Broken

House, M.D.

Part Sixteen: Awe

It was a simple reaction. That’s all. You would have done the same thing if you had been in my shoes.

Standing at my whiteboard. Fussing at my employees. Wearing my tuxedo. Still tasting the champagne and cigars on my tongue.

Sick kid in the ER.

“This case is twelve years old,” Cameron said.

“Yep,” I answered, not turning.

Foreman jumped in. “And this case is Cuddy’s.”

I rolled my eyes, still writing on my whiteboard. “She assigned it to me.”

Chase sounded surprised. “She agrees with you that this is something more than gastroenteritis?”

How thick could they get?

“She wouldn’t have assigned it to me if she didn’t, would she?” I said and turned around and stopped.

I just stopped.

I stopped talking. I stopped thinking. I stopped being. I just stopped and stared at Cameron.

I’d never seen anyone or anything so beautiful in all my life.

The dark red evening gown she wore was strapless, baring her shoulders and slender clavicles. Her hair was curled and fell around her face as if a designer had placed it there. It was perfect. She was perfect.

And then I woke up.

She was blushing, looking away.

And I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I had been talking about.

Play it up. Act like it’s just you being you. “What were we talking about?”

Chase, smug son of a wombat, spoke up, “Two patients with two symptoms in common. And five symptoms not in common.”

At that moment, I wanted to strangle him. Worse that I wanted to hurt him when he turned on me for Vogler’s sake. And not because he was sounding smart, but because he had already been granted a precious gift—seeing Cameron with all her walls down, all her inhibitions thrown aside. It was something I would never see, and for a brief moment I hated him for it.

I was being silly. Stupid. I’d already gone through this conversation in my head.

I can’t have her.

But seeing her like that—it suddenly made me want to change my mind.