Time Marches On, Chapter Six: Kutner
Apr. 7th, 2008 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
namasteTitle: Time Marches On Chapter Six: Kutner
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, Chapter Two: Taub, Chapter Three: Thirteen, Chapter Four: Foreman, Chapter Five: Chase
Kutner
Kutner stared at the numbers on the screen, rubbed his eyes and studied them once more.
“Negative,” he finally said. “Again.”
He should have gotten more sleep when he had the chance, gone back and stretched out in the on-call room once Ozzy was in surgery, but he been too wired to sleep. He could still see the look in House’s eyes as he’d looked at the ultrasound report, remembered the way that House at glanced over at him. He was pretty sure that House had even given him a slight nod.
But that was more than five hours ago, and the excitement of finding tumors faded when they’d found out the growths were benign. The little of that buzz that remained faded with each hour in the lab rerunning the tests, checking again and again for things they’d already ruled out. For things Thirteen had already ruled out.
“Got the next sample ready,” Thirteen said. She tried to hold back a yawn, and didn’t quite succeed. Kutner knew she had to be just as tired as he was. Maybe more.
He keyed in the information and waited for the numbers to pop up on the screen.
“Negative,” he said, reading the data.
She yawned again, stood up and stretched, walked to his side of the table to look at the numbers for herself. She shook her head.
“We can take a break, if you want,” Kutner said.
“I’d rather get these done,” Thirteen said, but she didn’t go back to her seat. Instead she walked to the far side of the room, stretching her arms high over her head, the folds of her lab coat creasing between her shoulder blades as she reached higher.
“How many more do we have left?” Kutner asked.
“Three.” She dropped her arms, let her head roll from one shoulder to the other as she tried to loosen up.
“If we know it’s autoimmune, we should just start him on corticosteroids, see how he responds, then work out which one it is later,” Kutner said.
Thirteen turned toward him again. “House won’t like that,” she said. “He’s going to want the diagnosis no matter what.”
Kutner nodded. “I know. I was just ...” he shrugged, “thinking out loud.”
“You do that a lot.”
“I know,” he said. “Habit.” He spun around in the chair to face her. “When I was a kid, I was alone a lot. It was always quiet.” He’d hated that feeling, silence closing in on him and no one to know he was even alive. He sometimes thought that hell would be like that -- with nothing and no one -- forever. “Sometimes I’d talk just to hear a voice in the house, you know?” He shuddered a bit, trying to shake away the memory. “It didn’t seem so lonesome.”
He looked over at Thirteen. She nodded slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but then she looked away, rubbed at her eyes, and went back to her seat. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.
Kutner turned back to the monitor. “Sure,” he said.
He told himself that Thirteen was just tired, anxious to finish up, but couldn’t silence the voice in his head telling him he’d said too much again. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have cared. Either people liked him or not.
But that was before House told him again and again that everyone lies. Before Cole proved it was true.
He’d liked Cole. Hell, a part of him still did -- and a part even forgave him for what he’d done. He’d heard that Cole got a position in Philadelphia, and he’d been happy for him. He wouldn’t have to move right away. It was a long commute, but at least he wouldn’t have to move his son halfway through the school year. No kid should have to move twice in a year, or three times.
Part of him wanted to stop and see Cole sometime, just show up at his doorstep, see how he reacted. He wanted to hear him apologize. He wanted to forgive him. But if Cole was really sorry, he would have said something already. Maybe Cole thought Kutner wouldn’t forgive him. Or maybe he’d been lying about their friendship the whole time.
Kutner adjusted the equipment, tried to let the thoughts go, or at least push them somewhere into the back of his mind where he could ignore them.
“You ready?” Thirteen asked.
Kutner nodded. “Let’s go.”
---
Kutner stood just inside the conference room door. House was alone at the table, staring at the window. He followed his gaze, seeing the snow bright white against the dark gray clouds. Thirteen had said she was going to check with Taub in the path lab, and Kutner had volunteered to bring House the news that they had nothing new.
House had one hand on the edge of the table, the other working at the muscles high on his right thigh. Kutner knew that massage helped some people. For others, it was at least a distraction. Back when he was still working in rehab, he’d see people come in, muscles tight and joints stiff -- hands gripped tightly onto crutches or wheelchair wheels or canes. After each session their movement seemed to ease, at least for a few hours, even their faces marked by less tension.
House was kneading a spot on the inner part of the thigh, just above the knee. Kutner guessed he must have strained it sometime, either last night, when he’d been tired and moving slower, or this morning when he’d shown up bearing the marks of a fall in the snow with one dark spot on his jeans where he’d landed, and another, lighter one where he’d pushed himself up onto his left knee.
Kutner could almost picture the fall. When he closed his eyes he could even draw out which muscles were damaged by the way he moved. It was what he used to do -- watching people walk barefoot down hallways to study the way they moved, to know what he could fix, and what couldn’t be fixed.
Sometimes he’d found himself watching House with the same eye he’d developed then. He known from the first time he’d seen him that there were things deep inside his leg that could never be repaired, and he knew that House knew that too.
“Make yourself useful,” House suddenly said, and Kutner jerked slightly. House was holding up his mug. “Black,” he said, “two sugars.”
Kutner didn’t move for a moment. “How did you ....” he started to ask, but House nodded toward the window. Kutner saw his own reflection there, the light from the hallways just bright enough to show his silhouette against the dark sky.
“I was thinking about installing a web cam, but this is cheaper,” House said. He held the mug toward Kutner. “Coffee,” he said.
Kutner walked over, took the mug from House’s hand. The pot was nearly empty, and he wondered for a moment if House would mind if he split what was left between House’s cup and one for him. Then he smiled. Of course he’d mind.
He poured the coffee in House’s mug, added the sugar and gave it a quick stir.
“What happens when the blinds are closed?” he asked, handing House the mug.
“I won’t close them,” House said.
“What about this summer, when it’s light out?” Kutner asked. “No reflection.”
House took a deep breath. “There are a few bugs in the system yet,” he said. “I’ll figure them out.”
The smart thing to would have been to keep quiet. Kutner was smart enough to know that, but you didn’t learn anything new if you didn’t ask questions. He poured grounds into the coffee filter, fit it into place.
“Nothing new on the repeat tests, right?” House said, and Kutner nodded.
He pushed the button to start the coffee brewing, listened to the water as it heated. It was quiet in the room. Kutner knew that House probably liked it that way, and that he should keep his mouth shut. But people who never asked questions, never got answers, he thought. He wanted to know everything. How House thought. Whether he’d ever made mistakes. What he’d learned from his mentors. He knew he’d never get all the answers, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.
He turned toward House. Start small. Start with something simple.
“Why’d you rearrange the room?” he asked.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if House hadn’t said anything, or had called him an idiot and walked away.
House took a drink. “Meerkats spend their entire lifetime in the same two square miles of desert,” he said.
“You watch Animal Planet?” Kutner asked.
House ignored him. “If their food supplies run out, they’ll starve to death, rather than find new territory,” he said.” If their alpha male and alpha female can’t mate, they’ll allow their entire family to die out, rather than change the social structure.”
He took another drink. He was still staring out the window. Kutner could see the corner of the building, but the rest of the campus was hidden behind the storm.
“Red-tailed hawks,” House continued, “range from the mountains of Alaska down to Mexico. They can forage in swamps or deserts or mountains or prairies. If their mate dies, they find another one.”
He fell silent again. Kutner waited, but he didn’t say anything else.
“So, what,” he finally asked, “we’re supposed to learn from migratory animals? Or is this about adapting to new environments?”
House finally turned to look at him, his eyes honed in on Kutner’s as if he was studying his face for some sign, some symptom, some answer of his own. “What do you think?”
Kutner dared himself not to look away, not to blink. He took a deep breath. “I think,” he said, “that you’re never going to give me a straight answer.”
He thought he caught a slight smile on House’s face before House turned away, went back to staring out the window.
Kutner grinned. Maybe he’d said the right thing for once.
The coffee pot burbled again, gasped as it finished the job. Kutner poured himself a cup. He heard footsteps, and turned to see Taub walk in, followed by Thirteen.
Taub crossed the room to the coffee pot, and Kutner moved away to give him space. Thirteen walked to the table, but didn’t sit. Instead she turned, walked halfway back to the door, then to the table again. Pacing. Keeping herself awake, maybe.
“Chase was right,” Taub said. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took an empty seat at the table.
“I know,” House said.
He took another drink, then grabbed his cane. Kutner saw him grip the handle tight, his knuckles turning white as he braced himself. House put his left hand on the table, pushed himself up, slowly. He paused there for a moment, then finally took a stuttering step away and over to the white board. He picked up the eraser and removed all of the possible diagnoses from one side of the board.
He uncapped a pen.
“If the tests won’t help, we’ll have to do this the hard way,” House said. “Which one of these,” he wrote “autoimmune” across the top, “cause these?” he asked, and pointed to the symptoms.
“Rheumatoid arthritis,” Taub said.
“No joint swelling,” Kutner pointed out, but House wrote it down anyway. “Reiter’s syndrome,” Taub said.
“No infection,” Thirteen said. House wrote down Reiter’s. “Kawasaki’s Disease.”
“No tachycardia,” Taub said, “and he’s not five years old.”
“Kawasaki’s in adults is rare, but it happens,” Thirteen said.
Taub shook his head, but didn’t argue. “Mixed Connective Tissue Disease?” he asked.
“It didn’t show up in the ANA,” Kutner said.
House added MCTD, then lupus. “If we’re going to assume that the ANA is giving us false negatives, we might as well assume it’s still lupus,” he said. He looked at the others. “Anything else?”
Thirteen stopped pacing, stood at the end of the table. She looked at Kutner, then at House. “Even if we don’t know what it is, we should start him on corticosteroids,” she said.
Kutner wondered if she’d planned to make the suggestion even back when she’d told him that it was a stupid one. Maybe she had, and she was no different than Cole.
“I had Foreman start them an hour ago,” House said. “How he reacts may tell us something new.”
House stared at the board, the pen still in his hand. Finally he capped it, put it on the table.
“What do we do now?” Thirteen asked.
“Now?” House finally stepped away from the white board, taking careful steps across the room. “Now we wait.”
He walked into his office and closed the door behind him.
Chapter Seven: Wilson
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, Chapter Two: Taub, Chapter Three: Thirteen, Chapter Four: Foreman, Chapter Five: Chase
Kutner
Kutner stared at the numbers on the screen, rubbed his eyes and studied them once more.
“Negative,” he finally said. “Again.”
He should have gotten more sleep when he had the chance, gone back and stretched out in the on-call room once Ozzy was in surgery, but he been too wired to sleep. He could still see the look in House’s eyes as he’d looked at the ultrasound report, remembered the way that House at glanced over at him. He was pretty sure that House had even given him a slight nod.
But that was more than five hours ago, and the excitement of finding tumors faded when they’d found out the growths were benign. The little of that buzz that remained faded with each hour in the lab rerunning the tests, checking again and again for things they’d already ruled out. For things Thirteen had already ruled out.
“Got the next sample ready,” Thirteen said. She tried to hold back a yawn, and didn’t quite succeed. Kutner knew she had to be just as tired as he was. Maybe more.
He keyed in the information and waited for the numbers to pop up on the screen.
“Negative,” he said, reading the data.
She yawned again, stood up and stretched, walked to his side of the table to look at the numbers for herself. She shook her head.
“We can take a break, if you want,” Kutner said.
“I’d rather get these done,” Thirteen said, but she didn’t go back to her seat. Instead she walked to the far side of the room, stretching her arms high over her head, the folds of her lab coat creasing between her shoulder blades as she reached higher.
“How many more do we have left?” Kutner asked.
“Three.” She dropped her arms, let her head roll from one shoulder to the other as she tried to loosen up.
“If we know it’s autoimmune, we should just start him on corticosteroids, see how he responds, then work out which one it is later,” Kutner said.
Thirteen turned toward him again. “House won’t like that,” she said. “He’s going to want the diagnosis no matter what.”
Kutner nodded. “I know. I was just ...” he shrugged, “thinking out loud.”
“You do that a lot.”
“I know,” he said. “Habit.” He spun around in the chair to face her. “When I was a kid, I was alone a lot. It was always quiet.” He’d hated that feeling, silence closing in on him and no one to know he was even alive. He sometimes thought that hell would be like that -- with nothing and no one -- forever. “Sometimes I’d talk just to hear a voice in the house, you know?” He shuddered a bit, trying to shake away the memory. “It didn’t seem so lonesome.”
He looked over at Thirteen. She nodded slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but then she looked away, rubbed at her eyes, and went back to her seat. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.
Kutner turned back to the monitor. “Sure,” he said.
He told himself that Thirteen was just tired, anxious to finish up, but couldn’t silence the voice in his head telling him he’d said too much again. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have cared. Either people liked him or not.
But that was before House told him again and again that everyone lies. Before Cole proved it was true.
He’d liked Cole. Hell, a part of him still did -- and a part even forgave him for what he’d done. He’d heard that Cole got a position in Philadelphia, and he’d been happy for him. He wouldn’t have to move right away. It was a long commute, but at least he wouldn’t have to move his son halfway through the school year. No kid should have to move twice in a year, or three times.
Part of him wanted to stop and see Cole sometime, just show up at his doorstep, see how he reacted. He wanted to hear him apologize. He wanted to forgive him. But if Cole was really sorry, he would have said something already. Maybe Cole thought Kutner wouldn’t forgive him. Or maybe he’d been lying about their friendship the whole time.
Kutner adjusted the equipment, tried to let the thoughts go, or at least push them somewhere into the back of his mind where he could ignore them.
“You ready?” Thirteen asked.
Kutner nodded. “Let’s go.”
---
Kutner stood just inside the conference room door. House was alone at the table, staring at the window. He followed his gaze, seeing the snow bright white against the dark gray clouds. Thirteen had said she was going to check with Taub in the path lab, and Kutner had volunteered to bring House the news that they had nothing new.
House had one hand on the edge of the table, the other working at the muscles high on his right thigh. Kutner knew that massage helped some people. For others, it was at least a distraction. Back when he was still working in rehab, he’d see people come in, muscles tight and joints stiff -- hands gripped tightly onto crutches or wheelchair wheels or canes. After each session their movement seemed to ease, at least for a few hours, even their faces marked by less tension.
House was kneading a spot on the inner part of the thigh, just above the knee. Kutner guessed he must have strained it sometime, either last night, when he’d been tired and moving slower, or this morning when he’d shown up bearing the marks of a fall in the snow with one dark spot on his jeans where he’d landed, and another, lighter one where he’d pushed himself up onto his left knee.
Kutner could almost picture the fall. When he closed his eyes he could even draw out which muscles were damaged by the way he moved. It was what he used to do -- watching people walk barefoot down hallways to study the way they moved, to know what he could fix, and what couldn’t be fixed.
Sometimes he’d found himself watching House with the same eye he’d developed then. He known from the first time he’d seen him that there were things deep inside his leg that could never be repaired, and he knew that House knew that too.
“Make yourself useful,” House suddenly said, and Kutner jerked slightly. House was holding up his mug. “Black,” he said, “two sugars.”
Kutner didn’t move for a moment. “How did you ....” he started to ask, but House nodded toward the window. Kutner saw his own reflection there, the light from the hallways just bright enough to show his silhouette against the dark sky.
“I was thinking about installing a web cam, but this is cheaper,” House said. He held the mug toward Kutner. “Coffee,” he said.
Kutner walked over, took the mug from House’s hand. The pot was nearly empty, and he wondered for a moment if House would mind if he split what was left between House’s cup and one for him. Then he smiled. Of course he’d mind.
He poured the coffee in House’s mug, added the sugar and gave it a quick stir.
“What happens when the blinds are closed?” he asked, handing House the mug.
“I won’t close them,” House said.
“What about this summer, when it’s light out?” Kutner asked. “No reflection.”
House took a deep breath. “There are a few bugs in the system yet,” he said. “I’ll figure them out.”
The smart thing to would have been to keep quiet. Kutner was smart enough to know that, but you didn’t learn anything new if you didn’t ask questions. He poured grounds into the coffee filter, fit it into place.
“Nothing new on the repeat tests, right?” House said, and Kutner nodded.
He pushed the button to start the coffee brewing, listened to the water as it heated. It was quiet in the room. Kutner knew that House probably liked it that way, and that he should keep his mouth shut. But people who never asked questions, never got answers, he thought. He wanted to know everything. How House thought. Whether he’d ever made mistakes. What he’d learned from his mentors. He knew he’d never get all the answers, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try.
He turned toward House. Start small. Start with something simple.
“Why’d you rearrange the room?” he asked.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if House hadn’t said anything, or had called him an idiot and walked away.
House took a drink. “Meerkats spend their entire lifetime in the same two square miles of desert,” he said.
“You watch Animal Planet?” Kutner asked.
House ignored him. “If their food supplies run out, they’ll starve to death, rather than find new territory,” he said.” If their alpha male and alpha female can’t mate, they’ll allow their entire family to die out, rather than change the social structure.”
He took another drink. He was still staring out the window. Kutner could see the corner of the building, but the rest of the campus was hidden behind the storm.
“Red-tailed hawks,” House continued, “range from the mountains of Alaska down to Mexico. They can forage in swamps or deserts or mountains or prairies. If their mate dies, they find another one.”
He fell silent again. Kutner waited, but he didn’t say anything else.
“So, what,” he finally asked, “we’re supposed to learn from migratory animals? Or is this about adapting to new environments?”
House finally turned to look at him, his eyes honed in on Kutner’s as if he was studying his face for some sign, some symptom, some answer of his own. “What do you think?”
Kutner dared himself not to look away, not to blink. He took a deep breath. “I think,” he said, “that you’re never going to give me a straight answer.”
He thought he caught a slight smile on House’s face before House turned away, went back to staring out the window.
Kutner grinned. Maybe he’d said the right thing for once.
The coffee pot burbled again, gasped as it finished the job. Kutner poured himself a cup. He heard footsteps, and turned to see Taub walk in, followed by Thirteen.
Taub crossed the room to the coffee pot, and Kutner moved away to give him space. Thirteen walked to the table, but didn’t sit. Instead she turned, walked halfway back to the door, then to the table again. Pacing. Keeping herself awake, maybe.
“Chase was right,” Taub said. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took an empty seat at the table.
“I know,” House said.
He took another drink, then grabbed his cane. Kutner saw him grip the handle tight, his knuckles turning white as he braced himself. House put his left hand on the table, pushed himself up, slowly. He paused there for a moment, then finally took a stuttering step away and over to the white board. He picked up the eraser and removed all of the possible diagnoses from one side of the board.
He uncapped a pen.
“If the tests won’t help, we’ll have to do this the hard way,” House said. “Which one of these,” he wrote “autoimmune” across the top, “cause these?” he asked, and pointed to the symptoms.
“Rheumatoid arthritis,” Taub said.
“No joint swelling,” Kutner pointed out, but House wrote it down anyway. “Reiter’s syndrome,” Taub said.
“No infection,” Thirteen said. House wrote down Reiter’s. “Kawasaki’s Disease.”
“No tachycardia,” Taub said, “and he’s not five years old.”
“Kawasaki’s in adults is rare, but it happens,” Thirteen said.
Taub shook his head, but didn’t argue. “Mixed Connective Tissue Disease?” he asked.
“It didn’t show up in the ANA,” Kutner said.
House added MCTD, then lupus. “If we’re going to assume that the ANA is giving us false negatives, we might as well assume it’s still lupus,” he said. He looked at the others. “Anything else?”
Thirteen stopped pacing, stood at the end of the table. She looked at Kutner, then at House. “Even if we don’t know what it is, we should start him on corticosteroids,” she said.
Kutner wondered if she’d planned to make the suggestion even back when she’d told him that it was a stupid one. Maybe she had, and she was no different than Cole.
“I had Foreman start them an hour ago,” House said. “How he reacts may tell us something new.”
House stared at the board, the pen still in his hand. Finally he capped it, put it on the table.
“What do we do now?” Thirteen asked.
“Now?” House finally stepped away from the white board, taking careful steps across the room. “Now we wait.”
He walked into his office and closed the door behind him.
Chapter Seven: Wilson
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-15 06:50 am (UTC)And he's not the new Chase. Being willing to blow himself and others up doth not mean 'open-minded'. Just suicidal.
Ah, yes, and this paragraph was wonky: The smart thing to would have been to keep quiet. Kutner was smart enough to know that, but you didn’t anything new if you didn’t ask questions. He poured grounds into the coffee filter, fit it into place.
I think you meant 'know anything' there.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-17 11:16 pm (UTC)I don't expect Kutner or any of the other new team members to be the original ducklings -- heck, the original ducklings weren't themselves just eight episodes in -- I'm happy playing with what we've got now and waiting to see what will happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-17 11:18 pm (UTC)