Authors Note: No, 13 and Cameron are not just going to hop into bed. Yet. Let me build their characters a little, jeez. Don't worry, there will be plenty of Cam/13 interaction soon.
The image of House reflected in her eyes.
He looks so old, Cameron thought. Not in a cruel way, just in a simple, objective way. Nearly risking his life for Wilson's girlfriend was a noble task she would have never thought House capable of. And now he looked so sick. Her pity went out to him, but she knew any sympathy she offered him would probably be rejected or else appreciated and then later mocked with contempt once he felt better.
So she watched him from afar as Cuddy's fingers entwined with his own.
"Blink if you can hear me", Cuddy said, leaning over House's bed. Cameron's heart did not leap like she thought it would when House responded to her voice with a single, bold blink. Relief was evident in Cameron's sigh, but for some reason that feeling of intense panic was not there like it had been when he'd recovered from being shot. The feelings she felt for House were finally dwindling. He no longer possessed her.
Maybe it's because I know that no matter how bad I feel for him, it is meaningless to care for him, she thought. She admired Cuddy's ability to care for him even when he resented her, but that's because her love was more maternal.
Maybe I'm just too damn needy, Cameron thought, and I'm finally getting sick of needing to be needed. She contemplated the possibility and decided it was quite likely that she was the one who was changing, not House. Cameron no longer felt that attachment. It had been broken by mounting bitterness.
I don't love you anymore. I've moved on.
And that is why, when the image of House reflected in her eyes, and when he gave her a faint smile, her heart did not leap. And the smile was not reciprocated.
"How's House doing?" Kutner asked, balancing his cell phone with his shoulder while he persisted in eating his fruitloops while watching cartoons. He told himself that he was only indulging in cartoons as a way to distract himself so he wouldn't worry about House and Amber. Nevermind that he had SpongeBob on his DVR schedule.
"He's conscious and a little out of it," Thirteen said. She remained in the same room where she had tested herself for Huntington's. She felt trapped. She needed someone to retrieve her, to get her out of the room and back into reality. That's why she had flipped open her cell phone and called the one
person she thought could understand her just a little. Optimistic Kutner, surely he could think of something to say.
But at that moment, her pale lips opened to spill everything thought she had contained for the past several hours when she froze. The breath she had taken held tight in her chest. Words escaped her.
"I'll be over there soon to check on him," Kutner said. Thirteen nodded, still immobilized. The denial kicked back in.
"Okay," she said.
"You're a real fighter," he said. Thirteen nearly dropped the phone in shock. It was like he knew. First the bisexual thing, now Huntington's. How did everyone just accurately predict these things about her?
"What do you mean?" she said, he voice raising a pitch.
"I mean, you've been at the hospital for awhile. Nearly everybody has gone home for some rest. You should take a break, I'll be there soon."
"Oh," she said. Of course.
"Bye," she said hanging up the phone. She sat back down, absorbed in denial. The test was wrong. It had to be. Yet she refused to retest herself. To do so would mean that she had to accept she had Huntington's. And that there was no one-in-a-thousand chance that the test wrong. A retest was a bad idea.
She sat there and debated calling Taub, but restrained herself, knowing full well that he was probably preoccupied with his wife. He'd be polite if she called, even more polite if she told him what she had just discovered, but she knew he didn't really want to hear about her problems. He didn't relate. No one could get inside her head and help her cope. Her mom was gone, her father was an illusion, and she had no one to depend on. Ordinarily this fact did not bother her in the least, but now…the realization was just so new. She'd never been fully cognizant of just how helpless she was. She stared at the tiny crumble paper on the floor, the cause of all this panic and emotion. She focused on it, almost meditating in a subconscious way, reviewing what had happened over the last few hours in her mind, when the phone in her hand vibrated.
It was House.
Gregory House faded in and out of sleep for several hours. A combination of the drugs, the stress, and his injury caused him to evade consciousness through slumber. Although that didn't prevent
him from picking up his cell in a disoriented and baffled state and dialing the first number in his address book.
Which happened to be Doctor Remy Hadley, a.k.a., listed under "13".
Just as she was about to follow Kutner's advice and go home for rest, the phone vibrating in her hand alerted her to other matters. Her boss was sick. He was calling her for help. He was sick too and he…needed her? Dr. Gregory House was actually reaching out to another human for contact? He was showing his helplessness?
"Hello, House?" she said
"Auwahaawa," he said, making an illegible noise sound perfectly sane, even consistent with his cynical tone.
"House?" she repeated," Are you okay?"
Again he murmured unintelligibly, infrequently releasing an actual word scattered amid a series of odd grunts. Thirteen rushed towards his room, still listening to him on the phone. Eventually she understood the words "get me out of here."
"House, I can't do that," she said, pausing as she approached his room. She looked at him slouching up on the bed, medicated and staring at the phone as though it was some kind of new technological invention, and Thirteen had just apparitionated out of it. She flipped her cell phone closed, and they made eye contact.
"You're sick," she said.
"I know," he said, sounding normal enough.
"I'm sick too," she said, not elaborating. She allowed the words to infiltrate the absent air, and it seemed such a morbid thing to say. Her tone was not harsh, but not Cameron-sensitive either. It hovered ambivalent between caring too much and not caring enough.
"You're sick too?" he asked. He appeared to be contemplating.
"Why are you sick? I mean, I kinda just got electrocuted. It would be cool if it didn't suck so much. But why are you sick?"
"I took the test."
"What test? That test," he said, realization breaking through his drug induced hazy mind. Thirteen sighed. A part of her was relieved, to have at least told someone, even if it was her injured, drugged up, cynical boss. A part of her was sad too, because she wasn't sure if she wanted to reveal her illness yet and because she was a little ashamed she'd taken the test. She stood up to him so boldly months ago when she threw the test results he'd taken without her permission in the trash and told
him she didn't want to know. Now she had just revealed that she had been frantically anxious to know and that she was not brave like she had once portrayed herself to be.
And a tiny fraction of her was embedded in denial, screaming LIAR! YOU'RE A FILTHY LIAR! YOU'RE NOT SICK YOU FEEL JUST FINE!
This was the part of her that previously controlled her decision not to get tested. Now it was overruled by the relief of knowing, even if the knowing meant accepting an inevitable brief lifespan. But still, that small part of her that would never accept it had been what kept her going. And now it was gone. She wanted to collapse, to retreat back to the test room, to play the whole scene in reverse, right to the point where she ripped the paper out of the machine.
No, before that. Before Amber got on the bus, before her mother died, before her father-
You can't rewind, she told herself again. She'd played this game so many times as a kid she thought she'd never forget the rules, but she had. You can fast-forward, pretend that the bad times are all gone, but you can't rewind. When her mother was sick all the time, she would fast-forward in her mind. Pretend she was all grown up and she was a doctor who could make her mommy better. The other doctors couldn't, but that is because they didn't know her good enough, didn't love her. But Remy could. Dr. Remy Hadley could make her mommy all better one day.
But it happened too fast. Her mother died. And she couldn't rewind.
"Thirteen" a soft voice said, angelic in tone. She looked up at House who remained silent, but motioned his head to the doctor behind her.
"Dr. Cameron" she said, her voice was slightly surprised, and she wondered when Cameron had walked into the room.
"I'm sorry I don't know your real name," Cameron said.
"Thirteen is fine," she said.
"Cuddy said Kutner is on his way here and she insisted I tell you to go home and rest."
"Okay." Thirteen looked at House, pleading with her eyes for him to say something, even if it didn't mean anything, something just for her that she could hold on to.
"I didn't know," he said. She nodded. That was good enough.