Fic: My Raggedy Doctor (2/2)
Rachel is twelve years old.
She has decorated her room in shades of black and red, and is on a Beatles kick. She wears bracelets that jingle and colors her Chucks with magic marker and wants to get her ears pierced but her mother keeps telling her to wait until she’s thirteen, which she hates. She loves Doctor Who (Twelve is her favorite). Her grades are decent. She loves to read, and wants to be a writer when she grows up, a profession that her mother disapproves of (“Writers don’t make any money until after they’re dead. And by then it’s too late to enjoy it”). She loves Hemingway and Keats, and is learning to play the piano. She doesn’t know why, but she’s always wanted to learn the piano.
Her mother, she has come to realize, even in all of her tween rebellion, is beautiful and sad. She works hard, has a few friends, stays home at night (to Rachel’s eye-rolling dismay) because she insists on having a family dinner. She is content, but she is not happy.
It’s a Saturday, when the doorbell rings. She bounds down the stairs, taking two at a time, and pulls open the door. Standing at the threshold is an old man. He’s got a long face, grey hair and a cane, and looks at her with surprise and recognition.
“Rachel?” his voice is gravelly, and he is favoring his right side.
“Yeah?” she replies, snapping her gum impatiently.
“Do you remember me?” he asks.
She turns around, hollers down the hallway, “Mom, there’s someone at the door for you!” before bounding into the direction of kitchen, a ball of energy and youth.
“Rachel!” the man repeats, a little louder. There’s vague recognition in his bark, the way he curls his r around the a in her name gives her pause. She can hear her mother’s footsteps echoing down the hallway, moving closer. She turns around, looking into the man’s eyes. For whatever weariness he exudes, his eyes are a stunning blue. A blue that she vaguely…
“House?” Rachel whispers.
Her mother is behind her, then, a solid figure at her back and a cross look on her face, “What are you doing here, House?”
His gaze travels across Rachel’s face, his eyes sorrowful, before moving up to her mother’s, “I, uh… I needed to talk to you.”
“Are you better, House?” Rachel asks before her mother can reply.
He looks at her curiously, then shakes his head, “I don’t think I’ll ever be better. Not completely. But I am… I’m okay.”
She smiles gently, slowly remembering her old friend, “I’m glad. I waited for you to -“
“Rach? Can you give us a minute, please?” her mother interjects, keeping her gaze on House’s face.
Rachel huffs in frustration, trudging up the stairs in a, slow, angry stomp. When she reaches the landing, she peers around the corner and down the stairs, watching her mother.
“What are you doing here, House?” her mother asks again.
He is quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he admits. I got in my car, and it just sort of drove itself up here.”
“How’s you’re, uh…” she gestures toward his leg, and he looks down at it.
He knocks on his right leg lightly, a hollow sound even through his jeans, “Fantastic,” he snarks, “I could run two marathons.”
Her mother ignores his sarcasm, “Does it still hurt?”
“There’s some phantom pain every now and then. Nothing compared to before, though.”
Rachel watches her mother’s back, unmoving, as she stares at the man in the doorway. Her shoulders are stiff, and Rachel recognizes that posture. That’s her “I’m angry and frustrated but keeping it together” posture. Rachel knows it well from all the times she leaves her dishes in the sink or brings home a C in Science class. She hears a sigh, and her mother’s shoulders slump as she invites House inside.
His gait is more balanced than she remembers, though he still favors his right side. When her mother invites him into the living room, Rachel tiptoes down the stairs, watching through the banister rails as House awkwardly sits down on the sofa, holding his leg. Her mother sits next to him, and for a moment, Rachel wonders at how they seem to read each other without speaking. Her mother is the first to break the silence.
“I, uh,” she rubs her left palm with her right thumb as she tries to form the words, “I got your message. Messages, rather. I thought you should know.”
House hangs his head, embarrassed, “I wasn’t sure I’d actually called you. I was kind of - “
“Out of it?”
“Yeah.”
They laugh lightly, then catch themselves.
“I’m sorry I never called you back,” her mother says.
“No, it’s okay. I know you’re busy. Hospitals to run, doctors to boss around, donors to screw,” he replies lightheartedly.
“Still. I could have called,” she admits.
“Yeah, you could have. But I don’t blame you for -“
Rachel, listening intently, brushes her fingers idly through her hair, her bracelets clanging together as they fall down her arm. She doesn’t realize that she’s been caught until House turns to look her in the eye.
He leans forward, close to her mother, and stage-whispers conspiratorially, “We have a spy,”
Her mother turns around, eyeing her daughter’s chagrinned look, “Rachel, I told you to go upstairs.”
Rachel stands up, descending the staircase and taking a seat on the chair opposite the sofa where her mother and House sit. “No,” she says, “I wanna know why he’s here, too.”
“Don’t argue with me -“
“It’s okay, Cuddy,” House puts his hand on her mother’s arm, and Rachel notices her mother’s subtle reaction - like a circuit has been closed, “She can hear this, too.”
Her mother sighs, nodding her agreement while eyeing House warily.
“I’ve had plenty of time to think, y’know? Over the past few years. At the… hospital. In rehab -“
“You were a drug addict?” Rachel asks.
“Yes, for a while,” he answers unapologetically, “but also physical rehabilitation, for my leg.” He knocks on his leg slightly, and the hollow sound is louder. He lifts up the cuff of his jeans and she sees a long medal rod protruding out of his sneaker and up towards his knee. A prosthetic, she recognizes. They talked about them in health class.
“What happened?”
“I had an accident. I hurt some people,” he looks right at her mother, then back at her, “I was in a lot of pain for a long time. And then your mother helped me.”
“Are you still in pain?”
“No, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“And, are you still an addict?”
“Rachel,” he leans forward, “I will always be a drug addict. I haven’t taken a pill in seven years, three months, eight days. But that doesn’t mean I won’t tomorrow.”
“How come?”
He shrugs, “Because I’m a drug addict.”
Rachel doesn’t quite understand, but she lets him continue.
“Anyway, It’s taken me a long time…” he turns to face Cuddy directly, “When the pain is gone - really gone, you get this sense of clarity like you wouldn’t believe. Suddenly life’s not about the pain anymore, it’s not about forgetting it, or deadening it, or lessening it. It’s not about finding relief either, or this elusive desire for constant, impossible happiness. It’s about finding someone who will put up with you. That’s it - that’s the bottom line,” He takes a deep breath, and Rachel notices her mother’s eyes glistening with unshed tears, “And I know I was to blame for not being there for you, for not facing the pain. But I’ve - I understand now. It took a long time, and I made a lot of stupid mistakes, but, Cuddy, it hurts so much more living without you than whatever stupid imagined pain I felt in opening up to you. I’m tired of living without you. It’s been eight years of… I just can’t do it anymore.”
The room is silent for a moment, and Rachel’s eyes scan back and forth, from her mother - the only family she’s ever really known - to her old scallywag friend, and she is unsure of what will happen next. She doesn’t expect her mother to start yelling, but then she rarely does until it happens.
“Where the hell do you get off?” her mother exclaims angrily, her voice thick with emotion, “You did everything in your power to make me hate you. You destroyed my home, my life. You made me walk away for the safety of my child.” she points angrily at her daughter, “I tried, for years, to forget you. Forget how much you meant to me. I convinced myself that I couldn’t love you anymore, that you’d broken every promise you made when you disappeared to Tahiti, or wherever the hell you were.”
“Fiji,” he corrects, his head hanging low. Even from across the room, Rachel can see how much hope he’d held in coming here, and how her mother was breaking his heart all over again.
“Mom, stop,” Rachel exclaims.
“Rachel, stay out of this, “ her mother says pointedly, and it is only then that she realizes how much pain her mother is really in.
“I’ve made my life mean something again, House. I’ve got friends, a life. It took time, but…” her mother sighs, then, in defeat. Her shoulders sag, and she cups her face in her hands, trying to hide the tears as they fall.
“I’m sorry, Cuddy,” House murmurs as he starts to stand, “I should go…”
“No,” her mother’s arm shoots out, grabbing him by the wrist, “Don’t you get it? It didn’t work. None of it worked. I told myself that we would never have lasted anyway. That you could never be there for me like I need you to be. But it didn’t matter.”
“Cuddy…”
She stands to meet him, a soft smile on her face, “I love you. “
“But you wish you didn’t, right?”
Her mother closes her eyes, and Rachel guesses that he’s referencing something she said a long time ago.
“No. I just love you.”
House smiles, and for the first time, Rachel truly recognizes the man she knew as a child. He pulls her mother in close, her mother resting her head on his shoulder. She’s never seen her mother this content, this… happy. That’s what it is. For the first time since she can remember, her mother is actually happy.
Rachel books it upstairs when the kissing starts. She loves her mother but, come on. They’re old. That’s just gross.
-
It takes some time, but it’s worth it. There are nights when she can hear her mother and House yelling at each other from the other end of the building, and nights when it’s so quiet she’s sure they’re doing things in their room that no parent should be allowed to do. They argue a lot, but they are, Rachel suspects, happier than they’ve ever been. Her mother is quick to laugh a lot more. House is as funny as she remembers, but on the rare bad day he can cut her with a single phrase. Rachel hates it, but she loves him. He’s her first friend, and he came back. Why wouldn’t she?
--xx--
Rachel is thirteen years old.
She loves movies, and has a boyfriend named Bryce (House hates his name more than anything) and wears makeup and is about to graduate from 8th grade. She has cut her hair, and painted her room. House is teaching her the piano, and has convinced her to dump her Beatles collection in favor of The Rolling Stones and Jimmy Hendrix. She is growing up. But she still wants to be a writer.
House has eased into semi-retirement with a part-time teaching position at Syracuse University. He hates his students, mostly, but doesn’t mind teaching. It’s Diagnostics, which he loves, and his TAs do all the paperwork for him.
Rachel isn’t sure how that works - him working for her mother and coming home to her at the same time. She suspects it’s a delicate balancing act. She also suspects they thrive on conflict, so it works for them. She asks her mother, and House on occasion, tidbits about their lives from before. Where did they meet? When did they fall in love, the first time? The second time? The third time? What’s different now?
She knows when she asks him that it’s never the first answer that she believes, or the second or third. But the forth answer is usually correct, and one day, when she has all these little tidbits tucked away in her head, she plans to write their story; A story of love and loss and pain and redemption, of suffering and sadness and beauty and Joy.
For now, she is happy enough, even with all her teenage angst. She’s getting used to having a father again, and even though she argues with him all the time, House is more solemn than she remembers. On quiet nights, when she tiptoes through the house in search of mischief, she can hear them whispering to each other in the dark, like secret lovers. Officially, she thinks it’s gross, how much they love each other again. But unofficially she knows how lucky they are to have each other, and how much they understand that the alternative, for all its calmness and monotony, is never going to be an option for them. They gravitate toward each other like planets, forever in each other’s orbit.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
--xx-End-xx-
Sorry if it goes a bit OOC at the end. I wanted House and Cuddy to have a happy ending, and figured 8 years was enough time for them both to come to a lot of realizations and learn a lot from the mistakes of the past and be ready to start over. It’s completely unrealistic in Shore’s Houseverse, but this is my own and I want them together, dammit! :P
Thanks for reading!
She has decorated her room in shades of black and red, and is on a Beatles kick. She wears bracelets that jingle and colors her Chucks with magic marker and wants to get her ears pierced but her mother keeps telling her to wait until she’s thirteen, which she hates. She loves Doctor Who (Twelve is her favorite). Her grades are decent. She loves to read, and wants to be a writer when she grows up, a profession that her mother disapproves of (“Writers don’t make any money until after they’re dead. And by then it’s too late to enjoy it”). She loves Hemingway and Keats, and is learning to play the piano. She doesn’t know why, but she’s always wanted to learn the piano.
Her mother, she has come to realize, even in all of her tween rebellion, is beautiful and sad. She works hard, has a few friends, stays home at night (to Rachel’s eye-rolling dismay) because she insists on having a family dinner. She is content, but she is not happy.
It’s a Saturday, when the doorbell rings. She bounds down the stairs, taking two at a time, and pulls open the door. Standing at the threshold is an old man. He’s got a long face, grey hair and a cane, and looks at her with surprise and recognition.
“Rachel?” his voice is gravelly, and he is favoring his right side.
“Yeah?” she replies, snapping her gum impatiently.
“Do you remember me?” he asks.
She turns around, hollers down the hallway, “Mom, there’s someone at the door for you!” before bounding into the direction of kitchen, a ball of energy and youth.
“Rachel!” the man repeats, a little louder. There’s vague recognition in his bark, the way he curls his r around the a in her name gives her pause. She can hear her mother’s footsteps echoing down the hallway, moving closer. She turns around, looking into the man’s eyes. For whatever weariness he exudes, his eyes are a stunning blue. A blue that she vaguely…
“House?” Rachel whispers.
Her mother is behind her, then, a solid figure at her back and a cross look on her face, “What are you doing here, House?”
His gaze travels across Rachel’s face, his eyes sorrowful, before moving up to her mother’s, “I, uh… I needed to talk to you.”
“Are you better, House?” Rachel asks before her mother can reply.
He looks at her curiously, then shakes his head, “I don’t think I’ll ever be better. Not completely. But I am… I’m okay.”
She smiles gently, slowly remembering her old friend, “I’m glad. I waited for you to -“
“Rach? Can you give us a minute, please?” her mother interjects, keeping her gaze on House’s face.
Rachel huffs in frustration, trudging up the stairs in a, slow, angry stomp. When she reaches the landing, she peers around the corner and down the stairs, watching her mother.
“What are you doing here, House?” her mother asks again.
He is quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he admits. I got in my car, and it just sort of drove itself up here.”
“How’s you’re, uh…” she gestures toward his leg, and he looks down at it.
He knocks on his right leg lightly, a hollow sound even through his jeans, “Fantastic,” he snarks, “I could run two marathons.”
Her mother ignores his sarcasm, “Does it still hurt?”
“There’s some phantom pain every now and then. Nothing compared to before, though.”
Rachel watches her mother’s back, unmoving, as she stares at the man in the doorway. Her shoulders are stiff, and Rachel recognizes that posture. That’s her “I’m angry and frustrated but keeping it together” posture. Rachel knows it well from all the times she leaves her dishes in the sink or brings home a C in Science class. She hears a sigh, and her mother’s shoulders slump as she invites House inside.
His gait is more balanced than she remembers, though he still favors his right side. When her mother invites him into the living room, Rachel tiptoes down the stairs, watching through the banister rails as House awkwardly sits down on the sofa, holding his leg. Her mother sits next to him, and for a moment, Rachel wonders at how they seem to read each other without speaking. Her mother is the first to break the silence.
“I, uh,” she rubs her left palm with her right thumb as she tries to form the words, “I got your message. Messages, rather. I thought you should know.”
House hangs his head, embarrassed, “I wasn’t sure I’d actually called you. I was kind of - “
“Out of it?”
“Yeah.”
They laugh lightly, then catch themselves.
“I’m sorry I never called you back,” her mother says.
“No, it’s okay. I know you’re busy. Hospitals to run, doctors to boss around, donors to screw,” he replies lightheartedly.
“Still. I could have called,” she admits.
“Yeah, you could have. But I don’t blame you for -“
Rachel, listening intently, brushes her fingers idly through her hair, her bracelets clanging together as they fall down her arm. She doesn’t realize that she’s been caught until House turns to look her in the eye.
He leans forward, close to her mother, and stage-whispers conspiratorially, “We have a spy,”
Her mother turns around, eyeing her daughter’s chagrinned look, “Rachel, I told you to go upstairs.”
Rachel stands up, descending the staircase and taking a seat on the chair opposite the sofa where her mother and House sit. “No,” she says, “I wanna know why he’s here, too.”
“Don’t argue with me -“
“It’s okay, Cuddy,” House puts his hand on her mother’s arm, and Rachel notices her mother’s subtle reaction - like a circuit has been closed, “She can hear this, too.”
Her mother sighs, nodding her agreement while eyeing House warily.
“I’ve had plenty of time to think, y’know? Over the past few years. At the… hospital. In rehab -“
“You were a drug addict?” Rachel asks.
“Yes, for a while,” he answers unapologetically, “but also physical rehabilitation, for my leg.” He knocks on his leg slightly, and the hollow sound is louder. He lifts up the cuff of his jeans and she sees a long medal rod protruding out of his sneaker and up towards his knee. A prosthetic, she recognizes. They talked about them in health class.
“What happened?”
“I had an accident. I hurt some people,” he looks right at her mother, then back at her, “I was in a lot of pain for a long time. And then your mother helped me.”
“Are you still in pain?”
“No, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“And, are you still an addict?”
“Rachel,” he leans forward, “I will always be a drug addict. I haven’t taken a pill in seven years, three months, eight days. But that doesn’t mean I won’t tomorrow.”
“How come?”
He shrugs, “Because I’m a drug addict.”
Rachel doesn’t quite understand, but she lets him continue.
“Anyway, It’s taken me a long time…” he turns to face Cuddy directly, “When the pain is gone - really gone, you get this sense of clarity like you wouldn’t believe. Suddenly life’s not about the pain anymore, it’s not about forgetting it, or deadening it, or lessening it. It’s not about finding relief either, or this elusive desire for constant, impossible happiness. It’s about finding someone who will put up with you. That’s it - that’s the bottom line,” He takes a deep breath, and Rachel notices her mother’s eyes glistening with unshed tears, “And I know I was to blame for not being there for you, for not facing the pain. But I’ve - I understand now. It took a long time, and I made a lot of stupid mistakes, but, Cuddy, it hurts so much more living without you than whatever stupid imagined pain I felt in opening up to you. I’m tired of living without you. It’s been eight years of… I just can’t do it anymore.”
The room is silent for a moment, and Rachel’s eyes scan back and forth, from her mother - the only family she’s ever really known - to her old scallywag friend, and she is unsure of what will happen next. She doesn’t expect her mother to start yelling, but then she rarely does until it happens.
“Where the hell do you get off?” her mother exclaims angrily, her voice thick with emotion, “You did everything in your power to make me hate you. You destroyed my home, my life. You made me walk away for the safety of my child.” she points angrily at her daughter, “I tried, for years, to forget you. Forget how much you meant to me. I convinced myself that I couldn’t love you anymore, that you’d broken every promise you made when you disappeared to Tahiti, or wherever the hell you were.”
“Fiji,” he corrects, his head hanging low. Even from across the room, Rachel can see how much hope he’d held in coming here, and how her mother was breaking his heart all over again.
“Mom, stop,” Rachel exclaims.
“Rachel, stay out of this, “ her mother says pointedly, and it is only then that she realizes how much pain her mother is really in.
“I’ve made my life mean something again, House. I’ve got friends, a life. It took time, but…” her mother sighs, then, in defeat. Her shoulders sag, and she cups her face in her hands, trying to hide the tears as they fall.
“I’m sorry, Cuddy,” House murmurs as he starts to stand, “I should go…”
“No,” her mother’s arm shoots out, grabbing him by the wrist, “Don’t you get it? It didn’t work. None of it worked. I told myself that we would never have lasted anyway. That you could never be there for me like I need you to be. But it didn’t matter.”
“Cuddy…”
She stands to meet him, a soft smile on her face, “I love you. “
“But you wish you didn’t, right?”
Her mother closes her eyes, and Rachel guesses that he’s referencing something she said a long time ago.
“No. I just love you.”
House smiles, and for the first time, Rachel truly recognizes the man she knew as a child. He pulls her mother in close, her mother resting her head on his shoulder. She’s never seen her mother this content, this… happy. That’s what it is. For the first time since she can remember, her mother is actually happy.
Rachel books it upstairs when the kissing starts. She loves her mother but, come on. They’re old. That’s just gross.
-
It takes some time, but it’s worth it. There are nights when she can hear her mother and House yelling at each other from the other end of the building, and nights when it’s so quiet she’s sure they’re doing things in their room that no parent should be allowed to do. They argue a lot, but they are, Rachel suspects, happier than they’ve ever been. Her mother is quick to laugh a lot more. House is as funny as she remembers, but on the rare bad day he can cut her with a single phrase. Rachel hates it, but she loves him. He’s her first friend, and he came back. Why wouldn’t she?
--xx--
Rachel is thirteen years old.
She loves movies, and has a boyfriend named Bryce (House hates his name more than anything) and wears makeup and is about to graduate from 8th grade. She has cut her hair, and painted her room. House is teaching her the piano, and has convinced her to dump her Beatles collection in favor of The Rolling Stones and Jimmy Hendrix. She is growing up. But she still wants to be a writer.
House has eased into semi-retirement with a part-time teaching position at Syracuse University. He hates his students, mostly, but doesn’t mind teaching. It’s Diagnostics, which he loves, and his TAs do all the paperwork for him.
Rachel isn’t sure how that works - him working for her mother and coming home to her at the same time. She suspects it’s a delicate balancing act. She also suspects they thrive on conflict, so it works for them. She asks her mother, and House on occasion, tidbits about their lives from before. Where did they meet? When did they fall in love, the first time? The second time? The third time? What’s different now?
She knows when she asks him that it’s never the first answer that she believes, or the second or third. But the forth answer is usually correct, and one day, when she has all these little tidbits tucked away in her head, she plans to write their story; A story of love and loss and pain and redemption, of suffering and sadness and beauty and Joy.
For now, she is happy enough, even with all her teenage angst. She’s getting used to having a father again, and even though she argues with him all the time, House is more solemn than she remembers. On quiet nights, when she tiptoes through the house in search of mischief, she can hear them whispering to each other in the dark, like secret lovers. Officially, she thinks it’s gross, how much they love each other again. But unofficially she knows how lucky they are to have each other, and how much they understand that the alternative, for all its calmness and monotony, is never going to be an option for them. They gravitate toward each other like planets, forever in each other’s orbit.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
--xx-End-xx-
Sorry if it goes a bit OOC at the end. I wanted House and Cuddy to have a happy ending, and figured 8 years was enough time for them both to come to a lot of realizations and learn a lot from the mistakes of the past and be ready to start over. It’s completely unrealistic in Shore’s Houseverse, but this is my own and I want them together, dammit! :P
Thanks for reading!