Disclaimer…I own nothing except the characters I create. The quote in the summary is a Swedish proverb.

Author's Note...I think my favorite out of all my personal Muses is the one who brought you 'Rest In Peace.' I didn't want to overwork her, so I laid her down to rest with Bryan and his wedding ring. (Note: Not a real person. Unfortunately. Remember the wedding ring metaphor from the last line or so of 'Rest In Peace'?) But alas; it seems I have not learned my lesson from that story, lesson being, some things never die. Lucky for me, Muse is one of those things. So, I bring you 'Thicker Than Blood.' Enjoy--and if anybody would like to offer their services as beta, that would be much appreciated!

Dedicated to all mothers, who put up with their daughters and love them anyway


"It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man;
it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

-Baudouin I 1930-1993, King of the Belgians

Cameron's Point of View

All I can see is white, everywhere there is white. My dress--no, my gown--is white, the seats are white, the women (who, by the way, are each flaunting white bouquets) who are following me everywhere I go are in white. Everything is pure and clean and fresh and new. Even Johanna's white knee-length dress is without a stain, and this is how I know I am dreaming.

I look around, my pupils dilating in search of color. Finally, I spot him; James Evan Wilson, standing in front of me yet still very far away, doing a remarkable impression of a penguin.

I walk closer to him, the women behind me hot on my glorious three-inch heels (which I miraculously do not trip over) and see that contrary to my earlier idea, Jimmy is not pretending to be the prey of the seal.

Rather, he is merely dressed like one.

I know dreams are usually surreal, but this is ridiculous.

I gracefully swivel around and demand the woman right behind me to tell me where the hell I am.

She grins stupidly. "Why, we're at your wedding, silly!"

XXXxxxXXX

I wake with a start, my hairline damp with sweat. Jimmy is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking worriedly at me and Johanna is at the doorway, fully dressed. I glance at the clock; it is 10:30 in the morning. For a minute I am concerned that I am still dreaming, because those two are my human alarm clocks, but I can feel the familiar anxiousness creep upon me like a cat. I must be awake; there is no way the great pie in the sky that Jimmy insists is there would be so cruel as to burden me with emotions in my slumber.

Agonizingly, I turn to Jimmy and point an accusing finger at him. "I'm not going to marry you," I shout rather manically.

Jimmy and Johanna exchange glances and even though they're probably contemplating which mental institution they should call, I am absolutely tickled by the fact that they are so comfortable together. For years, Jimmy had been rather awkward around her, but a few months ago, a necessary if terrifying catalyst shoved him in the right direction. I am so happy with their bond that I do not mind that, in their newfound closeness, they are unwittingly but somehow systematically shutting me out. Jealousy, as House once told me after seeing the way I eyed one of Jimmy's female patients, is an awful color. Apparently, it clashes horribly with guilt and good intentions.

I remember telling House that if he wanted to be someone's style expert, he was barking up the wrong tree and glanced meaningfully at Chase. I'm not exactly sure what has happened to our relationship over the years, and whether we are friends now or what, but it is as though we have developed a common link through association. We have a deal; he never lets Jimmy on that motorcycle of his, and never tells Jimmy why; and I never hold Jimmy back from hanging out with House, doing 'manly things'.

However, if he decides not to go to some monster truck rally or horserace or bar on his own accord, well, then it's out of my hands.

Smirking at myself and my womanly influences, I climb out of bed and give each a kiss on the cheek, the anger from my dream fading away. On my way to the bathroom, I study Johanna's attire. She is wearing denim kapris, a black t-shirt, and a faded bubble-gum pink sweatshirt. It is not her clothing that alarms me; it is the fact that she is clothed. Not that my eight-and-a-half year old daughter runs around in the nude; it just takes several minutes of nagging to get her dressed, and in weather-appropriate clothes.

"It's not Mother's Day," I think aloud. "Not my birthday. Last time I checked we weren't living in an alternate universe," I bend over so my face is inches from Johanna's. "So what's the big occasion?"

Despite what my words imply, Johanna is anything but a problem. My only wish for her is a rather selfish one, and it pains me to admit it, even to myself, but if I could change a single thing about her, I would be embarrassingly happy if she needed me more. I suppose that her fierce independence is due to the first six years of her life and the uncertainty of it all, and I know I'm the cause of that but it doesn't make me want to be needed any less. Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen when she learns to drive…will she just up and leave, tired of my over-caring ways? Will she eventually come to see me as nothing more than a person who offers shelter and financial support? What about when she goes to college…by the time she graduates, she won't need me at all.

I know what happened when I went to college.

I snap out of my troubling reverie, and ask Johanna to repeat what she has just said. She smiles uncertainly, and starts over again. "You said you would take me to the zoo to draw the giraffes today, remember? You promised me last weekend."

I do remember that, but what I remember more clearly is the look in our patient's, young Katie Willow, eyes. They were empty, dull, vacant.

One of the first signs sailors have of their ships sinking is the rats. Somehow, rodents have an instinct to flee the drowning boat, even if it means taking a suicide plunge off the hull. I suppose souls are the same way; when the body enters the homestretch of death, the final few minutes and seconds, they are the first to leave. Nerve endings can still live for a few hours and it took the Titanic an entire two hours and forty long minutes to sink.

Even as a doctor, I know that at some point or another, medical charts and oceanic maps do not matter anymore. When the rats jump; when the soul flies away; that's when you know you're in the crap. Even if the band plays on.

"Sorry, Johanna," I apologize, "but I really have to be at work." Technically, I'm off, but I want to see how our patient is doing. Or, rather, I need to see how she is doing.

Annoyance then understanding seeps across Johanna's face. "Ok," she says resignedly and leaves the room.

My heart wracked with guilt, I move to follow her but something grabs my arm and stops me.

It's Jimmy.

"I'll take her," he graciously offers.

"Don't you have work?"

He shrugs. "We can make it quick."

No he can't. Johanna's young flesh and blood is clearly that of an artist's, and when she gets into a project, really, truly, into it, she's on island time. Art is Johanna's escape, and once she puts a pencil in her hand, it doesn't come out for hours. A good job, she told me once, is not something you can rush.

Ain't it the truth.

"You'll have to take the whole day off," I tell him.

Jimmy shrugs. "I don't have an appointment 'till late this afternoon. If I can't make it, I'll ask Dr. Lagber to."

I shake my head. Sometimes he just doesn't get it. "No, you have to take it," I insist. "This person has cancer. They shouldn't get stood up by their own oncologist."

He grins and follows me into the bathroom as I begin to brush my teeth. "It must be exhausting to live with that moral compass of yours," he marvels.

"You have it too," I say after I spit and rinse. "You're just very good at ignoring it."

"You know me too well."

I wipe the excess water from my mouth with a coarse washcloth and smile at him. "I do. And I have no complaints."

With that, I turn around and march into Johanna's room, leaving a happy Jimmy in my wake.

XXXxxxXXX

I look around Johanna's room five times for her. It is completely uncharacteristic for her to just…disappear. And besides, I didn't hear the front door slam.

"Johanna," I call out, stupidly looking under a small pillow for her. "Where are you?" For a beautiful, fleeting moment, I am taken back a few years and she's still six and I'm still single and it's just the two of us, indulging in that wonderful childhood game where, no matter what, you always find what--or who--you're looking for.

"In the living room," she calls back.

I sigh and follow her voice to find my daughter sitting in front of the computer, quickly typing what looks like a letter. I notice with some pride that she has to backspace less and less; her typing has gotten better.

I read over her shoulder. "What've you got there?"

"Nothing important."

"Can I read it?"

Johanna shrugs and gives up her chair. I study the screen, she has written in an impossibly small font.

"Do you wish the reader of this to go blind?"

Johanna blushes slightly and shrugs.

I smile at her and significantly enlarge the font, making myself feel much older than I am.

Dear Mr. Walmount,

I'm very sorry to say I was unable to finish the final project you assigned to us by the due date. I will hand it in to you next Monday, unless I start a new one. I hope this does not cause any trouble.

From,

Johanna C. Wilson-Cameron

If I felt guilty before, I feel positively awful now. Sighing, I turn to Johanna. "What's the assignment?"

"For our last project, we had to draw a series of something. I did animals. I already drew a dog, a cat, a bird, a lizard, and one of the elephants at the zoo," Johanna explains.

How old is she again? I could have sworn that she was born yesterday.

Then again, I really couldn't.

"Could you draw Steve McQueen? I'm sure House isn't at work yet, I can ask Jimmy to call him and ask to bring him in."

Johanna brightens. "That'd be great!" Her smile fades suddenly; remembering who House is, no doubt. "But will he mind?"

I shrug. "Probably. But don't worry…he'll have much more fun hanging it over me than you."

This logic means nothing to Johanna. Like me, she is one to take the beat for her own problems and needs.

"I'll call him," she decides and leaves to do the deed.

I smile at her retreating form and triumphantly, if prematurely, delete her letter. I'm her parent; I determine how old she must be to pay for her mother's assorted complexes.

XXXxxxXXX

It does not surprise me one little bit that House brings in the aging rat. Johanna may be oblivious to the fact that she has had most of the hospital staff wrapped around her pinky finger since she got here, but I am not. Nevertheless, I privately thank House for the favor once Johanna is happily sketching and lost in her own world.

His gaze lingers on Steve McQueen a second longer than it should, and I feel compelled to ask what's wrong.

He looks at me like I have grown an extra head. "It's a rat."

"He's your pet."

"It's a rat," he insists. "Not everybody forms a bizarre attachment to anything and everything they meet, foreign as it may seem."

"Is he sick?"

He closes his eyes for a second and looks like he seriously considers yelling at me. "It's a rat," he finally says, apparently at a loss.

I examine Steve McQueen from a distance. "He looks thin," I tell House.

"It's on a new diet. South Beach was for wussies."

I wrack my brain for everything I know about the South Beach Diet. I vaguely remember reading that the lack of nutrition may be carcinogenic. "Your rat has cancer?"

He looks at me approvingly. "Very good. You've been Googling diet plans, then. Interesting. Is Wilson expecting a better body out of his woman? Is living in sin finally taking its toll on your hips? A little junk in the trunk never hurt anybody, Dr. Cameron. Especially potential anorexics."

I roll my eyes so hard my head swerves a bit. "Just because I choose salads over fast food does not mean I'm anorexic," I snap.

"Just because I pop Vicoden like candy and drink Scotch like it's fresh from the Fountain of Youth doesn't make me an addict."

I open and close my mouth furiously, but find I am totally speechless.

Foreman walks in, nods at me and Johanna in greeting, and looks grimly at Katie Willow's latest charts. Sighing audibly, he makes some coffee for himself and examines the whiteboard. "Cameron, I just saw Wilson. He wanted to know if you wanted one of those snacks he keeps because you skipped breakfast this morning."

Johanna looks up. "But I thought…" House's sarcasm finally dawns on her and she smiles slightly, appreciating the humor, before getting back to work.

I look at House, almost infuriated with him. He grins down at me. "Oh, the tangled webs we weave, when we practice to deceive." He looks over at Johanna. "You can keep him if you know who said that," he says, clearly expecting the wrong answer.

"Sir Walter Scott," she answers without batting an eye. When House's mouth drops, Johanna grins cheekily at him. "I just read an Illustrated Classics version of Ivanhoe. I researched the author."

My daughter.

I turn to House, barely able to conceal the proud grin threatening to splash across my face. "That rat better not be dying," I warn before practically jolting from the room, so desperate am I to find a place where I can safely collapse into laughter.

XXXxxxXXX

The rest of the day passes by uneventfully. Johanna is ecstatic about her new pet, who she promises to take excellent care of, and never to feed it Vicoden. Jimmy and I are, needless to say, less than thrilled about the new addition. Meanwhile, poor Katie Willow seems to be stuck in limbo. She is a hair's length away from a vegetative state and Chase now has his very own assisted suicide tale to tell. He informed the family that such a thing was illegal, but assisted them in filling out the correct DNR forms.

Maybe I shouldn't have come to work today.

When House tells me that I'm going to need to stay late tonight, and Wilson tells me that it turns out he'll be working the night also, I arrange for a sleepover for Johanna and check my messages. The sleepover is easy; all I have to do is ask Johanna to call so-and-so and I don't have to lift another finger, but as for checking my messages; it's an adventure in itself. I have just recently learned how to maneuver the new answering machine, and I'm still working out the kinks.

The first message is from Johanna's friend; she needs the homework.

The second is from Jimmy's other brother, Mike; he wants to know what he and Jimmy are getting their parents for their anniversary. I wrinkle my nose at this one; they are both over thirty-five, and still they chip in for the same gift.

The third is from his parents themselves; they want to know if they are coming down here for their anniversary (please no) or if we are coming up there. I have met them all of two times, each time they have been aloof and distanced themselves from Johanna and me. To be fair, we weren't exactly very warm to them either.

The fourth is from Ms. Harding, from the adoption agency, asking for us to call her immediately.

It's an emergency.