Chapter 1: 2012
Chapter Text
The surprise, Cameron thinks, is how many people showed up for House’s funeral.
Perhaps that’s cynical of her. Perhaps she has become a cynical person. But the rows are packed with the grieving and familiar, the list of speakers endless. She’d expected House would have some mourners. She’s pleased, and heartbroken, to see how many.
After Wilson rushes out, the service comes to an awkward end. There’s a reception, and people filter out in small, hushed groups to continue reminiscing over canapés and wine. Cameron helps herself to a plate and realizes abruptly how out of place she feels.
Princeton is no longer her life.
House, for his misanthropy and unpleasantness, had a way of drawing people to him, of inspiring extreme loyalty. It has been almost three years since Cameron left Princeton, and she realizes it acutely. House had new fellows she’d never met. People she’d once considered her friends offer her polite hellos before drifting to comfort and talk to one another. Cameron is the outsider, the stranger, never mind that she wasn’t, that these people, this world, had once been her entire life, and —
She feels lost.
She’d wanted this when she’d left. It was good that she’d left.
She hates it now that she’s here.
“Hey,” says Foreman, excusing himself from a conversation. “I’m glad you made it. Your speech was great.”
“Thanks,” Cameron says, grateful. She returns his polite hug before sitting at one of the scattered chairs, her food balanced awkwardly on one knee. She huffs. “I’m glad you’re here, too. Thanks for making the time to say hello,” she adds, teasing: “I saw you making the rounds.”
“Turns out you don’t get much of a learning curve for this stuff.” Foreman chuckles as he sits beside her. “You either learn to kiss some ass, or you’re out of a job.”
“I’m sorry this is what it took to get me back to Princeton,” Cameron says. Foreman’s smile is rigid. “It’s… awful, but I think a part of me expected this is what it would take. Not now. Not like this.” But House. But a funeral.
“Yeah.” Foreman tries not to grimace. “How have you been?” They keep sporadic contact. Another surprise. She’d always respected Foreman, liked him as a colleague. A friend, despite it all. But for him to be her only lifeline to her old life, the one person she still keeps up with…
“Nothing new.” Now it’s her turn not to grimace. He knows the gist, and it feels wrong to talk about here and now.
“Your boyfriend didn’t come?”
“It didn’t seem… I don’t know, appropriate? I didn’t want to take attention away from House at his own funeral.” Cameron’s smile is forced. She wonders, suddenly, if that is self-centered. If anyone really would have cared. She’d imagined questions, introductions, friendly prodding. They’d all spent years so tightly entwined, so wrapped up in one another’s business and gossip, it had felt inevitable that bringing Scott would be the start of a whole lot of conversations. But House is dead. She’s the outsider here.
She looks idly about the reception hall, turning in her seat. The crowd has thinned out, and she recognizes more faces. Old colleagues. Hospital employees being polite. She sees Taub, talking to the two women who’d been introduced as House’s current fellows… and finally her eyes land on Chase. He’d seemed exhausted and miserable earlier, but now he’s chatting amiably with Thirteen across the room.
No. Doctor Hadley. Cameron probably shouldn’t think of her by nickname anymore. “How’s Chase?” she asks softly. They’d exchanged brief — polite — hellos when she’d arrived, but it had been obvious he hadn’t wanted to talk for long. She understood. Awkwardness of chatting with one’s ex-wife aside, all bad blood and bad memories aside… it was House’s funeral.
“Being his usual charming self,” Foreman says dryly, before remember who he’s talking to. “He’s taking it hard, and so of course he refuses to talk about it.”
She turns back around. Chase’s back is to them, so Cameron watches Dr. Hadley instead. She has a drawn look to her but she’s smiling, some of her usual detached irony fallen away. “Are those two…? I mean, she’s your ex, and my ex — I guess — but…”
“Oh, no, it’s much weirder than that,” Foreman says with some humor. “They’re good friends. They text. Don’t ask me, I keep out of it.” She chuckles. It’s a bittersweet feeling, but not a bad one.
“I’m going to offer him the diagnostics department,” Foreman adds.
“Really?” That’s news. Cameron blinks, turning her attention back to him.
“Well, it was that or swoop in and take it for myself,” Foreman says dryly. Cameron’s eyebrows quirk. “I’m kidding. That ship sailed years ago.”
“It’s never too late,” she says diplomatically.
“For some things, yeah, it is.” He shrugs. “I like being Dean. And Chase…”
“He’ll be great at it,” she says. She means it.
“We’ll see if I can talk him into it.”
“He’ll take the job.” Cameron has long since abandoned any dreams of being a diagnostician she may have once held, without bitterness or remorse. House taught her so much, and that training has helped tremendously with emergency medicine, but she was never really in it for the mystery and problem-solving. Still… she feels a pang of something like jealousy. Remorse. She laughs under her breath. “Remember when Cuddy put you in charge of House for a while? The first time. I was so mad. I thought she was being sexist by not picking me, the obvious best candidate.”
Foreman chuckles. “And I was so sure I’d been set up to fail, I could barely concentrate on the diagnostics. If only you and House would stop undermining me.” He grins, raises his voice pointedly. “And meanwhile pretty boy couldn’t have cared less.”
“I cared.” Cameron starts: she hadn’t noticed Chase approaching, although Foreman clearly had. She looks guiltily up at him, but he has a wry sort of smile on his face, directed at Foreman. “I just knew what you idiots forgot: that House was still the boss.” His hands are in his pockets, and he looks exhausted.
“All that ass-kissing you used to do, maybe I just wanted a taste for myself,” Foreman says dryly.
“You’d have had to have something I needed for that,” Chase retorts.
“Hey,” Cameron says anxiously. Feeling left out, feeling strange. “How are you doing?”
Chase’s expression is closed off, but his answer is polite enough. “Alright. You?”
“Just reminiscing on the good old days,” Foreman says. The two of them had often been opposed or annoyed with one another over the years, but Cameron notices how relaxed they seem now. She feels a lonely pang. They had once been a group, a trio. Always on the same level, collaborating, bickering, teaming up two against one and having dinner, grabbing drinks after long shifts. She’s been left out and left behind. “Pull up a chair.”
Chase hums and obeys. “What good old days? The time you all lost hundreds betting against a DNA test?”
“The time you made hundreds, betting House wouldn’t fire any of the fellows?” Foreman retorts.
“Hey.” Chase’s expression is mock offended. “Thousands.”
“Kiss ass,” Foreman snorts.
Chase grins. “Can’t get everywhere on looks alone.”
With the ice broken, things are easier, and when Foreman excuses himself to talk to some of the others, Cameron and Chase manage to keep up the conversation alone. Talking about old times. About House. The months before Foreman had been hired, when Cameron was new and adjusting; House’s remaining fellows. Taub and Dr. Hadley.
“You in town just for the weekend?” Chase asks eventually.
“Flying back tomorrow.” she grimaces. “The saddest part is, this is the longest break I’ve had for a while.”
“I get it. I’ve been unemployed a month and I’m sick of it. Thirteen’s trying to talk me into a holiday in Greece…” Chase looks unconvinced.
“Like a…” she feels juvenile. Like they’re middle schoolers talking about crushes. But she can’t seem to form the question. Like a romantic getaway?
He looks amused. “I’d be staying with her and her girlfriend, yeah.”
“Oh.” She’s being ridiculous. She doesn’t even care, not really — only in the sense that she hopes he’s doing well, and is intrigued by the possibility (or not) of this new pairing. And, sure, she cares in the sense that he’s her ex-husband, and it’s probably always weird to think about your ex with someone new… “I’ve been seeing someone,” she blurts.
“Alright.” His tone is neutral, if slightly cool.
“My sister-in-law — I mean, you know, Amanda — set us up. He’s a manager at a paper plate company, if you can believe it…”
“Wow. You’re dating middle management? Now that is impressive,” Chase says dryly.
“I’d almost forgotten what it was like to talk to someone who wasn’t a doctor,” she retorts, amused. He doesn’t seem hurt by her announcement, which is a relief, given how badly she’d made it.
“I’m not sure I’d know either.” He shifts in his seat, restless.
“I didn’t tell you — I mean, I’m not trying to suggest that you should care, or I thought you cared, or anything like that,” she says quickly. “It’s just, you know, we’re catching up. And that’s what’s new with me. Not that new — it’s been a year. But —”
“Cameron. It’s fine.” His eyebrows raised, his tone gently exasperated.
“Right.” She nibbles on a cracker from her half-forgotten plate. She hadn’t wanted him to be upset, and he isn’t. God, they divorced three years ago, she’d be more worried if he did want to get back together. But things used to be so easy. They used to talk. Share hospital gossip, House gossip, joke and tease and… be friends. And now they don’t. Now she doesn’t.
“I should check on Adams and Park,” Chase says after an awkward silence, and she feels a pang — that she doesn’t know House’s fellows, that he does. He softens the excuse to leave with a smile. “I’m glad we got to catch up.”
“Me too.” She means it, and his smile softens at hers. “We should keep in better touch.”
“Yeah, alright.” It’s the sort of thing you say. She doesn’t know if he wants it, if she even really means it. If he does. But in this moment, she’s glad it was said. He gets to his feet, hands going back into his pockets — looking all of twelve again.
She picks up her plate and starts to stand — the conversation is over, and she thinks a friendly hug goodbye would be appropriate, even nice. Show they’re on good terms, show that even with how awkward it is there’s no hard feelings — “Take care of yourself, okay?”
She stands up —
And —
— Cameron stumbles. Her vision dims, head spins — she reaches out awkwardly for the back of her chair to steady herself.
Kutner’s voice is in her ear. She feels a large hand on her shoulder. Light contact, steadying. “Woah! Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Stood up too quickly.” She blinks rapidly as her vision clears, the dizziness fading just as quick. “Sorry. What were you…”
Kutner draws his hand back, suddenly apologetic. “House wanted to know if you had any interesting neurological cases in the ER you could refer to us today.”
“You mean any interesting cases.” She’s talking on autopilot, staring at Kutner. The dizziness is returning, vertigo creeping behind her eyes. Her fingers feel suddenly cold. Slowly, Cameron sinks back into her chair.
“No, neurological symptoms specifically. He and Foreman are in the middle of this whole thing — Dr. Cameron? Are you sure you’re okay? You’re… pale.”
“I… don’t know,” she says. Kutner blinks. Turns his head slightly. She can’t look away from the way his eyes dart, a slight twitch to his mouth as he waits for her reply. The faintest lift and fall of his shoulders and chest as he breathes, all the tiny, ignorable markers of life you normally don’t notice when you look at someone, but —
She remembers his funeral.
He’s been dead three — four years — he —
Cameron’s pulse is rapid. She feels herself starting to sweat. “What…” She looks around frantically. They’re in the emergency room, and every inch is familiar, except this isn’t Chicago, it’s Princeton, and —
Hallucinations. Delusions. She was at the funeral, House’s funeral — he and Foreman are in the middle of this whole thing —
Her heartrate is rapid. It’s becoming difficult to breathe. Panic attack, she thinks, in a distant, clinical part of her mind.
“Doctor Cameron! Hey! I need some help over here!” Kutner’s voice sounds like it’s coming from far, far away.
“Something is wrong,” she says, as calmly as she is able, her hands cold and clutching desperately at the back of her chair — “I think I’m having a psychotic break —“
As the world goes dark, she can hear Kutner yelling for a nurse.
“When I said I was looking for patients with neurological symptoms, I didn’t mean you had to go ahead and get some for yourself,” House says. “Sweet of you though. Why did I ever fire you?”
Cameron’s head aches, and her slightest movement sends the overly starched hospital sheets crackling. She blinks, her eyes gummy. She’s in one of the recovery rooms, still in her scrubs. Her blood pressure and oxygen are being monitored, and she closes her eyes.
House says —
House.
She opens her eyes and jerks upright — “What the hell —“
“You fainted.” His tone suggests he’s disappointed in her. His tone — she stares at him. He’s at the foot of her bed, unimpressed. Alive. Breathing. Young — no, not exactly, but different than in her memories, less tired, less —
She’s at his funeral…
Dimly, she’s aware her heart rate is spiking.
“How are you feeling?” Foreman asks, approaching the bed. He was in the room as well — Cameron knows, she’d seen him, she smiles politely at him now, but whenever she looks away from House her eyes seem to be dragged back. He’s alive. He’s…
She swallows. “I didn’t hit my head or anything, did I?” Reaching up to touch it, feel herself: her skin, her hair. Real. Physical and real.
“No. Just fainted. But you were slow to come to,” Foreman says gently. “Your blood sugar is low. Otherwise you seem okay.”
“I… guess I skipped breakfast. Lunch. I don’t remember.” She remembers the hotel had a buffet. Overcooked eggs, soft bagels, under-ripe fruit. She’d stared at the warming trays for a while, knowing she ought to eat something before the funeral…
House leans against the plastic rail at the foot of the bed. His gaze is sharp. He blinks. He breathes. This is…
Her heart is pounding. The monitors beep steadily, quicker.
There’s a logical explanation. House must have faked his death. She fainted, and… he came out of hiding to check on her. That doesn’t make sense. Cameron’s head pounds.
“Can you tell me your name?” Foreman asks.
She gives him her most exasperated look. “Really?”
“Humor me.”
“Allison Jane Cameron. I’m in Princeton Plainsboro hospital. One of the first floor recovery rooms.” Her gaze darts back to House, who is watching and tapping the butt of his cane against the floor.
“Today’s date?”
“Why?“ Her voice is strangled.
“Cameron.” Foreman’s tone is gentle, in a way it never is with her. This is his patient voice, his I’m a good doctor voice — her heart is racing. Some corner of Cameron’s mind automatically tracks the rate, calculates her BP on the monitors. Heightened, panicked, indicating stress, indicating…
She stares at House again, frightened.
Foreman moves on with the neurological test. She can do mental math. Can spell world backwards and forwards, and can list a solid half dozen animals that start with the letter A.
She fainted. Foreman doesn’t seem alarmed or surprised to see House. Had he been in on the scam? Unlikely.
Maybe House wasn’t here at all.
She’s hallucinating. The funeral. The stress. Death on her mind, and she’d imagined Kutner — maybe it had just been a dream. That made sense. She’d already fainted, and it had been a lucid dream, one hell of a lucid dream, and because she’d fainted they’d taken her to the hospital…
(A room full of doctors, and they called an ambulance?)
…And now she was imagining House. At the foot of her hospital bed. Alive. Staring.
Cameron can hardly tear her eyes from House. He watches her impassively. She knows she’s acting obvious, acting weird, but —
“You’re a little disoriented, but you seem fine,” is Foreman’s verdict.
“Not generally a sign of fainting,” House points out.
Foreman glances at him, unimpressed. “Really? I’d say they’re part and parcel.”
She grows cold.
“Sorry, let me rephrase. Disorientation is a classic symptom. Disorientation plus panic attack?”
If she’s hallucinating House, how is Foreman able to interact with him?
“I’m not having a panic attack,” she says cautiously. Shakily. If House isn’t a hallucination, it’s a normal reply. If he is, Foreman should react as if she’d spoken out of nowhere.
She waits, but neither Foreman or House object. “I… it’s just been a long day. A long week. Lots of eighteen hour shifts this week, I’ve been traveling, and I skipped breakfast, and I fainted. That’s all.”
“When,” House asks, tilting his head, “have you traveled anywhere recently?”
She isn’t sure what to say.
“Okay, I’ll try an easier one. You said you’ve done ‘lots’ of eighteen hour shifts this week. It’s Monday —“
“I meant in the past seven days, not literally a calendar week —“
“And you haven’t. You’ve been on regular hours for the past two weeks. Right here in good old Jersey.” For the first time, a flicker of emotion crosses House’s face. He glances at Foreman. “If I know when she’s not at work, I know when it’s safe to visit the E.R without a side of sanctimony. There’s also the little fact that Kutner says you said you were having a psychotic break. Are you calling him a liar?”
Cameron tries to speak, but doesn’t know what to say. “I — was panicking. I was fainting.”
“You were panicking,” House agrees. “Why?”
I was at your funeral. Kutner has been dead for three years. None of this is possible.
“I don’t know,” she lies. She’s delusional. That’s the only explanation. She’s hallucinating. The stress of the funeral, of returning to Princeton, have gotten to her, and she didn’t faint: she freaked out, and her mind created some alternate reality where…
Cameron had avoided returning for such a long time. A clean break. She’d only briefly returned to get her divorce papers signed, sneaking in and out like she was ashamed. Like she was frightened. And maybe she had been.
Her life in Chicago is simple. It’s easy. Princeton had been a drug, House had been a drug, and she was finally clean. And the funeral had set off… some latent PTSD. Some hallucinations. She is imagining being in a hospital bed, being lectured by House, because that would mean he isn’t dead.
It makes sense.
But it feels so real.
She tries to remember if her psych rotation had covered anything like this. How to make the hallucinations stop. She even considers mentioning it — explaining to House and Foreman that she’s dreaming them up.
But…
(What if she isn’t?)
She feels itchy all over. Panicked and jittery and cold.
“I’m fine,” she says, confidently as she can. “Low blood sugar can cause confusion, disorientation, and fainting. And I don’t know that I’ve ever actually fainted before. I panicked.”
House regards her, and a part of her…
He’s dead.
But he’s staring at her the way he always had, like he’s trying to see under her skin, as close as she thinks he’s capable of expressing care. He’s dead. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in years. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed…
“Drink some ginger ale,” he says after a moment. “Physically, you’re fine. Mentally… eh. Talk to a shrink.” House’s tone is suddenly abrupt: he’s done with this conversation, or has a diagnoses he wants to pursue.
“I’d like to keep you here for observation,” Foreman interjects. “Physically you’re fine, but…”
“I’m fine,” Cameron says again. “I’ll take some aspirin for the headache and eat a proper lunch.”
He disapproves. “I can’t keep you here if you don’t want it, but you should know…”
“I’m a doctor, too,” Cameron points out, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “I think I can keep an eye on myself.”
“You heard the lady,” House says impatiently. “Get her some crackers.” His gaze falls back on Cameron. “Your prettier half is in surgery, but we’ll let him know you’re fine when he’s free.”
For a moment, Cameron has no idea what he’s talking about. And then — her heart sinks. She feels suddenly cold. “Oh.”
“Interesting,” House says.
She grabs for the remote on the end table and turns on the TV as soon as they’ve left the room, skipping channels until she finds the TV Guide. The date is displayed in the corner, and she stares at it unblinking. April 28th, 2008.
Her heart races.
What the hell is going on?
Chapter 2: Possibility Five
Summary:
She wants to go home, she wants to wake up — keeps turning the facts and possibilities over in her head. Hallucination. Lucid dream. It actually is 2008, and somehow I invented an entire timeline of the next four years in excruciating detail, then forgot it wasn’t real.
Except: there’s a fifth possibility. But it’s the most unlikely, and the most terrifying, of them all.
Notes:
VERY transitional chapter but we're moving from denial to bargaining so let's go! pace will pick up, i promise. necessary footwork and all.
i was blown away by the response to the first chapter - i really did think just my one friend i'd been talking about this with would be the only reader! i hope ya'll enjoy and i can keep it up!
cameron absolutely would be a bullet journal girl if that had been a trend at the time, btw. i'll die on this hill.
Chapter Text
Growing up, Cameron had always looked forward to the end of year pizza party for students with perfect attendance. Her teachers would hand out certificates, and she’d tape each one up in her bedroom. In fifth grade, she’d had a nasty case of the flu. When her parents had made her stay home for two days, she’d been inconsolable.
Feeling as if she’s in a dream, Cameron leaves the recovery and finds Dr. Bellamy. Her old boss. Her boss in 2008, the year it apparently is. Bellamy lets her go home to rest up the moment she asks, and Cameron doesn’t even feel guilty.
On her way to the locker room, she keeps spotting people she hadn’t thought about in years. A NICU nurse she was friendly with. Members of the surgical staff. Doctors she knows by sight and not name. There should have been turnover after four years. There should be —
In the locker room, she sits heavily on a bench. It’s like deja vu but worse, and she keeps waiting for the vertigo to fade. Keeps waiting to wake up. She can’t remember what locker is hers. She can’t remember the combination. She puts her head in her hands and wants to cry.
What is going on?
Three possibilities.
One: This is some sick joke. For some reason, everyone she knows and used to know have teamed up to trick her into thinking it’s 2008. House faked his death to pull it off. She could almost believe that — if Foreman wasn’t involved. If House had any reason to be that motivated to gaslight her after so long.
Two: She’s having a massive psychotic break. House’s death has sent her into some sort of spiral, and she’s imagined up a world where he isn’t dead and she never left Princeton. And for some reason it’s 2008.
Three: It actually is 2012. But she’s hallucinating House — hallucinating Foreman talking to House — hallucinating the date on the television, hallucinating that she’s an employee of Princeton-Plainsboro… she knows people can be perfectly aware of their hallucinations, even in the midst of an episode, but to this extent? And, if this is some sort of lucid dream, shouldn’t she know her locker combination?
Cameron is crying, now; her palms wet and hot against her eyes. She is not sobbing, does not make a sound. The tears fill her hands and trickle through her fingers. She is terrified. She doesn’t know what’s going on.
Possibility four.
It’s 2008. It always has been 2008. For some reason, she has concocted an elaborate delusion-cum-fantasy of the future, and then convinced herself that she knows the future. A future where she left Princeton. Left her job, left her life, and then found herself a new life. A new boyfriend. But why? And why does that delusion feel more real to her than reality?
At last, she stands and goes to wash her face. Her eyes are red, her cheeks blotchy: she looks at herself in the mirror intently. Does she look different? If she does, then —
She can’t tell. The more she stares at herself, the more alien she feels.
The locker room is empty. It’s a miserable place to kill time, but Cameron doesn’t know where else to be. She wants to go home, she wants to wake up — keeps turning the facts and possibilities over in her head. Hallucination. Lucid dream. It actually is 2008, and somehow I invented an entire timeline of the next four years in excruciating detail, then forgot it wasn’t real.
But why? Why any of this? Why —
She goes over the last few hours — what she remembers to be the last few hours — over and over again. Waking up in the hotel after a bad night’s sleep. The lackluster breakfast buffet. Killing time in her hotel room, watching local news, only half paying attention.
The service. Her eulogy. Everyone else’s. Talking with Foreman and Chase —
Nothing.
Except: there’s a fifth possibility. But it’s the most unlikely, and the most terrifying, of them all.
Cameron doesn’t know how long she sits in the locker room. She cries some more — dispassionate and almost unemotional, just a steady leaking from her eyes. She goes over the facts again and again, until her head hurts and her butt is sore from the benches and her eyes ache. She wants to go home. She wants —
A group of doctors and nurses come in. Surgical staff, talking about how their procedure had gone and eager to clean up. Cameron wipes her eyes and tries to act normal, like she’s not freaking out — or stuck here —
Surgical staff. She realizes a moment too late —
“Cameron! Hey. House paged me. I thought you’d went home —“
Chase.
She looks up in guilty horror —
And suddenly, Cameron realizes this might all be real.
Where Foreman hadn’t looked significantly different between the funeral and the recovery room, Chase was harder to reconcile. This morning, he’d been drawn and tired. He’d always had a baby-face, but grief and exhaustion had aged him, and while their conversation had been friendly, he’d been guarded. Their divorce had taken away whatever ease they’d once shared.
This Chase sits beside her on the bench, openly concerned. His hair is longer, his face rounder and more boyish than hours ago —
Your prettier half. In 2008, they were dating. Oh, god.
Her voice is weak. “House paged you?”
“Sure.” He raises his eyebrows, communicating something she no longer knows how to interpret. “‘Cameron fainted. Have fun with your splenectomy.’”
She finds it hard to look at him. Her gaze swings to their legs, to the floor. “He’s not wrong, but I’m fine. Skipped breakfast like an idiot.”
“He wouldn’t have bothered paging if it was nothing,” Chase points out. He puts his hand on her thigh, just above the knee — Cameron feels herself start to flinch. Suppresses the urge to move. He notices. “You sure you’re alright?”
“I…” Yes, she wants to say. Her lips quiver. “I… I forgot my locker combination.”
A moment, and Chase snorts. “Serious?”
“Shut up.”
He’s trying not to laugh. “You’ve been sitting here —“
She finds herself trying not to smile. She wipes at her eyes. “Shut up.”
He sobers — although she can still see the amusement in his eyes. “Let me change, and I’ll drive us home, alright?” He leans in and kisses her cheek.
She does not flinch.
It’s 2008.
Shit.
Cameron had moved a handful of times in the years she’d lived in Princeton. She remembers each place, although the dates she moved in or out are somewhat fuzzy, and when Chase offers to drive her home she’s at first not quite sure where he means.
In the car, she intends to ask him about the surgery, about his day. Politeness, and a good distraction, but she ends up staying mostly silent. She looks out the window. In four years, Princeton wouldn’t have changed that much, even if today were a normal one — but every street and building seem new and unfamiliar.
Chase is quiet, too. She remembers that the hours of hyper-focus long surgeries required usually left him mentally drained, but…
He thinks they’re dating.
She doesn’t want to even look at him.
They arrive at her old building — at her apartment. Chase parks and fiddles with his keys, untangling one from the chain. “Here.” Her apartment key.
He’d had a copy. Of course. Obviously. They’re dating, in 2008 they’d been together for, what, a year? And —
“Thanks,” she says, grimacing. Hoping she looks rueful, embarrassed. She can’t meet his eyes: she’s never been a very good liar.
“I have to go back to work,” he says. “Thomas wants me to assist on a pacemaker this afternoon. But I’ll be done around eight?”
She plays with the key. He’s asking if she wants him over, she knows. 2008. Probably her normal answer would be yes, of course. The… normal thing to do would be to would be to invite her boyfriend over.
Cameron doesn’t feel normal.
“I’m really not feeling well,” she says. “Maybe not tonight?”
“Sure,” he shrugs. She can’t tell if he buys it or not.
She climbs out of the car and watches him drive away.
The smell of her apartment hits her first. Some undefinable scent. Laundry and cleaning agent and carpet and paint and life, distinct and nostalgic and terrifying. A pair of shoes she’d forgotten she’d once owned lie by the door: a couch she’d donated when she and Chase had moved in together fills the living room. She has photos taped to her fridge. Cheap art prints on the walls. She’d tried to make the place look homey, but Cameron had never really spent that much time here…
She wanders the rooms. Her favorite brands of food in the fridge. IKEA silverware in the drawers. God, she’d loved the striped throw blanket on the sofa, even though it hadn’t survived her marriage or move back to Chicago. A tidy stack of old photo albums — she still has those, but keeps them in a storage box, not on proud display.
Cameron picks one and leafs through it. Her wedding album.
Her first wedding album. She hasn’t looked at these photos in years. They’d taken dozens and dozens of photos of the wedding, the reception, everything. There were variations of everything: six photos of their first dance, eight of cutting the cake, fourteen of the ceremony. Too many. Most of them were almost identical. It had been as though by taking so many photos, drowning in excess, they could make the wedding more. Bigger. Realer. Forever.
She’d looked happy, though.
Cameron used to fantasize about seeing David again. She’d known it was impossible, of course: She didn’t believe in an afterlife, of a reunion in heaven after death. But it had been a comfort to imagine. She’d promise him she’d never forgotten him; he’d be proud of her accomplishments and success.
She’s not sure if she ever daydreamed about their marriage somehow continuing in this scenario. If they could reunite through supernatural means and resume being madly in love.
The fact is, even against her will, Cameron had moved on. She will always, always love David. But if she suddenly woke up in 1994 instead of 2008…
There are a couple of photos on her fridge that feature her and Chase. Their first weekend away together — they’d only gone as far as the Shore — posing in sunglasses. He’s pulling a face, she’s cracking up. Another from a Christmas party from years ago — (No. A few months ago—) posing slightly awkwardly, looking like children.
She’s not sure what became of those photos. She didn’t bring them to Chicago. She supposes Chase had them. Probably threw them out after they divorced.
(It hasn’t happened yet.)
Feelings don’t just stop. She knows that better than anyone. She doesn’t hate Chase, even now, after everything. She never hated him. But…
Cameron takes a very long, very hot shower, washing and then standing listlessly in the scalding water staring into space.
It’s 2008.
Now what?
Cameron has always kept planners and a meticulous calendar. After her shower, she wraps herself in a fluffy bathrobe (she no longer owns four years from now) and goes to find her stash. She remembers 2008 in vague terms: the presidential election, of course. Her first year in the ER. That — this — was the year House had his little olympics to hire new fellows, wasn’t it? Was it this year Dr. Cuddy had adopted Rachel?
It was four years ago, and her memory isn’t exact. She pulls out her ’07 and ’08 planners from the banker’s box she keeps them all in. She’d tracked her schedule and the few social events she’d had time for: half her entries are little more than recaps of work done and tests ran, but it’s a good refresher.
Sept 5. 2nd. Interview w Cuddy 10:00. Chase still reluctant but he’s the one who wants to finish his surgical res!
Sept 30. Quiet in ER. Think I’m getting the hang of it!
Oct 3. House still hasn’t noticed we’re back! 20 bucks to whoever he notices first. Chase says he walked right by the office and nada. (Cheater!) Busy.
Oct 9. Met some of the new fellows. Cole - sensible, over his head. Brennan - was in Peace Corp! Fascinating chatting!! Chase thinks Volakis is a shoo-in.
Cameron stares at the page for a long time, then begins to frantically leaf through her planner for Amber’s name. There isn’t much: a brief mention in February that she and Wilson were dating, and a mention of running into Amber in the staff cafeteria a few weeks later. They had never been friends.
Cameron remembers her funeral.
The bus accident!
She flips through her planner again and again. The last entry was on April 24th: Lunch w Foreman. Useless. Completely useless. What had happened? Why can’t she remember?
There was a bus accident. House and Amber had been on the bus — hadn’t she gone to meet him, or something? She remembers Dr. Wilson blaming House for it, but the details… Amber had died; there had been no way to save her, some complication with the drugs. In the spring of 2008. Try as she might, Cameron can’t remember the exact date.
But not yet. Not yet, because she knows she would have written it down, written the dates of the funeral, a service, a visit to Wilson, anything —
It’s the end of April. There isn’t much left of spring, which means that… in a month… a few weeks… hell, maybe tomorrow —
She’s crazy. She’s had a psychotic break, she’s hallucinating, she — It’s not the end of April, it’s 2012, she’s imagining this, she’s creating an imaginary world in her head, there’s no way —
She’s frantic.
Cameron pulls herself away from her planners. Paces circles around her living room.
She’s delusional. That must be it. She doesn’t know the future, that’s impossible. Cameron doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t believe in magic, and the only possibility is, therefore, that she’s insane. Clinically. Completely.
Amber died in the spring of 2008.
She’s going in circles, she knows she is.
Cameron goes to the kitchen, opening cupboards in search of something to eat. Some soup, maybe — she opens a can of tomato and pours it into a bowl, covers it and puts it in the microwave. As she waits for the soup to warm, her gaze falls on her sink. Her dirty dishes. Two bowls, two spoons, two mugs.
She stares at them for a long time, and then slowly goes to her cupboards. There: maple and brown sugar oatmeal. Apple cinnamon oatmeal. A box of Rice Krispies, a box of Raisin Bran… and a box of Fruit Loops, because Chase still ate like a twelve year old, because, apparently, he’d spent the night and they’d left their dishes in the sink when they’d gone to work.
She doesn’t remember.
Two bowls. A box of cereal she doesn't like, that she'd completely forgotten Chase did.
Her microwave is beeping every few seconds, reminding her that her soup is getting cold. Cameron opens the door mostly to shut it up.
This is real. It’s 2008. She’s here. She doesn’t know how, or why, but she’s four years in the past, or she has four years of future memories, and it’s all real.
She feels faint again.
She has to sit down.
She flips through her 2008 planner, dizzy. Her schedule is noted carefully — handy, as she has no idea when she’s due at work — and in the monthly calendar section in the front, she’d noted a few upcoming appointments. But it’s April: most of the book is empty.
Amber dies this spring.
She’s sitting at the kitchen table, and, because Cameron often updates her planner at the kitchen table, there’s a little caddy with highlighters and random pens next to the salt and pepper shakers. She grabs a marker and turns to May.
There’s only really a month left in spring. How can she stop Amber from getting on a bus? How can she stop House from needing Amber to pick him up on a bus? Can she stop the crash? She’s playing into her own delusions, she’s indulging her own psychosis, but what if this is real?
There are 34 days until June. She marks the first with a big circle and writes Amber in its center.
When did Kutner die? That’s easier to recall; it was right before the disaster of her and Chase’s engagement. Next year. Her planner only covers January of 2009, but there’s a memo section in the back.
Cameron starts a list.
April-May: Amber.
Pre-April 15 2009: Kutner.
May 26th, 2012: House.
But that’s not all, is it?
She writes down every event she can remember, large and small. Patients. Notable events. She doesn’t remember a lot of precise dates: she draws circles and lines to order her rough timeline. She includes her life in Chicago — her start date, the date she’d met Scott — but most of the big stuff is here in Princeton. The page is crinkled and looks like the messiest differential board when she’s done —
But she does finish.
There’s no way to prove a negative. Maybe she is delusional, but if she sits back and lets Amber die in a bus accident just to prove she does know the future, Cameron couldn’t live with herself.
And that means she needs a plan.
On the cardboard back cover of her planner, she writes out her next steps.
- Amber. Prevent bus accident (??how?? start bus boycott?). Dies picking up House. Offer to be House’s DD. Chauffer. Lend Amber car? BUY Amber car? Does she own car???
- Kutner. Talk to him. Invite for lunch? Next steps? (Does he have hobbies??) Hard to prove success, will have to keep close eye. (Befriend him? He seems nice) (Hospital-wide mental health initiative???)
- Convince Wilson to have repeated and frequent cancer screenings. Often. Going forward. (Hospital-wide cancer screening initiative? Can probably get Wilson to help organize!)
- Keep House from fires??? Hard to accomplish unless following him everywhere. Hypothesis: more reckless bc of Wilson’s diagnoses? Lack of deep relationships? Encourage him to branch out? Be his friend? (how???? i have time)
There is more to brainstorm, more to figure out. And if she’s going to do this, believe her delusions, she might as well go all-in. Maybe she can look into drug trials for Dr. Hadley — she remembers some drama about that years ago. Or help House get and stay clean. She’d heard about his jail sentence and how Dr. Cuddy had retired in disgust. If she can somehow stop them from dating… But what about Foreman? It wasn't fair to take away his job because of that.
There’s one particular thing she knows she’s avoiding. One more life to save. But Cameron stalls, tapping her pen, her apartment growing dim and dark around her. Dibala.
And then there’s only one other thing she needs to do, before she can get started on anything else. It's important. It’s only fair. It’s only decent.
She carefully adds it to her action plan:
- Break up with Chase.
Chapter 3: Strike
Summary:
Cameron can’t resist peeking into House’s office as she strolls by. Part of her expects to see it empty. Boarded up and deserted, its occupant gone forever… but it isn’t. House is in the conference room. Kutner is seated at the table, his back to the windows, and as House abruptly turns and begins to erase the whiteboard clean, Cameron freezes, transfixed.
On the board, House writes: impaired memory. disorientation. low blood sugar.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Thanks to her planner, Cameron arrives at work promptly on time Tuesday morning. Her first stop is to find someone in maintenance to open her locker for her. She retrieves her wallet and cell phone and keys, and uses her lunch break to run to Walmart for a new combination lock.
She’s never been happier to have switched to emergency medicine. She hardly has time to think for most of the day, not about anything beyond the next crisis, the next patient. Things feel almost normal. Like she isn’t two days into a massive delusion of time travel and foreknowledge.
Cameron has two hours of clinic duty at the end of her shift. She never used to mind clinic duty, and especially after switching to emergency medicine, she often found it almost relaxing. The same take it as they come of the ER with half the stakes and half the rush.
The problem is, it leaves her more time for her mind to wander. She spends her moments between patients considering Amber. If Cameron is honest with herself… she doesn’t think she ever liked Amber much. Being ambitious was perfectly fine, but… Amber was a bitch. Manipulative. Unfriendly.
(New patient. A cold that just won’t go away. Lungs sound normal. He’s been working sixty hour weeks and hasn’t taken a single day off to recover. Orange juice, and a recommendation to get some sleep.)
That doesn’t mean for a second that Cameron isn’t going to save her life. Your right to life doesn’t hinge on how nice you are.
(Her next patient: College kid. Almost certainly gonorrhea. STD workup and a pamphlet on safe sex.)
It does make it a little harder to think of ways to befriend Amber. But, she and Wilson had been genuinely in love. Maybe she was kinder than she let on. Cameron has always liked Wilson; he cares about people, openly and without embarrassment. If Amber was drawn to that kindness, then she’ll certainly like Cameron, too. Which even to her sounds arrogant… but it’s true. She takes pride in her ability to emphasize, to have compassion…
(She doesn’t let herself think about —)
(Last patient: teenage girl and her mother. The girl’s chronic cold sores are in reality HSV-1, but no sooner does Cameron utter the words herpes than the girl starts to panic, swearing she isn’t sexually active. They have a long conversation on the difference between the two, and Cameron prescribes a cheap ointment to help with the discomfort.)
After finishing her shift, Cameron heads upstairs to Wilson’s office. She’s decided she’ll be direct about it: they are dating, and she’s been remiss in offering congratulations, and try to hint she’d love to get to know Amber better.
The walk upstairs is surreal.
All day, she’s managed to suppress the unreality of being and working in Princeton-Plainsboro again, of four years having vanished or been created in her imagination. But walking the familiar route upstairs — as she had thousands of times before — she feels the dizziness she’s starting to associate with her deja vu again.
Cameron can’t resist peeking into House’s office as she strolls by. Part of her expects to see it empty. Boarded up and deserted, its occupant gone forever… but it isn’t. House is in the conference room. Kutner is seated at the table, his back to the windows, and as House abruptly turns and begins to erase the whiteboard clean, Cameron freezes, transfixed.
House’s every gesture is so — normal. Impatient and tense, talking as he wipes the whiteboard in messy strokes. It could be any day. Any year. Any one of thousands of times. House grabs a black marker and uncaps it: she cannot make out his exact words through the glass but can hear the tone and cadence of his words: impatient and eager and brusque. An eager reply from Kutner — his back to Cameron, but she can imagine the eager look on his face, the half smile and excitement he’d always seemed to have, his only expression in her memory —
If she could just march on in, have a seat —
The nostalgia and the longing shocks her, overwhelms her. She’s missed —
She’d left. So suddenly, so abruptly, because if Cameron had lingered she would never have had the strength. Move on. Forget everything. That she’d loved this life, loved —
(I can do it again —)
Chase suddenly sits at the conference table, and for a moment she looks around — for Foreman, for herself, young and innocent and — wait. Chase?
It takes Cameron a second to realize that she’s not just imagining things.
He must have been at the kitchenette: he’s holding a mug, and from where she’s standing, the coffee machine is blocked by bookshelves. He leans against the table, facing the white board. House says something: she can hear the familiar tenor of Chase’s voice as he replies, lifting the mug to take a sip.
On the board, House writes: impaired memory. disorientation. low blood sugar.
Get a neurologist, Cameron thinks immediately, glancing to see if she missed Foreman somehow —
And then she realizes.
Her fingers tremble as she reaches, automatically, for the door — House thinks she’s crazy. (She is crazy.) Roping it not his full team, but Kutner, but Chase — (Like there’s something wrong with her —)
And then what?
Just as fast, her knee-jerk reaction fades. She backs away a few steps. It is suddenly shocking that she has yet to be noticed: Cameron feels naked and exposed.
She slinks away, absurdly guilty — trying to grasp for anger instead. Outrage. The violation of it, to be treated as a puzzle, a new mystery to solve — except even the anger keeps slipping from her. House is right. She’s been caught. It’s been barely a day, and everyone will know now, the entire hospital will know —
Know what? That she’s insane? That —
Cameron leans against the wall of a quiet corridor, her fingers pressing firm against her temples. That she’s insane. She’s leaning fully into her delusions, she thinks she can see the future, and being self aware isn’t actually a cure. How is it better to know and want to do it anyway?
Two days ago. Three days ago. She was in Chicago. She can picture Scott’s house in vivid detail: the bare walls in his living room, the mismatch of furniture. He’s unpretentious in a way she finds refreshing. He didn’t care how he was perceived, that he might be judged for his lack of ambition and how easily he is made content. Scott preferred to devote his energy to the things he cared about — biking, fishing, hiking, the youth baseball team he coached, his hours at the Boys & Girls club. It didn’t matter to him that he didn’t make a lot of money, that he didn’t care about his job. Had Cameron made him up? Invented their first, awkward date? Walking along the lakeshore for their second? He imagined himself a great chef. He loved to read the types of thrillers you’d find in airport bookshops. She isn’t that creative. She isn’t that imaginative. How can it all be a lie? How can —?
She imagines what’s going on in the conference room. The differential for a sudden psychotic break in a thirty-something year old woman.
House will think she’s insane, searching for causation. It won’t be enough that Cameron is delusional. It must be a deficiency, a tumor. There are any number of diseases. She can almost hear him demanding workups. Samples. MRIs.
And Chase…
The anger prickles up her spine. If he’s there, he must have noticed — or thought he noticed — something wrong. But he didn’t say anything, not to her — just stayed quiet in the car like a coward, passive-aggressive to the last — then ran to House. Grief-stricken and guarded at the funeral, Foreman preparing to offer him House’s job, the way he’d pretended for years at cynicism and accused her of being obsessed with the man, when the moment he was given the chance he’d leapt back into diagnostics, turned into House, covered his ass and thrown away —
She calls him.
Her cellphone feels clunky and outdated in her hands: weird and jarring, how quickly tech changes. (How could she have invented these memories?) He’s under her contacts; she presses call.
Two tinny rings. “Hello?” Even slightly distorted by the phone, Chase sounds normal. Calm.
“Hi. I’m breaking up with you.” She had intended on this being an in-person conversation, but her anger is too hot, too satisfying. Solid and sharp and nothing like her nauseous confusion, her terror. She hears him take in a breath. “It’s over. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“Hang on —“ He sounds winded. She hears a voice in the background. Kutner, maybe: House won’t care.
“No,” Cameron says. “This isn’t a discussion.”
Another sharp breath, and then he sounds halfway to angry. “How isn’t it a discussion? You can’t just call me out of nowhere and say you want to break up, I —“ his voice lowers abruptly. She imagines the stares. There is a sick pleasure to this. For the first time since the funeral, Cameron is in control. “— there has to be more to this.”
“And it’s okay to huddle together with House about me behind my back?” she snaps, arch.
A moment of silence, then a burst of static and scuffling noises, and then the quality of the silence changes — “You’re welcome to join us in person,” says House.
His voice is far-off: she’s been put on speaker.
“Stay out of this,” she says.
“Absolutely,” says House.
“I’m serious. There is nothing wrong with me, and I can’t believe — do you have any idea what kind of violation this is? Do you even care?”
“See, the normal, appropriate reaction to a couple brain farts is to laugh it off,” House continues.
“I did laugh it off,” Cameron snaps, her ear hot and palm sweaty as she clutches her phone. “Because nothing is wrong. Until I found out you’d thrown together a little party to diagnose me!”
“Hmm. Chase,” House says brightly, raising his voice, “Add paranoia to the board, would ya?”
More scuffling noises, and the call is abruptly disconnected.
It’s so abrupt and ineffectual that Cameron doesn’t know what to do for a moment. She stares at her phone, her heart racing.
Paranoia. Delusions. Irrational anger — no, rational, it was rational, but —
To her surprise, her phone begins to ring again after only a few seconds. Chase.
She stares, feeling it vibrate in her palm. The tune of her ringtone ends a loop and starts a new one, and she can’t decide what to do. The illusion of control has vanished, and she can feel the fear swelling —
Her phone keeps ringing. At last, she brings it back to her ear. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” Chase says hastily, as if he’s worried she’s about to hang up on him. “House insisted I drop by and I didn’t know what he intended. Are you still at work?”
She’s still on the same floor, although Cameron doesn’t want to see him. She tries to steady her breathing, to not let on her panic. “I don’t want to hear it.”
His sigh is a burst of static in her ear. “Listen — Allison —“
Her name stops her cold.
It’s been years —
“I’m breaking up with you,” she repeats, suddenly icy calm.
A sharp, staticky intake of breath. “Because of… this?”
I’m not signing the papers. Not without a conversation.
Cameron is acutely aware of how sideways this has gone. She’d intended on doing this gently. In person. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s not you, it’s that I’m seeing someone else. That we divorced. That I hadn’t spoken to you in years before yesterday.
She squeezes her eyes closed. “No.“ It’s not you, it’s me. He deserves a conversation. An explanation. What kind of explanation? I’m from the future, and we don’t work out. I woke up two days ago and realized I don’t love you. “I was meaning to break up with you anyway. I care about you, but I have no interest in being in a relationship with you.“
Chase is quiet for a moment, but then his laugh is staticky and cold. “Just like that? A year, and you’re just over it?”
“It’s not fair of me to lead you on,” she says, stiff, trying to stay calm, to give him some sort of closure this time. “It’s not you, it’s —“
“Yeah,” he drawls. “Bit late for that.” The warmth in his voice the day before is gone. “What,” he adds, his voice tinted dark and sardonic, “did you realize it’d had been a year and I was still inconveniently alive?”
The anger flares back up. “I realized you were a jealous, passive-aggressive, spineless asshole,” she snaps, “which is exactly why I had no interest in trying again in the first place!”
A clean break from Princeton. Coming back to get him to sign the divorce papers had been terrifying, excruciating, because she’d known, she’d always known, if she’d lingered she’d never leave. She’d wanted to stay, she’d always wanted to stay, but the poison —
She had wanted to try again. Of course she had. That was why she had to return, to get him to sign the papers: if it was a cold war, they both knew she’d give in. Remembering the good times, wishing, hoping — if there was a chance, she’d surrender. Divorce. Clean break. Don’t look back. Remember his worst qualities, his most annoying habits. He’d rather cover his own ass and be with House than be with her —
Her parents had urged her to end their separation. To reconcile. They’d loved Chase, because the man couldn’t put himself in the same room as someone’s parents without desperately trying to win them over. They’d wanted her to try again, she’d wanted to try again, and it would have been so easy to give in, to fall back, to surrender to addiction, and so she had not.
And wasn’t that enough?
Wasn’t that good? That Cameron had been strong for once, been able to let go for once, to move on, to live her life, a good life, a life she’d been happy with —
On the other end of the phone, in 2008, Chase goes very quiet. “Fine,” he says at last, and hangs up.
Cameron cries in her car for a good long while. Out of grief and frustration and anger and guilt. And relief, most of all, most hateful of all. What other choice did she have? She couldn’t have led Chase on, pretended —
(Given in.)
— But she had been hurtful, she knows. She has hurt him, she knows.
(Paranoia. Delusions. Irrational anger. Overnight shifts in feeling, emotion, priorities.)
The next morning, Cameron arrives to work promptly on time. It is a busy day in the ER, and she does not let herself think about it. About any of it. House and his whiteboard, pasted bright in her mind. House’s funeral, no coffin or ashes to display.
The way the hospital rumor mill works, Cameron assumes everyone knows about her breakup by now. Probably also House’s whiteboard. Luckily, her paths don’t cross with either Diagnostics or Surgery too often, and she’s able to ignore or stare down anyone looking overly solicitous.
But there aren’t many. It takes Cameron some time, but eventually she realizes that her coworkers are genuinely preoccupied. It’s not until she sees Dr. Cuddy sweeping by in a rush that she realizes it’s serious enough to pay attention to. She flags down one of the attendings. Dr. Waters. Terry. Teresa?“What’s going on?”
“You didn’t hear?” Waters grimaces. “Last round of negotiations have fallen apart.” Cameron must still look confused, since she immediately clarifies: “With the nursing union?” she shakes her head. “I get it, they’ve been screwed with this 401k shit, but we’re gonna be screwed if they go on strike. We don’t have enough nurses here as is.”
The nurse’s strike. Of course. Cameron had benignly assumed she had a good memory, that she recalled the last years of her life clearly, if not perfectly. But the strike had completely slipped her mind. She remembers the weeks of exhaustion, each shift twice as difficult, twice as stressful —
She briefly toys with the idea of trying to resolve the strike early, but has to admit it’s a bit out of her wheelhouse. There’s no special future knowledge Cameron can apply here. The strike will end when it ends. Still, she’s preoccupied through the afternoon, thinking about it. What’s hardest about not having nurses? Would it be preemptively scabbing if she asked one or two to give her a quick tour of the drawers and supplies, so when they did leave she’d be more prepared…?
“Dr. Cameron?”
She looks up from the nurse’s station, where she’s been updating charts.
Kutner looks hesitant, and raises his hand in an abortive wave.
“Hi,” she says slowly. It’s still a shock to see him — present and blinking and alive. And she immediately remembers House’s office, last night — “Can I help you?” She fumbles with her clipboard, wanting suddenly to seem busy. “House looking for a new neurological case?”
“Oh, no, I’m just here to say hey,” Kutner says hastily. Cameron touches her pager, desperate for news of an impending five car pileup. She has nowhere else to be. “How are you feeling?”
She sighs. “If House sent you to spy on me…”
“He didn’t.” He raises his palms in supplication. “I mean, okay, he wanted to, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“So why are you here?” She decides now would be a good time to look very busy and go get a coffee from the break room. Kutner follows.
“I just wanted to check on you. You fainted a couple of days ago…”
“The first of my many symptoms, right?” Is she House’s new case? Have they spent an entire day gossiping about her? House spilling all her secrets? Foreman might try and reign him in, she thinks, but the idea of House’s new fellows being roped into her personal life…
“I was just worried about you. It was kind of scary.” Kutner shrugs. She blinks at him. His tone and posture are completely disarming. Like he… actually means it.
“Oh. Well, thanks,” Cameron says awkwardly. “I’m fine now.” She pushes the door open into the break room. Kutner follows. There’s about half a cup of coffee left in the pot — god knew how long it had been sitting there — and she considers it a moment before dumping it in the sink and starting a new one.
“And, uh, if you wanted to talk…” Her guard goes back up. He looks sheepish. “House didn’t send me, I swear. But you and Dr. Chase are fighting, right? It just seems like you might, uh… be having a rough few days.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” she says neutrally.
But suddenly she realizes this might actually work in her favor. No, in Kutner’s favor. She finds herself staring at him. He has less than a year to live. No: to be more precise, he has less than a year before he dies of suicide. Suddenly, she wonders if his concern is actually genuine. Maybe he thinks she’s having a mental health crisis (delusions. paranoia. impaired memory) and is… trying to relate.
She never knew him well enough to be certain. But…
She tries to smile. “Do you just feel responsible because you were there when I fainted?”
Kutner winces. “And when you dumped — I mean, uh, when you and Chase had that fight. Kind of in the same room for that, too.” He makes a vague, incomprehensible gesture. “Just kind of feels weird that we don’t really know one another, and you swooned in my arms and all.”
It’s a very weak joke, but she smiles. Cameron thinks for a long minute, watching the coffee slowly drip into the glass carafe. “I haven’t taken a real lunch today. Want to grab a bite to eat?”
To Do:
- Stop/fix nurse's strike. (??) (who is in charge of the nurse's union? Brenda?) (May have to give up on this one)
- SAVE AMBER. Get to Amber through Wilson? (don't forget cancer screenings!!)
- Research Princeton bus routes/schedules/drivers? Will absolutely lose license if I claim driver has deadly allergy to bus upholstery + can't drive route. Think of SOMETHING!
- Convince House everything is fine and he should mind his own business for once (ugh). Teach him fire safety. Keep him away from Amber, Wilson??? How? (Involve Foreman? NEED to find out what the "diagnoses" is. Foreman best bet to shut this down. Or Cuddy?)
- Lunch w Kutner.
Break up with Chase✓
Notes:
friendship ended with chase md, kutner md is best friend now
Chapter 4: Andrew Slocum
Summary:
“Well, you also asked me to lunch,” Kutner points out. “I figured it was to interrogate me about House, but then you were just asking me stuff about me.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
They get lunch off campus: burgers. “Tell me about yourself,” Cameron says, picking at her fries.
Kutner chews his burger thoughtfully. “Well, huh. I like to swim. I’m from California. I love Star Wars, but if you made me pick I’d probably go Star Trek. And Picard over Kirk all the way.” His tone is matter of fact, but means very little to Cameron.
“Your specialty is in sports medicine, isn’t it?” she remembers.
“Sure. I realized I was never gonna be a pro basketball player, and I always wanted to be a doctor, so I was like, next best thing. You studied emergency medicine?”
“Immunology.” She nibbles at another french fry. Getting-to-know-you small talk has never been difficult for her, but looking at Kutner, she finds it impossible to not picture his memorial service. His devastated parents. She knows appearances can be deceiving, but the easy-going man in front of her now…
“What brought you to that?”
She smiles ruefully. “Well, I didn’t dream of being an immune system and settle for the next best thing.” He laughs politely. “I don’t have a deep reason. I just… thought it was a useful way to help people. I would have specialized in emergency medicine, but…” Cameron watches Kutner polish off his food. “I was married,” she says. “When I was twenty.”
She half assumes House would have mentioned it — god knew he brought it up enough to taunt her over the years — but there’s no recognition in Kutner’s expression. “He had cancer. I already knew I wanted to go to medical school, but after he passed I wasn’t sure I was up for a specialty with such an intense mortality rate.”
“I’m sorry,” Kutner says.
She wonders if he’s thinking about his own mortality. Suicidal depression isn’t usually sudden onset: it’s far more likely Kutner has struggled for years with his own, his death the culmination of a long struggle. Cameron had been depressed after David died, but not clinically. Still, if she can allude to it…
Kutner takes a noisy sip of his soda. “So, how’d you end up with House?”
“…Same way as you. I applied for a fellowship.”
“Along with how many others, and over how many weeks?” Kutner grins.
Cameron laughs. “Just me. House had been hiring and firing a new fellow once a week, from what I’ve heard. I guess I got lucky.”
“Oh, I relate. I think I’ve been fired… four times now?” Kutner jokes.
“But you’re still here. And I think House likes you. As much as he likes anyone.”
“I like him,” says Kutner. “He’s absolutely nuts, but he’s great.”
She has to laugh. It’s… strange. Why had she never gotten to know him before? Why had she never bothered to really get to know any of House’s new fellows? She’d been acquainted with Thirteen, but she’d rarely had cause to spend time with Kutner or Taub. Maybe if I had, I would have seen something the first time around.
They exchange stories. “House got half the hospital involved in a paternity bet once,” Cameron says. “I lost a hundred bucks.”
“Did you bet for or against?”
“For. And it turned out the kid was adopted!” She remembers how outraged she’d been. “House had been going on and on about how no one was capable of being faithful in a marriage. He goaded me into it.”
“If the kid was adopted, it sort of proves you right,” Kutner says. “It’s not proof the parents were faithful, but it at least rules out one affair.”
“True,” she laughs. She hadn’t considered that. “So why did you apply for the fellowship?”
“It sounded fun. I was kind of at loose ends after my residency.” A strange expression crosses Kutner’s face, different from his usual easy-going smile.
“Where was your residency?”
“University of Colorado.”
“Great skiing up there, I bet.” Cameron watches Kutner’s face carefully for a tell. Did something bad happen? Was loose ends code for — for what? Depression? Self harm?
“More of a snowboarder. I’m not that great, though. Broke my leg first week of residency; that was pretty awkward. You do any skiing?”
“Any other injuries?” Cameron asks. A history of reckless behavior? Risk taking?
Kutner pauses, playing with his empty cup as he frowns thoughtfully at her. “Are you… taking a history, Dr. Cameron?”
“What?” she stammers, but he clearly doesn’t believe her. “I…” Her mind feels completely empty as she scrambles. What can she even say? “You caught me,” she blurts, rolling her eyes. “I only asked you to lunch because I was hoping for a complete medical history.”
Sarcasm has often worked on both Foreman and Chase in the past. But Kutner only frowns, as if considering it. “This is related to House’s theory, isn’t it?”
She feels a chill. “Depends. What’s his theory?”
Kutner cocks his head and leans back in his chair, watching her. Cameron tries to look neutral and unperturbed. He leans forward. “Okay, how about this? I tell you what’s going on, and you tell me what’s going on.”
“What if I don’t want to know what’s going on?” she retorts.
“I’m pretty sure you do. And I don’t have any big secrets, so fishing’s not gonna get you much. Actually it’s a good deal for you.”
“I’d say it’s a better deal for you, since you just told me there’s nothing you can offer me.” Cameron wants to cross her arms, to fidget. She grabs a napkin and begins methodically shredding it in her lap.
“Okay, then I’ll tell you whatever you want for free,” he shrugs.
She can hear an implied but — but Cameron doesn’t push it. She shreds her napkin. She feels like an idiot, getting caught so quickly. To admit she’s fishing for information feels like a loss; like she’s giving too much up. It’s frustrating. She’s frustrated. Cameron’s never liked scheming, lying to patients, manipulating people…
Maybe it would be better to just be honest.
“What’s House’s theory?”
Kutner hesitates, taking a breath. “Korsakoff’s came up.”
“I am not an alcoholic!” she snaps, offended.
“Obviously not!” Kutner raises his hands almost before Cameron interrupts. “But you don’t have antegrade amnesia, and you haven’t had any recent head trauma, so the list of amnesia-causing disorders isn’t that long. House still wants to get you an MRI…”
“He thinks I have amnesia.” There’s a nauseous, anxious pit in her stomach. “House has been watching too many soaps.”
“It was mostly because of Chase,” Kutner says. “He says you forgot some stuff.”
“My locker combination?” Cameron laughs incredulously. Anxious.
“Uh, and I guess also that he’d spent the night? And you’d had lunch together?”
And breakfast, Cameron suddenly realizes, remembering the dirty dishes in her sink. Shit.
“Then there’s the sudden personality changes.” Kutner’s starting to look anxious.
“That I broke up with my boyfriend for tattling?” she snaps, unamused.
“Kinda.” He winces apologetically at her look. “That one was House’s idea, not mine!” He looks like he wants to say something else, so Cameron waits impatiently for him to spit it out, her lap a mountain of shredded paper. “Did you and Dr. Chase really break up over this?”
“He didn’t tell you?” Cameron asks, unimpressed.
Kutner shrugs. “After House put him on speaker, he grabbed his phone back and stormed out. Haven’t spoken to him since. It’s not my business, but, I dunno, it does seem like it could be a personality change.”
What is she supposed to say? It is, but it isn’t. Cameron hasn’t forgotten anything, she’s just… skipped ahead. “Why was Chase there?” she asks.
“House wanted to know if you had been acting unusually — uh, breaking up with Chase did not help convince him otherwise, by the way — and also if you were an alcoholic or on any drugs that could explain…”
“Korsakoff’s,” she mutters.
“Or something else, yeah. There’s not a huge pool of options for memory loss without physical trauma or symptoms. Drugs makes sense.”
“I don’t have memory loss, and I don’t do drugs.” She sounds too defensive, but when she tries to force herself back into calm, her voice wavers. “Maybe a tiny bit of confusion the day I fainted, which, by the way, explains the locker thing and me forgetting about lunch. No other mental symptoms.”
“Well, you also asked me to lunch,” Kutner points out. “I figured it was to interrogate me about House, but then you were just asking me stuff about me.”
“I was being friendly,” Cameron objects.
“Would you consent to an MRI?” he asks, infuriatingly calm and inquisitive.
“I thought you weren’t here to spy for House?” she replies cattily.
Kutner shrugs.
She wants badly to explain herself, to justify herself. Kutner thinks she’s crazy, House thinks she’s crazy, and she isn’t. She knows perfectly well what’s going on. It isn’t her problem how she’s being perceived — except that’s not true at all. Cameron hates being perceived… incorrectly. As someone she isn’t. As someone she doesn’t want to be.
There’s plenty of sexism in medicine. She’s pretty, she likes to help, and her entire career people have thought of Cameron as too sensitive, irrational, weak — all different ways of saying too feminine, not capable of a man’s job. Kutner’s accusations have nothing to do with sexism, she knows, but it hits too close to home. Look at Allison. Irrational, emotional, crazy.
She flexes and clenches her fingers in her lap. “Maybe,” she says with grit teeth, “there’s a reason I don’t want to get dissected under a microscope.”
“Because you think you’re not sick?” Kutner asks.
“Because I already know exactly what my condition is.” His eyebrows go up, eyes widening. Cameron allows him a beat to get excited. “And it’s private.”
Kutner looks disappointed. “Okay,” he says at last.
“Really?” she smirks, on edge, halfway wanting a fight.
“I mean, House won’t buy it.” His grin is rueful. “But that’s good enough for me. And, I actually was serious about just wanting lunch, since I seriously do feel awkward about the last couple days”
“You’re still going to tell House all of this, though.”
Kutner laughs. “Well, obviously.”
On Friday, the nurse’s strike formally begins, throwing most of the hospital into chaos. The ER is particularly badly affected, and Cameron’s hopes of preparing in advance are largely stymied — there’s just not a lot future knowledge can do with only two days forewarning. If there’s one positive, it’s that she’s so busy she has absolutely no time to worry about House.
It’s actually distressing how quickly Cameron finds herself falling back into this life. Hours will pass without her consciously remembering how impossible this all is, that she’s in New Jersey and not Chicago. And then she’ll run into Dr. Cuddy in the cafeteria, or get a flash of deja-vu in the hallway, and suddenly feel lost and disoriented all over again.
Princeton is a college town full of college kids who do stupid college thins. Friday nights in the ER have never been a good time. “Bus five minutes out!” Dr. Waters calls, pulling back the curtains with a metallic scraping: “Car crash. Driver and two passengers.”
“Kinda busy here!” Cameron replies testily: she’s busy sewing up a frat bro who’d somehow put his arm through a window. He’d been too drunk to feel it, but he’s whimpering with each stitch. “Hold still. We’re almost done.”
“I need someone,” Waters complains.
“Find a resident! A student!” It’s been less than a day, and the lack of nurses is already killing them. Best Cameron can remember, the strike will last almost a month. A month.
“The med students are probably the ones on the bus,” Waters mutters.
“Hey.” Cameron tries not to grin as she ties off the stitches. “Almost done,” she adds, for the sake of her whimpering patient.
By the time she’s finished, the ambulances have arrived and been unloaded, and Cameron rushes over to see what she can do to help — and freezes.
Dr. Waters and a resident are busily stabilizing the female passenger. The car’s driver sits on an adjacent bed, holding an ice-pack to his head and looking dazed but unhurt as a second resident checks for a concussion. The other male has some minor cuts but is standing, pale and frightened as he watches the doctors tend to his friends.
She’s seen this exact scene before.
Cameron remembers this crash.
The vertigo of deja-vu hits her hard, and she has to close her eyes for a moment. Force herself to take a deep breath.
She can’t say why she remembers. The car crash wasn’t particularly remarkable, there were no medical mysteries of note, she didn’t know any of the injured. She certainly hadn’t remembered it had happened today. And yet she remembers now, seeing it. Remembers Waters and the resident working fast, Waters snapping a little as the resident fumbles. Remembers the befuddled look on the driver’s face, like he has no idea where he is or how he got here.
Remembers what comes next.
The driver, despite being absolutely trashed, will turn out to have no injuries worse than some minor bruising. The woman will spend a night in the ICU, but ultimately be fine. And their seemingly uninjured friend…
Cameron stumbles forward. “Hi. I’m Dr. Cameron. Has anyone had a look at you yet?”
“Um, no. But I’m okay.” White male, early twenties, brown hair and eyes. He rubs his torso anxiously and can’t take his eyes off his female friend. “I had on my seatbelt, Jess —“
“Does your stomach hurt?” Cameron steers him to an empty bed. “What’s your name?”
“Andy Slocum. I guess — the seatbelt dug in pretty hard. I didn’t know Trev was so trashed, he seemed like he was fine to drive —“
Cameron checks out his eyes. Good response. Superficial cuts on his face and forearms. He’s dazed, and she can smell alcohol on his breath. “Would you lie down for me please, Andy? I want to look at your stomach.”
He obeys, peeling up his shirt. There’s an angry bruise where the seatbelt had dug into his stomach and torso.
She remembers this case.
First night of the nurse’s strike. The ER is packed and everyone is stressed. Andy presents with a high blood alcohol level and complaining of stomach pain, but one look at his stomach was enough to explain that, and his disorientation could have been caused by his alcohol level. Only the pain had gotten worse.
His spleen had been ruptured in the crash, and the symptoms had been overlooked in the chaos. They’d gotten him to surgery in time, but by that point, Andy was in a critical state. She remembers this case. She’d gotten lucky the first time. This time…
“Wait here just a second, okay, Andy?” Cameron can feel her hands shaking. Adrenaline. She’s half terrified and half excited. She knows what’s wrong. There’s no nurses, so she rushes to the desk herself, dialing the extension for surgery. “This is Dr. Cameron. I have an emergency splenectomy. Need an OR. Who’s the on call?”
There’s a half second of silence on the other end of the line. “I am,” says Chase, his voice flat.
The transfer goes smoothly. Andy is more confused than frightened, and since they caught the rupture so quickly, he only ends up needing a patch job instead of a splenectomy. The procedure proceeds without issue.
“Nice catch with that kid earlier,” Waters says. It’s three AM, and the ER has finally quieted down. “No CT or anything?”
“I had a hunch,” Cameron says, staring down at her coffee. She’s prepared to explain her reasoning — reasoning that isn’t I remembered it — but Waters is exhausted and doesn’t press her.
“I’m gonna go get something from the vending machine. Want anything?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
Cameron is exhausted, too. This was the first time her memories have done anything, made a difference, even if the difference wasn’t as major as saving a life. But all she feels is dread.
She’d only seen Chase for a few seconds during the transfer: just long enough to confirm it really was him on call.
And that was the problem.
Cameron has been obsessing over how things went the first time Andy came into the ER. How she’d missed the diagnoses in the chaos of the evening. How luck more than anything else had led him to the OR in time. How awful she’d felt, knowing that if things had gone even slightly different he could have died.
She remembers going back to Chase’s place after work. Talking to him about it, stressed and anxious. He’d been at his apartment. He hadn’t been at work that night.
So he took on an extra shift. Who cares?
It’s none of her business. They broke up.
But it’s different.
It doesn’t matter. Whatever her issues with Chase, Cameron knows he’s a great surgeon; if anything, Andy was lucky Chase had been the on-call tonight. It makes no difference. It’s a meaningless difference. It’s totally fine. But Chase wasn’t supposed to be here.
Cameron turns it over in her head, again and again and again, but she’s so tired she can hardly recite the basic facts, let alone figure anything out. Her shift is over, but she’s due for her next in five hours: rather than going home, she decides she’ll sleep in the on-call.
She should feel proud of herself. Maybe she didn’t save Andy’s life, but she certainly saved him a major surgery and a lot of pain. She’s making a difference, and if she can do this, she can absolutely do more. One thing is for sure: she’s wasted enough time. She needs to track down Amber, and fast. She can make a difference. She will save her.
Nothing to worry about.
But as Cameron collapses onto one of the overly-starched cots in the on-call room and closes her eyes, the only thing she feels is dread.
Notes:
amber is in the next one I SWEAR
Chapter 5: AUTHOR'S NOTE
Chapter Text
Hi! It's been a while! I'll cut to the chase:
It's looking increasingly that, despite my own desires, I'm not going to be finishing this story. I'm my own worst critic, and I kind of am at the point where I'm like "if I keep this story going, I'd want to re-write it from the start first," and I'm not entirely against that option but… it's not happening right now. Anytime soon. So I'm officially orphaning this work (right after I post this).
But, I also know how lowkey frustrating it is when a story gets abandoned and is left unresolved, so I thought I'd throw you all my outline, let everyone know what was going to happen. Spoilers: time travel is a metaphor for control!!
- Next chapter: Cameron finally connects with Amber, but Amber basically blows her off because she can absolutely tell Cameron has Ulterior Motives, Cameron can't say I time traveled , it all goes really poorly… and the chapter ends with the news of the bus accident.
- Cameron is able to identify Amber as missing/injured in the other hospital right away. Ultimately this makes no difference and Amber still dies. She is incredibly shaken by this; she really thought she could do this, fix everything just by force of will.
- Ends up telling Kutner the truth about the time travel. He's like. Super into it. She doesn't tell him he's dead in her future, she tells him all about the Amber situation though and about Dibala (as a reason why she dumped Chase). (Kutner is like "wait, you're blaming him for something he won't do for two years?" and she's like… :| yes)
- Meanwhile, Chase is retreating to his Safe Space, Diagnostics. He's the main victim of the butterfly effect, and Cameron isn't noticing. In the background there are little things. He's in diagnostics more. She sees him and 13 grabbing lunch. Cameron writes all this off, she's not really paying attention, her goals are guilt based: Amber died / KEEP KUTNER ALIVE AT ALL COSTS so she's ignoring everything else.
- She's trying to help House and Wilson repair their friendship because she feels like shit about the Amber thing, and befriending Kutner at the same time, because she cannot fail again. The latter goes great. The former goes terribly because House absolutely knows something is going on with Cameron but obviously is not going to guess time travel. Her meddling basically screws things up more.
- When The Itch happens she is able to instantly diagnose the guy, since she was super involved in that case.
- Last Resort happens. Chase has been knocked off his timeline; he gets taken hostage along with House and 13, and gets shot by the gunman. He's okay, but this triggers just a total despair event from Cameron; she wasn't paying attention to changes she caused, she doesn't know what she's doing, she keeps failing, this whole thing sucks. She likes Kutner but feels like she can't open up to him all the way because she hasn't told him you're due to die, she feels like she almost got Chase killed, just, total collapse.
- Apologizes to Chase (who is like… wtf, we haven't spoken in months and this had nothing to do with you). She ends up telling him the whole time travel truth too and he's kind of into it (the time travel, not her actions) and she's like listen I just need a friend right now?? Everything sucks??? How do I fix things???
- Chase is like "you…………don't??? Stop obsessing over every goddamn detail and acting like you know best. I could have told you this months ago if you didn't dump me btw."
- Cameron tells Kutner the truth (that he dies). He's like oh, hmm, yeah, that checks out. IDK I don't feel like offing myself right now. I can keep you posted I guess?
- That's basically the end of the story it's a metaphor for you can't control everything.
- Flash forward to the day of House's funeral in the original timeline. Things are different. Cuddy is still around, she and House didn't date; she's grooming Foreman to take over for her (Cameron's "idea"). Kutner is alive! He and Park are besties. Going out???? Wilson still has cancer but it was caught earlier and chemo isn't going great but he probably has a couple years, not a couple months; general theme is "everything isn't perfect but it's a little better." They're all at, not House's funeral, but some other hospital event. We get another Cameron-Foreman-Chase convo as in the first chapter, they're all friends and haven't lost touch/no awkwardness. Cameron finally tells House the truth and he tells her her fixing everything idea was stupid. She tells him about his funeral and he's like I bet I faked my death. The end.
Additionally, I was talking about this story on tumblr and someone asked how my Last Resort re-write would go. I hadn't actually plotted it out in detail, but I find that stuff fun, so I did write up a summary of that hypothetical chapter:
- Episode starts off (almost) the same. Chase is hanging out with 13 in the clinic as House does his thing. Gunman comes in.
- Cameron remembers this happening! She even remembers it was a tropical disease, although she can't recall which one. She remembers 13 was very badly hurt. She's reliving/trying to remember and Save Everything and at first misses the news that Chase was also dragged in. After all, he wasn't involved the first time, he nope'd on out of that episode, his absence doesn't strike her for a minute.
- From the hostage's POV, everything stays the same at first. Chase replaces that one nurse. He's not here to be heroic, he's here to keep his head down, tend the other guy who got shot, and be annoyed at House playing games. He really doesn't want to be there! During one of the conference calls, House complains that Chase is being useless and he'd rather have gotten stuck with someone else.
- This hits Cameron like a ton of bricks, because this is different, this means she has no clue what's going on, what's going to change, what has changed. Foreman is like the hell is wrong with you?
- 13 still volunteers to be drug tester, Chase very much does not, but he does help tend to her when the drugs start working, as House is busy with the patient.
- Chase loses his patience as 13 gets worse and House starts playing games. He's a huge House enabler, but he always puts his own life/safety/job first, and this is ridiculous. He tries to storm out or leave and gets shot. (This startles and alarms House. It's not fatal, it's still a gunshot! But House is like… just leave him in the hall, he'll get to safety, I want to Solve This Case. Like the moment with the gun and the MRI.) Chase does get to safety with a hole in his side or something. The rest of the episode proceeds as normal, with 13 being left alone with the guy and realizing she doesn't want to die etc.
- Cameron meanwhile has been just in a panic daze, she's not being very helpful. She does mention tropical disease but can't prove it, but Foreman remembers it for later. When she finds out Chase has been shot she immediately jumps to he's dead. She's butterfly effected things so hard she got him killed! This is 100% her fault! She's the worst! Like truly ready to martyr herself over this. Chase is in the ICU. He is okay. He's insulted she thinks it was her fault, even after she explains the time travel thing. First because she dumped him and hasn't spoken to him in months, second because it was his own idiocy that landed him here, thanks.
- But they have a "well, I do still care about you as a person" moment. Sort of making up. Cameron has kind of missed him as a friend. Chase is pretty relieved to hear that Cameron… I mean, she still dumped him for a stupid reason, but at least now he has a reason, the way it went in the story she basically just told him she was sick of him and never spoke to him again. But at the same time Chase is more worried about his new best friend 13 (Cameron has been missing this but they've become friends in the background). Cameron is like :| but that's also different you can't -- and then realizes how fucking insane that is, don't be friends with 13 because of the timelines, and she has a moment like "oh… things have changed, maybe I can't just… force it back the way it was, maybe things can be good this way too."
- Meanwhile Foreman remembers what Cameron kept saying about tropical diseases and mentions it on the phone, the patient reveals he doesn't think Florida is a tropical climate, the end.
I'm sorry for giving up on this story, but I hope this at least helps a little. Thanks for sticking with me until now!
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