Inquiry: Day Nine, 1 p.m. - Dr. Lisa Cuddy 4
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 4
Day Nine, 1 p.m.
Cuddy had no appetite for lunch, and so spent the lunch break once again in the ladies’ room, doing yoga, splashing cool water on her face, touching up her makeup and trying to remain calm. It was a more chastened Lisa Cuddy who came back into the room after the break and seated herself back before the panel.
They got right to it. After going through his notes just long enough to make Cuddy a bit jumpy, the panel chairman started off the session with this: “Dr. Cuddy, were you aware that on more than one occasion while you were seeing him, Lucas Douglas broke into Dr. Wilson’s condo -- the condo you had hoped to buy -- and repeatedly caused considerable damage, both to the condo and to Dr. House personally?”
Despite the unsettled feeling that this line of questioning wasn’t going to make her any happier than the questions from the previous session, she was grateful for any change of topic. “No… no, I didn’t know that.” She had suspected it, of course, but at least she could answer honestly that she hadn’t known it.
“Not even after he tripped Dr. House in your hospital’s cafeteria -- again injuring him -- and announced what he had done before a roomful of people?”
That lump in her throat got bigger. Now she was having trouble catching her breath. She hadn’t realized that Lucas had actually injured House… or apparently had done so twice. “I had heard there was some kind of confrontation, but I didn’t know exactly what had happened.” Liar, said the part of her brain that had been checking in every so often.
“Were there security cameras in the cafeteria?”
“Yes,” she replied with a sinking feeling that things were about to get much worse.
“Did you ever review those security tapes?”
“Not in that particular instance, although I did review them sometimes, when it seemed warranted.” Thinking back, she remembered purposely avoiding those specific tapes, trying to remain technically ignorant of exactly what had taken place between Lucas and House. She hadn’t wanted to see any evidence that Lucas wasn’t the sweet, good-natured man she wanted to believe he was. She hadn’t wanted to know he was capable of that kind of malicious behavior… or that House might, just this once, be an innocent victim.
“Speaking of security, we have been made aware that on at least two occasions, Dr. House was attacked on hospital grounds -- the first time when he was shot, and the second when he and several staff people and patients were taken hostage.”
“That’s correct.” So far, so good. Maybe things would ease up now.
“Was the shooter in the first incident ever apprehended?”
“No. He got out of the hospital before the police arrived.”
“And your security people were unable to apprehend him?”
“They didn’t realize what had happened until after the man left the property.”
“After Dr. House was shot, did you take any steps to improve security at the hospital? Install a metal detector in the lobby, upgrade the security camera system, or anything like that?”
“No, I didn’t see the need to. It had been a singular incident, and was unlikely to happen again.”
“And yet, within a few years, another major security breach took place. Shouldn’t it have been your responsibility as administrator to ensure the safety of your employees and the patients visiting the hospital?”
Ouch! “Yes, but as I said, I assumed the first time was unique.”
“But it wasn’t, was it, Dr. Cuddy?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Did you discuss security with your board of directors after Dr. House was shot?”
“I seem to recall some discussion of the event.”
“Did the board agree not to beef up security?”
“Ultimately, yes.”
“Ultimately?”
“I think I recall a few of the board members urging me to spend some of the annual budget to improve our security system.”
“Whose decision was it not to do that… yours or the board’s?”
“Mine, I think, although after all this time, I’m not positive the idea originated with me. I think I felt it was an inefficient use of our funds… and the board agreed with me.” In retrospect, Cuddy wasn’t sure she’d made the wisest choice. Security at public buildings around the country was being bolstered because there had been so many incidents of malicious or crazed people with guns or knives endangering those inside.
“And the second security breach… tell us about your reaction to the hostage situation.”
“I was terribly concerned about the hostages.”
“Including Dr. House?”
“Yes… as well as the others.”
“Of course, in the second instance, the damage done by the gunman and the SWAT team wound up being fairly expensive, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but our insurance covered most of that.”
“Were the hospital’s insurance rates raised because of the incident?”
These people are too sharp, thought Cuddy. “Yes. They were,” she replied.
“And how much money did you lose because the hospital was shut down during the hostage crisis?”
That question took her off guard. “I’m not really sure. It’s been a long time. I would think you’d have that information available to you already.” She waved her left hand vaguely in the general direction of the piles of paper on the long table. There. Put the responsibility back on them to dig it out.
“Tell us what you did in the days following that second episode.”
Uh-oh, said that little voice in Cuddy’s head. Now we know where this is going, don’t we? Beware! She chose her words carefully, trying to omit anything that might put her back in the hot seat. “My office had been damaged during the crisis, and needed to be repaired, so I decided to renovate, which took a few weeks.”
“During those few weeks, where did you work?”
“In Dr. House’s office.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry… why what?”
“Why did you work in Dr. House’s office? Surely there was other office space available. From what we have gathered, your office was on the main floor with the clinic and the ER, and his was all the way up on the fourth floor.”
The room had grown more stifling as the early afternoon heat built up, and Cuddy felt perspiration dripping down over her forehead and into her left eyelid. She dabbed at it with one elegantly manicured finger, trying not to smudge her eye makeup. “I chose to work in his office, because I believed he was responsible for the damage, and felt he should be as inconvenienced as I was.” That sounded pretty lame, she thought. And it really wasn’t the whole story, anyway.
“You thought he had damaged your office? I thought the damage came about because the gunman took several people hostage there… and…” he rummaged through the papers in front of him. “…and… yes… apparently shot one of them. Why would you blame Dr. House for that damage? And more to the point, why would you think that an appropriate reaction was to force an employee who had just been through a traumatic hostage situation to share his office space with you, thereby altering his work environment?”
“No, it wasn’t like that at all,” she insisted. “He deserved it. He was directly responsible. If he hadn’t encouraged the guy, there would have been no damage.”
“You can’t know that for sure, can you, Dr. Cuddy? Isn’t it possible the situation might have escalated even further?”
Cuddy huffed in frustration. “I suppose so,” she admitted, albeit reluctantly. “Besides, he marked on my wall.”
“Marked on your wall? How?”
“He didn’t have a whiteboard, so he used my wall to try to diagnose the man.”
“Again, why would you punish Dr. House for that by making him share his office with you?”
The memory of that morning was suddenly in sharp focus. After riding with House in the elevator up to the fourth floor, she’d walked side by side with him down the hall toward his office. What had she said? “My office was recently destroyed. I thought I’d use the office of the doctor directly responsible.” He’d responded, “I think the patient holding the gun to my head was actually the one directly responsible.” Which, to be fair, was technically true. Then she’d come back with some smart-ass remark about her desk not fitting in the guy’s jail cell. Once they got to House’s office, she’d proceeded to kick him out altogether, telling him he could use the conference room as his office instead. Eventually she allowed him to share his desk with her, an imaginary dividing line separating her half from his.
Wilson had said something to her later on. What was it? “Don't take his office and pretend like all you're doing is taking his office. You chose his room because you want to be there. But sitting near him and hoping isn't going get it done.”
What motivation could she have had, other than to try to escalate sexual tension between herself and House? Her rationale for taking over his office really made no coherent sense; there was no other explanation for her behavior than that she was trying to get into his pants. How the hell was she going to explain this in any way that was understandable to this panel of men and women who weren’t there at the time… and who did not seem inclined to be sympathetic toward her, despite the fact that she’d had to put up with House for all those years, and had had her home and career torpedoed by his insanity?
Now, with everything that had happened since, she couldn’t even imagine what she must have been thinking. Why the hell had she been so determined to entice House into a love affair, when hindsight made it very obvious that any relationship between them was damned to hell from the start?
Sighing heavily, she clenched her jaw and answered as tactfully as she could. “I guess I just wanted to get in his face about it. I… we… we had been kind of dancing around each other for a long time. I thought maybe if we shared space, he would declare himself.” Cuddy was flustered enough that she didn’t realize she’d set a trap for herself and then walked right into it.
“I assume this was prior to Dr. House’s time at Mayfield.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“So you used this disturbing situation to try to manipulate Dr. House -- your employee -- into starting a sexual relationship with you?”
“No! No… that’s not it at all.” Yes, yes, it is, said that horrid little voice growing louder in her head.
“Then what is it?”
She threw out the phrase that usually got House to shut up. “He owed me.” There. That was clear enough.
“He owed you what?”
“He just owed me.” Right this second, in this pressure cooker, Cuddy couldn’t even think straight enough to get herself out of this mess. The panel chair was so right -- she had been sexually teasing House, but whether she’d really wanted to start a relationship with him, or had intended to smack him down if he made a move, she couldn’t recall. Then, he’d been such a boor and had grabbed her breast… and that had been that. For a while.
She certainly wasn’t going to admit before this unsympathetic panel that she had tried to manipulate one of her employees into a sexual relationship. Fortunately, the panel chair changed the topic, although the new topic still left her on the hot seat.
“Dr. Cuddy, could you please give us your recollections of the sequence of events following the death of Dr. House’s father?”
Shutting her eyes for just a moment, Cuddy resigned herself to facing the music. “Dr. Wilson had informed me that he’d gotten a call from Dr. House’s mother, who told him that Dr. House had been avoiding her calls after his father died.” She left out the part where she led House to believe that Mrs. House had called her directly.
“This would have been a few months following the death of Dr. Volakis, after Dr. Wilson had resigned from Princeton-Plainsboro for a time and was no longer speaking to Dr. House… is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then what happened?”
“I went to Dr. House’s office to talk to him about it, and to let him know that his mother wanted him to give the eulogy at his father’s funeral.”
“Which Dr. House had no intention of attending...”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“As we understand it, though, he ultimately did attend, with Dr. Wilson.”
“Also correct.”
“How did his attendance come about, please?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nemesis Lady watching her sharply, reminding Cuddy of a cat about to pounce. “I… I had promised Dr. Wilson I would arrange for Dr. House to be in his car later that morning.”
“From what we’ve heard, Dr. Wilson was reluctant to take Dr. House to the funeral, but did so because Mrs. House had asked him to bring her son. Would that correlate with your memory of the situation?” Was there anything these people didn’t know about? Cuddy certainly hoped so.
“Yes, it would.”
“How did you convince Dr. House to go with Dr. Wilson?”
Here we go, she thought. “As I said, I went to Dr. House’s office to express my sympathies, and to encourage him to write the eulogy, because his mother had requested it.” And to drug him into a stupor, she added mentally.
“What was Dr. House’s reaction to your sympathy and your encouragement?”
“He deflected, which was how he always dealt with things.”
That was true enough, wasn’t it? Not always, said that little voice. There were at least a couple of times when it was House trying to get her to talk about something during the time they were together, and she was the one deflecting. After he’d lied to her about how he’d come up with a solution to his patient’s case, House was the one who had asked her, “Can’t we even talk about it?” How had she responded? “You can’t apologize… we can’t talk.” She’d simply shut him down.
And then there was that night, right toward the end, when he hadn’t showed for the charity gala where she was getting an award, instead turning up on her doorstep later that night, drenched to the bone and drunk as a skunk. What had he said? “We really, really need to talk.” And once again, she’d simply shut him down. “You screwed up big time,” she’d told him, right before he confessed that she made him a worse doctor and that he’d always choose her over medicine… a huge concession on his part.
It wasn’t until the next day that she’d discovered he’d lost his patient, and had been out drinking because he was flagellating himself over missed opportunities with patients who had died since the two of them had become a couple. No wonder he’d insisted that she made him a worse doctor. Maybe she had, by pressuring him on the job in ways she never would have before. He’d been devastated by yet another patient death, but she hadn’t even bothered to ask if there were any extenuating circumstances for his absence from the banquet, or for his drunken state. How much of a relationship compromise had it been for him to confess that, despite those needless patient deaths, he’d always choose her? And she had never mentioned the mariachi band… yet another thoughtful gift she’d never thanked him for.
“Did he tell you why he might have been reluctant to go to his father’s funeral, Dr. Cuddy?”
“No. He just deflected, as always,” she repeated. She got a little worried when she saw several panel members searching through their notes and then jotting things down on their legal pads.
Here came the cat. Nemesis Lady. Oh, goody. “Did Dr. House ever talk to you about his father?”
Cuddy searched through her memories. “Not that I recall,” she said, “other than telling me once that he didn’t hate his mother, but he hated his father. Why do you ask?”
“More to the point, why do you think he hated his father?” Nemesis asked, looking her right in the eye.
All of a sudden, light dawned, and Cuddy felt that nasty knot in her stomach clench. Oh, dear lord, she thought. He was abused. That’s what he told Eve. That’s what got her to open up to him about her rape. That’s why he was trying to avoid giving the eulogy for his father. What had he said? Something about being willing to give a bastardogy, or words to that effect. “Oh, my God!” she blurted out. “His father abused him, didn’t he?”
Nemesis shrugged, her eyes hooded. “Perhaps, Dr. Cuddy. But go on with your story.”
“I… uh… told him I needed to give him an IG shot because his patient, who had contracted SARS, had coughed in his face.” Always pleased with herself when she got the upper hand with House, she remembered feeling so very clever about how she tricked him into letting her drug him. Now, she merely felt sick. How could she -- and Wilson -- somehow, she thought, Wilson was always at the heart of these intrigues -- have forced House to attend the funeral of the man who had abused him as a child without taking House’s own feelings about the situation into consideration? He’d said he hated his dad… why hadn’t that been enough for them? Why had they felt the need to override his obvious reluctance to go to that funeral?
“But it wasn’t an IG shot, was it, Dr. Cuddy?”
Reluctantly, she shook her head. “No. Yes. Well, it wasn’t just an IG. It was also propofol.” She’d planned it all out, even bringing a wheelchair with her so she could roll House down to Wilson’s waiting car. What she hadn’t counted on was Taub showing up just as House collapsed, or the fact that she couldn’t heft House into the wheelchair without help.
The panel chairman took over the questioning. “Let me make sure I understand exactly what you’re saying here, Dr. Cuddy. You went against Dr. House’s express wishes in this matter -- which had a more than reasonable basis -- drugged him unconscious, and then you and Dr. Wilson essentially kidnapped him against his will and forced him into attending the funeral of the man who had abused him as a child. Would that be accurate?”
Cuddy thought she was going to throw up. Without intending to the chairman had confirmed that House had indeed been abused. She closed her eyes and swallowed convulsively, trying to catch her breath and very glad she’d had no lunch. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she nodded. “Yes. I… I’m sorry to say that it is.”
“How did Dr. House react toward you once he returned from the funeral? Did he hold your felony kidnapping against you?”
Felony kidnapping. She and Wilson had committed an actual crime against House… a felony. By this point, Cuddy could scarcely breathe. “No… no. I don’t think he did.” Gathering her strength, she added, “I think he was just happy to have Dr. Wilson back as a friend.”
“You do realize that in the state of New Jersey, kidnapping is a First Degree felony that carries a potential sentence of 10 to 20 years? Plus, I believe Dr. Wilson crossed state lines during the execution of this felony, which would make what the two of you did a federal offense as well.”
Feeling faint, Cuddy went pale and gripped the edge of the desk in front of her for balance. All she could think of was House, sent to prison for damaging her home… when she just as easily could have been sent to prison to serve a much longer sentence, for what she and Wilson had done to him. The difference was that House had forgiven her, but she had never forgiven him. If she had, would she be sitting here now, having to confront her past actions in this wrenchingly painful way?
“N-n-no… I didn’t.”
“Once again, Dr. Cuddy, you should consider yourself lucky. In this case, because Dr. House -- despite his other, more obvious, flaws -- clearly had a forgiving nature toward the people he cared about.”
Because words escaped her, Cuddy merely nodded. That soap-opera actor popped into her thoughts, and how House had kidnapped him… but no charges had ever been filed because House had saved the man’s life. How idiotic that was… but was it any stupider than what she -- and Wilson -- had done? The difference was that, even thought he’d gone about it idiotically, House had been so sure of the medical necessity that he had risked his career to try to save the man’s life… while she and Wilson had done essentially the same thing to House himself, but in order to force a man who had been abused as a child to attend the funeral of his abuser. They had lucked out, but only because House had forgiven them and never pressed charges.
Nemesis continued her question. “Did you often second-guess Dr. House’s motives, Dr. Cuddy?”
“I suppose I did it more than I’d realized,” she answered quietly, struggling to get words out. She grabbed the water bottle and sipped at it, swishing the water around in her mouth before swallowing, hoping it would rid her of the horrible dry mouth that was making it so hard to talk. Her tongue felt like lead.
“If you had to hazard a guess, how often were you accurate about what motivated him, as opposed to how often he was correct in his assessment of your motives?”
Her eyelids drifted shut again, as House’s “job review” of her swam into view. She’d read it and reread his words dozens of times -- had practically memorized it -- in the days after he’d read it aloud to her. “You act like employees should fear and respect you, but your eyes tell us... actually your eyes tell us nothing because we're looking at your boobs,” he’d begun. “…which tell us that you're desperate to have someone jump on you and tell you they love you one grunted syllable at a time. What you want, you run away from. What you need, you don't have a clue. What you've accomplished makes you proud, but you're still miserable. Please sign.”
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, he’d been right on every point. She had dressed provocatively… for him… and had desperately wanted someone - no, not anyone… House -- to tell her he loved her. Even on their first morning together as a couple, during that Scrabble game, she’d refused to let go of the fact that she’d told him she loved him, but hadn’t yet heard it back from him. Only hours into their relationship, following that horrendous day at the crash site, she was already trying to control his behavior, change him into that lover she wanted him to be.
Her own words from later that day came back to her: “I don’t want you to change,” she’d said. But, if she was being honest with herself, and this damned panel was forcing her into a more truthful self-examination than she’d ever undergone before, she had wanted him to change, and she’d started trying to change him almost from the moment they got together.
For years, she’d run away from getting into a truly adult relationship, blaming her inability to find love on the faults of her partners, and yes, he was right -- she had no idea what she might really have needed. She still had no idea what she needed. Yes, she had been miserable -- to be fair, she was still miserable -- but very proud of her professional accomplishments… Be candid here, Lisa, she thought. Wasn’t the main reason I was so mortified when he crashed into my house was because the destruction of my home and our relationship had wound up on the national news? Not because House had lost control of himself, or because I might have fallen out of love with him, but because it reflected so badly on my professionalism and the choices I’d made.
The worst of it was that, right this minute, after all these revelations, she couldn’t remember a single time when she’d been right about him. She was sure she must have been, but her mind was a blank.
“I don’t honestly know,” she admitted.
“Break,” said the chairman. “We’ll meet back here at 3 p.m.”
Day Nine, 3 p.m. - Dr. Lisa Cuddy 5