| |
Everybody Dies
by gena
Everybody Dies........
It started innocently enough, as these things usually do. Like Mrs. Lincoln asking Abe "You want to catch that new play tonight?" or the captain of the Titanic noting it was a little chilly, things have a way of getting out of control. So when Dr. Gregory House stood at the whiteboard in the Diagnostic Medicine Department that sunny day he had no idea things were about to take a turn for the worse.
".....a lateral supposition of the hypothalamus which, of course, caused a complete nuclear anal implosion," he was saying. Two of his minions were busy concurring with his brilliant diagnosis of their current case.
"Are you whacked out of your drug addled mind?" Dr. Eric Foreman demanded.
"But she can't have that!" Cameron countered, "It would mean she had cheated on her income tax and kicked a puppy! She would never do that, she's a good person."
"She's also dead." House, Foreman and Cameron all turned to look at Dr. Chase. He shrugged and threw himself into the nearest chair. "You done with the paper?" He asked, digging out a gnawed ink pen and going to work on the crossword puzzle.
"I just solved this complex case," House pointed out, "discovering she was a sheep rancher recently returned from Alberta where she bought a tainted snow cone at a craft fair from a man wearing a plaid hat infected with weevil feces. She can't be dead, we caught it in time. All she needs is a shot of Tylenol PM and she'll be fine."
Chase looked up, "What's a four letter word for no longer alive?"
"Dead." Cameron said.
"Yep, just like Mildred Foggbottom," Chase replied. And so it began. First patients with rare diseases began dying, then patients with mildly uncommon diseases, finally people with just plain boring stuff like hangnails began keeling over. Hospital Administrator Lisa Cuddy was the first to raise the alarm.
"OH MY GOD!" she shrieked. "What the hell is going on, House? I hired you to cure people and now we have," she checked a clipboard, "fifty-three dead, twenty-seven nearly dead and five who we told their families they were just resting but are mostly dead. Is this an epidemic?"
House, ensconced in his chair, cane twirling in one hand and yo-yo bouncing in the other, barely looked up. She could see the maniacal gleam in his electric blue eyes. "Have the dead patients had any contact with the patients in the clinic?"
Cuddy stared at him as if he'd gone insane, which she wondered from time to time. "Contact? You mean like gone on dates? Or maybe you think we're piling the bodies in empty exam rooms?" She filed that thought away for later. "Don't be an ass, House. The dead patients have remained locked in the cafeteria cold storage locker."
"What?"
"It's not as bad as it sounds," Cuddy assured. "We keep the dead people away from the food - well, most of it. I wouldn't order the veal if I was you."
"No wonder the clinic patients have started to croak,' House said. "It's spreading through the Jello." At Cuddy's blank look he explained. "As everyone knows Jello is jiggly-wiggly fun in a bowl but not many people know that when scientists run out of petrie for petrie dishes, they use Jello - usually green Jello but I've known some scientists to use Strawberry too. Jello has amazing communicable properties, everything sticks to it, everything can grow in it. The freezer fan is blowing lethal germs from the bodies, and they're landing on our supply of Jello which is spreading death through the lunch line. Which isn't that unusual, but not something we should encourage."
"No!" Cuddy wobbled on her seven inch heels, face a deathly shade of white, "I authorized free Jello to the clinic patients as a way of distracting them while we carried bodies to the cafeteria!"
"Jello is just the beginning, soon everything in the dessert case will be infected and after that it's just a matter of time before we all succumb. Now, we just have to figure out what this disease is and where it's come from," House said. "Have you seen Wilson?"
"Oh yeah, I passed him in the hall, he said he was heading down to grab a quick lunch."
House stared at her. "L-lunch? No," he said in an anguished whisper, "not lunch!" For a crippled man who had to rely on a cane for mobility and who knew what else, House could move incredibly fast. Once he got to the ground floor level he did have to slow because of all the bodies sprawled in the lobby. He spotted Brenda, deceased but still at her post. Sam, the guy who ran the snack stand was slumped over in the Snickers. House swiped a pack of Tic-Tacs and maneuvered through the carnage. He'd just stepped over a departed security guard and was turning into the hall leading to the cafeteria when he stopped, shocked. House limped back a couple of steps and toed the figure over onto its back. Foreman. He still had a spoon in his mouth and a snarl on his lips. House sighed, mentally reviewing the last batch of applicants he'd gotten and went off in search of his friend.
Inside the cafeteria things were quiet as the grave but the food smelled good. He made a quick circuit of the room, and found Mark Warner face down in a bowl of chicken noodle soup. "What's that? Did you say something Markie?" House grabbed Warner by the hair and lifted, dripping soup and with a noodle stuck to his cheek, House figured Mark wouldn't look as appealing to Stacy as he once had. "You just stay here and enjoy your soup, old chum." He patted the un-noodled cheek, "No, I won't gloat, honestly." Though if there had been anyone still living there in the cafeteria they would have probably attested he said this in a gloating tone. "Stacy's married to a dead guy," he mocked, dropping Mark's head back in the soup and making his way slowly out of the room. Thankfully Wilson hadn't been among the deceased, but a new worry sprang to mind - maybe Wilson was out on the patio where he often had lunch when it was nice.
House pushed open the door and stopped in his tracks, the sight so disturbing that even a doctor as hardened to hideous gore the way he was (those video games had a lot to answer for) had to look away. Chase and Cameron were dead. Both of them completely and utterly lifeless. It was awful, and House felt the first stirrings of nausea in his bowels - but it could have been caused by the cold pizza he'd had for breakfast - whatever the cause, he had to lean over and hurl into the bushes. Once he'd finished House forced himself to look at the bodies, breathing shallowly from his mouth. On closer inspection it was even worse than he'd thought. Chase lay on his back across a table, blue eyes open and the residual of horror still lingered within them. Cameron lay across him, her teeth fastened to his lower lip like an Airedale with a Frisbee. The fierce hunger in her face - not to mention the green Jello oozing between their mouths made him woozy. House turned away quickly.
He hesitated at the door, afraid of what he would find but knowing he could not live with himself if he didn't try to find Wilson. If nothing else he owed it to his only friend to give him a decent burial - of course, knowing Wilson there would be lines of attractive women weeping and wailing over his carcass and a story on 20/20 about the handsome young oncologist cut down in the prime of life. Damn! Still, he did owe him. Speaking of owning - if Wilson was dead he wouldn't have to pay back that last ten grand he'd borrowed - no, he couldn't think like that. Squaring his shoulders, House ventured back into the fray. He circled the dead pool otherwise known as the Clinic, but as he was passing it, heard a thump come from Cuddy's office.
Normally the sound of something heavy falling in her office signaled she was breaking in a new male secretary or that J-Date had pissed her off and she'd knocked the computer off her desk. Bookkeeping had budgeted over $15,000 for "administrative office supplies" for replacement computers and hush money. But with the state of things at the moment House decided to risk it and peek inside her sanctum sanctorum. Cuddy, too, had bitten it. Literally. She had a banana in her mouth and a look of shock on her face. House took a silent moment closing her eyes and opening her blouse to expose her lacy FOH bra. She would have wanted to be remembered that way. "Stop, you pervert!" House whirled around at the sound of Stacy's voice.
"Stacy, it's me!"
"I know! You've just been waiting for a chance to get your paws on those breasts," she accused. Standing in the doorway, arms cross and brows arched, she reminded House of a - scary frozen thing. Yeah, James Arness in that old Thing movie.
"I've had my paws on those breast before," he countered. "I've had lots of body parts on those breasts." Stacy looked mildly horrified by that, but only mildly because her expression never really chanced. "Cuddy is dead."
"Dead? You are a pervert."
"I was just checking for a pulse."
"O-kay."
"Have you seen Wilson?" He asked, edging around the desk and towards the door.
"Earlier. He was so busy, we were suppose to have lunch together but he couldn't. He had one of his staff send lunch up to him," Stacy said with a - expression on her face. "Poor, James, he wasn't looking well." Her words sent a chill through House.
He met her gaze - was that a hint of triumph in the set of her brow or just too much botox? Spying an untouched apple on Cuddy desk he asked, "Did you get lunch?" He left her going through Cuddy's drawers - and she called him a pervert - and munching on her apple. He heard another thump when he reached the elevators followed by a sound very much like frozen flesh shattering. He punched the button for the 4th floor and got off with a sense of dread - and Wilson's name on his lips. When the elevator doors opened, House limped towards the oncology department. Anonymous people littered the hallway like extras cast aside in some TV drama, forcing House to weave like a drunken sailor - so he took the opportunity to hum a few bars of a song he'd learned at his father's knee, one about Ginger haired sailors. He'd always wondered why that song made his father teary but never had the nerve to ask.
House burst through the door to Wilson's office just in time to see his best friend scoop the last spoonful of green Jello out of the bowl and into his mouth. "No!" House cried and launched himself at Wilson. He fell over with a muffled curse, pulled himself to his feet and hurried to Wilson's side. Already his best friend had a sickly green cast to his skin, his brown eyes looked glassy and he seemed to be having trouble focusing.
"House? What's wrong?" House wiped a tear from his eye and pulled Wilson into an embrace. "Why am I so cold?"
"I left the window open," House lied, trying to postpone the inevitable. "You'll warm up soon."
Wilson blinked, his dark mahogany eyes fixed on House, a small smile formed on his lips. "I want to tell you something."
"No, save your breath," House whispered brokenly, "I know." He leaned in, kissing Wilson deeply, putting his whole heart into the first and last kiss he would share with the only person he had ever truly loved. When he broke the kiss, he smiled tenderly into Wilson's eyes and brushed back a stray lock of walnut colored hair. Wilson seemed to be trying to say something, his voice weak, rasping in his throat. House leaned in.
"Pervert." ~choke~ gasp~ thunk~. Wilson died.
"Shit," House muttered and dropped him back onto his desk. Silence spread throughout the hospital, an endless echoing expanse of alliterated silence that surrounded House like a straightjacket. He couldn't break free of the horror. They were all dead. Everyone. People he disliked (most of them), people he tolerated (Cuddy), people he found mildly amusing (Cameron, Foreman and Chase), people he loathed (Mark and Stacy) and people he loved (Wilson, up until that pervert remark). Alone, and hungry House did the only thing he could - he went home and ordered a pizza.
Please post a comment on this story.
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.
|
|
|