Thank you to all of my awesome reviewers! You are beyond great! (throws flowers, money, candy, and, for the slashers out there, pictures of my boyfriend and me making out) I'm still going to stick with the alternating POVs, because this is a new style I want to explore. And I realize my grammar is a bit screwed up…again, new style: I'm not used to writing in present tense. (kicks grammar-checker) Damn thing's supposed to, you know, work.

CAMERON'S POV

Usually emergency surgery is done when the patient in question has just had a windshield wiper driven through their lungs, and thus a thorough examination is often foregone until the patient has been stabilized. Dr. Wilson's hematoma wasn't as serious, but it still necessitated a less-thorough examination.

This speed found only bruises and superficial lacerations. Nothing big. When he didn't come out of his coma, and in fact went down the scale, the examination was a lot more scrupulous.

Found: one ugly, foot-long, half-scabbed gash running from shoulder to mid-back. The triangular shape of the indentation suggests use of a nail, or perhaps a nail file. Not something he could have done himself.

Found: small amount of blood in urine. Cause is apparently bruised kidneys. Normally wouldn't be too serious, but in this case it's adding rabies to AIDS.

Found: localized numbness down the back-gash, suggesting that it might actually be rabies. Luckily, it wasn't.

Found: My half-hour in the lab with a skin biopsy brought a diagnosis, and not a nice one: tetanus. Forget that luckily part. Rabies might have been better.

For those illiterate in medical matters, tetanus is not a kind disease. Paralysis floods through your body, radiating from the point of infection to the most severe injuries. So. The hematoma was caused/worsened by slight paralysis of ventricles. After the ventricular paralysis, the disease will—probably has already—begin to work on Dr. Wilson's kidneys and the area around his cracked rib. This means eventual kidney and lung failure. Because the infection was not caught in time with a shot, the prognosis is one horrible word that still drives shards of glass into my soul:

"Terminal."

Cuddy lets out a horrible half-sob, covers her face with her hands, sinks into a chair, begins rattling a chain of swear words. Chase lets out a very un-Chase-like hiccup of emotion and puts his head on the table. Foreman just looks sad, but it's the kind of sad that breaks hearts.

It is probably lucky House isn't here. However, he has just spent the past four hours sitting next to Dr. Wilson and not letting anyone talk to him, so that luck is dubious.

Cuddy stands up, wipes her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. Her expression has shifted from that horrible deep grief to a quiet anger that will eventually bubble up and corrode everything around it.

"I need to talk to our lawyers," she says tersely, and leaves.

I sit down, nearly missing the chair.

There is silence in the office for a few minutes.

Life without Dr. Wilson.

He's one of the most-loved doctors in the whole damn hospital. His patients thank him for telling them that they're going to die, the other oncologists regard him as a sort of god-king, he's managed to keep up a good friendship with Dr. I-Hate-The-Human-Race…it seems that the only people who don't like him are his two exes and his one soon-to-be.

How many cases would we have flubbed without him? How many cancer patients would have been left to the mercy of a cold, unattached doctor? How many would have died?

And now we find out that his wife has effectively murdered him.

And on top of that he's been slicing his skin into ribbons.

Which means, once his kidneys and lungs start stuttering and shutting down, he'll be mostly ineligible for a transplant.

Which is even more tragic. Kidneys are live-organ transplants—

A frighteningly simple and plausible idea races through my head.

"What's his blood type?" I ask. Casual. Stay casual, Allison.

"A positive," says Chase wearily, sliding a hand through his hair.

A positive. What are the chances?

I'm A positive and perfectly healthy. I obviously can't donate a lung, but maybe—

I suddenly realize that I have only thought this over for less than a minute. I think it over again, for another thirty seconds, and decide.

The tetanus will probably go after his kidneys first, destroying them within six months, and thus giving Dr. Wilson six months to live. Or less, depending on his lung function. Dialysis won't do much. He needs a new one, which he definitely will not be getting from the kidney transplant list. Which means that a live organ transplant has to be found.

He's just found one.

I spring up and go chasing after Cuddy.