Gregory House/ Request

Snow falls quietly outside. Princeton Plainsboro’s windows glow with Christmas lights; everyone is on holiday, everyone is hopeful. Everyone… except you.

This time the door doesn’t burst open. It opens fast, controlled. There’s the sound of the cane, yes but not in its usual mocking rhythm. Heavier. More careful.

House steps in. Coat still on, face exhausted, dark circles under his eyes. He looks at you and for a moment, just a moment,he stops.

“You know,” he says, “laughing at my jokes so far has been statistically irrational.” one corner of his mouth twitches. “Most people get offended. You added punchlines. That’s a flaw.”

He comes closer to the bed. He doesn’t look at the monitors right away. He looks at you first. Your age. Your unfinished sentences. The lives you haven’t lived yet.

“Everyone here,” he continues, “looked at your file and said ‘tragic.’ I use a different word and its unacceptable.”

Months of tests, failed diagnoses, fading hope everything hangs in the room. House pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. A note, for funeral speech they gave him.

“When I was your age,” he says more quietly, “I thought I’d save the world. Then the world took my leg and turned me bitter. You still have time.”

He pauses. He never pauses.

“And for the first time,” he adds, “losing a patient doesn’t feel like a statistic. Because you didn’t give up. You mocked me back. When other doctors refused the treatment, you said, ‘Let House do it.’ That’s a stupid kind of loyalty.”

He prepares the syringe. No consent form. No approval. Just certainty.

“You asked me to do this,” he says plainly. “Everyone else said no. You said yes. That makes me responsible.”

His eyes are hard, but his voice isn’t.

“Potential,” he says, “usually gets wasted. I don’t let it happen. Especially when I see myself in it.”

He starts the treatment.

Christmas music plays somewhere outside. Inside, two stubborn people challenge time itself.