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A Valiant Woman
by Flywoman
DISCLAIMER: Do you see my name when the House M.D. credits roll? Didn't think so.
THANKS: To Susanne for constructive criticism and to jezziejay for overcoming her fear and loathing long enough to read and comment - I owe you big time!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: If Three Months was my love letter to the first few seasons, then this is my letter of resignation to Huddy.
***
Chapter 1: Far Above the Price of Rubies
"I'm not pregnant!"
When she was sixteen, Lisa Cuddy had excitedly explained to her parents that because Y-bearing sperm swam faster but X-bearing sperm lasted longer, the sex of one's child could be influenced by the timing of intercourse relative to ovulation. Her mother had just stared, her habitual smile frozen on her face, but her father had raised eyes and hands to heaven, then leveled a finger at Lisa and thundered, "Use a condom."
She had used a condom, and other methods in addition, every time. She'd had no intention of allowing an unwanted pregnancy to derail her meteoric medical career. And now here she was, still childless at thirty-five, her skirt hiked up around her hips while she waited for the world's most annoying man to stop appreciating her assets and inject her with gonadotropins already.
But no. House obviously considered this a golden opportunity to lecture her on selecting the father of her child for smart reasons, unlike the vast majority of the human race, while rubbing her buttock with an antiseptic cotton ball in torturously slow circles. She felt her face heat even as the ethanol evaporated on her skin like a cool kiss, causing her to shiver. "I'm pretty sure you got that," she finally huffed, in a probably vain attempt to cover up her perverse arousal.
"Microbes can be sneaky," he answered, punctuating his point with the prick of the needle. He left her reflecting that playing doctor twice a day really was going to be fun. That, or grounds for personal humiliation and a truly spectacular firing followed by a sexual harassment lawsuit. From where she was standing, it could go either way.
Entrusting him with her folder of donor candidates naturally proved to be a big mistake. She'd be lucky not to get sued for breach of confidentiality, not to mention some kind of employment discrimination. And she'd probably never be able to enjoy listening to Mozart again. She only wished she'd managed to jerk her desk drawer more violently into the man's groin.
But she turned up on time to the clinic for her second injection, baring her bottom even as she reamed House out for violating Patrick's privacy. He was coldly clinical, peremptory, perhaps distracted by his friend's dying "daughter," perhaps by something else. And as he emphasized how much he didn't care whom she dated or married or permitted to father her children, it occurred to her that maybe the man doth protest too much.
"Genes matter. Who you are matters. Find someone you trust."
"Someone like you?" she goaded him on a sudden hunch. House paused on his way out the door.
"Someone you like," he corrected her in a tone that made it clear he hardly expected to fall into that category.
Although she would never admit it to him, that response had given her pause. Did she like House? She had to admit that the answer, most of the time, was hell, no. Sure, she admired him, for the most brilliant mind she'd ever encountered, because he had the courage of his convictions, and (grudgingly) for his infuriating refusal to knuckle under to her authority. She trusted him, even with something as sensitive and personal as these fertility treatments, and knowing that his best friend was the hospital's biggest gossip. She cared about him, watched him like a hawk to keep tabs on his progression up the pain scale, and even if he would probably dismiss that as guilt over her role in the surgery following his infarction, she knew better. As for lust, well, the body sometimes has its own reasons that reason cannot touch, but even if his gruff voice quickened her pulse and caused sweat to collect behind her knees, it said nothing about liking.
As for Wilson, House had guessed that their dinner had been an audition, one that had failed. He probably chalked it up to Wilson being too nice for her, and in a way, that was true. Wilson didn't want kids, she could infer that much from his evasiveness, even if she thought that he would make a great dad. At the same time, he was a guilt-ridden caretaker of the worst kind, so he would never have been content to share his seed and then stand silently on the sidelines. Given a glimpse of her desperation, he would have fallen for her, spoiled her with sensitive sex and that bottomless well of empathy, and used his considerable powers of persuasion to drag her to the altar. And then, maybe two years later, maybe a little longer if she really appeared to need him, his attention would have strayed, and she'd be left a laughingstock, the Dean of Medicine cuckolded by her own department head. Yes, she wanted a child, but she still had her pride, and that just wasn't a price she was prepared to pay.
At least once, she came dangerously close to propositioning House despite her doubts. But in the end, she eschewed both members of the Dynamic Duo and chose an anonymous donor, this time checking with a genetics counselor at the fertility clinic instead of running the file by House.
The day after House was discharged on sick leave following his shooting and surgery, she showed up for her insemination, feeling even more monstrously alone than she had at the closing of the purchase of her own home. She envied the couples that crowded the waiting room despite the aura of anxiety, the strained smiles, the silent wincing at well-meaning gestures of comfort.
When it was her turn, she lay back on cool vinyl covered with a translucent sheet of sanitary paper and marveled at how different this was from most women's dreams of conceiving within the safety of strong, loving arms. To ease the passage of the catheter, she imagined House's hands cupping her heels instead of the shiny steel stirrups, his voice an arousing growl in her ear. Afterwards she held absolutely still for the recommended fifteen minutes, visualizing the thawed sperm swarming up her fallopian tubes, blindly questing for their destination. She thought she could actually feel the shock of penetration, of binding and engulfment, followed quickly by nuclear union and the start of the dazzling dance of development, and had to laugh a little at herself.
Three weeks later, she swerved from self-deprecating smirks to furtive tears of joy.
It was easy enough to keep it from everyone at first, especially since for two months House cast nary a shadow on the steps of the hospital, while his erstwhile team twiddled their thumbs. But shortly after returning to work, House had noticed. Even as the aftereffects of the ketamine treatment were wearing off and he was starting his slow swan dive into drug abuse and self-destructive depression, he commented crudely on the firmness of her breasts, later leered at the barely visible convexity of her yoga-toned abdomen.
Under duress, she confessed to her lie about Richard's recovery on cortisol, but she kept her second secret to herself. She was not simply protecting herself from House, from the awkward interrogations, the possible disappointment in his eyes. Generations of superstitious Jewish foremothers applauded her decision to keep quiet about her good fortune until it announced its own presence.
Her fears had been realized less than four days later when sudden cramps drove her into the bathroom and she slumped, weeping, while rubies cascaded into the water.
The next morning, she allowed House to believe that her husky voice and reddened eyes marked the unexpected passing of Ezra Powell. Apparently it worked, because when his obnoxious antics in the clinic got him summoned to her office two weeks later, he rooted through her trash for evidence of morning sickness and diagnosed a first trimester ass. Yet again, and for once sincerely, she denied being pregnant. "You are not always right, House," she added for good measure.
House reminded her of her father, always so certain that he was right. Even if you had the temerity to point out that yesterday he'd believed something completely different, he had absolute confidence that he'd been right before, given the information that he had had then, and he was right now, even if the next hour might alter his views completely.
The thing was, it wouldn't be half so aggravating if he didn't turn out to be right so much of the time.
With that in mind, she went home to pee on one more probe, hoping against hope that House really had seen something she hadn't. Two minutes had never lasted so long. Crouched by the toilet, yet another negative test trembling in her hand, she felt something twist deep inside her. She wrapped the stick in a tissue and tossed it in the trash, then sat sideways on the floor, her thigh pressing against the cold tile.
She woke the next day in bed with her work clothes still on and no memory of how she'd gotten there.
After that, she decided to take a break. She knew the statistics all too well, and logically, one miscarriage should not have discouraged her from resuming the fertility treatments once she recovered, even at her age. But self-doubt had taken root in her breast like a stubborn seed, swelling powerfully against her heart. Although she did not believe in God, or mystical messages from the universe, she had made unnatural demands of her body, and it had rejected them. Perhaps it was too little, too late. Perhaps she deserved to fail for once.
***
Chapter 2: The Success of Her Dealings
"Why are we still together?"
Like so many idealistic little girls, she had gone through a brief phase of wanting to become a nun, secular Judaism notwithstanding. She hadn't realized that pursuing her career ambitions would entail the same demands of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Now that she had climbed to the top of the ladder, she had escaped the second and, to some extent, the third, but the first was as heavy a cross to bear as ever.
She'd tried every online dating service imaginable: Match, Chemistry, eHarmony, OK Cupid. But even J-date, suggested in whispers by more than one of her aunts, had failed her. Oh, she received matches, was bombarded with a flurry of messages every time she posted her profile, even managed to make it far enough to face a tense stranger across a table multiple times.
But there was never any second date. House, in his juvenile jealousy or impeccably poor timing, had seen to this in some cases. However, the decision usually had nothing to do with him, at least not directly. A couple of men had actually been forthright enough to confront her courteously at the end of dinner, saying that they just hadn't gotten the impression that she was all that interested in them. And she'd shaken herself, startled, realizing that she'd been half-asleep even while thinking that the evening had been going rather well. Nice enough guys, most of them, decent-looking and reasonably bright. The trouble was that nice, decent, and reasonable were proving not to be the primary characteristics that kept her attention.
She had once asked her mother why she had decided to marry her father. Her mother had looked away, then back, and said simply, "I knew that I would never be bored." When Lisa had related this to various friends, they had almost unanimously responded that there were worse things than being bored (Stacy being the notable exception). But she had never been able to bring herself to agree; she honestly couldn't think of anything sadder than realizing that your spouse was going to be stuck pretending not to be bored by you for the rest of your lives together.
Greg House was many things, but he was never boring.
What with one thing and another, she weathered five long years of drought, the closest thing to a kiss taking place on the filthy floor of a bus after House crumpled in physostigmine-induced cardiac arrest. One hand tilting his head back, she counted and breathed into his mouth, the bristly stubble burning her lips. Every few seconds his whole body jerked from the force of Wilson's fist pounding on his otherwise stone-still chest. In retrospect, she wouldn't be certain exactly how they had arrived at that particular distribution of labor after House collapsed, but in the moment, she had no other thought but breathe you bastard, breathe. She was sure her own heart would stop from sheer terror before he finally gasped for breath, blue eyes blinking open, blank with unwanted revelation.
She had already stayed one night on the chaise lounge in House's apartment to keep him from limping for the border with a herniated brain, and after he acceded to the request that couldn't save Amber and suffered a DBS-induced seizure, she spent another watching over him in the ICU. She dozed fitfully, curled in a chair, or slumped at his bedside, clasping his bruised hand to her heart. Every time she was jolted into anxious consciousness, her gaze jumped to his pallid face, his shuttered eyes, measured the rise and fall of his labored breaths.
When he woke, he looked right past her in search of Wilson.
Anyway, given that track record, she had eventually decided that open adoption might be the best way to go. It wasn't likely to be a short way - even the stable, successful couples she knew had waited a couple of years, with numerous (and expensive) false alarms, before bringing a baby home, and not many mothers-to-be were going to look twice at a single woman. But Becca had seen too many women in her family dragged down by the men in her lives and didn't want her daughter to be raised by a loser.
House was even more of an ass than usual the day she arranged to meet the birth mother and ended up admitting her to the hospital. Stunts like spilling "baby barf" on her shoulder and breaking her office lamp weren't half so obnoxious as the crap that came out of his mouth about her unsuitability for motherhood. The worst was when she was tying herself into knots to appease her conscience and he nastily informed her that trying to do the right thing by Becca just meant that some part of her didn't want this baby.
She advised Becca to wait a week or two, to give her daughter's lungs time to develop, but the girl didn't want to make any more sacrifices for a baby that wasn't hers to keep. In the OR, Lisa clenched her fists hard enough to draw blood, waiting for the first wail that would signal some hope of success. She could have beaten House to death with his own cane when he poked his head into the surgical suite to demand her administrative services in the middle of the C-section. His case would have waited; he just didn't want her to be here.
Although, in the end, it probably would have been much, much, easier if she hadn't been.
She didn't know how long she'd been in the nursery, leaning against the wall she'd painted a fertile, nurturing green, when House's knock roused her from her stupor. Lisa let him in, even though she was certain that he'd come to gloat, but his actual words were much worse. Other babies in the sea... but she was just quitting, again... and it was too bad, because she would have been a great mother.
And the anger she'd felt towards him earlier in the day was dwarfed by the rage that gripped her now. How dare that son of a bitch jerk her around like this? Who did he think he was, fueling her self-doubt right up until the moment that the decision was taken out of her hands, then turning around to damn her with praise once it was too late? "Why do you need to negate everything?" she demanded, getting up into his face, her fingers itching to wrap themselves around his fucking throat.
"I don't know," House whispered, those three little words shocking in their rarity. They stared at each other. He loomed over Lisa, but with the sad, scared look of a lost little boy. Then he lurched forward and covered her mouth with his. Her hands flew up of their own accord, but instead of striking or strangling him, they clutched convulsively at the tender skin above his collar, helping to hold her up as she rose on tiptoe to meet him.
There was nothing remotely arousing or romantic about this kiss; House's lips were stiff and awkward, and he tasted like remorse and desperation. It occurred to her that for once, he didn't have a plan; wit and words had failed him, and he was simply reacting instinctively, like a toddler who'd accidentally blacked his mother's eye with a stray fist and hoped that he could kiss it and make it better. He was only sticking his tongue in her mouth because he had no idea what the hell else to do.
And yet, her traitorous body responded, crushing her against the leather of his motorcycle jacket that stank of stale sweat, loosening her thighs, starting the flow of secretions that would ease his entry if he stayed. She felt like she was drowning, struggling just under the surface, but on the verge of breaking through onto a new and terrifying shore.
When he stopped and pulled back almost imperceptibly, it tore the breath from her lungs and left her stranded, staring up at him in stunned disbelief. His flushed face had clamped closed, pale eyes unreadable.
"Good night," he muttered, and fled as fast as his crippled leg would carry him.
***
They needed to talk about this, but after spending more than two years acting like a lovestruck schoolboy, House had, to all appearances at least, abruptly lost all interest in pursuing her. To her knowledge, he had not returned after that evening, although a couple of times the sound of a motorcycle on the street caused her to tense up and busy herself in another part of the house. She was perfectly willing to chalk up their kiss to an attempt at comfort in an emotional moment, but either he wasn't satisfied with that explanation or it scared him more than he wanted to admit. Either way, it made working with him incredibly awkward.
Perhaps out of a perverse desire to force the issue, Lisa took advantage of her office being renovated after the hostage crisis by commandeering House's. She figured that he could hardly continue to avoid her if they were sharing the same room. Plus it had the added bonus of allowing her to play with his balls and taunt him about it afterwards.
When Wilson warned her that sitting near House and hoping wasn't going to get it done, she decided that an escalation was in order. The hellish stink of hydrogen sulfide should get his attention. She also had all of his office furniture removed and wore one of her most alluring ensembles the following morning.
It worked. House rose to the bait and accused her of denying his requests, not for medical reasons, but because she had the hots for him. She countered that he was still there because he had the hots for her.
"Evidenced by the fact that I'm the one who moved into your office," he riposted.
"It's the biggest office, and I'm the one who's-"
"Why are you dressed like that?" he interrupted. "Why do you try so hard to get my attention?" When she didn't answer immediately, he moved forward to invade her space, blue eyes glinting with suspicion. "Are you screwing with me?"
Seeing her opening, she stepped closer too, with a provocative smile. "Are you screwing with me?"
"Depends on your answer."
"Everybody knows this is going somewhere," she said softly. House's eyes darted from side to side, looking less aroused than perturbed, but he didn't pull away, so she pushed harder. "I think we're supposed to kiss now."
He gave a quick shake of his head, whether in negation or in an attempt to clear it, she wasn't sure. "We already did that." Then, his face an unreadable mask, he reached out and placed his hand, crudely and deliberately, on her breast. Unapologetic in the face of her obvious annoyance, he shrugged, "It seemed like the logical next step."
"Really," she responded in disgust. "I'm an idiot for being surprised." She started to stalk away, but the son of a bitch refused to relinquish his hold on her.
"Can you leave these?" It was the last straw. She turned to give him one look full of wounded dignity and disappointment, and his hand dropped to his side.
Entering her own office later with Wilson, she declared bitterly, "House is an unemotional child, incapable of intimacy or romance. Trust me, it's done." Then the perfection of the redone room took her breath away and crowded out all thoughts of House.
She didn't even notice the desk until Wilson pointed out how much character it had. It wasn't the one she had ordered, but her own old desk from med school, and she hadn't told her mother about the renovations. Then she realized who was responsible, and felt a big, rueful smile break out on her face.
She dropped by House's office, spirits soaring, to thank him for the surprisingly sweet gesture, but stopped short when she saw that he was overtly flirting with a patent prostitute. This final blow to her ego and insult to her authority was too much to bear. As she slunk away to lick her wounds, she was certain that anything they might once have been to each other, any hope of a future together, was finally over.
***
After the first failed adoption, she had meant it when she told House that she was done, that she couldn't stand to go through that again - the experience of watching a sweet young woman take hold of the thing with feathers and pitilessly wring its neck right in front of her. But as the weeks went by, the pain faded enough to be eclipsed by the memories of cradling the newborn baby in her inexperienced arms, of holding those fragile fingers in hers. She found herself drawn irresistibly to pedes patients - a four year old with an iron overdose, an emancipated incest victim - most of all, to the overweight girl who reminded her of her own awkward teenage years of waiting for her baby fat to melt away, her hair to unfrizz, and the rest of her face to catch up with her nose.
She didn't know what instinct carried her into the condemned building in search of Natalie's abandoned baby; perhaps she was still riding the wave of self-confidence that had surged in her with the eclampsia epiphany. After picking her way gingerly through the litter and rubble, she found herself stepping into a squatter's den. The spoons and needles littering the coffee table told her all that she needed to know. Her voice was quiet but authoritative when she told the ragged woman who had saved the infant's life, "Now you have to let her go."
House found her later in the ICU, gazing down at the tiny girl whose teenage mother was dying of multiple organ failure and whose grandparents wanted nothing to do with her. The joy that suffused Lisa at finally getting what she wanted left no room for tears over the terrible tragedy that had resulted in this incredible gift. She had already spoken to her lawyer; she would become a foster parent, and if all went well, she would adopt. She thought she heard House wish her a merry Christmas. She didn't hear him leave.
***
Chapter 3: Her Children Rise Up and Praise Her
"It's a decision that changes everything."
At the dogmatic age of ten, Lisa had declared that she would never get married or have children because husbands and babies just messed everything up. The next couple of decades did little to change that opinion, particularly as one classmate after another dropped out of school to deal with unexpected pregnancies. But in her early thirties, as her married friends settled down and started families, she had begun to waver between wanting kids and not. Then the proverbial biological clock blew her brains inside out like an estrogen IED, and suddenly every chubby-cheeked cherub she encountered made her nipples ache with longing.
Now that she finally had one of her own, she was starting to think that she'd had it right the first time. Suddenly she found herself assuming complete responsibility for this alien being for whom crying appeared to be the sole mode of communication.
She had gotten everything she wanted. She should be thrilled. In fact, once the initial excitement and novelty wore off, she was so strung out and demoralized that she often felt nothing at all.
Even with a housecleaner and a nanny to help, her once-pristine house constantly looked like the entire contents of the Natural Baby catalog had exploded all over it. Lack of sleep, the sporadic, often seemingly inconsolable screaming; the stress of remaining in a perpetual state of alert, had her so keyed up and muzzy-minded that she was surprised that she hadn't been caught wearing mismatched shoes or putting the baby in the oven and the brisket in the bassinette.
House was no help at all, not that she had expected him to be. The only time he set foot in her home was when he needed her approval for yet another dangerous or marginally legal procedure, and she refused to haul Rachel along just to rein him in face to face. She couldn't help noticing that his personal hygiene levels had sunk to new lows. Not that she was exactly excelling in that department these days herself.
In contrast, Wilson couldn't seem to stay away. She should have known that allowing him to glimpse her guilt and desperation had been a mistake. Every time he visited her and Rachel at home, she found herself wondering whether this would be the day when he took her in his arms and offered to move in. It was just lucky that her hormone levels were so depressed from exhaustion that she felt no temptation whatsoever to open up the opportunity for him.
Most difficult for the woman who'd always graduated at or near the top of her class was the constant niggling conviction of failure. She had been so sure that she could do this, that a combination of caring, money, and carefully honed time management skills would allow an almost seamless integration of her personal and professional life. Instead, she found herself stuffing dirty diapers into expensive attach cases and damned near dozing off during the weekly meetings with her department heads to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."
Perhaps if she had remained close enough friends with any professional couples with children to get realistic glimpses into their daily lives, she would have known better.
Although she couldn't help feeling like the fact that she'd spent the past few weeks juggling one unmanageable child at home and a much larger and more ornery one at work might have had a lot to do with it, too.
When Kutner called to tell her that House was removing a patients skull so he could monitor nerve conduction in her exposed brain, Rachel was already wailing, her face flushed and scrunched up like a cranky old drunk's. Lisa could barely hear her colleagues, although she caught Cameron's voice saying something snide about not needing her as much as the baby did. Not for the first time, Lisa wondered why human infants had evolved the ability to make a noise that didn't just attract attention but actually worked on the nerves of the nearest adults to the point where they would do anything to make it stop, up to (and occasionally including) throwing them against the wall.
She finally had to give up on the conversation with her colleagues and focus completely on Rachel, feeling as if the raw surface of her own brain was being pierced by her screams. "I need you to be quiet! I don't know what you want! I will give you anything that you want, I just don't know what it is! Tell me, please, just help me, please!" Rachel stopped at last, looking up at her with a gassy grin. "Really? That worked!" She laughed through her tears, finally feeling the connection that she had known they needed.
Later that evening Lisa took Rachel to visit House in his office and crow over her victory. "I talked to her. We connected!"
Color House unimpressed, but Lisa was too relieved to let it bother her. "You want to hold her?" she offered. She knew from parents' anecdotes as well as her own observations in the clinic that despite his display of reluctance, House was excellent with small children. As expected, Rachel regarded him solemnly and didn't cry. But she did spit up on him.
House complained that if he threw up on her, she'd be pissed. Lisa generously refrained from mentioning that he had in fact thrown up on her before, and far from holding it against him, she had given him CPR and spent the night at his bedside. She knew that the grumbles held no real rancor, only the petty jealousy of an only child suddenly forced to cede attention to a younger sibling.
Cameron came to her at the end of the day to say that she was quitting. She explained that she would always say yes to House, and anyone else would always say no. He needed Lisa to look after him - and no one else would do.
***
She was losing her mind, actually approaching bat-shit insane. It was the only possible explanation for why she had tried to put Cameron in charge of House-sitting, hoping that the younger woman's intimate knowledge of his habits combined with her newfound manipulative streak could carry the day, and now found herself pulling pranks on him that had James Fucking Wilson telling her that she had to dial it down.
Inexplicably, House hadn't retaliated for the out-of-service elevators, the tripwire, the theft of his cane. He'd appeared in her office with an olive branch, and she'd responded by cutting off his heat and power during a New Jersey winter. She would not be ignored. He wouldn't just suffer, he would be seen to suffer, by her, by everyone. For the first time, she understood the saying "misery loves company" all too well. Great, that was another thing the two of them had in common.
When Wilson left her in the clinic, she went back to her office, drew the blinds, and wept. She was deeply ashamed, barely recognizing this sadistic stranger inhabiting her skin. Wilson was right; what House did was who he was. And the same went for her.
She was waiting when House returned to his office at the end of the day, his cane in her hand. "I found this. In the, uh, coat closet. Where I hid it."
He accepted "little, little Greg" and sat down next to her, close enough that their shoulders brushed together. But when she tried to apologize, he turned right back into a grade-A ass and accused her of riding the crimson wave as well as of being only slightly crappier at her job with a kid than without. And yet... somehow she knew that this was an act. That they were, at least for now, all right.
As the elevator doors closed, she felt a huge smile of relief spread over her face.
The following day, she started therapy and anti-depressants and hired a relief pitcher, a community college student who lived at the end of her block. When Wilson told you to stop being a martyr, it was definitely time to admit that you needed help.
***
Chapter 4: Sturdy Are Her Arms
"Good morning, sunshine!"
She honestly hadn't seen this train wreck coming. Kutner's death was a big deal, an upsetting shock for everyone, but she hadn't realized how much it had affected House. When he had turned up in her office that night, looking as serious and lost as she'd ever seen him, she thought that he was just jerking her chain, threatening to quit so that she would give him another week of personal days or a special telephone account to use for a hooker hotline or something. She knew that she was running late to relieve the nanny, and she didn't have time for this shit. She especially didn't have time for his vicious crack about the little bastard child who made her feel good about herself.
She'd returned to work the next day somberly suited, determined to put him in his place. His filming her in her office was a little weird, but compared to some behaviors, nothing to get too worked up about. Their pissing contest about his clinic hours was just par for the course. The stool sample delivery in front of some of her biggest donors and the pirate stripper had her wondering a little. Was this what an apology from House looked like? If so, next time she'd forego the honor.
Then the real terrorist attack came as a blithe announcement from the balcony, and she quite literally went blind with rage.
She wondered that her shaking legs could even carry her along the corridor after him as tears ran down her face. Why not scream at him? The son of a bitch had left her no dignity to lose. And his response to her fury over his incredibly public insinuations about their sex life? "I was wondering if we should move in together."
She was so taken aback that she could only laugh, a painful, ugly sound to her own ears, while he smiled smugly back at her.
"You're fired," she said finally. She managed to keep upright until the elevator doors closed behind her.
***
She was sitting on her sofa with the last sodden tissue wilted in her hand when he entered her office and asked some ridiculous random question about whether she had two lipsticks in the same shade. "How could that possibly be relevant to anything?"
He looked honestly puzzled, even a little hurt. There was no twinkle of malice in his eye, no jeering edge to his voice, as he asked, "You really don't think you're just... overreacting to the other night?"
"Fine," she said, getting to her feet. "I am overreacting. You've said plenty of lousy things to me before. But reaching the final straw has been a good thing." She took refuge behind her desk, wishing that it didn't remind her that there was actually a spark of sweetness deep down under all that assholery. "It made me realize that we not only don't have a personal relationship... we never could."
House frowned, blinked, shook his head a little as if to clear it. Stammered, "You... you've been overreacting... to something I said?"
She shrugged, still not understanding. "You insulted me... I walked out." She allowed just a little of the bitterness to bleed into her voice as she added, "It's nothing that hasn't happened a hundred times before."
He stared at her, then through her. He swiveled to face the door, turned back to her, scrunched bewildered blue eyes shut. "No, no," he said softly but urgently. "That's not what happened." He took an entreating step forward. "I told you that I needed you. You helped me!"
That was when it finally dawned on her that something was very, very wrong.
"Are you okay?" House reached into his jacket pocket, slowly opened his fist. As the vial of Vicodin plummeted to the rug, he stumbled backward as if it were a scorpion. She was already rounding the desk, reaching for him. "Are you okay?"
He closed his eyes for a long moment, clammy under her hand, then looked at her and said with a simplicity that squeezed her heart, "No. I'm not okay."
Suddenly she had an almost visceral sensation of everything clicking into place. His office. The balcony. The hallway. House was hallucinating. He truly thought that they had... oh, God. She wrapped her arms around him as if this could still prevent him from shattering into pieces. He stood absolutely still, rigidly upright, staring over her shoulder with terror in his eyes. At last he uttered one imploring word: "Wilson."
Some women might have called security at that point; Lisa only took House by the hand. Never for a second did she fear that he would lash out at her, and she had to get him help, get him out of here, get him to Wilson.
Wilson would know what to do.
More than anything else, his unprecedented lack of resistance almost broke her. They shambled through the late afternoon light to the elevator together, and he leaned into her hopelessly as she punched at the buttons.
They paused once along the way so that he could stumble into the men's room to puke up a couple of pills into the sink. House stared down into the swirling water with an expression of exhausted disbelief. She had to cup her hand under the tap, rub it over his lips, tear off a piece of paper towel to dab them dry.
When she opened his office door, Wilson raised his head with an alacrity that told her he'd been waiting - waiting for this, or something like this, to happen. For a second, she could have killed him for keeping her in the dark, just snatched up the shiny steel letter opener lying on his desk and carved into his carotid. But there would be time enough for recriminations after. After.
Her mind refused to move beyond that after as she retreated alone to her office and put her aching head down on the desk.
***
Author's Note: Ever since I read "A Thing with Feathers" by blackmare, House has stopped to puke on his way to Wilson's office. It's just how it is.
***
Chapter 5: Entrusting His Heart to Her
"I need someone I can count on every day."
Lisa and her father had had an ugly fight when she was last home for the holidays. She'd made the mistake of bemoaning her solitary life, and he had told her that she was still alone because she had wasted so much time pining after the wrong men instead of embracing what was right in front of her. "You like a challenge, Lisa," he'd said. "It's taken you a long way in your profession, and I'm proud of you for that. But it's no way to find a good relationship."
In retrospect, that might have been partly why she agreed to go out with Lucas despite the decided creepiness of their initial encounters. He was available, he was obviously interested, and he could express his admiration in public without causing her to glance nervously over her shoulder in case a colleague or potential donor might be coming around a corner. Plus, and it was a huge plus, he was good with Rachel, easy-going and endearingly goofy when warranted.
She tried not to think about the fact that the months of House being unreachable in rehab might have had something to do with it too.
***
She'd only accepted the offer of a ride from Wilson because he'd assured her that House had thrown a temper tantrum about the conference and was refusing to come along. Thus, she was not pleased to encounter House opening the car door for her, although at least she had Rachel with her to serve as a tiny human shield. As she knew all too well herself, infants could make astonishingly effective anti-aphrodisiacs, especially when loudly making their displeasure known on long car trips.
House found her doing her best imitation of Alex Owens at the 80s party, and she was somehow not surprised to see that he had chosen to go with the Alexander Hamilton look. It would have been really rude to decline his offer of a dance, particularly after he ran off a moron who mistook her for Jane Fonda, but she didn't at all intend to find herself snuggled up against him for a slow song. God, it had been so long, and of course there was the leg, yet they moved together so naturally that she allowed herself to indulge in nostalgia for a few minutes... right up until he told her that only his expulsion from med school had made their first date a one night stand. Suddenly she realized what had really brought House to this conference, and what a compromising situation she had unwittingly created. She cursed herself silently for willful obliviousness and escaped to her room.
The next morning, Wilson approached her to inquire oh-so-subtly about what had happened at the party. She assured him that House had been nothing but sweet, and admitted (both to him and to herself) that she could see that he really was trying to turn over a new leaf since getting out of rehab. But she was a mother now, and she needed someone whom she could count on every day. That person had never been House.
He found out about Lucas, of course, and the fact that she had concealed the relationship from him made the whole thing ten times as awkward. During the morning break, she somehow found herself in a cozy foursome chatting over coffee. She tried to deny that she had kept her secret to protect House in his fragile state, but Lucas blithely ratted her out with seeming innocence. Horrifyingly, he even managed to reveal that he knew of House's hallucinations about her, in the context of assuring the other man that it was no big deal. Lisa knew better, and experienced the all-too-familiar feeling of wishing the ground would open up and swallow her from sight, although for once House was not the direct cause.
At least she didn't have to forgive herself for any perverse satisfaction at this evidence of her power. In her torturous teenage years, her mother's kinder friends assured her that she might not believe it yet, but she would eventually blossom into a real heartbreaker. She hadn't understood at the time why that was something to which a girl should aspire, and she still didn't.
***
Inviting House to join them for Thanksgiving at her sister's had been Lucas' idea. Lisa still felt occasional twinges of guilt for her behavior towards House in the early weeks of Rachel and opposed the plan at first, but given the persistence with which he was wangling for an invitation, she finally decided that Lucas was right, and the only way to ensure that House didn't turn up on her own doorstep and cause a major scene would be to send him someplace else. It also had to be a plausible alternative since House would certainly do some investigating before setting out. With Julia in Hawaii for the week, there was a ready solution at hand.
Their dinner was delicious and thankfully House-free, but she couldn't help feeling like she'd done something shameful akin to tripping an old lady crossing the street. The six hour round trip would be hell on House's leg, never mind any disappointment he would experience upon the discovery of her deception. Lucas told her not to worry, that the son of a bitch had just been plotting to put pressure on their relationship, and they'd beaten him at his own game. When he discovered via surveillance that House had turned up at his own home and was waiting for him there, Lucas practically rubbed his hands in anticipation.
Lucas returned late that night, wrapped himself around her, and nuzzled her ear until she roused. He gleefully related his conversation with House, who had obviously been pretending to be in vino veritas so as to let slip his undying declaration of love for Lisa, trigger a jealous confrontation, and break the two of them up. Their next move was to convince him that it had worked.
Lisa had some serious reservations, but agreed to stop by the next morning and tell House that she had been dumped but that he still didn't have a chance in hell with her. House looked appropriately pathetic when he opened the door, wincing against his faux hangover and sounding convincingly contrite about his drunken outburst last night. For a second she doubted Lucas' convictions, not to mention her own ability to pull this performance off, but she managed to keep in character and deliver her lines with a fair degree of credibility.
The next time she saw House, he was sporting a fresh shiner courtesy of Chase, whose behavior had been alarmingly erratic ever since Cameron's departure. Lisa wondered whether she was about to lose yet another employee to a major breakdown, but all House seemed concerned about was asking her out now that she was supposedly available again.
She didn't have to fake her feelings when she told him that this just wasn't fun anymore.
***
When Lucas suggested that they move in together, Lisa could have approached half a dozen realtors about a new property, but she knew that using Bonnie would practically guarantee a hotline to House - and if that didn't work, it would give her an excuse to mention the development directly to Wilson. What she hadn't anticipated was that they would use their insider information to buy the condo she had her eye on right out from under her. She wasn't particularly bitter about it - in a way, she considered it karma - and she even attempted to conceal it from Lucas, figuring that he really didn't need any additional ammunition in his rivalry with House.
When she was called into the Diagnostics conference room one day to hear House's histrionic imitation of Clouseau (or perhaps Poirot, it was impossible to tell), she realized at once that Lucas had had both motive and opportunity to place the possum and rig the sprinkler system in Wilson's condo. He denied it that night, but she knew better; despite his trusting face, he was a master manipulator on the same scale as House and Wilson. And herself. He also hadn't pranked them in retaliation on her behalf, but rather taken advantage of the excuse to demonstrate his superiority over his opponent. It was the 21st century manchild equivalent of dueling for her hand, which she supposed was sweet, in an extremely immature kind of way. Still, no one had been seriously hurt, and House in particular seemed to harbor no hard feelings, so she persuaded herself to let it go.
***
Three months later, Lucas proposed. She tried not to see it as settling, telling herself that nobody was a perfect fit and every relationship entailed charitableness and compromise. Accepting the offer of a loving, stable man and a second parent for her daughter was surely the adult thing to do.
***
Author's Note: Any insights into Lucas Douglas were doubtless inspired by the recent works of readingrat, particularly "Pyrrhic Victory."
***
Chapter 6: Laughing at the Days to Come
"You think I can fix myself?"
House walked into her office, already in his motorcycle jacket, as she was pulling her scrubs over her head. She started telling him about the disaster in downtown Trenton, but he simply interrupted, "Don't care," and handed her a bulky manila envelope. The copy of the book by her great-grandfather was in excellent condition, the gilt letters bright, the leather hardly worn. He had written carefully on the creamy blankness of the first page, "To Lisa and Lucas. Here's to a new chapter. Best, Greg." She blanched, wondering how he could possibly have learned about the engagement so soon.
"I've known for a while. The fact that you've decided to co-habitate is not exactly a spoiler." Co-habitate? Oh, thank God. He didn't know. Yet. "Unless my intel's wrong." She turned her back to hide the relief on her face as much as so that he could help her with her haz mat suit, then pulled her hair up and tied it back out of the way. "Trouble in paradise?" he queried, clearly trying not to sound too hopeful.
She fled to Trenton.
***
What with the sirens, shouts, and helicopters hovering overhead, she didn't notice House's arrival at the scene until he was close enough to touch her. Trying to disguise her involuntary attempt to jump out of her own skin, she turned away and quickly wove her way through the crowd, hoping that he'd get the hint and put himself to good use someplace - someplace very far away from her.
He caught up to her eventually, of course, but he seemed content to triage nearby, effortlessly integrating a dozen subtle signs into decisions of life or death in a matter of seconds. He was especially interested in the operator of the crane, who apparently had been far too hopped up on caffeine to fall asleep at the wheel. House wanted to take him back to PPTH for neurological evaluation. Lisa overheard and yelled indignantly that she needed him here, wishing like hell that it weren't the case.
***
Later on, House called her over to a largely demolished building, am empty soda can crushed in his hand. He insisted that he'd heard something - that someone had been trapped underneath the rubble. But the EMTs dismissed his suspicions and dispersed, and she went with them, seeking safety in numbers.
***
She didn't see House for a while after that, but when he reappeared, causing her to jump guiltily again, he opened with, "So I hope I didn't weird you out, giving you that gift." She tried to put him off, to forestall upsetting explanations for just a little longer, but he was exhibiting his usual obstinacy of a bloodhound on the scent. When she finally bit the bullet and informed him that she had thought the book was, not a housewarming gift, but an engagement present, he was stunned, speechless. Eventually he recovered enough to start speculating on why she had been hiding this from him, and she tried hard to assure him that there had been a perfectly reasonable explanation.
There was no telling what he would have said next if an EMT hadn't interrupted to take them down to visit the victim that House had stumbled upon under the rubble. She followed the two men through the bowels of the building on her hands and knees, acutely grateful that she had never been claustrophobic. The EMT explained that they couldn't free the leg; it was time to discuss amputation. Hannah protested, sounding terrified, and House, predictably, backed her up.
Lisa made the call. "Captain. He's a jerk. That's what the patient wants. Can we please just give it a couple more hours?"
***
One of the EMTs came to fetch her from the middle of a procedure, saying that the trapped patient was having a panic attack and "the old grouch" was nowhere to be found. She caught House mounting his motorcycle and told him that he had to stay for Hannah's sake. That, for whatever reason, he was the one she wanted.
"I'm flattered," he said sarcastically.
"You have to go back. She needs you, House."
***
House dragged himself back out after a secondary collapse cut his nose, bruised his cheekbone, and nicked a subclavicular vein. She was waiting for him to emerge, first aid kit at the ready, and gave him a thorough once-over before allowing him to sit and have his wounds attended to. While she was putting the finishing touches on his bandage, his phone rang and he talked to his team for a minute, Lisa only half-listening.
As he hung up, the EMT arrived bearing bad news. Lisa told House that it was time to get Hannah out of there, even if it meant losing the leg. House would have none of it and began babbling about potassium levels and unregulated administration of glucose and insulin.
"That is insane!" she found herself shouting. "It's not worth it."
"Really?" House barked. "'Cause I think I'm the only one here who knows what a leg is worth. Fortunately, you're not the one who's in charge, he is. He knows that I'd testify against him if Hannah sues for cutting off her leg without exhausting every option."
He was impossible. She walked around him and leaned in to tell the EMT, "Give us a minute," then turned back to House. "I know you're angry," she said, "but please, don't put her life at risk just to get back at me."
House grinned ferociously. "Really? Wow." He rose to loom over her, as if he thought he could use his height and bulk to intimidate her after all the years they'd know each other. "So this is all about you, now."
"You took her side against me right after you heard about my engagement," she reminded him.
"Yeah. That must be it. It's not that you're a pathetic narcissist." He spoke savagely, but his face was an open wound. Lisa abruptly realized that she couldn't keep putting bandaids on him forever when a clean break was the only reasonable remedy.
"I don't" -she steeled herself for the lie- "love you." House looked away, shutting down, shutting her out. "So just accept it, and move on with your life instead of making everyone miserable."
"That's great," he gibed. "A life lesson from a middle-aged single mom who's dating a man child."
The helicopters couldn't compare to the rush of her blood in her ears. "Screw you," she growled, wishing that she had a more original retort ready. "I'm sick of making excuses for you. I'm sick of other people having to tiptoe around you and make their own lives worse while they try to keep you from collapsing." She took a deep breath. "I'm done." She turned, trembling, and began walking away.
"Fantastic," he called after her. "Just stay away from my patient." There he went again, waving a red cape before the bull. Unable to resist, she spun around and marched back.
"What are you clinging to, House? You're going to risk her life just to save her leg? It really worked out well for you, didn't it?" The betrayed expression on his face only spurred her on to uglier depths. "What do you have in your life, honestly, tell me? I'm moving on. Wilson is moving on. And you?" He just stood there silently and took it as she finished brutally, "You've got nothing, House. Nothing."
She closed her eyes briefly, already hating herself as the rage cooled, but far too stubborn to cop to it. "I'm going down there, and I'm going to convince her to let us cut her leg off. If you have any decency left, you'll stay out if it."
***
Hannah was still dead set against the amputation, insisting that Doctor House had promised that she could keep her leg. Lisa turned her head as the sounds of shifting rubble announced the arrival of someone else in the narrow passage, and when she realized who it must be, she groaned.
"Doctor House. Tell her," the patient pleaded.
House crawled along the dusty ground until he reached Lisa's side, breathing heavily. He must have been in pain, but he was completely focused on the matter at hand. "Hannah," he said gently, "we have to amputate your leg." Lisa was so surprised that her head came up involuntarily.
"No. You said... that there was time!"
"There was," he said, still incredibly gentle, "and it's run out."
"No!"
"You asked me... how I hurt my leg." Lisa sucked in air and closed her eyes in distress as he continued, "I had a blood clot, and the muscle was dying. I had all these doctors telling me I should amputate, and I said no. They did this very risky operation. I almost died."
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut in denial, shaking her head. "B-b-but," she stuttered, "you saved your leg."
House paused, then said solemnly, "I wish I hadn't." Lisa swallowed hard, feeling the first tear trickle down her cheek. She'd heard this tale before, once to teach, a number of times to torment. She had never before heard House lay himself bare to save a stranger, but she realized that, knowing him as she did, she should not have been so surprised.
"They cut out this chunk of muscle about the size of my fist, left me with a mutilated, useless thing... I'm in pain... every day. And it changed me. It made me a harder person. A worse person. And now... now I'm alone," he concluded with a wistful simplicity.
"You don't want to be like me." He paused, intent on persuading Hannah no matter how hard it was for him to find the words. "You've got a husband who loves you, friends, you'll start a family. You have a life." Beside him, Lisa struggled not to sob as her cruel words were echoed back to her, his evident sincerity a stab to her heart.
"And this... it's just a leg."
In that moment, Lisa saw him as he truly was, and as he would have been, and as he yet could be. And she knew that she would be willing to do whatever it took, to grapple with all her native tenacity, in order to get him there.
And Hannah gasped, "Okay."
House finally looked over at Lisa, without a trace of embarrassment or resentment, just as if she were a long-standing colleague and a friend - not a traitor, or a source of unceasing pain, or a target of unrequited love. "We've got it," he confided.
***
Lisa wondered whether Jane Austen had felt anything like this as she headed home to break the news to her soon-to-be-former fianc. Unexpectedly, Lucas didn't resist at all, just retreated from the field. He said he'd always known this might happen - that he'd moved so quickly, pressed his advantage, hoping that her decades of defenses could be conquered by a surprise attack. He even said, wistfully, that he wished them well.
Once she would have felt enormously guilty in the face of such graciousness, maybe even tempted to change her mind: look, what a good guy she was giving up! But House and Wilson between them had managed to teach her to recognize manipulation when she saw it, and it took all of her strength not to scream at Lucas that she wasn't a moron, that she actually would have felt worse if he'd acted mad enough to fight for her. And if her earlier epiphany about House had hit her with the force of a Mac truck, she was doubly shaken to see Lucas clearly of a sudden, his guileless features the perfect disguise for his Machiavellian machinations.
***
House hadn't locked the front door. She found him sitting on the bathroom floor, lame leg splayed out hopelessly in front of him, staring at the tablets cupped in his shaking hand. As she stepped slowly into the room, his head jerked up, with a hungry, haunted expression that she knew all too well. Then he looked down, licked his lips, and taunted her, "You gonna leap across the room and grab them out of my hand?"
"No," she said softly, not making any sudden moves. She felt like she finally understood the secret. He could do this; he could do anything. But it would be his decision, on his terms. All she could do was step back and give him the space in which to make it. "It's your choice if you want to go back on drugs."
He nodded, swallowed. "Okay," he said. "But just so you know, I'm finding it hard to see the downside."
She took a cautious step into the room. "We need to re-bandage your shoulder."
House glanced away, then down. "Is that why you're here? Foreman send you?"
"No," she sighed, thinking that she was going to kill Foreman in the morning for not notifying her that his boss was at the end of his tether.
"You're here to yell at me again?" he guessed.
"No," she repeated.
"Well, I'm running out of ideas."
She struggled to get the words out. "Lucas-"
"Oh, great," he interrupted. "You're feeling uncomfortable again. Probably means that you just got back from some quickie wedding in Vegas, or you're already pregnant-"
"I ended it," she said simply.
His head jerked up again, his eyes wide with shock. "What?"
"I'm stuck, House," she said, torn between laughter and tears. "I keep wanting to move forward, I keep wanting to move on, and I can't. I'm in my new house with my new fianc, and all I can think about is you." She took a deep breath, feeling as if she were standing naked before him. "I just need to know if you and I can work."
House's gaze drifted away, then back. "You think I can fix myself?"
"I don't know," she admitted, because apparently she was absolutely committed to telling the truth today, no matter whom it hurt.
He swallowed, stared at her abjectly. "Because I'm the most screwed-up person in the world."
"I know." And then, "I love you." She gave him a rueful half-smile, thinking that she couldn't have made this moment less romantic if she tried. "I wish I didn't. I can't help it." So much for that theory; yes, she could.
House continued to gaze up at her. She couldn't recognize the expression, not on his face anyway, because she hadn't seen it when she perjured herself to keep his ass out of jail, or when his hand jerked in hers and woke her at his bedside after his DBS-induced seizure, or when she'd escorted him to Wilson's office a year ago after watching him crack up right in front of her. But then she realized that it might simply mean that he wasn't grateful before, merely resentful; that he hadn't wanted to be saved, at least not by her.
And that the fact that she was seeing it now meant that there was suddenly space for hope.
House seemed to have come to a decision. He moved his hands to the floor, tried to brace himself to stand, but grimaced and fell back. Then, almost without hesitation, he held out his hand for her help. She felt the smile spread spontaneously across her face as she stepped forward smoothly to give it.
Upright, he pulled her closer, bent down, then paused, his breath brushing her lips, as if waiting to see whether this was really happening, or giving her a last chance to change her mind. Then he moved a centimeter closer, and their mouths met.
House kissed her gently, gingerly, at first, but tugged lightly at her lower lip as he pulled away. "How do I know I'm not hallucinating?" he asked, only half-joking.
She smiled up at him. "Did you take the Vicodin?"
He reluctantly released her upper arm, turned his palm upwards to reveal the pills. "No."
"Then I think we're okay," she said, meaning so much more than that.
He smiled back, a shy, glad grin that she couldn't recall ever having seen before. "Yeah," he agreed, and the tablets clattered to the tile floor. His empty fingers entwined with hers, sending a shiver of arousal up her spine.
House's bathroom was a minefield of silvered glass shards, and to take him home with her before Lucas had even finished moving his stuff out seemed too much to ask. But she couldn't care that his mouth tasted like grit, or that they were both filthy, streaked with dust and sweat from the evening's exertions. She kept his fingers tangled in hers, tugged him gently into the bedroom and down beside her, sliding against him as the edge of the mattress buckled under his weight.
He took a deep, shamed breath, carefully not looking at her. "Uh... don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure I'm up for this right this minute."
She swallowed a brief swell of disappointment and tightened her grip, leaned her head lightly against his shoulder. "We've waited this long," she said. "I'm not going anywhere."
***
Author's Note: Okay, so maybe I am still in denial. Just a teeny little bit.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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