Fic: Iron & Irony, chapters 3 & 4
Jun. 22nd, 2008 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veldeiaRating: PG-13 for some language etc
Category: Crossover, angst, drama, hurt/comfort, romance, suspense
Spoilers: Iron Man, the movie / House MD late season 4
Pairings: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Summary: An Iron Man movieverse / House MD crossover. When Tony suspects he's caught a mystery illness, he turns to the best doctor he can find. But can House solve this puzzle?
Chapter 3: "What is that thing?"
"Miss Potts? Hello, this is Jim Rhodes. I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
"Not at all," Pepper answered the phone. She'd joined doctors Kutner and Hadley (who was, for some reason, called Thirteen) for a cup of coffee at the hospital cafeteria. Now, she stood up and walked away from the table to talk to Rhodes, leaving the doctors to compare their experiences about tropical disease. "Why did you call me, though, and not Mr. Stark?"
"I figured he wouldn't be able to answer, I guess I was wrong? I've no idea what's going on in there. I just heard it on the news, so all I know is he's in a hospital, in New Jersey, of all the places you could pick. Is Tony all right?"
"I wish I knew! Something happened when he was in Brazil, and now he's sick. We're here to consult one of the world's top diagnosticians, trying to figure out what's wrong. But, to tell you the truth, the doctor seems convinced that he's just caught cold."
"That's good to hear. I mean, I was getting worried here. Since there's been no official statement, the reporters are having a ball speculating what he's got. Half of them are betting on a new injury sustained as Iron Man, the other half on something old from the Afghanistan incident, and then there's one who's convinced that his liver's finally quit on him because of all that drinking..."
"Well, they're all wrong, that's for sure. We're postponing giving a statement until we've actually got something to state. So far we haven't got anything, and it's partially Mr. Stark's fault. The doctors haven't been able to examine him properly, since he's been wearing his suit several days on end, because he's afraid he'll spread whatever mysterious disease he might have... And I don't know whether to be with him on this or against him. I just wish this whole mess was over with already," Pepper explained. She felt like pouring it all out, all the stress, the uncertainty, the irritation, the worry. Rhodes was a good friend of Tony's and she'd come to consider him her friend as well. She could tell him everything and he'd understand, he knew how impossible Tony could be.
"Jeez, Tony sure knows how to beef up the drama. You know what, Miss Potts - I'll catch the first possible transportation and join you there."
"That'd be great! Maybe he'll listen to you. Um, wait a moment..."
The two young doctors had suddenly leaped up from their seats, looking at their pagers. As they noticed Pepper's inquiring gaze, Hadley spoke up, "Miss Potts? Mr. Stark's unconscious."
"What? Is he okay?" she tried to ask, but the doctors were already heading out of the room.
"Oh, Rhodey, there might be a problem with Tony, I've got to go. I'll call you later," she finished the conversation and hurried after the two doctors.
Doctor Taub met them at the decontamination room, and told Pepper to stop where she was. "You'd better stay here, you'd just stand in our way if you came with us. We'll let you know as soon as we have any news..."
"No, I'm coming with you," she said adamantly. "I'm the only one who knows anything about the Iron Man suit. You might need me."
They had to admit she was right, and as soon as they were in full protective clothing and inside Tony's room, they found out that her knowledge of the suit was exactly what was needed.
Tony was lying on the floor, and House was busy trying to get the suit off him. He'd managed to remove the helmet and the gauntlets, and now he was working on a sleeve. He didn't seem to be getting anywhere, though.
Tony's eyes were closed, and now that the helmet was off, Pepper saw he looked worse than she'd expected. His face was pale and haggard, and the stubble that surrounded his usually well-trimmed beard didn't help at all. The dark circles under his eyes suggested that he hadn't had a lot of sleep, and reminded her of how many timezones he'd crossed yesterday, his suit covering huge distances as fast as a fighter plane.
"Is he... Is he all right?" Pepper stammered.
"He's stable, he'll come around soon. Hey, you three, quit standing there and start helping me," House urged his team.
"Wait, you can't..." Pepper began.
"He's out cold, needs medical attention and I'm his doctor. Of course I can," House declared, though his last words were somewhat undermined by his lack of success in what he was doing.
In a way, Pepper agreed with House. She had wanted Tony out of the suit herself, hadn't she? She didn't agree with his methods, though. Taking advantage of Tony's unconsciousness - the reason for which she didn't even know - was mean, and she didn't want any part of it. If she helped House, Tony would feel like she'd betrayed him, and she didn't know how she'd be able to stand that.
Luckily, she never had to make the decision. Tony woke up before she got that far.
For a few seconds, there was an adorably confused expression on his face, such a lost boy look that it'd have melted any girl's heart. The next moment, his eyes widened as he took in where he was and what had happened, and then narrowed with cold fury.
"House!" he growled with such authority that Pepper thought he sounded like Iron Man even though he no longer wore the helmet. "Are you out of your mind? You don't want to fight me. I'm way out of your league." As he spoke, Pepper realized that though he sounded menacing enough, he was speaking in short phrases, as if he was winded.
"Depends on which weapons we choose to use in this duel," House replied, seemingly carefree. "Feel free to sue me, I had solid medical grounds for getting you out of the suit. If you want to fight superhero-style, you'll need to get me a suit of my own or it'll be unfair."
"Solid medical grounds, like hell. It's your fault I fainted in the first place. Must've been a real testosterone rush, having decked Iron Man just like that."
Pepper was shocked. House had deliberately caused this? How dared he! She studied the doctor's face to figure out if what Tony said was true, but House was unreadable.
Thirteen had the sense to cut the pointless arguing short. "Mr. Stark, Doctor House, this is getting us nowhere. And Mr. Stark, it's a fact that your suit's already been opened, so whatever decontaminating effect it had is now compromised. If you carry something contagious that's airborne, then it's probably already in the air here. You could just as well give in."
Tony glared at House for a while longer, a dark look that, if looks could kill, would've been a nuclear bomb. House stared back, his icy blue eyes challenging, unyielding.
Finally, Tony closed his eyes. The room was silent for a while except for the sound of his heavy breathing.
"Fine. You're right," he relented, looking at Thirteen now. He could admit she was right. Pepper guessed he would never admit that House might've been right, too.
Taub had to admit that without Stark and his assistant helping them, they might never have managed to get him out of the Iron Man suit. It was much more than just simple armor, which shouldn't have come to him as a surprise, since Stark had actually been able to spend several days wearing it continuously.
The last remaining pieces were the chest and back plates. Pepper Potts showed Thirteen how to open the locking mechanisms in the sides. House, Taub and Kutner stood by and watched as the women worked.
"Good thing this version's a bit easier to take off than the previous ones," Pepper noted to Stark.
"Oh? I was thinking the opposite," Stark answered, still sulking. "It comes off too easily. I might need safeguards. I don't want any actually dangerous enemies undressing me while I'm unconscious," he put a slight weight on the words "actually dangerous", just enough that House would notice the barb. Stark really was smooth. He was one of the few people Taub had met so far who'd been able to challenge House's sneering.
Thirteen and Pepper lifted the chestplate off Stark. Taub was taken by surprise again as he saw that the light that had been gleaming brightly in the armor's chest was not attached to the suit, but directly to Stark's body.
House moved closer to Stark. "What's this, the latest craze in body modifications? When tattoos and piercings just aren't extreme enough?" he jeered, reaching to pull the thing off.
"No!" Pepper exclaimed.
Stark placed his hand protectively over the glowing blue and silver disk. "Remove it, and you won't have a patient left to diagnose," he said. There wasn't even a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"You agreed we could take the suit off, and it shouldn't be hard to understand that having a chunk of metal on your chest is going to obstruct our work," House said, quite serious as well.
"Didn't you hear what I said? Removing it would kill me," Stark said, speaking slowly, as if to a child. "It's not on my chest, it's in my chest, and it's not an ornament." He grabbed the device with his hand, twisted it and pulled it out. Pepper cried out softly, looking horrified.
Taub stared at Stark, amazed. There was actually a deep, metal-lined hole in his chest, where the device was set. As a plastic surgeon, Taub had seen all kinds of strange things that people wanted to do to themselves, but this was too far out to be anything like that. He couldn't imagine anyone would voluntarily choose to have a gaping hole in their upper body. Taub considered how this would affect their work: they wouldn't be able to get an echocardiogram through that thing, it would stand out disturbingly in X-rays, MRI would be out of the question... Even without the suit, Stark would still be a very challenging patient.
Stark seemed to be holding his breath as he held the device, and after mere seconds had passed, he screwed it back in its place and shuddered. "I hope I've made my point. I don't want to do that again."
"What is that thing?" Kutner asked, clearly captivated by Stark.
"It's a miniaturized arc reactor. Built it myself. I was hit by a bomb of my own design in Afghanistan. The shrapnel is still in my chest. This device," he tapped it with his fingers, "keeps it from making my heart as holey as Swiss cheese."
"But that makes no sense," Taub had to speak up. "There are better ways to manage an injury like that. Why resort to something this invasive and crude? It can't be completely inoperable, why not simply have surgery?"
"Invasive and crude - that's the way you do things, if caught in a cave, captured by terrorists."
"What's to stop you from having surgery now, though?" Thirteen suggested.
Stark frowned, thoughtful, his expression somewhat difficult to read. Pepper was looking at him with raised eyebrows.
After a while, he shook his head. "I didn't come here to have heart surgery. I came to have a disease diagnosed. Would you people mind actually doing your job?"
Of course, Tony had considered surgery. He knew that what even the miracle-working Ho Yinsen had not been able to do, in a bleak cave with haphazard instruments, would be possible for a well-prepared surgical team in a modern hospital. Still, the idea made him uneasy.
The way Pepper looked at him, he could see she was all for it. She would love knowing that his life didn't depend on the arc reactor, that he couldn't be killed by someone simply removing the device, like Stane had nearly done.
He didn't enjoy being dependent, either, but it wasn't as simple as that. Of course, getting rid of the shrapnel wouldn't have to mean getting rid of the arc reactor. It would probably be easier to leave it in its place instead of going through complex reconstructive surgery to get rid of the hole in his chest. It wouldn't be the same, though. He had grown oddly attached not just to the device, but to the injury as well. It was a thing that defined him, like a dozen other negative character traits that most other people didn't appreciate, but he was proud of, in some twisted way. It was a constant reminder of the fact that he shouldn't even be alive, that he had survived for a reason. It was a symbol of how he had changed and what he had become.
Somewhere deep down, he was afraid that if his body were returned to the health it'd had before Afghanistan, he'd revert to the person he had been, back then. Just as intelligent as now, but without a conscience, shallow, directionless.
It was a dilemma he didn't want to face right now, so he simply brushed the matter aside and told the doctors to concentrate on the immediate problem.
Tony needed to get off the floor and on the bed, so he stood up, and almost fell down again as his vision started to gray out. Instantly, there were several pairs of hands stopping his fall, helping him sit down on the bed and then lie down.
Ironically enough, despite of what he'd told House earlier, it was only now that Tony truly realized how sick he was. The suit had obscured some of it. Without its strength-enhancing effects, moving was a huge strain, and what he had taken for threatening panic was actually real trouble catching his breath. It was obvious it hadn't been this bad before, though - if it had, Jarvis would've mentioned it.
Tony also felt naked, even before House's team started cutting off his undersuit. It was easy to appear fearless and confident in the Iron Man armor. Without it, he felt weak, fragile and insecure.
The doctors went on with their work, attaching medical monitoring equipment - the display that had showed the suit data was only showing an error message now that he wasn't in the suit anymore. As soon as they'd checked his blood oxygen level, they fitted him with a nasal cannula for extra oxygen, and they told him that his blood pressure was pretty low so they'd give him medication for that. Most of the time, though, they were pretty much ignoring him, treating him like a lab specimen. He didn't mind. Pepper had slipped out of the room at some point, and he appreciated her giving him the privacy. He was incredibly tired. For the first time during his illness, Tony relaxed and gave in to the feverish haze that'd been threatening to take him over for days.
"And as Stark Industries stock continues to fall, the question on everyone's lips is, 'Where is Iron Man'?" the news reporter read. The image shifted to a magnificently shot sequence of Iron Man flying in the cerulean sky over a calm, deep blue sea.
House sighed. No matter what his opinion of Stark was, he couldn't help liking Iron Man. The armor was the single coolest thing invented since monster trucks first saw daylight. House also liked the symbolic value of the suited superhero, because he enjoyed observing the effects it had on people. Some hero-worshipped it without reservation, some hated it right away. House himself remained neutral. After all, Iron Man was just a piece of fiction, a legend with only loose ties to reality. House liked him like he enjoyed his favorite soap opera.
"The self-made superhero, also known as billionaire industrialist Tony Stark, was last seen yesterday, entering Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey in full armor, as confirmed by several eyewitnesses." The screen now showed the familiar facade of the building where House was at the very moment. "After that, he hasn't been seen or heard of. It is generally assumed that it is Mr. Stark himself who is ill, not a friend or a family member. However, there has been no official statement on his current condition."
Tomorrow morning, you shall have one, House thought to himself. The news broadcast moved on to other subjects, and House turned off the TV. It was past 6 PM, and he was still waiting for his team to return with the results. Luckily, he had no objections to working overtime now that the case actually had turned out interesting.
He had been wrong about the diagnosis. He was also starting to consider that he might've been wrong about Stark. The revelation that Stark had actually been captured and injured in Afghanistan had taken House by surprise, and he hadn't expected the grim, serious side of the man's personality that emerged at times.
House wasn't sure he had figured out the relationship between Stark and his secretary, either. He had been certain that the girl was with Stark because he was handsome and had a lot of money, and he with her for almost the same reasons, because she was pretty and he could pay her enough. Their protectiveness over each other clearly contradicted that theory. Had they got a real relationship of some sort, or were they just good friends? And if they hadn't got a relationship, why not?
It was obvious House hadn't figured out Stark yet, which made him a puzzle, which was an added bonus to the case.
His three ducklings entered the room, each bringing a set of results. House spent some time reading and thinking them through, set the chest x-ray on the wall and limped to the whiteboard.
"We now have a diagnosis," he declared. "Give your best shot, the looser makes coffee."
Taub had been the one to do the chest x-ray, and he spoke up first. "Congestive heart failure."
House glanced at the x-ray. With the round silhouette of the arc reactor covering the heart, it was hard to say anything about it. The shrapnel wasn't visible, either. Without that thing blocking the view, an echocardiogram would've been very useful - now, they hadn't even bothered with trying to get one, since it'd show nothing. Nevertheless, they had enough clues. House didn't suspect for one moment that they were dealing with a heart condition here.
"Bzzzzt! That does it, Taub, you're our barista for tonight. Did you even look at the rest of the results? Or the ones we had before? No EKG abnormalities except for sinus tachycardia, and what about the several days' prodrome with non-specific symptoms?"
Taub crossed his arms and grimaced, saying nothing. It was a possible diagnosis, House gave him that, but not a very fitting one, and House expected better of him. Taub must be getting tired.
"Some viral infection that's hit his lungs," Kutner offered.
"That doesn't count, you need to be more specific."
"Pneumonia. Legionnaire's?" he tried.
"Now you're just guessing. Might be, but I'm going for something rarer. Thirteen, your turn. Don't worry, unless you'll suggest lupus, you're safe from coffee duty."
"There's no reason it has to be viral," she stated. "Could be tularemia."
"Stark would love that, it's a known biological weapon. You'll get extra points for it, and a hint. Take a good close look at the platelet count and white blood cells, and guess again."
"Thrombocytopenia, leukocytosis with neutrophilia and a left shift, plus circulating immunoblasts," she recited, studying the paper, then looked up and frowned. "I see what you're thinking, but I can't see how it fits, the incubation period is much too short."
"Come on, you don't need to suck up to Stark, he's not in the room. No one here's saying that the incident in Brazil has to be when he was infected. No, he must've caught this earlier."
"What's 'this' anyway?" Kutner asked.
"Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome," Thirteen answered, winning the diagnosis quiz.
Kutner looked stricken, and House knew it wasn't because he'd lost to Thirteen. It was because HPS wasn't the nicest diagnosis they could've hoped for.
Chapter 4: "I could use a second opinion here"
"Hantavirus? I've heard of it - but it's carried by rodents, right?" Tony looked up at the four doctors, dubious. Pepper saw and heard that, despite the extra oxygen, he still had trouble breathing normally.
"Yes. And it takes several weeks before the symptoms show up, which means you must've contacted it before you left to Brazil," Thirteen clarified.
"Makes no sense," he answered.
"I seriously doubt Mr. Stark has had anything to do with rodents," Pepper told them, as surprised by the diagnosis as he was, and figuring he'd rather not exert himself with a long-winded explanation. "There is absolutely no way there can be any pests at his home," she declared, since Jarvis would notice any right away and then they'd be doomed, "and the places where he spends time tend to be on the cleaner side. If he does go to some dodgier settings as Iron Man, the suit should protect him, right?"
"Something was going on in Brazil," Tony added, as if he hadn't been listening to her at all. He obviously had his mind set on it. She wondered if there was something he hadn't told her, some extra reason why he was so sure about it.
"Whatever was going on in Brazil, I don't give a rat's ass about it," House threw in a bad pun. "The symptoms match the disease. You asked us to do our job, and we're doing it. Would you mind playing your part, being a good patient and listening to your doctors?"
Pepper didn't think she could stand listening to yet another verbal duel between House and Tony, so she spoke up before Tony had the time to answer. "So, what's the prognosis, and how do you treat this?"
Even through the protective suits they wore, Pepper saw the three younger doctors exchange glances. House was the one to answer, though. "There's good news and bad news. Good news is, survivors of HPS come through with no lasting effects. The bad news is that there's no specific treatment, and the mortality rate is close to 40 percent. The disease has already progressed to the cardiopulmonary phase, and in lethal cases of the disease, death usually occurs within 24 hours from that."
"Oh no!" she uttered, and without her even realizing it, her gloved hand found its way to Tony's.
He squeezed her hand reassuringly. "I've fought worse odds," he told her. Funny, she thought, how the one who was sick was consoling the one who wasn't, and not the other way around. "So, what's going to happen next?" he asked the doctors.
"This is going to get worse," Thirteen answered this one, her voice controlled and emotionless, professional. "Breathing will become progressively more difficult, as your lungs fill with fluid. It's very likely that at some point we'll need to intubate and ventilate mechanically. The cause of death in terminal cases is that the heart starts to fail, eventually leading to a fatal arrhythmia."
"And what're we going to do? Just wait and see whether I'm going to kick the bucket?"
"There's no cure per se, no medication, but like she already mentioned, there's supportive care. We can keep you breathing if you can't breathe on your own, for starters. We treat the symptoms as best we can," Kutner explained.
"Oh, and on a side note, since there's only one person-to-person transmitted case of HPS ever, I think we can safely tone down the isolation a bit," Taub added, talking to the other doctors as well as to Tony and Pepper. "Should make things easier and more comfortable for everyone."
"Are you completely certain about this diagnosis?" Tony asked gravely.
"Not hundred percent, yet," Kutner said. "We haven't tested it, so we'll take some blood now and get confirmation as soon as possible."
"As long as you're not sure, we'll stick to the isolation. And while you're testing... Put some of my blood under a microscope. See if there's anything strange," Tony suggested. Pepper had no idea what he was thinking about.
House let out an exaggeratedly exasperated sigh. "Oh, puh-lease, Mr. Stark. The game's over, it's time to admit you're wrong and I'm right."
"I don't care who's right or wrong. I just want to know the truth," Tony replied solemnly. He pointed the rest of his words at House's team instead of the man himself. "Just do it, all right?" he pleaded, and coughed. "Consider it a last wish - if that makes it less offensive, taking orders from me."
None of the three answered anything to that, but Kutner moved in to draw the blood. House left the room before the others, and they followed soon after him, leaving Pepper alone with Tony.
"Colonel Rhodes is on his way here," she told him absently, still so shocked that she was unable to think of much of anything to say. "He should arrive in a few hours."
"Rhodey. Great," Tony actually smiled a little. As usual, he could find something to say. "Pepper, it's all right. After all I've been through... I'm not gonna be killed by a mouse."
"Of course you aren't," she replied automatically, but he looked so pale and so weary and so ill that she felt sick with worry nevertheless.
Forty percent mortality - a sixty percent chance to survive. Tony wondered what would be the possibility of surviving a load of shrapnel to the chest when captured by terrorists. Had to be pretty close to zero, and he'd made it. If the doctors were right and this really was hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, this should be a walk in the park compared to Afghanistan. If this was a regular disease, even a potentially deadly one, he was actually relieved. That was one very big if.
Before Pepper left to meet Rhodey in the lobby, Tony asked her to get him his helmet from the corner of the room where the suit was stacked. He didn't feel up to working anymore. How could he think when he could hardly even breathe? It felt like someone was pressing a pillow on his face. Nevertheless, he needed to try.
"Jarvis?"
"Online, sir. I have been monitoring your readings on the hospital computers, and I'd like to note that in your current condition, any unnecessary exertion should be avoided."
"This is necessary. I need to know about the missing scientists."
"I have completed the task, and I have results. In addition to the two Stark Industries employees, there are five other missing people in similar fields. Two nanotechnology-specialists, a microbiologist, a geneticist and a virologist. There was also a major technology theft reported at Nanogentec inc. in Dallas."
Tony shivered, and not just from fever-induced chills. Whether it had anything to do with his sickness or not, there was something big going on, there was no question about it. He had to do something - or rather, since he wasn't up to it, someone else had to.
"Collect all data relevant to this case and send it to James Rhodes."
"Will do, sir. I'll send him an email with instructions on where and how to access the data. May I suggest rest now, sir?"
"A fine idea, Jarvis," he found himself agreeing with his AI butler, this once.
He took off the helmet and let it clatter to the floor, because he hadn't got the strength to actually set it down. He tried to compare this to Afghanistan. Had he felt this weak? He didn't think so, not even when he'd just woken up with a car battery attached to his chest.
He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind, to fall asleep, but he soon found out he couldn't. He couldn't stop thinking about the mystery disappearances. How it ominously seemed that someone had been gathering a team to build something very nasty.
The door hissed open, letting a solitary figure into the room. From his size and his way of walking, Tony recognized him instantly.
"Rhodey. Good to see you."
"Tony! Pepper already told me about the diagnosis they gave you. How are you?"
"Been better," he answered. Articulating sentences of more than five words at a time was starting to feel impossible. "Look, Rhodey. There's something I need..." he needed to stop to breathe. This was so not good. "...you to do."
"Anything I can do, just name it."
"I just sent you e-mail with access..." - air, damn it, he needed more air - "...to certain files. Possibly related to this. Definitely related to something big. Jarvis will help you. You might want to hand it..." breathe in, then go on, "...over to S.H.I.E.L.D. This is their sort of stuff."
He was panting now, unable to catch his breath anymore. He could almost concretely feel Rhodey's worried, pitying gaze on him.
"Man, Tony, your lips are turning blue," Rhodey said, sounding seriously freaked out.
Either Rhodey pressed the call button or then an alarm had gone off somewhere, but instantaneously Kutner and a nurse rushed into the room and offered Tony an oxygen mask. It helped, he could breathe properly again. Whew.
According to what the doctors had said, this was going to get even worse. He looked up to Rhodey's concerned eyes and knew that Rhodey would see he felt scared, but he didn't mind, there was no need to keep up a facade around him.
He took the mask off to speak. "You gonna do what I asked, Rhodey?"
"Of course, sure I will. You just concentrate on getting better. I'll handle the investigation, whatever it's about."
Thirteen stared at the test results. "House was wrong. It's not HPS."
"It's not?" Kutner asked dumbly.
"Test came through negative," she said, and moved aside to let him see for himself.
"The results from the CDC won't arrive until sometime tomorrow. This might be a mistake, we need to re-check," Taub told them, as if they didn't know it already. It would be what House would tell them to do when they'd let him know. He'd ask them to re-check, and then check again, at least twice, before he'd believe they hadn't botched it.
"Don't you think we should do what Stark asked, too, though?" Kutner suggested.
Thirteen nodded. It wouldn't be a very difficult task, after all. "I'll do it and leave this to you in case I messed up something the first time."
Carefully following safety protocols while handling the possibly contagious blood sample, Thirteen made a smear and put the slide under the microscope. At a glance, she saw nothing she wouldn't have expected based on their earlier test results. Of course, hantavirus was much too small to show up with a regular optical microscope. Still, Stark hadn't asked her to look for that, but for "anything strange". She increased the magnification.
After staring at the familiar blood cells for quite a while, she noticed something small that she couldn't recognize or explain right away. She zoomed even closer, nearing the limits of the microscope's resolution.
She had no idea what she was looking at. It was large for a virus, small for a bacterium, and there was something disturbing about it that she couldn't quite put a finger on. Now aware of what she was searching for, she scanned the rest of the smear closely, and found more of the strange organisms, or whatever they were. She got a picture of the thing, to examine it better on a computer screen.
"I could use a second opinion here," she called out to the others.
Kutner and Taub gaped at the thing, as mystified as she was.
"Never seen anything like it. Stark's full of mysteries, isn't he?" Taub said. "First the chest device, now this. What do you suppose it is?"
"Well, if he tests negative for HPS, but has this in his blood, maybe this is the pathogen we're searching for?" she suggested. It was really weird, but also logical. She glanced at Kutner, waiting to hear what he thought.
Kutner's expression was almost uncharacteristically thoughtful and anxious. "He knew it might be there, since he told us to look for it. But it couldn't be..." he said.
"Why not? I mean, it's strange, but doesn't it support Stark's Brazil theory, which you've been voting for all the time?"
"Yeah, sorry, that's not what I meant," Kutner hesitated, peering at the organism so closely that his nose almost touched the screen. "I meant that it couldn't be what I think it is. I mean, I think I know what this is, but it's a really scary idea."
"A biological weapon?" Taub offered.
"Not just that," Kutner turned to look at the others. "It's artificial. Stark told me himself that the biotech center in Brazil specialized in nanotechnology."
"So, who's going to break the news to House?" Taub asked.
House massaged his temples thoughtfully. This wasn't what he'd expected, and he was at a loss, maybe more so than ever before during his long and colorful career. They'd just jumped from the realm of medicine and science fact into science fiction and technology. Something Stark was far more familiar with than he was. He looked at the image, and on an intuitive level, he could instantly see that there was something unnatural about this tiny bug. House was glad he had let Stark stay in isolation as he had wished, instead of forcing him out of it. They definitely wouldn't want this thing to spread.
"We'll need to let Stark know," he told his ducklings.
"But it's past midnight, and he's getting worse, he should be resting," Kutner blurted out.
"And you think he's going to start getting better if we just wait?" House sneered, and got up. Better get this over with sooner than later.
Once in Stark's room, House glanced at the monitors. They had switched the nasal cannula to an oxygen mask, and so far Stark was managing, but House was prepared to bet it wouldn't last long. A fast decline after the onset of cardiopulmonary symptoms was a hallmark of HPS... He had to stop and remind himself that this was probably not HPS at all, merely something that progressed a lot like it.
House was surprised to learn that despite the late hour, Stark wasn't sleeping. He lifted the mask off his face and asked, "What's up, doc?"
"Please tell me you've injected yourself with the latest experimental nanotechnological creation to give you more superpowers," House suggested hopefully.
"Would I be here if I had?" The look on Stark's face was clear enough: he had instantly understood what House was talking about, he was taken aback, scared, but not really surprised.
"But you know what this thing in your bloodstream is, then?"
"I've an idea," he replied briefly. "It came from Brazil."
"Care to elaborate? It's, what? A nanotechnological virus? Based on how closely the symptoms resemble HPS, is there some connection to the real hantavirus?"
"I'd guess not entirely nanotech, partly biological," Stark answered, which made perfect sense to House. "Might use the real virus in its design. Can't know for sure."
"If this really came from Brazil, then the incubation period is much shorter than that of the real hantavirus. I'd guess this is more contagious too, and I'm afraid it could be more aggressive and have an even higher mortality rate than the original."
Stark simply nodded, his eyes showing that this once, he agreed with House in everything.
"I've never met anything like this. I didn't think stuff like this was even possible. I can't begin to explain how it works, if it's partly technological - like, how it can replicate. And I've no idea how to treat this. I guess we've got no choice but to keep the course we've already talked about, just give you all the supportive care we can and hope that it's possible to survive this thing," House spoke, sort of thinking out loud.
He never felt anything for patients, they were just puzzles, just nameless people - but this patient was the exact opposite of nameless. House had an awful sinking feeling, and he felt surreal. He felt like he was giving Iron Man a death sentence.
"For HPS, there's at least a lot of data on how cases have been managed before, there've been trials for medication, all kinds of things. This is something I guess no one's ever faced before. So if there's anything more you can tell, Stark, now'd be a good time."
"I've got people working on it," Stark answered. "I don't know anything useful yet."
"But isn't this basically what you do?" House tried to push him, turning the sarcasm in his voice to the max. He'd come up with an idea, or rather, an idea of an idea he hoped Stark might come up with. Anything they could do to stop this thing or to slow it down would give Stark more chance of surviving it. "You're supposed to be one of the greatest technological minds of our age, isn't this right up your alley?"
"It's part biological, you forget that already?"
"No, but you should. If we could somehow attack the technological parts of this bug..."
Stark frowned. House could almost see his mind working furiously. "I don't know the design. It's not from Stark biotech, so..."
"It's probably somehow related to Stark biotech, right? Why's that important?"
"All our nanotechnology was supposed to have a failsafe," Stark replied, speaking quickly and then taking a few breaths from the oxygen mask. "A way to shut it down if things went bad. But it was all theoretical."
"What sort of a failsafe?"
"An EMP should kill it."
"An electromagnetic pulse? It messes up technology, so I guess that makes sense... We can't know what exact effects it would have on this, can we?"
"Most likely none. It's still worth a shot, though. How'd you guess..."
"That there'd be something like this? I didn't, I just anticipated that if you're half as smart as they say you are, you'd figure out something. So, how do we get an EMP without detonating a nuclear bomb, and so that it doesn't cause a blackout in the entire hospital and half the city?"
"No problem. Just get me a pen and paper, and my helmet and one of the gauntlets."
House eyed Stark with newly found respect. Seemed like the man really might be up to his reputation as a technological genius, after all.
Back to Chapters 1-2
On to Chapters 5-6
Category: Crossover, angst, drama, hurt/comfort, romance, suspense
Spoilers: Iron Man, the movie / House MD late season 4
Pairings: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts
Summary: An Iron Man movieverse / House MD crossover. When Tony suspects he's caught a mystery illness, he turns to the best doctor he can find. But can House solve this puzzle?
Chapter 3: "What is that thing?"
"Miss Potts? Hello, this is Jim Rhodes. I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
"Not at all," Pepper answered the phone. She'd joined doctors Kutner and Hadley (who was, for some reason, called Thirteen) for a cup of coffee at the hospital cafeteria. Now, she stood up and walked away from the table to talk to Rhodes, leaving the doctors to compare their experiences about tropical disease. "Why did you call me, though, and not Mr. Stark?"
"I figured he wouldn't be able to answer, I guess I was wrong? I've no idea what's going on in there. I just heard it on the news, so all I know is he's in a hospital, in New Jersey, of all the places you could pick. Is Tony all right?"
"I wish I knew! Something happened when he was in Brazil, and now he's sick. We're here to consult one of the world's top diagnosticians, trying to figure out what's wrong. But, to tell you the truth, the doctor seems convinced that he's just caught cold."
"That's good to hear. I mean, I was getting worried here. Since there's been no official statement, the reporters are having a ball speculating what he's got. Half of them are betting on a new injury sustained as Iron Man, the other half on something old from the Afghanistan incident, and then there's one who's convinced that his liver's finally quit on him because of all that drinking..."
"Well, they're all wrong, that's for sure. We're postponing giving a statement until we've actually got something to state. So far we haven't got anything, and it's partially Mr. Stark's fault. The doctors haven't been able to examine him properly, since he's been wearing his suit several days on end, because he's afraid he'll spread whatever mysterious disease he might have... And I don't know whether to be with him on this or against him. I just wish this whole mess was over with already," Pepper explained. She felt like pouring it all out, all the stress, the uncertainty, the irritation, the worry. Rhodes was a good friend of Tony's and she'd come to consider him her friend as well. She could tell him everything and he'd understand, he knew how impossible Tony could be.
"Jeez, Tony sure knows how to beef up the drama. You know what, Miss Potts - I'll catch the first possible transportation and join you there."
"That'd be great! Maybe he'll listen to you. Um, wait a moment..."
The two young doctors had suddenly leaped up from their seats, looking at their pagers. As they noticed Pepper's inquiring gaze, Hadley spoke up, "Miss Potts? Mr. Stark's unconscious."
"What? Is he okay?" she tried to ask, but the doctors were already heading out of the room.
"Oh, Rhodey, there might be a problem with Tony, I've got to go. I'll call you later," she finished the conversation and hurried after the two doctors.
Doctor Taub met them at the decontamination room, and told Pepper to stop where she was. "You'd better stay here, you'd just stand in our way if you came with us. We'll let you know as soon as we have any news..."
"No, I'm coming with you," she said adamantly. "I'm the only one who knows anything about the Iron Man suit. You might need me."
They had to admit she was right, and as soon as they were in full protective clothing and inside Tony's room, they found out that her knowledge of the suit was exactly what was needed.
Tony was lying on the floor, and House was busy trying to get the suit off him. He'd managed to remove the helmet and the gauntlets, and now he was working on a sleeve. He didn't seem to be getting anywhere, though.
Tony's eyes were closed, and now that the helmet was off, Pepper saw he looked worse than she'd expected. His face was pale and haggard, and the stubble that surrounded his usually well-trimmed beard didn't help at all. The dark circles under his eyes suggested that he hadn't had a lot of sleep, and reminded her of how many timezones he'd crossed yesterday, his suit covering huge distances as fast as a fighter plane.
"Is he... Is he all right?" Pepper stammered.
"He's stable, he'll come around soon. Hey, you three, quit standing there and start helping me," House urged his team.
"Wait, you can't..." Pepper began.
"He's out cold, needs medical attention and I'm his doctor. Of course I can," House declared, though his last words were somewhat undermined by his lack of success in what he was doing.
In a way, Pepper agreed with House. She had wanted Tony out of the suit herself, hadn't she? She didn't agree with his methods, though. Taking advantage of Tony's unconsciousness - the reason for which she didn't even know - was mean, and she didn't want any part of it. If she helped House, Tony would feel like she'd betrayed him, and she didn't know how she'd be able to stand that.
Luckily, she never had to make the decision. Tony woke up before she got that far.
For a few seconds, there was an adorably confused expression on his face, such a lost boy look that it'd have melted any girl's heart. The next moment, his eyes widened as he took in where he was and what had happened, and then narrowed with cold fury.
"House!" he growled with such authority that Pepper thought he sounded like Iron Man even though he no longer wore the helmet. "Are you out of your mind? You don't want to fight me. I'm way out of your league." As he spoke, Pepper realized that though he sounded menacing enough, he was speaking in short phrases, as if he was winded.
"Depends on which weapons we choose to use in this duel," House replied, seemingly carefree. "Feel free to sue me, I had solid medical grounds for getting you out of the suit. If you want to fight superhero-style, you'll need to get me a suit of my own or it'll be unfair."
"Solid medical grounds, like hell. It's your fault I fainted in the first place. Must've been a real testosterone rush, having decked Iron Man just like that."
Pepper was shocked. House had deliberately caused this? How dared he! She studied the doctor's face to figure out if what Tony said was true, but House was unreadable.
Thirteen had the sense to cut the pointless arguing short. "Mr. Stark, Doctor House, this is getting us nowhere. And Mr. Stark, it's a fact that your suit's already been opened, so whatever decontaminating effect it had is now compromised. If you carry something contagious that's airborne, then it's probably already in the air here. You could just as well give in."
Tony glared at House for a while longer, a dark look that, if looks could kill, would've been a nuclear bomb. House stared back, his icy blue eyes challenging, unyielding.
Finally, Tony closed his eyes. The room was silent for a while except for the sound of his heavy breathing.
"Fine. You're right," he relented, looking at Thirteen now. He could admit she was right. Pepper guessed he would never admit that House might've been right, too.
Taub had to admit that without Stark and his assistant helping them, they might never have managed to get him out of the Iron Man suit. It was much more than just simple armor, which shouldn't have come to him as a surprise, since Stark had actually been able to spend several days wearing it continuously.
The last remaining pieces were the chest and back plates. Pepper Potts showed Thirteen how to open the locking mechanisms in the sides. House, Taub and Kutner stood by and watched as the women worked.
"Good thing this version's a bit easier to take off than the previous ones," Pepper noted to Stark.
"Oh? I was thinking the opposite," Stark answered, still sulking. "It comes off too easily. I might need safeguards. I don't want any actually dangerous enemies undressing me while I'm unconscious," he put a slight weight on the words "actually dangerous", just enough that House would notice the barb. Stark really was smooth. He was one of the few people Taub had met so far who'd been able to challenge House's sneering.
Thirteen and Pepper lifted the chestplate off Stark. Taub was taken by surprise again as he saw that the light that had been gleaming brightly in the armor's chest was not attached to the suit, but directly to Stark's body.
House moved closer to Stark. "What's this, the latest craze in body modifications? When tattoos and piercings just aren't extreme enough?" he jeered, reaching to pull the thing off.
"No!" Pepper exclaimed.
Stark placed his hand protectively over the glowing blue and silver disk. "Remove it, and you won't have a patient left to diagnose," he said. There wasn't even a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"You agreed we could take the suit off, and it shouldn't be hard to understand that having a chunk of metal on your chest is going to obstruct our work," House said, quite serious as well.
"Didn't you hear what I said? Removing it would kill me," Stark said, speaking slowly, as if to a child. "It's not on my chest, it's in my chest, and it's not an ornament." He grabbed the device with his hand, twisted it and pulled it out. Pepper cried out softly, looking horrified.
Taub stared at Stark, amazed. There was actually a deep, metal-lined hole in his chest, where the device was set. As a plastic surgeon, Taub had seen all kinds of strange things that people wanted to do to themselves, but this was too far out to be anything like that. He couldn't imagine anyone would voluntarily choose to have a gaping hole in their upper body. Taub considered how this would affect their work: they wouldn't be able to get an echocardiogram through that thing, it would stand out disturbingly in X-rays, MRI would be out of the question... Even without the suit, Stark would still be a very challenging patient.
Stark seemed to be holding his breath as he held the device, and after mere seconds had passed, he screwed it back in its place and shuddered. "I hope I've made my point. I don't want to do that again."
"What is that thing?" Kutner asked, clearly captivated by Stark.
"It's a miniaturized arc reactor. Built it myself. I was hit by a bomb of my own design in Afghanistan. The shrapnel is still in my chest. This device," he tapped it with his fingers, "keeps it from making my heart as holey as Swiss cheese."
"But that makes no sense," Taub had to speak up. "There are better ways to manage an injury like that. Why resort to something this invasive and crude? It can't be completely inoperable, why not simply have surgery?"
"Invasive and crude - that's the way you do things, if caught in a cave, captured by terrorists."
"What's to stop you from having surgery now, though?" Thirteen suggested.
Stark frowned, thoughtful, his expression somewhat difficult to read. Pepper was looking at him with raised eyebrows.
After a while, he shook his head. "I didn't come here to have heart surgery. I came to have a disease diagnosed. Would you people mind actually doing your job?"
Of course, Tony had considered surgery. He knew that what even the miracle-working Ho Yinsen had not been able to do, in a bleak cave with haphazard instruments, would be possible for a well-prepared surgical team in a modern hospital. Still, the idea made him uneasy.
The way Pepper looked at him, he could see she was all for it. She would love knowing that his life didn't depend on the arc reactor, that he couldn't be killed by someone simply removing the device, like Stane had nearly done.
He didn't enjoy being dependent, either, but it wasn't as simple as that. Of course, getting rid of the shrapnel wouldn't have to mean getting rid of the arc reactor. It would probably be easier to leave it in its place instead of going through complex reconstructive surgery to get rid of the hole in his chest. It wouldn't be the same, though. He had grown oddly attached not just to the device, but to the injury as well. It was a thing that defined him, like a dozen other negative character traits that most other people didn't appreciate, but he was proud of, in some twisted way. It was a constant reminder of the fact that he shouldn't even be alive, that he had survived for a reason. It was a symbol of how he had changed and what he had become.
Somewhere deep down, he was afraid that if his body were returned to the health it'd had before Afghanistan, he'd revert to the person he had been, back then. Just as intelligent as now, but without a conscience, shallow, directionless.
It was a dilemma he didn't want to face right now, so he simply brushed the matter aside and told the doctors to concentrate on the immediate problem.
Tony needed to get off the floor and on the bed, so he stood up, and almost fell down again as his vision started to gray out. Instantly, there were several pairs of hands stopping his fall, helping him sit down on the bed and then lie down.
Ironically enough, despite of what he'd told House earlier, it was only now that Tony truly realized how sick he was. The suit had obscured some of it. Without its strength-enhancing effects, moving was a huge strain, and what he had taken for threatening panic was actually real trouble catching his breath. It was obvious it hadn't been this bad before, though - if it had, Jarvis would've mentioned it.
Tony also felt naked, even before House's team started cutting off his undersuit. It was easy to appear fearless and confident in the Iron Man armor. Without it, he felt weak, fragile and insecure.
The doctors went on with their work, attaching medical monitoring equipment - the display that had showed the suit data was only showing an error message now that he wasn't in the suit anymore. As soon as they'd checked his blood oxygen level, they fitted him with a nasal cannula for extra oxygen, and they told him that his blood pressure was pretty low so they'd give him medication for that. Most of the time, though, they were pretty much ignoring him, treating him like a lab specimen. He didn't mind. Pepper had slipped out of the room at some point, and he appreciated her giving him the privacy. He was incredibly tired. For the first time during his illness, Tony relaxed and gave in to the feverish haze that'd been threatening to take him over for days.
"And as Stark Industries stock continues to fall, the question on everyone's lips is, 'Where is Iron Man'?" the news reporter read. The image shifted to a magnificently shot sequence of Iron Man flying in the cerulean sky over a calm, deep blue sea.
House sighed. No matter what his opinion of Stark was, he couldn't help liking Iron Man. The armor was the single coolest thing invented since monster trucks first saw daylight. House also liked the symbolic value of the suited superhero, because he enjoyed observing the effects it had on people. Some hero-worshipped it without reservation, some hated it right away. House himself remained neutral. After all, Iron Man was just a piece of fiction, a legend with only loose ties to reality. House liked him like he enjoyed his favorite soap opera.
"The self-made superhero, also known as billionaire industrialist Tony Stark, was last seen yesterday, entering Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey in full armor, as confirmed by several eyewitnesses." The screen now showed the familiar facade of the building where House was at the very moment. "After that, he hasn't been seen or heard of. It is generally assumed that it is Mr. Stark himself who is ill, not a friend or a family member. However, there has been no official statement on his current condition."
Tomorrow morning, you shall have one, House thought to himself. The news broadcast moved on to other subjects, and House turned off the TV. It was past 6 PM, and he was still waiting for his team to return with the results. Luckily, he had no objections to working overtime now that the case actually had turned out interesting.
He had been wrong about the diagnosis. He was also starting to consider that he might've been wrong about Stark. The revelation that Stark had actually been captured and injured in Afghanistan had taken House by surprise, and he hadn't expected the grim, serious side of the man's personality that emerged at times.
House wasn't sure he had figured out the relationship between Stark and his secretary, either. He had been certain that the girl was with Stark because he was handsome and had a lot of money, and he with her for almost the same reasons, because she was pretty and he could pay her enough. Their protectiveness over each other clearly contradicted that theory. Had they got a real relationship of some sort, or were they just good friends? And if they hadn't got a relationship, why not?
It was obvious House hadn't figured out Stark yet, which made him a puzzle, which was an added bonus to the case.
His three ducklings entered the room, each bringing a set of results. House spent some time reading and thinking them through, set the chest x-ray on the wall and limped to the whiteboard.
"We now have a diagnosis," he declared. "Give your best shot, the looser makes coffee."
Taub had been the one to do the chest x-ray, and he spoke up first. "Congestive heart failure."
House glanced at the x-ray. With the round silhouette of the arc reactor covering the heart, it was hard to say anything about it. The shrapnel wasn't visible, either. Without that thing blocking the view, an echocardiogram would've been very useful - now, they hadn't even bothered with trying to get one, since it'd show nothing. Nevertheless, they had enough clues. House didn't suspect for one moment that they were dealing with a heart condition here.
"Bzzzzt! That does it, Taub, you're our barista for tonight. Did you even look at the rest of the results? Or the ones we had before? No EKG abnormalities except for sinus tachycardia, and what about the several days' prodrome with non-specific symptoms?"
Taub crossed his arms and grimaced, saying nothing. It was a possible diagnosis, House gave him that, but not a very fitting one, and House expected better of him. Taub must be getting tired.
"Some viral infection that's hit his lungs," Kutner offered.
"That doesn't count, you need to be more specific."
"Pneumonia. Legionnaire's?" he tried.
"Now you're just guessing. Might be, but I'm going for something rarer. Thirteen, your turn. Don't worry, unless you'll suggest lupus, you're safe from coffee duty."
"There's no reason it has to be viral," she stated. "Could be tularemia."
"Stark would love that, it's a known biological weapon. You'll get extra points for it, and a hint. Take a good close look at the platelet count and white blood cells, and guess again."
"Thrombocytopenia, leukocytosis with neutrophilia and a left shift, plus circulating immunoblasts," she recited, studying the paper, then looked up and frowned. "I see what you're thinking, but I can't see how it fits, the incubation period is much too short."
"Come on, you don't need to suck up to Stark, he's not in the room. No one here's saying that the incident in Brazil has to be when he was infected. No, he must've caught this earlier."
"What's 'this' anyway?" Kutner asked.
"Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome," Thirteen answered, winning the diagnosis quiz.
Kutner looked stricken, and House knew it wasn't because he'd lost to Thirteen. It was because HPS wasn't the nicest diagnosis they could've hoped for.
Chapter 4: "I could use a second opinion here"
"Hantavirus? I've heard of it - but it's carried by rodents, right?" Tony looked up at the four doctors, dubious. Pepper saw and heard that, despite the extra oxygen, he still had trouble breathing normally.
"Yes. And it takes several weeks before the symptoms show up, which means you must've contacted it before you left to Brazil," Thirteen clarified.
"Makes no sense," he answered.
"I seriously doubt Mr. Stark has had anything to do with rodents," Pepper told them, as surprised by the diagnosis as he was, and figuring he'd rather not exert himself with a long-winded explanation. "There is absolutely no way there can be any pests at his home," she declared, since Jarvis would notice any right away and then they'd be doomed, "and the places where he spends time tend to be on the cleaner side. If he does go to some dodgier settings as Iron Man, the suit should protect him, right?"
"Something was going on in Brazil," Tony added, as if he hadn't been listening to her at all. He obviously had his mind set on it. She wondered if there was something he hadn't told her, some extra reason why he was so sure about it.
"Whatever was going on in Brazil, I don't give a rat's ass about it," House threw in a bad pun. "The symptoms match the disease. You asked us to do our job, and we're doing it. Would you mind playing your part, being a good patient and listening to your doctors?"
Pepper didn't think she could stand listening to yet another verbal duel between House and Tony, so she spoke up before Tony had the time to answer. "So, what's the prognosis, and how do you treat this?"
Even through the protective suits they wore, Pepper saw the three younger doctors exchange glances. House was the one to answer, though. "There's good news and bad news. Good news is, survivors of HPS come through with no lasting effects. The bad news is that there's no specific treatment, and the mortality rate is close to 40 percent. The disease has already progressed to the cardiopulmonary phase, and in lethal cases of the disease, death usually occurs within 24 hours from that."
"Oh no!" she uttered, and without her even realizing it, her gloved hand found its way to Tony's.
He squeezed her hand reassuringly. "I've fought worse odds," he told her. Funny, she thought, how the one who was sick was consoling the one who wasn't, and not the other way around. "So, what's going to happen next?" he asked the doctors.
"This is going to get worse," Thirteen answered this one, her voice controlled and emotionless, professional. "Breathing will become progressively more difficult, as your lungs fill with fluid. It's very likely that at some point we'll need to intubate and ventilate mechanically. The cause of death in terminal cases is that the heart starts to fail, eventually leading to a fatal arrhythmia."
"And what're we going to do? Just wait and see whether I'm going to kick the bucket?"
"There's no cure per se, no medication, but like she already mentioned, there's supportive care. We can keep you breathing if you can't breathe on your own, for starters. We treat the symptoms as best we can," Kutner explained.
"Oh, and on a side note, since there's only one person-to-person transmitted case of HPS ever, I think we can safely tone down the isolation a bit," Taub added, talking to the other doctors as well as to Tony and Pepper. "Should make things easier and more comfortable for everyone."
"Are you completely certain about this diagnosis?" Tony asked gravely.
"Not hundred percent, yet," Kutner said. "We haven't tested it, so we'll take some blood now and get confirmation as soon as possible."
"As long as you're not sure, we'll stick to the isolation. And while you're testing... Put some of my blood under a microscope. See if there's anything strange," Tony suggested. Pepper had no idea what he was thinking about.
House let out an exaggeratedly exasperated sigh. "Oh, puh-lease, Mr. Stark. The game's over, it's time to admit you're wrong and I'm right."
"I don't care who's right or wrong. I just want to know the truth," Tony replied solemnly. He pointed the rest of his words at House's team instead of the man himself. "Just do it, all right?" he pleaded, and coughed. "Consider it a last wish - if that makes it less offensive, taking orders from me."
None of the three answered anything to that, but Kutner moved in to draw the blood. House left the room before the others, and they followed soon after him, leaving Pepper alone with Tony.
"Colonel Rhodes is on his way here," she told him absently, still so shocked that she was unable to think of much of anything to say. "He should arrive in a few hours."
"Rhodey. Great," Tony actually smiled a little. As usual, he could find something to say. "Pepper, it's all right. After all I've been through... I'm not gonna be killed by a mouse."
"Of course you aren't," she replied automatically, but he looked so pale and so weary and so ill that she felt sick with worry nevertheless.
Forty percent mortality - a sixty percent chance to survive. Tony wondered what would be the possibility of surviving a load of shrapnel to the chest when captured by terrorists. Had to be pretty close to zero, and he'd made it. If the doctors were right and this really was hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, this should be a walk in the park compared to Afghanistan. If this was a regular disease, even a potentially deadly one, he was actually relieved. That was one very big if.
Before Pepper left to meet Rhodey in the lobby, Tony asked her to get him his helmet from the corner of the room where the suit was stacked. He didn't feel up to working anymore. How could he think when he could hardly even breathe? It felt like someone was pressing a pillow on his face. Nevertheless, he needed to try.
"Jarvis?"
"Online, sir. I have been monitoring your readings on the hospital computers, and I'd like to note that in your current condition, any unnecessary exertion should be avoided."
"This is necessary. I need to know about the missing scientists."
"I have completed the task, and I have results. In addition to the two Stark Industries employees, there are five other missing people in similar fields. Two nanotechnology-specialists, a microbiologist, a geneticist and a virologist. There was also a major technology theft reported at Nanogentec inc. in Dallas."
Tony shivered, and not just from fever-induced chills. Whether it had anything to do with his sickness or not, there was something big going on, there was no question about it. He had to do something - or rather, since he wasn't up to it, someone else had to.
"Collect all data relevant to this case and send it to James Rhodes."
"Will do, sir. I'll send him an email with instructions on where and how to access the data. May I suggest rest now, sir?"
"A fine idea, Jarvis," he found himself agreeing with his AI butler, this once.
He took off the helmet and let it clatter to the floor, because he hadn't got the strength to actually set it down. He tried to compare this to Afghanistan. Had he felt this weak? He didn't think so, not even when he'd just woken up with a car battery attached to his chest.
He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind, to fall asleep, but he soon found out he couldn't. He couldn't stop thinking about the mystery disappearances. How it ominously seemed that someone had been gathering a team to build something very nasty.
The door hissed open, letting a solitary figure into the room. From his size and his way of walking, Tony recognized him instantly.
"Rhodey. Good to see you."
"Tony! Pepper already told me about the diagnosis they gave you. How are you?"
"Been better," he answered. Articulating sentences of more than five words at a time was starting to feel impossible. "Look, Rhodey. There's something I need..." he needed to stop to breathe. This was so not good. "...you to do."
"Anything I can do, just name it."
"I just sent you e-mail with access..." - air, damn it, he needed more air - "...to certain files. Possibly related to this. Definitely related to something big. Jarvis will help you. You might want to hand it..." breathe in, then go on, "...over to S.H.I.E.L.D. This is their sort of stuff."
He was panting now, unable to catch his breath anymore. He could almost concretely feel Rhodey's worried, pitying gaze on him.
"Man, Tony, your lips are turning blue," Rhodey said, sounding seriously freaked out.
Either Rhodey pressed the call button or then an alarm had gone off somewhere, but instantaneously Kutner and a nurse rushed into the room and offered Tony an oxygen mask. It helped, he could breathe properly again. Whew.
According to what the doctors had said, this was going to get even worse. He looked up to Rhodey's concerned eyes and knew that Rhodey would see he felt scared, but he didn't mind, there was no need to keep up a facade around him.
He took the mask off to speak. "You gonna do what I asked, Rhodey?"
"Of course, sure I will. You just concentrate on getting better. I'll handle the investigation, whatever it's about."
Thirteen stared at the test results. "House was wrong. It's not HPS."
"It's not?" Kutner asked dumbly.
"Test came through negative," she said, and moved aside to let him see for himself.
"The results from the CDC won't arrive until sometime tomorrow. This might be a mistake, we need to re-check," Taub told them, as if they didn't know it already. It would be what House would tell them to do when they'd let him know. He'd ask them to re-check, and then check again, at least twice, before he'd believe they hadn't botched it.
"Don't you think we should do what Stark asked, too, though?" Kutner suggested.
Thirteen nodded. It wouldn't be a very difficult task, after all. "I'll do it and leave this to you in case I messed up something the first time."
Carefully following safety protocols while handling the possibly contagious blood sample, Thirteen made a smear and put the slide under the microscope. At a glance, she saw nothing she wouldn't have expected based on their earlier test results. Of course, hantavirus was much too small to show up with a regular optical microscope. Still, Stark hadn't asked her to look for that, but for "anything strange". She increased the magnification.
After staring at the familiar blood cells for quite a while, she noticed something small that she couldn't recognize or explain right away. She zoomed even closer, nearing the limits of the microscope's resolution.
She had no idea what she was looking at. It was large for a virus, small for a bacterium, and there was something disturbing about it that she couldn't quite put a finger on. Now aware of what she was searching for, she scanned the rest of the smear closely, and found more of the strange organisms, or whatever they were. She got a picture of the thing, to examine it better on a computer screen.
"I could use a second opinion here," she called out to the others.
Kutner and Taub gaped at the thing, as mystified as she was.
"Never seen anything like it. Stark's full of mysteries, isn't he?" Taub said. "First the chest device, now this. What do you suppose it is?"
"Well, if he tests negative for HPS, but has this in his blood, maybe this is the pathogen we're searching for?" she suggested. It was really weird, but also logical. She glanced at Kutner, waiting to hear what he thought.
Kutner's expression was almost uncharacteristically thoughtful and anxious. "He knew it might be there, since he told us to look for it. But it couldn't be..." he said.
"Why not? I mean, it's strange, but doesn't it support Stark's Brazil theory, which you've been voting for all the time?"
"Yeah, sorry, that's not what I meant," Kutner hesitated, peering at the organism so closely that his nose almost touched the screen. "I meant that it couldn't be what I think it is. I mean, I think I know what this is, but it's a really scary idea."
"A biological weapon?" Taub offered.
"Not just that," Kutner turned to look at the others. "It's artificial. Stark told me himself that the biotech center in Brazil specialized in nanotechnology."
"So, who's going to break the news to House?" Taub asked.
House massaged his temples thoughtfully. This wasn't what he'd expected, and he was at a loss, maybe more so than ever before during his long and colorful career. They'd just jumped from the realm of medicine and science fact into science fiction and technology. Something Stark was far more familiar with than he was. He looked at the image, and on an intuitive level, he could instantly see that there was something unnatural about this tiny bug. House was glad he had let Stark stay in isolation as he had wished, instead of forcing him out of it. They definitely wouldn't want this thing to spread.
"We'll need to let Stark know," he told his ducklings.
"But it's past midnight, and he's getting worse, he should be resting," Kutner blurted out.
"And you think he's going to start getting better if we just wait?" House sneered, and got up. Better get this over with sooner than later.
Once in Stark's room, House glanced at the monitors. They had switched the nasal cannula to an oxygen mask, and so far Stark was managing, but House was prepared to bet it wouldn't last long. A fast decline after the onset of cardiopulmonary symptoms was a hallmark of HPS... He had to stop and remind himself that this was probably not HPS at all, merely something that progressed a lot like it.
House was surprised to learn that despite the late hour, Stark wasn't sleeping. He lifted the mask off his face and asked, "What's up, doc?"
"Please tell me you've injected yourself with the latest experimental nanotechnological creation to give you more superpowers," House suggested hopefully.
"Would I be here if I had?" The look on Stark's face was clear enough: he had instantly understood what House was talking about, he was taken aback, scared, but not really surprised.
"But you know what this thing in your bloodstream is, then?"
"I've an idea," he replied briefly. "It came from Brazil."
"Care to elaborate? It's, what? A nanotechnological virus? Based on how closely the symptoms resemble HPS, is there some connection to the real hantavirus?"
"I'd guess not entirely nanotech, partly biological," Stark answered, which made perfect sense to House. "Might use the real virus in its design. Can't know for sure."
"If this really came from Brazil, then the incubation period is much shorter than that of the real hantavirus. I'd guess this is more contagious too, and I'm afraid it could be more aggressive and have an even higher mortality rate than the original."
Stark simply nodded, his eyes showing that this once, he agreed with House in everything.
"I've never met anything like this. I didn't think stuff like this was even possible. I can't begin to explain how it works, if it's partly technological - like, how it can replicate. And I've no idea how to treat this. I guess we've got no choice but to keep the course we've already talked about, just give you all the supportive care we can and hope that it's possible to survive this thing," House spoke, sort of thinking out loud.
He never felt anything for patients, they were just puzzles, just nameless people - but this patient was the exact opposite of nameless. House had an awful sinking feeling, and he felt surreal. He felt like he was giving Iron Man a death sentence.
"For HPS, there's at least a lot of data on how cases have been managed before, there've been trials for medication, all kinds of things. This is something I guess no one's ever faced before. So if there's anything more you can tell, Stark, now'd be a good time."
"I've got people working on it," Stark answered. "I don't know anything useful yet."
"But isn't this basically what you do?" House tried to push him, turning the sarcasm in his voice to the max. He'd come up with an idea, or rather, an idea of an idea he hoped Stark might come up with. Anything they could do to stop this thing or to slow it down would give Stark more chance of surviving it. "You're supposed to be one of the greatest technological minds of our age, isn't this right up your alley?"
"It's part biological, you forget that already?"
"No, but you should. If we could somehow attack the technological parts of this bug..."
Stark frowned. House could almost see his mind working furiously. "I don't know the design. It's not from Stark biotech, so..."
"It's probably somehow related to Stark biotech, right? Why's that important?"
"All our nanotechnology was supposed to have a failsafe," Stark replied, speaking quickly and then taking a few breaths from the oxygen mask. "A way to shut it down if things went bad. But it was all theoretical."
"What sort of a failsafe?"
"An EMP should kill it."
"An electromagnetic pulse? It messes up technology, so I guess that makes sense... We can't know what exact effects it would have on this, can we?"
"Most likely none. It's still worth a shot, though. How'd you guess..."
"That there'd be something like this? I didn't, I just anticipated that if you're half as smart as they say you are, you'd figure out something. So, how do we get an EMP without detonating a nuclear bomb, and so that it doesn't cause a blackout in the entire hospital and half the city?"
"No problem. Just get me a pen and paper, and my helmet and one of the gauntlets."
House eyed Stark with newly found respect. Seemed like the man really might be up to his reputation as a technological genius, after all.
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