Christopher Taub was standing against a wall, leaning towards the white hospital bed. His tie was wrinkled, face stubbly and expression tired. Foreman, who sat right aside him, scratched his goatee and sighed. His eyes were darting to the wall clock every 6 seconds, counting time. Cameron fixed her eyes on the matted tips of her shoes, refusing to make eye contact with anybody in the room. Her left foot was tapping on the floor. Jackson shot a silencing look, which she must have sensed – she looked up and sneered at him quietly, which he welcomed with obvious disgust. She turned on her heel and left the room, moving her hips vividly and waving her hands in angry gesticulation. Avery gulped, trying to get rid of an awful feeling of insecurity. His face turned back to the bed, on which Remy Hadley was laid, white, peaceful, and staring at the ceiling. Her hospital gown was slightly open, revealing deep scratch marks and burns, where the paddles hurt her.

… 'Remy, answer me!'

Thirteen was laying on the floor, rocking slightly from side to side like a hospitalism case. Her eyes were fixed on some distant point, motionless. She scratched her bosom with long, sharp fingernails, drawing blood. Her face was pale, almost morbidly white.

Jackson put two fingers against her neck to check for pulse. It was barely there. She was having a heart failure. She had bradycardia. She needed to be shocked back into rhythm.

'I need a crash cart in here!' He yelled desperately, lifting her from the floor and dashing through the door of the diagnostics department. Alarmed nurses were already feet away, so he laid her down on the corridor bench. One of them tore off Remy's shirt, revealing even more of her scratched body. She pasted on three electrodes connected to a monitor, while another one squirted some gel in two paddles and yelled 'Charging one hundred!' …

'Leave us.'

All three doctors turned their heads, confused. House was standing in the door of the patient's room, toying with his cane. His eyes were cold and his blue, wrinkled shirt's collar was up. 'I said, leave us.'

Avery stood where was. Taub and Foreman exchanged looks. House banged his cane on the glass wall. 'Yes, I mean you, morons!' A muscle on his cheek twitched and they greyish hair seemed to crack with electricity.

Foreman gave House a loathing look and walked out. Taub followed him, patting Jackson on the back, which he acknowledged with a grunt. Theirs eyes interlocked for a split second and quiet understanding flashed in them. Taub sighed and left the room, peeking over his shoulder as he disappeared behind a corner of the corridor.

…'Clear!' Avery roared as all three nurses backed off. Remy shuddered as the electric shock brought her back into the world of living. From what the monitor showed her rhythm came back to discussingly normal, but she looked like a corpse.

'Need a gurney!' One of the scrubbed nurses run for her dear life to find a transport for Thirteen. Avery checked her reactions, flashing a light in her eyes. Pupils were reactive, round and even. Medically speaking, Remy just had a heart failure and she was coming back to normal. What would make her so limp, so unresponsive?

He lifted her again and put on a provided gurney, trying to unclench his jaw in the process. All his muscles were alert and his veins pumped adrenaline. …

'What happened.' That sentence sounded more like a statement than a question, but Avery sighed and described briefly what he saw and did. House studied Thirteen's empty face for a few minutes then turned around and sat on a chair previously occupied by Foreman. He rested his chin on the cane's handle and furrowed his brow.

'You found a phone around her somewhere?'

Avery nodded. 'It was on the floor. She must've dropped it.' House nodded to that answer and tapped his cane on the floor.

'She must've heard something challenging. She became bradycardiac, eventually asystolic. She nearly died from fear-'

'I know.' Avery interrupted rudely, snapping impatiently at him. House looked at him, making him feel extremely uncomfortable. Jackson raised his head and looked the older doctor in the eye. The blue orbs stared into green ones for a few seconds and House broke the eye contact. He went back to watching Remy stare at the ceiling.

…'Jesus Christ, Remy, talk to me!'

Thirteen was still laying flaccid on the bed, except that now her eyes were closed and the eyelashes' shadows made her face eerily corpse-like. The monitor connected to the electrodes above her heart started flashing, O2 sats were in the toilet and her heart was now beating abnormally slow once again.

'Remy, Remy, please, come back to me, come back!'

Jackson tried to manually push her chest, trying to get her back into normal rhythm. Her little, white breasts jumped with every push. He didn't care if he was going to break her sternum. She couldn't die. Not now, not when everything was beginning to work…

'Is she pregnant?'

Avery shook his head. 'We thought she was. She gained weight, barked at you for boob jokes, missed her period…she was a textbook pregnancy. Apart from the fact she wasn't.' He moved closer to the bed and brushed his hand over Remy's. She didn't move.

'I thought she was.' Jackson looked at House. Gregory House admitting to a mistake? That was new. 'Something must have caused it. Healthy 30 – year olds don't die from fear,so-.'

'She isn't healthy, she has Huntington's.'

House shot Avery a puzzled look. 'You know?' Jackson returned the look, even more confused. 'And you do?'

'I was the one to talk her into taking the test.' He rose from the chair and moved closer to Avery. 'You are no good for the next few days.'

Jackson smiled. From all he could imagine, House would mock him for his involvement in Thirteen's life. And here it was – the best form of compassion he could get. House was basically giving him time off to stay by his girlfriend's side.

'Cameron is angry. She wanted you for herself; you might want to watch out for the Lady Bitch in the next few weeks.' Older doctor shot both his employees, one pale and indifferent and one dark-skinned and worried, yet another scornful look and left, waddling from side to side. On his way to the office he bumped into a biscotti-Labrador looking like psych ward resident. He grunted something in apology and went on, while the intern moved quickly on, dashing towards Remy's patient room, his white lab coat fluttering behind him.

'Um, ?'

…'Dr. Avery, what do we do?'

The nurses turned to Jackson with much despair; Thirteen was asystolic. The flat line on the screen and a loud beep made everybody quiet for a split second. Jackson stared on the monitor for a mere moment, feeling his own heart being cut open with that piercing sound. Then he grasped a needle with ten of adrenaline from nurses hand and without much consciousness stabbed Remy right in the heart, pushing the medicine into her cardiac muscle. Flat line turned into a chaotic scribble and then went flat again. Avery heard his pulse beating in his ears.

'I lost you.'

He was not even sure whether he said that out loud. He stared into the monitor with a silent prayer on his lips when the flat line disappeared, making place for a normal rhythm. He exhaled, clutching the syringe in his bare hands and piercing the skin. He started bleeding, but he didn't care, he didn't even notice. Remy was back…

'Yeah. It's me, and you are…?' Jackson woke up from his short stupor and blinked, trying to get a polite expression on his tired face.

'Dr. Levi Menace, nice to meet you. I'm the hospital counselor and … well, um, I'm here to talk to you about .'

Jackson glanced at Remy. She didn't flex a single muscle.

'She put your name in all 'emergency contact' boxes, so…'

He clearly waited for a reaction so Jackson nodded, a bit taken aback with such amount of information. Human Labrador smiled encouragingly. His plaid red shirt was ironed neatly, and rimmed glasses were slightly fingerprinted. Red stubble covered his cheeks unevenly, and his strawberry blonde hair was slightly tousled.

'So, from the looks of it, is fully aware of what is happening. She is kind of locked-in; silent, quiet, but fully aware. No physical factor contributes to that, it is all in her head. She went mute from acute stress and is currently my patient. She hears you, she knows you are present. For some reason she remains completely isolated from the environment she is in, but it will pass with time. You have to give it to her.'

Avery turned around to face the bed. Remy blinked, but her sight stayed fixed on the ceiling.

'How do I give her time?' He asked, feeling his voice getting full of tears. He swallowed as the wet droplets fell from his lashes on the freckled cheeks.

'Be there. Talk to her, be around, and tell her stories. She will come back.'