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Chapter Seven- Diagnosticians are firmly behind weird cases

The faculty wizards of Ankh Morpork's Unseen University had an unspoken rule of thumb when it came to work. It had to be a rule of thumb as sitting down and drafting an actual rule would take far to much time and effort. Regardless, it went something like this. If there was not any work to do, don't go looking for any and if there was, put it off until tomorrow. So when Greg House limped back into his office to find two of his underlings with their feet up reading newspapers, he had to double-check that he had not wound up on the Discworld.

House took in the lazy layabouts and smiled to himself; neither had noticed that he had entered the room. Sliding over to the head of the table he raised his cane and...BANG! The sound of it smacking down onto the tabletop echoed around the room and the sight of his two startled employees made him smirk.

"The two of you have just earned yourselves one mornings worth of my clinic hours each." He dropped himself into his chair, the look on his face daring the other doctors to argue. "I'm going to have to start leaving you kiddies homework. I could almost feel your brain cells die through lack of stimulation."

Chase let loose a breath of air he had been holding and shook his head. "Well, it's not like we've got anything to do. No patients remember," he said by way of explanation.

Foreman nonchalantly folded his paper and looked at his boss, "I assume by your dramatic entrance you've either found something for us to do or you're fed up with the clinic."

House had to resist the urge to make a statement that began with, 'back in my day'. Largely due to the fact that anything he said would most likely be so much of a lie that even these two bozos would see through it. For like the aforementioned wizards of the Unseen University, by this time in the afternoon, he would have most likely already been utterly hammered. Instead, he went with the more truthful, "why has it got to be one or the other? Why can't it be I got bored and found us something to do? But for that matter may I remind you that when we don't have a case, it's your job to go out and find one." He rolled his eyes and popped a Vicodin. "God, you guys suck in comparison to my old team. I'd have already rejected at least seven possible cases by now and that would have been before lunch."

"Well..." Chase began, clearly unsure if he was part of the old team or not. He waited, looking at House for some indication. House stared back with a 'what?' sort of expression. Finally, he continued, "...we assumed that anything good that would come in from the ER Cameron would pick up. Anything in the clinic, you'd pick up. And anything else would be a referral, which would be brought to your office. Better to be here to get it when it came we assumed." He shrugged.

"Wow, it takes two of you to wait for a case to come... does it also take two of you to use the little boy's room? Should I make you both hold hands when we leave the room in case you get lost?" House asked, bating them for a response. He then quickly turned back to Chase, "and for the record, you were the token foreigner on my old team."

Chase seemed to contemplate this and shrugged as it didn't bother him. "So I'm the token foreigner, I can live with that."

"No," House admonished, "you were the token foreigner, past tense. That role passed to Foreman. Now your just the sympathy case."

Foreman sighed and shook his head, unwilling to play the game, "I was born near New York." He looked sternly at House as if this clarified things. "Have you got something for us or not?"

House elected to ignore the New York comment. He did not care where his team came from, so long as they did their jobs and followed his lead. "In case you're both wondering, Cameron's the eye candy." He swivelled his head towards the door as he spoke.