Trust//House M.D. Fanfiction

One: Miss Diagnosed

Hannah Christie woke up in a bright white room, feeling dizzy and sick to her stomach. Her heart was racing and all she wanted to do was chomp on ice cubes, a bad habit of hers that she'd picked up since moving to New Jersey. Voices were muffled and she could hear a loud drone in her left ear, and a softer one that sounded like a siren. That was when she recounted what had happened.

Wilson! He had called her, assuming she was Mara Dadario. Of course he must have worried about her silence, wondered what was wrong and called the ambulance when he heard the phone drop and her scream of agony - Hannah's last memory. The funny thing was, he didn't even realize is was her, the woman he had tried so hard to forget. Oh, what a surprise he'd get when they arranged a time for his appointment with Mara.

Finally, one of the doctors tending to her rose from her side and opened the door, and Hannah noticed that while the muffled sirens of the vehicle kept going, the movement had ceased. Either she had been unconscious for longer than she thought, or she was only a short trip away from the hospital. As the two other men in the back of the ambulance grabbed her stretcher and secured her, Hannah felt the dizziness return and she closed her eyes to welcome sleep, but not before bile rose in her throat. The last thing she remembered was the smell of puke and blood, mixed together as one.

---

The steady beeping from next to her let Hannah know she was safe now. She could feel the IV present in her left forearm, but it wasn't uncomfortable. This must have been what the cards were predicting two weeks ago.

She tried not to make it a habit to read for herself - it seemed to weaken the interpretation and one was able to twist it too much when reading to the self. Regardless, she limited herself to twice a month or times in trouble. In times like these, however, there was no way she could have seen this coming. Oh, the Tower was a terrible card indeed.

When Hannah had gained the confidence in herself to open her eyes, she was glad to see no dizzy picture. However, her head still pounded and she still wanted that ice. Looking around the room from left to right, Hannah took in her surroundings. The hospital room was nice, cozy enough that she wouldn't be uncomfortable staying here for an extended time if need be. Finally, her eyes rested on an unfamiliar man with a cane in the doorway.

"He-" she started, but her tongue felt too thick in her mouth and she decided to let him speak first.

"Miss Dadario, you have one of the most severe cases of iron deficiency anemia I've ever encountered, you know that?" Hannah shook her head, smiling a small bit. The lack of a lab coat was both unsettling and comforting, but she had enough strength to invade his mind - another bad habit that she tried not to do too much. He handed her a glass of water. "Here, that'll make the swelling in your tongue go down."

Taking the glass, Hannah smiled a bit bigger, then started going through his mind. He was most definitely a doctor. He was thinking about what caused it still, and she'd been there for almost two days now. Some things popped up like puzzle pieces: perhaps it's the fact she commonly donates blood. While that was true, but it couldn't solely be that, she'd have to donate a lot, and they would have stopped her when her hemoglobin got too low. It was all mambo-jumbo to Hannah, so she stopped.

"Thank you," she sighed, setting the glass down on the table next to her. "And you are?"

"Not lying about my real name, 'Hannah Christie, tarot master and reader of minds'. You know, there's an entire webpage dedicated to you? Lucky." It was then that surprise and a bit of fear stuck her heart - not a very good thing. The heart monitor spiked, and from how the doctor responded, that was uncommon. "Wow," he looked back to Hannah, "it's really bad. Now calm down, you're acting like you've escaped from the law. All we did was check your fingerprints, purely for safety, of course. We searched the history for a Mara Dadario and found no results."

Hannah had to admit, hearing the full explanation really did calm her down. The heart monitor slowly returned back to its normal pace. "Well," she heaved, still feeling out of breath from the shock. "What do you need to know? What do I need to know."

"Iron deficiency anemia quite common and very treatable. Your body doesn't have enough iron, which goes to the bone marrow and makes red bloo-"

"Skip the fifth grade science lesson. What does it mean in terms of my health?" The doctor looked at her, it seemed unfair that he knew her name but she didn't know his. She was too tired and too nice, however, to intrude back into his mind.

The man nodded, walking to her side slowly, seeing as he was using a cane. "Red blood cells carry around oxygen, right? Well, you don't have enough, so you also don't have enough oxygen. It affects the heart and the lungs. If it wasn't so treatable, I'd say you were dying. Congrats." Hannah smiled at his sarcasm towards the end of his explanation.

"Thank you." She thought for a moment. "You know me, you know what I can do. You already know I donate blood, but you also know that's not all that it could be. What else can cause anemia this bad?" The doctor looked taken aback, and Hannah didn't even have to read his mind to tell that he was impressed.

He continued walking, or hobbling, around her bed, taking her in closely, probably looking for symptoms of something else. "Well, you're a woman, so I wouldn't be surprised if one of the causes could be heavy menstrual flow." Hannah nodded before speaking again.

"That's true. So, really anything to do with blood loss could cause this? Because unless you find internal bleeding, my being a donor and my 'heavy flow' is all. I didn't even know that could present as a problem. Do whatever tests you can, I can pay you in readings, ooh!" Hannah smirked a bit as she finished speaking, waving her arms like a magician might around his magic hat right before pulling a rabbit out. The doctor only half smiled back before turning to leave.

"I'll have my team do an MRI and a biopsy to check for internal bleeding."

Hannah thought about it, then nodded. "Alright, thanks for being so frank with me." The doctor with the cane turned at the door to face her in her hospital bed.

"I'm not Frank. I'm Doctor Gregory House."