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Chapter 16

Cameron glanced at her watch and saw she had twenty minutes left and decided to stop by House's office. She knew he wouldn't be in yet but she wanted to leave him a note. His office was still dark but she saw Foreman in the adjoining room attempting to make coffee. She quietly snuck up behind him and goosed him in the ribs, causing him to spill coffee grounds on the counter.

Foreman spun around to see who was behind him and was very surprised to see Cameron.

"Hey! What brings you up here? House isn't here yet."

"I know. I need to leave him a note and I saw you in here. Want some help with that?" She asked, pointing to the coffee.

"Would you please? Everyone around here sucks at making coffee. You would think out of five doctors one of us could make decent coffee." Cameron took the filter from him and proceeded to make the coffee.

Foreman eyed her curiously. "So, you said you needed to leave House a note?"

She recognized his tone and knew he wanted to know what was going on.

"You know, House has been acting strange the last couple of days. Wouldn't have anything to do with you, would it?" Foreman continued.

"When is House not acting strange?" She avoided answering Foreman's question. After starting the coffee, she went into House's office and sat down at his desk looking for a blank piece of paper.

Foreman followed and watched her as she shuffled through the papers on the cluttered desk.

"How does he find anything around here. I don't remember it being this bad." She stated.

"Does that surprise you? You were the one who kept everything organized."

He continued to watch her.

She saw the look. "What?"

"Nothing. You just look normal sitting there." "Yeah, lobby art." They both laughed. "I suppose it wouldn't do me any good to send him an email instead?"

"Not if you want him to read it in this life time."

Cameron finally found a note pad underneath the mess of papers and scribbled a short note, folded it in half and taped it to the front of his computer.

She stood up and looked at Foreman who was still watching her. "Why do you keep looking at me that way?"

"You're coming back to work here, aren't you?"

Cameron couldn't hide the look of surprise. "Why would you think that?" She laughed.

"Just a feeling."

She looked at him sheepishly. "Would it bother you if I did?"

Foreman looked at her seriously for a minute before answering. "I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it. Does that mean you are coming back?" He asked again.

Cameron was trying to suppress the large grin that desperately wanted to spread across her face. "Yes. Are you okay with that?"

Foreman became silent again.

Cameron felt a little uneasy with his silence. She and Foreman hadn't always been the best of friends and definitely had not seen eye to eye on many issues. She subconsciously started biting her bottom lip.

Foreman couldn't hold back any longer. "Hell yeah. It will be nice to have you back." He said and gave her a hug, surprising her.

"I'm glad because I'm really nervous about working with the new team."

"They're a little green around the ears. They haven't figured out how to handle House yet."

"So I've heard. Hey, don't let him know you know."

"I won't. What does Chase say about all this?"

Cameron's look gave him the answer.

"He's not happy is he?"

"No. He thinks I took the job for different reasons."

"And are you?" He asked.

"No, I'm not." She said, tired of having to answer that question.

Foreman decided to leave it alone. "Give Chase time. He'll come around. When do you start?"

"Monday." She glanced at her watch. "I gotta go. My shift starts in five minutes. I'll see ya later."

"Okay. Thanks for the coffee." He said as he walked back into the conference room to pour a cup.

A few minutes later, the others started filtering in wondering if they had a new case yet.

**********

House wandered into the office around ten. He glanced into the other room to see that every one was already gone for the morning. He dropped his bag on the floor behind his desk and turned to see the note stuck on his computer. He limped over and plucked it off the screen, unfolded it and read the perfect handwriting

"Good Morning Dr. House. I notified Dr. Cuddy that I have accepted your offer and that I will be working in the Diagnostics Department once again. I suppose this makes it official. Hope you know what you're getting into."

Sincerely,

Dr. Allison Cameron

House rubbed his chin and smiled at its formality. It definitely had smart-a$$ written all over it. Let the fun begin, he thought. He unlocked his bottom desk drawer and placed the note between the three files that occupied the space, locked it back and left to find Wilson.