Chapter 18: The Stick
The hum of the elevator felt louder than usual, a mechanical drone matching the vibration in House’s leg. He’d taken a Vicodin twenty minutes ago, but the familiar haze was slow to curtain the sharp edges of the day. The image of Cameron’s stricken face, the red marker circling ‘soil exposure,’ it all churned in a way that annoyed him. Sentiment was a diagnostic error.
The doors slid open on the surgical floor. Quieter here. The air smelled of iodine and repressed anxiety. He turned left, his cane tapping a staccato rhythm on the polished floor towards Y/n’s private room.
He heard the quick, light footsteps behind him before she spoke. He didn’t slow down.
“My opinions shouldn’t be rejected just because people don’t like me,” Cameron’s voice came, tight and clear from a few yards back.
House stopped. He didn’t turn. He stared at the exit sign at the end of the hall, a dull red beacon. He let out a short, breathy laugh. “They like you. Everyone likes you. You’re like a golden retriever with a medical degree. It’s nauseating.”
He resumed walking. Her footsteps followed, closer now.
“Does Y/n?”
That made him pause again, his hand tightening on the cane’s grip. He half-turned, looking at her over his shoulder. She stood her ground, arms crossed, but her eyes were wide, searching. She looked exhausted. “What?”
“Does Y/n like me?” Cameron repeated, the question hanging in the sterile air between them.
House fully turned now, leaning his weight on the cane. He studied her. The perfect curls were deflated, the compassion in her eyes hardened into something more desperate. This wasn’t about medical opinions anymore. This was a biopsy of something personal, and she was handing him the scalpel. “I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth. His sister was a vault. “She hasn’t filed a formal complaint. That’s her version of a love song.”
Cameron took a step forward, then another, closing the distance until she was within arm’s reach. The hallway was empty, just the distant beep of a monitor and the rumble of a laundry cart from a service elevator. She looked up at him, and for a second, the doctor was entirely gone. It was just a woman, stripped raw.
“Do you?” she asked, her voice dropping to a soft, almost dangerous register. “Do you like me?”
The question was so absurd, so utterly irrelevant to the cosmos of his thinking, that he just stared. He saw the challenge in it, but beneath that, a genuine, pathetic need for an answer. The charity case seeking validation from the benefactor’s cruel brother. The clock on the wall ticked. One second. Two. A nurse hurried past, not glancing at them.
“No,” House said. The word was flat, factual, devoid of malice only because malice would have implied he cared enough to summon it.
Cameron’s face didn’t crumple. It solidified. A slight, sarcastic shake of her head, a bitter twist of her lips. She nodded, as if he’d just confirmed the diagnosis of a terminal condition. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe I should just quit.”
“Maybe you should,” he replied, his tone matching hers. A simple agreement. A logical conclusion.
She held his gaze for one more second, a final, silent transmission of something he couldn’t and wouldn’t decode. Then she turned on her heel and walked away. Her steps were quick, deliberate, echoing down the linoleum corridor until she disappeared around the corner towards the bank of elevators.
House stood there, listening to the silence she left behind. His leg throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The Vicodin was finally kicking in, softening the world at the edges. He turned back toward Y/n’s room, pushing the door open without knocking.
The room was dim, lit only by the gray afternoon light filtering through the blinds. Y/n was awake, propped up, staring at the muted television where a cartoon cat was chasing a cartoon mouse in silent, violent loops. She didn’t look at him.
“Heard voices,” she said, her own voice raspy from disuse.
“Cameron,” House grunted, lowering himself into the visitor’s chair with a grimace. He tossed his cane so it clattered against the bedside table.
“Arguing?”
“Communicating. It’s uglier.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “She might quit.”
Y/n was silent for a long moment. On screen, the cat slammed into a wall. “Because of you?”
“Because of her. I just handed her the mirror.” He looked at his sister. The pallor of her skin, the dark circles under her eyes. A different kind of puzzle. “Do you like her?”
Y/n finally turned her head on the pillow, fixing him with a look that was so like his own it was unsettling. “What’s it to you?”
“Curiosity. A doctor’s first and fatal flaw.”
She watched the silent cartoon again. “She doesn’t blink. Most people, when they look at this,” she gestured weakly at the hospital bed, the IV line, “they blink. They have to look away for a second. She doesn’t. She just… sees.” Y/n shifted, wincing. “It’s uncomfortable.”
House digested this. He pulled the bottle of Vicodin from his pocket, tapped out a pill. “She asked if I liked her.”
A ghost of a smile touched Y/n’s lips. “And you told her the truth.”
“Of course.”
“Idiot.” She closed her eyes. “She’s the best one you’ve got.”
“She’s a liability.”
“She’s the conscience you threw in the dumpster ten years ago.” Y/n’s voice was fading, heavy with pain meds.
House sits back in the chair as the both of them watch the show on the muted tv.