Time Marches On, Chapter Three: Thirteen
Apr. 7th, 2008 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
namasteTitle: Time Marches On Chapter Three: Thirteen
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, PG
Length: About 23,500 words
Spoilers: Through "Don't Ever Change," fourth season.
Author's Note: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pwcorgigirl, silja_b and topaz_eyes for beta and feedback duties.
Previous chapters here: Chapter One: Cameron, Chapter Two: Taub
Thirteen
Hadley stood in the hall, watching the patient and his wife through the glass. She’d seen Foreman leave ten minutes ago. Now the patient was still lying on his side, his back to the glass walls. His wife had pulled one of the chairs up next to the bed and was sitting there leaning toward him, her elbows on the edge of the bed. Hadley couldn’t see the wife’s hands, but imagined them holding her husband’s larger hands, comforting him -- or maybe allowing him to comfort her.
“We’ve got the MRI in fifteen minutes.” Hadley hadn’t heard Taub until he spoke and she glanced over at him. He had an ability to move quietly in and out of patient rooms, to draw no attention to himself until he was needed. During exams and procedures he moved with small, quiet and precise actions. She wondered if he’d learned how to do that during his days in plastic surgery, or if he’d been drawn to reconstructive surgery because of his ability to hide where he’d been.
Maybe it was both.
“We should get him down there,” Taub said.
“I was giving them a minute,” Hadley said, and looked back into the room.
Taub nodded. He leaned back against the wall, but Hadley could sense him watching her, rather than the patient. “Something you need?” she finally asked.
“Just thinking,” he said.
“About what?”
“I’m trying to imagine what it’s like to be in there,” he said. “The guy wakes up this morning at home, thinking he’s got a touch of the flu. Now, he’s in the ICU. Tomorrow?” He shrugged, and didn’t bother answering his own question.
He was quiet for a few seconds, then Hadley heard him shift his position. She turned to face him, but he had turned away, was staring across the hall at Osbourne and his wife. “Most of us know that things could change, anytime. You get in a car accident, you lose your job, but most people never realize how suddenly things can change -- in a week, in a day, in a few hours.” He turned back to Hadley. “You ever wonder what it’s like? Knowing that your life could go from something completely normal to a death sentence in just a few hours?”
Hadley looked at him. “House told you.”
“Told me what?” Taub looked confused.
Hadley took a step toward him, wondering if he was lying. In the weeks since she’d told House about her mother, he’d dropped hints, even called her “Huntington’s,” though later claimed it meant nothing. Only Kutner had followed up on it, and only once. She kept expecting House to say more. Maybe he’d take someone aside, someone like Taub. Tell him that he should monitor her for signs, just in case.
But if he had, no one had said anything about it to her yet. Of course it would be just like House to tell them to keep it a secret, to not let her know, then amuse himself of her expense, watching to how see each person reacted, waiting to see how long it took her to find out. Nobody had come to her and confessed anything, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they knew. That each time one of them stared at her, they were judging every movement, every action.
“Told me what?” Taub repeated.
Hadley shook her head. Taub wasn’t that good of an actor. If he were, he’d still be in New York, still doing surgery on the rich and famous. “Nothing,” she said.
House hadn’t had any problems announcing Taub’s secrets to everyone. Kutner hadn’t been spared either. It didn’t make sense that he was keeping her secret to himself. Of course, there was a good chance he was just waiting for the most dramatic moment to reveal it. There was no way she could know when that would be.
She stepped away from Taub again. “I’ll get him ready,” she said, and nodded toward Osbourne’s room.
“I’ll meet you down there,” Taub said.
She watched as he walked away, then took a deep breath. She crossed the hall, slid open the door and stepped inside.
Jennifer Osbourne looked up. Hadley recognized the look on her face, a mixture of fear and confusion. The longer it took to diagnose her husband, the more that expression would change, combining with exhaustion and frustration as each hour clicked by.
“I just need to borrow your husband for a while,” Hadley said. She gave the wife a smile, but she didn’t look reassured. Hadley wondered if she suspected just how bad things could be. How much worse they could get. Probably not. It was easy for families to fool themselves into believing the best, convincing themselves that they were the exception.
Osbourne pushed himself up on one elbow, and fumbled a bit with the EKG leads.
“You don’t have to get up,” Hadley said, and put a hand on his shoulder. She nodded over at the door as an orderly walked through pushing a gurney.
“I can walk,” Osbourne said. He rubbed his forehead and watched as the orderly came around to the side of the bed.
Hadley smiled. “I’m sure you can, but you’ll feel better if you don’t.” She leaned down toward him, talking softly. “And your headache will only get worse if you move around.”
He grinned slightly, then lay back. Hadley helped him slide over to the gurney, untangling the wires and waited as the orderly covered him with a blanket. She watched the gurney roll out the door, then stepped next to the wife, touching her arm, holding her back from following them.
“This is going to take about an hour,” she said. “You should take a break. Get something to eat.”
Jennifer Osbourne shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she said, “and I’d rather be with him.”
“I know,” Hadley said. It wasn’t a lie. “But you won’t be allowed in the room during the tests.” She gave the wife a moment to accept that information. “You’ve had a long day already, and it’s not over yet,” she continued. “You should take the chance while you’ve got it.”
The wife finally nodded, and Hadley stepped away, following the gurney’s path down the hallway. When she looked back, Jennifer was standing just outside the room, watching them. She turned to wipe away a tear. Probably she hadn’t wanted her husband to see. Hadley remembered what that was like, not admitting to your own emotions because you had to be strong for someone else -- for your mother, for your husband, for your wife -- until the mask was second nature, and you never let anyone see the truth.
Hadley caught up with the gurney in the hallway, then walked alongside it to the elevator.
“How did you know I had a headache?” Osbourne asked.
“It’s a common side effect,” she said.
“Of the tests? Or just from being here?”
She looked over at him, seeing the smile on his face from the small joke, knowing that he was just trying to settle his own nerves. “A little of both,” she said.
The elevator door opened and she helped push it over the threshold and inside, waited until the orderly pushed the button for the basement radiology area. “You should tell us when you something feels wrong, even if you think it doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t want to complain,” Osbourne said. He was watching the numbers change as the elevator descended. “Between the guys on the work sites bitching and the sounds of the power tools I get headaches sometimes. And there are always the usual aches and pains, you know. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“I understand,” Hadley said, “but it could be a new symptom. We need to know what’s going on.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I guess I’m not used to being a patient.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then glanced over at her before he stared back up at the numbers. “I’m usually the one taking care of everyone,” he said.
Hadley remembered seeing her mother when she was first diagnosed, watching the way she fought the transition from caretaker to patient. “It’s not always easy,” she said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky, and you won’t be a patient for long, Mr. Osbourne.”
“Ozzy,” he said. “Call me Ozzy.”
“Ozzy,” she said.
The elevator doors opened and the orderly pushed. Hadley guided the gurney left, toward the MRI rooms, then walked ahead to push open the doors.
She turned back to look at Osbourne. He was staring at the MRI machine that dominated the center of the room, then looked over at the monitors along the walls.
“First job I ever got, I was seventeen years old,” he said, his voice quiet, almost distant. Hadley guessed that he wanted to distract himself by talking about something normal, about work. About his life. “I walked onto the job site and the foreman complained that he had two guys named Chuck already working for him. He said he was going to call me Ozzy, and I’ve been Ozzy ever since.”
The gurney came to a stop next to the MRI table. Taub was waiting for them and helped to adjust the IV and EKG leads.
Osbourne watched them, but kept his mind in the past, back when things were still normal. “My wife didn’t know my real first name until we’d had three dates,” he said. “My parents are the only ones who call me Chuck anymore.”
“We’re going to need you to scoot over,” Taub told him, and he did. The orderly pushed the gurney away from the MRI, then out the door. “You’ll need to lie completely still,” Taub explained. “It’s going to be loud, but if you need anything, just speak up. We’ll be able to hear you.”
Osbourne nodded, but his eyes darted from one piece of equipment to another. She wondered if he was still thinking he’d find something comforting. Something familiar.
Hadley slid the O2 sat monitor onto his finger, then looked up to see him watching her. She leaned down and smiled. “They call me Thirteen,” she whispered.
He looked up from the monitor to focus on her. He managed a slight smile. “Now that’s a crazy name,” he said.
Hadley nodded, adjusted the blanket and stepped back.
“If they call you Thirteen, Dr. Hadley, what do you call yourself?”
Hadley stopped for a moment, considered the question. A few months ago, the answer would have been easy. Now it wasn’t. “It depends,” she said, “on what I’m thinking about.”
Osbourne grinned and Thirteen hit the button to slide the table into the MRI. “If you need anything, just let us know,” she said.
---
Thirteen stopped outside the conference room door, staring through the glass. Taub came to a stop just behind her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stepped aside and let him peer through the glass with her.
There were books on the table, books on the chairs. Three different stacks of books were piled against the glass wall between the conference room and House’s office.
She saw Kutner walk out from the back of the room, zigzagging past the lone desk and the white board. He had six textbooks balanced one on top of the other, held in a tight stack between his hands. He stopped when he saw them, his eyebrows raised briefly and the expression on his face making it clear that he had no answers for them. He walked on, and found a place for the books on the floor between the table leg and one of the chairs.
Thirteen pushed the door open. “What’s going on?”
Kutner let go of the books, the top two sliding off the pile and he scrambled to pick them up. He didn’t say anything, just nodded toward the back of the room.
“You two should have finished the MRI fifteen minutes ago.” House stepped out from the between the book shelves, carrying a book in his left hand. He tossed it to Kutner, who found a place for it on the top of the table. He pointed his cane at Taub. “Should I be creating some mental scenario of you getting it on with every woman in the hospital? If so, I should warn you that the lock on the janitor’s closet doesn’t work.”
House took two steps toward them, his hand held out, his fingers motioning for the envelope in Taub’s hand.
“We were waiting for the films,” Taub said, and handed over the envelope. “We figured you’d want to see them for yourself.”
House carried them into his office and turned on the light board, slapping them into place. “Nasty,” he said. He stepped closer. Thirteen knew what he’d see: no sign of injury, no malformation of the heart itself, just the enlarged pericardium. She heard the door open behind her and looked over to see Foreman walk in. His hands were empty, so he probably didn’t have anything new to show. No answers. He stood behind Taub, looking at the film over his shoulder.
“Nothing to indicate post-MI,” Taub noted.
Kutner didn’t seem surprised. “I already checked the blood work for any unusual cardiac enzymes. Nothing. None of his guys could remember him being sick in the last two months, other than his ER visit here a week ago and both his house and the work site were clear.”
House seemed to be ignoring Kutner. He must have already heard his report earlier. Instead he kept staring at the film. Thirteen was sure that there was nothing to see beyond the buildup of fluid, but still wouldn’t have been surprised to hear House point something out that they’d all missed.
She heard the wind whistle past the windows and looked away from House, out toward the windows where she could see snow falling thick through the air. “I’m surprised anyone’s working outside today,” she said.
“They weren’t,” Kutner said, “not really. Mostly they were hanging out in the trailer, waiting to see if the bosses would send them home.”
“What kind of a trailer?” Taub asked.
“I don’t know,” Kutner said, “a little one?”
Taub turned to House. “There have been cases down in New Orleans and Mississippi where people have gotten sick from the formaldehyde leeching out from their FEMA trailers.”
House cocked his head slightly, but didn’t say anything.
“He still could have gotten enough exposure to increase his cancer risk,” Taub said. “Add that to any of the other environment factors ...”
“There were a bunch of cigarette butts in the trailer,” Kutner noted. “Ozzy doesn’t smoke, but that raises his exposure to second hand smoke. Enough exposure in the trailer, enough exposure to the cigarettes ...”
Thirteen smiled a little hearing Kutner use the nickname. She shouldn’t have been surprised. People liked Kutner. Hell, she liked Kutner, at least a little. She glanced over at him, saw the way his face lit up with the possibility that he’d found something new, something useful. It didn’t seem to take much to make him happy.
“Cancer’s a better diagnosis than an infection at this point,” Foreman finally said. “The spinal tap was clean.”
“Except we haven’t found any actual signs of actual cancer,” House said, “just symptoms.”
“The fluid they withdrew in the ER was exudate,” Foreman said. “I’d thought it was another sign of infection, but it could be from a malignancy.”
House turned back to the light board, put his hand up against the light, his fingers following the outline of muscle and tissue.
Thirteen was sure she hadn’t missed anything. So was Taub. But she leaned forward waiting to see House point something out, something they’d all missed.
When he turned away, she was almost disappointed.
“So,” he said, and walked past them, through the door, back into the conference room. He’d left a path clear to the white board, which was on the other side of the room, for some reason.
“What the hell happened in here?” Foreman stood at the doorway, his arms spread wide.
“Kutner did it,” House said.
“You ...” Kutner stepped closer to House. He leaned in close. “You told me to.” Maybe he’d meant to whisper, but his voice carried across the room.
“Don’t blame me, blame Foreman,” House said.
“What?” Foreman asked. “No way, House.”
House sighed, his head swaying from side to side as he exaggerated the rolling of his eyes. “You were the one who said we couldn’t get to the coffee with the white board over here.”
“And, we can’t get to the coffee translates to destroying the room how?” Foreman had his hands on his hips.
Foreman never seemed happy -- amused sometimes, as he watched House or watched them, caught up in some private joke that he seemed to think they’d never understand -- but never happy.
“If we move the bookshelves, then we’ve got room for the white board over here,” House said. “To move the bookshelves, we have to move the books.”
“So you had Kutner move the books,” Foreman said.
“Well, I’m not doing it.” House held up his cane. “Cripple.”
“Here’s another idea,” Foreman said. “You could just put the board back over where you had it before.”
“But that wouldn’t be any fun.”
“No, but you might get more work done, and you’d have the doctors who work for you practicing medicine, rather than doing heavy labor.”
“It’s not heavy labor,” House said, “it’s moving a few books around.”
Foreman crossed his arms over his chest and stared at House.
House stared back, then turned to the board. He uncapped a marker and drew a thick black line through the word “infection.” “I suppose we could always spend a few more hours proving that you were wrong,” he said. “That’s always fun.” He looked back at Foreman. Foreman didn’t budge.
House turned back to the board and crossed out “post-MI.”
“And that leaves autoimmune, and cancer -- coming up fast.” House capped the pen and nodded toward Thirteen. “You do the ANA yet?”
“What?”
“An antinuclear antibody test, you’ve heard of it, right?” he asked. “It’s a little thing we like to do to check for autoimmune diseases.”
Thirteen’s eyebrows drew together. She thought back over everything House had ordered in the past few hours, the conversations they’d had in the room. She turned to look at Taub. Maybe he was supposed to tell her something and didn’t. Or maybe he’d just “forgotten” to tell her.
“You ... didn’t ask for an ANA,” she said.
“But you thought it might be autoimmune,” House said. “So why didn’t you run the ANA?”
He didn’t seem angry, she thought. Maybe he was just tired. It was getting dark outside. She hadn’t looked at her watch for a while, but knew it was getting late, and that she was tired, so maybe he was too. Maybe he thought he’d told her to follow up.
“I was busy with the other tests,” she said.
“So why didn’t you ask Foreman to do it, as long as he was looking for the nonexistent infection?”
“I ...” She heard someone move next to her, and she jumped slightly at the sound. She’d forgotten that anyone else was there. House had that ability to bring you into his world, whether you wanted to be there or not.
“Taub was running tests with you, but he was at least still thinking about cancer. What were you thinking about?”
Thirteen didn’t answer. She felt her skin grow hot, hoped it wasn’t turning red, giving away the frustration and embarrassment she was feeling as House called her out.
“Any doctor can treat,” House said. “Some can even treat properly. You’re here to diagnose. We need to treat his conditions, but if we don’t find out what went wrong in the first place, he won’t get any better. Don’t forget that.”
Thirteen nodded
“Run the ANA now,” he said.
House finally looked away and she felt herself breathing again. She wasn’t sure if she’d actually stopped breathing for a minute, or just forgotten everything that had happened in the last few minutes except the sound of House’s voice.
“Foreman, you and Kutner do the needle cath, and grab some more fluid for testing while you’re in there. Taub?” He picked up a book and tossed it at him. Taub looked surprised, but made a fumbling catch to grab it against his chest. “You’ve got some tests of your own to run if you’re going to prove lymphoma, but first I’ve got a special job for you,” House said.
Chapter Four: Foreman
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, PG
Length: About 23,500 words
Spoilers: Through "Don't Ever Change," fourth season.
Author's Note: Thanks to
pwcorgigirl, silja_b and topaz_eyes for beta and feedback duties.Previous chapters here: Chapter One: Cameron, Chapter Two: Taub
Thirteen
Hadley stood in the hall, watching the patient and his wife through the glass. She’d seen Foreman leave ten minutes ago. Now the patient was still lying on his side, his back to the glass walls. His wife had pulled one of the chairs up next to the bed and was sitting there leaning toward him, her elbows on the edge of the bed. Hadley couldn’t see the wife’s hands, but imagined them holding her husband’s larger hands, comforting him -- or maybe allowing him to comfort her.
“We’ve got the MRI in fifteen minutes.” Hadley hadn’t heard Taub until he spoke and she glanced over at him. He had an ability to move quietly in and out of patient rooms, to draw no attention to himself until he was needed. During exams and procedures he moved with small, quiet and precise actions. She wondered if he’d learned how to do that during his days in plastic surgery, or if he’d been drawn to reconstructive surgery because of his ability to hide where he’d been.
Maybe it was both.
“We should get him down there,” Taub said.
“I was giving them a minute,” Hadley said, and looked back into the room.
Taub nodded. He leaned back against the wall, but Hadley could sense him watching her, rather than the patient. “Something you need?” she finally asked.
“Just thinking,” he said.
“About what?”
“I’m trying to imagine what it’s like to be in there,” he said. “The guy wakes up this morning at home, thinking he’s got a touch of the flu. Now, he’s in the ICU. Tomorrow?” He shrugged, and didn’t bother answering his own question.
He was quiet for a few seconds, then Hadley heard him shift his position. She turned to face him, but he had turned away, was staring across the hall at Osbourne and his wife. “Most of us know that things could change, anytime. You get in a car accident, you lose your job, but most people never realize how suddenly things can change -- in a week, in a day, in a few hours.” He turned back to Hadley. “You ever wonder what it’s like? Knowing that your life could go from something completely normal to a death sentence in just a few hours?”
Hadley looked at him. “House told you.”
“Told me what?” Taub looked confused.
Hadley took a step toward him, wondering if he was lying. In the weeks since she’d told House about her mother, he’d dropped hints, even called her “Huntington’s,” though later claimed it meant nothing. Only Kutner had followed up on it, and only once. She kept expecting House to say more. Maybe he’d take someone aside, someone like Taub. Tell him that he should monitor her for signs, just in case.
But if he had, no one had said anything about it to her yet. Of course it would be just like House to tell them to keep it a secret, to not let her know, then amuse himself of her expense, watching to how see each person reacted, waiting to see how long it took her to find out. Nobody had come to her and confessed anything, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they knew. That each time one of them stared at her, they were judging every movement, every action.
“Told me what?” Taub repeated.
Hadley shook her head. Taub wasn’t that good of an actor. If he were, he’d still be in New York, still doing surgery on the rich and famous. “Nothing,” she said.
House hadn’t had any problems announcing Taub’s secrets to everyone. Kutner hadn’t been spared either. It didn’t make sense that he was keeping her secret to himself. Of course, there was a good chance he was just waiting for the most dramatic moment to reveal it. There was no way she could know when that would be.
She stepped away from Taub again. “I’ll get him ready,” she said, and nodded toward Osbourne’s room.
“I’ll meet you down there,” Taub said.
She watched as he walked away, then took a deep breath. She crossed the hall, slid open the door and stepped inside.
Jennifer Osbourne looked up. Hadley recognized the look on her face, a mixture of fear and confusion. The longer it took to diagnose her husband, the more that expression would change, combining with exhaustion and frustration as each hour clicked by.
“I just need to borrow your husband for a while,” Hadley said. She gave the wife a smile, but she didn’t look reassured. Hadley wondered if she suspected just how bad things could be. How much worse they could get. Probably not. It was easy for families to fool themselves into believing the best, convincing themselves that they were the exception.
Osbourne pushed himself up on one elbow, and fumbled a bit with the EKG leads.
“You don’t have to get up,” Hadley said, and put a hand on his shoulder. She nodded over at the door as an orderly walked through pushing a gurney.
“I can walk,” Osbourne said. He rubbed his forehead and watched as the orderly came around to the side of the bed.
Hadley smiled. “I’m sure you can, but you’ll feel better if you don’t.” She leaned down toward him, talking softly. “And your headache will only get worse if you move around.”
He grinned slightly, then lay back. Hadley helped him slide over to the gurney, untangling the wires and waited as the orderly covered him with a blanket. She watched the gurney roll out the door, then stepped next to the wife, touching her arm, holding her back from following them.
“This is going to take about an hour,” she said. “You should take a break. Get something to eat.”
Jennifer Osbourne shook her head. “I’m not hungry,” she said, “and I’d rather be with him.”
“I know,” Hadley said. It wasn’t a lie. “But you won’t be allowed in the room during the tests.” She gave the wife a moment to accept that information. “You’ve had a long day already, and it’s not over yet,” she continued. “You should take the chance while you’ve got it.”
The wife finally nodded, and Hadley stepped away, following the gurney’s path down the hallway. When she looked back, Jennifer was standing just outside the room, watching them. She turned to wipe away a tear. Probably she hadn’t wanted her husband to see. Hadley remembered what that was like, not admitting to your own emotions because you had to be strong for someone else -- for your mother, for your husband, for your wife -- until the mask was second nature, and you never let anyone see the truth.
Hadley caught up with the gurney in the hallway, then walked alongside it to the elevator.
“How did you know I had a headache?” Osbourne asked.
“It’s a common side effect,” she said.
“Of the tests? Or just from being here?”
She looked over at him, seeing the smile on his face from the small joke, knowing that he was just trying to settle his own nerves. “A little of both,” she said.
The elevator door opened and she helped push it over the threshold and inside, waited until the orderly pushed the button for the basement radiology area. “You should tell us when you something feels wrong, even if you think it doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t want to complain,” Osbourne said. He was watching the numbers change as the elevator descended. “Between the guys on the work sites bitching and the sounds of the power tools I get headaches sometimes. And there are always the usual aches and pains, you know. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“I understand,” Hadley said, “but it could be a new symptom. We need to know what’s going on.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I guess I’m not used to being a patient.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then glanced over at her before he stared back up at the numbers. “I’m usually the one taking care of everyone,” he said.
Hadley remembered seeing her mother when she was first diagnosed, watching the way she fought the transition from caretaker to patient. “It’s not always easy,” she said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky, and you won’t be a patient for long, Mr. Osbourne.”
“Ozzy,” he said. “Call me Ozzy.”
“Ozzy,” she said.
The elevator doors opened and the orderly pushed. Hadley guided the gurney left, toward the MRI rooms, then walked ahead to push open the doors.
She turned back to look at Osbourne. He was staring at the MRI machine that dominated the center of the room, then looked over at the monitors along the walls.
“First job I ever got, I was seventeen years old,” he said, his voice quiet, almost distant. Hadley guessed that he wanted to distract himself by talking about something normal, about work. About his life. “I walked onto the job site and the foreman complained that he had two guys named Chuck already working for him. He said he was going to call me Ozzy, and I’ve been Ozzy ever since.”
The gurney came to a stop next to the MRI table. Taub was waiting for them and helped to adjust the IV and EKG leads.
Osbourne watched them, but kept his mind in the past, back when things were still normal. “My wife didn’t know my real first name until we’d had three dates,” he said. “My parents are the only ones who call me Chuck anymore.”
“We’re going to need you to scoot over,” Taub told him, and he did. The orderly pushed the gurney away from the MRI, then out the door. “You’ll need to lie completely still,” Taub explained. “It’s going to be loud, but if you need anything, just speak up. We’ll be able to hear you.”
Osbourne nodded, but his eyes darted from one piece of equipment to another. She wondered if he was still thinking he’d find something comforting. Something familiar.
Hadley slid the O2 sat monitor onto his finger, then looked up to see him watching her. She leaned down and smiled. “They call me Thirteen,” she whispered.
He looked up from the monitor to focus on her. He managed a slight smile. “Now that’s a crazy name,” he said.
Hadley nodded, adjusted the blanket and stepped back.
“If they call you Thirteen, Dr. Hadley, what do you call yourself?”
Hadley stopped for a moment, considered the question. A few months ago, the answer would have been easy. Now it wasn’t. “It depends,” she said, “on what I’m thinking about.”
Osbourne grinned and Thirteen hit the button to slide the table into the MRI. “If you need anything, just let us know,” she said.
---
Thirteen stopped outside the conference room door, staring through the glass. Taub came to a stop just behind her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stepped aside and let him peer through the glass with her.
There were books on the table, books on the chairs. Three different stacks of books were piled against the glass wall between the conference room and House’s office.
She saw Kutner walk out from the back of the room, zigzagging past the lone desk and the white board. He had six textbooks balanced one on top of the other, held in a tight stack between his hands. He stopped when he saw them, his eyebrows raised briefly and the expression on his face making it clear that he had no answers for them. He walked on, and found a place for the books on the floor between the table leg and one of the chairs.
Thirteen pushed the door open. “What’s going on?”
Kutner let go of the books, the top two sliding off the pile and he scrambled to pick them up. He didn’t say anything, just nodded toward the back of the room.
“You two should have finished the MRI fifteen minutes ago.” House stepped out from the between the book shelves, carrying a book in his left hand. He tossed it to Kutner, who found a place for it on the top of the table. He pointed his cane at Taub. “Should I be creating some mental scenario of you getting it on with every woman in the hospital? If so, I should warn you that the lock on the janitor’s closet doesn’t work.”
House took two steps toward them, his hand held out, his fingers motioning for the envelope in Taub’s hand.
“We were waiting for the films,” Taub said, and handed over the envelope. “We figured you’d want to see them for yourself.”
House carried them into his office and turned on the light board, slapping them into place. “Nasty,” he said. He stepped closer. Thirteen knew what he’d see: no sign of injury, no malformation of the heart itself, just the enlarged pericardium. She heard the door open behind her and looked over to see Foreman walk in. His hands were empty, so he probably didn’t have anything new to show. No answers. He stood behind Taub, looking at the film over his shoulder.
“Nothing to indicate post-MI,” Taub noted.
Kutner didn’t seem surprised. “I already checked the blood work for any unusual cardiac enzymes. Nothing. None of his guys could remember him being sick in the last two months, other than his ER visit here a week ago and both his house and the work site were clear.”
House seemed to be ignoring Kutner. He must have already heard his report earlier. Instead he kept staring at the film. Thirteen was sure that there was nothing to see beyond the buildup of fluid, but still wouldn’t have been surprised to hear House point something out that they’d all missed.
She heard the wind whistle past the windows and looked away from House, out toward the windows where she could see snow falling thick through the air. “I’m surprised anyone’s working outside today,” she said.
“They weren’t,” Kutner said, “not really. Mostly they were hanging out in the trailer, waiting to see if the bosses would send them home.”
“What kind of a trailer?” Taub asked.
“I don’t know,” Kutner said, “a little one?”
Taub turned to House. “There have been cases down in New Orleans and Mississippi where people have gotten sick from the formaldehyde leeching out from their FEMA trailers.”
House cocked his head slightly, but didn’t say anything.
“He still could have gotten enough exposure to increase his cancer risk,” Taub said. “Add that to any of the other environment factors ...”
“There were a bunch of cigarette butts in the trailer,” Kutner noted. “Ozzy doesn’t smoke, but that raises his exposure to second hand smoke. Enough exposure in the trailer, enough exposure to the cigarettes ...”
Thirteen smiled a little hearing Kutner use the nickname. She shouldn’t have been surprised. People liked Kutner. Hell, she liked Kutner, at least a little. She glanced over at him, saw the way his face lit up with the possibility that he’d found something new, something useful. It didn’t seem to take much to make him happy.
“Cancer’s a better diagnosis than an infection at this point,” Foreman finally said. “The spinal tap was clean.”
“Except we haven’t found any actual signs of actual cancer,” House said, “just symptoms.”
“The fluid they withdrew in the ER was exudate,” Foreman said. “I’d thought it was another sign of infection, but it could be from a malignancy.”
House turned back to the light board, put his hand up against the light, his fingers following the outline of muscle and tissue.
Thirteen was sure she hadn’t missed anything. So was Taub. But she leaned forward waiting to see House point something out, something they’d all missed.
When he turned away, she was almost disappointed.
“So,” he said, and walked past them, through the door, back into the conference room. He’d left a path clear to the white board, which was on the other side of the room, for some reason.
“What the hell happened in here?” Foreman stood at the doorway, his arms spread wide.
“Kutner did it,” House said.
“You ...” Kutner stepped closer to House. He leaned in close. “You told me to.” Maybe he’d meant to whisper, but his voice carried across the room.
“Don’t blame me, blame Foreman,” House said.
“What?” Foreman asked. “No way, House.”
House sighed, his head swaying from side to side as he exaggerated the rolling of his eyes. “You were the one who said we couldn’t get to the coffee with the white board over here.”
“And, we can’t get to the coffee translates to destroying the room how?” Foreman had his hands on his hips.
Foreman never seemed happy -- amused sometimes, as he watched House or watched them, caught up in some private joke that he seemed to think they’d never understand -- but never happy.
“If we move the bookshelves, then we’ve got room for the white board over here,” House said. “To move the bookshelves, we have to move the books.”
“So you had Kutner move the books,” Foreman said.
“Well, I’m not doing it.” House held up his cane. “Cripple.”
“Here’s another idea,” Foreman said. “You could just put the board back over where you had it before.”
“But that wouldn’t be any fun.”
“No, but you might get more work done, and you’d have the doctors who work for you practicing medicine, rather than doing heavy labor.”
“It’s not heavy labor,” House said, “it’s moving a few books around.”
Foreman crossed his arms over his chest and stared at House.
House stared back, then turned to the board. He uncapped a marker and drew a thick black line through the word “infection.” “I suppose we could always spend a few more hours proving that you were wrong,” he said. “That’s always fun.” He looked back at Foreman. Foreman didn’t budge.
House turned back to the board and crossed out “post-MI.”
“And that leaves autoimmune, and cancer -- coming up fast.” House capped the pen and nodded toward Thirteen. “You do the ANA yet?”
“What?”
“An antinuclear antibody test, you’ve heard of it, right?” he asked. “It’s a little thing we like to do to check for autoimmune diseases.”
Thirteen’s eyebrows drew together. She thought back over everything House had ordered in the past few hours, the conversations they’d had in the room. She turned to look at Taub. Maybe he was supposed to tell her something and didn’t. Or maybe he’d just “forgotten” to tell her.
“You ... didn’t ask for an ANA,” she said.
“But you thought it might be autoimmune,” House said. “So why didn’t you run the ANA?”
He didn’t seem angry, she thought. Maybe he was just tired. It was getting dark outside. She hadn’t looked at her watch for a while, but knew it was getting late, and that she was tired, so maybe he was too. Maybe he thought he’d told her to follow up.
“I was busy with the other tests,” she said.
“So why didn’t you ask Foreman to do it, as long as he was looking for the nonexistent infection?”
“I ...” She heard someone move next to her, and she jumped slightly at the sound. She’d forgotten that anyone else was there. House had that ability to bring you into his world, whether you wanted to be there or not.
“Taub was running tests with you, but he was at least still thinking about cancer. What were you thinking about?”
Thirteen didn’t answer. She felt her skin grow hot, hoped it wasn’t turning red, giving away the frustration and embarrassment she was feeling as House called her out.
“Any doctor can treat,” House said. “Some can even treat properly. You’re here to diagnose. We need to treat his conditions, but if we don’t find out what went wrong in the first place, he won’t get any better. Don’t forget that.”
Thirteen nodded
“Run the ANA now,” he said.
House finally looked away and she felt herself breathing again. She wasn’t sure if she’d actually stopped breathing for a minute, or just forgotten everything that had happened in the last few minutes except the sound of House’s voice.
“Foreman, you and Kutner do the needle cath, and grab some more fluid for testing while you’re in there. Taub?” He picked up a book and tossed it at him. Taub looked surprised, but made a fumbling catch to grab it against his chest. “You’ve got some tests of your own to run if you’re going to prove lymphoma, but first I’ve got a special job for you,” House said.
Chapter Four: Foreman
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 03:43 am (UTC)So it's Thirteen. Heh. *satisfied*
Oh, right: I'm actually a little afraid to go to Foreman's part. I don't want to get into his head. I don't like the outside of him, so the inside feels even worse. He's got House totally beat in the misery department because at least House knows he's miserable and knows why and doesn't think it's someone else's responsibility to make him happy.
*pauses*
I think I just realized why I can't stand Foreman anymore. He reminds me of someone I know who's exactly the same way. *sighs*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-09 12:25 pm (UTC)It's also the reason why I use other characters in their POVs point out those flaws, like Taub's comments about Foreman in his chapter.