A/N: Okay, see NOW we're nearing the end, not the end-end, but close. But, I am proud to announce I have decided that "How Long Has This Been Going On?" is the first instalment in a series of House stories I will be writing. I call the series... Well I don't know yet, but when I come up with a name it will rock your socks! (And I have a plan for later on in the series, assuming I get loyal readers or something like that. Man, I need sleep.)
"Just checking on the patient." Chase said swiftly to the police officer standing inside of Gloria Corbin's room who became ironclad as the young doctor stepped in.
Gloria was sitting there with an almost eerily calm look on her face, her right wrist was handcuffed to the bed rain, an iv dripped the aspergillosis medication slowly into her arm. The room was completely silent, as if a sound would shatter the little sanity she had left.
"How are you feeling today, Mrs Corbin?" Chase asked as he looked over the woman's chart with little interest of how she was actually doing.
"They've arrested my husband." She said dimly. "The only reason they haven't taken me away yet is because I still need treatment."
"That... Is true." Chase said with little interest in what the woman had to say.
"And then when I'm better they'll take me away."
"Yes, yes they will." He adjusted the iv drip slightly and continued to ignore the woman as much as he could.
"Because of what I did to that bitch."
Chase turned and stared at the woman who had a mysterious grin on her face. "You've got a lot of nerve calling the girl you kidnapped a 'bitch'."
"Oh but she is." Gloria smirked to herself, a far away look in her eyes, as if she were entirely in a world of her own. "Of course, it wasn't her fault that this happened, but what did she expect? We didn't love her, who could love such a child? Always crying, asking for hugs and kisses and things that children don't need."
"You're mad." Chase muttered, "You kidnapped a two-year-old girl with tuberculosis and raised her as your own."
"And I did a fine job."
"You barely kept her alive," Chase said darkly, "You watched her get beaten and raped by your husband... Didn't any of it register with you that what was happening was wrong? Or were you too consumed with your drug abuse to notice?"
Gloria Corbin snapped her head and looked at Chase, she looked down at her arms and pressed her left hand gently against the white scar lines on her right arm. "I may have had an abuse problem in the past, but it in no way interfered with my raising of Jenny."
"That remains to be seen," Chase muttered, "It doesn't matter, you won't be hurting her again."
"Jennifer has grown up a strong and brave young woman." Gloria smirked, "Anything she endured from my husband or I was for her own good."
"Let me guess, that which doesn't kill her only makes her stronger?"
"Exactly," Gloria smiled, "No one will ever break her, she's grown up on the defense."
"No one will break her because she's already broken." Chase pointed out as he jotted something down on the clipboard, "You're the kind of person who deserves to feel the pain you've dealt over the years. Your kind always gets what's coming to them."
"You think I care?" Gloria asked with a chuckle, "Its so silly, another month or two and she would have been dead, it wouldn't have mattered."
"What wouldn't have mattered?" Chase demanded quietly, suddenly his interest had been piqued.
"The money," Gloria replied with a smirk, "We would have taken her back to BC, the police would have found her body and made an id, and after thirteen years those poor Kendall's would have gotten some justice."
"Well lucky them, they get their daughter back."
"No, they don't." Gloria smiled to herself and went back to her own little world, "She'll be gone before they have a chance to see her."
Chase stopped and slowly turned to look at Gloria, "What are you talking about?"
She simply smiled and began humming a little tune to herself.
"What do you mean, she'll be gone?"
"Long gone."
"What are you..." Chase began to talk when his beeper went off, he reached into his lab coat and pulled it out, after looking at the short message he looked back at Gloria who was smiling brightly.
"I'm right."
xXx
Earlier:
Foreman slid the door to Jenny's room shut and looked around, Spencer had gone, doctors orders, to get something to eat from the cafeteria, he was far more relaxed after watching Daniel Corbin being led away by the police. It was safe to leave Jenny alone, she was stable, still tired but stable. What could go wrong?
"Hey, How's Jenny?" Wilson asked as Foreman passed by him in the hallway.
"On the mend," Foreman replied, "She's stable, still not hungry and pretty tired but her body is doing fine."
"Is she opening up to anyone yet?"
"I think so, slowly but surely, It'll take a lot more work if anyone ever wants her to come out and admit sexual abuse though."
"At least that creep is in jail." Wilson muttered.
"Yeah, but still, this whole situation is really messed up."
"Well of course it is." Wilson replied, "It's in this hospital, we can't anything nice and simple that might make sense and that we could all leave from emotionally stable."
"Are you suggesting that this case as somehow affected our emotional state?"
"All I'm saying is that everyone seems to be getting far more involved with the patient than they should. I'm all for communication but when House starts caring, then something is just wrong."
"Yeah that is a little weird." Foreman agreed, "Still, it can't be helped, she's just the kind of kid that draws people to her."
"Don't let her draw you too close," Wilson warned with a smirk, "It's hard to let them go."
"They grow up so fast," Foreman said as he rolled his eyes, "I think I'll get over it pretty quickly when we discharge her."
"Well, while we're being honest..." Wilson said, "I won't."
"Yeah," Foreman sighed, "Neither will I..."
The thought was cut off by the electronic chime of a beeper, Foreman reached into his lab coat and pulled out the device, when he read the message his heart dropped him his chest.
"What is it?" Wilson asked.
"Jenny." Foreman whispered.
xXx
Earlier:
Cameron was relieved to a certain extent, she was no longer panicking about Jenny, now her only fear was that of her parents. Would they come? Did they still want her or would they find some loop hole in the law which exempted them from parental duties? Richard Kendall didn't sound like the kind of man that would try to do that, quite the contrary, he sounded relieved to hear Jenny was alive.
So why did they need to think about it? Why would they have to think about their daughter and whether or not she should be back in their life? Obviously there was something deeper, some secret that kept them from coming near to their daughter.
Cameron poured herself a cup of coffee and collapsed onto a chair in the office, the black sludge was bitter and jolted her awake ever so slightly. A thought suddenly occurred to her, she pulled over her laptop and opened up the internet in hopes of finding something more conclusive than a few random thoughts. She googled the name "Richard Kendall" and 380,970,285 different results showed up.
'Richard Kendall Jennifer Kendall kidnapping'
She pressed the enter button and waited patiently as the painfully slow connection filtered through the massive interweb until the page appeared with the results. She skimmed over the odd titles and summaries of articles when the words 'mob connection' and 'money scandal' caught her eye. As she clicked on the link her beeper went off, with a sigh she pulled it from her lab coat, the message wasn't something she wanted to see.
Doctor Cameron was off of her seat and out the door in a flash just as the page finished loading.
xXx
House was ambling down the hallway in search of something to do when his beeper went off, he sighed and pulled it from his pocket, fully expecting to see some note from Cuddy, telling him to get his butt down to the Clinic. It wasn't, 'Jenny, code blue' was written out in the small letters. House turned around and limped as fast as he could toward the young girls room.
"Jenny, wake up Jen, come on." Cameron lightly shook the body of the young girl as House stood outside of the room and watched the proceedings inside.
"Airways are open." Chase said, "Her pupils are reacting."
"Her BP is low again." Foreman said.
"She's not responding to pain."
"What's going on?" Spencer asked as he stepped in behind House.
"She's in a coma." House replied as the three doctors within stepped away from Jenny. "Which means something else has to be wrong."
"Excuse me." House turned to face a middle-aged couple who looked a little lost. "We're looking for a Doctor Cameron," the man said, "Could you tell us where we can find her."
"She's with a patient right now." House replied.
"She told us our daughter was here." The woman replied, "Jenny Kendall, do you know her?"
A/N: updates will be waaay less after this (sorry, bad timing) school starts again tomorrow.