Inquiry: Day Nine, 9 a.m. - Dr. Lisa Cuddy 2
Title: InquiryAuthor: zeppomarx
Characters: All the usual suspects, plus more.
Summary: When a panel is convened to review the facts of Gregory House’s life, his fellows (past and present), colleagues, patients and friends are called to testify.
Thanks: To Brigid45, for her infinite wisdom and advice.
Warnings, etc.: Possible character death.
Disclaimers: Don't own House or any of the show's characters. If I did, things might have gone a little differently.
Chapter Summary: Testimony of Dr. Lisa Cuddy 2
Day Nine, 9 a.m. -- Thursday
The next morning, after taking a deep breath, Lisa Cuddy squared her shoulders and marched back into the inquiry room, settling herself onto the wooden chair.
“Tell us, from your perspective, Dr. Cuddy, what happened with Detective Tritter.”
Oh, dear Lord, thought Cuddy, who really didn’t care to rehash that travesty… and she absolutely didn’t intend to tell these strangers how she had perjured herself to keep House out of jail. Maybe, she thought, it would have been better if she’d just kept her mouth shut and let the idiot serve time then.
She took another deep breath and answered the question. “Det. Tritter came to me with a complaint about House’s behavior toward him in the clinic -- not an unusual situation, by the way. I demanded that House apologize to him, but he refused. It escalated from there.”
“We understand that Det. Tritter froze the assets of many of Dr. House’s fellows, as well as the assets and prescribing privileges of Dr. Wilson. What legal action did you take, as hospital administrator, to rectify that situation?”
What the hell was the point of that question? she wondered. “None. I was hoping that by working with House and putting pressure on him, the situation would resolve itself.”
“You’re talking about restricting, then eliminating his access to Vicodin, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And meaning you thought he would then apologize in order to get his prescriptions renewed?”
“Yes.”
“But from what we’ve been told about his character, that was never very likely.”
“It still seemed like the right approach. I thought if we could make things more uncomfortable for House if he didn’t apologize than if he did, he would rectify things.”
“It didn’t happen that way, did it?”
Yesterday, they’d questioned her judgment in ordering the debridement and about getting Foreman to snitch to her about House, and now they were questioning her judgment about how she’d handled the Tritter disaster. “Not exactly, no.”
“While all this was going on, did you seek advice from the hospital’s counsel about Dr. House’s legal rights… or attempt to challenge the legality of Det. Tritter’s actions, which, as we understand it, were not actually performed according to the law?”
“No, I did not.”
In fact, Cuddy realized, it had never even dawned on her to get in-house legal advice. Why, she couldn’t say, especially in light of the panel’s assertions that Tritter was acting outside the law.
Every other time House had gotten himself in deep with a patient, she’d had the lawyers all over it. But in the Tritter case, when so much was at stake, House had even had to hire an outside attorney to plead his case. Of course, that was about his arrest, which took place outside hospital property. But if Tritter was actually on a less-than-legal vendetta that originated in the clinic, then it all really revolved around the hospital and pointed to negligence on her part. Wilson’s prescribing privileges had been affected… and certainly Tritter’s shutdown of Wilson and House’s team’s bank accounts affected the hospital. Then there was the whole business of Tritter pressuring her staff to turn on House. Her mind buzzed around the problem.
Maybe she should have gotten the PPTH legal counsel in on it. Maybe, if what Tritter did really was illegal, things could have been resolved much sooner. She wouldn’t have had to force House to detox at all, and she would never have had to perjure herself. Cuddy was not comfortable with these disturbing thoughts; she didn’t like facing the possibility that she might have handled things better, and, as was often her way when confronted with something that went against deep-seated beliefs, she shut those ideas out, making herself focus only on the specific questions she was being asked. Unfortunately for her, the panel was not going to let her get away with ignoring the problem.
“This seems like a serious managerial oversight on your part,” said the chairman, bluntly, echoing her self-examination. “Did you ever ask Dr. House why he was being so stubborn about Det. Tritter? Did it ever occur to you to wonder if there might be more to the story, that perhaps Det. Tritter had precipitated the problem himself?”
“No, it did not.” It should have, though, shouldn’t it? came a niggling little voice tickling at the back of Cuddy’s mind, the same little voice that had disconcerted her when she found out House’s crazy story about the CIA had actually been true.
“From what you and others told us, you restricted and then withheld Dr. House’s pain medication to try to force him into rehab, which you felt might appease Det. Tritter. Would that be accurate?”
“Yes, it would.”
“And you had no compunction about withholding pain meds from a man suffering severe nerve and muscle pain?”
Cuddy didn’t enjoy feeling like a bug under a microscope, so she went on the attack. “I felt it was the only way to resolve the situation,” she stated firmly. “And besides, House used Vicodin to numb himself out from emotional pain as well as physical. It should be apparent from what happened to him later that the man had serious addiction issues.”
“Did you really believe the best way to handle an already volatile situation was to force someone you believed to be an addict to go through unsupervised withdrawal?”
She set her jaw in irritation. “Yes. Under the circumstances, with Det. Tritter watching over our shoulders, yes, I did.”
“Did Dr. House have any patients during this detoxing period?”
In her mind’s eye, Cuddy saw the dwarf mother and her daughter seeking a medical solution from House and his team. With a sharp stomach clench, she remembered standing at House’s front door, seeing him in the throes of withdrawal, refusing to give him pills, but insisting that he help the patient, despite the fact that she was the one who had pulled him off the case.
“You’d rather kill this girl than give me my pills?” he’d asked, with that frightening ability he had for getting to the heart of the issue.
“I would rather lose one patient now than the dozens we will lose while you’re in prison,” she’d replied, in what she suddenly felt was an appalling application of medical arithmetic.
What had House said? “Have fun explaining that to her itsy bitsy mother.”
The next morning, Cameron brought up the subject again. “What if we sacrifice this girl and House still goes to jail?” she’d asked.
And how had Cuddy responded to that? “I’d feel bad,” was all she’d said about it.
Had she really been so callous that she would intentionally allow the death of a patient just to resolve an increasingly uncomfortable situation? And, unlike her, and despite what he’d said to her, House had quietly prompted his team to find the right answer, apparently unwilling to sacrifice the patient just because he’d been going through hell and Cuddy had yanked him from the case. So who really was the more responsible person in the situation? Which of them had been more ethical? Cuddy no longer knew.
“Yes, he did, at first… although I removed him from the case.” Fingers crossed, she hoped they’d take it no further.
“And this was not the only time you forced Dr. House into a cold-turkey detox, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t.” They just weren’t going to let up. If they’d known House the way she had, they’d have known he was an addict. Why were they making her feel as if she was the one who had done something wrong?
“How was the situation ultimately resolved?”
“The case was dismissed and Dr. House went into rehab.” Which he scammed, thought Cuddy with disgust. Damned Vicodin.
As angry as she’d been with him at the time, it had never occurred to her to wonder why, if he had been scamming while he was in rehab, he had spent hours vomiting into the rehab toilet. But as the unwanted thought flitted through her mind now, she chose to ignore it.
“Back to the other detoxing incident. We have heard from Dr. Wilson his version of the events. Would you please tell us yours?”
Cuddy was glad for a change of subject, even as she recognized there might be new pitfalls ahead. “Dr. Wilson and I felt that House had become addicted to Vicodin, and thought that if he had to detox from it, he would recognize that he had a drug problem. He could never back down from a bet or a challenge, so I offered him time off from the clinic if he could go a week without Vicodin.”
“Which he, in fact, did. Correct?”
“Yes. He even admitted at the end of the week that he was addicted, but told Dr. Wilson he had no intention of quitting. According to what James told me, House claimed the Vicodin didn’t make his pain go away, but it enabled him to function… to pay his bills, cook his meals and do his job.”
The chairman looked thoughtful. “Interesting. From what we’ve heard about other instances when he had to do without painkillers, it sounds as if that might quite literally have been true.”
Uh-oh. She really didn’t like where this line of questioning was leading her. “You may be right,” she conceded, less than happily. “Some of the worst problems we ever had with him were when he was detoxing.” But then there was the whole hallucinations/delusion problem triggered by the Vicodin. Her head hurt as her brain tried to resolve conflicting ideas.
Certainly the worst problem she’d ever had with him personally was when he took that one damned pill just so he could sit by her side during her cancer scare. Cuddy didn’t like the suggestion that maybe… just maybe… he was often better on the stuff than off. She’d wanted him to be with her, but totally unimpaired. But if the only way he could handle his fear of losing her was one measly Vicodin, and it enabled him to be there for her, why had she felt such a strong need to dump his ass for it? If she hadn’t, there would have been no drug and alcohol bingeing, no hookers, no green card hooker wife, no cannonball into the pool off a 10-story balcony… and her house and career would still be intact.
As most people do, Cuddy saw everything through the prism of her own feelings and experiences, so in her reflections, she gave no thought to the impact of that one measly Vicodin on House’s personal life -- a long prison sentence, ruined reputation, financial disaster, faked death, parole violations, and so much more -- nothing about what that one Vicodin and her subsequent breakup with him had cost the man she had once claimed she loved so much.
For some reason, she found herself wondering just how she actually defined the word love. The panel chair roused her from her reverie. “Dr. Wilson told us that, during both of these detox incidents, there was no medical supervision of Dr. House’s initial withdrawal, and no attempt to provide alternate pain medication for him. Is that true?”
As her mind raced through memories of both detoxes, Cuddy struggled to come up with a reasonable explanation, one that would absolve her and Wilson from what was clearly becoming an accusation of medical insensitivity… at the very least. “House did complete his detox during the Tritter incident at our rehab facility at PPTH, under medical supervision,” she said, hoping she’d be lucky and they wouldn’t notice that she had completely skipped over the other detox, or House’s miserable withdrawal before going into rehab. Which he’d scammed. Or had he?
She wasn’t lucky. The woman down the table to her left immediately jumped on her evasive answer. “You’ve ignored the real question, Dr. Cuddy,” she said. “We asked you if it was true there was no medical supervision of Dr. House’s initial withdrawal in the Tritter incident or any at all during the weeklong detox bet situation. Did you or did you not provide medical supervision for him? And did you or did you not provide him with alternative pain relief?”
Closing her eyes a moment and sighing, Cuddy knew she was cornered. “No. Neither Dr. Wilson nor I provided Dr. House with any alternative pain medication, and there was no direct medical supervision, other than the two of us making sure he wasn’t using.” That sinking feeling grew as she saw several of the panelists taking furious notes.
“Can you explain why you ignored medical protocol in both of these incidents, leaving Dr. House alone to go through such painful withdrawal that in once instance, he broke his own hand to activate the gating mechanism, and in the other, began cutting himself to release endorphins?”
Swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat, Cuddy suddenly didn’t feel like her usual confident self. She -- and Wilson -- were at fault here. No matter how good their intentions, or how sure they were that House was an addict, they (no, make that she) had gone about it in a particularly cruel way, a way that not only caused House considerable and needless pain, but also was totally ineffective at dealing with the issue. In neither situation had their efforts resulted in House giving up the drug for long.
All that happened in the first case was that he’d admitted he was an addict (but wasn’t willing to quit using), and in the second he’d nearly gone to prison and had wound up desperately stealing bottle of oxycontin, thereby committing a felony, before he scammed his way through rehab. If he had actually scammed… she couldn’t keep thinking about this.
A new idea occurred to her, and it was equally unsettling. Was it possible that, after several days of watching House suffer in extreme pain, Voldemort, as House had insisted on calling him, had taken pity on him and provided him with Vicodin, just to ease his own conscience about being part of House’s torturous withdrawal?
Damn! It was a lot easier when she could stay angry and blame House for everything. She really didn’t like where her conscience was taking her, so once again, she locked the unwanted thoughts into a bank safe and left them there.
The panel chairman took over the questioning again and changed the subject, to her great relief, although the new topic only eased her discomfort slightly. “Dr. Cuddy, despite your current dislike of Dr. House, there must have been something about him that you liked at one time, or you would not have begun a romantic relationship with him. Could you give us some examples of moments when Dr. House showed you a positive side to his personality?”
Oh, God, she so didn’t want to go here! It was bad enough to think she might have caused him unnecessary pain with those detoxes, but she certainly didn’t want to remember anything good about him. Although willing to admit she’d made a mistake in getting involved with him, she wasn’t yet ready to remember the reasons she’d gotten involved with him in the first place. And she really wasn’t willing to admit that she might have contributed to the ultimate outcome of that mistake. He’d proved himself to be unstable and violent, and she was serious this time when she’d told him she was done. The last thing she wanted right now was to talk about him. Her resentment of this whole proceeding began to grow again as she grabbed at that anger toward House, clutching it close to her heart, desperately wanting to keep hating the man.
“I decline to answer that question.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Cuddy, but you don’t have that choice. This is not optional. Answer the question.”
Cuddy sighed dramatically, glaring at the panel chair. “I guess there were occasional moments when he did something positive. I can’t think of any right now.”
“Try. Try harder.”
Cuddy thought back past her damaged home, past his fake marriage to that whore, past their breakup, past the relationship itself, and wracked her brain.
“Okay, I guess this would count. At one point, I was trying to become pregnant, and, because I was already getting older, I needed fertility shots. I asked House to give me the twice-daily injections. He did. And he never told anyone about it, not even Dr. Wilson.”
“That sounds like something a friend would do for another friend. What else?”
“I suppose he sometimes gave me support or good advice. I remember trying to negotiate a contract with an insurance company, and I was facing problems on all sides. He privately encouraged me to keep after what I felt the hospital deserved. He was right. I got the deal. And I guess I needed his encouragement right that minute.”
He’d found her in the parking garage, sitting in her car, where she’d retreated to think. “They're not going to fire you,” he’d said. “And you're not going to quit.” “Why not?” she’d asked him. “Because you're an idiot,” he’d replied. “This place needs you. And that matters to you.”
Then she’d asked him about Gail, who’d been stealing meds. “She's a sociopath,” he’d told her. “You knew she was stealing meds?” she’d asked. “No,” he’d said, “but have you seen the way she opens the mail?” “Why didn't you ever tell me?” she wanted to know, and he’d answered by saying, as only House could, “Figured it might come in handy one day.”
Almost against her will, Cuddy found herself smiling rather nostalgically. She’d almost forgotten -- no, that wasn’t right… she’d purposely forgotten -- that side of House, that frighteningly perceptive side of him, the part of him that was almost always right, except when it came to making decisions for himself… and maybe even then… he had, after all, predicted that their relationship was doomed and had tried to talk her out of starting it up, predicting with frightening accuracy exactly what was going to happen. But how much of that was self-fulfilling prophecy, and how much was his innate understanding of their respective weaknesses and capacity for failure?
The panel’s next question shook her out of her reverie. “What about your desk, Dr. Cuddy? Or your great-grandfather’s book?”
Wait… what? How did they know about those? “I… ummmm… yes, well, he did surprise me with the desk. It was, I guess, pretty thoughtful.”
“You guess?”
“Yes, I… it was thoughtful.” Flushing, she remembered how mortified she’d been to find him in his office with a hooker when she went to thank him. But had she ever actually gone back to express her thanks to him… or had she just ignored the whole thing after the awkward moment outside his office? She wanted to pretend she couldn’t recall, but the reality was she was perfectly aware that she’d avoided the subject from that instant on, and had never attempted to thank him again. House must have gone to a lot of trouble to arrange such a gift -- dealing with her mother and then getting the desk restored and secretly delivered. It really was a very thoughtful gesture, and for just a moment, Cuddy felt a little twinge of guilt over having been so ungracious about it that she’d never even mentioned it to House.
“How about the book?”
“Oh, that was just stupid. He’d found out Lucas and I were moving in together, and he somehow thought if he gave me a gift like that, I’d turn to him instead.”
“Which, of course, you did. That same night.”
“Y-yes. I guess I did.” She’d never really thought about it that way. But by the time she’d broken up with Lucas and turned up in House’s bathroom late that night, she’d forgotten all about the book. It had been a long day.
“How do you know what he thought at the time?” asked the panel chairman. “Did he tell you later on that he’d tried to use that gift to manipulate your feelings?”
“No. I just assumed…”
Wilson’s nemesis spoke up from Cuddy’s far left. “Dr. Cuddy, apparently you are unaware that Dr. House had gone to considerable effort and expense, over a period of many years, to track down that book for you. According to Dr. Wilson, he had been waiting for just the right moment to give it to you. So, is it possible the gift was his way of conceding defeat? That it was actually a considerate and gracious thing for him to do?”
Cuddy felt the breath get knocked out of her. Maybe he hadn’t been tormenting her with that book. Maybe he’d meant it genuinely. And how had she responded? Not very positively, if she remembered correctly. What did his face look like at that moment? She really couldn’t conjure it up; her memories were all mixed up with the crane crash and the turbulent emotions of that day. Was he hurt by her reaction? I would be, thought Cuddy, a tight, nasty knot suddenly forming in her stomach. I’d feel hurt if my gift was not appreciated. Maybe House wasn’t the only one who had behaved badly at times.
“I… I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do. Other than his original injury and the couple of times you and Dr. Wilson forced Dr. House to detox against his will, how involved were you with his medical treatment?”
“Not much. Dr. Wilson was his prescribing physician.” Oh, wait. There was the methadone. And that time House had asked her for morphine injections.
“Not much isn’t terribly specific, Dr. Cuddy,” interjected the panel chairman, taking back the reins of the questioning. “Could you give us examples of other times you treated him medically?”
Cuddy closed her eyes. She was exhausted already, miserably hot and sticky, and not happy about this whole thing. “He approached me a couple of times, claiming his pain was out of control, and asked for morphine injections in his spine.”
“He came to you, and not to Dr. Wilson or his pain doctor in Trenton.”
“I… I didn’t realize he was seeing a pain doctor.”
“Yes, he had been… off and on for years. Answer the question, Dr. Cuddy.”
“Yes. He came to me.”
“And you gave him the morphine?”
“No, I did not.”
“Really? Why not?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Cuddy saw the woman at the end of the table leafing through a stack of papers in front of her. Clearing her thoughts, Cuddy answered the question. “I felt he was exaggerating his pain, that he was actually responding to a psychological situation, not a physical one, so I injected him with saline instead.”
“A placebo?”
“Yes.”
“Was it effective?”
“Temporarily.” At this, Cuddy became aware that all of the panel members were suddenly taking notes.
“I’m sure you know about the placebo effect,” said the chairman, looking up from whatever he was scribbling, “so it’s not surprising if Dr. House felt a temporary decrease in his pain levels.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Do you also realize that giving him a placebo would not mean his pain was psychological… just that he’d felt some relief because of the placebo effect, which can be temporarily effective on physical pain?”
“I…I…” Cuddy, for once, was speechless. While she grappled with what the chairman had said, he went right on to the next question.
“Why did you stop giving him the placebo? Did Dr. House no longer come to you for injections… or was his pain so severe that the placebo didn’t help?”
She pulled herself back together. “No. I informed him about the saline.”
“Ah… so, once he knew about it, the placebo effect would no longer work.”
“Correct.”
“Help me understand. You discounted his pain, blamed it on psychological issues -- something you have apparently done more than once -- gave him a placebo in place of actual pain medication, and then informed him that you had done so. Would that be accurate?”
“Yes, it would.”
“I would think he might be annoyed at finding you had used him as a guinea pig for your theory about psychologically induced pain. What was his reaction when he found out he’d gotten a placebo?”
“I don’t recall.” But she did remember watching in horror as he dropped his trousers, forcing her to look at the hideous scar on his right thigh -- the scar she had caused to be there -- begging, with tears in his eyes, for relief. And what had she done? She’d given him a placebo… and then rubbed his nose in the fact that she believed his pain was all psychological. It was getting harder and harder for her to feel blameless, for everything between them to be House’s fault and his alone. And yet, she really wasn’t ready to discard any of the anger she still felt over House’s invasion of her dining room.
“Tell us what happened when he tried to ease his pain with methadone.”
“I knew nothing about it until one day in his office, when we found that he had stopped breathing. Shortly afterward, Dr. Wilson told me he thought Dr. House was on heroin, but later we found out he was taking methadone.”
“Methadone is a recognized pain treatment. What happened next?”
“I informed Dr. House I wouldn’t allow him to take methadone while he worked in my hospital.”
Nemesis Lady interjected unexpectedly, dismaying Cuddy, who was beginning to dread her questions almost as much as Wilson had. “Why on earth would you do that?”
“I was trying to get him to see reason.”
“About what? You were neither his primary care physician nor his pain management specialist, were you?”
“No, but I was his boss and part of his healthcare team.”
“The methadone had been prescribed by his pain doctor, Dr. Chakravarti. Why would you go against Dr. House’s own physician in this matter? Why would you think it was your business to interfere with Dr. House’s medical treatment?”
“I didn’t know he was seeing anyone for pain… and I felt it was too dangerous for him because of the earlier respiratory distress.”
“Should that have been your call? The methadone had been legitimately prescribed.”
“But I wasn’t aware of that.”
“It still shouldn’t have been your decision. It was up to Dr. House and his physician to decide if methadone’s risks were too dangerous, not you. Did you even ask Dr. House how he got the methadone?”
“No....” Another lapse on her part.
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“House got angry with me, and quit his job for a couple of days.”
“He got angry with you for interfering with a recognized treatment, legally prescribed, for the kind of pain he suffered… a treatment that he found remarkably effective?”
“Yes. I guess so.” This wasn’t sounding so good, Cuddy realized in an embarrassing moment of clarity.
“Under what circumstances did he return?”
“He came into my office to pick up a letter of recommendation. I had… well, I had purposely not completed it, because I had a counter-proposal for him. I offered him his job back, if he would let me monitor his methadone intake.”
“He accepted?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have other offers on the table?”
“Apparently so. But I reminded him that he really belonged at PPTH, and he caved.”
“Even though you had been underpaying him for years and personally benefitting from his international reputation?”
“I… If you must put it that way, yes.” No, this was not sounding good at all. Cuddy didn’t like the way the deck was stacking up against her, and yet she couldn’t argue too much with the conclusions the panel might draw. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, they had been making reasonable points.
“So, in essence, you played chicken with him, using as a weapon legitimately prescribed medication that had completely eliminated his pain.”
“It worked. He came back.”
“But at what cost, Dr. Cuddy? At what cost?”
Although Cuddy had been shocked when House had quit over the methadone treatment and had made up her mind not to lose him at her hospital, she was also an astute businesswoman, and intended to play hardball if she had to. It had worked when she’d initially hired House, and she believed it might work again. In fact, it had. “I refused to give him a raise,” she said. “I just offered him his old job back, under the condition that I would personally administer the methadone to him.”
“You’re quite the business barracuda, aren’t you? I didn’t mean at what financial cost. I meant at what cost to his health.”
At the time, that was something Cuddy hadn’t even figured into the equation. All she cared about was getting him back to work for her. “It didn’t matter. He found that the methadone had negatively impacted his medical judgment, and so he quit using it that very night,” she said, challenging the notion that she had ignored House’s medical needs. “As far as I know, he never took methadone again.”
Nemesis didn’t seem to see things that way. “It didn’t matter?” she asked, her voice rising slightly. “Before you became aware that House was going to quit using methadone, you were willing to sacrifice the possible well-being of a… friend and employee… in order to continue profiting from his presence on your staff?”
Nemesis sounded incredulous, and opened her mouth to continue, but Cuddy interrupted. “I didn’t see it that way,” she said, determined not to lose on this exchange.
Fortunately for her, the panel chairman intervened. “I can see we’re not getting anywhere on this, so let’s move on. According to the hospital’s financial records, the department of diagnostics was budgeted with an additional $50,000 a year to cover legal expenses. Why was that?”
“I’m sure you know that Dr. House could be abrasive or intrusive with patients. As a result, they sometimes sued, so we budgeted additional funds to cover those lawsuits.”
“But we also note that most of those suits were ultimately dropped once Dr. House and his team solved the case. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
The questions changed direction. “Explain what happened the day you returned to work after Dr. Cameron had filled in for you.”
“Nothing happened. I came back to work. End of story.” Not true, said a part of her brain she hadn’t used in a while. She paid no attention to it.
“That’s not what we have heard, Dr. Cuddy. From what we have been told, you resented him for some reason, and then you forced Dr. House to climb four flights of stairs, stole his cane from him, set a trip wire in his office -- which injured him -- had his home’s heat and power turned off, and possibly other things as well. Do you believe this is an appropriate way to treat a disabled employee?”
The memory of how angry she’d been at the time came flooding back, and Cuddy burst out a defense: “He never wanted to be treated as disabled… and besides, he made me come back to work when I would have preferred to stay home with my daughter.”
The woman at the end of the panel suddenly barked at her, causing her to jump in her chair. “Excuse me, Dr. Cuddy? He made you come back to work? What are you - six? Aren’t you a grownup? Don’t you have control over your own life? Are you not capable of handling a situation without resorting to vengeance against an employee… a disabled employee?”
Cuddy stared at her, openmouthed.
The woman continued, almost without taking a breath. “Could you not have found someone else to manage things for a few days? Perhaps a board member, or Dr. Wilson, or an administrator from outside the hospital? And why do you believe that your own decision to return to work was somehow Dr. House’s fault and deserved retribution? Why not blame Dr. Cameron, who had refused to continue filling in for you? Really, Dr. Cuddy, what were you thinking?”
Cuddy was taken aback, her anger flaming out as quickly as it had come upon her. “I guess I wasn’t thinking very clearly,” she admitted, lamely.
“I guess you weren’t. Did Dr. House file any charges against you for assault or for violating the Americans With Disabilities Act?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Then you should consider yourself fortunate.”
Cuddy was shocked. “I guess, in retrospect, I should.”
The panel chair, interjected at this point, and Cuddy sighed.
“That’s enough for now. Let’s take a 15-minute break and meet back here at eleven o’clock.”
Day Nine, 11 a.m. - Dr. Lisa Cuddy 3