Thanks, everyone, for your comments and support. It's good to know that you recognize I'm trying something a little unusual here, and that you're with me on this journey.
-harp
Day Three, 3 p.m.
Allison Cameron entered the inquiry room after she was summoned. She approached the panel slowly, her head held high, a solemn expression on her face. She seated herself primly across from them, and waited.
"State your name."
"Dr. Allison Cameron."
"What is your current position, Dr. Cameron?"
"I'm the head of the ER at Chicago Presbyterian."
"Thank you for traveling to New Jersey to meet with us. You were one of Dr. House's fellows, correct?"
"Yes, I was." She swallowed the word was.
"You were hired in 2004?"
"Yes, that's right. I was hired after Dr. Chase, but before Dr. Foreman." The first time she'd met House, at her job interview, she'd been petrified. It was unlike any other job interview she'd ever had. A couple of days before, she had gotten her hair trimmed, deciding at the last minute to dye it brown, afraid if it stayed blonde, he'd think she was dumb. The morning of the interview, she'd carefully dressed in her best suit, trying to look both attractive and professional… emphasis on the professional.
Before she'd sent him her résumé, she had already heard about the infamous Dr. House's reputation - both good and bad – and, of course, as she sat across the desk from him, he immediately honed in on her insecurities about her skill and intellect. Then he'd made crude jokes about her flat figure, and had openly leered at her. When she answered his questions, she was sure he could hear the nervous quiver in her voice. Compulsively, she had tapped her right big toe inside her shoe, hoping her nerves would be redirected there and that he wouldn't notice how scared she was.
Cameron wanted this fellowship so desperately - in fact, she'd never wanted anything so much before in her entire life - but she left the interview positive that House would never hire her, that he thought she wasn't determined enough, or smart enough, or that she was just trading on her looks. She wasn't averse to using her appearance to help her, but she also wanted to be taken seriously. Later on, of course, once she had the job, she realized he made fun of everyone on the team, usually in as insultingly un-politically correct way he could, trying to see if he could shock them… and since she was so easily shocked in those days, she was teased most often.
Maybe she was a little slow on the uptake, but years after the fact, by which time she'd already moved on, both personally and professionally, she finally figured out that he never would have hired her if he hadn't thought her skill as a doctor brought something useful to the table. And it eventually dawned on her as well that maybe the reason he so often tried to distract his fellows and throw them off their game was to give them practice at staying focused when a patient's life was at stake. His methods might have been unorthodox, and God knows he could be offensive, disgusting and even abusive at times, but it was effective. They'd learned how to stick with the task at hand, no matter what was happening around them.
"Could you give us your impression of working for Dr. House at that time?"
She smiled, picturing those early days, the long hours doing nothing, sitting there waiting for something, anything, to happen that would justify their presence. "I think the word 'working' is an overstatement… at least at the beginning."
"What do you mean?"
"Dr. House seemed to spend more time avoiding work than actually working on cases. We - Dr. Chase and I, and later on, Dr. Foreman - spent a lot of time doing crossword puzzles and reading journals."
"How did you respond to this forced inactivity?"
"We didn't care much for it, frankly, but we were being paid. I later came to realize that Dr. House was still recovering from the physical and emotional after-effects of his leg injury, and it was pretty much all he could do just to show up. But we didn't know that at the time. He was always pretty good at hiding personal things."
"What ultimately changed?"
"Dr. Cuddy really pushed him. Unfortunately, she also pushed him to spent more time in the clinic."
"Why do you say 'unfortunately'?"
"I felt his talents were wasted down there, although every so often he would find a case for us among the clinic patients. I guess, it wasn't all bad, though, because by forcing him to do clinic duty, Dr. Cuddy probably helped get him motivated to take on more diagnostic cases… if only to avoid the clinic."
"How did you and Dr. House get along? Along the lines of what you were just telling us, we have been led to understand he could sometimes be difficult."
"Oh, I can't be very objective about that. I had a terrific crush on the man for a long time… a very long time, in fact. I saw him as a tragic, romantic figure, and kept trying to be more to him than just an employee. It's actually kind of embarrassing to talk about now." She blushed, remembering that mortifying dinner when he had nailed her emotionally, refusing to play the dating game, but insisting - as only House could - on giving her painful pinpoint laser insight into her own motivations.
"That's understandable. Let me rephrase: How did Dr. House treat you professionally?"
"Oh, the usual: He teased me, mocked me, prodded me, and forced me to use parts of my mind I hadn't even known existed." Of course, during that whole brain cancer scam, she had kissed him, thinking, with a distinct lack of rationality, that she somehow had the allure to be able to distract him enough to sneak a blood sample while his lips were otherwise occupied. How stupid she'd been! What had made her think she could actually extract a vial of blood without him either noticing or overpowering her?
"How did he tease you?"
"In my case, I was a young, naive, soft-hearted kid, really, and he seemed determined to make me grow up... and he did."
"Would you say that you changed during the time you worked for Dr. House?"
"Absolutely. I needed to hear what he had to say. I was far too idealistic in those days. I wore my heart on my sleeve, and I drove him crazy by constantly worrying about how he was feeling."
"So he didn't appreciate your concern?"
"Oh, God, no! The real problem was that I constantly drifted away from the medical cases to express my concern for him… always asking if he was in pain… that sort of thing… and that was the last thing he wanted. He didn't want a fuss made, and he especially didn't want pity."
"How did he react when you asked how he was feeling?"
"It varied," she said, catching herself before she rolled her eyes thinking about some of the horrible things he'd said to her. "Sometimes he made fun of me, sometimes he ignored me, sometimes he changed the subject, but most often he simply yelled at me to do my job. It's embarrassing to admit now, but he was right. I wasn't being paid to make goo-goo eyes at him or play nursemaid. I was there to do what he'd hired me to do, which was to use my brain to save a patient's life. Under the circumstances, I suppose I should consider myself lucky he didn't fire me." And why hadn't he? she suddenly wondered.
"Would you say he taught you to toughen up?"
"I guess so, although I never really lost my ability to empathize with people - it's actually served me well in the ER I run in Chicago - but I no longer try to avoid the harsh realities of life. I owe that to Dr. House."
"Could you give us an example of how he helped you to confront the 'harsh realities of life'?"
What immediately came to mind was something she didn't feel comfortable disclosing… when she had euthanized Ezra Powell. That whole case had challenged her then-simplistic views of right and wrong. Here was a man who had done terrible things in order to have a positive outcome, and here was a situation where the only time House had ever said he was proud of her was when she'd killed that same man, but for good reasons. She'd always wondered if she'd been willing to euthanize Powell only because she'd been so disgusted by the work he'd done. If he'd been someone blameless, would she have had the compassion to ease him out of life? And hadn't she ultimately done exactly what Ezra Powell had - committed an unspeakable act because the end result was a good one?
In retrospect, given that situation, she wished she could have been a little less judgmental when Robert had done the same thing, but with vastly different motives. It was all overwhelming and confusing… but damn, if it hadn't helped her grow up. Cameron decided she must be one of those people destined to learn her lessons the hard way.
Instead, she went with: "Sure. At one point, I wanted feedback from him on a journal article I had written about one of our cases. I should have been bright enough to realize, when I hadn't heard back from him about it after awhile, that he hadn't even read it. But I waited patiently, like a good little girl, and then felt blindsided when Dr. Foreman wrote up the same case and got his version published. I felt Foreman had plagiarized me - to be honest, I still feel that way to some extent - but Dr. House had no sympathy. He wanted me to get to the point where I had enough confidence that I would believe in myself, behave professionally and stand up for what I thought was right without needing Daddy's approval."
She'd never forget how shocked and angry she'd been when Foreman's article appeared in print. She was furious with him, and none too happy with House, because she felt he should have read her article, thereby giving her the opportunity to get her version published first. It took her a long while to get over the whole situation, to give up her resentment, to get perspective on it.
"And this was helpful to you?"
She nodded. "Yes. It was painful… extremely painful, actually… but it was a great learning moment for me, when I had to face the fact that colleagues aren't necessarily friends. I learned to stand up for myself and also to watch my back. Invaluable."
"Somewhere in our notes, we found a reference to you opening and answering Dr. House's mail, writing up his notes, and submitting records for insurance reimbursement. Is that correct?"
"Yes, it is."
"Didn't you find that demeaning, sexist?"
"On some level, probably. I knew he had asked me to do it because he saw it as 'women's work.'"
"And that didn't bother you?"
"Thinking back on it, knowing what I now know, I'm pretty sure he did it to see if I'd refuse to fit into that stereotypical role. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to see that at the time, so I just kept doing it."
"Do you mind sharing the nature of the mail he received?"
"Certainly. Every week, he would get dozens of requests for consultations, articles, speaking engagements and pleas from prospective patients hoping he would take their cases."
"How did he react to those requests?"
"He took a few of the consultations, ignored the speaking engagements and accepted only a handful of the cases… the most interesting ones. Every so often, he'd write an article." At first, she had pleaded with him to write responses to every letter, to take on those speaking engagements and consultations, agree to write the articles, or at the very least to turn down cases he didn't want to be bothered with. Later on, when it had finally hit her that he would never respond on his own, she'd simply written back to each and every letter, and signed his name. That's how she'd learned to forge his signature. Shaking her head slightly, she thought about how naïve she'd been - a doctor who had allowed herself to get turned into a secretary. She couldn't even blame House for it; she'd done it to herself. And why would he turn down free secretarial help if she was willing to do it for him?
"Could you spend a moment to tell us about how Dr. House and Dr. Cuddy interacted?"
Refocusing her attention, she replied, "Certainly. What would you like to know?"
"What was your impression of Dr. Cuddy's management style?"
Cameron pursed her lips. "It seems kind of ironic now, given what happened between her and Dr. House, but at one point - after Dr. Chase and I first got involved - she lectured me about how inappropriate it was to be in a relationship with a co-worker. She said that she had no intention of talking to Robert about the situation… that if the relationship caused a problem at work, she would have to let one of us go… and that one would be me."
The man sitting across the long table from her seemed genuinely startled, and Cameron noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that other panel members were taking notes. "Really? That seems a bit, well, sexist."
"I think it was, actually. I got fairly defensive about it. Now that I run my own department, I think that if I were faced with a similar situation, I would be a lot more concerned about whether or not the people involved were neglecting their duties than in whether they were involved at all. And, let me add, for the record, Dr. Chase and I were, indeed, neglecting our duties and should have been called to task for that, but I don't believe either of us should have been fired over it - just reprimanded."
"You've given us an example of Dr. Cuddy's management of you personally. But what we'd really like to know is if there anything else you would like to add about her management of Dr. House?"
"That's not an easy question to answer. She always insisted that she was the only one who really knew how to manage him. That may have been true. I filled in for her for one day after she got her daughter, and I found it quite hard. I really believed I couldn't be objective about House… that, in fact, most people would find it hard to be objective about him."
"In what ways would they find it hard to be objective?"
"In my case, because I had worked for him, I was concerned that I might approve procedures that I shouldn't, just because I knew how often he was right… and I felt that most other people would deny procedures and treatments he asked for, just because his personality rubbed them the wrong way. Dr. Cuddy seemed, for the most part, to be able to approve what was really essential, and deny him permission for things that weren't."
"Is there anything else you'd like to add to your testimony, Dr. Cameron?"
Cameron considered the question for a moment. "Yes, actually, there is. I've had a people ask me how I can go from the excitement of working for Dr. House in running an ER - didn't I find that a step down, and didn't I miss the thrill of diagnostics? The answer is, that no, I don't find it a step down. It's more hands on than what I did for Dr. House, and the pressure to stay on top of the unexpected is a different kind of stress, but my background in diagnostics has regularly been invaluable."
"In what ways?"
"I would say that several times a year, I've had a patient come through the ER who is, as Dr. House used to put it, a zebra not a horse. If I hadn't been trained by him to diagnose the unusual, it's probable that those people would have died. But I notice things other doctors don't, just because I had those years with Dr. House, and as a result, I can help people who otherwise would slip through the cracks of our medical system. I wouldn't trade that knowledge for anything."
"That's a very interesting analysis, Dr. Cameron. Thank you so much for coming all this way, and for taking the time to talk to us today."
"You're quite welcome."
As Cameron got up and headed toward the door, she heard the panel chair address the rest of the panel, saying, "That's it for now, folks. See you bright and early tomorrow morning at nine."
