Bub

Gregory House was fairly certain that Lisa Cuddy’s spite had finally achieved its final, terrifying form.

For weeks, she had been a relentless gale of administrative fury, blowing through his office with pamphlets for pain clinics, orthopedic specialists, and even a particularly aggressive acupuncturist who House suspected was actually a hitman in disguise. When he had rejected them all with his trademark cocktail of sarcasm and Vicodin-fueled apathy, she had taken matters into her own hands.

"I called every hospital within a fifty-mile radius, House," Cuddy had yelled earlier that morning, her hands planted firmly on her hips. "Do you know how many of them were willing to take you as a patient? None. Zero. Mercy General actually hung up the phone when I mentioned your name. They have a 'No House' policy taped to the intake desk."

"I should get a royalty for that," House had muttered, leaning heavily on his cane.

"Except for one," she continued, her eyes gleaming with a triumph that should have signaled immediate danger. "St. Jude’s of the Valley. They’ve agreed to a full evaluation and a consultation for a new pain management regimen. You’re going. Today. Or I’m filing the paperwork to have your medical license reviewed for self-prescribing violations."

So, here he was. St. Jude’s of the Valley. It was a hospital that looked like it had been designed by an architect who specialized in Soviet-era prisons and then abandoned by God. The linoleum was a shade of yellow that suggested decades of nicotine and neglect. The air smelled faintly of burnt toast and industrial-strength floor wax. It was the kind of place where people went to get a flu shot and came out with a staph infection.

"Dr. House?" The receptionist didn't even look up from her solitaire game. She pointed a gnarled finger toward a hallway that looked like it led to a furnace room. "Exam Room 4. Dr. Monet will be with you... eventually."

"Monet?" House limped down the hall, his cane clicking rhythmically against the cracked tiles. "Is he going to paint my leg in soft pastels? Because I’m more of a Goya man. Dark, moody, lots of Saturn devouring his son."

The receptionist didn't respond.

House entered Exam Room 4. It was small, cramped, and the paper on the exam table was crinkled. He sat down, his right leg throbbing with a dull, insistent heat that never truly went away. He waited. Ten minutes passed. He checked his watch. Twenty minutes. He began to entertain himself by seeing how many tongue depressors he could balance on the edge of the sink.

Forty-five minutes later, the door burst open.

It wasn't a doctor who walked in—at least, not any doctor House recognized. The man was a whirlwind of disheveled energy. He had a mop of shaggy black hair that looked like it hadn't seen a comb since the turn of the millennium. His glasses were thick, slightly crooked, and perched on the bridge of a nose that had clearly been broken at least once. He wore no white coat, just a faded black t-shirt with a diagram of a human skull on it and a pair of trousers that were two inches too short.

The man stopped dead, staring at House with wide, blinking eyes. He looked like he had just been teleported into the room against his will.

"Oh," the man said. His voice was higher than House expected, airy and frantic. "You’re... a person. A living one. Right. Hello."

House raised an eyebrow. "Usually. Unless the commute here killed me and I just haven't noticed the transition to the afterlife. It would explain the decor."

The man scrambled toward a desk, shuffling through a stack of papers that looked like they had been handled by a toddler. "Right. House. Gregory. Leg thing. Infarction. Chronic pain. Yes. I’m Monet. Dr. Arthur Monet."

"Cuddy told me you were a specialist," House said, his voice dripping with skepticism. "What’s your specialty? Urban camouflage? Competitive bed-head?"

Monet didn't seem to hear the insult. Or if he did, it didn't register. He tilted his head sharply to the left, a bird-like gesture that made his glasses slip further down his nose. "Specialty? Oh, I’m a pathologist. I spend about ninety-eight percent of my time in the morgue. The dead are very quiet. They don't complain about the lighting. I only found out I had a patient five minutes ago because the Chief of Medicine told me if I didn't do this, he was going to start charging me rent for my locker."

House froze. "You’re a pathologist. You work on corpses."

"Exclusively, usually," Monet said, nodding enthusiastically. He stepped closer, invading House’s personal space without a hint of hesitation. He didn't smell like a doctor; he smelled like formaldehyde and peppermint gum. "But a body is a body, isn't it? Yours just happens to be breathing. It’s like a puzzle that talks back. Very novel."

House tried to lean back, but Monet was already reaching for his leg. There was no "How are we feeling today?" or "Scale of one to ten?" Monet simply knelt on the floor, his movements jerky but strangely precise.

"I’m going to need you to drop the trousers, Gregory," Monet said, his head now tilting to the right. "I need to see the atrophy. The books say the muscle loss in these cases is fascinating, but the photos are always so poorly lit."

"I don't usually put out on the first date," House snapped, though he found himself complying. There was something about Monet’s utter lack of social awareness that was harder to fight than Cuddy’s nagging. It was like trying to argue with a golden retriever.

As House exposed the scarred, mangled mess of his thigh, he expected the usual reaction. Pity. Wincing. Professional detachment.

Monet did none of those things. He leaned in so close his glasses nearly touched the scar tissue. He began to poke and prod with a clinical intensity that was borders on aggressive.

"Ooh," Monet whispered. "The scarring is magnificent. It’s like a topographical map of a disaster. Does it feel like burning? Or more of a grinding? I read a paper once that suggested the nerve endings in long-term infarction sites actually try to 'scream' in a frequency we can't hear, but the brain interprets as white-hot needles."

"It feels like someone is trying to eat my leg with a rusty spoon," House said, his jaw tight. "And you’re currently helping them."

Monet didn't flinch. He grabbed House’s ankle and began to rotate the foot. House let out a sharp hiss of pain, his hand tightening on his cane.

"Interesting resistance," Monet murmured, tilting his head so far it was almost parallel to his shoulder. "The tension in the hamstring is fascinating. You know, most of the doctors upstairs don't like me. They say I’m 'odd' and 'disturbing' and that I 'talk to the cadavers too much.' But the cadavers don't mind. We have great conversations about cellular decay."

"I can't imagine why they’d find you off-putting," House gritted out. "You’re a ray of sunshine."

"Exactly!" Monet beamed, looking up at House with a terrifyingly genuine smile. "But they’re just annoyed because I keep pointing out their mistakes during autopsies. 'You missed the pulmonary embolism, Dr. Miller!' 'That’s not a tumor, Dr. Sarah, that’s a swallowed marble!' People are so sensitive about being wrong."

House felt a strange, unwelcome spark of kinship. "Tell me about it."

Monet stood up abruptly, his knees popping. He began to pace the tiny room, his hands fluttering like trapped birds. "The problem, Gregory, is that everyone is looking at your leg like it’s a broken machine. But I see it as a crime scene. Something happened here, and the evidence is still being tampered with by your own central nervous system. You’re over-medicating the symptoms and under-stimulating the dormant pathways."

He stopped, his head tilting again. "You have a very high heart rate. Is it the pain, or are you just excited to be in a room with a man who spends his lunch breaks with a rib-spreader?"

"It’s the overwhelming urge to flee," House said. "Are we done? Because I’d like to go back to a hospital that has actual living patients and less... whatever this is."

Monet hummed, a low, buzzing sound. He walked over to the sink and started washing his hands, but he did it with a strange, rhythmic scrubbing motion that went all the way up to his elbows.

"You’re very rude," Monet observed, his back to House. "That’s probably why they sent you to me. I don't have a reputation to protect, and I don't care if you call me names. In the morgue, I can call the bodies whatever I want and they never report me to HR. I called a guy 'Sir Loin of Beef' yesterday because he was so remarkably muscular. He didn't mind."

House stared at the man’s back. "You’re insane."

"I’m thorough," Monet corrected, turning around and drying his hands on his pants. "Your current regimen is garbage. It’s a chemical band-aid on a gunshot wound. I’m going to write a report for Dr. Cuddy. I’m going to suggest a series of nerve blocks combined with a specific type of localized electrical stimulation that I usually only use to test muscle responsiveness in the recently deceased. It’s a bit... experimental for the living."

"You want to jump-start my leg like a Frankenstein monster?" House asked.

Monet’s eyes lit up behind his glasses. "Yes! Exactly! It’s all about the bio-electricity. If we can trick the nerves into thinking they’re dead, they might stop complaining about being alive."

House looked at the shaggy-haired weirdo standing in the middle of the dingy exam room. Monet was vibrating with a sort of manic, unpolished brilliance. He wasn't trying to heal House’s soul, and he wasn't trying to make him a "better person." He just wanted to solve the puzzle of the screaming meat.

"You’re going to get fired," House said.

"Oh, I get fired once a month," Monet said dismissively, tilting his head to the side again. "But then they realize no one else wants to do the 3:00 AM floaters, and they hire me back. It’s a very stable cycle."

House reached for his trousers, his movements slow. "Fine. Write your report. Tell Cuddy I need to be electrocuted by a man who talks to steaks. She’ll love it."

Monet walked over and patted House on the shoulder. It was a clumsy, awkward gesture, like a human trying to mimic an alien species' idea of comfort. "You have a very interesting gallbladder, Gregory. I can tell just by the way you hold your torso. If you ever decide to stop using it, I’d love to have a look at it. Professionally speaking."

"I’ll put it in my will," House said, standing up and leaning on his cane.

"Wonderful!" Monet chirped. He turned and walked toward the door, but stopped, his head tilting one last time. "And Gregory? Try the peppermint gum. It masks the smell of the Vicodin. The living think it’s refreshing, and the dead don't care."

With a final, erratic wave, Dr. Monet vanished into the hallway, leaving House alone in the yellow-stained room.

House stood there for a long moment, the throb in his leg as constant as ever. He looked at the door, then at the crinkled paper on the exam table. He pulled a bottle of Vicodin from his pocket, looked at it, and then tucked it away without taking one.

"God help me," House whispered to the empty room. "I think I like him."

He limped out of the room, his cane clicking against the floor. As he passed the reception desk, the woman didn't look up from her game.

"How was he?" she asked tonelessly.

"He’s a lunatic," House said. "He’s unqualified, socially stunted, and he probably hasn't showered in three days."

"So you'll be back for the follow-up?"

House paused at the exit, the heavy glass doors reflecting his own weary face.

"Tuesday," House said. "Tell the Butcher I’ll bring the peppermint gum."