A Rush Of Blood To The Head – Chapter X
Meredith had hurriedly put on her white coat and clipped her pager on when there was a ding and the elevator doors opened. Derek stood inside, hand in his coat pockets. Meredith smiled wryly and walked in and pressed a button on the side. The doors closed. Derek smiled slyly and looked at Meredith. "What have you been up to?"
"Oh, just breaking into a patient's house. You?"
"Craniotomy." Derek looked Meredith up and down, smiling. "Hey you know what I miss?" Meredith looked at Derek. "Kissing in the elevator. I used to love kissing in the elevator." Meredith looked away, smiling. "Whatever happened to kissing in the elevator?"
"Addison."
Derek looked away. "Ah... But I miss kissing in the elevator. We used to do it all the time."
"We've only kissed in the elevator once."
"All the more reason to do it again!" Derek came closer to Meredith.
Meredith began to falter. "We're going slow... remember? You're having...space."
Derek moved closer to her, his hands clasped behind him, leaning into her so close, all she could see were his deep blue eyes. "I am?" He murmured.
Meredith swallowed and tried to keep her composure. "You..."
There was a ding. Quickly Meredith broke away from Derek, who was still smiling cheekily. The doors opened to reveal people waiting for the elevator. Some moved in between Meredith and Derek.
"Should we take the stairs? Or maybe the pre-op room?" Derek smiled.
"I have to go back to the conference room."
"What's wrong with your guy now?"
"I got a page from Bailey. Apparently he's just had a renal failure."
Derek looked stunned. "Renal failure? How does that work?"
"I don't know." The doors opened, Meredith walked out of the elevator. "That's what I'm going to find out. Nice to speak with you Dr Sheppard."
Derek moved his head so he could call out through the now closing elevator doors. "I'll meet you in the stair-well in five!"
Meredith smiled to herself and turned to the conference room.
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"We're missing something."
House was leaning on his cane next to the whiteboard, fist up to his lips. The interns and his ducklings had been sitting in the conference room for an hour, drilling out possible causes. When House heard about the renal failure he was stumped. Three seemingly unconnected symptoms and not one clue what it was.
Foreman rubbed his face with his hands and sat back in his seat. "His blood work was negative, no infection. Tox screen was negative, Bone marrow test was negative, Lumbar puncture was negative, CT was negative, everything is negative. Is that a clue?"
"What about a rhino-virus." Alex blurted out, no idea what else say.
House stoped and looked at him. "I'm not even going to acknowledge that with a brilliant quip."
"ALS?" Cameron sighed.
"Wouldn't have caused the brain haemorrhage." House looked at the whiteboard again and got up from leaning on his cane. "What causes your brain to bleed?"
Chase too had run out of ideas. "TTP?"
"Well, seeing how the patient's neither a girl, nor 11 years old, I'm going to ignore that injection."
Christina looked up from the text books she had been avidly flipping through. "We've tried everything."
House looked back to the whiteboard. "What if the scaring on the chest films wasn't from the surgery."
Meredith looked up from her coffee. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what if it was a symptom? What if his renal failure was there before? During the surgery, the kidneys shut down, but it wasn't noticed. The toxins moved into the abdomen and caused the bleeding. But how does that connect to the brain? It doesn't fit."
George looked at the chart again. "There was some scaring around his heart."
"I said the brain, not the heart. You obviously get confused about which one to listen to." House started pacing. "All these things, there trying to tell us something. But what?" House stopped at the board again. "It's like the boy who cried wolf. All these symptoms; the renal failure, the seizures, the scaring: they're all unimportant. The body screams them out to call attention to it. And we get interested. But then the tests come out negative. They don't make sense, and we try and figure out what it means when there is no point. Because the boy has seen the wolf, but we are ignoring because of all these other symptoms. That's what we need to focus on: the wolf. The blood in the head is the wol..." House suddenly stopped. "How's the calcium in his T-Cells?"
George quickly flicked through the file. "Ah, increased. Why?"
House stood there next to the board, in deep thought. Suddenly he turned around and sprang out the door. Chase jolted up and followed him as quickly as he could, all the others, before the realised what was happening, followed Chase. What was House doing?
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Amazed at how fast the cripple could move, Meredith pulled up to the lab with everyone else, looking through the glass walls to House, now enveloped in his activity. Pulling out the bone marrow sample from the fridge he put it in a test tube and added some chemicals to it. Shaking it lightly he put it in the processor. As it began to spun, House moved to the computer and turned it on, still oblivious to the group starting at him through the glass. After a while, the machine stopped. House clicked on to the results and held his breathe. Meredith watched as his face suddenly became grave. Getting up from the computer he walked over to the door and opened it, walking past Meredith and the others.
"It's Lupus." He said deeply as he passed the others and walked down the hallway.
Everyone's heart sank. Foreman sighed. How was he going to explain this?
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NB: Ok, one of my main aims in the story was for someone to actually have Lupus. And I did! Go me! Included some Mer/Der (in case you hadn't noticed...) which I was always going to do but you just have to give it time, things will happen over time. Time time time. Ok, shutting up. Anywho, you know the drill: If you hate, love, like, are impartial to, have some mistakes to fix up in this story then REVIEW!! Thanks mate!