oo7.

The first time I met Allison Cameron, I didn't like her. And it wasn't because of a need on my behalf to engage in that innate woman-to-woman pissing match like every analyst will tell you. The way one woman will meet another and instantly size up everything about her - the glossiness and bounce of her hair, whether or not she tweezes or waxes, jewelry (conservative or ostentatious?) - and make a conscious decision that the acquaintance will be either passive or aggressive.

I didn't like her because House deliberately mispronounced her name when I met her - "Allison Camerone" - and I called her that for three days until she politely corrected me. "It's Cameron. Like the movie director." And she pushed a small smile into the lip of her coffee cup while House smirked at me over the table. On the way out of the meeting he leaned over my shoulder: "Way to go, Liza Coodee."

I resolved to be civil to her after that.



The first time I met James Wilson, he complimented me on my shoes. In his defense, they really were spectacular. It was three months after I'd officially taken over as Dean of Medicine and I'd spent two days and two grand on wardrobe modifications. He was in my office (just saying that - "my office" - was enough to make me want to spend more money) amongst the new furniture, one pleated trouser leg tossed over the other. He was courting Wife #2 at this point and his tie collection had not yet exploded in an orgiastic spectrum like it would when he was stressed or depressed.

"I like your shoes."
"I...oh. Thank you. Your tie is nice, too."
"Thanks. I just kind of throw it together."

He started hanging around House and his tie selection got bolder and brassier. House would mock him for them, calling them "the fashion equivalent of a bullfrog's throat bulge during mating season", while his own collar hung limply around his neck.

When I unthreaded the tie from Wilson's neck the other night, I noticed that it was the same one he'd worn to my office when we first met.



The first time I met Gregory House I think that he thought I was in love with him. Which, in itself, wasn't surprising. Half of the female population at the University of Michigan (along with a surprisingly strong contingent of Y-chromosome subscribers) wanted the "legendary grad student" to do their annual physicals. "I mean, this guy is smooth --" this from Miriam, my roommate and bellwether friend, who'd end up dropping out of law school halfway through her junior year to marry a state senator "-- I'd serve him with a court order for medical malpractice just so I could be in the same room with him."

The lacrosse field was on the way back to my dorm and I would walk past the chainlink fence while the team did windsprints up and down the turf. He'd trot by on the pretense of recovering a lost lacrosse ball - or just to stretch the splints from his calves - and push a smile through the chainlink that was so potent I almost wished I had gone into athletic medicine. He made team captain at the end of my sophomore year. I had stopped walking by the field three months before and he caught my eyes over the lecture hall one morning, the brim of his U of M Lacrosse Team ballcap tugged low. In the hall, afterward:

"I haven't seen you around practices lately."
"I've been busy. I'm taking an MCAT preparatory seminar."
"That test is bogus, anyway. Skip the lecture. I'll tutor you."
"No, thanks."

A smirk. "You know what your last name rhymes with? Cruddy. As in, 'it sure was cruddy of Lisa Cuddy to turn down a chance to watch Greg House run'."

I'd never see him run again.