Cameron Takes Flight:
Part One
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A/N: This story is mostly for me. It encompasses some of my own real-life experiences seen through a new pair of eyes, and is a story of independence for our heroine, Allison Cameron. I should give you fair warning that she is the only canon character with more than a mention in this piece. This is a piece about Cameron alone, and her search for independence and a sense of self after the difficulties surrounding her departure from PPTH. Though Cameron is in her 30s, it reads something like a coming-of-age story. I hope, through the universal desire for freedom and independence, it can connect with all the readers.
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Unnecessary disclaimer: None of the characters or storylines appearing in the TV show "House, M. D." belong to me.
Abstract: Cameron leaves PPTH broken and burdened. How can she find herself again amidst the wreckage of her life as she knew it?
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Cameron had plenty of job offers but not the heart to take them.
She was a pretty hot commodity on the Chicago market, with no small thanks to Cuddy who gave her glowing reviews. She wasn't sure if Cuddy was being kind or self-serving by guaranteeing her a job somewhere else, but it had the same result either way. She flipped through the mail with a sigh, and ignored the messages on the answering machine.
She was heartbroken.
The sense of betrayal she felt ran deep. How could she have stayed when so many she trusted had broken that trust?
Her marriage was broken beyond repair. Chase had seen to that. House, too, had seen to that. She thought that her marriage could have a chance, but that was now impossible.
And yet, the loss of her marriage wasn't the worst betrayal she had felt. House had never been one to worry if it was his place to say something. But this time he had kept his mouth shut for, supposedly, that very reason. She saw no other explanation but that he simply did not care that she hear the truth about what her husband had been doing. She shouldn't have, but she had expected better of him.
The two people she had cared for most were lost causes now. She left Princeton without, it seemed, a single friend.
Wilson had experienced divorce as both the villain and the victim, and yet, he did not comfort her. She had been there for him in his loss, but he was too busy to be there for hers. Too busy playing matchmaker between their boss and a man that she had convinced herself no longer cared for. And with that final betrayal, she was left to pick up the pieces alone.
She didn't want to be in Chicago. The heaviness of her failed marriage, her betrayal, and things left broken and lost still weighed upon her. Chicago had been to save her marriage, not to go on alone. But she may as well make the most of it—she was stuck here now.
Or was she?
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Cameron hung up the phone with a heavy hand. She had done it.
She went through every letter and every message and called them back, giving a negative response. It was too late now to back out.
Where to go? Somewhere far away, she decided. Where no one knew her, where she could escape the weight of her past, the ghosts that seemed to follow her wherever she went.
She logged onto the internet, intending to investigate the job markets around the country, before she thought better of it, shutting her laptop.
She planned far too much.
Cameron went to grab the outdated road map from her car. Her father had purchased it for her at sixteen, long before the days of the GPS. She opened it to a page showing the entire country, and looked around, finally focusing her attention on the southwest, a strange and exotic place in her mind.
She put her finger on a small point on the map. She had decided.
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Cameron drove into the city with all her worldly belongings packed into the trunk of her car, no place to go, and no job. As scary as it was, it was exhilarating too. Even in youth she had never lived with such exquisite freedom. Recklessness, she ought to call it.
Cameron glanced in her rearview mirror, captivated by the image of the looming mountain reflected back at her. She was forced to drive through its foothills on her way in, and it seemed a constant presence in the city. For Cameron, who had never lived near mountains before, it was fascinating.
She pulled into the visitors' center and viewed the sign in front of her. "Welcome to Albuquerque, New Mexico," it said in festive lettering. Welcome home, she thought.
After gaining some cursory information and an accordion-folded city map, she headed to the nearest motel, where she would begin her search for a home and a job. She arrived at the Best Western and locked the door tightly, effectively shutting out the world.
That first afternoon she made a couple of calls and had already set up a few interviews before the loneliness set in. What on earth was she doing? She knew no one, was unfamiliar with the city, and had no idea what she was going to be doing with her life. She had truly lost it, she decided.
Dinner the first night was a solitary affair in her motel room.
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