November 7 - Early

[eric_foreman]

The lights were off in the doctor's lounge. Foreman sat on the couch, a frown etched on his face, his hands clenched together. Light was starting to come in the window. He had no idea how long he'd been sitting here. It hadn't been worth the bother of flicking a light switch, or even moving. If he moved, he'd want to lash out. Punch a wall. As if he could solve anything with a melodramatic gesture.

His stomach churned with hunger cramps. His eyelids gritted every time he blinked. The headache he'd gotten yesterday hadn't disappeared, even though he'd swallowed four aspirin. Pain radiated in sharp pangs up both sides of his neck and throbbed around his eye orbits.

Casey had polio.

He still couldn't believe it. His thoughts kept circling back, and every single time he'd run up against a brick wall. Polio. It was fucking impossible, but the test results were there. Brennan had run them, and that alone should be enough of a tip-off that something was wrong...Foreman snorted. Like him. He'd been wrong. No matter how much he didn't want it to be true, it was there in black and white. Brennan might lie but the test didn't. And treating the girl with vitamin C, for fuck's sake. When she'd looked up, astonished, to tell them that her legs hurt--

He'd never felt smaller in his life. Useless. Moron. The insults followed on the heels of every thought. Thought he was so fucking amazing, only to have his face rubbed in the truth. Cuddy should fire him. The new fellows had figured out what he couldn't. Despite him.

He'd apologized. The words had stuck, heavy and hurtful, in his throat, but he'd done it. He'd said to Amber yesterday--yelled, maybe--that he was willing to admit it when he was wrong. And he had; he had that much pride, to acknowledge when he'd screwed up. But they didn't care about that, and why should they? Why should any of them listen to him, when he'd been holding back the diagnosis by cutting Brennan off the case?

Everything he'd prided himself on had been punctured. He'd swallowed down his denials and let them get on with whatever the hell they needed to do. If House came back, he'd reward them. He might not be able to get rid of Foreman, but he'd managed what he wanted to do last week--humiliate him into leaving. Foreman hadn't been miserable because he'd had Amber, but now, he knew, he wouldn't have her either. She'd doubted him, and she'd been right to doubt him. Why the hell should she apologize for going behind his back, when clearly they'd needed to do that just to solve the fucking case?

The thought of telling her that--of admitting it--he couldn't manage that. Not yet. He'd crawl home and lick his wounds in private. All of last week's happiness, and the frustration too, it was over. If he'd lost Amber's respect, if he'd lost her, it was his own damn fault. There was nothing he could do.

He didn't look up when the lounge door opened. What was the fucking point? He wasn't needed. Whoever it was could ignore him and leave him the fuck alone.

"Hey."

Chase. Foreman glanced over his shoulder at him and didn't say anything.

"Whoa. Problems?" Chase grinned. If he said one word about Amber, Foreman was going to show him just how much harder than House he could punch. "I heard about your patient. Polio!" He whistled for emphasis.

Foreman shrugged, locking out any reaction. "I got everything wrong," he said. And, even though five seconds ago he would have loved to smash Chase's face in for mentioning Amber, he said it anyway. "Amber went behind my back to treat her."

Chase shrugged, like he didn't see the problem either. Christ, why did Foreman tell him anything? "While you were screwing up? She did what she thought was right," Chase said. "Would you really rather she follow everything you say? You don't want a robot for a girlfriend."

No fucking help at all. Foreman retreated back into stony silence, turning away from Chase.

"Anyway, you can't have gotten everything wrong," Chase said, shrugging. "You're not that bad." He clapped Foreman on the shoulder and disappeared into the locker room.

Foreman snorted to himself. It had looked like heat stroke. Even House had thought it was a boring case--he wouldn't have left if he'd had the least interest in it. Anger tightened Foreman's shoulders, until his fists were clenched again. Everything in him said polio was impossible. There was no logical reason why vitamin C should cure it. And if Casey's blood samples from when she was admitted were still available--shit. Shit. Foreman pushed to his feet, ignoring the stiffness in his body from sitting so long. He might still be wrong. But he had to know. He had to check.

He headed for the lab with Chase's words still echoing in his head. She did what she thought was right. Amber had said the same. But what neither of them understood was that being right wasn't enough. If you were right, you had to prove it. You had to have a chance to prove it, instead of having everything you were trying to do screwed up by one false step. What was best for the patient--what was best for her was the truth, now. And what was best for her then was not for her doctors to be playing games with her treatment. He still couldn't forgive Amber for what she'd done, but if she was wrong now--fuck. Fuck. He didn't know why he was still thinking about her when they'd already had this argument. More than once. It was impossible, it couldn't be solved.

But he still cared about her. And he wanted her to get what she wanted. It couldn't be at his expense; he'd already fucked up everything for himself. There was nothing Amber could do to hurt him anymore. But he could still help her. Maybe--or maybe this would just give her one more chance to laugh in his face, to tell him he was playing the martyr.

Foreman turned into the lab and went straight to the fridge, checking first that they had a vial of Casey's blood from her initial blood tests. It was there. It was one test. Once he knew he could say anything he damn well wanted. He pulled on a pair of gloves and started working.

When he sat back, the assay results in front of him on the computer screen, he felt numb. He tapped the print button and stripped off his gloves, still unable to take his eyes away from the screen.

He was an idiot. He knew it. But he took out his phone and texted Amber anyway--Path lab. Something to show you.

Comments

[eric_foreman]

Amber was out of the patient’s room like a shot, striding quickly until she’d overtaken Foreman. He had to lengthen his stride to keep up with the tap of her heels as she made her way around patients and porters’ carts. Foreman found himself grinning and then calling himself an idiot for it. The fight lay between them, all the battlelines drawn, and just because they’d called a ceasefire didn’t mean that he might not end up losing the war. Amber might demand that he forgive her. Not by asking him directly, but by assuming that he’d accepted what she’d done. So he’d spilled his guts and admitted he didn’t truly believe he belonged here; that didn’t mean she’d listened, or that she’d respect what he’d said. Did it even register with her that the way she’d broken his trust was, in his mind anyway, completely separate from the medical issue? What she did as House’s candidate, he didn’t care about: they’d resolved that one early on, when he’d realized he couldn’t rein her in when it came to her schemes. Okay, he’d accepted that. But going behind his back was still a problem for him. What if it wasn’t just about the medicine? What if it was expedient some day for her to stab him in the back on a personal level?

Still, he liked the idea of taking the rest of the day off, as unrealistic as it sounded. Foreman nodded, though, at the mention of paperwork. He’d have to report Brennan to Cuddy before she had an unexpected lawsuit on her hands, and how they were going to explain the situation to Casey and her father was probably something best left in her hands. At this point, they didn’t know--they thought there was some kind of polio miracle still at work--and Foreman grabbed on to Amber’s imperious invitation like a stranded swimmer grabbing a life raft. House had hired the guy; he could face Cuddy’s wrath if she needed to spread it around. “Sounds good,” he said, unable to completely repress a smile as he glanced sideways at her. She looked fierce, like the first person to get in her way would be mown down, but Foreman suspected some of that was her own uncertainty. She’d been hesitant when he’d explained himself. Wary. She’d even thought it was over, without more from him except the fact that he’d turned her down for sex. Foreman was beginning to see a lot of her strength as a cover. Not that she wasn’t really strong, because she was. But that there was more to it, to her reasons, than he’d suspected at first. “Here, or Mickey’s?” he asked. The cafeteria would have the benefit of being transparent: nothing going on, nothing to see, just coffee. But Mickey’s wasn’t far away, they both had their pagers, and Foreman wanted the chance to touch her--even if it was just to hold her hand across a linoleum-topped table.

[amber_v]

They'd made a near-full circuit of the floor. While they could avoid the Diagnostics department by turning around and walking back the way they'd just come, circling infinitely, Amber was ready to face the screwballs and work. They'd be going out later anyway; they could do all the talking they'd like then. For now, she'd fill in those papers and let her mind wander, processing their latest conversation and what it all meant. She may not have resisted giving Eric another chance, but what did it mean? Amber felt whammed by a ton-heavy hammer, hit by all her frustrations and distrust and the nascent hope she couldn’t keep back despite all the warning signs.

Amber halted before the corridor turned again, giving them a pause to talk before reaching the department's glass walls. "Mickey's," she started—hardly glamorous, but they didn’t need the shine and glitter of Ma Cabane to discuss their nitty-gritty problems-- then stopped as she took in Eric's expression, pleased like he'd just won an academic award. "What?" she asked, voice peeved and curious but a half-grin tugging at her mouth anyway. What was it about Eric that he could make her make her smile simply by doing the same himself? “You’re ridiculous sometimes, you know that, right?” But it was nice. If he was this glad with the mere prospect of maybe being with her a bit longer—grin now a full-fledged smile, Amber shook her head like she was facing a hopeless, hopeless case. Maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt more often. For all the times that she’d lost faith in him, he’d come through for her. Could he really like her that much? No one else had bothered putting up with all her demands and conditions.

[eric_foreman]

It really didn't seem like it'd be good for him for Foreman to admit what he'd been thinking about Amber's defence mechanisms--or how good she looked when she was hiding behind them. He chuckled lightly. "I'm looking forward to it." If they hadn't been five steps away from Diagnostics, he would've taken her hand again, taken comfort that he could. It wasn't over. Not if Amber was dissolving into a smile when she'd been angry so recently. And calling him ridiculous--he nearly laughed out loud. "Me?" he started, but he really would look ridiculous if he started that argument here. He shook his head, sending her a mock-threatening glance. He'd have another chance to prove who, exactly, was ridiculous, later on.

For now, they were stuck with paperwork. Thank Christ House had made himself scarce. Probably avoiding any fallout from the Brennan situation, or any new cases, or any clinic hours he'd racked up. Probably, Foreman thought, all of the above. But it meant that he could use House's office. The other candidates were in the conference room, Thirteen and Cole looking over Casey's file while it seemed like Kutner was reenacting Brennan's fall from glory and dismissal, with a lot more explosions and dropped jaws than there had been in the original story.

"I'll see you after," Foreman told Amber, and then went into House's office. She could follow behind him, or wait, whatever suited her purposes best. Foreman wasn't going to make a big deal out of it at this point. He called Cuddy and told her what had happened. "We're going to need to know what you want us to tell the Alfonsos before we discharge Casey," he said. He could all but hear her eyeroll over the phone, but since it was mostly directed at House for disappearing for two days and allowing this to happen, he wasn't too worried. He'd done what he needed to: caught Brennan's idiocy, and made sure he was fired. Cuddy's hospital was safe from lawsuits again, so he was doing his job.

She kept him on the phone longer, though, going over the whole of Casey's stay, making sure they hadn't missed anything. Foreman justified his decisions to her easily, although they looked stupid in hindsight. He tried to be discreet about glancing through the glass to see how Amber would handle the others, and hoping she'd be done soon so that he could get Cuddy off the phone and get out of here.

[amber_v]

Seriously, how silly could you get? It was just coffee that'd probably be fifty kinds of awkward with a ninety percent chance of ending in a fight. Very, very silly. But Eric sure did have a beautiful smile. It shone through even his fake sternness. "Yes, you!" Amber raised her hand to whap his arm and maybe do something a bit more tender, but stopped halfway; she couldn't touch him on hospital grounds. She segued the aborted playful smack with running her fingers through her hair. "I'm always wise and right, you know that."

Though Amber's high spirits sank as she went through the doorway, her steps quickened and her posture became taller, more rigid. Damn if she'd show the others sign of weakness. It'd be like throwing a bloody carcass into a tank of starving sharks. As she swept in, she scanned the rooms for House: gone. She could look forward to his teasing later, then. Her abdomen clenched in anticipation, her pulse beat just a bit faster. "Yeah," Amber said to Eric, not glancing back at him as she went into the conference room.

"And he was like, Screw you! and I think he would’ve hit House--" Kutner stopped, his hands in the air. "Heeeeey, you're back. Make up with Eric?"

Of all the times to follow House's example. "None of your business," Amber replied, sitting down and scooting the chair closer to the table.

"It kind of is," Taub said. "Since his mood affects us all."

Thirteen looked up sharply, glaring. "God, what does it matter? It's not as if they won't make up or fight again in five minutes." Burning heat overtook Amber. If she didn't interrupt Thirteen, it was only because she didn't even know what she was feeling. "Can we just do this? The sooner it's over, the sooner we can get out of here."

"I'm with her," Amber muttered. At least that much she agreed with. She wouldn’t tackle the rest of what Thirteen had said; her private life was already way too public. Together with Taub and Cole, they worked to complete the forms.