Notes: Takes place between "Hunting" and the disciplinary hearing of "The Mistake". This is my first published House fic, so please be gentle. But if you think I've messed up the characterizations, please let me know!
Janet hurried up the slope, cursing under her breath. It was her own damn fault for not realizing how hard it was going to be to get a parking spot on Hospital Hill, but she'd always hated being late. As she stepped into the ambulance driveway...something happened. For just a moment, the space of a blink, the world shifted around her and then snapped back into its normal shape.
She froze in place, one foot still on the curb and the other on asphalt. It hadn't lasted long enough for her to process while it was happening, but something had changed. The steep terrain and interlinked buildings of Oakland had gone flat and open, and she would have sworn it was colder for a second.
To her left, a horn sounded and Janet started out of her daze. Great, just great, she thought as she started walking again. At least I'm on the way to a doctor. A gynecologist, granted, but that was what referrals were for. If she even needed a referral. It was probably nothing--just too much stress and an overactive imagination.
She got to her door, finally, and as she reached for the handle to yank it open it happened again. The institutional tan-and-blue of the lobby beyond went a little darker, sprouted a desk and decorative trees in pots that were clearly fake because no real tree had leaves that red in May. Janet blinked and it all cleared away. OK. Maybe not stress. For one thing she was pretty sure that flash had lasted longer than the first.
She got through the door before the next one happened. This one was definitely longer, lingering enough that she started to get details instead of just impressions. It was still a hospital; the women behind the desk was in scrubs and so were a number of the passers-by. There were horrid textured murals on the walls by the elevators. And the desk nurse was giving Janet a funny look, as well she should because this time it wasn't going away. Janet knew she was standing there gaping, and the details were starting to look familiar somehow. She made herself take a step towards the desk. She was pretty sure the desk nurse was talking to her and it wasn't hard to guess the question: Are you all right?
She tried to say no, but the words wouldn't form and before she could worry about that the world went white and very, very quiet.
Allison Cameron stepped out of Exam One with her last patient of the day right behind her. They chatted amiably about the weather as they went to the clinic desk for Allison to drop off the chart and sign out, and then the patient shook her hand, thanked her, and left. Allison watched her go with satisfaction; it had been a simple enough physical exam and the woman had been pleasant to talk to.
She started for the elevators, pushing through the clinic door. It had been a bit of a long day.
And, she realized, it was going to stay long, because the woman her last patient had just brushed by, standing just inside the outer doors, was white as chalk and pretty clearly about to go out for the count. As Allison started towards her she took a shaky step towards the desk as the duty nurse asked if she was all right--which was a silly question, but it was what they were trained to ask, to try to get a response as a gauge of how bad it really was. The duty nurse had the desk between them, blocking her path, so Allison was the first to the woman's side, getting there just as her eyes rolled up into her head and she fainted dead away.
Allison managed to catch her well enough that she didn't hit her head on the way down. It wasn't a faint, because fainting didn't cause seizures and there was definitely some seizing going on. Allison shifted her grip and managed to roll the woman onto her side in case of vomiting, snapping out orders as she did. She did a quick overview while she waited for the gurney: none of the telltale junkie gauntness, no smell of alcohol, no MedAlert tag warning of diabetes or epilepsy, no bleeding or bruising around her head, no trauma at all that Allison could detect on a first pass. Her pulse was frighteningly fast, though, and she didn't respond when Allison pinched her hard.
Allison knew it hadn't really taken the ER folks long to get there, but the strange stretched time of a crisis made it seem like forever. As they loaded the woman onto the gurney one of the ER techs asked, "Coma Cocktail?"
Allison almost smiled despite herself; an EMT she'd known once had called it that. It was the standard "I don't know why this person's unconscious" mix: glucose to deal with low blood sugar, Narcan to block opiates, and something to take care of alcohol. "Yes, and give her an anticonvulsant," she said. She was about to order something for the tachycardia as well when the pulse under her fingers began to slow. "Wait!" she said to the tech, who had a syringe out.
The seizing stopped. Allison pinched the woman again and this time got a verbal response that was almost a word. "OK," she said. "Someone get her purse and check for ID, get an IV started anyway just in case, and let's admit her." She sighed. It was a long day. "And please page Dr. Foreman for me."