Chapter Eight - Touch

“I’ve got a pulse. Weak as hell, but it’s still there!”

The forensics doctor yelled and the ambulances, which had followed the cop cars, were on hand. EMTs swarmed in, pushing him back as he fought to stay by her side.

They loaded her unhesitatingly onto a stretcher, one working to keep her heart beating whilst another tried to stop the bleeding. He grabbed onto her hand, instantly horrified by how icy cold it was. Enclosing her small, weak hand between his larger ones, he willed his warmth into her, willed his life into her. God only knew what traumas she’d suffered through, but as long as she didn’t die. She couldn’t die.

When she was stretchered outside, there were already neighbours gathering behind the crime scene tape some officer had put up, their curious gazes falling on the unconscious woman being carried out of the abandoned building. Their hushed gossiping created a buzz of tension, as each speculated on who the victim was and what had happened to her.

Chase’s heart stopped, just as House’s had, when he caught sight of Cameron’s lifeless body being brought out of the building, which was now illuminated in the blue glow from the police cars’ lights and cast tall shadows across them, the sun slowly beginning to rise behind it. He ran blindly toward her, desperately pleading with her to stay with them.

“Allison, oh God…Ally, please stay with us. Keep fighting, sweetheart.”

He couldn’t bear to even think of their baby. There was strong doubt that Cameron would make it right now, never mind the baby.

House didn’t falter in struggling into the back of the ambulance as the EMTs loaded her in. Chase was left watching helplessly with the cops as the ambulance’s sirens wailed and they shot immediately toward PPTH. The journey went by in a blur of panic for House. He understood perfectly what the EMTs were saying to each other, could interpret the assessments of her vitals quite easily, but he simply could not take it all in. He stayed silent, still clasping her hand and unable to tear his eyes from her face.

There were gashes and cuts all over her face; he didn’t want to imagine what the rest of her body looked like right now. He’d already seen enough when that door had been opened. She had a black eye developing fast as well as other bruises; blood soaked her hair and ran down her cheeks, completely soaking through the antiseptic cloth with which one medic was gently cleaning the wounds on her face.

“This is…we ain’t seen nothin’ this bad in a long time.”

An older EMT said quietly to House, his Southern accent strongly contrasting the hardened New York accent of his younger colleague. He’d obviously seen a lot as House guessed he’d been in this job for many years. He had that old, weathered look of experience that had worn him down to create a kind of immunity to the horrors of an average day.

So if he was saying it was bad…

House shook his head and tried to find his voice. For once he felt no need to snark. His thoughts were darkened beyond that now. If Cameron didn’t recover from this, or even if she did, House vowed to find the son of bitch who’d inflicted her wounds and kill him just as painfully.

“She’ll pull through this. She’s a fighter.”

He’d said the same line over and over to himself in his mind, willing it to help her by saying it out loud. The ambulance came to a stop a few minutes later and the ensuing moments were chaos. Cameron was frantically wheeled out of the ambulance and through the open doors of the hospital, where plenty of doctors were on hand awaiting her arrival. She was taken straight through the Trauma One where they tried to stabilize her and make an assessment of her chances.

House was refused entry into the resuscitation area but his eyes never left her as he stayed glued to the windows, trying in vain to hear what was being said.

“House!”

Hearing Cuddy’s voice from down the corridor – she’d obviously been on edge waiting for them to arrive too – House didn’t even bother turning. She came to stand beside him, her eyes following his and her hand covering her mouth in horror the moment she caught sight of Cameron behind the glass.

“Oh my God.”

She couldn’t come up with any kind of constructive input right now. Her mind was awash with the image of the young doctor she’d been so fond of, now lying motionless and covered in her own blood.

“She’s a Class Four Haemorrhage, I can see that just by looking at her.”

His voice was lower and quieter than she’d ever heard from him. He was troubled by it all, not that she could really expect anything less. She knew as well as everyone else that his feelings for his young immunologist were far from platonic, no matter what he would say on the subject.

“She’s-“

“A fighter, I know,” he finished for her, still not meeting her eyes, “I keep telling myself that. But look at her. She’s lost more than 40% of her blood. Contusions, lacerations…incisions. He tortured her for God knows how long and I don’t know how anyone could survive those kinds of injuries. The bruises…she’s internally bleeding, probably everywhere.”

A hand on his shoulder did nothing to comfort him, his heart feeling like it was as shattered as hers, as she lay lifelessly under the harsh lights of the ER. But they kept working on her and emergency cross-matched blood was rushed down and pumped continuously into her. Twelve units were used in all…double that what would, or should, have been in her body before.

“Who did this to her?”

Cuddy asked in barely more than a choked whisper. House finally turned to look at her, his fists clenched as he tried to stop himself from shaking with anger at the thought of that man.

“I don’t know. I didn’t stick around at the scene long enough to see if they got him. But if they did, the son of a bitch won’t get away with it. I’ll see to that personally.”

---

“She’s stable, we’re moving her to the ICU.”

Dr. Lewis, one of the Senior Attendings in the ER, finally left Trauma One some two hours later with the news that Cameron had a chance of living. There was no guarantee that she’d ever wake up from the coma she was currently in, but at least she was still with them.

Chase had long since arrived at the hospital and had stood wordlessly next to House as they’d waited for any news. They’d analysed every facial expression, every movement in that room to try and perceive any developments in her condition. It was beyond relief that they felt when Dr. Lewis announced she was stable.

“Dr. Lewis…what about…”

Chase had to ask. The empty feeling in his gut told him the answer along with the look on Lewis’ face.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Chase, she lost the baby. That amount of blood loss…we’re just lucky we managed to save her. We had no chance of saving her pregnancy.”

The brutality of this truth almost caused tears to slide down Chase’s cheeks. They really had almost lost Cameron. And their baby was gone. As much as it hadn’t been a planned pregnancy by any means, Chase had secretly been thrilled when she’d told him. Sure, it had been a shock and took a while to sink in but the thought of her carrying his child had been perhaps one of the most exciting feelings he’d ever experienced.

Having been left at the scene after Cameron had been rushed to the hospital, Chase was better able to fill in the blanks concerning the man who had done this to her.

“He wasn’t there. There was no one else at those flats. But they’ve collected evidence from the scene and they’ll be there for a while with that, but…they’re gonna need evidence from Cameron too. They have fingerprints but his…h-his DNA…”

He wasn’t able to finish that sentence. They both knew the trauma Cameron had suffered, but it still did not bear thinking about. They’d need evidence from her and perhaps they could catch this guy then. All House knew was that he wouldn’t rest until he was caught, even if that meant House were to take it upon himself to hunt him down. Chase sighed and sat down on the bench next to them, his head in his hands. He looked back up at House as he spoke again.

“We don’t even know who he is…but this can’t have been a random attack. Not the things he did to her. One of the cops said there was retribution in those wounds and…I hate to agree with him, but I think he was right. Whoever did this…I don’t think he’ll be done until we know exactly what message he wanted to get across.”

---

For weeks, Chase sat by her bedside. House tried to keep himself pre-occupied with patients but didn’t snark at Chase for constantly disappearing to sit with her. He just couldn’t bring himself to sit there day after day when the doctors had told them her chances of waking up were minimal. Not that he didn’t have a glimmer of hope that she would, but sitting there making unspoken plea bargains with a God he didn’t believe existed would just have hit it home that there really was minimal chances. And every time he’d sit there with no movement from her whatsoever, it would just break him down a little bit more each time.

The routine collection of evidence had been carried out not long after she’d been moved to ICU. None of them were very happy with the idea of the exam, but they knew it was necessary if they wanted to see the man responsible for her current state put where he belonged. As the death penalty had been abolished in the state of New Jersey, House could only hope that life imprisonment would await the man.

Now, almost four weeks after the attack, the police were still no closer to finding their suspect. It had been handed over to the Special Victims Unit, specialised in these crimes. The detectives from the SVU had seemed to have a genuine passion for finding and punishing the man for this crime. But he wasn’t on the Offenders registry or in any other crime database they’d searched. They’d gone through the whole tirade of noting how for a first offence it was highly unusual that the attack was so severe. That had brought them to questioning whether anyone could have had any kind of motive for wanting to hurt her. The answers all around were vehemently negative. No one would want to hurt Cameron. Everywhere they asked they got the same answer. Who could have had an reason for wanting to hurt such a well-liked, compassionate, sensitive and beautiful woman? She was a good doctor and a good person, who cared deeply about her patients. So how could this happen to her? House felt guilty, but he didn’t really understand why. He somehow felt responsible that this attack had fallen on her.

---

Sitting by her bedside for the first real time since she’d been moved to ICU, House let his eyes trace to healing cuts and angry bruises on her face and neck. She still had a black eye but the nasty gash on her cheek was healing nicely, despite that it would likely leave a scar, along with the rest of the little cuts blemishing her otherwise pretty face. To him no amount of bruises or cuts or scars could take away her beauty.

Taking advantage of the quietness of the room and the lulling regular bleep of her heart monitor, House examined the file of a current patient. Nothing special jumped out at him. The patient history was standard, if anything, and the patient had no allergies other than pineapple, which could in no way have caused multiple organ failure as was presenting currently.

---

Cameron was aware of a woozy sensation fogging her mind, numbness brought on by large amounts of morphine. She could hear her own heart monitor beeping intermittently, increasing ever so slightly as consciousness slowly returned. The ache in her entire body was dull in general but in her right leg and her chest the pain was sharper, more apparent. Her eyes gradually began to open, but she could feel the resistance of one and knew a black eye when she felt one. Her vision finally coming into focus, she found herself staring up at the whitewashed ceilings and harsh fluorescent light of the hospital in which she’d worked for the best part of three years.

Her mind was a blank as to how exactly she’d ended up in the hospital bed, but as she felt a shooting pain through her head when she tried to turn it, the memories all came flooding back and she inhaled sharply, her heart monitor picking up the sudden stress.

House looked up pointedly over his glasses as the heart monitor’s bleeping increased. And he was sure his stomach and heart both did somersaults. Her eyes were open. She was looking up at the ceiling with wide eyes – as wide as possible considering one of them wouldn’t open properly – and he could see the anxiety in her features. She was remembering. He could almost see the images before his own eyes again and he quickly forced them out.

“Cameron…”

He said gently, hauling himself to his feet and grabbing his cane he’d hooked onto the chair. Moving up to stand at her bedside, she painfully turned her head a little so she could look up at him. The affliction he could see in her haunted blue-green eyes cut deep. Her chin trembled and silent tears began to fall down her cheeks, stinging the cuts.

“You remember.”

He said simply, his eyes locked onto hers, despite how difficult it was to witness that agony she was so clearly feeling. It was a statement, not a question, but the way she bit her lip trying to fight further tears gave him the answer anyway.

“Who…was he?”

She asked hoarsely. Her breath rasping and catching in her throat, as dry as dust…the dust she could still taste from that awful prison. She gagged at the memory, incessant and distressing images flashing before her eyes. She shook her head furiously to try and clear them from her mind, pushing through the pain caused by the sharp movements.

House couldn’t give her an answer and he couldn’t bring himself to say he didn’t know. She needed comfort, not to be terrified further with the knowledge that her attacker was still out there somewhere.

A thought suddenly occurred to her and she pressed a bandaged hand to her stomach through the covers, her eyes searching House’s desperately. He broke their gaze.

“House…please tell me my baby’s alright…please…”

Her tearful sobs pleading ardently with him for the relief of assurance that her baby had survived sliced into his normally unaffected heart. When it came to her, his heart could never be unaffected. How could he tell her she’d lost her baby when everything else had been taken from her too?

“Allison, you lost too much blood…”

A broken-hearted and agonised cry tore right from her heart and she squeezed her eyes shut, pressing herself into the bed as though it would take her out of the unbearable world she’d woken up in if she pressed hard enough. Her whole body shook with sobs as she rode out the emotions. She’d lost everything because of one person. That man had snatched every shred of her away until she was now just a shell.

House almost had to turn away. Just seeing her in that much emotional pain made him want to throw up. But instead, he stayed by her side, tentatively reaching out to cup her cheek in a silent gesture of support and love.

But as his fingers grazed her cheek she shot away from him, still shaking with sobs, eyes wide with instinctive alarm as a haunted expression passed over her. He’d never seen such a look in her eyes before and it chilled him to the bone. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the bed covers. Cowering against one side of the bed, as far as possible from his touch, words passed her lips that broke his heart.

"Please...don't...touch me."