Chapter 6

Answers

House sat, slumped uncomfortably in his chair. He looked up briefly as Wilson entered the room.

"I heard." He regarded House and waited.

House's voice revealed the frustration Wilson knew he was feeling. "It's not Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis; it can't be. She's still getting worse. It fit. It was perfect." House sighed and thought back to all the times he had had this same conversation with the man standing before him.

"I know."

"It looked viral. Everything fit. I have Cameron and Foreman testing for bacterial infection, and Chase looking for anything else. They'll be back soon. You want to hang around? At this point I don't want to rule anything out." He sighed again and turned to the computer. Wilson took this as his sign to leave. He walked over to the conference room and poured himself a cup of coffee. This case was really getting to House. He knew why, but it still made him feel bad. House had a soft spot for kids, even if he didn't want to admit it to himself. The fact that this girl had not only been severely abused, but misdiagnosed as well, easily explained House's intense desire to see her cured.

A few minutes passed in relative silence, and then the three younger doctors came back. House entered the room only moments after they had seated themselves with mugs of coffee.

"What do you have?" He asked.

"Well, it's not a common bacteria—if it is a bacteria," Cameron offered.

"I couldn't find any other physical cause, and I looked over the MRI again; there's nothing there to indicate a physical problem." Chase said.

"Ok, so it's not viral, and it's not another systemic cause, so what kinds of bacteria can cause this?" House asked.

"It could be Typhoid Fever." Chase offered.

"No cough, no other signs, and her blood tested negative." Cameron replied.

"Tests can be wrong," House offered "But I don't think it's Typhoid."

"What about that weird infection, the one caused by drinking unpasteurized cow's milk?" Foreman asked.

"Gibraltar fever?" Chase asked.

"Right, Brucellosis." House said. "That's got to be it. Cameron, you said that she used to live on a farm, right?"

"Yeah, she was locked in the basement."

"I don't care about that part. I think that they were just feeding her the milk straight from the cows; it's cheap, easy, and lets them spend the money that the state gives for her food on something more important to them. Start her on Doxycycline 100mg po bid, and Streptomycin 1 g IM." House looked around the table once more and then limped back into his office.

:Pain:

:Hot:

Kelly's mind tried to work around the loss of the two things that had been constants for so long. With a tentative touch on consciousness she willed the gray away. She allowed herself to drift up from the foggy safe world that she inhabited more often then not. She kept her eyes closed and just listened to the colors in the room. There was a deep gold and a brilliant cerulean blue that filled the room. They were shortly joined by a powerful plum that mixed happily with the other two colors. Kelly could tell that these three colors worked well together and sighed happily at the interplay of light and color that flashed before a screen of black. She liked these colors, but missed the calm smoothness of the teal that she had come to like. Cautiously inching her hand over to the edge of the bed she felt for the smooth object that seemed to be a part of the teal. When her fingers met air she had to keep herself from making a noise of disappointment. She had learned early on that making noises was not a good thing. All they brought was more pain.

:Pain:

She carefully took stock of her body. Her knee was still painful, but only in an annoying way. To her, pain was life, and without it she would be lost. Her head no longer pounded, but her whole body ached. The heat that she had noticed was missing wasn't really missing, but it was much reduced. She continued her internal investigation until she found the wounds on her back. They felt different somehow, scratchy and not as hot as they had been before. She shifted slightly to test this new feeling, and decided that it wasn't at all bad. She pushed her mind closer to awareness and tried to listen to the three people she knew were in the room, but they were either speaking a language she didn't understand, or speaking in rhymes.

:Riddles:

She liked riddles. One of the places she remembered had riddles, a little book full of words that, when put together, made wonderful puzzles that diverted her mind for hours. She would figure them out quickly, and then analyze every aspect of the puzzle. She liked puzzles. The Bad Place didn't have books, and she found that she missed the small marks on a page that she had learned to decipher by watching the other foster children struggle through homework, and essays. To her, words were almost sacred. A secret to never let on that she knew. There must be a reason they never taught her to read. It must be bad for her to do it. She tried very hard to not be bad; being bad only brought pain. That was an easy lesson to learn. The harder one was why not being bad also brought pain. The Bad Place had taught her that. She pulled herself out of her mental ramblings and listened to the three voices in the room. They were still muffled and funny sounding. She sighed and slipped back into the gray place, but kept her ears open for any signs of teal.