Chapter 60 — Intermission
A/N: Thank you to Rubyia, SoleFaith, BrySt1, Musikrulesok, HeatherSS1, Meme, Josalynn, Illand Girl, Robin, KitCatWolfMCSW, LeePacefan, Fernix13, OldSFfan, iShyboy, and lizonia for their reviews on the last chapter!
It was one hell of a summer.
I learned a few things.
1. The chaos of House's methods of madness became ever more prevalent to me when he started treating patients that I didn't know the diagnosis of from word go.
When you've seen an episode ten, twenty, thirty, forty times—it's just not as impressive anymore. The awe wears off. But watching it firsthand, for the first time, well...I was both getting a new episode of House to watch each week, and for the first time in many years getting the full effect of just how insane House was.
It was sometime in May when House burst into the differential room, swung his head around frantically, and demanded, "The ducklings. Where are they?" House had finally picked up my usage of the ducklings phrase and had adopted it for himself, which absolutely delighted me.
Zach and I were on the floor, passing House's DS back and forth, seeing how far we could get in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. I looked up with a furrowed brow. "I don't know. I thought you had Chase running blood cultures and Cameron and Foreman worrying about the angio—"
"I need to set my patient on fire," House said dramatically. He flourished his cane and limped out of the room at high speed.
Zach and I as one uttered, "What the fuck?"
Worse yet, House's patient was a ten year old boy.
I had to work the night shift at Ryan's that evening. When I probed House for answers about possibly immolating a child, he just grinned and remained tight-lipped, eventually ending the conversation with, "I burned him to a crisp and hid the body in the backyard, you wanna go dig him up?"
The patient was released three days later, diagnosed with Graves' disease and undergoing treatment that would make his life perfectly livable, though not always easy. No burn marks.
2. I had no idea how to act in a relationship.
I didn't know what was more excruciating and for who—my first few weeks with Zach, or House's first few weeks with Cameron where she had to learn the true extent of his wildly fluctuating moods. I had a lot of sympathy for both of our new significant others.
"Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
Zach and I were walking down the street together in Princeton, spending a lazy summer day window shopping. His hand held my much smaller one in its grasp, and Zach would occasionally squeeze my hand. The squeezing picked up more and more as the day went on.
"You're shaking," Zach elaborated. "That's why I keeping squeezing you. Like, are you alright? Nobody shakes that much."
"I, uh—" I released his hand, wiping it on my jeans, as a lot of sweat had accumulated there over the past several hours. "It's embarrassing."
"So?" Zach asked uncomprehendingly. "You want to know something embarrassing about me? There's all kinds of shit. People are embarrassing. When you're with someone, there's no hiding that."
I shrunk into myself slightly, drifting a few feet away from Zach. "Look, I can count on one hand the amount of like...physical contact I've had with non-family members. I've never been touched a whole lot in my life, and I was never with anybody for long enough to get beyond arm-over-the-shoulder movie dates. I'm not used to it, so it makes me nervous, but not the kind of nervousness that I feel emotionally, just, my body feels it. Temporary tremors."
"You'll get used to it, though. It'll go away," Zach said, trying to catch my eye. "Right?"
"Sure hope so," I replied. "It's not you, okay? It's me."
"Now I feel like you're dumping me."
"No no no!" I burst out quickly, and I grabbed his hand again. "Just take it as a sign of me liking you a lot. I'll get over it. This is just new for me. Very new."
Zach leaned over and lightly kissed me. My heart picked up, as per usual—I wasn't even close to used to that, either. I suspected the lip-on-lip contact would take even longer for me to adjust to than the hand holding.
"Is new good?" he asked, pulling back.
"Yeah." I grinned up at him. "Yeah, new is good."
Zach was my sanity in it all. The person I could step away from the rest of my life with, and just be a normal eighteen year old. And he was happy to join me in anything, whether it was doggedly following House around the hospital, driving around in Lola, filling out nursing school applications, or even going to church—a surprise, given how militantly agnostic Zach was—if I asked, he would come. And a lot of times, I didn't even have to ask.
House would hassle him constantly, usually choosing to sharpen all the kitchen knives whenever he came over, or ask probing questions meant to rattle him, but Zach took it all in stride.
He just seemed psyched to be with me, and I was psyched to be with him. I had to hide a lot from him, but I got the distinct feeling I would never know the full extent of Zach's past, so we were even in that. And most important of all, he was patient with me and my awkwardness in the romantic realm. He didn't seem like he was going anywhere, anytime in the near future.
For that much, I was grateful.
3. House and Cameron, somehow, in their own way...functioned?
"Chase has always been kind of oblivious—no one that attractive isn't self-obsessed," House theorized one humid night in June, lounging on the couch in the living room. "I expected better of Foreman though. He's good with the puzzle pieces. Usually there's a few things out of place, but he's always got the corners right where they need to be."
"Does it really matter?" Cameron asked from the other side of the couch. House's socked feet rested in her lap. Cameron absentmindedly rubbed them, minding a glass of wine with her free hand. "Wasn't the whole point to not let the boys know?"
"What? Don't you trust them not to go running to Vogler?" House countered
"She does, but I doubt you do," I chimed from the piano, my fingers trailing a lighthearted tune along the keys. "It can't hurt to keep things quiet. Eventually Vogler will get bored and move onto another pet project anyway, and the hospital doesn't have any technical policy about a boss dating an underling. You just have to sign some papers and put both of your jobs at a slight risk, but hey, your jobs are always at a slight risk."
"How is that you know so much about the hospital's inter-departmental dating policy?" Cameron said, casting me a suspicious look over her glasses.
"Back when my spawn was still a hopeful doctor, she wanted to make sure if she got hired at PPTH she'd still be able to date Chase," House said without missing a beat, covering for me.
"Hey, I have a boyfriend," I snapped, the words feeling unusual on my tongue.
"Does he know about all the Chase pin-ups?" House sassed me.
I rolled my eyes, not dignifying the schoolyard taunt with a response.
Cameron finished her glass of wine and stretched over to kiss House. He responded happily and smacked her ass when she pulled back.
"Please, not in front of me," I crowed from the piano.
"Don't be baby, this is in your peripheral," the diagnostician shot back in response. He reached for Cameron again, but she danced out of his grip.
"I can't stay tonight," Cameron said with a regretful smile. "I'm getting my clinic hours out of the way in the morning so I can leave when you do tomorrow."
"You could just do what I do and ignore your clinic hours entirely," House offered, trying and failing to hook Cameron's leg with his cane, but she was too nimble to be caught.
"If you wanted to date yourself, you've got your right hand and a mirror," she cracked, still smiling. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"See you," House said, watching her go with faintly narrowed eyes and a hint of a smirk on his lips.
"Goodnight Anya," Cameron said to me.
"Night, Cameron." When I heard her retreating footsteps, I turned to House immediately. "This is weird."
He perked his head up to look at me. "You're weird."
"And you're happy!"
"I understand how this could be a problem for you. If I'm happy, then what do you need to save me from?" House pushed himself into a seated position with a wince.
"I just...Cameron of all people..."
"So I take it this didn't happen in canon?" House asked.
"No. I think you can imagine exactly how things happened in canon. Cameron tried. You were an ass. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred."
"Well, we've definitely passed go, and if you're wondering, yes—those legs do go all the way up." House tilted his head in faux-wonder. "Makes things more difficult in the bedroom, but what can I say, I'm—"
"House, take me seriously for one second. Please."
"What fun would that be?" Still, I saw his expression change infinitesimally. He was listening. How long I would have his attention was very much up for debate however, so I needed to make my point quickly.
"Stacy and Mark are coming up three times a week for Mark's physio and group therapy," I said evenly. "Stacy's been around the hospital."
"Is this you pestering me about being over Stacy, again? I'm bored of this conversation." House blinked a few times. "Mark's going to group therapy? Why?"
"Some people like to talk about their crippling disabilities instead of slamming down vicodin until their fucking eyes cross," I pointed out mildly.
House let out a loud, fake-laugh. "Hey, you're talking about me, aren't you? Oh, you."
We had indeed gone several rounds about the Stacy situation since the summer started. I was terrified that without their arc through the first half of season two House would never get anything resembling closure with Stacy—meaning he would be pining for her forever, interfering with him moving onto somebody else. Preferably Cuddy, but as long as he was with someone who made him happy, I didn't particularly care.
(Okay, I kind of cared, but in a totally selfish, inactionable way)
But I needed to make sure that everything was on the up-and-up. "House. You're not just dating Cameron to fuck with Stacy, are you? Make her jealous?"
House just watched me, not responding. I took that as a bad sign.
"House," I pushed back from the piano, bench scraping across the wood floor. "You can't do this to her. Don't toy with her."
"I'm not toying with her—"
"Then what are you doing?"
"I don't know!" House burst out, surprising me. Okay. He was getting frustrated. We were getting somewhere. "I don't know what I'm doing, I...like her. She's irritating and officious and naive and has absolutely no idea who I am. But I like her."
"So this has nothing to do with Stacy?" I pushed one more time. "This is between you and Cameron?"
"I'm your parent, I can order you to bed, can't I?" House rose from the couch with a grunt of pain, heading for the liquor cabinet. "If it's not you it's Wilson. I'm sure this'll crash and burn as soon as the honeymoon phase wears off, so do we really need to worry about it?"
"You don't want to lose her. And I don't mean in the relationship sense, I mean in the sense of the team. Cameron's your moral compass. When you, Chase, and Foreman have all pissed off the patient or the patient's family too much to get consent anymore, Cameron's there to smooth things over. The three of you aren't bad people, you all have good hearts, but...Chase goes into a room, flashes his pretty smile, tells the same tonsil story to every patient, then as soon as he's out of the room he runs his mouth about them. Foreman's like you, he thinks everyone else is an idiot. He's slightly better at hiding it, but not by much. As for you, you rarely deign it even necessary to see your patients at all, and when you do see them it's usually to ask for permission for some treatment that sounds more like torture, or to insult them into doing what you want. You need Cameron on your team because Cameron is the human aspect, she sees what you guys don't see, what you can't see."
"Wait until you find out that she only signed a contract for two years. Boy, will your face be red," House said, pulling out his bourbon. "Standard fellowship."
"You know she'll re-sign after her fellowship's up. If you don't fuck things up, by say, I don't know—using her as leverage to try to get the love of your life back."
House turned around, bottle in hand. "You don't know what happened between me and Stacy. You know nothing about me and Stacy. I don't care if you saw a flashback, I don't care if you watched me every day of your life for eight years. You weren't there. No one was besides the two of us, and Wilson when everything was said and done and he had to clean up ground zero—and notice that I'm not sitting on his knee waiting for advice either. You barely know how to function in the relationship you're in, stop trying to micro-manage mine."
I crossed my arms, faintly stunned by the rebuttal. House rarely, if ever, went off on me like that, because he rarely deigned anything I said worthy of any real reaction besides snark.
House poured himself a shot.
"House...I'm sorry. I know I wasn't there. I..." I struggled for the words. "I just want you to be happy."
He didn't respond, but he did take his shot.
There was no use pushing anymore. Not tonight. If House was enjoying his time with Cameron...there was no real reason to interfere.
...Right?
4. I had actually made a tangible change in the department, and it was primarily in the dynamic of the ducklings. And it might not have been for the best.
I walked into the differential room with a languid stretch. It was July, a beautiful, sunny day outside. Zach and I had plans to go out for a swim later, but until then, I thought I would annoy House and the team. Chase and Foreman were at the table, each eating from a variety platter of bagels. Cameron was brewing up four cups of coffee at the kitchenette, humming something.
Foreman had a crossword in front of him. "Twenty-four across, church officer."
"Deacon," Chase provided.
"Fits." Foreman scrawled it down. His eyes flicked up to me. "Hey Anya." He pushed the plate my way. "Eat. We've got blueberry."
I saw Cameron add a fifth cup of coffee to her collection she was working on. She smiled at me over her shoulder, and I returned it before taking a seat next to Chase.
"Morning," he greeted as I took a blueberry bagel and immediately started wolfing it down.
"Morning. Slow day?"
"We're all caught up on clinic hours and House is nowhere to be found," Chase said with a shrug. "Mental health day. I think we've got Monopoly around here somewhere."
"You don't want to play Monopoly with me," Cameron warned, and she delivered Foreman and Chase their coffee, then doubled back to grab mine and hers. She left House's in the microwave to be warmed up whenever he finally got in. He'd been nowhere to be found when I'd left this morning, which meant he was off with Wilson somewhere.
"Never took you for the ruthless capitalist," Chase joked.
"It's a white people thing," Foreman added with a snort. "Twenty-five down, command."
"Order," Chase filled in. "And don't let Vogler hear you say that. Shame my dad's dead, he'd give you a run for your money. Literally. Used to wipe the floor with me and my sister whenever we played."
"How is your sister?" Cameron asked, sipping at her coffee and peering at the crossword puzzle. "37 across is Lamest."
Foreman bounced his eyebrows. "Nice. And yeah, how's she doing?"
"I keep trying to convince her to come stay for awhile," Chase said tiredly, rubbing a hand over his forehead. "She says she's fine but I don't think she is. I'm terrified she's gonna drop out of uni when next term rolls around."
"Just let her know that you're there for her. Sometimes that's all you can do," Foreman said seriously, meeting Chase's eyes. "I haven't lose a parent yet, but I can't imagine it's something that you get past overnight."
"Neither of us could stand Dad for half our lives, you'd think we'd be taking it better," Chase muttered.
I hesitantly scratched Chase's back in what I hoped was a comforting gesture. "He was still your dad. Both of you are allowed to mourn."
Chase looked at me. "How long did it take with your mom? To stop...thinking about it, all the time."
"I'll let you know as soon as it happens," I told him quietly, dropping my hand.
Foreman offered him another bagel. "Eat your feelings."
"Prefer to drink them, but 11am seems a little early for that," Chase grumbled, but accepted the bagel.
"Maybe we all could use a drink. Mental health day, right? Let's go out to the pub across the street for dinner," Cameron suggested. "If we all harass House he might even come."
"Sure," the boys chorused.
"36 down, make certain," Foreman said.
"Ensure," Cameron answered.
Foreman jotted it down. "Only a few left."
I watched the group of them interact, trade jokes, solve the crossword together, all while I ate my breakfast and sipped at my coffee. The way they interacted, the smiling, the laughing...this was different. A dynamic that didn't come around until much later in the series. Foreman and Chase could barely stand one another by the end of season one, Chase and Cameron seemingly had no feelings towards each other in any shape or form. Foreman and Cameron had been friends, I guess, but that hadn't been truly cemented until the events of Euphoria.
Was this all because Chase hadn't been here to betray House during the Vogler arc? Had it made such a substantial difference that the three of them were already close in some capacity?
"You guys actually like each other," I commented aloud, not really meaning to.
They all looked up at me, matching expressions of faint confusion. "...Yes?" Cameron asked, adjusting her glasses.
"House would probably have more fun if we hated each other," Chase said with a faint chuckle.
"I certainly would," House said, finally barging into the room well past one. He stopped and stared at the four of us. "Shouldn't you all be doing doctor things?"
"Clinic hours are all done," Foreman said.
"Billing's caught up," Chase added.
"New grant proposals written up and sent out," Cameron finished, looking up at House with a sly smile. "Do you have a case for us?"
House narrowed his eyes at her. "No."
"Mental health day," I told House. "Milk the clock and then we all go for beer and cheese fries. Well, beer for you guys. Cheese fries for me."
House's eyes flicked to each of us individually, finally landing back on Cameron. "I'm not paying," he said, the closest to a yes we were ever going to get.
I commented on the ducklings burgeoning Three Musketeers vibe later that day while I tailed House to Coma Guy's Room to watch his soaps with him. "They're...a lot closer than they were in canon."
"Were they ripping each other's throats out in the show?" House asked, though he seemed only vaguely interested.
"Well...yeah, kinda. Not that you would ever encourage anything like that, master at office politics as you are." I scratched the back of my neck, frowning. "The only time in season one they really seemed to stick together was when you were trying to induce an AIP attack in Mark and they tried to stop you."
House side-eyed me, hand resting on the handle to Coma Guy's room. "They didn't try to stop me."
I stopped cold. "Wait, what?"
"Cameron spun her typical black-and-white moral spiel in my general direction, Foreman nervously glanced over his shoulder and faked being racked with guilt, Chase didn't seem to care either way. None of them actively tried to stop me. Which makes them cowards, sure, but it made things a lot more convenient for me. I could take Chase and Cameron in a fight, but even armed, I'm not taking my chances with Foreman," House said with a wave of his cane.
"Oh," was all I could manage.
House could read the obvious anxiety in my face. "In your effort to make everything perfect, you've made things too perfect. Now they're all in awe of me and totally subservient." House cocked his head. "I wonder if Chase and Foreman will try to jump my bones next? Did God send you here to get me a harem?"
I waved him off. "Stop, stop."
"Better start thinking of course corrections," House said, then disappeared to watch his soaps.
Everything was all warm and fuzzy as far as the department went. No dead patients weighing on anybody's mind, Vogler was a looming and constant threat, but he was only so dangerous without an informant. Cameron and House were banging and happy about it, seemingly, Chase had found closure with his father and was dealing with it in a healthy, adult way...
So, was this a sign that things were taking a turn for the better, or a calm before the storm? I wish I could've just enjoyed how well things were going, but anxiety constantly gnawed at me that everything would soon spin out of control and go south. I thought everything was fine before, and then I'd ended up dangling from a meat hook in a slaughterhouse in downtown Trenton.
All I could do for now was pray. And hope that the ducklings not standing up to House with the Mark situation wasn't a sign of worse things to come.
5. Getting into nursing school was easier than I thought it would be.
I put my foot down about nursing school—I was getting in by myself, or not at all. I had no choice but to work with my faked transcripts of course, but the recommendation letters, the essays, the application process, I did the real deal. Wilson and Cameron wrote me reference letters without any convincing (no surprise) and I poured over my essay for several days, not wanting to just use the scam one House had given me for Princeton, as that was just a few sentences off from Cameron's Michigan essay.
No plagiarizing this time.
I applied to several different schools within a thirty mile radius, including the one House had recommended, but I wanted to cast a wide net, for fear of rejection. However, much to my delight, I'd landed interviews with four of the five schools within three weeks of applying. I spent most of July wandering back and forth across Princeton and Trenton, doing different rounds of interviews, all of which were much less rigorous and high-tension as my Princeton interview had been.
In the end, I'd scored three acceptance letters. I could choose which I wanted. I was gonna be a nurse—not a doctor, but goddamnit, it was close enough to work. I could help people. I could do something worthwhile.
I laid out the three acceptance letters in front of House while he was sitting on the couch. "ATP accepted me. Do you know anything about the other two? Which do you think I should go with?"
"Do I look like a nurse? Go ask Brenda for advice." House still picked up the letters though, flipping through them. "Princeton Nursing Institute will look better on a resume and cost triple what ATP does, but it won't make you any better a nurse. I've never even heard of this one," he tossed the acceptance letter from Jersey College Nursing School into the nearby trash can. He handed me the one from ATP. "You work at a coffee shop, you're not affording PNI unless you want to be paying off student loans until you die."
"I could get a better job, House."
"Better job means background check, thorough background check proves you're not real. I pulled strings at Princeton to avoid that, but my villainous influence only extends so far." He brandished the ATP letter at me again. "You wanted advice. Take it."
I snatched the letter from him. "Fine. And thank you." I glanced over the letter again. "Orientation is August 26th. That's the day it was in my reality when I got sucked into your world."
"Maybe you'll get sucked back that day. I can only hope." House rose from the couch. "What do you want for dinner?"
"Is this a trick question? We don't have any food in the apartment."
"It is a trick question. Let's go get Chinese."
"Fine. Grab Wilson on the way?" I asked, tucking the acceptance letter away in my dresser.
"Cameron too," House said. "I feel like an after-dinner massage with a happy ending."
"Ew. But okay. Let's go." I pulled on my shoes and met House at the door. When I stood back up, House was staring at me.
"You'll do well," he said, surprisingly serious, and he was out the door before I could react.
"Th-thank you?" I whispered. House never heard me.
6. Vogler wasn't going to just hold hands with House and cross the street with him.
Vogler did, for the most part, let House and the rest of the department off his leash—but there were still times when he interfered when he felt House had gone too far. Well, House frequently went too far, it was just the matter of whether Vogler found out or not. Cuddy had begun using Vogler as a kind of secret weapon. When she couldn't convince House to not do something, in stomped Vogler to shut everything down. House usually managed to subvert Vogler at every turn, but sometimes Vogler walked away with one in the win column, much to House's chagrin.
"You have no right to pull rank on patient care!" House bellowed.
"I do when you're trying to turn a patient into a lab rat!" Vogler roared back.
I sat between the two in the differential room, studying one of my anatomy textbooks for nursing school ahead of time and trying to block out all the yelling.
"They've had an open trial running for mTOR-inhibitors in conjunction with low-dose Prednisone in cases of Non-Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis with an eighty percent success rate—"
"Yes, in cases of Erdheim-Chester, which your patient doesn't have!"
Huh. Vogler had done his research. He was upping his game.
House threw his hands up in the air. "Different flavors of NLCH, different flavors of fruit snacks, same bag! You're gonna kill this patient because you're worried about the numbers instead of the living, breathing human down in the ICU who's got three days tops if we don't do something!"
Vogler took a step closer to House, towering over him. "What's your patient's name, House?"
House stared Vogler down. "Doesn't matter. I'm not treating a name, I'm treating a body—I can tell you every single thing on that chart, SED-rate, O2 stats, vitamin levels—"
"Her name is Morgan DeRose, and you're not giving her that medicine. Find another way." Vogler headed for the door. Just before he left, he added over his shoulder, "That's what you're supposed to be so good at...isn't it?"
House thumped his cane furiously on the glass table, causing me to jump. "You should've just let the original timeline sail its course, if it meant we got rid of that son of a bitch. He's gonna kill my patient."
"One hundred million dollars," I reminded him, snapping my book shut. "That's gonna save a lot of people. There's no working around that."
"Aren't you supposed to be worried about saving me?" House shot back.
"The more the merrier."
"Except this patient, right? So what if a few people die along the way?"
"I believe you can save her if she's able to saved," I told him evenly.
"Thank you so much, I'm sure your unshakable faith in me will solve everyone's problems." House was off without another word, anger in every step.
I sighed and cradled my head in my hands. This wouldn't be the last time this happened, of that much I was sure.
House did save his patient, but it was a near thing. The biggest question was, would we not be so lucky next time?
Outside, I heard a motorcycle revving. Loudly. Repeatedly. I stayed on the couch where I was, watching television, until the revving became so frequent that I knew the neighbors were going to complain. With a heavy sigh, I walked out of the apartment in my socked feet and down the stairs, where House was sitting on his motorcycle on the curb, looking at me expectantly.
It was a temperate August evening, humid but comfortable. The air was alive with chirping birds and barking dogs, barbecue and bonfires on the wind. The ideal summer night, and maybe one of the last ones we'd get before school kicked in and autumn crept back to us. It reminded me of the last day I'd spent in my own universe, and God, I still missed home.
Next week, I started nursing school. And before long, season two would start—House had been tan and it had been sunny outside during Acceptance, so within a few weeks, I'd be back to playing guardian angel, and with not nearly as much time to run interference on my hands. It made me nervous as hell, but there was no stopping the passage of time. I just had to do the best that I could, because House didn't have the luxury of the best of someone better watching out for him.
"You could've just come inside and asked if I wanted to go for a ride," I said, crossing my arms.
"You would've said no," House pointed out, proffering me the helmet.
"I am saying no. Zach is picking me up for dinner. You'll have to go bug Cameron."
House rolled his eyes. "Cameron doesn't get nearly as scared as you do."
"Oh, so the entertainment value is in me being terrified?"
"Like you didn't already know that."
I just grinned at him, unable to stop myself. "You're an ass."
"And you choose to live with me, which makes you an idiot. This stating the obvious contest is fun." He put on his helmet, evidently not feeling like arguing me into tagging along with him. "When does season two start?"
I glanced up and down the sidewalk. No one around, thankfully. "I...don't know. Let me know when you get a death row patient. That's episode one."
"Name?"
"Acceptance."
House tilted his head slightly. "What was the season one finale called? I never asked."
"...Honeymoon," I provided carefully.
House's expression was inscrutable in wake of the information. He turned his eyes away from me. "I'll be home later."
"I know."
One more glance at me. "Bye, Anya."
"Bye, House."
He roared off into the distance, and I watched him go.
No matter what was coming next, as long as he kept coming back...I think I'd be alright.