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Thicker Than Water, Chapter Four
by ParisWriter
Author's Note: Thanks again go out to my wonderful beta-readers.
Chapter Four
Rachel wasn't sure what was happening to her, all she knew was that she had been having severe headaches for just over two months. She had been to three doctors and received three different types of drugs that were supposed to either relieve the pain or prevent the headaches from happening altogether. Sometimes they would work for a bit, at first, but then they'd suddenly stop working - as though they had lost their potency overnight.
When she finally reached the end of her rope, her mother suggested going to see a doctor who was widely known, able to diagnose and treat patients with illnesses no one could decipher. Rachel had jumped at the chance to see this doctor, and was only slightly fazed when her mother said that the doctor in question was none other than Gregory House, her biological father.
Rachel hadn't seen the man since she was five years old, and she barely remembered him. Her mother remarried when she was eight, and as far as she was concerned her step-father - though she called him Joe - would always be the only father she had known. The fact that her mother would even think to suggest she go see her real father for his medical advice stunned her, mainly because her mother never talked about her father or their past life before moving to Arizona.
Apparently, her mother's suggestion wasn't just surprising to her, when she had finally come face-to-face with her father again after almost twenty years; he hadn't recognized her at first. Then, when he saw the name, things finally fell into place. They were arguing before they even had a chance to get off to a good start, she was beginning to rethink her decision to follow her mother's advice.
So now she was waking up in a completely different room...alone. She looked around to find herself hooked up to several different machines; one of them was monitoring her heart rate while another was taking an occasional reading of her blood pressure. The beeping of the IV machine had been what woke her up.
With a groan she searched the bed with one hand until she found the patient call button. Once her hand wrapped around it, she pressed the button and waited. Nothing happened, so she pushed it again... and again.
"You know, it only goes off the first time you push it," came a voice from the doorway to her room. "Every subsequent time doesn't matter. Sort of like pushing an elevator button won't make it come any faster."
"What can I say, I'm impatient."
She turned her head to look at the man she was talking to; she knew it wasn't her father because his voice was different - less gruff, more cheerful. The man it belonged to was tall and professional-looking; his brown hair just fell into his eyes as he looked down at her with a smile... definitely not her father.
"Who are you?" she asked him, her tone a bit more cranky than she would have liked.
"I'm Doctor Wilson," he told her as he worked on changing her IV. "You can call me Wilson, or James, or Jimmy."
"Why so informal?" she wondered as she took him in some more. The drugs were starting to wear off to the point where she was beginning to feel her normal self again, she was becoming fully aware of her surroundings. He was older than her, maybe about ten years or so. He wasn't exactly what you'd call `drop-dead gorgeous,' but he was still boyishly handsome in a way.
"I'm the head of the oncology department," Wilson explained. "And I'm a friend of your father."
"My father actually has friends?"
Wilson chuckled a bit at her outburst. "One or two, actually"
"Where is he, anyway?"
He paused for a moment, looking furtively out into the hall as he finished hanging the new IV bag by her bed.
"He's talking to your mother," he stated simply as he pulled a chair over to her bedside and sat down.
"Talking?" Rachel asked. "You mean they're not trying to rip each other apart like rabid hyenas?"
"They seemed pretty calm when I left them to check on you," he assured her.
Rachel laughed a little. "What you witnessed, Doctor Wilson, was merely the calm before the storm."
"I doubt that..."
"You wanna put money on that assumption?" she asked him, smirking. Wilson looked at her self-satisfied smugness as she offered to make a bet with him and finally saw the family resemblance to House.
"You really are your father's daughter, you know."
Rachel shrugged, then slumped down into her bed some more with an audible sigh.
"My mom won't be much help," she informed Wilson. "I haven't really told her much about what's been going on."
"Trust me," Wilson assured her. "House will find something she's picked up on that you probably never even thought she'd notice."
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House sat behind his desk, staring stonily at the woman sitting across from him. Wilson had been the first person to run into her in the hallway as she was looking for his office, and had graciously escorted her to him. House was thankful that it had been Wilson who found her, if any of the others had found her first - particularly Cameron - he knew he would have been in for a vast Q and A session after she left. In Cameron's case, that would likely then be followed up with a lot of unnecessary hand-holding.
"You look good," he told her; finally breaking the silence that had stretched between them after Wilson had left them alone.
"Thank you," Miriam replied as she tucked some of her short blonde hair behind one of her ears.
She was just as old as him, and should have been sporting a few grey hairs, but her locks were the same golden hue he remembered them being when they first met. Her eyes were the same, too; a soft chocolate brown with thick girly lashes framing them. It was her eyes that had first drawn him to her when they met in their freshman year of college.
"She looks so much like you now. It's almost disturbing."
Miriam laughed. "Yes, well... She may have gotten my looks, but she definitely doesn't have my personality."
"Not anal retentive enough for you?" House asked bitterly. "I know how much you hate people who are too laid back."
"Greg," she said, the tone of her voice a warning to him not to push things any farther.
"Our daughter is sick. I came here to help, not argue with you about why things didn't work out between us."
House nodded and stood from his chair, then walked into the conference room to get some coffee. Miriam wordlessly got up and followed him, taking the cup he offered her.
"How bad is it?" she asked as she nervously stirred the contents, watching him fix his own cup of coffee.
"She has end-stage kidney disease," he told her without looking at her. He didn't need to see her face to know she would be upset by the news. When he finally did turn to face her, she was staring at nothing in particular, her mouth partly open in shock.
"Is she going to..."
"We can treat her, but at this advanced stage it's hard to say how long she'll survive."
"Is there a chance it might somehow reverse itself?" Miriam questioned him, her eyes full of hope.
"Sure," House answered. "There always a chance it could just spontaneously go into remission, just like there's a chance I might get a sex change and join up with Cirque du Soleil."
Miriam closed her mouth and turned away from him, sitting her coffee cup on the table as she began making her way toward the door.
"Wait," House called as he hobbled after her. "C'mon, I'm sorry okay?"
She stopped and turned to him, her mouth a thin angry line. "You can be a real bastard sometimes."
"Most of the time, actually," House corrected her. He couldn't help but think of a time when someone else had said almost exactly the same words to him.
"What can we do?"
House took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his mouth as he thought over their options.
"We don't have much time, but if we can figure out the cause of her kidney disease, there might be a chance that we can treat it."
Miriam nodded solemnly, squaring her shoulders as she looked back up at him.
"Just tell me what I can do to help, and I'll do it."
"I need you to tell me as much as you an about Rachel's recent medical history," House told her as he sat at one of the chairs surrounding the table. Miriam followed, sighing softly as she sat opposite him and picking up her cup of coffee.
"The headaches started about two months ago, right after her birthday."
"So, mid-October then?"
She looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup, a surprised smile on her face. "You remembered?"
"October 18th, 1979 and it was about three o'clock in the morning and--"
"And it was snowing," she finished for him. "You wanted to name her Snowflake."
"Drugs will make you say stupid things."
"Thank God one of us was sober enough to give her a normal name."
They shared a laugh over the memory of the day their daughter was born. It was already the beginning of the end for their marriage, with House out later and later each night - at parties, studying in the library, anywhere but at home. Being at home reminded him that his days of carefree youth were over. He had a wife and a child on the way, and neither of those things was conducive to the carefree lifestyle he wanted in his years at college.
"What was she given for the headaches?" he finally asked, remembering their original topic of conversation.
"Vicodin, Percocet," Miriam rattled off the names of the prescriptions Rachel had been given by her doctors. "She was taking some over-the-counter stuff, too."
"Like what?" House quizzed her, even more interested than before.
"I... don't know, for sure," she admitted. "Excederin Migraine, I think."
"How much was she taking and how often?" House's questions became more rapid as the tone of his voice became more demanding.
"She always took two at a time," Miriam replied, visibly flustered by his current state.
"She said she'd take them pretty much every morning when she got to work. I saw her take them a few times in the afternoon, too."
House groaned, closing his eyes as he leaned forward to rest his forehead on his cane.
"And she was taking the over-the-counter meds in addition to her prescriptions?"
"Yes. Well... Not both of them. The Percocet made her sick," she explained. "That was when the doctors switched her to Vicodin. They tried giving her something else, too... something to help prevent the headaches."
"What?"
"I... I don't remember. It started with an N. Neuro... turo... tonin or something like that."
"Neurontin?" he asked her.
"That's it."
"Neurontin is used almost exclusively for patients with epilepsy," House told her. "Was she having seizures, too?"
"No."
House stood suddenly and angrily strode toward the door.
"Greg?" Miriam called after him.
"I want to know the name of the quack who gave our daughter that medicine," he called over his shoulder.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of Fox Television, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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