The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me
"Why me?" The thought was certainly not a new one, but right now, it echoed throughout Cameron's body in a way she'd never imagined was possible. Pain engulfed her the way she'd imagined being a fly caught in a venus flytrap must feel—some unknown force digesting you slowly, breaking down your body cell by cell while you struggle helplessly caught in its jaws. She knew she was crying, could see Joe crying across from her, but really the only thing registering was the steady tone of the heart monitor. He came over to her, pulled her to his chest, but suddenly everything that had grown comforting about him—his scent, his stupid silk ties and rough, starchy white shirts—felt wrong, and sent feelings like skittering cockroaches across her skin.
"Don't." She pushed him away, and stood. She reached out a hand to her husband's face, brushing a strand of hair from where it'd fallen into his eyes, now wide open, unable to care that hair was stuck in them. "No." She placed her lips against the skin of his forehead, already rapidly losing heat, feeling more and more like a table or a dresser by the second. "It can't be real." The sobs of his parents broke into her consciousness and fueled the moment's reality. It was real, entirely too real. She needed to go, to be anywhere but here. She grabbed her coat and keys and dashed out the door.
"Your patient, House, not mine. You and your team of overpaid doctors can figure it out without me." Cameron, in her sleepiness and frustration, growled into the phone pressed against her ear. She squinted into the bleary deep grays of the morning hours at her alarm clock, but the hands were blurred into darkness, even against the bright white face.
"What?"
The voice on the other end of the line snapped her awake and she sat up, letting the sheets fall and expose her chest to the cold morning air. "The phone said House."
"Oh." There was a pause, a several second delay, like it took a minute for Thirteen to process the simple meaning of the words. "I'm calling from his office."
"I know." Cameron cringed at the stilted conversation, the way Thirteen's voice sounded dead and entirely uninterested. It was one of the things about Thirteen that scared her. Yes, scared was the right word. Thirteen's numbness frightened her. "What do you need?"
"He might not make it through the night. Taylor." Her voice rasped on the boy's name, sending a chill through Cameron's bones. "He asked to see you."
"Why me?" She tugged on the sheets, rough from overuse, and trapped it across her chest with her arms.
A heavy crackling denoted Thirteen's sigh. "Are you coming or not?"
"Yeah. Yeah, of course." The plastic clattered onto the nightstand, and Cameron turned to the body next to her, reaching out to touch him, a hand brushing against the rough beginnings of a beard. "Robert." When he didn't stir, panic rose in her chest, threatening to choke her with the memories still fresh in her consciousness. She pushed his shoulder a little rougher than she'd brushed his face. "Robert."
He let out a small moan, twisting his head away from her hand, stubbornly refusing to be awoken from his sleep.
"Robert, I need to go into the hospital."
He grunted, waving a hand in the air to show he'd heard, then letting it thwunk onto the mattress as consciousness left him again. Allison didn't move yet, though, her body stuck, unwilling, resisting leaving the safety of her bed, resisting leaving the body heat that pulsated off her lover for the pristine chill of the hospital. Eventually, she forced herself to her feet and pulled together something that resembled a decent outfit. The outside was cold, colder than even the still air of her bedroom, and she pulled her coat closer around her body, trapping in as much warmth as she could manage. The silence that hung in the air calmed her tingling nerves, though, so at least she could be grateful for that. The drive was short with no traffic, yet another thing to be thankful for.
The doors opened and soon the fluorescent warmth of the hospital sucked her in, and her feet took her of their own accord to the metal lips of the elevator, inside and up to Taylor's room. The room obscured the view of the waiting area tucked behind it as she neared, and the vertical blinds made the scene inside the room a bar code.
"That was fast." Thirteen was leaning—mostly standing with her shoulderblades placing a very light pressure—against the wall across from the doorway. "I didn't expect to see you for another hour or so."
"You said he might not make it through the night." Cameron replied, glanced at the door, where she could see a little redheaded girl talking to Taylor. "Sister?" She nodded to the child, then glanced back at Thirteen, obscured partly by shadow from a column nearby (though the way the place was lighted, lights hit from almost every angle, making complete shadow impossible).
"Yeah." The rasp in Thirteen's voice had returned, and she glanced down at her arms crossed over her chest, toyed with a button that rested against her collarbone, and looked back up. "She's ten." She shook her head, loose waves brushing her cheeks, "he's sixteen."
Cameron took a step forward, noticed the water stains on her cheek, and decided not to mention them. Her fingers twitched, fighting the urge to brush away the remainder of Thirteen's grief, but instead, she turned and let herself fall against the wall next to her.
"I'm sorry about last night." She wiggled her fingers nervously in the pockets of her linen dress pants.
"Don't worry about it." Thirteen's angular face seemed to harden—making her somehow more beautiful and statuesque than she usually was— and the muscles in her cheeks throbbed; Cameron again fought the urge to trace the gentle curvature of her face.
"No, you were right. I've been harsh with you, and you deserve an explanation." She sighed, and moved her hands from her pants to the soft cashmere of her cardigan. "I think you just—I think I just came really close to being you." Her words came out as a jumble, and she shut her eyes and jaw tightly.
Thirteen snorted. "Is this gonna turn into Dr. Cameron's touchy-feely overshare story time?" She turned her attention back to the family framed in the doorway. "I'm really not in the mood."
"You're sad about him dying so young. It hurts to watch, doesn't it?" It had slipped out of Cameron's mouth, and she wondered if she'd come to regret it sometime soon. The air between the two of them contracted and tightened, and Cameron swallowed.
"I don't like losing patients." Thirteen was in defense mode, and she squared off, facing Cameron directly now. "I happen to remember walking in on you crying hysterically over patients in the ER staff lounge last night."
"You're right. Nobody likes it, but it happens to everybody."
"Death is a fact of life. The fact of life." The air molecules warmed and expanded, began to move again in a light breeze from the changing pressure in the hallway.
"You were crying." It was against Cameron's better judgment to push these sorts of things, but Thirteen's cold façade had cracked as she stared off, and her morbid curiosity had begun to get the better of her.
Thirteen sighed, shutting her eyes tightly, veins like roots visible in her eyelids from so close a distance.
"It's okay." Allison's hand brushed the rough polyester of Thirteen's lab coat, her fingers instinctively snagging in the fabric, holding it desperately, and pulling forward ever so gently, yet hard enough to make Thirteen open her eyes. She glanced down at the hand, up at Cameron's face.
"I have to go be with Taylor." She turned to walk, but Allison's grip didn't loosen.
"No." She tugged again, this time pulling Thirteen successfully a couple inches toward her. "Don't run away. I've been where you are, and running made it so much worse."
"You've never been where I am." This time when Thirteen pulled away, her coat slipped easily from Cameron's fingers, and she disappeared into the room.
"Allie?" The question came from behind a curtain of thick curls, hair that was usually so carefully swept off to the left. "What are you doing here? It's late."
"Sometime after 3:46 am." Cameron whispered, mouth hanging open, mouthing the words she was meaning to say but couldn't bring herself to.
"Allison, what's going on?" The curls had been brushed urgently aside as though they were the obstruction of understanding. "You're scaring me."
"He died at—" Her voice crumbled, tumbled into silence with a crashing sob. "At 3:46 am. They called it, and I needed—" She was sobbing, her breaths coming in heaves that broke each sentence into something almost unrecognizable. "I needed you."
The other woman inhaled sharply through her nose, digging her fingers deeply into her upper arms. "I thought you said you didn't want to be around me anymore."
"I don't care about any of that anymore." The sobs had subsided for the moment, the interaction like novocaine. "I want to feel good." She stepped forward, buried her tear-soaked face in the exposed neck just below the bobbing ringlets. "I want to be near you." She inhaled deeply, letting her lips graze the skin there as she did. "Please let me stay tonight."
A slow exhale this time, and the girl took a step back. "Okay. Just for tonight, though." She stepped backward, engulfed in the black tint of the dark hallway, and reached out a hand to lead Cameron down the way she'd have been able to travel in pitch blackness. But still she accepted the hand and allowed herself to be taken forward.
In my distress I called to the Lord;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
The earth trembled and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
The Lord thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
with great bolts of lightning he routed them.
The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, Lord,
at the blast of breath from your nostrils.
A/N: So, getting heavy now. What do you think? Worth the wait? Enjoying the flashbacks? Let me know!
