House woke slowly to a throbbing pain in his abdomen. He glanced around the room and saw Cameron slouched over in a chair, sleeping with a book in her hand. He reached up to feel some new growth on his face. However, this wasn't like the hallucination and he couldn't tell how long he had been out. He grabbed a cup and the pitcher of water sitting on the table beside him and took a quick sip. He thought about throwing the rest of the water on Cameron to wake her up but decided against it. He could wait a little longer to get answers on whether he was given Ketamine. He wanted to take some time just to watch her sleep. Ever since he had slept with Stacy and she had slept with Chase, Cameron had made a habit of not being in a room with House alone. House wasn't sure how long he watched her but he was broken out of his stupor with a commotion from outside the room. He looked over to see one of the nurses yelling at an orderly. He turned back to Cameron and was reaching to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear when the sliding door started opening and he quickly jerked back his hand. He turned to see Wilson entering the room with a smirk on his face.
"She was worried about you. I don't think she has left the hospital since you got shot. A few times I managed to kick her out to sleep or eat. She ate in the cafeteria and slept in empty rooms."
"Cameron worries about puppies and kittens," House said and passed the feeling of happiness off as a result of being alive and seeing Wilson, not because Cameron hadn't left the hospital.
Wilson just looked at House with a knowing smirk. House got uncomfortable with this and changed the subject.
"How long was I out?"
Wilson knew what he was doing but allowed him to change the subject. "3 days," he replied.
"And the Ketamine?"
"Ah, now there you put everyone in an awkward position. Apparently I am your medical proxy."
"Well, yeah. You didn't expect me to keep Stacy, did you?"
"It would have been nice if you would have told me this. Anyway, if you had told me you had been researching Ketamine, the decision would have been a lot easier."
"So did you give it to me or not?" House asked impatiently.
"Hold on, this is my story. Anyway, you apparently woke up after the shooting and told Cameron to give you Ketamine."
"I know that. That's why I'm asking if you gave it to me."
"Well I thought you weren't in a very good position to be making a medical decision about yourself but Cameron fought with me to make sure you got it so I decided to go along with her."
House glanced over at the still sleeping Cameron and smiled before turning back to Wilson as he continued.
"We then searched your computer and found a bunch of websites in your browsing history about Ketamine. How long have you been researching it?"
"Long enough," House said cryptically.
"Anyway, the guy who shot you wasn't caught. Any idea who he was?"
"He said he was a patient. I didn't recognize him but I don't visit patients anyway," House said, leaving out the part from his hallucination where the man said his wife was the patient. He was unsure if his mind just made that up and wanted to do some digging before saying anything about it.
"The police talked to your team and none of them recognized him either. They will probably want to talk to you as well."
"Not much to talk about. He came in, shot me, and I didn't recognize him."
"They are still going to want to talk to you."
"Fine. What about our patient? Infection?"
"I don't know. You'll have to talk to your team," Wilson replied and then sneezed.
House gave Wilson a warning glare before glancing over at Cameron. She slowly stirred and opened her eyes.
"House! You're awake!" she said excitedly. "How are you feeling?"
"My abdomen and neck are throbbing but my leg is fine. Thanks." House said awkwardly, with his eyes downcast.
"I'll leave you two alone," Wilson said and quickly left.
"How's big tongue guy?" House asked after Wilson had left.
"You were shot. I think you can take some time to recover before worrying about a patient."
"Getting shot is diagnostically boring. Was it an infection?"
"Yes."
"What type of infection?"
"I don't know. Chase and Foreman handled it. They just told me I wasn't needed because they figured it out."
"Where is caring Cameron? You didn't hold his hand and help with the case? What were you doing?" House asked with a smirk.
Cameron quickly changed the subject, "By the way, I got your operative notes," she said, reaching for a blue folder under her chair. "I figured you would want to take a look at them to make sure nothing went wrong."
"How did you get them? They don't like to release patient's operative notes."
"Gillick was your surgeon, use your imagination."
Gillick was a notorious flirt around the hospital who had probably slept with half of the nurses and quite a few doctors as well. House told himself the feeling in his stomach was pain and not jealousy. House grabbed the folder from Cameron and glanced through it before laying it back down. He kept coming back to his conversation with the shooter in his hallucination. The shooter said his wife was diagnosed with genetic predisposition to brain aneurysms. House vaguely remembered the case but needed to look at the file to see if his hallucination was correct about the man shooting him because his wife killed herself over the affair. He got up from his bed and walked out of the room with his IV, with Cameron following along behind.
"Where are you going? You just woke up."
"I want to test a theory," House replied.
"House, stop. You are going to rip your stitches out and set back your recovery."
"Are you going to stop me? You don't even want to touch me."
Cameron moved around to the front of House and grabbed his IV and arm. They had a stare down for a few seconds before House broke the silence.
"We already went through this once, Cameron. I'm twice the size of you; get your hands off me."
Cameron removed her hands but stared at House in confusion.
"What are you talking about?"
'Crap,' House thought. 'This happened in my hallucination, not in real life and I'm not ready to talk about my hallucination, especially to Cameron.'
House decided to ignore her and continued walking. Cameron followed him into the elevator as he pushed the button for the diagnostic floor. Cameron continued to follow him in silence as he went into his office. When he started rifling through patient files, Cameron couldn't hold back her curiosity any longer.
"Why are you looking through patient files? The tongue guy isn't in there yet. I haven't finished the paperwork."
"I'm not looking for the tongue guy," House answered and continued to search through the files. After five minutes of searching, House realized it would take him forever to go through all the files searching for the wife. However, Cameron had them organized according to last names and she might be able to help.
"Genetic predisposition to brain aneurysms, you remember the case?"
"Of course I do. What is this about?"
"Doesn't matter," House replied, still not wanting to talk about his hallucination. "What was the name?"
"Moriarty."
House quickly found the file and starting flipping through it. He noticed a jotted note that an STD might have been the cause of the symptoms but was proved wrong when later symptoms popped up. House passed the file to Cameron who just held it, looking confused at House.
"What am I supposed to do with this?"
"Flip to page three." Cameron did so and House continued, "Did we ever ask if either of them had an affair?"
"Yes, the husband had an affair but that wasn't the cause of the symptoms. Why does this matter?"
House ignored her and grabbed the file back. There was a phone number listed for the wife and House quickly walked over to his phone and started dialing. When it went to voicemail, House hung up.
"Is there another way to get in touch with her?"
Cameron grabbed the file back and started flipping through it.
"There isn't any other contact information listed but it says here she was supposed to come for a follow-up a month after being released but she never showed. The hospital tried calling but no one answered the phone for a week and the hospital stopped trying."
"What about an address?"
"There isn't one listed."
"How would the hospital bill them? There has to be an address."
"You would have to ask accounting. I'm sure they would have it."
"They aren't real big fans of me. Get it for me."
Cameron glared at House for a few seconds before replying, "House, if you want me to do this for you, you are going to have to tell me why. I don't want to be running on a wild goose chase."
House glanced around uncomfortably for a minute before deciding to come clean, partially.
"After I was shot, I had a hallucination," House said, looking at the floor, unable to look Cameron in the eyes. "The shooter was shot trying to escape and ended up in the ICU next to me. We talked a little. He told me the reason he shot me was because I told the wife about the affair, despite it not being necessary, and she killed herself. I'm trying to figure out if this was true or if my brain was just trying to fill in the blanks."
House was still looking at the floor when Cameron replied, "I'll see what I can do. Just please go back to your room."
House glanced up as the door to his office closed behind Cameron. He hadn't wanted to tell anyone about the hallucination just yet but at least Cameron stopped asking questions. He grabbed his IV machine and headed back to his room.
House was sleeping when Cameron came to his room with the address a few hours later. She decided to let him sleep and sat down in the chair next to the bed and opened her book. After two hours of reading and the clock reading 11:00, her back was starting to hurt and she was debating whether to go find another empty room to sleep in when House woke up.
"Did you get it?" were the first words out of his mouth.
"Yes. You wouldn't imagine how hard it is to get addresses from them."
"Let me guess, you used your feminine wiles on someone, like you did with Gillick."
"Actually, no. Wilson is friends with Debbie, who works there. He managed to charm it from her."
"You didn't tell him why you needed it, did you?" House asked worriedly.
"No, I told him I needed to get in touch with her to make sure the treatment was working."
House looked relieved before holding his hand out for the address. Cameron gave him the slip of paper before looking at the clock again. House noticed her glance at the clock. He wanted to be left alone to think and figured he could probably convince her to go home. He was only doing it to be left alone, not because he was worried that she was looking worn down.
"Why don't you go home tonight? You look like you could use a good night's sleep. I'll page Wilson to drive you home."
Cameron looked up surprised at his concern. House noticed this and immediately covered it up with some snark.
"Can't have my lobby art getting in an accident because of sleep deprivation."
Cameron just nodded and House pushed the nurse button beside his bed. When a nurse came in, he asked her to page Wilson. Wilson arrived ten minutes later. House told him to take Cameron home and they both left. House glanced at the address on the paper- Princeton. Well that would make things a lot easier to try and find her.
Cameron fell asleep on the drive home. When Wilson pulled up in front of her building, he gently shook her shoulder to wake her up. Cameron looked around in confusion before noticing Wilson beside her. She groggily opened her door and started to slowly walk towards her building. After she almost fell, Wilson took pity on her and got out to help her. They slowly made their way to her door. Wilson had planned on just getting her in the door and then leaving but Cameron had other ideas.
"Why don't you stay?"
"No thanks. I'll drive to my hotel and be back tomorrow."
"Please? It is the least I could do. You don't want to drive back to your hotel and then have to come pick me up again tomorrow. I don't have a spare room but the sofa pulls out into a bed."
Wilson agreed and Cameron gave him a pillow and blanket and showed him how to pull the sofa into a bed and went to her room to get some much needed sleep.
House woke up the next day around eight and headed back to his office. He quickly pulled up the internet and did a search for the address. He found a phone number that was different than the one listed in the file and quickly dialed it. He soon found out that Mrs. Moriarty no longer lived at that house and the new owners didn't know where she had moved. House figured the next step would be to call the newspaper to see if they had a record of an obituary. He spent thirty minutes on the phone, trying to explain that he was a doctor and he was trying to find the obituary on a patient. The editor refused to give the information over the phone but agreed to give the information if someone came in. House decided to give Cameron a call, to see if she could stop at the newspaper office on her way to work.
Wilson woke to a smell coming from the kitchen. He wondered into the kitchen to see Cameron making pancakes. She turned and smiled at him before turning back to the stove. The phone began to ring and Cameron asked Wilson to get it while she tended to the pancakes.
"Hello?" Wilson said into the phone.
"Wilson? What are you doing at Cameron's apartment?"
"I just woke up and Cameron's making pancakes," Wilson said, not awake enough to realize how it sounded.
"The hell?!? I asked you to take her home, not to sleep with her!" House yelled and hung up.
It was only then that Wilson realized how it must have seemed to House but it was too late to rectify the situation right now.
"Who was it?" Cameron asked.
"House. You might have some problems with him when you go in. He thinks I slept with you."
"What? Why?"
"Because I answered the phone."
"Whatever, I don't see why he would care anyway."
Wilson just looked at her amused but decided to keep silent. They ate breakfast in silence and Wilson drove them to the hospital. Wilson quickly headed to his office while Cameron stopped in Cuddy's office to see if she was needed for anything yet. Their team had been given the week off while Cuddy tried to figure out what to do with them with House needing time to recuperate. Cuddy still hadn't figured anything out so Cameron headed to House's room.
When she entered the room, House was busy watching television. He glanced at Cameron when she entered the room but quickly turned back to the television. Cameron waited until a commercial before speaking.
"How are you feeling?"
"Fine," House said, despite his neck killing him.
"Did you get anywhere with the address?"
"Not yet."
Cameron went to sit down and House glared at her. Cameron pretended not to notice but when he was still glaring at her when his show came back on, she finally decided to confront him.
"What?"
"I'm just wondering what you are doing."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't play dumb with me. I may have hired you for your looks but I know you aren't stupid."
"We have the week off."
"Don't give me that. Why aren't you hanging out with your new boy toy?"
"I don't know what you are talking about," Cameron said, despite Wilson warning her about this.
"You tried out Chase when you were stoned and now you are on to Wilson. Who is next, Foreman?"
"I made a mistake with Chase. And why do you care if I was with Wilson? You have made it clear you aren't interested in me."
"He has 3 ex-wives. He will eventually cheat on you and then I'll have you moping around the office for weeks and I won't be able to call him in for consults."
"Right," Cameron said, clearly not convinced to his reasoning. "Even if we were to eventually get married and divorced, it wouldn't bother you. I don't plan on being on your team for the rest of my life."
House knew he wasn't going to win this argument so decided to change the subject.
"I found out that Mrs. Moriarty doesn't live at that address anymore. I called the local newspaper to see if I could get their obituary records but they refused to give me anything over the phone. However, they agreed to give me the information if I came in."
Cameron looked at him for a minute, expecting him to ask her to go but then realized that was as close as he was going to get to asking her.
"Do you want me to go?"
"Sounds good. I told them a woman would be in around 10."
"Unbelievable. You volunteered my services without asking me?"
"Shh," House said. "Show's back on."
Cameron just shook her head. She glanced at the clock to see it was 9:30.
"I guess I'll get going."
House just nodded, too engrossed in the show to say anything.