Unluckily Lucky
Timeline: Season 8 AU. Thirteen took over the head of ER job while House was in prison and continued to do that job when he came back, not going back into diagnostics. Foreman is dean and then there's Park and Adams (but I didn't really write them into this one).
A/N: Just something off the fly. I was going to split it in chapters but I really shouldn't commit with half baked ideas and less time to flesh them out. So this is a one-shot.
Disclaimer: I do not own House MD.
It's a personal record. Thirteen had been on the hospital grounds for officially 4 days. 76 hours in the ER fixing broken bones and listening to nurses bitch about patients and sleeping in the on call rooms. 76 hours since she's been home where her father was waiting for her.
She rejected a call from John Hadley for the umpteenth time. She slid the phone into her lab coat pocket and headed to the ambulance bay. A 5 car pile-up was reported 20 minutes ago and they were receiving the 4 critical patients. Great, Thirteen thought genuinely. More work to keep her here.
"Mr. Johnson, I'm Dr. Hadley. We're gonna take care of you, okay? Do you know where you are?" She asked a man in his 40's who was just wheeled in.
"A hospital in Princeton. PPTH I guess." She heard clearly. Despite the head injury and broken leg, he was surprisingly coherent. The adrenaline will wear off soon, Thirteen thought. They have to be prepared. "Where is Libby?"
"Daughter." The young paramedic told Thirteen. They had wheeled him to the bed and were prepared to move him but the patient was squirming, trying to look around in his neck brace.
"She's not here at the moment but you'll be the first to know once she's arrived at the hospital, okay? Try not to move so much."
Thirteen did preliminary checks and let a resident wrap up the leg before he was sent away for a head CT. She proceeded to check on the other criticals which included 2 severely burnt men and a pregnant woman who's foetus will probably not make it through surgery due to the mother's blood loss. She would be the first to get to the operation theater.
She was following up on Mr. Johnson when she thought she heard someone call her.
"Remy." She frowned. Nobody in the hospital called her that. It was either Dr. Hadley or Thirteen. She choked it up to lack of sleep.
"Remy." She heard louder this time. She turned around and saw her father in the middle of the emergency room, standing very tense. John Hadley is in his late 50's but still sported a strong built which made him look younger than he is. But right now he looked as if he hadn't slept in days and hasn't shaven for longer than that. His clothes were disheveled and he looked like he hadn't eaten much recently. Thirteen's face heat up from panic and she walked rather quickly away from the patient.
"I'm working. You can't be here." She hissed.
"Why won't you see me? You haven't been home in days."
"I've been busy, I'm running the ER! You have to leave, you're getting in the way."
"I just need 5 minutes with you." He said.
"I can't. There's been a huge accident and there are patients I need to tend to." Suddenly he grabbed her forearm harshly.
"Remy please." He begged. She tried to pull away but he gripped tighter. She looked around and saw that they were being stared at. She looked back at John and nodded briskly, needing to avoid making a scene. He followed her from behind.
They walked out of the ER and onto the footpath where it was more secluded. He had let go of her arm and now she was waiting for him to speak up first. She hasn't seen her father since her brother was sick, before she euthanized him. She had been arrested before she saw any her family members. None of them even showed up at her trial. A part of her was relieved she didn't need to face them. But it's been more than a year since her release and she wasn't sure what her father or the rest of her family knew of what she had done. She was slightly frightened.
"I need you to repent." He broke the silence. Thirteen was shocked at the sentiment.
"What?"
"I need you to repent for what you did to your brother. I need you to ask for forgiveness from the lord." She grew up in a pious household but she always made excuses to skip mass or other church events where her other siblings were active in. When she went to college, she denounced her faith completely and was estranged from her family ever since.
"No."
"Why do you have to be so stubborn?"
"Why do I have to ask forgiveness from someone I don't even think exists?" She could see that he was about to yell at her for her blasphemous statement but she quickly cut him off.
"I don't regret what I did. If I had to do it all over again, I would."
"You don't mean that."
"Yes, I do. Now please, I need to get back to work."
"Remy, don't do this. We can fix this. We'll find a church and you can go for confession."
"Why are you here? It's been more than a year. You didn't visit me in prison. You didn't attempt to contact me after I got out. What changed?" John was silent but then it finally clicked in her mind.
"You thought God would punish me. You thought you'd find me begging at your feet but instead I'm still thriving here." His silence was a confirmation.
"You had no right to take your brother's life." He said.
"He wanted it. He told me to."
"You don't think your mother was the same?! She begged to die every chance that she got but I knew it was not my place." Remy was finally speechless. Her mouth was dry. She wanted to say something but she couldn't. She suddenly felt frightened. Her father had always been a calm man when she was growing up. She couldn't rationalise the feeling. It was in the back of her head, her instincts were telling her to run.
"God works through his people. He spoke to me, Remy." She wanted to ask what but nothing came out of her mouth.
"You need to be punished." John pulled out a gun that was tucked behind his pants and pulled the trigger. Thirteen fell back from the force and onto the wet footpath. There was a sharp pain in her chest but before she could touch where it hurt, she heard a second gunshot causing her to flinch. She didn't feel the second shot. Maybe he missed, she thought. Blood was pooling on the left side of her upper chest.
This was why John waited for her to get home. The likelihood of her recovering from a gunshot wound would be significantly higher at the hospital. Which was what happened when a paramedic came running to her side.
"Dr. Hadley, can you hear me?" She heard a familiar voice say. A bright light was shone in her eye and she flinched.
"Get that light out of my eye, Ferguson." She told the attending. The young paramedic had patched her chest and carried her to the ER 20 feet away. Who said chivalry was dead.
"She's responsive. Do you know what happened?"
"I was shot. Then that cute paramedic carried me here." She recalled. Despite the car accident, a lot of doctors and nurses managed to take the time to crowd around her. Being the center of attention made her uneasy.
"Where is he?" She asked.
"The medic?"
"The guy who shot me."
"The bastard shot himself after he shot you."
"Oh."
She yelped when Ferguson checked the wound. It was a through and through and it didn't hit any major organs. She was supposed to feel pain. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream at the universe for making her go through so much shit. But all she felt was numb. But that was probably because of the morphine.
Her eyelids were burning. She slowly opened them and they were slightly stuck together. She raised her right arm and rubbed her eyes until she could see more clearly. She recognised that she was in the ICU. She must've dozed off after the police took her statement right after she was stitched up. She couldn't even recall what she had told the police. With her lack of sleep and being jacked up on pain meds, it was understandable that she would fall asleep as fast as she did.
She saw an intern and a nurse standing around her, changing her IV bag. They had sympathetic looks on their faces. With that she knew that everyone knows. Her father tried to kill her. Then he killed himself.
"Lucky Thirteen." A deep voice said. She turned toward the voice and saw House sitting on the other side, leaning his chin on his cane. An indifferent look on his face. The nurse left but not before giving Thirteen a soft squeeze on her leg.
"I think you're mistaking me for someone else nicknamed Thirteen who won the lottery yesterday." Her voice was cracked. Then she reached for the cup of water. House handed it to her.
"If the bullet was half an inch more to the right and you would be in the morgue." Then he turned to the intern who just hooked up the bag. "If you kids are still curious as to why her name is Thirteen, this is it." The intern gave an uncomfortable nod and left them, closing their privacy curtain.
"So your theory is that despite having a string of horrible circumstances in my life, the chances of my survival were slim to none, which could only mean I'm lucky. That I'm unluckily lucky."
"You're such a smart girl." He said patronisingly and patted her head. She rolled her eyes and took more water.
"Your step-mother is in the morgue by the way, trying pack up your dad for New York. Or whatever that's left of him." He thought saying something this insensitive would cause a reaction but her expression didn't change. "She requested to see you but Foreman told her to stay the fuck away."
"In those words, I hope." House gave a weak smile. She could see that he was buying time to get to the real reason to why he was there. Because he sure as hell wasn't the caring type.
"Why did he do it?" There it was.
"I thought it'd be at least another 5 minutes before you pry into my personal life." She scoffed.
"My theory is that he had a mental breakdown after his son died, to your hands. All the emotions he's kept inside of him for a long time finally blew up in his face, literally." All he cared about was satisfying his own curiousities and she knew that. She was almost too tired to hide behind her sarcasm. Almost.
"He had been holding a grudge since that time I broke his reading glasses in '89." House was not amused.
"Don't do that. Don't… hide. Just tell me." He said, looking awfully honest. She wasn't sure if it was genuine but she was too tired to find out. She sighed.
"Why do you think? He's a religious nut who said God told him to punish me for what I did to my brother." Her eyes was tearing up now. She was reliving the moments before and all the emotions she was keeping at bay for the past few hours were flooding in.
"You got your answer. You can leave now." She said, sobbing. She wants to stop, she needs to stop but she's coming to a point of no return. He was silent and visibly uncomfortable in his seat.
"You are the king of avoiding emotional engagements. Do you really want to stay and watch me embarrass myself in front of you?" She said angrily and the tears were unstoppable. He was looking at her now like how he did in Schenectady when she confessed euthanasia. It was shared pain. He had enough pain to last a few lifetimes but now he felt that Thirteen had surpassed him in the screwed up department.
Then he did something that surprised both of them. He got up and slid to lie down next to her, careful not to pin any tubes. She turned to lie on her right side so he could place his left arm above her head. She was full blown crying now, her face buried in his chest, her good arm grabbing his shirt for dear life. He rubbed her back with his other hand, pulling her even closer.
Thirteen thought she could at least last until she got home to her apartment before she would break down. But now, stripped of all her walls, she couldn't care less that the only thing separating them and the rest of the world from being exposed was a thin sheet of curtain. Her crying slowed into sobs and finally into whimpers. She was emotionally and physically drained. House stayed with her until she fell asleep before he slipped away. Fortunately for them, nobody came in.
The next time Thirteen woke up, she was in a private room. She was alone this time. The clock on the wall told her it was almost 8pm, about 10 hours since the shooting. She was breaking her personal record by a mile.
The pain in her chest seemed to have increased. The morphine dose was lowered sometime after she fell asleep. Despite it being her first long sleep in 4 days, it was hard for her to feel remotely refreshed. Luckily she still had the strength to get to the bathroom.
A young nurse came by and asked is she needed anything. Thirteen said something about a sponge bath and the nurse visibly blushed.
"We'll see what we can do about that." The nurse replied and returned a flirty smile before leaving the room. What a tease. She was cute and new and if Thirteen was not bedridden, she would've chased that girl down. But that was all the ego boost Thirteen needed for the night to compensate for her breakdown in front of House. The thought of it made her cringe. But she was glad it happened. The tension that was building inside of for over a year seemed to have dissipated from her bones. For the moment.
Taub and Chase came by minutes later, the nurse probably informed them that she was awake. They accompanied her for a while until they were paged to tend to their patient. Wilson also came and stayed with her the longest, all the while she was wondering where House was.
"I'm sure he'll come by. He cares about you even if he doesn't show it." Wilson said. This meant House didn't confide in him about their previous snuggling session which was odd.
Foreman came later that night, telling her there was a big media circus outside and he was trying to defuse it all day. He tried to coax her into telling him about what really happened so she just told a completely detached version of it. She didn't disclose what happened to her brother. Foreman just wants something he can tell the media, to make sense of this tragedy. She knew that wasn't true and he actually cared but it was easier to not care. This must be what House feels all the time.
He said he already had that information from her police statement but he didn't push it further. He left soon after.
First thing in the morning, Thirteen woke up from a restless night and freshened up. She had asked Taub to bring in her things from her locker so her clothes and handbag was already in her room.
"What are you doing?" House said from her doorway. He was holding a newspaper in his hand. She had already changed into her civilian clothes, a purple top with jeans and a brown leather jacket.
"I'm preparing for a cross country." She said sarcastically.
"You just got shot."
"I can't stay in this hospital for another day."
"I'm sorry, I don't think you heard me. You just got shot, in the chest, by your father." He emphasized.
"I feel fine. I didn't lose a lot of blood and the pain is manageable."
"You're gonna rip your stitches."
"I'll be careful."
"Stitches on you chest and back. From where you were shot." He repeated once more.
"I'll be very careful." She had finished packing and was headed to the door but House lifted his cane so it was wedged between the doorway and effectively stopped her.
"House, I'm fine."
"Where are you going?"
"Colorado. The marathon starts in 4 hours."
"I suggest you don't leave unless you want your face in the front of the New York Times."
"What?"
"Didn't you hear? You're America's Favourite Tragic Sweetheart." He took the newspaper that was tucked under his arm and tossed it to her. The headline was Father Shoots Daughter at Hospital, Man Commits Suicide. There was only an illustration that accompanied the column and not any actual pictures which was a slight relief. She sat down and continued reading it. It was all there. Her mother, their disease, her brother and subsequent prison sentence. Even the religious stuff was in there.
"What the fuck." She muttered.
"Exactly. I'm actually a world renowned diagnostician." House chipped in. The paper had written nationally renowned diagnostician. Thirteen was too busy reading to amuse him with a reaction.
"Relax. In a few days, it will all blow over. You'll be asked to show up on talk shows, get a book deal and before you know it, America will move on to grovel over a new Brangelina baby." She shook her head at his outdated pop culture reference.
"Who got this information? Was it Foreman? Was it you?"
"You're my personal tragic starter pack, I wouldn't share you. I'm not sure about Foreman though." She cursed. The pain was coming back now as her heart rate sped up. She visibly winced.
"All the more reason for you to lie down here like a vegetable. Sit down before you get blood on my shoes."
"I don't wanna stay here." She said, having read enough of the front page column.
"I just told you…"
"No, I don't want to stay in this room. Can I go to diagnostics? Maybe I can help with the case."
House came into diagnostics to find two sleepy male employees and two other indifferent female employees.
"Gooood morning class. We have a new student today." House announced. They all looked up and their jaws dropped when they saw Thirteen come in.
"Well actually she's an old student but she just can't stay away from old Mr. House's Masochism 101 class."
"I was bored." She said, before House could embarrass her any further. She took a seat next to Chase at the table. She hadn't gone to the DDX room since it's renovation so the whole place had a different feel to it with the couches at the back.
"How do you feel?" Chase asked.
"Like I've been shot. Oh wait."
"You should really rest." Park offered, the soft voice a stark contrast to everyone else in the room.
"I'm fine, thank you. Besides, I'm not the patient here."
"You are a patient." Taub chipped in.
"But I'm not the one dying right now." They all stared at her, speechless. She rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant."
"Okay kids, that's enough. Let's set all our sympathy aside and treat Miss Thirteen here like a normal person for once, okay? Now what causes syncope, paralysis and blindness?"
The rest of the team went off to start tests on the patient and House went over to his office. Thirteen followed him and stood in front of his desk while he settled in his chair.
"I didn't get a chance to talk to you about yesterday."
"I didn't know how else to shut you up."
"So you decided hugging me to sleep was a viable option?"
"I was expecting clothes to be shed. I was wrong."
"And you didn't tell Wilson about it."
"Of course Wilson visited you. He just can't stay away from a needy women. I suggest you wear a chastity belt for the next few months."
"You tell Wilson everything. Which means yesterday meant something to you." She said, ignoring his efforts to deflect.
"I told you. I don't like to share." He said. Thirteen smiled.
"Thank you, not just for yesterday. But for stopping me from leaving the hospital and for bringing me up here."
"If you feel the need to take off your top in gratitude, you're most welcomed." They watched each other for a moment before his features softened and he nodded.
He thought she was going to leave but instead she walked over and stood in front of him. She leaned into him and held the armrest of his chair with her good arm, her face an inch from his own. The weird thing was, he didn't even move back. Then she turned to the side and gave a lingering kiss on his cheek, holding the other side of his face with her left hand. He turned slightly into the kiss. When she pulled away, he surprised her by pulling her in by the lips. It didn't take long for her to respond.
Things got heated very fast and House saw how uncomfortable her position was, her head craned like that so he gently guided her, tugging her by the thighs so she was straddling him. She brought both her hands up to his neck while his hands were on her hips, keeping them steady on the swivel chair. His tongue was pushing back against her lips and she parted them slightly, moaning in response. After a while, they pulled back, panting, pupils dilated. She looked at the entrance of the office and was glad all the blinds were closed. Then she turned back to him and he proceeded to place soft kisses on her jaw and then neck.
She felt his hand on the seams of her jacket and had pulled it off slightly. She wondered if he had done this before in the vulnerability of his unlocked office. He did date Cuddy for a while. And then there was that thing with Cameron. At least he had a sense of adventure.
"You're bleeding." He said, her head out of the gutter immediately. Her purple top was quickly soaking up blood.
"Fuck."