I do not own or claim to own any part or the whole of House. Just borrowing them for my entertainment and hopefully the entertainment of others.
This is a continuation of my story Beautiful Disaster. It takes place right after Cameron's ending.
No matter how much I research I'm sure not everything is right. Please don't take any medical advice from this. I'm not a doctor, med student or pre-med major.
That being said, enjoy!
When they walked into the hospital, Cameron and Thirteen parted ways with a shared smile. She wasn't even halfway to the ER when Cameron's pager went off. She checked the number, then changed directions.
Cameron walked into Cuddy's office, "You paged me?"
Cuddy nodded, "I have a favor to ask."
"I'm not doing House's charts again," Cameron stated.
"Did I mention this favor pays overtime, plus your regular day's pay?" Cuddy asked.
Cameron thought for a moment, then she thought of all the places she could take a certain brunette diagnostician with the overtime money. At the least it was a bouquet of roses and a nice dinner, maybe even tickets to a show. "Okay."
As she walked down the hallway toward the diagnostics office, she pulled the glasses out of the pocket of her scrubs and slid them on. She smiled remembering Thirteen tell her that she looked hot in them.
When she stepped into the office she was disappointed to see only Foreman sitting at the table.
"What are you doing here?" Foreman asked neutrally.
"Files," Cameron pointed to the mound of paper on the desk, "Don't you have a gorilla and three lost puppies to look after?"
"The gorilla sent the puppies to teach his once a year class today," Foreman replied unfolding his news paper. "I have a feeling that short puppy or more likely bi puppy is teaching the class while dumb puppy checks out the med students."
"While gorilla…watches his soaps?" Cameron asked sitting behind the desk.
Foreman nodded, "That'd be my guess."
"No patients?" Cameron picked up the first file.
"Not yet," Foreman stated, "But it's still early."
After about an hour, Cameron decided she needed some more caffeine and walked into the hallway toward the doctor's lounge. As she was walking out of the lounge, she heard House's voice.
"Thirteen!" he called.
Cameron looked up to see Thirteen step out of the elevator followed by Taub and Kutner. House started walking with them, "I need a favor."
"Does any of it involve getting naked?" Thirteen asked.
House paused, "Well, I'm sure you could figure out a way to sleep with Amber while keeping your clothes on."
"I'm not sleeping with Amber," Thirteen stated and stopped in front of the diagnostics office door.
"I'll do it," Kutner volunteered.
"Then will you sleep with Wilson?" House asked ignoring Kutner.
Thirteen raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth, but was interrupted by a woman walking up to them.
"Excuse me," she looked at Thirteen, "Where am I?"
Thirteen looked confused, but answered, "Princeton Teaching Hospital."
"Princeton?" the woman asked, "New Jersey?"
The doctors all craned their necks to examine the woman with their eyes.
"Do you remember how you got here?" House asked.
The woman shook her head, "Last thing I remember is…." she trailed off. Suddenly she fell to the floor and started having violent spasms.
"She's seizing," Taub stated as he, Kutner, and Thirteen dropped to their knees.
"Someone get a gurney in here," Thirteen called down the hallway. She checked the patient's heartbeat as the seizure passed.
Once the patient was stabilized and in a diagnostic room, they team went back to their office and Cameron went back to filing.
"What are you doing here?" House asked.
"Organizing," Cameron replied opening up another folder.
"So you're going to be here once a month, cleaning up my mess?" House asked with a devilish smile.
Cameron shook her head, "This is the last time."
"Sure it is," he stated and turned back to his team, "Disorientation, confusion, and seizures."
"Could be Reye's," Taub offered.
"Or it could just be a hit on the head," Kutner stated.
Thirteen added, "The only hit on her head was the one caused by her fall right in front of us. Encephalitis."
"There's no paralysis or photophobia," Kutner stated.
"Not yet," Thirteen added, "It could still be in the early stages."
Cameron stood and walked over to the table dropping files in front of each doctor. "Sign your name where the red 'X' is."
"Will you spank me if I don't?" House asked.
Cameron handed House a pen. "Do it."
House took the pen and signed his name where Cameron told him to.
"This isn't mine," Foreman stated, "The writing's bubbly and girlish."
Thirteen passed it to Kutner, "Must be yours then."
"Thirty-one and Foreman," House stated signing the last folder, "Go run an MRI. The other ones, do a blood panel."
Thirteen walked into the observation room of the MRI suite. "She's all set."
Foreman pressed a button and the machine started to go in.
Thirteen turned on her monitor and took a seat. No sooner had she sat down, the woman started screaming in agony.
Foreman ran out and pulled her out of the MRI machine. "What happened?"
She pointed to her upper abdomen before passing out again on the table.
Thirteen lifted up the woman's shirt to see that there was a long purple space on the woman's upper abdomen spanning up to her upper chest. "The magnet ripped something all the way through her. We need to get her to an OR."
Within minutes, they had the woman who was now awake and coughing toward the OR. Thirteen picked up Kutner, Taub, and House along the way, while Foremen went back to the diagnostic office to see what he could come up with from the symptoms they had. They had one short stop to have a brief chat with Chase who followed them to the OR before scrubbing in.
The group stood just inside the doors of the OR holding surgical masks over their mouths. Chase opened up the woman and pulled out metal fragments from the woman.
"Are those bullet fragments?" Thirteen asked.
Chase nodded, "There's four of them."
"But she doesn't have any scars," Taub added.
"We didn't see her back," Thirteen sighed.
House picked up the phone and dialed a number before hanging up.
"Who was that?" Kutner asked.
"Our secretary," House stated, "I thought I'd save me the trip of taking these records to her. And if she sees it, I don't have to sign it."
A few minutes later, as Chase started to sew the woman up, Cameron entered holding a surgical mask over her face. "What do you need?"
House handed her a folder.
She rolled her eyes. Just as she started to leave, there was a loud beeping and the woman started to moan. Chase was just finishing sewing her up when she shot up.
"What are you doing?!" she screamed and started clawing around snatching off Chase's surgical mask before barreling through the diagnostic team, knocking Cameron down causing her to drop her mask and the file. The nurses followed the woman out of the room.
Thirteen was the first one to help her up, "Are you okay?"
Cameron nodded, "Yeah." She took Thirteen's hand and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
"Dr. Chase?" Kutner called to Chase who was blinking rapidly.
"I…where am I?" he asked.
"He's gonna faint," Thirteen called.
Taub and Kutner ran to his side and caught him before he could hit the ground.
House paused, "She was contagious."
"Which is why you're all going to have to stay in there," Cuddy told them from the observation room above, "Your patient's in isolation and all the nurses are quarantined with her. You all have to stay in there. You're all stuck down there until we figure out what this is."
About half an hour went by as all their conditions started deteriorating. Cuddy stood a faithful watched from the observation deck the whole time.
Kutner groaned.
Cameron stood from her squatting position after checking House's eyes. "Can we get some IVs or water in here? They're all getting dehydrated and I'm starting to feel it too."
Cuddy nodded and pressed the button, "I'm sending water. Since you're all infected I don't think IVs would be a good idea because there'd be no one to maintain them if you all get too sick." She walked out of sight.
Thirteen picked up a pillow and knelt next to Chase. She lifted his head and put the pillow under it. "How do you feel?"
He groaned, "I can't…" He didn't finished.
Thirteen nodded understandingly. "Try to sleep," Thirteen told him and stood up. She took a few steps toward the cabinet. She stopped and grabbed onto the wall.
"Are you okay?" Cameron asked rushing to her side and grabbing her arm.
Thirteen nodded, "Yeah. I just got a little dizzy there."
"You need to sit down," Cameron told her.
"No," Thirteen shook her head, "I'm fine. Where's the water?"
"It's coming," Cameron assured her.
A few minutes later the water was pushed through the door on a cart. The door closed behind it.
Kutner got up and passed out some water bottles.
"We're not doing any good just sitting here groaning," House stood up. He faltered and Thirteen was quickly at his side. He put his arm around her and leaned on her. "If we just lay here, we're depending on Cuddy, Wilson, and Foreman to figure out what's wrong with us. We might as well start building out coffins out of tongue depressors." He looked at Taub, "What's wrong with you?"
"I have a fever and drowsiness," Taub answered.
"Chase is weak and nauseous," Thirteen added, "I'm dizzy."
"We're all getting dehydrated," Cameron answered.
"Kutner," House said, "Do you have anything that doesn't point to the flu?"
Kutner shook his head, "I have muscle aches and weakness."
"I guess we have to wait then," House stated, "We can't test anything in here."
"We can have an portable x-ray machine brought in," Chase suggested from the floor, "It's not much and probably won't tell us anything, but it's something."
House looked up at Cuddy who was now standing in the window, "We need the portable x-ray in here."
"Why?" Cuddy asked.
"Because we don't trust you, Wilson, and Foreman to figure out what's wrong," House stated.
"I'll see what I can do," Cuddy replied.
Thirteen told Kutner, "Roll me that chair."
Kutner rolled a stool over to Thirteen. She handed it to House and stepped out from under his arm. Once she was free she shed her lab coat, "God it's so hot in here."
Cuddy appeared again, "They're bringing the x-ray in."
Thirteen walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a syringe.
"What are you doing?" Taub asked.
Cameron noticed what she was doing and walked over.
"I'm going to do a primitive blood smear with a surgical microscope. If we put it at the highest magnification we might be able to see if there are an irregular number of red blood cells," Thirteen stated grabbing a tourniquet out of the drawer next to it, "It's the best we've got."
She tied the tourniquet around her arm and opened the syringe packet. After she took the cover on the needle off with her mouth she looked down at her arm.
Cameron wrapped her hand around Thirteen's. "Let me do it. You're shaking, you might hurt yourself."
"You look like you've had experience putting needles into your arm," House stated from his stool, "Is that why you love drug addicts?"
Thirteen ignored him. She watched Cameron insert the needle and draw some blood. Cameron put the cover back on the needle and set it down. Cameron gently untied the tourniquet and held some gauze over the needle mark, "Are you okay?"
Thirteen nodded.
Cameron smiled gently and Thirteen couldn't help, but smile back.
"Ow," Kutner clutched his side and sank to his knees.
"What is it?" House asked.
"My kidneys," Kutner replied.
"Finally," House stated, "Another symptom. You should have gotten sicker faster."
Cameron and Thirteen placed a few drops of the blood onto a slide and set it on the operating table. Then they pulled the microscope over and set it over the sample.
House walked over so he could see the screen better. "Did I just see a cell with a Huntington's label swim by?"
When there wasn't an answer, he looked over at Thirteen. She had her back against the wall and her eyes were drooping.
"Thirteen?" he asked, growing concerned.
She sank down the wall into a limp heap on the floor.
Cameron ran over. She laid Thirteen out on the ground and checked her pulse, then her eyes. Thirteen squinted at the light, "What happened?"
"You fainted," Cameron replied.
Thirteen squirmed on the floor and started pulling at her shirt, "Why is it so hot?"
Cameron grabbed Thirteen's hands to calm her. Thirteen moved so that her head was in Cameron's lap and sighed.
"It'll be okay," Cameron gathered Thirteen's hair away from her neck and softly stroked her cheek, "Everything's going to be okay." She leaned down and kissed Thirteen's scorching cheek, while desperately wracking her brains for the reason they were all getting so sick.