(no subject)
Hostile Work Environment
Gently House/Stacy, House/Cuddy
PG-13 for references and naughty words
Lisa Cuddy stared blankly at the document in front of her, refusing to accept its reality.
“I’m…being sued?” she asked, her voice registering astonishment and uncertainty, two qualities rarely found in her sure, confident voice.
Defendant: Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Her name, in neat print, beneath that of the hospital she’d come to love in place of the children she’d probably never have. It always hurt her when PPTH was sued, even when she knew perfectly well that the lawsuit was earned, even knowing that New Jersey’s medical malpractice insurance rates were starting to rival its automobile insurance rates, even knowing that doctors and hospitals had been sued for reasons as ridiculous as scars on the face of a teenaged girl who’d eschewed the law regarding seatbelts and had consequently gone head-first through the windshield of her boyfriend’s car.
This was different, though. This wasn’t a medical malpractice suit, and it wasn’t against one of her doctors.
“Sexual harassment?” she murmured, turning wide, questioning eyes on Stacy Nichols, who was running her fingers through her long dark hair and sighing.
“Yeah,” she said, the slight Dixie twang that emerged when she was nervous or stressed making itself known. “Plaintiff’s Dr. John Reilly.” Cuddy frowned.
“John Reilly? Stacy, I barely knew the kid. He interned here for, what, maybe three weeks? A month? And I never-I never touched him, made advances, nothing. What’s going on?” Stacy sighed again.
“Hostile environment. Look, Lisa…sexual harassment’s come a long way. There’s quid pro quo harassment of the old ‘you give me an orgasm, I give you a promotion’ variety, which you would never be stupid enough to do, so scratch that. Then there’s gender-based harassment, which is basically sex discrimination, and again, you’re too smart for that. But hostile environment…Dr. Reilly’s claiming that you’ve engaged in ‘nonverbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature that is sufficiently severe and persistent to impede his job performance.’”
“What the hell?”
“Lisa, you’re the endocrinologist. What happens when you take a healthy, single twenty-six year old man and put him to work under an attractive woman?” Cuddy sputtered, indignant.
“How am I guilty of sexual harassment just because he’s attracted to me? That’s ridiculous! It’s practically harassment against me; he has a problem with the fact that I’m a woman.” Stacy rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair.
“I talked to plaintiff’s counsel. Basically, the problem’s your clothes.”
“My clothes?”
“He claims that they’re too provocative for him to concentrate.”
“But that’s absurd!” Stacy took a moment to steel herself, then sighed.
“Lisa, I can see your nipples.” Cuddy immediately looked down and, blushing furiously, buttoned her blouse up a little higher.
“Look, I understand that you’re an attractive woman with a great body-God, what Greg wouldn’t give to hear this conversation,” she added with a chuckle, “but to be honest, it wouldn’t hurt to keep more of it covered up. Just…” Stacy stood up and gestured to her own outfit. She was wearing a grey wool pantsuit over a green blouse and black pumps, the blouse open just enough to bare the silver crucifix at her neck.
“Is this your ‘Southern lady’ way of saying that I dress like a prostitute?” snapped Cuddy, and for a moment Stacy looked chastened, but her temper could and did flare, too.
“No, Lisa, it’s my ‘hospital counsel’ way of saying that you might try actually following a dress code at work!” Cuddy rose, almost involuntarily, and Stacy immediately pointed to her skirt.
“For example…pencil skirt, knee-length, very appropriate, except that it’s slit more than halfway up your thighs! When you cross your legs, you give everyone a nice view of the lace tops of your stockings. Then there’s the low-cut blouse, the stiletto heels…I know it doesn’t feel fair, but you’re not dressed in office attire, not really, and you know it.” She sighed. “I don’t think Reilly’s going to win this suit, doubt we’ll even have to settle, but you should consider dressing a bit more modestly. John Reilly might be the only one to have filed a suit, but he’s not the only doctor to have…mentioned the way you dress. And, no, I don’t mean Greg,” she finished quickly. Cuddy sighed, trying not to let her annoyance show.
“So…what…God, Stace, what do I wear? I’ve dressed the same way for years; I…” The other woman sighed, shook her head, and sat back down.
“I’ll take you shopping after work.” She chuckled slightly, and Cuddy jumped verbally at the sound.
“What?” she demanded. Stacy smiled.
“Nothing. I’m just going to have a hell of a time trying to explain to Greg what I’ve been up to.” Cuddy’s face registered horror.
“You are not-Stacy Nichols, I’m warning you-House hears nothing about this, do you-why are you laughing?” Stacy’s hand rested on Cuddy’s as she spoke gently.
“When’s the last time you successfully lied to Greg?”
Silence.
“Now imagine if he were there every waking and sleeping moment and had even more…inventive…ways of coaxing the truth out of you.”
“Oh, fuck…”
“Exactly. I won’t volunteer anything, Lisa, but…well…it’s going to come out. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cuddy said stiffly. “You’re right. It’s all but impossible to lie to him.” She shut her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “He is never going to let me forget this.”
“Probably not,” Stacy agreed sympathetically. “Greg doesn’t forget much, especially when it’s embarrassing.”
He chose that opportune moment, of course, to waltz into the office unannounced and uninvited.
“Are my ears burning?” he teased, planting an inappropriate kiss on Stacy’s neck that made her squirm and then looming over her chair to stare at Cuddy. He frowned.
“What’s with the top?”
“I’m sorry you don’t like purple, House, but, really-”
“Purple’s fine,” House interrupted easily, “but the girls are all covered up. They like to be free, Cuddy; I thought you knew that.” The room teemed with tension, which, after a swift glance at Stacy, Cuddy finally broke.
“Actually, Stacy, if you’re not doing anything, would you like to go to lunch with me and discuss the, uh, lawsuit?”
“I’m being sued?” demanded House before Stacy even had time to answer. “And I wasn’t even invited to the meeting? For God’s sake, I’m sleeping with the hospital’s lawyer!”
“You haven’t been sued, Greg,” said Stacy patiently. “Don’t worry about it.” House shook his head, clearly in a mood, and he reached for the papers.
“You’ve been working here for four years, Stace, and yet you still haven’t learned that lawsuits at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital always involve the handsome, feared, and lusted-after menace known as…Lisa Cuddy?” He glanced up from the lawsuit, confused, and stared at the blushing woman seated at the desk in front of him.
“Cuddy? You’ve been touching the little boys’ private parts? Sexual harassment? Where do I sign up? Top of a baby grand’s just below hip level, not to give you any ideas, but…”
“House!” she managed sharply through her blush.
“I’ll admit, it’s complicated, what with the G-I-R-L-F-R-E-I-no, wait, I-E-N-D-in the room, but as Jack Nicholson said in that movie she rented last week, ‘There is nothing, believe me gentlemen, nothing sexier on earth than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote 'em all I say.’ So with that said…”
“House,” she repeated, and her voice had gotten even sharper in the interim.
“What?” he asked innocently. “So I quoted a movie. ‘Power is the ulitimate aphrodisiac.’ See, I can quote respectable people, too.”
“The fact that Henry Kissenger said something doesn’t make it appropriate to relate to your boss, Greg,” Stacy pointed out calmly.
“You’re just annoyed ‘cause I don’t have to salute you in the morning.”
“And yet you do anyway!” she shot back, turning to face him and not even flinching when she realized that his standing position and her sitting one put her face more or less level with his crotch. Cuddy shook her head.
“And somehow I’m the one who got the lawsuit…”
“We’re in a consensual relationship,” House parroted. “A relationship which does not violate any hospital rules, whether de jure or de facto, by the way.” Cuddy was mildly impressed, and it showed. House had conquered almost all modern languages, in whole or in part, but the dead ones had been, for the most part, outside his realm of interest.
“Sleeping with a lawyer,” he reminded her. Stacy shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“Yes, well, don’t worry about this,” stumbled Cuddy. “Stacy and I can handle it.” House raised his eyebrows, apparently twisting her words until they implied something he found more pleasant than a lawsuit.
“Stop it,” commanded Stacy, smacking him lightly on the backside to emphasize her point. He smirked.
“Obviously I like me some dominatrices,” he noted, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll talk to you ladies later-oh, and just so you know, I’m doing exploratory brain surgery on Mr. Lancaster.”
“What?” exclaimed Cuddy.
“Can’t shoot me down,” he replied with a grin. “I mean, the fact that I won’t sleep with you is no reason to withhold my doctor-privileges…wouldn’t want to be facing two simultaneous sexual harassment suits, would you? Ta-ta!”
A very red Cuddy shifted even lower into her seat.
“I can’t believe you’re actually with him,” she muttered. Stacy laughed.
“Um…pot? Kettle? Matching shades of black?”
“I’m more like grey,” she pointed out defensively. “I only slept with him once. You’ve lived with him for three years!” Stacy smiled serenely and absently tossed her hair.
“I didn’t let him pick what I was going to do for a living!” Cuddy flushed.
“Neither did I; I just…well…it was a good idea!” Stacy laughed.
“What do you tell people when they asked you how you picked your specialty? ‘Oh, this guy I met in Ann Arbor when I was nineteen told me it would be really cool and funny if a hot girl were to specialize in hormones’? Come on, Lisa, you can’t deny it. The man is a pain in the ass, but he-”
“He does have a certain charm,” Cuddy admitted grudgingly. “And he’s good at his job, which at least gives me a reason to justify keeping him. But how you live with him, I’ll never know.” Stacy shrugged.
“He gives a good neck and shoulder massage?” They both laughed. “I don’t know; it just seems to work. Anyway. It’s almost noon. Did you want to go shopping?” Cuddy shrugged.
“Well, House knows now. We might as well just eat and shop after work, like the original plan.” She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and relaxed into her chair for a moment before asking, tentatively, “Stacy?”
“Yeah?”
“Off the record, do you think this kid…you know…was it a hostile work environment?”
“Off the record? He’s a horny kid who needs to learn how to work with women. But a little modesty never killed anyone. Save the more revealing stuff for special circumstances. After all, you don’t want to risk anyone’s becoming immune.” She smiled beatifically and suddenly they were both giggling.
Gently House/Stacy, House/Cuddy
PG-13 for references and naughty words
Lisa Cuddy stared blankly at the document in front of her, refusing to accept its reality.
“I’m…being sued?” she asked, her voice registering astonishment and uncertainty, two qualities rarely found in her sure, confident voice.
Defendant: Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
Her name, in neat print, beneath that of the hospital she’d come to love in place of the children she’d probably never have. It always hurt her when PPTH was sued, even when she knew perfectly well that the lawsuit was earned, even knowing that New Jersey’s medical malpractice insurance rates were starting to rival its automobile insurance rates, even knowing that doctors and hospitals had been sued for reasons as ridiculous as scars on the face of a teenaged girl who’d eschewed the law regarding seatbelts and had consequently gone head-first through the windshield of her boyfriend’s car.
This was different, though. This wasn’t a medical malpractice suit, and it wasn’t against one of her doctors.
“Sexual harassment?” she murmured, turning wide, questioning eyes on Stacy Nichols, who was running her fingers through her long dark hair and sighing.
“Yeah,” she said, the slight Dixie twang that emerged when she was nervous or stressed making itself known. “Plaintiff’s Dr. John Reilly.” Cuddy frowned.
“John Reilly? Stacy, I barely knew the kid. He interned here for, what, maybe three weeks? A month? And I never-I never touched him, made advances, nothing. What’s going on?” Stacy sighed again.
“Hostile environment. Look, Lisa…sexual harassment’s come a long way. There’s quid pro quo harassment of the old ‘you give me an orgasm, I give you a promotion’ variety, which you would never be stupid enough to do, so scratch that. Then there’s gender-based harassment, which is basically sex discrimination, and again, you’re too smart for that. But hostile environment…Dr. Reilly’s claiming that you’ve engaged in ‘nonverbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature that is sufficiently severe and persistent to impede his job performance.’”
“What the hell?”
“Lisa, you’re the endocrinologist. What happens when you take a healthy, single twenty-six year old man and put him to work under an attractive woman?” Cuddy sputtered, indignant.
“How am I guilty of sexual harassment just because he’s attracted to me? That’s ridiculous! It’s practically harassment against me; he has a problem with the fact that I’m a woman.” Stacy rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair.
“I talked to plaintiff’s counsel. Basically, the problem’s your clothes.”
“My clothes?”
“He claims that they’re too provocative for him to concentrate.”
“But that’s absurd!” Stacy took a moment to steel herself, then sighed.
“Lisa, I can see your nipples.” Cuddy immediately looked down and, blushing furiously, buttoned her blouse up a little higher.
“Look, I understand that you’re an attractive woman with a great body-God, what Greg wouldn’t give to hear this conversation,” she added with a chuckle, “but to be honest, it wouldn’t hurt to keep more of it covered up. Just…” Stacy stood up and gestured to her own outfit. She was wearing a grey wool pantsuit over a green blouse and black pumps, the blouse open just enough to bare the silver crucifix at her neck.
“Is this your ‘Southern lady’ way of saying that I dress like a prostitute?” snapped Cuddy, and for a moment Stacy looked chastened, but her temper could and did flare, too.
“No, Lisa, it’s my ‘hospital counsel’ way of saying that you might try actually following a dress code at work!” Cuddy rose, almost involuntarily, and Stacy immediately pointed to her skirt.
“For example…pencil skirt, knee-length, very appropriate, except that it’s slit more than halfway up your thighs! When you cross your legs, you give everyone a nice view of the lace tops of your stockings. Then there’s the low-cut blouse, the stiletto heels…I know it doesn’t feel fair, but you’re not dressed in office attire, not really, and you know it.” She sighed. “I don’t think Reilly’s going to win this suit, doubt we’ll even have to settle, but you should consider dressing a bit more modestly. John Reilly might be the only one to have filed a suit, but he’s not the only doctor to have…mentioned the way you dress. And, no, I don’t mean Greg,” she finished quickly. Cuddy sighed, trying not to let her annoyance show.
“So…what…God, Stace, what do I wear? I’ve dressed the same way for years; I…” The other woman sighed, shook her head, and sat back down.
“I’ll take you shopping after work.” She chuckled slightly, and Cuddy jumped verbally at the sound.
“What?” she demanded. Stacy smiled.
“Nothing. I’m just going to have a hell of a time trying to explain to Greg what I’ve been up to.” Cuddy’s face registered horror.
“You are not-Stacy Nichols, I’m warning you-House hears nothing about this, do you-why are you laughing?” Stacy’s hand rested on Cuddy’s as she spoke gently.
“When’s the last time you successfully lied to Greg?”
Silence.
“Now imagine if he were there every waking and sleeping moment and had even more…inventive…ways of coaxing the truth out of you.”
“Oh, fuck…”
“Exactly. I won’t volunteer anything, Lisa, but…well…it’s going to come out. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cuddy said stiffly. “You’re right. It’s all but impossible to lie to him.” She shut her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “He is never going to let me forget this.”
“Probably not,” Stacy agreed sympathetically. “Greg doesn’t forget much, especially when it’s embarrassing.”
He chose that opportune moment, of course, to waltz into the office unannounced and uninvited.
“Are my ears burning?” he teased, planting an inappropriate kiss on Stacy’s neck that made her squirm and then looming over her chair to stare at Cuddy. He frowned.
“What’s with the top?”
“I’m sorry you don’t like purple, House, but, really-”
“Purple’s fine,” House interrupted easily, “but the girls are all covered up. They like to be free, Cuddy; I thought you knew that.” The room teemed with tension, which, after a swift glance at Stacy, Cuddy finally broke.
“Actually, Stacy, if you’re not doing anything, would you like to go to lunch with me and discuss the, uh, lawsuit?”
“I’m being sued?” demanded House before Stacy even had time to answer. “And I wasn’t even invited to the meeting? For God’s sake, I’m sleeping with the hospital’s lawyer!”
“You haven’t been sued, Greg,” said Stacy patiently. “Don’t worry about it.” House shook his head, clearly in a mood, and he reached for the papers.
“You’ve been working here for four years, Stace, and yet you still haven’t learned that lawsuits at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital always involve the handsome, feared, and lusted-after menace known as…Lisa Cuddy?” He glanced up from the lawsuit, confused, and stared at the blushing woman seated at the desk in front of him.
“Cuddy? You’ve been touching the little boys’ private parts? Sexual harassment? Where do I sign up? Top of a baby grand’s just below hip level, not to give you any ideas, but…”
“House!” she managed sharply through her blush.
“I’ll admit, it’s complicated, what with the G-I-R-L-F-R-E-I-no, wait, I-E-N-D-in the room, but as Jack Nicholson said in that movie she rented last week, ‘There is nothing, believe me gentlemen, nothing sexier on earth than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote 'em all I say.’ So with that said…”
“House,” she repeated, and her voice had gotten even sharper in the interim.
“What?” he asked innocently. “So I quoted a movie. ‘Power is the ulitimate aphrodisiac.’ See, I can quote respectable people, too.”
“The fact that Henry Kissenger said something doesn’t make it appropriate to relate to your boss, Greg,” Stacy pointed out calmly.
“You’re just annoyed ‘cause I don’t have to salute you in the morning.”
“And yet you do anyway!” she shot back, turning to face him and not even flinching when she realized that his standing position and her sitting one put her face more or less level with his crotch. Cuddy shook her head.
“And somehow I’m the one who got the lawsuit…”
“We’re in a consensual relationship,” House parroted. “A relationship which does not violate any hospital rules, whether de jure or de facto, by the way.” Cuddy was mildly impressed, and it showed. House had conquered almost all modern languages, in whole or in part, but the dead ones had been, for the most part, outside his realm of interest.
“Sleeping with a lawyer,” he reminded her. Stacy shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
“Yes, well, don’t worry about this,” stumbled Cuddy. “Stacy and I can handle it.” House raised his eyebrows, apparently twisting her words until they implied something he found more pleasant than a lawsuit.
“Stop it,” commanded Stacy, smacking him lightly on the backside to emphasize her point. He smirked.
“Obviously I like me some dominatrices,” he noted, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll talk to you ladies later-oh, and just so you know, I’m doing exploratory brain surgery on Mr. Lancaster.”
“What?” exclaimed Cuddy.
“Can’t shoot me down,” he replied with a grin. “I mean, the fact that I won’t sleep with you is no reason to withhold my doctor-privileges…wouldn’t want to be facing two simultaneous sexual harassment suits, would you? Ta-ta!”
A very red Cuddy shifted even lower into her seat.
“I can’t believe you’re actually with him,” she muttered. Stacy laughed.
“Um…pot? Kettle? Matching shades of black?”
“I’m more like grey,” she pointed out defensively. “I only slept with him once. You’ve lived with him for three years!” Stacy smiled serenely and absently tossed her hair.
“I didn’t let him pick what I was going to do for a living!” Cuddy flushed.
“Neither did I; I just…well…it was a good idea!” Stacy laughed.
“What do you tell people when they asked you how you picked your specialty? ‘Oh, this guy I met in Ann Arbor when I was nineteen told me it would be really cool and funny if a hot girl were to specialize in hormones’? Come on, Lisa, you can’t deny it. The man is a pain in the ass, but he-”
“He does have a certain charm,” Cuddy admitted grudgingly. “And he’s good at his job, which at least gives me a reason to justify keeping him. But how you live with him, I’ll never know.” Stacy shrugged.
“He gives a good neck and shoulder massage?” They both laughed. “I don’t know; it just seems to work. Anyway. It’s almost noon. Did you want to go shopping?” Cuddy shrugged.
“Well, House knows now. We might as well just eat and shop after work, like the original plan.” She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and relaxed into her chair for a moment before asking, tentatively, “Stacy?”
“Yeah?”
“Off the record, do you think this kid…you know…was it a hostile work environment?”
“Off the record? He’s a horny kid who needs to learn how to work with women. But a little modesty never killed anyone. Save the more revealing stuff for special circumstances. After all, you don’t want to risk anyone’s becoming immune.” She smiled beatifically and suddenly they were both giggling.