This fic is AU, but I'm still trying to keep within the parameters of the House universe.



Cuddy was in her office, thinking about the almost split personality of Dr. Gregory House when she heard the horrific scream. The scream was followed by a loud commotion in the clinic. As Cuddy stood up from her desk slowly, she had learned that it was better to go slow than to pass out, she saw a blur run past her office. It had looked like some kind of feral man.

Cuddy walked out to the doors and opened them, seeing a small trail of blood leading out of the clinic. Just as she started out the doors, a nurse came rushing over.

“Dr. Cuddy, something…oh god…” said the nurse, looking pale and sick.

“What happened?” asked Cuddy, trying to stay calm.

“It’s one of the students…something, someone, she’s…” said the man.

“Where?” asked Cuddy, seeing she wasn’t going to get much out of this one.

“Exam room three.” said the nurse.

Cuddy followed the trail of the thick blood to exam room three where a large crowd of people had gathered. She asked a few of the nurses to help get the patients back into the waiting room. After most of the crowd had dissipated she turned attention back to the exam room. The first thing she noticed was strange, almost metallic smell near the room.

When she got to the door way she understood the smell. The room was covered in ribbons of blood. It was splattered all over the walls, like someone had taken a whisk, dipped it in blood, and flung it around. There were some spots where still dripped wetly down the lightly colored walls and you could almost hear the drops hit the floor.

There were large pools of the quickly darkening substance on the floor. You could hear the sickening sound of the sticky liquid as nurses rushed around the room. They were all quiet, but moving quickly, like the person who’s blood this was could still be alive. Cuddy couldn’t help the feeling of her stomach rolling as she took in the sight, sounds, and smells of the room.

She found the biohazard bin and promptly proceeded in vomiting. The realization that she was standing in a pool of the almost horror movie like blood spurred this feeling on even more. She was a doctor, and was used to mass amounts of blood, but this…this was just wrong. This was something you would see in a very badly made horror film, not in real life. No one could do something like this for real, she just couldn’t believe it was possible. It was too scary of a thought to think about.

After Cuddy finished retching into the bin, she wiped her face with a paper towel and threw that in too. She carefully turned around in the slick gooey blood and looked around. She saw a familiar gray jacket and pants straddling bare, and lifeless legs on the floor. The ever present cane looked like it had been laid hastily on the exam table. She moved to get a better look at the scene and suddenly felt dizzy and light headed at what she saw.

Lying on the floor under House was the pale and naked body of Dr. Emrys Acer. She was one of the younger med students and very bright. Twenty two, even though she looked barely eighteen. When she had graduated from med school in New York, she was placed here to do her residency. She had studied general and internal medicine in school and was now doing rotations in different departments to find a specialty. Everyone always just called her Ace, a first day mistake of the name that had stuck. She was bright and cheerful, always willing to help out and cover a shift.

That bright and cheery girl was gone now, replaced by a cold, scared, and dying one. Her clothes lied in a heap in the corner of the room, some of them torn. She was covered in just a lab coat, that was rapidly turning red in spots. Her already pale completion was taking of the grayish tone that accompanied massive blood loss. Her once bright and sparkling blue eyes were now franticly looking around as House and the nurses worked on her. Her dark and once long, perfectly curled hair was now matted with the clotting blood.

Cuddy fiercely wanted to look away, but she was drawn in by the horrifying yet entrancing scene. She only realized that she was holding her breath when those glassy and dimming blue eyes fell on hers. Their gazes locked and in that moment Cuddy saw the look of someone who knew they were going to die. It was a terrifyingly peaceful and sad look. It was like you could see her soul slipping away, as the light in her eyes grew softer, and she knew it. The moment was broken when one of the nurses asked Cuddy to make room for the gurney they were bringing in.

Cuddy stepped aside and the nurses placed Emrys on the gurney and quickly rolled her out of the exam room to the ER. House stood up and grabbed his cane off the table, following the nurses. As he passed Cuddy he didn’t say anything, he just glanced at her with almost the same look of knowing that Emrys’ had. This shook Cuddy, as she stood in the now empty exam room and tried to regain her composure.

The sight of Emrys had been awful, she didn’t know how anyone could have survived, or even stayed conscious, but she had. Cuddy assumed that she had been raped, the way her clothes were torn and tossed aside. She had also been cut and beaten many times, from the way the lab coat had soaked up the blood from the wounds. Still, the worst sight wasn’t any of this…that might have been the worst for Emrys, but for everyone else it was her neck.

Cuddy now realized that the splatters and sprays must have been from the carotid artery. Emrys’ neck had had a bright red line around the front, like she had been almost strangled so she would keep quiet. Still, the most blood had come from the gaping hole in the side of her neck. It had looked like some kind of animal had just bitten a very large chunk of tissue away. That’s exactly what it looked like, an animal attack, not something any human could ever do. It had been so deep of a wound that even her vocal chords had been severed. If she lived, there was probably no chance of her ever talking again.

Cuddy left the room, taking her blood covered shoes off and holding them. One of the guards on duty had told her that the police were on their way as she passed. She followed the bloody trail of wheel marks to the room where a team of doctors and nurses worked on Emrys. Just as Cuddy walked in she heard House yell, “Damn it!”, and the all to familiar drone of the monitor displaying a flat line.

Cameron had begun to do compressions, with each one a small amount of blood leaked through the gauze bandage on Emrys neck. Each spurt containing less and less as she bled out. They had already given her bags of blood, but she was bleeding from so many wounds and they were so deep. Cuddy heard House call the clear, and the small sound of the machine delivering the shock, but she wasn’t watching him.

She had her gaze transfixed on Emrys’ eyes as House yelled at Emrys.

“Come on Ace, stay with me!”

Now completely dull and glazed over, Emrys’ eyes were still open and staring at the ceiling. Her body convulsed with each shock of the defibrillator, but her expression never changed. Her mouth slightly open and eyes wide, it was almost a look of shock, or relief…Cuddy didn’t know which one.

Cuddy heard the click of the paddles as they were put back into the cradles. The switch of the monitor being turned off. House calling her time of death as sixteen twenty two, December twenty ninth, 2008. She heard the sounds of people leaving the room, and the clatters of the trays as they were moved and taken away. She heard all of this, but she wasn’t really aware. Her eyes were still focused on Emrys’ eyes, once so clear and happy, now dull and void of life.

Cuddy didn’t know why this was affecting her the way it was. She hadn’t known Emrys all that well really, or for that long. Still, there was a knot in her throat, her stomach felt like it was doing flips, and her heart actually hurt. Maybe it was just her hormones, but she felt like there was something more to this. She just couldn’t figure it out. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry for the next month.

As she heard Cameron say that she would stay and clean Emrys up, Cuddy’s line of sight finally shifted to House. He was taking off his paper gown and throwing it on the floor. He picked up his cane, and walked over to Cuddy, pausing to stand in front of her. He still hadn’t looked her in the eye, and he had a look of grief mixed with worry and hurt on his face. He was covered in blood from head to toe and looked himself over.

“I need to get cleaned up, and you need to talk to the police. When I’m done go to my office. If I’m not there, wait for me.” he said stating this quite firmly.

He only quickly glanced at her, but she saw something in his eyes, almost like he was keeping something from her. He stepped around her and limped off to the employee locker room to take a shower. Cuddy watched him walk away for a minute before turning back to the almost empty room. Cameron was carefully stitching Emrys’ wounds as a nurse cleaned the blood away, her eyes were now closed.

Cuddy had thrown her shoes in the biohazard bin and started back to her office. She hadn’t wanted to keep them, they would just remind her of this day. She found that while she was gone, the entire clinic had been cleared out and yellow police tape had placed across the entry doors. There were a few officers standing in front of the doors, talking to some of the people, nurses, and doctors who had been in the clinic.

Cuddy had told them who she was, that Emrys had died, and given a statement. They told her that they would let her know if anything came up and then went on about their business. One of the officers had let her into her office to gather her things and then she went up to House’s office to wait for him. She felt strange, she didn’t know what to do since she wasn’t in charge of things at the moment. So she just sat there, trying to get the image of Emrys on the exam room floor out of her mind.