You want me to Date You?

Chapter Thirty One

Winter had arrived at Princeton Plainsboro, although that didn't mean that the planned event at the hospital couldn't happen. There was a red carpet that led inside the large building as the annual Oncology Benefit was taking place.

Within the hospital were people dressed to the nines as they sat around various tables, playing games of poker and roulette. House sat beside Wilson and Cuddy and a few other people as he looked down at his hand of cards. He glances over at Wilson and raises and eyebrow at him.

Wilson grins, and then tosses a chip to the middle of the table. "Twenty."

"I'll call," Cuddy replied as she sat down her own chip on the center of the table.

House rolled his eyes. "You'll call on anything."

Cuddy raised an eyebrow at her employee. "My stack's bigger than your stack," she said confidently as she looked between their two piles of chips. "Are you in or out?"

"You know, relative to their size, gorillas have smaller testicles than humans?" House replied.

Cuddy rolled her eyes at House's dramatics. "Well then, you'd probably have the edge over a gorilla, but not over me," she said defiantly.

"The reason being, primate teste size inversely corresponds to the fidelity of our females," House replied as he looked at his cards. HE looked back towards Wilson to see him roll his eyes at him.

"Women are evil, you're right to drive them away," Cuddy responded. "Call, fold or raise, story time can wait!" she added impatiently.

House chuckled and continued with his information on gorillas. "We're smaller and better than chimps, but bigger and worse than gorillas. For all our rationality, our supposed trust and fealty to a higher power, our ability to create a system of rules and laws; our baser drives are more powerful than any of that. We want to control our emotions, but we can't. If we're happy, things don't annoy us. If on the other hand, we're sitting on crappy hold cards, little tiny things annoy us a whole lot more." He looks over at a now very annoyed Wilson. "I raise," he ended confidently, then put a few chips on the others in the center of the table.

"Are you going to recite that every time I raise?" Wilson droned.

"My, that would be annoying now wouldn't it?" House answered cockily, causing Wilson to slap his cards down on the table, folding his hand.

Cuddy sighs and puts more chips in the center. "I call." She looks up when she sees one of the other doctors on call for the night walk up to her.

"Dr. Cuddy, I have one of your patients in the ER. A boy named Marcus Tanner, Six years old?"

"Yes, I know him. What's the problem Dr. Wells?" Cuddy asks, then turns toward House suddenly and pushes all of her chips into the center of the table. "All in."

Dr. Wells looks down at her clipboard. "He came in with bloody diarrhea and he's hemodynamically stable but has been developing some co-ordination problems."

Cuddy nods as she takes in the information. "That sounds like gastroenteritis and dehydration. Order fluids and I'll take it on my service." She looks back over at House and nods towards him. "It's your turn to bet, House."

House shuffled his cards around in his hands before he looked up at Dr. Wells. "Did you scan the boy's head?" he asked.

"No... why would we?" Dr. Wells responded, only to be cut off by Cuddy.

"Are you going to call or not House?" Cuddy questioned, but House ignored her.

"How is the boy's heart rate?" he asked.