Hello, everyone! I got really bored and had some "fluff" in mind. For some reason, in almost all my House M.D. stories, a particular someone dies... Sad. So, if you love the House/Cameron angst, this story is for you! Don't worry, I have a few other stories I'm working on that aren't nearly as full of sadness and angst as this story and "Pale Words" is (Pale Words is currently on hiatus as I try and figure out what to do next with it!)...
Please be nice and leave me a review, even if you hate it. Constructively hate, though, if you must... The more opinions I get, the better I can write and keep in mind what the reader wants next time around! Thank you very much!!!!
Purple Dawn
He sat there, patient, silent, waiting for minutes on end. Minutes fell into hours, hours feeling like minutes to the doctor who had no better place to be with nothing better to do.
House sat at his desk examining the latest scans from his latest patient, the most interesting case he had had in a very long time. It wasn't because the patient was particularly sick; that was only part of it. It wasn't because the rest of his team was gone and he was the only one there, save Wilson and Cuddy, to work on this case. That, too, was only a minor detail in the grand scheme that involved these scans. He couldn't seem to find the lump, the red flag he knew was there. It would maybe have helped if he wasn't intellectually colorblind. He couldn't start the treatment on the patient until he found that lump; not just because Wilson and Cuddy wouldn't let him, but because he wasn't sure he was right to start the treatment before actually finding the evidence to prove it.
Wilson and Cuddy hadn't ever stopped him before. House always had tricks up his sleeve when it came to his team, able to fool them all pretty easily with simple slight-of-hand antics and sarcasm that taught as well as stung. His team wasn't there, now, for him and wouldn't be for quite some time. Foreman had called to tell him he was cutting his hard earned vacation short to come back to the hospital, Chase had come down with a case of pneumonia and couldn't come into work without risking infecting deathly ill patients, and Cameron had taken a bad fall just a day or two ago. House remembered in a flash most of what he had done to them to get them to fall like dominoes with just a flick of the wrist.
When it came to Wilson and Cuddy, though, those things didn't work. They were much too smart and knew him much too well for House to get away with any of that. For them, House had to use his most cunning words in the most powerful manner, battling for every inch he gained, fighting harder for every inch he lost.
He pretended not to know why Cuddy had set nurses on guard outside the patient's room, the patient whose scans he continued to search for the confirmation of the suspected illness. He pretended not to care when Wilson offered to sit with him in his office and help with the work of the case. In truth, House knew. He knew Cuddy had the patient on constant surveillance not just because of the dire situation but because House would sneak in there and potentially cause irreparable harm. He knew Wilson wanted to work on the case, too, but also knew Wilson wanted to give House emotional strength for "when the time came" and there would be nothing else left for the doctors to do. Wilson needed someone to lend him strength, too, but House was not interesting in a leech at the moment, preferring to untangle this web alone.
His eyes were starting to hurt and the lamplight burned with the glare coming off the plastic scan sheets. House rubbed them and continued on, starting from the very beginning. Maybe he just had to give up and admit they were not there. If they were not there, that meant there was no treatment available and the patient would die. If there was a tumor, a single lump, it would diagnose the illness and give the doctors a chance to save the patient. This was the last available scan; Cuddy wasn't giving permission for anymore tests to be run that caused the patient excess pain. Excess pain...
Why did that trigger thought? The patient had had ever increasing pain and had to be admitted to the hospital, becoming a sort of guinea pig for medical tests House had never run before. This was a case unlike anything House had ever seen, or so he thought. Maybe his judgment was clouded by the particular circumstances he found himself in dealing with this case. The pain the patient experienced was thought to be caused by a nasty fall, a trauma to the head. After the patient awoke from unconsciousness, there was a massive amount of pain that could not be explained. There was no cranial bleeding, no excess pressure on the brain, minimal nerve damage: nothing that could explain why the patient was now laying on a hospital bed, so pumped full of drugs that, if the pain itself didn't kill the patient, the amount of drugs would.
This shouldn't trigger thought! This should trigger action! House was shouting at himself in his mind. When things are instinctive, there is no thought, there is only action. And now he was sitting there, pondering and mulling over all the things he should have instinctively looked over because he should have already known the answer! There was no such thing as demanding too much from himself. House knew that from experience. Demanding things from one's mind and body were natural, even when the mind and body seemed to have no more to give without failing completely. His body was damaged and was never getting better; House accepted that. His mind would have to compensate, but right now, it wasn't doing much but annoying him.
His pager went off and, frustrated with the distraction, snatched it from his hip pocket. It was from Cuddy about the patient. He was to report to the patient's room immediately. This wasn't a good sign. Determined not to miss any more of the precious seconds he had left to possibly save her, House grabbed his cane and gathered the scans, reviewing them as he limped through the hallways in haste.
Reaching the patient's door, House ignored the nurses that looked at him, ignoring the look in their eyes. He didn't want that look, the pity. He already had enough of that about his leg... Before turning his eyes to the patient, House looked one more time at the scans. Again, there was no lump. No tumor. No treatment.
"Hi," the patient said weakly, "I thought you would never come."
"I came," House said, avoiding the patient's eyes. He couldn't look into those eyes. He wondered if they were as full of warmth as he remembered them, the compassion indescribably annoying and comforting at the same time.
"I came," he repeated, startled to find his voice cracking. They must have the patient off the drugs so he could speak with her. Or they had her so full of drugs she had only minutes to go until her body shut down in response to all the chemicals. Either way, it hurt. Looking to the corner of the room, still avoiding the patient, House waited for Cuddy to speak.
"Anything?" she asked, her voice soft.
House shook his head and offered the scans, which Cuddy took on her way out the door.
"Aren't you going to stay and say goodbyes?" House asked, trying not to think about the words he had just said.
"No," was the answer, "I said them already. You need a private goodbye."
"Wilson?"
"Said his, too. You need a private goodbye."
The click of Cuddy's heels as she left the hospital room didn't quite cover the sob she couldn't control and the door slid carefully shut behind her.
"House, you can look at me."
"I- I don't want to," House admitted, feeling rather foolish.
"It's me."
"I know."
"Then why not?"
"Because I don't think I want to see you any different how I remember you."
House was amazed at the words coming out of his mouth. He had never felt so stupid in his life, but never had the words fit so perfectly.
"Please, House. Just look at me and then you can go."
House hobbled over to the bedside, slowly lifting his eyes to meet her eyes; they were just as full of kindness and warmth as before, but now there was a dull feel to them, a hollowness the pain had left.
"You couldn't find anything, could you?" she asked. By the way she gripped the bed rail, her knuckles white and arms stiff, she needed more medication. As House reached for the dial, the patient stopped him.
"No, don't. Cuddy already did," she said. "It's already as high as it can go. It'll kick in soon."
"It's a lethal amount," House noted, the cold fear he had so rarely felt striking his heart. "You'll die within a few minutes."
"I know."
"Why go out this way, though?"
"It's either die pain free, looking at your face, or die because of the pain wracking my body while I'm all alone."
"I thought looking at my face was painful," House tried to joke, the small chuckle sounding more weak than the patient's voice.
"No, House. It's not."
The doctor sat there for several moments, looking at her face. How many times had he looked at her before and never noticed her? Looking and noticing were two different things. He had never noticed her before now.
"You said once I was broken, House," the patient said, her grip on the bed rails loosening as the painkiller entered her body in stronger and stronger doses. "Do you still think so?"
"Yes," House answered. "You're sick. We don't know what's wrong with you. We can't find the tumor that seems to be pressing on your spinal cord or on your brain and the only way to fix the problem is to give you a lethal amount of painkiller to avoid the lethal amount of pain you'll experience. You're still broken."
"You were right about me, then."
"I guess I was."
"You and Wilson and Cuddy shouldn't be doing this for me. This could cost the hospital everything if an investigation started on why a patient died due to excess painkiller. Doctor assisted-"
"It's not like that. You know you'll die, anyway. Your heart will not be able to sustain the amount of pain, neither will your lungs. The pain would send you into a coma and then we would really have no choice-"
House noticed the anguish on her face that wasn't caused by the ever dimming pain in her body. Once again, his words had hurt her.
"I really cared for you," she said, turning her head toward the window so he wouldn't see the tears coming from her eyes.
House couldn't respond to that and listened to the silence as the seconds became minutes. It was almost dawn, the dark sky fading into the palest of purples. House wasn't sure if he had enough in him to say what he knew she wanted to hear. He had no courage. The most brilliant doctor in the hospital, perhaps in the whole world, had no courage to say three simple words the patient just said.
"I love you."
As the patient began to slip away, House knew the monitors would go off and the other doctors would rush in, on Cuddy's orders, but wouldn't do anything to revive her. It was in the medical legalities to give a patient whatever means necessary to help them and, if the dosage high enough to prevent the patient from dying was also enough to kill her, it was a sort of double jeopardy. The hospital nor the doctors on her case could get in trouble. Cuddy had suggested the plan, trying to convince the patient it would be better than live for who knew how long in a coma before she died. The patient knew how awful it would be to be a coma victim, but considered it before realizing she had run out of time.
That was the the way the patient always had been, though, carefully considering every option. It was a surprise, though, that one who valued life above all else, it seemed, would choose the quick, painless death.
"I love you, too" he said carefully, hardly believing the words came from his own mouth. He had time later to think about whether or not he meant it later. For now, all that mattered was that he said the words. The patient smiled and shut her eyes, blocking out the light from the rising sun, the sun that was slowly burning away the beautiful purple dawn.
And House leaned down and kissed Cameron goodbye.
So, sorry for making you cry (or laugh, depending on how much you loved or hated it) and I really hope to hear from you!!! (I know most of this is SO unrealistic, but a person can actually die from extreme pain and the stress it puts the body through... Poor Cameron...)
I wouldn't be goldnote if I didn't kill her off in the end... Anyway, as I said before, leave me a review if you could! Happy New Year, by the way!!! (What a way to start off the new year? Angst-y House fics... hehe...)