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"Where should she be?"
An uneasy silence follows House's question, as Foreman looks back to Chase and the blond pulls out his phone to check he hasn't missed anything in Cameron's text.
"She was supposed to be with Chase."
Foreman frowns, pulling out his own phone and pressing it to his ear after finding the blonde's number in his recent contacts.
"It's ringing."
He mutters while House rounds on Chase, his expression thunderous.
"You didn't go with her?"
"Go where?"
Chase replies with a little more urgency, getting an uneasy feeling as the others appear anxious for reasons he's still in the dark about.
"She messaged me and asked me to meet her in the car park after I finished work, but I had a patient, I told you."
He reminds House, before demanding seriously
"What's going on?"
"No answer."
Foreman shakes his head as he places his phone irritably on the table before finally putting Chase out of his misery.
"Cameron found a lead on one of our dead girls. There's a good chance she went missing over on seventh, and given the number of old industrial buildings there are at that end of town, we wondered if it might be worth checking what kind of chemicals were used to see if there's anything that might link up with our girls' symptoms. It could be a shot in the dark, it could be nothing at all, but we've not been able to come up with a diagnosis working this blind, so it seemed worth checking out. Cameron said she'd go, and that she'd take you with her."
"Why me?"
"Your indisputable powers of intimidation."
House rolls his eyes, and when the blond merely throws him a confused look, he elaborates impatiently
"Because, so far as we know, you're male."
"Why would that matter?"
"Well, for one, we haven't sent any of those down to the morgue recently."
"The morgue?"
Chase shakes his head, and Foreman sighs as he gets up to refresh his coffee and clear his head
"He's being an asshole... But, seventh isn't a place I'd want to spend much time exploring on my own. It doesn't exactly fill me with confidence knowing Cam's doing just that."
"She might not be, she might have been called into surgery or something if she was hanging around..."
The blond suggests uneasily. He feels slightly guilty, although he knows that he shouldn't; he'd had no way of knowing what it was Cameron might be messaging him about. House seems not to share this logic as he continues to glare at him irritably.
"She'd have said."
Foreman reasons, and while he knows it's a long shot, Chase argues
"Not necessarily. Not if there was an emergency."
Still, he knows that he sounds too hopeful to also sound convincing. Deciding to go for a different tack, he assures
"Allie's not stupid. I know seventh is a dump, but it's not as though just passing through is signing a death warrant. It's just a dodgy part of town. If she's there already, and if she's checking into things, it's actually a good sign she's not answering her phone."
"How'd you figure?"
"Well, it's hardly the latest model, but probably still not smart to be strolling around chatting away."
Chase shrugs, and Foreman nods but points out
"I very much doubt she's strolling anywhere."
"Me neither, but that has very little to do with it being a shady area, and a lot more to do with the fact I don't think Cameron's capable of anything so casual."
A shared snigger at this - affectionate rather than cruel - which House resents, although he knows he would usually be the one to make such a comment himself. Now doesn't seem the time though, not when apprehension he has no wish to acknowledge the ridiculousness of creeps inside his gut.
She's a grown woman, and hardly dressed the way that our girls have been.
He silences the voice in his head that asks whether this is a good or a bad thing.
Besides... He takes issue with the others' joking around for another reason. The night he'd walked home with Cameron following their time in the bar had been casual. Relaxed. Else he wouldn't have stuck with her and landed himself in the situation he's in now. Certainly, there had been electricity between them - an exhilarating energy - but she hadn't been behaving in the highly-strung, nervous yet controlled way he knows Chase and Foreman refer to. There have been times - particularly when they'd all worked together - when he's likened the blonde to a hummingbird; an analogy that pissed her off just as well as any of his previous animal analogies had done, and he knows why. Knows she'll have taken it to mean small, or fragile, or something similar. Something along the lines of his usual jests at her expense. What he'd meant though, was in reference to the blonde's inability to stop. To be still. Her sometimes manic need to make sure everything will turn out alright. It can be exhausting as much as it is intriguing, and he has always wondered if - always worried that - her heart, either physically or emotionally, might simply give out on her.
He has since learned of another side to her nature, and understands that Cameron is more than capable of taking things casually.
In the end, it had been he who had presented the problem.
"So... What should we do?"
Foreman asks, and House frowns as he catches Eric looking expectantly at him for guidance.
"Why are you asking me? You're in charge, remember?"
He reminds gruffly, and Foreman sighs irritably before asking Chase
"What do you think? Should one of us see if we can track down Cam, or just leave her to it?"
"Leave her. She'll get mad if you pull a babysitter move like that."
"For her own good!"
"Maybe. But she'll call you sexist, and I'm not so sure she's wrong, despite good intentions."
Chase shrugs, and Foreman nods as he conspires with a grin
"Well, we can't have that, then."
"I'll see if I run into her down in the ER. Otherwise, it looks like she's decided to go rogue."
"Idiot."
House grunts, and Foreman turns on him and jabs a finger accusingly
"You realise she'll only have done so because of you, right? I told her I didn't want her going alone, and while slightly annoyed, she was fine with it. If she's now gone anyway, it's because she won't have wanted to deal with your crap if you'd come in and found her sitting pretty. Ordinarily, I'd call her out for deferring to your foul mood over my position as the head of this team, but given the way you've been towards her this week, I can't say I'm surprised!"
"Please. Cameron's to blame for her own foolishness; last I checked she had free will."
House scoffs, although privately, he feels unsure. It doesn't sit well with him at all that Cameron should see him as such an ogre that she would rather act recklessly than risk the possibility of him teasing her, and suddenly the magnitude of the mess between them truly hits home.
We need to talk. Properly.
Fuck.
He sighs, not relishing the prospect of tiptoeing around the blonde's current arctic mood, but he doesn't want her to do anything else foolish if he's to be responsible for it. True, she does have free will, and it's not in his nature to take the blame for another's actions, but he doesn't wish to need to argue his point should anything actually go wrong. He isn't willing to risk that.
He'll talk to her.
"Let's get on with looking into more documented cases and wait to hear from Allie. I guess we'll just presume she's made her way to seventh and that we'll see her later."
Foreman sighs, interrupting House's thoughts, and Chase seems to agree with this plan of action as he heads for the door and reiterates that he'll do a quick sweep of the ER in hopes of spotting the blonde, but after that, he's heading home. Struck by a sudden thought, he turns back to the others and reasons
"If the snow's coming down as hard as it seemed to be on my way up here, you might want to leave Cam a message if she is out and tell her to head home once she's done and catch up with you tomorrow. I'm dreading just trying to get out of here! You know what it gets like around the entrance."
"Will do."
Foreman agrees, before looking up at House when the greying doctor shakes his head and offers gruffly, "I'll do it," before limping towards his office.
"House, seriously, don't have a go at her. You're not going to help things!"
"You never know, I might. I've always been of the belief that she's secretly into it."
House shrugs, shutting himself away behind the glass door before Foreman can pitch any further concerns.
Falling into his chair, he pulls the replacement Wilson had found for his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. Silently commending his luck that his sim card had remained intact, he scrolls through his contacts and finds Cameron's number under P.
Princess Party-Pooper.
He supposes he should really change that, but isn't sure to what. The only contacts he has stored under their actual names are four of his favourite escorts, and he highly doubts his entries would match any of their ID cards should it come down to it. Still, he can't put Cameron in with that group, so resolves to amend her contact details when he comes up with something more fitting.
Pressing CALL, he holds the phone to his ear.
It rings four times before her voicemail service kicks in, and he waits for her pre-recorded message to end with a short beep.
"You better not be doing what I think you're doing."
He warns gruffly, and he supposes, ordinarily, this would be the perfect time for innuendo, but he sacrifices the golden opportunity and carries on seriously
"If you're still out scouting for poisons and pesticides, get your butt home. Don't bother coming back to the hospital, the weather's only getting worse, and there's nothing that needs doing that Foreman and I can't handle until the new kids show up... If you're home already... Let me know, okay? I'm not sure if that's allowed with your whole 'avoiding me' thing, but... Please just do it, Cameron. Ta-... Dr-...I ... I'll see you tomorrow."
He finishes awkwardly; the platitudes of 'drive safe' and 'take care' seeming far too foreign to him to pass on to her.
Hanging up, he frowns as he looks out of the window; watching the snow flurry as the sky already begins to darken.