Maid-of-All-Work - PG
Greetings!
Originally written for the ficwriters _anon challenge.
In which Lady muses on what a long, strange road it's been - and the one fork she will not take.
Warnings: Spoilers for S2-15 "Clueless", possible spoilage for misc. bits of background trivia; rated PG for heavy thoughts.
House M.D. and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, Fox, etc.
These particular variations on a theme belonging to others are mine.
Enjoy!
-Katrina
Maid-of-All-Work
She brings order out of chaos. Whether it’s people’s houses or people’s lives, she is there, tidying, watching, listening. She is there when people need her, whether to reclaim their homes from dirt and clutter, or to give the one piece of advice gleaned from a well-lived life that will help bring peace out of despair.
When she started cleaning houses for a living, she didn’t know that it would become her life’s work. It was something she was good at, something to pay the bills and put food on the table, but never something she’d imagined spending a lifetime doing. When she was younger, there were dreams of other things, of careers and husbands and children, but the inevitable passage of time has taken away these possibilities, leaving her to be adopted by a hundred other families, while never once having her own.
This position gives her a unique opportunity to observe the lives of her families. Of all of them, she has found herself drawn to one in particular. The nice young oncologist and his wife. Once they were happy together, but now… now she knows it is only a matter of time before they go their separate ways. The only questions left are how and when.
She has dared, a few times, to give advice, mostly to the wife, because she is the one who is usually home, and sometimes to the doctor when she can catch him between commitments. Regardless, she sees her words flying over their heads like embattled doves, fluttering and fighting with never a break for rest. She sighs wearily and goes back to her cleaning. She has tried. That’s all she can do.
That trying is probably what got her fired in the end. Kill the messenger and all that. The wife, now ex, convinced that she told, even through protestations of innocence ultimately made in vain. Tragedy is never the fault of the perpetrators, after all.
He feels responsible, as he always does, even for the things that are only partly his fault. He’s staying with a friend, he says, a friend who could use some help. Would she mind coming over a few days a week? Just for a while, until she can get some new clients lined up. Same salary of course.
She’s not too proud. After all, there are still bills to pay and food to put on the table. So she says yes and comes to a new house.
He’s loud, this friend. Loud and abrasive and full of a pain so deep it nearly brings tears to her eyes. Not just the physical pain, obvious with limp and cane and pills, but mental pain as well, the causes of which are hidden from her, and, she suspects, to a certain degree hidden from himself as well.
She knows better than to show him her knowledge however. She knows he wouldn’t thank her. So she shows him in other ways - by not taking his loudness personally, by standing up to him when he’s wrong, and by having at least some of the answers he needs when he needs them, even if it is only something as small as the location of a box.
Soon he begins looking at her with a new respect. And when she leaves his house for the last time, it’s with his quiet ‘thank you’ ringing in her ears.
She would have stayed, working for whatever he could afford to pay, but she finds that for once, she cannot. The incipient tragedies are too much for her to bear. The one, looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes, the other, sliding slowly down into an abyss she fears he will never be able to climb out of. She cares too much to stay, so she does not. She leaves, praying to God that He will watch over them and keep them safe. For even she, the maid-of-all-work that she is, cannot help every family that she touches. Some things take more than soap and water, or even words, to clean.
Originally written for the ficwriters _anon challenge.
In which Lady muses on what a long, strange road it's been - and the one fork she will not take.
Warnings: Spoilers for S2-15 "Clueless", possible spoilage for misc. bits of background trivia; rated PG for heavy thoughts.
House M.D. and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, Fox, etc.
These particular variations on a theme belonging to others are mine.
Enjoy!
-Katrina
Maid-of-All-Work
She brings order out of chaos. Whether it’s people’s houses or people’s lives, she is there, tidying, watching, listening. She is there when people need her, whether to reclaim their homes from dirt and clutter, or to give the one piece of advice gleaned from a well-lived life that will help bring peace out of despair.
When she started cleaning houses for a living, she didn’t know that it would become her life’s work. It was something she was good at, something to pay the bills and put food on the table, but never something she’d imagined spending a lifetime doing. When she was younger, there were dreams of other things, of careers and husbands and children, but the inevitable passage of time has taken away these possibilities, leaving her to be adopted by a hundred other families, while never once having her own.
This position gives her a unique opportunity to observe the lives of her families. Of all of them, she has found herself drawn to one in particular. The nice young oncologist and his wife. Once they were happy together, but now… now she knows it is only a matter of time before they go their separate ways. The only questions left are how and when.
She has dared, a few times, to give advice, mostly to the wife, because she is the one who is usually home, and sometimes to the doctor when she can catch him between commitments. Regardless, she sees her words flying over their heads like embattled doves, fluttering and fighting with never a break for rest. She sighs wearily and goes back to her cleaning. She has tried. That’s all she can do.
That trying is probably what got her fired in the end. Kill the messenger and all that. The wife, now ex, convinced that she told, even through protestations of innocence ultimately made in vain. Tragedy is never the fault of the perpetrators, after all.
He feels responsible, as he always does, even for the things that are only partly his fault. He’s staying with a friend, he says, a friend who could use some help. Would she mind coming over a few days a week? Just for a while, until she can get some new clients lined up. Same salary of course.
She’s not too proud. After all, there are still bills to pay and food to put on the table. So she says yes and comes to a new house.
He’s loud, this friend. Loud and abrasive and full of a pain so deep it nearly brings tears to her eyes. Not just the physical pain, obvious with limp and cane and pills, but mental pain as well, the causes of which are hidden from her, and, she suspects, to a certain degree hidden from himself as well.
She knows better than to show him her knowledge however. She knows he wouldn’t thank her. So she shows him in other ways - by not taking his loudness personally, by standing up to him when he’s wrong, and by having at least some of the answers he needs when he needs them, even if it is only something as small as the location of a box.
Soon he begins looking at her with a new respect. And when she leaves his house for the last time, it’s with his quiet ‘thank you’ ringing in her ears.
She would have stayed, working for whatever he could afford to pay, but she finds that for once, she cannot. The incipient tragedies are too much for her to bear. The one, looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes, the other, sliding slowly down into an abyss she fears he will never be able to climb out of. She cares too much to stay, so she does not. She leaves, praying to God that He will watch over them and keep them safe. For even she, the maid-of-all-work that she is, cannot help every family that she touches. Some things take more than soap and water, or even words, to clean.