Quantum Differential

As the waters broke over his head, James had to admit that he'd screwed up. How many times had he tried to suppress his medical oath for the benefit of his gate team.

'Not everyone wants to be saved, Jimmy.'

'Keep your hands to yourself, Jimmy.'

Now, this time, his simple reaction to stop a person from suffocating as they choked had led to this. His submersion in ceremonial waters was meant to cleanse his sin.

'A simple, if unexpected, bath then back to the gate.'

He remembered scowling at his team leader for the blithe dismissal of the natives' reaction. Not that much could be done. Policy forbade a reaction with potentially lethal force unless imminent danger to life or limb had been presented.

His humiliation in a ceremonial pool could hardly be considered either. Even if he wanted to flay the smirk right off the last face he saw before his head went under.

Then, distracted by the glint of light beneath the surface, James reached out.

 

***
 

"Sir, please step out of the water."

The cop's flashlight flickered over the moving flow of the fountain as he aimed it on the drenched figure hunched over beneath the pounding water. Turning to his partner, he scowled.

"My turn?" the partner asked. At the nod, he sighed heavily and stepped over the concrete and tile edge that held back the pool of water. "Damn drunk frat kids," he cursed as his uniform sucked the liquid up his pant legs.

 

***
 

"It could be Lupus?" Cameron offered, uncertainty coloring her tone.

"It's not Lupus," House returned distractedly. His gaze never wavered from the white board. The oddity of the symptoms was compelling. There was a clue, something niggling at the very rear of his brain, but it just wouldn't connect.

"Micro tumors?" Chase volunteered.

"There are no indications this is cancer," Wilson refuted. He was in hiding from the Oncology department. One of the department secretaries had just gotten engaged. Watching a clearly ecstatic young woman celebrate her engagement was the type of masochism only House would indulge.

"House," Foreman began, only to be interrupted.

The man in the Air Force uniform had been clearly visible hurrying down the hall outside the glass-walled conference. When he stopped and hesitated at the empty office next door, they'd ignored his presence. He wasn't as easy to ignore barging into the middle of their differential diagnosis.

"Dr. House?"

"Who wants to know?" House asked suspiciously. The intruder was military, point against him. Still, he wasn't one of those annoyingly young recruiters, point for him. And, he wasn't a Marine, also point for him.

"National security issue." Brown eyes narrowed at the cane and turned their focus. The man, General, House corrected mentally at the star on his shoulder, addressed Wilson. "James House?"

Chase's muffled snort was ignored as Wilson's eyes went impossibly wide very fast. He straightened from his sprawl in the conference room chair. Trying to look like a professional, he straightened his tie as he sat up. "Dr. James Wilson, actually."

"Dammit," was the man's simple response. Sparing them no further interest, he turned away back to the hall.

The door was designed not to slam. A slammed glass door, after all, resulted only in a broken door and a costly repair with the potentiality of injuries. This particular feature ensured that the doorway remained open long enough to hear the beginnings of the man's phone call.

"O'Neill. Put me through to Carter." A longish pause, then, as he started to fade around the corner, "He's not here. You know I hate this shit. Get a team out here. The ship hasn't left yet? Good, use them. We don't have time for a delay."

House's head was cocked to the side as he stared vacantly at the exit that had so recently been used. The sounds of four pagers going off in such a confined space seemed to startle his fellows, but didn't even disrupt his introspection.

"Emergency page," Foreman elaborated. "House?"

"Take care of it," House waved them off with his free hand before dropping the dry erase marker in the shallow tray attached to his white board. Just as quickly, he snatched his cane from its place hanging on the side of the board. Their hurry out was unobserved. He was moving to his attached office, brain already transferred to a different topic.

"Was that weird?" Wilson asked, standing just at the door.

House stopped with his cane planted to support his weight, leaning back into the conference room to goggle at his friend. "Yeah… Foreman needing to be told to handle an emergency? Here I thought he was a doctor or something."

As House ducked into his office, back to the conference room, he missed the rolled eyes before Wilson made his own exit.

 

***
 

The Emergency Room nurses and admitting physician scrambled to hold the patient down.

"He's seizing," the doctor called out, rather unnecessarily. "Get me that fucking Ativan, already… And where's Dr. House?!"

The first nurse administered the requested medication into the hastily inserted intravenous line. The second, moving in concert, finished cutting back the leg of the patient's trousers. He'd injured his left shin at some point, the blood seeping through the cloth.

"We've paged him and his team," the first of the nurses finally answered. She could barely meet the questioning gaze of her colleague as they held on through the last of the seizures.

"What the hell caused this?" was hissed almost quietly across the legs they held. "Wasn't he working today? He looks like one of those paintball idiots."

There wasn't time to respond as the doors swung open. Rather than Dr. House, who they had all been hoping would arrive to take over, they were blessed with the next best thing. His three fellows, Doctors Foreman, Cameron, and Chase, entered.

They halted en masse, then hurried into position around the patient as the emergency admitting physician stepped back with hands raised. The rubber gloves were unbloodied, one of the rare gifts of that particular experience.

"When was he admitted?" Foreman demanded, verifying the vitals and the connection of the monitoring equipment.

"About twenty minutes ago," the doctor answered. He glanced at the nurses, jerking his head slightly for them to clarify.

One of them had backed out of the room to avoid overcrowding, but the other managed to stutter an answer. "He… He came in and demanded to be admitted. Something about seizing within minutes, but this is the first incidence."

"How is this possible?" Cameron asked. "He was just upstairs with us."

Chase shook his head. "It isn't. There's no way Wilson was admitted twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes ago we walked in on his argument with House about who left that red mug in the sink."

"Then who is this?" Cameron questioned, her voice twisting upwards into plaintiveness.

"His twin brother?" Chase hypothesized.

"Who gives a damn?" Foreman interrupted. "He's crashing."

 

***
 

Sorting the contents of her hospitality cart, the volunteer let out a quickly strangled, high-pitched squeak when a hand landed on her shoulder. She turned, trying to paste a congenial smile on her face to cover her shock.

The tall man was glowering at her. His blue eyes were familiar, despite the oddity of his clothing.

She knew Dr. House never wore his lab coat but this was definitely new. Wondering how much the gossip market would pay for a description of the oddly accurate feeling jungle camo get-up, she asked, "Can I help you?"

"You know who I am."

It wasn't a question, yet she answered it as one. "Of course, Dr. House." Like anyone hadn't received descriptions and warnings about the dragon of Princeton-Plainesboro.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small device. It looked like his iPod, headphone cord wrapped around the body and secured with a rubber band. "Put this on the desk in my office. If I don't find it there later…"

The threat tapered off as exactly what the consequences could be struck the hint of avarice from her eyes. She nodded rapidly, swallowing to get rid of the dry spot in the back of her throat.

He was waiting for something, staring at her steadily. Realizing it, she took the object from him with hands that shook only slightly.

"Yes, Dr. House."

It seemed to satisfy. He nodded tightly, striding off down the corridor. Deep breathing to regain her composure, she could only think that the other volunteers had it all wrong. The limp? Drastically overstated.

And, dear lord, why had no one ever mentioned the accent…

 

***
 

"Stable," Chase stammered. "Jesus Christ, he's stable."

It had been a tense ten minutes, their nerves wrought by the trial of trying to save the life of a man who looked exactly like James Wilson. Foreman glanced across the momentarily still body, trying to ignore the way his hands trembled slightly and avoiding the dampness in Cameron's eyes.

"Get House," he directed his coworker. For once, Allison Cameron didn't argue about her place on the team. She simply left, knowing that they did indeed need House.

Chase leaned in as their patient stirred. Wilson's eyelids fluttered as he tried to blink back to awareness.

"Dr. Wilson?" he asked. "Can you hear me?"

"House."

Chase frowned slightly at the faint, husky word. It was, at least, acknowledgement that the man was aware. House was, after all, listed as Wilson's personal physician. As Wilson was for the other man. He let his hand rest reassuringly on Wilson's shoulder. The scratchy cloth under his hand distracted him for a moment before he focused on his patient.

"Cameron's gone to get him… He'll be here in no time."

 

***
 

"Dr. House?"

"What?" he barked in reply to the hesitant voice speaking from his office door. The silence finally brought him to look up. The frowning, clearly disappointed and confused, candy-stripper was none of his concern and in no way interesting.

"What?" he drew out, clipping the final letter off clearly.

"You," she stuttered over the word, "You asked me to bring this to you."

His eyes clearly stated that she was an imbecile, but elucidating the depths of her ignorance would bore him. "Yes, fine, go now," he replied, shooing her with a free hand.

It took only moments after her absence for the object became the focus of his curiosity. It looked like an iPod. But it wasn't, because his was safely in the music dock on his desk. Turning it over, he read the engraved back quickly. A serial number, a military code, and his own social security number.

Odd.

Interesting.

Curiosity peaked, House popped the earbuds in his ears and checked the volume level before cueing the file that had been paused before the setting was clicked to hold.

"This is Gregory House," his own voice began. At least, the way he presumed his voice would have sounded if his father hadn't insisted on the diction coach after their move to Japan when he was fourteen. "I'm going to tell you a story about a gateway to the stars… and the people who step through it every single day."

 

***
 

"Give the boy a prize," a voice interrupted. It sounded like House… If Gregory House had been raised in England, or by a succession of British nannies to influence his words. "Well, Jimmy, you've gotten yourself in a right pickle."

Trying to laugh only caused James to wince in pain. "Bastard," he managed to utter.

"Well, at least your brain isn't too damaged. You seem to know who I am."

The man who both was and wasn't House looked up from where he'd bullied aside the remaining staff to move to Wilson's side. His blue eyes were just as piercing, equally as accusatory over his friend's condition, as both Chase and Foreman had expected. They hadn't expected to see their boss moving so easily, in such vaguely military clothes, or speaking so oddly.

"What has he been given?"

Chase shot Foreman a concerned look. Foreman was scowling, arms crossing in front of his body. Clearly, the other doctor had no intention of cooperating until he received some answers.

"Ativan," Chase answered, ignoring Foreman's disgusted glare. "To stop the seizures. Nothing else, not until after we could get him into an MRI."

"Mmmm," House murmured to himself, doing a quick physical check of the patient. "That would have been an experience," he confided to Wilson, now ignoring the other two doctors. "I wonder if it would have pulled the subcu out? What do you think?"

"I think," James gritted out, becoming more aware by the second, "that I'm about to seize again."

"Fuck." It was a bald and basic statement from House in reply. "How long have you been here?"

Teeth chattering, James managed, "Forty hours, or so… I lost track when they arrested me."

"Jimmy!" House managed a proud tone even as he began to rustle in his surprisingly varied pockets. "That makes what… the twelfth time?"

"Nine," was the sparse reply. "Greg… I'm sorry."

House's jovial manner fell away as quickly as he had conjured it to start. "Don't you dare," he hissed, leaning over the patient. "You're not fucking leaving me like this, Jimmy."

Chase began to edge to the door. Something was seriously wrong here. Foreman, however, stepped closer as House finally pulled an object from his pocket. The auto-injector caught the emergency bay lighting, reflecting the glint of metal.

"You can't give him epinephrine. The reaction with the Ativan…"

Foreman never had the chance to finish. House had completely disregarded the warning and pressed the injector against Wilson's neck.

"Will save his life," House finished for Foreman.

"And it's not epinephrine," House added. From behind them.

Chase turned, eyes widening almost comically as he stumbled over himself to move further into the room. House, despite standing next to the bed, was standing behind him. With the military officer who had poked his head into their meeting room earlier.

Foreman squinted between the two men, clearly trying to determine if this was some kind of practical joke. "I want to know what's going on," he finally managed, brittle words bit off in anger.

"Sorry, national security matter," House replied with an oddly manic grin. Their House, at least. He moved to the patient, cane assisting his steps, single earbud dangling against his chest as the other remained nestled in his left ear. "Interesting recording," he offered to his doppelganger.

A sharp nod was his only reply, before the other guessed, "You've always wanted to say that, haven't you?"

House's grin was answer enough as he studied the man on the bed. "Close, very close. Stationed in Manchester?"

"Seven to thirteen," was the obscure reply in accented stereo. "Three weddings does not a negative make."

"I can see that," House mused. He was studying Wilson's nail beds and bounced his ring finger slightly against the lowered side railing. The resulting metallic ping echoed for only a second. "Those regulation?"

"There are a few differences," was the cryptic reply.

"General?" House called over his shoulder to the oddly amused officer leaning against the door. It moved slightly behind him as he prevented the entrance of any further staff, muffling the voice of an increasingly irate Dr. Cameron.

"Doctor."

"How much trouble are we in?" His cynical gaze met one its equal.

O'Neill, surprisingly, smiled. "For this little practical joke? None."

House nodded slightly, lips curling. Turning back to his twin, he asked seriously, "Take care of him?"

"Always," House reassured himself. Then, leaning further over the patient as House limped back from the bed, both of the oddly dressed men vanished in a flash of light.

After a pause, Chase stammered, "Wait… What?"

Foreman, simultaneously, demanded, "What just happened here?"

"Nothing," House barked at them. Pointedly gesturing with his cane, he indicated the door that O'Neill was still blocking. "You've been down here interfering with my revenge on Dr. Fairview and neglecting our patient. Back to work!"

Chase frowned, and Foreman glared mutinously, but they both turned to face the door. With a raised eyebrow, O'Neill stepped aside. The two junior doctors stepped through, pressing back the other that would have entered, and shut the door behind them.

"They bought that?" O'Neill asked.

"No, but neither will they question it."

Jack sighed, "I miss those days." After a moment, he frowned, "Not that I ever really had them."

House let the creeping silence stand for a moment before limping forward. "I imagine there's a mountain of paperwork in my near future."

"More like a galaxy worth," O'Neill smirked.

House sighed noisily, preceding the general through the door.

 

***
 

Hours later, the ducklings had disbursed, their actual patient had been downgraded from interesting to treated, and House was bouncing his ball off the opposite wall and catching the rebound. He ignored the door as it creeped open, not glancing up as Wilson closed it behind him and slumped in one of the chairs.

The ball continued its thumping path. Routine, monotonous, soothing.

"You know," James began, "Today has been filled with all sorts of interesting stories."

"I asked Cuddy," House rejoined, distracted from his usual pointed vigor. "She swears they're real."

"House," James chastised with a frown. "Warn me next time… I can help."

"Help?" The ball's motion ceased as Greg swung around to face his friend.

"Help," Wilson emphasized. "Fairview's a dick to everyone. He's been working his way through the Oncology nurses for months." Wilson interrupted himself to point at House, "don't say it," before resuming his main thought. "I would have backed up your story, if I even knew what it was supposed to be."

"You would?" House mused. He worked his way slowly to his feet as James watched warily. It had been a long, exhausting day and his leg was reminding him of his physical limits.

"I would," Wilson confirmed as House edged nearer to him.

"Stand up."

James edged from the chair at his friend's demand. He watched House curiously, waiting for the punchline. But, somewhere in the eyes scrutinizing him so thoroughly was surprise.

"You would." Greg observed with a hint of amazement.

Then, before Wilson could reply, his best friend slipped his free hand into thick brown hair. James hesitated, then met House's lean. As their lips brushed, then clung, long moments passed.

Wilson looked away as House eased back, staring out the window. "If this is a joke, I'm poisoning your Vicodin."

Greg could hear the hesitancy in his voice and for once didn't have a sly remark in reserve. Or, at least not much of one. "I'm tired," he answered. "Can we talk this to death tomorrow? Over dinner?"

James finally met his gaze, face lighting with pleasure. "Yeah," he confirmed. Then, leaning in one last time, he brushed his own kiss over House's lips. "Yeah."

Watching Wilson walk away was the hardest thing House had done that day…

 

***
 

House stared at the telephone that sat on his desktop for several minutes in accusatory silence. Finally, when it seemed disinclined to simply provide him with the answers he sought, he reached out.

Face twisted with the obvious dislike of what he was doing, he tapped out the numbers with insistent force. The ring was tinny, distant, and altogether unfamiliar. He had this number memorized. He'd simply never had the desire to use it before.

Those who met his father assumed the man was retired. Gregory House was never one to part freely with the facets of his personal life. He let people make all the assumptions they wanted. But retirement would no more suit the elder House than it would suit the younger.

The ringing was replaced with the coolly professional voice of an adjutant. "Major General House's office, Captain Wallace speaking. How may I help you?"

House hesitated, the intentional contact and its likely conclusion grating on him. He was giving in. Admitting his father was right. There were more interesting things than medicine and he had no idea what he had been missing. It was probably going to give him an ulcer.

"I'd like to speak with John House."

"Who's calling, please?" The voice was noticeably cool, even if it remained as polite as ever.

"His son," House bit out with unnecessary vigor. Round One had gone to him. Medical school, not the military. Round Two was clearly going to his dad.

"I'm sorry, Doctor House," was the quick reply. Far too quick to have needed any real consultation with the man himself. "The general is unavailable at the moment. Shall I have him return your call at the hospital or at home?"

He seethed for a moment. The urge to slam the telephone down, to damn this need of his to solve puzzles, was incredibly strong. But he'd glimpsed something he hadn't even known he was missing. He'd seen, for one bizarre moment, what could have been if different paths had been taken. And it was not only fascinating, but available.

"Put the general on the phone," he managed to enunciate with delicately deceptive candor before finishing, "Or I will become very curious about what exactly an International Oversight Committee is overseeing and why the United States military just conducted a joint operation to take apart Scudder Plaza fountain."

The long pause almost convinced House that his bluff had been called. Maybe O'Neill had already reported. Maybe they knew that he had already signed his life away to confidentiality. He could be stubborn, curious, and irritating. Most likely, if he was forced down that route, he'd end up in prison… or the psychiatric ward. Who'd believe his story, after all?

"Please hold," was the answer he finally received.

Leaning back in his chair, he propped his feet up on his desk. Lounging, he waited. Whatever this was, it was incredibly interesting. This would have been a far more convincing argument than 'duty, honor, country' when his father had been trying to convince him to take the Naval Academy's offer.

Of course, the old bastard was probably ignoring the evidence that demonstrated even in a reality where Gregory House was a Marine, he was still a doctor.

"Greg?" he finally heard in his ear. There was the expected irritation, but an odd hint of hopeful anticipation he'd thought fully vanished years ago.

"Hey, Dad," he began flippantly, slouching even more.

This was going to be fun.


Finis
 

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