Time Marches On, Chapter Two: Taub
Apr. 7th, 2008 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
namasteTitle: Time Marches On Chapter Two: Taub
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, PG
Length: About 23,500 words
Spoilers: Through "Don't Ever Change," fourth season.
Author's Note: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pwcorgigirl, silja_b and topaz_eyes for beta and feedback duties.
Previous chapters here: Chapter One: Cameron
Taub
“It’s an infection.” Foreman read the white board and shook his head. His voice had that same tone of frustration that Taub had heard from the first day Foreman had shown up at the back of the lecture hall.
House kept writing, his back to Foreman. He added “diff. breathing” under “fever.” “That’s not what the blood work says,” he said.
Taub had heard from friends back in New York that Foreman had made the rounds there during the summer, after Mercy fired him. He wondered why Foreman hadn’t just taken a different tack. There were plenty of other positions he could have had with his experience in neurology and diagnostics, other than running his own team somewhere else. He could have signed on as an attending almost anywhere and work his way up, if he’d just been patient. There was no reason why he had to come back here.
“That just means it didn’t turn up on the tests the ER ran,” Foreman argued. It seemed like he was always arguing about something. “It doesn’t mean that it’s not an infection.”
Of course, Taub thought to himself, Foreman was just stubborn enough not to follow any possibility except the one he already had set for himself.
“And that’s why we’re going to run another set of labs -- blood, urine, pericardial fluid and whatever else we can find. And add a spinal tap while we’re at it.” House turned to the table, the marker still in his hand. “What else?”
“Could be autoimmune,” Thirteen said. “His body is screwed up and attacking it’s own organs.”
“Post-MI syndrome,” Kutner said.
“Dressler’s?” Foreman asked. “You really think he had a heart attack and didn’t realize it?”
Kutner shrugged. “He had so much extra fluid in his pericardium it was affecting his heart, but he wrote it off as heartburn. It’s not that hard to think that he ignored a mild heart attack a few weeks ago as a bad burrito.”
House added “post-MI” and “autoimmune” to the white board on the side for diagnosis, next to “infection.” “Anything else?” he asked.
Taub looked at the board again. He’d spent years talking about operations, about new techniques, honing his skills with a scalpel and stitches. He’d been good at that, at running meetings, at talking to patients. He’d built a good reputation ... as a surgeon anyway. He’d been admired, and was happy within his own comfort zone.
Here he sometimes felt like he was a half-step behind everyone else, still learning how to play House’s version of diagnostics hardball while everyone else was swinging for the fences. He heard the wind whistle past the windows, thought about how he always seemed to be running against the wind, while the others coasted along with it at their backs.
Taub turned away from the windows, away from distractions of the way things used to be. He looked at the chart again, let his mind make new connections between the patient, his symptoms and what they could mean. “Cancer.”
House turned at looked at Taub for a moment, balanced with his weight on his left leg, the pose that Taub had come to recognize was comfortable for him. He fiddled with the marker between his fingers. “Most likely place for cancer to turn up that would affect the heart would be in the lungs,” House said. “Look at the film. The lungs are clean.”
“That’s the most likely place, but not the only place,” Taub said. “Could be lymphoma or leukemia.”
House didn’t say anything, just stood there. Taub wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but guessed that it was good. He was pretty sure that if he hadn’t liked the idea, House would have just called him an idiot and moved on. Finally House nodded, turned to the board and added “cancer” to the list of possible diagnoses.
House stared at the board, his back to the room with nothing Taub could see except the dark gray of House’s suit jacket, no way to tell what was going through his mind. Finally he capped the marker. He unhooked his cane from the board and stepped away. “Of course,” he said, and sat on the edge of the table, “first we have to make sure he lives long enough to diagnose.” He nodded at Thirteen. “You and Taub repeat the echocardiogram, get a look at what’s going on in the pericardium now.”
“Why not do an MRI?” Kutner asked.
“Echo’s faster,” House said. “If he looks good enough on the echo, we can wait and see if he gets worse. If not, get him to the MRI and prep him to drain more fluid.”
“We should start him on some IV antibiotics,” Foreman said. “If he responds, we’ll know it’s an infection, and we might not have to drain anything.”
“But what flavor?” House asked. “We could go broad spectrum, but chances are that won’t do any good unless we can narrow down the type of infection we’re looking at.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt,” Foreman said.
House stared down at the carpet, cocked his head slightly to the side, as if he could see something there that no one else could. “Fine,” he said, and looked up at Foreman. “Start him on cefatoxime, but then run some more blood tests and do a spinal tap so you can find this infection of yours.”
He pointed his cane toward Kutner. “And you,” he said, “get a better history. See whether he’s had any other cases of heartburn lately. If he says he hasn’t, go to his house, see if he’s stashed any over-the-counter heartburn meds anywhere.”
Kutner took the file and was out the door before Taub was even up.
“I’ll get a new set of blood samples while you two get everything ready for the echo, then do the spinal tap once you’re done,” Foreman said. He took off his suit coat and hung it on the back of his chair, then grabbed his lab coat from a hook near the door.
Taub wondered why Foreman bothered with the suit. Taub left his suit coat in his locker every morning, exchanging it for the lab coat. That white piece of cotton meant something. It meant he was a doctor, someone to trust. Foreman only wore the lab coat when he needed to, instead preferring his high end suit. Maybe he thought that meant he was someone else, someone in charge, but he didn’t fool anyone. Wearing the right clothes -- dressing the part -- didn’t mean that he was in control. But then maybe he wasn’t trying to look like he was in charge of House. Maybe he was just using the suit to try and draw a line between himself and Taub, Kutner and Thirteen.
It didn’t make any difference what he wore, though. He still had to answer to House the same as everyone else.
Thirteen held the door open behind her and waited as Taub caught up. Foreman was already at the elevator and hit the button for the third floor. Once the doors opened again, he headed for the patient’s room at the end of the hall. Taub turned right and walked past the nurse’s station toward the portable ultrasound cart in the storage room just behind it. Thirteen took the container with the gels and wipes.
At any other hospital, they would have just ordered the test, then waited for the radiologist’s report. They all would have sat back and waited -- maybe done some more research or seen more patients. A year ago, and Taub would have done the same thing, would have thought that was the best way to do things. Now ... He ignored the thought and pulled the cart out from its niche against the wall, out into the open space of the storage room. Now he wasn’t so sure that the normal way to do things made as much sense anymore.
House doesn’t work like that, and now, neither does Taub. Nothing’s normal any more, at least not what he’d come to think of as normal. Normal ended sometime after the day Amy walked into his office and introduced herself as the temp his partners had hired while he was on vacation with his wife.
Normal ended sometime after she laughed at his joke, when no one else did. Normal ended sometime after she’d reached across the table at the office holiday party, and wiped a stray bit of whipped cream from his chin.
Normal ended sometime after his wife told him she was going to Vermont with her friends for a women’s skiing retreat.
Normal ended when Amy smiled, and asked him what he’d do by himself while his wife was gone.
Normal ended when Amy let something they’d done together slide to one of the other nurses -- who just happened to be the last one-night stand.
Normal ended when that nurse whispered something to someone else, then to someone else.
Taub pulled the cart out of the nurses’ station, then turned to push it ahead of him down the hallway. One of the wheels wobbled, and he put extra pressure on the left side of the cart to keep it moving straight ahead.
He followed Thirteen down the hall, wondering what normal had been like for her -- before. And what normal would be like some day. He wondered if he’d even recognize normal when he saw it.
He still missed what he’d had, mourned the life that was dead -- the life he’d killed. Some mornings when the alarm went off, he’d lay there in bed, knowing he had to get up, start the long commute to Princeton. Back in New York, he’d been the one in charge, the one everyone came to for advice. He’d take young surgeons under his wing, show them some of his tricks, smile at every compliment.
He had power then. Prestige. A partnership. Everyone loved him. Now? Now he’d see the looks the nurses gave him when he passed by, heard their comments about House, and -- by extension -- about him.
“I don’t trust House,” one of them had told him during his first week at PPTH, “so I don’t trust you.”
He knew he should stop thinking of what had happened back then. Of what he’d lost. What was important was what he still had. His wife still loved him, despite it all. He still had money, at least he had enough banked away to continue living well even with the small salary he earned as one of House’s fellows.
And the crazy thing was, he was actually enjoying himself. It wasn’t the life he’d chosen. Staying in plastic surgery would have been easier, but he didn’t have that anymore. What he had, was this -- a life where nothing was ever normal, at least not for long.
He slowed down when he came near the patient’s room and let Thirteen open the door for them. He pushed the cart through. Foreman was filling a vial with blood.
“Almost done,” he told them. He didn’t bother to look up.
“Hi.” Thirteen put the supplies down on a table. “I’m Dr. Hadley, this is Dr. Taub.” She nodded back toward him.
The patient, Osbourne, just nodded to them. His wife shook Thirteen’s hand. “Hi,” she said.
Jennifer Osbourne’s hair had been dyed a light blonde, Taub noticed. It didn’t quite match the shade of her eyebrows. She had some minor scarring on her face, probably from acne as a teenager. If she’d been a patient of his, a year ago, he would have expected her to be asking for breast augmentation. But she wasn’t his patient, and this wasn’t a year ago. He shook his head. Another change he’d have to make. Different patients, different concerns.
Taub turned to Charles Osbourne in the bed. He was a few pounds overweight, according to his chart, but fit. Taub could see the muscles flex in his forearm as Foreman drew out the syringe, covered the spot with a cotton ball and bent his elbow in.
“Did Dr. Foreman tell you what we’re going to be doing?”
“He said you needed to do some more tests, to check his heart again,” Jennifer Osbourne said.
Foreman looked over at them. “I’ll be in the lab,” he said, and left. Taub moved around to the side of the bed where Foreman had been and moved the cart into place.
“Is this going to take long?” Osbourne asked.
“Not too long,” Taub said. “We’re going to use the ultrasound to get a picture of your heart. That’ll help us find out how your heart’s doing, and if we’ll need to drain some fluid.”
“They already did that in the emergency room,” Jennifer Osbourne said.
“I know,” Thirteen said. She stepped in next to Taub. She gave a slight smile which seemed to reassure the wife. People who didn’t know her -- patients , family -- seemed to trust Thirteen, to think that her downplayed emotions were a sign of confidence, rather than Thirteen’s refusal to show what she was thinking about anything.
“We just want to make sure everything still looks good,” Thirteen said.
“Why wouldn’t it?” the wife asked.
Taub looked over at Thirteen, let her answer the question.
“We still have to find out what caused his problems in the first place,” she said. “Since we haven’t done that, the fluid could return.” She paused for a moment. “We may have to drain it again.”
Jennifer Osbourne took her husband’s hand. He turned his palm to meet hers and their fingers intertwined. He smiled at her. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.” She smiled back.
“I know,” she said.
Taub looked at them, then picked up the probe. He squirted the gel over the surface while Thirteen opened Osbourne’s gown. “Let’s get started,” Taub said.
---
“We’ve got too much fluid in the pericardium again,” Taub told House.
“It’s only been three hours,” House said. “How much?” He looked up from the far side of the table, where he was setting up the tripod frame for the white board in the open spot on the floor just in front of the sink.
Wilson was sitting at the head of the table, a red mug in front of him, and a folded newspaper held in his hand. He didn’t say anything, but kept glancing from an article over to House and back.
“Enough that we’ve cleared time to drain it again this afternoon,” Taub said. He watched as House stepped away, looked at the room, then shifted the frame a little closer to the table. Wilson looked back down at his paper, unfolded it and turned a page. Taub heard the door opening behind him and he looked over to see Foreman coming into the room.
“Thirteen’s clearing us some time in the MRI so we can take a closer look at the heart for any other problems,” Taub said. Foreman didn’t say anything. He watched House for a moment, then looked at Wilson and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Wilson shrugged and took a drink.
Taub still hadn’t figured out Wilson. He didn’t work for House, but they seemed to be a package deal. He looked like the kind of doctor everyone admired, the guy everyone liked. The nurses liked him, his doctors liked him, even his patients liked him.
It didn’t make any sense that he’d spend so much time with someone like House.
The wind blew past the windows again. Taub heard the rough growl of snowplow scraping along the pavement somewhere outside the building. It’d be a bitch getting home tonight -- if he made it home at all. Naomi had asked if he wanted to move, but he didn’t want to commit until he had the job. Now that he had the job, he didn’t want to give up on the last pieces of the life he’d had before, the apartment that he’d bought after he’d been made a partner, the neighborhood that Naomi liked so well.
He heard snow pellets rattle against the glass, and wondered if he should just reserve a hotel room for the night.
Taub finally looked away from the window, and saw House staring at the glass, shifting his weight slightly onto his cane. Taub saw Wilson put down his paper. He was watching House, and Taub followed his gaze to try and see what he saw, but saw only the set of House’s shoulders, the way he stood like he always did. House turned from the window, and Wilson managed to turn away before House saw him. Instead House caught Taub studying him. He stepped away and pointed at the white board, lying face down on the table.
“Grab that,” he said.
Taub picked it up. It was heavier than he’d expected. He wondered how hard it had been for House to take the few steps with it over to the table.
“Put it there.” House nodded at the frame and Taub put it in place. The letters were slightly smudged and Taub looked down and saw where the ink had rubbed off on the white cloth of his lab coat and dress shirt.
He looked at House. “Why are you moving it?” he asked.
House groaned a little and rolled his eyes as he turned to Taub. Dumb question, Taub told himself. “I wanted to,” House said. “I’m trying something new.” His voice was harsh, taunting. Definitely a stupid question, Taub told himself.
“White count is elevated,” Foreman finally announced. Maybe that’s what really separated Foreman from him and Thirteen and Kutner. Foreman knew not to ask stupid questions.
“Not that elevated, or you would have been shouting about it as soon as you walked in,” House said.
Foreman sighed. “It’s a little under 12,000.”
“So, not enough to actually tell us anything,” House said.
“Sed rate is higher than normal,” Foreman added.
“Which only means something’s inflamed. The effusion already told us that.” House looked at the white board and took another step back.
“Where’s Kutner?” Foreman asked.
“Checking the guy’s work site,” House said.
“Not the house?”
“He already did the house,” House said, turning to Foreman. “I figured as long as he’s out, he might as well be thorough.”
Foreman shook his head, and walked over to the spot where the white board used to be, looking from there to the new location. “You planning to leave that there?” he asked.
“Why not?” House asked.
“Because you’re blocking the coffee.” Foreman nodded toward the coffee maker on the counter behind the board.
Wilson looked over the top of his newspaper. “He’s got a point,” he said.
House walked around to the side of the board, looked at it from another angle. He stepped back to the front and pulled at the frame, yanking it forward six inches. Taub reached out to steady the board as it shuddered and slid until House got it to the spot he wanted.
House stepped back to the side of the board. “That works,” he said.
“Yeah,” Foreman said, and shook his head. “That’s much better.”
House leaned onto his cane, his right leg bent slightly under him. “You do the lumbar puncture yet?”
“Not yet, I was waiting for them to finish the echo.”
“We’re done,” Taub said.
“So,” House turned to Foreman, “why are you waiting now?”
Foreman put up both hands, then turned and walked out.
House looked at the board again. Taub pulled out a chair and sat. “And why are you still here?” House asked.
“I’m ... waiting for Thirteen to page me that she’s cleared us some time in the MRI,” he said.
“And it would take even less time if you were both working on getting some MRI time,” House said. “That would be good for the patient, right?”
Taub stood again. “Right,” he said. “I’ll just go help her out.”
“Good idea.”
Taub walked across the room and out the door. Through the glass he could see House take a seat. He was still staring at the board as Taub walked out of sight.
Chapter Three: Thirteen
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, PG
Length: About 23,500 words
Spoilers: Through "Don't Ever Change," fourth season.
Author's Note: Thanks to
pwcorgigirl, silja_b and topaz_eyes for beta and feedback duties.Previous chapters here: Chapter One: Cameron
Taub
“It’s an infection.” Foreman read the white board and shook his head. His voice had that same tone of frustration that Taub had heard from the first day Foreman had shown up at the back of the lecture hall.
House kept writing, his back to Foreman. He added “diff. breathing” under “fever.” “That’s not what the blood work says,” he said.
Taub had heard from friends back in New York that Foreman had made the rounds there during the summer, after Mercy fired him. He wondered why Foreman hadn’t just taken a different tack. There were plenty of other positions he could have had with his experience in neurology and diagnostics, other than running his own team somewhere else. He could have signed on as an attending almost anywhere and work his way up, if he’d just been patient. There was no reason why he had to come back here.
“That just means it didn’t turn up on the tests the ER ran,” Foreman argued. It seemed like he was always arguing about something. “It doesn’t mean that it’s not an infection.”
Of course, Taub thought to himself, Foreman was just stubborn enough not to follow any possibility except the one he already had set for himself.
“And that’s why we’re going to run another set of labs -- blood, urine, pericardial fluid and whatever else we can find. And add a spinal tap while we’re at it.” House turned to the table, the marker still in his hand. “What else?”
“Could be autoimmune,” Thirteen said. “His body is screwed up and attacking it’s own organs.”
“Post-MI syndrome,” Kutner said.
“Dressler’s?” Foreman asked. “You really think he had a heart attack and didn’t realize it?”
Kutner shrugged. “He had so much extra fluid in his pericardium it was affecting his heart, but he wrote it off as heartburn. It’s not that hard to think that he ignored a mild heart attack a few weeks ago as a bad burrito.”
House added “post-MI” and “autoimmune” to the white board on the side for diagnosis, next to “infection.” “Anything else?” he asked.
Taub looked at the board again. He’d spent years talking about operations, about new techniques, honing his skills with a scalpel and stitches. He’d been good at that, at running meetings, at talking to patients. He’d built a good reputation ... as a surgeon anyway. He’d been admired, and was happy within his own comfort zone.
Here he sometimes felt like he was a half-step behind everyone else, still learning how to play House’s version of diagnostics hardball while everyone else was swinging for the fences. He heard the wind whistle past the windows, thought about how he always seemed to be running against the wind, while the others coasted along with it at their backs.
Taub turned away from the windows, away from distractions of the way things used to be. He looked at the chart again, let his mind make new connections between the patient, his symptoms and what they could mean. “Cancer.”
House turned at looked at Taub for a moment, balanced with his weight on his left leg, the pose that Taub had come to recognize was comfortable for him. He fiddled with the marker between his fingers. “Most likely place for cancer to turn up that would affect the heart would be in the lungs,” House said. “Look at the film. The lungs are clean.”
“That’s the most likely place, but not the only place,” Taub said. “Could be lymphoma or leukemia.”
House didn’t say anything, just stood there. Taub wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but guessed that it was good. He was pretty sure that if he hadn’t liked the idea, House would have just called him an idiot and moved on. Finally House nodded, turned to the board and added “cancer” to the list of possible diagnoses.
House stared at the board, his back to the room with nothing Taub could see except the dark gray of House’s suit jacket, no way to tell what was going through his mind. Finally he capped the marker. He unhooked his cane from the board and stepped away. “Of course,” he said, and sat on the edge of the table, “first we have to make sure he lives long enough to diagnose.” He nodded at Thirteen. “You and Taub repeat the echocardiogram, get a look at what’s going on in the pericardium now.”
“Why not do an MRI?” Kutner asked.
“Echo’s faster,” House said. “If he looks good enough on the echo, we can wait and see if he gets worse. If not, get him to the MRI and prep him to drain more fluid.”
“We should start him on some IV antibiotics,” Foreman said. “If he responds, we’ll know it’s an infection, and we might not have to drain anything.”
“But what flavor?” House asked. “We could go broad spectrum, but chances are that won’t do any good unless we can narrow down the type of infection we’re looking at.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt,” Foreman said.
House stared down at the carpet, cocked his head slightly to the side, as if he could see something there that no one else could. “Fine,” he said, and looked up at Foreman. “Start him on cefatoxime, but then run some more blood tests and do a spinal tap so you can find this infection of yours.”
He pointed his cane toward Kutner. “And you,” he said, “get a better history. See whether he’s had any other cases of heartburn lately. If he says he hasn’t, go to his house, see if he’s stashed any over-the-counter heartburn meds anywhere.”
Kutner took the file and was out the door before Taub was even up.
“I’ll get a new set of blood samples while you two get everything ready for the echo, then do the spinal tap once you’re done,” Foreman said. He took off his suit coat and hung it on the back of his chair, then grabbed his lab coat from a hook near the door.
Taub wondered why Foreman bothered with the suit. Taub left his suit coat in his locker every morning, exchanging it for the lab coat. That white piece of cotton meant something. It meant he was a doctor, someone to trust. Foreman only wore the lab coat when he needed to, instead preferring his high end suit. Maybe he thought that meant he was someone else, someone in charge, but he didn’t fool anyone. Wearing the right clothes -- dressing the part -- didn’t mean that he was in control. But then maybe he wasn’t trying to look like he was in charge of House. Maybe he was just using the suit to try and draw a line between himself and Taub, Kutner and Thirteen.
It didn’t make any difference what he wore, though. He still had to answer to House the same as everyone else.
Thirteen held the door open behind her and waited as Taub caught up. Foreman was already at the elevator and hit the button for the third floor. Once the doors opened again, he headed for the patient’s room at the end of the hall. Taub turned right and walked past the nurse’s station toward the portable ultrasound cart in the storage room just behind it. Thirteen took the container with the gels and wipes.
At any other hospital, they would have just ordered the test, then waited for the radiologist’s report. They all would have sat back and waited -- maybe done some more research or seen more patients. A year ago, and Taub would have done the same thing, would have thought that was the best way to do things. Now ... He ignored the thought and pulled the cart out from its niche against the wall, out into the open space of the storage room. Now he wasn’t so sure that the normal way to do things made as much sense anymore.
House doesn’t work like that, and now, neither does Taub. Nothing’s normal any more, at least not what he’d come to think of as normal. Normal ended sometime after the day Amy walked into his office and introduced herself as the temp his partners had hired while he was on vacation with his wife.
Normal ended sometime after she laughed at his joke, when no one else did. Normal ended sometime after she’d reached across the table at the office holiday party, and wiped a stray bit of whipped cream from his chin.
Normal ended sometime after his wife told him she was going to Vermont with her friends for a women’s skiing retreat.
Normal ended when Amy smiled, and asked him what he’d do by himself while his wife was gone.
Normal ended when Amy let something they’d done together slide to one of the other nurses -- who just happened to be the last one-night stand.
Normal ended when that nurse whispered something to someone else, then to someone else.
Taub pulled the cart out of the nurses’ station, then turned to push it ahead of him down the hallway. One of the wheels wobbled, and he put extra pressure on the left side of the cart to keep it moving straight ahead.
He followed Thirteen down the hall, wondering what normal had been like for her -- before. And what normal would be like some day. He wondered if he’d even recognize normal when he saw it.
He still missed what he’d had, mourned the life that was dead -- the life he’d killed. Some mornings when the alarm went off, he’d lay there in bed, knowing he had to get up, start the long commute to Princeton. Back in New York, he’d been the one in charge, the one everyone came to for advice. He’d take young surgeons under his wing, show them some of his tricks, smile at every compliment.
He had power then. Prestige. A partnership. Everyone loved him. Now? Now he’d see the looks the nurses gave him when he passed by, heard their comments about House, and -- by extension -- about him.
“I don’t trust House,” one of them had told him during his first week at PPTH, “so I don’t trust you.”
He knew he should stop thinking of what had happened back then. Of what he’d lost. What was important was what he still had. His wife still loved him, despite it all. He still had money, at least he had enough banked away to continue living well even with the small salary he earned as one of House’s fellows.
And the crazy thing was, he was actually enjoying himself. It wasn’t the life he’d chosen. Staying in plastic surgery would have been easier, but he didn’t have that anymore. What he had, was this -- a life where nothing was ever normal, at least not for long.
He slowed down when he came near the patient’s room and let Thirteen open the door for them. He pushed the cart through. Foreman was filling a vial with blood.
“Almost done,” he told them. He didn’t bother to look up.
“Hi.” Thirteen put the supplies down on a table. “I’m Dr. Hadley, this is Dr. Taub.” She nodded back toward him.
The patient, Osbourne, just nodded to them. His wife shook Thirteen’s hand. “Hi,” she said.
Jennifer Osbourne’s hair had been dyed a light blonde, Taub noticed. It didn’t quite match the shade of her eyebrows. She had some minor scarring on her face, probably from acne as a teenager. If she’d been a patient of his, a year ago, he would have expected her to be asking for breast augmentation. But she wasn’t his patient, and this wasn’t a year ago. He shook his head. Another change he’d have to make. Different patients, different concerns.
Taub turned to Charles Osbourne in the bed. He was a few pounds overweight, according to his chart, but fit. Taub could see the muscles flex in his forearm as Foreman drew out the syringe, covered the spot with a cotton ball and bent his elbow in.
“Did Dr. Foreman tell you what we’re going to be doing?”
“He said you needed to do some more tests, to check his heart again,” Jennifer Osbourne said.
Foreman looked over at them. “I’ll be in the lab,” he said, and left. Taub moved around to the side of the bed where Foreman had been and moved the cart into place.
“Is this going to take long?” Osbourne asked.
“Not too long,” Taub said. “We’re going to use the ultrasound to get a picture of your heart. That’ll help us find out how your heart’s doing, and if we’ll need to drain some fluid.”
“They already did that in the emergency room,” Jennifer Osbourne said.
“I know,” Thirteen said. She stepped in next to Taub. She gave a slight smile which seemed to reassure the wife. People who didn’t know her -- patients , family -- seemed to trust Thirteen, to think that her downplayed emotions were a sign of confidence, rather than Thirteen’s refusal to show what she was thinking about anything.
“We just want to make sure everything still looks good,” Thirteen said.
“Why wouldn’t it?” the wife asked.
Taub looked over at Thirteen, let her answer the question.
“We still have to find out what caused his problems in the first place,” she said. “Since we haven’t done that, the fluid could return.” She paused for a moment. “We may have to drain it again.”
Jennifer Osbourne took her husband’s hand. He turned his palm to meet hers and their fingers intertwined. He smiled at her. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.” She smiled back.
“I know,” she said.
Taub looked at them, then picked up the probe. He squirted the gel over the surface while Thirteen opened Osbourne’s gown. “Let’s get started,” Taub said.
---
“We’ve got too much fluid in the pericardium again,” Taub told House.
“It’s only been three hours,” House said. “How much?” He looked up from the far side of the table, where he was setting up the tripod frame for the white board in the open spot on the floor just in front of the sink.
Wilson was sitting at the head of the table, a red mug in front of him, and a folded newspaper held in his hand. He didn’t say anything, but kept glancing from an article over to House and back.
“Enough that we’ve cleared time to drain it again this afternoon,” Taub said. He watched as House stepped away, looked at the room, then shifted the frame a little closer to the table. Wilson looked back down at his paper, unfolded it and turned a page. Taub heard the door opening behind him and he looked over to see Foreman coming into the room.
“Thirteen’s clearing us some time in the MRI so we can take a closer look at the heart for any other problems,” Taub said. Foreman didn’t say anything. He watched House for a moment, then looked at Wilson and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Wilson shrugged and took a drink.
Taub still hadn’t figured out Wilson. He didn’t work for House, but they seemed to be a package deal. He looked like the kind of doctor everyone admired, the guy everyone liked. The nurses liked him, his doctors liked him, even his patients liked him.
It didn’t make any sense that he’d spend so much time with someone like House.
The wind blew past the windows again. Taub heard the rough growl of snowplow scraping along the pavement somewhere outside the building. It’d be a bitch getting home tonight -- if he made it home at all. Naomi had asked if he wanted to move, but he didn’t want to commit until he had the job. Now that he had the job, he didn’t want to give up on the last pieces of the life he’d had before, the apartment that he’d bought after he’d been made a partner, the neighborhood that Naomi liked so well.
He heard snow pellets rattle against the glass, and wondered if he should just reserve a hotel room for the night.
Taub finally looked away from the window, and saw House staring at the glass, shifting his weight slightly onto his cane. Taub saw Wilson put down his paper. He was watching House, and Taub followed his gaze to try and see what he saw, but saw only the set of House’s shoulders, the way he stood like he always did. House turned from the window, and Wilson managed to turn away before House saw him. Instead House caught Taub studying him. He stepped away and pointed at the white board, lying face down on the table.
“Grab that,” he said.
Taub picked it up. It was heavier than he’d expected. He wondered how hard it had been for House to take the few steps with it over to the table.
“Put it there.” House nodded at the frame and Taub put it in place. The letters were slightly smudged and Taub looked down and saw where the ink had rubbed off on the white cloth of his lab coat and dress shirt.
He looked at House. “Why are you moving it?” he asked.
House groaned a little and rolled his eyes as he turned to Taub. Dumb question, Taub told himself. “I wanted to,” House said. “I’m trying something new.” His voice was harsh, taunting. Definitely a stupid question, Taub told himself.
“White count is elevated,” Foreman finally announced. Maybe that’s what really separated Foreman from him and Thirteen and Kutner. Foreman knew not to ask stupid questions.
“Not that elevated, or you would have been shouting about it as soon as you walked in,” House said.
Foreman sighed. “It’s a little under 12,000.”
“So, not enough to actually tell us anything,” House said.
“Sed rate is higher than normal,” Foreman added.
“Which only means something’s inflamed. The effusion already told us that.” House looked at the white board and took another step back.
“Where’s Kutner?” Foreman asked.
“Checking the guy’s work site,” House said.
“Not the house?”
“He already did the house,” House said, turning to Foreman. “I figured as long as he’s out, he might as well be thorough.”
Foreman shook his head, and walked over to the spot where the white board used to be, looking from there to the new location. “You planning to leave that there?” he asked.
“Why not?” House asked.
“Because you’re blocking the coffee.” Foreman nodded toward the coffee maker on the counter behind the board.
Wilson looked over the top of his newspaper. “He’s got a point,” he said.
House walked around to the side of the board, looked at it from another angle. He stepped back to the front and pulled at the frame, yanking it forward six inches. Taub reached out to steady the board as it shuddered and slid until House got it to the spot he wanted.
House stepped back to the side of the board. “That works,” he said.
“Yeah,” Foreman said, and shook his head. “That’s much better.”
House leaned onto his cane, his right leg bent slightly under him. “You do the lumbar puncture yet?”
“Not yet, I was waiting for them to finish the echo.”
“We’re done,” Taub said.
“So,” House turned to Foreman, “why are you waiting now?”
Foreman put up both hands, then turned and walked out.
House looked at the board again. Taub pulled out a chair and sat. “And why are you still here?” House asked.
“I’m ... waiting for Thirteen to page me that she’s cleared us some time in the MRI,” he said.
“And it would take even less time if you were both working on getting some MRI time,” House said. “That would be good for the patient, right?”
Taub stood again. “Right,” he said. “I’ll just go help her out.”
“Good idea.”
Taub walked across the room and out the door. Through the glass he could see House take a seat. He was still staring at the board as Taub walked out of sight.
Chapter Three: Thirteen
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Date: 2008-04-09 03:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 12:22 pm (UTC)