Wow, a new chapter! Double wow, it's over 2000 words! If only French coursework was as easy as this... Seriously though, I just want to say thank you to everyone has reviewed so far; especially if I didn't reply to a review. Alerts went 'funny' on me and I think I missed some, so if you reviewed and I didn't reply, sorry and thank you.
On with the chapter!
"How do you lose a post-coma patient?" Cameron asked the nurse in a terrifyingly low voice. She even made House nervous, he had never seen her display this kind of anger before. Shouting yes, silence yes, but never this dark, intense, almost murderous anger. Blonde nurse, whose real name was Dannie, was cowering under the force of Cameron's rage.
"I'm sorry…" she stammered weakly, "You left intructions that she wasn't to be disturbed." The sounds of Cameron's palms hitting the counter-top of the nurses' station bounced off the walls.
"Disturbed means you don't go in and wake her up!" She yelled furiously, and Dannie's shoulders shook visibly in terror. "Are you stupid? Post-coma patients need consistent observation; you don't just ignore them for two hours!"
"Cameron," House finally said, stepping in and taking a hold of her arm. She whipped around to look at him, eyes blazing.
"What?" she snapped. He tightened his hold on her a little, led her away from the nurses' station. She was quivering with anger, her pulse racing underneath his grip.
"Is that really making you feel better?" he asked quietly.
"Yes." She lied, but her expression gave her away; her bottom lip began to quiver and suddenly her eyelashes were spiked with tears.
We'll find-" House's reassurance was interrupted by the shrill ringing of the telephone. Nurse Dannie jumped a half-mile out of her skin before snatching up the handset. She listened for a few seconds then glanced towards Cameron; seeming equally terrified and piteous in one simple look.
"Dr. Cameron…they found her." She hesitated, and in an instant Cameron was flush against the nurses' station, desperate for this tiny glimmer of hope.
"Where is she? Is she in the hospital? Is she ok?" she fired questions at the nurse, eyes almost wild and searching for something, anything that Dannie could give her.
"She's on the roof." came the small reply, and House saw Cameron falter, the angry blush of her cheeks was instantaneously washed away and she looked deathly pale. He moved forward and slipped his arm around her, gripping her left elbow to support her. Cameron leaned into him and allowed him to guide her towards the stairs. Cameron being Cameron, she broke through her own daze to wait patiently on each step for him, feeling a wrench of emotion as he determinedly climbed the steps.
As they reached the top of the impossibly long ascent, Cameron could hear muffled voices from the other side of the door and she stopped abruptly, terrified of what she was going to find. House reached out and turned the handle for her, moving back so that they could see together. She felt his hand on her elbow again, steadying her...
It wasn't like they expected, although neither Cameron nor House were exactly sure what they had thought they would find on the roof. As it was, the scene that lay before them was almost a relief. Three figures were sat in the snow, opposite the doorway with their backs against the low brick wall, so that when House and Cameron finally stumbled through the doorway they could clearly see that in the middle, flanked by two stereotypical security guards, was Hayley. Her head was resting on the shoulder of one of the men, and from his position it looked to House as if the teenager was barely conscious. Cameron rushed over to her sister, and knelt in front of her.
"What did you think you were doing?" she whispered furiously through the tangle of their hair as she pulled the younger girl into a hug, before pulling backwards sharply. She laid a hand flat against Hayley's forehead, feeling the searing hot skin beneath her palm. She looked back over her shoulder to House, who was stood trying to surreptitiously catch his breath.
"She's burning up. Her fever must be at least 101." Cameron told him, and Hayley began to cry, mumbling vaguely.
"It was too hot, and I was too…on fire and the snow was cold. I like the snow." Cameron took in the fact that the sweater and jeans that she was given her sister were drenched, and freezing cold. Hayley had brought herself to the roof to lie in the snow, and get cool House realised, and even through his confusion as to how Hayley had suddenly developed a fever in the hundreds he was impressed at her thinking.
"We need to get her downstairs, and into a clean room." He told Cameron and she asked the beefier of the two security guards to pick up her sister. The man, Kevin, did as she had asked, lifting the teenager easily despite her protestations. Cameron laced her fingers through Hayley's as the younger girl tried to kick out in an effort to get Kevin to let her down.
"Why a clean room?" Cameron asked House as they followed the two security guards, plus Hayley, down the stairs. Cameron instinctively reached out to support House and he tried to ignore the gesture as he answered,
"High fever, possible hallucinations-" Cameron opened her mouth to object and he held a hand up to stall her, "Cameron, what healthy person thinks the best way to lower a fever is to lie in the snow?" Cameron obediently closed her mouth and he continued. "Possible hallucinations, and from what you've given us from her history she has a sustained vulnerability to infection. I don't know what she has right now, but we need to stop her getting anything else before we figure out why this is happening. Are you on the same lines here, or do I need to write it down?"
Cameron allowed herself a small smirk at the typical 'House' wisecrack. She knew he didn't mean it as an insult or something stupid like that, he was trying to make her feel better; like what was happening to her sister wasn't some great and terrifying illness but something that he would easily be able to fix. And she was grateful.
"99.8" Cameron said, walking over to the glass wall that divided her and House, and holding the thermometer up so that he could see the reading. Hayley was curled semi-conscious on a bed in the clean-room, somewhere in the limbo between asleep and awake. She was wearing a regulation hospital gown; all the clothes she had been wearing were soaked and freezing from where she had lain in the snow.
"Down another four points, that's better." He confirmed, and jerked his head to show that Cameron should join him in the hallway. She turned, walked away and set the thermometer down on the unit beside Hayley's bed before walking back and standing opposite him; the glass separating them. House raised his eyebrow. "You aren't supposed to be in there. Out, now." He instructed and she folded her arms obstinately.
"No, House." Cameron insisted. "I'm staying in here."
"Glass walls, you can see her just as easily from this side as that one. Now come on!"
"I can't."
"It's a relatively easy concept Cameron. One foot in front of the other, repeat until you reach the wall. Press the button, walk through conveniently placed hole in said wall; sometimes called a door, and then out here." Cameron smirked, and then jumped in shock when a small giggle came from behind her.
"He thinks he's being funny." Hayley murmured weakly, as Cameron rushed over to the bed.
"Hey." She said gently, sliding stray tendrils of Hayley's hair away from her hot, damp, forehead. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I'm on fire."
"You have an ear infection; it caused a really high fever." Cameron told her sister, noting that the younger girl's cheeks were still flushed red.
"Was I on the roof?" Hayley asked, suddenly remembering two burly figures and a lot of snow.
"Apparently you thought lying in the snow was a good way to bring your fever down." Cameron answered, allowing a hint of sarcasm to break through.
"Sorry." Hayley said through a yawn and Cameron smiled affectionately.
"You're back now. But you have to stay in here for a while." She indicated the clean room; with its lack of any non-essential furniture, the complex vacuum doorway and the air-lock box in the middle of the wall.
"You stuck me in the bubble?" Hayley's voice cracked and tears rushed to her eyes as she gazed around the sparse room. From his position on the other side of the glass House couldn't hear exactly what she was saying, she spoke quietly but he could see she was distressed. Cameron's voice however was it's usual clear tone; he could hear her perfectly.
"We had to. Hayley, your fever was so high you hallucinated and wandered onto a roof. You could have been really hurt."
"But I wasn't!" Hayley protested as a tear fell down her hot cheek. She brushed it away, angry with herself for crying.
"Hayley this is serious. Today it was an ear infection, tomorrow it could be something worse."
"What do you mean?" Hayley asked, and Cameron cast her eyes around the room searching for a stool or something else to sit on. She tutted at her own stupidity; no chairs in a clean room, and lowered the safety rail on the bed. House watched as she curled her legs up beneath her, a girlish gesture that made him think of toe-nail painting and sleepovers.
"House thinks that there's something behind all of this, that there's a reason why you keep getting sick. But while we figure it out you have to stay in here because there are far worse things than ear infections floating around this hospital and we can't afford for you to catch anything. Do you understand?"
"Michelle hated clean rooms." Hayley muttered, her eyes focused intently on the pattern of her hospital gown.
"And whenever she had to stay in one you would stand on the other side and make her laugh. Remember when she tried to teach you poker and you had to trade jelly beans through the air-lock?" Cameron replied, holding a hand underneath Hayley's chin and lifting her face upwards; so that they were eye-to-eye.
"I don't like jelly beans anymore." Hayley told her sister, and Cameron laughed.
"If you're lucky I'll steal House's iPod." At the sound of his name House rapped his cane on the wall.
"Cameron, out now." He called through the glass, and Hayley giggled at the sound of his muffled voice.
"Go on." She said, and Cameron leaned forward to kiss her sister's forehead.
"I promise you won't be in here a minute longer than is absolutely necessary."
"I'll hold you to that." Hayley said, as Cameron slid off the bed and walked towards the door. She pressed the button and tried not to laugh when House said,
"See, told you it was easy."
A few seconds later she was stood on House's side of the glass, watching Hayley as she wandered around the clean room.
"She's going to be fine." House told the younger doctor and she sighed, her breath misting the glass slightly. She scrubbed the mark away with her sleeve.
"I know. I just wish I could make her 'fine' sooner."
"Foreman and Chase are coming in early, I called them earlier. You up for a differential?" he asked, with what might have been an anxious glance at his youngest employee. "You didn't get any sleep last night, and I'm betting not much the night before."
"You are not cutting me out of the differential." She told him, and he held his hands up in a gesture of mock-surrender.
"Would I dare?" he remarked. "I was just going to suggest that you might want to get some coffee beforehand." He tried to sound indifferent to his own idea; truth was he was worried about Cameron. Her concern for her sister was no doubt warranted but she had only left the hospital for a grand total of seven hours in the past three days, and he hadn't once seen her stop to eat anything.
"Coffee would be good…" Cameron replied, and knocked on the glass. Hayley turned around, stopping her close inspection of the air-lock, and waved at the two doctors.
"But…?" House asked, sensing a second part of her sentence was on it's way.
"Breakfast would be better."
And there it is...as always please please review, cos they make my world go round :P