I just wanted to thank all of you guys following and/or favoring this story (limptulip, Bakerstreet blues, VictoriaCP2, HOUSEocdFan and hughsouldinGregsmind) and all the people sending me messages to encourage me to continue this story. (I'm sensing story is gonna be a long project). I in particular wanted to thank OldSFfan for all of her messages and reviews that I am very thankful for and all of her wonderfully written stories, past, present and future. Thank you guys!
Cuddy stood beside the whiteboard tapping it with the black tip of the whiteboard marker whilst Foreman, Cameron and Chase sat in silent thoughtfulness. Foreman flicked through a medical encyclopedia, underlining and marking potential diseases whilst Chase buried his face in his arms which rested on the glass table, desperately attempting to scavenge his subconsciousness for ideas and theories.
"It has hit his brain. We know its an infection. But not a common one," Cameron stated as she paced the floor of the diagnostic office.
Chase sighed loudly in frustration without moving his face from the cradle of his arms, "You can keep reciting the symptoms but it doesn't help."
"Stop it guys," Foreman warned. They weren't going to get a diagnosis by grappling at each others throats.
Cuddy stopped tapping on the whiteboard and instead began fiddling with the marker lid, "what does he work as again? Did he tell you?"
"He works at a pharmaceutical firm, but nobody's sick. No lead there," Foreman explained without drawing his attention away from the thick encyclopedia.
"Could it be genetic?" Cuddy questioned as she pulled a chair out from the table and occupied it.
Cameron momentarily paused her pacing, "some kind of genetic immunity-compromising disease, perhaps?"
Foreman closed the encyclopedia in front of him. "No," he said as he rubbed his tired face. "If it was he'd be getting sick from every common bug. And genetic testing takes weeks to complete anyway, even if it was he'd be dead before we can cure him."
The diagnostics office had a thick atmosphere of fatigue and over-exhaustion. Each of them secretly harboring a small desire for House to walk into the office, call them 'idiots' and cure the patient with an elaborate diagnosis. But this was how life was going to be from now on (that or the diagnostics office was going to close down).
"Did you guys check his home for toxins? It would obviously have to be fat-soluble for him to be getting sicker," Cuddy said to the group as she grappled for a theory.
Cameron threw her arms in the air in a demonstration of self-defeat, "we should call House. This patient is going to die!"
"Nobody is calling House! From now on we do this by ourselves," Cuddy replied in a tone matching Camerons vexed, weary tone.
Suddenly Chases blonde head shot up from its resting position on the solid glass table, "There was no point in searching the home because the guy hadn't been home, he had been away on business." Chase's drowsiness and sleepiness became undetectable as he rose from his chair, "his first symptom arose when he went to work to pick up his partner. He'd been to Phoenix and everyone knows new American citizens who have moved from Mexico usually immigrate to phoenix. Cerebral malaria is prevalent in Mexico. He must of picked it up."
"Go and give him treatment," Cuddy ordered making the team dart out of the door.
Cuddy slouched back in her chair and breathed a satisfying sigh of relief, allowing her chest to fully inflate and deflate and she smiled. The tension and frustration that had built in the diagnostics office since the patients vitals had become critical had broken.
The ducklings will be okay, Cuddy thought. We'll be okay.
