“Sure. But he’ll be asleep for a while.”

“And so will you,” the surgical nurse reminded Kendra. “If you want to take the bear into the OR with you, we’ll have to put him in a sterile bag.”

Kendra looked up at him hopefully. “Can I?”

“Sure.”

Dr. Bear, pantsless as ever, was bundled into a plastic bag. Wilson managed not to raise any questions about how he would breathe in there. Teddification was having some obvious effects on House, but Wilson found that having a teddy for a best friend was changing his perspective on things too.

Once Kendra went under the anesthetic, he was free to go back to the office. The surgery would take a couple of hours--he’d stop back again when she was coming around.

He knocked on his own office door before opening it, hoping that if House was doing anything disgusting, he’d have the decency to stop.

When he looked in, House’s head popped up over the edge of the carton. “I was sleeping,” he said accusingly.

“Sorry. Do you want to go to your lab now?”

House yawned. “Still sleepy. I could use some tea.”

“Tea?” House never drank tea, as far as Wilson knew.

“And maybe some little cakes or something. Or a muffin. Muffins are good.”

“You want to have a tea party,” Wilson observed incredulously.

House’s furry brow creased. “No I don’t,” he protested.

“You just want tea and little cakes.”

“Yup.” House nodded.

Wilson considered arguing the point but decided it wasn’t worth it. “You realize this is going to be the fourth time you’ve eaten so far today.”

“Nuh-uh. We had the French toast for breakfast, and then sandwiches.”

“You forgot your cocoa and Oreos.”

“Oh, yeah.” House shrugged. He patted his tummy. “I guess teddy bears have to eat more often than humans.”

“I guess so.”

Wilson trooped down to the cafeteria again. They didn’t have any little cakes, but Wilson picked out some muffins and a slice of lemon pound cake, and filled his pockets with a variety of tea bags. After a moment’s thought, he added a handful of honey packets.

That turned out to have been a good idea. When he returned to the office, House complained because neither the muffins nor the pound cake had any icing.

“That’s what they had,” Wilson explained. “There was carrot cake, but I know how you feel about that.”

“Cake should not have vegetables in it,” House said, nodding. He poked at the honey packets with his paw. “I wonder….” After getting Wilson’s help opening the packets, he was soon spreading the muffins and pound cake with honey. “Thish’ll do for now,” he said stickily, taking a big bite. “We’ll just have to find a bakery on the way home.”

The bright side of the situation, Wilson supposed, was that House seemed to be adjusting pretty well to being a teddy. But he wasn’t sure how much longer he himself could handle it.

#

After their little snack, Wilson finally agreed to take him back to the lab. However, all was not well. Wilson unceremoniously picked him up and stuffed him under his arm. “Hey! What’s the carton supposed to be for?!”

“If I have to carry your urine sample, in my mug, I need a free hand,” Wilson explained. “Oh, hold on a minute.” He put House and the mug down.

House got to his feet and poked his stomach back into shape. “Look at me, I’m all squashed.”

“Uh-huh.” Wilson ignored him and applied strips of tape across the top of the mug.

“What’s that for?”

“So I don’t accidentally take a sip out of it while I’m carrying it.”

“You could just be careful,” House pointed out.

“It’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”

Finally, Wilson finished his obsessive-compulsive pee-containment ritual and picked him up again. “Be careful! I’m not a bag of potatoes!”

“Next time a witch decides to turn you into something, I’m going to suggest that. I bet a bag of potatoes wouldn’t whiz in my mug.”

“You really need to let go of that,” House advised him. “All this anger is bad for your blood pressure.”

As usual, Wilson just sighed instead of responding to his perfectly valid point. House waited until they were in the elevator with some other people, and then kicked Wilson in the ribs while nobody was looking.

Wilson made a very satisfying “Ooof!” Several other passengers turned to look at him. “Sorry, I just….” He trailed off, apparently unable to come up with a plausible explanation.

House followed up by making what he felt was a very realistic fart sound. Wilson blushed helplessly as the other people edged away from him.

However, when they got off the elevator and turned down the empty hallway to the lab, House began to wonder if he had miscalculated. Wilson squashed him again and hissed, “You!”

“What?” he asked, as innocently as he could managed.

“Behave!”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Wilson huffed and opened the lab door. “You know perfectly well that you--hi, Chase, Cameron.”

House immediately went limp. Now if only Wilson could be trusted not to give him up….

Cameron was the first to recover. She stepped away from Chase and smoothed down her shirt. “Hi, Wilson. We were just…what’s up?”

“Uh…House left some samples down here that he asked me to pick up. Do you know….”

“Oh, sure, these?” Cameron turned to the worktop and started gathering things up. “We noticed these--is House working on something?”

“Sort of…it’s kind of a personal project.”

Cameron stepped on Chase’s foot, and he yelped. “Ah! Um, is there anything we can do to help?”

“I don’t think so,” Wilson said. “I’ll just get his samples….” Wilson put the very incriminating urine-filled mug down on the counter, the doofus. “Maybe I should have brought a bag or something…let’s see, if I stack these up….”

“What’s the teddy bear for?” Chase asked.

“This? Oh, this!” Wilson fake-laughed. “That’s, um, well, what it is, you see, is…it’s a present for House! A get-well present. That’s what it is.”

Even Cameron looked dubious at that. “You think he’ll like that?”

Wilson glanced down at him. “Well, no, but he’s very hard to buy for.”

“I guess,” Cameron said. And then--then!--she grabbed him! “It’s cute, though. I like his little jacket.”

“Thanks,” Wilson said, reaching toward him. “I’d better--”

But Cameron was turning him over. “Look, Chase! He has a little tail.”

Chase glanced at his tail. “Cute.”

Wilson had better rescue him soon. Cameron’s nails were digging into his head-fur. It was very ouchy.

“We’d better--I’d better go,” Wilson said, wresting him out of Cameron’s talons. “I’ll just…come back for the samples later. Bye!”

They escaped. “A present for me!” House said scathingly when they were safely in the elevator. “Like that’s plausible.”

“I didn’t have time to think of something more convincing,” Wilson defended himself. “What should I have said?”

“That I was for the Peds ward? Or you stole me from a kid? Or you were doing a teddy-bear ventriloquist act?”

“Okay,” Wilson said. “Those might have worked. But I didn’t have any time to think.”

“She pinched me.”

“Sorry.”

“And showed Chase my tail. My personal tail.”

“Well, it does stick out of your pants.”

“So?”

#

Cameron shut the door behind Wilson and locked it again. “That was weird.”

“Yeah,” Chase agreed. He hadn’t realized that Cameron liked stuffed animals. Maybe he should buy her one.

“Something’s definitely up with House.” She picked up a slide and started tapping her fingernail on it.

“What are you doing?”

“I got some fiber samples from the teddy bear while I was pretending to show you its tail,” she explained.

So she didn’t really think it was cute? “Uh…why?”

“I think it’s the same one--or at least the same kind--as the other samples are from,” she explained, putting the slide on the microscope. “I don’t know what that proves…but obviously it’s not really a present for House.”

“Right,” Chase agreed. That had seemed a little dodgy to him too.

“Wilson probably brought it here to run some more tests on it. For some reason.” She switched slides. “I think they’re the same. You have a look.”

Chase compared the two fiber samples. “Yeah. They look the same to me.” He moved down to let Cameron back at the microscope. “What do you suppose this is?” he asked, picking up the coffee cup Wilson had left behind. The top was covered with strips of tape. “Another sample?”

“Probably.”

He peeled off the tape and examine the liquid inside. It was amber-colored…either apple juice or urine. He sniffed it. “Urine sample,” he told Cameron.

“That’s kind of weird.”

“You think?”

But Cameron looked serious. “Maybe it’s House. Maybe he’s sick.”

“We know he’s sick,” Chase reminded her. “That’s why he’s not here.”

“I mean really sick. And Wilson’s trying to find out what’s wrong with him.”

Chase shook his head. “He’d have us help.”

“What if House told him not to?”

“Like when he didn’t have cancer?” It did seem plausible. “Maybe he doesn’t know Wilson’s treating him, either. That would explain why this is in a coffee cup and not a specimen container.”

Cameron nodded eagerly. “Yeah--and maybe he took the bear over there and got House to cough on it or something.”

That made slightly more sense than Wilson’s explanation. “Now that we know, we can help.”

“Let’s start by running every test we can think of on this urine.”

On to chapter 12!