House

"Remind me why I have to be here again?" House grumbled, looking around the baby store with distaste. "I thought you and Cameron already did the girly shopping thing."

"That was before I found out that she was moving halfway across the country and didn't have a blessed thing for the baby except for a bassinet and a co-sleeper," his mom scolded, slapping him on the arm before turning back to the shelves. "That was a fun run. This is a practical one."

"Then shouldn't Cameron be here?" he whined.

"You're here to help me pick out things Cameron's going to like. And I figured since you two will be the ones babyproofing the apartment for her, you should probably come along so you know how everything works," his mom said absently. She picked up one of those video baby monitors that streamed directly to your phone, looking at the price tag in disbelief. "Good grief. Look at all this. It's a wonder either of you survived your childhood."

Wilson just shook his head. "I don't even know what half of this stuff is."

"You and me both," House said, sighing in resignation when his mom headed for the baby swings. It was going to be a long day.

He hated when he was right. Cameron's eyes got huge when the three of them showed up, boxes and bags in tow. With Wilson's help, he spent the next few hours building the crib, sticking plugs in sockets, baby-proofing counter corners, and hauling a dresser and changing table to the corner of Cameron's second bedroom. Meanwhile, the women got to chit chat without breaking a sweat while they folded teeny tiny little clothes and hung decorations on the wall.

His mom had agonized for almost an hour between the owls and the butterflies and Winnie the Pooh until House talked her into a blue and purple galaxy set he knew Cameron would like. It came with all sorts of crap, including a solar system rug for the floor and little glow in the dark stars for the ceiling, and as much as he bitched about having to haul it all in, even he had to admit it was pretty damn cute by the time it was done.

The Chinese food Cameron bought them all as a thank you was pretty nice too.

Wilson headed out right after dinner, claiming he had some reading to catch up on. House gritted his teeth when Wilson bussed a quick kiss across Cameron's cheek before letting himself out. He still wasn't completely comfortable with how comfortable Wilson and Cameron were together. Since his mom popped her plate in the sink and went back to fiddle in the baby's room just a few minutes later, leaving he and Cameron at the table alone together for the first time since she'd spent the night at his house the week before, he figured he could get over it.

"This was really nice of you guys, thank you." Cameron's smile was just a little awkward, like she too realized this was the first time they'd been alone together since the morning she woke up in his bed.

"You said that already." House waved the compliment away with his fork. "Kid needed a place to sleep." Truth was, he felt a little bad that Wilson had done most of the heavy lifting. Not too bad-he was holding on to his status as a cripple with both hands, damn it. But a little.

"Well, thank you anyway. I appreciate it." Cameron poked at her food with her fork, then sucked in her breath, her left hand reaching around her abdomen to rest right below her ribs.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Just a twinge." Cameron smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. House frowned.

"How long have you been having pain?"

"Just the past little bit. I figured if I sat down, it would go away." Cameron set her fork down to squeeze her forehead. "And my head is killing me. Maybe I'm coming down with something."

"And maybe you're an idiot." House scowled, pushed back from the table. "When was the last time you checked your blood pressure?"

"Yesterday. Maybe. Day before?" Cameron frowned. "It's been fine as long as I've been taking my medicine."

"Where's your stuff?"

Cameron pointed mutely to an end table drawer in the living room. House hobbled over and pulled out the electronic cuff, already knowing what he was going to see. Sure enough, Cameron's BP was up in the stratosphere.

"Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's down the hatch with some labetalol, then off to the ED you go. And don't even think about just going in and laying back down," House warned her before she could even open her mouth. "I'll just call Wilson to pick you up and throw you into the back of the car."

Her mouth quirked into a quick smile, but she didn't waste any time grabbing some shoes and a coat and letting him lead her out the door-or arguing when she threw up all over her doorstep and he decided to call an ambulance instead.

Half of his doctor brain told him she was probably going to be fine. They would run some magnesium, get her blood pressure back down. She was what, thirty, thirty one weeks along? Worst case scenario, baby would be spending some time in the NICU. It wasn't ideal-he'd have liked another six weeks, at least-but although you would have had to break off his arm and beat him with it to get him to admit it, their facility was excellent and the neonatal docs were top notch. And since Chase insisted on double dipping every chance he got, at least one member of his team was going to be on hand to keep an eye on things when he couldn't.

The other half of his brain was quickly ticking through everything that could possibly go wrong in this scenario, up to and including losing both Cameron and the baby, if they didn't get the situation under control. The ambulance wasn't going to have hydralazine or magnesium on board, and he'd maxed out her labetalol at home. If things started slipping downhill, they were pretty much screwed.

When she seized in the ambulance, and he grabbed the LMA from the incompetent paramedic who couldn't get it in when she lapsed into unconsciousness, he'd never been so sorry to be right in his life. Fortunately, the idiot had had the foresight to call ahead, and the OB team and NICU were waiting for them when they arrived on the floor.

"What happened?" asked Dr. Lee, flicking his penlight into Cameron's eyes while his minions quickly ran an IV and hung the medications he'd have killed for on the ride over.

"Headache and right upper quadrant pain over dinner. Blood pressure 220/110 in the ambulance," said House gruffly, hobbling along beside the gurney. "Tonic clonic seizure en route, lasted for about a minute, then became unresponsive."

"Alright." They had gotten to Cameron's room at this point, and a quick look at the fetal monitor told House there was no way they were going to ride this out. Cameron still wasn't responding to meds, and baby's heart rate had dropped well below what could be considered a safe baseline.

"Andrea, call the OR team. We need to get this baby out of there. I assume you're coming back to the OR with her?" At House's mute nod, Dr. Lee turned to one of the other nurses. "Jane, get Dad a set of scrubs, and grab Dr. Cameron's consent forms out of her files. I'm going to scrub up, and I'll see you in there." With a quick clap on the shoulder, he left the room, leaving the nursing staff staring at him for a moment in disbelief.

"Alright Dr. House, if you come with me, I've got some paperwork for you to sign, then you can get changed." Jane, the tiny brunette nurse House didn't recognize (which wasn't surprising, since the only time he hung out on maternity was when his TV wasn't working and he wanted to watch General Hospital in the doctor's lounge), was the first to get over the shock of realizing that he and Cameron had done the wild thing. "Dr. Lee is very good," she said softly, giving him a warm, reassuring smile that he was sure worked wonders on nervous fathers that didn't have a medical degree. "She's in good hands, and it'll be over before you know it."

"Not fast enough," he grumbled, surprised when she reached over and gave the hand not holding his cane a quick squeeze. Then she grabbed a clipboard off the desk and passed it over to him, leaving him to wade through paperwork hell while she ran back and got him a pair of paper scrubs that would keep the grime off him while they popped the baby out.

He'd just finished signing the last consent when his mom and Wilson showed up on the floor.

"How is she?" Wilson asked, brow furrowed in concern.

"I called James before I left," said his mom, intercepting the obvious question of what Wilson was doing there. "I thought you and Cameron could use him."

"Cameron's unconscious and baby's circling the drain," said House roughly. "She seized on the way over here. They're going to section her as soon as the OR team gets off their ass and gets things moving."

The last was said just as Jane came walking up to him holding a pair of surgical scrubs. He waited for a nasty retort, either from her or one of the nurses behind him, but all he got was a sympathetic smile.

"We didn't have any of the paper ones, but I figure you probably know what to do with these." She nodded her head toward the doctor's locker room. "Normally we wouldn't encourage it, but given the circumstances…"

House looked at his mom and Wilson and waggled his eyebrows. "See you on the other side." Then he headed for the locker room, leaving Wilson and his mom to find their own way to the waiting room and, finally, had a moment with his own thoughts. When he put any serious thought into what was about to happen, the only two options were a grim sort of acceptance or blinding fear.

He wasn't the type of man who got to ride off into the sunset. He knew that, had known it since he was a kid trying to figure out why his father was such a cold blooded bastard. He'd lost Stacy. He'd lost Cuddy. He'd lost Lydia. He'd lost Cameron…over and over and over again.

Pulling the surgical scrubs over his head and feeling the familiar soft blue fabric against his skin, he realized that he'd never expected to keep her, or his daughter. And no matter how hard he tried, what he did right, what he did wrong, he still wasn't going to be able to keep them. This was all some big cosmic joke, and this moment, with Cameron teetering on a knife edge and his daughter's life in danger, this was the universe telling him he'd been an idiot for thinking he deserved them.

Taking a deep breath, House reached out and grabbed his cane. He'd go into that operating room because he needed to go into that operating room, if for no other reason than to reassure himself that nobody screwed up. Then, when it all went to hell like it was bound to, he could head up to his office, pull out the bottle of carefully stashed scotch that he'd stuck in there, and spend the rest of the evening reminding himself that men like him didn't get happily ever after.