WARNINGS: major character death; season six spoilers; addiction; sex; violence

NOTES: I apologize for this chapter falling so close to current canon events, but I hope you'll enjoy it all the same. I really appreciate all of your feedback and positivity on this story so far, and I hope that you'll stick with me over the coming months regardless of what happens on the show. All I can promise is that I'm trying in every way I know how to give us closure with this story in the event that it doesn't happen in canon. (Although I really think it will.)


Chapter Nine

Cameron leads the way back into the diagnostics office when they return from searching Claire's apartment, a welcome change from feeling left behind in everything the past couple of weeks. Chase has a grocery bag full of all the medications that were in the bathroom drawers and cabinet, just in case anything turns out to be relevant. Besides the puppy, nothing else had seemed particularly notable in terms of Claire's ear problems, but Chase had insisted on taking the time to feed the dog before returning to the hospital. Foreman has his back to them now, writing on the whiteboard and pausing every few moments to erase what he's just scribbled down.

"Girl's hiding a puppy in her apartment." says Chase, setting the bag on the table with a clatter of pills being jostled. "What's wrong with you?"

"Patient developed severe left orbital pain and double vision," says Foreman, not turning around. "And she can't close her eye. She was in too much pain for me to do a full exam after the fact, but I think we're looking at sixth facial nerve palsy."

He sounds frustrated, Cameron thinks, and she wonders whether she's made a mistake in leaving so early in the case. She has to admit that if Chase always acts this way at work, he doesn't need supervision. And yet, Cuddy's warning is still fresh in her mind , and she can't help wondering whether he's only performed so well because she's been watching. It isn't a fair suspicion, but she can't afford to be wrong.

"Brain tumor?" asks Cameron, moving to stand over his shoulder so that she can see what he's been writing.

"I don't know," Foreman growls, looking like he's about ready to throw the marker at the board. He didn't used to get upset this easily over cases, Cameron thinks. "She started screaming in pain in the middle of the CT. Couldn't stay still. I had to get her out of there and shoot her up with an IV full of morphine. She's maxed out now and still in pain."

Cameron winces sympathetically. Claire isn't a patient she would have expected to go from a minor infection to severe intractable pain in a matter of hours, but she spent enough time working with House to know better than to trust that assumption.

"What about an intracranial abscess?" asks Chase, coming to stand by the whiteboard as well, evidently too engrossed in the case to stick to his habit of keeping as much distance from her as possible. "Brain tumor wouldn't likely get this much worse this fast."

Cameron nods. "Increasing intracranial pressure?"

Foreman frowns, tapping the back of the marker against the edge of the board, staring at it like he might be able to read something else in the list of words if he looks long enough. "Not likely. To cause localized pain and paralysis like that, an abscess would have to be in exactly the right location."

"Okay," Chase says dryly. "What about an abscess in exactly the right location?"

"What about the rest of the neurological exam?" asks Cameron, hoping to stop this argument before it can start.

Foreman sighs. "Sixth and seventh facial nerve palsies we already discussed. Nothing relevant besides that. She's awake and alert. Seems like a nice girl. Lab tests all came back normal too. Nothing."

"We need to get an MRI," Cameron decides. "That'll tell us if it's a tumor or an abscess. Or neither. And make sure to get the temporal bones as well. If it's not in her brain, it really still could be her ear."

"We should do a lumbar puncture too," says Chase, and Cameron jumps a little, having forgotten he's standing so close. "Rule out meningitis. It's unlikely with no fever, but we can't risk assuming."

Foreman nods. "And let me guess. You want me to do all the testing."

"You are the neurologist," says Cameron.

"I'll do the LP," says Chase. "You do the MRI." He turns to Cameron before heading out the door, smirking in a way that she can't quite read. "You—do administrative bullshit, Boss."

The locker is almost entirely empty. Cameron has a box of the things she cleared out of her old locker, sitting in the closet of her childhood bedroom back in Chicago, a reckless jumble she's never bothered to look back on. Still, this seems like a good opportunity to steal a little quiet while Chase and Foreman are running their tests. It takes her four tries to turn the new combination, her fingers feeling unaccustomed and clumsy.

Inside the locker is a thin layer of dust, and Cameron trails a fingertip idly through it, tracing meaningless patterns on the shelf. Someone has left a tiny mirror on the inside of the door, and she wonders for a moment whether there was anything in her old locker for its new occupant to find. She realizes suddenly that she doesn't remember which one it was, and that thought is oddly distressing.

She's brought the bottle of cleaner that was left over from their day going through House's inner office, and she steps back now, spraying the inside of the locker thoroughly. The scent of artificial lemon is almost overwhelming as Cameron leans forward again, swiping all of the dust out with a wad of paper towels. It takes scarcely more than a few seconds, and yet it's immensely satisfying.

Tossing the paper towels into the nearby trash can, Cameron stills for a moment, surveying the empty inside again. It feels as though she ought to have something to put inside it now, to claim it as her own in more than just knowing its code. But all of her things are still at home; this space seems almost redundant when she's not truly settled anywhere in Princeton. It's time to find an apartment now, she knows. Turning to leave, she slips her hand into her pocket and then freezes again when her fingers brush the edge of her unused plane ticket for the return trip to Chicago.

It has to be more than a coincidence, she thinks, finding it now, at this particular moment. Pulling it out, she reads it slowly, then sets it on the floor of the locker and stands letting its weight shift off of her. Taking a breath, finally, Cameron takes hold of the door and starts to close it, whirling around with a shock when Chase's reflection suddenly appears in the mirror.

"What the hell?"

Chase looks unamused at her reaction. "LP was negative. Foreman's doing the MRI now."

"And you needed the stealth approach to tell me that because...?" Cameron frowns.

Chase just shrugs, and Cameron finds herself suddenly filled with a wave of frustration. She's managed to keep herself from thinking of it again until now, but beneath it all she knows that they were close to something in that moment at Claire's apartment. And yet it slipped away again, and the void left behind is somehow the most painful thing she's experienced since being back.

"Don't try to pretend that what you did to Foreman was anything resembling what you did to me," Chase says at last, acidly, as if he's just read her mind.

Cameron bites her lip and presses her back to the wall of lockers, not knowing how to respond.

"I needed you," he continues, with a soft intensity that turns her blood to ice.

"I know," Cameron whispers, swallowing. This is an attack, she knows, in the most personal way, but it's also a chance she was all but certain would never come again. "But—you wouldn't let me help you. What choice did I have?"

"You always had a choice!" Chase snaps, pushing himself away from the wall.

"After what you said?" Cameron crosses her arms, aware of her voice getting louder but feeling a strange sense of disembodiment, as though she's drowning in the sudden remembered anger and grief. "What was I supposed to do?"

"You weren't supposed to leave!" Chase shouts, finally exploding, and Cameron flinches, hoping no one is around to hear. He takes a breath, visibly trying to get control of himself. "I never expected you to leave."

"You forced me out of your life," she insists weakly, but his last admission seems to have shaken the ground beneath her feet. She has never actually considered that giving in to his spiteful demands might have been the real mistake, that his crime hasn't changed him too entirely for her to love. Three years ago there had been nothing visible beyond the hurt, the confusion, the sudden betrayal. "I thought you made it pretty clear that you needed to deal with your demons alone."

"I needed my wife to help me," Chase says, with the same quiet bitterness as before. He is shaking, badly.

Cameron flinches again, feeling as though she's taken a punch to the gut, and breath won't seem to come. She leans more heavily on the lockers and clenches her jaw. "Then why didn't you tell me that? I practically begged you to let me help."

"Right," Chase spits, retreating entirely behind the facade of anger and hate again. "I deserved to burn in hell. Believe me, I know."

Cameron opens her mouth to attempt a response, but is interrupted by the door swinging open. She catches her breath in momentary panic before recognizing Foreman. He stops short, glancing back and forth between them several times as if choosing a response.

"Gradenigo syndrome," he says matter-of-factly, as though he hasn't just stumbled into the middle of a warzone. When no one else speaks, he continues. "MRI confirmed it. Explains the pain, bleeding, discharge. Even the facial paralysis. Probably triggered by an allergic reaction to that dog. Made her vulnerable to the bacteria. Infection ate away at the bones of her inner ear and caused the neurological symptoms."

Cameron swallows and draws in a shaky breath, trying to force herself to focus for the sake of the patient. "Good. Start her on broad spectrum antibiotics and steroids. She should be fine in a few weeks."

Foreman nods.

"Fantastic," Chase says sourly, though the previous moment's rage seems to have been buried again for the moment. "I'm going home."

It's the middle of the day still, but Cameron finds herself completely unable to protest. Everything feels shifted, somehow, and she finds herself impossibly disoriented in the familiar world of her own emotions.


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