Chapter Text
If someone were to tell me that hospitals cannot resemble a battlefield during wartime, I wouldn’t believe them. Not after what I had witnessed. The chaos of the epidemic, barely contained by orders and procedures that hospital staff and patients tried to follow, filled the air with fear, hopelessness, and the shadow of death. No one knew how it would end for them, so everyone did whatever they could to mitigate the consequences of the spreading disease - even if it meant causing more disorder by running or screaming, desperate for attention from medical staff and a chance to be cured. Doctors, nurses, and non-medical staff, including me, at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, had no choice but to endure and help every person they could. The meningitis epidemic, which started from a swimming pool in the area, was no joke and had to be dealt with quickly and precisely. I had worked at this hospital long enough to recognize real danger. I did everything I could to ensure that all patients, nurses, and doctors received the help they needed, whether it was urgently bringing paperwork or simply giving a thirsty patient a glass of water. Being a hard worker wasn’t easy - far from it.
But the epidemic had its good side too, no matter how weird it might sound. As a secretary working around a few different departments in the PPTH, I didn’t get to talk to doctors that often. I usually hung around with other secretaries and nurses, gossiping, being sometimes my only way to know a thing or two about doctors and higher staff. This time it was different. During the epidemic, even my plain and easily replaceable persona could feel like someone who doesn’t only look at personal details on paper and screen for hours a day. I felt needed, helpful even. I kept getting called by nurses and doctors several times, and it was a joy to help them on their own battlefields. Especially when one of them caused my belly to twist and legs to jiggle whenever I heard my name coming from his lips in a warm, melodic voice. To help or to just be around Dr. James Wilson, it was the greatest pleasure. I saw him a few times before when I had some work to do in the oncology department, but we barely exchanged any words with each other. Maybe I was a bit shy or intimidated, but it never struck me to ever talk to him besides what was necessary for the job. I was a mere secretary and him being a head of the oncology department, a highly regarded doctor... We had no topics to talk about anyway, as I thought many times, daydreaming about us together. Additionally, I knew the gossip about his falling apart marriage. It’s not them that had been discouraging me daily, but rather the fact that Dr. Wilson could have any other woman in the upper world. His inner and outer charm radiated from him, especially when a smile decorated his handsome face, like a sun on a warm summer day. I was nothing special compared to him - a simple secretary, a girl of few interests but otherwise blendable with the rest of society. I was alone with my little crush, infatuation, that I probably shouldn’t have been feeling in the first place.
The epidemic in the hospital gave me more opportunities than I deserved to talk to him. It was definitely more than I could handle by trying to hide my embarrassment, showing in flushed cheeks, a raised voice, and slightly trembling legs. I couldn't bear his sweet and dark, chocolate-like eyes looking at me, acknowledging my existence. Whenever he directed his gaze on me, a part of myself wanted to run and hide my warm face in my hands, just yell in the palms to relieve the tangling frustration. If only I could hold his face instead of mine in my palms...
Having a second for myself between one billing paper and another, I wanted to relive a moment from earlier today when Wilson winked at me, smiling so gorgeously, which made him the only person in the hospital's hall for a second. I laughed at his corny joke, and he made me forget about the whole crowd of staff and patients; even the annoying presence of Dr. House had disappeared for the slightest of seconds. Or the other time when we somehow ended up talking about non-job-related things for a few minutes. His velvety voice – it graced my ears for longer than I deserved, and yet I wanted to hear it every single day for my entire life – probably the biggest of my dreams at that moment. But I couldn't give in to the thoughts of things that would never happen. I had people to help and paperwork to deal with.
Waves of incoming patients never stopped that day, and it almost seemed as if meningitis became a new fever, especially one from a kindergarten and on steroids. We weren't the only hospital dealing with it, so I could only imagine the grand scale of the epidemic and chaos caused by it in the rest of the units. But if I wanted to help with stopping the spread and curing as many people as we could, the work had to be done, and I had to stop stalling. I grabbed the pile of files that was put on my desk with a loud thud a while ago and started to fill them out according to the information given in the hospital's accounting program. 21st century and we still have to send everything on paper, my god... I thought to myself while collecting all the documents into one pile again, being ready to forward them further in the line of the hospital's bureaucracy.
Moving around the place while trying to avoid all the sick people was not an easy task, and I simply had no choice but to walk through the hospital's main hall. Whether I wanted it or not. But it's also where I spotted in the distance Dr. House talking with Dr. Wilson. It seemed weird to me for him to be friends with probably one of the most eccentric and sometimes (more often than not) plain rude doctors in the whole PPTH. The gossip really wasn't kind to Dr. House, and he was the first one to get criticized for absolutely everything and anything. Was he really that bad a person? If Wilson befriended him, he for sure had to have some good qualities, because I didn't want to think Wilson would share similar bad traits to House. Or maybe Wilson was just extremely patient.
I didn't want to admit to it at first, but I was curious what they had been talking about. Maybe it could give me a clue to their friendship or just an insight into Wilson's personality. I just wanted to know more, that's it, but the path to gain the "knowledge" was like a parkour with all the skipping I needed to do between confused patients and running personnel. Bouncing from one corner of a corridor to another, maybe bumping into a kid I just didn’t notice, I made my way close enough to House and Wilson, examining incoming patients in the main lobby, that I could hear them somewhat clearly. Mumbling something about shoes, House, and women, how bad he's at relations with them all the time, but then something made it way more interesting for my ears:
"Cameron is so not perfect", House muttered indifferently, a bit condescendingly even. Why would he say it like that? For some time, then, there were rumors about him and dr Cameron having sort of a thing together. Were they true? No idea, but his voice indicated that they're definitely not neutral to each other, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
"Well, nobody's perfect", came as a harsh response from Wilson, and while I agreed with him, it still didn't mean he couldn't get someone close to the ideal. Knowing myself, at least somewhat knowing dr Wilson, I was most likely far from his definition of perfect. Average face, easily blending with the rest of the personality, no special talents, no meaningful lifestory to tell, no...
"No medical degree". I knew it. I knew it, and yet these words felt like a stab anyway. My sliver of hope cracked so easily. How could I have been so naïve? Did I really think a renowned oncologist would ever want from a woman anything less? For months, I was deluding myself that Wilson's friendly personality and radiating sympathetic charisma weren't just a façade. He never seemed like someone being judgmental of others, but in that moment, it was clear he wouldn't date anyone from a lower level. Just the hospital was full of attractive and intelligent doctors and nurses, meanwhile, I was so insignificant, so replaceable, so out of his league. I didn't do anything, and yet I felt so ashamed of myself. I wanted to leave, to turn back and never even look at him again. Or maybe rather make him look at me.
I was caught in a moment when the time paused; when the noise of the crowd blurred with a thud of rushing blood through my head and a constant buzz of the fluorescent lights into a single hum. The gravity of his words, lingering and echoing in my mind, felt heavier than anything else in the world. Despite my best attempts to run, as if my bones and muscles turned into unmovable stones. While the heart had been sinking deeper and deeper in my chest, I could feel my eyes water, sparkling with tears, slowly making their way down my cheeks. And when I thought I couldn't be in a worse situation - unable to run, with a troubled heart and glossy eyes - his deep brown pupils looked at me from across the whole lobby as I stood there paralysed. Wilson's gaze was the last thing I expected at that moment and the last thing I hoped for. I could notice a tinge of an unknown feeling combined of various emotions, in his eyes, one that I couldn't decipher and didn't know if I even wanted to.
I could see House and his stark, icy blue eyes making their way from looking at Wilson to me. Did he know something that I didn't know, or was he just not expecting the eternity-long moment between Wilson and me? Did he even know who I was? Either way, his persona made me quickly realise that we were still in the hospital full of sick people, that it wasn't just Wilson exchanging stares with me forever. I snapped out of the moment with a sharp pain in my chest I knew no doctor but one who could heal it. With a sudden surge of energy, I turned on my heel before Dr. Wilson could even finish his first step toward me. I didn't want to look at him, I didn't want to talk to him, I didn't want to be near him at all. Not in that moment. Tears had been flowing down my face while I tried to omit everyone just to get into my office, holding onto my papers with a force making my knuckles white, possibly knocking out a few nurses and patients whom I couldn't see through my watered eyes. I just wanted to be alone.