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Thicker Than Water, Chapter Five
by ParisWriter
Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has been reading and reviewing the story so far. You guys make the work worthwhile.
The usual, standard disclaimers apply. House isn't mine, yadda yadda... You get it by now, right?
Chapter Five
House could hear laughter as he approached Rachel's room in the ICU. As he rounded the doorway, he found her sitting up in bed, talking to Wilson. Their eyes moved to him and they both suppressed another laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing," she replied in a strained voice before a small chuckle escaped her.
"I was just telling your daughter some stories about your many misadventures here at the hospital," Wilson informed him as he stood and placed his chair back in its original position in the corner of the room.
"I'll talk to you later, Rachel," he told her as he scooted past House making his escape.
"Later, James!"
House watched Wilson leave, before turning back to his daughter to find her grinning at him.
"How long has he been divorced?" she asked once Wilson was out of earshot.
"How do you know he's divorced?" House questioned her.
"One, you pretty much just told me by asking that question," she pointed out with another small laugh. "Two, he has a nervous habit of twisting his wedding ring around on his finger - only he wasn't wearing a wedding ring. He kept grabbing for an empty ring finger on his left hand throughout our entire conversation. Now, that usually means one of two things. He's obviously not a widower, though; because if he was he'd probably still be talking about his wife to everyone he met. So I ask you again... How long has he been divorced?"
"Almost four months," House told her, marveling at her attention to detail. "Why?"
"Just curious," Rachel answered with a shrug.
"By the way, where's mom? You didn't kill her and stuff her body in a trunk somewhere, did you?"
"Do you really think an old cripple like me could take her on?"
"I suppose you could probably beat her to death with your cane," she suggested. An uncomfortable silence passed between them before she cleared her throat to speak again.
"I've been meaning to ask you about that, actually."
"It was an infarction."
"How long ago?"
"Six years."
"I really wish I could have been here to help you get through that," she told him sincerely. "It must have been a difficult adjustment to make."
"What would you have been able to do?"
"A lot," Miriam's voice replied from the doorway. "Rachel's a grief counselor."
Rachel's demeanor brightened considerably at the sight of her mother, a wide grin spreading across her face and bringing a sparkle to her eyes.
"Hey Mom!" she greeted her.
Miriam rushed to her daughter's side and gave her a hug, then kissed the top of her head. House shifted his weight on his feet as he watched them. The pure love that passed between them made him feel uncomfortable being in the same room, and it also gave him a certain nagging feeling he would much sooner forget about.
"Her HIV test is back," Chase announced as he entered the room, putting an abrupt end to the love-fest.
"HIV test?" Rachel asked, looking from her father to the doctor who had just entered. She spent a moment taking him in - sun-bleached hair, blue-green eyes, full lips... this was what she would call `drop-dead gorgeous.'
"We ran the test in order to rule out AIDS as the cause of your kidney failure," he explained to her, his voice thick with an Australian accent.
"Kidney failure?" she exclaimed, turning her eyes back to her father.
"No one told you your condition?" House asked as he turned an accusatory glare on Chase.
"She only just woke up, and I've been in the lab all this time," Chase informed him.
"Why didn't Wilson tell her?" House wondered aloud before turning his attention back to Rachel.
"Your kidneys are failing. You are likely going to die from it unless we can figure out what caused the damage."
"Gee, you're real sympathetic about breaking the bad news to people," Rachel observed. She stared at him for a moment with a vague look of disgust on her face before turning to her mother.
"Why did you make me come here?" she whispered angrily.
"The good news," Chase interjected, "is that the HIV test was negative."
"So?" Rachel said. "It could always be a false negative."
"That's highly unlikely," Chase assured her.
"If you had AIDS and it was advanced enough to start causing organ failure, there wouldn't be a false negative," House explained.
"So what's causing the kidney failure then?" she asked, ignoring her father and directing the question to the other doctor.
Chase shrugged and looked to House for an answer. Rachel sighed heavily before repeating her question to her father.
"What's causing it?"
House stared at her for a moment, grinding his jaw. His patience was starting to run thin, but she was a patient and he was a doctor. It was his duty to treat her just like any other patient, even if she was his daughter.
"I need to speak to Rachel alone," he announced. "Doctor Chase, will you please escort her mother to the waiting room?"
Rachel and House continued to stare each other down as Miriam stood from her perch on Rachel's bed and followed Chase out of the room. When the door closed, House moved around to the side of the bed and sat in the chair Wilson had been occupying when he first arrived.
"I'm sorry," Rachel apologized. "I know I'm being a bitch, but I don't like it when people keep things from me."
"No one's keeping anything from you," House pointed out as he shifted his position in the chair, pulling his jacket out from under him.
"No one bothered to tell me what was wrong with me," she pointed out.
"I apologize for that," House grudgingly stated. "You're the patient; you have a right to know what's going on."
"And a right to not be the last to know about it."
House nodded in agreement, reaching into his pocket to retrieve his bottle of Vicodin. Without even thinking about it, he popped the lid open and dumped one of the pills into his hand, then tossed it into his mouth and swallowed.
"I recognize those," Rachel told him, pointing to the bottle as he replaced the lid.
"Your mom told me you've been on a lot of different pain meds recently," he informed her.
She nodded. "They started me off with Percocet, but I couldn't keep it down. So they switched me to Vicodin."
"What about the Neurontin?" House asked, turning his head to look at her. "How long have you been taking those?"
"I took it once," she replied. "It made me feel like a zombie. All I wanted to do was sleep, and I hated it."
House sighed and reached up to massage his brow and he continued questioning her.
"Your mom also said you've been taking over-the-counter pain pills."
"Yeah."
"I need to know exactly what you were taking."
"Excederin Migraine... Two pills, usually twice a day."
House said nothing. He simply nodded and stood from his chair, then made his way toward the door.
"Are you hungry?" he asked as he reached for the door handle.
"A little," Rachel told him with a shrug.
"I'll send someone with some food," he said before opening the door and stepping out into the hallway.
Chase was standing outside the room waiting for him. He had been joined by Cameron and Foreman. Cameron took in House's appearance and sighed softly at how much this case seemed to be affecting him. She knew that, whether or not he wanted to admit it, he was bothered by the fact that his daughter was dying.
"How is she?" Foreman asked.
House shook his head before replying.
"She took too many pain pills and now her kidneys are dying," he told them as he continued walking. "She did this too herself."
"I'm sure she didn't know--" Cameron started, but House cut her off.
"She's an idiot. Like most idiots, she didn't bother to read the warnings or the recommended dosage on the over-the-counter pain pills she bought at her local mega-mart."
"Maybe her kidneys were already trashed before she took the pills?" Chase suggested. "Kidney failure does lead to headaches."
"The headaches would have been caused by the high blood pressure from her kidneys not working properly," Foreman reminded him.
"So?" Chase asked.
"So," Cameron replied, "her BP has always been normal at her previous checkups. If anything, it's been a little on the low side."
"The pills caused the kidney failure," House repeated. "The question is: what caused the headaches that made her take the pills that caused the kidney failure?"
"Don't we have a more pressing issue here?" Cameron wondered. House stopped walking and turned around to look at them.
"Get her started on dialysis and make a call to the transplant committee," he ordered, his voice quiet and solemn. "And somebody tell her what's going on before talking to her mother about this."
He turned around and started walking away from them again, this time heading toward the elevator banks.
"Where are you going?" Foreman called after him.
"I need to talk to Wilson about something," he replied as he stepped into the lift that had just stopped on their floor.
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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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