazil is not in Africa."
"No, but he was visiting a biotech center where they might've been working on infectious disease among other things, who knows what they've got there? And then there's the story about something weird going on there and a guy who apologized to Stark and then committed suicide?"
"Kutner, you're just humoring his paranoia. Though I'm sure he was lying his socks off when he told that Stark Industries has nothing whatsoever to do with biological warfare, I'd think he was telling the truth when he said that the local biohazard teams couldn't find anything like that at the complex. As to the story, all it means is that his company has some internal problems. I'm sure he hasn't told us even half of it and he's not going to, since it's medically irrelevant. So, let's just stick to the facts instead of fantasy."
"All these tropical disease are viral and there's no treatment anyway, so if it's one of them, waiting is still all we can do," Foreman pointed out.
"Yup. As I said, this is probably going to turn out a pretty dull case. The only reason Stark is here bothering us and not at home with the flu is that he's convinced he's the center of the world, and he's completely paranoid because of that. I'm going home. Let me know if something interesting happens."
After having seen Iron Man live, which admittedly had been pretty cool, House had gotten second thoughts about taking this case. Stark wasn't very interesting as a person, not much of a puzzle - he'd been on the news often enough that House was convinced he had the man completely figured out already. So far he had seen none of Stark's allegedly keen intellect, and he doubted there really was any. Stark's reported three month captivity in Afghanistan had probably been just a publicity stunt. Stark was an annoying egoistical jerk just like House himself, but unlike House, Stark had convinced everyone, maybe even himself, that he really was a superhero do-gooder on a quest to save the world, while all he really cared about were the glory and the girls.
Chapter 2: "You can't stay like this forever"
"You can't stay like this forever, Tony," Pepper told him, exasperated. She'd spent most of yesterday arranging the decontamination of Tony's swimming pool and its surroundings, and now she was standing in a full protective suit in his hospital room.
Tony had been here, in the hospital, in quarantine, in his suit, for almost a day now, and there'd been no change, no news, nothing. As annoying as House was, he had pretty much convinced Pepper that Tony wasn't seriously ill, just seriously overcautious.
"I'm still feverish," he replied, pointing at the computer display by his bedside. They'd set it up to show what little medical data they could get out of his suit. It showed his temperature was at 101.4. "I can stay like this until I'm no longer sick."
"You could just take the suit off, let them have some blood samples and whatever else they want, find out what the problem is, and then continue convalescing at home. If you're not seriously sick, it wouldn't change anything, and if you are, then hiding in the suit will just make things worse. I mean, can you even eat in that thing?"
"I'll survive a few days without eating, and everything else I've taken care of, I've got water in the suit, and, uh, waste-management. We've been through this twice already, Pepper, and I'm not about to change my mind. Besides, that nurse with big brown eyes is really pretty, and I'd hate to leave before I've gotten to know her better."
She shook her head, huffed indignantly and headed out of the room. Like every time she came here, she had to go through the meticulous process of getting off the protective clothing and decontaminating everything and herself. Leave it to Tony to make such a spectacle of being sick. If he'd just stayed at home, in bed, drinking tea and watching TV, like normal people did... Still, underneath the annoyance, there was still the tiniest hint of worry. He was right most of the time. What if he was right now, too, and everyone else was wrong? What if scolding him and trying to coax him out of the suit and the isolation were a huge mistake?
On his way to talk to Tony Stark, Kutner ran into the man's red-headed assistant, nearly knocking her over. She was really pretty, like all the girls Stark surrounded himself with, but right now, she looked cross.
"Please tell me you have some news," she said, sounding as irked as she looked.
"Sorry, no," he answered. "I'm just going to talk to him, in case he can come up with any details we don't know that might be useful."
"Good luck to you, then, I really wish you learn something. If he'd only listen to reason..."
"You don't think he's doing the right thing here, then?"
"What, and you do?"
"Well, I suppose he knows what he's doing, he's Iron Man, after all."
"Oh please!" she cried, and walked away, leaving Kutner staring after her, baffled - but wow, was she impressive, the way she walked with those heels!
Kutner gazed until she'd disappeared from sight, then returned to what he'd been about to do, getting into a protective suit and entering Stark's room. Boy, was it weird seeing Iron Man like this, in a drab, featureless room in all his gleaming red-and-gold glory. He was sitting on the bed, talking. Kutner frowned. There was no one else in the room, so who was Stark talking to?
"Yes, I've contacted Santos's next of kin, yes, all that's taken care of. No, I'm... sort of occupied at the moment, I won't be able to stop by anytime soon, I'm afraid. Maybe next week. I'll have Pepper schedule something when it's possible. Great. Let me know instantly if there's anything new."
Of course, Stark was on the phone! He had an inbuilt phone in his helmet. Wow. Kutner could guess he couldn't probably even imagine all the gizmos Stark must have in that suit. Of course he'd want to be able to answer his phone everywhere in the world. Cool.
Unwilling to disturb the billionaire-superhero, Kutner knocked on the wall to announce his presence. "Mr. Stark? If you're not too busy, I'd like to ask some questions."
"Sure. I was just talking to my representative in Brazil. They've still got nothing. What about you?"
"Well, we've got a lot of ideas, but we can't really know if any of them are close to the truth. How're you feeling? Still the same?"
"Pretty much, yeah. Definitely not better," he answered, and coughed a little, the sound coming through strange and metallic. "Oh, and this is new, I think."
Kutner wrote "cough" on the file on the clipboard he was carrying. Too bad it was yet another nonspecific symptom. "So, I thought I'd ask you a bit more about Brazil. That biotech center of yours, what sort of things are they researching there, exactly? They haven't publicized anything, as far as I could find out."
"They haven't, since they've only been in operation for a bit over a month. I already told House we don't do bio-warfare, they haven't got anthrax or smallpox in there. They do have some hazardous materials, but no infectious disease. The main projects have to do with nanotechnology, particularly ways to utilize it in medicine."
"Couldn't that be relevant to your situation?"
"I sure hope not, it's all pretty much theoretical so far, they have are no finished products and nothing that's even been tested on humans yet. Still - I'm starting to feel like a parrot here - they weren't working on making people sick. Not my company. I've killed enough people already."
"But you've saved many, too," Kutner remarked. "You're a superhero, after all."
"I think I've harmed more than I've helped," Iron Man bowed his armor-clad head. "People like you are the real heroes. The ones that get hardly any thanks and no attention, and save more lives."
Kutner was glad he wasn't the blushing type, because if he were, he'd surely have blushed at that. He was even more convinced now than before that House hadn't got the slightest idea about what Stark really was like. He really wasn't attention-seeking and self-centered, he was a true hero. "Thank you, Mr. Stark. And for what it's worth, I believe in you. I think you're right to be cautious. Don't mind House, he doesn't like anyone and he thinks all people are lying morons."
"I figured as much already, Doctor... what was your name?"
"Kutner."
"Thanks, Doctor Kutner. Glad to know there's at least one person here who doesn't think the old rustpot has gone off his rocker."
"I'm sure I'm not the only one. Anyway, where were we..." he muttered, glancing at his clipboard. "Right. I've got a few more questions."
Kutner seemed over-eager and naive, but Tony found talking to him a refreshing change. During the day he'd spent in this hospital, nearly all conversations had been either contests of wit (with House), clinical and impersonal (with House's subordinate Doctor Taub) or more or less aggressive disputes (with Pepper). It was nice to have a conversation where the other person didn't take him for an idiot, an object of study or a five year old.
The questions Kutner asked also helped Tony to shape the ideas and theories he'd been thinking over. After the young doctor left and Tony finally had some peace and quiet, he asked Jarvis to show him the data from the Amazon biotech center again.
He wasn't at his best, his thinking slowed by the fever, the dizziness and the nagging uncertainty of whether or not he was just on a mindless wild goose chase. Still, he'd been able to figure out things, and what he'd come up with was alarming.
Doctor Jose Santos, the late head researcher at Stark Industries biotech, was the man who had first contacted Tony about something weird going on. His first report had only mentioned some missing equipment, accompanied with computer glitches: someone had taken the stuff and removed any records of it, but Santos or someone under him had noticed the theft nevertheless. Later, Santos had sent a report concerning trouble with some of the personnel, who had lots of poorly explained absences from work on one hand, a lot of overtime at odd hours on the other.
Something had been going on, and Santos had known about it. And now Santos was dead - he was the man who had taken his life right in front of Tony's eyes. Why exactly, that was one thing Tony couldn't figure out. The most worrisome thing was, Santos' body had disappeared. Tony had had a very difficult time explaining it to the man's next of kin. It'd been taken right under his nose, because he had been at the biotech center all the time after the incident. He'd even talked to the guy whose job it had been to transport the body. This suggested that the enemy, whoever they were, had infiltrated the local authorities. If they had, then it was no surprise that the investigations there had lead to nothing. The bad guys had cleaned and covered their tracks.
There had also been another death, one that hadn't raised any suspicions at first. A younger scientist, a man by the name of Jonas Blakely, had died in a supposed accident on the river Amazon, two weeks ago. No one really knew what had happened, just that he'd gone canoeing and then his body had been found in the river. He had drowned, it had looked like a free time accident that had nothing to do with his work, but maybe, just maybe, he had found out something and someone had silenced him.
Or then Tony was just being paranoid and building theories on nothing. That was always a possibility. Still, the more he studied this, the more worried he grew.
He coughed a little. It didn't feel serious, but it'd probably been wise to mention it to Kutner anyway, because he hadn't had a cough before today. All in all, he thought he felt a bit worse, but then again, the longer he stayed in the suit, the worse he was bound to feel. He had designed it for sustained use, but this was pushing it. There were moments when he actually felt a bit claustrophobic in the thing, short of breath, as if there wasn't enough air inside the metal shell...
Ah, damn. He needed to stop feeling sorry for himself and concentrate on the company trouble.
He'd had Jarvis go through the personnel records for any worktime irregularities, and it was easy to point out two scientists who'd clearly been up to something. Tony tried to contact these people, but not surprisingly, he wasn't able to reach either of them, and no one who knew them had been in contact with them during the last few weeks or so. There were a few others who were suspicious, but less clear. One of them actually answered his call - and he learned that the guy was a single dad with a little baby girl, which was why he had some trouble with his timetables. So, a false lead.
Tony re-read the files on the two missing scientists. A woman and a man, possibly friends, since they had graduated the same year from the same school, though with different disciplines. The man was a microbiologist, the woman specialized in nanotechnology. They had been working on different projects at SI biotech, he on ways to utilize biological components in nanotechnology, she on self-replicating nanotech. Neither of the projects had had anything even nearly finished and functional, and especially the former had been mostly theoretical. Still, combining the two added up to... Yeah, he didn't even want to think about it. Self-replicating half-biological nanobots?
Of course, it was unlikely that just two, or even four people (counting the other suspects) could come up with such a breakthrough, so Tony set Jarvis to search for any other missing scientists with similar specializations.
Tony sincerely hoped he was wrong about this.
House had had a busy and active morning of avoiding work, and after a modest lunch break of about two hours, he sat down in his office to waste a few minutes thinking about Stark. After all, he was House's only active case at the moment.
Kutner had interviewed the patient earlier, and had learned of one new symptom: cough. That told as little as the earlier ones. The flu was still a likely diagnosis.
"And, I just thought I'd say... I don't think you're being fair to him. He's not a bad person. He's not here to annoy us, he's here because he wants to protect others," Kutner had also told House. He smirked at the memory. Kutner was blissfully oblivious to the fact that the world wasn't all good and sunny, and that superheroes were just people, just like the rest of them, maybe even a bit worse.
"He's here because he wants it to look like he's protecting others while he's really just protecting himself," House had answered. "But I know that understanding such complex motives is beyond you, so don't even try, it might fry the few neurons you've got left."
House opened Stark's file on the laptop, checking the current situation - still feverish, respiratory rate and pulse still on the fast side, but not notably so. EEG showed beta waves, suggesting that he was thinking actively. Probably hitting on some nurse.
House scrolled the data backwards, checking the readings some hours ago, during the night and yesterday. Gazing at them gave him the intuitive hunch that he'd missed something important here. He hadn't had anyone actively follow the readings, just someone glancing at them every now and then to see there was nothing alarming. That might've been a mistake - but he'd been certain that there wouldn't be anything.
He scrolled back to the readings on admission, and then onwards again, towards the current moment. There was a trend. The respiratory rate was clearly higher now than before. House had thought the tachypnea was due to the fever, but that didn't seem likely anymore, since the patient was breathing faster now than yesterday. Combine that with the cough, and it could suggest a pulmonary problem. It might suggest that House had been wrong to take things for granted.
They really needed to get Stark out of that suit and start diagnosing him properly. House had spent enough time playing with Stark's insane rules. It was time to quit playing and get serious. He'd flood the room with an anesthetic to knock Iron Man unconscious and strip that suit off him, if that was what it took.
House picked up his cane and hobbled to Stark's room as fast as he could.
"All right, Stark. Your time is up. Get out of that suit, or I shall use my magical doctorly superpowers to get you out against your will."
"Ooo, I'm so frightened," Stark answered. The suit distorted his voice so much that House couldn't tell if he actually sounded out of breath. "To what do I owe the pleasure of you harassing me personally? I've already had Taub and 'Thirteen' tell me the same thing today."
"Obviously, they failed. I won't. You're sick, Stark. Think of all those cute little children and puppies who die and those bad guys who go free while you're stuck here, refusing to let us do our job," House told him in a mock accusing tone.
"So now you've noticed I'm sick? Well done, Doc! The fact that I'm in a hospital should've given you some clue about that."
"I could have you declared incapable of making decisions for yourself. I'm sure your secretary would back me up."
"No way she would!" Stark was starting to sound genuinely angry. "You leave her out of this."
"Oh, that struck a nerve. Do you treat all the girls you buy with such chivalry?"
Iron Man stood up, his menacing armored figure towering over House, but he didn't speak - instead, almost as soon as he'd gotten off the bed, he fell on his knees, and then toppled backwards and landed on the floor with a loud clank.
House glanced at the screen. Stark's vitals were stable but high, which wasn't a wonder since he'd been so ticked off. House knelt by Stark's side, took hold of his metal-covered shoulder, shook and yelled, "Hey! You still with me? Stark?"
He got no answer, the patient seemed to be unconscious. House's best bet was that it was simply a combination of too little food and water, slight lack of oxygen and the change in blood pressure when Stark had stood up. There was no way to confirm that since the suit readings didn't include BP or O2 sat, but if he was right, Stark was likely to come to very soon. House hadn't got any time to waste.
This wasn't exactly what he had had in mind, but it worked just fine. He called for help and began scrutinizing Iron Man's suit to find out how to open it.
Chapters 3 & 4