Hi everyone!
Here's the next chapter. Up a bit faster than the last one too. I was in a writing frame of mind today so I sat down in front of series one of House to keep me focussed on this.
Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing. Have a nice day.
Jenny.
Total Lockdown.
Chapter 7.
Chase stood close behind Vikki's back, leaning over her shoulder to see what she was doing in a way that was highly irritating to her whilst simultaneously causing goosebumps to spread across her neck when his warm breath came into contact with her skin.
"So?" He asked, sounding resigned, as though he already knew the answer which, she reminded herself, he probably did, hanging over her shoulder as he was.
"Nope. Nothing. Wilson?" She called over to where Wilson was standing by the glass wall, holding up Stephen Meyer's year-old x-ray to the light.
"I'm looking now." His forehead was creased as his eyes frantically searched for something, anything, which could give them the smallest inkling about what was happening in the ER. He lowered it after a few seconds with a sigh and collapsed onto the nearest stool.
"Okay, so what do we tell House?" Chase asked, looking between Vikki and Wilson with growing apprehension.
"You could always declare your undying devotion for me from the hospital roof. I wouldn't mind. I'll make the banners." House announced his arrival at the door and looked between the three doctors in the room. "I've got the histories, we'll discuss that back upstairs, tell me what you guys have got."
Wilson spoke first, after a short tense silence during which he, Chase and Vikki shot little looks at each other, determined to not be the first one to tell House that they had nothing, and House glared at them all, informing them with his eyes that if somebody didn't speak soon he would not be held responsible for their heads coming into sharp contact with his cane.
"No sign of pulmonary fibrosis on Stephen Meyer's x-ray. I can't see any other problems that would fit the symptoms either. The man's never smoked a day in his life, his lung are as healthy as any I've seen."
"But as you spend all day looking at x-rays riddled with cancer that's not really saying a lot. Carry on." House interjected eyes fixed on the floor in front of him as his brain absorbed all the information.
Wilson allowed himself a few indulgent seconds for aiming a withering glance (which, probably luckily, House missed as he was too busy contemplating the third tile on the left from the door) at his friend before continuing.
"As it turns out, Cameron had an x-ray about eighteen months ago as well. According to her notes she fell down the stairs and thought she'd fractured a couple of her ribs. She hadn't and her lungs show none of the early signs of pulmonary fibrosis that would have been present at the time if that was the problem now."
"Got it. Not pulmonary fibrosis. Chase? Pertussis?"
"No antibodies for the pertussis toxin in the blood. It's not pertussis."
"Good. This is good."
"Is it?" Wilson asked sceptically. "How exactly, in your admittedly twisted mind, is it good that our options are being ruled out?"
"Because we're narrowing it down. Have you got anything?" House directed the last question at Vikki, who was fiddling with the focus on the microscope in front of her nervously.
"Still waiting on a couple of things." She nodded towards a line of test tubes and petri dishes with various chemicals and dyes mixed in. "I did one for the flu just to be sure it wasn't that easy. I was hoping it would be but..."
"No?"
"No. It's not the flu."
House sighed and looked up towards the ceiling briefly, before finally looking at the other three doctors in the room.
"Okay then. Back upstairs then where I can write those histories up on the whiteboard and we can cross out some of the possibilities. We'll come and check those last few tests as soon as they're done. TB test is being taken care of, just in case. Wilson..." House broke off when an urgent beeping from his hip drew his attention. He dropped his cane, allowing it to clatter unceremoniously to the floor as one hand drew up his one side of his jacket so the other could reach his pager more quickly.
He pulled the screen up to eye level, leaning heavily on the counter behind him in the absence of his cane and read the short message. Wilson stood from the stool and bent to retrieve House's cane from its spot lying on the cold tiles. House took it from him without a word and put the pager back.
"House? What is it?" Chase enquired anxiously after taking in, at a glance, the dark look on House's face.
"Upstairs. Now." House demanded and moved out of the room ahead of the others, not even pausing to see if they would follow.
House dropped the black marker onto the conference room table and stepped back from the board.
"So... not flu, not pulmonary fibrosis, not pertussis, TB's sat on the bench with several others in test tubes downstairs, what's next to step up to the plate?"
"And, in a surprise twist to the game...?" Wilson spoke from his position in the opposite side of the table.
"New symptom! Aren't we lucky?" Contrary to his remark, House's voice held no glee whatsoever at this development.
"Unusual muscle stiffness." Vikki read off the board. "How do they know it's unusual?"
"At first only Stephen Meyers was complaining of it in his leg, but after Holly Byrne mentioned it in passing it seemed like it was related to the illness."
"Cameron?"
"Her too. In her neck."
"Couldn't it be psychological?" Chase asked hopefully. "Holly and Allison overheard Stephen Meyers complaining of it and on a subconscious level they started feeling muscle pain too?"
"Sorry Sigmund Freud. Not possible. Neither Holly nor Allison were told of Mr Meyer's complaint until after they themselves started feeling the stiffness in their muscles too. Down in the ER they decided that would be better to prevent that sort of psychological reaction."
"Right. So the list reads: high temperature, dry cough, loss of appetite, unusual stiffness in muscles and breathing difficulties." Wilson left a small pause to allow this to register in everyone's brains before continuing, "At least we're narrowing it down. That's good."
"And muscle stiffness is not a symptom of TB so we might be able to rule that out."
"Might?" Vikki asked, confused as to House's wording.
"Unless the muscle stiffness is due to being lying still in a hospital bed for hours."
Wilson groaned. "So it might not be a symptom at all."
"We'll know soon enough. I told the ER to try and get Stephen Meyers walking around for a while. Just around his cubicle. See if his leg stiffness goes away with a little movement."
"Right. So we might have a new symptom, we might not. It might be TB, it might not. It might be any of the other diseases we are currently testing for and it might not. We're making excellent progress." Chase moaned in frustration and Vikki sighed heavily at his stark statement.
"We've narrowed it down. That's progress. Anyway, on to the histories." House stepped up to the whiteboard and spun it around, and it only just missed his foot as it swung around. The reverse side of the board was blank and House snatched up the marker held out by Chase. He swiftly drew two vertical lines down the board, splitting it into three and wrote Holly's, Stephen's and Cameron's names at the head of each column.
"Holly Byrne... lives alone... no partner... journalist..." House muttered the various details of the history Cameron had gathered as he listed them and the other three stayed silent as he moved onto Stephen Meyers. Cameron's he was already aware of as he had been her previously been her employer and had become privy to her entire medical history over the course of her employment due to his natural curiosity and reluctance to let any quirk of her behaviour and mannerisms go. Thus, he had carefully cultivated, over the course of three years, a detailed knowledge of Cameron's history.
House smirked as it occurred to him that Cameron must have known this. That was why she hadn't bothered to give him her history.
"We should focus on Holly Byrne first. She was the first to show symptoms. This... whatever it is... is hard to catch. Only two other people in the entire ER caught it. Cameron was in fairly close contact as she was treating her. What about Stephen Meyers?"
Vikki flicked quickly through the papers in front of her, searching for a specific one. "ER says he was sat next to her in the waiting room."
"There we go then. Close proximity once again. Good news is, if you have to be close to someone for an extended period of time and she lives alone, chances are she's neither given it to someone else or caught it off someone. So, if we assume she contracted it directly from the source... what's the source?"
"Environmental. Has to be environmental; we've ruled out genetic predisposition to a condition such as pulmonary fibrosis." Chase spoke again.
"So viral or bacterial..." House jotted down each option with a question mark after each one.
"Has she been out of the country recently or is it definitely a local source?" Wilson asked and House turned to face him.
"Of course she's..." he broke off as he glanced at the board once again and realised he'd forgotten to write something Cameron had told him down. "Sorry. My mistake." He quickly added something to Holly Byrne's history list. "As I was saying: she's a travel journalist. Of course she's been out of the country. We can't rule anything out."
"Where out of the country?"
"All over the place. In the last three months... Thailand, Russia, Poland, China, New Zealand. If you want me to go back further the list gets longer."
"Great. So basically it could be any disease, from anywhere."
"Not any disease. Don't be so morbid. You forget, we've ruled out pulmonary fibrosis and the flu and if the stiffness is a symptom, then it's not TB either."
After a few more minutes of discussion, Vikki looked down at her watch. "A few of the tests should be ready by now. I'll go down and check."
House nodded at her and she left the room. He then turned to address Chase and Wilson. "And we will go down to the ER."
Chase looked confused. "Why?"
"To see if the stiffness is a symptom." With that he followed the path Vikki had taken out of the office, leaving Wilson and Chase to stand up and scramble after him.
"Hi." Cameron reached the glass and her eyes smiled up at House on the other side. The diagnostician, for his part, couldn't help but notice the slightly awkward way she held her head because of, he assumed, the stiffness in her neck.
"Hi. Neck no better?" He gestured with his free hand but did not remove his eyes from her face.
"No. Neither is Stephen's leg."
"So it is a symptom." House considered this for a moment before deciding to go with his gut reaction. He inhaled deeply. "Oh good."
Cameron lifted an eyebrow delicately and placed one hand on her hip in that beguiling way of hers. "Good?"
Preoccupied by her stance it took House a moment or two to sufficiently gather his thoughts to respond. "I mean..." He groped uselessly with the words which refused to come and promptly gave up, gesturing impatiently with his hand in that highly distracting way of his. "You know what I mean. It's not TB. Means we won't need to wait two days for the Mantoux test to tell us what we already know."
She looked down at her forearm. House couldn't see from where he was stood but he guessed she was looking at the injection site. She fingered it carefully, tracing around it while he watched.
"Good. I was hoping it wasn't TB." She sounded distracted, as though her mind was miles away. She looked back up, letting her arm fall to her side. "So what else could it be? Whooping cough?"
"Test for pertussis came back negative." Chase said from behind House and Wilson cleared his throat.
"Not pulmonary fibrosis either." Wilson said and Cameron's eyes widened.
"Pulmonary fibrosis? That seems unlikely. You're really not leaving anything to chance are you?"
"No." House said quickly.
"Seems unlike you." She said softly and smiled when he met her eyes.
He made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and shifted on the spot. "What? I don't take chances with... okay I do but not too many. Not when it's serious. And not now."
Cameron nodded. "Noted and appreciated." Even behind the mask she wore, House could see Cameron's grin and responded in kind but their happy moment was disrupted by her violent cough.
He looked around him and then back at Cameron and was about to say something else to her when he was interrupted before he could even start when Vikki walked up behind Chase and Wilson, smiling tentatively at Cameron and then biting her lip when House turned to look at her.
