fic: The Cuckoo -- Chapter 20

[readingrat]

 

Part IV
Chapter 20: Waking Up

Taub woke him around two a.m. "Wilson is sewn up and on his way to the SICU," he said. "Wow, you look a sight!"

"You're not looking too hot yourself," Pete said. Taub's eyes were red, his face pale, and his hands were trembling with exhaustion.

"I'm getting too old for all-nighters," Taub said. "I'm off to bed. What about you?"

Stupid question.

"I'll take you to the surgical ICU," Taub said.

Pete grabbed the three candy bars that had mysteriously appeared on the coffee table in front of him and followed Taub.

"We're the surgical team from Princeton-Plainsboro," Taub told the nurse on duty, flashing his temporary ID at her. She waved both of them through without checking Pete.

Inside, the eerie quiet of late night reigned. Wilson was intubated and attached to an alarming array of monitors, drains, and lines, with a nurse hovering over him checking the flow rate and making notes in his chart. In short, he looked terrible. Compared to him Lisa, off the ventilator already and merely having her vitals monitored, looked good.

"She was awake about an hour ago and she's doing fine," the doctor on duty said from behind him.

He jumped half a foot in surprise; he hadn't heard him coming up.

"What about Wilson?" he asked.

"Too soon to say, but the surgery went extremely well, I heard. The blood work won't be back for another two hours, though. I can't say much until we have that."

"What immunosuppressants have you got him on?"

"None; his immune system is down anyway, so we're waiting to see how he reacts to the new liver."

Pete nodded; it was what he'd have advised.

"Once we're sure the liver is functioning we'll move him back to the ICU. Dr Cuddy will be moved to a regular ward."

Pete nodded again.

"You wanna go in and see Dr Cuddy?" The doctor nodded at a sink equipped with the usual sterilisation paraphernalia.

He didn't want to. He didn't want to explain to Lisa that she had less than a third of her liver left. He looked around, but Taub must have left without his noticing.

He washed his hands thoroughly and then disinfected them. Then, for good measure, he put on a pair of gloves – the physician on duty believed he was here as a member of the transplant team, and he had no intention of disillusioning him by neglecting elementary precautions that any sane surgeon would take.

He went into Lisa's cubicle and sat on a rotating stool next to her bed, swinging slowly to and fro. When he got bored with that he took her file from the end of the bed and leafed through it. Healthy as a horse, that woman – prior to the transplant. Blood values all optimal, practically no prior medical conditions, not on any sort of medication except for an anxiolytic 'as needed', whatever that meant.

He checked out the psych evaluation that had taken place before the transplant.

Dr Lisa Cuddy is in ongoing therapeutic treatment after severe episodes of PTSD and adjuvant depressive episodes. Her mental status is stable. We see no impediment to a live donation on her part.

So in theory, she was the ideal donor. In practice, she was too small to donate safely to a man with fifty percent more body mass than she had, and no matter what she'd made the psychiatric evaluator believe, she was less stable than you'd wish for in a donor. She still had flashbacks – he'd witnessed at least one of them – and the career set-back that she was headed for could easily unsettle people with no history of depression.

"Hey!" she croaked.

He snapped the file shut and slipped it onto the cart behind him, turning round to give her a bright false smile. "Hey, Sleepy Head," he said.

She smiled at him dopily. They must have given her the Good Stuff to dampen the pain.

"Our Shylock didn't stop at one pound of flesh; he went and took two, what with your liver looking so delectable." There was no reaction from her. He scratched his eyebrow with his thumb. "Upside is, you've lost weight. Two pounds in twelve hours: I could market this as a new miracle diet. But take it easy with the chocolate the next few days; you don't want to gain it all again before you leave the hospital."

Lisa gave a chuckle that turned into a grimace of pain. Maybe the good stuff wasn't good enough. Her hand moved from her side to the bedside railing. He stared down at it. Was he supposed to hold it or something?

"Wilson?" she asked.

"Doing fine, from what I've heard. Didn't flatline, didn't bleed into his abdominal cavity, no fun stuff at all. Your surgical staff got to watch a textbook transplant. They'll be itching to do it themselves next time."

"Won't be … a next time," Cuddy whispered. "Rachel?"

"It's three a.m.; didn't think you'd want her here at this time of day, what with school and all that."

"Bring her tomorrow?"

"Sure," he said. "I'll drag her here anytime you like."

She smiled again. He had to bend down to hear her next words. "You're cute … when you're feeling guilty."

He could feel himself flush. "Hey, I'm always cute!" he said, pulling a hand theatrically through his sparse hair and getting up before he made even more of a dork of himself.

"Can I bring you anything: Chinese takeaway, spare ribs, whisky?" he asked. She wouldn't be allowed solids for a few days and she'd be teetotaling for months, so his offer was entirely spurious.

She smiled again and made a weak shooing motion with her hand, closing her eyes as she did so. It was a dismissal. He left the cubicle, glad to have gotten off so lightly. The next time he visited, she'd doubtless be in a considerably worse mood.

He considered his options. He could wait for Wilson's blood work to come back, but he doubted there'd be anything of importance at the moment. Wilson's state would be critical for days or possibly weeks; hanging out here now and losing all chances of getting some shuteye made no sense. But go back to the apartment and risk missing something?

There was one room in the hospital where he was unlikely to attract unwarranted attention – Lisa's office. He took the elevator to the first floor and followed the signs there. The entire wing was dark; administration had shut down for the night. The locks would normally have stymied him, but he had Lisa's home keys and sure enough, she had an office spare on the key ring. He went through the ante-room, unlocked her office door, re-locked it behind him and drew the blinds. Then he lay down on the couch and shut his eyes.

---

"Who are you?"

Someone was shaking his arm vigorously. He automatically snatched it away and sat up, trying to assess the threat posed by this stranger. He wasn't a security officer nor was he Lisa's PA, who knew him anyway and wouldn't have to ask who he was. He was a dapper man of around sixty in a suit and a tie, with metal-rimmed glasses. If the man thought he was a burglar or the like, then he was being brave (or very foolish), because Pete was sure he was a head taller and about twice as heavy.

"Who are you?" he returned the question.

"Excuse me, but I have every right to be here," the man said. "The same probably can't be said for you. What are you doing in Dr Cuddy's office?"

"Duh, sleeping?"

The man went to the phone, probably in order to call security.

"I'm a friend of Dr Cuddy's," Pete admitted.

Metal-rimmed Glasses stopped short and peered at him doubtfully. "Your name? Have you got any ID?"

Pete wordlessly handed over his driver's licence.

"Gregory House. Hmm, name sounds familiar. She may have mentioned you." He frowned at the ID and then at Pete. "Couldn't you have cleared this with security?" he finally asked.

"It was a spontaneous decision," Pete said. "It's not like anyone had much advance notice."

"True, true. Still, it's very irregular."

"Can I go back to sleep now?" The clock on the wall showed 8:30 a.m. He could go check on Wilson, but there was a point to be made and territory to be defended if he was to be comfortable at the hospital the next few weeks or so.

"Actually, I want to work here now," the little man said. "I'm her stand-in: I'm Arthur Rubinstein, former dean of this hospital – and I'll be here every other day until Dr Cuddy has recovered." As though to sweeten the bitter pill he added, "The phone will be ringing all morning; you won't find it very pleasant here."

A strategic retreat was clearly indicated.

He was on the way to the ICU when his phone rang. The number on the display was Lisa's landline. He supposed he had to take the call.

"Hello, is that Pete? This is Louisa, Lisa's neighbour."

"Yeah?"

"That cleaning lady of yours, the Polish one, brought Rachel over last evening, but she couldn't tell me what was going on, while Rachel told me the strangest story imaginable. She said Lisa was getting her liver removed or something."

Louisa waited, expecting some sort of response from him. He chose not to oblige. What did he care whether Louisa's source was reliable or not?

"Well, I just couldn't believe that," Louisa continued undaunted, "because as far as I know, you need your liver in order to survive, so I tried to phone Lisa, but she isn't answering her phone, so then I phoned Lisa's sister …"

Oh, fuck! He had a vision of bumping into Julia Cuddy in the corridors of Philadelphia Central or, even worse, Julia turning up on Lisa's doorstep with her husband in tow while he was minding Rachel.

"… and she didn't know a thing about it! So I figured Rachel must have got it wrong, and Lisa is hosting some sort of liver conference. What's the correct term, heptatology? But Rachel insists that Lisa will be in the hospital for a week and that you are taking care of Rachel for the rest of the week, so I thought I'd phone you – it's a good thing Lisa has the number stored in her phone, because Rachel didn't have it – and find out what's going on. Is this some kind of liver conference that Lisa has to attend? She could have told me, you know. It's not that I mind looking after Rachel for a night or two, but if it's any longer than that, maybe it would be better if Julia took over."

He found his voice again. "No, no, that's fine. I can take care of her."

"Are you sure? It's not that easy. Sometimes she needs help with intimate things, if you know what I mean …"

"I'm a doctor; I can catheterise her if necessary."

"Well, I don't know. It doesn't seem fitting, you know, leaving a little girl alone with a man who isn't a member of the family, and I really don't know …"

"Lisa would hardly have left her with me if she didn't trust me," he pointed out, registering for the first time the full extent of Lisa's trust in him.

"I'd rather I talked to her about it," Louisa said with determination.

He felt like shooting her to the moon. Then again, she had a point.

"Fine, I'll tell her to call you," he said.

"So is this a conference or is Lisa …?"

He quickly disconnected the call. Let Lisa deal with her; hopefully she'd see the need to keep her sister in the dark for the time being and tell Louisa as little as possible.

At the ICU Dr Liu immediately came over when she spotted him. "He still doesn't want to see you," she said.

He kept his face blank, as though this piece of information didn't bother him. (And it didn't. Why should it? The liver transplant hadn't changed anything, after all. He was still the guy who had drugged Wilson and dragged him off to hospital against his will.)

"But," Dr Liu continued, "he has consented to let you see his medical files and all test results. He said you'd hack into his medical records anyway, so he'd spare us the embarrassment of having to explain to him how it was that our hospital security was so slipshod. I'll get you his file."

He nodded, following her as she went to the nurses' station to get the file and plucking it out of her hands without a comment.

So far, everything was fine. He allowed himself a brief moment of hope. Of course, it could all still go terribly wrong. They had no idea how his immune system would react to the stress of dealing with a foreign organ while it was still reeling from the effects of the chemo.

"I need regular updates," he said, moving his finger down the blood values to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

"Sure."

He'd expected token resistance, something along the lines of, 'You'll have to come in and get them,' or 'As long as Dr Wilson consents,' not this quiet acquiescence. He peeked at her from behind the file.

"He'll come round," she said.

He didn't need to be patronised. Slamming the file down on the nurses' desk he left.

Lisa's room was sequestered in a corner of a wing that could, for all practical purposes, have been a geriatric one – she lowered the average age of the wing's patients substantially. Although she couldn't have been there for more than six hours, she already had four vases of flowers, two teddy bears, and a box of chocolates. He grabbed the box as he sat down in a chair by her bedside and opened it, making a show of selecting one.

"I'm feeling totally shitty, but thank you for asking," Lisa said pointedly.

He popped three chocolates into his mouth and munched them noisily.

"They're going to make me get up and walk this evening," she continued. "It hurts already when I as much as yawn; that'll kill me!"

"Drama queen!" he mumbled through a mouthful of nougat. These chocolates were excellent.

"Gee, thanks!" She finally noticed what he was doing. "Hey, I wanted to keep those for Rachel. When are you bringing her?"

Oh, yes, he'd almost forgotten about that. "After school tomorrow?" he suggested, looking pointedly at the mess of lines and drains trailing from her bed.

"Did you reach Louisa? Was everything okay last night?" she asked next.

"Sort of. She wants to talk to you."

Lisa sighed. "Could you pass me my phone please? It's in my purse. Oh, and I need some things from home: my charger and my glasses – they're in the top drawer of my nightstand. And there's a book on it …"

"Make a list," he said, reaching over to angle her purse from the shelf next to him. He dug around in it, checking through the contents even though the phone was prominently on top of the pile of things in the main compartment. It contained the usual stuff: a compact, a lipstick and an eyeliner, a tampon, a handkerchief, a small bottle of disinfectant. A wallet with a bit of cash and an assortment of cards. No sign of any medication – good! He handed her the phone. "By the way, Louisa went and phoned your sister."

She looked at him, perplexed. "Why'd she do that?"

"Because …" He scratched the stubble on his chin. "… I may have been somewhat cryptic in the note I left for her, and she couldn't make sense of what Rachel told her. She believes you're hosting a conference on hepatology."

"Note? What note? What conference? Oh, never mind!"

"You might want to phone your sister and make sure she stays away. "

"That's going to be impossible," Lisa said. She thought for a moment. "But I doubt she'll want to see Wilson. Just keep away from my room when she's here, and you'll be fine. Oh god, I hope she doesn't bring my mom! I don't think I can deal with her at the moment."

While she scrolled through her contacts and dialled, he got up, popped more chocolates into his mouth, then took the box and tipped the rest of the chocolates into the pocket of his jacket.

"Hey, I said I wanted those for Rachel!" Lisa protested, pointing an accusing finger at him and grimacing in pain at the sudden movement she'd made with her arm.

"The box is very pretty too," he said, putting it back on her bedside table. "She'll like it."

"Hello, Louisa. Thanks so much for taking Rachel. … No, Rachel was almost right; I donated a lobe of my liver. It's no big deal, just a routine operation," Lisa lied glibly, "but you know how it is: they insist on keeping you in hospital so you can't sue them for negligence afterwards."

A good time to leave. Flowers for Tanja might be a good idea; she hadn't been happy at having to be at his disposal at such short notice. He grabbed one of the vases on his way out.

" … He said he'd look after Rachel? … No, no, if he wants to do it, it's fine! …"

---

"You've got a visitor, Dr Wilson!"

Wilson opened his eyes. Everything was hazy; it took him a few seconds to focus on the nurse, who was smiling cheerfully. Behind her was Lisa in a hospital gown, hanging on to an IV pole with another nurse supporting her. Lisa sat down (or rather, collapsed) on the chair next to his bed.

"Thank you," she said to the nurse. "Hello, James." She leaned forward to take his hand.

"Don't hesitate to call us if you need anything," one of the nurses said. "Oh, and Dr Cuddy? It would be better if you didn't kiss him."

Cuddy, like the nurses, was wearing a face mask, which made PDAs complicated. But he and Cuddy weren't much into hugging and kissing each other anyway.

"I'll control myself," Cuddy said coolly. The nurses nodded and left.

"How are you doing?" she asked next, giving his hand a squeeze.

"I … don't know." He hadn't felt too bad after waking from the procedure, but a few hours ago his pain level had rocketed, so they'd upped the morphine. Now his abdomen throbbed with pain and his brain was fuzzy from the pain killers they'd put him on. "I've got your liver."

"Yes."

"Why?" He couldn't for the life of him think of a good reason why Cuddy would compromise her health for the sake of a man whose cancer was probably incurable.

"Because we couldn't get a donor liver for you. You don't qualify." Cuddy was brief and to the point as usual. Except that her answer wasn't to the point. It explained why he hadn't obtained a regular donor liver; it didn't explain why he'd gotten hers.

"Did House talk you into this?"

"I knew what I was doing," she said. She added with a grimace, "Although I did underestimate the discomfort it would bring with it. I swear, I never knew that a fifty yard corridor could be so long. I hope they get me a wheelchair for the trip back to my room."

"I … didn't want this," he said.

She leaned forward to clasp his hand with both of hers. "It's okay," she said. "I know you would never have asked this of me. In some way, knowing that you'd never have asked made the decision easier for me."

That wasn't what he meant. He meant that he hadn't wanted a transplant. He hadn't wanted anything that required hospitalisation, and for a good reason. Now he had a donor liver in addition to his tumour, and if one didn't kill him the other would. The odds of ever getting out of here, of dying on his own terms instead of those of his attending, had sunk so far that no sane person would take the bet.

That, however, wasn't something he could say to the person who had just allowed a bunch of surgeons to carve a substantial chunk out of her liver for his sake, so he squeezed her hand back. Hopefully she'd interpret this as appreciation of her sacrifice, because although his brain was sluggish, he was fully aware that it was a sacrifice on her part, not an imposition. Cuddy had her fair share of negative attributes (including unfounded optimism and a tendency to make rash decisions), but riding rough-shod over patient wishes wasn't her defining character trait. No, someone else held a monopoly on that particular vice.

He wanted to throw something at someone – at House, to be precise – but at the moment he could barely breathe comfortably, let alone raise an arm in anger. He withdrew his hand instead and tried to sit up, but gave up immediately when a bolt of pain seared through his body.

He'd die without ever seeing his child. He'd never hold him or maybe her in his arms. Hell, chances were that he'd never find out whether he had a son or a daughter. He'd die in this hellhole of a hospital without knowing whether his kid was healthy.

"Amy," he croaked. "I want to see Amy."

Cuddy's hand flew to her mouth. "I forgot about Amy," she confessed with a look of consternation.

He couldn't blame her. He must have crashed fast after being admitted to the hospital: everything that had happened before the transplant was a misty haze. He vaguely remembered being in the ICU and getting blood drawn, and people milling around him, but that was about it.

"Will you ask her to drop by, please?" The least he owed Amy was a goodbye.

Cuddy bit her lip. "That might be awkward. I told the transplant committee that we're a couple."

Wait – she what?

She gave him a wry smile. "That's why I'm afraid we'll have to hold hands every now and then. And … do call me Lisa whenever anyone is around. I'll call you James."

Sheesh, this was as crazy as calling House 'Pete', and probably for the same reason: it was a lie. House wasn't 'Pete' just because he'd conveniently erased his memory; the past existed, no matter whether he remembered it or not – as his House Smash! spree of the preceding days proved. Now that he'd gotten what he wanted, he had probably reverted to his bland Banner persona, but Wilson wasn't fooled, oh no! He was glad that he, at least, was still 'Wilson' to everyone, because he wasn't a part of this ridiculous alternate universe where a different name changed everything. If House and Cuddy chose to pretend that calling each other 'Pete' and 'Lisa' erased the drama that had ended in collapsed houses and crippled kids, then that wasn't his headache. But he wasn't prepared to deny his past, the good, the bad or the ugly. And he sure as hell wasn't going to allow House to pretend that he was just another of his patients over whom he could ride rough-shod. They'd known each other for decades, and no matter whether House could remember those years or not, he had an obligation towards him – as a friend.

Cuddy, oblivious to his thoughts, continued, "We should keep up the pretence until you're released. But I'm sure I can explain the situation to Amy."

He hoped so. Amy wasn't always reasonable. She tended to react badly to stress, and there was no denying that she'd been stressed recently, not only by the pregnancy and the hormonal changes in her body, but also by his initial refusal to get treatment. As it slowly dawned on her that she'd have to raise the child without his help, she'd gotten more and more distant. He couldn't blame her: what was the use of investing emotionally in someone who wouldn't be around much longer? If she chose to save her strength for her child (their child), he was the last person to object. But it would be nice to get closure, to see the slight swell of her belly, maybe get a look at the latest ultrasound, and possibly feel the child kick against his hand before he left this world.

"And the transplant committee believed you?" he asked skeptically.

She shrugged. "Why not? We've known each other for years, and you've been around a lot recently. I told them that you are on the verge of moving to Philadelphia and already on the lookout for a job here. It's a good thing, though, that I didn't date anyone from the hospital recently," she added as an afterthought. "That would have blown large holes in my story."

"You – date?"

"Sure," she said smoothly, "every now and then."

"Oh." She'd told him once that she'd more or less stopped dating after the car incident with House, and he had assumed that her second foray into dating House would make her even less inclined to give the male sex another chance. It seemed that the opposite was the case. "Will this …," he waved his hand weakly between them, "make things awkward for you?"

She rolled her eyes. "Goodness, no! When I say 'dating', I mean that I've gone out with guys a few times, but it's never been a great success." She twirled a lock of hair meditatively between her fingers. "I just don't have the patience for that sort of thing any longer: being on my best behaviour, smiling politely, and pretending I like the restaurants they drag me to."

"But you're good at that sort of thing – you used to do it with donors all the time."

"Yeah, and I still do. But I don't want to have to do it in the little spare time I have. When I go out, I want it to be fun, not another extended business dinner where I have to mind my step if I want to get lucky. There seems to be a secret code to dating, and I haven't hacked it yet. But if guys can't take who I am on the first date, how will they put up with me once the thrill of the unknown has faded?"

He would have chuckled if he could have done so painlessly. Cuddy was right; dating was a complicated ritual. The way to be successful wasn't in trying to manipulate the ritual in order to influence the outcome. Success lay in enjoying the ritual for itself, independent of the outcome. Maybe that was his problem: he got so involved in the different moves – choosing the right venues for dates, making sure to phone his date within three days after every rendezvous (but not much earlier so she wouldn't feel stalked), giving her thoughtful little gifts, listening to her problems – that he tended to lose track of the fact that his dates weren't people with whom he'd want to spend more than one evening a week, much less the rest of his life.

His eyes must have fallen shut, because he sensed rather than saw Cuddy rise from his bedside. He supposed he should say something – thank her for her visit or for her liver once again – but his lips felt sticky and heavy, as though resisting this exercise in hypocrisy. He heard the squeak of the IV pole's wheels, Cuddy's steps dragging across the floor, a sharp intake of breath as she slid open the door to his room, and then low confabulations with the nurse. He tuned out the background noise, returning to his own thoughts.

Would he be wanting to spend the rest of his life with Amy if she hadn't gotten pregnant? Probably not. Amy and he hadn't even dated in the true sense of the word. They'd hung out together a few evenings after work, because Amy hadn't wanted to be alone and neither had he. He'd only just gotten his diagnosis, he'd relapsed, and he'd fooled himself into believing that his drinking was social, because he'd been doing it in Amy's company. Heaven only knew what had possessed Amy to sleep with him, an ageing, mournful alcoholic, but chances were that she'd been three sheets to the wind too.

But it could work, they could work. This time he had an incentive to do more than the other times. This time there would be no evading unpleasant situations by submerging himself in his work or pretending that House needed him, because it wasn't just about 'him & her' anymore: there was an 'it' in the middle, a little person who needed him more than a woman ever could.

If there was a 'this time'.

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