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Post by Lemurlou on Oct 22, 2006 12:28:11 GMT -5
Chapter 25
House knew himself well enough to know that he didn’t work well if he was too wound up in the cause, so he turned his mind to their real patient. He picked up the folder, squinting as he read it in the dark room.
Sixty-two yr old male. Diarrhea, migraines, unaffected by OTCs. No meds. Smoker 40 yrs, mild Turret.
Only one thing about that interested him. Why wasn’t the medication helping? In diarrhea, that meant the body needed to rid itself of a toxin so desperately that nothing could stop it. Persistent headache could mean all sorts of things. But why did they come on so quickly? That, he couldn’t think of an explanation for. Sleeping seemed like the only possible thing to do.
As House drifted off, he watched Cameron. She exactly fell asleep. She just spent the night half-conscious, staring at something unseen by everyone else. It gave House a strange feeling.
Doctors work with mortality every day. But in order to keep their sanity, they distance themselves from it. It’s a non-issue. But when they’re facing the mortality of a loved one, it’s just like how the general population faces death.
House sat there, drifting in and out of sleep, straining his mind for something ,anything, that would keep him from facing mortality the way most people face it.
Because House was never “most people”. Never. And this would be no exception.
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Post by Lemurlou on Oct 22, 2006 12:28:42 GMT -5
Chapter 26
Wilson came into Cameron’s room to find House asleep in a visitor’s chair. He shook him awake.
“What?” House groaned.
“If Cuddy finds you in here….”
“As soon as you visit a hospitalized colleague it means you’ve slept with them? Interesting. What did that mean for Foreman?” Wilson shook his head a few times.
“I’m trying to block that thought. And no, it doesn’t mean you’re in love with someone if you visit them. If you stay overnight in their room, though…”
“Who says I’m in love?” House asked bitterly, fishing for his Vicodin.
“Don’t pull that crap with me. You love her. You always have.”
“A physical attraction doesn’t mean love. Sex doesn’t mean love.”
“I didn’t say it did. I just said that you love her.” House slammed the side of his Vicodin bottle against the desk.
“I cannot get this thing open,” he muttered. Wilson took it from him and uncapped it, but didn’t hand it back.
“I don’t care if you never speak to her outside of work again, fire her, refuse to treat her. I just want you to admit how you feel about her.”
“There’s a reason I didn’t hire a therapist.” House said, and snatched the Vicodin back. Wilson threw up his hands.
“Fine.” He left and stood outside the glass hospital room. And when House thought Wilson wasn’t looking, House took Cameron’s limp hand and squeezed it.
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Post by Lemurlou on Oct 22, 2006 12:29:51 GMT -5
Chapter 27
After a quick shower and a change of clothes, House went down to the Diagnostics office. Chase and Foreman were drinking coffee, staring bleary-eyed into space. House tapped the Differential Diagnosis Board, where the symptoms, diarrhea and headache, had been written.
“Okay, and…. Go.”
“It could be a migraine.”
“It’s been going on for days. Not a migraine.”
“HIV?”
“Get me a blood test. While you’re at it, check for hepatitis A, B, C, E and X, and find out what his blood sugar’s like. Chase, get a Lumbar puncture, check for meningitis.”
Chase looked distinctly annoyed.
“This guy has the flu or something. We don’t need to be poking him full of holes.”
“He has health insurance. Might as well make the most of it.” With a disgusted sigh, Foreman and Chase left the room.
House picked up Cameron’s folder. Just in time for his pager to go berserk.
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Post by Lemurlou on Oct 22, 2006 12:30:11 GMT -5
Chapter 28
“She’s got a fever of a hundred and four point seven,” the nurse reported loudly. “Where’s that ice bath?” Cameron was lying on the bed writhing, red and sweaty. House couldn’t move as the nurses came in with the frigid tub, as Cameron was stripped and lifted in. She was impassive, even as her body was submerged in ice.
Exhaustion had made her half-dead. Her head lolled around, and House noticed the nurses had not been keeping her very clean. And suddenly, he realized that something was definitely horribly wrong with Cameron.
How could this be happening? How could House, the doctor, the greatest diagnostician ever known, not fix this? Cameron was going to die before his very eyes. And that was all there was to it.
Her body temperature dropped to ninety-seven degrees and Cameron was re-dressed and placed back in bed. Not moving, not making a sound.
House caught the head nurse on her way out.
“What do you need?” she asked briskly.
“Make sure she gets cleaned up,” He said simply. The nurse nodded.
House didn’t know why he cared. She certainly didn’t. She was practically comatose now. And it wasn’t as if making her look nice would fix her. But since he was the attending, he needed to fix her.
Her fever was back up again. Was this just a never ending cycle… cycle. Wait.
House made a mental whiteboard.
Fatigue Fever Swollen Spleen
Things were always connected. The question it was House’s job to answer was “how.”
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Post by Lemurlou on Oct 22, 2006 12:30:28 GMT -5
Chapter 29
Chase and Foreman caught up with House on his way back from Cameron’s room.
“All the tests were negative,” Foreman reported.
“That was helpful. Anything positive?”
“No, but…”
Their pagers went off. The patient.
“What’s wrong?” Chase asked.
“It… it burned me!” The man pointed to the Popsicle on his tray.
“Sir, it’s cold.”
“IT BURNED ME!” He yelled, before he broke out sweating and yelling uncontrollably.
“Ativan,” Foreman announced boredly as he stuck the man in the buttocks with the needle.
When they were out in the hallway again, House began the quiz. But this time, he had the answer key already.
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house_crazy
Junior Member
Ryan Ross! (Guitarist for P!ATD)
Posts: 50
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Post by house_crazy on Oct 23, 2006 17:12:31 GMT -5
More please! It burned me...heehee...I should use that...
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Post by Angi on Oct 29, 2006 10:30:22 GMT -5
awww, poor Cammi
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