House of Love

The fluorescent lights of Princeton-Plainsboro’s ER flickered like a dying star, casting a sterile glow over the chaos below. Dr. Gregory House limped in, cane thumping the linoleum, his face etched with the kind of scowl that could curdle milk. He’d been paged at 3 a.m., which meant someone was either dying spectacularly or wasting his time. Given his luck, it was probably both.

“Talk to me,” he barked at Foreman, who was already mid-stride with a chart.

“Two patients, 17-year-olds, male and female. Came in fused together—literally. Skin, muscle, some subcutaneous tissue. They’re conjoined at the arm and torso now, and it’s progressing. Parents say it started a month ago as a ‘rash’ where they kept touching. They’re dating, apparently inseparable. Refused to stop holding hands, cuddling, you name it. Now they’re a medical freakshow.”

House stopped, one eyebrow arching like a skeptical vulture. “Fused? As in, Siamese-twins-after-the-fact fused?”

“Exactly,” Cameron piped up, her doe eyes wide with that irritating mix of concern and fascination. “It’s like their bodies are… merging. Labs show elevated fibroblasts, collagen deposition, and some weird cytokine activity—like their immune systems are collaborating to knit them together.”

House snorted, hobbling toward the exam room. “Oh, this I’ve got to see. Love’s a hell of a drug, but I didn’t know it came with a flesh-glue side effect.”

Inside, the two teens—Jake and Mia—sat on a gurney, a tangle of limbs and awkward glances. Their right and left sides, respectively, were a grotesque patchwork of fused skin, a seamless gradient where her arm met his torso, their hands locked in a grip that looked less romantic and more like a biological hostage situation. Mia’s cheeks were tear-streaked; Jake just looked dazed.

“Help us,” Mia whispered. “We didn’t mean for this to happen.”

House leaned on his cane, sizing them up like a butcher eyeing a cut of meat. “Let me guess: you’re the kind of couple that finishes each other’s sentences, shares milkshakes, and hasn’t spent five minutes apart since you swapped spit at prom. And now, surprise! Your PDA’s turned into a science experiment.”

“We love each other,” Jake said defiantly, his voice cracking.

“Love,” House sneered, dragging the word out like it was a bad punchline. “Let me break it down for you, Romeo. Love’s just evolution’s dirty little trick—a dopamine hit to keep you horny monkeys breeding. Oxytocin, serotonin, a dash of vasopressin, and bam, you’re picking out curtains together. But this? This is what happens when nature’s reward system gets too good at its job.”

He turned to his team, who’d shuffled in behind him. “Differential diagnosis, people. What turns teenage puppy love into a literal flesh prison?”

“Epidermolysis bullosa inversa?” Chase offered. “Some rare connective tissue disorder could explain the skin merging.”

“Nope,” House shot back. “That’s blisters and fragility, not spontaneous Velcro. Next.”

Cameron hesitated. “What about a psychosomatic response? Emotional attachment manifesting physically?”

House rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. If feelings could fuse people, I’d be stuck to my whiskey bottle by now. Try again.”

Foreman crossed his arms. “Could be a localized scleroderma variant, triggered by constant pressure and inflammation from their nonstop contact. Like those sadhus in India who let chains grow into their skin—self-inflicted fibrosis gone wild.”

House tapped his cane against the floor, a slow rhythm of contemplation. “Huh. Not bad. Chronic pressure, inflammation, maybe a genetic quirk amplifying the healing response. Their bodies think they’re one organism because they won’t stop touching. Love’s biology on overdrive—repair systems so efficient they’re building a bridge between them.”

“So what do we do?” Mia asked, her voice trembling.

House smirked, leaning closer. “First, we test the theory. Foreman, get a biopsy of the fusion site—check for fibroblast overactivity and cytokine storms. Chase, run a full genetic panel; see if these lovebirds have some mutant healing factor. Cameron, dig up case studies on extreme tissue adhesion. And somebody get me coffee—this is going to be a long night of mocking Darwin.”

Hours later, the team reconvened in House’s office, test results splayed across the desk like a battlefield map. The biopsy confirmed Foreman’s hunch: rampant fibroblast proliferation and collagen overproduction, fueled by a rare genetic mutation in both kids that supercharged their wound-healing pathways. Constant contact had tricked their bodies into treating each other as extensions of themselves, merging tissue like a slow-motion horror movie.

“Congratulations,” House drawled, popping a Vicodin. “You’ve got the biological equivalent of a clingy ex. Your DNA’s so eager to bond, it’s turning you into a two-headed prom date.”

“Can you fix it?” Jake asked, his voice muffled through the glass of the observation room where they’d been quarantined.

“Surgery’s an option,” Chase said. “Separate them, graft the gaps. But the fusion’s deep—nerves, blood vessels. Risky.”

House waved a hand dismissively. “Surgery’s boring. Besides, they’ll just Velcro back together the second they start making googly eyes again. No, the cure’s simpler: peer pressure.”

The team stared at him. Cameron frowned. “What?”

“Scorn and attention,” House said, grinning like a mad scientist. “Right now, they’re the tragic love story—Romeo and Juliet with a side of meat glue. But make them the laughingstock of their high school, and they’ll ditch each other faster than you can say ‘prom king.’ Embarrassment’s the best scalpel we’ve got.”

“How do we do that?” Foreman asked, skeptical.

House limped to the whiteboard, scribbling a plan. “Leak it to their classmates. Photos, rumors—‘Freaky Fusion Couple Can’t Let Go.’ Teenagers are sharks; they’ll smell blood and tear them apart. Literally, in this case. Once the social cost outweighs the mushy feelings, they’ll stop touching long enough for their bodies to figure out they’re separate entities.”

“That’s cruel,” Cameron protested.

“That’s effective,” House countered. “Unless you’d rather watch them turn into a human pretzel. Your call.”

A week later, the plan worked—gruesomely, gloriously. Jake and Mia, humiliated by viral TikToks and relentless teasing, broke up in a blaze of tears and shouting. Separated, their fusion halted, then reversed, the tissue slowly unraveling as their bodies remembered their boundaries. House watched from his office, sipping coffee, as the teens glared daggers at each other across the clinic lobby.

“Love,” he muttered to himself, tossing an empty Vicodin bottle into the trash. “Nature’s cruelest joke. At least this punchline’s got a happy ending.”

He limped off, cane tapping, already bored with the miracle he’d just wrought.