[Nene]

The old doctor couldn't take standing close to the patient he'd lost and he got out of there, quickly. The hallway leading to his office was completely desolate at this time in the evening, to House's relief, and all House could hear would be the noise of the tip of his cane tapping the floor with his steps. House went into his darkened office and closed the door, and he took care to pull the blinds closed, covering all of those tall windows that gave him a look out to the hall and gave nosy passerbys the ability to look in on him.

House limped carefully through the darkness toward his desk and he lowered himself to sit. He sat there for upward of five minutes in total darkness, steadying his breathing to calm himself some before he would start to write his report. He switched on the lamp that sat atop his desk and he opened one of those old cabinets to take out the first half of those necessary documents for reporting a patient's death and he tossed them onto the desk by the lamp.

With a pen in one hand, and his head in the other, House stared down at the paperwork and tapped the pen on the desk. He couldn't see anything through the tears and he had to breathe and calm down. House let out a lengthy, frustrated sigh. He was angry, angry at himself, angry at that father that hadn't told him anything about his daughter coming in contact with a rabid animal. He couldn't save one precious, sweet little girl, she didn't deserve to die and House couldn't get through the darkness that had started to cloud that brilliant mind of his. "I... should've known." he whispered and in that moment, his long time friend, Dr. James Wilson came into his darkened office.

House attempted to blink those tears away, not wanting anyone, not even Wilson to look at him when he'd gotten so torn up over a case. He felt like he couldn't breathe, he couldn't talk without his voice wavering and all he could do was look to his friend, and act like he'd listened to him. He hadn't any witty comments, nothing to say that would break the worry that he'd caused Wilson.

House had at least taken Wilson's advice and had gone on home, leaving the unfinished paperwork on his desk, though that night he hadn't caught any shuteye and that following day he'd gone to work, worn out and sleep deprived, though he'd made that report with Cuddy, calmly, without any comment unrelated to his little baby that had rabies. That came as a surprise to Cuddy who would expect something else out of one of her best, though most irritating doctors and hadn't gotten it. "House, are you--?" she'd attempted to question if he was okay, but he took his cane and left her.

Over the last week and a half following the death of his last patient, House had developed chronic headaches that worsened by the day, and the pain in his leg had increased tenfold, to the point where Vicodin couldn't even make a dent in his pain level. He'd at least looked at the patient's file though he couldn't read, he could barely see, hear, walk, or even think. Any interactions with his team would be short and then he had to go lie down. He'd feared that he'd break down in front of someone if he'd tried to communicate with anyone other than himself, so he stayed away, and opted to figure out what his current patient was dying from, on his own, without his team, though he wouldn't get far at all.

Nothing could take care of this pain, and he'd had a temperature of a hundred and two when he'd come into work for the last couple of days. He hadn't slept well at all, he'd barely eaten, and he couldn't stop thinking about Katie, baby with rabies. His lack of shuteye had caused visual and auditory hallucinations; he could see and hear that happy, innocent little girl if he'd be left completely alone.

As one of Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital's most reliable physicians, House decided that he would take himself on as a case, temporarily. He had to care for himself before he could take on that patient that waited for his care down the hall; he believed that his team could take care of that zebra of a patient. House hadn't thought at all that any of his symptoms would be psychological, not at first - he would be hard-wired not to blame any patient's ailments on depression or any other mental illness without ruling out every other condition out there.

Desperate for an answer, House had gone to the lab, without telling anyone where he was, nor had he told anyone that anything had gone wrong and he'd taken the time to get an MRI, without a clue that anyone would come to him. He sat and went through his results, and he'd gotten nothing. All clear. He turned the chart over when he'd heard someone come in - he couldn't let anyone see that he'd had his own file, that he'd spent the last half an hour in the imaging lab.

"Well, that's because I didn't," came House's response to Wilson's comment. He'd had no way out of here, with Wilson blocking the only exit, and Wilson wouldn't believe any of his bullshit if he'd tried to lie to him about whose name was on those images that still displayed on the computer screen and the chart that he'd held under his hand.

He looked from Wilson to the computer screen when Wilson questioned if he was supposed to assume that was his brain, and he didn't respond. He didn't even look at Wilson, not until Wilson had brought up his patient, and the little girl that he couldn't get out of his head.

"You think I don't know that?" House asked, then he hesitated. He hadn't acted like he'd cared at all about that medical zebra down the hall, he'd loved medical zebras, they were so interesting to him but he couldn't function and he hadn't thought that maybe another doctor should take his patient, but the patient was given to him for a reason - every other doctor couldn't figure it out.

"... What made you think that this had anything to do with Katie?" his voice shook as he uttered that name. He'd normally not even known the patient's name, all he'd cared about would be their condition, and treating them. That would be Wilson's evidence that House hadn't moved on.

House would be in denial. He couldn't admit that that case had gotten to him. He'd refused to believe that his current condition was a direct result of the emotional distress and his darkened mental state from the loss of that baby patient. He'd felt nothing for so long and those strong emotions were bubbling up to the surface and he couldn't control them, not on his own.

He couldn't bottle anything up anymore and it was like someone had dropped that bottle and shattered it, letting all that he'd trapped in there out. He'd tried to blame all of this pain on some medical cause but his MRI and bloodwork both came out clean.