Blessings, Part 11
Title: Blessings, part 11
Pairings, characters: House/Cuddy established, Rachel, Wilson, Stacy, some OCs.
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst and naughty language.
Summary: “It is one of the blessings of old friends that we can afford to be stupid with them.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson. A sharkverse fic, in which House and Cuddy are still together 6 years after the end of “Help Me.”
When Rachel was very small, she was afraid of the cappuccino machine. It seemed stupid now, but its growling and hissing and sputtering made her think of hungry animals, and she was not able to hear it without imagining something evil on the prowl, like the wolves in Beauty and the Beast.
Rachel was older now, and the rumble of the cappuccino machine made her feel pleased and safe; it meant that not only was Mom home, but House was making her coffee just the way she liked it, so she was sure to be in a good mood.
"Stacy." Mom didn't sound like she was in a good mood after all.
A cabinet door slammed. "This would be the smart, sexy, single Stacy, who's still hung up on you?"
"Yep, that one." House didn't seem to be in a good mood either; he sounded sad. "Could you maybe put the knife down?"
"You wish. What the hell were you doing with her?"
Someone turned on the kitchen faucet. "I honestly was unclear on that, until suddenly, I wasn't doing it anymore."
"Don't you ever get tired of hurting yourself and the people who care about you?"
"God, yes. Exhausted. Look, I was sure I was managing it."
"You're never right about that, you know. Especially when you're sure." A plate clattered.
"I'm with you there."
There was a metallic scraping sound, and the crackle of something frying. "Do you still have feelings for her?"
"Absolutely. I feel stupid and relieved."
"Should I feel stupid?" Now Mom sounded sad, too, and angry, the way she did when Nana Arlene was being especially mean.
"Only if you think you have any competition, Beautiful."
"Fine, I won't feel humiliated, then. I'll just be furious, instead. You're an idiot. And an ass."
"Tell me about it. No, don't; there's no need. I kind of stumbled over those all by myself."
Rachel rubbed her eyes, thinking she might be in the middle of some backwards dream. Her mother was barefoot and wearing an oversized sweatshirt over leggings, and House was wearing a fancy buttoned shirt and, even stranger, a tie. But then, everything about this whole week had been so weird. With sleeping in a car, having McDonald's three times in a row, and being home on a Friday, nothing seemed completely out of place any more.
"Good morning, Sweetie." Mom picked Rachel up and squeezed her, so hard and for so long that when she finally put her down, they were both breathing hard.
"Where's House going?" Rachel asked.
Smiling softly, Mom lifted Rachel's hair out of the collar of her robe and said to House, "Good question. It's freezing, and the crowds are going to be horrible. Why would you even want to leave the house today?"
"I'm meeting Chan at the hospital. To talk," House smiled and flourished his hand over a plate, "turkey."
"You speak Turkey?" Rachel asked. She was remembering their last trip to Costa Rica, when Nana Blythe marched into her parents' room, threw open the windows and announced, "The sun is shining, and the birds are singing!"
"That's the only sound they know how to make, Mom," House said, and rolled over. "There's probably one bird who gets up early, and that racket is Bird for, 'Shut the fuck up, I'm trying to sleep.'"
"Gregory House, you watch your language."
A laugh emitted from under the covers. "You're one to scold me about the f-bomb, Mrs Make A Marine Blush."
House poked his head out and addressed Rachel. "I overheard her chewing out a garage door opener once. It scarred me for life, I tell you. Peeled the paint off a Buick."
"I got it working, didn't I, Smartalec?"
"We were living in California at the time," he went on. "Don't tell Al Gore, but I'm pretty sure that's how global warming got started."
"Oh, just get your lazy ass out of bed and take Rachel and your wife to the beach."
"What?" Rachel's mom asked. "Oh." She picked a banana slice from Rachel's plate. "Oh, no, Sweetie, 'talk turkey' means to get serious in a conversation."
"Oh, you mean it's an idiom." Rachel was trying to figure out why turkeys were thought to be serious talkers. They all looked kind of dumb and silly to her.
Mom looked surprised. "Exactly." She turned to House. "I don't know what you have in mind, but it isn't going to work. Everyone knows you hate moving."
"We're moving?" Rachel asked.
"No, of course not," her mother said.
"We hate moving. " House grinned and pointed a fork at them. "But we liiiiike, leverage."
Mom looked at him with narrowed eyes and blew on the foam of her coffee. "Yes," she said, a little unhappily, "we do."
"What's leverage?"
"An advantage. Like having a firm offer in hand, before I go to the board," he answered, "and tell them that either they give your mother the position she deserves, or I walk, and take my money, my name on their letterhead, my people, and their head of oncology with me."
"I can't let you -- or Wilson -- do that," Mom huffed.
"But, you could come home. Things could go back to the way they were! Why can't you let him do that?!" Rachel exclaimed.
"Rachel, it's complicated." Mom squirmed and looked down, pressing her lips together. "Sweetie," she said softly, in the tone she always used when she was about to send Rachel out of the room.
"Actually," House said, "it's simple. I got my job thanks to you, and on more than one occasion, I kept it because of you. Now it's my turn. And before you get pig-headed: unlike me when I was hired, you've already earned that job ten times over. If they aren't complete morons, they're already looking for a reason to bring you back on. I'm going to give them one."
"What if that doesn't work? Will we have to move?" Rachel asked.
"We won't have to move, because they'll cave."
"We won't have to move because you're not doing this." Mom got up briskly and slammed her dishes into the dishwasher. "I won't allow it."
"What did you just say?" House's eyes got wide and he tilted his head.
Mom sighed. "I said thank you very much, Dear, but I can take care of myself."
"I know you can Cuddy, but the point is you don't have to." He slipped his arm around her waist. "If they don't cave -- and they totally will -- I do have tenure. If they didn't revoke it for any of the crazy crap I've pulled over the past twenty years, they won't revoke it for jerking them around."
"So." Mom looked at the ceiling and back at House. "Worst case scenario, they call your bluff, you'll screw over the board by letting them falsely hope that they're finally getting rid of a known pain in the ass and then reneging, and screw over Walt Chan by promising him that he's about to hire that pain in the ass and then reneging. That's our plan, is it?"
"See? Win-win." He folded her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.
Rachel soaked a piece of pancake in the pool of syrup on the edge of her plate. Well, that stunk. She'd kind of been looking forward to moving.
"You called us all in for this?" Foreman asked. House was overdue for one of his "or I quit" spiels, but Foreman hadn't expected him to interrupt the Thanksgiving reunion for a hissy fit.
"You're bluffing," the president of the medical school pronounced. Ten years and over eleven hundred dollars in lost bets and poker hands behind him, Foreman knew better than to even try to tell the difference between House with a busted straight and House with kings over aces, but he had to give Nardin points for style.
"I've been promised a comparable salary and substantially improved working conditions, including two additional fellows, unrestricted access to all diagnostic facilities, and a research lab with two grad students in the medical sciences to entertain me," House said. "Union Memorial has an excellent pain management department and does not have a free clinic."
"They also have a smaller budget and a lower faculty to student ratio," Nardin replied easily. "You're looking at a hefty pay cut, and more teaching responsibility." He looked conspiratorially over at Foreman. "Which is to say, some teaching responsibility."
House folded his hands together and leaned back in his chair. "Gentlemen," he said, and nodded at the dean of research, "Tang. Would anyone here like to hazard a guess at how much I'd be willing to pay, to get out of clinic duty forever? Would a million zillion bazillion jillion dollars sound out of line?"
"Pre or post-tax?" Foreman asked dryly.
"And does this competing offer from our interim chief of medicine," Nardin made the title into a scathing accusation, "include a position for Doctor Cuddy as well?"
House rewarded this with a steely glare and opened his mouth, but before he could answer, Nardin let a triumphant smile slide across his face. "I thought not. It's well known, House, that you won't go anywhere without Cuddy. Without an MHA or an MMM, no reputable teaching institution is going to hire her to be chief operating officer. She was barely out of residency when she took the job in admin at PPTH, and times have changed; no one of that age or experience would be so much as considered for the job, today. Here at Princeton, she's retained her tenure as a member of the faculty. So in the very unlikely event that she's not granted a new contract with the board when she returns from her sabbatical, she'll have that to fall back on. Union Memorial cannot offer her that security. Now, with apologies for indulging this colossal waste of all our time, I'll let you all get back to the rest of your holiday weekend."
Walter Chan coughed and put up a finger. "I'd like to respond to that, if I might. Excuse me. I'll be back in just a moment."
A few minutes later, Lisa Cuddy, locked and loaded for bear and looking like a million zillion bazillion jillion dollars in a Michigan sweatshirt, her head held high, stalked unwaveringly into the room.
"Walter," she said, inclining her head as Chan resumed his seat behind her desk. She gave the president of the university a frosty look. "Dillon."
"So nice to see you," Nardin said. "How are the Wolverines doing this year?"
"Bite me," she responded politely. House inhaled deeply and beamed at her, positively entranced.
"I suppose you have some questions," Chan offered.
House got hot and loud when he was angry. Cuddy, in contrast, went quiet. Foreman had been saying all along that as soon as Cuddy got good and mad she'd take control of the situation, and she was clearly enraged. Watching her stiffly draw herself up, Foreman's inner boxing fan settled into his seat with some popcorn. These yo-yos had absolutely no idea how much danger they were in right now.
Taking a chair, she folded her hands daintily, crossed her legs, and came out swinging. "Why have you, in clear violation of ADA regs, moved a disabled employee's office to the sixth floor and over two hundred feet from an elevator, why is the oncology department head no longer even in the same wing as hematology, whose budget did the money for a thirteen hundred dollar massage chair come from, and who the hell brought those cookies?" she asked coolly.
Chan was rattled only for a moment. "President Nardin has just made the observations, " he began, with a nervous glance at the offending butterscotch bars, "that Doctor House will not leave this esteemed institution without you, and that you are not --currently -- a competitive candidate for a chief administrative position. I quite agree. The converse -- that Doctor Cuddy would not go anywhere without House -- is precisely what I have been counting on."
House assumed the half-annoyed, half- amused expression that he always wore when the game was turning his way for reasons having nothing to do with the way he played.
Chan looked over at Nardin. "A few years ago, Doctors House and Foreman consulted with UM's infectious disease department on an internal multi-resistant bacteria outbreak. I don't think it will surprise anyone in this room that I, the presiding officers from the CDC, and to a person, my support staff, found House to be abrasive, demanding, combative, reckless, and not a little unhinged. He was also brilliant, relentless, and utterly indefatigable. When I expressed my appreciation for his diligence he merely grunted an opinion that it was a very good thing Doctor Cuddy had not been involved in the case, as she would have become emotionally involved. The woman is, he said, when she relates to a patient, stubborn, irrational, unable and unwilling to detach herself. He used the phrase 'a boil on the ass of science and a complete nightmare.' "
"That sounds like him." Cuddy, for her part, looked ready to explode. "Sorry, Janine, he's taken. What's your point, Walt?"
"I've been waiting for five years to ask you this." Chan reached into the top desk drawer and withdrew a thick binder.
Cuddy took it and read the first page. "The Meredith Elise Chan Memorial Clinic?" She blinked numbly over at Chan. "Walter?"
"I realize," Chan said. "I understand, that it would require a great deal of you, that there is a great deal of compromise involved for you, but I. That is, but my wife and I, would be very honored and very grateful, if you would consider taking charge of the medical center that will bear our daughter's name."
"What the hell?" Nardin demanded.
'We break ground in March," Chan said. "It's going to be small, but beautiful, just like Meredith was."
"I, I don't know what to say," Cuddy stammered.
"I've discovered that the trouble with medical administration is that the higher up you go in it, the farther away you get from the things that made you want to become a doctor in the first place," Chan said pensively. "Our vision for this position is that a practicing doctor will be involved in the patient care and the overall long-term policy and goal-setting, while all the administrative horseshit gets handled by a professional paper-pusher."
"That sounds like a boatload of work," House pointed out.
"Oh, yes. But it will make a difference."
"A difference," Cuddy repeated.
"Hold it," House said. It may have been dawning on him that he might have just agreed to a pay cut, and a move to Baltimore, for a job that required clinic duty and teaching.
"So all this time you've been sucking up to House to get Cuddy?" Tang, who for a scientist was incredibly slow, asked.
"I'm a practical man, and I knew he'd be easier to lure away. Doctor Cuddy is far more emotionally invested in this particular hospital. Indeed, the only thing she's more attached to than PPTH, is House." Chan was looking at Cuddy. "Places like Michigan University churn degrees out by the hundreds. But a physician with so much devotion to her patients that she'll stand up to Gregory House -- and win -- well, that's someone who ought to be practicing on the front lines of medicine, who ought to be directing at least in some small way the very future of medicine. That's who we want to lead our legacy."
Cuddy was reading the binder, mesmerized.
"Cuddy," House said desperately. "Cuddy, let's think about this. Twenty minutes ago, he was an opportunistic jerk. Now he's an opportunistic jerk with a dead kid. Cuddy. Cuddy, will you please look at me?"
After a minute, she did, blinking back tears. She and House had a long, silent conversation.
Finally, he nodded. "You want to say it, or should I?" he asked.
"Let me. You do it all the time and this is probably my last chance to."
Clutching the binder to her chest, she looked the president of the country's most highly ranked medical school directly in the eye.
"Fuck you," she said.
Part 12
Pairings, characters: House/Cuddy established, Rachel, Wilson, Stacy, some OCs.
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst and naughty language.
Summary: “It is one of the blessings of old friends that we can afford to be stupid with them.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson. A sharkverse fic, in which House and Cuddy are still together 6 years after the end of “Help Me.”
When Rachel was very small, she was afraid of the cappuccino machine. It seemed stupid now, but its growling and hissing and sputtering made her think of hungry animals, and she was not able to hear it without imagining something evil on the prowl, like the wolves in Beauty and the Beast.
Rachel was older now, and the rumble of the cappuccino machine made her feel pleased and safe; it meant that not only was Mom home, but House was making her coffee just the way she liked it, so she was sure to be in a good mood.
"Stacy." Mom didn't sound like she was in a good mood after all.
A cabinet door slammed. "This would be the smart, sexy, single Stacy, who's still hung up on you?"
"Yep, that one." House didn't seem to be in a good mood either; he sounded sad. "Could you maybe put the knife down?"
"You wish. What the hell were you doing with her?"
Someone turned on the kitchen faucet. "I honestly was unclear on that, until suddenly, I wasn't doing it anymore."
"Don't you ever get tired of hurting yourself and the people who care about you?"
"God, yes. Exhausted. Look, I was sure I was managing it."
"You're never right about that, you know. Especially when you're sure." A plate clattered.
"I'm with you there."
There was a metallic scraping sound, and the crackle of something frying. "Do you still have feelings for her?"
"Absolutely. I feel stupid and relieved."
"Should I feel stupid?" Now Mom sounded sad, too, and angry, the way she did when Nana Arlene was being especially mean.
"Only if you think you have any competition, Beautiful."
"Fine, I won't feel humiliated, then. I'll just be furious, instead. You're an idiot. And an ass."
"Tell me about it. No, don't; there's no need. I kind of stumbled over those all by myself."
Rachel rubbed her eyes, thinking she might be in the middle of some backwards dream. Her mother was barefoot and wearing an oversized sweatshirt over leggings, and House was wearing a fancy buttoned shirt and, even stranger, a tie. But then, everything about this whole week had been so weird. With sleeping in a car, having McDonald's three times in a row, and being home on a Friday, nothing seemed completely out of place any more.
"Good morning, Sweetie." Mom picked Rachel up and squeezed her, so hard and for so long that when she finally put her down, they were both breathing hard.
"Where's House going?" Rachel asked.
Smiling softly, Mom lifted Rachel's hair out of the collar of her robe and said to House, "Good question. It's freezing, and the crowds are going to be horrible. Why would you even want to leave the house today?"
"I'm meeting Chan at the hospital. To talk," House smiled and flourished his hand over a plate, "turkey."
"You speak Turkey?" Rachel asked. She was remembering their last trip to Costa Rica, when Nana Blythe marched into her parents' room, threw open the windows and announced, "The sun is shining, and the birds are singing!"
"That's the only sound they know how to make, Mom," House said, and rolled over. "There's probably one bird who gets up early, and that racket is Bird for, 'Shut the fuck up, I'm trying to sleep.'"
"Gregory House, you watch your language."
A laugh emitted from under the covers. "You're one to scold me about the f-bomb, Mrs Make A Marine Blush."
House poked his head out and addressed Rachel. "I overheard her chewing out a garage door opener once. It scarred me for life, I tell you. Peeled the paint off a Buick."
"I got it working, didn't I, Smartalec?"
"We were living in California at the time," he went on. "Don't tell Al Gore, but I'm pretty sure that's how global warming got started."
"Oh, just get your lazy ass out of bed and take Rachel and your wife to the beach."
"What?" Rachel's mom asked. "Oh." She picked a banana slice from Rachel's plate. "Oh, no, Sweetie, 'talk turkey' means to get serious in a conversation."
"Oh, you mean it's an idiom." Rachel was trying to figure out why turkeys were thought to be serious talkers. They all looked kind of dumb and silly to her.
Mom looked surprised. "Exactly." She turned to House. "I don't know what you have in mind, but it isn't going to work. Everyone knows you hate moving."
"We're moving?" Rachel asked.
"No, of course not," her mother said.
"We hate moving. " House grinned and pointed a fork at them. "But we liiiiike, leverage."
Mom looked at him with narrowed eyes and blew on the foam of her coffee. "Yes," she said, a little unhappily, "we do."
"What's leverage?"
"An advantage. Like having a firm offer in hand, before I go to the board," he answered, "and tell them that either they give your mother the position she deserves, or I walk, and take my money, my name on their letterhead, my people, and their head of oncology with me."
"I can't let you -- or Wilson -- do that," Mom huffed.
"But, you could come home. Things could go back to the way they were! Why can't you let him do that?!" Rachel exclaimed.
"Rachel, it's complicated." Mom squirmed and looked down, pressing her lips together. "Sweetie," she said softly, in the tone she always used when she was about to send Rachel out of the room.
"Actually," House said, "it's simple. I got my job thanks to you, and on more than one occasion, I kept it because of you. Now it's my turn. And before you get pig-headed: unlike me when I was hired, you've already earned that job ten times over. If they aren't complete morons, they're already looking for a reason to bring you back on. I'm going to give them one."
"What if that doesn't work? Will we have to move?" Rachel asked.
"We won't have to move, because they'll cave."
"We won't have to move because you're not doing this." Mom got up briskly and slammed her dishes into the dishwasher. "I won't allow it."
"What did you just say?" House's eyes got wide and he tilted his head.
Mom sighed. "I said thank you very much, Dear, but I can take care of myself."
"I know you can Cuddy, but the point is you don't have to." He slipped his arm around her waist. "If they don't cave -- and they totally will -- I do have tenure. If they didn't revoke it for any of the crazy crap I've pulled over the past twenty years, they won't revoke it for jerking them around."
"So." Mom looked at the ceiling and back at House. "Worst case scenario, they call your bluff, you'll screw over the board by letting them falsely hope that they're finally getting rid of a known pain in the ass and then reneging, and screw over Walt Chan by promising him that he's about to hire that pain in the ass and then reneging. That's our plan, is it?"
"See? Win-win." He folded her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.
Rachel soaked a piece of pancake in the pool of syrup on the edge of her plate. Well, that stunk. She'd kind of been looking forward to moving.
"You called us all in for this?" Foreman asked. House was overdue for one of his "or I quit" spiels, but Foreman hadn't expected him to interrupt the Thanksgiving reunion for a hissy fit.
"You're bluffing," the president of the medical school pronounced. Ten years and over eleven hundred dollars in lost bets and poker hands behind him, Foreman knew better than to even try to tell the difference between House with a busted straight and House with kings over aces, but he had to give Nardin points for style.
"I've been promised a comparable salary and substantially improved working conditions, including two additional fellows, unrestricted access to all diagnostic facilities, and a research lab with two grad students in the medical sciences to entertain me," House said. "Union Memorial has an excellent pain management department and does not have a free clinic."
"They also have a smaller budget and a lower faculty to student ratio," Nardin replied easily. "You're looking at a hefty pay cut, and more teaching responsibility." He looked conspiratorially over at Foreman. "Which is to say, some teaching responsibility."
House folded his hands together and leaned back in his chair. "Gentlemen," he said, and nodded at the dean of research, "Tang. Would anyone here like to hazard a guess at how much I'd be willing to pay, to get out of clinic duty forever? Would a million zillion bazillion jillion dollars sound out of line?"
"Pre or post-tax?" Foreman asked dryly.
"And does this competing offer from our interim chief of medicine," Nardin made the title into a scathing accusation, "include a position for Doctor Cuddy as well?"
House rewarded this with a steely glare and opened his mouth, but before he could answer, Nardin let a triumphant smile slide across his face. "I thought not. It's well known, House, that you won't go anywhere without Cuddy. Without an MHA or an MMM, no reputable teaching institution is going to hire her to be chief operating officer. She was barely out of residency when she took the job in admin at PPTH, and times have changed; no one of that age or experience would be so much as considered for the job, today. Here at Princeton, she's retained her tenure as a member of the faculty. So in the very unlikely event that she's not granted a new contract with the board when she returns from her sabbatical, she'll have that to fall back on. Union Memorial cannot offer her that security. Now, with apologies for indulging this colossal waste of all our time, I'll let you all get back to the rest of your holiday weekend."
Walter Chan coughed and put up a finger. "I'd like to respond to that, if I might. Excuse me. I'll be back in just a moment."
A few minutes later, Lisa Cuddy, locked and loaded for bear and looking like a million zillion bazillion jillion dollars in a Michigan sweatshirt, her head held high, stalked unwaveringly into the room.
"Walter," she said, inclining her head as Chan resumed his seat behind her desk. She gave the president of the university a frosty look. "Dillon."
"So nice to see you," Nardin said. "How are the Wolverines doing this year?"
"Bite me," she responded politely. House inhaled deeply and beamed at her, positively entranced.
"I suppose you have some questions," Chan offered.
House got hot and loud when he was angry. Cuddy, in contrast, went quiet. Foreman had been saying all along that as soon as Cuddy got good and mad she'd take control of the situation, and she was clearly enraged. Watching her stiffly draw herself up, Foreman's inner boxing fan settled into his seat with some popcorn. These yo-yos had absolutely no idea how much danger they were in right now.
Taking a chair, she folded her hands daintily, crossed her legs, and came out swinging. "Why have you, in clear violation of ADA regs, moved a disabled employee's office to the sixth floor and over two hundred feet from an elevator, why is the oncology department head no longer even in the same wing as hematology, whose budget did the money for a thirteen hundred dollar massage chair come from, and who the hell brought those cookies?" she asked coolly.
Chan was rattled only for a moment. "President Nardin has just made the observations, " he began, with a nervous glance at the offending butterscotch bars, "that Doctor House will not leave this esteemed institution without you, and that you are not --currently -- a competitive candidate for a chief administrative position. I quite agree. The converse -- that Doctor Cuddy would not go anywhere without House -- is precisely what I have been counting on."
House assumed the half-annoyed, half- amused expression that he always wore when the game was turning his way for reasons having nothing to do with the way he played.
Chan looked over at Nardin. "A few years ago, Doctors House and Foreman consulted with UM's infectious disease department on an internal multi-resistant bacteria outbreak. I don't think it will surprise anyone in this room that I, the presiding officers from the CDC, and to a person, my support staff, found House to be abrasive, demanding, combative, reckless, and not a little unhinged. He was also brilliant, relentless, and utterly indefatigable. When I expressed my appreciation for his diligence he merely grunted an opinion that it was a very good thing Doctor Cuddy had not been involved in the case, as she would have become emotionally involved. The woman is, he said, when she relates to a patient, stubborn, irrational, unable and unwilling to detach herself. He used the phrase 'a boil on the ass of science and a complete nightmare.' "
"That sounds like him." Cuddy, for her part, looked ready to explode. "Sorry, Janine, he's taken. What's your point, Walt?"
"I've been waiting for five years to ask you this." Chan reached into the top desk drawer and withdrew a thick binder.
Cuddy took it and read the first page. "The Meredith Elise Chan Memorial Clinic?" She blinked numbly over at Chan. "Walter?"
"I realize," Chan said. "I understand, that it would require a great deal of you, that there is a great deal of compromise involved for you, but I. That is, but my wife and I, would be very honored and very grateful, if you would consider taking charge of the medical center that will bear our daughter's name."
"What the hell?" Nardin demanded.
'We break ground in March," Chan said. "It's going to be small, but beautiful, just like Meredith was."
"I, I don't know what to say," Cuddy stammered.
"I've discovered that the trouble with medical administration is that the higher up you go in it, the farther away you get from the things that made you want to become a doctor in the first place," Chan said pensively. "Our vision for this position is that a practicing doctor will be involved in the patient care and the overall long-term policy and goal-setting, while all the administrative horseshit gets handled by a professional paper-pusher."
"That sounds like a boatload of work," House pointed out.
"Oh, yes. But it will make a difference."
"A difference," Cuddy repeated.
"Hold it," House said. It may have been dawning on him that he might have just agreed to a pay cut, and a move to Baltimore, for a job that required clinic duty and teaching.
"So all this time you've been sucking up to House to get Cuddy?" Tang, who for a scientist was incredibly slow, asked.
"I'm a practical man, and I knew he'd be easier to lure away. Doctor Cuddy is far more emotionally invested in this particular hospital. Indeed, the only thing she's more attached to than PPTH, is House." Chan was looking at Cuddy. "Places like Michigan University churn degrees out by the hundreds. But a physician with so much devotion to her patients that she'll stand up to Gregory House -- and win -- well, that's someone who ought to be practicing on the front lines of medicine, who ought to be directing at least in some small way the very future of medicine. That's who we want to lead our legacy."
Cuddy was reading the binder, mesmerized.
"Cuddy," House said desperately. "Cuddy, let's think about this. Twenty minutes ago, he was an opportunistic jerk. Now he's an opportunistic jerk with a dead kid. Cuddy. Cuddy, will you please look at me?"
After a minute, she did, blinking back tears. She and House had a long, silent conversation.
Finally, he nodded. "You want to say it, or should I?" he asked.
"Let me. You do it all the time and this is probably my last chance to."
Clutching the binder to her chest, she looked the president of the country's most highly ranked medical school directly in the eye.
"Fuck you," she said.
Part 12