Chapter 4 – Why?

"She'll be okay", Wilson said sliding his hands into the pockets of his white coat and looking at House.

House looked sideways at his friend. He raised his eyebrows in silence and went back to staring down through the glass panel into the operating theatre.

"You can't say that yet," House said seriously, leaning hard on his cane. Wilson didn't know how to reply because deep down he knew House was right. They couldn't be sure that she would be ok. There was a lot of internal bleeding. Her left lung had been punctured that was for sure.

The pair stared down into the operating theatre. House thought Cameron looked so small laid on the table. He had never seen her naked and now he was staring at her naked form, he felt nothing sexual from it, just the coldness of dread as he watched the surgeon with his hands inside the bloody incision that had been made across the upper part of her abdomen. He looked away and stared instead at the monitors, her heart rate was steady but her SATs were slightly low.

He watched as the surgeon dealt with the deflated lung and could hear the sucking of the machinery that was draining the blood from where it shouldn't be. There was too much blood in her stomach cavity for it to just be a punctured lung.

Wilson put a hand on House's shoulder, "I have an appointment with a patient. Let me know the minute anything happens." He turned and left House staring worriedly at the action below.

-------------------------------------------

"The operation was successful," Cuddy said gently to the pale and nervous looking young man, he kept touching his nose as he listened to what the doctor was saying.

They were stood outside the glass fronts to one of the ICU wards. "The lung should heal nicely, but there is a greater risk of complications because we had to remove the spleen as well. Allison's not out of the woods yet, but things are looking better than last night" She smiled. She didn't enjoy telling relatives things like this and it was only made worse by the fact that the patient was someone who worked under her, someone she talked to everyday. To compound the matter the young man in front of her looked like a male version of Cameron, his dark hair as shiny as hers but short instead of long and they had the same eyes.

Cuddy pushed open the glass door and led the man into Cameron's room. House was sat in a chair beside her bed his leg propped up on a stool and his PSP in his hands. He looked up as Cuddy and the stranger entered.

"Dr House, I'd like you to meet Allison's twin Adrian," Cuddy said her voice sounding more professional than it normally did when she was talking to House.

House nodded and went back to his game. Adrian moved towards his sister. House looked up at him, and saw the man's eyes fill with tears. He wondered why Cameron had never said she had a twin. That made her interesting just as much as her love of damaged people.

House watched as Adrian took hold of his sister's hand and stared at all the wires and tubes coming from her body.

"No change then?" Cuddy asked House.

"I upped her morphine a few minutes ago" House replied not looking up from his game.

"Is she in pain?" Adrian said looking alarmed.

"Not anymore," House grinned and Cuddy looked suspiciously at the morphine drip beside Cameron, the dose was high but not too high.

"Why is she still a sleep?" Adrian asked not taking his eyes from his sister. House shrugged.

"You told me on the phone that she would be awake by the time my plane arrived," he was almost pleading with the two doctors as if it was their fault.

"We just need to let her body rest, the coma is the body's way of coping with the trauma of the accident, your sister had massive injuries, and major surgery it's just taking a little longer than we had hoped." Cuddy replied.

House hated conversations like this and was pretty certain he had a patient somewhere, so he stood up slowly. He rested his hand on his aching thigh and reached for cane before heading for the door.