(no subject)
Title: Reality's Nightmare, Part 4/6
Author: Janelle (
blue_crystal_9)
Pairing: House/Cameron
Rating: PG 14
Warnings: Violence, and swearing.
Summary: A man kidnaps Cameron in order to attract House's attention to his medical problems. Obviously, it works, and the team has only four days to solve the man's case or Cameron will be killed.
Spoilers: Pretty much anything from Season 1 and 2.
Disclaimer: I don't own House. David Shore and FOX do, but I would love to borrow him for a couple days. Pleasssse? I promise I'll return him in the same condition he was in before. ;)
Author's Notes: I finally decided that I'm going to have six parts, so there will be two more parts after this one. :)
Beta: A big thanks to
kellyannie, who was my beta. *hugs*
Feedback: Feedback is like vicodin to me. ;)
Other Parts: Part One Part Two Part Three
Nightmare’s Reality: Part 4/6
86 hours, 43 minutes left . . .
After running through about a million diagnoses, they still had nothing. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Every single test they’d run had come back negative. House was getting extremely frustrated. The bastard had Cameron in his maniacal clutches for over ten hours now, and they still hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to help her in that massive amount of time.
He needed to treat this like a normal case. He needed to be as unattached and indifferent as he usually was with all of his other cases. Except this wasn’t a normal case, as Foreman had so annoyingly pointed out earlier. They couldn’t do anything like they usually did; run tests, try different treatments, actually examine the patient. This was even worse than the time they had that kid who had burns on over forty percent of his body. Also, House was used to having three staff members, not two. It was weird that Cameron wasn’t there, making the coffee and sitting in her usual place at the conference table. He missed her presence, and her lavender scent. He missed her a lot more than he dared to admit to himself. It was much harder to act unattached and indifferent because of this.
House was sitting in his office, searching through the internet, trying to hunt down at least a tiny clue as to what was wrong with Michael Weathers. Medical books were spread open all over his desk, and papers with notes scribbled over them were all over his desk and floor. He’d ordered Chase and Foreman to redo all the tests, just in case there had been a false negative, or something they had missed. House knew he was being extra cautious, something he hadn’t done for a very long time. And he wasn’t happy about it, either. But this time it was different. The one other person in his life besides Wilson that he gave a damn about was in danger, and House didn’t like it one bit.
The other bad thing was that they were running low on Michael Weathers’ blood. They had to use more to redo the tests, plus some more for a few other diagnoses they’d thought of. They had only had enough blood for a few more tests, and then that would be it. House was hoping they’d find the answer soon, because if not, they would be in big trouble.
His cell phone rang and he searched frantically for it under all the books and papers on his desk. After a moment he found it and snatched it up, checking the caller I.D. Allison Cameron flashed across the screen.
“House,” he said roughly.
“So, have you figured out what I have yet?” Michael Weathers’ smug voice came over the phone.
“Nope.” House said lightly, “Speaking of which, we seem to be running out of the blood that you so generously provided. You need to come in and get some blood drawn so that we can run more tests.”
He laughed. “Nice try, Dr. House. Luckily, I already thought of that. Look in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet.”
House did so and found a bag with a couple dozen vials of blood in it. “Jesus, do you have any blood left?” he grumbled.
“I’ve got plenty left over.”
“So, I’m assuming you got someone to draw the blood for you. It’s a little hard to do it by yourself.”
“Yes, I got someone to do it for me.”
House snorted. “I’m sure you paid him well.”
“He was fairly happy, yes.”
“Alright, enough small talk,” House said, abruptly ending all other discussion. “Put Cameron on the phone.”
“Can’t do that.”
“I’m sure she’s not still knocked out after ten hours. PUT HER ON THE PHONE,” House demanded, his voice a notch away from yelling.
“Fine.”
A brief shuffling came over the line, then Cameron’s soft voice came over the phone. “House?”
Some of the pent up worry, anxiety, and fear that were compressed inside of House’s chest seemed to leak out slightly when he heard her voice. He sighed with relief, and sagged against his chair. At least now he knew she was alive. “Cameron ... are you okay?” he asked awkwardly. Of course she’s not okay, you dumbass! he scolded himself.
There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “Yes... I’m alright.”
He detected a slight quiver in her voice, and asked more urgently, “Has ... did he try to...” House trailed off, uncomfortable and uncertain.
“No, he hasn’t touched me.”
House was getting slightly freaked out by her unusual quietness, but then mentally slapped himself. She just got kidnapped, she isn’t going to be overly chatty, he scolded himself for the second time in two minutes. “Are you hurt?”
“Well, he hit me in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher to knock me out, so my head is pounding and I’m pretty sure I have a concussion. And I’m going to have pretty bad bruises on my wrists from the ropes he’s bound me in, but other than him being a prick, I’m fine.”
House clenched his jaw at the fact that the guy had hurt her, even though it was only slightly. Bastard.
“So, do you have any idea about what he has?”
House sighed. “Nope.”
“Well, his symptoms are fatigue, sore throat, joint pain and swelling, right? What else?”
“Fever and chills that come and go and muscle pain too,” House added.
“Did you test for Influenza?”
“Yep. Negative. That was one of the first things we tested for. Everything’s negative,” House said bitterly.
“Oh.” Her voice sounded small and sad.
“Do you have any idea where he’s taken you?” House asked, changing the subject.
“No, I don’t know where I am. All I know is that I’m at his cabin somewhere and-”
Michael’s voice came back over the phone. “No more chit chat. Now go and figure out what I have.” A click signaled he’d hung up.
House threw his phone on his desk in disgust and frustration. If he ever came face to face with this fucker, he swore on the life of his GameBoy that he’d beat him to death with his own cane.
*********
Cameron tried in vain to stretch her aching limbs but to no avail. She sighed, and looked over at Michael, who was sitting in a chair reading a book. She sighed again, this time much louder and more dramatic.
Michael looked up from his book irritably. “What?!”
“My wrists and ankles hurt and I haven’t had anything to eat since supper yesterday. Unless you want me to die of hunger, you’re going to have to feed me.” Her stomach growled loudly to prove her point.
“Fine. I’ll feed you.” Michael got up, tossed his book on the floor, and started to walk towards the kitchen.
“Hold on,” Cameron called, stopping him. “Untie me first.”
“Uh...no.”
“Come on,” Cameron pleaded. “My limbs are killing me. Plus, how am I supposed to eat without using my hands?”
“I could feed your food to you,” Michael said smugly, leering at her.
Cameron scoffed. “Yeah, right. I don’t think so.”
“I suppose I could chain you to the wall instead.” Cameron watched as Michael opened the closet door and hauled out a metal chain that was connected to a cuff. He attached it to a little metal hook in the wall besides her, then untied her hands.
As he was working on her feet, she inched her hands towards the book that he had thrown on the floor earlier. She noiselessly grabbed hold of it, and held it over her head. She then smacked him as hard as she could on the side of his head with the heavy book.
He let out a loud cry of pain and fell backwards, clutching his head.
She fumbled with the rope on her feet, and pulled it off quickly. When she stood up, she gave him a swift kick in the groin. He howled in pain, and Cameron gave him a smirk. “Weaker, female coworker? I think not.” Cameron scoffed and then ran out of the cabin as fast as she could, slamming the door behind her.
She stumbled as she ran down the porch steps, her legs and arms still asleep from being tied up. But she knew that he’d only be down for a couple minutes, so she had no time to waste.
The trees became a blur as she ran away from the cabin, nearly colliding with a navy blue car parked outside it, presumably Michael’s.
She ran into the woods, putting her arms in front of her face to shield her eyes from the stray twigs and branches. She ran blindly now, not caring where she was going, as long as she was as far away from that cabin and that man as possible.
It was like one of those nightmares where you’re running away from something, and you’re filled with such terror that you’re going to be caught by whatever’s chasing you. And usually you wake up before or just as you’re caught. But Cameron wasn’t going to wake up, because this was reality. And that scared the shit out of her.
Suddenly Cameron tripped over a rock, and began rolling down the sloping forest floor. She screamed as trees, rocks and the ground began flashing at lightning speed past her. She came to a very abrupt stop when she rolled directly into a tree.
She bit her lip and moaned as her right side began to throb. As she lay on the ground with her head in the leaves and her eyes closed, she heard a noise coming from up ahead. She sat up instantly, listening hard. After a few seconds, she realized what it was. It was the sound of vehicles.
Cameron scrambled to her feet and ran forwards. About one hundred and fifty feet later, she noticed a part in the trees. She scampered through it, and felt absolute joy at what she saw.
She was standing at the edge of a highway, and cars, trucks, and other various types of vehicles were rushing past. She walked closer to the highway, and called out, “Someone stop! Please!” The vehicles continued to rush past, so after a few minutes she started waving her arms in front of her. A van up ahead began to slow down.
Finally, something is going right, she thought. The van came nearer, and when it was only about eighty feet away, she began to do her own little dance of joy inside her head.
A hand suddenly clamped over her shoulder. She screamed in fright and tried to escape, but a strong forearm locked around her waist, preventing any means of escape. The other hand clamped around her mouth, to stop her from screaming. Cameron didn’t need to look behind to know who it was. She kicked and flailed, but that only seemed to tighten Michael’s iron grip on her. He began to haul her backwards, and she continued to struggle.
Something hard and cold was stuck against the side of her head, and she felt Michael’s warm breath on her ear. “If you keep struggling I swear I’ll shoot your brains out.” Shit. If only she’d known he had a gun; she would have taken it with her when she ran away.
Cameron instantly went limp. Numbly, she allowed him to haul her back towards the cabin. She could hear him grunting in pain. She assumed it was from the pressure on his swollen and sore wrists. She was glad that she was causing him pain; it was payback for the amount of pain he’d already caused her.
A few minutes later, he was hauling her up the steps. He opened the door and literally tossed in her the corner of the room. She bit back a moan when she banged into the wall.
He continued to keep the gun pointed at her as he pulled her cell phone from his pocket. He hit a button and after a moment said, “We seem to be having a little problem here, Dr. House.”
House grunted. “What the fuck am I supposed to do about it?”
“Well, for starters, you could tell your little slut here to stop trying to escape!” Michael said venomously.
“I’m not a slut! But I know what you are,” Cameron spat out, her eyes flashing angrily. “You are a schizophrenic, psychopathic, insane bastard.” .
Michael turned and gave her a hard kick in left side, and she screamed in pain.
House could hear her scream all the way through his phone, ringing in his ears. “What the fuck are you doing to her?!”
“Teaching her not to call me names.”
“LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE!” House yelled.
“No. She’s too pretty to be left alone.”
“Fuck you,” Cameron said angrily, gritting her teeth in pain.
“You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“I would never like to be fucked by a pompous, arrogant jerk whose dick is probably the size of a string bean,” Cameron said spitefully.
This earned her an even harder kick in the side, and she screamed even louder than before.
The sound of her scream echoed piercingly in House’s ear. “Don’t fucking touch her, you son of a bitch!”
“I don’t need to. Someone already has.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” House demanded, enraged.
“Your Dr. Cameron here was raped years ago. Tell me Allison, did you scream when he hauled you out of the shower? Did you cry?” he taunted.
“SHUT UP!!!” Cameron screamed. She lay on the floor clutching her side, fighting to keep the tears in. She would not show her fear. She would not let him see her acting weak. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Cameron said, hissing in pain.
“So she confirms my diagnosis.” Michael said mockingly. “Apparently, Dr. House, you don’t know as much about Dr. Cameron as you think you do. So why don’t you think about that while you solve my case? Oh, and by the way, you now have only two days left to solve my case, not three. You can thank Dr. Cameron for that.” And with that, he ended the conversation. All House heard was a dial tone in his ear.
“FUCK!” He yelled and threw his cell phone as hard as he could against the wall. It bounced off and flew behind his chair somewhere.
He was now even more worried about Cameron. This guy was proving to be more psychotic then he had thought. Fear and anger were coursing through his veins, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
*********
While this was going on, Chase and Foreman were in the lab, running more tests.
Chase sighed deeply and said to Foreman. “I’m really worried about Cameron.”
“I know. I keep thinking about how badly I treated her. You know, with the whole ‘stealing her article’ thing.”
“Same here. I feel really guilty about the things I said to her when Vogler was here.”
“Yeah, you were a HUGE ass then.”
“Shut up. You were just as bad after she found out you stole her article.”
Foreman grinned slightly, then was silent for a moment. “If I ever see that fucking son of a bitch, I’m gonna make sure he never sees the light of day again,” Foreman fumed, his brotherly instinct toward Cameron taking over. He sighed, “Man, as soon as she gets out of there and back here, I’m treating her to as many margaritas as she wants.”
Chase snorted, but then his face went serious. “Yeah, if she gets back here.”
Foreman just looked at Chase worriedly, no longer smiling.
*********
Cameron lay on the floor, clutching her left side. She figured that a couple of her ribs were broken, or at least fractured. Her right side also hurt from colliding with the tree earlier.
After Michael had “talked” to House, he had hooked her left ankle up to the chain, checking to see if it was secure, and then connected it to a little metal ring on the wall. He had then went back to reading his book, but now he was sitting at a further distance away from her, and he’d look up at her every few minutes.
Cameron’s voice interrupted the silence when she asked quietly, “Why do you know so much about us?”
“What do you mean?” Michael quirked an eyebrow at her.
“How did you know that I worked for House, and that there are two others on our team? And how did you know about stuff that ... happened ... in my past?
“A few weeks back, I began to do research on Dr. House. And through that research, I discovered that you, along with Eric Foreman and Robert Chase, worked for him. When I began formulating my plans for this, I decided it would be much easier to kidnap you than Dr. Foreman or Dr. Chase.”
“But ... how did you find out all of this? The stuff from my past and everything,” Cameron questioned, interrupting him.
”I have my sources. When you’re going to kidnap someone, it’s very useful to know as much about them as possible. Keep that it mind for when you kidnap someone,” Michael smirked at her.
Cameron sighed. She wasn’t getting much out of him. “But why is it so important that your case gets solved? I mean, I know no one wants to die, but why go to such lengths to get it solved? Why go through the trouble of kidnapping me and everything?”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I had a wife and a little girl. My life was ... perfect. Then. six months ago, my wife got in a car accident. She was coming back from picking up her sister and her family. The car slid on a patch of ice and went headlong into a transport truck. Everyone died instantly. I was left a widower, and my four year old daughter Julianne was left without a mother. No one to show her how to put on makeup. No one to talk to her about boys. No one to make her look pretty for her first day of kindergarten. Then I get this mysterious disease that no one can figure out. There’s no one to take care of my daughter if something happened to me. I have no siblings; both mine and my wife’s parents are dead. There’s no one. If I died, my daughter would have to be put into foster care. I was in foster care for most of my childhood. Some foster families aren’t as kind as others; I’ve learned from personal experience,” he said bitterly.
“But you could just as easily get killed in a train crash. You wouldn’t have been able to prevent your death then.”
“Yeah, but at least I can control this. At least I still have control of something.”
Despite the fact that Michael had beaten her up less than an hour ago, she felt a small stab of sympathy for him. Maybe House was right, maybe she was too soft. “Well, you’re not the only person that has problems.”
He snorted, “Yeah? Like who? House?”
“Well, as an example, yes. He had a fairly normal life six years ago. Then he had his infarction and his leg got screwed up and now he can’t do anything he used to do. He’s in constant pain all day, and he’s completely miserable.”
“Oh boohoo. Poor fellow, his leg is the cause of all his problems,” Michael said sarcastically, “Unfortunately, just because he’s in pain isn’t a good enough reason for being an ass.”
“And just because you have no patience to find another doctor to treat you isn’t a good enough reason to kidnap someone and then break two or three of her ribs,” she snapped back at him.
“Whatever,” Michael replied flippantly. Cameron rolled her eyes and sighed miserably.
Two hours later Michael Weathers was running a fever of 105.7.
*********
Author: Janelle (
blue_crystal_9)
Pairing: House/Cameron
Rating: PG 14
Warnings: Violence, and swearing.
Summary: A man kidnaps Cameron in order to attract House's attention to his medical problems. Obviously, it works, and the team has only four days to solve the man's case or Cameron will be killed.
Spoilers: Pretty much anything from Season 1 and 2.
Disclaimer: I don't own House. David Shore and FOX do, but I would love to borrow him for a couple days. Pleasssse? I promise I'll return him in the same condition he was in before. ;)
Author's Notes: I finally decided that I'm going to have six parts, so there will be two more parts after this one. :)
Beta: A big thanks to
kellyannie, who was my beta. *hugs*
Feedback: Feedback is like vicodin to me. ;)
Other Parts: Part One Part Two Part Three
Nightmare’s Reality: Part 4/6
86 hours, 43 minutes left . . .
After running through about a million diagnoses, they still had nothing. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Every single test they’d run had come back negative. House was getting extremely frustrated. The bastard had Cameron in his maniacal clutches for over ten hours now, and they still hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to help her in that massive amount of time.
He needed to treat this like a normal case. He needed to be as unattached and indifferent as he usually was with all of his other cases. Except this wasn’t a normal case, as Foreman had so annoyingly pointed out earlier. They couldn’t do anything like they usually did; run tests, try different treatments, actually examine the patient. This was even worse than the time they had that kid who had burns on over forty percent of his body. Also, House was used to having three staff members, not two. It was weird that Cameron wasn’t there, making the coffee and sitting in her usual place at the conference table. He missed her presence, and her lavender scent. He missed her a lot more than he dared to admit to himself. It was much harder to act unattached and indifferent because of this.
House was sitting in his office, searching through the internet, trying to hunt down at least a tiny clue as to what was wrong with Michael Weathers. Medical books were spread open all over his desk, and papers with notes scribbled over them were all over his desk and floor. He’d ordered Chase and Foreman to redo all the tests, just in case there had been a false negative, or something they had missed. House knew he was being extra cautious, something he hadn’t done for a very long time. And he wasn’t happy about it, either. But this time it was different. The one other person in his life besides Wilson that he gave a damn about was in danger, and House didn’t like it one bit.
The other bad thing was that they were running low on Michael Weathers’ blood. They had to use more to redo the tests, plus some more for a few other diagnoses they’d thought of. They had only had enough blood for a few more tests, and then that would be it. House was hoping they’d find the answer soon, because if not, they would be in big trouble.
His cell phone rang and he searched frantically for it under all the books and papers on his desk. After a moment he found it and snatched it up, checking the caller I.D. Allison Cameron flashed across the screen.
“House,” he said roughly.
“So, have you figured out what I have yet?” Michael Weathers’ smug voice came over the phone.
“Nope.” House said lightly, “Speaking of which, we seem to be running out of the blood that you so generously provided. You need to come in and get some blood drawn so that we can run more tests.”
He laughed. “Nice try, Dr. House. Luckily, I already thought of that. Look in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet.”
House did so and found a bag with a couple dozen vials of blood in it. “Jesus, do you have any blood left?” he grumbled.
“I’ve got plenty left over.”
“So, I’m assuming you got someone to draw the blood for you. It’s a little hard to do it by yourself.”
“Yes, I got someone to do it for me.”
House snorted. “I’m sure you paid him well.”
“He was fairly happy, yes.”
“Alright, enough small talk,” House said, abruptly ending all other discussion. “Put Cameron on the phone.”
“Can’t do that.”
“I’m sure she’s not still knocked out after ten hours. PUT HER ON THE PHONE,” House demanded, his voice a notch away from yelling.
“Fine.”
A brief shuffling came over the line, then Cameron’s soft voice came over the phone. “House?”
Some of the pent up worry, anxiety, and fear that were compressed inside of House’s chest seemed to leak out slightly when he heard her voice. He sighed with relief, and sagged against his chair. At least now he knew she was alive. “Cameron ... are you okay?” he asked awkwardly. Of course she’s not okay, you dumbass! he scolded himself.
There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “Yes... I’m alright.”
He detected a slight quiver in her voice, and asked more urgently, “Has ... did he try to...” House trailed off, uncomfortable and uncertain.
“No, he hasn’t touched me.”
House was getting slightly freaked out by her unusual quietness, but then mentally slapped himself. She just got kidnapped, she isn’t going to be overly chatty, he scolded himself for the second time in two minutes. “Are you hurt?”
“Well, he hit me in the back of the head with a fire extinguisher to knock me out, so my head is pounding and I’m pretty sure I have a concussion. And I’m going to have pretty bad bruises on my wrists from the ropes he’s bound me in, but other than him being a prick, I’m fine.”
House clenched his jaw at the fact that the guy had hurt her, even though it was only slightly. Bastard.
“So, do you have any idea about what he has?”
House sighed. “Nope.”
“Well, his symptoms are fatigue, sore throat, joint pain and swelling, right? What else?”
“Fever and chills that come and go and muscle pain too,” House added.
“Did you test for Influenza?”
“Yep. Negative. That was one of the first things we tested for. Everything’s negative,” House said bitterly.
“Oh.” Her voice sounded small and sad.
“Do you have any idea where he’s taken you?” House asked, changing the subject.
“No, I don’t know where I am. All I know is that I’m at his cabin somewhere and-”
Michael’s voice came back over the phone. “No more chit chat. Now go and figure out what I have.” A click signaled he’d hung up.
House threw his phone on his desk in disgust and frustration. If he ever came face to face with this fucker, he swore on the life of his GameBoy that he’d beat him to death with his own cane.
*********
Cameron tried in vain to stretch her aching limbs but to no avail. She sighed, and looked over at Michael, who was sitting in a chair reading a book. She sighed again, this time much louder and more dramatic.
Michael looked up from his book irritably. “What?!”
“My wrists and ankles hurt and I haven’t had anything to eat since supper yesterday. Unless you want me to die of hunger, you’re going to have to feed me.” Her stomach growled loudly to prove her point.
“Fine. I’ll feed you.” Michael got up, tossed his book on the floor, and started to walk towards the kitchen.
“Hold on,” Cameron called, stopping him. “Untie me first.”
“Uh...no.”
“Come on,” Cameron pleaded. “My limbs are killing me. Plus, how am I supposed to eat without using my hands?”
“I could feed your food to you,” Michael said smugly, leering at her.
Cameron scoffed. “Yeah, right. I don’t think so.”
“I suppose I could chain you to the wall instead.” Cameron watched as Michael opened the closet door and hauled out a metal chain that was connected to a cuff. He attached it to a little metal hook in the wall besides her, then untied her hands.
As he was working on her feet, she inched her hands towards the book that he had thrown on the floor earlier. She noiselessly grabbed hold of it, and held it over her head. She then smacked him as hard as she could on the side of his head with the heavy book.
He let out a loud cry of pain and fell backwards, clutching his head.
She fumbled with the rope on her feet, and pulled it off quickly. When she stood up, she gave him a swift kick in the groin. He howled in pain, and Cameron gave him a smirk. “Weaker, female coworker? I think not.” Cameron scoffed and then ran out of the cabin as fast as she could, slamming the door behind her.
She stumbled as she ran down the porch steps, her legs and arms still asleep from being tied up. But she knew that he’d only be down for a couple minutes, so she had no time to waste.
The trees became a blur as she ran away from the cabin, nearly colliding with a navy blue car parked outside it, presumably Michael’s.
She ran into the woods, putting her arms in front of her face to shield her eyes from the stray twigs and branches. She ran blindly now, not caring where she was going, as long as she was as far away from that cabin and that man as possible.
It was like one of those nightmares where you’re running away from something, and you’re filled with such terror that you’re going to be caught by whatever’s chasing you. And usually you wake up before or just as you’re caught. But Cameron wasn’t going to wake up, because this was reality. And that scared the shit out of her.
Suddenly Cameron tripped over a rock, and began rolling down the sloping forest floor. She screamed as trees, rocks and the ground began flashing at lightning speed past her. She came to a very abrupt stop when she rolled directly into a tree.
She bit her lip and moaned as her right side began to throb. As she lay on the ground with her head in the leaves and her eyes closed, she heard a noise coming from up ahead. She sat up instantly, listening hard. After a few seconds, she realized what it was. It was the sound of vehicles.
Cameron scrambled to her feet and ran forwards. About one hundred and fifty feet later, she noticed a part in the trees. She scampered through it, and felt absolute joy at what she saw.
She was standing at the edge of a highway, and cars, trucks, and other various types of vehicles were rushing past. She walked closer to the highway, and called out, “Someone stop! Please!” The vehicles continued to rush past, so after a few minutes she started waving her arms in front of her. A van up ahead began to slow down.
Finally, something is going right, she thought. The van came nearer, and when it was only about eighty feet away, she began to do her own little dance of joy inside her head.
A hand suddenly clamped over her shoulder. She screamed in fright and tried to escape, but a strong forearm locked around her waist, preventing any means of escape. The other hand clamped around her mouth, to stop her from screaming. Cameron didn’t need to look behind to know who it was. She kicked and flailed, but that only seemed to tighten Michael’s iron grip on her. He began to haul her backwards, and she continued to struggle.
Something hard and cold was stuck against the side of her head, and she felt Michael’s warm breath on her ear. “If you keep struggling I swear I’ll shoot your brains out.” Shit. If only she’d known he had a gun; she would have taken it with her when she ran away.
Cameron instantly went limp. Numbly, she allowed him to haul her back towards the cabin. She could hear him grunting in pain. She assumed it was from the pressure on his swollen and sore wrists. She was glad that she was causing him pain; it was payback for the amount of pain he’d already caused her.
A few minutes later, he was hauling her up the steps. He opened the door and literally tossed in her the corner of the room. She bit back a moan when she banged into the wall.
He continued to keep the gun pointed at her as he pulled her cell phone from his pocket. He hit a button and after a moment said, “We seem to be having a little problem here, Dr. House.”
House grunted. “What the fuck am I supposed to do about it?”
“Well, for starters, you could tell your little slut here to stop trying to escape!” Michael said venomously.
“I’m not a slut! But I know what you are,” Cameron spat out, her eyes flashing angrily. “You are a schizophrenic, psychopathic, insane bastard.” .
Michael turned and gave her a hard kick in left side, and she screamed in pain.
House could hear her scream all the way through his phone, ringing in his ears. “What the fuck are you doing to her?!”
“Teaching her not to call me names.”
“LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE!” House yelled.
“No. She’s too pretty to be left alone.”
“Fuck you,” Cameron said angrily, gritting her teeth in pain.
“You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“I would never like to be fucked by a pompous, arrogant jerk whose dick is probably the size of a string bean,” Cameron said spitefully.
This earned her an even harder kick in the side, and she screamed even louder than before.
The sound of her scream echoed piercingly in House’s ear. “Don’t fucking touch her, you son of a bitch!”
“I don’t need to. Someone already has.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” House demanded, enraged.
“Your Dr. Cameron here was raped years ago. Tell me Allison, did you scream when he hauled you out of the shower? Did you cry?” he taunted.
“SHUT UP!!!” Cameron screamed. She lay on the floor clutching her side, fighting to keep the tears in. She would not show her fear. She would not let him see her acting weak. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Cameron said, hissing in pain.
“So she confirms my diagnosis.” Michael said mockingly. “Apparently, Dr. House, you don’t know as much about Dr. Cameron as you think you do. So why don’t you think about that while you solve my case? Oh, and by the way, you now have only two days left to solve my case, not three. You can thank Dr. Cameron for that.” And with that, he ended the conversation. All House heard was a dial tone in his ear.
“FUCK!” He yelled and threw his cell phone as hard as he could against the wall. It bounced off and flew behind his chair somewhere.
He was now even more worried about Cameron. This guy was proving to be more psychotic then he had thought. Fear and anger were coursing through his veins, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
*********
While this was going on, Chase and Foreman were in the lab, running more tests.
Chase sighed deeply and said to Foreman. “I’m really worried about Cameron.”
“I know. I keep thinking about how badly I treated her. You know, with the whole ‘stealing her article’ thing.”
“Same here. I feel really guilty about the things I said to her when Vogler was here.”
“Yeah, you were a HUGE ass then.”
“Shut up. You were just as bad after she found out you stole her article.”
Foreman grinned slightly, then was silent for a moment. “If I ever see that fucking son of a bitch, I’m gonna make sure he never sees the light of day again,” Foreman fumed, his brotherly instinct toward Cameron taking over. He sighed, “Man, as soon as she gets out of there and back here, I’m treating her to as many margaritas as she wants.”
Chase snorted, but then his face went serious. “Yeah, if she gets back here.”
Foreman just looked at Chase worriedly, no longer smiling.
*********
Cameron lay on the floor, clutching her left side. She figured that a couple of her ribs were broken, or at least fractured. Her right side also hurt from colliding with the tree earlier.
After Michael had “talked” to House, he had hooked her left ankle up to the chain, checking to see if it was secure, and then connected it to a little metal ring on the wall. He had then went back to reading his book, but now he was sitting at a further distance away from her, and he’d look up at her every few minutes.
Cameron’s voice interrupted the silence when she asked quietly, “Why do you know so much about us?”
“What do you mean?” Michael quirked an eyebrow at her.
“How did you know that I worked for House, and that there are two others on our team? And how did you know about stuff that ... happened ... in my past?
“A few weeks back, I began to do research on Dr. House. And through that research, I discovered that you, along with Eric Foreman and Robert Chase, worked for him. When I began formulating my plans for this, I decided it would be much easier to kidnap you than Dr. Foreman or Dr. Chase.”
“But ... how did you find out all of this? The stuff from my past and everything,” Cameron questioned, interrupting him.
”I have my sources. When you’re going to kidnap someone, it’s very useful to know as much about them as possible. Keep that it mind for when you kidnap someone,” Michael smirked at her.
Cameron sighed. She wasn’t getting much out of him. “But why is it so important that your case gets solved? I mean, I know no one wants to die, but why go to such lengths to get it solved? Why go through the trouble of kidnapping me and everything?”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I had a wife and a little girl. My life was ... perfect. Then. six months ago, my wife got in a car accident. She was coming back from picking up her sister and her family. The car slid on a patch of ice and went headlong into a transport truck. Everyone died instantly. I was left a widower, and my four year old daughter Julianne was left without a mother. No one to show her how to put on makeup. No one to talk to her about boys. No one to make her look pretty for her first day of kindergarten. Then I get this mysterious disease that no one can figure out. There’s no one to take care of my daughter if something happened to me. I have no siblings; both mine and my wife’s parents are dead. There’s no one. If I died, my daughter would have to be put into foster care. I was in foster care for most of my childhood. Some foster families aren’t as kind as others; I’ve learned from personal experience,” he said bitterly.
“But you could just as easily get killed in a train crash. You wouldn’t have been able to prevent your death then.”
“Yeah, but at least I can control this. At least I still have control of something.”
Despite the fact that Michael had beaten her up less than an hour ago, she felt a small stab of sympathy for him. Maybe House was right, maybe she was too soft. “Well, you’re not the only person that has problems.”
He snorted, “Yeah? Like who? House?”
“Well, as an example, yes. He had a fairly normal life six years ago. Then he had his infarction and his leg got screwed up and now he can’t do anything he used to do. He’s in constant pain all day, and he’s completely miserable.”
“Oh boohoo. Poor fellow, his leg is the cause of all his problems,” Michael said sarcastically, “Unfortunately, just because he’s in pain isn’t a good enough reason for being an ass.”
“And just because you have no patience to find another doctor to treat you isn’t a good enough reason to kidnap someone and then break two or three of her ribs,” she snapped back at him.
“Whatever,” Michael replied flippantly. Cameron rolled her eyes and sighed miserably.
Two hours later Michael Weathers was running a fever of 105.7.
*********