A/N: I own nothing.

A/N: A huge thanks to my stand-in betas! Pandorama, thanks for the title and the very in-character line. I'll have to start shopping (aka pestering my muse) for your birthday present pronto, since it may take a lot of persuading for me to write something you would actually like. Kara, your comments were extremely helpful. Thanks for tempting my muse with that delicious comment about Wilson and Cuddy.

Oh, and an AU note. In this story, everything in canon happened except for Chase and Cameron tying the knot.

For Melissa. Thank you for everything you do, and have a happy, happy birthday! Hope you like the story because, as the title warns, there are no refunds.

They had been married for thirty years: thirty Thanksgivings, thirty Christmases, sixty birthdays, if you counted one for each of them and the fact they had no children. All of the quintessential holidays, spent together. They had never left the other alone on one of those special days.

Until now.

It was her first birthday alone. Her husband (she supposed he was her second husband) had been dead for just over three months. It had been liver cancer in the end. Despite having given up the addiction years ago, the damage already done had been too much for his body to handle. Regardless, he'd still managed to outlast nearly all of his former fellows, and certainly all of his other friends. She could count their deaths on her fingers:

Thirteen had gone first, Huntington's disease. Not entirely unexpected.

Foreman had moved away following her death, but she had recently learned that he had died, too. Car accident . Icy roads. Bitter Minnesota winter. He had been working at Mayo.

Cuddy, also cancer. She had been dead for almost five years now, though she had fought the cancer for ten. Wilson had diagnosed the tumors in her breast. House had noted the irony of her greatest assets being her greatest downfall.

Wilson, heart attack. That had been the saddest death of all. She had attended the funeral with her husband, watched as he stared at the body of his last and oldest friend. A lone tear had slid down his cheek. She had clung to him tightly, and he to her, for she knew they could both feel that the end was near.

The last time she'd seen Taub was at Wilson's funeral. He had moved away, too following the inevitable divorce. He said he lived in Florida now. She hadn't heard from him since. She wondered vaguely if he'd been eaten by an alligator.

Then there was Chase. The last fellow in her class. She hadn't seen him since coming back to Princeton Plainsboro. No one seemed to know where he'd gone; either that, or they didn't want to tell her. She found that she didn't really care. Their romance, she realized later, would never have worked out. He simply wasn't damaged enough.

But she was the damaged one now, damaged and alone. She supposed she should consider herself lucky that she had aged without too many consequences. Her eyesight had deteriorated, necessitating glasses that were used for more than just reading. Her hearing was not as keen as it used to be, but it was not bad enough for her to require a hearing aid. She was slower, too, shuffling along the carpeted floors of her now empty house. Each meal she ate alone reminded her of how little contact she had with the outside world. Her only friends were dead and gone, and she was the last one remaining. Since returning to Princeton, she hadn't made many new friends, as the old ones had been more than enough. But now, she was beginning to wish that she had, if only so that she wouldn't have to spend this day alone.

She sat in a cushioned rocking chair by a large bay window. Spring was just beginning. The leaves were returning to the trees and the grass was starting to rejuvenate itself. Around her, everything seemed to be beginning, growing, moving on from the long winter. She was the only one stuck in the past.

She would never forget the day he died. He had insisted on staying away from the hospital, imploring her that he had given too much of his life to the place to want to die there, too. She knew that his refusal to enter the doors of Princeton Plainsboro again would surely mean the death of him, but there was nothing she could have said that would have changed his mind. Instead they had lain on the couch together, watching his favorite daytime soap operas and bantering about who would screw whom by the end of the episode. She hadn't even noticed he'd closed his eyes until it was too late to call an ambulance.

Now her days were spent doing only meaningless things. She had half a mind to call the local elementary school and ask if they needed any volunteers. Doing nothing only aggravated her loneliness. She constantly kept the television on in the background, preferring it to the suffocating drone of silence that otherwise would have filled the air. She passed the time following his soap operas, though she didn't really care what was going on. She liked to imagine that she would watch them for him, taking in all the details of the ridiculous plot lines, so that she could recount what had happened to his favorite characters the next time they met.

Despite the complicated lives of make-believe characters to keep her mind occupied, she still wished for something to occupy her time that was less mundane. She had recently begun going to the library down the street and checking out all the books she had neglected to read in high school and college English classes. She pored over Dickens and Dostoevsky, Steinbeck and Hemingway, occasionally forgetting her own troubles as she entered the lives of Oliver, Raskolnikov, and Lenny. She was just about to get up and retrieve her copy of The Sound and the Fury when the doorbell rang.

The bell broke the silence so suddenly, it sounded quite harsh. She froze, wondering if it had really happened, or if her mind was finally starting to go. No one had rung the doorbell since the coroner had arrived three months ago.

It rang again.

This time she knew her mind was not deceiving her. She leaned forward and used the arms of the rocking chair to help push herself to her feet. Slowly, she made her way to the door and undid the locks. They felt almost unnatural beneath her fingers.

A teenage boy stood on her doorstep, holding a medium sized box with an open lid. From around the box's corners, she could tell that he was wearing some kind of uniform. He shifted the box to one had and pulled out a clipboard with the other.

"Allison Cameron?"

She nodded. "Yes?"

He smiled and handed her the clipboard. "Sign here."

She took it from him and awkwardly scrawled her name. Her signature had gotten messier over the years to the point of being illegible. The boy looked at it as she handed the clipboard back to him.

"Doctor?" he inquired.

The ghost of a smile passed her lips. "Once upon a time."

"Cool." He extended the box to her. "You must have a patient that really likes you."

She peered inside. Though the box wasn't too wide, it was deep. She saw why as soon as she took it from him. At the bottom of the box, curled into a tiny ball, lay a sleeping Australian shepherd.

Her mouth dropped open in amazement. She glanced back up, but the boy was already halfway to his car. Curiously, she stepped back inside and placed the box on the floor. She quickly looked inside the box again, but the sleeping puppy had not stirred. The dog's coloring was grey with black spots and black ears, though she could see a tiny bit of white on its underbelly. She frowned and leaned forward, adjusting her glasses. There was something else underneath the puppy's stomach. Gently, she lifted the puppy's paws and slid the envelope out from underneath it. The dog whimpered slightly, but did not open its eyes.

The envelope wasn't marked, but she slit it open and pulled out the card inside. The card was blue, but there was no design on the front. With shaking hands, she opened it.

Dear Allison, it began. It was dated three and a half months ago.

Happy birthday. If you're reading this, I must not be there to say it in person. Sorry I had to go, but that's the way life is sometimes. Don't cry any more for me; you only have so many tears. Stop watching my soaps and go live your life. Here's a present to help you get started. I hope he's a cute one. Can't get a refund down here.

It wasn't signed. Tears filled her eyes as she read the note, but she hastily brushed them aside, heeding to the instructions from beyond the grave. She reread the note, and this time, a smile spread across her face. She tucked the note back inside the envelope and placed it carefully back into the box. Her fingers brushed against the dog's fur, and he whimpered again. She lightly placed her fingers on the dog's head and ran them across his smooth coat. She looked back at his tiny face: his nose, black and wet; his whiskers, barely visible against his light fur. He had a black spot on his forehead. Suddenly, he opened his eyes and gazed at her for the first time. His inquisitorial stare nearly took her breath away.

His eyes were blue.

A/N: Right, so. For all of you smirking and saying that I couldn't stay away from Hameron for more than a week, I guess you're right. Mostly because it was Melissa's birthday and I can't very well give my beta anything other than Hameron, can I? She'll beta Chameron, but you all know where her heart really lies.

In all seriousness, my note at the end of UTSM was two things a writer should never be: hasty and unclear. I shouldn't have said that it would be awhile until my next Hameron story, since you never know when that will be. I should have said that I don't have any other Hameron stories planned right now, but there is the possibility of me writing another one in the future. So don't lose all hope! In addition, I realized in writing my 'Chameron' story that my muse really can't avoid the Hameron, so there is a strong Hameron undertone for you die-hard fans. The moral of this story is, don't make promises your muse can't keep.