Living the Dream
"Chase, Foreman, Cameron – up here, please." Cuddy waited until they approached at the end of the meeting before she spoke quietly, "Why is House driving a limo."
"Don't know." Foreman looked at her.
Cameron placed her hands on her hips, "Don't have to know."
Chase knew he needed to go along with the 'don't' phrases, "Don't… care?"
"Wrong. Until this inspection is over, you're back on House watch." Cuddy pointed to Foreman then Cameron, "Current case, past cases."
"He doesn't have a current case." Foreman stated.
The blonde woman gestured behind her, "I have a whole department."
"Are you gonna fire us if we don't?"
The dean sighed, "I was just—" Chase was walking out the door before she finished the third word, "Asking for your help!" She yelled at the Australian before she turned to the other blonde, "The last time I checked the ER, you had the best-kept charts in the building. The last time I checked the fourth floor janitor's closet, I found House's charts. He hasn't filed anything since you left. Now, House may not care whether this hospital's accreditation gets downgraded, but the people who sign my paychecks do. So, I repeat, current, past."
"He doesn't have a current case." Foreman said again.
Cuddy gave him a look, "Did he tell you about the limo?"
~0~0~0~0~0~
Cameron could not believe that she was back here… she couldn't believe that she was that close to Remy and could do nothing about it. She worked effortlessly as she listened to the differential, but was still distracted when her lucky number started talking.
"Foot numbness has a huge differential."
"It gets a lot narrower when you add in peripheral vision problems." House looked at her.
Foreman looked at House the same way he looked at Thirteen, "Which gets a lot wider when there's no proof he ever had a vision problem."
"So, House was wrong about the first symptom, but the guy just happened to develop a second, unrelated symptom a few hours later?" Kutner asked.
Taub started into the conversation, "He already kidnapped and sedated a guy against his will. Makes sense he'd also do something to numb his foot so he couldn't leave."
"But it doesn't make sense to include the symptom that he caused in a differential he's so desperate to solve." House said as he leaned against the desk Cameron was using.
"Unless he didn't mean to cause it." Cameron glanced at him as she slapped a post-it on a file and highlighted something inside.
House gave her a look then slapped the file and spoke cockily, "Stick to the filing, Sweetheart. Let the doctors do the doctoring. Either toxins or a vitamin deficiency—"
"I'm guessing when you drugged him, you didn't catch him and ease him to the floor. He could have pinched a nerve in his ankle when he fell." She flipped the file closed and grabbed another, "You need to run an EMG test for motor nerve entrapment or the inspector will own your ass." She enunciated her last three words in the cute way she has, and chanced a glance to Thirteen who smirked at her.
House nodded and looked to Kutner, "Kutner, leave the room. Wait thirty minutes, come back and tell her the test was negative."
He knit his brows and stared at his boss as he spoke dryly, "Is it okay if I use that time to do the test?"
"Get out of here." House shooed him.
Cameron stood, emptying a sack of more files in front of her, "The rest of them can help me with all this stuff."
House looked at his best friend with a playful glare, "They're busy. Which is really annoying because I wanted to be able to say they're busy for no other reason than to screw with you." He grabbed a DVD collection from a box he brought into the room earlier, "Research."
As they filed out, House didn't wait on anyone and Thirteen was the last to leave, pretending she was cleaning out her mug quickly. She darted over to Cameron and pecked her lips, "I'd stay if he wouldn't notice I was gone…"
"I know, Baby. Go on." She kissed her back and shooed her on to follow her boss.
~0~0~0~0~0~
House, Thirteen, Foreman and Taub were sitting in the doctor's lounge in front of the TV watching Evan, their patient act as Brock, House's favorite TV doc.
House pointed to the screen, "You can't tell me you didn't notice that pause."
"Sorry." Thirteen shrugged.
House leaned forward, "Ah, this is a whole new experience in super high def. I had no idea Marie wore an underwire."
"Does sound a little forced. Could be stiffening in his tongue, which is a symptom of myxedema." Taub asked.
Thirteen cringed, "It's not the tongue, it's the dialogue." She leaned forward and squinted, "I think I dated that nurse, though." She knew House was staring at her like a happy puppy, "No." She shook her head.
"What about the way he's holding that stethoscope? His thumb and forefinger are meeting at an odd angle." Foreman said.
"Could be demylenation from toxic exposure." House added.
"Back it up." Taub wanted to see it.
The door opened and Thirteen jumped… she just knew that it was Cameron coming in to slap her face for thinking it was one of the many women she'd slept with before she found the blonde woman… Cameron was jealous, maybe not as jealous as Thirteen, but Thirteen did get slapped a lot while talking about pre-Allison Cameron… and she always had this freaky sixth sense of knowing what was going on… But as she turned and saw Cuddy, she relaxed a bit… but she knew that she would pay for that comment later sometime, somehow.
"What's this, the AV club?"
~0~0~0~0~0~
After going to the set of his favorite Soap and deciding he knew yet again what was wrong with Evan, he walked back into the diagnostics office.
"He's impotent." He stated simply as he threw a pack of sunflower seeds he got from Evan's dressing room, "Steady diet of sunflower seeds causes a B6 toxicity, which causes an autonomic disregulation, which causes a wood-free existence."
"One bad night and a couple of sunflower seeds and he's got autonomic disregulation." Kutner said.
"It's more than just one. He can't even remember the last time he was able to salute. It's cool, huh?"
"B6 wouldn't show up on a tox screen and we didn't find anything at the house." Thirteen added to the theory.
"So all we have to do is filter the B6 out of his blood. Prep him for plasmapheresis." House tried to shoo the once more.
"Just because he didn't salute doesn't mean he can't." Cameron looked up from her place and wrapped her sweater around her more, looking up at House.
House looked around pretending not to be aware of his best friend sitting right next to him, "And can you find out where that voice keeps coming from? And tell it to get out of my head."
"The impotence could be psychological. He's depressed. Hates his job."
"Plasmapheresis has risks. We should have him spend the night in the sleep lab. See if he gets a reflex erection." Thirteen suggested.
"Confirmation is for wimps and altar boys. We don't need to wait for a reflex. If he can't get engorged the way God intended, he can't get engorged." He finally looked down at the blonde.
Cameron stared back at him unenthused as she took a post-it from the pad and slapped down on some paper, "I'm not showing him my boobs."
"Lack of response to your chest tells us nothing. Thirteen, show him…" He sighed loud, as if asking the heavens, 'Why, God?' then asked the room flat out, "Where can I find a decent set of knockers around here?"
"Your porn's in the second drawer." Cameron straightened the file and looked up seemingly unaware of how the rest of the room would react by the fact that she said 'porn' so casually.
~0~0~0~0~0~
The next morning, Kutner and Thirteen let them know what happened the night before in the lab, "We shocked his heart back into sinus rhythm. He's stable, at least for now." Kutner started.
"Could be some sort of atypical septic reaction." Thirteen added.
Foreman shook his head, "Not without a fever."
She looked over at him, "Thus the word 'atypical.'"
"In that case, it could be an atypical bunion." House said as he did as his best friend forced as she stood over him, making him sign document after document.
…Thirteen was none too excited with Cameron choice of wardrobe, what with her boobies on display when she bent over. She tried to ignore House's eyes… and Taub's, and Kutner's and even Foreman's.
"He used to smoke. Could be paraneoplastic syndrome caused by small cell lung cancer." Kutner said.
"He quit twenty years ago and his calcium levels are normal." Foreman said.
Cameron didn't even bat an eye as she kept pointing to where House needed to sign and switched files, "Could be Graves Disease. Extreme hyperthyroid disease leads to systemic problems including numbness, vision loss and cardiac arrest."
House stopped, causing her to stop, straighten and look at him "You want to be here."
Cameron huffed a sigh, "I have to be here."
"Just say the word. I'll fire Thirteen." He waited for her reaction and looked over to Thirteen who looked a bit panicked, but over-confident that her job was not at stake.
"Just sign the forms." Cameron leaned back down and pointed.
"Smart move. I was bluffing." He turned to the rest of them, "She's right. We should fry the thyroid before it fries him."
"Uh… I know it's more exciting this way, but shouldn't we confirm you're right before destroying one of the most important glands in his body?" Taub asked.
House considered this, but continued on with his thinking, "If that gland has drawn a bulls eye on his heart, then no."
Cameron looked at them both, "Nuking his thyroid puts him at risk for vascular lesions and all kinds of cancer. Protocol says we should do an iodine uptake test."
"'We?'" He asked quietly to the blonde before turning to everyone else, "Anyone else want to run a useless test while Brock's thyroid plots its next lethal move?"
Thirteen's hand shot up quickly before anyone else's as they slowly raised it… she was so quick that she thought that her arm was going to fall out of socket… Really she just wanted to get her girlfriend's attention… which she did. They shared a smile before Cameron turned back to pointing and turning.
"It was rhetorical." House looked at all of them.
"You were sure about B6 toxicity, too." Thirteen gave him a look.
"House is right." Foreman said, causing everyone in the room to stop and stare at him.
"Seriously? I mean, I am, but you think so?"
"If he goes into full-on thyroid storm, he'll die. We gotta nuke his thyroid." Foreman got up quickly, getting the ducklings to follow him.
Thirteen looked at Cameron as she left giving her a look that gave Cameron warm fuzzies.
~0~0~0~0~0~
Cameron was on her way back to the diagnostics office from getting a refill on her coffee, but was plucked from the hallway and pushed into a supply closet. She didn't scream or anything, but she need time to recover.
She took a moment and pushed her hair back out of her face and straightened her clothes. She took a sip from her coffee before she set it on a shelf then looked at her captor, "Why am I getting pulled into supply closets?" She asked with a grin.
"No talking from you." Remy gave her a glare, "You have been showing everyone your boobies today and I do not appreciate it." She said seriously.
Cameron knit her brows, "When have I—?"
"Don't play little miss innocent on me, Baby… I know you did this on purpose because Jealous Remy hasn't made an appearance in a while and you decided to wake the beast. Well guess what!" She pushed her lover into the shelving unit behind her, "Beast woken." She kissed Cameron hard.
Cameron grinned as she pulled from her, "I'm gonna like assisting on cases…" she laughed as Remy nipped at her clavicle and tried and failed to get her pants undone.
"You know that I'm gonna be pissy later what with all of them ogling you… You know that, right?" Remy checked.
Allison grinned, "Of course I do, Baby… but if you're good, I'll make it worth your while tonight." She waggled her brows.
~0~0~0~0~0~
Cameron walked into House's office after her… meeting with her girlfriend, and found men hanging a flat-screen on his wall, "Doesn't the doctors' lounge have that same TV?"
House shook his head, "Nope. They've got a 12-inch, exactly like the one that used to be in here."
Cameron she rolled her eyes, "Files are done."
"I'll be doing a dance of joy just as soon as my leg is healed." He turned to the other guys in the room, "Can you tilt that down?"
"I know the paperwork annoys you, but patient records are important. You can't just let them sit there." She said seriously.
House looked up at her, "I had to. In the name of science. I let the crap pile up and I see which team member is the most self-flagellating… breaks down, clears up the mess. Surprise was, it turned out to be you. Again. And you weren't even registered as a competitor. You miss me." He grinned.
"You miss me." She shot back, "You hired Thirteen to replace me."
House rolled his eyes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. All pretty girls are fungible. You're avoiding."
"I miss the job. I miss running around playing private investigator. I miss... the puzzles."
House stared at him a moment, "Seriously. I'll fire Thirteen. Or Kutner, if you think Thirteen is hot." And when she didn't answer right away, and she just stood there, he grinned, "You think 13 is hot!"
Cameron just sighed and said, "Yes…" She gave him a look, "Have you seen her?" House laughed as his friend's face flushed. She decided to change the subject, "I miss you too… but I'm not coming back."
House watched her as she started making her way out, but he stopped her, "Oh. My. God." then in his usual epiphany way, "She's your doctor girlfriend."
She turned around with a grin, "Wonder what else you're gonna figure out…" she gave him a look telling him he almost had her figured all the way out.
House gave her an inquisitive look, "What do you mean?"
"I mean there's more to us than a couple of lesbians…" She knew he was right there on the tip of it.
He squinted in thought, "She's your college sweetheart… she never died… and you've never made her get the test."
"No." Allison looked down.
"How long have you been together?"
Allison smiled, "Rounding a decade."
He laughed, "You mean to tell me that this entire time, you two have been together? Ever since I've known you, you and Thirty-one have been together in a committed relationship?"
She swallowed and looked down, "Are you angry that I lied?"
"I'm actually quite impressed that you could lie for so long…" He gave her a look then said quietly, "I'm not mad… You did what you needed to do to protect her and you… So that you could be together." His stare lingered on his friend and he shook his head with a grin, "Thirty-one and Cameron… this is the best job ever." He waited for the maintenance crew still in the room to file out, "You know… if you have pictures or videos of you two having sex, I wouldn't mind if you wanted to show them to me… Or, you could give me a private show." He waggled his eyebrows and leered at her.
She laughed, but sobered quickly, "You're a pig."
"You wore a low-cut shirt today, of course I'm a pig… I'm sure Kutner, Taub and Foreman are all pigs as well."
"Well this shirt was not worn for any of you." She gave him a look.
He laughed, "I see… It was worn for the secret girlfriend that you flirted with like crazy last week—Don't think that because I wasn't around the six of you doesn't mean I don't know that Chase was on his period because you two were all over each other."
"We were not—!"
"You were flirting and touching a little bit… In super-jealous-Australian-surgical-resident speak it's 'all over each other'."
Cameron shook her head and walked out of the door. She was done talking about her relationship and he was not… the answer was simple. Stalk away. But she couldn't help the relief she felt wash over her when he said he wasn't mad. She was finally at peace… which meant something bad was going to happen.