Seeing is Believing (Part 10)
House, M.D.
by Cheers
It was the screaming, a slightly strangled sound, from the throat of the deaf boy that unnerved Cameron. The pain was getting worse. The anesthetic otic solutions weren't helping anymore. The child had retreated to the arms of his mother who gently rocked him in an attempt to soothe. Chase was on the phone trying to get the CT scanner cleared so that they could get Bobby in as soon as possible. Foreman had gone to Radiology in an attempt to see what the hold up was. All of them stopped what they were doing when they heard the code called over the hospital speaker system.
CODE BLUE. ICU 2-5-1. CODE BLUE. ICU 2-5-1. CODE BLUE. ICU 2-5-1.
A respiratory therapist was attempting to ventilate House's lungs with an Ambu bag and one hundred percent oxygen. His oxygen saturations remained in the low seventies. His heart rate had risen to nearly two hundred. He was having dangerous ectopy, a result of the hypoxia, and his blood pressure had dropped precipitously in response. The code team waited impatiently at his bedside for the portable X-ray machine to arrive so they could see what was happening in his chest. Dr. Faxton worked to place a radial arterial line in the patient's right wrist. As soon as the artery was cannulated Dr. Faxton drew a sample and handed it to a waiting nurse. "Stat ABGs," he ordered. Arterial blood gases would tell them just how hypoxic House was at that moment. He and Wilson both felt that House's right lung had collapsed again despite the chest tube. The diminished nature of his breath sounds due to the ARDS and the suction from the chest tube made it difficult to determine how severe the pneumothorax was with auscultation.
Lisa Cuddy arrived at ICU room 251 just as the arterial line was being connected to the bedside monitoring system. Mr. and Mrs. House stood in the hallway outside their son's room watching the activities designed to keep their son alive. Blythe clutched to the cross that hung around her neck and John clutched his wife to his side. The alarms from the bedside were relentless. Lisa wanted nothing more than to join the team in House's room and try to help. But they didn't need her help, she knew that. Helping always made her feel better, less vulnerable to the forces of death that threatened the patient. Seeing the Houses made her aware that they needed her more than she needed to address her own feelings of helplessness.
"Mr. and Mrs. House?" she said moving to stand between them and the windows of their son's ICU room. "I'm Dr. Cuddy … Lisa. I work with your son."
Blythe took her eyes off Greg long enough to meet Lisa's gaze. "You're his boss," she said matter-of-factly.
Lisa nodded, "Yes."
"Can you tell us what's going on with our son?" John asked, fear and urgency mixing to give his question an edge.
Lisa had half expected this. She knew House's father was a retired Marine pilot. She also knew that the son hated his father. Despite that, here that father was, understandably concerned and upset. She pointed to the atrium sitting area at the end of the hall. "We should go down here," she said, trying to usher them away from the room. While doing so she nodded to the nurse standing closest to the windows and gestured with her head to the blinds indicating that they should close them.
The Houses were startled slightly when the nurse moved forward and closed the blinds blocking their view of their son. "What the hell?" and "No, please," were uttered simultaneously.
Lisa tried again. "Really, we should go down here."
John was angry now. "That's our son in there. We have to know what's going on." His voice took on a stern edge that Lisa knew was designed to intimidate. How many times had she heard House do exactly the same thing?
"Mr. House," she looked directly into his eyes, "standing here is not going to help. The team in there knows what they're doing. We need to let them do it." She kept her words quiet but firm.
The portable X-ray machine rolled up to the doorway at that moment and Lisa pulled the glass door sideways to let the tech move it through and then closed the door behind. For the few seconds the door was open the unmuffled sounds of the bedside alarms again assailed the hallway. She would swear she heard James Wilson say "Thank God" as the Radiology tech entered.
Turning back to the Houses Lisa noticed that Blythe was pale. She reached out and touched the woman's arm. "I think you should sit down, Mrs. House."
John turned to regard his wife and seemed to soften as he realized that Dr. Cuddy was right. Taking his wife's arm to give her support, he finally began to move away from their son's room toward the atrium.
The cold faded as the intensity of the light increased. 'How white can white get?' he wondered. As he did the white around him pulled back.
He found himself standing in a hallway of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Before him three people ran down the hall to reach an ICU room. He recognized all three - Robert Chase, Allison Cameron, and Eric Foreman. They all looked scared. He frowned slightly. They shouldn't be there. They had all left.
He felt an overwhelming urge to look behind him. Turning he moved up the hallway to see three other people he recognized - Lisa Cuddy and his mom and dad. Cuddy sat facing his parents who held onto each other in the familiar way married couples do when they were facing something that was frightening, something that they couldn't control.
His mother was crying. Cuddy was concerned. His father was…. What did he see in his father's face?
He could have sworn it was fear.
Every nurse, tech, and housekeeper in the hospital knew what room Dr. House was in. Hospitals, no matter how large, were really small places. Once the code was called everyone knew that there was something wrong, desperately wrong, with Dr. House – the same doctor who had been on the news all morning. The only thing faster than the rumor mill at a hospital was the rumor mill at a hospital the day after the clinic pharmacy was robbed. The actions of Dr. House had already passed into legend. It was amazing how many off duty staff members just happened to be in the clinic yesterday. The stories, some embellished, some fabricated, ran from person to person, unit to unit.
Hadn't House been brave? Well, he should have been shouldn't he? That poor woman and her boy. Did you know they were deaf? Couldn't hear a thing. Dr. Cuddy was the one who really saved them. You wouldn't expect that from House, now, would you? He's never shown any sign of giving a damn. I always knew he was kind. It's the leg that makes him such a bastard. It was an old patient just like last time. That's silly, the pharmacy had been robbed you know. Just a ruse. They never caught the guy last time. I always thought he tried to commit suicide. No he never! Well, he's just getting what he deserves. He's a hero, saving that little boy like that. Not even sure there was a patient in that exam room. Just trying to get out of the line of fire, that's what I think. Not fast enough 'cause of the bum leg. He'd have done better if he wasn't half stoned. But the video? Didn't you see him push them? They were there and he saved them. It's as simple as that. They're coding him now. He's not going to make it. You can only cheat death so many times. He'll make it. He's made it before.
Dorothy watched the various employees as they moved about the pediatric unit performing the duties that kept the flow of care going in a hospital. No one had to tell her that the man who had saved her and her son was in trouble. She watched as they told each other.
She looked back to the sleeping figure of her boy. Dr. Chase had given him a sedative and told her they would have to wait for at least another hour before Bobby could get the CT scan he needed to see what was causing the pain in his ear. The tears slid relentlessly down her face. She didn't bother to try and wipe them away. Those tears were for two people – her son because he remained in pain and they still didn't know why and Dr. House because he was fighting for his life because of her son. Both circumstances were unfair but then, in her experience, life was never fair.