Crossover Fan Fiction / Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ Reason And Accountability ❯ Is This Your House? ( Chapter 40 )

“House! My office,” demanded Cuddy. The aging brunette was missing her child something fierce and dealing with the father, the super-genius doctor whose wit was matched only by his arrogance was a welcome thing to pass off to an intern, some Japanese guy who looked to be in high school if she was any judge.

House limped in with his cane. He was wearing the smirk today, rather than the I’m Too Busy frown or the Hungover disinterest look, which was often legitimate in his case, even if he did it so often it was excuse style #3 in her personal book.

“We have an intern who has requested to follow you today,” I explained to House. He blinked, looked around in that extra fake enthusiasm he uses while he’s thinking up an excuse not to do it. The young man waved from the side of the office, where he’d been waiting quietly.

House said something in Chinese then. The young man blinked twice, answered in Japanese, which caused House to blink.

“Sorry. I don’t speak Japanese,” House said.

“That is okay. I don’t speak Chinese,” answered the young man in fluent English.

“Ah, good. My Korean is only passable, and I would have tried that next.”

“Not Cantonese?” the young Japanese asked him.

“Well, I speak that too, but most people who speak it would have responded with it if they didn’t speak Mandarin,” House admitted. “So, why do you want to follow me, whatever your name is?”

“Ah, good. I enjoy a challenge. My name is Hikigaya Hachiman. Please call me Hikigaya-san if you please, House-san.”

“And the reason you are here?” House asked.

“Ah, I’ve been asked to meet you by one of your patrons,” he said.

“House, he’s got a recommendation letter from one of the board members, so no throwing him out any windows or abandoning him in the cancer ward,” I warned him. Hikigaya turned to regard me levelly, then House who just grinned that manic smile he gets when I’ve given him a terrible idea. They left me office and I shut the door, getting back to all this paperwork which makes being a hospital administrator such a rotten job.

“So,” said House to me,” What brings you to America?”

“I’m escorting my wife on a tour of this country. She’s Greek, so America is really a very foreign country for her.”

“But to New Jersey? The Garden State is never on the short list of destinations for international tourists,” he said.

“She can take care of herself. Even three months pregnant she’s a very determined woman.”

“What college are you attending?” House asked, changing the subject. “Most Japanese medical school students don’t start internships until they’re somewhat older than you.”

“I’m still choosing. I’ve considered the Chiba School of Medicine, which is a branch of Tokyo University. It is a teaching hospital, like this one.”

“You haven’t gotten in yet, but you’re touring internships?” House asked, confused.

“I have special qualifications,” I answered. House raised an eyebrow, then a light bulb lit and he jumped to the wrong conclusion. He then winced and slowed to a stop, digging out a pill bottle and pressing one to his lips, dry swallowing. He shivered as the pain immediately drifted away.

“Your leg is pretty damaged. And the pain medication is addictive. Would you like to be healed?” I asked him. He regarded me darkly.

“No therapies can regrow lost tissue. Grafts don’t work, and the missing nerves won’t regenerate to make the muscle work better. So I have constant pain. Satisfied?” he accused at the end of his brief description. I cast heal on his leg and started the process. His eyes saw nothing. I have noticed that atheists are unable to see magic. Whether this is a consequence of atheism or the cause of it I do not know, but it is an interesting metaphysical question.

“We had a faith healer here a couple years ago. Turns how he was passing herpes to his patients without knowing it. Ironically he infected hundreds of people, including children.”

“Ah, social diseases. Yes, many of those respond poorly to treatment. I may learn more about them in medical school.”

“So what are you doing with your hand there?” House finally asked, pointing. I was still healing him.

“How does your leg feel?” I asked.

“I just took a Vicodin. I don’t feel anything but pleasantly dizzy,” he admitted.

“Oh, well, I can fix that.” I cast cure poison and cure disease, removing the affliction of addiction in an instant, without any of that physical dependence problem. Magic medicine is very convenient because it has to be quick.

“What did you just do?” House asked, gasping. He leaned on his cane out of habit, then staggered and caught himself with his bad leg, which held instead of collapsing.

“So you ever think about metaphysics and philosophy?” I asked him.

“I’ve argued with priests.”

“I’m not a priest. I’m married, though to be clear Buddhist priests in Japan are required to marry due to specific reasons from our national history. And knowing what I know I can’t be a Buddhist, though I could understand why someone would be one.”

“I can feel my leg. The numb areas are gone,” House admitted.

“Feel free to eat some hamburgers or steaks in the next week. You’ll be building muscle again.”

“So for all this I have some bad news,” I finally said. House’s expression turned predictably suspicious.

“Such as? Is this a Flowers For Algernon thing where the healing wears off or I wake up and this is a coma dream?”

“Good guesses, but not this time,” I explained. English is a really great language for this kind of subtle communication. Less sarcastic than Japanese, more variation in expression.

“You’re a television show. Millions of people are watching your weekly life as entertainment, condensed into around 47 minutes for weekly broadcast.”

“Uh huh.”

“How’s the leg?” I asked him, as a reminder. “Try a deep knee bend.” He did. He was able to go way down and stand back up again, without the cane.

“Do you have evidence for your bold claim?” House asked me.

“Well, first of all, there is no such job as Diagnostician. That was invented by the show’s main writer because they liked your actor’s test footage and it sounded good. There’s such a thing as an Osteopath, but you aren’t one.”

“Anything else?” House asked.

“Princeton University does not have a medical school in Plainboro New Jersey, much less a teaching hospital far from campus. That is also fictional.” House was not impressed by this. He gestured around us.

“Yes, I can see it. There’s something you aren’t aware of. As an atheist this is going to be tough for you. Show me to a sick patient with something incurable, maybe your sharp cheeked number girl. She’s got that rare genetic degenerative condition.”

“You mean 13?” House asked. “She’s on leave. She’s not even here.”

“Hey, House, have you seen the metabolic panel for the patient in room 47B?” asked Thirteen peering at a patient file she wasn’t supposed to be looking at.

“That will do. Convenient how she just showed up like that, right?” I said. My slitted eyes slipped nearly closed as I grinned.

It was a short time later that House had convinced Thirteen to get into a patient smock and he started the usual examination of her gradually more cadaverous and clumsy body. There were bruises from falls. She’d lost a fair bit of her vision to encroaching blindness from the nerve damage. Her organs were suffering as well.

“So this guy is a faith healer?” Thirteen complained. “We did that already. He’s not just some perv is he?”

“He healed my leg without touching me,” House admitted uncomfortably.

“I don’t need to touch you. Besides, I don’t want to catch your politics. Feminism without equality in warfare is a disgusting farce,” I objected right back.

“Hey!” she complained, with nothing better to say.

“House, are you done with your examination?” I asked him.

“Yes. Degeneration is continuing as expected. Patient has probably around six months to live,” he said, an old topic that had drained all emotion from him. Thirteen had been a friend, a wingman even, and party to his self-destructive tendencies.

“So, if you could heal any one organ to extend her life, which would it be?” I asked him.

“Brain. The damage there is cumulative and causing problems for the rest of the body.”

I raised my hands and dual-cast heal on her brain for thirty seconds, restoring missing tissue and reconnecting the various autonomic controls that manage organs and hormones. Her thyroid would start working again, which would remove the hollow cheekbones I’d noted, similar to plague and starvation victims. I then healed the genetic disease itself, which is easy for magic but impossible for science before CRISPR finally rolls out in retroviruses a few years from now.

“I’ve cured the brain and the genetic disease. How about those kidneys?” I healed her kidneys, which were lagging badly, back to fully working nephrons of a newborn. She’d lose half of them in the next two years, but that was normal for newborns too. Then I hit the liver and removed a lot of cirrhosis scar tissue and quite a lot of heavy metals out through the skin.

“House, you’ll want a sponge to catch the metals I’m extracting. You’ve stayed somewhere with lead pipes, and there’s cadmium and mercury in your system too. Goodness. Very unhealthy.”

“Where?” House said, confused but playing along.

“Abdomen, right side. Right about… now,” I answered.

“Ugh. That’s very unusual. Is that all of it?” House asked.

“A bit more. There. She’s clean again. Better than chelating, and you don’t need a transfusion or dialysis,” I said.

“So are you an alien?” asked Thirteen, who was watching all this go on with her own body.

“You mean like ET? Or those chest bursters?”

“I was partial to Starman,” Thirteen said.

“The one with David Bowie?” I asked.

“That was good, but I meant the other one, with Jeff Bridges,” she explained.

“Oh, like when he raised that deer from the dead before he was picked up by the spaceship and went home?” I asked, barely remembering the old movie.

“Yeah, that one.”

“What are you both talking about?” House muttered, unusually uninformed on an item of popular culture.

“Metaphysics again, Greg,” I answered.

I checked Thirteen again, finding various organ damage, including cervical cancer, which I quickly cured.

“Well, if you lay off the drugs, alcohol, and all the sex partners you will live a pretty long time. I even cured your cancer. HPV is a sneaky one. You will want to contact your prior partners to warn them.”

“You say you did all that just now, without surgery or medicine or even touching me.”

“I can restore your hymen if you ask nicely.”

“Please?” she asked nicely. I cast the spell and fixed it. Its in the DNA. You can regrow wisdom teeth if you aren’t careful.

“House?” asked Thirteen uncomfortably.

“Just checking. So that’s how they did it,” he said sarcastically.

“Ever been to Bethlehem?” House asked me with a straight face. He needed a shave. And some better jokes.

“I’m sure you will want to confirm repairs with your usual MRI, even though the electricity requirements equal the entire demand for a small city.”

I released my spells, finally. Felt a little tired, but nothing serious. It wasn’t a whole room of soldiers cut to ribbons by swords, or radiation damage for Misato Katsuragi, or all of John Wick’s many injuries and his slow wolverine healing factor. Way faster than humans, but not visible to the naked eye like Deadpool.

“You never did answer my question. Are you an alien?” asked Thirteen. House looked interested in the answer.

“Metaphysics. I’m human, but I’m not from the same place as you.”

“Obviously. You’re Asian.”

“More than that. I’m not from your Japan. And the world is more complicated than you know,” I answered.

“Wait, I’ve heard that before. Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” House asked.

“No. Never met her. So far as I know that’s entirely fictional,” I answered. The space in my head for my boss agreed with this. Except that my journey began with a Wish Demon, so maybe those were real while the world that describes them for TV programming is just TV.

“So you’re an alien that’s human?” House confirmed.

“Eh, probably. You’re still a TV show, so don’t get worked up about this,” I reminded him.

“When I wake up from this dream I’m so putting this in my dream journal,” House promised.

“You have a dream journal?” Thirteen asked.

“Of course not. Do I look like a teenage girl?” he replied with sarcasm.

“So I should probably heal your best friend’s cancer and Cuddy’s cancer, and the other members of your team with cancer.”

“Why does everyone have cancer?” House asked with confusion.

“You live in New Jersey. It is the heavy metal dumping ground of the world. Duh!” I answered.

Forman was found next and cured of his cancer, which improved his mood. I found his friend, then finished with Cuddy, who remained grumpy because curing her cancer did not reduce the paperwork she was stuck working on. Forman offered to help.

“So that’s it? You came, healed the staff but not the patients, and then go after telling us our lives are a television show, a medical soap opera with sarcasm?” House complained.

“Yeah? Pretty much?” I answered.

“And no one can duplicate what you did?” House confirmed.

“Yes. Your jobs are safe. Faith healing that works is really rare.”

“I feel like there’s something you haven’t told me,” House complained.

“Gods are real. So is magic. It works here. It worked on you. And you’re going to have to stew on that for years before you can accept that your atheist beliefs have been disproved.”

“Shit.”

I used the portal to my world’s New Jersey and Pyrrha, and left House frustrated and gaping.