Hi everyone.

Sorry it's been a while but it's been a busy week. This chapter is longer than the others though so I hope that makes up for it. From next week my life is set to become a whole lot busier so the next update and the ones after that might take a bit longer but I will try to never leave it too long between updates.

Good news is, I've planned the rest of this out chapter by chapter so I now know where I'm going with it and how long it's going to last. At the moment it looks like it will be about nineteen chapters long but that might change if I combine chapters if I think they're too short.

Thanks for your patience and have a nice day.

Jenny.

Total Lockdown.

Chapter 10.

Wilson took one look at House's tired, pale face and sighed. He hadn't really expected House to sleep for long during the night but by the looks of it he hadn't slept at all. In fact, he didn't look like he had moved. He was sitting behind the desk, staring into space with the medical files belonging to Cameron, Holly and Stephen in front of him.

"Did you get any sleep?" Wilson asked as he placed his bag against the wall and collapsed in the chair facing House.

House didn't look at him; just continued staring into space. "Tried. Thought I heard my pager so I stopped."

Wilson knew he was lying but chose not to start lecturing House on the importance of sleep. He could look after himself. "Has your pager gone off?"

House shook his head, still not looking Wilson in the eye. "I thought I heard it once but it might have been a dog outside. There's been nothing from the ER."

"I suppose that's something. She's not got any worse."

"I was going to go down there but I figured she'd be asleep anyway. We'll wait for the others to get here and then go and see what's going on. I would have been told if any of them had deteriorated but we need to know exactly what's going on; if there's been any improvement at all, even if it's only a small one."

House blindly reached for his Vicodin bottle and swallowed two of the pills, washing them down his dry throat with the cup of coffee on his desk. He grimaced when he swallowed the uncomfortably cold liquid which, thinking about it, Wilson realised must have been at least twelve hours old.

Wilson pulled the cup away from House, standing as he did so and walking out of the door to the conference room. "Couldn't you have got up long enough to make some more coffee?" He called the question over his shoulder as he reached the sink and turned on the tap to rinse and wash the mug.

"No." House's voice was nearer than he expected and Wilson nearly dropped the mug in shock, but caught it before it fell and smashed in the sink. Turning his head, Wilson saw that House had followed him into the conference room and had slumped into the chair nearest the glass door to the corridor.

House watched silently as Wilson wash the cup and place it upside down by the side of the sink to dry.

"So you've had nothing to drink all night?" Wilson asked as he busied himself with the coffee machine. "Wouldn't it have been easier to just make yourself something?"

House leaned forwards, his elbows resting on the table. Wilson thought with a wry smile that if his own mother could see his friend now, House would be getting an earache from listening to her lecture about table manners. Mrs Wilson had been quite the authority on etiquette when James Wilson was growing up and had never quite left the frame of mind that her son and his friends required regular tutelage on the subject.

"In the years I've been here, I have never once made my own coffee. I wasn't going to start now so I decided to wait until you or one of the others came in." House stated simply.

Wilson was rather surprised at this. Not at being treated as House's personal barista- that was something he accepted with an ease that made him suspect he had been around House for far too long a time. No, what he was surprised about was that House, with all his claims of being independent and not needing anyone (until Cameron came along that was), had never once used the coffee machine in his own office.

"Never? You've never made your own coffee?"

House shrugged easily, the only contradictions to his relaxed air being his rumpled clothes and dark bags under his eyes.

"Never needed to. I always had a team to do it for me. First there was Chase but the less that's said about his coffee-making skills the better." House gave a mock-shudder as he remembered. "Rough, really rough. Then Allison came along. That was one of the questions I asked when I interviewed her actually- if she could make a decent cup. God knew I couldn't survive on Chase's attempts much longer. You know, if he hadn't served it up in a 'World's Best Boss' mug, I would have been sure he was trying to poison me. But you don't suck up that much to someone you're trying to off."

Wilson smirked. "I wouldn't be too sure if I were you. Maybe he was trying to make you sick so he could cure you and take over your job."

"No I'm too loveable. Anyway nobody wants this job that badly. All that paperwork, charting..."

"House when was the last time you did any charting?"

"Not the point. The point is that Chase adores me."

Wilson rolled his eyes while he poured the freshly brewed coffee into two mugs. "So Cameron's coffee skills were an improvement?"

"They could hardly have been worse than Chase's. Not the most wonderful in the world but when you look like Allison does, who cares? And she was better at it than anyone else so far."

"You keep track of these things?" Wilson handed House the red mug, which he accepted wordlessly, before sitting down on the opposite side of the table with his own drink.

"How else am I supposed to know who deserves the biggest Christmas bonus?"

"Maybe who works the hardest?"

"Too obvious. They'd be expecting that."

"So instead you calculate it on things that don't actually matter medically speaking like the best coffee-maker?"

House nodded. "I'm also in the process of working out the whiniest employee so far by counting the number of times they've gone running to Cuddy."

"Who's the frontrunner?"

"Don't know yet. Haven't got out of the idea stage."

"Put me down for twenty bucks on Cameron. She has a pretty good ethical compass."

Reminded (as if he'd forgotten) of Cameron, House looked over his shoulder towards the door. "Where are they? We need to go down to the ER."

Wilson pointed at the clock. "They aren't late yet. They've still got ten minutes."

House made an irritated noise in his throat, midway between a grunt and a whine and took a large gulp of his coffee, almost spitting it across the table when he found it was too hot. He managed to swallow it without wetting the surface and gave Wilson a dirty look.

"Coffee's meant to be hot House." Wilson said blithely and hid his own smile behind the rim of his mug.

Three minutes later Vikki walked in and, at Wilson's indication, grabbed a drink of coffee. Four minutes after her entrance, Chase followed. Before he had a chance to get more than a few steps inside the door, let alone pour himself coffee he found himself practically herded back out of the door by House, closely followed by Vikki and Wilson, who abandoned their drinks hastily to jog after House.

"The coughing seems to have eased up a bit in both Doctor Cameron and Mr Meyers this morning. Looks like the treatment is working but there isn't any significant improvement in any of the patients, and Miss Byrne is as bad as ever." The man, Doctor Jack Davies, said from inside the ER.

Chase, Vikki, Wilson and House stood in a line facing him and Jack Davies' eyes darted between them all, not entirely sure where to look. He pulled his lab coat further around him and pushed his hands deep into his pockets for lack of anything else to do.

"So it is SARS then?" Vikki enquired.

"Looks like it yes." The doctor in the ER said, carefully avoiding House's eyes for fear of how this piece of news would make him react. To everyone's surprise he was eerily calm, staring straight ahead and not shouting or demanding to see Cameron or himself.

"How's Cameron feeling?" Wilson asked, shooting a sideways glance at House, who pulled himself out of his reverie at the sound of the question and fixed his gaze on Jack Davies.

"She's asleep at the moment. She was awake a few minutes ago and seemed optimistic." Davies' eyes met House's before he continued. "She trusts you. She believes you found it early enough and the reduced coughing this morning seems to confirm that. She is, of course, still worried about Holly Byrne's condition as, although she has not started showing any more symptoms, she has not shown any improvement so far."

House nodded and Davies hesitated before speaking again. "Would you like me to get her?" He asked tentatively and then seemed to regret asking.

"No. Let her sleep." House replied and Davies relaxed in relief. He didn't think it was a good idea to wake her when she was still rather ill but he knew House and his reputation and wanted to make the offer in case House started making demands to see her and caused a scene.

"We're keeping a close eye on all three of them and we'll let you know if anything else happens. Is there anything else you'd like us to do?"

House rested more weight on his cane as he considered. "Just... let me know if any of them gets worse. Monitor Holly Byrne's condition very closely as I think she's our main worry right now."

"I will do. Anything else?" He paused before adding cautiously. "Any messages?"

House sighed, searching fruitlessly for words that would make it all better. "Just tell her... I was here and I'm taking care of it."

"That's all?"

House nodded and Davies left. Wilson turned his head to House. "That's all?"

House fixed him with a glare. "What else could I say? I'm not going to ask some man I don't know to tell her I love her, am I?"

Wilson said nothing else, but looked at his friend with that irritating sympathy back in his eyes.

"Okay. What now?" Chase asked, looking, as always, to House for guidance.

"Now we wait. Nothing else to do. I'm going back upstairs and because I want you all close by if any news comes in and we need to get back down here quickly, you're all coming too."

"And do what?" Vikki asked confused.

"We just sit in the conference room. It's what we always used to do when I worked for him and there was nothing to do." Chase told her.

"So we do nothing?"

"Not nothing. We find something to keep us occupied but which we can drop at a moment's notice if need be." Chase supplied. "I usually find the crossword in the newspaper."

Vikki rolled her eyes. "Let's go then."

"I'm bored." Vikki whispered to Chase half an hour later in the conference room, not loud enough for the sound to carry through to House's office, where he sat talking to Wilson with his feet on the desk.

Chase looked at her for a second before turning back to the newspaper he had on his lap and thumbing through it. Finding what he was looking for he tore a page out and handed it across to her. She took it and as soon as his hand was free once more he pulled a pen from his pocket and gave that to her too.

She looked at the ripped page in bemusement. "Sudoku?"

"Yeah. You know how to do them right?"

"Of course." She looked mildly offended at the insinuation but then grinned and leaned forwards to rest the page on the table. "Thanks."

Ten minutes later she sat up straight once more. "Finished."

Chase looked up in surprise. "Already?"

Vikki shrugged. "It was an easy one and I was obsessed a couple of years ago. I got pretty good at them. How's the crossword going?"

Chase glanced down at the maze of black and white boxes in front of him that was three-quarters completed. "Fine."

Vikki looked around the conference room in silence, the only noise in the room the scratching of Chase's pen nib on the newspaper and the sound of low male voices chatting in House's office.

After a few more minutes of quiet, during which Chase finished off his puzzle and Vikki studied the room which had been his workplace for over three years, Vikki jumped when Chase unexpectedly broke the spell.

"Have you seen that new movie at the cinema?" He didn't look up from the page where he was dutifully filling in the last answer to solve the crossword.

"Which one?" Vikki asked, thoroughly confused.

"Any of them."

"You're asking me if I've seen... any movies? In my whole life?"

"I'm asking if you'd like to go and see one."

"With you? Like a date?"

He finally looked up. "Just like a date." He confirmed. "After this is done I mean. We have to solve the case first but I just thought maybe you'd like to. I mean you did say once we would just be friends for now but that was three months ago and you thought I was still getting over Cameron and I'm definitely over her now." The longer Vikki went without speaking the more nervous Chase got and he started to backtrack.

"I mean, it's alright if you don't want to, I just thought I'd ask. Never mind." He looked down again and it was this more than anything that galvanised Vikki into action.

"No, no. I'd like to. I was just a bit surprised that's all." Chase looked back up to her and gave a smile which she returned warmly.

"Okay."

"Yeah." Her smile widened and she was about to say something else when the opening of the door to the corridor disturbed them.

A young woman with titian hair and a pale face stepped in. She wore denim jeans and a purple tee-shirt, which had a small tea stain at the bottom near the hem, and her brown eyes glanced between Chase and Vikki uncertainly.

She cleared her throat while Vikki and Chase stared. "Doctor House?"

Chase opened his mouth to respond when House's voice came from the entrance to his office. He and Wilson had evidently noticed the arrival of the woman and had come into the conference room to find out what was going on.

"That would be me. The devilishly handsome one over here. Who are you?"

"I was sent up by reception. They said I could find Doctor House here."

"Well, they had to get something right one of these days. I think they were hired out of pity. They might not have any organisational skills but if they can make some sort of attempt at reading and writing then they're in. Yes, I'm Doctor House. But you still haven't answered my question. Who are you?"

"Sorry." She stepped forward and shook her hair out of her face. "My name's Sian Lomax. You're treating my boyfriend, Stephen Meyers?"

Wilson nodded in recognition and stepped forward to shake Sian's hand. "Yes we are. That's Doctor House, I'm Doctor Wilson. At the table there we have Doctor Chase," he paused and gestured towards Chase, "and Doctor Tatum." He pointed towards Vikki who smiled at the woman in greeting.

"You're the girlfriend who was flying in from Missouri?" Wilson continued.

"Yeah, that's me. I came straight from the airport. How is he?"

"We've started treatment and he seems to be getting better." House was making no attempt to speak so Wilson took over the job of explaining while Chase and Vikki sat quietly.

"What does he have?"

"Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. SARS for short. It's a viral infection in the lungs. It's quite serious but we think we've caught it early enough."

Sian looked shocked. "Will he be alright?"

"Like I said, he's being treated and there seems to be some improvement but we can't really tell the extent of the damage just yet."

Sian looked briefly around the rest of the people in the room, her curious gaze resting just a bit longer on the silently staring man with the cane who looked as if he had slept about as much as she had.

Finally she looked back at Wilson. "Has Amy brought Liam in?"

Wilson looked confused. "Who?"

"Amy, his ex-wife, has she brought his son in to see him?"

"No, not yet. She was worried about infection but we've called and assured her that the quarantine was successful and all the cases are contained and she has agreed to bring him in after school today."

"Okay. I'll make myself scarce when she gets here. We... tolerate each other but she doesn't like dealing with me more than she has to."

Wilson nodded. "Would you like to go and see him now?"

Sian smiled gratefully but shook her head. "Just give me a minute. I want to change my shirt first." She scratched at the tea stain with her thumbnail. "We hit a bit of turbulence on the way in." She said by way of explanation for the stain.

"I'm sure we have a spare top somewhere you can change into." Vikki began to stand up from her chair as she spoke and moved to stand nearer to Sian.

"No need. I came directly from the airport. My suitcase is downstairs in reception. Security wouldn't let me bring it up here but they said they'd look after it for me. There's a change of clothes in there."

Vikki nodded. "I'll come down with you and show you where you can change and where the ER is. You can't go in but you'll be able to see him if he's feeling well enough."

Sian thanked her and then the other three in turn before leaving with Vikki to go downstairs. House stared after her, this woman who was in the same situation as himself and inhaled deeply as he tried to steady himself.