Chapter 26
Cameron sat at the opposite end of the couch from House. He hadn't moved or spoken since she'd come in and put down her things. She wasn't entirely convinced that he was sleeping, but she didn't want to wake him if he was. So she sat. After a few minutes, House picked his head up and looked at her. Cameron knew that even though he seemed to love the sound of his own voice sometimes, he wasn't really much of a talker.
"Hungry?" she asked. It was a safe question. When wasn't he hungry?
House just shook his head no. He was too tired to eat. He was too tired to talk. He just wanted to sit.
"Well then. I guess I'll tell you what I came to say. I don't expect any sympathy or anything. In fact, I'd rather you didn't try to be nice, you'd only screw it up." Cameron shot him a quick grin at that last comment. "I already know you pulled my medical records. You must have seen that I was hospitalized for a month when I was 17?"
House nodded. He'd noticed, of course.
"And I assume, seeing as you're House, that you checked out the hospital where I was, since it's not a name you were familiar with?" Cameron continued.
Again, House nodded. I must be getting predictable, he thought.
"Well, so then you know it was a psychiatric hospital." Cameron looked to House for confirmation; he nodded again. "And I suppose you decided it was some sad little girl angst, about a bad home life or a boyfriend. Something typically Cameron?"
House just looked at her. How did she know that's what he thought?
"Well, what you probably didn't know is that the hospital also runs a drug treatment facility."
House looked up at her, surprised. Cameron, a drug addict? That was ridiculous.
"Humph," Cameron huffed. "I figured as much. You know, House, I always wondered why you never pushed me on that night I got high. Did that really seem like me? The me that you know?" House shook his head this time. "But you never pushed me on it. Maybe you're slipping in your old age?" Cameron teased. House frowned.
"Right, not in the mood to be teased." Cameron paused. "You're always going on about how ethical I am, how moral. I push too hard, nothing is ever gray, just black and white." Cameron paused again. This was harder than she'd thought. "I push myself that hard because I remember how easy it was for everything to be gray. Everything was okay; nothing was really wrong or bad, as long as you had a good reason for it. I can't let myself see the gray, because I'm afraid. I'm afraid if I see the gray somewhere, it'll creep in everywhere else. Does that make any sense?" House nodded.
Cameron continued speaking. She told House about the dreams she'd had as a little girl, and about how she'd asked her parents for years and never been able to get an answer. Her parents were distant, fighting all the time and not really being a part of her life. They were there, but only in the physical sense. By the time she started high school, she knew that she needed to go away to college. Her parents didn't make a lot of money, so the only way that was going to happen was for her to get a scholarship. She told him how she'd thrown herself into her schoolwork; she hardly made any friends at all or had any kind of life.
Then she told him about how, when she was midway through her sophomore year, her father got laid off from his job. He struggled to find even part time work in their small little town, and she and her mother had both had to take part time jobs just to get by. Her grades began to slip, just a little at first but then more and more. She didn't have the time to study she'd had before she started working, and the work itself only got harder.
"It started out innocently enough, I suppose. Of course, that's probably what everybody says. I started taking caffeine tablets, just enough so that when I finished waiting tables in the evening, I could still come home and spend a few extra hours studying. It was a rough few months, but I got through it. I spent that entire summer before my junior year working, hoping that if we could save up a little money, maybe I could take less shifts when school started again." Cameron had gotten up and begun pacing the apartment by this time.
"But, it didn't work out that way. My mom got fired, and she couldn't always find steady work. So only a month into my junior year of school, I was taking the caffeine pills again. Only they weren't enough. I couldn't stay up late enough, and I was desperate. I couldn't quit my job, and I couldn't let my grades go. Getting a scholarship was the only way I was ever going to get out of that town. So, I started taking uppers. It was perfect. I could stay up the whole night to study before any test or exam, or to write a paper." Cameron looked at House, trying to gauge his reaction. He was watching her intently.
"Of course, you can only do that for so long before you crash. I made it until Christmas break. I convinced my mom I'd caught some sort of flu that was going around school, and I spent basically the whole vacation sleeping. But then school started up again, and I just couldn't keep up with the pills. So I started taking uppers and downers. I'd take an upper when I came home from work, study until 2 or 3 in the morning, then take half of a downer, just enough to get maybe 4 hours of sleep. I'd picked up an extra shift on the weekends at work; it was just barely enough to pay for the uppers. When I started needing the downers too, I couldn't afford it."
Cameron paused. This was the part that she hated the most, even more than the crash and burn at the end. And she wasn't sure she wanted House to hear it, but she thought the only way he'd ever trust her was if she trusted him. So she continued.
"I couldn't afford to pay my dealer for both of them. I couldn't work any more than I already was. So, he let me take it out in trade." Cameron stopped and looked at House. She didn't want to go into any more details than absolutely necessary, but she wanted to make sure he got what she meant. One look at his face told her he got it.
"Well, it went that way the rest of the year, and the summer. Turns out even though I didn't need them anymore, I still needed them. My senior year was no different. My parents never noticed anything serious. Whenever my mother would get a little suspicious, I would just tell her how tired I was from working and studying so hard, and she'd give me this sad little smile and tell me what a good girl I was." Cameron wiped a tear away at that point. She and her parents had never had much of a relationship, but she still always hated herself for lying to her mother like that.
"When senior year finished, I got my scholarship. I was so excited; I wanted to burst. But, I had no friends to celebrate with. My parents were happy, I guess, and proud of me, but we just weren't a family. So, I called my dealer and told him I wanted to celebrate. We spent the next three days completely high and well, you know." Cameron blushed. House didn't make a single comment. Cameron was very grateful for that.
"When I came home three days later, I collapsed in my room and didn't come out. My mom and dad were a little freaked. But that was nothing until they couldn't wake me up. They called an ambulance, and I'm sure you can figure out the rest. Lucky for me, my dad had managed to get a job working as a janitor in the hospital. He knew the administrator, and was able to get me into that private hospital. I spent a month in detox and therapy. That was when I found out about my sister."
Cameron continued to tell House about how she'd discovered, in a joint session with her mom and dad, she'd had a sister, Emily who had died of cancer. The whole story came out, about how Emily had gotten sick. How each of her parents blamed the other. And, how after Emily died, they both just sort of retreated into themselves. They had given everything they had to Emily while she was sick, and they just had nothing left to give.
"Since it was a private hospital, they told the college admissions board I was admitted for mental exhaustion. Stress from the years of working and studying so hard. I left for college that fall, and didn't go back home until my mother died. I went to the funeral, and then left again. I'll go back for my father's funeral, of course. But probably not before." Cameron stopped. She was done. She looked at her watch. Amazing. She'd told him her entire life story in just over an hour. It was barely 9:30.
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"The night I got high last year was the first time I've touched anything that wasn't a prescription in more than ten years. And in one night, I was right back to who I was when I was a teenager. I'm not proud of it, but I always knew it could happen some day. You don't ever get over being an addict. And it only takes a minute to slip." Cameron sat back on the couch with House.
"Anyway, I wanted you to know. I understand exactly what you're going through. Not the leg, of course, and whatever other personal stuff you've got going on in there. But I get the Vicodin. You'll never hear a bad word from me about it. I know how hard it is, and how hard it always will be. You can talk to me about it anytime you want, or not. It's totally up to you. But I know I would have liked to have someone I knew and could trust to talk to, instead of a bunch of strangers."
House didn't say anything, just nodded at Cameron to indicate he understood. His mind was still reeling a little from all the information she'd given him. And he was surprised he'd never put the two things together. Maybe he was so wrapped up in Stacy when Cameron had slipped last year, that he couldn't see it right in front of him.
He heard Cameron behind him rustling in some bags. He stretched his longs legs out in front of him, and then stretched his arms along the length of the couch. He looked over at Cameron, who was pulling something out of the shopping bag she'd brought.
"Okay, all the serious stuff is done. You owe me a movie. Not that I don't enjoy British comedy, because I do. But I thought something a little different might be good today." Her tone was much lighter. She meant what she'd said. Enough seriousness. She sat next to him on the couch and handed him the DVD. It was Girl from Rio.
House raised an eyebrow at her.
"Hugh Laurie again, huh?" He finally spoke. "What are you, in love with him?"
"Jealous?" Cameron asked, teasing. She got up from the couch and put in the DVD.
"Are you kidding? I'm ten times better looking than he is." House snarked.
"Maybe," Cameron drawled, looking him up and down. "But you don't have the accent."
"The accent?" House questioned.
"The accent," Cameron confirmed, heading back for her bags. "It's a well known fact that a British accent instantly makes any man at least five times sexier than he is based on just his looks."
"Women." House replied. Cameron came around the couch and handed him a deli container. He opened it to find a Rueben sandwich and a bag of chips. Then he wrinkled his nose. Cameron, sitting next to him opening a sandwich for herself, caught the face and laughed at him.
"What's with the face?" she asked.
"There is a pickle dangerously close to my sandwich," House said.
Cameron giggled. She reached into House's container and grabbed the pickle.
"It's not poison, you know," she said, munching happily on the excellent deli pickle.
"No, but it used to be a vegetable," House replied.
"Men," Cameron huffed. "Vegetables are good for you. Did you skip that day of med school too? Must have been the same day they taught bedside manner."
"Snarky today, aren't we?" House asked.
"I learned from the best," Cameron answered.
"True, very true." House paused. "Cameron?"
"House."
"You did good today." House didn't look at her while he said, just studied his sandwich.
"Thanks," Cameron replied. "Movie's starting."
