I'm soooooo sorry it has taken so long for this update. Real life is complicated and time-consuming. Thank you to everybody who has followed, favourited and reviewed. I'm going to try my very, very hardest to update as often as possible. Enjoy!
Beep, beep went her pager, and Lyle stopped browsing through E.R files to check it, pulling it out of her pocket and glancing down at it with blue eyes as she stood among the bustling emergency room, the wailing of ambulance sirens loud in her ears, even through the doors and walls of the hospital. The message on her pager was clear enough, and the young doctor instantly dropped the medical file she'd ben flicking through onto the desk and, shoving her beeper back into her pocket, sprinted across the E.R, expertly dodging doctors and patients and narrowly avoiding crashing into the department head as she did.
By the time she'd taken four flights of stairs three at a time, the white walls and glass of the hospital corridors flashing by dizzyingly fast, and staggered into the patient's room, she saw Hartwood dragging one hand through his dark air and the mother of the teenager they were treating pacing the room, from one end to the other, with flushed cheeks and tears staining her face, her high-heeled boots clattering against the floor with each step.
"What happened?" Lyle panted, leaning on the door and breathing hard from her dash through the hospital, pushing golden brown hair out of her eyes.
"Lucy had a tonic-clonic seizure, straight after we started the antibiotics," Hartwood explained, sighing to himself. "Taylor's rerunning the blood samples, but I don't think it's an infection; I've kept her on the antibiotics, just in case they come back positive."
"So, you have no idea what's wrong with her?" the mother piped up with a shaking voice, stopping her pacing and staring at them with wide, terrified eyes. Lyle and Hartwood looked at each other with a shared expression, that was universal among doctors, and meant one thing: No, we don't.
"We're… working on it," Lyle improvised, glancing at the patient's vitals and her still body lying in the hospital bed. Lucy Courtfield's face was pale, as if someone had painted it pure white, and her breathing seemed steady as her chest rose and fell beneath the sheets. She'd lost consciousness and probably wouldn't wake up for another couple of hours, meaning the antibiotics should be working by the time she opened her eyes. If it was a simple infection that was plaguing her, of course. There was a deep red cut on her lip, clearly from where she'd bitten it during her seizure, and the blood was dripping onto her chin as she breathed. Her mother half-consciously wiped it away.
"Maybe we should wait until she wakes up?" Hartwood offered, his voice mostly lost among the shouting of his fellow doctors. Even House was occasionally joining in the argument with something more than snide comments.
"Her white count is too low for it to be an infection!" Taylor exclaimed, slamming the results to the blood tests onto the table.
"Her white count is raised!" Lyle shouted back. House continued to watch the two doctors as they fought, as if he was watching a tennis match, his head swivelling from side to side like a bird checking for predators.
"Barely raised! She could have a cold and it would explain her white count," Taylor shot back, glaring at House as he opened his mouth to say something, before closing it against as he thought better.
"You took the blood after you gave her the antibiotics. They could be working and fighting the infection, which is why her white count is low!"
"The antibiotics caused a seizure. No way they're helping her."
"Or…" House interrupted, waving his cane in the air and making all three instinctively duck away from the mad man before recovering their positions and glaring at each other across the tale – or, in Hartwood's case, looking increasingly fed up. "The seizure could be a…" He was returned with nothing but blank looks. "It could be a… starts with s…?"
"Symptom?" all three echoed, clearly not having thought of the possibility before.
"Yes, children," he patronized, standing up and patting each one of the them on the head as he walked around the table before scribbling another symptom on the board: Seizures.
"Seizures can be caused by infections," Lyle pointed out. "We should keep her on the antibiotics."
"Keeping her on antibiotics could cause side effects that'll make it harder for us to diagnose her," Taylor argued.
"Which we won't have to do if it is an infection!" As if someone had flicked the switch, the two dissolved into another argument, and House continued to lean on his cane and watch with a mildly interested expression on his face.
"Or we could wait until she wakes up!" Hartwood finally shouted, slamming his hand down on the table and making Lyle and Taylor almost leap up from their chairs in surprise. "If she's no better when she wakes up, we can go right back to DDX-ing. If she does, we can prescribe a course of antibiotics and send her home."
"Lanky as a point," House agreed, collapsing into his chair and dropping his cane down beside him, putting his feet up on the desk with a thump. "Hartwood, take the kid's blood every half an hour. Check her white count. Lyle, go convince the mom we know what we're doing. Taylor…" He waved his hands vaguely and shrugged his shoulders. "Buy me lunch. Chop chop, off you go."
In a flurry of papers and white coats, the three doctors were halfway down the corridors to do their respective jobs, the glass door swinging shut behind them.