Victims of Circumstance
Summary: Quarantined in the clinic, House and his team try to find out what's wrong with a comatose young woman.
A/N: Thanks to Niff and Marlou for reading over this for me.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with the show, and I am not a doctor. Don't trust my medical information to be completely accurate.

---

Chapter 1

Leaning on the clinic's reception desk, Dr. Allison Cameron concentrated on the folder in front of her. She dutifully filled in patient information while filtering out the crying and screaming coming from the waiting room. While she was sympathetic, the constant interruptions from nervous parents threatened her patience.

The clinic was busy, even by its normal standards. A virus had swept into town, affecting primarily the very young and the elderly. The disease wasn't particularly serious, but it made the children miserable. Parents desperate for help filed into the clinic all day, joining the normal clients and an influx of students returning for the fall semester.

She'd been working non-stop, even skipping lunch, to help with the backlog. Technically, she was off-duty, and she was more than ready to leave the chaotic atmosphere of the clinic. But her conscience wouldn't let her leave until her replacement showed up.

Unfortunately, her replacement was none other than her supervisor.

Absentmindedly, she frowned as her thoughts drifted towards the misanthropic Dr. Gregory House. There was no questioning his medical brilliance, but everything else about him was fair game. His avoidance of patients was legendary, and it struck her as odd that such a gifted doctor didn't want to treat people.

Even odder were her feelings for House. Since his blunt rejection, she'd been re-evaluating what attracted her to him. She'd originally thought it was because he always did the right thing, but he was trying to revive his relationship with Stacy while at the same time treating her husband. That was wrong, even using House's typical ethically-challenged guidelines.

He didn't want to get involved with her. He wasn't a nice man. He was violating every medical oath by chasing a patient's wife. So what did her continued interest in him say about herself?

Cameron recognized the irate tapping of Dr. Lisa Cuddy's heels as she bore down on her. "I don't know where he is," she snapped preemptively. "Trust me, if I did, I'd have dragged him down here myself."

Cuddy stopped short and stared disbelievingly. The curt response from the normally abnormally nice doctor convinced her that Cameron wasn't covering for House. After a double take, she threw her arms up and turned to the nurse. "Has anyone checked the exam rooms?"

"Twice, ma'am. He's not hiding in there."

"Why do I put up with him?" Cuddy muttered rhetorically as she headed back down the hallway. She was partway to the elevator when she spotted someone lamely dashing behind a potted plant out of the corner of her eye. "Dr. House!"

Coming out from his hiding spot, he headed directly towards the doors. When Cuddy quickly overtook him, he smiled at her. "What say? Bloody good weather for an afternoon constitutional, don't you agree? Sorry I can't stay. Carry on! Tally-ho!" he said in an exaggerated British accent.

"You aren't going anywhere," she replied, grabbing his arm and nearly jerking him off-balance as she spun him around. "The clinic is packed."

"So?"

"You're a doctor. Those are patients. Do I need to draw you a picture?"

"Ooh! With lots of pretty colors? And lots of exposed skin? Not yours – someone hotter. Carmen Electra is always a good choice. Better yet, just download something from the Internet. I hear they have all kinds of interesting web sites."

"I'm sure you know all about them," Cuddy said with a smile.

"Those credit card bills don't prove a thing," he said as he tried to leave. "Uh, you can let go of my arm now. People will start to talk if you're groping me in public. Then all the other doctors and nurses will want to grope me. I'll never get any work done."

"What work do you get done now? The hospital runs this clinic as part of its operation. As a doctor here, you are required to work in the clinic. You don't like it? Too bad! We all do things we don't like. Keeping you on staff, for example."

"Don't hold back on my account. Let me know what you really think."

"Every organization has its own rules. It's a necessity to make sure things run the way they're supposed to."

"Okay, let me rephrase this," House said shortly. "So, what do you want me to do? It's a virus. It's not even a bad virus. The kids have a headache, and their little, bitty throats hurt, and they feel like shit in general. They can't tell anyone they feel that way, so they cry. That makes the mommies and daddies worried. They bring them here."

"Your compassion is amazing."

"Compassion has nothing to do with it. All they need are some cold drinks and bed rest, but the parents are going to want drugs for their precious tykes. Doesn't matter that antibiotics don't treat viruses, and it's not safe to give them drugs that aren't doing anything. People can't accept that sometimes there's just nothing you can do but let the body fight the disease off on its own. Why should I waste my time arguing with the parents?"

"Guess what? Not all the patients have the virus," Cuddy said, grabbing a separate stack of files from the reception desk. Taking the first one, she nodded her head. "Diabetic with irregular blood sugar levels."

House snatched the folder from her. "He's twelve. He's cheating on his diet, and not telling Mom that he's eating junk food."

Cuddy rolled her eyes, but took the next folder from the stack. "Patient complaining of upper back pain."

"He's pulled a muscle."

"Forty-three-year-old man complaining of arm pain."

"Muscle again. People actually have them all over their bodies. See, this is what happens when you buy the answers to your med school exams. You forget the simple stuff. Or did you ever learn it in the first place?"

Glaring at him, she handed over another folder. "Fine. Patient complaining of exhaustion, coughing and painful urination."

House took it and shook his head. "Who's been in repeatedly this month, always with vague complaints. All the tests came back clear," he said, looking away pensively. "We had a name for someone like that when I was in med school. Oh, yeah. A hypochondriac."

"If you don't want to see these patients, you can treat the sick kids then."

House pulled away and started again for the doors. "Why don't you call me when something interesting shows up?"

He'd only gone a few steps when a terrified scream came from the clinic. Hearing the sounds of chairs knocking over, he gazed upward with a long-suffering look. "I set myself up for that one."

Turning around, he made a disagreeable noise deep in his throat. Patients milled around, some trying to get away from a row of chairs while others tried to get closer to see what happened. Together, they effectively blocked his view. He managed to catch sight of Cameron dashing to the center of the commotion and dropping to the ground. She called out for a gurney, and a group of nurses and Dr. Chase raced to join her.

Deciding they had it under control, he started to resume his trek towards the exit when Cameron called to him. There was a note of urgency in her voice, but his first thought was that she treated everything as worthy of his attention. Frowning, he admitted to himself that she was a highly professional doctor; if she yelled at him across a packed waiting room, there probably was a good reason.

Or there better be. He needed to grab a sandwich and stop by the pharmacy before his soaps started.

With a resigned sigh, he turned around in time to see Cuddy frantically dashing to a phone and security guards locking the doors. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Quarantine? Now they had his attention.

Forcing his way into the crowd, he used his height to his advantage. Looking over assorted heads, he saw a young woman lying unmoving on the floor with Cameron examining her. From the woman's position, he assumed she'd passed out while sitting and slid to the floor.

What caught his attention was her neck, specifically a large swollen area on the right side. He estimated it was at least four inches across, an interesting symptom in itself, but not nearly as impressive as the steady stream of yellowish-green pus oozing from it. He could smell the foul stench from across the room. Occasionally, the swelling sputtered, sending a glob of pus flying to the floor or the woman's arm, and drawing another round of screams from frightened children and mothers.

He heard Chase state she was burning up and ordered an ice bath. Cameron pushed her knuckles painfully into the woman's chest, but there was no response.

"Coma," he said softly as he added the symptom to his mental checklist. Trying to force his way through the crowd, he scowled. The other patients packed together tightly, slowing his progress. "Get out of my way! Doctor coming through. I have a cane, and I'm not afraid to use it!"

He'd made it most of the way through the throng when a surly boy in his late teens ducked in front of him. Pushing his thick glasses up, he pointed at the girl and let out a frightened yell. "Her neck! She has the plague!"

"This isn't medieval Europe," House hollered. The nervous crowd was loud, and he could tell they were on the verge of panic. The girl probably had an infectious disease, and it was possible that it was contagious. It might even be the plague, but the last thing he needed was this snotty brat starting a stampede. If it was contagious, they needed to limit the spread, and they couldn't do that if the patients fled. "No one gets the plague any more."

"That's not true," the boy said, turning around defensively. He saw the guards at the doors and pointed. "Look! They're locking us in. We can't leave – that's means we're infected. We're gonna die!"

The boy bolted towards the door, kicking out House's cane from under him. Trying to regain his balance, he watched in horror as some of the parents picked up their small children and herded after the troublemaker. Their panic ignited others, and soon a third of the people in the waiting area crushed towards the exits, dragging House in their midst.

Yelping painfully, he wished he'd refilled his Vicodin earlier in the day.

---

"Take it easy," Dr. James Wilson said softly.

"Take it easy? Did you see what they did?" House snapped, slapping his friend's hand away from his head. Shifting uncomfortably on the exam table, he lifted his hands up. "It's hopeless. It's beyond repair."

"You can get a new TV set. I'm worried about your skull."

"It's fine. I'm the thickheaded one. At least that's what you're always telling me that. If I can't trust my friend who can I trust?"

"In your case, probably no one. Maybe you should think about that some time."

"Why? It's depressing." House screwed up his face, and looked morosely at the portable television in his hands. "My soap starts in an hour. What am I supposed to do? There aren't any TVs down here."

"I don't know. Maybe you could try something doctor-like and try treating some patients," Cuddy said as she entered the exam room. "How is he?"

"He is fine. He is pissed. He is in the room and able to hear," House said acerbically. "What he needs is for the pharmacy to send me down a refill of my pills. Send him down? Weird referring to yourself in second person."

"No."

House turned to her with an incredulous expression. "No? You picked a fine time to play 'let's see if he's an addict' again. I have one pill left, and my leg hurts. The water buffaloes out there jerked it all over the place."

"I am sorry," Cuddy said honestly. "But the clinic is under quarantine. No one comes in or out of here. I'm not risking an exposure for you to get your pills. We'll do what we can to manage your pain if it gets too bad."

"I need them."

"No, you think you need them. Besides, you got caught in that mob because you were trying to get out of clinic duty. And if you were doing your clinic duty, maybe we would have gotten that young woman into a room before the panic started."

"Oh, this is my fault?" House asked indignantly.

Cuddy nodded. "You nearly getting trampled? I'd say so."

Wilson shook his head as he leaned against a desk. "Oh, this is going to be a fun quarantine."

They all turned when the door opened again, this time revealing Dr. Eric Foreman. "Security has the crowd rounded up. No one was hurt. Well, except for a potted tree. It's toast. Some scrapes, a few bruises, but nothing serious."

"And I'm fine. Thanks for asking. I'm so touched," House said sweetly.

"Hey, if you were hurt the entire hospital would know by now. You're not exactly quiet."

"And people think my bedside manner needs work. Ah, the prodigal son returns with the not-so-prodigal daughter."

Cameron and Chase ignored the comment and entered the room. "She's in a coma," Chase began without preamble. "Her fever topped at one oh five point six. We have her in an ice bath to bring it down, and we've started her on broad spectrum antibiotics."

"The lymph node in her neck isn't the only one swollen; it extends to several nodes on her upper right side. I did a complete examination of her. There're no cuts, lesions, abscesses or other visible signs of an infected wound that would explain the lymphadenopathy."

"Do we know anything about her?" Wilson asked.

"Her name is Jen Hopper, age twenty from Ames, Iowa. She's a student at the university. Her student id and driver's license were in her pocket," Cameron said.

"School just started. There's a good chance she caught whatever she has before she left home," House noted as he searched through drawers in the exam room.

"I have a nurse calling the registrar to get her parents' phone number."

"And I already informed the state health department and the Centers for Disease Control that we might have an exposure incident," Cuddy said.

"Yeah, well before we freak out the herd out there with the guys in the space suits, let's see if we can figure this out ourselves. Diagnostics and all of that." House taped several sheets of paper to the wall. With a marker, he wrote 'fever', 'regional lymphadenopathy' and 'coma' on the top piece. "Not much to work with."

"Too bad no one did a patient workup before she slipped into a coma," Cuddy said sharply, causing House to roll his eyes.

"With a fever that high, the coma could be a side effect, not a symptom," Foreman pointed out.

House thought about it for a moment before writing a question mark next to 'coma'. "Or she has meningitis or encephalitis."

"With suppurating lymph nodes?" Foreman asked.

"Depends on the underlying cause," Cameron said.

House turned towards her. "College student - did she have a book bag?"

"There was one on the floor. I guess it was hers."

"Go grab it. If there's any over-the-counter medications in there, it might give us a clue what's going on," he said, turning back to his notes with a grunt. "I hate to say it but that twerp out there might be right. Her symptoms match the plague."

"But the bubonic plague in Iowa? That doesn't seem very likely," Chase said.

"He's right. In the US, it's basically limited to the Southwest," Wilson added. "How does a kid from Iowa get around fleas from wild desert rodents?"

"For all we know, she spent the summer vacationing in Arizona," Cuddy said. "Those patient histories really are useful."

House let out a huff of breath and turned to her. "Yes, Torquemada. I know. I'm a bad doctor! Bad! But before you break out the newspaper and swat my nose, could we maybe help the patient?"

Cuddy was holding out her hands when Cameron entered the room with the book bag. She paused, cocking her head in confusion when she saw the makeshift white board. "You think she has the plague?"

"We've already had this discussion. We don't know where she was this summer," he answered irritably, but her hurt expression surprised him. It was the type of look that made him want to apologize to her, and that left him confused. He wasn't the type of person who apologized.

"That's not what I meant. Her lymph nodes are swollen, but they're soft. If she had the plague, they'd be hard."

"Not if it's in the later stages. They fluctuate then. And if that's the case, it's also probably too late to save her. Anything in there?"

"A bottle of ibuprofen. She's taken a lot of them, but swollen lymph nodes are painful. That doesn't really help much," she said as she sorted through the items.

Foreman took a seat on the examination table, crossing his arms thoughtfully as he did so. "Septicemic plague is the most likely to cause meningitis, and it doesn't have the swollen nodes."

"Unless the fever caused the coma, and she has another form of the plague," Chase reminded him. "Swollen nodes would fit with either bubonic or pneumonic presentations of the plague."

"Assuming it is the plague, it takes days to do a culture, and we aren't even set up to do it," Wilson said. "We can't keep that crowd quarantined for that long."

"No, but we can run the hemagglutination assay," House told him. "If she's been exposed, she'll have the antigens."

"That could be a problem."

The other doctors turned to Cameron, who held out a folded up piece of paper. "From her class schedule, I'm guessing she's a zoology major. Depending on what animals she works with, she could be vaccinated against the plague. An assay will test positive whether she has it or not."

House leaned against the wall, rubbing his leg with a wince. "And no one really knows how effective the vaccine is against the plague, so even if she had a vaccination, she could still have the disease."

"I think we're jumping the gun here," Foreman said. "It could be the plague, but I say tuberculosis is a more likely diagnosis. It fits the symptoms, and it is more common."

"I agree," House replied as he added it to the list. "The PPD skin test takes days to cause a reaction. She may not have that much time; start her on INH, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and streptomycin in the meantime. And if she has the plague, streptomycin is the drug of choice for that."

"Do you think that's safe? We don't have enough information to make a diagnosis," Cuddy said.

"She's already in a coma. If we don't treat her soon, she'll be dead before we get the lab results back."

"The medications can cause serious complications. TB would have pulmonary symptoms. At the very least, we need a chest X-ray. And where do you think you are going?"

He paused at the door and pointed his cane towards the waiting area. "You're right, Dr. Cuddy. We don't have enough information. But there's an entire room of people out there who were sitting near her."

The others followed him quickly, half-afraid of how the anxious patients would react to the caustic doctor. He didn't allay their fears when he started by letting out a loud whistle. People gathered around him, shouting out questions until he slammed his cane loudly on the desk.

"Just keep quiet for a minute, will you!"

The crowd started to calm down – except for the crying small children – until the surly teenager with the thick glasses forced his way to the front. "We're going to die, aren't we?"

"You? Of course you are."

"What?"

House gasped, covering his mouth dramatically. "Ponce De Leon! I didn't recognize you. You look so young. Been hitting the water a bit too much, haven't you? You and Dick Clark – never know when to say enough is enough."

A snickering started in the back of the room, and House saw a lone woman standing far apart from everyone else trying to cover her laugh.

"What?" the boy repeated when others gradually joined in.

"He's telling you that everyone is going to die," a man in an expensive suit answered. "But since we are quarantined, I'm assuming the girl has a contagious disease."

"That's what we're trying to figure out."

"Are we going to be here long? I'm due in court in two hours."

"I'd let the judge know you're not going to make it."

"Just how long are we going to be here?" asked an older man.

"Trust me, I'm going to get the lot of you out of here as fast as I can," House said forcefully. "The young woman probably has an infectious disease. We're running tests to find out what."

"She has the plague," the boy interrupted. "We're going to die. That's why they won't let us out. They don't want to start an epidemic. It'll kill everyone. That's what it did in Europe."

House hobbled to the boy, draping an arm over his shoulder. "Don't listen to my esteemed colleague here; Doogie Howser is wrong in this case."

"Who?" he asked scowling angrily at House.

"Okay, not so esteemed. And he's still wrong. If she turns out to have something contagious, we'll give you the appropriate medicine. You'll be fine."

"You're just saying that so we'll be sheep and stay here."

House glared at the boy. "Where did you go to medical school?"

"Me? I'm not a doctor."

"Then shut up before I suture your mouth closed," House stated lowly.

The teen pulled away. "You can't say that to me. Did you hear what he said to me? I'll sue you if you try it!"

"And I'll represent you – pro bono," the lawyer said, pulling out a card and surprising the boy by handing it to House. "Does the girl have the plague?"

"Like we said, that's what we're trying to figure out. Don't panic," he snapped when the crowd began to fret. "Yes, it could be the plague, but that's not likely. Even if it is, it's not that contagious, and it's easily treated."

"Yeah, if that's true, why did it wipe out so many people?"

"Because they didn't have antibiotics back then."

"Right," the teen muttered.

House grunted impatiently. "Listen, kid, a lot of stuff you take for granted hasn't been around that long. MP3 players, cell phones, video games, quilted toilet paper, acne cream – well, scratch the last one from your list. But antibiotics have only been around for sixty years."

"You're not a very nice person," a younger woman with two small children said.

"No, I'm not. And I really don't like him," House answered, pointing to the cowering teen. "Noticed the cane? I have that because my leg is bad. The little mob scene he started earlier didn't help it. And I don't have my pain medicine. Now, that sick woman was sitting in a waiting room full of you people. Who saw her?"

People mumbled to themselves, but no one answered. "I don't believe it. You sat in here forever like sardines. At least one of you is a busybody. Who is it? If you think I'm not nice now, just wait until later when my blood sugar drops. I didn't eat lunch, and I get really cranky when I'm hungry."

An elderly woman moved forward slowly on her walker, and House smiled at her. "Good. You saw her."

"Oh, no, dearie. I was signing in when the excitement started," she answered, fumbling with her purse.

"And you are talking to me because?"

"Here," she said, handing him a candy bar. "That'll make you feel better, honey."

House blinked and took it with a long sigh. "Thanks."

"And here. These will make you regular. That'll really fix your mood," she said, pushing a box of laxatives into his hand before slowly leaving.

Ignoring the subdued laughter coming from his team, House rubbed his forehead. "Look, the sooner someone answers my questions, the sooner we'll get out of here. We need to know if she was coughing, sneezing, anything. Someone had to be sitting next to her. Who was it?"

"We were," a frazzled man said, holding a crying infant in one arm while trying to keep two older children under control. "I'm sorry. The baby was sick, and Charlie kept crying. I didn't pay any attention to her. Lucy was sitting right next to her, though."

House looked down to the five-year-old girl huddling around her father's legs. Bending over, he tried a friendly smile, but that only prompted her to hide from him. "Okay, Lucy, did you see the sleeping lady on the floor? Good. Was she sleeping when you first got here?"

"Uh, uh."

"Did she cough any?"

"Uh, huh."

"Was it a productive cough or a dry cough?"

The girl blinked at him incomprehensively, and he closed his eyes. Why was he doing this? Cameron would have gotten every patient's perspective of what happened by now. Because his leg ached, and he only had one Vicodin left. Nothing in the clinic came close to that strength, and if he didn't concentrate on something, the pain would overwhelm him. He'd tried going cold turkey once, and that was an experience he never wanted to repeat.

"Okay," he said with a forced calm. The day he couldn't out-reason a child was the day he gave up medicine. "Why don't you cough for me like the sleeping lady did? Come on, I bet a big girl like you can do it. I'll see if I can find you a lollipop if you cough like the lady did."

Lucy opened her mouth, but instead of a cough, she vomited on House's shoes. That caused the other patients to pull away, some nervously picking up their children and leaving the area. Crying, she buried her head into her father's legs, and he tried to free an arm to wrap around her.

"She had an upset stomach. All the kids do. That's why I brought them here," he said apologetically.

"That's fine," House said, heading towards the reception desk, kicking his shoes before he turned back to the crowd. "Anyone else? Did anyone else see her coughing?"

When no one else answered, the doctors headed back to the examination room. Sitting on a stool, House pulled off his socks and tossed them in the biohazard waste container. "Great. We have the Deaf, Dumb and Blind Club out there. She could have been clearing her throat or coughing up her lungs, and no one noticed."

"We'll have to keep TB as a possibility," Cuddy admitted.

"Ya think? What else?"

Chase answered first. "Glandular tularemia."

"Rabbit fever?" Cameron responded, shaking her head. "You know that's a rare disease to begin with, but that form is even rarer."

"But it does match the symptoms, including the spontaneously draining nodes," he countered. "And she works around animals."

House gave a condescending headshake, but added it to the list.

"What about lymphocytic choriomeningitis?" Wilson suggested, and House gave him a questioning look. "Hey, she could work with rodents at the school."

"Research on killer gerbils? Homicidal hamsters? Spooky."

"Hey," Wilson said defensively. "Have you ever been bitten by a gerbil? It hurts. They're just overgrown, furry rats."

"There's no bradycardia," Cameron said. "We should test for HIV. If she has AIDS, almost any infection could cause this severe of a reaction."

House nodded and added it. "Or it could just be a bad case of non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infection. Come on people. You're missing an obvious one."

"Rickettsial disease," Foreman said. "This part of the world, it'll most likely be Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever."

Cameron shook her head. "There's no spotting on the skin."

House wrote it on the list anyway. "Twenty percent of cases are spotless spotted fever. Which is a really dumb name for a disease. Who comes up with these things?"

"What about murine?" Foreman asked.

"There would be a rash with that. And I'm disappointed in you. Attractive twenty-year-old college student; sexually active – I guarantee it," House said, adding syphilis to the bottom of the list.

"She doesn't have any lesions," Cameron noted.

"They don't show up in advance stages of the disease. Which would be when the patient does something like slip into a coma."

"But that takes years to develop."

House gave her an impatient look. "You really have trouble with the fact that some people do have sex when they're kids, but that isn't a reason to rule it out."

"No, she's right. It can't be syphilis. Syphilitic meningitis is afebrile. That girl is burning up," Foreman injected.

"Now that's a reason I can believe. But I don't. Test for it anyway – it's not always feverless. Run the CBC, urinalysis and liver functions. Run titers for the rabbit fever. And get Cuddy's chest X-ray. Foreman, do a lumbar puncture. If it's meningitis or encephalitis, that should tell us."

"Should we start the other patients on streptomycin as a precaution?" Chase asked.

"There's no reason to do that yet," Foreman said. "Besides, did you see how many little kids are out there? Streptomycin is too dangerous for them. At least one of them would go deaf or need a kidney transplant if we started them on a preventative dosage."

"What if she has pneumonic plague?" Chase pressed. "The symptoms of the plague can show in less than a day after exposure, and if treatment isn't started immediately, that form is almost always lethal. If we wait for the CDC to culture it, those children could be dead by the time the results get back."

An uneasy silence fell over the room until Wilson let out a whistle. "What do we do? Ask the parents if they want to take a chance like that? And how do we do it without causing another panic?"

"It's too rare to take that type of risk," Foreman said. "The odds are it's not even a contagious disease."

"The last major outbreak of pneumonic plague in the US was eighty years ago in Los Angeles. Only two people who were infected survived," House said. "It's rare, but it's lethal. Antibiotics don't always help. Cameron, are any of the other nodes swollen enough to aspirate?"

"Yes."

"We need a sample now, before the antibiotics start to work. Get it sent to the lab for staining. It's a priority. The yersinia bacteria are bipolar shaped. If nothing like that shows up on the stain, we can rule the plague out. If it is bipolar, it doesn't prove it's the plague, but it's a starting point. We'll worry about what to do with the kids then."

"We're going to need samples to send to the CDC as well," Cuddy said. "I'm having the hallway outside the door by the elevators set up as a staging area. Leave the samples in the hallway, and someone in a biohazard suit will come in later to pick them up. Follow quarantine procedures."

"We should run the PPD test on everyone out there," Chase said. "If it is TB, we can send them home with instructions to return in a few days to check to see if they had a reaction."

"Do the tests while examining the patients. Let's try to keep everything low-key. That mob lost it once; they could panic again," House said, heading into the clinic area.

Cameron followed him to the reception desk where he rifled through the folders impatiently. "Are you okay?" she asked softly.

"No. My TV is broken, my soap starts soon, and I'm stuck in here with all of you. Does that sound okay?"

"That's not what I meant," she said kindly. "Did you hurt your leg?"

"It hurts all the time. That's why I pop pills."

"And you're out of Vicodin."

"No, I have one pill left, and I'm trying to save it for later. That means I'm avoiding aggravation," he said pointedly. Finding the folder he wanted, he called the name out and handed it to Cameron. "Isolate him, and keep a close eye on him."

"Why?"

"If we're dealing with an contagious disease, then I want to know exactly what other symptoms show up before the patient falls into a coma. Things like that tend to help me figure out what's wrong with the patient."

"The little girl and her family were closer."

"Yeah, but they already have gastrointestinal symptoms. If that's part of it, we can't tell from them. And the boy has juvenile diabetes. He's more prone to disease. If we do have a contagion, he's the first one that's going to break with it," House said, watching sadly as the curly-haired boy and his mother approached. "He's our canary in the mine."

TBC