A Week of Mondays

Summary: Cameron and House have a series of bad days. Seven weeks of them.

One: A Good Run of Bad Luck

Allison Cameron woke up from her nap at 5:30 PM on Saturday, still less than refreshed, and surprised herself by reaching for her pain medication before she even bothered rolling out of bed. House is rubbing off on me, she thought darkly, not bothering to get up and get a glass of water before swallowing a dose. It would have been close to impossible to move without the drugs in her system; her leg had taken a lot of abuse in the past twenty-four hours.

She stared at the ceiling until the drugs kicked in, memories of the previous night coming back to her in snippets: the calm energy of Sting's music resonating through the theatre. Sitting with House in the cafeteria with a cheap pack of cards memorizing the rules and betting strategies of Blackjack. Turning the tables and teaching him to count cards. Doing so well at the Blackjack tables that they decided to move on before the dealers got suspicious. A ridiculous turn of luck. Discovering the shopping boutiques were open all night and going in loaded (in more than one sense) because there was no way she was going to get home that night and there was no way she was sleeping in The Dress.

They'd had fun. She almost wished it had gone badly, but they'd had fun and House had relaxed and been bearable (although the sarcasm factor hadn't diminished), and she'd let all his errant comments slide and…

And she had been so close to giving up. Cameron was, in fact, pretty distressed by how desperately she wanted to give up. She was a realist. She knew the odds were not stacked in her favour, unless you were using a different definition for the word stacked. But every time she tried to move on with her life, something stopped her.

Once she'd asked House point-blank if he liked her, knowing that whatever he felt, the answer would still be 'no.' She was sure that if she heard him say it, she'd be able to put her guard back up and walk away. Instead, the next two weeks had impressed clearly upon her that House really did care, at least a little, and she'd found hope unlooked-for lurking behind every corner.

She pushed him. She was purposefully blunt. Hell, she'd quit her job to give herself a chance to get away before it was too late, but even that had backfired on her. Stacy had shown up and Cameron had been pretty sure that House's emotional baggage was going to be all over the office and he was going to be stuck cleaning up the mess rather than following through with their date, but then that had gone remarkably well, too, hangovers aside.

Cameron sighed, heaved herself off of the bed, and limped towards the kitchen in search of some leftovers. She knew there was only so much luck a given person had and she was certain hers was going to run out on Monday.

Ben & Jerry's for dinner, then. Triple chocolate fudge was the answer to just about every problem involving House. Maybe she should buy him a tub.

She had just got the first spoonful of sinful goodness into her mouth when the phone rang. She debated whether or not to answer it for a moment- ice cream was currently winning out against any kind of interruption- but then Foreman's number flashed on the call display.

Could be work, she thought with a sigh, reaching over to pick it up. "Hello?" Around a mouthful of ice cream, it sounded like, "Hewwo?"

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?"

She swallowed, wincing as the cold made her head ache. "You and Wilson should form a hospital mommy club." She dug out another chunk of brownie. "What's up?"

"Going out to Faces with a couple of guys from Neurology tonight. You up for it?"

Do I want to come out with you and be gawked at by your ridiculously sexist neurologist friends? No thanks. Cameron chewed the brownie slowly. "Why, Foreman? You want to show off the pretty immunologist?" Swallow, scoop out some more fudge. "I think I'll stick to my Ben & Jerry's."

"Got to love a nutritious dinner," he said dryly. "Where were you this morning? Or this afternoon, for that matter? I've been trying to get a hold of you all weekend."

Almost before she could stop herself, she was groaning around a piece of fudge. "Oh, no. You're my Wilson."

"Your what? And you didn't answer my question. Let me guess… it's related to the reason you're having three different kinds of chocolate for dinner."

Damn Foreman. He'd known her weakness for triple chocolate ice cream ever since he'd taken her with him to break into Rebecca Adler's apartment. Cameron said nothing.

"So how was your date?"

Sighing, she set down the ice cream. Apparently Foreman wanted to play girlfriends. She supposed she needed someone to fill the role. "I don't know. It would help if I remembered what happened."

She could almost imagine his taken aback expression. "What, did he drug you or something?"

"Foreman, I know everyone thinks I'm the Red Riding Hood to his Big Bad Wolf, but I promise I keep an axe in my back pocket." Cameron leaned back on the couch and put her feet up on the table. "I got drunk."

She probably should have been angry with him for laughing, but she couldn't blame him. "Well, that explains your reluctance to come out tonight. Do anything stupid?"

"Aside from the drunkenness?" A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. If you couldn't laugh at yourself… "I got lucky."

There was a thud like Foreman had dropped the phone. "What?"

"I won three thousand dollars."

"Jeez. Warn me next time you decide to give me a heart attack, yeah?" He sounded a little too relieved for her to want to give him any more details.

"Sorry." She wasn't, really. Neither did she particularly want to talk about the Date anymore, but she couldn't tell him that, because then he'd understand how much it meant to her and that would cause problems.

"I guess you're not coming out tonight then. Well, keep yourself hydrated. You just got out of the hospital."

Cameron rolled her eyes. "Bye, dad. Don't stay out too late."

/h

To say that House was in a strange mood on Monday morning would have been a gross understatement. He was as sarcastic as ever, but his comments lacked bite. He lost the battle against the space monkeys.

And he went to visit his newest patient, who had just arrived that morning. Wilson was worried. House was used to very low estrogen levels in his personal life, and all of a sudden Cameron and Stacy had got thrown back into that mix.

Maybe that was why Wilson was afraid he was going to crack at any minute.

As usual, he didn't bother knocking before barging into House's office. "Ah, the man of the hour. Shouldn't you be writing your own soap right about now?"

House scowled at him, but didn't stop his cane-twirling. "I couldn't decide what should happen next."

"Well, there's always treating your patient, but I know how you feel about that." He stopped himself before he could go any further, noting House's expression. He was definitely, genuinely upset about something. "Okay, what's going on?"

Another glower, but this one didn't last. "She's driving me crazy." Watching the whirling handle of his cane and not Wilson's face.

Yep. Estrogen problem. "What? Who? Stacy?" A beat. "Or Cameron?"

The end of the cane hit the floor with a solid-sounding thunk. "Yeah."

/h

It wasn't just a simple case of jealousy. House was jealous every day, mostly of people who had retained the ability to walk normally.

He didn't like being patronized. Of course, no one was actually actively doing so. Most people he knew had more sense than that after speaking with him for five minutes. The kicker of it was, he was patronizing himself.

House had watched Stacy with her husband that morning, and that had been a mistake. He'd been shocked that he could do it, frankly. He'd had the impression that it should have hurt a lot more than it did. And, okay, it didn't exactly feel great to see how well life had turned out for her, even as much as it sucked that her husband was in the hospital and nobody knew what was wrong with him. Not when House's life was (notably, of late) devoid of that kind of personal attachment.

It was a smack in the face, and what was more, it was a reminder that he was the one keeping himself from that. Well, him and Vogler, since Vogler was really just looking for an excuse to fire him and Cameron was one more way to get to House. Hell, Vogler would probably get them both fired. He'd probably call up Donald Trump to get a recording of his voice telling House that he and Cameron were fired.

And the problem with this line of reasoning, House realized, was that he hadn't given a second thought to the idea someone had planted that he wanted a relationship with Cameron.

This was all very, very bad.

/h

Tuesday morning, ten o'clock. "Dr. Cameron!"

The blood test results on Mark Wardell should have been ready by now, and Cameron had been on her way from the clinic to the lab to check them out when Cuddy stopped her in the hallway. She had time for a quick prayer directed at the powers that be- Please don't let it be about House's bad mood, please don't let her know about Friday, please let me just die if it is- and then she turned around. "Dr. Cuddy."

"I need to see you in my office, if you've got a moment."

Well, that sounded ominous. She put on what she hoped was an innocent face. "Sure."

In her office, Cuddy went right to a stack of what looked like mostly junk mail. "What do you know about the Autumn Immunology Conference?"

That's a relief. "That's the one in Chicago, right?" she asked. "I've never been. Why?"

"Early notice," Cuddy answered, smiling and handing her a brochure. "It's in November, so clear your calendar."

"Oh," Cameron said, suddenly feeling a bit thick. Isn't this kind of assuming Vogler hasn't magically produced a reason to fire me before November? "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." She sat down at her desk, rifling through some more paperwork, then looked up. "You can go back to avoiding Dr. House now."

Oh, great. Two bosses to make fun of her. This was just what she needed.

/h

On Thursday, they still hadn't found anything anomalous. Cameron spent endless hours poring over detailed medical records from every clinic, hospital and HMO Mark Wardell had been treated at in the past year. None of them yielded anything rewarding.

"You have a biopsy for those kidney stones?" Foreman asked, flipping pages without reading them.

Cameron gave it a cursory check, but she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. "No, none of them- do you?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Both of mine were done at the… Herz-Werner HMO in Atlantic City. What've you got?"

"Same." She frowned. "Done by different doctors, though."

Foreman nodded. "Yeah. Four different doctors, no biopsy." He looked up. "Interns?"

"What do you want to bet?" Cameron sighed. "I'll contact the clinic, just in case they forgot to include the biopsies, but I have my doubts."

"Looks like House's HMO prejudice is justified."

"Like we didn't know that already."

/h

"So that's where I put that journal." Cameron, sitting in House's chair as she munched distractedly on a mid-afternoon snack of raw vegetables, looked up guiltily, her nose buried in Wilson's latest issue of Oncology Today. "The Pandey article on apoptosis?"

She nodded, dropping her eyes back to the page. The painkillers made it possible for her to read again; without them, her head pounded. Unfortunately, they also made her somewhat more irritable than usual. "It's fascinating. The research is so close to a breakthrough, but there's too much red tape to start clinical trials on patients." She popped a carrot into her mouth, chewing and swallowing before she continued. "Anything I can help you with, Dr. Wilson?"

"Yes, actually." He sat down with his back facing the door. She cringed. Uh oh. This was going to be about-

"I need to talk to you about what happened with you and Greg on Friday."

Allison swore mentally in increasing degrees of profanity. She did not want to talk about Friday. She had had enough of talking about Friday. She definitely didn't want to talk about House, she was pretty sure she wasn't ready to start calling him Greg, and in any case she wasn't doing either, because Stacy Wardell had just walked into the office like she owned the place.

"So you're Greg's hot date." From the way Stacy was looking at her, she didn't necessarily agree with the assessment. "I admit, I'm a little surprised. I thought he had a policy about dating employees."

Wilson, facing Cameron, cringed but said nothing. Coward, she thought at him, steeling herself. "The hospital has a policy about dating employees. I'm surprised that you forgot House has a policy about breaking policies." Doing her best to keep from snapping, she took a bite of red pepper and watched as Stacy's eyes narrowed. Cameron swallowed the pepper. "Actually, it's more of a guideline. And you can relax, as if you had a right to be jealous. He owed me dinner." And a concert and some gambling, a hangover, and, apparently, half of six thousand dollars. Also possibly a Swarovski crystal bracelet and, oh yeah, a shirt that says I got lucky. My head hurts.

Stacy looked pretty pissed, and Cameron mentally patted herself on the back. Wilson still looked like he was waiting for the bomb to drop. "Jealous? Of what? Time spent with that bitter shell of a man?"

Cameron shrugged, taking another bite of pepper. "If the shoe fits…" She closed the journal. "Was there something you wanted?"

"An update on my husband's condition would be nice."

"Slight fever, above normal white count, currently moving about freely. But you could have asked him yourself, you know. He's a five minute walk from here."

Cameron opened the journal again as Stacy spun on her heel, clearly irritated. "If you're looking for Dr. House, he's in the clinic," she yelled after her, reaching for the painkillers.

Wilson watched her carefully as she popped two into her mouth. "So you're a liar now?"

"I didn't lie. That's where he is." A glare. Where did Wilson get off calling her a liar? "Whose side are you on, anyway? Nice to know you have my back."

"'He owed me dinner,'" Wilson mimicked. "What, are you ashamed of the truth?"

"That was the truth," Cameron pointed out. "I came back to work. He owed me dinner."

She didn't like the self-satisfied smile that was crossing his lips in the slightest. "Yes, and that's what you got, isn't it? Dinner. No need to mention the concert, a night of gambling and intrigue-"

"This had better have a point, Dr. Wilson."

"So hostile," he said with an infuriatingly knowing look. "You are not a dishonest woman, Dr. Cameron, so I'll tell you what I think is going on here. Option a- you are in a mood. The painkillers are messing with your hormone levels. Option b. There is something you genuinely dislike about Stacy. I find that hard to believe, since you basically like everyone, including Dr. House, and he treats you like crap." Wilson leaned over the desk, eyes sparkling. "Or, option c. You are ashamed of your torrid and illicit affair with the good doctor and want to cover it up."

Cameron narrowed her eyes at him. Since when had everyone turned against her? This was getting ridiculous. She'd thought Wilson was her friend, until Stacy had showed up. Clearly, he had deeper loyalties. "You are so out of line." She reached for her cane, needing to walk off some of her anger.

"Of course, there's always the fourth option." The chair squeaked as Wilson shifted to watch her walk out. She stopped halfway to the door, but didn't turn around.

"There really is no reason for her to be jealous. But you wish there was."

Cameron gripped her cane just a little too tightly as she limped out the door.