DISCLAIMER: I don't own House. But I do watch it religiously.

Q is for Quarantine

Chapter Three: Orange Spacesuits and the CDC

Foreman and Cameron left it to the nurses – finally, when they came – and were ushered out of ICU, baffled by the latest unfolding of events. They looked at each other and a silent communication of thoughts took place, whereby they both came to the conclusion that Chase was AWOL and would pay for it dearly. But first things first; get the blood samples to the lab to confirm a diagnosis.

"I'll go," said Foreman, again, pushing the trolley that he had procured earlier. "And when you find Chase, you have my full permission to kick his ass," he added, walking down the corridor.

Cameron stripped off her gloves and threw them into a bin along her way. First, she checked the IT room (dunno what you call it in the US, but in the UK, the computer room is called the IT department, ok!) for Chase, but he must have already left because there was no sign of him there. She stalked past several rooms, peeked into House's office and even checked the clinic for her other co-worker, but no such luck. A few unhelpful nurses pointed her in vague directions with, 'oh, I saw him down there a few minutes ago…' and 'yes, he's definitely in radiology…' Grinding her teeth in frustration, she rounded a corner a bit more forcefully than intended, and ended up smacking straight into the body of some poor innocent doctor, who didn't deserve getting thumped in the stomach by a-

"Chase!" Cameron screeched when she realised who she'd rammed into. "Where have you been! Foreman paged you ages ago!"

Chase held up some papers by way of explanation. "Researching," he said simply. "I thought I told you." For some reason, his cool response only infuriated Cameron more.

"Cosgrove might die because of you," she hissed. "He started haemorrhaging again and we needed you. Are you deaf? Did you not hear your pager?"

Chase delved into the pocket of his lab coat and fished out his pager. He turned up the volume to its maximum and showed it to Cameron. "Happy now?" he drawled, still in the process of waking up.

"What is wrong with you, Chase?" she said, trying to calm herself down. "Do you even care that this person might die and we'll never find out why?"

Chase perceived at her oddly before answering. "Ok, how about this; is the only thing you care about, the fact that we'll never find out what disease this is – or if the patient lives or dies?"

Cameron's eyes widened. "How could you even imply that-?"

"I just did. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a patient to diagnose." Chase pushed past her and continued on his way to House's office. As expected, Cameron came following close behind, hot on his heels.

"You got some information on the symptoms?" she asked him, anger slipping away marginally in light of his discoveries. "Why didn't you say?"

"It was kinda hard to get a word in when you were telling me I was deaf," said Chase wryly, sticking the printed-out sheets under her nose as they walked. Blushing slightly, she took them and began reading, eyes darting quickly back and forth across the pages. Chase kept having to manoeuvre her out of the way of stampeding nurses, rushing doctors and speeding gurneys, until they reached the safety of the elevator, where she could read without getting trampled by an onslaught of medical technicians.

Chase shoved his colleague out of the lift before stepping out himself. They made their way to the diagnostics department and to where a particular diagnostician was waiting. The two doctors entered House's office and took their respectable seats at their table. House and Foreman were already there, discussing whatever a stuck up employer and criminal employee discussed about. Actually, they were just glaring at each other in silence, making Chase and Cameron wonder what had been said during their absence.

"So you've finally decided to grace us with your presence," said House, clapping his hands together to relieve some of the tension. "You," he pointed at Chase, "have been playing hooky. What could be more important to you than tending to the terminally ill? Or was that left out of your job description when you applied?"

Chase scowled but forced his voice to stay neutral. "I was researching the symptoms of the patient." Partially the truth, he reasoned with himself. No one needs to know I slept on the job. "Cameron's read what I came up with. Nothing's concrete yet, but-"

"Oh, so now you've taken a liking to looking up the causes of diseases? Did you list them in alphabetical order, like I asked last time? Because you know I won't read the stuff otherwise." House leaned forward anyway and plucked the sheaf of papers from Cameron's hands. He scanned the pages for anything useful, shuffling through the sheets before crumpling up the pile and tossing the whole load into the bin. Chase narrowed his eyes at his boss. Don't kill the cripple don't kill the cripple don't kill the cripple don't kill the cripple –

"And you call yourself a doctor, Chase," sighed House, adding a sympathetic tone to his voice, mocking the younger doctor. "Next time you do 'research' I suggest you provide me with information that is relevant to the case, and not some random gobbledegook that you copied and pasted off the internet." He faced the rest of the team, and picked up his favourite board pen. "Ok, thanks to Goldilocks over there, we've wasted some precious time to save Cosgrove's life – if he's not dead already, again, thanks to Chase. Right, so let's start with what we know…"

Chase droned out the rest of House's speech, stewing quietly in his simmering fury. It seemed that nothing he did was ever going to be right, no matter how hard he tried.

His thoughts were interrupted by a nudge in his arm. Reluctantly, he turned to see Cameron, pulling on his sleeve, bending towards his ear. With her face so close to his, he was surprised that she didn't feel the heat radiating off his cheeks as he flushed at the intimacy of their position. Then, after these thoughts fluttered across his mind, he cursed inwardly and willed himself to concentrate on what Cameron was saying.

"Pay attention," she whispered. "Look at what House is writing on the board."

He was about to say that he didn't give a damn about what his boss was writing, when he realised some familiar words emblazoned across the stupid board. Frowning, he diverted his attention back to the diagnostician who was grinning broadly and tossing his pen around in his hands. Grinning with that self-satisfied air that never failed to piss people off.

House had written up all the things that Chase had listed, and was now tapping the whiteboard and generating ideas for the diagnosis of the patient. Chase was pleasantly surprised, but still pissed off; on one hand, House had put his information to good use, and on the other, he had also gladly taken the credit for all of Chase's elbow grease. Well, at least Cameron knows, thought Chase, a little more at ease. In the end, he was too drawn into the discussion of diseases and symptoms that he pushed his irritant feelings towards House to the back of his mind and treated his boss with the same distanced indifference as he usually did. He offered suggestions where necessary and argued points with Foreman for a while, before shutting up and listening to House's opinion on the facts. The doctor in question was popping the lid off his Vicodin bottle and shovelling the pills down his throat. The ducklings waited for his speech.

"What?" asked House, into the overhanging silence, after no one had spoken for a while. "Why has everyone stopped arguing? I was beginning to enjoy that."

The ducklings shared a look, before gazing back at House, who was watching them with an expectant gleam in his eyes. Cameron was about to say something when-

"Doctor House!"

The door to the office blew open to reveal Cuddy, Stacey and Wilson bursting in from the corridor. Everyone's face showed frowns of obvious confusion, except House, whose expression mirrored that of all the times when Cameron handed him his coffee, i.e. he looked as though he couldn't be more bothered.

"Woah, all three of my favourite people, come to visit me at the same time. I feel so loved," he said, smiling at them. "Well, not you, Cuddy; you're my superior, I just pretend to like you so that I can keep my job."

However, Cuddy didn't smile back or reply with a smart comment like she usually did. On the contrary, her face remained stony, and a slightly urgent edge entered her voice when she opened her mouth to speak.

"House," she intoned gravely. "We have a serious problem."

"If a patient died, it's his-" House pointed at Chase, "fault… Wait, Chase has already killed someone and Cameron's slept with a co-worker. Hmm, that leaves Foreman. Ok, if a patient died, then it was Foreman's fault."

Stacey could barely disguise her annoyance for the sarcastic diagnostician. "Shut up, House, this is serious."

"Yes, because the tone of your voice is telling me that you're extremely happy and upbeat."

This time, Wilson intervened. "It's about that Cosgrove guy we were talking about earlier."

House straightened quickly. "Oh, no, you guys are right; it wasn't Doctor Foreman who killed Mr Cosgrove. No, that was Chase, sorry, my mistake."

"What are you talking about?" Cuddy snapped, after sending Chase a what-did-you-do-this-time glance. "Cosgrove's not dead!"

"Yeah, it's much worse than that," added Stacey with a touch of impatience. "Another patient's caught the disease."

"Try another five," Wilson chipped in and the ducklings' eyes widened uncomprehendingly.

"Five other people?" Foreman repeated, making sure he had heard right. "Five? But Cameron and I were down there a minute ago. Everything was alright then, albeit the fact that Cosgrove transformed into a blood spurting geyser again."

Cuddy nodded grimly. "Five patients in the ICU department all started exhibiting the same symptoms as Mr Cosgrove; first, bleeding from the finger nails, then the gums and so forth. "
"How long ago was this?" questioned House, twirling his stick with his hands.

"I just received word of it."

House frowned. "So, five patients suddenly turned into blood fountains after being in the same room as Cosgrove for-"

"Er, around an hour," supplied Cuddy. The ducklings absorbed the news, then one by one, they blanched, blinking rapidly. If it had taken an hour for the disease or virus to infect the patients in the same room as Cosgrove, and they had actually touched him (well, not Chase so much)…

"Oh, my God," House hopped off his desk (to the best of his ability), crossed to his whiteboard and hid behind it. Everyone looked at him like he was mad, and as if to seal the fact that he actually belonged in the psychiatric ward, he held his stick out so that is stuck out from behind the board, aimed at the table where the ducklings were sitting. "Stay away," he warned them in a level voice. "You see, this is why I don't go see patients; you have no idea what deadly crap they're harbouring in their little disease-ridden bodies." The top of his head peeked round the side of his board, eyebrows knitted together in a tight frown. "Now you guys've probably contracted some of those pathogens. Please get out of my office, I'm not going to risk my health around you three. New rule in the hospital; Foreman, Chase and Cameron can't come within a two mile radius of me. Thank you, Cuddy, that will be all."

Now Stacey, Cuddy and Wilson were staring at Cameron, Foreman and Chase.

"Hey," said Foreman, "let's not jump to conclusions." He glanced at the whiteboard and House's legs stationed behind it. "Not that all of us can jump," he added in an undertone.

"We have to get those tests from the lab. The blood tests from Cosgrove," said Cameron as steadily as possible. First HIV, now this, she thought with a twinge of hysteria, which she was doing well to conceal from the people around her. Chase, however, turned his eyes on her, concern flashing across his irises for a split second before his eyes returned to their prior state. Blank. Chase faced away from her but Cameron was so sure she had seen something there, some emotion. And it was aimed at her! Shaking her head, she tuned into the discussion that had risen around the subject of contamination in the hospital.

"How many other nurses or doctors were in contact or within close proximity to Cosgrove?" Chase was asking.

Cuddy made as if to shrug, but Stacey put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll go find out," she said, shooting a glare to where House was hiding, as if she couldn't stand being so close to the diagnostician. "If someone else hasn't already," she shared a meaningful look with Cuddy.

"Don't tell them anything yet," murmured the hospital administrator, after thanking her. Stacey nodded, then exited abruptly.

A low whistle sounded from where House was. "One down, five to go," he announced, counting down the number of people left in the room with him, as if it affected his chances of contracting the virus.

"Who's them?" asked Foreman, puzzled. "The nurses?"

Cuddy shook her head and let out a sigh. "I suppose you'd better come see," she said wearily. Wilson's eyes were uncharacteristically downcast and his body language was screaming: UNCOMFORTABLE. No one really noted his presence in the room; he was keeping a silent and wary approach to the goings-on.

Cuddy shuffled backwards to the door. She opened it and motioned for the doctors to follow her out, Wilson going through it before her. Cameron, Foreman and Chase also ambled out, various degrees of bewildered expressions plastered across their faces. House feigned hesitance as he slithered out from behind the whiteboard, as if looking out for floating pathogens in the atmosphere. At Cuddy's irritated expression, he immediately made a beeline for the door. When he approached her, he announced pointedly, "I don't want to catch whatever they've got, but, hey, what can I say? I'm curious. And you're scary when you're angry."

House stopped smirking when he noticed the bustling activity in the corridor. Cuddy and Wilson were watching him for his reaction, and they would have laughed at his dumb-founded countenance, had it not been so humourless a situation. The ducklings just stared as though Martians had landed right in front of them, crawling out of space suits and waving laser guns madly. House gained back some of his composure after a couple of seconds, then started hobbling down the hall, five doctors in his wake. He narrowly avoided collision with a man who had, stupidly, thrown out an arm to obstruct the crippled doctor from going any further. House's smouldering gaze was enough to make him lower his arm, but not to make him move out of the way.

"If I'm polite, will you shift your ass and stop blocking the hallway?" House asked, lifting an eyebrow.

The other man's expression was stony. "Are you a doctor?" he shot back rudely.

House rolled his eyes, lifting his stick and nudged the man's orange suit with it. "Well, duh," he said, still prodding the folds of orange protection suit that the man was donning. "And who are you? Neil Armstrong gone colour blind?" He raised his stick higher and knocked on the transparent plastic that shielded the man's face. The man didn't blink.

He regarded House and all his colleagues, who were watching the unfolding scene with tensed awareness. They were all wearing lab coats, save House and Cuddy, so the man assumed they were doctors too. He had already met the Dean of Medicine earlier, and that had not ended well; the infuriated woman had stormed out, declaring that she was going to find a house, or something, he didn't really hear her clearly…

"I am Doctor James from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." House took a slight step back and his team waited for the rest of the terrible truth to come out, even though they knew what was coming next.

"Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital is hereby placed under quarantine by the CDC."

A/N: Slightly longer chapter this time; sorry if it took too long to actually get to the point! As usual, please forgive me for any mistakes with the characterisation and with general stuff on the story; I haven't watched nearly enough House episodes to write a good fanfiction on the show, but I'm trying! Also, is there an IT room in PPTH? Well, is there isn't, now there is! Thank you for reading, and thank you to all my previous reviewers. To future readers (and past): please REVIEW! Any criticism is welcomed.

Daygoner