ch 10

"Cameron! Calm down, it's ok, you're safe!" Allison heard Foreman's voice before she could properly focus her gaze. She was terrified for a moment, until she saw Foreman and Chase on both sides of her bed, bending over her trying to keep her still, and she realised that they really were Foreman and Chase, not the Scarecrow and the Lion. She looked around her and realized she was in a hospital room with all sorts of monitors and tubes attached to her. And House was standing at the foot of her bed.

"I'm home?" Allison asked. She saw House's eyebrows climb at her question, but he answered her, never the less.

"It depends on what you mean by home. I know you spend majority of your time in this hospital, especially when we have a case, but I wasn't aware that you were so fond of PPTH that you'd call it home."

"Can't you stop being sarcastic even for a moment" Foreman sighed in exasperation. "Now Cameron, we need to do some tests, but start with telling our names."

"I have concussion, then?" Allison asked.

"Names first, questions then, please" Chase demanded.

"Ok. But I think you have gotten awfully bossy all of a sudden Chase!" Allison said.

"One down, two to go," House voiced limping a little closer to her side.

"Foreman and House," Allison said. "Satisfied now?"

"Not completely, but I will be once you pass all the tests." House growled. "You gave us quite a scare. What do you remember?"

"I tripped and fell in your office. Judging by the time about an hour ago," Allison said.

"No, not an hour ago. It happened yesterday. You have been out of it for a whole day," Foreman informed her.

"What?" Allison exclaimed. "What happened? Surely I would not have been out for that long for a mere concussion?"

"No concussion," House confirmed. "You didn't exactly fall in my office, you passed out. We found an aneurysm in your frontal lobe. It was bleeding, but fortunately we got it before it was too late."

"We did at first think you had tripped and hit your head, especially since after a while you seemed to be regaining consciousness, but you went deeper again and we had to think of something else," Chase told her.

"Well, it was a good thing I was surrounded by the best doctors in the country, then." Allison said.

"Indeed!" House agreed. "But why did you wake up screaming? Pain?"

"Nightmare," Allison said. "Or a hallucination. I don't know which. I ended up as Alice in Wonderland, and it all felt too real. And way too weird, especially since it wasn't all Wonderland, but Oz, too. I was travelling with the Scarecrow and the Lion and they took me to the Tin Man, who turned out to be the Wicked Wizard and they wanted to have my brain and my nerves and my heart."

The three men looked at her inquiringly – even House, who usually hated "story-hours" – and Allison gave them a short version of her adventures in the Wonderland. However she did not tell them that the people in her dream had had some very familiar faces.

"Talk about neurosurgery!" Foreman commented after her story.

"Yikes! No wonder you were happy to be home," Chase said. "And no wonder you said you were home. You didn't mean PPTH so much as you meant just here and not there."

"I see," House mused. "In other words you visited the hollow men ... the stuffed men / Leaning together / Headpiece filled with straw. Alas/ Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless / As wind in dry grass / Or rats' feet over broken glass / In our dry cellar. Cannot have been very reassuring. Interesting though, that in a way you incorporated into your dream what was happening in reality. We really did cut into you brain, after all – though not to steal it."

"You think I was aware of what was happening to me, on some level, then?" Allison asked.

"Looks like it," Foreman said.

"Ok, kiddies, playtime is over," House said. "You can get all the details later. Cameron needs her rest."

Foreman and Chase knew their master's voice, so they took their leave from Cameron, promising to come again, before they left for the day. House stayed behind for a moment. He didn't say anything, just stood there in his infuriating way, looking at her, like he was waiting for some kind of a reaction or an outburst. Allison hadn't meant to say anything, but suddenly she found the words just leaping out of her mouth.

"I thought they were my friends!"