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HOUSE
“You cannot do that, House,” Foreman is nearly yelling at me.
“Surely I can, Foreman,” I snipped back at him. “Cameron, go talk with the parents and inform them of the risk, using a lot of medical jargon.”
She glares at me instantly.
“Katy's parents should know the real risk,” she says, nearly yelling at me too.
Why is average people so blind?
“Fine,” I say taking out my cellphone and opening my screen and searching for a name fast.
My Little Wombat
Last seen 15:35
Are you free?
14:00
Yeah.
14:01
Eating lunch after a 4 hours surgery.
14:01
Can you come to my office?
It will be just a minute.
14:02
I will give you half of my chocolate cake.
14:02
I will be there in a sec.
14:03
ILU xo
14:03
I lock the screen of my new smartphone and take my red and grey ball to start playing with it. I throw it up and it comes down, as it should be.
“Our patient is nearly dying; we have no diagnosis but you sit here and throw a ball just for fun?” Cameron says, standing up, nearly spilling her coffee over her.
A little knock in the glass door starts all my two ducklings. They turn their heads and I take that moment to appreciate my beautiful husband. His hair is falling over his forehead and he is wearing ocean blue long sleeves sweater, baby blue scrubs and white crocs bistro zuecos.
He looks so fucking handsome that I have to stop and wonder how I ended up with such a lovely specimen of a man. He is all the things that I am not and then, a bit more.
“Hi,” he says, entering the room and standing at the door. “You wanted a consult, Dr. House?”
I jerk my head towards one of the open chairs.
“Who is he?” Foreman asks.
“He is Dr. Chase,” I say to him, because even if we are married, and outside of this hospital he can be Robert House all he wants, he medical license still says Robert Chase. “Play nice with the guest.”
Cameron smiles up at him, batting her eyelashes quickly and I feel my blood boiling inside my veins. I glance quickly in Foreman’s direction and I see him glaring at the newbie. Meanwhile, the blond is walking to the open position, oblivious to the display around him.
Cameron stands up and throw her hand forward and Robbie just shake it. Oblivious as ever. And then, he has the boldness to ask me why I don’t let him walk alone at night. He will be dead by now, going around the world with this kind naivete. But, again… This is supposed to be a safe environment for him.
Which is not.
“Chase,” he says, shaking her hand softly and letting it go after a couple of seconds.
I can see the polite smile stuck in his face, and I can hear his brain counting the seconds until is polite to turn toward Foreman to extend the same greeting to the black skinned man. But, unlike Cameron, Foreman don’t even try to shake the limb.
He just mutters an angry: “Foreman.”
Robbie looks at me and shrug his shoulders. He sits his perky ass down and I pass him my chocolate cake over.
“Thanks,” he says softly. Always the well-groomed rich kid. “So, what is the consult about?” he looks at me while fellating the poor spoon. He smirks around the object. “This is LiLLi’s.” he says knowingly.
His accent is thick and the flirting is making me hard on my pants.
“We have a weird case,” I say to the surgeon. “The street-girl is in troubles.”
“Her name is Katy,” Cameron supplies. Like if I care.
Robbie extends his free hand towards me and I handle him the first clinic history of the scammer kid.
“Girl, Candy, whatever… She is just a girl trying to scam some poor bastard out there,” I say grumpily. Fucking Bell cannot see a scammer.
“Why do you say girl like that?” my husband asks me.
“Because I am sure she is not his daughter,” I say crossing my arms over my chest. “They just don’t look alike.”
“I don’t look like my father,” Robbie says, trying to put a little bit of humanity in this since we are talking about a little girl. A crying eleven years old girl at that.
A scammer at this age… Great.
He is trying to be less of a genius, more human. Less cold. Warmer.
“She is a scammer,” I say to him. “It was not an attack, but she came here because something happened to her heart. We managed to remove the dead tissue in her sinusal coronary… ”
I look up to see Robbie reading through the kid’s file. He looks tired and I know is due to the double shift he has pulled. He is working crazy hours and I find myself constantly missing my husband. The thing is worst when I have to explain to a four years old little girl why her daddy is not home.
At least, he is eating calories today.
Because he is being a hero, honey, and that phrase is not cutting it good any more.
“She has a hepatic failure,” Robbie says. “Who is the mother, again?” He closes the file and looks expectantly at me.
“Ana Claire Lavarova,” I respond her. He makes that cute face of his. “Does it ring any bell?”
He nods softly.
“She was a pianist,” he says softly, sticking the spoon inside his mouth. “She was a prodigy or at least that was what they said.” His gaze is glazed, he is not even here. “She was beautiful, smart…” He trails off. He is tired. “They called her brilliant, I used to call her a bitch.”
“Why?” Cameron asks. “Just because a woman is good at something doesn´t meant she needs to be a whore.”
Robbie shakes his head softly.
"She is a bitch," I add my grain of salt to this conversation.
“She will do whomever, whenever…” he says to her, scooping a new bit of the cake. “She will hit them later, she tended to scream at the studio and to abuse her peers with her tongue.”
“They think is immune,” I say to him.
“And what do you think?” he asks me.
“I think science has a answer itself,” I throw back at him.
“Well,” he stands ups with the empty plate in his hands. “It is not auto-immune. It doesn’t fit. And science might have an answer, but she likes to play mute somedays.” He is shooting me now and I feel happy.
Even while tired his brain is something that can keep up with my crazy thoughts.
“A hepatic biopsie can make her body talks,” I say to him.
“Maybe… You are just wasting your time,” he says. “She was a liar… Ana Claire, I mean. She was always complaining about her piano being out of tune when it wasn’t.”
Robbie starts cleaning the dish and the spoon in the sink.
“And how would you know that?” Foreman asks.
Robbie looks briefly at Foreman and shrugs, before letting the plate in its place.
“I just know,” and then, he looks me dead in the eye. “Don’t call me. I’m busy.” And he is gone.
I nod. Knowing he knows.
“Why was he here, really?” Foreman asks me.
“He just gave us a clue about this kid,” I say to him.
“And how does he know all of those clues?” Cameron inquires.
“She raped him when he was a teenager,” I send the ball back to them, happy to see the horror expression on their faces. I smirk briefly, just remembering that I still have a choice to make.
“You are insufferable,” Cameron accuses me.
I smile up at her, feeling my mood changing. We still have no diagnosis.
I feel my leg giving up under me and I curse.
“I hate fucking winter,” I growl, erecting myself again and going to find the little liar. There’s something I want to check with her… Skin.
* * *
“Why am I here again?” Robbie asks, nearly falling out of his chair.
“You intubated her a few minutes ago,” I say to him. “Why was it?”
“Why else would it be?” he asks me with a duh expression.
“Foreman did it wrong? Was it the correct bag?” I ask him.
He shakes his head.
“He did it okay. It was the correct bag,” he says to me. “He just didn’t wait enough to see a late bad reaction,” he says, resting his head in his forearms.
“Foreman, aren’t you a doctor?” I ask him, stroking Robbie’s arm while passing him.
“She was doing okay,” he says.
“The first ten minutes,” I reproach him this.
“I am a doctor, not her mother,” he yells back at me. “I have other patients.”
“It’s no one’s fault,” Cameron stands in between, trying to play advocated. As always.
I huff.
“The kid is still dying,” I say to them. “How bad was the reaction?”
I look at my husband, nearly sleep in the red couch.
“Put her on ventilation,” my blond companion mumbles. “She’s doing good, but at this rate she is going to be dead soon.”
“How many time?” I ask Chase. “You are the intensivist.”
“Six hours top,” he says, looking at me straight in my eyes.
“We based ourselves in proves,” I say, walking the little area that’s nearly inhabited because we are in the coma ward. “We did this by the moral book.”
“Which is alright,” Cameron says, trying to make me feel what?... Better?
“It’s not working for street-girl down in ICU,” I say to her. “We know the deferoxamine is killing her. Why?” I ask all of them.
“It is a chelating agent,” Cameron supplies.
“It removes the extra iron from the liver,” Foreman answer quickly.
Good. At least, he is not as useless as he presented himself in front of my four years-old.
“How?” I ask them.
None of them answer. I look at my husband.
“The iron is heavy and it gets stuck. Deferoxemine acts like a lubricant. It makes the iron slicks so it can move around again.” Robbie answer for my team.
“Moves through where?” I ask my team again. “To where?”
“Through the waste,” Robbie answers fast.
“She is screwed up, since her waste system is backwards,” I say, pacing again. “The iron isn’t going to where it is supposed to.”
“It’s going to her lungs,” Robbie says. “It is the first time she needs ventilation. The iron in the lungs can cause holes everywhere in the tissue.”
“Why?” I ask to no one in particular now, since Foreman and Cameron seems to be happy looking through the sidelines.
“Because oxygens bonds to iron quickly,” Cameron offers softly.
“That can increase her chances of infection and what else?” I throw back at them, because my leg is throbbing again. I hate fucking winter.
“A lot of complications, mostly in the brain,” Foreman supplies.
“Her brain is good,” Cameron contradicts him fast. “The MRI is clean.”
“Oxygen likes water and iron,” Robbie is trailing somewhere. “Like some plants.” But his eyes are closed, so there’s no way for me to know if he is close to falling asleep.
“Like plants,” I mumble, stoping to look at my beautiful husband, being careful to keep my emotions to myself. It wouldn’t do if they discovered we have been married for three years now. “Like fungus.”
“If it is a fungus, she is dead,” Foreman says. “There are like 25 types of anti-fungus.”
“Most common is aspergillius,” Chase mumbles and I feel my heart melting inside me.
“Keep her in ventilation and attach a drip of variconazole,” I say to them. “Lets hope her parents are praying for us to be right.”
My team left to do as they are told and once I know we are alone, I trade my fingers on Robbie’s hair.
“Common,” I say to him. “There’s a nice chair in my office waiting for a sleepy wombat-baby.”
Robbie stands up and I guide him through the halls with my hand on his shoulder. Trying to go through the less crowded one. Once my husband is nestled on my chair, with my coat over his slim body, I take out my cellphone. Is barely eight thirty in the evening.
I hit the video call button and the face of my daughter glints in my screen.
“Hey, Papa,” she says softly, her eyes sleepy.
“Hey, little monster,” I say to her softly, seating down on the floor. “Are you mad at us?”
She shakes her head no.
“I love you,” she says, softly, her eyes nearly closed. Her voice heavy with sleep.
“Daddy too?” I ask her, fearing she might be mad with my husband. With her daddy. With her last living relative.
“Tons. Love daddy tons,” she mumbles.
“He loves you too,” I say to her. “Do you know that we are close to you even if we are apart?” I ask her.
“Yeah,” and she says it just like Robbie. “Inside my mind and my frontal cortex.”
I smile at her.
“I will bring daddy home soon,” I promise her.
“I know. We need to erase his sadness away,” she says softly.
“You and I can do that,” I mumble softly.
“It’s our turn to be his hero,” she says and softly with heavy words.
“Sleep tight, lil monster,” and I end the call, feeling exhausted and ready to go home to cuddle with my family.
I stand up and close the courtains, locking the door while at it. Then, I lay down in the conference room’s floor, fearing to wake up my husband. He has been in a delicate place lately and I can see the first sign that he needs his family more then ever.
“She was lying,” Cameron says, entering the conference room. “She accepted that she wasn’t where she said she was. She was never in the motel her mother left her to for the night.”
I look at her, surprised. Cameron is learning, snail pace.
"What did you tell her?" I ask her, curious.
"That if whe was lying, the new medication might kill her," she says honestly.
Here goes my happiness.
“She was in a pub cabin,” Foreman says. “They put sound absorbers sheets.”
“So, the winner is…” I drum my fingers.
“Zygomycosis,” Foreman says. “She was in the middle of that hurricane.”
I nod softly.
“Start her on an IV drip of amphotericin B,” I say to them. “And add colony-stimulating factors to the cocktail.” I stand up. “She will be ready to go to parties behind her mom’s back in a few hours.”
They hurry out of the conference room and I enter my inner office. I shake Robbie’s shoulder softly.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” I say to him, looking fondly at how his hands try to rub the sleep out of his face. “Time to go home.”
He nods and he tries to keep up with me at the best of his abilities.
* * *
By ten at evening I am helping my husband out of my car and into our home. I help him change his clothes into comfortable PJ’s and I let him crawl into our bed, removing the comforter before he can be dead to the world again.
I kneel down by his side in our bed.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Robert?” I ask him, moving his hair out of his face.
He nods his head.
“I want to go back to mental therapy,” he says, looking at me with shinning eyes. “The nightmares are too much lately and I cannot sleep when I am alone in the bed. I am too scared of something happening to you or Ellie.” A tear scape down his cheek and I wipe it away.
I lay down at his side, pulling him closer to my chest. My heart breaking in my chest. Metaphorically. But this fucking hurts. It is a physical hurt.
“We both are okay, love,” I whisper to him. “And we are going to be here while you get better. Just focus into loving yourself. I promise you I love you as much, or maybe more then I did when I asked you to marry me.”
“What about Ellie?” he asks me, suppressing a sob.
“I swear she loves you as much,” I murmur against his hair.
“I wanna get better.” he says softly.
“And you will, love,” I hold him tight. “You have us and we have you. We are going to be okay,” I whisper to him. Holding him against my chest, cherishing in my heart.
“I love you,” Is the last thing I hear from his lips.
I smile and lean down to kiss his head.
“To the moon and back,” I complete for him, closing my eyes and letting myself drift off to sleep.