At the start of the final week of her three weeks' notice, Cameron found herself stitching up bus accident victims while others were being rushed into an OR they'd never make it out of. House had somehow managed to escape concussed and with a gash on his head, which Cameron carefully (tried to) stitch closed.

He acted as though there had been nothing between them.

There wasn't. There was just one night when they'd needed to take advantage of each other in order to move forward.

Within seventy-two hours, Amber Volakis was dead and House was unconscious following a complex partial seizure.

Cameron found Chase leaning against a wall outside the ICU, propping himself up with his right arm, his forehead pressed to his wrist.

"Robert?" she said softly, not sure whether she should reach out.

He turned slowly to face her. "We don't know yet," he said, answering the question she hadn't asked.

"You shouldn't have agreed to do the procedure. Foreman refused because he said to send electrical impulses through someone's brain while they're still awake is –"

"Stupid," Chase said. "You're both right." His longer-than-usual hair framed his face when he looked down.

"I'm looking for a job in Philadelphia, anyway."

"Foreman mentioned yesterday –"

"It's not that I – they're cutting H-1 visas again next year, so we thought it would be best to –"

"I don't need to know."

"It'll just be a quick City Hall thing." He shook his head abruptly. "Allison, please be careful. What happened to Amber – she died because she was compelled to "rescue" House – that could have so easily been you."

"Let's have dinner after we get out of here tonight," Cameron said. "You, me, and Foreman, I mean."

Chase nodded. "I'll call your cell when I'm out of here."

Walking away, Cameron wished for the "I'm sorry" she was never going to hear.

House was in the ICU, eyes shut, probably sleeping. One of the nurses had told her that he'd regained consciousness but couldn't speak. Cuddy was curled up in a chair next to him. She'd known him before the infarction, before PPTH, even; maybe he needed her, maybe she could function better as his friend than Cameron, a thirty-year-old doctor who'd harbored a schoolgirl-like crush on him throughout much of her late twenties, ever could.

So Cameron walked away, and went to see Wilson, who sat on a bench just outside the hospital, waiting for the cab that would take him to Newark Airport, where he'd catch a flight to Chicago and meet Amber's family for the first time at her funeral.

Cameron laid a hand on his shoulder.

"This is neither the time nor the place," he said, his voice cold but teary.

"No," she said, sitting beside him. "Not that. Not him."

"If you're here to defend him, I can't –"

She'd never make it better for House, Chase would never make it better for her, but at least she knew how to save a man from himself after he'd watched a lover die.

"I'm here to warn you that for the next couple of weeks, everyone will try to tell you that 'time heals all wounds' and it'll make you sick to your stomach."

Wilson looked straight at her and broke down just enough so that a tear ran down each cheek. "I went home before, and –" He didn't trail off, but breathed in sharply.

"You don't have to say it."

"Time –" he began.

"Won't matter to you for years," she said.

"Right."

The car service pulled in and Wilson stood slowly, taking the arm that Cameron offered him. "Look," she said, "everybody's going to offer you sympathy. If you need empathy, I'm here."

"You were so young," he whispered.

"Does it make a difference?"

"No." He swallowed hard, hugged her quickly, and climbed into the cab.

After a quick, mostly silent but somehow comforting dinner with Foreman and Chase, Cameron's beeper buzzed once. She'd set an alarm to go off at midnight to remind her to take her birth control pill while working late shifts in the ER. She popped out a white pill and realized that she was four days into a new pack.

She would need to stop for a home pregnancy test on the way back to the apartment she'd shared with Chase until just over a month ago.

Probability said that if she was pregnant, it was Chase's: she'd missed several pills during the last month they were together, they hadn't used condoms since that night she showed up at his door to tell him she wanted him to say he liked her no matter what day of the week it was, and her last period had been very light, light enough to suggest she'd been pregnant and just experiencing some light bleeding. She'd had sex with House twice in eight Hours, with condoms, after taking the Pill every night at midnight like clockwork.

But probability also said that Amber should be alive, House dead.