Title: Trading My Child For Opiates

Summary: Cameron!Childhood. Cameron recalls the breaking of bones. The sound of the ambulance. The pain. The pills are taken away. All to feed her mother's sick need for attention and painkillers.

Disclaimer: I don't own House nor the lyrics by The Used.

Warning: Child abuse.

IIIII

You're quiet on the car ride home

You're waiting for your head to explode

You're hiding in your safe place

Hiding with your eyes shut tightly all the way to the hospital

IIIII

"Oh my God! My baby!"

It's all for show. I know what she wants, and what Mom wants is for me to hurt, so that is what I'm doing.

She says to the ambulance workers that I was a clumsy child and had fallen down the stairs.

"It's her fault," Mom says. She sounds disgusted with me.

I lay at the bottom of the steps trying not to howl from the pain that begins to become unbearable. I've never had a broken bone before. Mom said that it wouldn't hurt too much.

She lied to me. I should have known.

Mom is very good at that. As the workers try to calm me down my Mother is putting on a show for them. She says that she feels dizzy and can't take seeing me in such agony. I wish that she would say that for real. She doesn't mean a word of it.

"Allison, we need to . . ."

There's a blotting blackness that is starting to take away the reality. My pain begins to fade and I fall in the inviting darkness, relishing in the fact that I don't need to hear my mother crying my name as though she cares.

IIIII

As they being to set the bone in my arm straight - after taking X-Ray - they start to question me about my 'fall'. Was it an accident? Is that what really happen? If it wasn't what occurred can I tell them the truth? Telling the truth is good, they say to me, and I want to cry out that my mother took blunt hammer to my arm and fractured the bone. Instead fat tears roll down my face as they tell me that I might need a rod put into my forearm to set it straight.

"I don't want to do that," I say pitifully. "I want to go home. It hurts . . ."

At ten years old it is hard to deal with such suffering. It is also hard to know that you can not tell the truth. Otherwise Mom will also know suffering.

She still stands outside the door. Again she puts on a show for the nurses. They feed into her self-loathing saying that there is no way that she could have known I would fall and hurt myself. That it doesn't make her a bad mother.

No that doesn't make her a bad mother. What does makes her a bad mother is the fact that she's putting me through hell right now just to gain some extra attention and the inevitable pain pills I will receive.

This is only the beginning of my own personal oblivion. I will be released in a cast, after they say they don't need to put a rod in my arm to set the bone straight. I do not want to be released right to my Mom who would rather have her morphine and vicodin than a cheerful child.

She thinks that I'm stupid. She thinks that I don't understand because I am only ten. She thinks a lot of things. Over my years I've not only thought - but proved through my short lifetime - that she is a selfish woman bent on destroying me.

I am not a dumb child. I get teased a lot for an extended vocabulary and smarts with medicine. I can also tell lies from truth and sincerity from deceit.

My only hope is my Papa. My father is my savior. He will certainly help me through this.

He and Mom divorced two years ago. I get to see him this weekend. Maybe she hopes that I'll stay this weekend. She will use the pain pills in her favor. I don't want to go through such a painful experience without something to numb the pain in my arm and in my mind.

Papa visits me hours later. He hugs me as gently as possible. Over his shoulder I can see my mother scowling at the show of affection.

"Sweetheart, you should be more careful," Papa says hesitantly. It is as though he knows of Mom's psychotic ways. "Please don't do anything . . ." The words float away, left unspoken. I know he wants to add "To make your mother mad" but with her in the room we have to use our nonverbal bond of understanding eachother.

"Larissa she's still coming over this weekend," Papa says. I can tell he's trying to sound determined but he falters under Mom's intense glare.

"Are you an imbecile? She needs to stay home and rest. She can't run around with you from store to store trying to buy her love."

"Allison can rest with me. We'll watch movies, eat popcorn, and play dictionary games," He answers. Papa shares my love for the dictionary.

"Mom, I want to go to Papa's this weekend," I voice meekly. I am afraid of her rage. "Please?"

"No!" She snaps crossing her arms. "You are staying with me. You need good rest. You will stay in bed all weekend. No playing, young lady. Remember today? You tried to play and you fell!"

I want to shout that she is the one who led me to the garage under the false pretense of getting in the car and going to the movies. That was when she brought out the hammer telling me that this would sting -- sort of like a shot. Again she lied and I believed her. What choice do I have? She's my Mom. After snapping my bone she dragged me to lay down near the stairs while she called the ambulance.

That was the truth. Not this picture she is painting of me being a clutz who was running and fell down the stairs.

"Papa, I want to go with you," I whisper, pulling on his sleeve with my good arm. My broken one is in an itchy cast.

"I know honey but . . ."

Stand up to her! I scream in my thoughts. Please! For me?

He resigns. He stays for a while and tries to cheer me up. All I can think about is Papa abandoning me to the monster of a mother.

IIIII

"Mommy, it hurts!"

"Go away and meditate or something," She groans, sliding down in her chair.

The Vicodin they prescribed to me was to get me through the worst of it. My arm is throbbing and I wonder if they have snapped it back into place properly. I fear that maybe I will have a weird crook in my arm for the rest of my life because my mother rushed me out so she could get high on my medication.

"Please. Just one."

"I can't waste any."

"Waste? But I'm in pain," I say miserably.

This is a lost cause. I'm a lost cause, apparently, because my Mother has given up on helping me.

I wish she would release me to Papa. He would go to the courts and file for full custody but my Mom is manipulative. She would somehow get things to go her way. She would full the judge with her side-show act of 'Poor me! Poor me!'.

I know that if I say anything more that she will shove me down the hall and lock me in my room. She wants to be high in a cheerless silence.

IIIII

I roll around at night trying to get comfortable. My arm won't stop throbbing as though it wants to break out of the cast and burst. I'd rather that happen than endure this horror. I can cry, and I try to distract myself with TV, but nothing can outweigh the pain.

I know it's the middle of the night but I consider sneaking into Mom's room and getting a Vicodin or two. I'm sure that she will count them when she gets up in the morning but I do not care. I need this torment to stop or I will have to resort to other drastic measures. I'm not quite sure what those are yet but I'm positive that they won't be pleasant for either of us.

As I suspected she's passed out on her bed. I slip through the door without making a single sound. The carpet absorbs the sound of the pitter-pattering my feet cause. I thought luck would be with my and she would leave them on her nightstand but all that is there are many burned-out cigarettes and an empty pack of Marlboro's. I go over to her dresser thinking that she would leave a few out for when she gets dressed in the morning but alas I fail to find any little white pills.

I go to open up the one drawer of her nightstand and I think her snoring will drown out the sound of the creaking but I was wrong. Her eyes flutter open and I panic. I shut the drawer and make a run for it before she can sit up to see who is in her room. Maybe she'll think she is hallucinating, or that this is a dream, and I can go find something in the kitchen cabinets that contain alcohol.

I knew that drastic measures would come.

That leads me to where I have a vodka bottle in one hand and a shot glass lying on my dresser. I pour the liquid into the glass and consider any other way to soothe my aches and pains.

Nothing comes to mind.

I know I should not do this. This will abuse my liver. I have seen all of the commercials talking about alcoholism and how it ruins lives. But this isn't for my enjoyment. This is to make the pang disappear.

And soon I am drunk. My mind if fazed. My arm doesn't hurt so much anymore. That's all I wanted. I wouldn't have resorted to this if my Mom hadn't put me through the agony I went through today.

IIIII Years Later... IIIII

Now when I see House with his Vicodin bottle, bringing it out in front of patients and in the Clinic as though he is taunting all of us that he can get legally high, it reminds me of my Mom pulling horrible stunts to hurt me, gaining sympathy and painkillers.

House is right. I want to fix him. Just like I want to fix my mother.

I can't fix either one of them and that eats away at my insides. I see that they are both in psychological pain but neither one wants to admit it.

Mom refuses to acknowledge all that she put me through. More than once she made me fake painful illnesses, and actually hurt me, to gain access to opiates. She says that it was all lies put into my head from my 'rotten' father.

House will admit all too casually he's addicted but it is not a problem. I want to tell him about my past, and that's why I have concern for his health, and that I have this undeniable urge to put the pieces back together for him. He refuses me time and time again.

He can't love me just like my mother couldn't. While they enjoy the blissful fog that Vicodin can cause for them, outside of that mist is me trying to reach through it, and putting my emotional stability on the line to help them.

I don't know what hurts the most. Seeing my boss everyday who reminds me of my mother, and thus my past, or the fact that my mother doesn't want to see me unless I can break bones in my body just to get her high one last time.

IIIII

I needed to write Cameron angst. I guess I had to tie in House's own addiction to explain my version her attraction to him.

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