Author's Notes:

I gave Joe a last name and invented one for Cameron's husband. While I tried to make the medicine feel real, I am not an expert in medicine and don't pretend to be.

I have trouble proof reading my own work so I apologise for any errors. If you find any mistakes please let me know and I will fix them straight away.

I love getting feedback so reviews are more then welcome.

Chapter 1: Joe

The funny thing about falling in love with someone is the power they have over you for years after. You won't think about them for weeks, even months, and then all of sudden you run into them on the street and your pulse races, your stomach goes queasy and you forget how to move. You thought you were completely over them, insensitive to their charms and with one glance they steamroll you all over again. And boy had she been steamrolled…

These thoughts ran through Cameron's head as she splashed water on her face in the ladies room in an attempt pull herself together. She could do this. This was going to be okay.

Today has started out completely normal (odd that she now thought diagnosing bizarre and rare diseases as normal), House had her and Foreman running every test known to man on a young high school cheerleader who had collapsed at practice. Everyone was convinced the girl was clean of drugs and toxins but House wasn't so sure. Cameron wasn't feeling too stressed about the whole thing, the girl's life wasn't in danger, the biggest risk at the moment was ensuring that they didn't miss anything. Even better then dealing with a patient that wasn't living on borrowed time, was that she and Chase had a date lined up tonight. Well not really a date, more like a pre-sex meal. Their relationship was exactly what see needed at the moment, commitment free, stress free, just quite a lot of 'sex-that-didn't-suck'. Things were good, or at least they were at 10:56am.

10:57 turned out to be a completely different matter.

She had been happy even when the administrative assistant knocked on her door and to tell her that she had a call waiting for her. She wasn't even thinking about what the call could be when she picked it up, "Dr. Cameron here."

"Allie, it's Samantha." Instantly Cameron knew something was wrong. And it was not just that it one of her best friends was calling her from work. It was the tone, a half-hysterical, half-together tone that Cameron knew all to well.

"What's the matter?" Cameron said quickly, with hundreds of horrible scenarios running through her mind.

"Joe collapsed at work today, complaining of shooting pains. And they found a lump on his neck…"Sam broke down fully then, sobbing into the phone. If it hadn't been for the wall holding her up, Cameron would have fallen straight to the floor. Joe might have cancer…Joe, the husband of her best friend…Joe, the best friend of her husband…Joe, the man she had fallen in love with during those horrible months that she watched Mike fade away.

Cameron attempted to say something soothing into the phone, "It might not be malignant Sam. Are you having him brought to PPTH? I know a good oncologist here…This is going to be okay."

Sam tried to pull herself together on the other end of the line, "That's why I am calling," her voice began to break up at the end of the line, "They are rushing him to the hospital in an ambulance right now, the pain just keeps on getting worse."

Cameron wasn't quite sure how see made it to the Emergency Ward so fast. She might have run, snippets of staircases flitter through her head. She was just racing in when the ambulance arrived. The stretcher was pulled in, and for a minute it looked like just another patient. As it wheeled closer the patient came into view, the man in the stretcher was tall, almost to big for the stretcher, with chestnut hair and a dimple on the side of his smile that you might miss if your didn't look closely. Sitting up straighter, he stunned the whole emergency ward by shooting out, "Damn woman, you still look like sex on legs!"

And she was steamrolled.