Christmas was two weeks away and PPTH was decorated festively, but Cameron didn't notice much as she went through the motions at the clinic. House rarely spoke to her now, even during differentials. What really concerned her, though, was how readily he'd given up his claim to his child that night she'd told him that she didn't want him to be the baby's father; though he was probably right when he said anybody could lose interest, she'd half-expected him to fight harder for a place in his child's life.
"You're too naïve, still," Wilson told her one afternoon in a corner of the clinic's waiting room.
Wordlessly, Cameron took a candy cane out of a mug on the reception desk and snapped it in half.
"He feels betrayed," Wilson continued.
"Now you sound like you're defending him."
"I'm not saying he was betrayed. I'm saying he feels betrayed by you and me and doesn't understand the difference."
"You obviously –" Cameron sensed a heart palpitation and felt the familiar dizziness that usually accompanied a drop in her blood pressure. "You obviously are starting to care about his well-being again."
"I am ... worried. About all of us."
"You don't think I was wrong, do you?"
"Allison, your pupils are dilated." There was alarm in his voice. "Allison?" Now he sounded like he was buried deep in a commuter rail tunnel. Her feet, she imagined, were lifted off the ground. The floor rose up under her and the waiting room went black.
When she regained consciousness only seconds later, Wilson was cradling her head to prevent her from falling further backwards. For the second time during her pregnancy, he helped her into a wheelchair.
Upstairs in obstetrics, Sarah Kishore and a consulting cardiologist determined that Cameron's loss of consciousness was simply the result of a stress-related drop in blood pressure. "Whenever your heart adds an extra beat," the cardiologist explained, "your heart tries to compensate with the next beat, and your BP drops."
She'd known that for nine years, ever since she'd passed out in her mother-in-law's living room with a BP of 85/50, the day after her husband's funeral.
But after a sonogram, Sarah returned looking rather somber. "You're lucky you passed out today," she told Cameron.
"Why?"
She sat at the edge of the table and held her friend's hand. "You are not allowed to panic."
"That's really not helpful. I would never tell a patient not to panic."
"Your baby's lungs are hypoplastic. I need to admit you and administer a course of glucorticoids. The lungs haven't grown at all since your last sonogram at week 26, and we need to jumpstart their growth."
"Sarah," she said, sitting up, "I'm panicking."