(no subject)
3.5 Write about your character the day after Amber died
It was a balancing act, reaching out to Wilson while watching over House. It wouldn’t have been so difficult if the two men weren’t on non-speaking terms, but then nothing involving them, involving House, was ever easy. A woman had died and they were sitting on opposite sides of that divide. Cuddy was trying to be the bridge that kept them connected.
She should’ve been helping Wilson. She was good at organizing, at handling details, and she should’ve been there, organizing and handling all those insidious little details that had to be handled and which the grieving survivors were so often unaware of or couldn’t cope with. Wilson would know the details, of course, he was all too familiar with death, but she wasn’t sure he could cope. His familiarity with death was professional, not personal.
Instead, she had to settle for sporadic phone calls, keeping tabs on him, letting him know she cared. Because instead of helping one friend through his grief, she was watching another to make sure he didn’t die, too. Not that House would thank her for caring. He was the one, after all, who, after the bus ride from hell, had induced a heart attack with drugs and then stuck electrodes in his head to fry his already messed up brain. Frankly, she wasn’t sure why she cared about his life when he didn’t seem to.
In spite of that, she did care. That’s why she sat at his bedside, making sure he didn’t find some new and creative way to die. She certainly couldn’t trust his fellows, former or current, to do it. They were just as likely to conspire in his crazy schemes no matter what the risk to House. Chase was currently at the top of her shit list but she was mad at all of them on principle. And Wilson wasn’t there to wait and berate House for his stupidity. The only vigil Wilson was keeping was a personal shiva.
She hadn’t liked the woman he mourned. Amber was too pushy, too manipulative, too ruthless for Cuddy’s taste. She understood, though, what it was like to be a young, female doctor. She understood what it was like to be ambitious. She understood what it was like to ponder the sacrifice of personal happiness for professional respect. What she didn’t understand, what she’d never experienced, was finding both love and respect in the same person. Sure, Wilson didn’t have the greatest track record with relationships but any possible future was now irrelevant.
So maybe she sat at House’s bedside because it was easier to pretend all she felt for him was anger than to admit she envied a woman who’d died before she could discover her future. Easier to pretend that she was wasn't hoping to find what Amber had found. Because that would just be stupid. A successful, independent woman with her future still full of possibilities had no reason to envy a dead woman. That’s what she kept telling herself as she reached for House’s hand.
~500 words