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readingrat A/N: I apologize for the delay in posting; after ‘Bombshells’ aired, I decided to wait out the season finale to see how things would develop to pre-empt writing myself into a tight corner. When the season finale did air … it took me some time to recover. And then it took me some more time to figure out how I could fit the plotline into my ‘verse. Here comes the first of three instalments that represent my effort to make the best of a bad deal.
Warning: This chapter leads up to the terminal illness of a major character. If that thought bothers you, you might want to stop reading here.
Thanks as always to my beta![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brighidsfire , who puts up very patiently with my insecurities.
IX: Family Practice
In which Wilson nags and Cuddy literally goes up in smoke.
"So, Bill, how are you today?"
The patient in the bed grunted. With her smile firmly glued in its place, Cuddy flicked open the patient's chart.
"How are you responding to the new medication?" Another ambiguous grunt. "Any dizziness? Faintness? How's your appetite?"
The patient didn't deign to respond at all. Sighing, Cuddy turned to the gaggle of students surrounding her to test them on their background knowledge of the case. The questions died on her lips when she realized that the students were not focused on her or the patient, but on something going on outside the patient's room. A few students were suppressing giggles, others simply looked puzzled. With an even deeper sigh, Cuddy followed their glances. Surprisingly, it wasn't House cutting capers in the corridor who was mesmerizing them; it was Wilson, doing a wild pantomime to get her attention.
Thrusting the patient's charts at the resident, Cuddy said, "You continue please, Dr Sinha." She approached Wilson, ignoring both Sinha's mild grunt of protest and the sobering premonition that she was about to get her head chewed off.
"How was the conference, James?" she asked with her best placatory smile.
"Fine," Wilson said briefly, "but Masters isn't. She's in my office having a melt-down, because according to her, Good Cop Cuddy deserted her, leaving Bad Cop House to threaten her with instruments of medieval torture."
"Ah, yes, there was some incident last week," Cuddy said vaguely, "but I don't really know anything about that." Off Wilson's look of disbelief she added, "I had ... other problems to deal with."
"Your mom. I heard."
"Well, then you understand that I couldn't give Masters and her personal issues with House my full attention." Behind them the students exited Bill's room, chattering loudly. Seeing Dr Sinha approach her, Cuddy grabbed Wilson's arm and led him to the elevators, punching the upward button when she reached the doors.
"Masters gave me a very garbled version of what happened. Between her allegation that House conned her into assaulting a patient and her tales of switched and double-switched medication, I'm beginning to wonder whether the poor girl is paranoid. You might want to do something about her," Wilson suggested. "You don't want her spreading either story around the hospital. House's situation is precarious enough without Masters making him out to be some Dr Mengele."
"What did she tell you?"
"Some mad tale about House pretending to treat your mother but feeding her placebos the while, which made your mother fire him, then really treating her after he got fired, switching her medication and then switching it back again - I lost track of what happened somewhere around the double switch. Oh, yes, and kidnapping her out of the ambulance when she decided to get transferred to Princeton General."
"Well, yes," Cuddy said noncommittally.
"Are you telling me that her rigmarole is ... true?" Wilson's eyebrows threatened to merge.
"No." Cuddy gave a tight smile. "That's the official version." The elevator doors opened, and Cuddy stepped inside briskly. Wilson followed, frowning when he saw which button Cuddy had pressed.
"So there's also an unofficial version," Wilson ventured. Cuddy looked unhappy, but chose not to elucidate. "You know," Wilson said conversationally, "I've known House for almost twenty years now, but even so I can't picture a scenario that's worse than the one Masters described to me."
"It wasn't House's fault," Cuddy admitted as the elevator stopped on the top floor.
"I gathered as much from Masters. ... Wait, are we really going up on the roof? Cuddy, it's cold out there!"
"It's secluded up there. Come along, we're both wearing lab coats. This won't kill us." She took the flight of stairs from the top floor in her usual brisk stride, Wilson trailing in her wake.
"Don't you think this is a bit melodramatic? I doubt anyone has bugged your office. Can't we ...,"
"No, we can't," Cuddy snapped, drawing a packet of cigarettes out of her lab coat and placing one between her lips with shaking fingers. She took it out again to wave it in Wilson's surprised face. "I set off the fire alarm two days ago by smoking in my en-suite bathroom - I don't need a repetition of the ensuing fuss. I told security that it must have been House who set off the alarm. Seriously, why would anyone install a smoke detector in the dean's bathroom?"
"I - didn't know you smoke."
"I stopped after med school, and started again last week." After lighting the cigarette she took a deep drag. She leaned on the balustrade, gazing out over Princeton as she blew out the smoke. Wilson moved over next to her, curiosity and the need to reassure her with his presence overcoming his physical discomfort at the chillness of the air. He waited patiently while Cuddy took a few more calming puffs. Finally she said, "It's complicated."
Wilson offered one of his platitudes. "It always is when family is involved."
"A year ago my mother had a hip replacement. About four months ago her orthopaedic specialist contacted her. He informed her that the manufacturing company was recalling the artificial hip because of technical problems and that she'd need to get it replaced. Mom freaked. She refused to have the hip replaced, saying that it was perfectly fine and that this was a plot to cover up surgical negligence during the operation. Nothing Julia or I said made any difference; in fact, she's suing the hospital where she got the replacement done."
"That ... doesn't make sense. For one, there's no way she can judge whether the artificial hip is okay or not; for another, if the hip wasn't placed correctly, that’s all the more reason to get it looked into."
"None of this makes any sense!" Cuddy twisted a strand of her hair around a finger. "I think Mom may be in the early stages of dementia."
Wilson looked surprised. "I didn't notice anything."
"No, she's good at compensating, but something's been off lately, more than usual. She forgets stuff or mislays things, but she always has some excuse - the glass of wine that made her fuzzy or the unexpected phone call that drove whatever it was clear out of her mind. I think she's started drinking during the day so that she has an explanation for anything that goes wrong. And she's become downright paranoid, so she's convinced that all her doctors are involved in a huge scam to rob her of her money while ignoring her real medical issues. That includes me, of course."
"Can't you do anything - get a care giver or something?"
"That won't stop her paranoia, and so far she has Julia firmly on her side. Julia refuses to believe that something's seriously wrong with Mom. She's convinced that Mom is just being a little 'difficult'." Cuddy sketched quotation marks in the air. "When I couldn't get my mother to see sense about the hip replacement, I went and ranted to House about it. I didn't dare to hope he'd be of any help - he just happened to be around, so I vented my frustration on him. But House came up with a solution. He told me to get Mom admitted on some pretext, and then he'd take care of the rest."
"What? Admitting your mother to your own hospital was House's idea?"
"Yes, it was," Cuddy said with a hint of smugness. "She'd never have agreed to be taken here, so I planned a shopping trip in the vicinity, and then spiked her drink with beta blockers."
"I take it that inducing bradycardia was also House's idea? Oh, forget it, just tell me House's brilliant master plan."
"Oh, the plan was quite simple: he intended to administer meds that would make her condition increasingly worse; then, when she was convinced that she was dying, he'd pull the diagnosis 'cobalt poisoning due to a defective artificial hip' out of his hat and get her consent for the operation."
"Downright ingenuous in its simplicity," Wilson deadpanned. Then he grew serious. "You agreed to this?"
"It seemed preferable to her dying of real cobalt poisoning. She's planning an extended vacation in the South in summer. If she falls sick then, there's no way anyone can diagnose her, not when the last thing she'd mention in her medical history is that she's been running around with an artificial hip that should have been removed months ago."
"So what went wrong?"
Cuddy drew out another cigarette. "My mom fired House before he had a chance to poison her thoroughly. I put Marty Kaufmann on the case because he's a bumbling idiot - yes, that was House's idea too - but neither of us had reckoned with the team."
"You initiated the diagnostic team into a plan that was illegal, unethical and totally insane even by House's standards, and expected them to go along with it?" Wilson asked incredulously.
"No, of course not!" Cuddy countered with equal indignation. "I'm not crazy. If my mom ever finds out what we did, she'd probably stop short of suing me, but she'd have no compunction about suing diverse members of my staff. The less they know the better. The problem was that since they didn't know what was going on, they didn't want to switch Mom's medication once House was pulled off the case. Marty, you see, was prescribing the good stuff to make her get better."
"Ah, yes, asking them to tamper with the patient's medication without her consent in order to worsen her condition was okay, but telling them why they were doing so wasn't."
"They're House's team - they do this sort of thing all the time," Cuddy justified herself.
"But not on your orders."
"Those were House's orders, not mine."
"Same difference, as House was acting on your orders. Besides, he isn't a doctor and he isn't their boss anymore."
"Precisely. Foreman refused outright, deciding that killing his boss's mother on the orders of a delusional ex-employer would not further his career. Which was okay, really," Cuddy added, blowing smoke into the sky. "At least House and I knew what we were working with there. Chase, however, figured that pissing off his boss's boyfriend might be just as detrimental to his career as killing his boss's mother, so he opted for a middle path. He agreed to switch the meds, but he secretly replaced the meds House had ordered with the ones Marty was prescribing. There came a point where it wasn't clear to anyone which meds she was getting, especially since Masters created complete confusion by informing Marty of what she thought was going on. In the end House and I more or less knocked Mom out with a narcotic and then made a big show of pretending to find some necrotic tissue at her hip."
"This ... is bad," Wilson judged.
"Yes."
"Worse than what Masters told me."
"Yes."
"It's bad enough that you're treating your own kith and kin here at your hospital. No one here has the guts to stop you, so you nearly killed your mother on the assumption that she might, just might, become critically ill at some undefined point in the future," Wilson held up his hand to stop Cuddy's protest, "and you got House embroiled in the mess on a false pretext."
Cuddy's eyebrows went up at that.
"A false pretext," Wilson repeated. "House took an enormous risk for something he wasn't medically interested in, because he thinks he's your boyfriend."
"What risk?"
"Losing his licence, if either Marty or your mother complained to the board, maybe?"
"He doesn't have a licence!" Cuddy pointed out with an exasperated huff.
"No, but he doesn't know that. Look at it from House's point of view. He'd never have gotten himself involved in a case like this - your family involved, no puzzle whatsoever, and any amount of bother coming his way if anything went wrong, which it did! - if he hadn't been thinking of the perks this would get him."
"Like gratitude sex."
"I was thinking more in terms of 'couple-bonding in the face of adversity'."
Cuddy scowled petulantly. "Who says we aren't bonding over this?"
Wilson threw up his arms and turned to leave. "Call it what you like, but you're using him."
As the heavy metal door slammed behind him Cuddy lit her third cigarette. "House is right - you nag!" she said to the empty space he'd left.
X: Carrot or Stick, Two Stories
Depicts the battle between Tradition (as embodied by her model mother) and Anarchy (in the form of her would-rather-not-be father) in the life of Miss Rachel Cuddy.
Cuddy was vacillating between a pearl chain and a silver necklace with a pendant when the doorbell rang. She went to the door in bare feet and opened it after quickly checking the peep-hole. Wilson stood outside, brushing a few raindrops off his coat. He stepped forward to give Cuddy a hug.
"Sorry I'm late. I had to give Sarah her insulin shot before coming here."
Cuddy stepped aside and waved him in. "It's fine - I still have half-an-hour. Rachel's asleep already - she shouldn't be any problem." She reached out to take his coat from him. "If you wanted a pet that's more trouble than it is worth, you could have kept House," she added as she led the way back to her bedroom.
"You're beginning to sound like him. What happened to the bonding process?"
"Sorry. He's just - driving me crazy." Cuddy shook her head as though to clear it. Struck by a sudden thought, she turned back to Wilson, who was following her rather hesitatingly. "Tell me, when you were sharing the condo, did he ever take the trash out?"
"No!" Wilson said with a laugh that was more of a snort.
"Hmmm. Leave the toilet seat up?" Cuddy waved Wilson, who was hovering at the door, into her bedroom and indicated the bed. He perched awkwardly on its edge, trying not to let his eyes roam around the room.
"Not really an issue, with two guys sharing an apartment. But now that you mention it, he always puts it down. A relic of his childhood training, he says."
"Drilled into him by his father," Cuddy surmised, opting for the pearl chain.
Wilson looked thoughtful. "No, quite the opposite. He told me that his dad used to leave the seat up on purpose, which irritated his mother no end. She'd grin and bear it, saying to House that men will be men, or something to that effect. That made House determined to prove to his mother that it was just his father being a jerk, so he'd always put the seat down."
"See, that's how I remember seeing it whenever I was at his apartment. The seat was always down. Now that he's practically living here, he leaves the seat up." Cuddy tilted her head in the mirror as she fixed a pearl ear stud in her left ear. "What about toothpaste stains in the washbasin?"
"No, he's fussy about hygiene in the bathroom and in the kitchen."
"And did he ever use your toothbrush?"
"Jeez, no! He had his own. Just get him a spare toothbrush."
"I did," Cuddy said, giving her appearance a last check before turning away from the mirror. "I've got a whole bathroom cabinet full of spare ones - okay, I'm exaggerating - but he won't use them. He chews up mine."
"Sounds like when he was trying to drive a wedge between me and 'Sam'," Wilson noted.
"So he's jerking me around." She picked up the handbag that was lying on the bed and preceded Wilson out of the bedroom into the living room.
"Perhaps now that the honeymoon period is over, he's reverting to slovenly male behaviour." There were some snacks on the coffee table, to which Wilson gravitated gratefully.
"We've just established that his default behaviour isn't all that slovenly. Besides, House is a creature of habit. He's quite incapable of putting up a civilized façade even for one day, let alone a honeymoon period. House's packaging is transparent - you buy what you see. Wilson, would you write me a recommendation?"
Cuddy was gathering a few stray toys from the floor and throwing them into a large box that was standing in one corner of the living room. Wilson blinked. "I'm ... sorry?"
She looked up, grinning at his confusion, and walked over to a pile of brochures lying on a side table. "A recommendation." Cuddy handed the top brochure to him. "For pre-school, for Rachel. Though some discipline and structure wouldn't do House any harm either. This place," she waved a hand at the brochure Wilson was holding, "wants a recommendation from a friend of the family."
"Sure, no problem. What do you want me to write?" Wilson asked obligingly. He squinted at the pile that Cuddy was still holding. "Are you thinking of applying to all these places?"
"Yes." Thumping the brochures onto the coffee table, she sat down on the couch, smoothing her dress down routinely.
Wilson sat down next to her. "Aren't you overdoing it? It can't be that difficult to get a child into pre-school."
"I need to get applications in at more pre-schools than House can find the time to visit in his campaign to sabotage Rachel's chances of getting an education."
"You're being harsh. House was trying to help."
"By going to a Career Day at the school that he thought I was trying to get Rachel into, holding a talk spiked with sexual innuendos and designed to drag our profession into disrepute, assaulting a parent (or was it a teacher?), corrupting two fifth-graders by revealing intimate details about his relationship, and then informing the principal that he was my boy-friend? How exactly does that improve my chances of getting Rachel admitted to Brye Park? They phoned this afternoon suggesting that I withdraw the application."
Wilson blushed for his friend. "He didn't mean for all that to happen. That's just ... House, but he meant it for the best. He knew you were upset at him, and he was worried you'd be even more upset if another school rejected Rachel, so he .... "
"They would never have rejected Rachel if he hadn't interfered," Cuddy stated flatly.
"Well, Waldenwood rejected her."
"Because of House."
"Oh, no, no!" Wilson remonstrated. "He didn't do anything there. Hey, he may not have told you, but he spent hours in my office teaching Rachel the skills she needed to pass their admission test."
Cuddy swivelled to face him. "Wilson, I'm the dean of a small, but renowned teaching hospital. If I brought a dressed-up chimp to any one of these schools saying she was my daughter, they'd admit her without batting an eyelid. Rachel needs no special skills to get into a good pre-school. All she needs is the right parents."
"House told me that Rachel was rejected because the school was oversubscribed and siblings got priority," Wilson said weakly.
"Crap! I know someone who knows someone on the staff. Rachel didn't get rejected because she has no siblings at Waldenwood. Nor because she's too stupid. Not even because they resented House training her for the test - a lot of parents do that. No, Rachel got rejected because after House's theatrical performance, the admissions officer decided that they didn't need a child with parents like that."
"But - he didn't go to Waldenwood."
"Oh, yes, he did! And he made absolutely sure that they saw him." Cuddy played her trump. "He came along for Rachel's admission test."
"He probably wanted to be supportive," Wilson said with the mien of a general whose flanks have just collapsed.
"Supportive, my foot! All the other fathers were in suits and ties, while House was sporting a ridiculous baseball cap. That got everyone's attention, including that of the staff members who'd seen him on his previous visit when he'd pretended to be a Health Inspector or something like that. Those teachers aren't the brightest bulbs in the box, but they soon figured out that they were dealing with a criminal element."
Wilson knew when a battle was lost. He rubbed a hand wearily over his forehead. "So House cost you your two first choices."
"No. Brye Park Academy was just a decoy to test my theory that House sabotaged my attempt to get her into Waldenwood."
"But," Wilson said, frowning in confusion, "House hacked into your laptop ... . You'd written in your journal that Brye Park Academy was your first choice."
Cuddy rolled her eyes at so much trusting naivety. "House hacks into my laptop at least once a week. I don't write anything in my journal there - into any journal, for that matter - that I don't want him to read. And sometimes I write stuff in there especially for him. Like wanting to get Rachel into Brye Park." She flicked idly through the pile of brochures in front of her. "Where'd that brochure come from? I didn't order that!" She drew out one that looked much the same as all the others: glossy on the outside, lots of pictures of smiling children inside, and pink post-its sticking up from strategic pages.
Shrugging, Wilson flicked open the one Cuddy had given him to write his reference for. It fell open at the centrefold, displaying a neatly uniformed throng standing in ascending ranks in an assembly hall. 'Redland Seminar: Traditional Values Meet Modern Teaching Methods,' the caption read.
"I'm sure I never ordered a brochure from Westhill Wilds," Cuddy said, stabbing the offending object with one forefinger. "That school is unsuitable. Look at their pre-school time-table - free play outside every afternoon!"
Wilson peered over at the page she was studying. "So? Their grounds are nice: a sort of rambling wilderness with lots of adventure stuff. I'm sure the kids aren't bored playing out there every day. They probably love it." His brochure showed girls in pink leotards and tutus practicing basic ballet steps in a mirrored room.
"Yeah, she'll come home covered in mud, but without a smidgen of knowledge in her head. No formal instructions, no pre-school foreign language programme. They have some sort of Orff group for Rachel's age group, but no instrumental lessons. She should start the piano or the violin soon."
"Cuddy, she's three!" Wilson remonstrated.
"She'll be in that school till she's six, and I haven't got the time to take her to ballet lessons (or soccer or whatever) or to music lessons. Either she does it at school or she won't do it at all. And everyone needs a foreign language or two nowadays."
Cuddy turned to the next page. It had a picture of an indoor gym with trampolines and ball baths (and the obligatory grinning kids), and another one of a horde of children painting their classroom in garish colours, their obligatory grins amplified by the layers of paint that covered them. Cuddy grimaced, but Wilson said, "I kinda get what House sees in this place, as far as he's capable of being enthused by places of education."
"House?"
"Yeah, those are House's post-its. You stick your post-its in sloppily," Wilson pointed out, holding up the Redland Seminar brochure in illustration. "His are aligned to the edge of the paper."
"You think House is trying to sell me this school?" Cuddy turned the pages carefully as though fearing an anthrax attack.
"It would explain how the brochure got on your pile."
"Yeah, I get what he sees in it too - the element of anarchy. Talking of House, where the hell is he?" She cast an irritated glance at the clock.
Wilson's eyebrows rose. "Oh, are you going out with House? I thought you were wining and dining some donors."
"Then House could have babysat."
"You're going out with House although he's pushing every boundary he can find? What happened to ... ," Wilson skimmed Redland Seminar's Code of Conduct and came up with, " ''immediately challenging inappropriate behaviour when it occurs'?"
"We're at the 'developing a rapport' stage, and I'm 'reinforcing modified behaviour with positive feedback'," Cuddy quoted back at him. "He has apologized for the ravaged toothbrush and bought one of his own."
"Where's he taking you?"
"Dominica's. He still owes me a dinner there. Remember Alice Tanner? We never did get to the restaurant after the good woman nearly brained me."
"You got him to take you to a place where he has to wear a suit? Wow!"
"And a tie," Cuddy said with a triumphant smirk. "Oh, he quite enjoys it on special occasions."
A car horn blared outside. Wilson rolled his eyes, while Cuddy jumped up. "Well, I hope he behaves himself and doesn't cause a scene."
"Oh, he will - scenes of female mass hysteria, and that quite unintentionally." She walked into the hall, where she slipped into a pair of killer heels. "When he walks in, every female head swivels round. I've seen women drool when he puts on his reading glasses to read the menu or rolls up his sleeves when it gets warm. You wouldn't believe under what pretenses they come up to our table to hit on him!"
Wilson held out her coat for her. "Does that bother you? You can't really be jealous if you're not ... sexually interested, can you?"
"I may not be jealous, but I have a damn possessive streak!" She gave him a quick peck before she flounced out of the door.
XI: Bombshells
The Author of this work apologizes most sincerely, should the contents of this chapter upset the tender sensibilities of her Readers. Be assured that if The Powers That Be had left her with any other choice, she would have taken it gladly, rejoicing in being able to grant her Readers relief from the sadness that must perforce have overcome them at the end of the last season. Alas, it was not to be! Statutory Warning: Future Character Death Implied! Read at your own risk!
It was Julia who opened the door for Wilson, smiling when she saw that it wasn't House. "Hello, James. Come in."
"Hello, Julia." Wilson's return smile was perfunctory. Cuddy now appeared at the door of the living room, holding a mug of tea. "Hey, Cuddy. How are you doing?"
"Great. Everything's healing well." She was still a little pale, and her movements were slower than usual.
"Julia, could I have a moment with Cuddy? Thanks." Wilson's tone brooked no denial. He followed Cuddy back into the living room, his briefcase tucked under his arm, while Julia, with an eye roll that had to be in the Cuddy genes, headed for the kitchen. When Wilson closed the living-room door behind him, Cuddy's eyebrows rose in surprise, but she made no comment. Wilson waited until she was seated on the couch, and then he took the armchair next to her. "How's House doing?" he asked offhandedly.
Cuddy smiled again. "He's fine, too. Relieved. He ... ." She fell silent, her fingernails tapping against her mug. Finally she turned to Wilson, fixing him with an accusing stare. "You know, you could have been a bit more supportive? I know this was difficult for you, too, but House - needed you."
"I was busy." Wilson's eyes travelled to his briefcase.
"Too busy to make sure he wasn't relapsing? When he finally came to me in the middle of the night he was stoned!" If Cuddy was expecting any sort of shock or dismay, she was disappointed. Wilson's face remained non-committal. She tried again. "I'm pretty sure it was only a one-off, but what if the results hadn't been good? If he couldn't get through that without chugging a pill, bad news would have sent him into a total tail-spin."
Wilson leaned over to his briefcase, opened it and withdrew a large manila envelope. "That's why I was busy - I was faking the results of the tissue analysis in advance. Lisa, here are the real results." He proffered the envelope.
Cuddy stared at him wide-eyed, her hand reaching out automatically. She opened the envelope and scanned the two sheets inside it. Finally she lowered them onto her lap, her thumbs tracing random circles on the top sheet, while she stared blankly at the opposite wall. "I've got cancer."
"I'm sorry."
She turned to look at Wilson, a faint glimmer of hope still in her eyes. "And the other results, the ones that said I was clean?"
Wilson took a deep breath. "Those were for House's benefit. Foreman called me that night after the imaging came in, saying that House was ... in a bad state and that he had some vicodin from his previous patient. I ... I couldn't deal with both of you - you possibly dying and House relapsing - at the same time, so I decided to buy some time." He stood up and walked to the fireplace, massaging the back of his neck as he leaned against the mantelpiece, half turned away from Cuddy. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I got your hopes up, but I didn't know what else to do."
"It's okay. You did fine." Cuddy straightened and tucked the sheets back into the envelope, her hands shaking slightly, but her expression calm and collected.
Wilson came back and sat down next to her. "Look, the prognosis isn't that bad. We can remove the kidney, and we'll start you on something for the metastases in the lungs ..."
"How long?"
"Renal cell carcinoma is difficult to predict, but median survival time for stage IV is over a year. Sometimes the disease progresses very slowly, and we've had very good results, very good ones with Sunitinib; you could still have years ahead of you."
Cuddy was silent.
Wilson leaned over slightly and put a hand on her arm. "Can I do anything for you? A cup of tea?"
"No, I'm fine. I just had one. Besides, Julia is here." Cuddy's stare was unfocused; one of her hands worried the neckline of her top, while she bit her lower lip with her upper teeth. Wilson gave her arm a gentle squeeze. As if that was a signal, Cuddy suddenly tapped her forehead with the tips of her fingers and rose. Wilson followed suit, mystified.
"Where are you going?"
"To House."
"Umm, do you think that's a good idea?" Wilson trailed behind her as she moved towards the door of the living-room. "You've only just got bad news - you're upset, vulnerable. His reaction may not be ... supportive at first. Give yourself time to deal with your own emotions before you burden yourself with his."
Cuddy whirled round to him, grimacing slightly as the sudden movement pulled at her stitches, clutching his arm as much in anger as for support. "Of course his reaction won't be supportive! We've just witnessed what his idea of support is - MIA till the last moment, and then he turns up stoned to the gills." She let go of Wilson's arm, covering her eyes with her hand for a moment instead. "Okay, that isn't quite fair, but we both know that he won't be around to watch me die. He'll be wallowing in vicodin and scotch and anything else he can find, numbing his emotions so he won't have to think about his pain or mine."
"I know you go for this 'sharing misery to average it out' thing, but he won't be sharing your misery, he'll be increasing it by adding a good portion of his to yours. Because, believe me, he's the Einstein of misery - he can turn mass into it."
Cuddy leaned against the door. "Wilson, you've bought us time, and I intend to put it to good use. I'm going over to his place to break up with him."
"He'll freak!" Wilson objected, hovering over her. "This won't end any better than you telling him that you do have cancer after all."
Cuddy smiled grimly. "House, as you frequently point out, is not really my boyfriend. It wouldn't be fair on him to make him watch me die. Yes, a break-up will be messy and unpleasant, very unpleasant, but for House it will be nowhere near as bad as me dying as his girlfriend."
Wilson hit the wall with the side of his fist, but gently so as not to wake Rachel. "I don't see what we win this way. We'll just have the nuclear meltdown twice, once now and once more when you ... die. If you die."
"A year is a long time. Who knows, he may find someone else by then." Cuddy avoided Wilson's eyes as she pushed herself off the door and opened it.
"You don't believe that yourself!"
She shrugged. "Maybe not. But in a year’s time he won’t be thinking of me as his girlfriend anymore. I’ll be The Bitch Who Dumped Him Because Of One Stupid Vicodin, which will make my death a lot easier to bear. Are you driving me?" Wilson looked at her helplessly. "I take it that's a yes." As she slipped into a pair of flat shoes she continued, "I won't be able to stay on my feet forever. Sooner or later I'll have to resign and leave PPTH, and at that point at the very latest House will figure out that something is wrong with me. I need to get away from him before that happens. With a bit of luck House will do something so drastic in response to being dumped that we'll be able to sell him my resignation as a reaction to whatever bullshit he inflicts on me. Then I can crawl away to die in some hole where he won't find me."
"You'd do that for him?"
"For him?" Cuddy laughed mirthlessly. "For myself! House may melt down when I die, but before he does, he'll be trying out all sorts of tests and procedures on me in the hope of proving your diagnosis wrong or reversing the course of destiny. Do you remember Ezra Powell? Well, I'd like to die with a shred of dignity, spending as much time as possible with Rachel before I go, not subjecting myself to a Houseian Crusade against Renal Cancer. Trust me - we'll all be happier this way."
Warning: This chapter leads up to the terminal illness of a major character. If that thought bothers you, you might want to stop reading here.
Thanks as always to my beta
brighidsfire , who puts up very patiently with my insecurities.IX: Family Practice
In which Wilson nags and Cuddy literally goes up in smoke.
"So, Bill, how are you today?"
The patient in the bed grunted. With her smile firmly glued in its place, Cuddy flicked open the patient's chart.
"How are you responding to the new medication?" Another ambiguous grunt. "Any dizziness? Faintness? How's your appetite?"
The patient didn't deign to respond at all. Sighing, Cuddy turned to the gaggle of students surrounding her to test them on their background knowledge of the case. The questions died on her lips when she realized that the students were not focused on her or the patient, but on something going on outside the patient's room. A few students were suppressing giggles, others simply looked puzzled. With an even deeper sigh, Cuddy followed their glances. Surprisingly, it wasn't House cutting capers in the corridor who was mesmerizing them; it was Wilson, doing a wild pantomime to get her attention.
Thrusting the patient's charts at the resident, Cuddy said, "You continue please, Dr Sinha." She approached Wilson, ignoring both Sinha's mild grunt of protest and the sobering premonition that she was about to get her head chewed off.
"How was the conference, James?" she asked with her best placatory smile.
"Fine," Wilson said briefly, "but Masters isn't. She's in my office having a melt-down, because according to her, Good Cop Cuddy deserted her, leaving Bad Cop House to threaten her with instruments of medieval torture."
"Ah, yes, there was some incident last week," Cuddy said vaguely, "but I don't really know anything about that." Off Wilson's look of disbelief she added, "I had ... other problems to deal with."
"Your mom. I heard."
"Well, then you understand that I couldn't give Masters and her personal issues with House my full attention." Behind them the students exited Bill's room, chattering loudly. Seeing Dr Sinha approach her, Cuddy grabbed Wilson's arm and led him to the elevators, punching the upward button when she reached the doors.
"Masters gave me a very garbled version of what happened. Between her allegation that House conned her into assaulting a patient and her tales of switched and double-switched medication, I'm beginning to wonder whether the poor girl is paranoid. You might want to do something about her," Wilson suggested. "You don't want her spreading either story around the hospital. House's situation is precarious enough without Masters making him out to be some Dr Mengele."
"What did she tell you?"
"Some mad tale about House pretending to treat your mother but feeding her placebos the while, which made your mother fire him, then really treating her after he got fired, switching her medication and then switching it back again - I lost track of what happened somewhere around the double switch. Oh, yes, and kidnapping her out of the ambulance when she decided to get transferred to Princeton General."
"Well, yes," Cuddy said noncommittally.
"Are you telling me that her rigmarole is ... true?" Wilson's eyebrows threatened to merge.
"No." Cuddy gave a tight smile. "That's the official version." The elevator doors opened, and Cuddy stepped inside briskly. Wilson followed, frowning when he saw which button Cuddy had pressed.
"So there's also an unofficial version," Wilson ventured. Cuddy looked unhappy, but chose not to elucidate. "You know," Wilson said conversationally, "I've known House for almost twenty years now, but even so I can't picture a scenario that's worse than the one Masters described to me."
"It wasn't House's fault," Cuddy admitted as the elevator stopped on the top floor.
"I gathered as much from Masters. ... Wait, are we really going up on the roof? Cuddy, it's cold out there!"
"It's secluded up there. Come along, we're both wearing lab coats. This won't kill us." She took the flight of stairs from the top floor in her usual brisk stride, Wilson trailing in her wake.
"Don't you think this is a bit melodramatic? I doubt anyone has bugged your office. Can't we ...,"
"No, we can't," Cuddy snapped, drawing a packet of cigarettes out of her lab coat and placing one between her lips with shaking fingers. She took it out again to wave it in Wilson's surprised face. "I set off the fire alarm two days ago by smoking in my en-suite bathroom - I don't need a repetition of the ensuing fuss. I told security that it must have been House who set off the alarm. Seriously, why would anyone install a smoke detector in the dean's bathroom?"
"I - didn't know you smoke."
"I stopped after med school, and started again last week." After lighting the cigarette she took a deep drag. She leaned on the balustrade, gazing out over Princeton as she blew out the smoke. Wilson moved over next to her, curiosity and the need to reassure her with his presence overcoming his physical discomfort at the chillness of the air. He waited patiently while Cuddy took a few more calming puffs. Finally she said, "It's complicated."
Wilson offered one of his platitudes. "It always is when family is involved."
"A year ago my mother had a hip replacement. About four months ago her orthopaedic specialist contacted her. He informed her that the manufacturing company was recalling the artificial hip because of technical problems and that she'd need to get it replaced. Mom freaked. She refused to have the hip replaced, saying that it was perfectly fine and that this was a plot to cover up surgical negligence during the operation. Nothing Julia or I said made any difference; in fact, she's suing the hospital where she got the replacement done."
"That ... doesn't make sense. For one, there's no way she can judge whether the artificial hip is okay or not; for another, if the hip wasn't placed correctly, that’s all the more reason to get it looked into."
"None of this makes any sense!" Cuddy twisted a strand of her hair around a finger. "I think Mom may be in the early stages of dementia."
Wilson looked surprised. "I didn't notice anything."
"No, she's good at compensating, but something's been off lately, more than usual. She forgets stuff or mislays things, but she always has some excuse - the glass of wine that made her fuzzy or the unexpected phone call that drove whatever it was clear out of her mind. I think she's started drinking during the day so that she has an explanation for anything that goes wrong. And she's become downright paranoid, so she's convinced that all her doctors are involved in a huge scam to rob her of her money while ignoring her real medical issues. That includes me, of course."
"Can't you do anything - get a care giver or something?"
"That won't stop her paranoia, and so far she has Julia firmly on her side. Julia refuses to believe that something's seriously wrong with Mom. She's convinced that Mom is just being a little 'difficult'." Cuddy sketched quotation marks in the air. "When I couldn't get my mother to see sense about the hip replacement, I went and ranted to House about it. I didn't dare to hope he'd be of any help - he just happened to be around, so I vented my frustration on him. But House came up with a solution. He told me to get Mom admitted on some pretext, and then he'd take care of the rest."
"What? Admitting your mother to your own hospital was House's idea?"
"Yes, it was," Cuddy said with a hint of smugness. "She'd never have agreed to be taken here, so I planned a shopping trip in the vicinity, and then spiked her drink with beta blockers."
"I take it that inducing bradycardia was also House's idea? Oh, forget it, just tell me House's brilliant master plan."
"Oh, the plan was quite simple: he intended to administer meds that would make her condition increasingly worse; then, when she was convinced that she was dying, he'd pull the diagnosis 'cobalt poisoning due to a defective artificial hip' out of his hat and get her consent for the operation."
"Downright ingenuous in its simplicity," Wilson deadpanned. Then he grew serious. "You agreed to this?"
"It seemed preferable to her dying of real cobalt poisoning. She's planning an extended vacation in the South in summer. If she falls sick then, there's no way anyone can diagnose her, not when the last thing she'd mention in her medical history is that she's been running around with an artificial hip that should have been removed months ago."
"So what went wrong?"
Cuddy drew out another cigarette. "My mom fired House before he had a chance to poison her thoroughly. I put Marty Kaufmann on the case because he's a bumbling idiot - yes, that was House's idea too - but neither of us had reckoned with the team."
"You initiated the diagnostic team into a plan that was illegal, unethical and totally insane even by House's standards, and expected them to go along with it?" Wilson asked incredulously.
"No, of course not!" Cuddy countered with equal indignation. "I'm not crazy. If my mom ever finds out what we did, she'd probably stop short of suing me, but she'd have no compunction about suing diverse members of my staff. The less they know the better. The problem was that since they didn't know what was going on, they didn't want to switch Mom's medication once House was pulled off the case. Marty, you see, was prescribing the good stuff to make her get better."
"Ah, yes, asking them to tamper with the patient's medication without her consent in order to worsen her condition was okay, but telling them why they were doing so wasn't."
"They're House's team - they do this sort of thing all the time," Cuddy justified herself.
"But not on your orders."
"Those were House's orders, not mine."
"Same difference, as House was acting on your orders. Besides, he isn't a doctor and he isn't their boss anymore."
"Precisely. Foreman refused outright, deciding that killing his boss's mother on the orders of a delusional ex-employer would not further his career. Which was okay, really," Cuddy added, blowing smoke into the sky. "At least House and I knew what we were working with there. Chase, however, figured that pissing off his boss's boyfriend might be just as detrimental to his career as killing his boss's mother, so he opted for a middle path. He agreed to switch the meds, but he secretly replaced the meds House had ordered with the ones Marty was prescribing. There came a point where it wasn't clear to anyone which meds she was getting, especially since Masters created complete confusion by informing Marty of what she thought was going on. In the end House and I more or less knocked Mom out with a narcotic and then made a big show of pretending to find some necrotic tissue at her hip."
"This ... is bad," Wilson judged.
"Yes."
"Worse than what Masters told me."
"Yes."
"It's bad enough that you're treating your own kith and kin here at your hospital. No one here has the guts to stop you, so you nearly killed your mother on the assumption that she might, just might, become critically ill at some undefined point in the future," Wilson held up his hand to stop Cuddy's protest, "and you got House embroiled in the mess on a false pretext."
Cuddy's eyebrows went up at that.
"A false pretext," Wilson repeated. "House took an enormous risk for something he wasn't medically interested in, because he thinks he's your boyfriend."
"What risk?"
"Losing his licence, if either Marty or your mother complained to the board, maybe?"
"He doesn't have a licence!" Cuddy pointed out with an exasperated huff.
"No, but he doesn't know that. Look at it from House's point of view. He'd never have gotten himself involved in a case like this - your family involved, no puzzle whatsoever, and any amount of bother coming his way if anything went wrong, which it did! - if he hadn't been thinking of the perks this would get him."
"Like gratitude sex."
"I was thinking more in terms of 'couple-bonding in the face of adversity'."
Cuddy scowled petulantly. "Who says we aren't bonding over this?"
Wilson threw up his arms and turned to leave. "Call it what you like, but you're using him."
As the heavy metal door slammed behind him Cuddy lit her third cigarette. "House is right - you nag!" she said to the empty space he'd left.
X: Carrot or Stick, Two Stories
Depicts the battle between Tradition (as embodied by her model mother) and Anarchy (in the form of her would-rather-not-be father) in the life of Miss Rachel Cuddy.
Cuddy was vacillating between a pearl chain and a silver necklace with a pendant when the doorbell rang. She went to the door in bare feet and opened it after quickly checking the peep-hole. Wilson stood outside, brushing a few raindrops off his coat. He stepped forward to give Cuddy a hug.
"Sorry I'm late. I had to give Sarah her insulin shot before coming here."
Cuddy stepped aside and waved him in. "It's fine - I still have half-an-hour. Rachel's asleep already - she shouldn't be any problem." She reached out to take his coat from him. "If you wanted a pet that's more trouble than it is worth, you could have kept House," she added as she led the way back to her bedroom.
"You're beginning to sound like him. What happened to the bonding process?"
"Sorry. He's just - driving me crazy." Cuddy shook her head as though to clear it. Struck by a sudden thought, she turned back to Wilson, who was following her rather hesitatingly. "Tell me, when you were sharing the condo, did he ever take the trash out?"
"No!" Wilson said with a laugh that was more of a snort.
"Hmmm. Leave the toilet seat up?" Cuddy waved Wilson, who was hovering at the door, into her bedroom and indicated the bed. He perched awkwardly on its edge, trying not to let his eyes roam around the room.
"Not really an issue, with two guys sharing an apartment. But now that you mention it, he always puts it down. A relic of his childhood training, he says."
"Drilled into him by his father," Cuddy surmised, opting for the pearl chain.
Wilson looked thoughtful. "No, quite the opposite. He told me that his dad used to leave the seat up on purpose, which irritated his mother no end. She'd grin and bear it, saying to House that men will be men, or something to that effect. That made House determined to prove to his mother that it was just his father being a jerk, so he'd always put the seat down."
"See, that's how I remember seeing it whenever I was at his apartment. The seat was always down. Now that he's practically living here, he leaves the seat up." Cuddy tilted her head in the mirror as she fixed a pearl ear stud in her left ear. "What about toothpaste stains in the washbasin?"
"No, he's fussy about hygiene in the bathroom and in the kitchen."
"And did he ever use your toothbrush?"
"Jeez, no! He had his own. Just get him a spare toothbrush."
"I did," Cuddy said, giving her appearance a last check before turning away from the mirror. "I've got a whole bathroom cabinet full of spare ones - okay, I'm exaggerating - but he won't use them. He chews up mine."
"Sounds like when he was trying to drive a wedge between me and 'Sam'," Wilson noted.
"So he's jerking me around." She picked up the handbag that was lying on the bed and preceded Wilson out of the bedroom into the living room.
"Perhaps now that the honeymoon period is over, he's reverting to slovenly male behaviour." There were some snacks on the coffee table, to which Wilson gravitated gratefully.
"We've just established that his default behaviour isn't all that slovenly. Besides, House is a creature of habit. He's quite incapable of putting up a civilized façade even for one day, let alone a honeymoon period. House's packaging is transparent - you buy what you see. Wilson, would you write me a recommendation?"
Cuddy was gathering a few stray toys from the floor and throwing them into a large box that was standing in one corner of the living room. Wilson blinked. "I'm ... sorry?"
She looked up, grinning at his confusion, and walked over to a pile of brochures lying on a side table. "A recommendation." Cuddy handed the top brochure to him. "For pre-school, for Rachel. Though some discipline and structure wouldn't do House any harm either. This place," she waved a hand at the brochure Wilson was holding, "wants a recommendation from a friend of the family."
"Sure, no problem. What do you want me to write?" Wilson asked obligingly. He squinted at the pile that Cuddy was still holding. "Are you thinking of applying to all these places?"
"Yes." Thumping the brochures onto the coffee table, she sat down on the couch, smoothing her dress down routinely.
Wilson sat down next to her. "Aren't you overdoing it? It can't be that difficult to get a child into pre-school."
"I need to get applications in at more pre-schools than House can find the time to visit in his campaign to sabotage Rachel's chances of getting an education."
"You're being harsh. House was trying to help."
"By going to a Career Day at the school that he thought I was trying to get Rachel into, holding a talk spiked with sexual innuendos and designed to drag our profession into disrepute, assaulting a parent (or was it a teacher?), corrupting two fifth-graders by revealing intimate details about his relationship, and then informing the principal that he was my boy-friend? How exactly does that improve my chances of getting Rachel admitted to Brye Park? They phoned this afternoon suggesting that I withdraw the application."
Wilson blushed for his friend. "He didn't mean for all that to happen. That's just ... House, but he meant it for the best. He knew you were upset at him, and he was worried you'd be even more upset if another school rejected Rachel, so he .... "
"They would never have rejected Rachel if he hadn't interfered," Cuddy stated flatly.
"Well, Waldenwood rejected her."
"Because of House."
"Oh, no, no!" Wilson remonstrated. "He didn't do anything there. Hey, he may not have told you, but he spent hours in my office teaching Rachel the skills she needed to pass their admission test."
Cuddy swivelled to face him. "Wilson, I'm the dean of a small, but renowned teaching hospital. If I brought a dressed-up chimp to any one of these schools saying she was my daughter, they'd admit her without batting an eyelid. Rachel needs no special skills to get into a good pre-school. All she needs is the right parents."
"House told me that Rachel was rejected because the school was oversubscribed and siblings got priority," Wilson said weakly.
"Crap! I know someone who knows someone on the staff. Rachel didn't get rejected because she has no siblings at Waldenwood. Nor because she's too stupid. Not even because they resented House training her for the test - a lot of parents do that. No, Rachel got rejected because after House's theatrical performance, the admissions officer decided that they didn't need a child with parents like that."
"But - he didn't go to Waldenwood."
"Oh, yes, he did! And he made absolutely sure that they saw him." Cuddy played her trump. "He came along for Rachel's admission test."
"He probably wanted to be supportive," Wilson said with the mien of a general whose flanks have just collapsed.
"Supportive, my foot! All the other fathers were in suits and ties, while House was sporting a ridiculous baseball cap. That got everyone's attention, including that of the staff members who'd seen him on his previous visit when he'd pretended to be a Health Inspector or something like that. Those teachers aren't the brightest bulbs in the box, but they soon figured out that they were dealing with a criminal element."
Wilson knew when a battle was lost. He rubbed a hand wearily over his forehead. "So House cost you your two first choices."
"No. Brye Park Academy was just a decoy to test my theory that House sabotaged my attempt to get her into Waldenwood."
"But," Wilson said, frowning in confusion, "House hacked into your laptop ... . You'd written in your journal that Brye Park Academy was your first choice."
Cuddy rolled her eyes at so much trusting naivety. "House hacks into my laptop at least once a week. I don't write anything in my journal there - into any journal, for that matter - that I don't want him to read. And sometimes I write stuff in there especially for him. Like wanting to get Rachel into Brye Park." She flicked idly through the pile of brochures in front of her. "Where'd that brochure come from? I didn't order that!" She drew out one that looked much the same as all the others: glossy on the outside, lots of pictures of smiling children inside, and pink post-its sticking up from strategic pages.
Shrugging, Wilson flicked open the one Cuddy had given him to write his reference for. It fell open at the centrefold, displaying a neatly uniformed throng standing in ascending ranks in an assembly hall. 'Redland Seminar: Traditional Values Meet Modern Teaching Methods,' the caption read.
"I'm sure I never ordered a brochure from Westhill Wilds," Cuddy said, stabbing the offending object with one forefinger. "That school is unsuitable. Look at their pre-school time-table - free play outside every afternoon!"
Wilson peered over at the page she was studying. "So? Their grounds are nice: a sort of rambling wilderness with lots of adventure stuff. I'm sure the kids aren't bored playing out there every day. They probably love it." His brochure showed girls in pink leotards and tutus practicing basic ballet steps in a mirrored room.
"Yeah, she'll come home covered in mud, but without a smidgen of knowledge in her head. No formal instructions, no pre-school foreign language programme. They have some sort of Orff group for Rachel's age group, but no instrumental lessons. She should start the piano or the violin soon."
"Cuddy, she's three!" Wilson remonstrated.
"She'll be in that school till she's six, and I haven't got the time to take her to ballet lessons (or soccer or whatever) or to music lessons. Either she does it at school or she won't do it at all. And everyone needs a foreign language or two nowadays."
Cuddy turned to the next page. It had a picture of an indoor gym with trampolines and ball baths (and the obligatory grinning kids), and another one of a horde of children painting their classroom in garish colours, their obligatory grins amplified by the layers of paint that covered them. Cuddy grimaced, but Wilson said, "I kinda get what House sees in this place, as far as he's capable of being enthused by places of education."
"House?"
"Yeah, those are House's post-its. You stick your post-its in sloppily," Wilson pointed out, holding up the Redland Seminar brochure in illustration. "His are aligned to the edge of the paper."
"You think House is trying to sell me this school?" Cuddy turned the pages carefully as though fearing an anthrax attack.
"It would explain how the brochure got on your pile."
"Yeah, I get what he sees in it too - the element of anarchy. Talking of House, where the hell is he?" She cast an irritated glance at the clock.
Wilson's eyebrows rose. "Oh, are you going out with House? I thought you were wining and dining some donors."
"Then House could have babysat."
"You're going out with House although he's pushing every boundary he can find? What happened to ... ," Wilson skimmed Redland Seminar's Code of Conduct and came up with, " ''immediately challenging inappropriate behaviour when it occurs'?"
"We're at the 'developing a rapport' stage, and I'm 'reinforcing modified behaviour with positive feedback'," Cuddy quoted back at him. "He has apologized for the ravaged toothbrush and bought one of his own."
"Where's he taking you?"
"Dominica's. He still owes me a dinner there. Remember Alice Tanner? We never did get to the restaurant after the good woman nearly brained me."
"You got him to take you to a place where he has to wear a suit? Wow!"
"And a tie," Cuddy said with a triumphant smirk. "Oh, he quite enjoys it on special occasions."
A car horn blared outside. Wilson rolled his eyes, while Cuddy jumped up. "Well, I hope he behaves himself and doesn't cause a scene."
"Oh, he will - scenes of female mass hysteria, and that quite unintentionally." She walked into the hall, where she slipped into a pair of killer heels. "When he walks in, every female head swivels round. I've seen women drool when he puts on his reading glasses to read the menu or rolls up his sleeves when it gets warm. You wouldn't believe under what pretenses they come up to our table to hit on him!"
Wilson held out her coat for her. "Does that bother you? You can't really be jealous if you're not ... sexually interested, can you?"
"I may not be jealous, but I have a damn possessive streak!" She gave him a quick peck before she flounced out of the door.
XI: Bombshells
The Author of this work apologizes most sincerely, should the contents of this chapter upset the tender sensibilities of her Readers. Be assured that if The Powers That Be had left her with any other choice, she would have taken it gladly, rejoicing in being able to grant her Readers relief from the sadness that must perforce have overcome them at the end of the last season. Alas, it was not to be! Statutory Warning: Future Character Death Implied! Read at your own risk!
It was Julia who opened the door for Wilson, smiling when she saw that it wasn't House. "Hello, James. Come in."
"Hello, Julia." Wilson's return smile was perfunctory. Cuddy now appeared at the door of the living room, holding a mug of tea. "Hey, Cuddy. How are you doing?"
"Great. Everything's healing well." She was still a little pale, and her movements were slower than usual.
"Julia, could I have a moment with Cuddy? Thanks." Wilson's tone brooked no denial. He followed Cuddy back into the living room, his briefcase tucked under his arm, while Julia, with an eye roll that had to be in the Cuddy genes, headed for the kitchen. When Wilson closed the living-room door behind him, Cuddy's eyebrows rose in surprise, but she made no comment. Wilson waited until she was seated on the couch, and then he took the armchair next to her. "How's House doing?" he asked offhandedly.
Cuddy smiled again. "He's fine, too. Relieved. He ... ." She fell silent, her fingernails tapping against her mug. Finally she turned to Wilson, fixing him with an accusing stare. "You know, you could have been a bit more supportive? I know this was difficult for you, too, but House - needed you."
"I was busy." Wilson's eyes travelled to his briefcase.
"Too busy to make sure he wasn't relapsing? When he finally came to me in the middle of the night he was stoned!" If Cuddy was expecting any sort of shock or dismay, she was disappointed. Wilson's face remained non-committal. She tried again. "I'm pretty sure it was only a one-off, but what if the results hadn't been good? If he couldn't get through that without chugging a pill, bad news would have sent him into a total tail-spin."
Wilson leaned over to his briefcase, opened it and withdrew a large manila envelope. "That's why I was busy - I was faking the results of the tissue analysis in advance. Lisa, here are the real results." He proffered the envelope.
Cuddy stared at him wide-eyed, her hand reaching out automatically. She opened the envelope and scanned the two sheets inside it. Finally she lowered them onto her lap, her thumbs tracing random circles on the top sheet, while she stared blankly at the opposite wall. "I've got cancer."
"I'm sorry."
She turned to look at Wilson, a faint glimmer of hope still in her eyes. "And the other results, the ones that said I was clean?"
Wilson took a deep breath. "Those were for House's benefit. Foreman called me that night after the imaging came in, saying that House was ... in a bad state and that he had some vicodin from his previous patient. I ... I couldn't deal with both of you - you possibly dying and House relapsing - at the same time, so I decided to buy some time." He stood up and walked to the fireplace, massaging the back of his neck as he leaned against the mantelpiece, half turned away from Cuddy. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I got your hopes up, but I didn't know what else to do."
"It's okay. You did fine." Cuddy straightened and tucked the sheets back into the envelope, her hands shaking slightly, but her expression calm and collected.
Wilson came back and sat down next to her. "Look, the prognosis isn't that bad. We can remove the kidney, and we'll start you on something for the metastases in the lungs ..."
"How long?"
"Renal cell carcinoma is difficult to predict, but median survival time for stage IV is over a year. Sometimes the disease progresses very slowly, and we've had very good results, very good ones with Sunitinib; you could still have years ahead of you."
Cuddy was silent.
Wilson leaned over slightly and put a hand on her arm. "Can I do anything for you? A cup of tea?"
"No, I'm fine. I just had one. Besides, Julia is here." Cuddy's stare was unfocused; one of her hands worried the neckline of her top, while she bit her lower lip with her upper teeth. Wilson gave her arm a gentle squeeze. As if that was a signal, Cuddy suddenly tapped her forehead with the tips of her fingers and rose. Wilson followed suit, mystified.
"Where are you going?"
"To House."
"Umm, do you think that's a good idea?" Wilson trailed behind her as she moved towards the door of the living-room. "You've only just got bad news - you're upset, vulnerable. His reaction may not be ... supportive at first. Give yourself time to deal with your own emotions before you burden yourself with his."
Cuddy whirled round to him, grimacing slightly as the sudden movement pulled at her stitches, clutching his arm as much in anger as for support. "Of course his reaction won't be supportive! We've just witnessed what his idea of support is - MIA till the last moment, and then he turns up stoned to the gills." She let go of Wilson's arm, covering her eyes with her hand for a moment instead. "Okay, that isn't quite fair, but we both know that he won't be around to watch me die. He'll be wallowing in vicodin and scotch and anything else he can find, numbing his emotions so he won't have to think about his pain or mine."
"I know you go for this 'sharing misery to average it out' thing, but he won't be sharing your misery, he'll be increasing it by adding a good portion of his to yours. Because, believe me, he's the Einstein of misery - he can turn mass into it."
Cuddy leaned against the door. "Wilson, you've bought us time, and I intend to put it to good use. I'm going over to his place to break up with him."
"He'll freak!" Wilson objected, hovering over her. "This won't end any better than you telling him that you do have cancer after all."
Cuddy smiled grimly. "House, as you frequently point out, is not really my boyfriend. It wouldn't be fair on him to make him watch me die. Yes, a break-up will be messy and unpleasant, very unpleasant, but for House it will be nowhere near as bad as me dying as his girlfriend."
Wilson hit the wall with the side of his fist, but gently so as not to wake Rachel. "I don't see what we win this way. We'll just have the nuclear meltdown twice, once now and once more when you ... die. If you die."
"A year is a long time. Who knows, he may find someone else by then." Cuddy avoided Wilson's eyes as she pushed herself off the door and opened it.
"You don't believe that yourself!"
She shrugged. "Maybe not. But in a year’s time he won’t be thinking of me as his girlfriend anymore. I’ll be The Bitch Who Dumped Him Because Of One Stupid Vicodin, which will make my death a lot easier to bear. Are you driving me?" Wilson looked at her helplessly. "I take it that's a yes." As she slipped into a pair of flat shoes she continued, "I won't be able to stay on my feet forever. Sooner or later I'll have to resign and leave PPTH, and at that point at the very latest House will figure out that something is wrong with me. I need to get away from him before that happens. With a bit of luck House will do something so drastic in response to being dumped that we'll be able to sell him my resignation as a reaction to whatever bullshit he inflicts on me. Then I can crawl away to die in some hole where he won't find me."
"You'd do that for him?"
"For him?" Cuddy laughed mirthlessly. "For myself! House may melt down when I die, but before he does, he'll be trying out all sorts of tests and procedures on me in the hope of proving your diagnosis wrong or reversing the course of destiny. Do you remember Ezra Powell? Well, I'd like to die with a shred of dignity, spending as much time as possible with Rachel before I go, not subjecting myself to a Houseian Crusade against Renal Cancer. Trust me - we'll all be happier this way."
