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The only light creeping in from outside was the orange of streetlights, night had crept in sometime while they were in the bowels of the hospital, either in the lab watching blood samples spin out, or utilizing one of the newer MRI machines. Chase had been right, one blood test had popped positive showing that the patient had an excessive amount of growth hormone, much more than a forty four year old man should have coursing through his veins. Chase had thrown out the idea of a pituitary adenoma, so he and Foreman had run the bloodwork while Cameron performed an MRI of the patient's head and neck area.
Foreman and Chase burst into the office where House sat at his desk playing solitaire with a deck of cards. It was late enough the hallway lights were half on half off and the office light was low. Chase dropped the lightly crumpled paper in his hand on top of House’s cards then ran his hands through his slightly disheveled hair as the words tumbled out of his mouth “we got it, he has acromegaly caused by a pituitary adenoma. An excess amount of growth hormone showed up on the bloodwork and Cameron said she can see the mass on the MRI. We booked OR 14 for tomorrow at 3pm.”
“I was about to win at solitaire, you couldn’t have just handed the paper to me?” House picked up the paper and flipped through the bloodwork results. After reading for a moment he spoke again “Chase earned a sticker on his chart for getting the correct diagnosis. We got a tumor to remove tomorrow. Who is talking to the patient?”
Foreman stretched his arms above his head while rotating his shoulders “Cameron, since she was watching the MRI live.”
“Good, that makes seventeen patients in a row I haven’t actually had to meet. Let’s keep that up,” House tossed the papers on the conference table and shuffled towards the door. “Get started on this paperwork so we can go home and sleep before poking around in some man's brain tomorrow.” Chase waited till House was far enough from the office before he slumped into his seat at the conference table and laid his head in his arms. Foreman ambled over to the mini fridge and took out three bottles of water, he pressed the coldest one from the back of the fridge against the back of Chase’s exposed neck. He jerked up half-heartidly swinging at the man, “fuccccck, that’s cold, dickhead.” He took the bottle from Foreman and took a long drink before staring at the paperwork that lay sprawled across the table. The words on the pages bled together the longer he stared.
Foreman slouched into his seat, cracked open his bottle and took a few deep gulps before speaking “Cameron isn’t getting out of this paperwork, we aren’t touching it till she gets back.” Chase snorted "absolutely, we all get to be tired and do paperwork. I can’t wait to eat and go to bed.” Foreman slid his shoes off, leaned back in his seat and propped his feet on an empty chair, Chase lay his head down on the table again. “Your feet smell, put your shoes back on” he mumbled to the floor, not bothering to look up. “Bullshit, no they don’t.” Foreman shot back.
“Yes they do.”
“No they don’t. You’re just smelling yourself after this long ass day. I think we’ve been here fifteen hours.”
“Naurr, it’s your feet that smell. I re-applied deodorant sometime around 4pm because I knew I was getting funky.”
“You both smell and so do I, we’ve worked basically non-stop today. Foreman for the record your feet don’t stink.” Cameron had arrived to derail their mindless squabbling.
Chase sat up and tossed her the third bottle of water, she caught it and chugged half of it before dropping into her chair at the table. “Did House really bail and leave us to do the paperwork?”
Chase snorted but it quickly turned to a yawn “Yeeeaaahhhh… You can’t be surprised by that?”
She shrugged “maybe he went to get us all food.”
Foreman snorted “oh yeah, Mr. Warm and Fuzzy went to get us food for solving the case. He’s probably already at the liquor store on the way home.”
Cameron rolled her head and shoulders in a circular motion to work out aches and kinks “give him credit, he does do things like that occasionally.”
They fell into silence, nobody making a move to start the pile of paperwork. The silence was a rare treat after such a taxing day, this patient had been in their care for a week and most of the days had been long. Chase felt his head start to dip towards the table when Foreman spoke “We need a bit of sugar to power through.” He reached into his lab coat pocket and pulled out a new package of grape Hubba Bubba bubble gum. “Sure, why not.” Cameron put her hand out, Chase followed. Foreman shredded the package trying to get it open but eventually dropped a wrapped piece into each outstretched hand.
A small grin crept across Cameron’s face “give me the packaging you shredded and your wrappers. House left his coat here, he’s getting a pocket full of trash for leaving us.” Foreman barked a short laugh and shredded his wrapper before dropping it on the table in front of Cameron. Chase unwrapped the gum and popped it into his mouth. He shredded his wrapper like Foreman had and sprinkled it into the pile. Cameron giggled and started shredding her wrapper, then grabbed a post-it from the stack and started shredding and mixing post-it into the shredded paper mix. Chase felt a laugh bubble up in his chest and he couldn’t stop it tumbling from his mouth. Foreman shook his head and snorted which made Chase and Cameron giggle even harder.
I don’t know why this is so funny. God, I’m so tired. Chase walked around the table to help brush the pile of shredded paper into Cameron’s cupped hands. She was now laughing so hard her hands shook. With fisted hands, she walked over to stand behind House’s desk, his jacket hanging from the back of his chair. Chase searched the right hand pocket and found House’s keys. “He can’t have gone home, his house key is right here. We better make this quick.” This observation set off another round of giggling from all of them; they didn’t sound like twenty and thirty year old doctors, they sounded like eleven year olds sneaking around out of bed at a sleep over. But to be fair, late nights working in the hospital like this where you were slap happy on sugar and awake for far too long everyone tended to revert back to earlier times.
Chase held the keys while Cameron stuffed the pocket “hold on, put some on the other side too. I’ll put his keys back in here so when he pulls them out it flies everywhere.” This brilliant idea brought another round of tired snickering. Chase held open the left pocket and Cameron made sure to pick up any dropped pieces before stuffing what was left in her hand into the pocket. Satisfied with their work, they returned to their seats.
Foreman tossed his head back and blew a bubble with his gum. “Man the flavor doesn’t last on this like it used to.” Cameron blew a bubble in response, stopping before it got too big and pulled the gum e back into her mouth with her tongue. A grin slid across Chase’s face. “Chicken, scared it’ll pop on your face?”
“No. I just don’t want gum in my hair.”
Foreman pulled what was left of the package from his pocket, unwrapped another piece and popped it in his mouth. He tossed a second piece at Cameron and Chase. “This will get us real bubbles.” Foreman chewed for a moment, put his feet on the floor, backed away from the table slightly and blew and blew and blew. The bubble was nearly the size of his head before he huffed and the bubble formed a slow air leak and deflated.
Chase unwrapped the second piece, his mouth was flooded with grape flavor once more. He moved the gum around in his mouth, flattening it with his tongue and blowing a few smaller bubbles before trying for a bigger one. He held his palm under the bubble as it grew larger and larger. The bubble sprang a leak from somewhere and started to deflate, he caught it with his hand and stuffed the gum back in his mouth. He and Foreman stared expectingly at Cameron across the table.
Cameron pulled a hair tie from her wrist and pulled her slightly messy hair from her face before blowing a bubble. She blew too fast and it popped across her mouth and chin. Foreman and Chase howled at the sight. Cameron groaned and started pulling the gum from her face and stuck it back in her mouth. “Is there any on my face still?”
“On your left cheek” Chase rubbed at a spot on his cheek to show her. She peeled the little bit off and rubbed it into the wrapper on the table. “Should we shred those and put them in House’s pockets too?” Foreman suggested. “Oh absolutely,” Cameron replied.
Foreman gathered the three new wrappers and shredded them just like before. In socked feet he walked around the table and stuffed them into House’s left coat pocket. This brought another round of tired snickers from all of them. Foreman returned to his chair and dropped into it.
They sat in exhausted silence for a few moments before Cameron spoke, the corner of her mouth turning up into a smirk “betting time gentleman, how much cash do you have in your pockets?” She pulled three $1s and some coins from her white coat pocket and dropped the wad in the middle of the table. Foreman reached into his pants pocket and pulled out two $1s and dropped them on top of what Cameron had put down. Chase reached into his own pocket and felt around, the constant vending machine usage this week had tapped into his usual pocket change reserve. He turned up three crumpled $1s and a few dimes. “Alright, the prize is our leftover vending machine money. The bet is whoever blows the biggest bubble wins.”
“Game on,” Chase said, sitting up straighter. “Can’t wait to take all of your pocket change home” Foreman laughed “I am a pro at this, it's my gum.”
At first it was hard to blow a big bubble because when one of them snorted or giggled the other two followed. Chase felt like he would fall asleep sitting up here. A weird mixture of exhaustion and sugar rush was making him feel floaty. Maybe a real meal would have been a better idea then this sugary gum.
Like anything they did, they got unnecessarily competitive, the slap happiness making them more uninhibited. The bubbles got bigger, things started getting tossed when someone’s bubble got a little too big, so they started using empty clip boards and hands as shields. So absorbed they were in protecting their own bubbles that they failed to notice the clicking of a cane on the tile floor in the hallway, nor the sounds of the office door opening and closing. They failed to notice the man who stood there watching them blowing bubbles and giggling like children, paperwork untouched in front of them. Not even the smell of the Chinese food in the bag in the man’s free hand was noticed.
House had left the hospital to get Chinese food before sending his idiot ducklings home. It was the only thing open this late. They needed a good meal before driving home after being at work for so long. It had been a horrendously long week. He yearned for his own bed but it was only about ten minutes to pick up food—the place was right across the street from the hospital main entrance. So he had told them to start the paperwork to get his team to stay put till he could feed them and send them home to bed. Rewarding my team for a job well done? Saying I’m proud of them? Disgusting, no. I am feeding them so they eat something and don’t die of hunger. Replacing three of them would be so much paperwork.
He could hear their laughter as soon as the elevator doors opened. He allowed a smile to ghost his face at the sound before setting his face back to neutral. Time to scare the shit out of them. Sneaking up on them had been ridiculously easy. They appeared to each have an entire pack of that grape gum Foreman liked in their mouths and were blowing bubbles and trying to stop each other from popping their bubbles. He knew slap happiness when he saw it. Like overtired children someone needed to send to bed. Apparently that was also his job. They still hadn’t noticed him standing here, late dinner for all of them in hand. He sat the bag and his cane down on the couch by the door and pulled out two ink pens from his pants pocket. He grimaced at the one with jagged teeth marks Chase has been in my pens again, little asshole.
“Okay, clipboards down, all together now, the biggest one gets the pot” Cameron said. Seeing his opportunity, House held a pen in each hand and lunged himself onto the middle of the table and simultaneously popped Foreman’s and Cameron's bubbles and with surgical speed and precision Chase’s almost immediately after.
The second piece had lost its flavor now. Chase was ready to be done and just leave the paperwork, go home to eat a bowl of cereal, shower and crawl into bed. Cameron spoke “Okay, clipboards down, all together now, the biggest one gets the pot.” He sat his clipboard down and flattened the gum against his teeth again in preparation. They all leaned forward, his eyes flicked between Cameron and Foreman’s mouths and his own. They all started to blow, a few seconds passed Mine is bigger, I’ve got this. Suddenly his view of Cameron was obscured by another body, something was plunged directly into his bubble and it popped across his face. All three squeaked in surprise and stared at the person laying across the table.
Chase blurted “oh shit it’s House.” This set off another round of giggling from the group as House used his hands to push himself back off the table. Chase reached up to assess the damage to his face. Gum was definitely in his nose and probably a bit in his hair. He looked at Cameron across from him desperately scraping gum from her cheeks and she was only partially succeeding. Foreman wasn’t faring much better. Chase did his best scraping what he could off and reached down for the trash can under the table; he brought it up to the table and they all started dropping bits of gum into the trash. Purple specks littered their faces as they turned to look at House who had yet to speak.
They look so young. Stupid annoying children. Time to feed them and send them home. “You’re all idiots, I got Chinese food. Eat and go home. Everyone needs a shower before bed, and everyone really needs to wash their face before bed.” He gathered the untouched paperwork from the table into a semi-neat pile and dropped it on the counter next to the sink. Foreman was the first to move, he picked up the bag of food from the couch and started to unpack the containers onto the conference table. This spurred Chase into action, he opened the cabinet by the coffee pot for disposable plates and silverware. Cameron filled four paper cups at the sink and took out napkins.
House sat in the seat Foreman had been using as a foot rest before the bubble blowing contest had gotten serious. Chase handed out plates while Foreman opened containers. House had gotten an assorted family size meal; multiple containers were passed around and plates quickly filled. Chase hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he was about halfway through his plate. The jittery floaty feeling evened out. He chugged the cup of water Cameron had placed in front of him and looked at his team members again, they both had specks of purple gum on their faces, meaning he must as well. He couldn’t find it in him to care that much; they all looked equally dumb. House had filled his own plate and ate as hungrily as they were. Next to him Foreman slid his feet back into his shoes that were still on the floor, as if he had just remembered they were there.
Now that he was full, Chase was absolutely ready for a hot shower, and bed. He looked at the table for a fortune cookie but spotted their pocket change pile. “Hey House,” he spoke up in the content silence.
House quirked an eyebrow as if to say “what? ”He was finishing the remaining fried rice directly from the container. “Before you popped our bubbles, who’s had the biggest?” House snorted and a bit of rice fell from his mouth before he recovered. “I come back to the three of you having an elementary school field day and the only thing you have to say is ‘who won whatever little bet we have going’?” The three younger doctors all nodded, all eyes on House now. He sighed as if greatly put upon and took a few more bites of rice, then a long drink of water. “Chase’s, that’s why there’s still purple bits stuck in his hair and under his chin.”
“Yes!” Chase pumped his fist and swept the money from the table to stuff into his lab coat pocket. A few more days of snack money secured. He scratched under his chin and found a few more purple bits to scrape away that he wiped on the plate. “Mostly on the right side of your hair, close to your ear.” Cameron said, throwing her empty plate and cup into the trash can.
House shoved the little bit of leftover food into the mini fridge, the trash went into the trash can with the gum scrapings and the days worth of trash. A Clorox wipe was lazily swiped across the table by Cameron. Lab coats were removed and outside coats put on. Chase had nearly forgotten House’s coat pockets were full of shredded paper until the man swung his coat off the back of his office chair. He made eye contact with Cameron who appeared to be thinking the same thing will he notice before we get out of here?
Environmental sciences had their cleaning cart parking in the hallway, seemingly waiting on them to leave so they could clean the office. They left the dimmed lights on and the door open and walked as a group to the elevator. “Thanks for dinner,” Cameron spoke up, breaking the sleepy silence. Foreman yawned and mumbled in agreement. Chase nodded at House. “Shut up, getting low blood sugar while driving home is for pussies.”
The elevator ride was quiet, Chase could see Foreman stealing glances at House’s hands, they all seemed to be waiting on the proverbial shoe to drop. It finally did as they stepped out of the hospital door towards the parking lot. House stuck his hand in his right coat pocket and immediately withdrew his hand, sending shredded paper down his side and floating to the sidewalk like snowflakes falling. Chase snorted and that was all it took to get the group giggling going once again. House stared at each of them and reached into his left pocket, he huffed almost indignantly and pulled out the fist full of paper and tossed it in their faces. “I feed them and they stuff my pockets with their trash” House mumbled as he emptied his pockets. All three brushed off the few bits that had stuck to them, a stray giggle still sneaking out occasionally.
The group kept walking, their cars were all near the building, they had been some of the first in that morning and some of the last to leave. House spoke again, the corner of his mouth twitching as if trying not to smile “you’re all fired for such a half assed prank, I expected better of my team.” House’s car was closest in the handicapped parking, he dropped heavily into his driver's seat.
Chase spoke before the man closed his door “Thanks House, see you tomorrow for that brain surgery.” The older man huffed, closed his door and sped out of the parking lot. Chase yawned again and clapped Foreman and Cameron on the shoulders as they parted ways. “Night” he said, climbing into his car. “Night” Foreman mumbled, “Goodnight guys see you tomorrow” Cameron chirped.
The drive home was quick, the roads nearly vacant at the late hour. Chase set his phone alarm and plugged it in on his night stand before going to shower. Upon looking at himself in the mirror he realized he really had gotten the worst of the gum on his face compared to Foreman and Cameron. It was in his hair, there were still purple flecks clinging to his cheeks and even a bit on his forehead. He ended up cutting a tiny bit off the end of his hair, taking extra time in the shower scrubbing his face. He fell into sleep's embrace as soon as he hit the mattress. Another day, another surgery and probably some sort of prank from House as payback lay ahead of him tomorrow.