Fic: Easier Said
Title: Easier Said
Author: Waylandsmithy
Characters: Cuddy , sundry others
Rating: PG
Words: 2000 approx
Comment: AU Post 7x23. Cuddy adapts to a new life. The odd purple passage.
You don't expect me to believe she never thinks of him?
“Now Dr Cuddy, d’you have all you need, or do you have any questions for me? It’s sure a lot to take in all at once. And is Dr Cuddy ok or do you want to be called Dean? Dean Thomas did but then his name was Dean; so it was kind of a joke. He was pretty informal.”
“Dr Cuddy’s fine” said Lisa, a trifle more firmly than she had intended. She would have to curb her no doubt invaluable new P.A.’s flow of chatter if she was to make headway today, her first official day in her new permanent appointment. She already had a headache, the result of a sleepless night thanks to Rachel’s ill-timed stomach flu.
The two women sized one another up covertly. Cuddy saw a woman approaching sixty with rather too much turquoise and silver jewellery for her taste and the tanned skin and outdoors living style of dress ubiquitous in the South West. She’d get used to it.
Mylene for her part wondered what had brought this slender, wiry woman with her very East Coast manner, her formal suits and delicate complexion to live in this harsh, dry climate. Other than the job, that is. It didn’t seem quite enough.
As if sensing the other woman’s curiosity, Lisa said “I think that’s enough to be going on with, Mylene. I’ll need to familiarise myself first of all with the senior medical staff records and you’ve already given me those. I didn’t get a chance to look at them last night; my daughter was sick.”
Mylene made a sympathetic noise and Lisa added “She had a hard start to life and I’m hoping the warm climate will agree with her better than the New Jersey winters.” The almost-lie slipped smoothly off her tongue. Rachel was as tough as they come. The fact she had survived at all proved that. It satisfied Mylene, though and it would no doubt soon be all over the hospital that the new Dean’s adopted daughter was ‘delicate’.
Plenty of strong coffee and a challenge had always been enough to overcome physical tiredness in the past and it was now. By the day’s end she was feeling less at sea. It would take her many months to become as familiar with all the procedures and personnel as she had been at PPTH but, feeling more energised than she had for a long time, she knew she could do again what she was hired to do, turn this hospital around……
A month ago, at interview, she’d been asked by the Board why she’d suddenly quit PPTH to take up a routine, temporary position in endocrinology, her former specialty, and she’d had her answer ready.
“I was made aware on a number of occasions” she said, that I’d been Dean for such a long time that I’d lost touch with practising front line medicine and that this made me perhaps less able to appreciate the stresses on my colleagues. I worked some Clinic hours but that was generally not very challenging.”
A voice echoed in her head ‘Could be done by a monkey with a bottle of Motrin.’ She suppressed the memory and continued. “Although it may have seemed like a snap decision I had been considering such a move for some time and as I had been mentoring one of my neurological staff for some years with a view to his taking over my position, the transition posed no difficulties for the hospital.“
“Ah, yes the Clinic,” said one of her interviewers, a lawyer she’d already seen described in the local press as ‘a socialist’. “We have been impressed by your innovative ideas in that area of your stewardship at PPTH and that is why your resume was of particular interest to us.The hospital’s catchment covers a huge area, much of it thinly populated with agricultural workers who are poorly covered by medical insurance, if at all. The border’s close, as you know and we also have a residual Native American population.”
“The question is,” said a florid-faced man in a check shirt, “can you run a free clinic along the lines of the one you started at Princeton Plainsboro without our already strained budget going to hell?”
“I can,” she said. “Just looking around I can already see areas where dollars can be saved. And that’s without looking at your paperwork.”
That assurance clinched it. A year after her few certainties crumbled, literally, around her ears, she was back in the driving seat.
A month passed, then two. She could not have said in all honesty that it felt like home but she was getting to appreciate the hard work that underpinned the apparently casual attitude of her staff and their willingness, for the most part, to carry out the measures needed to pull the hospital up from the lower ranks where it had been floundering for years. These were tough times. The routine culling of non-medics was the province of HR,thank God. She had never had a taste for firing people but she’d had no compunction in letting go those few senior staff resistant to change, or obvious trouble.
~~~
“A’hm the hospital’s bad boy. Mylene will’ve warned you.” A pleasant drawl drew her attention away from the screen on her desk and a brown hand was extended for her to shake, which she did, briefly.
“Matthew Jimson, same as the weed; though I’ve been told I ain’t as poisonous. “ The voice and hand were attached to a compactly built man in his later forties. His hair was prematurely silver and his light grey eyes were startling against his tanned face. The beautifully- cut suit shouted “Italy.” It would have stood out a mile even against Eric Foreman’s impeccable wardrobe; here, it was positively bizarre.
Only his manner and the way he appraised her from head to foot seemed eerily familiar. “I wasn’t looking forward to coming back,” he said “but I feel better already.”
“Let’s hope that continues” Lisa said coolly. “I have a meeting; please excuse me.”
“Why, sure. You’re the boss.” His smile belied his words.
His personnel file showed an unspecified three month medical absence in Europe. She recognised the name of the clinic. One whiff of alcohol on his breath during working hours and he’d be out of there before you could say Jack Daniels.
He was self-confident. He was attractive. He was dangerous.
Six weeks later he was out of there.
Perhaps she had learned something.
Rachel had settled down better even than she had hoped. She missed Marina terribly at first but was now full of “Constanza says….” She was happy and getting on well at preschool, less competitive perhaps than Lisa’s preferred one at Princeton but perhaps, she conceded, one more realistically suited to her abilities. Damn House, right about that but he’d have no further influence on her assessment of her daughter, nor more importantly, on the child. He could not be even a dim memory to her now and the pirate hat she’d insisted on wearing all that previous summer, oblivious to her mother’s pain, now lay discarded and forgotten at the back of her closet.
~~~
“What are you doing; drawing?” Cuddy sat down at Rachel’s little desk in their den.
“No,” Rachel shook her head vigorously. “I’m making the bad man go away.”
“Bad man?” Cuddy’s anxiety was immediately aroused. Then she saw. Rachel was using a felt pen to remove a figure from a group photograph. It had been taken by Wilson with Arlene’s old fashioned camera on one of her rare visits to her daughter and showed Lisa herself; her mother rather stiffly holding Rachel, and of course, House; almost invisible now under a layer of purple ink.
“You shouldn’t take things from my bureau, Rachel. It’s very naughty and I’m cross.”
“Granma said he’s a bad man.”
“Are you listening to me, Rachel? You mustn’t take things out of there. Mommy keeps important papers in there.”
“But Granma said…”
Lisa bit her lip. The recent bond between her mother and Rachel had been achieved with difficulty and she did not want to endanger it but there were times when she could willingly strangle Arlene, who seemed incapable of censoring her comments in front of her granddaughter.
“He is a bad man?” Rachel looked up innocently, as if for confirmation.
“He did a bad thing” said her mother, after a moment, “a very bad thing, but he’s not a bad man.”
She cleared her throat, suddenly tight. “He’s a doctor. Made Granma better.”
“Oh,” said Rachel. “I thought he was a pirate.”
Dear God, did she remember him? Surely not.
“You were very little, Rachel. I don’t think you remember.”
“His leg was all bleedy.”
“It’s better now. Let’s put this away and don’t let me see you take anything out of my desk again. Is that clear?”
Bathtime followed suppertime and once Rachel was in bed, Cuddy took her Saturday evening glass of wine out on to the terrace with its stunning views across the city and the desert floor, to the mountains, still snow-topped in places. She wasn’t planning to fall in love with this location, so different from the greenness of her New Jersey roots but it could be a good deal worse. In eight years, ten at most, she and Rachel would be ready to move on. A good school for Rachel back East, and for her a prestigious, plum job to end her career with a flourish.
She’d be alone, she knew. The highly competent, cautious, work-driven personality had warred with the risk-taking lover of the unconventional and it was a tussle almost to the death. The Dean of Medicine and single mother had won out.It was a triumph that had left the taste of ashes in her mouth. Never again.
On the still air she heard the soft sounds of a piano. It was a familiar tune; “After you’ve gone”. The lyrics came back to her with a poignancy that made her hurry back indoors.
“Words don’t matter. Actions, matter.” How many times had she heard him utter these or similar words over the years? If that were the case he was condemned out of his own mouth and every particle of anger and outrage she had felt over the last many months, even when it had diminished to a kind of numb grief which crept up on her unawares such as now; every bit of it was fully justified.
But, said her traitorous self, if only actions matter, what did his voluntary submission to the law say? A law that would not have sent him to jail and kept him there for ten long months if he’d been apprehended at the time. She was indebted not to Wilson for this information, surprisingly enough but to Eric Foreman, who’d let it slip in his otherwise strictly FYI call when he’d arranged House’s parole to solve that lung transplant case.
Wilson, true to his nature had decided to pretend that House had never existed in her life while maintaining, she supposed, a friendship with them both, just as he’d omitted all reference to Stacy in his dealings with House for five whole years.
Foreman had kept up an occasional correspondence with her as and when she could provide a short cut answer to issues which turned up at the hospital. He was grateful for her co-operation and as sympathetic as his nature would allow to the situation in which she had found herself. “She should have known it would end in disaster” was his view. He was not alone in this.
He didn’t expect House to pursue Cuddy half way across the country on his release and in any case his movements were severely restricted by the ankle monitor but he felt obliged to inform her that he was ‘out’ in case the Department of Corrections did not. That had been back in the fall.
She knew what had upset her carefully achieved balance now. Not that damn song, though he’d played it more than once when they were together. No, it was the news yesterday, courtesy of Eric, that he’d been freed at last from what she thought of as shackles, together with the revelation that Rachel had tried to expunge his image as a “bad man” from the photograph, in a way that her infant memory had clearly not.
Words might not matter to him but she knew she spoke the truth when she told her daughter he was not a bad man. She had done the only thing she could, after the event, to protect herself and Rachel and she did not regret it. She could not forgive him, did not want to forgive him. That didn’t mean she didn’t have a gaping hole in her life as big as the one he had left in her home.
Author: Waylandsmithy
Characters: Cuddy , sundry others
Rating: PG
Words: 2000 approx
Comment: AU Post 7x23. Cuddy adapts to a new life. The odd purple passage.
You don't expect me to believe she never thinks of him?
“Now Dr Cuddy, d’you have all you need, or do you have any questions for me? It’s sure a lot to take in all at once. And is Dr Cuddy ok or do you want to be called Dean? Dean Thomas did but then his name was Dean; so it was kind of a joke. He was pretty informal.”
“Dr Cuddy’s fine” said Lisa, a trifle more firmly than she had intended. She would have to curb her no doubt invaluable new P.A.’s flow of chatter if she was to make headway today, her first official day in her new permanent appointment. She already had a headache, the result of a sleepless night thanks to Rachel’s ill-timed stomach flu.
The two women sized one another up covertly. Cuddy saw a woman approaching sixty with rather too much turquoise and silver jewellery for her taste and the tanned skin and outdoors living style of dress ubiquitous in the South West. She’d get used to it.
Mylene for her part wondered what had brought this slender, wiry woman with her very East Coast manner, her formal suits and delicate complexion to live in this harsh, dry climate. Other than the job, that is. It didn’t seem quite enough.
As if sensing the other woman’s curiosity, Lisa said “I think that’s enough to be going on with, Mylene. I’ll need to familiarise myself first of all with the senior medical staff records and you’ve already given me those. I didn’t get a chance to look at them last night; my daughter was sick.”
Mylene made a sympathetic noise and Lisa added “She had a hard start to life and I’m hoping the warm climate will agree with her better than the New Jersey winters.” The almost-lie slipped smoothly off her tongue. Rachel was as tough as they come. The fact she had survived at all proved that. It satisfied Mylene, though and it would no doubt soon be all over the hospital that the new Dean’s adopted daughter was ‘delicate’.
Plenty of strong coffee and a challenge had always been enough to overcome physical tiredness in the past and it was now. By the day’s end she was feeling less at sea. It would take her many months to become as familiar with all the procedures and personnel as she had been at PPTH but, feeling more energised than she had for a long time, she knew she could do again what she was hired to do, turn this hospital around……
A month ago, at interview, she’d been asked by the Board why she’d suddenly quit PPTH to take up a routine, temporary position in endocrinology, her former specialty, and she’d had her answer ready.
“I was made aware on a number of occasions” she said, that I’d been Dean for such a long time that I’d lost touch with practising front line medicine and that this made me perhaps less able to appreciate the stresses on my colleagues. I worked some Clinic hours but that was generally not very challenging.”
A voice echoed in her head ‘Could be done by a monkey with a bottle of Motrin.’ She suppressed the memory and continued. “Although it may have seemed like a snap decision I had been considering such a move for some time and as I had been mentoring one of my neurological staff for some years with a view to his taking over my position, the transition posed no difficulties for the hospital.“
“Ah, yes the Clinic,” said one of her interviewers, a lawyer she’d already seen described in the local press as ‘a socialist’. “We have been impressed by your innovative ideas in that area of your stewardship at PPTH and that is why your resume was of particular interest to us.The hospital’s catchment covers a huge area, much of it thinly populated with agricultural workers who are poorly covered by medical insurance, if at all. The border’s close, as you know and we also have a residual Native American population.”
“The question is,” said a florid-faced man in a check shirt, “can you run a free clinic along the lines of the one you started at Princeton Plainsboro without our already strained budget going to hell?”
“I can,” she said. “Just looking around I can already see areas where dollars can be saved. And that’s without looking at your paperwork.”
That assurance clinched it. A year after her few certainties crumbled, literally, around her ears, she was back in the driving seat.
A month passed, then two. She could not have said in all honesty that it felt like home but she was getting to appreciate the hard work that underpinned the apparently casual attitude of her staff and their willingness, for the most part, to carry out the measures needed to pull the hospital up from the lower ranks where it had been floundering for years. These were tough times. The routine culling of non-medics was the province of HR,thank God. She had never had a taste for firing people but she’d had no compunction in letting go those few senior staff resistant to change, or obvious trouble.
~~~
“A’hm the hospital’s bad boy. Mylene will’ve warned you.” A pleasant drawl drew her attention away from the screen on her desk and a brown hand was extended for her to shake, which she did, briefly.
“Matthew Jimson, same as the weed; though I’ve been told I ain’t as poisonous. “ The voice and hand were attached to a compactly built man in his later forties. His hair was prematurely silver and his light grey eyes were startling against his tanned face. The beautifully- cut suit shouted “Italy.” It would have stood out a mile even against Eric Foreman’s impeccable wardrobe; here, it was positively bizarre.
Only his manner and the way he appraised her from head to foot seemed eerily familiar. “I wasn’t looking forward to coming back,” he said “but I feel better already.”
“Let’s hope that continues” Lisa said coolly. “I have a meeting; please excuse me.”
“Why, sure. You’re the boss.” His smile belied his words.
His personnel file showed an unspecified three month medical absence in Europe. She recognised the name of the clinic. One whiff of alcohol on his breath during working hours and he’d be out of there before you could say Jack Daniels.
He was self-confident. He was attractive. He was dangerous.
Six weeks later he was out of there.
Perhaps she had learned something.
Rachel had settled down better even than she had hoped. She missed Marina terribly at first but was now full of “Constanza says….” She was happy and getting on well at preschool, less competitive perhaps than Lisa’s preferred one at Princeton but perhaps, she conceded, one more realistically suited to her abilities. Damn House, right about that but he’d have no further influence on her assessment of her daughter, nor more importantly, on the child. He could not be even a dim memory to her now and the pirate hat she’d insisted on wearing all that previous summer, oblivious to her mother’s pain, now lay discarded and forgotten at the back of her closet.
~~~
“What are you doing; drawing?” Cuddy sat down at Rachel’s little desk in their den.
“No,” Rachel shook her head vigorously. “I’m making the bad man go away.”
“Bad man?” Cuddy’s anxiety was immediately aroused. Then she saw. Rachel was using a felt pen to remove a figure from a group photograph. It had been taken by Wilson with Arlene’s old fashioned camera on one of her rare visits to her daughter and showed Lisa herself; her mother rather stiffly holding Rachel, and of course, House; almost invisible now under a layer of purple ink.
“You shouldn’t take things from my bureau, Rachel. It’s very naughty and I’m cross.”
“Granma said he’s a bad man.”
“Are you listening to me, Rachel? You mustn’t take things out of there. Mommy keeps important papers in there.”
“But Granma said…”
Lisa bit her lip. The recent bond between her mother and Rachel had been achieved with difficulty and she did not want to endanger it but there were times when she could willingly strangle Arlene, who seemed incapable of censoring her comments in front of her granddaughter.
“He is a bad man?” Rachel looked up innocently, as if for confirmation.
“He did a bad thing” said her mother, after a moment, “a very bad thing, but he’s not a bad man.”
She cleared her throat, suddenly tight. “He’s a doctor. Made Granma better.”
“Oh,” said Rachel. “I thought he was a pirate.”
Dear God, did she remember him? Surely not.
“You were very little, Rachel. I don’t think you remember.”
“His leg was all bleedy.”
“It’s better now. Let’s put this away and don’t let me see you take anything out of my desk again. Is that clear?”
Bathtime followed suppertime and once Rachel was in bed, Cuddy took her Saturday evening glass of wine out on to the terrace with its stunning views across the city and the desert floor, to the mountains, still snow-topped in places. She wasn’t planning to fall in love with this location, so different from the greenness of her New Jersey roots but it could be a good deal worse. In eight years, ten at most, she and Rachel would be ready to move on. A good school for Rachel back East, and for her a prestigious, plum job to end her career with a flourish.
She’d be alone, she knew. The highly competent, cautious, work-driven personality had warred with the risk-taking lover of the unconventional and it was a tussle almost to the death. The Dean of Medicine and single mother had won out.It was a triumph that had left the taste of ashes in her mouth. Never again.
On the still air she heard the soft sounds of a piano. It was a familiar tune; “After you’ve gone”. The lyrics came back to her with a poignancy that made her hurry back indoors.
“Words don’t matter. Actions, matter.” How many times had she heard him utter these or similar words over the years? If that were the case he was condemned out of his own mouth and every particle of anger and outrage she had felt over the last many months, even when it had diminished to a kind of numb grief which crept up on her unawares such as now; every bit of it was fully justified.
But, said her traitorous self, if only actions matter, what did his voluntary submission to the law say? A law that would not have sent him to jail and kept him there for ten long months if he’d been apprehended at the time. She was indebted not to Wilson for this information, surprisingly enough but to Eric Foreman, who’d let it slip in his otherwise strictly FYI call when he’d arranged House’s parole to solve that lung transplant case.
Wilson, true to his nature had decided to pretend that House had never existed in her life while maintaining, she supposed, a friendship with them both, just as he’d omitted all reference to Stacy in his dealings with House for five whole years.
Foreman had kept up an occasional correspondence with her as and when she could provide a short cut answer to issues which turned up at the hospital. He was grateful for her co-operation and as sympathetic as his nature would allow to the situation in which she had found herself. “She should have known it would end in disaster” was his view. He was not alone in this.
He didn’t expect House to pursue Cuddy half way across the country on his release and in any case his movements were severely restricted by the ankle monitor but he felt obliged to inform her that he was ‘out’ in case the Department of Corrections did not. That had been back in the fall.
She knew what had upset her carefully achieved balance now. Not that damn song, though he’d played it more than once when they were together. No, it was the news yesterday, courtesy of Eric, that he’d been freed at last from what she thought of as shackles, together with the revelation that Rachel had tried to expunge his image as a “bad man” from the photograph, in a way that her infant memory had clearly not.
Words might not matter to him but she knew she spoke the truth when she told her daughter he was not a bad man. She had done the only thing she could, after the event, to protect herself and Rachel and she did not regret it. She could not forgive him, did not want to forgive him. That didn’t mean she didn’t have a gaping hole in her life as big as the one he had left in her home.