Past/Present - Part 3a
It's been a little while, but here's the next part in this collaborative fic with jovsg! We're coming down to the good stuff people, so enjoy the ride!
As always my thanks to my partner in crime, who has made this process so much fun :)
Part III:
Spring was really starting to settle in around Princeton, and when Cameron stepped out of her apartment building, she was greeted by a warm breeze that caressed her face instead of biting into it the way the winter chill had just weeks before. She saw that the neatly manicured patch of lawn in front of her complex was shimmering, as the crystalline coated blades reflected the morning sunlight. It was probably one of the last frosts and it was already melting away. The quietly beautiful image was something that ordinarily would have put her in a good mood for the morning, but she just glanced at it and continued quickly towards her car, footsteps loud against the concrete and echoing in her ear.
She hadn’t slept well because she’d been dreading going into work. She hadn’t felt that way for a very long time.
It was still ten minutes to eight when she arrived at the hospital and so she was not at all surprised to find the office empty. On ordinary days, she got in early so that she could start the coffee before anyone else got their incompetent hands on it, and go over the latest patient reports or sift through the mail looking for promising cases. It was her private time at work and she enjoyed having the office to herself. This wasn’t an ordinary day. She still made the coffee and went through their patient’s chart, but she also used the time to collect her thoughts. She knew that House was going to say something to her and she wanted to be prepared.
If he didn’t say something then she would have to, and that would require even more preparation. She just had no idea what she was doing anymore. She prided herself on being in control even if House and Foreman and Chase all saw her as the “emotional one”. Yes, she could get emotionally invested in what happened to their patients. Yes, she could have strong feelings about them. Those were emotions she allowed herself to display. Despite what anyone else thought, she felt as if they helped her to be a better doctor. Wilson had warned her about getting attached, but she hadn’t been able to take his advice. How could she shut herself down and be a cold clinician in the face of people who needed warmth and support? The answer was simple. She couldn’t. Yet for all of her impassioned treatment of their patients, she still held her deepest feelings and emotions inside. Showing caring and concern for strangers was easy for her to do because she could easily empathize with them, but her own fears and needs and desires never saw the light of day. Not really.
There might be a soulful look or a few softly spoken words, but nothing beyond that. Chase could tease her about liking House, but he didn’t know the depth of her feelings, and Foreman could call her soft and naïve, but he didn’t know her past or the history that made it impossible to be as naïve as he thought she was. House had seen more; much more, but still only a fraction of what she held inside.
A corridor when she’d needed him to admit that he at least liked her. A lab when he’d pulled a piece of her past from her. A doorway when she’d laid out for him the reasons she couldn’t work for him. Another corridor when she’d tried to convince him that she was happy for him. The memories of those few raw and painful moments spread over the course of two years, stood in stark contrast to the warm and friendly times she’d spent with Joe over the span of less than a month. She’d always hoped for more with House and had seen, sometimes, in the pauses between their words to one another, a deeper connection to him, as if he saw something in her and she knew things about him even though they didn’t say anything explicitly personal. For a long time, it had been enough. A thin hope, but hope nonetheless. Joe had changed that in some way and she didn’t know how to deal with that shift in the status quo. She didn’t feel in control of anything anymore.
The coffee had finished brewing and she hadn’t even noticed it as she stared out at the leaves swirling down from the trees in the hospital courtyard. It was a quarter past eight and people would be arriving soon. She sighed as she picked up her mug and poured herself some coffee.
Chase and Foreman arrived at the same time, and if House had been there he would have let out a snarky comment about the two of them driving in together and a love that dare not speak its name. As it was, House was nowhere to be seen and truthfully, Cameron didn’t expect him before ten.
“How’s the patient?” Chase asked as he pulled off his jacket and traded it for a lab coat.
“Stable,” Cameron replied, “but we probably can’t keep him hooked up to machines and IVs forever.”
“Well, about the only thing we haven’t checked is his brain,” Forman said, sitting down at the conference table and picking up the latest chart updates.
“Trial and error. Great way to cure people,” Cameron said, immediately regretting the statement as it left her mouth.
“Hey, it’s what House does,” Chase piped up and Cameron bit her tongue to keep from saying that House always had his reasons.
“True,” Foreman was next in line to side against her. “Anyway, House isn’t here, and considering the way he flew out of here yesterday, I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” Chase said. “One of the nurses said he looked even scarier than usual,” he continued, letting out a dry laugh. “I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that, eh, Cameron?”
She drank her coffee and stared at the computer.
“I’m not his keeper.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t have to play innocent with us. He jealous of the new boyfriend? I saw him here yesterday afternoon.”
“I said that I have nothing to say about House or why he left yesterday,” Cameron replied, her lack of sleep was making itself known in her tone of voice and the hard look in her eyes.
“Hey, Chase, lay off,” Foreman apparently saw something in her expression that made him rethink the conversation. “She said she doesn’t know what’s up with House.”
Chase looked mildly irritated at the fact that Foreman had switched sides, but he rolled his eyes and changed the subject.
“Fine. I’m going down to check on our patient and schedule a CT. Maybe if House shows up, he’ll have some idea of what to do next.”
There was a brief rustle of papers as he gathered up the latest test results, and then he left the room. Foreman remained in his seat and stared at Cameron as the muscles in her face relaxed and the fierceness in her eyes was replaced by weariness.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, no problem,” Foreman replied. He knew there were still bridges to be rebuilt between them and he did his best to at least not halt the progress they’d made. He didn’t know what, if anything, was going on between Cameron and House, and he didn’t know what Cameron’s new boyfriend had said to House to make him agitated enough to skulk off, but he did know that antagonizing Cameron wasn’t going to make her reveal anything.
“I should probably head down to the clinic,” Cameron said, standing up and abandoning her coffee. It didn’t taste as good as it usually did.
“If anyone’s looking for you, I’ll let them know,” Foreman told her, and a minute later he was left alone in the office.
Cameron took the stairs down to the clinic because standing in front of the elevators, waiting for the doors to open and possibly reveal House standing there, made her anxious and twitchy. Burning off that excess energy by marching down three flights seemed the best thing to do, and she was calmer by the time she reached the clinic and logged in. It was still early enough that there were only a few patients in the waiting room, and she grabbed a chart and called out the name at the top of the coversheet.
Treating two cases of the common cold and a simple broken finger gave her mind time to wander in precisely the way she had been hoping to avoid. First Chase’s words about House’s probable jealousy floated at the front of her consciousness. Naturally Chase would assume that it all boiled down to their overly-controlling boss having a case of misplaced jealousy. He couldn’t see everything that had led up to that moment. He couldn’t read House’s mind. Neither could she. She just knew, inexplicably, that whatever had gone on between House and Joe was more complicated than House needing to exert his territorial rights over her while in the hospital.
Because that was what Joe had claimed it to be. She’d run into him in the hallway between the clinic and the cafeteria and he had flat out told her that he’d had words with House. She’d asked him about the conversation, futilely hoping that it wasn’t as bad as she automatically feared, and he had told her that House was just being an asshole about letting her leave. The fact that Joe rarely called people names, along with the tight muscle in his jaw, had told her that it had been more than that. She’d tried to press, but he’d just deflected her questions by calling House a nosy bastard.
She could have agreed with him and laughed about it and then gone out with him to dinner as planned. Instead she had informed him, in her most regretful tone of voice, that their patient still wasn’t quite stable and that she was going to have to stay late at the hospital. She had noticed a sort of grim look flash across his face for just an instant, but then he had accepted her excuse with good humor and said that he’d call her. She still felt guilty about how accommodating he had been even though she knew he hadn’t told her everything. She wavered between wanting to know what had gone on between them and being happily ignorant about any problem brewing behind House’s intense gaze.
The case of an active ten year old in need of stitches consumed more of her attention, but not enough to keep her from thinking about how things were progressing in her relationship with Joe. Until the previous afternoon, she’d almost managed to convince herself that things were fine, that she was fine, that Joe was fine, that everything was fine and happy and perfect. Now one little blip in the well-ordered routine she’d worked out had her reevaluating things all over again.
What did she really want? Did she dream of a picket fence and children and a strong, sensitive man cradling her in his arms every night? Was she really masochistic enough to want the push and pull of a frustrating non-relationship with a man who barely acknowledged her on some days, derided her on others, and casting soulful glances at her and leaving phantom touches on her shoulder, arm, wrist, just often enough to keep her longing for more? She couldn’t answer those questions any more. Well, she could, but not in a way that satisfied her.
Everything in her brain told her to dismiss all thoughts of House and to cut ties, change jobs, move, do anything to keep those thoughts away. Wanting him was the epitome of self-destructiveness, and she didn’t want that in her life. Yet she couldn’t seem to break away either. If such a move was possible, she would never have returned to PPTH after handing in her resignation. She wanted him, she just wanted things between them to be easier, for him to admit to whatever feelings he had, or to finally draw a line and stop tip-toeing over it. And that was where her circular thoughts left her. She wanted House, no matter how much she denied it.
With a neat series of ten stitches in place and a grateful and very pale mother giving her copious words of gratitude, Cameron tried to settle into a peaceful professional manner. She ushered mother and son out of the clinic after giving them a sheet of instructions and telling them to come back in a week to have the stitches removed. A final wave from the little boy, and then she was distracted by the sound of her pager going off. It was House, summoning her to the office.
She took the stairs again, because it took slightly longer, and then mentally counted her steps on the way to the diagnostics department. The room was just as she’d left it, except now Chase and Foreman were gone and House was standing by the coffee maker pouring himself a drink. She sucked in a breath before pushing open the door and entering.
“Where is everyone?”
“Don’t know, don’t particularly care,” House answered. “You’re the one I wanted to talk to.”
The expectation that he’d be hung over or coming off of a Vicodin overdose had been firmly set in Cameron’s mind, but his appearance still startled her a bit. He looked more than hung over. He looked exhausted and drawn and she was angry at herself for wanting to tell him to sit down while she finished rummaging for the sugar.
Instead she just asked him what he wanted.
“Patient update. Figured you’d be just the one to give it to me.” He knew he looked like hell, but he was still irritated at the silently sympathetic look in Cameron’s eyes.
“You couldn’t just read the chart?” she asked.
“It’s so much more exciting to hear you tell it,” he said, hoisting himself up on the edge of the conference table and trying to affect a mockingly child-like expression, but succeeding only in looking more tired.
“He was stable when I came in and then we decided that a CT scan was the next step. Chase is probably doing it right now. I’m not sure where Foreman is, and I was down in the clinic, which is where I’m scheduled to be until noon unless something happens.”
“Hmmm,” House said thoughtfully. “Your delivery is lacking a little something today.”
Cameron stared at him, thinking about how his attempts to be nonchalant were having the opposite effect, and wondering if he ever got tired of holding up his façade and longed to just say what was on his mind. He certainly never had a problem doing so when the subject was anything other than his personal life or feelings.
“Something on my nose?” House asked. He hated when she looked at him like that, but drank it in at the same time and somewhere inside he knew that if he really hated it, he’d just turn away.
“No,” she replied, still looking into his eyes.
It was disarming and he started to squirm just a bit and needed to hop off the table and start tapping his cane against the whiteboard as he stared at it.
“I heard you spoke to Joe yesterday,” she said, wondering where the words were coming from only after they were out of her mouth. He might be able to stand the tension, but she was beyond that now.
“Aren’t you supposed to be running back to the clinic?” He asked, definitely not wanting to discuss Joe or anything else that pertained to Cameron’s personal life. He was afraid of what he’d reveal.
“He doesn’t like you much,” she pressed, wishing that he would say something that mattered.
“Yeah, neither do most of the people I meet,” he said, voice gruff.
“Most people,” she emphasized. “Not all.”
And when he stiffened at her words and glanced up at her, she was still staring at him. Their gaze only held for another few seconds, but House felt more exposed than if he’d been standing there with his pant leg cut off and his external scars revealed in the harsh fluorescent light. Cameron sensed what he was feeling, but also wondered if he was reading her the way he always did. She turned away before he did, and then walked out of the office while he remained statue-like beside a list of symptoms written in red.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Cameron had not quite finished dressing when her doorbell rang unexpectedly, causing her to curse under her breath. She was already running late for a multitude of reasons. She’d been held up late at the hospital running a slew of tests on their patient, traffic on the way home had been a nightmare, but most importantly, her thoughts were still preoccupied with House. He had held one more differential session after their encounter, a clinical, impersonal exercise, and he hadn’t acknowledged her again except in reference to the team as a whole. He’d ordered them out to run various tests and tasks, and had barricaded himself in the office with coffee, the blinds drawn and soft streams of jazz wafting through the connecting glass door. Her thoughts had trailed her home, and, if she were totally honest with herself, had caused her to forget that she was going out to dinner with Joe. Cameron knew she couldn’t cancel another date with him, especially using anything hospital-related as an excuse, so she had scurried to shower and dress and answered the door in a still partially disheveled state.
“Oh Joe! Hi. You’re-you’re early!” she stammered.
“You’re flustered,” Joe countered with a devilish grin. “S’okay. It’s a good look on you. For you, mademoiselle,” the arm hidden behind his back presented Cameron with a single rose.
Joe really was terribly sweet, Cameron had to admit, making her feel doubly guilty for putting him through the frustration of her indecisiveness. Still, even as she flashed her best full-toothed smile at him, gratefully accepting the offered flower and stepping aside so he could come in, she couldn’t help but remember another flower from another man with a slightly wistful pang.
“I’m really glad we could reschedule dinner, Allie. I’m sorry you weren’t up for it last night,” he broached carefully.
“Oh. Well, thanks for understanding.”
“You hungry?”
“Mmm-hmm. Starving.” Was House? she wondered. To her knowledge, he hadn’t left the office the entire day. She couldn’t help but worry that he’d been subsisting on stale coffee and Vicodin, added to an obvious hangover of some sort. She certainly wasn’t about to show up on his doorstep with boxes of take-out, but neither could she let go of her nagging concern for him while she scarfed down ravioli.
“Good. Because this new place is killer. Best Italian food this side of the Hudson River. You’re gonna love it!” Joe’s face beamed with genuine excitement. He’d been waiting all day to see her and couldn’t wait to take her out. While he wasn’t ready to admit that he felt badly about his confrontation with House, he did regret that he’d hurt Allison in the process.
“Hmm, what?” Joe’s voice registered Cameron’s attention from her musings.
“I said the camel walks upside down on the marble staircase.”
“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”
“Just making sure I’m not white noise, I guess.” As much as he was trying to make light of his disappointment through lighthearted teasing, Joe couldn’t mask the edginess the statement was laced with. He had done everything she’d asked of him since he had come back to town, and had exhibited more patience than could be expected of someone in his shoes, had showered her with unconditional understanding, and still he felt like she was elsewhere, like he was losing her before he’d even had her. What more was he supposed to do to vie for her affection and interest? What was it that Allison was even looking for?
“No, you’re not. Sorry. I guess I’m just a little out of it. My mind’s still back at the hospital with this patient we had.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Perfect. I just need shoes and a coat, and I’m all yours,” she mustered up another smile, which she hoped would mollify Joe. He just looked back at her curiously, with an indecipherable expression on his face.
“Where are we going, Allison?” He leaned casually against her treadmill, but looked at her pointedly.
“Um, dinner, eating, food at a restaurant. I-I don’t understand what exactly you’re asking here. Hang on a sec, I have to go grab my shoes,” she scurried past him, disappearing into her bedroom.
“Right. Dinner,” Joe echoed wryly to himself. “And then what?” he hollered in the direction of Cameron’s room. She appeared in the doorway a couple of seconds later, a high-heeled sandal in each hand, and a thoroughly confounded look on her face.
“I…don’t know…exactly. Dessert? Coffee? What’s going on with you?” Now she was definitely puzzled. Joe had always been careful and considerate, but never evasive. She could always count on him to be honest with her if something was on his mind.
“Let me ask you a question. Why haven’t we had sex yet? Or even gotten past second base for that matter?”
For a second, Cameron felt as if she’d swallowed her tongue, and was unsure of what to say. A part of her thought he might be joking; it wasn’t beyond Joe to deadpan. But a closer look at him convinced her that he was being neither cryptic nor sardonic. She could see in the seriousness of his eyes exactly what he was referring to, what he was asking her.
“That’s what this is about? You’d rather stay home and have sex?”
“No. I want you to finally be honest with me about where we stand.”
“I have been totally honest with you, Joe,” Cameron replied with an exasperated sigh. She dropped her shoes and moved in closer to him until they stood inches apart. “I haven’t purposely kept anything from you. I told you that I am in a very confusing and difficult space right now, and I’ve never tried to lead you on.”
“It just seems like your heart isn’t in this. You’ve been distant and distracted, and I don’t want to force you into anything. At best, I deserve an explanation.”
“It’s been a hard day. We had a lot going on at work,” she looked away and closed her eyes briefly, a flash of House’s vulnerable and anguished appearance replaying in her mind. His crystalline blue eyes and tired, pallid countenance were still freshly imprinted in her memory. How could she explain to Joe that no matter how badly she wanted to enjoy herself fully with him, she couldn’t? That no matter how much her mind wanted to go to dinner and laugh at his jokes, her heart was a million miles away? How could she tell Joe that, above and beyond her own control, the weeks of moments built between them disappeared the second that she and House locked eyes?
“Well then I’ve got just the thing to take your mind off of it. I have a riddle for you.”
“Joe, I’m really not in the mood for-”
“What has a really bad limp and walks with a cane?”
“That is not funny,” Cameron snapped her head up and fixed him with an icy glare. He stared back at her humorlessly.
“It wasn’t meant to be. I just figured it was time to discuss the crippled elephant in the room and I knew you weren’t going to bring it up, so how about it?”
“Don’t bring House into this, Joe. I told you there is nothing going on between us, and I wasn’t lying.” Cameron didn’t know where the sudden hostility she felt was coming from. She felt instantly protective and slightly unnerved when House’s name fell from Joe’s lips.
“Why wouldn’t I bring him up? We’ve been dancing around this long enough. There’s been this third person here between us the entire time we’ve been trying to date. I mean I can certainly understand that back then things were complicated for us, but this-”
“Back then? Back then?! What was there to understand? What exactly did you think was going to happen back then Joe? I was married to Chris! I was in love with him!”
“And now you’re in love with your boss,” he stated simply.
“No! No! That is not how things are,” Cameron emphasized, trying to convince herself as well as Joe with the strength of her voice. She even held out a hand as if to physically distance herself, from Joe, from having to deal with the situation, from stopping things from completely spinning out of her control.
Joe scratched his head, which he shook incredulously. “You know, what I can’t figure out at this point is exactly who it is that you’re lying to: him, yourself, or everyone around you.”
Cameron’s shoulders slumped under the expectant weight of Joe’s stare. It was useless trying to shield herself from the truth. Joe was reading her like an open book, the way he always had. She wondered if she was this transparent to House, too. “It’s a complicated situation,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t slept with him. We haven’t even kissed. But…there are extenuating feelings there.”
“There’s nothing complicated or extenuating about this situation. I’m not going to be a fool here, Allie.”
“I’m not trying to make you into a fool,” Cameron stepped in and stroked Joe’s arm.
“Well you can’t be with both of us. It’s as simple as that. And you can’t have me as a crutch while you convince yourself that you don’t feel anything for him. That’s not fair to any of us.”
“So what, you’re giving me an ultimatum?”
“Just answer me this. How long do I wait? At what point do I wait long enough, am I patient enough, understanding enough, for your “extenuating feelings” to completely disappear? At what point are you going to be able to be with me without thinking about him at all, without him having this hold over you? Because if you give me a number, a time frame, I swear to God Allie, I will wait it out. Just let me know. How long is it going to take for you to be over him?”
Cameron stared back at Joe like a deer lost in the headlights. She opened her mouth to say something, but found herself unable to speak. She couldn’t utter the one-word answer that would break Joe’s heart, and possibly her own. Her features contorted painfully until a single choked sob from the back of her throat ushered in the flood of tears that followed. No longer feeling that her leaden legs could hold her up, Cameron collapsed into Joe’s arms, wrapping her own tightly around his neck and burrowing her face into his shoulder. She didn’t want to think about the fact that the shoulder was a surrogate, about whether Joe might very well hate her for this, or how big of a mistake she was making in sacrificing a safe, sure love for one far more oblique that might never materialize. She simply allowed the emotions of the last weeks (years?)-her worry, her love, her loss, her want, her frustration-to pour out of her without thinking about where they were coming from.
“Hey, come here. Come here, it’s OK.” Joe transformed instantly from accusing and frustrated to comforting and understanding. He rubbed Cameron’s back and cooed supplications into her ear until her sobs diminished into sniffles. He had a hunch that he wasn’t the true source of her tears, that what she was crying for he could neither fix nor give her, but he cared for her too much not to stay. He didn’t have it in him to walk away and leave her in this state. After all, he was used to letting Allison cry in his arms over another man.
“This is so unfair,” she eventually mumbled into his shoulder.
“You’re telling me,” Joe retorted. “Trust me, if I can’t even compete with a cranky, crippled old dude, I have bigger problems than I thought.”
Cameron lifted her head to glance up at him. “No, that’s not what I meant at all.”
“I know, silly.” He unwrapped one arm from her waist to gently trace away a tear from the corner of her eye with his index finger. “I was just kidding,” he added quietly.
“I have enjoyed spending this time with you. I’m glad that you came back here, that you sought me out. Joe, I do have feelings for you,” she said emphatically.
“I believe you.”
“This is unfair because we’re right for each other. You make me laugh, you’re wonderful, almost too good to be true, and I’ve been alone for so long. What I felt back then, what I feel now, that was real. I hate that we can’t just pick up where we left off. I hate that you’ve been so understanding, that you deserve better than this. I hate that in my head I want this, I do,” she waved her hand between them, “but I…”
“Can’t be with me?” he finished where her voice had trailed off. “Yeah, me too.” He disengaged from the embrace, but when he resumed speaking, his voice was gentle and his eyes reassuring. “Sometimes, two people can be so right for each other that it hurts. On paper, everything is perfect. But, for whatever reason, they don’t get together because they’re always passing each other by. Because the timing never seems to be right. Because Mars is in retrograde with Venus. But sometimes,” he quirked his eyebrows at her pointedly, “they don’t get together because they’re both too damn stubborn to take their heads out of their asses.”
Cameron smiled at his thinly veiled hint. She wished she could see things with that kind of simple clarity and perspective. “I wish this didn’t have to be so complicated,” conveying to Joe with her eyes how sorry she was that she was hurting him.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he comforted her, even though his smile didn’t reach far beyond his lips. “You love him. You should be with him.”
Cameron cringed at hearing the vocalized declaration, one that she wasn’t really even sure that she’d admitted to herself internally, let alone hearing it spoken out loud. “I’ll do my best. I promise.”
“Good,” Joe said, moving over to the sofa to grab the jacket he’d thrown over it when he’d come in. “Because if I’m going to have to lose you, I need to know that it’s to fulfill a higher purpose.”
“Wait. What are you doing? Don’t you want to still-”
“Allison, maybe we’d better not. I think it’s for the best that I just drive home.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she admitted, seeing him to the door. “But, I’d like for us to stay in touch this time, to stay friends.”
“I’m glad. Because my brilliant back-up plan was to show up in another ten years on the off-chance that you were between relationships again.” He winked at her, and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“You won’t have to wait that long, wise-ass. I have an aunt in Philadelphia that I’m pretty close to. I’ll give you a call when I’m in town to see her.”
“Oh, so I’m not banished forever? I get to come to the wedding, and everything?” Joe teased her.
Cameron cackled loudly at the suggestion. “Ha! That’s a good one. Don’t hold your breath. I’ll be lucky if I can even drag House out on another date.”
Joe lifted her chin towards him, his eyes lingering on the outline of her pretty features. “Hey. He’s crazy about you, you know.”
“Right,” she snorted. “I’m pretty sure he’s just crazy.”
Joe stepped out into the hallway and glanced back at her one last time. “I know for a fact that Chris would want you to be happy. He loved you so much.”
“He’d want the same for you,” she returned with a croaked whisper. “Bye, Joe.”
“Goodbye Allie.”
Cameron leaned into the door, clicking it closed with the pressure of her body, and remained still for a few moments, her eyes drifting shut. Oh crap, she thought with a deep sigh. Now what?
As always my thanks to my partner in crime, who has made this process so much fun :)
Part III:
Spring was really starting to settle in around Princeton, and when Cameron stepped out of her apartment building, she was greeted by a warm breeze that caressed her face instead of biting into it the way the winter chill had just weeks before. She saw that the neatly manicured patch of lawn in front of her complex was shimmering, as the crystalline coated blades reflected the morning sunlight. It was probably one of the last frosts and it was already melting away. The quietly beautiful image was something that ordinarily would have put her in a good mood for the morning, but she just glanced at it and continued quickly towards her car, footsteps loud against the concrete and echoing in her ear.
She hadn’t slept well because she’d been dreading going into work. She hadn’t felt that way for a very long time.
It was still ten minutes to eight when she arrived at the hospital and so she was not at all surprised to find the office empty. On ordinary days, she got in early so that she could start the coffee before anyone else got their incompetent hands on it, and go over the latest patient reports or sift through the mail looking for promising cases. It was her private time at work and she enjoyed having the office to herself. This wasn’t an ordinary day. She still made the coffee and went through their patient’s chart, but she also used the time to collect her thoughts. She knew that House was going to say something to her and she wanted to be prepared.
If he didn’t say something then she would have to, and that would require even more preparation. She just had no idea what she was doing anymore. She prided herself on being in control even if House and Foreman and Chase all saw her as the “emotional one”. Yes, she could get emotionally invested in what happened to their patients. Yes, she could have strong feelings about them. Those were emotions she allowed herself to display. Despite what anyone else thought, she felt as if they helped her to be a better doctor. Wilson had warned her about getting attached, but she hadn’t been able to take his advice. How could she shut herself down and be a cold clinician in the face of people who needed warmth and support? The answer was simple. She couldn’t. Yet for all of her impassioned treatment of their patients, she still held her deepest feelings and emotions inside. Showing caring and concern for strangers was easy for her to do because she could easily empathize with them, but her own fears and needs and desires never saw the light of day. Not really.
There might be a soulful look or a few softly spoken words, but nothing beyond that. Chase could tease her about liking House, but he didn’t know the depth of her feelings, and Foreman could call her soft and naïve, but he didn’t know her past or the history that made it impossible to be as naïve as he thought she was. House had seen more; much more, but still only a fraction of what she held inside.
A corridor when she’d needed him to admit that he at least liked her. A lab when he’d pulled a piece of her past from her. A doorway when she’d laid out for him the reasons she couldn’t work for him. Another corridor when she’d tried to convince him that she was happy for him. The memories of those few raw and painful moments spread over the course of two years, stood in stark contrast to the warm and friendly times she’d spent with Joe over the span of less than a month. She’d always hoped for more with House and had seen, sometimes, in the pauses between their words to one another, a deeper connection to him, as if he saw something in her and she knew things about him even though they didn’t say anything explicitly personal. For a long time, it had been enough. A thin hope, but hope nonetheless. Joe had changed that in some way and she didn’t know how to deal with that shift in the status quo. She didn’t feel in control of anything anymore.
The coffee had finished brewing and she hadn’t even noticed it as she stared out at the leaves swirling down from the trees in the hospital courtyard. It was a quarter past eight and people would be arriving soon. She sighed as she picked up her mug and poured herself some coffee.
Chase and Foreman arrived at the same time, and if House had been there he would have let out a snarky comment about the two of them driving in together and a love that dare not speak its name. As it was, House was nowhere to be seen and truthfully, Cameron didn’t expect him before ten.
“How’s the patient?” Chase asked as he pulled off his jacket and traded it for a lab coat.
“Stable,” Cameron replied, “but we probably can’t keep him hooked up to machines and IVs forever.”
“Well, about the only thing we haven’t checked is his brain,” Forman said, sitting down at the conference table and picking up the latest chart updates.
“Trial and error. Great way to cure people,” Cameron said, immediately regretting the statement as it left her mouth.
“Hey, it’s what House does,” Chase piped up and Cameron bit her tongue to keep from saying that House always had his reasons.
“True,” Foreman was next in line to side against her. “Anyway, House isn’t here, and considering the way he flew out of here yesterday, I’m not sure when he’ll be back.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” Chase said. “One of the nurses said he looked even scarier than usual,” he continued, letting out a dry laugh. “I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that, eh, Cameron?”
She drank her coffee and stared at the computer.
“I’m not his keeper.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t have to play innocent with us. He jealous of the new boyfriend? I saw him here yesterday afternoon.”
“I said that I have nothing to say about House or why he left yesterday,” Cameron replied, her lack of sleep was making itself known in her tone of voice and the hard look in her eyes.
“Hey, Chase, lay off,” Foreman apparently saw something in her expression that made him rethink the conversation. “She said she doesn’t know what’s up with House.”
Chase looked mildly irritated at the fact that Foreman had switched sides, but he rolled his eyes and changed the subject.
“Fine. I’m going down to check on our patient and schedule a CT. Maybe if House shows up, he’ll have some idea of what to do next.”
There was a brief rustle of papers as he gathered up the latest test results, and then he left the room. Foreman remained in his seat and stared at Cameron as the muscles in her face relaxed and the fierceness in her eyes was replaced by weariness.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, no problem,” Foreman replied. He knew there were still bridges to be rebuilt between them and he did his best to at least not halt the progress they’d made. He didn’t know what, if anything, was going on between Cameron and House, and he didn’t know what Cameron’s new boyfriend had said to House to make him agitated enough to skulk off, but he did know that antagonizing Cameron wasn’t going to make her reveal anything.
“I should probably head down to the clinic,” Cameron said, standing up and abandoning her coffee. It didn’t taste as good as it usually did.
“If anyone’s looking for you, I’ll let them know,” Foreman told her, and a minute later he was left alone in the office.
Cameron took the stairs down to the clinic because standing in front of the elevators, waiting for the doors to open and possibly reveal House standing there, made her anxious and twitchy. Burning off that excess energy by marching down three flights seemed the best thing to do, and she was calmer by the time she reached the clinic and logged in. It was still early enough that there were only a few patients in the waiting room, and she grabbed a chart and called out the name at the top of the coversheet.
Treating two cases of the common cold and a simple broken finger gave her mind time to wander in precisely the way she had been hoping to avoid. First Chase’s words about House’s probable jealousy floated at the front of her consciousness. Naturally Chase would assume that it all boiled down to their overly-controlling boss having a case of misplaced jealousy. He couldn’t see everything that had led up to that moment. He couldn’t read House’s mind. Neither could she. She just knew, inexplicably, that whatever had gone on between House and Joe was more complicated than House needing to exert his territorial rights over her while in the hospital.
Because that was what Joe had claimed it to be. She’d run into him in the hallway between the clinic and the cafeteria and he had flat out told her that he’d had words with House. She’d asked him about the conversation, futilely hoping that it wasn’t as bad as she automatically feared, and he had told her that House was just being an asshole about letting her leave. The fact that Joe rarely called people names, along with the tight muscle in his jaw, had told her that it had been more than that. She’d tried to press, but he’d just deflected her questions by calling House a nosy bastard.
She could have agreed with him and laughed about it and then gone out with him to dinner as planned. Instead she had informed him, in her most regretful tone of voice, that their patient still wasn’t quite stable and that she was going to have to stay late at the hospital. She had noticed a sort of grim look flash across his face for just an instant, but then he had accepted her excuse with good humor and said that he’d call her. She still felt guilty about how accommodating he had been even though she knew he hadn’t told her everything. She wavered between wanting to know what had gone on between them and being happily ignorant about any problem brewing behind House’s intense gaze.
The case of an active ten year old in need of stitches consumed more of her attention, but not enough to keep her from thinking about how things were progressing in her relationship with Joe. Until the previous afternoon, she’d almost managed to convince herself that things were fine, that she was fine, that Joe was fine, that everything was fine and happy and perfect. Now one little blip in the well-ordered routine she’d worked out had her reevaluating things all over again.
What did she really want? Did she dream of a picket fence and children and a strong, sensitive man cradling her in his arms every night? Was she really masochistic enough to want the push and pull of a frustrating non-relationship with a man who barely acknowledged her on some days, derided her on others, and casting soulful glances at her and leaving phantom touches on her shoulder, arm, wrist, just often enough to keep her longing for more? She couldn’t answer those questions any more. Well, she could, but not in a way that satisfied her.
Everything in her brain told her to dismiss all thoughts of House and to cut ties, change jobs, move, do anything to keep those thoughts away. Wanting him was the epitome of self-destructiveness, and she didn’t want that in her life. Yet she couldn’t seem to break away either. If such a move was possible, she would never have returned to PPTH after handing in her resignation. She wanted him, she just wanted things between them to be easier, for him to admit to whatever feelings he had, or to finally draw a line and stop tip-toeing over it. And that was where her circular thoughts left her. She wanted House, no matter how much she denied it.
With a neat series of ten stitches in place and a grateful and very pale mother giving her copious words of gratitude, Cameron tried to settle into a peaceful professional manner. She ushered mother and son out of the clinic after giving them a sheet of instructions and telling them to come back in a week to have the stitches removed. A final wave from the little boy, and then she was distracted by the sound of her pager going off. It was House, summoning her to the office.
She took the stairs again, because it took slightly longer, and then mentally counted her steps on the way to the diagnostics department. The room was just as she’d left it, except now Chase and Foreman were gone and House was standing by the coffee maker pouring himself a drink. She sucked in a breath before pushing open the door and entering.
“Where is everyone?”
“Don’t know, don’t particularly care,” House answered. “You’re the one I wanted to talk to.”
The expectation that he’d be hung over or coming off of a Vicodin overdose had been firmly set in Cameron’s mind, but his appearance still startled her a bit. He looked more than hung over. He looked exhausted and drawn and she was angry at herself for wanting to tell him to sit down while she finished rummaging for the sugar.
Instead she just asked him what he wanted.
“Patient update. Figured you’d be just the one to give it to me.” He knew he looked like hell, but he was still irritated at the silently sympathetic look in Cameron’s eyes.
“You couldn’t just read the chart?” she asked.
“It’s so much more exciting to hear you tell it,” he said, hoisting himself up on the edge of the conference table and trying to affect a mockingly child-like expression, but succeeding only in looking more tired.
“He was stable when I came in and then we decided that a CT scan was the next step. Chase is probably doing it right now. I’m not sure where Foreman is, and I was down in the clinic, which is where I’m scheduled to be until noon unless something happens.”
“Hmmm,” House said thoughtfully. “Your delivery is lacking a little something today.”
Cameron stared at him, thinking about how his attempts to be nonchalant were having the opposite effect, and wondering if he ever got tired of holding up his façade and longed to just say what was on his mind. He certainly never had a problem doing so when the subject was anything other than his personal life or feelings.
“Something on my nose?” House asked. He hated when she looked at him like that, but drank it in at the same time and somewhere inside he knew that if he really hated it, he’d just turn away.
“No,” she replied, still looking into his eyes.
It was disarming and he started to squirm just a bit and needed to hop off the table and start tapping his cane against the whiteboard as he stared at it.
“I heard you spoke to Joe yesterday,” she said, wondering where the words were coming from only after they were out of her mouth. He might be able to stand the tension, but she was beyond that now.
“Aren’t you supposed to be running back to the clinic?” He asked, definitely not wanting to discuss Joe or anything else that pertained to Cameron’s personal life. He was afraid of what he’d reveal.
“He doesn’t like you much,” she pressed, wishing that he would say something that mattered.
“Yeah, neither do most of the people I meet,” he said, voice gruff.
“Most people,” she emphasized. “Not all.”
And when he stiffened at her words and glanced up at her, she was still staring at him. Their gaze only held for another few seconds, but House felt more exposed than if he’d been standing there with his pant leg cut off and his external scars revealed in the harsh fluorescent light. Cameron sensed what he was feeling, but also wondered if he was reading her the way he always did. She turned away before he did, and then walked out of the office while he remained statue-like beside a list of symptoms written in red.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Cameron had not quite finished dressing when her doorbell rang unexpectedly, causing her to curse under her breath. She was already running late for a multitude of reasons. She’d been held up late at the hospital running a slew of tests on their patient, traffic on the way home had been a nightmare, but most importantly, her thoughts were still preoccupied with House. He had held one more differential session after their encounter, a clinical, impersonal exercise, and he hadn’t acknowledged her again except in reference to the team as a whole. He’d ordered them out to run various tests and tasks, and had barricaded himself in the office with coffee, the blinds drawn and soft streams of jazz wafting through the connecting glass door. Her thoughts had trailed her home, and, if she were totally honest with herself, had caused her to forget that she was going out to dinner with Joe. Cameron knew she couldn’t cancel another date with him, especially using anything hospital-related as an excuse, so she had scurried to shower and dress and answered the door in a still partially disheveled state.
“Oh Joe! Hi. You’re-you’re early!” she stammered.
“You’re flustered,” Joe countered with a devilish grin. “S’okay. It’s a good look on you. For you, mademoiselle,” the arm hidden behind his back presented Cameron with a single rose.
Joe really was terribly sweet, Cameron had to admit, making her feel doubly guilty for putting him through the frustration of her indecisiveness. Still, even as she flashed her best full-toothed smile at him, gratefully accepting the offered flower and stepping aside so he could come in, she couldn’t help but remember another flower from another man with a slightly wistful pang.
“I’m really glad we could reschedule dinner, Allie. I’m sorry you weren’t up for it last night,” he broached carefully.
“Oh. Well, thanks for understanding.”
“You hungry?”
“Mmm-hmm. Starving.” Was House? she wondered. To her knowledge, he hadn’t left the office the entire day. She couldn’t help but worry that he’d been subsisting on stale coffee and Vicodin, added to an obvious hangover of some sort. She certainly wasn’t about to show up on his doorstep with boxes of take-out, but neither could she let go of her nagging concern for him while she scarfed down ravioli.
“Good. Because this new place is killer. Best Italian food this side of the Hudson River. You’re gonna love it!” Joe’s face beamed with genuine excitement. He’d been waiting all day to see her and couldn’t wait to take her out. While he wasn’t ready to admit that he felt badly about his confrontation with House, he did regret that he’d hurt Allison in the process.
“Hmm, what?” Joe’s voice registered Cameron’s attention from her musings.
“I said the camel walks upside down on the marble staircase.”
“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”
“Just making sure I’m not white noise, I guess.” As much as he was trying to make light of his disappointment through lighthearted teasing, Joe couldn’t mask the edginess the statement was laced with. He had done everything she’d asked of him since he had come back to town, and had exhibited more patience than could be expected of someone in his shoes, had showered her with unconditional understanding, and still he felt like she was elsewhere, like he was losing her before he’d even had her. What more was he supposed to do to vie for her affection and interest? What was it that Allison was even looking for?
“No, you’re not. Sorry. I guess I’m just a little out of it. My mind’s still back at the hospital with this patient we had.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Perfect. I just need shoes and a coat, and I’m all yours,” she mustered up another smile, which she hoped would mollify Joe. He just looked back at her curiously, with an indecipherable expression on his face.
“Where are we going, Allison?” He leaned casually against her treadmill, but looked at her pointedly.
“Um, dinner, eating, food at a restaurant. I-I don’t understand what exactly you’re asking here. Hang on a sec, I have to go grab my shoes,” she scurried past him, disappearing into her bedroom.
“Right. Dinner,” Joe echoed wryly to himself. “And then what?” he hollered in the direction of Cameron’s room. She appeared in the doorway a couple of seconds later, a high-heeled sandal in each hand, and a thoroughly confounded look on her face.
“I…don’t know…exactly. Dessert? Coffee? What’s going on with you?” Now she was definitely puzzled. Joe had always been careful and considerate, but never evasive. She could always count on him to be honest with her if something was on his mind.
“Let me ask you a question. Why haven’t we had sex yet? Or even gotten past second base for that matter?”
For a second, Cameron felt as if she’d swallowed her tongue, and was unsure of what to say. A part of her thought he might be joking; it wasn’t beyond Joe to deadpan. But a closer look at him convinced her that he was being neither cryptic nor sardonic. She could see in the seriousness of his eyes exactly what he was referring to, what he was asking her.
“That’s what this is about? You’d rather stay home and have sex?”
“No. I want you to finally be honest with me about where we stand.”
“I have been totally honest with you, Joe,” Cameron replied with an exasperated sigh. She dropped her shoes and moved in closer to him until they stood inches apart. “I haven’t purposely kept anything from you. I told you that I am in a very confusing and difficult space right now, and I’ve never tried to lead you on.”
“It just seems like your heart isn’t in this. You’ve been distant and distracted, and I don’t want to force you into anything. At best, I deserve an explanation.”
“It’s been a hard day. We had a lot going on at work,” she looked away and closed her eyes briefly, a flash of House’s vulnerable and anguished appearance replaying in her mind. His crystalline blue eyes and tired, pallid countenance were still freshly imprinted in her memory. How could she explain to Joe that no matter how badly she wanted to enjoy herself fully with him, she couldn’t? That no matter how much her mind wanted to go to dinner and laugh at his jokes, her heart was a million miles away? How could she tell Joe that, above and beyond her own control, the weeks of moments built between them disappeared the second that she and House locked eyes?
“Well then I’ve got just the thing to take your mind off of it. I have a riddle for you.”
“Joe, I’m really not in the mood for-”
“What has a really bad limp and walks with a cane?”
“That is not funny,” Cameron snapped her head up and fixed him with an icy glare. He stared back at her humorlessly.
“It wasn’t meant to be. I just figured it was time to discuss the crippled elephant in the room and I knew you weren’t going to bring it up, so how about it?”
“Don’t bring House into this, Joe. I told you there is nothing going on between us, and I wasn’t lying.” Cameron didn’t know where the sudden hostility she felt was coming from. She felt instantly protective and slightly unnerved when House’s name fell from Joe’s lips.
“Why wouldn’t I bring him up? We’ve been dancing around this long enough. There’s been this third person here between us the entire time we’ve been trying to date. I mean I can certainly understand that back then things were complicated for us, but this-”
“Back then? Back then?! What was there to understand? What exactly did you think was going to happen back then Joe? I was married to Chris! I was in love with him!”
“And now you’re in love with your boss,” he stated simply.
“No! No! That is not how things are,” Cameron emphasized, trying to convince herself as well as Joe with the strength of her voice. She even held out a hand as if to physically distance herself, from Joe, from having to deal with the situation, from stopping things from completely spinning out of her control.
Joe scratched his head, which he shook incredulously. “You know, what I can’t figure out at this point is exactly who it is that you’re lying to: him, yourself, or everyone around you.”
Cameron’s shoulders slumped under the expectant weight of Joe’s stare. It was useless trying to shield herself from the truth. Joe was reading her like an open book, the way he always had. She wondered if she was this transparent to House, too. “It’s a complicated situation,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t slept with him. We haven’t even kissed. But…there are extenuating feelings there.”
“There’s nothing complicated or extenuating about this situation. I’m not going to be a fool here, Allie.”
“I’m not trying to make you into a fool,” Cameron stepped in and stroked Joe’s arm.
“Well you can’t be with both of us. It’s as simple as that. And you can’t have me as a crutch while you convince yourself that you don’t feel anything for him. That’s not fair to any of us.”
“So what, you’re giving me an ultimatum?”
“Just answer me this. How long do I wait? At what point do I wait long enough, am I patient enough, understanding enough, for your “extenuating feelings” to completely disappear? At what point are you going to be able to be with me without thinking about him at all, without him having this hold over you? Because if you give me a number, a time frame, I swear to God Allie, I will wait it out. Just let me know. How long is it going to take for you to be over him?”
Cameron stared back at Joe like a deer lost in the headlights. She opened her mouth to say something, but found herself unable to speak. She couldn’t utter the one-word answer that would break Joe’s heart, and possibly her own. Her features contorted painfully until a single choked sob from the back of her throat ushered in the flood of tears that followed. No longer feeling that her leaden legs could hold her up, Cameron collapsed into Joe’s arms, wrapping her own tightly around his neck and burrowing her face into his shoulder. She didn’t want to think about the fact that the shoulder was a surrogate, about whether Joe might very well hate her for this, or how big of a mistake she was making in sacrificing a safe, sure love for one far more oblique that might never materialize. She simply allowed the emotions of the last weeks (years?)-her worry, her love, her loss, her want, her frustration-to pour out of her without thinking about where they were coming from.
“Hey, come here. Come here, it’s OK.” Joe transformed instantly from accusing and frustrated to comforting and understanding. He rubbed Cameron’s back and cooed supplications into her ear until her sobs diminished into sniffles. He had a hunch that he wasn’t the true source of her tears, that what she was crying for he could neither fix nor give her, but he cared for her too much not to stay. He didn’t have it in him to walk away and leave her in this state. After all, he was used to letting Allison cry in his arms over another man.
“This is so unfair,” she eventually mumbled into his shoulder.
“You’re telling me,” Joe retorted. “Trust me, if I can’t even compete with a cranky, crippled old dude, I have bigger problems than I thought.”
Cameron lifted her head to glance up at him. “No, that’s not what I meant at all.”
“I know, silly.” He unwrapped one arm from her waist to gently trace away a tear from the corner of her eye with his index finger. “I was just kidding,” he added quietly.
“I have enjoyed spending this time with you. I’m glad that you came back here, that you sought me out. Joe, I do have feelings for you,” she said emphatically.
“I believe you.”
“This is unfair because we’re right for each other. You make me laugh, you’re wonderful, almost too good to be true, and I’ve been alone for so long. What I felt back then, what I feel now, that was real. I hate that we can’t just pick up where we left off. I hate that you’ve been so understanding, that you deserve better than this. I hate that in my head I want this, I do,” she waved her hand between them, “but I…”
“Can’t be with me?” he finished where her voice had trailed off. “Yeah, me too.” He disengaged from the embrace, but when he resumed speaking, his voice was gentle and his eyes reassuring. “Sometimes, two people can be so right for each other that it hurts. On paper, everything is perfect. But, for whatever reason, they don’t get together because they’re always passing each other by. Because the timing never seems to be right. Because Mars is in retrograde with Venus. But sometimes,” he quirked his eyebrows at her pointedly, “they don’t get together because they’re both too damn stubborn to take their heads out of their asses.”
Cameron smiled at his thinly veiled hint. She wished she could see things with that kind of simple clarity and perspective. “I wish this didn’t have to be so complicated,” conveying to Joe with her eyes how sorry she was that she was hurting him.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he comforted her, even though his smile didn’t reach far beyond his lips. “You love him. You should be with him.”
Cameron cringed at hearing the vocalized declaration, one that she wasn’t really even sure that she’d admitted to herself internally, let alone hearing it spoken out loud. “I’ll do my best. I promise.”
“Good,” Joe said, moving over to the sofa to grab the jacket he’d thrown over it when he’d come in. “Because if I’m going to have to lose you, I need to know that it’s to fulfill a higher purpose.”
“Wait. What are you doing? Don’t you want to still-”
“Allison, maybe we’d better not. I think it’s for the best that I just drive home.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she admitted, seeing him to the door. “But, I’d like for us to stay in touch this time, to stay friends.”
“I’m glad. Because my brilliant back-up plan was to show up in another ten years on the off-chance that you were between relationships again.” He winked at her, and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“You won’t have to wait that long, wise-ass. I have an aunt in Philadelphia that I’m pretty close to. I’ll give you a call when I’m in town to see her.”
“Oh, so I’m not banished forever? I get to come to the wedding, and everything?” Joe teased her.
Cameron cackled loudly at the suggestion. “Ha! That’s a good one. Don’t hold your breath. I’ll be lucky if I can even drag House out on another date.”
Joe lifted her chin towards him, his eyes lingering on the outline of her pretty features. “Hey. He’s crazy about you, you know.”
“Right,” she snorted. “I’m pretty sure he’s just crazy.”
Joe stepped out into the hallway and glanced back at her one last time. “I know for a fact that Chris would want you to be happy. He loved you so much.”
“He’d want the same for you,” she returned with a croaked whisper. “Bye, Joe.”
“Goodbye Allie.”
Cameron leaned into the door, clicking it closed with the pressure of her body, and remained still for a few moments, her eyes drifting shut. Oh crap, she thought with a deep sigh. Now what?