She was soaping up to her elbows and under her fingernails in a metal sink, when someone appeared at her side.
"Morning." Dr. Robert Chase said, beginning to sterilize next to her.
Dr. Rush smiled at him quickly, before looking back down at her lathered hands.
"You're quiet." He remarked.
She shrugged.
"Is something interesting going on?"
She just smiled, blushing slightly as she turned off the water.
"No way..." He grinned devilishly. "You're not..."
She nodded, hands held above her head as she elbowed her way into the nearby OR. One thing she had learned about anyone who had worked with Gregory House, was that they didn't miss much.
"Finally!" Chase cried, sliding on gloves and a mask. "This is gonna be great. You guys are gonna be great."
Rush smiled nervously.
"Don't be worried." Chase told her. "The worst he can say is 'no', right?"
She looked at him. "Encouraging."
"You'll be fine. When are you gonna ask him?"
"After lunch."
"Find me and tell me what happens."
Another fact of House's people; they liked drama, anything that would bring some excitement. Something interesting needed to be happening right this minute to keep them focused. She guessed that it was this frantic mindset they'd been in for three years which had lead them eventually to the ER, surgery, and then back to House, respectively.
She quieted her nerves as the anesthesiologist did his work. It was just a appendectomy, which was a bit simple for Chase's liking, but it had been a slow morning.
Afterwards, they were pushed immediately toward another operating room, where a patient had a massive bleed somewhere in the small intestine. They found and repaired it quickly.
It's 11:30 in the morning when they finally peeled off gloves and robes.
"It's lunchtime." Chase said.
She rolled her eyes. "No, it's not."
"Too bad. Putting it off won't help. You just gotta get it done."
"You make it sound like a chore."
"This part is. The small talk, the asking, it's just trivial. Part of the social contract. The thing is, if you like eachother, you like eachother, and it doesn't matter what you do. But society dictates for one of you to grow a pair and ask the other out."
"So that's why you just bypassed the whole dating thing with Cameron, right? Because you liked eachother, and so it was inevitable." Rush retorted.
"Don't do what I did. Also, that's different because she was the one who didn't want to deal with the social norms and I went along with it for obvious reasons. Consequently, we spent a lot of time dicking around instead of just admitting we were more than sex partners. The asking may be trivial, but you gotta do it."
She sighed. "Fine. I'll got to lunch. But if I get paged in the middle and have to throw away half my food, I'm blaming you."
"I'll cover for you." Chase replied. "And I don't come back here until you've at least tried to score yourself a boyfriend."
She stopped at the door and turned. "Thanks, by the way."
He shrugged. "No problem." She smiles.
Chase had been adamant when she'd told him a out her crush. Since then, he'd made it a routine to send her upstairs with any surgery results, instead of taking them to House himself. House, thought an asshole (a fact every other doctor and nurse had told her when she'd asked about the conspicuous doctor, upon her arrival at Princeton-Plainsboro), could be tolerable, even fun, in small doses. Admittedly, though, she hadn't the slightest desire to work for him, and he was hardly the bright spot in her visits up to Diagnostics.
Since she was still a resident, and several years his junior, Chase had decided to take Medina Rush under his wing. She had also never lived in the north before, having been born in Richmond, Virginia and gone to school in Baltimore, leaving her unequipped to deal with living immersed in New Jersey's weather and people. She couldn't quite remember what exactly had drawn her to PPTH, except that when doing research on various possibilities for her residency, she kept being drawn back to Princeton. Now, she was a year into her residency, and on her way to becoming a full fledged surgeon.
She entered the cafeteria, and found a few half decent items for lunch. Most doctors weren't eating yet—it wasn't yet noon, so the room was muffled in volume.
She ate slowly, mustering up her courage. This was not going to be easy. She had never been one for words, and, like most residents, she was in an almost constant state of sleep deprivation.
She should probably plan what she wanted to say before she got up there.
Dear Kutner, I find you attractive, we should go out some time.
Perhaps not. Too strange, even for Kutner.
I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink some time?
She started thinking of a couple of weeks ago, when she'd gone up to Diagnostics, only to see Kutner carefully edging around a ladder, placed strategically in front of the conference room doorway.
She'd found this odd, but had reported on the health of his patient and not mentioned it. It was cute, really, seeing a grown man succumb to superstition.
House had seen her watching Kutner as he walked down the hall.
"Hmm." House had said, squinting at her, before limping away. For once, it seemed, House was too busy for a witty comment. This was supported by the fact he a dark gray cat tucked under one arm.
Later that evening, Kutner'd caught up with her in the parking lot and asked her almost point blank if she believed in the paranormal.
She'd replied that there was plenty of things that couldn't be explained by science, and some things that never would be. And she had a certain reliance on fate to a healthy extent, some belief that everything happened for a reason. Although sometimes that reason seems to be simply to fuck up your life.
He told her about Debbie the Death Cat, and they ended up talking about things of that nature for a while. She thought about asking him out right then, but she'd just worked a thirty-six hour shift in the ICU and could barely get home without her eyelids drooping dangerously.
He'd gotten an excited glint in his eye when they talked about the supernatural. They'd both put a fair amount of thought into it, the meaning of life and the substance of death. He'd told her about his birth parents, and the sparkle had left his dark eyes. They'd talked only a little longer after that, before she told him she really had to get some sleep.
Since then, he'd invited her over to the table he and Taub usually shared for lunch. They watched a lot of the same TV and movies, when they weren't being worked to the bone by their bosses. Rush had a deep love for stories in general, so she found media outlets exceptionally agreeable. Kutner had a similar view. It was an escape, they decided, a moment to look at a character and either be supremely jealous or say "at least I don't have that problem", or maybe even relate something fictional to your own life. She grew addicted to that excited gleam, appearing whenever he talked passionately about something. It made her smile involuntarily.
Besides Kutner, she didn't really have anyone to geek out with.
They shared a smile and a hello when they passed in the hallway, and talked when their work schedules permitted. She still submitted to the usually crush in close proximity behavior: trying to look respectable in clean scrubs and keeping her brown hair combed when he was around. But she still had know idea the range of his feelings for her.
She supposed she'd be finding out soon enough.
She was interrupted from her thoughts as an ambulance came roaring by the outside wall. She glanced at her watch, deciding it was time to man up and do this shit.
Her chest was tight with anticipation, a mixture of fear and elation.
She smiled like an idiot in the hospital corridors, taking the stairs three at a time, as thought Lawrence Kutner had already told her yes.
m m m
Chase sauntered into the ER as lunch time approached, hoping to collect his girlfriend for a meal.
Allison Cameron was standing at the center counter, looking down at a red file. Her face was ashen, and the hand that held a black pen was shaking slightly.
"I have good news." Chase said, coming toward her with a grin spreading across his stubbled face. "Medina's finally gonna ask out Kutner."
Chase's rather naïve protege and her crush had come up more than once in his and Cameron's conversations. After all, they were children of House, and this could be considered drama.
She looked up at him, and her eyes were glassy. He took in the scene quickly. A body, covered by a sheet was being rolled away by nurses.
"What's going on?" He asked.
When she told him, he took and involuntary step back, clutching at the counter.
"Why?" Chase asked, horrified.
"Nobody has any simple explanation." She replied.
He reached out for her, and they hugged for a long time. It didn't matter that they hadn't known Kutner very well. It was shocking, and he could only imagine the pain of the new team. Maybe even House would be upset by this. And Medina, good lord, Medina would be completely blind sighted. She wouldn't be able to handle this.
Chase found himself thinking something that had crossed his mind many times before.
The universe is just cruel.
To Kutner, to the team, to Medina, to everyone, really.
m m m
Rush's stomach was doing flip flops as she opened the door exiting the stairwell. She speed walked down the hallway toward the Diagnostics conference room.
She decided the world was cast in happy shades today, with the bright sun streaming in Princeton-Plainsboro's many windows, wide corridors, and smiling doctors, even as she quieted her butterflies.
She pushed open the glass door to find Taub, Foreman, and Thirteen seated at the table, their faces masked in confusing expressions. Guilt and grief on a day like this? They had been talking quietly, but stopped when she appeared. House was in the corner of the room, leaning heavily on his cane and staring at the gray carpet. Thirteen had unshed tears filling her eyes.
"Where's Kutner?" Rush asked, observing his absence. The room was gloomy with the shades drawn, and the air was suffocatingly thick with tension. House had yet to say something sexist or racist, and they didn't seem to be doing any kind of differential. Unease knelt in the pit of her stomach, but she remained optimistic.
"Gone." Foreman whispered, and then explained.
Medina Rush just looked at him for a moment, then watched as all the color drained from the world before her.