Four Days, One Room - Day One B
Title: Four Days, One Room
Fandom: House/Criminal Minds
Pairing: Eve Carter/Jennifer Jareau
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from House or Criminal Minds.
Rating: PG
Summary/Spoilers: An STD patient and rape victim copes with her turmoil through a special friendship she develops with a certain FBI agent. This is a retelling of the House episode ‘One Day, One Room’. Various of the episode's story revelations are revealed.
A/N: Eve is a character played by Katheryn Winnick who made a guest appearance on House for that one episode.
A/N 2: Special thanks to my wonderful beta geekgrrllurking.
Day One (Part B)
Hours have passed and House is finally out of the operating room. He enters the hallways and lets out a sigh of relief. Cameron approaches him.
“So what can you tell me about our little rape victim?” he asks.
“Well she seems confused about what she wants,” Cameron answers “Or maybe she’s just being stubborn.”
“Any answers to why she finds me so fascinating?”
“I asked her a bunch of questions and the only one she responded to was that you were crippled.”
“Sounds like one of those cases of someone in pain who likes to relate to others who aren’t feeling too great themselves.”
“Does that mean you’re going to have to talk to her again?”
They stop walking. Suddenly, it’s as if a bulb lights up above House’s head, “I have a better idea.”
*****
Eve gets up to the sound of something loud approaching her room. She spots Cameron in the hallway, following behind her are two men pushing a hospital bed. Cameron holds the door open as the men wheel the bed through the doorway.
“What’s going on?” wonders Eve aloud.
“You’re going to be getting a roommate.” Cameron answers with a smile. “We’re going to have to move your bed a bit, do you mind?”
Eve looks at Cameron, “Oh! No problem.” She gets off the bed.
The two men slide her bed off to the side. They then move to the new bed and push it against the wall, just a few feet away from Eve’s. The sound of more wheels rolling across the tile surface comes traveling their direction. Three more people come into view. One pushing medical equipment and the other two wheeling, what Eve can only assume is her new roommate, on a gurney.
The area of the hospital that Eve was occupying became so loud, so quickly. Eve is rather astonished at how quickly the medical team was working. She watches as they plug in and activate the medical equipment that read vital signs and who knows what else they were used for.
Cameron is the one leading traffic. They grab a hold of each corner of the sheet the patient is laying on.
“Get her up in 3.. 2.. 1..” they lift her off the gurney and onto the bed they just brought in. They pull the sheet from underneath her, stick the IV tube back into her arm and wrap an oxygen tube on her.
“Okay good work guys, looks to be everything.” Cameron compliments them. They leave just as quickly as they entered. Cameron’s still staying behind to make sure everything is right.
Eve couldn’t help but be curious about the woman they just brought in. “Is that the gunshot victim you were talking about?”
“This is her,” answers Cameron.
“What’s her name?”
Cameron looks at her clipboard, “Jennifer.”
Once Cameron has left, Eve finds herself alone with her new roommate. She didn’t have anything better to do than watch her. Eventually Eve steps out of her bed to get a better look at Jennifer. She’s a blonde too who looks around Eve’s age. Eve didn’t know what fueled her curiosity in Jennifer. Maybe it was because Jennifer reminded Eve of herself. Or maybe it was because she felt Jennifer was going through more pain than she was. Or maybe it was simply because Eve never saw a gunshot victim in person before. Whatever the reason, Eve’s ordeal was no longer the primary thought on her mind.
Eve takes a hold of Jennifer’s hand as a gesture of hope. She looks down at Jennifer and utters the words, “Hang in there.”
*****
Later in the day Eve’s new roommate Jennifer has already received some visitors herself. Cameron guides Jennifer’s coworkers Spencer Reid and Elle Greenaway to the room.
“We came as soon as we were told she was out of surgery,” said Elle. “So how is she doing?”
Cameron looks at them, “She’s going to live, but due to the blood lost we don’t know how long it will be before she regains consciousness.”
Spencer scrunches his face. “Will the hospital update us when her condition gets better?”
“We will. I do a daily inspection of her.” Cameron reassures him.
“Just daily?” Spencer goes on, “Can you guys check on her a little more? There have been some cases, although rarely, where injured patients in an unconscious state seem fine at first, then all of a sudden they just flat line.”
Eve interrupts their conversation, “I’ll watch over her.”
That seems to calm Spencer a bit. He looks towards the blonde from across the room, “You will?”
Eve nods her head. “I’m here most of the time anyways, so I can check on her. I’d be a pretty horrible person if something did happen to her, and I just watched idly by.”
“Thank you,” Reid smiles softly.
“Come one Reid,” Elle places a hand on his back and leads him out of the room. “JJ needs her rest.”
“We’ll update you if her condition changes. I promise.” Cameron reassures them again as they leave.
*****
As the day moves on by, Eve finds herself doing a little exploring of the hospital. She even comes across the rooftop entrance. However she ultimately decides to return back to her room and see what is on TV. She flips through the channels, hoping to find something that might interest her.
‘Reality TV really ruined things’, she thought. Suddenly she hears a knock at the door. It was Cameron.
“Hope I’m not disturbing anything. I’m just putting Jennifer’s clothes and belongings away.” She says politely. Cameron moves across the room to the other wall where the drawers were located. She’s holding Jennifer’s clothes folded neatly in a pile and a plastic container with things inside it. As Cameron turns to leave the room, Eve couldn’t help but ask a question burning on her tongue.
“Hey Cameron, I’m just wondering, is there anything I could do to help her out?”
“Watching her is really all you can do,” the brunette answers.
“There’s got to be something else, any special techniques to help people heal faster?”
Cameron could see how much Eve cared about her roommate, so she adds “The best thing you could do is make her comfortable. They say people could still hear things as they sleep. So you can say things to her if you’re that concerned. Is that everything?”
“Yeah that’s everything,” the blonde says softly.
*****
The sun sets on Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Eve makes use of the rooftop entrance she discovered earlier to gaze at the image. She always found sunsets beautiful. Liked the feeling that orange glow felt against her light complexion too. It was also the perfect place for Eve to be left alone with her thoughts.
She always tried to find solace in what happened to her by reminding herself of the philosophies she was taught, or even the faith in God that her parents raised her with. “Everything that happens, happens for a reason,” they would tell her. Then there was the whole karma of “What goes around, comes around.” Or even Sir Isaac Newton’s “Everything action, has an equal and opposite reaction.” It was right though she thought. The guy who raped her and gave her an STD was arrested and is probably sitting in some police holding cell right now.
With all the thoughts going through Eve’s head though, the one she’s mostly thinking about is how she never pictured herself spending the night at a hospital.
‘Well I don’t have to,’ she thought to herself. She was given an okay by the doctors to return home if she felt like. However the place of healing really did seem like the only place she wanted to be at the moment.
As the night arrives Eve gets off the roof and heads back down into the building.
*****
She encounters Foreman in the hallways. “Hey there,” she says to him.
“Hey, you’re up,” as if he’s surprised to see her out of bed.
“I’m just wondering where would be the best place to find a book around here?” she asks politely.
“Well any of the waiting rooms would have some reading material.” He thinks for a bit, “Actually the waiting room on the fifth floor has a pretty big collection of books. You might want to try there.”
“Okay thanks,” Eve makes her way to the fifth floor.
Once she arrives at the area, she starts picking out books from the rack closest to her. She goes through the titles, “Sesame Street? God no. Where’s Waldo? Good but not something I can read out loud.” Then a book that doesn’t look like a typical novel catches her attention. “A collection of poems: 1999 Edition,” she opens it up and looks through the pages, “You’ll do.”
****
It’s late night. Eve looks at the clock and decides she’s going to be calling it a day soon. She turns off the TV, puts the remote on the counter and grabs the poetry book beside it. She gets off the bed and walks towards the corner where a stool sits. She picks the stool off the ground with one hand, her book clutched in the other. She places the stool near Jennifer’s bedside and takes a seat.
“Hey there Jennifer. Growing up I always liked it when people read to me before I went to bed. Hope you feel the same way.” Eve takes a hold of Jennifer’s hand. “If you like it just squeeze my hand or give me a sign.” She opens up the book, “Okay lets begin.”
The time passes by. Once Eve felt she read enough, she releases Jennifer’s hand. Before she heads for her own bed, she stares at Jennifer’s pretty face for a while. Getting another sense of feelings within, she leans in and gives Jennifer a tender kiss on the forehead.
“Good night.”
That night Eve tosses and turns in her bed trying to get to sleep. She figured it must have been due to what happened to her, but then again she had trouble sleeping even before the rape, so maybe it was just the stress of her life in general. She could have asked the doctors to give her something to help her sleep, but the idea of taking a sleeping pill was one she wasn’t fond of.
She turns over and sees the other woman sleeping across from her. She could make her face out pretty well in the dark. And the lights from the hallway were shining against the curtains just enough to help her see certain areas.
Jennifer looked so peaceful, kind of reminding Eve of Sleeping Beauty. She humoured herself by imagining being able to wake Jennifer up by simply kissing her on the lips. Eve closes her eyes, rolling that pleasant idea around for awhile. Maybe that will help her sleep...
*****
Eve opens her eyes. It’s morning. She turns the lights on and walks over to roll open the blinds. She stretches while looking outside her room, and sees that it’s business as usual.
Eve grabs her shoes then heads for the door. Eve runs her hands through her hair as she steps out of her room, tidying up the blond strands from a night of tossing and turning. She looks around as she strolls through the hallways. A few people passed by her. Two kids were playing around in what looked to be a daycare center. A few doors down, a woman was paying a visit to her husband.
On top of the roof again, Eve takes a deep whiff of the morning air and takes a look at the beautiful view outside. It’s going to be another day at the hospital she thought to herself.
If you want to check out the other days:
Day One A
Day Two A
Day Two B
Day Three A
Day Three B
Day Three C