Must Get Out 5
WARNINGS: For those who haven't watched Needle in a Haystack, spoilers. For those who have watched it, a slight deviation on the turn of events than shown in the episode.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own House, MD. Joy is my character, however.
NOTES: House is—well, the Tritter fiasco is still fresh. That's all I have to say. And after seeing Needle in a Haystack, I have opted to stick with the open-air parking lot. I also realized that I had Joy drinking iced tea during WINTER! (Oops)
--
As I wait for Al to answer her phone, I worried inside the ladies' room of Maximo's Deli. Would I be able to contact her on time?
"Cameron."
Thank goodness. I wasted no time in informing her of the seriousness of the situation.
"Your boss wants a thigh implant!" I squawk.
"What?!"
O––kay, so I wasted a few precious moments…
A rough voice from a neighboring stall stopped me from replying: "If the boss is interested, he can have one of mine—I've got PLENTY!"
"Not interested!" I mutter loudly. Then to Al, "You boss—Dr. House—he found out about your resignation from a higher-up. He sent you on a mission in order to get you out of the way and hack into you e-mail…"
"He did WHAT?!" Al hisses.
"…and search for some clues." I pause here to breathe in—carefully, because God knows what I'm inhaling in a public restroom—before adding rapidly: "If I wasn't freaking out right now, I'd say it was kinda romantic—in an American Psycho kind of way."
The pause at the other end of the line wasn't very reassuring—must be because I could hear her hyperventilating. I disrupted the disturbing breathing sounds: "He's going to try and convince you to pull out your resignation—or make fun of you for doing it again, then convince you to pull out your resignation."
A long-suffering sigh followed this. "Knowing him, he'll do the second one."
I rub the tip of my nose. Providing the appropriate background music, the potential thigh-donator of the other stall flushed the toilet.
"What now, Allison?" I ask cautiously. "Face the music, or regroup at the pizza parlor?"
She sighs. "I should be on leave right now," she says wearily. Then in a louder, embarrassed-sounding voice, "We're driving back from the apartment—bogus information, ugh! I'll tell you when I see you. Anyway, I'll just inform Cuddy that House didn't let me go according to schedule because of the new patient. I'll try to get another leave as soon as we cure this patient."
"Have you called Dr. Yule?" I ask. By this time, Al should've shaken hands with Dr. Yule as they began the interview. Then Al groaned, and I mentally junk the image of hand-shaking Dr. Yule (as played by Donald Trump—I have to watch something other than "The Apprentice") out of my mind. "Well, now what?"
"Hmm—you're on leave now, right? How about you pick me up here at the hospital?" Al asks.
That surprised me. "Why, and what happened to your car?"
"Nothing wrong; I just have this insidious plan…" Al says, devious-like (my English teacher is going to kill me).
I press my mobile phone closer to my face and listen with glee, which momentarily sizzled down to a derisive snort. "Oh, how juvenile," I declare in a scathing tone. "I love it!"
What have I done to her I ask you? What?!?
--
After fifteen minutes of careful driving over icy roads, I arrive at the parking lot of the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I maneuver around the snow-covered vehicles in search of a slot near the entrance to the hospital. Finding none, I had to settle for a vacant spot several meters away.
I thought I had completely flushed away the iced tea I had earlier before leaving the deli. The unfortunate fact is that there's still some more left in my puny bladder. Damn—I have to use the little girl's room inside the hospital, at risk of bumping into a crippled grouch. I kill the engine as I flip out my mobile phone.
"Cameron."
"Hey girl—I need to visit the ladies' room to powder my nose and pee."
Al groans. "Didn't you go before you got here?"
I roll my eyes—as if she'd appreciate it over the line, ha!—as I carefully extracted myself from the driver's side of the car. "Is it my fault if there's a need for a sequel?"
Al muttered something foul and inarticulate. "Fine—go past the lobby then turn left. You'll immediately see the signs. We'll rendezvous there instead."
"Alright-y then! Over and out!"
Al's original plan was that I meet her at the parking lot and drive out to her place to regroup and plan anew. While she waited, she's going to try to avoid Dr. House and call Yule to apologize and attempt to beg for another schedule. If that didn't work, we're going to try and cook up a new plan.
I locked up, adjusted my jacket to cover me up some more, and walked briskly across the parking lot for the entrance. When I got to the pedestrian part of the lot, my mind played back a portion of my diatribe at House:
"All I did was to be her friend, and as her friend, I actually told her to move on and reconsider resigning from you."
That made me stop walking.
The mind does have a damn lousy sense of timing, like when I've already given up on finding out what I said that made House so damn smug. It was the last thing I remembered before something threw me off-balance and knocked me out.
--
When I came to, the first thing that came floating to my foggy mind was a mish mash recollection of hearing an angry female voice and of feeling strong hands which transferred me on a stretcher. The second thing that registered was the voice of an overdramatic woman making some kind of cheesy plea to somebody. Accompanying this annoying monologue was some equally cheesy piano music playing softly in the background.
(Damn, that's a lot of adjectives. My English teacher will hunt me down for sure.)
Somewhere at my right, I could hear a crunching sound.
Crunching?
"Whozair?" I mumble. "Weh am I?"
A deep, mournful voice answered, "You have been a bad little Amish girl. You have been sent to the third circle of hell, where you shall be forced to wear pastels for all eternity! Muahahahahahahaaaa!!!"
How odd—the Angel of Death sounds like he's still munching on a mouthful of pig skin crackling…
Wait a minute.
I open my eyes, blink rapidly to get my vision cleared a bit, and turn to face the Angel of Death on my right.
"Dr. House!" I whisper hoarsely.
"Welcome to the system, sinister friend of Cameron's," he says in a normal voice. I lick my dry lips; those dry lips suddenly encounter the tip of a straw, and I tentatively sip some blessedly refreshing water. (If he poisoned it and there are such things as ghosts, I will haunt him...)
Once I lubricated my mouth I tried to ask "Wha—?", but I didn't get to finish saying the word when I started to feel the pain—primarily on my right side and my head. "Jeez! What hap—what hit me? And how long was I out?" I demand hoarsely.
"House ran you over while he was on a wheelchair yesterday," someone else answers.
I gingerly raise my head up and see Al close the sliding door to my room. Huh, that's something: a glass-walled hospital room. Wonder what their psych ward is made of—if they have one—because I'd like to see the guy who ran me over with a wheelchair into one. I bet it's made of aluminum and bubble-wrapped solitary confinement rooms. That would be so awesome!
But I just say, "What are the injuries? And I want to call a lawyer."
Al winces. "You dislocated your right shoulder after you landed on it. You have a mild concussion on the right side of your head, a large bruise on the side of your left leg, and some minor cuts and bruises. The hospital—" Here, Al shoots a look of vexation at the culprit's direction. "—will shoulder all expenses. If you're going to call a lawyer, you can have him settle it all out with the hospital's lawyers. How's that?"
I give Al my most winning look of bewilderment. "And let the Evil Knievel of all Jackasses here get away scot-free?"
At that, Al smirks. "Don't worry—according to Dr. Cuddy, part of it is going to be taken out of his pay and he's going to repay her by doing more hours at the Free Clinic downstairs."
Meanwhile, Dr. House goes juvenile beside me. I heard him mimic Al like this: "Mart o'mit ee'goin' oo me ekin ow o' ees maaaaay…"
Al gives Dr. House a smug look at this—must be some kind of inside joke. I look at Dr. House, who started to pout and make faces.
God, they are so married!
That's it—I sigh and make the announcement I should have made the moment Al started to tattle on about big, mean ol' Dr. House.
"Al—I quit being your mentor."
Al looks at me like as though I told her that there was, indeed, a god (I'm a Catholic, and that statement doesn't bode well for me if Mom hears about it!).
Dr. House makes some kind of irritable noise. "Well, you're a lousy mentor anyway—"
I cut him off. "And you, sir, are a brat!"
Dr. House looks scandalized—drama-queen scandalized. I try hard not to laugh; feeling the pain helped. I gingerly adjust my position on the bed. Al went to my other side in order to press the button that automatically repositioned the head of the bed a few degrees upward.
"I am so not a brat!" he pouts.
"You so are!" I huff irritably; at my new position, I discover that my chest and stomach have giant bread crumbs. I attribute those crumbs to Dr. House, who's holding a large Styrofoam glass from Subway.
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!" And I emphasize by sticking my tongue out at him. He reacts by poking me on my good arm.
"Ow!"
"Stop it!" Al yells.
"You heard the lady—stop it!" I issue the command to House in my most severe school-marm voice—and poke him somewhere on his upper torso. Hey, limited dexterity when the arm I'm using is hooked to an IV bag, people.
Al had enough. "House, stop torturing her and get back to the conference room; we have a new case! Joy, stop encouraging him; you'll rip out your stitches!"
"Aw, Mo-ooom!" House whined; he got a folder on his lap for that. I took this moment of inattentiveness to tip his Subway drink into him. It didn't work—drat! Confounded man has the reflexes of a cat. Thankfully, he didn't retaliate—something in that folder got his attention. Must be one interesting patient; the good doctor suddenly sprang up from his seat, grabbed his cane, and said, "Don't just stand there, Cameron—we have a mystery to solve!"
"I'll be right there," Al replies sardonically as Dr. House toddled out. The moment the man's sneakers disappeared around the corner, Al folds in. Her shoulders slump, and she rubs the bridge of her nose in vexation.
I look closely. "You're not going to resign, huh," I said.
Al shakes her head.
I start to get nauseated. "What happened?"
Al breathes in deeply, makes some wild gestures in the air, and finally looks me in the eye to say, "I have no idea."
I raise an eyebrow—the left one, since everything on my right is aching. "Care to enlighten, m'dear?"
Al looks at me with a twinkle in her eyes and winks. "No," she simply says. She takes advantage of my shock by brushing off the remaining crumbs on my person and blanket—and humming while she's at it.
I look suspiciously up at her—her cheeks are getting a little ruddy around the apples. "You—" I began. She looks down at me and gives me an innocent look that doesn't fool me, her best friend since med school, in the slightest.
My jaw went slack, and before I could interrogate her further, she left the room in a hurry.
"You temptress you!" I whisper softly and grin.
Fin.
It is done! Thank you for supporting Joy, my OC! (bows)