Ficlet: Jones
Title: Jones
Characters: Cameron
Spoilers/Warnings: None
Summary: Habits can be broken, but memories are tougher. 350 words.
They indulge her sometimes -- at least it feels like indulgence, still, despite the three lives she's saved because of what she learned from House. Her methods annoy her colleagues, though, and that's been one of the hardest things to come to terms with. She was used to all the displeasure being thrown at House, like ping-pong balls at the side of a cliff. For all the dangerously insane shit he'd asked his team to do, he'd also drawn the enemy fire to himself.
So here she is in the cardiac ward, on her own, trying to figure out why a 29-year-old without any signs of heart disease suddenly needed a pacemaker for severe bradycardia.
"I'm not here to pass judgment or call the cops," she says, feeling like a fraud because she doesn't yet have so much as a theory. "But sometimes when things go wrong with people so young, it's got to do with drug use."
"I wish." The woman's smile is wistful and sly. "Not in forever, though."
"What?"
"Age seventeen to twenty-one. I quit eight years ago. Heroin. Does it still matter?"
"And you haven't relapsed at all?"
"No. I just miss it. Oh, look at you, with your concerned-doctor face. I'm not gonna start again, okay?" The woman's blond hair is stringy now from two days in this bed, but her face is unlined, her condition healthy except for the obvious problem. She's surrounded by cards from people who adore her. "Just because you're clean, happy, and won't ever go back, doesn't mean you don't still want the stuff. If you'd ever had a habit, you'd know."
Cameron's fourth look through the charts yields no more hints or revelations than she got the first three times. She would damn near give her right arm for a team and a whiteboard right now. And a cane-waving genius maniac who made things somehow work and who, last she heard, was in prison for nearly killing Lisa Cuddy.
"Mine wasn't a drug," Cameron says, and that seems to be enough. "Why don't you tell me about the place where you work?"
Characters: Cameron
Spoilers/Warnings: None
Summary: Habits can be broken, but memories are tougher. 350 words.
They indulge her sometimes -- at least it feels like indulgence, still, despite the three lives she's saved because of what she learned from House. Her methods annoy her colleagues, though, and that's been one of the hardest things to come to terms with. She was used to all the displeasure being thrown at House, like ping-pong balls at the side of a cliff. For all the dangerously insane shit he'd asked his team to do, he'd also drawn the enemy fire to himself.
So here she is in the cardiac ward, on her own, trying to figure out why a 29-year-old without any signs of heart disease suddenly needed a pacemaker for severe bradycardia.
"I'm not here to pass judgment or call the cops," she says, feeling like a fraud because she doesn't yet have so much as a theory. "But sometimes when things go wrong with people so young, it's got to do with drug use."
"I wish." The woman's smile is wistful and sly. "Not in forever, though."
"What?"
"Age seventeen to twenty-one. I quit eight years ago. Heroin. Does it still matter?"
"And you haven't relapsed at all?"
"No. I just miss it. Oh, look at you, with your concerned-doctor face. I'm not gonna start again, okay?" The woman's blond hair is stringy now from two days in this bed, but her face is unlined, her condition healthy except for the obvious problem. She's surrounded by cards from people who adore her. "Just because you're clean, happy, and won't ever go back, doesn't mean you don't still want the stuff. If you'd ever had a habit, you'd know."
Cameron's fourth look through the charts yields no more hints or revelations than she got the first three times. She would damn near give her right arm for a team and a whiteboard right now. And a cane-waving genius maniac who made things somehow work and who, last she heard, was in prison for nearly killing Lisa Cuddy.
"Mine wasn't a drug," Cameron says, and that seems to be enough. "Why don't you tell me about the place where you work?"