House Fic: the three dollar win
the three dollar win
in theory, it’s the start of a string of long days. they say she’s the better loser. if only she had a poker face. house md cameron. house/cameron. general season four spoilers. 5050 words, pg.
notes: the funny thing about this story is that it started from an idea that stemmed from flybutterfly24, but ended up being finished at the request of deadduck008 who was like “oooh angst! oooh dialogue!” and i don’t do the word no when it comes to her. also for the free_neutrality’s promptapalooza shindig using the prompt ‘bruise’ and house/cameron.
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In theory, it’s the start of a string of long days. And she won’t have time to think about it.
She’s already to the doors, the pager on her hip buzzing as she rushes to greet the next patient being wheeled in. It’s a girl, no younger than seventeen, and the paramedic says something about self-medicating and coming off of something over the counter. She’s not really paying attention to the noise, her hands already at work as she listens to the rest of the stats.
It’s all it is, you know, the emergency room. Mothers and babies and friends with issues abound - it’s all just noise that gets louder and softer and louder without any apologies. Half the time, if she’s going to be honest, she really does wonder why she said yes.
This is her job.
“What’s your name?”
The girl’s eyes are glassy, her mouth slipping into a sigh and then a whimper. She tries to arch, but it’s a mere limp of pain with her shoulder rolling back with a quick crack. She’s strapped in properly, shaking and muttering. Cameron almost forgets that today’s just one of those days, not enough beds for something like this. But misdirection isn’t going to come yet and she shakes her head and tells herself to just focus.
She tries again. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“J-ulia.”
“Hi Julia,” she says quietly, her thumbs brush under the girl’s chin, “I’m Allison. Can you tell me what’s going?”
“I need it.”
It doesn’t surprise her. This week that’s all the emergency room has seemed to open to. Addicts and college kids, spring break is long gone and graduation is wrapping around the corner. She’s seen stupid things, from splinters to falls and children that just won’t stop crying. She doesn’t know what’s different about this girl and already, in her head, there’s a montage of she’s not different and prepare yourself.
Her mouth stays firm. Old habits like to laugh some days.
“We’re going to take care of you.”
“No,” the girl trembles, “I need it.”
Two nurses join her on either side and the girl starts to thrash, her arms and legs whipping around as if she were a child throwing a tantrum. They won’t make it to the corner, so they stop at the quickest opening. The girl’s going to have to be transferred upstairs as soon as the drugs wear off of her. The muttering starts again though, things and names that she can’t quite understand. It’s not her job, Cameron tells herself. And again. And again.
The girl needs to be stabilized.
“I need it.” - but she’s ignored. It’s the best thing to do and Cameron motions for the cuffs. They might have to keep her strapped to her bed. She doesn’t know enough and the paramedics were too quick to be nothing else than a little lost.
“We’ll have to move her upstairs,” one of the nurses says.
The other is agreeing already. “- not enough beds here.”
“I know,” she mutters, “I know.”
They’ve been short staffed and she’s more than annoyed. It happens, Cuddy told her. It’s the time of year. Maybe, she’s just tired already. Maybe, it’s the routine. But it’s not the time any of this.
Maybe, this is why she’s here.
“We don’t have enough beds for this,” the nurse says again, “we’re going to need to move her and move her fast. They’re more equipped for this.”
She just wants the woman to shut up.
The girl keeps thrashing and Cameron’s trying to regain some sort of order as one of the nurses fights for her arm. They’re spending more time trying to calm her down. Julia - right, she tells herself - it’s Julia. But she can’t personalize this. Personalizing is how problems start, how attachments become more than just attachments, and how she’ll never be able to do her job.
“I neeeed some.”
The nurse snaps. “Her arm.”
Quickly, the girl goes back to being the girl as she starts to scream for something incoherently. The nurse is hit, the needle scampering across the floor as the girl’s hand connects with the older woman’s stomach. She moves to grab her wrist, to take the place of the nurse, but the girl’s hand reaches for her.
“Stop it,” she sobs. “I need it.”
The heel of her palm slams right into Cameron’s mouth, her fingers clawing at her lip. She stumbles forward, almost into the bar of the bed. She loses a little air - it’s not too hard - and
“Damn it.”
She doesn’t have enough time to really think about it. Her mouth hurts like hell and she finally pins the girl’s hands down. She’s babbling incoherently and they’re talking out all the things that the paramedics had told him - no other substances, no allergies, no other history known.
“Dr. Cameron?”
She shakes her head, her hair falling over her eyes. “It’s fine,” she mutters, working faster, “it’s fine. I’m fine.”
She can taste the blood in her mouth.
“I need -”
It just happens. It always just happens.
The girl suddenly snaps back, her eyes rolling back into her head. Cameron can hear herself sneering orders - she works faster, without cause, and finds her way around the girl’s small body. The limbs are tangled, shaking in the sheets, and there’s foaming around the mouth. Overdose. Overdose. Overdose. The ironies of familiarity come again, falling too quickly for her to really assemble some sort of perspective. But it’s too late.
It’s too late.
The flat line is almost eerie, starting slowly. There’s no build, not piercing ring. It’s not the first time she’s lost a patient. It’s not the last. But as reassurances, both thoughts fall dead to her rationality.
Cameron doesn’t breathe. She calls the time of death instead.
“Eleven,” she sighs, “Twenty-three.”
Her gloves are too tight. She tastes the blood in her mouth again. She almost spits into her gloves, but has the presence of mind to stick to grabbing a tissue. She watches as the nurse pulls the blanket over the girl’s head. Are there parents? Are there friends? They never asked where they found her.
“Dr. Cameron?”
The nurse is watching her expectantly. But she shakes her head. “I’m fine. Anyone with her?”
There is a quick no and she doesn’t stay for the next one, grabbing the ends of her gloves and snapping them off her wrist. She ignores the crack over her skin, stepping around the nurses and heading to the station desk. She practically slams the file against the counter, her hands dropping to the edge.
“Damn it,” she breathes.
She closes her eyes under the reminder that this is her job: again, it comes to her in spurts, the sudden, too quick reassurances that this was her choice and it still is her choice.
“Damn it.”
Whipping around, she nearly stumbles - she’s got to go back, right? Work to be done. Patients to see and to cover - it’s the routine. She bites her lip hard, aggravating whatever the small casualty of skin is. There’s a slip of a hiss, a snort, and she nearly runs into someone.
“Whoa.”
Her eyes are sharp. House is standing, amused and shrugging. He eyes her over and she reacts prematurely, turning back around to the desk. Either she snarls or snaps, too self-involved to really give him anything coherent or cohesive. Her hand goes to her pager instead and she ignores Chase’s number from before, dropping it too and over the desk.
“Not now.”
She just goes for the mirror on the desk, tucked behind a stack of files and pictures. She wants to see. It’s a strange, almost morbid fascination with what just occurred. It should be a bigger deal and a part her knows that she’s making it out to be. She just doesn’t know why she’s still trying.
He still digs. “Nice mouth.”
She ignores him, sighing. Her lip is split off to the side, a small tear of skin that makes her feel awkward and almost childishly sullen. She tries to ignore him as he steps forward, leaning against the desk too and watching her. She tries not glue herself to the mirror, her reflection too weary and too open in front of him.
“It just happened,” she mutters.
He rolls his eyes. “Right.”
“What are you doing?”
“I was coming to annoy you,” he shrugs, “ because the patient flow is dry on Thursdays and I figure I’d bum some of yours.”
She doesn’t say anything.
It’s not worth it. It hasn’t been for awhile and she’s too distracted to be really caught up in any of this. Her thumb slides over the small cut - a nail, maybe? - and she shakes her head, stealing a look at him.
“Good look for you,” he snorts - she’s being obvious.
Her eyes roll. “Stop.”
“What? We can’t be friends?”
“I’m not in the mood,” she shakes her head, “use your stunning powers of deduction and see that.”
He holds his hands up. “I’m hurt.”
“Go figure.”
Cameron puts the mirror back on the desk. She doesn’t know what to say and perhaps, this time, it’s not going to go beyond that. There’s no interest in any sense of an extension and she just sort of shrugs, rubbing her eyes. She ignores the dull throb around her mouth and waits for him to leave.
But he seems too comfortable.
He isn’t watching her - she steals another glance, quicker, as she stays tense and settled against the desk. She’s too smart to ask about the whys, but they’re still on the tip of her tongue.
“Busy night?” His voice is dry.
There’s no sense of any interest, merely a tense jerk of sound; he stays amused and maybe, that’s all she’s really going to recognize. It should be easier. And selfishly, she knows that it’s always had the potential to be. It’s nothing that she’s been able to make herself come to term with.
“Always is.”
“Don’t want to talk about it?” There’s a curl of something in his voice, the sudden shift between irritation and a push making her look up for just a second.
He’s closer. His shoulder brushes hers.
She swallows. “Not really.”
It’s strange moment. She’s not really completely here and he’s never really here. What it adds up to, still, is over her head and she keeps trying to tell herself that it’s not important enough to care. A part of her suddenly wishes for Chase, even Foreman. It’s odd how idealistic it sounds with the peculiarities of each relationship. However, despite each difference, she thinks she would be much more comfortable relating something.
But Chase is tired. It’s doing something to them, being back. It goes beyond her being in over her head and him being angry because he was never supposed to leave like that either.
She’s come far. Still, though, nothing makes complete sense. And somehow, she’s starting to believe that she’s taking a few more steps back.
“Something happened.”
She’s surprised when he nudges her, shoulder to shoulder again, and she half-jumps, looking up at him.
“Something usually does,” she mutters.
Her lip hurts. She shakes her head, sliding her thumb along the cut. It was the heel of the girl’s palm. She replays the quickness of the moment in her head. If she hadn’t blinked, maybe that would’ve been some good time. Maybe, she would’ve been able to stabilize her.
But, she reminds herself, she didn’t have all the facts. These things happen. Too fast, too soon, and with little or no information - she just needs to let this go. Otherwise, it’s going to break her.
“Something usually does,” she says again, “because this is the ER and people, a lot of people, come here first.”
She should go and clean it, she thinks. Clear her head too. But he’s watching her again, as redundant as the action seems, and she’s too all over the place to really laugh at any of it.
“This is cute.”
“Right.”
He scoffs, rolling his eyes. “You and your self-righteousness.”
Is she that transparent?
She’s presuming that there’s something to say, that he’s got something to say; he usually does, opening the space between them and launching them into a repetitive cycle of whatever. She rolls her eyes back at him, shaking her head and pressing her hand to her mouth. The bruise is going to be there, noticeable, and she’s just going to shrug it off.
So she tells herself. There’s nothing to say.
“You’re looking for some excuse to give this more significance that it already has,” he says in amusement. He calls her out with little or no information, still easing into it as if even the moment had intimacy. “And that’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
She’s quiet, turning her gaze down. There’s slip of shame to what she feels, to the silent admission she’s been carrying around but ignoring. She’s human, she likes to tell herself, she’s human and these things come and go - if only she understood it a little better, if only she could laugh right back and say yeah, okay and maybe, you’re just wrong for once.
Instead, she sighs.
“You need to stop recycling your insults. They get old.”
House’s expression doesn’t change, the amusement drying along his mouth. It becomes a slow line and he’s stepping forward before she steps back, her hands sliding right into her pockets. Her thumbs hook around the fabric, the itch sliding around the pads of her skin.
“Poetic.”
She shrugs. “I try.”
If he’s comfortable, it’s not because of her. He merely pushes himself off the desk to stand in front of her. She’s long skipped any obvious attraction to understand the sort of play that they fall into. The movement seems to be another one of those characteristics: if he goes, she goes and if she goes, he goes. It’s all until one of them gives up - her, usually - or one of them breaks.
He shrugs.
They stand then, facing each other - neither him nor her make the move, if there’s a move to be made. It’s how she feels, at the end of a path and looking both ways as if to know something is waiting for her. She wants to avoid the metaphorical, the end of the line, the choices that she made; all of this, of course, has led to here and to even now, but she keeps looking back. She doesn’t understand why it’s so easy to keep looking back, to hang on to those few, random fringes that hang over her head.
“You want a drink?”
Her surprise rewrites itself across her face, her mouth turning up and then down. She tries to read the air between them, the tension spinning around them as she sighs and steps forward. There’s the intention of leaving, always there, but she never follows through.
“With you?” It’s shaky and she says it on the edge of the same thought: the one time she did follow through with any intention to go -
She’s back here again.
“No,” he says, “I’m only asking because -”
He doesn’t finish, leaning forward and into her space. He doesn’t touch her. She doesn’t know if she wants him to. The air frowns into a tease and she’s leaning forward too, right back into his space and drawn by her curiosity.
“Because you’re bored,” she finishes.
She watches him shrug, the flux of awkwardness shifting to her favor. The tension shoulders against her neck and her hand rises, her fingers pressing into her skin. She rolls them against the pain, taking a soft sigh as the only allowance in front him.
“No.”
It’s what he expects. It’s what she doesn’t expect. A part of her knows that she’s still trying to rewrite whatever interactions are left between them. She lowers her gaze and she turns away, after the answer; what he does, at the end, is always short, always tense and terse.
So she lets it go.
Quiet, she turns and sorts her hands over files on the desk. Something to do, right? Some stacks go to the left. Some stacks go to the right. There’s a clear space between her hands and she presses her palms against the counter as she leans forward to look for a nurse. No one comes to the desk and she snaps her identification tag off from her hip, placing it on the counter next to her pager.
“You’re pissed.”
She snorts. “You’re observant.”
And then he’s closer again, leaning next to her on the counter. His hands dangle over the files, knocking some into a slow mess of a pile.
“Oops,” he shrugs. “My bad.”
Her eyes roll. She’s sort of at a standstill, watching him without anything to really say. She wants to have something to say, something witty, something easy, but that’s been long gone for while now. It’s interesting, then and now, the way that she can and cannot talk to him. Sometimes, she feels him close. Sometimes, she doesn’t. That sensation is still there, still clear, but she has no idea what to make of it.
“You’re still here.”
“I’m trying to annoy you.”
And she can’t help herself, “it’s working,” snide and sharp, drops without any sense of remorse. It’s a little too harsh and she’s looking up, watching his surprise turn into ill-fitted amusement.
“I’m getting to you.”
This could go on and on; it does, it has, and she’s just frustrated by the lack of initial grasping that she keeps telling herself to get. It’s never been about spines and backbones and all those plastic metaphors that seem to wedge themselves between them anyway.
But it’s also a little more than that. She has no desire to share her lack of adjustment with anyone. She’s embarrassed, she thinks, and she’s lonely. It’s a funny thing to say, to think, but she is. Dealing with things differently is not a reassurance, but now a ploy and with how transparent she is here, even in front him, she worries about what else she can give away.
“That’s juvenile,” she mutters.
He smirks.
House seems to be waiting for more than something, something that she’s obviously missing because he’s still here and watching her flip between wanting him to go and wanting to him -
Don’t you dare, she tells herself.
Stepping back, her hand slides over her hip and she does a full turn with the intention to walk away from him. But she stops, of course, and turns back - her pager, her identification tag. It’s not like he need them to follow her, but she just wants to cover bases.
She almost laughs at herself.
Instead she eyes him and presses her mouth into a thin line.
“What are you doing?” She shakes her head. “I mean, really. What are you doing? You don’t do clinic. And you sure as hell don’t come here. We’re not short staffed and I know that your patient’s being monitored for recovery. So what are you doing?”
“Keeping this philosophical dialogue going.”
“You’re cute.”
His lips curl. “I know.”
Flushed, she’s not going to get an answer. She knows that. It’s the allure of pushing, the continuation of pushing - always pushing, pushing, pushing. She’s angry enough, still, for whatever reason, to get trapped into pushing back. It’s not even about that anymore.
It has to be about fitting. It has to be.
She rolls her eyes, long past the lay of dialogue and turns around again. Her hands are clutching her things, dropping them into the pockets of her lab coat. She’s trying not to remember the girl’s name either, to fall for that self-deprecating distraction. She’s a chart, she tells herself. Something for the nurses to take care off.
She sighs.
The conversation sort of stops and she doesn’t make any effort to slip into it again, sliding into the hallway and off to the locker room to change. She just wants to go home, stuck on the routine outside and not inside the hospital. It’s easier, despite how thin and fake her confidence seems. Some things aren’t fair and letting go of them, letting go of all of it means admitting things she’s not ready to admit.
So she forgets the combination to her locker instead.
It’s the wrong locker.
She shakes her head, stepping away from the door and deeper into the locker room. She sighs - it’s not her day, not her day at all. And then she changes course. She’s back to what she did wrong. Patient names - She can barely remember the girl’s name either. She should be thinking about her instead. Training herself. Telling herself what she did wrong. For a moment, she can see the glassy eyes; the flat line is still ringing in her ears, the sigh completely different. It seems dull, almost unwarranted. Some times she thinks it’s just one, continuous ring that she’s been carrying over all these years. Just to remind herself.
Just to remind herself.
“Of course,” she mutters.
She hooks her thumb around the lock, tugs and turns and tries to forget the flush that is still lingering across her cheeks. Her head dips forward and rests against the locker, a curse slipping and fading as half-hearted.
She’s asked herself all of this before. All the questions. All her series of what ifs and, of course, the whys; she fragments her answers for functioning and being back, remaining almost jealous of Foreman and Chase for doing what she seems to be unable to. It seems to be the key in her switch of tone: she’s faster, a little harsher, and her eyes are tuned to everything else but what she should see.
“You’re funny.”
She jumps.
Her knuckles slam against the metal, a thick cry dropping from her mouth as she whirls around. Her eyes narrow and House is there, watching her in amusement again.
“Seriously?”
His mouth turns. “It’s too much fun - I don’t get this chance anymore.”
It’s always going to be like this. He’s going to aggravate her. He’s going to leave. That’s the edge of predictability that she knows, that pushes her back and way from even reconsidering any of this. It’s a ploy, of course, or so she thinks. It makes her tired.
It’s nothing new.
“You need to go,” she tries to be firm. “Or -”
“Or what?”
She snaps here. It just spills out of her. The rush of minutes - hours? - winds around her and she slams her hand against the locker again. Her knuckles scrap against the metal and she wants just a normal bad day for once. Just a distraction that’s all outside of this. She can hear Chase in her head - Told you, he always says, Coming back was a bad idea. Her excuses, the ones that she knows, start to disappear before she can do anything. Her hand hurts. Her mouth hurts. And she swears if he comes any closer -
What?
Her eyes close. What is she going to do?
It’s more apparent how this is coming to surface. She can’t control it. She can’t control herself, but she’d rather not be around him for this. He’s seen slips, slips of vulnerability, slips of things she can’t afford.
She doesn’t want to do it again.
“I don’t want to do this,” she almost sneers, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know why I came back here. I don’t know why I stayed. Is that enough? Is that what you want? Do you want to see me have a bad day, is that it?”
He’s watching her, his gaze unreadable. There’s an edge of discomfort, him to her, and she’s far from sharp. It’s exhausting, the sudden burst of anger that splits between them before her. She doesn’t know where if comes from - or maybe, she does. It’s just a process of thought she’s not going to touch.
He sighs. “Calm down.”
“Why? So you can hear me say that I can’t do this? Or better yet, getting to attached to a patient that died not even a full damn hour in the emergency room?”
He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t expect him to. These ideas of expectation were drying long before this. It’s common knowledge or something to that matter. She turns back to her locker, opens it and lets the door slam back. She’s being a child and for that, that she lets herself sigh and rummages through her things to grab a shirt to change into. Her hands are shaking and her mind is chaotic, thoughts stumbling back and forth and away from her grasp. It doesn’t matter though.
She’ll be here another hour or so, she thinks. She just needs coffee. Strong coffee. And maybe, something to eat.
“Come have a drink with me.”
She throws her hands up, leaning back against the locker. Her shoulders are slumped, her frustration too obvious and overwhelming everything else. She sighs quietly, rubbing her eyes.
“Why?”
He rolls his eyes. “You need it more than I do.”
What she doesn’t understand is the sudden attention; of course, it could just be here attaching herself to something more that she doesn’t need at all. It’s always something more in her head, it’s never anything beyond than what she sees and she wonders when she’s just going to let it go. It becomes sort of a game with herself, how long and how far she can go. The thing is she hasn’t been back for that long and it becomes more than clear that she hasn’t let it all go quite yet. Or even to begin with.
It just weighs more than it should.
“I don’t want a drink,” she tells him, “I don’t want to go and have a drink. I don’t even really know what I want.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t even care if that’s not what you want to hear. I don’t even care if I’m rambling along like I’ve completely lost it. I’m just tired and I want you to know that there’s not point here to prove.”
There’s a funny smile - not even a smile, just the single curl of his mouth. She feels uncomfortable. He feels closer. And it’s the circle of another routine. Her mouth is sore and she turns away, brushing her thumb along her jaw. It’s not like he’ll ask her to coffee and the promise of a drink isn’t really a promise, it’s more of a dig or a ploy; she’s not stupid, she hasn’t forgotten.
She just needs a little bit of control.
“Suit yourself.”
She scoffs. “Figures.”
But he sits in front of her, his cane stamping across the floor and by her legs. The bench moans. He snorts. She feels smaller than she is. She watches him though, leaning back and rocking against her heels. That amusement is still written across his face, opted by the mechanics of his curiosity, and this is, really all that’s left: between odd moments and shifts in favors, they’ve become something completely different to each other.
And yet, she feels the same.
“What?”
He shrugs. “Nothing.”
She’s not going to relate what happened. And she’s sure, at least of one thing, that he really just doesn’t give a damn. The interest is brief though, to her face, and she looks away, rubbing her eyes.
“I don’t want a drink,” she tells him again.
House doesn’t push again, doesn’t act like he wants to push again, and she’s studying the small shift in position. He’s still sitting. It’s too soon to really admit anything and thinking about it, even now, will end up making it worse. So she watches him quietly. She thinks about how she’d say it -
Lost someone today. Couldn’t stop it.
There’s no expectation of compassion either, it’s more of figuring things out. She doesn’t want to be placated. She just wants more than a moment.
“I -”
“Don’t want a drink,” he finishes.
Then, he’s standing and she has no idea if the moment’s been lost - if, really, she should care at all. It’s coming at an odd time and she just tries to tell herself that it’s not as big of a deal as she’s still trying to make it be.
He’s not in her space though.
His hand rises and reaches forward. It sort of stops, skims over the spot over her shoulder as if he’s thinking of coming closer - but that’s all he does, that she knows, that is nothing new.
“You know where to find me.”
Her eyes widen a little.
It’s a strange thing to say, but she has no time to really adjust to any frankness of a meaning; it’s what he does and he shifts, just a little bit, stepping forward and right into her space. She swears then that his hand is moving towards her again, his fingers cocked and nearing her hip. But he doesn’t touch her. He’s hovering and she’s really just sick of being stuck here and there with no complete answer. She doesn’t know what he’s offering, if he’s offering anything at all.
And that’s where they don’t meet.
She doesn’t understand why he keeps pushing, why she keeps letting him push. It’s not even hard now. It’s more of dusting of nostalgia. It’s silly and she should brush it off. She wants to brush it off just like he does.
“You’re not serious.”
He cocks an eyebrow at her. “I could be.”
It’s the end of that. She feels the lack of expectation from him - she’s not going to ask him to stay, to come back. It’s just not in her. Not now, not anymore. But still, the edge of curiosity is starting to unfold again and she doesn’t know what to do with it.
She licks her lips, but he’s already moving to the door.
It’s like he’s giving it back.
“Right,” she mutters. She just watches him go.
in theory, it’s the start of a string of long days. they say she’s the better loser. if only she had a poker face. house md cameron. house/cameron. general season four spoilers. 5050 words, pg.
notes: the funny thing about this story is that it started from an idea that stemmed from flybutterfly24, but ended up being finished at the request of deadduck008 who was like “oooh angst! oooh dialogue!” and i don’t do the word no when it comes to her. also for the free_neutrality’s promptapalooza shindig using the prompt ‘bruise’ and house/cameron.
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In theory, it’s the start of a string of long days. And she won’t have time to think about it.
She’s already to the doors, the pager on her hip buzzing as she rushes to greet the next patient being wheeled in. It’s a girl, no younger than seventeen, and the paramedic says something about self-medicating and coming off of something over the counter. She’s not really paying attention to the noise, her hands already at work as she listens to the rest of the stats.
It’s all it is, you know, the emergency room. Mothers and babies and friends with issues abound - it’s all just noise that gets louder and softer and louder without any apologies. Half the time, if she’s going to be honest, she really does wonder why she said yes.
This is her job.
“What’s your name?”
The girl’s eyes are glassy, her mouth slipping into a sigh and then a whimper. She tries to arch, but it’s a mere limp of pain with her shoulder rolling back with a quick crack. She’s strapped in properly, shaking and muttering. Cameron almost forgets that today’s just one of those days, not enough beds for something like this. But misdirection isn’t going to come yet and she shakes her head and tells herself to just focus.
She tries again. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“J-ulia.”
“Hi Julia,” she says quietly, her thumbs brush under the girl’s chin, “I’m Allison. Can you tell me what’s going?”
“I need it.”
It doesn’t surprise her. This week that’s all the emergency room has seemed to open to. Addicts and college kids, spring break is long gone and graduation is wrapping around the corner. She’s seen stupid things, from splinters to falls and children that just won’t stop crying. She doesn’t know what’s different about this girl and already, in her head, there’s a montage of she’s not different and prepare yourself.
Her mouth stays firm. Old habits like to laugh some days.
“We’re going to take care of you.”
“No,” the girl trembles, “I need it.”
Two nurses join her on either side and the girl starts to thrash, her arms and legs whipping around as if she were a child throwing a tantrum. They won’t make it to the corner, so they stop at the quickest opening. The girl’s going to have to be transferred upstairs as soon as the drugs wear off of her. The muttering starts again though, things and names that she can’t quite understand. It’s not her job, Cameron tells herself. And again. And again.
The girl needs to be stabilized.
“I need it.” - but she’s ignored. It’s the best thing to do and Cameron motions for the cuffs. They might have to keep her strapped to her bed. She doesn’t know enough and the paramedics were too quick to be nothing else than a little lost.
“We’ll have to move her upstairs,” one of the nurses says.
The other is agreeing already. “- not enough beds here.”
“I know,” she mutters, “I know.”
They’ve been short staffed and she’s more than annoyed. It happens, Cuddy told her. It’s the time of year. Maybe, she’s just tired already. Maybe, it’s the routine. But it’s not the time any of this.
Maybe, this is why she’s here.
“We don’t have enough beds for this,” the nurse says again, “we’re going to need to move her and move her fast. They’re more equipped for this.”
She just wants the woman to shut up.
The girl keeps thrashing and Cameron’s trying to regain some sort of order as one of the nurses fights for her arm. They’re spending more time trying to calm her down. Julia - right, she tells herself - it’s Julia. But she can’t personalize this. Personalizing is how problems start, how attachments become more than just attachments, and how she’ll never be able to do her job.
“I neeeed some.”
The nurse snaps. “Her arm.”
Quickly, the girl goes back to being the girl as she starts to scream for something incoherently. The nurse is hit, the needle scampering across the floor as the girl’s hand connects with the older woman’s stomach. She moves to grab her wrist, to take the place of the nurse, but the girl’s hand reaches for her.
“Stop it,” she sobs. “I need it.”
The heel of her palm slams right into Cameron’s mouth, her fingers clawing at her lip. She stumbles forward, almost into the bar of the bed. She loses a little air - it’s not too hard - and
“Damn it.”
She doesn’t have enough time to really think about it. Her mouth hurts like hell and she finally pins the girl’s hands down. She’s babbling incoherently and they’re talking out all the things that the paramedics had told him - no other substances, no allergies, no other history known.
“Dr. Cameron?”
She shakes her head, her hair falling over her eyes. “It’s fine,” she mutters, working faster, “it’s fine. I’m fine.”
She can taste the blood in her mouth.
“I need -”
It just happens. It always just happens.
The girl suddenly snaps back, her eyes rolling back into her head. Cameron can hear herself sneering orders - she works faster, without cause, and finds her way around the girl’s small body. The limbs are tangled, shaking in the sheets, and there’s foaming around the mouth. Overdose. Overdose. Overdose. The ironies of familiarity come again, falling too quickly for her to really assemble some sort of perspective. But it’s too late.
It’s too late.
The flat line is almost eerie, starting slowly. There’s no build, not piercing ring. It’s not the first time she’s lost a patient. It’s not the last. But as reassurances, both thoughts fall dead to her rationality.
Cameron doesn’t breathe. She calls the time of death instead.
“Eleven,” she sighs, “Twenty-three.”
Her gloves are too tight. She tastes the blood in her mouth again. She almost spits into her gloves, but has the presence of mind to stick to grabbing a tissue. She watches as the nurse pulls the blanket over the girl’s head. Are there parents? Are there friends? They never asked where they found her.
“Dr. Cameron?”
The nurse is watching her expectantly. But she shakes her head. “I’m fine. Anyone with her?”
There is a quick no and she doesn’t stay for the next one, grabbing the ends of her gloves and snapping them off her wrist. She ignores the crack over her skin, stepping around the nurses and heading to the station desk. She practically slams the file against the counter, her hands dropping to the edge.
“Damn it,” she breathes.
She closes her eyes under the reminder that this is her job: again, it comes to her in spurts, the sudden, too quick reassurances that this was her choice and it still is her choice.
“Damn it.”
Whipping around, she nearly stumbles - she’s got to go back, right? Work to be done. Patients to see and to cover - it’s the routine. She bites her lip hard, aggravating whatever the small casualty of skin is. There’s a slip of a hiss, a snort, and she nearly runs into someone.
“Whoa.”
Her eyes are sharp. House is standing, amused and shrugging. He eyes her over and she reacts prematurely, turning back around to the desk. Either she snarls or snaps, too self-involved to really give him anything coherent or cohesive. Her hand goes to her pager instead and she ignores Chase’s number from before, dropping it too and over the desk.
“Not now.”
She just goes for the mirror on the desk, tucked behind a stack of files and pictures. She wants to see. It’s a strange, almost morbid fascination with what just occurred. It should be a bigger deal and a part her knows that she’s making it out to be. She just doesn’t know why she’s still trying.
He still digs. “Nice mouth.”
She ignores him, sighing. Her lip is split off to the side, a small tear of skin that makes her feel awkward and almost childishly sullen. She tries to ignore him as he steps forward, leaning against the desk too and watching her. She tries not glue herself to the mirror, her reflection too weary and too open in front of him.
“It just happened,” she mutters.
He rolls his eyes. “Right.”
“What are you doing?”
“I was coming to annoy you,” he shrugs, “ because the patient flow is dry on Thursdays and I figure I’d bum some of yours.”
She doesn’t say anything.
It’s not worth it. It hasn’t been for awhile and she’s too distracted to be really caught up in any of this. Her thumb slides over the small cut - a nail, maybe? - and she shakes her head, stealing a look at him.
“Good look for you,” he snorts - she’s being obvious.
Her eyes roll. “Stop.”
“What? We can’t be friends?”
“I’m not in the mood,” she shakes her head, “use your stunning powers of deduction and see that.”
He holds his hands up. “I’m hurt.”
“Go figure.”
Cameron puts the mirror back on the desk. She doesn’t know what to say and perhaps, this time, it’s not going to go beyond that. There’s no interest in any sense of an extension and she just sort of shrugs, rubbing her eyes. She ignores the dull throb around her mouth and waits for him to leave.
But he seems too comfortable.
He isn’t watching her - she steals another glance, quicker, as she stays tense and settled against the desk. She’s too smart to ask about the whys, but they’re still on the tip of her tongue.
“Busy night?” His voice is dry.
There’s no sense of any interest, merely a tense jerk of sound; he stays amused and maybe, that’s all she’s really going to recognize. It should be easier. And selfishly, she knows that it’s always had the potential to be. It’s nothing that she’s been able to make herself come to term with.
“Always is.”
“Don’t want to talk about it?” There’s a curl of something in his voice, the sudden shift between irritation and a push making her look up for just a second.
He’s closer. His shoulder brushes hers.
She swallows. “Not really.”
It’s strange moment. She’s not really completely here and he’s never really here. What it adds up to, still, is over her head and she keeps trying to tell herself that it’s not important enough to care. A part of her suddenly wishes for Chase, even Foreman. It’s odd how idealistic it sounds with the peculiarities of each relationship. However, despite each difference, she thinks she would be much more comfortable relating something.
But Chase is tired. It’s doing something to them, being back. It goes beyond her being in over her head and him being angry because he was never supposed to leave like that either.
She’s come far. Still, though, nothing makes complete sense. And somehow, she’s starting to believe that she’s taking a few more steps back.
“Something happened.”
She’s surprised when he nudges her, shoulder to shoulder again, and she half-jumps, looking up at him.
“Something usually does,” she mutters.
Her lip hurts. She shakes her head, sliding her thumb along the cut. It was the heel of the girl’s palm. She replays the quickness of the moment in her head. If she hadn’t blinked, maybe that would’ve been some good time. Maybe, she would’ve been able to stabilize her.
But, she reminds herself, she didn’t have all the facts. These things happen. Too fast, too soon, and with little or no information - she just needs to let this go. Otherwise, it’s going to break her.
“Something usually does,” she says again, “because this is the ER and people, a lot of people, come here first.”
She should go and clean it, she thinks. Clear her head too. But he’s watching her again, as redundant as the action seems, and she’s too all over the place to really laugh at any of it.
“This is cute.”
“Right.”
He scoffs, rolling his eyes. “You and your self-righteousness.”
Is she that transparent?
She’s presuming that there’s something to say, that he’s got something to say; he usually does, opening the space between them and launching them into a repetitive cycle of whatever. She rolls her eyes back at him, shaking her head and pressing her hand to her mouth. The bruise is going to be there, noticeable, and she’s just going to shrug it off.
So she tells herself. There’s nothing to say.
“You’re looking for some excuse to give this more significance that it already has,” he says in amusement. He calls her out with little or no information, still easing into it as if even the moment had intimacy. “And that’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
She’s quiet, turning her gaze down. There’s slip of shame to what she feels, to the silent admission she’s been carrying around but ignoring. She’s human, she likes to tell herself, she’s human and these things come and go - if only she understood it a little better, if only she could laugh right back and say yeah, okay and maybe, you’re just wrong for once.
Instead, she sighs.
“You need to stop recycling your insults. They get old.”
House’s expression doesn’t change, the amusement drying along his mouth. It becomes a slow line and he’s stepping forward before she steps back, her hands sliding right into her pockets. Her thumbs hook around the fabric, the itch sliding around the pads of her skin.
“Poetic.”
She shrugs. “I try.”
If he’s comfortable, it’s not because of her. He merely pushes himself off the desk to stand in front of her. She’s long skipped any obvious attraction to understand the sort of play that they fall into. The movement seems to be another one of those characteristics: if he goes, she goes and if she goes, he goes. It’s all until one of them gives up - her, usually - or one of them breaks.
He shrugs.
They stand then, facing each other - neither him nor her make the move, if there’s a move to be made. It’s how she feels, at the end of a path and looking both ways as if to know something is waiting for her. She wants to avoid the metaphorical, the end of the line, the choices that she made; all of this, of course, has led to here and to even now, but she keeps looking back. She doesn’t understand why it’s so easy to keep looking back, to hang on to those few, random fringes that hang over her head.
“You want a drink?”
Her surprise rewrites itself across her face, her mouth turning up and then down. She tries to read the air between them, the tension spinning around them as she sighs and steps forward. There’s the intention of leaving, always there, but she never follows through.
“With you?” It’s shaky and she says it on the edge of the same thought: the one time she did follow through with any intention to go -
She’s back here again.
“No,” he says, “I’m only asking because -”
He doesn’t finish, leaning forward and into her space. He doesn’t touch her. She doesn’t know if she wants him to. The air frowns into a tease and she’s leaning forward too, right back into his space and drawn by her curiosity.
“Because you’re bored,” she finishes.
She watches him shrug, the flux of awkwardness shifting to her favor. The tension shoulders against her neck and her hand rises, her fingers pressing into her skin. She rolls them against the pain, taking a soft sigh as the only allowance in front him.
“No.”
It’s what he expects. It’s what she doesn’t expect. A part of her knows that she’s still trying to rewrite whatever interactions are left between them. She lowers her gaze and she turns away, after the answer; what he does, at the end, is always short, always tense and terse.
So she lets it go.
Quiet, she turns and sorts her hands over files on the desk. Something to do, right? Some stacks go to the left. Some stacks go to the right. There’s a clear space between her hands and she presses her palms against the counter as she leans forward to look for a nurse. No one comes to the desk and she snaps her identification tag off from her hip, placing it on the counter next to her pager.
“You’re pissed.”
She snorts. “You’re observant.”
And then he’s closer again, leaning next to her on the counter. His hands dangle over the files, knocking some into a slow mess of a pile.
“Oops,” he shrugs. “My bad.”
Her eyes roll. She’s sort of at a standstill, watching him without anything to really say. She wants to have something to say, something witty, something easy, but that’s been long gone for while now. It’s interesting, then and now, the way that she can and cannot talk to him. Sometimes, she feels him close. Sometimes, she doesn’t. That sensation is still there, still clear, but she has no idea what to make of it.
“You’re still here.”
“I’m trying to annoy you.”
And she can’t help herself, “it’s working,” snide and sharp, drops without any sense of remorse. It’s a little too harsh and she’s looking up, watching his surprise turn into ill-fitted amusement.
“I’m getting to you.”
This could go on and on; it does, it has, and she’s just frustrated by the lack of initial grasping that she keeps telling herself to get. It’s never been about spines and backbones and all those plastic metaphors that seem to wedge themselves between them anyway.
But it’s also a little more than that. She has no desire to share her lack of adjustment with anyone. She’s embarrassed, she thinks, and she’s lonely. It’s a funny thing to say, to think, but she is. Dealing with things differently is not a reassurance, but now a ploy and with how transparent she is here, even in front him, she worries about what else she can give away.
“That’s juvenile,” she mutters.
He smirks.
House seems to be waiting for more than something, something that she’s obviously missing because he’s still here and watching her flip between wanting him to go and wanting to him -
Don’t you dare, she tells herself.
Stepping back, her hand slides over her hip and she does a full turn with the intention to walk away from him. But she stops, of course, and turns back - her pager, her identification tag. It’s not like he need them to follow her, but she just wants to cover bases.
She almost laughs at herself.
Instead she eyes him and presses her mouth into a thin line.
“What are you doing?” She shakes her head. “I mean, really. What are you doing? You don’t do clinic. And you sure as hell don’t come here. We’re not short staffed and I know that your patient’s being monitored for recovery. So what are you doing?”
“Keeping this philosophical dialogue going.”
“You’re cute.”
His lips curl. “I know.”
Flushed, she’s not going to get an answer. She knows that. It’s the allure of pushing, the continuation of pushing - always pushing, pushing, pushing. She’s angry enough, still, for whatever reason, to get trapped into pushing back. It’s not even about that anymore.
It has to be about fitting. It has to be.
She rolls her eyes, long past the lay of dialogue and turns around again. Her hands are clutching her things, dropping them into the pockets of her lab coat. She’s trying not to remember the girl’s name either, to fall for that self-deprecating distraction. She’s a chart, she tells herself. Something for the nurses to take care off.
She sighs.
The conversation sort of stops and she doesn’t make any effort to slip into it again, sliding into the hallway and off to the locker room to change. She just wants to go home, stuck on the routine outside and not inside the hospital. It’s easier, despite how thin and fake her confidence seems. Some things aren’t fair and letting go of them, letting go of all of it means admitting things she’s not ready to admit.
So she forgets the combination to her locker instead.
It’s the wrong locker.
She shakes her head, stepping away from the door and deeper into the locker room. She sighs - it’s not her day, not her day at all. And then she changes course. She’s back to what she did wrong. Patient names - She can barely remember the girl’s name either. She should be thinking about her instead. Training herself. Telling herself what she did wrong. For a moment, she can see the glassy eyes; the flat line is still ringing in her ears, the sigh completely different. It seems dull, almost unwarranted. Some times she thinks it’s just one, continuous ring that she’s been carrying over all these years. Just to remind herself.
Just to remind herself.
“Of course,” she mutters.
She hooks her thumb around the lock, tugs and turns and tries to forget the flush that is still lingering across her cheeks. Her head dips forward and rests against the locker, a curse slipping and fading as half-hearted.
She’s asked herself all of this before. All the questions. All her series of what ifs and, of course, the whys; she fragments her answers for functioning and being back, remaining almost jealous of Foreman and Chase for doing what she seems to be unable to. It seems to be the key in her switch of tone: she’s faster, a little harsher, and her eyes are tuned to everything else but what she should see.
“You’re funny.”
She jumps.
Her knuckles slam against the metal, a thick cry dropping from her mouth as she whirls around. Her eyes narrow and House is there, watching her in amusement again.
“Seriously?”
His mouth turns. “It’s too much fun - I don’t get this chance anymore.”
It’s always going to be like this. He’s going to aggravate her. He’s going to leave. That’s the edge of predictability that she knows, that pushes her back and way from even reconsidering any of this. It’s a ploy, of course, or so she thinks. It makes her tired.
It’s nothing new.
“You need to go,” she tries to be firm. “Or -”
“Or what?”
She snaps here. It just spills out of her. The rush of minutes - hours? - winds around her and she slams her hand against the locker again. Her knuckles scrap against the metal and she wants just a normal bad day for once. Just a distraction that’s all outside of this. She can hear Chase in her head - Told you, he always says, Coming back was a bad idea. Her excuses, the ones that she knows, start to disappear before she can do anything. Her hand hurts. Her mouth hurts. And she swears if he comes any closer -
What?
Her eyes close. What is she going to do?
It’s more apparent how this is coming to surface. She can’t control it. She can’t control herself, but she’d rather not be around him for this. He’s seen slips, slips of vulnerability, slips of things she can’t afford.
She doesn’t want to do it again.
“I don’t want to do this,” she almost sneers, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. I don’t know why I came back here. I don’t know why I stayed. Is that enough? Is that what you want? Do you want to see me have a bad day, is that it?”
He’s watching her, his gaze unreadable. There’s an edge of discomfort, him to her, and she’s far from sharp. It’s exhausting, the sudden burst of anger that splits between them before her. She doesn’t know where if comes from - or maybe, she does. It’s just a process of thought she’s not going to touch.
He sighs. “Calm down.”
“Why? So you can hear me say that I can’t do this? Or better yet, getting to attached to a patient that died not even a full damn hour in the emergency room?”
He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t expect him to. These ideas of expectation were drying long before this. It’s common knowledge or something to that matter. She turns back to her locker, opens it and lets the door slam back. She’s being a child and for that, that she lets herself sigh and rummages through her things to grab a shirt to change into. Her hands are shaking and her mind is chaotic, thoughts stumbling back and forth and away from her grasp. It doesn’t matter though.
She’ll be here another hour or so, she thinks. She just needs coffee. Strong coffee. And maybe, something to eat.
“Come have a drink with me.”
She throws her hands up, leaning back against the locker. Her shoulders are slumped, her frustration too obvious and overwhelming everything else. She sighs quietly, rubbing her eyes.
“Why?”
He rolls his eyes. “You need it more than I do.”
What she doesn’t understand is the sudden attention; of course, it could just be here attaching herself to something more that she doesn’t need at all. It’s always something more in her head, it’s never anything beyond than what she sees and she wonders when she’s just going to let it go. It becomes sort of a game with herself, how long and how far she can go. The thing is she hasn’t been back for that long and it becomes more than clear that she hasn’t let it all go quite yet. Or even to begin with.
It just weighs more than it should.
“I don’t want a drink,” she tells him, “I don’t want to go and have a drink. I don’t even really know what I want.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t even care if that’s not what you want to hear. I don’t even care if I’m rambling along like I’ve completely lost it. I’m just tired and I want you to know that there’s not point here to prove.”
There’s a funny smile - not even a smile, just the single curl of his mouth. She feels uncomfortable. He feels closer. And it’s the circle of another routine. Her mouth is sore and she turns away, brushing her thumb along her jaw. It’s not like he’ll ask her to coffee and the promise of a drink isn’t really a promise, it’s more of a dig or a ploy; she’s not stupid, she hasn’t forgotten.
She just needs a little bit of control.
“Suit yourself.”
She scoffs. “Figures.”
But he sits in front of her, his cane stamping across the floor and by her legs. The bench moans. He snorts. She feels smaller than she is. She watches him though, leaning back and rocking against her heels. That amusement is still written across his face, opted by the mechanics of his curiosity, and this is, really all that’s left: between odd moments and shifts in favors, they’ve become something completely different to each other.
And yet, she feels the same.
“What?”
He shrugs. “Nothing.”
She’s not going to relate what happened. And she’s sure, at least of one thing, that he really just doesn’t give a damn. The interest is brief though, to her face, and she looks away, rubbing her eyes.
“I don’t want a drink,” she tells him again.
House doesn’t push again, doesn’t act like he wants to push again, and she’s studying the small shift in position. He’s still sitting. It’s too soon to really admit anything and thinking about it, even now, will end up making it worse. So she watches him quietly. She thinks about how she’d say it -
Lost someone today. Couldn’t stop it.
There’s no expectation of compassion either, it’s more of figuring things out. She doesn’t want to be placated. She just wants more than a moment.
“I -”
“Don’t want a drink,” he finishes.
Then, he’s standing and she has no idea if the moment’s been lost - if, really, she should care at all. It’s coming at an odd time and she just tries to tell herself that it’s not as big of a deal as she’s still trying to make it be.
He’s not in her space though.
His hand rises and reaches forward. It sort of stops, skims over the spot over her shoulder as if he’s thinking of coming closer - but that’s all he does, that she knows, that is nothing new.
“You know where to find me.”
Her eyes widen a little.
It’s a strange thing to say, but she has no time to really adjust to any frankness of a meaning; it’s what he does and he shifts, just a little bit, stepping forward and right into her space. She swears then that his hand is moving towards her again, his fingers cocked and nearing her hip. But he doesn’t touch her. He’s hovering and she’s really just sick of being stuck here and there with no complete answer. She doesn’t know what he’s offering, if he’s offering anything at all.
And that’s where they don’t meet.
She doesn’t understand why he keeps pushing, why she keeps letting him push. It’s not even hard now. It’s more of dusting of nostalgia. It’s silly and she should brush it off. She wants to brush it off just like he does.
“You’re not serious.”
He cocks an eyebrow at her. “I could be.”
It’s the end of that. She feels the lack of expectation from him - she’s not going to ask him to stay, to come back. It’s just not in her. Not now, not anymore. But still, the edge of curiosity is starting to unfold again and she doesn’t know what to do with it.
She licks her lips, but he’s already moving to the door.
It’s like he’s giving it back.
“Right,” she mutters. She just watches him go.