Saturday morning.
Greg House usually wasn’t up this early on a Saturday morning. However, he hadn’t been able to leave the night before – at about 8:30, enough snow had been dumped on Princeton to bring everything to a grinding halt. It was being called a freak storm, the kind that hadn’t been seen in New Jersey in years.
And so, he had slept on the couch in his office the night before. The sounds of the hospital coming to life had awakened him at 7:00 AM, and now he was doing his daily therapy, except he was striding through the halls of PPTH rather than the streets of his neighborhood.
As he passed one room, he heard his name called.
“Dr. House!”
He stopped, turned back, and stuck his head into the room. President Bartlet seemed to be surprisingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for somebody with likely less than forty-eight hours to live.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” House said. “How are you feeling this fine day?”
“Well, first of all, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it a fine day, given that there’s enough snow on the ground outside that the cars are merely white lumps.”
House couldn’t disagree with that.
“Secondly, it hurts just to move, I’m having trouble with the functions in my left hand, and according to that monitor right there, my blood pressure is high enough to power Cleveland. Oh, and there’s the small matter that I was informed last night that I probably have less than forty-eight hours to live. But aside from that, I’m great!”
With that, he turned a bright smile to House and said, “I also believe we have a chess game to play.”
House, on the other hand, was astonished. “Wait. Are you telling me that Dr. Cameron actually TOLD you your prognosis?”
Bartlet’s smile faded a notch. “Well, not really. She was discussing it with Sam Seaborn last night as I was waking up, and I heard her. She seems like a sweet girl, too, so I can understand if it may have been difficult for her to bring herself to tell me.”
House shook his head and laughed. “Sixteen years she’s been working for me, and she’s never quite developed the cynicism that a good doctor needs.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jed replied quickly. “Cynicism seems like an overrated trait in a doctor. You forget, I was married to one, and one of my daughters is one.”
“Mr. President, with all due respect, they had to have been the most cynical doctors of all time given that they were part of the President’s family.”
Jed looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, “Well, you’re probably right, but who cares. Chess!”
“Alright,” House replied. “Let me just go back to my-“
As he turned to leave the room, he saw that he didn’t need to bother to go back to his office and retrieve his chess set, because it was sitting on President Bartlet’s bedside table.
“Okay, Mr. President, joke’s on me,” House said, bewildered. “I know you aren’t a Jedi Knight in disguise, so how exactly did my chess set get here from my office?”
“Oh, I just flagged down one of the other doctors here,” Jed replied. “A Lisa Cuddy, I believe. Very nice woman. Seems to be a good Dean of Medicine.”
“That’s not all she’s good at,” House cracked under his breath.
“I’m sorry, what was that? You’d like your apartment redecorated?”
“No, sir,” House replied quickly. “I didn’t say anything.”
Jed shook his head and smiled. Some people just didn’t learn.
House allowed Jed to open the game, despite Jed’s superior skill – he felt it was only proper to give that to the former President.
“You know, I hate hospitals,” Jed said as he made his first move. “I’ve managed to stay out of them except for checkups for the last fifteen years. In fact, the last time I was in a hospital for an extended period of time, it was because my old friend Leo had had his first heart attack.”
“Leo McGarry, sir?” House asked. Jed nodded affirmatively. “I remember that,” House said. “I’ll admit – I had voted for Vinick in 2006, but when Leo McGarry died on Election Day, it still seemed like an insurmountable loss for the country.”
“Yeah,” Jed replied sadly, moving a piece. “The worst part is, there was nothing we could’ve done. He was already gone when Annabeth Schott found him.”
House stopped, and looked at Jed. He wasn’t quite sure how to form his next phrase. So, he took a moment of silence, making his move, and then waited till Jed had made his next move before speaking.
“That’s actually not true, sir,” House said.
Jed looked up at him. “What do you mean, exactly?” he asked sharply.
“What I mean, sir, is that if Bethesda Naval Hospital had installed a Pacemaker with a distress signal after his first heart attack – and they had those, back in 2005 – first of all, he probably wouldn’t have had the second heart attack, and secondly, even if he had, emergency response in Houston would’ve been notified as soon as he went into cardiac arrest.”
The color had drained from Jed’s face. “You mean, we could have saved him?”
It was then that House realized what he had done. “Oh, God,” he said softly. “Mr. President, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I really didn’t…”
Jed took a deep breath, then used his right hand to wipe his eyes. “It’s alright,” he said. “It’s been over fourteen years now. I just… I just wish we would’ve known.”
“You can never know everything, sir,” House replied. “Even with a doctor for a wife. Even with a Nobel Prize.”
Jed sighed, then smiled gently. “So you think I can’t know everything, huh?”
Two hours later
“…And that was the third time my family visited the Grand Canyon.”
House’s leg was experiencing phantom pains. He had had his ass kicked at chess – twice! He had heard about almost every national park in America. And yet, he felt strangely invigorated. President Bartlet was about to start in on Sunset Crater National Monument when the door banged open.
“House! Clinic!”
Oh, you have got to be kidding me, he thought. “But… but I’m keeping the President company!”
“Mr. President, I’m sorry,” Lisa Cuddy said. “But Dr. House hasn’t fulfilled his clinic hours in nearly a month.”
Jed’s eyebrows shot straight up, and he looked from Cuddy to House and back again. Then he started laughing. “Oh, my,” he guffawed. “Oh, Dr. House, you are definitely not using me as an excuse to get out of your job. That would run contrary to every health plan I put forth while in office.”
“Dammit,” House muttered. “Well, Mr. President, it was a pleasure to talk to you and to get my tail soundly whupped by you. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to do this again.”
With that, House stumped out of the room. Cuddy was about to follow him when Jed stopped her.
“Dr. Cuddy?” he said.
“Yes?” she replied, turning to him.
“Could you get Dr. Cameron please?”
“Is something wrong?” Lisa Cuddy asked, concerned.
“I can’t feel anything on the left side of my body.”
