Disclaimer: Don't own House.

A/N: Uhm… I don't have much to say, actually, which is weird… Hi guys. If you're like me, I hope finals will/have/are go/gone/going well. Review and make me happy.

Cameron stared at the anxious woman sitting on the hospital bed in front of her. Though the hustle and bustle of the ER went on as usual, she could feel the world slowly close in on her as the woman described what was wrong.

"I-I haven't felt the baby move in the past two days. At first I thought it was just because I'm nearing nine months, you know? There's not much room for her to move around, right? And I know that if I'm worried I should keep a kick chart, or something, but it was just…It was just one day, and now it's two days, and I… Please, Doctor, just tell me it'll be okay." The woman gripped her hand, and looked pleadingly into Cameron's eyes. Though she patted the woman's hand reassuringly, Cameron knew that she couldn't hope for the best. The woman's husband stood to the side, nervously pacing along the side of her bed.

"What I'm going to do now is get an ultrasound, and we'll just take a look, okay, Mrs. Burnham?" It took Cameron all of her will power to calmly put on her medical gloves and turn on the ultrasound machine. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. That was a mistake.

"Mommy? What's wrong? What happened?" Six-year old Allison went up to her mother's hospital bed, not understanding the dead look in her mother's eyes. "Mommy?" She placed her tiny hand on her mother's hospital gown, and gently shook her shoulder. "Where's the baby? I want to see my baby sister."

"The baby died, Allison," her mother explained, not bothering to look at her confused daughter. Her tone was harsh and cutting, which frightened the young child. Immediately Allison's eyes welled up with tears, and she started to sniffle. Her mother gave her one impatient look, and rolled her eyes. "Brian, can you take her away? Allison, go with your father." Panic rose in her throat as she thought about being left alone with her father. She worried about what would happen if he started to drink.

"Sure, Liz, no problem. Allie, honey, let's leave your mom alone for a while." Her father reached out with his hand, and Allison flinched.

"No, Mommy! I want to stay with you! Mommy, please?"

"Brian." With that one tersely-spoken word, Allison's father forcefully picked her up and took her out of the room. Allison noticed that her mother didn't even turn to say goodbye to her, even as her childish screams echoed throughout the room.

"Dr. Cameron?" Mr. Burnham queried when he saw Cameron's hesitation. She spun around and faced them with a smile. Her heart constricted as she saw the worry wrought on their faces.

"All right, let's see what's going on," she said, lifting Mrs. Burnham's shirt and applying the gel. "This is a little cold, I'm sorry." Mrs. Burnham was too nervous to say a word in response; instead, she just gave a curt nod as she stared at the ultrasound screen.

Cameron's heart plummeted into her stomach. No heartbeat; no movement. The baby had died.

"Uh, I'll…I'll be right back," she stammered, standing up and moving quickly to the nurses' station. Ignoring the pleas of the Burnhams to give them news of their child, she spoke to the nurse on duty. "I need you to page an OB-GYN for a consult right away. I think we have a stillborn baby here."

"You think, Dr. Cameron, or you know?" The nurse seemed skeptical. She'd seen doctors try to pass off giving families bad news to other unsuspecting doctors, and she wasn't going to let Dr. Cameron get out of her responsibility.

"Will you please just do your job and page an OB-GYN?" Cameron snapped, earning an annoyed look from the nurse. They had a small staring contest until the nurse slowly picked up the phone and paged Obstetrics. Cameron waited, tapping her toe impatiently. The phone rang after a minute, and the nurse picked up, warily eyeing the usually cheery Dr. Cameron.

"They say they're swamped upstairs—full moon or something, and apparently everyone and their sister goes into labor. I'm afraid you're on your own for this one." The nurse reported, shrugging as she hung up the phone.

"Full moon? B-But it's not even noon!"

"I don't know what to tell you, Dr. Cameron. I'm only telling you what they told me. You can send the woman upstairs."

"Well, I have to! Her baby…" She trailed off as she stole a glance at the Burnhams, and then she lowered her voice to a whisper. "Her baby died! There's nothing I can do for her down here!"

"Then give her the bad news and send her up," the nurse suggested, shrugging once more. Cameron felt tears of frustration prick the back of her eyes, and she turned to the nurse, angry that she wasn't more sympathetic.

"Thanks so much for you help," she spat, leveling her with a gaze that might have made even House proud. As she tried to gather herself for what she had to do, Cameron closed her eyes once more.

Two months after she was dragged from her mother's hospital room, Allison returned home from school to find a quiet house. Usually her mother was in the living room, smoking a cigarette or sipping her early afternoon cocktail; recently it had been both.

"Mommy?" Allison called out, surprised to hear no answer. Slowly, she put down her school bag and closed the door behind her. Scared to find herself alone, she ran up the stairs as fast as her little legs would take her. "Mommy?" she whispered, hearing the radio in her parents' bedroom. As if by its own volition, the bedroom door slowly swung open…

Cameron's eyes shot open. She walked towards the Burnhams, wrestling with her own emotions.

"Mr. and Mrs. Burnham," she began, looking at their fearful faces, "I'm afraid I have some bad news." The blood from Mrs. Burnham's face drained, and she gripped her husband's hand forcefully. "It appears from the ultrasound that your baby, unfortunately, has died…" When Mrs. Burnham burst into hysterical tears, Cameron felt herself shut down. She had to get out of there as soon as possible…

House was in the middle of a differential diagnosis when Chase strode into the room. Foreman and the three fellows looked at him with curiosity—especially Foreman—but Chase gave only House a hard glare.

"Dr. House, may I speak to you for a moment please?" he asked, obviously doing his best to be polite. House raised his eyebrows, too intrigued to concentrate on returning a sarcastic comment. Instead he turned to Foreman and nodded towards the whiteboard. Without hesitation, Foreman took up where House left off, allowing Chase and House to speak privately in House's office.

"What can I do for you today?" House asked, flopping down in his chair, and picking up his ball. Chase ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

"Okay, Cameron's missing." House dropped the ball, and it bounced noisily across his desk, knocking down a few papers and pens along the way. All of the occupants of the other room gave the two men a strange look before continuing with the differential.

"What do you mean 'Cameron's missing?'" House hissed.

"She was in the ER this morning, then she took her lunch break, and she was expected back for clinic duty over an hour ago. But she's nowhere to be found! We tried paging her, calling her, and I just came back from her apartment; she's nowhere. But her car is still in the parking lot, so she couldn't have gone far. It's just… she had a tough case this morning, and I think that it hit her pretty hard, and I'm just worried." Chase sat down in the chair in front of House's desk, and House realized for the first time that Chase looked exhausted.

"Why are you talking to me about this?" House asked. "What do you think I can do about it? My mystical powers do not extend to Cameron Tracking, nor would I want them to. X-ray vision, on the other hand…"

"House, this is serious!" Chase stood up again, and began to pace. "The only time I've ever seen her drink too much, she mentioned something about a stillborn younger sister, and today she had to tell parents that their baby was stillborn, and I'm… I'm just worried." He was repeating himself, which made House frown. Though Cameron had told him last night that the two of them had broken up, Chase was clearly not over it quite yet.

"Again, I have to ask: why me?"

"Because I'll never understand her," Chase mumbled, sitting down again. "We broke up, House. She's not mine to worry about."

"So she's mine to worry about?" He began to twirl his cane, desperately trying to play it cool as he wracked his brain, searching for ideas as to Cameron's possible whereabouts.

"No! No, that's not what I'm saying." House waited as Chase gathered his thoughts. "I could never get inside her head to understand what was going on, nor she would ever let me. But you, House? She'll let you in." Chase laughed. "God only knows why." With that, he stood up and headed towards the door. "Will you let me know when you find her?"

"You still love her, don't you?" House asked.

"Don't you?"

"Never did," House responded, rolling his eyes, though he felt his traitorous heart skip a beat. "You obviously didn't want to break up with her."

"She doesn't want me, House," Chase replied, his tone letting House know that it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It was never me." He left without letting House get another word in, which was probably for the best. After a moment's hesitation, House picked up his cane and left his office, headed towards the place where he knew Cameron would be. His fellows watched him carefully, all turning to each other silently when he was finally out of sight.

"You know, I really can't believe that it took this long for you to finally skip clinic duty. I must admit, though, that the build up has made for some really impressive drama now that you've finally cut loose." He had to raise his voice a bit in order to be heard over the wind. Being on top of a roof in the middle of November was not his idea of fun, but he understood the urge; it was the only place in the entire hospital that you were pretty much guaranteed to be left alone. House had thought that he was the only who had ever been up here, but clearly he was wrong.

"Go away, House," Cameron called out. He took a moment to observe her. She was sitting down on the ground, with her back up against the wall. Though her eyes were red from crying, at the moment her cheeks were dry and she wasn't sniffling. When she didn't hear him move, she turned to look at him, and the depth of pain in her gaze shocked him. And yet, bizarrely, he thought she looked beautiful. The naked emotion on her face was enthralling.

House ignored her command, and sat down beside her. The last flight of stairs had worn him out more than he would like to admit, and he had to rub his thigh for a few moments before he could speak.

"Chase is looking for you," he said, watching her to gauge her response. She smiled sadly, and drew her knees to her chest. The response told him nothing.

"Well, he didn't find me, did he?"

"So, you have an issue telling people about their dead children, but specifically babies; I think I've gotten all of that by this point. Last night you reacted as if I might…as if I might physically hurt you. Considering you stole my bottle of Scotch last night," he shot her an annoyed look, "I'm assuming…"

"House, stop it." Cameron turned to him, her voice rough. "This is really not the time or place for you to try to figure me out." He saw her knuckles turn white as she gripped her arms, digging her fingernails into her sleeves.

"I beg to differ. I think this is the perfect time to figure you out. In the past two days, I've been given at least three different puzzle pieces…"

"What is it that you want to know?" She interrupted him and stood up, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. "What is it? Do you want to know that when I was six my mother killed herself while suffering severe post partum depression? Or do you want to know that my sister was stillborn, and my mother never recovered? What about the fact that she left me, all of six years old, to find her body? How about that, House?" Tears began to flow freely down her cheeks as she shouted her confessions to the wind. "But it gets more interesting, which I'm sure you'll be glad to know. My alcoholic father started beating me when I was four, but it only got worse when my mother died. When I was sixteen he finally drank himself to death, leaving me to my senile maternal grandmother, who died when I was twenty. Is that what you wanted to know House? Did you want to know just how damaged I am? Do you feel better now? Because I don't." She started to wipe away her tears with her sleeves. "So, yeah, today I needed a few minutes because I had to go and ruin a family's life."

"But they aren't your family, Cameron. You don't know that they won't bounce back." House stood up and walked over to her. They stood a few feet apart, eyeing each other suspiciously.

"Since when are you the optimist?" she snapped.

"You can't make every tragedy about you. That's not how it works," he admonished.

"What about you, House? You pop your pills, drink your booze, and make your sarcastic comments all in a desperate effort to not make it about you." She took a step closer to him and poked him violently in the chest. "I'm just willing to admit that something might actually affect me."

"This isn't about me." He took another step closer to her, forcing her to strain her neck to look up at him.

"Why are you here? To tell me I'm overreacting? Thanks, I think I've got it covered, because despite what you may think, I don't like the fact that I'm up here crying over something that happened more than twenty years ago." They both stared at the other, suddenly realizing that their bodies were only inches apart. "Why are you here?" she whispered, leaning forward slightly. House watched the emotions play over her face: anger and frustration were replaced by sadness, resignation, and, he thought, hope. Unthinkingly, he reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Chase was looking for you," he repeated, somewhat flustered as he realized what he'd just done.

"You're not Chase," she countered.

"Thank God for that," he exclaimed. Cameron gave him a small smile.

"I'm sorry, House, for yelling at you. I just… I guess I wasn't prepared for that this morning." She walked past him and leaned against the edge of the building, watching the people below. House took a place next to her, mirroring her position.

"I-I used to come up here all the time, before this," he said, holding up his cane. "It's been a little while, though."

"It's a nice spot. You're usually left alone. That is, if you don't have sarcastic, crippled bastards stalking you." She shot him another shy smile, obviously still feeling somewhat guilty for yelling at him.

"I'm going to have to buy you a thesaurus for Christmas, because those are the three most obvious adjectives that could be applied to me. Well, I guess technically you used 'bastard' as a noun, but…" He trailed off, shrugging. "Cameron, you can't avoid these sorts of things when you're a doctor. You know that."

"I know, I know. It's just… No, never mind, it's kind of stupid."

"What?" Of course he had to ask. She hesitated, staying silent for a few minutes.

"I guess I was thrown off by what the Mirror patient told me. I've just been trying to figure some things out since then." House turned to look at her, intrigued. Of course he knew what the Mirror patient had said when they'd both been in the room, but he had no clue what had been said when it had been just her… But when she didn't elaborate, House realized that she wasn't going to tell him anything else. "I should probably go do my clinic duty," she said, sighing.

"It can wait," House suggested, turning to look at the sun. As they approached winter, the sun disappeared sooner and sooner. Though it couldn't be later than three, the sun was already approaching the horizon. "A few more minutes…"

"Yeah, a few more minutes," she repeated, turning to look at House. "I can wait."