Week Twenty-Six: The House and I

Chase would lay things to rest with Cameron, and then he would be free to move on. He was going to meet with her, and then it would all be laid to rest. He could get back the Cameron shaped part of his heart and find someone else to fill it. Or maybe, it would be no one at all – maybe, Chase could enjoy being single and be the party boy people kept assuming him to be.

Maybe he would find a nice little island to kick back on, the way House had when he had run off. Live the life, not worrying about anyone or anything – wasn't that supposed to be what everyone wanted, at the end of the day?

Trying to be the best doctor, trying to really help people, it was exhausting. Half the people you never could help, and the other half didn't want it. Had the years of medical school, trying to make his father proud of him in a fruitless search, had any of that even been worth it, or had he thrown his one and only life away? Even falling in love seemed, sometimes now, like a waste of time after all.

Of course, he didn't end up at an island at seven o'clock that morning; he walked into work with the same tired step he had been wearing through the floor for six years now. What if he just dissolved into the woodwork of the place, he wondered, what if he just stopped caring and let moss grow around him? Would anyone even notice?

Now was not the time for a mid-life crisis – but what better time to have one than when your ex-fiancée is having your boss' baby?

"Not even her boss anymore, my boss," he found himself telling Taub, who was hard at work running tests. "It's all one big cosmic joke, I'm telling you."

"It's time to get over yourself. There's actual medicine going on here, and all you're concerned with is the never-ending House and Cameron drama. Do you get tired, looking at yourself in the mirror every day, or what?"

"What, I'm an Abercrombie and Fitch model now?"

"Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say."

"They don't even say that!"

"Close enough for you to need to move on already – that's what I'm getting at. Cameron is over. It's done. Greener pastures await. For the good of all of us, because on behalf of the whole team, everyone is tired of listening to you complain about this."

"I haven't even complained about it at all!"

Taub tilted his head to the side and gave Chase a look that clearly said, "Yeah, right."

"You don't even need to say it out loud. It's on your long face every time you walk in here, and your work is suffering for it."

"How? I'm the same doctor as I always was."

"Neither of you are. You aren't, House isn't, and Cameron doesn't even work here anymore. And you're pathetic, and House is pathetic, and Cuddy is pathetic, and we need to have a real ban on any of us dating anyone who works here."

"Didn't you just knock up a nurse or something?" Chase fired back at him.

"That is a thing that happened, yes, and that is why I feel there should be a ban. Has this actually worked out well for any of us? Does it ever – does anyone ever go, I'm glad I dated my co-worker, I couldn't have found this level of devotion outside my workplace?"

Chase made a snorting noise and took some glassware off the table. He'd just start running tests, he decided – he didn't need to hear this lecture from Taub of all people. He had it sorted out, he knew he did.

If only there was a litmus test to determine how messed up your life was.

Cameron examined herself in the mirror, finding herself more than a little self-conscious. That was the part she hadn't expected in this whole situation. The clinical part was a breeze, it really was – the emotional part? That was a hell no one could know. It was as if she had been shoved into a blender, and the blender had been turned on.

For nine months.

Why had she talked herself into this? Why had she been pushed forward, driven by the desire to chew herself up and spit herself out for all eternity?

Why couldn't she have just stayed in Chicago? She could be married there, could be single and sitting in a lawn chair and soaking up the sun, forgetting the medical risks of such a thing (of everything, honestly), sipping a margarita. She was not going to be having any of those for quite a while, now. She let her eyes shut for a moment, picturing what could have been, the path not taken. Sliding doors, maybe.

But she had been the one to let them slide shut, not House, not anybody else. She had made the choice to start this crazy plan, and she would be the one to follow through on it. It was a crazy, stupid plan.

She had to smile at the fact that it had worked so far, though – the whole thing was working in some crazy kind of way, like one of House's own plans really. He could have invented this as a crazy scheme and she would have told him that there was no way he could pull it off.

Then again, she had always believed in House, still believed in him. Why else buoy him back into life even after he himself had given up? Why dangle this life in front of him that he didn't even want?

Maybe the world needed Dr. House more than Dr. House needed the world, and maybe Cameron needed House more than she needed a normal life. Maybe that was it, at the end of the day.

Who was she to make that calculation? Did she even have that right?

Maybe she was more life House than she knew.