A Midwinter Nightmare Chapter 7 (of 8)
Sep. 18th, 2010 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingrat Act 4
Titania: Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4 Scene 1]
3 am
“No, Mom, I don’t think either of us will be back anytime soon. Lucas has been admitted for observation and I don’t want to leave him until I’m sure he’s alright. ... No, it’s nothing serious, just a precaution ...Mom, please go to bed. There’s no sense in worrying – Lucas will be fine. ... Yes, I’ll lie down for a few hours in my office. ... Mom, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I’ll be fine! ... Yes, I can shower here and I have a change of clothes.” Cuddy rolled her eyes. “The babysitter will be in by seven-thirty, okay? ... Yes, I will. ‘Night, Mom.”
She put down the phone and leaned her forehead on her hand. Saying that she was staying in the hospital because of Lucas was far enough from the truth to qualify as an outright lie. She knew now what ailed Lucas, even if she didn’t know the hows and whys of it, but it wasn’t life-threatening. The reason she was staying was one she didn’t want anyone, least of all her mother to know, for fear that it might get around to Lucas.
House.
Was he coming apart again? If he was, she needed to be around to pick up the pieces and glue them together before he ... before he did what?
Don’t kid yourself, she thought. From the evidence that’s staring at you he’s already running rampant leaving a trail of wreckage in his wake, while so far you haven’t done a thing to stop him.
Cuddy tapped her fingers on the case file in front of her. ‘Diagnosis: meningitis, to be confirmed by laboratory results.’ Two faked signatures. He’d ordered broad-spectrum antibiotics and a lumbar puncture for a kid with concussion. She hadn’t rescinded the antibiotics ... as yet. Perhaps House was right and the kid had meningitis. Or House was losing it, seeing cases where there were none.
She picked up the phone again to dial the laboratory. “Spinal fluid sample for Arun Chatterjee, reference number ...,” she squinted at the file, “053927-C. Are the results in yet? ... Yes, Wesley, I know you’re alone in there.... No, I don’t expect you to ... Two hours? Wesley, we’re talking meningitis! ...Yes, okay ... How about ninety minutes? ... Thanks, Wesley. ‘Night.”
She put down the phone. The next piece of evidence against House’s sanity was circumstantial, but all the more disconcerting in its various implications. It was a lab sheet bearing the name ‘Lucas Douglas’. The left-hand column listed every drug of interest. The right-hand column read ‘negative’ in black letters for everything except ...
Flunitrazepam. The chemical name for Rohypnol, also known as the ‘date drug’. Was there any reasonable explanation as to why House would drug Lucas, ‘reasonable’ being a relative term with regard to House? Cuddy thought back with a shudder to the last twelve hours before House had consented to be admitted to Mayfield. He’d pulled every register known to him to annoy her. Did this ‘prank’ fall into the same category, was it therefore a sign that he’d lost all sense of relation again, or was there an explanation that put it within the limits of normal House-ian madness? She doubted that there could be an explanation that justified subjecting someone to a banned drug. Why was he doing this? Surely he must know that today of all days she had neither the time nor the energy to deal with his puerile pranks.
She’d viewed the surveillance video of the lobby only to discover that it was worthless. It showed Lucas leaving with Wilson around 11 p.m. Half-an-hour later they had reappeared, Wilson leading a puppet-like Lucas. There was no sign of House leaving or entering the hospital at any point of time, yet Cuddy was sure he was involved in some way. Wilson had looked far too flustered when returning with Lucas to have drugged him in cold blood.
Cuddy rose. Lucas had been transferred from the ER to a room on a general ward once the results from the drug screen had come in. She walked there rapidly, thinking of the third piece of evidence of the evening. Foreman and Thirteen had marched into her office half an hour earlier tendering their resignations and asking to be released from their contracts immediately. Foreman had hinted that Chase might be leaving too. Three team members in one night!
House hated change. He annoyed, bullied and intimidated his team members, violated their privacy and exposed them to ridicule. Nevertheless, he had developed an almost paternal attitude towards them, though he’d deny it hotly if confronted with such a charge. The only explanation that fitted such wildly erratic behaviour as he’d displayed towards his team tonight was that he was using again.
When Cuddy arrived outside Lucas’s room she stopped abruptly. The blinds were open, giving her a clear view of Lucas, still in his bed, surrounded by a boisterous group of uniformed men. What on earth was going on in there? Cuddy threw open the door of the room. Instant silence descended on the group that she now recognized as the major part of her security staff. The only sound in the room came from the TV screen. Lucas looked blank. Given the amount of Rohypnol in his blood, this was hardly surprising. The security guards looked sheepish. Again, given the sounds emanating from the television, this wasn’t astonishing either.
Cuddy stepped swiftly to the TV and switched it off. Then she turned to face the bed and her staff. “You have assembled in a patient’s room to watch porn?” she said, not even trying to keep the volume down.
There was a general murmur of denial.
“Perhaps one of you would like to explain this to me.” She glared at the oldest guard. Tom, she remembered he was called. He shuffled his feet and looked at the others for inspiration.
“We came to see how Lucas is doing,” a red-headed boy finally offered. “He was already watching that,” a nod at the screen, “when we came in.”
“Believe me, Lucas is in no state to work a remote control, let alone put a DVD into the player,” Cuddy snorted. Since when did patients’ rooms sport DVD players, she wondered.
Alarmed by Cuddy’s raised voice the night nurse came in.
“Can you explain this?”Cuddy asked her with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the DVD player, the television set and the fidgeting men.
“The doctor said it was okay for them to visit. Oh, and the DVD player is courtesy of Dr House,” the nurse explained. “He dropped by with a DVD and the player, saying that Mr Douglas had expressed an interest in the DVD. I’m not sure whether he’s actually registering anything he sees, but I thought it can’t do any harm.”
Cuddy extracted the DVD from the player, briefly closing her eyes when she saw the title: Feral Pleasures. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.
The nurse shook her head. “I only watched the first few minutes when I started the player for Mr Douglas.” Defensively, she added, “It seemed quite nice, with fauns and nymphs – a bit like that Narnia movie my children enjoyed watching.”
Narnia! Cuddy rolled her eyes – C.S. Lewis was probably doing somersaults in his grave. One of the security guys guffawed. Cuddy shot around.
“Out! All of you!”
When everyone had left the room, Cuddy dumped the DVD in the trash. Was this thing going to turn up in all corners of the hospital for the next six months? House was such a child! He hadn’t drugged Lucas in order to force him to watch Wilson frolicking through the forest with scantily clad nymphs, had he? Not that Lucas would need to be immobilized – he had the same childish sense of humour that House possessed. Heck, he’d probably pay to be allowed to watch Wilson make a complete fool of himself.
The ringing of a cell phone interrupted her line of thought. Cuddy glanced around to locate the sound – it came from Lucas’s coat that was hanging on a hook next to the bed. She went over to retrieve the phone so as to turn it off and slid her hand into the inside pocket. It came back up with not only Lucas’s phone, but also a small bottle of medication. Drawing both out, she proceeded to give the red button on the phone a few energetic jabs that effectually shut it up and dropped it back into the pocket. About to do the same for the bottle, it occurred to her that as far as she knew Lucas wasn’t on any sort of medication. Worried about possible interactions with the Rohypnol in his blood, she turned it so she could read the label. It was in Spanish, but the active pharmaceutical ingredient, Flunitrazepam, practically jumped at her.
Cuddy sat down heavily in the chair next to Lucas’s bed. Fatigue fell on her like a blanket, while her thought processes, usually a continuous firing of synapses, slowed down to an occasional pop or a fizzle. She gazed at Lucas abstractedly while her fingers fidgeted with the bottle of medication; for a moment she found herself trying to run it up and down her fingers much as House had formerly done with his Vicodin bottles. She stopped herself, setting the bottle aside on the bedside table – House’s Vicodin habit was not a good association to have in this context.
What did the Rohypnol in Lucas’s pocket mean? It was, of course, possible that House (or Wilson) had planted the bottle there after slipping some of the contents into Lucas’s drink. This was not, however, a very likely scenario. Wilson had brought him to the ER and House had been the one to suggest a drug screen. Had either of them had any interest in keeping the reason for Lucas’s present condition secret, all they would have needed to do was to get Lucas out of the way for the next twenty-four hours or so. Chances were that he wouldn’t have remembered enough to even consider a drug screen, so that their misdeed would have gone undetected. Now that she thought of it, the notion of House using an illegal drug on Lucas was not logical at all. House had access to the hospital pharmacy, so if he chose to drug someone, he’d use something he could get his hands on legally instead of resorting to dubious methods of acquisition that carried the potential for legal unpleasantness. No, of the three persons involved in this escapade, there was only one who was dependent on what the streets had to offer. A memory nagged at the back of her brain: a small package arriving for Lucas from abroad a few weeks ago – had it been from Mexico? Lucas had quickly possessed himself of it, mumbling something about technical gadgets for his work that could be bought cheaper south of the border. She hadn’t really been interested anyway.
Did this mean that Lucas had drugged himself? Why would he do that? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense any more. Cuddy rubbed her eyes, remembering too late that she was wearing mascara. She wanted to shake Lucas out of his somnambulant state, but she knew that it was of no use. He was out for now, and even if he wasn’t, she doubted that she’d get answers from him.
He’d left the lobby with Wilson. Wilson in turn had told her that they’d gone for a drink. That was when Lucas had gone catatonic. Why would Lucas want to go for a drink with Wilson of all people on an evening when he was unbelievably busy? Lucas was only marginally interested in Wilson – it was House he was obsessed with, as Cuddy knew from the casual questions and comments that he sometimes threw her way. Had he hoped to get something on House from Wilson? If so, would Lucas have considered incapacitating Wilson in order to act on whatever information he’d gleaned from him?
A memory rose bubble-like from her subconscious: Lucas phoning for a general key so that he could search House’s office. The bubble hovered over her in iridescent glory, providing Cuddy with a solution of sorts. There was something in House’s office that incriminated House so badly that Lucas had invested time and energy this evening in an attempt to retrieve it. He’d said something about ‘porn’, but given House’s openness about that addiction, it was more likely to be something House really couldn’t afford to be caught with.
Vicodin.
It fit in with all the other puzzle pieces of the night. If House was using again, Cuddy wouldn’t put it beyond Lucas to know before anyone else did. Nonetheless, after what had transpired at the conference last fall, she’d rather not that Lucas put that knowledge to use before she had the chance to get House out of the line of fire. All things considered, she’d prefer Lucas not to have anything on House at all.
Cuddy closed her eyes, considering her options. Given that Lucas had somehow managed to incapacitate himself more or less right after he’d phoned her it was a pretty safe bet that he hadn’t got around to searching House’s office. She could give Lucas a metaphorical slap on the wrist to keep him off House, but otherwise ignore the possibility of a relapse. This was the easiest option, the one that she’d like to choose, the only halfway attractive option.
Other options included confronting House (even if he was guilty as hell, he’d do such a convincing mixture of hurt and indignation that she’d end up scurrying away in a cloud of guilt at doubting him), demanding a urine sample (ouch, he’d be scathing, asking why she hadn’t manipulated his toilet or which coffee mug he should use this time), asking Wilson to spy on House (Wilson followed his own agenda and was as trustworthy as a fork-tongued adder) or conducting random searches (he’d hide his stash at home or in his car, where she had no license to search). If she did catch him red-handed or cow him into an admission (dream on, Lisa!) she’d have to pull hospital policy on him: regular urine samples, proof of attendance for a certified therapy, impeccable work attendance record – she shuddered to think of what House would say to such a catalogue of humiliating concessions. He’d never consent, not unless he crashed completely again. If he didn’t consent, she’d have to fire him; that was hospital policy.
This was hospital administration at its least attractive, a real bitch with a hangover. Cuddy didn’t want to implement hospital policy, she certainly didn’t want to fire House and she would definitely not consider this option were there not another memory, this one not in her subconscious, but buried deep where sunshine rarely illuminated it. It was a telephone conversation with Dr Nolan, a displeased, reprimanding Dr Nolan, about eight weeks after House’s admission to Mayfield.
He’d called her to discuss ‘her handling of addiction issues at the workplace’. ‘Enabling behaviour’ had been the kindest of his epithets. She’d been ‘egoistical and self-serving’, placing the hospital’s interests and her career above the health and the well-being of an employee. She’d ‘sought harmony at all costs’, avoiding conflict. He’d concluded that she should count herself lucky that House showed no inclination to sue her or the hospital.
Cuddy had risen in her own defence. “I was trying to help him, as a friend. He wouldn’t have listened to me. Had I tried to pull hospital policy on him, he would have let me fire him. Then where would he be now? In some gutter, scoring illegal drugs, doing heaven knows what to his health.”
“Dr Cuddy, had you fired him four years ago, as you should have, he’d have reached the bottom line that much quicker and sought help much earlier. As for his health, do you have any idea what his liver values were like when he got here? No? If you call that health care, he’s better off in the gutter.
“Just so we understand each other, Dr Cuddy: I will not permit him to return to PPTH. I can’t force you to stay away from him once he is released, but I would strongly advise you to do so. It’s in his best interest. He is adept at manipulating you, while you have persuaded yourself that your method of dealing with him and his addiction is to his benefit. It isn’t. If you really are his friend, you will let him go. I will find a new hospital and a new environment for him.”
“Well, good luck with that! You won’t find anyone idiotic enough to take him except for me,” she’d muttered after he’d put down the phone. She’d started dating Lucas a week later.
Her prediction had been correct – Nolan had underestimated the difficulties associated with finding employment for Gregory House – but her little victory had tasted bitter, giving her no pleasure.
It was an unpleasant memory, so she picked it up between thumb and forefinger to drop it back into the dark deep hole where it belonged. Nevertheless, the last thing she needed was another conversation of that sort to add to her collection of distasteful situations that were best forgotten. If she messed this up, if she ignored House’s addiction issues or tried to gloss over them, Nolan would (rightly) subject her to a dressing-down that would make House’s outbursts seem a panegyric.
So it was decided – she would have to find out whether House was using again. She decided to focus on that, pushing the question of what was to be done if she discovered that he had indeed had a relapse to the back for the moment. If Lucas believed that there was something incriminating in House’s office, chances were that he was right.
Cuddy rose from the chair. She glanced undecidedly at Lucas. An obscure part of her brain registered that her worries about House’s potential relapse had driven all questions about how Lucas had been incapacitated clear out of her mind. Yet she felt pretty sure that Lucas himself was to blame for his state, his attempts to use Wilson to get at House probably having backfired in this spectacular manner, though heaven alone knew what he’d hoped to achieve through Wilson.
On the one hand she was upset at him – if this was pranking House and Wilson, then it was definitely getting out of hand. Opossums in bathtubs were one thing (he’d never admitted to the pranking, but it carried his signature), but trying to drug someone so as to get at potentially harmful information - she suspected that Lucas wasn’t beyond using such information as a source for blackmail - was a different cup of tea altogether. On the other hand, he was her boy-friend and hence entitled to her trust and confidence until proven guilty. Perhaps there was some absolutely sane and logical explanation to this that cleared him completely, so she should really wait until he was sober again before she condemned him. Bending over him she gave him a quick hug, then she left his room.
House’s office was dark, but his team was assembled in the conference room over inevitable cups of coffee. Cuddy flicked on the light in House’s office and strode over to his desk, ignoring the surprised looks on the team members’ faces.
The top drawer yielded a bottle of medication. She paused; the label stated that it was ibuprofen, but then, House would hardly be likely to carry around his stash in bottles clearly labelled ‘Vicodin’, would he? Resolutely she pocketed it, ignoring the voice in her brain that was crying, ‘He’s going to torture you for this if you’re wrong. He’ll pull out your nails with tweezers, extinguish cigarette butts on your stomach, play the piano on your guilt!’
At first glance the second drawer held nothing of interest: odds and ends, a few CDs, a yo-yo, a red lollipop, a video cassette. Hang on, she’d seen one of those just an hour or so ago! She drew it out to read the label. Yes, it was a hospital surveillance tape. Really, she’d have to talk to him about not taking those – there’d be hell to pay if someone found out that the hospital was lax about implementing data protection regulations.
There was a post-it on the back adorned with House’s untidy scrawl: ‘Hey, Lucas. This is what you’re looking for. You’re welcome to it.’
Cuddy re-read the message thrice without comprehending it. What would Lucas want with a four-week-old surveillance tape? But whatever his motive, this was clearly the reason for part of tonight’s strange upheavals. She picked up House’s phone.
“Mr Quincy? I need a screen and a video player in my office. Thank you.”
Nodding to House’s mesmerized team, she departed with tape and medication.
The insistent beeps cut through his dreams, making him shake his head groggily as he groped for his pager. Chase. His watch told him that it was 4 am while his leg informed him that he’d missed his evening dose of pain medication, courtesy of the distraction offered by the case and, unwittingly, by Lucas. He limped out of the doctors’ lounge, into which he had fled to escape scenes of emotional interaction with his team, cursing himself for leaving his cane in his office. Normally he managed fairly well without it, but he’d been on his legs for too long today.
Chase greeted him with, “It’s not meningitis.”
“Damn. What else could it be? ... Come, come, we need some ideas before Cuddy gets wind of the test results and throws a wobbly.”
Foreman and Thirteen were back from wherever they had disappeared to, but were still giving him the freezer treatment.
“You can save the prima donna act for later,” House snapped at them. “For now you’re my employees, so you’ll diagnose my patient.”
“It’s concussion,” Foreman said in a bored voice, his expression saying, I’m tired, we don’t have a case AND you’re a jerk.
“Acanthamoeba,” and, “Brain tumour,” Cameron and Thirteen said in unison.
“Brain tumour it is,” House said without hesitation. “Foreteen, go do an MRI. Go before Cuddy gets wind of the test results.”
“Why can’t it be acanthamoeba?” an irritated Chase asked.
“Congratulations, Cameron. Your knight of the shining hair rises to your defence again,” House smirked. “Because if it’s acanthamoeba, then firstly, we can’t confirm our diagnosis until he’s dead and secondly, he’s as good as dead. That could be considered a definite pro, seeing as we’d get to confirm our diagnosis, but as you might have noticed over the years, patients’ families tend not to appreciate a correct diagnosis if it takes death to confirm it. Therefore a brain tumour is better for everyone concerned. Oh, and thirdly, acanthamoeba is extremely rare, whereas brain tumours aren’t.”
“I thought you liked ‘rare’,” Chase interposed.
“I do. But we aren’t talking of a case that has boggled any number of physicians. We are talking of a boy I stumbled across in the ER. He isn’t likely to be the Kohinoor among our diamonds.”
He limped to his office to retrieve his cane and his pain medication for which his leg was yelling with a vengeance by now. Exhaling a sigh of relief, he sank into the chair behind his desk and pulled open the top drawer. His medication was gone. He stared at the drawer. Then he rose carefully, feeling the pockets of his jeans.
Chase had followed him to the office. “Er, Cuddy was here. She ... took your medication.”
Slowly House looked up to study Chase’s face. Chase didn’t avoid his gaze, but he squirmed uncomfortably. The implications of Cuddy’s actions were clear, even if her reasons weren’t, so Chase’s eyes mirrored his speculations – was House using again? – as well as sympathy and possibly pity for the older man. House broke eye contact first, nodding a dismissal at Chase as he sank into the chair again.
Cuddy had taken his medication. Either she thought he’d slipped Lucas something or she believed that he was on Vicodin again. He considered the ramifications of both options, his fingers twisting a pencil round and round.
It didn’t matter whether she thought him capable of drugging Lucas with Rohypnol since she couldn’t have found any in his office. All she had was his prescription-strength painkiller because he didn’t possess anything else. Furthermore, contrary to what she believed, he did not slip people banned drugs just for the fun of it. He’d knock out a patient who refused life-preserving treatment, or Wilson to prevent his professional suicide, but he’d never dope Lucas just to irritate her.
He turned the other possibility over in his mind. Why would Cuddy fear that he was on Vicodin again? He retraced his actions of the day, but came up with nothing particularly outrageous or out of character. He’d tried to shirk clinic duty, had cast doubts on her diagnosis of that Indian boy, stolen her patient, messed around with his team, slipped a porn DVD into Lucas’s room – nothing unusual at all.
Whatever she suspected him of, he knew he wasn’t guilty. He wasn’t using nor had he drugged Lucas. Within him something bubbled up, a hot heavy mass that lumped in his throat threatening to choke his thoughts. Why couldn’t she trust him? Why didn’t she just ask whether he’d had a relapse?
Idiot, he told himself. If you were using again, you’d lie about it. Besides, trusting you means not trusting Lucas. For one thing was clear – there was some connection between Lucas and her search tonight. He clamped the lid down tight on his emotions, forcing himself to focus on the primary issue: how to deal with Cuddy after her search.
His eyes roamed the office, wondering whether anything else was missing. On a sudden premonition he ripped open the second drawer of his desk. The tape, damn! He’d anticipated Lucas trying to steal it, had been vigilant until Lucas had gone into a haze, but he’d seen no reason to guard it from Cuddy, who surely had known neither of its existence nor of its significance.
Now he had two good reasons for confronting Cuddy as quickly as possible. He needed his pain medication desperately and he had to stop her from watching the cafeteria surveillance tape. He kicked himself mentally for sticking the post-it onto it that must have caught her attention. Still, there was a good chance, even if she was watching it right now, that she hadn’t reached the decisive sequence as yet - there had to be at least six hours of inconsequential garbage on that tape - or that the camera hadn’t caught much of what had happened. She’d feel guilty about swiping his medication, so he could use that to get the tape back from her. Then he’d delete or destroy it as soon as possible.
When he got to the clinic Cuddy’s office was dark, and briefly he thought she might have gone home. But as he approached the anteroom, he saw that he was mistaken. There was light; a television screen was flickering, illuminating Cuddy’s face as she sat on her couch. Her attention, however, wasn’t on the screen. She was curled up in a corner, tissues scrunched in her hand, her eyes unfocused as bitter tears ran down her cheeks.
On second thoughts, House decided, turning away before she could notice him, he didn’t need his pain medication yet after all.
Titania: Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away.
[A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4 Scene 1]
3 am
“No, Mom, I don’t think either of us will be back anytime soon. Lucas has been admitted for observation and I don’t want to leave him until I’m sure he’s alright. ... No, it’s nothing serious, just a precaution ...Mom, please go to bed. There’s no sense in worrying – Lucas will be fine. ... Yes, I’ll lie down for a few hours in my office. ... Mom, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I’ll be fine! ... Yes, I can shower here and I have a change of clothes.” Cuddy rolled her eyes. “The babysitter will be in by seven-thirty, okay? ... Yes, I will. ‘Night, Mom.”
She put down the phone and leaned her forehead on her hand. Saying that she was staying in the hospital because of Lucas was far enough from the truth to qualify as an outright lie. She knew now what ailed Lucas, even if she didn’t know the hows and whys of it, but it wasn’t life-threatening. The reason she was staying was one she didn’t want anyone, least of all her mother to know, for fear that it might get around to Lucas.
House.
Was he coming apart again? If he was, she needed to be around to pick up the pieces and glue them together before he ... before he did what?
Don’t kid yourself, she thought. From the evidence that’s staring at you he’s already running rampant leaving a trail of wreckage in his wake, while so far you haven’t done a thing to stop him.
Cuddy tapped her fingers on the case file in front of her. ‘Diagnosis: meningitis, to be confirmed by laboratory results.’ Two faked signatures. He’d ordered broad-spectrum antibiotics and a lumbar puncture for a kid with concussion. She hadn’t rescinded the antibiotics ... as yet. Perhaps House was right and the kid had meningitis. Or House was losing it, seeing cases where there were none.
She picked up the phone again to dial the laboratory. “Spinal fluid sample for Arun Chatterjee, reference number ...,” she squinted at the file, “053927-C. Are the results in yet? ... Yes, Wesley, I know you’re alone in there.... No, I don’t expect you to ... Two hours? Wesley, we’re talking meningitis! ...Yes, okay ... How about ninety minutes? ... Thanks, Wesley. ‘Night.”
She put down the phone. The next piece of evidence against House’s sanity was circumstantial, but all the more disconcerting in its various implications. It was a lab sheet bearing the name ‘Lucas Douglas’. The left-hand column listed every drug of interest. The right-hand column read ‘negative’ in black letters for everything except ...
Flunitrazepam. The chemical name for Rohypnol, also known as the ‘date drug’. Was there any reasonable explanation as to why House would drug Lucas, ‘reasonable’ being a relative term with regard to House? Cuddy thought back with a shudder to the last twelve hours before House had consented to be admitted to Mayfield. He’d pulled every register known to him to annoy her. Did this ‘prank’ fall into the same category, was it therefore a sign that he’d lost all sense of relation again, or was there an explanation that put it within the limits of normal House-ian madness? She doubted that there could be an explanation that justified subjecting someone to a banned drug. Why was he doing this? Surely he must know that today of all days she had neither the time nor the energy to deal with his puerile pranks.
She’d viewed the surveillance video of the lobby only to discover that it was worthless. It showed Lucas leaving with Wilson around 11 p.m. Half-an-hour later they had reappeared, Wilson leading a puppet-like Lucas. There was no sign of House leaving or entering the hospital at any point of time, yet Cuddy was sure he was involved in some way. Wilson had looked far too flustered when returning with Lucas to have drugged him in cold blood.
Cuddy rose. Lucas had been transferred from the ER to a room on a general ward once the results from the drug screen had come in. She walked there rapidly, thinking of the third piece of evidence of the evening. Foreman and Thirteen had marched into her office half an hour earlier tendering their resignations and asking to be released from their contracts immediately. Foreman had hinted that Chase might be leaving too. Three team members in one night!
House hated change. He annoyed, bullied and intimidated his team members, violated their privacy and exposed them to ridicule. Nevertheless, he had developed an almost paternal attitude towards them, though he’d deny it hotly if confronted with such a charge. The only explanation that fitted such wildly erratic behaviour as he’d displayed towards his team tonight was that he was using again.
When Cuddy arrived outside Lucas’s room she stopped abruptly. The blinds were open, giving her a clear view of Lucas, still in his bed, surrounded by a boisterous group of uniformed men. What on earth was going on in there? Cuddy threw open the door of the room. Instant silence descended on the group that she now recognized as the major part of her security staff. The only sound in the room came from the TV screen. Lucas looked blank. Given the amount of Rohypnol in his blood, this was hardly surprising. The security guards looked sheepish. Again, given the sounds emanating from the television, this wasn’t astonishing either.
Cuddy stepped swiftly to the TV and switched it off. Then she turned to face the bed and her staff. “You have assembled in a patient’s room to watch porn?” she said, not even trying to keep the volume down.
There was a general murmur of denial.
“Perhaps one of you would like to explain this to me.” She glared at the oldest guard. Tom, she remembered he was called. He shuffled his feet and looked at the others for inspiration.
“We came to see how Lucas is doing,” a red-headed boy finally offered. “He was already watching that,” a nod at the screen, “when we came in.”
“Believe me, Lucas is in no state to work a remote control, let alone put a DVD into the player,” Cuddy snorted. Since when did patients’ rooms sport DVD players, she wondered.
Alarmed by Cuddy’s raised voice the night nurse came in.
“Can you explain this?”Cuddy asked her with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the DVD player, the television set and the fidgeting men.
“The doctor said it was okay for them to visit. Oh, and the DVD player is courtesy of Dr House,” the nurse explained. “He dropped by with a DVD and the player, saying that Mr Douglas had expressed an interest in the DVD. I’m not sure whether he’s actually registering anything he sees, but I thought it can’t do any harm.”
Cuddy extracted the DVD from the player, briefly closing her eyes when she saw the title: Feral Pleasures. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.
The nurse shook her head. “I only watched the first few minutes when I started the player for Mr Douglas.” Defensively, she added, “It seemed quite nice, with fauns and nymphs – a bit like that Narnia movie my children enjoyed watching.”
Narnia! Cuddy rolled her eyes – C.S. Lewis was probably doing somersaults in his grave. One of the security guys guffawed. Cuddy shot around.
“Out! All of you!”
When everyone had left the room, Cuddy dumped the DVD in the trash. Was this thing going to turn up in all corners of the hospital for the next six months? House was such a child! He hadn’t drugged Lucas in order to force him to watch Wilson frolicking through the forest with scantily clad nymphs, had he? Not that Lucas would need to be immobilized – he had the same childish sense of humour that House possessed. Heck, he’d probably pay to be allowed to watch Wilson make a complete fool of himself.
The ringing of a cell phone interrupted her line of thought. Cuddy glanced around to locate the sound – it came from Lucas’s coat that was hanging on a hook next to the bed. She went over to retrieve the phone so as to turn it off and slid her hand into the inside pocket. It came back up with not only Lucas’s phone, but also a small bottle of medication. Drawing both out, she proceeded to give the red button on the phone a few energetic jabs that effectually shut it up and dropped it back into the pocket. About to do the same for the bottle, it occurred to her that as far as she knew Lucas wasn’t on any sort of medication. Worried about possible interactions with the Rohypnol in his blood, she turned it so she could read the label. It was in Spanish, but the active pharmaceutical ingredient, Flunitrazepam, practically jumped at her.
Cuddy sat down heavily in the chair next to Lucas’s bed. Fatigue fell on her like a blanket, while her thought processes, usually a continuous firing of synapses, slowed down to an occasional pop or a fizzle. She gazed at Lucas abstractedly while her fingers fidgeted with the bottle of medication; for a moment she found herself trying to run it up and down her fingers much as House had formerly done with his Vicodin bottles. She stopped herself, setting the bottle aside on the bedside table – House’s Vicodin habit was not a good association to have in this context.
What did the Rohypnol in Lucas’s pocket mean? It was, of course, possible that House (or Wilson) had planted the bottle there after slipping some of the contents into Lucas’s drink. This was not, however, a very likely scenario. Wilson had brought him to the ER and House had been the one to suggest a drug screen. Had either of them had any interest in keeping the reason for Lucas’s present condition secret, all they would have needed to do was to get Lucas out of the way for the next twenty-four hours or so. Chances were that he wouldn’t have remembered enough to even consider a drug screen, so that their misdeed would have gone undetected. Now that she thought of it, the notion of House using an illegal drug on Lucas was not logical at all. House had access to the hospital pharmacy, so if he chose to drug someone, he’d use something he could get his hands on legally instead of resorting to dubious methods of acquisition that carried the potential for legal unpleasantness. No, of the three persons involved in this escapade, there was only one who was dependent on what the streets had to offer. A memory nagged at the back of her brain: a small package arriving for Lucas from abroad a few weeks ago – had it been from Mexico? Lucas had quickly possessed himself of it, mumbling something about technical gadgets for his work that could be bought cheaper south of the border. She hadn’t really been interested anyway.
Did this mean that Lucas had drugged himself? Why would he do that? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense any more. Cuddy rubbed her eyes, remembering too late that she was wearing mascara. She wanted to shake Lucas out of his somnambulant state, but she knew that it was of no use. He was out for now, and even if he wasn’t, she doubted that she’d get answers from him.
He’d left the lobby with Wilson. Wilson in turn had told her that they’d gone for a drink. That was when Lucas had gone catatonic. Why would Lucas want to go for a drink with Wilson of all people on an evening when he was unbelievably busy? Lucas was only marginally interested in Wilson – it was House he was obsessed with, as Cuddy knew from the casual questions and comments that he sometimes threw her way. Had he hoped to get something on House from Wilson? If so, would Lucas have considered incapacitating Wilson in order to act on whatever information he’d gleaned from him?
A memory rose bubble-like from her subconscious: Lucas phoning for a general key so that he could search House’s office. The bubble hovered over her in iridescent glory, providing Cuddy with a solution of sorts. There was something in House’s office that incriminated House so badly that Lucas had invested time and energy this evening in an attempt to retrieve it. He’d said something about ‘porn’, but given House’s openness about that addiction, it was more likely to be something House really couldn’t afford to be caught with.
Vicodin.
It fit in with all the other puzzle pieces of the night. If House was using again, Cuddy wouldn’t put it beyond Lucas to know before anyone else did. Nonetheless, after what had transpired at the conference last fall, she’d rather not that Lucas put that knowledge to use before she had the chance to get House out of the line of fire. All things considered, she’d prefer Lucas not to have anything on House at all.
Cuddy closed her eyes, considering her options. Given that Lucas had somehow managed to incapacitate himself more or less right after he’d phoned her it was a pretty safe bet that he hadn’t got around to searching House’s office. She could give Lucas a metaphorical slap on the wrist to keep him off House, but otherwise ignore the possibility of a relapse. This was the easiest option, the one that she’d like to choose, the only halfway attractive option.
Other options included confronting House (even if he was guilty as hell, he’d do such a convincing mixture of hurt and indignation that she’d end up scurrying away in a cloud of guilt at doubting him), demanding a urine sample (ouch, he’d be scathing, asking why she hadn’t manipulated his toilet or which coffee mug he should use this time), asking Wilson to spy on House (Wilson followed his own agenda and was as trustworthy as a fork-tongued adder) or conducting random searches (he’d hide his stash at home or in his car, where she had no license to search). If she did catch him red-handed or cow him into an admission (dream on, Lisa!) she’d have to pull hospital policy on him: regular urine samples, proof of attendance for a certified therapy, impeccable work attendance record – she shuddered to think of what House would say to such a catalogue of humiliating concessions. He’d never consent, not unless he crashed completely again. If he didn’t consent, she’d have to fire him; that was hospital policy.
This was hospital administration at its least attractive, a real bitch with a hangover. Cuddy didn’t want to implement hospital policy, she certainly didn’t want to fire House and she would definitely not consider this option were there not another memory, this one not in her subconscious, but buried deep where sunshine rarely illuminated it. It was a telephone conversation with Dr Nolan, a displeased, reprimanding Dr Nolan, about eight weeks after House’s admission to Mayfield.
He’d called her to discuss ‘her handling of addiction issues at the workplace’. ‘Enabling behaviour’ had been the kindest of his epithets. She’d been ‘egoistical and self-serving’, placing the hospital’s interests and her career above the health and the well-being of an employee. She’d ‘sought harmony at all costs’, avoiding conflict. He’d concluded that she should count herself lucky that House showed no inclination to sue her or the hospital.
Cuddy had risen in her own defence. “I was trying to help him, as a friend. He wouldn’t have listened to me. Had I tried to pull hospital policy on him, he would have let me fire him. Then where would he be now? In some gutter, scoring illegal drugs, doing heaven knows what to his health.”
“Dr Cuddy, had you fired him four years ago, as you should have, he’d have reached the bottom line that much quicker and sought help much earlier. As for his health, do you have any idea what his liver values were like when he got here? No? If you call that health care, he’s better off in the gutter.
“Just so we understand each other, Dr Cuddy: I will not permit him to return to PPTH. I can’t force you to stay away from him once he is released, but I would strongly advise you to do so. It’s in his best interest. He is adept at manipulating you, while you have persuaded yourself that your method of dealing with him and his addiction is to his benefit. It isn’t. If you really are his friend, you will let him go. I will find a new hospital and a new environment for him.”
“Well, good luck with that! You won’t find anyone idiotic enough to take him except for me,” she’d muttered after he’d put down the phone. She’d started dating Lucas a week later.
Her prediction had been correct – Nolan had underestimated the difficulties associated with finding employment for Gregory House – but her little victory had tasted bitter, giving her no pleasure.
It was an unpleasant memory, so she picked it up between thumb and forefinger to drop it back into the dark deep hole where it belonged. Nevertheless, the last thing she needed was another conversation of that sort to add to her collection of distasteful situations that were best forgotten. If she messed this up, if she ignored House’s addiction issues or tried to gloss over them, Nolan would (rightly) subject her to a dressing-down that would make House’s outbursts seem a panegyric.
So it was decided – she would have to find out whether House was using again. She decided to focus on that, pushing the question of what was to be done if she discovered that he had indeed had a relapse to the back for the moment. If Lucas believed that there was something incriminating in House’s office, chances were that he was right.
Cuddy rose from the chair. She glanced undecidedly at Lucas. An obscure part of her brain registered that her worries about House’s potential relapse had driven all questions about how Lucas had been incapacitated clear out of her mind. Yet she felt pretty sure that Lucas himself was to blame for his state, his attempts to use Wilson to get at House probably having backfired in this spectacular manner, though heaven alone knew what he’d hoped to achieve through Wilson.
On the one hand she was upset at him – if this was pranking House and Wilson, then it was definitely getting out of hand. Opossums in bathtubs were one thing (he’d never admitted to the pranking, but it carried his signature), but trying to drug someone so as to get at potentially harmful information - she suspected that Lucas wasn’t beyond using such information as a source for blackmail - was a different cup of tea altogether. On the other hand, he was her boy-friend and hence entitled to her trust and confidence until proven guilty. Perhaps there was some absolutely sane and logical explanation to this that cleared him completely, so she should really wait until he was sober again before she condemned him. Bending over him she gave him a quick hug, then she left his room.
House’s office was dark, but his team was assembled in the conference room over inevitable cups of coffee. Cuddy flicked on the light in House’s office and strode over to his desk, ignoring the surprised looks on the team members’ faces.
The top drawer yielded a bottle of medication. She paused; the label stated that it was ibuprofen, but then, House would hardly be likely to carry around his stash in bottles clearly labelled ‘Vicodin’, would he? Resolutely she pocketed it, ignoring the voice in her brain that was crying, ‘He’s going to torture you for this if you’re wrong. He’ll pull out your nails with tweezers, extinguish cigarette butts on your stomach, play the piano on your guilt!’
At first glance the second drawer held nothing of interest: odds and ends, a few CDs, a yo-yo, a red lollipop, a video cassette. Hang on, she’d seen one of those just an hour or so ago! She drew it out to read the label. Yes, it was a hospital surveillance tape. Really, she’d have to talk to him about not taking those – there’d be hell to pay if someone found out that the hospital was lax about implementing data protection regulations.
There was a post-it on the back adorned with House’s untidy scrawl: ‘Hey, Lucas. This is what you’re looking for. You’re welcome to it.’
Cuddy re-read the message thrice without comprehending it. What would Lucas want with a four-week-old surveillance tape? But whatever his motive, this was clearly the reason for part of tonight’s strange upheavals. She picked up House’s phone.
“Mr Quincy? I need a screen and a video player in my office. Thank you.”
Nodding to House’s mesmerized team, she departed with tape and medication.
The insistent beeps cut through his dreams, making him shake his head groggily as he groped for his pager. Chase. His watch told him that it was 4 am while his leg informed him that he’d missed his evening dose of pain medication, courtesy of the distraction offered by the case and, unwittingly, by Lucas. He limped out of the doctors’ lounge, into which he had fled to escape scenes of emotional interaction with his team, cursing himself for leaving his cane in his office. Normally he managed fairly well without it, but he’d been on his legs for too long today.
Chase greeted him with, “It’s not meningitis.”
“Damn. What else could it be? ... Come, come, we need some ideas before Cuddy gets wind of the test results and throws a wobbly.”
Foreman and Thirteen were back from wherever they had disappeared to, but were still giving him the freezer treatment.
“You can save the prima donna act for later,” House snapped at them. “For now you’re my employees, so you’ll diagnose my patient.”
“It’s concussion,” Foreman said in a bored voice, his expression saying, I’m tired, we don’t have a case AND you’re a jerk.
“Acanthamoeba,” and, “Brain tumour,” Cameron and Thirteen said in unison.
“Brain tumour it is,” House said without hesitation. “Foreteen, go do an MRI. Go before Cuddy gets wind of the test results.”
“Why can’t it be acanthamoeba?” an irritated Chase asked.
“Congratulations, Cameron. Your knight of the shining hair rises to your defence again,” House smirked. “Because if it’s acanthamoeba, then firstly, we can’t confirm our diagnosis until he’s dead and secondly, he’s as good as dead. That could be considered a definite pro, seeing as we’d get to confirm our diagnosis, but as you might have noticed over the years, patients’ families tend not to appreciate a correct diagnosis if it takes death to confirm it. Therefore a brain tumour is better for everyone concerned. Oh, and thirdly, acanthamoeba is extremely rare, whereas brain tumours aren’t.”
“I thought you liked ‘rare’,” Chase interposed.
“I do. But we aren’t talking of a case that has boggled any number of physicians. We are talking of a boy I stumbled across in the ER. He isn’t likely to be the Kohinoor among our diamonds.”
He limped to his office to retrieve his cane and his pain medication for which his leg was yelling with a vengeance by now. Exhaling a sigh of relief, he sank into the chair behind his desk and pulled open the top drawer. His medication was gone. He stared at the drawer. Then he rose carefully, feeling the pockets of his jeans.
Chase had followed him to the office. “Er, Cuddy was here. She ... took your medication.”
Slowly House looked up to study Chase’s face. Chase didn’t avoid his gaze, but he squirmed uncomfortably. The implications of Cuddy’s actions were clear, even if her reasons weren’t, so Chase’s eyes mirrored his speculations – was House using again? – as well as sympathy and possibly pity for the older man. House broke eye contact first, nodding a dismissal at Chase as he sank into the chair again.
Cuddy had taken his medication. Either she thought he’d slipped Lucas something or she believed that he was on Vicodin again. He considered the ramifications of both options, his fingers twisting a pencil round and round.
It didn’t matter whether she thought him capable of drugging Lucas with Rohypnol since she couldn’t have found any in his office. All she had was his prescription-strength painkiller because he didn’t possess anything else. Furthermore, contrary to what she believed, he did not slip people banned drugs just for the fun of it. He’d knock out a patient who refused life-preserving treatment, or Wilson to prevent his professional suicide, but he’d never dope Lucas just to irritate her.
He turned the other possibility over in his mind. Why would Cuddy fear that he was on Vicodin again? He retraced his actions of the day, but came up with nothing particularly outrageous or out of character. He’d tried to shirk clinic duty, had cast doubts on her diagnosis of that Indian boy, stolen her patient, messed around with his team, slipped a porn DVD into Lucas’s room – nothing unusual at all.
Whatever she suspected him of, he knew he wasn’t guilty. He wasn’t using nor had he drugged Lucas. Within him something bubbled up, a hot heavy mass that lumped in his throat threatening to choke his thoughts. Why couldn’t she trust him? Why didn’t she just ask whether he’d had a relapse?
Idiot, he told himself. If you were using again, you’d lie about it. Besides, trusting you means not trusting Lucas. For one thing was clear – there was some connection between Lucas and her search tonight. He clamped the lid down tight on his emotions, forcing himself to focus on the primary issue: how to deal with Cuddy after her search.
His eyes roamed the office, wondering whether anything else was missing. On a sudden premonition he ripped open the second drawer of his desk. The tape, damn! He’d anticipated Lucas trying to steal it, had been vigilant until Lucas had gone into a haze, but he’d seen no reason to guard it from Cuddy, who surely had known neither of its existence nor of its significance.
Now he had two good reasons for confronting Cuddy as quickly as possible. He needed his pain medication desperately and he had to stop her from watching the cafeteria surveillance tape. He kicked himself mentally for sticking the post-it onto it that must have caught her attention. Still, there was a good chance, even if she was watching it right now, that she hadn’t reached the decisive sequence as yet - there had to be at least six hours of inconsequential garbage on that tape - or that the camera hadn’t caught much of what had happened. She’d feel guilty about swiping his medication, so he could use that to get the tape back from her. Then he’d delete or destroy it as soon as possible.
When he got to the clinic Cuddy’s office was dark, and briefly he thought she might have gone home. But as he approached the anteroom, he saw that he was mistaken. There was light; a television screen was flickering, illuminating Cuddy’s face as she sat on her couch. Her attention, however, wasn’t on the screen. She was curled up in a corner, tissues scrunched in her hand, her eyes unfocused as bitter tears ran down her cheeks.
On second thoughts, House decided, turning away before she could notice him, he didn’t need his pain medication yet after all.
