So, it has been well over two months since I last posted and I am SOOO sorry, but things have been beyond crazy (if there's anyone out there attending school full time and working two jobs, you know what I mean). But here it is. Though there might be a few questions, here are some early answers: Zachary was Cameron's husband and childhood best friend; Cameron is her married name, which she never changed back when he died; Steven and Daniel are Zachary's older brothers, and Matthew is their father. This chapter will probably have a few more questions arise, but they will be answered in the next chapters, cause I didn't want this one to run on too much.
Thanks so much to sweetgreuy for all your help on this chapter, you were a lifesaver!
Enjoy!
"I want the names of EVERYONE in White House laundry." Cameron walks be the office that Gibbs and his team are occupying for the present moment of the investigation. Looking in, she only sees the Senior Agent with the two male agents earlier introduced – the sweet, younger, professional McGee, and the cocky, flirtatious DiNozzo. The question of where Abby was is answered as she passes the Pathology Lab and sees her running several machines simultaneously. Going to the Prime Minister's room, she enters silently when she notices his daughter sitting by the bed with her head bowed in prayer.
Silently, Cameron takes note of his vitals and checks the IV bag hanging on the stand. She replaces his chart and is about to slip out as quietly as she slipped in when she's stopped by his daughter.
"How is he?"
"He's holding on, which is good. Is there anyone that we can call for you? Perhaps your family?"
"No. My mother died when I was a child. My father and I haven't gotten along well since; and all communication stopped when my brother passed away."
"I'm sorry. What about friends?"
"They're all currently trying to find out who did this to him."
"Oh." Cameron stands there uneasily, trying to find an excuse to leave. "Well, if you need anything, let us know." She quietly slips out, leaving the pair alone. Sliding the door shut behind her, she turns to give a report to the nurses, but she stops abruptly when she sees the pair standing by the circular desk speaking.
oOoOoOo
House limps around the nurses' station, looking over his shoulder and doesn't see the woman that he's subsequently crashes into.
"So sorry." House glances forward and his voice catches in his throat when he looks into a pair of familiar green eyes. Taking in the entire face, he realizes that it's not who he thought it was. "Sorry," he repeats, "Are you alright?"
A smile shines in the woman's eyes and the smirk appears on her face with the teasing tone. "I'm a mother of seven, Dr. House; it takes a bit more than a grown man running into me to harm me."
"Aren't girls less rambunctious than boys?"
"You've obviously never met my girls."
"I've met one, I've worked with that one. Granted I have seen her be assertive, but not enough to warrant her being a difficult child."
"It's the quiet ones that you have to look out for. She might seem to be angelic, but Allison always was the one that we had to look out for."
"I second that." A blonde in her early forties walks up to the pair, signing off on a file and passing it off to an agent walking past.
oOoOoOo
Cameron grows worried as she sees her sister-in-law join in the conversation between her mother and boss. As much as she wants to move closer to hear what they're saying, she remains rooted to the spot.
oOoOoOo
"Magen Davenport." The blonde introduces herself to House.
House takes a moment to look her up and down while shaking her hand. He quickly takes in the short blonde with the bright blue eyes dressed casually in cargo pants and a blue button down; seeing the paint splatter on her backside, he chooses not to comment, merely returning the introduction.
"Greg House."
"Nice to meet you. And as mom was saying, Allison was the one that you always had to look out for."
"And you've known the family long?"
"I grew up next door to them."
"So a childhood sweetheart marriage. Don't you regret that?"
"Not at all. Michael and I were best friends growing up, we never dated. I went off to college at Stanford, he stayed home and went to Georgetown. We met up four years after graduation when we had both finished grad school and we were at Quantico for a joint service training exercise. We were both engaged to other people at the time, and it took us an additional three years to work things out and make it down the aisle with each other. The events of those three years are why you will often hear our relationship referred to as a soap opera.
"But as we were originally saying – Allison, she was always the idea woman and the ringleader behind all the escapades in the neighborhood. And when you've got a half dozen family with multiple children, school vacations can get interesting." She turns to her mother in remembrance. "Like the snowball fight that one July?"
"You had snow in July?" House asks incredulously.
"No, Allison saw an advertisement for Christmas in July in the middle of this torrential downpour we were having one summer – she was nine, I was home for summer vacation – and she believed that the mud was the summer's version of snow."
"It took the mom's almost an hour to hose all of the kids off." Melissa cuts in. "Allison could have been a lawyer with that golden tongue of hers. She could get anyone out of a bind, even when she was five years old. We could have proof of something she did right in front of us, and she'd still be able to convince us that it was the bully down the street's fault."
"Really?" House compares this new information with the immunologist he thought he had figured out. "So how did she choose medicine?"
The two Davenports share a look, silently deciding how much to share with him…finally Melissa answers.
"She might have become a good lawyer, but she'd wanted to be a doctor ever since she got one of those toy doctors' kits when she was four. And her resolve solidified when she was 12."
"What happened when she was 12?"
Melissa is prevented from answering when she hears her name coming over the walkie-talkie in her hand. She apologizes and heads down the hall. House turns to Magen, but she stops him when she puts her hand up to her ear and listens to what's said over her ear piece.
"Sorry, I'm needed in the office." She heads off down the same hall her mother-in-law took leaving House standing there.
oOoOoOo
Cameron sees the serious look cross over her mother and sister's faces and recognizes it immediately. She snags a passing agent and tells him to page her mother to the office. Once she's gone, and Cameron sees House turn to her sister, she takes the microphone from the agent and repeats the message. Once Magen is out of sight, Cameron turns and disappears down the hall before House can turn and notices her.
oOoOoOo
The lights are off in House's office when Cameron enters to retrieve her bag for dinner, so she doesn't pay much attention to the occupant sitting at the desk chair.
House watches Cameron enter the conference room and retrieve her purse from her desk, wondering what could have happened to Cameron when she was 12 to solidify her resolve to become a doctor, when it seemed she was destined for the law. House notes that there appears to be an extra weight on her shoulders, she doesn't seem quite as happy as she usually does after they've solved a case. He continues to watch her as she slowly dons her coat and leaves the office, leaving him in a more curious state than usual.
oOoOoOo
Cameron takes a seat at a booth in a restaurant down the street from the hospital and gives her drink order to the waiter right away, taking out and setting up her laptop while she's waiting. When he returns with her glass of wine, she orders her usual salad topped with chicken and sets to work once her waiter leaves. She's only able to concentrate for a few minutes before she pushes her work aside and pulls up a file on her computer. Quickly typing in the password, a series of photos pops up on her screen. She selects one and the screen immediately fills with the smiling faces of two children that look to be 11 or 12. Studying the photo, she quickly flashes back to that day.
oOoOoOo
"C'mon, Allison! We need to get home before Danny does!" Twelve year old Zachary Cameron pulls his friend along through the trees of the woods separating their neighborhood from the local park.
Allison stumbles slightly and falls to the ground, though she's up and moving again before Zachary can stop to help her to her feet.
"What's the rush, Zachary? Your mom said his plane wasn't landing until four, and it's just that now." She pushes ahead of him and holds back a tree branch so that they won't get scraped passing through. Once they're both safely on the other side, they take off at a sprint towards his house.
"But I want to be there to see him first. I heard Dad and Steven talking last night, they said that he'd been given the Navy Cross and a bunch of other medals for what he did. I want to see them."
"You know he's going to have your mom stop somewhere so that he can change out of his uniform. He's never liked wearing that any longer than he has to. It killed him to wear it for the entire day of his wedding."
"Maybe he'll still be wearing it." Zachary states stubbornly. Allison didn't say anything. She had the feeling that something bad was happening for the past few days. Things were much quieter among the adults and the older kids in the neighborhood ever since they'd found out that the second oldest Cameron was returning home.
Little did the younger kids know that this very moment was going to be their last innocent moment in time.
Zachary reached the fence that bordered his family's backyard and reached over to undo the latch so that he and Allison could get in. The pair weaved through the trees on the border of their yard and ran up to the back door, removing their shoes and running inside. They stopped in the kitchen and grabbed a few of the cookies waiting on the cooling rack before running back to the living room. The pair heard voices coming from the den and tiptoed over to find out what was going on. They both recognized the voices of their fathers and older brothers. The men had no idea there were prying ears on the other side of the door and made no move to stay quiet. Had they known the pair was listening in, they definitely would have been more quiet – or completely silent.
"Matthew, I'm not trying to tell you how to deal with your family business, but you need to tell the rest of your children what's going on. They shouldn't find out about this when they first see Daniel being wheeled up the ramp." Allison recognizes her father's voice.
"I appreciate the advice, Michael, but this is my family. No amount of explanation will prepare them for this, so they might as well be shown this at once and get it over with."
"What about Zachary?" Allison and Zachary share a glance at hearing his name spoken by Allison's brother. "He's always idolized Danny. And Danny isn't going to want to even think about what happened over there. Zachary is going to pester Danny to hear about what happened. He's going to see that Danny is injured and want to know what happened and how badly he's injured and if his actions when he was injured was how he received his medals and Danny isn't going to want to relive those moments because they're still too painful. What are you going to do then? Zachary's a curious soul, he's going to want to know what happened, and no matter how Danny reacts, he's going to continue to question him until he's satisfied."
"It's none of your concern, Mikey."
"It is, actually. This is my best friend that you're talking about here. He's not going to want to talk to anyone – not even the shrink he's been assigned – and you're acting like he's going to just bottle it up and forget about it. If he does that… well, you might as well start planning his funeral."
"You haven't said anything Steven, what do you think?" Matthew asks his oldest son.
"Danny was the one to teach Zachary how to play baseball, he taught him how to ride a bike, and just before he left, Danny promised that when he returned home he'd teach Zach how to throw a spiral and kick a field goal. Daniel has always been larger than life, it always was part of his charm, and now he could potentially spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair."
Allison places her hand on her friend's shoulder to stop him from bursting into the room. He settles back down and continues listening.
"It's a possibility, not a probability, Steven."
"Dad, I'm a physical therapist, I've seen this countless times. If Danny doesn't want to do his physical therapy, then he won't do it. And even if he does do it, going through the motions won't help him any. He has to really put the time and effort in order to get anything out of it. And I don't think that Danny will have the heart to put into it."
Allison grabs Zachary's arm and pulls him off to the stairs to go to his room. Once there, they shut the door and he collapses on his bed, Cameron sits quietly on his brother's bed.
"Do you think what they said was true? Is Danny going to be different?"
"We've played war before, Zachary; for Danny, it's been real. People die for real where he's been. That's something he's been seeing for the past year. It's not something that he's just going to forget. And if he really is injured so badly that he might not walk again, then it's going to be even harder to forget. You just have to do what they said you wouldn't. Be patient, he'll open up eventually." Allison gets up and sits down next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder in comfort. Zachary places his head on her shoulder and they sit there silently until they both hear a car drive up to the house.
oOoOoOo
Cameron is startled out of her memories by a plate being placed in front of her. It takes her a second to register that her dinner has just been placed in front of her and as an afterthought, she thanks her server, who has already moved on to another table. She slowly tucks into her salad, but after just one bite, she realizes that she's really not very hungry and summons her server over to request a carry-out box and her check. Once her salad is packed up and her check is paid, she packs up her laptop and the files that she'd brought out and leaves, returning to the hospital.
Oh yeah, I got a lot of complaints in the last chapter about how bitchy Cameron seemed and how idiotic I made Chase seem...That was not my intent. I wanted to show Cameron as the protective family member, and Chase as the one to state what House hadn't yet (didn't want to, since House was the only one who knew that her entire family was in the hospital for the case). I might not like Chase's character, but I don't write active characters as completee morons unless the original writers already have.