Prologue - Safe & Sound
It's late at night; there's nothing better to do than sit by the window and stare at the rain, the neon blue lights of the nightclub across the street nearly blinding, but dulled by the veil of teardrops splashing into deep puddles forming by the side of the road. Cars pass by, their brights fading as they passed, the red of their tail lights when they slowed at the four-way like a warning, mirrored in contrasting eyes.
His coffee's gone cold, but he doesn't care. He's waiting for something, hidden in the shadows at the edges of things. His hand is on the edge of the table, like he's holding on to everything that keeps his world intact, and maybe it really is like that in his mind. Eyes the exact color of the luminescent sign beckoning beautiful teens and twenty-somethings into a door more fit for a car garage came to rest on the leather of a pants-leg, the edge of a reddish coat, something particular and yet entirely random in the line outside the building.
The song on the speakers of the dirty cafe is something he would find appropriate if he were paying any attention to it. "Could you not be sad, could you not break down." But it was far too late for that, wasn't it? If it wasn't, he wouldn't be sitting at a table in a cafe smack in the middle of what was affectionately referred to as the part of town nobody should be exposed to. He could be home by now, but there are more important things.
Catching a glimpse of one of those more important things out the window, he stands, the abrupt movement making the table shake and a shock of pain bloom in his leg. He doesn't seem to feel it, though.
The ripples in his coffee don't still for a long moment, and by then he's long gone.
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"I don't know where he is," he mumbled into the reciever, biting back further comment in favor of keeping his life (and the others that held in the balance) intact. His lies, he found, were more believable when he kept them short and simple. A couple of words on the other end of the line later, and he was finally able to press the 'end call' button, slipping his cell back into his pocket. He was still cursing himself mentally for having forgotten to turn it off (though it had been almost worth it to see Cameron's reaction to finding that her boss's ring tone was the X-Files theme). He leaned his head back, staring up at the ceiling of his office for a moment, like it held some kind of answer for him. He couldn't find it there, either.
Two minutes and thirty-six seconds later, he was in the hallway, limping to their latest patient's room. It was empty, which he knew, and he thought that there should have been more fuss made about that. Well, there was a fuss being made, but it had less to do with a patient who had checked out early and more to do with a missing fellow. While it wasn't all that unusual for him to lose track of his employees, it was a bit troubling to get midday calls from his boss inquiring as to their location.
It was a hint that something was wrong, and Gregory House did so enjoy figuring these things out. Besides, if one of his ducklings was in trouble... well, he wanted to be there. For moral support, you understand.
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The patient's room was cleared out, no hint left of the woman who had occupied it not three hours ago. She had checked out against his recommendations (You can't win them all, Wilson had said, two hours ago when he had heard she was gone), and despite her condition had done an amazing job of cleaning everything up, unless that was the nurses at work. They did impressive work, for all that House rarely acknowledged their existance.
Were Cameron able to hear House's little inner monologue, she might have pointed out that the patient had an older brother who would have helped her to move out, and the diagnostitian would have informed her that the brother was doing anything but helping his dear darling little sister pack her things. "Not when there are more important things to do," he muttered to no one in particular, "Like causing pain and suffering in others." Something he might have applauded, but his fellows were off-limits - only he was allowed to abuse them. He certainly wasn't going to sit by when he knew that somewhere in this hospital, a patient's relative was beating on his duckling!
Well... except for that one time. But that had been pretty damn funny. There was very little that was humorous about the thought of his fellow getting beaten the hell out of (he would find the humor later, once his wayward charge had been recovered and probably treated). Particularly by their ex-patient's six-foot-four, two hundred and fifty pound brother. Black eyes were all well and good, but he didn't actually want Chase dead.
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He was fine with being yelled at. Hell, he was used to it by now, having worked under House for so long. Maybe he would have flinched before, but now he just tried to fake the appropriate facial expressions and wait out the storm. He had gotten good at lying, faking things. He had gotten very, very good at pretending - no one, least of all he himself, could say for sure how much of his emotion was real and how much manufactured. That wasn't new, but it had grown more expected since he had taken the job at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.
The punch in the face was unexpected. He flinched back at it, trying to remember what he had done that could have caused this. But the words of their patient's brother still hung in the air between them, and it was easy enough to pick them out: "You're letting her die. You're killing her!" And he thought for a moment that his anger was understandable, but his sympathy was a bit lost when he saw that the much-larger man was not yet finished taking his frustrations out on the Australian doctor.
"I'm not sure you should be doing that," a sharp tone, someone standing in the doorway, "Could get in a lot of trouble."
Things stopped for a moment, and he realized through the headache's haze that it was House who had stopped his attacker (if that could even be called stopping). The head of the diagnostic medicine department was posing a bit by the door (that was probably intentional), cane held in one hand as if he meant to attack with it. The blonde couldn't help but be greatful, although he did wish his rescuer could have been Cameron or Wilson. Someone with a bit less ego, who wouldn't hold it over his head quite so much later on. One couldn't be picky when it came to being rescued from beatings, though.
"You could probably be sued for that, you know," House continued, then paused, rethinking his approach, and added, "And that will, in fact, happen, if you don't go home and play nursemaid to your dear, dying sister and let us walk out of here."
He could have been harsher, but it wasn't necessary, and he was never going to see this guy again. Chase offered far more opportunities of the teasing and poking fun at variety, and he started in on him no more than three minutes after they had exited the exam room.
Then again, Chase was amazed by his restraint.
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Talk in the differential diagnosis room was only slightly different once House and Chase returned. Cameron was concerned, Foreman didn't care but pretended to, and House made allusions to what Chase could have been doing when he hit his head, disregarding the fact that he had seen it happen. The truth was so boring when compared to the imagination, and House did hate to be bored.
Chase got an ice pack for his cheek in the hope that he wouldn't have some terrible bruise to explain to every single patient for the next two days, and tried not to be irritable about it, especially considering that House was the one the patient's brother had been mad at. Chase had just been convenient, which was usually a good thing, unless someone was looking to punch the lights out of a doctor who had treated their baby sister.
After that, it was business as usual for a while, despite the overabundance of sexual jokes thrown in Chase's direction via his boss and the way Cameron kept looking at Chase like she was sure he had broken something. Foreman had stolen his crossword book, too. All in all, it was not Chase's day - then again, when was it?
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Finally, about three hours before quitting time (that gave them two hours to get a patient, if they were to have one), that tune - familiar to television, science fiction, and conspiracy theory fans everywhere - started playing, and House pulled his cell phone from his pocket (he had forgotten to turn it off again). Chase looked at the others, a bit bemused by the man's ringtone. Cameron just shrugged, as she had worn the same expression just a few hours earlier.
"Yeah," House said into the phone, and there was the usual unintelligable speech-sound from the phone which only House was close enough to decipher. Then, without warning, he flipped the phone shut and headed for the door, not even bothering to offer his fellows a "be good" as he typically did.
"What's going on?" Cameron asked, slightly dazed, before House could properly exit the room. The crippled doctor turned for just a moment, just long enough to speak.
"Doctor Wilson needs a consult," he said, his voice almost a growl. Then he turned to leave, letting the younger doctors speculate on what was going on.
They didn't know that not even House was entirely sure on that.