House groaned as he pushed the unconscious form of Colin from his lap, letting his body drop without a thought for the other man's wellbeing as he hit the deck. He looked up to see Cuddy frowning angrily at him, no doubt ready to scold him for his actions as he shakily pulled off the O2 mask.
"Are you okay?" he completely threw her by asking her the inevitable question first, which was all part of his plan. "What the hell happened?" he added after a few minutes of stunned silence save for the crackling of the ambulance's wrecked body work.
"What, did you miss out on the part where we just crashed?" Cuddy snapped in reply as she unbelted and made her way through the spilled medical paraphernalia to get to his side. "Put that back on" she ordered as she pushed the mask back over his face.
"What's the driver looking like?" he mumbled through the mask, pulling it off to repeat the question when it became clear Cuddy either couldn't hear him, or was choosing to ignore him.
"I'm going to take a look – just stay there, don't move" Cuddy said as she stumbled over to the cab. The driver was unconscious, and judging by the amount of blood on the side window, he'd stay that way for a while.
She squeezed through the small gap into the front and cursed as she saw where they'd landed. They seemed to be precariously close to a river, and it only took a small jolt from the occupants of the van to send it sliding closer.
"House…when I said 'stay put' about three seconds ago – I may have meant to say 'get the hell out of here right now', okay?" Cuddy said cautiously as she hastily made an attempt at getting the driver's seatbelt off. She grabbed a small piece of cloth to press against his head and did a quick assessment to see if he had any other injuries; it wasn't long before she heard a commotion from the rear of the vehicle as someone tripped on the spilled contents of the van.
"Shit!" came the loud curse from behind her as House braced himself using the driver's head rest; the small hop from the gurney to the front of the van seemed to take the remainder of the ambulance's stability and it rocked slightly, sliding even closer to the water.
"House!" Cuddy proclaimed, "Get Colin, and get out"
"I just wanted to suggest that you use the radio to maybe let someone know that we're down here" House defended, smirking slightly, "but if you'd rather just wait around in the hope that someone saw us…then that's fine too…do you think there's a flare gun in this thing?"
Cuddy measured up his lightly slurred tone and soon put two and two together. "Are you high?"
"I may have taken a little something for the excruciating pain I was in…" he replied, feigning guilt. "Colin's a Paramedic" he stage whispered, "he's got access to all kinds of cool drugs back here"
"Is he awake?" Cuddy asked hopefully as she pressed her hand back against the wound on the driver's head, vainly attempting to stop the blood that seemed to be flowing just as freely as a few minutes ago.
"No, I just stole his key to the cabinet…" he replied slowly, being sure not to make eye contact as he pretended to search for some sort of communication device.
"Something tells me that you're not being sarcastic" Cuddy stated as she followed his gaze to the roof of the ambulance.
"And you'd be right" House replied nonchalantly, leaning over to grab the radio that was hanging from the roof. "Ow!" he cursed as his right kidney reminded him that it hadn't gone away, and was still being brutally impaled by his broken lower ribs.
"Still hurts…" he muttered to himself as he shook his head and fiddled around with the transmitter, trying to send out a message for help – he was rewarded by someone calling out from the other end. "What? Could you repeat that in something resembling English?" House asked as the operator's shrill voice crackled through the otherwise silent cab.
Cuddy snatched the receiver out of his hands and reeled off their situation to a surprised sounding operator at the hospital control centre; she could only hope that the person the other end couldn't hear House mumbling incoherently about pain meds and dosages in the background.
When she finished the transmission and was informed that help was on its way, she turned her attention back to her conscious patient who was cradling his abdomen and trying to use a roll of gauze to mop his dripping brow, which indicated his fever was still in full force.
"They're sending a rescue team out now – do you think you can carry the big guy out of here?" she asked hopefully, indicating to Colin in the back.
"I wanted to shoot a flare..." House replied, much to the disappointment of his babysitter, "and my head is still killing me."
"What, and how much, did you take?" Cuddy asked, suitably frustrated by his neglect for his own health...and her own neglect for his health for that matter.
"Well, I can go back to writhing in pain in the back if you prefer?" came the reply, which wasn't exactly the one Cuddy was waiting for; she paused in her medical duties and gave him an exasperated look. "I took a bit of…something" he said still unwilling, or unable, to recall what he took, "don't worry – I'm not exactly back on the verge of passing out yet – we've got at least twenty minutes before this baby wears off"
"Please, just do me a favour and get the guy out of the back and onto the bank before we all drown" Cuddy requested, sounding as though she were talking to a small child.
"Well, since you asked so nicely" House said, almost returning to his full sarcastic glory as he stumbled back to tend to Colin. "You do realise – the water's probably only a metre deep" he called back to further annoy his boss.
"Which is deep enough to drown somebody in" she replied in a dangerously low tone, causing House to raise his eyebrows in alarm.
"Okay Colin…yep, you're unconscious" House mumbled as he looked down on his would be life saver. How the hell Cuddy expected him to drag this guy from the ambulance was anyone's guess – had she forgotten who she was dealing with?
"House – it doesn't sound like you're doing much shifting back there" came an annoyingly calm voice from the front.
"Can we swap?" he called back, "this one's not as conveniently located as your one." Cuddy poked her head around the corner, sighing as she remembered that she was asking a cripple with broken ribs, a possible ruptured kidney and one arm tied to an IV line to move another man off of a floor and down some steps onto an uneven riverbank.
"Can you at least assess him; see what's wrong with him?" she asked, reverting to some sort of 'plan B'
"Yeah, I know what assess means, Cuddy" he replied whilst still staring at the man on the floor, "It's the logistics of the operation that are bothering me"
"House, you've taken what I can only imagine as an extremely high dose of painkillers – I'm sure it won't hurt you just to get down there and see if he's still breathing!" Cuddy ranted, sticking to her position by the injured driver and ignoring her former-patient's insistent moaning. 'Honestly, I think I preferred it when he couldn't talk'
"Of course it won't hurt now…but it'll probably kill me later" House said quietly as he lifted the corner of his t shirt to reveal massive bruising once again flaring up on his lower rib area. 'Maybe you should be a little more careful incase you actually do die from internal bleeding in the back of an ambulance' he thought as he carefully crouched down beside Colin. 'How ironic would that be...'
He decided not to worry Cuddy with this unwelcome development, after all, she'd only start worrying about him again. It'd be better to let her know when the drugs wore off...it would be pretty hard to hide by then – even for Houdini-House.
Author's Note: Two updates in one day...hopefully they didn't suck either? Let me know what you think of the tangent I seem to be going down...x