Author's Note – Many different writers have done wonderful treatments of mass casualty events for all of the different TV medical shows, including House. In writing this piece, it was not my intention to steal their ideas, but rather to take the neat, ordered world we usually see, where House and his team spend hours focused on a single patient, and force the characters into the messy, split-second world of a large-scale emergency response. If you feel that I have taken ideas too directly from another story, it was unintentional, but please let me know and I'll do what I can to either acknowledge the source or alter my own story.
This story follows after my other House story, 'Youth,' and does include a new character in alongside the more familiar ones. Every effort has been taken to keep the character of Katrien Verhoeven, an intern assigned to House and his team, from becoming a cliché. I would, however, appreciate any feedback about the character and how she develops.
In my last story, I attempted to follow the layout of a normal episode with a shorter teaser followed by three acts of roughly equal length that would have been broken up by commercial breaks. My intention is to do the same with this story, although it is very much a work in progress and my intentions may change as the story progresses.
Finally, I have no medical or related training beyond some basic first aid training and a few university level anatomy courses. I have slightly more chemistry experience, but I am not a chemist. In all cases, I've used the Internet liberally for research, but there is no guarantee of the accuracy of anything I present here. My apologies for any medical or chemical errors.
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"The quality of daytime soaps is going downhill," House remarked lazily, gesturing at the cafeteria TV with his fork to emphasize his point.
"You can't even hear the sound in here," Wilson remarked, turning to look up at the television behind him, then turning back to look at House.
House, taking advantage of the oncologist's momentary distraction, stole some of Wilson's fries. Shrugging, he crammed them into his mouth, noting, "Doesn't matter. This one's a repeat anyway." He swallowed, then added, "But they actually tried doing medicine on General Hospital last week. They got the dosages right and everything."
"And that's bad because…"
"Because I watch General Hospital for its complete disregard for the way that real hospitals actually work," House sniped. "Of course, your marriage record is exempted. That is actually starting to approach the levels of being soap-worthy."
Wilson set his jaw and stared wordlessly at his friend.
"She served you with papers?" House questioned in surprise, raising an eyebrow. "Three divorces is definitely soap-worthy."
"Two divorces is hardly uncommon," Wilson stated blandly. "And no, she hasn't served me with papers."
"At least not yet," House noted.
"Your support for my marriage is heartwarming," Wilson said, rolling his eyes and standing to leave. "Remind me…" His voice trailed off abruptly.
"Remind you of what?" House questioned, taking Wilson's posture as free leave to finish the rest of the fries remaining on the oncologist's plate. When Wilson didn't answer immediately, House tried to verbally prod him again. "You know, I can't remind you of anything if you don't tell me what it is."
"House," Wilson began, his voice strangely thin, "none of the daytime soaps are set in Princeton, are they? And they don't usually involve massive explosions, right?"
House abandoned the rest of Wilson's lunch and followed Wilson's gaze up to the television screen. "No," House replied, his voice level and oddly detached. "And not even General Hospital uses that much fake blood."
Their pagers went off simultaneously the next moment, the sound joining in with the beepers of other cafeteria patrons to form a massive electronic chorus.