Ghost From the Past (7?)
Rating: PG-13 (I think)
Word Count: 2,410
Disclaimer: I own House. Um, right. That was a lie. I don't own anything. Except season 1 & 2 on DVD and my own insanity.
Summary: In the middle of a case, a figure from Cameron's past arrives, creating complications and confusions in her life.
Author's Note: As I said, this is my first House fanfic. The characters may be very, very OOC. It is possible. I have no medical experience, therefore anything I write is probably very wrong. I have no beta, so all mistakes are mine. No spoilers past season 2.
Ghost From the Past
Chapter Seven: Friendly Advice
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She couldn't remember. And that scared her. She could not remember—but she remembered enough to make her afraid. She and Chase—what had they done? She knew that she had kissed him, but she didn't know if that had been all she did. She felt like an idiot. Her head hurt like she had a hangover. And she knew she'd made a mistake. She had kissed him. He had tried to stop, but she had not wanted to stop.
Not then. Now…
She splashed water on her face and stood up, studying herself in the mirror. She looked terrible. She did her best to clean herself up, then left the room. She had to speak to Chase, though she wasn't looking forward to it. There would be coffee in the diagnosis room. And coffee was a good place to start.
When she entered the room, Foreman and Chase were there. She supposed it could be worse. House could have been there, too. She needed to talk to Chase, but she wasn't ready for that yet, and if she did talk to him, it should be when they were by themselves.
She looked at the clock. "Good morning."
Foreman grunted. She felt a twinge of guilt. She'd been asleep, but it didn't look like Foreman had been able to get any rest. Chase nodded over his coffee cup. She looked at him. She didn't recognize that shirt. Maybe Chase had gotten some sleep, too. But she wasn't sure that was a good thing, not if he'd slept with her…
"Nice shirt," she began, touching his sleeve. "Is it new?"
"Yeah," he answered softly. He met her eyes briefly, and then looked away. He shook his head, answering her unspoken question.
She sighed in relief. So they hadn't done anything. She smiled at him. "It looks good. Matches your eyes."
"Thanks," he mumbled, choking on his coffee but waved away her attempt to help. He took his coffee and grabbed his lab coat. "I've got clinic duty."
Cameron watched him leave and then sat down at the table, putting her head in her hands. What had she done? She knew that she shouldn't have kissed Chase, shouldn't have done what she did the other night, and now… It had gotten complicated. And that was without adding Joe to the mess.
"What have I done?" she asked herself. "What am I going to do?"
"You really want to know?" Foreman asked, offering her a cup of coffee.
"Yes," she answered, then reconsidered. "No. I don't know."
Foreman waited, watching her. She took the coffee cup from him and took a sip. "My life is a disaster."
"You want some friendly advice?"
"Yes," she didn't hesitate. She was so confused. She needed someone's help, and turning to Chase had been an even bigger mistake than the first time.
"Fine," Foreman said. "Stop using Chase."
"What?"
"You heard me," Foreman told her. "You're in control of your relationship. You have been for a long time."
"Relationship?" Cameron repeated, staring at Foreman. "Chase and I don't have a relationship."
"That's the problem," Foreman explained. "You know that. But I don't think he knows that."
She didn't understand. She shook her head. This was not what she expected, not the help she needed. She already knew that she had done the wrong thing by turning to Chase, but she didn't need to be told that. She sighed. "But why would he think there was more? There isn't."
"Cameron, please. You just told him he looked good in his shirt."
"As a friend. A friend tells their friends when they look nice," she protested.
"You're giving him mixed signals," Foreman told her. She stared at him in disbelief. She'd acted like a friend, just a friend. The sum of her "relationship" with Chase was that "it didn't suck." This was ridiculous.
Foreman sighed. "And he's got it bad."
Cameron kept staring. She couldn't believe this. She was talking about her nonexistent relationship with Chase with Foreman, there was a little girl dying in another room, and Joe…Joe was in love with her. Now Foreman was saying…No, that couldn't be right.
"I saw the way he took care of you the other night," Foreman said. "Cameron, he's in love with you."
She choked on her coffee. "What? No… No… It's not possible."
Foreman watched her. He shook his head, eyes closed. "Please tell me you didn't."
"Foreman—"
"You slept with him again, didn't you?"
She couldn't answer. She felt horribly guilty. She was going to be sick, and tears were welling in her eyes. How had things gotten so completely mixed up? Joe, Chase… "I didn't know—I didn't know he felt—He didn't say anything—I didn't know."
Foreman's gaze softened. He'd been harsh before, but now he touched her shoulder. "He didn't say anything because he doesn't know. But you had better be clear about it now."
She nodded, burying her face in her arms. Foreman stopped in the doorway. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
She thanked him, but she knew that fixing this wouldn't be easy.
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"She's using you," House said, opening the door to the exam room. "You know that, right?"
Chase's patient shrieked and covered herself ineffectually. It was perfect. House had some strange, twisted sense of timing, an ability to sense the worst possible moment. Chase had been in the middle of a breast exam on a very skittish woman in her early forties with the cancer gene and extreme paranoia. Every week she was in, convinced that she had found a lump. Most doctors were fed up with her hysteria, so Chase had calmed her down once by saying she should ask for him. It was a mistake. At first, she'd been too embarrassed to be seen by a younger doctor who was "cute," but now she would only see him. And House had just accused her of using Chase.
"Dr. House, get out," Chase ordered. "It's okay, Mrs. Stevens. Excuse me for a second."
"Oh, sorry," House said, looking at Mrs. Stevens. "Not you."
Chase shoved House out of the room. "What do you think you were doing?"
"What I always do," House said, frowning. "What is your problem?"
"My problem? You just burst in on my patient who happens to be nervous and extremely paranoid. She will probably sue. And since I know that you don't give a damn about that, how about the fact that you interrupted my exam for no good reason?"
"I was trying to be concerned about my subordinate," House pretended to look hurt. He faked puppy eyes at Chase, making his lower lip quiver like he was about to cry. "It's only because I really, really love you."
"House," Chase said impatiently.
"You're flushed," House said, dropping the act. "I noticed that the lovely Mrs. Robinson always asks for you. Why is that? Are you having an affair?"
"No," Chase said angrily.
"You were touching her breasts."
Chase banged his head against the wall. "She thinks she has cancer. I was doing an exam."
"Right. Sure. Is that what you call it when you do it to Cameron?"
Chase blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
House looked at him. "You know what I mean. You and Cameron. Or maybe it's just you. She's certainly not acting like a lovesick teenager. But you are."
Chase glared at him. "I have an exam to do."
"She can wait."
"If this was about a case, then yes, she could wait," Chase agreed, "but this isn't about a case. This is about you humiliating me because I won't buy into your crazy theory that Elizabeth's illness is contagious."
"Either you keep getting humiliated or angry or you have a fever. You shouldn't be treating patients," House said. "You do know she's using you, right?"
Chase said nothing, glaring at House and folding his arms over his chest. House watched him. "This is worse than I thought. You care about her."
Chase rolled his eyes and opened the door to the exam room. House pushed it shut. "You are an idiot. You're in love with her."
In all the years that he'd worked for House, Chase had never come closer to hitting House. He could feel his hand twitching, clenching and unclenching. His eyes never left House. Chase'd had enough. House had gone too far. But House actually wanted Chase to hit him. Chase stepped back and grabbed the door handle.
"It doesn't matter," Chase said, opening the door.
"Yes, it does," House said. "You can't work with her if you're—"
"It doesn't matter," Chase repeated. "I quit."
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"Cameron?"
The voice made her jerk her head up from the table. She hadn't moved since Foreman left her. Now that she was actually looking around, she discovered that someone had been nice to her and closed the blinds. And now she was no longer alone, but she wasn't unhappy about it. It could have been any one of three people and she would have wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but it wasn't. She knew that avoiding them wasn't helping anything, but she couldn't face them, either.
"I would have thought you'd be with Elizabeth," Wilson continued as he came over to the table.
"That would mean that I'd see Joe," she said, turning the full cup of coffee around in a circle. It was too cold to drink now. She could warm it up, but she wasn't about to move.
"Joe?" Wilson asked, raising an eyebrow. "Joe as in the Joe? The Joe you fell in love with when your husband was dying?"
"Yep. The Joe," she answered. It was so absurd she found herself smiling. She felt like she had been drinking. Or should have been drinking. "Joe is Elizabeth's uncle."
"That must be awkward," Wilson observed. He shrugged. "But I don't know that it explains why you look like you've been run over by a truck and you're in here by yourself in need of a good drink."
"You don't think it does?"
"You seemed to have put it behind you," Wilson went to the coffee pot, filled himself a cup, and then sat down across from her, folding his coat into his lap. "Maybe you regretted never knowing what it was like. But you had someone new."
She smiled ruefully. "You mean House."
"Am I wrong? Were you pining for Joe all this time?" Wilson prodded.
"No," she admitted. She felt better for saying it, admitting it. Her husband had died years ago, and she rarely thought of Joe. She had taken her wedding album out after that conversation with Wilson, but she didn't think about Joe, wonder where he was, or dream about him, except when she was reminded of him.
"So it's not because you ran into him again."
"No."
"And it's not because you're trying to cure his niece."
"No." She was aware that their conversation was like pulling teeth, and she was grateful that Wilson was patient enough to try.
"So I have to guess," Wilson said. He was good at this, she thought. Probably from all those years dealing with House. "Let's see… You obviously still have feelings for him. Which is worse, if he has feelings for you or if he doesn't?"
"It would be easier if he didn't," she answered. "But he loves me."
Wilson nodded. "And you're his niece's doctor, so you have—"
"And Chase loves me." The words still made her feel sick. Her stomach gave a little twinge. At least she hadn't eaten anything yet.
"Chase loves you?" Wilson asked. He didn't really sound surprised. Maybe the only one that didn't know was her. "How does Chase fit into all this?"
"I slept with him," she said. She couldn't be embarrassed anymore. It had gone too far. If everyone didn't know already, they soon would. They would know everything. They would know about Joe, about her husband, about how she'd used Chase…
"Again?"
She nodded, looking down at the coffee cup. "It was the night that we almost lost Elizabeth. I just wanted to forget. I didn't know that he was in love with me. Foreman told me this morning."
"You're sure he loves you?"
Funny. She'd never stopped to doubt it. Chase loved her. When Foreman said that, she'd accepted it without question. Well, no, she'd tried to deny it, but she hadn't tried very hard. Why? Because she wanted it to be true? Her life was complicated enough. Why would she want it to be true?
"I used him."
"He consented," Wilson said, taking a sip of his coffee.
"He loves me," Cameron protested. "He loves me, and I don't love him. I used him. I saw Joe again. I was confused about the way that I felt about him. Elizabeth coded, and Chase brought her back. And I used him because I wanted to avoid thinking about Joe."
Wilson nodded. "So you feel guilty."
"Yes."
"So you're sitting here feeling sorry for yourself?"
She jerked her head up, looking at him in shock. "I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I—"
"You—?"
"I don't know how to fix this. I don't know what to do." She sighed. "And I'm feeling sorry for myself."
He smiled. "You want some advice?"
"Foreman already gave me some," she answered. "Stop using Chase."
"Sounds good," Wilson agreed. "What about Joe?"
She shook her head with a shrug. "I don't know. I have to cure Elizabeth first. Then I'll decide."
Wilson frowned. "I'm not sure that avoiding a decision is a good idea."
"I can't make it now," she rose and dumped her coffee in the sink. She watched it go down the drain, feeling empty. "I haven't seen Joe in five years. I don't know him anymore. I need time to get to know him again."
"That sounds reasonable," Wilson told her. She turned as he got to his feet. Sure, it sounds reasonable; she wanted to scream, so why don't I feel any better? He walked over to her, squeezing her shoulder supportively. "You'll be fine."
She nodded and watched him leave. When he got to the door, he stopped. "Cameron, have you considered the possibility that you weren't avoiding your feelings for Joe when you were with Chase? That maybe you were acting on your feelings for Chase?"
Cameron stared at Wilson. She didn't have an answer for that.