Chapter 3

"House?? What are you doing here?" Cameron asked "It's 11am - you should have been at work 2 hours ago."

"What can I say? My 'special friend' had such a great time last night I practically had to throw her out which, being cripple n' all, was quite a feat." House replied.

House studied Cameron for a moment. She stood there wearing an over sized safety helmet with visor and medical overalls which were at least 2 sizes too big for her slender frame. House thought she looked like a school kid playing dress up in her Daddy's work clothes.

"I seriously don't have time for this House. If you're here to help then help. If you're not, get out of here." With this Cameron turned to walk away, her mind focused on the task ahead, but House grabbed her by the arm. This action 12 months ago would have sent a shiver through her. Cameron had been desperate for House to see her as more than a work colleague. Now however the move only served to annoy her more.

"House!! Let me go." Cameron shrugged to get his hand off of her arm but he held firm.

"Seriously. You're not going in there" House said, his sharp blue eyes looking into hers. It was said as a statement of fact rather than a question.

Cameron pulled closer to House so as not to be overheard by the Fire Chief. "You're not my boss any more House, you lost the right to tell me what to do, remember? Now let me go before I steal your cane and embarrass you in front of all these nice firemen." Cameron's voice was full of confidence - confidence she had learnt from her time as part of House's Diagnostics Department.

When she had joined his team, Cameron had been a junior Doctor lacking in confidence. She was undeniably keen and intelligence but she struggled to balance this with the pre-conception that most people held - she was a pretty girl and therefore knew nothing. This had held her back for a time. She hadn't been able to handle patients properly - not being able to tell them bad news or force them to see that House's crazy sounding treatment was their best option. She had quickly learnt that to survive a Fellowship under House she had to toughen up and not allow herself to be walked all over. If she hadn't done this, her colleagues Chase and Foreman would have outshone her and left her behind. This was something she was determined would not happen.

House was slightly taken aback by Cameron's tone and he let her go. He didn't even realise that it was him who had taught her to be that way. "Fine." he said "If you get killed don't come running to me. I'm good but I'm not that good - death is kinda permanent". House's sarcasm was his best form of defence. But why was he being defensive? Cameron wasn't part of his team any more just as she had pointed out moments earlier, in fact she had a team of her own now.

"Just promise me you won't buy me lilies for my funeral and I'll stay in the afterlife and leave you alone. I hate lilies." Cameron replied, turned on her heel and walked away. House watched her go, leaning on his cane.

"HEY HOUSE!" a voice cried from behind him.

"Great" he thought to himself "Nurse Whiplash has finally caught up with me."

"House - get your ass over here." Sarah shouted "Make yourself useful and practice some proper medicine for a change. You might learn a thing or two."

Cameron turned briefly to watch House limp toward Sarah. She could see he was already spouting a string of verbal abuse at Sarah who appeared to be holding her own as usual. House's limp became even more pronounced as he struggled over the remains of the building site, avoiding all of the hazards which lay all around them.

Cameron scrambled to the top of the wreckage and joined the Fire Chief and his crew. "Right, what's the situation?" Cameron asked.

"My men have secured a way down to two of the trapped workers. We need advice on how best to move them without causing them further injury. If you're serious about going in there you need to take these." The Chief handed her a two way radio and a flash light. Cameron juggled it with the medical pack she carried.

"Just show me where I get in." she replied resolutely. The Chief led her to the very top of the pile where Cameron could see a makeshift tunnel that had been created in the debris. Twisted metal barred most of the way and there were shattered pieces of walk boards everywhere.

"The first guy is down to the left" one of the fireman said "To me it looks as if he has a leg injury. He's pinned down at the moment but is nearly free. Should be able to move him in the next 20 minutes or so. The other guy we can reach at the moment is further down and to the right. He's in a worse state. Obvious head trauma and he's losing a lot of blood from an arm injury. He's in and out of consciousness and probably needs your attention first although its gonna take us longer to get him free."

"OK. Lets get in there so I can see for myself." Cameron replied pulling her medical kit onto her back. The fireman looked at her in disbelief. Anticipating his next question the Chief said "Just show the good doc where to go."

To his credit, the Fireman just turned and started to make his way into the tunnel. "You'll need to leave your pack, there's no room for it down here. If you brush up against the wrong thing the whole lot is likely to come crashing down around you" he said. Cameron dropped her pack but not before grabbing the essential first aid items - bandages, sterile pads and pain relief meds.

Cameron climbed into the hole and followed the Fireman down. She was first struck by the heat. It was 30 degrees outside, in here it felt more like 40. To say it was overbearing would be an understatement. She yearned to take off the helmet but knew she couldn't.

The next thing to hit her was the smell. She couldn't tell what it was but it made her gag for a couple of minutes. It was a pungent smell, almost chemical. It made her throat hurt and her eyes tear up. There were trickles of liquid running down in several places in the wreckage.

"Is this liquid some sort of chemical? Sure smells like it is" Cameron asked as she followed the Firemen down deeper.

"No - we've had to checked over. It's just water" the Firemen replied. "There was some sort of water tank being stored at the top of the scaffold. God knows why. It came down with the rest of it. Most of it spilt over hence the moisture down here but the rest of it is still up top. The smell is coming from deeper down. From what we can gather there was a paint store at the bottom of this lot. Again, God knows why. We reckon the pots have been split and that's what we can smell. We have others trying to reach the store to double check what's actually down there."

Cameron tried to put the acrid smell out of her mind and worked on the men she found trapped in the wreckage. It was just as the fireman had said. The first man, a worker called Joe, had a nasty leg injury which was pinned by a sharp piece of metal. Cameron had guided the fireman the best she could to remove the metal but even so as soon as the metal was removed the injury started to bleed profusely. Cameron did the best she could and used her supplies as a basic tourniquet. Joe was safely removed.

Cameron reached the second worker who was a young man called Will, he was just 19 years old. He had a crush injury to the head and Cameron immediately knew there was going to be very little she could do for him. She gave him some of the pain relief meds to make him more comfortable and let the firemen get on with their job of getting him free. Will had held on until he got half way to PPTH but, unbeknown to Cameron, he crashed on the way and never recovered. Will's parents would later want to thank Cameron for her kind words and efforts to save him.

All this had taken about an hour to accomplish and Cameron hadn't even reached the two other trapped workers. The fire department had spoken to the other workers and had been told that the site foreman, Sam, and another worker by the name of John were definitely still missing. Cameron thought this information highly unreliable given the chaos that was occurring outside.

After Will had been removed she had come to the surface to get a drink and some fresh air. She automatically looked around to see if House was still there but she couldn't see him. She was proud, however, to see that her team were working on the remaining casualties and everything was working well.

"Doctor Cameron!" came a shout from behind her "We've got the other two men."

Cameron put her helmet back on and made her way back into the "tunnel of hell" as she had been describing it in her head. It turned out that the two trapped men had been huddled together and had miraculously been cocooned within the twisted metal. Apart from some cuts, grazes and a low level concussion for one of the them, they were otherwise unhurt.

Cameron had given them the once over to check for anything more sinister and then gave the fire department the all clear to start leading the men out. "OK, so which one of you is Sam and which one of you is John?" Cameron asked in an attempt to engage in some normal conversation in the most bizarre of situations.

"That's John but I'm Bob, not Sam. If you're talking about Sam the site foreman he was right behind us when this thing started going to hell" the older of the two men stated "I haven't seen him since then."

Cameron's heart pounded. She had known that information hadn't been reliable - there was still at least one person trapped under this lot. "HEY!" she yelled to the fireman at the front "There's still someone else down here!"

"What do you expect to do about it now? Let's get these two up first and then we'll come back to look again" he replied dismissively. The fireman continued to climb and the other two men followed. Just then Cameron could have sworn she had heard metal hitting metal. She tried to concentrate on the area in which she thought she had heard it. There it was again - a faint clang-clang-clang. "Hold on!! I can hear someone" Cameron yelled. She hadn't realised but she had been so intent on listening for the noise that the others had nearly reached the surface.

"Hey!! Come on - get out of there!" yelled the fireman "You shouldn't be down there on your own. Get up here right now!"

"There is another patient down here and I'm not leaving him!!" she replied tersely "You do what you've got to do - I'll still be here when you get back."

She started to look around to see if she could locate where the noise was coming from. Suddenly, Cameron became aware of a rubbling noise. She looked up and the window of sky which framed the tunnel entrance seemed to suddenly get much smaller.

At the same time, on the other side of the building site ...

House turned just in time to watch the remainder of the scaffold collapse in on itself. Where was Cameron?