Hi again!
Thanks to everyone for reading, reviewing or alerting the last chapter. I'm glad so many people liked it. Hope you like the next one too.
Jenny.
Total Lockdown.
Chapter 2
Apparently not as straight forward as it had first seemed, Cameron's patient Holly had quickly developed an unexpected and worrying fever. Cameron stood near the nurse's station with a furrowed brow and surveyed the file she held, her lower lip between her teeth.
"Something bothering you, doctor Cameron?"
"Hmm?" Cameron looked up at the soft voice and found she was looking into the face of a nurse by the name of Naomi. She blinked, clearing her vision. God, the heat was giving her a headache. "Yeah, I'm fine. Someone needs to turn on the air-con though." She looked around distracted and noticed that several of the medical staff had already forgone their lab coats and she smirked as she was reminded of a certain other doctor who avoided wearing his coat at all costs.
"Broken." Naomi replied. "Cuddy called someone but they can't get here until tomorrow. Until then the hospital's just going to have to boil."
Cameron was slightly surprised at this bit of news. It was affecting the whole hospital? She felt a wave of sympathy for House as she thought of him imprisoned in the clinic. It was bound to be even more unbearable for him in this heat. She snickered to herself as another thought followed quickly on the tail of that one. He was bound to be more unbearable in this heat. She definitely wouldn't want to be in the position of any of his patients.
Even for summer the weather was unusually warm for New Jersey. The high temperature had been persisting into the nights and Cameron had been waking up in the early hours, throwing her constricting blankets off and onto the floor and allowing the night to cool her skin. She would never complain about being too cold again, she decided. Still heat had never made her as light headed as this.
She suddenly realised a few seconds had passed and Naomi was clearly expecting an answer, regarding her with growing concern.
"Great." The sarcastic edge to her voice had grown more pronounced since entering a relationship with House, one of the less pleasant changes his increased presence had caused in her life. She glanced up at the clock. "On the bright side, I'm halfway through my shift."
Naomi smirked. "Lucky you. I've only been here an hour." Naomi smiled and moved away and Cameron looked down, frowning at the results. What was going on?
Looking around the room, she noticed it was relatively quiet. All the patients were either waiting on results or being treated. She decided the best thing she could do was to go and examine Holly Byrne again, to see if there had been any change in the past half hour or so. As she walked across the polished floor, accompanied by the sound of a man coughing across the room, nurses talking about blood tests at the nurse's station and her own heels on the floor, her mind drifted back to House and she allowed herself a secret smile.
"Wilson!" James Wilson's head turned at the sound of a voice calling him across the clinic. Not that he really needed to of course, there was nobody else who felt comfortable holding a shouted conversation across a room, disturbing the quiet and discomfiting thirty people who, Wilson suspected, if they were honest didn't really wish to be privy to House's inner thoughts. Sure enough House was heading quickly towards him, followed by the eyes of several startled patients and being glanced at every now and then by a few more who were clearly trying to not be seen looking.
"What is it House?"
"So, I see the she-devil caught you too."
"Cuddy? No, I've not seen her. I've got no patients for another hour so I thought I'd help out down here. Get some clinic time done."
House gaped and Wilson quickly combed his mind for anything that he could have done to offend House recently. Had he accidently taken a bottle of Vicodin home with him? Had he taped over an episode of General Hospital? Wilson couldn't see why on earth he could have done either of these things seeing as he didn't have access to House's hidden tape stash and there was no way in hell he would ever have made the hideous oversight to take House's Vicodin, mistakenly or otherwise. Especially not on purpose. He wasn't suicidal.
"What? You're here when you don't have to be? Are you out of your God-damned mind? You could have just stayed in your office and instead you wander happily into the jaws of death? Quite frankly it's a marvel that people like you survived during the whole evolution thing. How do you even dress yourself without falling over and knocking yourself out?" Apparently House had gotten his voice back.
Wilson resisted the urge to step back, to step away from this intense over-reaction. God, House was more irritable than usual today. It was probably the heat. He grinned when House's eyes flickered, almost imperceptibly in the direction of the ER, which was in full view of the clinic through the glass walls, and, Wilson could only assume, one Allison Cameron. Oh yes, it was the probably the temperature combined with the thought of his girlfriend being so close and yet he couldn't see her.
Wilson had overtly expressed on several occasions that he was pleased of his friend's new relationship. Secretly, he sometimes worried that maybe they were going a bit too fast but he knew House could take care of himself if the need arose. He was stronger than he sometimes seemed and Wilson trusted Cameron. She had been waiting for so long now and she seemed just as happy with him as he was with her.
"Like I said, nothing else to do. How long have you been here?"
"A few hours. Which is a few hours too long so, if you don't mind, and even if you do," House looked around surreptitiously and stepped ever so slightly closer. He lowered his voice to a whisper, "I'm breaking out."
Wilson raised an eyebrow as he watched House attempt to creep around the nurse's station. Creep being the best word for what House was actually doing because Wilson was not really sure if there really was a word for leaning his back on the desk and sliding along it to keep as much weight off his feet as possible. He guessed that by doing this House intended to avoid using his cane (which, as practical as it was, was a beacon alerting Cuddy to his position) until he was nearer the doors but it was hardly an inconspicuous action. In fact many of the patients who had been staring when House first called his name were staring in their direction once again.
Finally House managed to make it until he was facing the doors. With one last look around him to check Cuddy was safely busy somewhere out of sight, he pushed himself off the desk and made his way as fast as he could over the short distance to the doors. Faster than Wilson could believe, House was through them.
Once in the entrance hall he turned and flashed Wilson a smug smile, which promptly disappeared when he spotted someone over Wilson's shoulder and quickly ducked to the left, out of the eye line of whoever it was. Wilson glanced over his shoulder and turned fully to face the woman when his suspicions were confirmed.
Cuddy, leaning out of a door down the hall, looked around the waiting room in confusion before she spotted Wilson. She stepped out of the exam room and moved towards Wilson who merely stood waiting for her. She looked all around him, even going so far as to lean slightly to look behind him as though she felt that a bad-tempered diagnostician with an infarction could hide by crouching behind his friend. Finally she met his eye.
"Have you seen House? He still has a patient waiting in exam room 1."
Wilson smiled to himself. "Hello to you too. And no, I haven't seen him all day. Unfortunately if he's escaped I don't think you'll be seeing him for the rest of the day either."
Cuddy observed him closely and he could tell the second she worked it out. She sighed and closed her eyes briefly. "You know he's gone, don't you?"
"Yes." Wilson responded immediately, nodding to underline his answer.
"And he's not coming back."
"I wouldn't bet your life savings on it, no."
Cuddy sighed. "Well. I'm surprised he stayed this long. Cameron seems to be having a very good influence on him work-wise." Wilson raised an eyebrow. "Well, a bit." She amended. After all he had stayed longer than she had expected. Wilson smiled and turned to pick up a file. Cuddy followed suit and sighed. "Better get started then now we're down another doctor."
Wilson nodded in agreement.
Cameron was tired, hot and utterly perplexed. In short, she was not in the best of moods. Holly had begun coughing in earnest whenever she had tried to speak and the act was physically draining. She had dropped off to sleep a while ago, leaving Cameron with two new symptoms to add to breathing difficulties. Coughing, fever and breathing difficulties could be indicative of hundreds of diseases and with no further way of narrowing it down, Cameron was forced to conclude that Holly Byrne would not be leaving any time soon.
A noise drew her attention from across the room. Someone was having a violent bout of coughing. She looked, concerned in the direction of the sound and saw a man bent over in his bed. A doctor walked over to him with a glass of water which he took and greedily swallowed it down. Once assured the patient was alright the doctor left him and started walking towards the station where Cameron stood.
"Is he alright?" Cameron asked when the doctor, Brendan Hall, reached her, nodding towards his patient.
Brendan Hall looked back over his shoulder. "Yeah. It's just weird. He came in with a suspected fractured fibula and while waiting to be taken for an X-ray he seems to be developing a fever and can't stop coughing."
Cameron's brow furrowed. That didn't sound good. Her eyes flicked towards Holly Byrne's cubicle. Not good at all.
"Strange. Look, if he has any trouble breathing, could you let me know?"
"Why?"
"Just let me know please." She started to walk away leaving Brendan staring after her but his voice pulled her back.
"He was a bit breathless a while ago."
Cameron whipped back around. "Then we have to tell Cuddy. I think we have a contagion on our hands."
Ten minutes later Cuddy looked through the glass door into House's darkened office. She squinted but still was not entirely sure whether he was in there or not. It was hard to tell with the lights out in the hall contrasting with the dark inside. She tried the door and found that it was unlocked. Stepping into the office she found it was mercifully cooler than the corridor and inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with cool air.
She looked towards the desk. He wasn't there and there was no noise in the conference room to indicate he was in there either. She turned to leave once again but as she turned she saw him reclining in the chair by the door. She jumped a little, startled, but quickly recovered her composure and folded her arms over her chest.
"Where did you disappear to?"
"I would have thought the answer was fairly obvious: here."
Cuddy rolled her eyes. "House, please. We have a problem. People are getting sick..."
"Really? What a surprise. This is a hospital, Cuddy, people only come here if they're sick."
Cuddy threw a hand up to cover her eyes, massaging her forehead in exasperation. "That's not what I mean. I mean in the ER. Something contagious seems to be going around. I've had to shut it off. Everyone's being diverted to Princeton General except the ones who are already in there. It's causing a lot of problems so I need you in the clinic so I can sort it all out."
House was silent, her words slowly sinking in. She stared at him, wondering for a moment why he was silent. House was never without a mocking comment. It seemed he was equally as quick witted in sarcasm as he was in solving medical cases.
Finally he spoke.
"ER."
Instantly she understood why he was quiet. "Yes."
"Cameron? What about her? Is she still in there?" He lifted his head up to meet her eyes and pinned her to the spot. She couldn't lie to him now, even if she wanted to.
"I'm sorry. Yes."
He sat in silence for a few seconds before standing abruptly and pulling open the door leading to the hall. She hastily followed as he made his way to the elevator as fast as he could. "That settles it then." He said suddenly, almost to himself.
"What? Settles what?" she looked at him as they entered the elevator which had arrived just as they reached it.
House looked at her as if only just realising she was there. "There's no way I'm going to the clinic now." He told her, as if the answer was obvious. "I'm going to the ER." The elevator doors closed behind them and began travelling down to the entrance hall.
