House of Cards

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Thanks go to: Reviewers everywhere; you know who you are. And Hallie for the beta.

/h

To further complicate things, when House checked his email the next morning, there was a short note from a Dr. R. Chase. He made the assumption that it was not from the Dr. R. Chase he dealt with in person on a daily basis, and opened it up.

The email consisted of two short lines and an attachment.

I would have sent this straight to Robert, but I didn't have an address for him. Please see that he gets it.

R. Chase

Fabulous. Instead of having to fire one of his doctors, he was going to end up with two of them quitting. He hit the 'print' button, then scribbled Chase's name on the sticky notes Cameron always left laying around and tossed the whole bundle on the table in the lounge.

He couldn't resist making a comment to Foreman, who was sitting in Cameron's spot going through a stack of would-be case files for something interesting. "You like me the least and you're the one staying. Stubborn."

Foreman raised an eyebrow, saying nothing. If he was surprised to hear that Chase would probably be leaving, he didn't advertise it.

"See that Chase reads that, if he ever tears himself away from Cameron's bedside." It figured that on a day when he sorely needed a distraction, there was none to be found.

At least, none that he trusted himself with.

/h

The clinic was obscenely busy. As a natural result, House was miserable. At least, he told himself he was miserable, and the patients told each other he was miserable; in point of fact he was reveling in tearing them apart for their stupidity, which did nothing to alleviate or increase his misery.

"He's been throwing up for two days," the boy's mother was saying. "He can't even keep water down. I gave him some Gravol to see if it would help, but there was no change. Is there anything you can do?"

House refrained from rolling his eyes. "Well, we could operate." He ignored the mother's shocked look and poked the boy in the left side of the stomach. "This hurt?"

The kid shook his head. He moved his hand to the other side and poked. The kid threw up all over his shoes. Well, that confirmed the diagnosis. "Mrs. Henderson, we're going to have to admit your son."

"It's Harrison. And what do you mean, admit him? Can't you just proscribe something? I'm late for work as it is."

God, he hated stupid people. "If you want your son to die, by all means say so. You'll have to sign a form saying you refused treatment, of course." House grabbed a pen and scribbled a note to the head of pediatrics in the front of the file. "He's got appendicitis, probably already burst. It's getting very squishy in there." He scribbled a note in the top of the file. "Wait here."

House told the nurse at the station to admit whoever was in exam room one and handed her the kid's diagnosis.

"Dr. House!"

He fought the urge to run (limp) away and braced himself to face her. "Dr. Cuddy. Fancy seeing you here. Is that a new spine?" Probably she was going to say something gloating- or worse, patronizing- about Cameron, and that was the last thing he wanted to hear.

Cuddy took the file from his hands. "Dr. House. You know how I love to stand around and trade insults with you, but you've got patients to consult with. Room two-sixteen. You might want to change your shoes first."

Well, he was getting out of clinic duty. That was something.

/h

He felt a little bit like a homeless man walking around the hospital in orthopedic slippers, but his shoes were fairly disgusting. Anyway, it wasn't like he cared what patients or their families thought of him.

He took a quick look at the file before reaching for the door and had the sudden, overpowering urge to kill Cuddy. The file belonged to Cameron.

I hate that woman. It was quite obvious that she had gone through a lot of trouble to get him to the room without tipping him off as to where he was going; that was why she had been so happy to see him leave the clinic: she'd been sending him somewhere arguably worse.

He sighed and pushed open the door.

The three of them were so clearly a family: Mr. Cameron standing closest to the door, looking awkward and uncomfortable, Cameron's mother sitting on the other side of the bed, post-tearful. It gave House an absurd amount of comfort to see Cameron in the middle, seemingly exasperated. Shockingly, her appearance was only one step down from 'anemic': pale, and obviously in pain, but not the corpselike entity she had been the day before.

Time to put away the discomfort and put on the polite face. He'd forgone the lab coat; Cameron would have noticed.

"Dr. House." Mr. Cameron extended a hand. "It's nice to finally meet you. We've heard so much about you."

Uh oh, thought House as they shook. "I hope you didn't believe any of it." Probably the most sincere thing he'd said all day.

"Dr. House," broke in Mrs. Cameron, and all of his neurotic mother detectors blared into life, "how could this have happened on hospital property? I thought fancy places like this would have security guards on duty…"

House had thought so, too. "We do. Unfortunately, security guards are human. This one was taking a little nap at the time of the attack." He'd spent two hours going over the surveillance tapes. "I had Cuddy fire him yesterday."

Cameron looked unaccountably surprised at this information.

"If you decide to sue- which you are well within your rights to do, I might add, and it will eat up Vogler's precious resources so please consider it- the hospital will probably settle quietly. Cuddy's feeling guilty enough as it is; she's not charging you for any medical expenses…" He trailed off, then wondered if Cameron's parents had caught the hidden reference to her medical insurance, which was expired now that she no longer worked at the hospital. If it had been anyone else, he would have exposed the secret without a second thought, but it wasn't. "Did you tell them?"

A quick nod, followed by sudden, impenetrable silence. Oops. He'd forgotten that he was supposed to be on his best behavior. Now he couldn't even be snide. Cameron would look at him. "So… questions? Technically, I'm not her physician, but if you promise not to tell I could have a peek inside the file."

That got a small smile out of her. "Dr. House suffers from chronic curiosity," she explained. It was an accurate, if dangerously understated, diagnosis. Then, uncertainly, "Maybe it would be better if I heard the prognosis myself first."

Mrs. Cameron, House could tell, was about to go through a distressing round of motherly protestations. Luckily, her husband cut her off and led her slowly through the door.

When it closed, House pulled up a stool and opened the file. "Dr. Wolf didn't go over this with you yesterday?"

Cameron shook her head. "I was too tired. I didn't want… If it was bad news…"

She didn't want to be without support. He could understand that, although it hadn't been his choice in a similar situation. He cleared his throat. "You want to see, or should I just read it to you?"

Another shake of the head, smaller this time. "Migraine." That explained the pale cast to her features. "Let's hear it."

House didn't think he'd ever actually been nervous going through someone's medical file before. Every word seemed to be written in red, impossibly sinister. Lung puncture. Knife missed the main arteries. Damage to right quadriceps. "Well, you're going to be in bed for at least a week. Your leg will heal-" and there was a brief moment where he was disturbed by his gratitude for that, when he had expected jealousy- "although for awhile we are going to have matching limps."

"We can have races," Cameron said irreverently.

He almost smiled. Everything looked pretty good, all things considered. Lots of minor damage that would heal up in a matter of weeks. And then, scanning further down the page, his heart stopped. Oh. That was it, really. Just oh. There weren't words.

"House?" By the tone of her voice, she'd caught his expression. "I can take it. Whatever it is…"

Maybe she could; House would be the first to admit that Cameron was impossibly strong. The problem was, he wasn't sure he was strong enough to tell her. He was a doctor; he did this every day. It should have been easy. With any other woman, it would have been easy. "The third stab wound," he started, and he could tell that she was beginning to understand, because her hand went straight to her belly and she lost any colour she might have had.

House swallowed, and pressed bravely on. "It destroyed a good portion of your myometrium." And because she was on the morphine drip, and because it was half-done to leave off there, to leave her hanging, without a medical encyclopedia to look up her condition and make sure, and how could he tell her this without hating himself, how could she hear it without hating him- "There's extensive damage to your uterus. Possibly permanent."

He had expected her to cry, to be upset, to do something other than sit impassively and stare at the wall. She wasn't supposed to handle something so serious better than he did. It was her heart that was supposed to be breaking, her fists that should have been clenching, and not his. She was probably in shock. He knew he was.

"Oh."

Somehow (oh, somehow, he didn't want to think about it, didn't want to acknowledge he had sought her out, that he could be human), somehow her hand was squeezed in his, just for a moment, just until he realized. Just until he found his voice again, until he stopped letting himself feel. "Do you want me to get your parents?"

She shook her head slowly, eyes closed. "No."

Quieter still, "Do you want me to leave?" Could he leave, after telling her something like that? Could he leave her to deal with it on her own?

Cameron didn't answer. House remembered being in her shoes, remembered the past six years of his life, remembered alone and abandoned, and stayed just where he was.