Archive of Our Own

Pleconaril (Picovir) is an antiviral drug that was being developed by Schering-Plough for prevention of asthma exacerbations and common cold symptoms in patients exposed to picornavirus respiratory infections. Pleconaril, administered either orally or intranasally, is active against viruses in the Picornaviridae family, including Enterovirus and Rhinovirus. It has shown useful activity against the dangerous enterovirus D68.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected pleconaril in 2002 due to the side effects. The most commonly reported side effects were mild to moderate headache, diarrhea, and nausea. Some women were having symptoms of spotting in between periods. Menstrual irregularities were reported by 3.5% of the 320 pleconaril treated women using oral contraceptives and by none of the 291 placebo treated women. In the clinical trial two women became pregnant due to the drug interfering with hormonal birth control by activation of cytochrome P-450 3A enzymes. Other patients have described painful nasal inflammation.

Dr. Georgina House was usually quite needed in a lot of areas that had mostly nothing to do with her, yet she was never wanted even in places where she was begged to be in. Which is the reason she can be found, willingly, in only a handful of rooms and hallways around her own place of work.

These can be her own office, her husband’s office, her best friend’s office, her favorite coma patient room, and quite surprisingly, in the OBGYN ward break room.

They have a TV, comfortable chairs, a very well stocked coffee bar, and the added bonus that she actually tolerated most of the doctors there.

Somewhat. She trained some of those doctors back when she practiced OBGYN full time, between research, innovation, and a second specialty, she whipped those men and women from shaky residents into full fledged doctors. They wore their mental battle scars with pride, as she never took interns again once she left her old specialty behind answering the call of diagnostics.

They also nearly killed Chase when he was chosen for the fellowship, but she knew these doctors would not be very useful for her in the department.

She was already the OBGYN, after all, even if it has been a long time since she was full time in the practice, she kept up to date with all the research. Unlike Cuddy, who barely qualified as a doctor nowadays.

She was watching her favorite soap opera, the worst kind. The more awful, the more entertained she usually was. This also applied for other shows she liked, like General Hospital or Sex and the City.

House was eating a yellow jello watching TV, hiding from her pups, her friend, and even her husband, as there hasn’t been any interesting case in over a week and she would rather total her car than do paperwork.

Two doctors came into the room, chatting about something or the other. One of those two used to belong to her, the other not really, but learned through his teachings. 

“Hi boss.”

“Not your boss.” She shot back, watching her soap opera. Not her circus, not her monkeys. She had more than enough with the wombat, the zebra and the deer.

They kept talking while she watched, one ear on their conversation and most of her brain predicting what was going to happen in the story. At some point, a water bottle was put in front of her, but she didn’t take it.

Until she heard it. 

Epidemics spread at a worrying speed for infants. One child in the class has something and suddenly the whole class has it. She didn't need to use her specialty in infectious diseases to know something every mother is aware of. One child came out contaminated, and tended to spread to the whole wing.

She could already see it, dozens of infants dead by the carelessness of everybody else.

Depressingly common.

She got up, grabbed her cane, and got out of the break room. She also paged Wilson for good measure. He made a good listener when she was trying to figure out something.

Usually, House kept her purse inside her office in a way to show that she was, in fact, inside the hospital, which made her forget trinkets, knick knacks, and other little treasures around the places she liked to be, as they were kept loose or in her hands, and everyone knew she was prone to forget even her own cane in occasions when her brain was overtaken by curiosity.

(House left her beige blazer behind. Dr. Chua took note of this and decided to drop it by her office when his lunch break was done.)

And not so long later, husband and wife were in the maternity ward, while House inspected the charts of the infants she heard about. Reading out loud the papers and then adding what she heard in the break room, hoping to get any idea from Wilson about the matter.

She got a side eye instead. And House swore she was going to thrash his french shoes for this.

“You know, this is amazing, you hung out in the OBGYN lounge all morning and heard about two sick babies from your old intern. The one you specifically said that was a whole weasel . Either luck or destiny. Maybe the weasel was lying.” He made an attempt to soothe one of the babies who was fussing a little bit, but House lightly slapped his hand away.

“Don’t touch that.”

“... Alright, sorry.”

“We have an infection spreading in the hospital.”

“These kids have totally unrelated illnesses.”

“They fell sick within four hours of being put within the ward. If one kid has it-.”

“Assume every single kid has it. Yeah, I know. But sometimes coincidences just… exist.”

“You don’t believe me.” It wasn’t even an accusation. She was pointing out the obvious.

“Gigi. I-”

“No nicknames at work.”

“Right. House. Listen. Sometimes the worst case scenario doesn’t have to happen.”

“They were born in the same delivery room. Then put in the same nursery.”

“House, the Hartig girl has a bowel obstruction, no matter how close they are, I’m pretty sure blockage is not shareable.”

“That’s the thing, do you know who diagnosed that? An overeager radiology intern who is on four hours of sleep on the daily and is eager to look into things that are just not there. This is why I usually send the pups to do the reading themselves, you can’t trust them with their jobs.”

And Wilson let out a laugh, a sound that usually would make her feel somewhat fulfilled and happy, even when she was at her most manic, but it just felt like getting spat on in the non fun way.

“Okay Gigi, you’re upset because you got hounded out of their lounge.”

She was about to whack her husband with her cane in the fucking balls.

“Look at the X-Ray.” Those weren’t read correctly, she could tell. She wasn’t blind nor fucking stupid.

“I can get you a key to the oncology lounge.”

“I know you desire to keep me in your metaphorically stomping grounds but forget about your weird possessiveness for three seconds and look at the damn X-Ray.”

“We’re getting TiVo.”

“It’s a normal gas pattern, air in the colon. If it’s air, no bowel obstruction.”

“Even if it’s air, it could have been there before the obstruction.”

“This is the reason we’re never getting a kid. You will kill it by being fucking dense. Nevermind, I will look into it myself.”

“Come on House, don’t be like that-”

Too late, she fucked off, hopefully to someone who listens.

“And you’re somehow the only one who put this together?”

She could have gotten better luck with Warner in legal.

“Because I’m the only one who has more than two brain cells and working instincts in this whole place. Looked at both kids, there is something more than the diagnoses they got. Cuddy, I need them both isolated and the maternity ward shut down before the whole thing gets infected.”

“Listen, I know you always love to be the fatalist and the herald of the worst case scenario known to mankind, but maybe, just maybe, all your alarm bells are flaring up because you are bored out of your mind.”

“No, you listen to me, I know the reading on the X-Rays was done wrong. Do you want to call me an omen? Fine, whatever. But something's not right. Best case scenario is a false alarm and the worst one is we have to order a dozen of teeny, teensy baby caskets.”

“No, House, I can’t risk a metaphorical PR suicide if we close the whole ward.”

“Of course PR is more important than a dozen infant deaths. I’m sure those will do lovely on the news. Legal will adore that, all the lawsuits of negligence we will get.”

“You don’t give a shit about lawsuits, if you did, you wouldn’t give Stacy migraines on a daily basis.”

“You know what, this is exactly why I don’t need a shrink, if I feel so listened to and validated by my friends as part of my so-called support network.”

Lisa let out a laugh, full teeth, pearls of laughter falling from her lips. A sound and a sight that would make her feel disgustingly warm on her solar plexus, but now she wanted to grab her by the hair and shake her, as if they were both in her 20’s fighting over whose name to put first in their joint research paper.

“If you ever consider going to a shrink you are getting straight into the ward.”

“Expensive shit, unlike that thing you wear around your neck. Not real pearls.”

Cuddy rolled her eyes and stood up, then seemed to think about something, hard enough to be quiet and stay still for a moment.

Before throwing her one of her stupid, aggravating, pitying eyes.

“I know this may remind you of-”

“Shut up.”

“And two sick babies is very sad. And I don’t want you to think that I don’t trust your judgement, but nothing about this says epidemic. Just coincidence. And I know you don’t believe in that or in luck but I trust that everything is going to be fine. Why don't you call-?”

“You know what, nevermind. Don’t fucking call me to ask about which flowers to leave at their unnamed tombs.”

And with that, she left, fuming with rage and shoulder checking Cuddy on her way out, no matter how much she called out juvenile behaviors in others, when her temper was just right, she was known to act like the most vengeful of the sorority girls.

Meanwhile, her fellows were pretty comfortable because of their easy going week. Cameron eventually gave House back her purse, and was promptly trying to hide from her out of shame. Foreman was kind of anxious at first after his huge blunder at their last case, but eventually he used the time to catch up on reading, as their boss had a thousand books in her office and in her conference room.

Chase catched up on sleep, until a book was thrown into his lap, shaking him awake.

“Get up, you useless poodle.”

Good fucking riddance, she was in a bad mood.

“Rottweiler, retriever, we are going hunting.”

“For… what?” Foreman was almost half scared to ask.

“Ideally? Rabbits. With our luck? Honey badgers.”

She didn’t believe in luck, not really, not in the same way other people did. But if she were to have faith in such a thing, she would say they all were born under a dark star.

They were then sent into a wild goose chase around the whole OBGYN ward, checking personally most babies that were born within the day. Chase wondered at some point why no one had stopped them, considering they were kind of personas non gratas around said ward, but Foreman told him they were being protected by the one who used to run it for a short while.

They didn’t find anything. 

They also had not seen House this frantic, never.

She was fast, surprisingly fast, sometimes they barely saw a hint of her loose fitting mom jeans or a flash of blue of the blouse she was wearing. At some point they had to do a double take because suddenly she was wearing a beige blazer, one which they weren’t sure where she even got it from.

Then they lost her again.

She was found once more, looking like she threw up a little bit in her mouth, while two women were crying, holding their baby tight, which seemed a little bit too unresponsive for their taste.

“I fucking hate being right. Page Cuddy.”

And then everything was thrown into chaos.

“What do you want me to say? Sorry? You catch hives every time someone apologizes to you.”

“I just want to know why I am treated as if I am hysterical everytime I see a pattern.”

“You lie for fun, just because, and out of boredom.”

“Not about the life of babies. Nearly 15 years of knowing me and it's like you don’t know me at all.”

“We can fight about this all day long or you can do something about this.”

“Damn right I am doing something. I’m the only competent doctor in this whole place.”

And with that, she took a small pill container out of a hidden inner pocket inside her beige blazer, popped two pills, just enough to think, but not as much to get lethargic, then she went away, leaving the sound of her cane against the floor as the only indicator of her getting away.

Everyone had too much to do. The pups were tracking possible causes and correlations, a team was brought in to analyse everything and about anything in the maternity ward, and Wilson was doing his best to avoid his wife after the fight they had last night.

“We’re checking the vents, as it could be airborne.” Cuddy looked immaculate, as always, the clicking of her heel making very little noise against marble tiles, yet, there was a certain air of tiredness about her, like she didn’t get an ounce of sleep the night before. “Somebody get the sinks too, and underneath them. I don’t want a spot unchecked.”

Wilson lightly sipped a coffee, choosing to stick besides Cuddy for the time being. His hair was slightly out of place, and his shirt kind of wrinkled. He also looked like he didn’t sleep at all, heavy eye bags ruining the illusion of a boyish charm. “This was your solution? Making the med students analyse the whole place?”

“What else are they gonna do? Sure as hell not delivering babies.” She got quiet for a moment, seeing a med student fumble with his tie. “So. She locked you outside your apartment?”

“I think it would have been better if she did. She just didn’t talk to me at all, then locked herself in our room.”

“That’s it?”

“A pair of my favorite shoes are missing.”

“Now that’s more like her.”

“Anyway, have you found something yet?”

“More than half of our antibacterial dispensers are either broken or empty. A knife was found in one.”

“You already know whose knife it is.”

“Yes, and if the staff can’t wash their hands regularly, it’s no wonder an infection has spread. Hey- Tie clip!”

Wilson looked tiredly where Cuddy was barking at the med student on proper sanitizing procedures and how they were in a current epidemic. And couldn’t help to think how much of a coward he was by shamefully keeping away from her own wife after nearly calling her crazy as if Lisa, Stacy and himself didn’t moan all the time how she was always right, even when the woman herself didn’t want to be.

Not for the first time, he wondered if she would have let him keep close if he made the effort to look like he believed her in the first time, nevermind that it could have led to ridicule if she was playing one of the particularly cruel pranks she liked to pull on people, at least if he fell for it he would have seen her laugh in a way that didn’t sound like nails on a chalkboard anyway.

In another place, in another time, a woman was trying to do some of the clinic hours she was meant to do as away to actually kill time, as the OBGYN ward was closed due the whole epidemic mess, she was mad at her best friend, hence, didn’t want to be in her office, and she knew that if she stayed in her own office her stupid, useless, effeminate husband would just stare at her from their shared balcony, like a weepy creep in need of atonement.

She was still angry, sue her.

Hiding his favorite pair of french leather shoes in the morgue only gave her a slight satisfaction, but otherwise didn’t quell down her anger.

Thinking it twice though, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to see clinic patients while pissed off.

That morning she barely had half the thought on getting on a gray pencil skirt, a sleeveless red blouse and a black blazer that kind of has seen better days. Her only accessories were a set of pearl earrings she had stashed in her purse and promptly forgot about maybe a month ago, and the only make up she could tolerate that day was her clinic lipstick.

She can see the irony.

“I have been feeling sick a lot.” Her current patient complained about it. “Maybe I’m over training, I’m doing the marathon. Like 10 miles a day, but I can’t seem to lose any weight.”

House lifted a graying eyebrow. Sometimes her own gender surprised her.

“Lift up your arms.”

She did.

“Alright, you’re in luck.”

“Huh?”

“You got the only OBGYN scheduled this week. On your back.”

She was moving, but looked extremely confused.

While infectious disease along with diagnostics were her true calling, she too found herself doing the mundane on her first specialty, like right now. Her bedside manners were atrocious, something that didn’t change much across the years, but she at least was a lot more objective than a lot of her coworkers.

“Congratulations or my condolences? We’ll see about that soon enough. Lift up your sweater and breathe normally.” House stood up and began to work the ultrasound machine, one of the very few medical equipment she had any true opinion about. Cuddy always listened to her regarding brands of these things, nevermind that it was pretty damn rare she touched one nowadays. 

“Why would it be a condolence? I am dying?”

“Well, it could be one of the outcomes with further complications I suppose. This is cold.”

Was the only warning her patient got before House squeezed some gel in her abdomen, ultrasound wand soon following after. She dug a little bit where she knew where the uterus was, and just like she thought, a fetus was there.

“There it is. Bundle of joy or your worst nightmare. Pick and choose. By the size I think you still have a month or so to decide if you want it off. If you want it off right now it is an easy and mostly painless process. Again, you’re in luck, as I believe in narcotics for all kinds of situations, from cervical cancer explorations through more invasive abortions.”

“... What?” House rolled a little bit her eyes.

“You are pregnant.” Then she turned the screen towards her, so she could see the ultrasound. 

“But… that’s impossible.”

“Unfortunately, most birth control has a chance of failing, and if you are on the kind where you don’t get your period, like the pills or a copper DIU, you have to do monthly pregnancy tests as a cautionary routine. By your scar on the arm I assume you are on the implant, which again, many medications, antibiotics and even eating a lot of grapefruit can mess up with its utility. Now, I can begin to prescribe you pre-natal care and hand you off to another OBGYN, or…”

“I… Doctor? Me… Me and my husband wanted to have a kid soon.”

She just made a sound like she listened, giving her some paper towels so she dried up her stomach, while she was putting away everything regarding the ultrasound.

“But… Oh my God, please, don’t, don’t judge me.”

“This is not a confessional but I am your healthcare professional.” And she was sure she was going to hear some juicy gossip, now that put her in a slightly better humour.

“... Ok… Like… Four months ago? We had this really big fight, he moved out, and I did something… extremely stupid.”

“One night stand?”

“Ex boyfriend.”

Now, a hiss let out of her mouth. She was right, she could feel herself in a better mood.

“Ethically I should tell you to woman up. Morally I think a little revenge never hurts anybody. Logistically… Does your ex-boyfriend look like your current husband?”

A nod.

“This could bite you in the ass.”

The woman looked almost scared.

“Men are strange creatures. Kinda stupid, you could pull off the dad swap. But if they grow, and they don’t look alike? He could either hurt you or hurt your kid.”

“He’s not a violent man.”

“All men have the capacity of violence. In every shape or form. If, and only if, you believe yourself with enough fang to do the good ol’ switcheroo? Go ahead.”

This girl did not have the fang to do it.

And at least seemed to be aware enough of it.

“You think I would be doing the right thing? Terminating?”

House had half the mind to compare the teary eyed girl to one of those chihuahuas with tapioca eyes. Shaking on the bed and slightly hugging herself. She could be almost cute if she didn’t have all that wet dog thing going on.

“I cannot tell you that.”

“And what about after? What method can I use so this doesn’t happen again?”

Ah, so she made a decision.

“I thought you were trying for a kid?”

“... I’m not sure if I should just yet. My husband and I… are still on a rocky spot.”

House nodded, and took her prescription pad, and was writing down the necessary mifepristone and misoprostol for her, as she was a little bit over two months she wanted to cover all her bases.

“So, a decision has been made?”

“Are you on birth control?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Which is it? Maybe I can get it on too.”

A laugh, and someone else may compare it to a particular grave bell.

“I had my tubes tied back in the 90’s. I could recommend it too. Well, maybe you gotta wait for that one, our maternity and OBGYN wards are under… renovation.”

Afterwards, she let herself get lost in the lull of patients, nothing as entertaining or messy as the patient she just had, only allowing herself to get out of the clinic when receiving a page from Foreman, as they wanted to report to her about their current case.

(She told the nurse at the desk the hour wrong by 7 minutes, she never called her out. She’s hoping someday she will. Truly, some nurses had too much backbone and others had such a small amount of it.)

She wished she stayed in the clinic.

The news were depressing, no improvement and a chance of nuking small kidneys was not something she wanted to ponder too much about, yet, it was something else that fell within her, judging by the desperate aura of her fellows.

Cuddy will take too much time in figuring out an ambiental cause, and she was plenty aware of it, looking just as distressed as the rest of the doctors in the room.

The only nephrologist she knew that was more than barely competent would not answer If she called in such short notice, and they were running out of time and options for both of the babies.

So this is what they were going to do.

“I am aware it sounds almost… salomoan-ish. But we either have one corpse or twelve of them. No other options.”

“But how do you decide which one dies and which one lives? How can you live with yourself and make this decision? This horrible unethical decision?”

Like hell she is telling Foreman she is going mostly blind in this. After not sleeping for almost three days, not being able to stomach food, and being incredibly angry at her stupid husband and her stupid best friend, she was going over and over what they had, which was mostly nothing. Either the babies died tonight due their mystery illness or due kidney failure. Two to go, ten left to their same fate.

“Right. How could I survive only having one corpse and not twelve in my consciousness.” She bit back, with not that much fire over it. Her migraine was getting worse, and she would like not to fight every little step of the way over the hard choices. 

No one ever liked what she offered, be it the truth or a solution. They didn't like making the tough choices yet they didn't like her answer to their prayers.

Maybe she should have stuck with interns rather than fellows.

“We need consent. Proper informed consent from the parents.” And Cameron looked about to fall under the heaviness of the situation. Just about to cry. Somehow, she looked less pretty than when Chase did.

“Foreman, Cameron, make it happen, Chase, begin treatment at first confirmation.” She knew what came next, by the glare Cuddy was throwing at her. It was time to have a fight with legal, which was on schedule for particularly hard cases. 

“How… How do I know which one to do what with?”

She made the decision for him, just like every other hard choice while she has been working there, and promptly followed Cuddy out, who seemed so pissed off that didn't even make the awkward attempt people did to slow down to her step.

Nothing that a couple of pills and hurrying her cane didn't fix.

A showdown against Stacy Warner, however, could not be fixed with a couple of pills.

Maybe some morphine.

Cuddy's secretary ran away the moment he saw all three women get into the office, all three of them with their head high and heavy sounding steps. Two pairs of heels and one metal cane.

Surprisingly, there was no yelling. Everyone was too exhausted to raise their voices.

“So, you threw the dart and let luck run its course?” Cuddy didn’t even have the strength to raise her voice. She didn’t even seem to have any kind of fighting spirit left. “That’s where we left two infant lives? To luck?”

“I don’t believe in luck.” Was the curt answer. “Nor fate. Was it at random? Sure. Didn’t matter.”

“It’s a matter of your license if this goes to hell.” Stacy Warner, the head of the legal department of Princeton Plainsboro looked the least affected in the whole conversation, staring down at House with immaculate posture and not even any hair left out from her tight ponytail. “Any other day, I would have a drink, cheering on your retirement, but my job is to protect this hospital.”

“Can I have a recommendation from my lawyer?”

“Your lawyer says to come up with something genuinely good on why you are going blind with treatment options. You are the biggest cheerleader regarding the use of experimental drugs and... unhortodox methodology, but this feels too rushed, too crass, too…”

“Hysterical?”

Both Cuddy and Warner gave a flinch on the inside, yet their faces betrayed nothing. She was getting angry, and they were losing their window of getting something coherent out of her before the ticking bomb goes off.

“Any justification, it doesn’t have to be a good one. Just anything so I can defend your choices.”

“Well, Hartig’s mom is hot, just like the hunk at pediatrics pronouncing his z’s  with his latin lover accent. So, we’ll take the Hartig kid off vancomycin.”

The glare she got from two of her closest friends didn’t make her feel anything. She left the pups doing exactly what she was explaining, going as far as writing it down in case Chase’s mind went blank from stress.

Maybe Wilson was right, maybe he was coddling him too much. She was going to make him lose his mind when everything was over so her cruelty balanced itself.

Cuddy seemed to think about what to say, yet, no words came out from her mouth. Rather, Warner took once more the thread of the conversation, before the Dean of Medicine did something worse, like exploding on the spot, the spark that would engulf all three up in flames.

“Whatever, I’ll think of something, but... Gigi.”

She was going to murder everyone. Every single one of the people who tolerated the most were hellbent on pissing her the fuck out.

“Is House on the clock, Warner.”

“Gigi.” She pressed again. “I need informed consent, on paper, so I can have a shield to defend your choices. You think informed consent is on the pro of the patient? Are you that naive?”

“I know it's so you administrative fiends can wash your hands off from any malpractice suit.”

“That’s right. So we have to get them to sign a special informed consent form, which involves them knowing what is going on with the other patient in your experiment.”

“Absolutely not. It would be unethical for one patient, and even then, it defeats the whole purpose, If they know, they won’t consent anyway.”

“I need to have all our bases covered.”

House stood up, in a quiet swoop she rose to her tallest height, supporting most of her weight in her heavy cane, making sure there wasn’t a hint of slouching in her form. She was looking down in something akin to rage. 

She never learned how to school her face.

“Two more babies just became symptomatic. There were twelve in the same rooms as the infected ones, so it’s only time. I care not for protection, or something as stupid as playing it safe. Nothing takes precedence over currently six dying babies and six more to go.”

“House, I need you to understand-”

“Let her do it.”

That silenced both women. Warner stood up to try to make her friend understand the stakes if anything went to hell.

And House always had such rotten luck.

With nothing much to add, the diagnostician glared at Cuddy for a tense moment, before nodding once, nodding twice, and getting out of the office, her limp a little bit more noticeable due being exhausted.

She didn’t realize she left her hair tie behind, the thing having fallen off somewhere along the discussion.

In another place, a little bit later, but having a time just as bad as his wife, James Wilson was reviewing documents near the hallway where Cameron was talking to the mothers of the baby Chen-Lupino, while Foreman just finished his own talk with the parents of the Hartig baby. He didn’t get punched, but that may be due to the trance the mother was in, which got a little bit worse after signing the papers. 

Poor woman.

He put down a couple of papers on the table, watching Cameron wrap up her own conversation from the corner of his eye, checking that the documents that Foreman gave him on his way out had everything in order. Such a curious thing, the Chen-Lupino couple actually looked… relieved.

This was not a good sign.

When he was sent to chaperone by Gigi herself the two of them, she did warn him to check on Cameron the most, and while he wasn’t sure what exactly she meant at the moment, now he was sure what was the real warning.

“What did you tell them?” Was the first thing to come out of his mouth. Many years serving death sentences and basically doing palliative care in his area has taught him a lot about the different faces of grief, of resignation, of bargaining, and of course of denial. This is not what was happening here, unlike with the Hartig marriage, whose grief was so plain to see from the spot where he was across the other hallway.

“I told them the truth.” She just left the papers on the table, avoiding his eyes. With a quick glance, he could see relieved smiles from the women she just talked to, and felt something like a rock nestle itself on his stomach.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Who are you? House?”

“No, but I don’t have to be to know you didn’t tell them the truth either.”

“I said what I had to say.”

“Allison.” Not even that made her stop. Usually getting name dropped made Gigi pause for a moment, if only to curse someone out. Cameron was steamrolling away from him, and if he wasn’t so angry, he may have found himself to respect her backbone a little bit more. “If the parents weren’t in tears or in shock by the time you left, you didn’t tell them the truth.”

“That’s not how I see it. Plus, I made them sign, isn’t that the whole mission here?”

“Do you want them blind sided?” He’s pretty sure not even Gigi would have done that. Lied to them? Somewhat, sure, why not, but would have laid down the true dangers of the procedure, so it didn't catch them unaware. Or soft, as she would say. 

“I wasn’t aware we worried about true informed consent.”

“Yes. No. It’s about getting them prepared for the likely death of their child.”

Finally, that made Cameron come to a sudden stop, and made her finally look him at the eye.

Wilson only found self loathing there.

“You think they’ll give a damn about what I said today if their son dies tomorrow? It’s not gonna matter, they’re not gonna care. Like at all. I offered a possible solution, they consented to try it. Didn’t work? They won’t remember today. Nothing’s gonna be the same ever again, is going to be a before and an after with very little recall of a time when they had hope. Even if they won’t remember, just give them some reprieve for the time being.”

“You are wrong.”

“You may be even more naive than I thought if you only take in consideration the way you think what grief is.”

For some reason, that seemed to make Cameron the kind of angry that he rarely sees outside palliative care. The kind that came from some soft part inside her being punched with just enough force to make her snarl, insulted and aggravated. He may get hit for this but it was something she needed to hear, especially if she was going to keep working in the area.

He just realized why he was sent to supervise both of them, rather than House doing it by herself.

“You may have not remembered anything told to you before a loss, but there are multiple people who respond to grief in such unique ways. Say, anyone like House may have gotten your throat ripped open in the middle of your shift if you told her that her son was doing well only for him to die the next few hours. You may be hurt. Your colleagues can be hurt. But more importantly, those women are just about to hurt in the most inhumane way possible.”

A wonder she just didn’t walk off in his rant, but maybe that was a signal that she was finally listening to what he wanted her to understand. House kind of got it, but she almost never saw patients, and even then, she always made her point across, either by cruelty or pure, unfiltered truth.

One may think they were the same. Alas, they were not, not when it was about her.

“Her son?” Gone was the anger, making her look a little bit… Confused. Intrigued, even.

“Of course that’s what you took from the conversation.”

At that moment, her pager went off. She gave a look at it, before looking at Wilson with some distrust, as if the words of his mouth were nothing but something to bother her with. A lecture for the sake of a lecture, and not a much needed reality check on what she believed was the high moral ground.

And then she left, without saying a single word back.

While some went, another person was going, and Dr. Georgina House was clocking out. She would not know anything about her current case until some time passed, so she was going home.

With her tattered wine colored purse in hand, she was leaving her office, not even bothering to close it in case her pups needed to take a nap inside, not that she would openly admit that outloud, of course. This case was taking a toll on all of them, and she would rather have a half decent sleep in her own bed before getting thrown back into the grind.

Or at least, that was the thought, before a very familiar face came, calling out her name, pulling a man who looked extremely lost by the arm.

“Dr. House! This is my husband Charlie.”

The man looked like a wet coyote.

“Girlie, girlie. Who told you where my office was?”

As the current of the week, her questions were ignored. She was too tired to get even more pissed off.

“Look, Doctor, this is about the… benign tumor.

That made her pause, trying to think about what the fuck she was talking about.

“The… tumour?” Did she page Wilson for that? No. He wasn’t consulted.

“Yeah, you know, the one I had that you said I should remove. The one in my belly.”

 She wrecked her brain for it for a moment, staring at her blankly, before catching on what she was asking for.

“Oh. Yeah, the girlie with the tumour near the uterus, yeah. I- I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget patients, I see so many on the daily. I thought you were this one idiot who didn’t know how to use birth control.” 

“Is… Is this tumour that dangerous?” The man asked, meekly, a little bit spooked for her wife. House did not feel bad for him.

“Not really, is not cancerogenous.” She played along, putting just enough comfort in her eyes. “But it’s still recommended to take it out.” 

Now, the man looked anxious, looking between his wife and the doctor, not quite knowing he was being lied to by both.

“Is- Um, ok. What, what do we do going forward?”

“Is a very easy surgery, don’t worry. Call my office sometime around midday tomorrow, I will connect you to the proper channels. Like I said, it’s not cancer, so it’s not quite that urgent, but it should come out sometime soon.”

It was almost adorable the way the guy fretted and worried about her wife, who just looked at him with an expression too serene and happy to be anything but fake, considering the current situation.

Maybe she did have some fang indeed. Good to know.

She was in a considerably better mood when she got out of the elevator. Such an odd thing to celebrate, she knew, but sometimes she was fond of the little things that made her day less shitty.

Waiting for her husband to come out and take them home drained the hell out of that little happiness she had.

And in retrospect, it’s a good thing she didn’t leave, because the second she sat down to wait, her page began to shriek like crazy. 

House threw her bag with the nurse in the clinic station and walked as fast as she could to the elevator, because she had a feeling something just hit the fan bad with one of the babies.

And of course, she was right.

She made it just in time.

It was for nothing.

“Chase.” She had to stop him. Otherwise, the man may have gone insane trying to bring back the baby, even if there was no use doing so. House looked at the clock, before letting out a sigh. “Time of death. 18:57.”

She could barely sense Wilson moving behind her, frustrated, angry, and grieving in the unique way he could only do so, even after seeing so much death in his own practice.

“The aztreonam doesn’t work.” She murmured, mostly to herself, yet, all the people in the room were listening. “Double cover all the babies with vancomycin.”

The first person to offer himself off, even if he was running on no sleep, was Chase, who just murmured “I’ll do it.” before fleeing the room. House had no doubt he would find somewhere quiet to cry a little bit before doing so, and she would allow it, because the man looked just about ready to keel over.

“Cameron.” She called her. “Tell the parents.” Since Cameron was the one who talked to the Chen-Lupino pairing, it was only fair she told them the news. With a look, she signaled Wilson to accompany Cameron in case something went sideways. Grief did stupid things to the brain, and the last thing she wanted was everything to escalate in a way not even she could foresee. “Tell them their child probably saved up to eleven lives.” She was exhausted, and she still had a lot of work to do.

Yet.

Yet.

“But Chase-”

“Chase is busy.”

“You’re the attending.” 

“They don’t know me.” And just before she left, she made a small signal to Wilson with her head and her eyes, and as always, he understood just fine, nodding a single time and looking at Cameron like he wanted to evaporate her with his glare.

Make sure she does her job.

She didn’t know if something happened between them for Wilson to have this much animosity, but she had better things to do at the moment.

Imagine her surprise when her own husband did her workers duty, as a way to spare her out of the situation. She didn’t care that she froze. She froze once and she had to keep going.

“I told you to get her to do her job, not do it for her.” She was pissed. 

“Technically you didn’t tell me anything.”

“You really want to sleep outside the apartment.”

“She froze up.”

“She felt sorry for the patients so she shut up, you felt sorry for her so you opened your mouth.”

“She has a problem. Well, multiple, but this one should be addressed first.”

“Believe me, I know. But this is something she has to learn to deal with. If you hadn’t bailed her out the second she brought the waterworks she would’ve done it.”

“Or she would have remained frozen.”

“No. She would have done it.”

“And then she wouldn’t have slept in two weeks… Maybe she is just not cut for this specialty. She could move to do lab work or research if she didn’t want to deal with hard choices.”

Whatever crude defense Gigi was about to make about Cameron (and why she kept her at all), Chase interrupted with even worse news than before, if that was even possible. And that meant they were back straight to square one.

The blazer was ditched, wearing only her red tank top and the gray skirt. A little bit of her bra was showing due the blouse riding a little bit too low, and her silver chain got lost in her bust due the length of it.

Everyone else was wearing scrubs, and House had half the mind to go get ones too.

“Vancomycin doesn’t kill it, aztreonam doesn’t kill it.” She kept quiet for a moment, staring off at the distance. “What the hell is this?”

No one had an answer. Wilson, Cuddy, Foreman and Chase threw half hearted attempts at diagnosis, every single one as bleak and fatalistic as the last one, and it was at that moment that House decided to send everyone home for the day. No one protested. She still had a couple of things to do at the hospital, so she would stay.

But first.

“Cameron, stay behind.” It was an order.

Chase and Wilson threw her something akin of a look, but they left her alone in the dimly lit office.

House didn’t even blink when she saw how Cameron's eyes went down her bust and back to her eyes in a quick, barely there eye movement. She wasn’t even going to comment on this. She just wanted to make her point across and get down the morgue, where Wilson was most likely waiting for her.

“Wilson tattled.” Was the first thing she said.

“Wilson tattled.” She nodded back. “I did send him to supervise Foreman and you, when you were talking to them about the consent forms and how he did your job for you after I called the time of death. I am not going to lie, nevermind the patient mothers, they could have hurt you with the way you handled it.”

“Hurt me?”

“Depending on the beast, one would have chosen to remember what you said before, hence, hurting you. Unfortunately, it is a part of the job of being wary of the family of the patients.”

“I'm sorry, but this sounds a little bit too... Paranoid. Are you speaking from experience?"

“Wilson and I have caught more than one punch, yes.”

“Wilson also said something like that… And another thing that I don’t know if he was lying to make a point or not.”

“He's usually right, while written down informed consent is so we don’t get sued as easily, it is within our job to give proper expectations to those that depend on us, nothing more nothing less.”

“So, is he right about everything? ... In that case, do you have a son?"

That made her stare her down, confused, about what exactly Wilson said to her.

“Yes. One. Pain in my ass, even if he doesn’t even live in the state anymore. I don’t know why this is relevant to your inability to safely do an important part of your job.” She was all bird bones and soft, fleshy parts. While there was something extremely wrong with her, she didn’t think it was physical abuse related, hence, would not know how to handle a direct attack from a grieving family member.

“If I told you he would be fine, and then he wasn’t, would you have hurt me?”

She didn’t even think about it.

“Yes. But that’s not something you ever got to worry about, as I am his only doctor. Even when he was a newborn, I was his only care provider.”

“Did he need medical care a lot?”

“He was very sick as a newborn, but I did what I always did best. Keep things alive… Maybe not specifically in this case.” She rubbed her face with one hand, feeling weary and exhausted after the whole mess this day was. “Get the hell out of here before you piss me off further. Take a shower, maybe a nap, I don’t know.”

“Are you going home too?”

“No, I have work to do, but you are useless right now.”

She didn’t even let her speak anything else. House grabbed her cane and limped towards the door with a surprising speed, taking a vicodin from seemingly nowhere and speeding towards what she knew she had to do, after all, not only Wilson was already waiting for her, he may actually surprise her with a pair of scrubs that might actually fit.

Did they fit?

Kinda.

Due to her height, most scrubs didn’t fit her form unless they were tailored, and the ones she actually owned were reserved for when she had to get in for actual surgery, and not everyday clothing. Fortunately, Wilson seemed to have grabbed some men’s scrubs a size too big for her, but it would have to do for what came next.

She wasn’t quite willing to admit outloud how grateful she was to get out of her skirt, as it was becoming a sensory nightmare, but she showed a little bit of mercy on her stupid, compassionate husband.

Wilson was used as a walking cane. House was supporting her weight in his arm, while he held her like an escort inside the morgue.

By the image they gave, one may think they were doing a grand entryway to a ball, rather, to dissect a corpse.

Wilson tried to do the autopsy by himself, specially by the way Gigi kept staring at the corpse of the infant with an unreadable look. The kind that got her too lost in her own head that made her move slower, with an insecure gait, yet, when he tried to sit her down while he worked, she came back to earth throwing him a scathing look.

He knew who she was seeing at the mortician’s table. And he knew who she wasn’t.

The whole thing was gruesome and uncomfortable, and James was actually pretty sure she did it by herself as a tool of self punishment, but by the time they were done, all their findings went straight to the lab, and both got changed out of the scrubs, Wilson was allowed to escort her wife back home.

They rarely took baths together, their size difference made it a little bit difficult, but for tonight Wilson had the honor of holding tight on her wife while she stared off at nothing in a scalding hot bathtub. No salts, as they itched, only some slightly scented mint oils that made him a little bit light headed between the vapors of the bath and how hot it was, but he knew that’s how she preferred it.

Once the thing went lukewarm, a small shiver went through her body, as if the water turned ice cold rather than manageable, and Wilson knew it was time to wrap it up, no matter how comfortable he got with her back fully flushed against his chest. They both forgot to eat after the meditative bath, but at least they were comfortable and warm in their bed afterwards, the way they fell asleep mimicking the way they were holding on to each other in the bath.

Tomorrow will be another day.

And indeed it was, after everyone could sleep, shower and eat, the spirits were a little higher and their minds clearer, which prompted a lot of work across the day. Between the debate of the viruses, collecting blood from both kids and mothers, and trying to pull a miracle against the current.

And at the end of the day, they had a diagnosis.

Just one that worked pretty bad against most treatments.

Echovirus.

No one knew how House managed to get a treatment from a company who was barely finishing doing their medical trials, especially this fast, but they weren’t complaining about it. The parents scrambled for anything to give them hope, and accepted the risks of being part of said trial for a chance of survival.

Georgina House passed through where Foreman was reviewing some documents from a nurse station, and called to him with a whistle and head movement. “Got a minute?” At that point the request was made clear. So Foreman took the documents with him to the elevator where her boss was waiting for him.

“So, pulmonary resistance has stabilized for the two kids, but, uh, BPs still-”

“Yeah, Chase told me. How’s Cameron?”

“Dr. Cameron? Dr. Allison Cameron?”

“I don’t have any other kid called Cameron don’t I.”

“You don’t have kids.”

“Answer the question.”

“Sorry, I’m not used to you asking for someone’s well being.”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“I am spitting blood on the next person who blows up my questions, only warning.”

“Fine! Fine, she’s doing just fine.”

She stared down on him a little bit, a touch of mirth in her expression, like she was aware of something he was not. 

“Great. Sure, whatever.” And with that, she left, entering the clinic and getting straight to a room, not even bothering to play with the nurse who did the charting. She only had one appointment anyway.

The woman looked almost giddy at seeing her, like she was a school girl being shared a secret among them.

“We can get your surgery scheduled by next week, we are currently finishing with an issue in the upper floors but everything should come out nicely. Your referral is right here and so is all the information regarding the surgery.”

“Do you think my insurance will cover it?”

“Oh absolutely, we’re lying to everyone in this one. We’ll just say we found benign masses near your fallopian tubes and everything else will be kept quiet. Hell, you could get an hysterectomy if you wanted.”

“Oh no that sounds more scary.”

“That's why I said if you wanted it.”

“Thank god. Thank you so much! I gotta get you a gift or something. Anything.”

“The best gift I could have is to never see you again. And please take monthly pregnancy tests, unfortunately, a side effect of this method while being on the safer side, is that you could be pregnant anyway, it’s a very small percentage, but it could happen. If you want to have kids again just come by and schedule something directly with the OBGYN ward.”

Gigi left the room, hearing the happy giggles from the woman she just left behind, feeling a little bit of lightness on her.

Her mood got even better when she got news that the treatment worked, even when the FDA was sceptical about the side effects in a particular study group. What mattered was that it worked, and they could get the drug just in time before it was either sold for an exorbitant fee or pulled it out from the market all together.

After nightfall, House was surprised to see Cameron still in the office. Her coat all but ditched and working in her laptop.

“They all gone?”

“Hartigs are checking out right now.”

“You look tired.”

“I can say the same thing.”

“No wonder. We both had a hard time the last couple of days.”

While Cameron picked up her laptop, her wallet, and her pager inside her red backpack, House just stared at her, in a way that Cameron could feel even with her back turned against her boss.

“Anyone who’s that awkward, either has too much experience with death or too much. I’m pretty sure it’s not the former. Chase told me-”

“Of course he did.”

A smile, and a scoff. “Chase told me.” House doubled down. “About that idea of the parents holding their baby. That was smart. Risky, but smart.”

That made Cameron pause a little bit. Praise from her was usually either underhanded or rare, so she braced a little bit for the impact that would sure to follow.

“Did you lose someone?”

“Everyone lost somebody.” She shot back.

“You lost a baby?” And how much she hated when House was digging for answers, like some kind of bird of prey digging her talons in some rot infested wound.

And with that, her mouth worked faster than her brain, and finally turned around and looked at House. 

“Like you almost did?”

Neither had something else to say at the moment, the stare off broken by Cameron, turning around and going away, an angry cloud around her mood. And House? She just sipped her coffee, finding it lukewarm, thinking that at least Cameron had the fang needed to be here.

A little bit later, House was found in one of the many chairs in the hallway that connected the OBGYN ward and the pediatrics wing. She was just sitting down, observing people coming and going, fidgeting with her cane, when a voice that she knew particularly well spoke next to her.

“I thought you would have gone home by now.”

Side eyeing Chase, with his outside jacket and a messenger bag over his shoulder, he looked pretty ready to get the hell out of there.

“I was hoping to catch a ride, but Cameron already left. What about you?”

“I’m in the haystack.”

“What are you talking about? Case’s over, let’s get home.”

“Then you must be as stupid as you are pretty. We still don’t know what caused this.”

“Isn’t that for Dr. Cuddy to figure out?”

Now she was getting pissed.

“In theory. But enteroviruses are spread by humans, they rarely find themselves in the environment at long term unless someone is keeping up the spread. Could be a constant secretion, as I don’t think it could be fecal.”

And without waiting for an invitation, Chase sat down next to her, bag put down on the floor, joining in her people watching.

“What are we looking for?”

“Someone so virulent they keep polluting the environment with new germs more than twice a day.”

“Dr. Cuddy wouldn’t have noticed?”

“We have an ever revolving door of nurses in certain areas. Palliative care, oncology, ER and pediatrics. Due to the nature of the work, mostly. It’s unrealistic for her to just know. What I find weird is that the babies didn’t share any common personnel.”

Chase didn’t have anything else to add, just kept an ear and an eye open for someone who was actively sick and working in this area. It was common sense to wear some kind of face protection around patients when feeling under the weather, and if someone feels ill enough, they won’t be at all around newborns, or at least, that was Chase’s logic. Yet he kept her company because she looked plenty stressed even after everything was said and done.

Not even five minutes passed before they heard it.

Cough. A very wet cough.

Both moved their heads at the same time, watching an elderly nurse push a tiny moving cart full of teddy bears. Chase didn’t even process that House stood up in one quick movement, as he was trying very hard to not scream at seeing the woman around bloody newborns while coughing out a storm in her hands, which then she used to touch the cart, the bears and even wipe her nose.

The australian snapped out of his own head at hearing House’s cane make quick, thumping sounds against the floor, almost like a mockery of running, then he had to stand up and get closer quickly, because he had never seen such genuine hatred in House’s deep, icy eyes.

The nurse didn’t even move, but she froze, and then Dr. Georgina House threw aside her metal cane, which made such a scandalous clashing sound against the floor, the weight of it and the strength of her boss making everyone freeze up in the hallway.

And then she used both hands to grab the nurse by the hair.

Her yells could be heard outside.

And Chase?

Chase only went to grab the cane.