New Fic: The Tangent Universe [1/?]
Title: The Tangent Universe [1/?]
Author: joe_pike_junior, AKA Armchair Elvis
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Warning: None, apart from a couple of swear words.
Summary: The House Cuddy heard of was different. One way Cuddy meets House.
Disclaimer: House belongs to Fox. No infringement intended.
Notes: Thanks to topaz_eyes and nomad1328.
THE TANGENT UNIVERSE
1.
I'm not living / I'm just killing time
Radiohead // True Love Waits
The first time Cuddy meets House, he’s supposed to be working in the clinic.
The lobby is wide and bright with earthy pastel paint, and there are durable plastic flower displays. She exits the quiet calm of her office and crosses through the sudden echoing of feet on linoleum. Sounds like this are what she's known since she was barely into her twenties: doctors being paged over the PA, nurses talking to patients, parents corralling children. Hospital life; really the most of life she's ever known.
She holds a steaming paper cup of coffee from the cart on the ground floor as she walks around the clinic admitting desk. "It's the usual mix today," the triage nurse explains. "Colds. Stomach bugs. Hungover students."
Cuddy takes a sip of the coffee. It's awful. She makes a mental note never to buy it again.
"Many homeless?" Her previous hospital had no free clinic. It was an inner city hospital with the attendant inner city problems.
The nurse picks up a chart and calls out a patient's name. "Some, but there'll be more in winter."
A fat man with a red face walks over, and the nurse says "Dr. Jensen will see you in room three now." Cuddy takes another sip of the coffee. Maybe her first hiring-and-firing action as Dean of Medicine should be to sack the person who made this. She throws the cup in the trash can and says "So. I think I'll jump in now."
The nurse smiles. "Take your pick. Consultation room four is free. Just there on the right."
Cuddy takes the first chart on the desk, thanking her. Here goes.
When she opens the first door on the right, a thin, slightly bearded man looks up in indignant surprise. He has a pile of charts next to him, but he's sitting on the examination bench reading The National Enquirer, instead.
"Who are you?" he says. Cuddy is just thinking about asking him the same question when Brenda clacks across the waiting area and leads her away. "That's Doctor House," she says. There's just the right mixture of contrition and scorn in her voice to answer the next question Cuddy was going to ask: that's the Gregory House.
An hour and a half and three cases of stomach flu, a wrist sprain and a case of "the worst headache I've ever had" later, Cuddy returns to her office. The nurses in the clinic have the usual complaints -- not enough time, too many patients, not enough money, too much waiting time. Cuddy downloads the latest budget. She intends to report to the Board that the clinic is well-run, but would ultimately benefit from more funding, perhaps from a corporate source.
If Cuddy had asked herself if she was going to be doing this ten years ago, she would have laughed. She wanted power, not to be beholden to the old boy's club and corporate sponsors. She wanted to get ahead in her career, but she didn't know she'd be wining and dining and schmoozing in the burnout heaven that was New York. She knew what she wanted, and back then she thought it was as simple as that.
She glances out the window. She has a courtyard, and at this time of the morning it's bathed in weak autumn light. None of that matters, now: the endless battles in New York, the screaming fights she had in her last days together with Richard, the smog and the art galleries and the crowded hospital. She's here. She has the job she wanted.
Princeton is quiet, full of college kids and old buildings. She feels that she can settle down here, knowing that she's on top. New York can wait. She feels like living in a house, watching football games. Not being stuck in the largest apartment she could afford, beholden to the resident's board. She wants to find someone who can soothe the smart Richard left her before she left him. A relationship that she won't end in a single conversation, like ripping off a Band-Aid. What Cuddy wants most of all is more. She feels like she has that here.
Cuddy enters the hospital intranet, copying her username down from the Post-It note stuck to the edge of her computer screen. She looks for the employee phonebook and enters "G. House". Dr Gregory House, working out of Infectious Diseases. There's an email address, a phone extension, and the location of his office. Nothing else.
House's office is in the new wing, on the third floor. It has the same dark-grained wooden door that all the offices on the corridor do, with just his name stenciled on it, no department. Next door there's an empty conference room, with a TV tuned to Dr. Phil and someone's hastily-abandoned lunch sitting on the table. The refrigerator is probably full of Tupperware science projects and stale birthday cake. The door informs her that the conference room belongs to Infectious Diseases.
When Cuddy knocks the door swings open, but the office is dark and empty. There’s a window showing a nice view of the rest of the campus, a tree with orange-brown leaves partially obscuring it. The blinds are half open, so the light coming in illuminates the dust swimming in the air. It's a nicely-sized office, more than enough for one person. The computer keyboard is obscured under a mess of papers. There are three or four coffee cups lying around. There’s an acoustic guitar in a stand against the filing cabinet. The finish of the wood is rich and lustrous, and it looks like the best-cared-for thing in the whole office. Cuddy stands there and looks at the beautiful view and the shabby room. The copy of Carrie filed next to Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology.
She goes to the next office on the right. Oncology is also on this floor, and this office belongs to the head. Wilson. Nice guy, she hears. He has a degree from Columbia. Always audaciously chasing grants. And nurses.
She knocks on the door, and Dr. Wilson looks up with a “can I help you?” look on his face. There’s a schooled politeness to his gestures.
“I’m looking for Dr. House…?” Cuddy says, and Wilson frowns.
“Does he owe you money?” Wilson says this with a half-serious look on his face, like he’s equally prepared to burst into a charming, laughing grin or reach for his wallet.
“No.” Cuddy pauses for a second. “I’m Lisa Cuddy, the new Dean.” She watches that sink in.
He smiles. “James Wilson, head of Oncology.” Wilson stands and shakes her hand. He has a boyish face and dark brown eyes. He smiles like he knows he's good-looking and thinks he's suave. Cuddy thinks of the nurses.
Cuddy isn’t ready to walk through Oncology yet. She’s still working her way through the ICU, listening to complaints and interviewing the Attendings and the department head. She hasn't read up on this department's vitals. Regardless of that, she has a particularly tedious discussion with Wilson. He makes a convincing case for the establishment of a new oncology research position. His patter is smooth, but it doesn't sound rehearsed.
Cuddy is so glad to be on the other side of the coin, now. She looks at the whole picture, not merely as one branch in a hospital system where every department head is clamouring for more money and opportunity and power.
As soon as she turns the conversation around to House again, Wilson looks a lot more uncomfortable. He leans against his desk with his hands on his hips, glancing at the floor between his feet.
“You might find him on the roof,” Wilson says. “He sneaks up there. Now that you know that, he might have to work on finding a better hiding place.” Curioser and curioser, she thinks. This is not the same Gregory House the board lauded as a world-renowned expert, a jewel in the hospital’s crown.
Cuddy thanks Wilson and finds the fire stairs. Leading up from the top floor, the stairs are narrow and made of plain concrete, more utilitarian and less contrived than the rest of the hospital.
The door is propped open on a dingy-looking wedge of wood. She pushes it all the way open, seeing plain dirty concrete and bricks, hearing the faraway hum of an air conditioner plant.
There are signs of human habitation, too. There’s one of those metal 'smokers please' door ashtrays, full of a strata of old cigarette butts. Someone has hauled a couple of plastic chairs up here, and there are a few old soda cans, coffee cups.
House is sitting in a cheap folding chair, nestled in the lee of the building. He’s slouching, and there’s a dark wooden cane resting between his knees. She hadn’t noticed that before. It must be hard for the guy to walk up stairs, she thinks, so why is he --
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a trek, but the view is worth it,” House says, as if he can tell exactly what she’s thinking. She stands out in the open as the door closes on the chock behind her, gazing at the darkening sky. She thinks of the world of polished wood and glass down below.
“Don’t you have something to do?” Cuddy asks this by way of a greeting. She's afraid she already knows the answer.
House purses his lips in mock deliberation. “No.” He reaches into the inner pocket of his blazer (also crumpled), and brings out a hard pack of cigarettes. He extracts a red Bic lighter from the inside of the packet and lights one. She walks closer to the edge as the lighter flares between his face and his cupped hands. There's a brick ledge, about four feet high.
“So,” he says. “Are you the new Dean? Have you come up here to fire me?”
Cuddy nods. “Should I fire you? Is there something I need to know about?” She comes a little closer to the wall, so she can see down over the parking lot and the roads beyond, one of the University’s playing fields.
House ignores half of her question and brushes some flying ash from his trousers. “You probably should fire me. I don’t pull my weight.”
“You’ve got tenure.”
House smirks. “You’re got your work cut out for you. Gonna be hard to get rid of me.”
She turns to look at him. He’s got a smart face, and she’s surprised by the bright blue colour of his eyes. His face is very worn-looking. He looks around fifty. Maybe forty-five. An old forty-five. "Maybe." She crosses her arms. It's getting chilly up here, and she's only wearing a blouse. House taps his foot.
“So,” he says, taking a last drag on his cigarette and blowing the smoke upward, “Where’d you go to school?”
“UM”, she says, getting the feeling he’s sizing her up. Doctors like House make and break Deans of Medicine, she knows this.
“Oh,” he says. “I applied there, but then I kissed some ass and ended up not getting expelled from Hopkins.”
Cuddy smiles despite herself. “You don’t seem like the type to kiss ass.”
House snickers. It’s a smoker’s laugh. “I haven’t had a taste for it since,” he says, and then he does something Cuddy hasn’t seen anyone do in years: he lights a new cigarette straight off the still-smouldering butt of the old one. The butt he drops to the wet concrete beneath his feet, ground to paper beneath the heel of his left shoe.
So. It's come to this. Gregory House, the world famous diagnostician, the guy who headlined diagnostics conferences, a man who left a trail of destruction in med school and in hospitals around the country, a name the PPTH board practically flaunted when they asked her to apply for the position. It seems that this apparently exceptional medical mind spends his time playing the guitar in his office and smoking his way to an early death on the hospital roof. This apparently great doctor doesn’t seem to treat anything more than runny noses and cough. Cuddy thinks of his rathole office, the old journals littering the floor like detritus, the stacks of books and charts. The House Cuddy heard of was supposed to be difficult and brilliant. The House Cuddy heard of was different.
House is looking at her. “Who told you I was up here, anyway? Was it Wilson?”
So they’re friends. Cuddy stores that information away for later. “Wilson?”, she says.
“James Wilson. Oncologist. Disgustingly good looking, suave, handsome? Do me a favour, Cuddy, don’t marry him. He’s already cheated his way through two disastrous marriages. My bet is that the third will collapse any day now.”
Cuddy takes one last glance at the view and turns to go. “Would you consider taking any cases on, Dr. House?” Testing the water.
He goes on looking at whatever he looks at, out there. “Do you rent by the hour?” Cuddy snorts and leaves. He's an asshole, too. Excellent.
Cuddy and Wilson sit at a corner table in the cafeteria. Wilson nervously revolves his coffee cup in his hand, clears his throat. "What exactly do you want to know about House, Dr. Cuddy?" He seems surprised that Cuddy would consider using him as a sort of Rosetta stone for House. Maybe nobody bothers trying any more. He can talk oncology and funding and research opportunities all day, but this seems to make him run cold.
“Well, I read his personnel file, and I'm curious,” Cuddy says. She sees Wilson glance down again, that odd flicker of uncertainty a stutter in the vein of self-confidence that runs through his conversation.
Wilson stirs his coffee. “But why me? You could be talking to someone in Administration, someone in HR... Even someone in Legal, I guess.” Cuddy thinks of the curious silence of her predecessor on the subject of House. No warning passed on with the congratulations, no self-righteous explanation passed on with the memo. For what seems to be a massive administrative problem, the hospital seems remarkably blasé.
“C’mon, Wilson,” Cuddy says. “This is a hospital. People who work in hospitals tend to want to cover their asses. You’re his friend. I want the real story, not what Larry in Human Resources can tell me about all the focus groups House has refused to attend.” She leans forward. "What I want to know is what House does."
Wilson shrugs, an embarrassed, awkward little gesture. “He’s technically employed within the department of Infectious Diseases, as a diagnostics consultant. But he had a falling-out with Kaysen, the head of department there, and he doesn’t really work in that department any more, or go on many consults. He works in the clinic occasionally. A really interesting case might interest him enough for him to go over the file, but that’s rare.”
“And that doesn’t bother anyone?” Cuddy stirs her tea, the teaspoon warm in her fingers.
“Of course it does,” Wilson says. “But I guess you get to a certain point and you piss enough people off, people just don’t want to have to deal with you. He’s the most stubborn person I've ever met.”
Cuddy leafs through the printout she has on House. “And this,” Cuddy says. “His tenure came up for review two years ago. If he was even half as lazy and uncooperative as he now is then, why was it approved? Why did Legal intervene?” The file shows the breakdown of a flurry of memos and meetings, ending with a single dry pronouncement: The Legal department advises that it considers it prudent not to terminate the employment of Dr. Gregory House. Cuddy doesn't want to speak to a dry hospital counsel or some careerist PR flack. She knows Wilson knows something.
“Ah,” Wilson says. He fidgets with his wedding ring. The talk is that he has a habit of having affairs with people he shouldn’t have affairs with. Cuddy realises dimly that he’s uncomfortable. She nods, encouraging him.
“When I met House, he avoided a lot of work, but it was different." Cuddy doesn't really know what he's talking about, but she can imagine, so she nods.
"And then, about five years ago, he got sick. Here. He had a blood clot in his thigh, but the case was bungled. He was in a lot of pain for days before they found out what it was, and he lost a lot of muscle because of it, because it didn't get diagnosed and because they dithered after they diagnosed. His heart stopped twice on the operating table. House felt that he hadn’t been listened to, that he got turned away from the clinic in the first place because the doctor on duty had a grudge against him.”
Wilson gets a look on his face like he's contemplating launching into a more detailed monologue of House's medical history. His ears are red. Cuddy nods, and he changes tack.
“House had been dating a lawyer for years. They were pretty serious. You know, I guess as serious as House could be with anyone. She threatened to launch a case against the hospital. Lots of higher-ups freaked out. It wouldn’t look very good at all, you know, “doctor's treatment substandard at his own hospital”. They saw headlines. So House got a small settlement, and he’s got a job here for as long as he wants. He knows that if anyone starts to make noise about his job, well, he can threaten to sue.”
Cuddy takes a sip of her tea. Wilson is the type who will talk himself out. She waits. She thinks again of House sitting smoking into the twilight.
“His girlfriend left him, a couple of years ago now. He’d been sticking to a schedule before that, working five days a week, PT, all that. She said he’d changed, that she couldn’t handle it any more.” There's a hollow tiredness in Wilson's voice, like he's learned that no matter how many times he tells this story it will never tell itself right.
“Has he changed?”
Wilson shrugs. “With House, you can never tell. Now he doesn’t even bother coming into work a day or two out of every week. He just doesn’t have any direction, no motivation. He’s in a lot of pain. He takes a lot of Vicodin. He’s killing time.” And if he lets those bleak sentences stand instead of a real answer, what does Wilson really know? What hasn't he said? Cuddy's tea settles in her stomach like ice water.
The way Wilson offers that explanation, a sort of guilty defiance, makes her think that it’s not just Vicodin House is (almost certainly) addicted to. Cuddy would bet that he takes something stronger, like morphine or oxycodone. God. What a mess. “Has anyone tried to give him this... direction?”
Wilson chuckles, bitterly. “You wouldn’t be the first to try, Cuddy. House is a lost case.” He gets up, ending the interview. Cuddy watches him walk quickly across the cafeteria, straightening his tie in a reflex action. She's heard House discussed at conferences. This man is supposed to be one of the finest medical minds of his generation.
Months go by, and Cuddy tries, without success, to convince House to take on more cases or do more work. He’s grown used to his quiet, lazy life in the hospital. Cuddy thinks that maybe he is a lost case, that he'll sit in his dusty office until the hospital finds a way to leave him by the wayside. One day, after Cuddy has had three interesting cases in as many weeks delivered to House's office, he personally returns the third file.
"What's this?" Cuddy tries not to flinch as he slaps the file down on top of the schedule she's about to okay and forward to Payroll.
"Haematemesis with no inflammatory markers? I thought you'd--"
House leans forward over her desk, and Cuddy moves back in her desk chair. His face is red, and his eyes are very bright.
"You thought what? I'd like to play doctor on the short bus? Elevated WBCs and sed rate? It's a stomach ulcer, Cuddy, and Mr. Magoo could see that. Stop wasting my time!"
Cuddy inclines her neck, looking straight up at him.
"You've got plenty of it to waste."
House snarls, his hands spread flat on Cuddy's desk. "I should have known you'd be a jaffa. Well, fuck off, Cuddy. I don't need you and I don't need your bullshit excuses for work. Go rescue someone else, or find a way to fire me." JAFFA. Just Another Fat Fucking Administrator.
"House, that's-"
He slams her office door behind him, the tension pushing his shoulders up so he lists from side to side as he walks. Cuddy sees that he's left two big palm-shaped sweat marks on the wooden surface of her desk. She thinks of a lot of things, the way the only time she's ever seen House animated is pushing against her. She takes a large gulp of coffee, still smarting from House's infuriating ability to get the last word.
In Wilson Cuddy has found a more than worthy replacement for Richard. She doesn't know for how long, but she's looking for someone to come home to occasionally, not bridesmaids and a honeymoon in Mexico.
She comes home to a warm garlicky smell, to Wilson reading at her kitchen table. He pushes a bowl of stir-fry across at her, the window dark behind him. Cuddy eats, and they talk about small things. When she's halfway finished she becomes aware that Wilson has put his book down. She looks up to see that he's looking at her, an odd look on his face.
"I heard you had a run-in with House today." He smiles weakly.
"In wonder who you heard that from." Cuddy wipes her mouth and puts down her fork.
Wilson reddens slightly. "He didn't come crying to me. He called me to rant about you." Cuddy makes an exasperated noise around her mouthful of stir-fry. "What did he do?"
Cuddy stares at one of Wilson's little carrots. Comfort food. "He came into my office, stood over my desk, and screamed at me." She picks up her fork again and stabs a snow pea. "Of all the reactions I expected, anger wasn't one of them."
Wilson gets up and starts running water into the sink. "You don't need to do that," she says. He doesn't answer.
There's a pregnant silence. Then Wilson says "You've got to understand how he sees it."
Cuddy spreads her hands. "It was just another case! Just another--"
Wilson doesn't turn around. "--to House it's never just another case. It's a reminder of what he doesn't do anymore, Cuddy. You think you're helping him. All you're doing is rubbing it in."
Rubbing what in? "He diagnosed the patient in twenty seconds," Cuddy says. "What do you mean? House can't work?"
Wilson wipes his hands. "I don't know." He turns around, but he still doesn't look at Cuddy. "But he won't. And that's the problem."
The next morning, she wakes up first. She watches Wilson sleeping as the late-morning sunlight streams in through the crack in her bedroom curtains. She goes to the kitchen and opens the window, welcoming the rush of clean spring air.
As Cuddy makes coffee and looks out the window onto her street she finds herself thinking of House, about how when people like she and Wilson climb to the top they step on people like him, whether they mean to or not. She sips the rich coffee Wilson bought for her machine and thinks of the savage rage in House's eyes, about how people like House hit out at the people who want to help them. About the deep, uncontrolled anger that helplessness brings.
A week later, she comes in one morning to find a hastily-filled-out application for an open-ended leave of absence on her desk. It's from House. Cuddy shows it to Wilson, and he says that House has often talked about taking time off and taking his motorcycle on the road. This surprises Cuddy, who had no idea he had a bike. She says to Wilson, "Will he go?"
Wilson says "I hope so. I think so," and so Cuddy signs and approves the application.
Cuddy decides to give House a couple of months. Whatever he does, it will be purposeful movement. She hasn't known House as long as Wilson, so she asks him what he thinks. "Do you think he'll come back? Do you think he'll come back and work?"
"I don't know," Wilson says, and Cuddy decides that's at least a step in the right direction.
House sends her a postcard from somewhere in Colorado, a deep blue sky above chocolate cliffs. When she turns it over she finds a quote in fine black scrawl: What is it, Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert? / It's clean. He's signed it House.
Cuddy smiles and sticks the postcard on her fridge. She wonders how someone as damaged as House goes about finding that broken part of himself, the scrap of life piercing his heart. If he ever will.
Author: joe_pike_junior, AKA Armchair Elvis
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Warning: None, apart from a couple of swear words.
Summary: The House Cuddy heard of was different. One way Cuddy meets House.
Disclaimer: House belongs to Fox. No infringement intended.
Notes: Thanks to topaz_eyes and nomad1328.
THE TANGENT UNIVERSE
1.
I'm not living / I'm just killing time
Radiohead // True Love Waits
The first time Cuddy meets House, he’s supposed to be working in the clinic.
The lobby is wide and bright with earthy pastel paint, and there are durable plastic flower displays. She exits the quiet calm of her office and crosses through the sudden echoing of feet on linoleum. Sounds like this are what she's known since she was barely into her twenties: doctors being paged over the PA, nurses talking to patients, parents corralling children. Hospital life; really the most of life she's ever known.
She holds a steaming paper cup of coffee from the cart on the ground floor as she walks around the clinic admitting desk. "It's the usual mix today," the triage nurse explains. "Colds. Stomach bugs. Hungover students."
Cuddy takes a sip of the coffee. It's awful. She makes a mental note never to buy it again.
"Many homeless?" Her previous hospital had no free clinic. It was an inner city hospital with the attendant inner city problems.
The nurse picks up a chart and calls out a patient's name. "Some, but there'll be more in winter."
A fat man with a red face walks over, and the nurse says "Dr. Jensen will see you in room three now." Cuddy takes another sip of the coffee. Maybe her first hiring-and-firing action as Dean of Medicine should be to sack the person who made this. She throws the cup in the trash can and says "So. I think I'll jump in now."
The nurse smiles. "Take your pick. Consultation room four is free. Just there on the right."
Cuddy takes the first chart on the desk, thanking her. Here goes.
When she opens the first door on the right, a thin, slightly bearded man looks up in indignant surprise. He has a pile of charts next to him, but he's sitting on the examination bench reading The National Enquirer, instead.
"Who are you?" he says. Cuddy is just thinking about asking him the same question when Brenda clacks across the waiting area and leads her away. "That's Doctor House," she says. There's just the right mixture of contrition and scorn in her voice to answer the next question Cuddy was going to ask: that's the Gregory House.
An hour and a half and three cases of stomach flu, a wrist sprain and a case of "the worst headache I've ever had" later, Cuddy returns to her office. The nurses in the clinic have the usual complaints -- not enough time, too many patients, not enough money, too much waiting time. Cuddy downloads the latest budget. She intends to report to the Board that the clinic is well-run, but would ultimately benefit from more funding, perhaps from a corporate source.
If Cuddy had asked herself if she was going to be doing this ten years ago, she would have laughed. She wanted power, not to be beholden to the old boy's club and corporate sponsors. She wanted to get ahead in her career, but she didn't know she'd be wining and dining and schmoozing in the burnout heaven that was New York. She knew what she wanted, and back then she thought it was as simple as that.
She glances out the window. She has a courtyard, and at this time of the morning it's bathed in weak autumn light. None of that matters, now: the endless battles in New York, the screaming fights she had in her last days together with Richard, the smog and the art galleries and the crowded hospital. She's here. She has the job she wanted.
Princeton is quiet, full of college kids and old buildings. She feels that she can settle down here, knowing that she's on top. New York can wait. She feels like living in a house, watching football games. Not being stuck in the largest apartment she could afford, beholden to the resident's board. She wants to find someone who can soothe the smart Richard left her before she left him. A relationship that she won't end in a single conversation, like ripping off a Band-Aid. What Cuddy wants most of all is more. She feels like she has that here.
Cuddy enters the hospital intranet, copying her username down from the Post-It note stuck to the edge of her computer screen. She looks for the employee phonebook and enters "G. House". Dr Gregory House, working out of Infectious Diseases. There's an email address, a phone extension, and the location of his office. Nothing else.
House's office is in the new wing, on the third floor. It has the same dark-grained wooden door that all the offices on the corridor do, with just his name stenciled on it, no department. Next door there's an empty conference room, with a TV tuned to Dr. Phil and someone's hastily-abandoned lunch sitting on the table. The refrigerator is probably full of Tupperware science projects and stale birthday cake. The door informs her that the conference room belongs to Infectious Diseases.
When Cuddy knocks the door swings open, but the office is dark and empty. There’s a window showing a nice view of the rest of the campus, a tree with orange-brown leaves partially obscuring it. The blinds are half open, so the light coming in illuminates the dust swimming in the air. It's a nicely-sized office, more than enough for one person. The computer keyboard is obscured under a mess of papers. There are three or four coffee cups lying around. There’s an acoustic guitar in a stand against the filing cabinet. The finish of the wood is rich and lustrous, and it looks like the best-cared-for thing in the whole office. Cuddy stands there and looks at the beautiful view and the shabby room. The copy of Carrie filed next to Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology.
She goes to the next office on the right. Oncology is also on this floor, and this office belongs to the head. Wilson. Nice guy, she hears. He has a degree from Columbia. Always audaciously chasing grants. And nurses.
She knocks on the door, and Dr. Wilson looks up with a “can I help you?” look on his face. There’s a schooled politeness to his gestures.
“I’m looking for Dr. House…?” Cuddy says, and Wilson frowns.
“Does he owe you money?” Wilson says this with a half-serious look on his face, like he’s equally prepared to burst into a charming, laughing grin or reach for his wallet.
“No.” Cuddy pauses for a second. “I’m Lisa Cuddy, the new Dean.” She watches that sink in.
He smiles. “James Wilson, head of Oncology.” Wilson stands and shakes her hand. He has a boyish face and dark brown eyes. He smiles like he knows he's good-looking and thinks he's suave. Cuddy thinks of the nurses.
Cuddy isn’t ready to walk through Oncology yet. She’s still working her way through the ICU, listening to complaints and interviewing the Attendings and the department head. She hasn't read up on this department's vitals. Regardless of that, she has a particularly tedious discussion with Wilson. He makes a convincing case for the establishment of a new oncology research position. His patter is smooth, but it doesn't sound rehearsed.
Cuddy is so glad to be on the other side of the coin, now. She looks at the whole picture, not merely as one branch in a hospital system where every department head is clamouring for more money and opportunity and power.
As soon as she turns the conversation around to House again, Wilson looks a lot more uncomfortable. He leans against his desk with his hands on his hips, glancing at the floor between his feet.
“You might find him on the roof,” Wilson says. “He sneaks up there. Now that you know that, he might have to work on finding a better hiding place.” Curioser and curioser, she thinks. This is not the same Gregory House the board lauded as a world-renowned expert, a jewel in the hospital’s crown.
Cuddy thanks Wilson and finds the fire stairs. Leading up from the top floor, the stairs are narrow and made of plain concrete, more utilitarian and less contrived than the rest of the hospital.
The door is propped open on a dingy-looking wedge of wood. She pushes it all the way open, seeing plain dirty concrete and bricks, hearing the faraway hum of an air conditioner plant.
There are signs of human habitation, too. There’s one of those metal 'smokers please' door ashtrays, full of a strata of old cigarette butts. Someone has hauled a couple of plastic chairs up here, and there are a few old soda cans, coffee cups.
House is sitting in a cheap folding chair, nestled in the lee of the building. He’s slouching, and there’s a dark wooden cane resting between his knees. She hadn’t noticed that before. It must be hard for the guy to walk up stairs, she thinks, so why is he --
“Yeah, it’s a bit of a trek, but the view is worth it,” House says, as if he can tell exactly what she’s thinking. She stands out in the open as the door closes on the chock behind her, gazing at the darkening sky. She thinks of the world of polished wood and glass down below.
“Don’t you have something to do?” Cuddy asks this by way of a greeting. She's afraid she already knows the answer.
House purses his lips in mock deliberation. “No.” He reaches into the inner pocket of his blazer (also crumpled), and brings out a hard pack of cigarettes. He extracts a red Bic lighter from the inside of the packet and lights one. She walks closer to the edge as the lighter flares between his face and his cupped hands. There's a brick ledge, about four feet high.
“So,” he says. “Are you the new Dean? Have you come up here to fire me?”
Cuddy nods. “Should I fire you? Is there something I need to know about?” She comes a little closer to the wall, so she can see down over the parking lot and the roads beyond, one of the University’s playing fields.
House ignores half of her question and brushes some flying ash from his trousers. “You probably should fire me. I don’t pull my weight.”
“You’ve got tenure.”
House smirks. “You’re got your work cut out for you. Gonna be hard to get rid of me.”
She turns to look at him. He’s got a smart face, and she’s surprised by the bright blue colour of his eyes. His face is very worn-looking. He looks around fifty. Maybe forty-five. An old forty-five. "Maybe." She crosses her arms. It's getting chilly up here, and she's only wearing a blouse. House taps his foot.
“So,” he says, taking a last drag on his cigarette and blowing the smoke upward, “Where’d you go to school?”
“UM”, she says, getting the feeling he’s sizing her up. Doctors like House make and break Deans of Medicine, she knows this.
“Oh,” he says. “I applied there, but then I kissed some ass and ended up not getting expelled from Hopkins.”
Cuddy smiles despite herself. “You don’t seem like the type to kiss ass.”
House snickers. It’s a smoker’s laugh. “I haven’t had a taste for it since,” he says, and then he does something Cuddy hasn’t seen anyone do in years: he lights a new cigarette straight off the still-smouldering butt of the old one. The butt he drops to the wet concrete beneath his feet, ground to paper beneath the heel of his left shoe.
So. It's come to this. Gregory House, the world famous diagnostician, the guy who headlined diagnostics conferences, a man who left a trail of destruction in med school and in hospitals around the country, a name the PPTH board practically flaunted when they asked her to apply for the position. It seems that this apparently exceptional medical mind spends his time playing the guitar in his office and smoking his way to an early death on the hospital roof. This apparently great doctor doesn’t seem to treat anything more than runny noses and cough. Cuddy thinks of his rathole office, the old journals littering the floor like detritus, the stacks of books and charts. The House Cuddy heard of was supposed to be difficult and brilliant. The House Cuddy heard of was different.
House is looking at her. “Who told you I was up here, anyway? Was it Wilson?”
So they’re friends. Cuddy stores that information away for later. “Wilson?”, she says.
“James Wilson. Oncologist. Disgustingly good looking, suave, handsome? Do me a favour, Cuddy, don’t marry him. He’s already cheated his way through two disastrous marriages. My bet is that the third will collapse any day now.”
Cuddy takes one last glance at the view and turns to go. “Would you consider taking any cases on, Dr. House?” Testing the water.
He goes on looking at whatever he looks at, out there. “Do you rent by the hour?” Cuddy snorts and leaves. He's an asshole, too. Excellent.
Cuddy and Wilson sit at a corner table in the cafeteria. Wilson nervously revolves his coffee cup in his hand, clears his throat. "What exactly do you want to know about House, Dr. Cuddy?" He seems surprised that Cuddy would consider using him as a sort of Rosetta stone for House. Maybe nobody bothers trying any more. He can talk oncology and funding and research opportunities all day, but this seems to make him run cold.
“Well, I read his personnel file, and I'm curious,” Cuddy says. She sees Wilson glance down again, that odd flicker of uncertainty a stutter in the vein of self-confidence that runs through his conversation.
Wilson stirs his coffee. “But why me? You could be talking to someone in Administration, someone in HR... Even someone in Legal, I guess.” Cuddy thinks of the curious silence of her predecessor on the subject of House. No warning passed on with the congratulations, no self-righteous explanation passed on with the memo. For what seems to be a massive administrative problem, the hospital seems remarkably blasé.
“C’mon, Wilson,” Cuddy says. “This is a hospital. People who work in hospitals tend to want to cover their asses. You’re his friend. I want the real story, not what Larry in Human Resources can tell me about all the focus groups House has refused to attend.” She leans forward. "What I want to know is what House does."
Wilson shrugs, an embarrassed, awkward little gesture. “He’s technically employed within the department of Infectious Diseases, as a diagnostics consultant. But he had a falling-out with Kaysen, the head of department there, and he doesn’t really work in that department any more, or go on many consults. He works in the clinic occasionally. A really interesting case might interest him enough for him to go over the file, but that’s rare.”
“And that doesn’t bother anyone?” Cuddy stirs her tea, the teaspoon warm in her fingers.
“Of course it does,” Wilson says. “But I guess you get to a certain point and you piss enough people off, people just don’t want to have to deal with you. He’s the most stubborn person I've ever met.”
Cuddy leafs through the printout she has on House. “And this,” Cuddy says. “His tenure came up for review two years ago. If he was even half as lazy and uncooperative as he now is then, why was it approved? Why did Legal intervene?” The file shows the breakdown of a flurry of memos and meetings, ending with a single dry pronouncement: The Legal department advises that it considers it prudent not to terminate the employment of Dr. Gregory House. Cuddy doesn't want to speak to a dry hospital counsel or some careerist PR flack. She knows Wilson knows something.
“Ah,” Wilson says. He fidgets with his wedding ring. The talk is that he has a habit of having affairs with people he shouldn’t have affairs with. Cuddy realises dimly that he’s uncomfortable. She nods, encouraging him.
“When I met House, he avoided a lot of work, but it was different." Cuddy doesn't really know what he's talking about, but she can imagine, so she nods.
"And then, about five years ago, he got sick. Here. He had a blood clot in his thigh, but the case was bungled. He was in a lot of pain for days before they found out what it was, and he lost a lot of muscle because of it, because it didn't get diagnosed and because they dithered after they diagnosed. His heart stopped twice on the operating table. House felt that he hadn’t been listened to, that he got turned away from the clinic in the first place because the doctor on duty had a grudge against him.”
Wilson gets a look on his face like he's contemplating launching into a more detailed monologue of House's medical history. His ears are red. Cuddy nods, and he changes tack.
“House had been dating a lawyer for years. They were pretty serious. You know, I guess as serious as House could be with anyone. She threatened to launch a case against the hospital. Lots of higher-ups freaked out. It wouldn’t look very good at all, you know, “doctor's treatment substandard at his own hospital”. They saw headlines. So House got a small settlement, and he’s got a job here for as long as he wants. He knows that if anyone starts to make noise about his job, well, he can threaten to sue.”
Cuddy takes a sip of her tea. Wilson is the type who will talk himself out. She waits. She thinks again of House sitting smoking into the twilight.
“His girlfriend left him, a couple of years ago now. He’d been sticking to a schedule before that, working five days a week, PT, all that. She said he’d changed, that she couldn’t handle it any more.” There's a hollow tiredness in Wilson's voice, like he's learned that no matter how many times he tells this story it will never tell itself right.
“Has he changed?”
Wilson shrugs. “With House, you can never tell. Now he doesn’t even bother coming into work a day or two out of every week. He just doesn’t have any direction, no motivation. He’s in a lot of pain. He takes a lot of Vicodin. He’s killing time.” And if he lets those bleak sentences stand instead of a real answer, what does Wilson really know? What hasn't he said? Cuddy's tea settles in her stomach like ice water.
The way Wilson offers that explanation, a sort of guilty defiance, makes her think that it’s not just Vicodin House is (almost certainly) addicted to. Cuddy would bet that he takes something stronger, like morphine or oxycodone. God. What a mess. “Has anyone tried to give him this... direction?”
Wilson chuckles, bitterly. “You wouldn’t be the first to try, Cuddy. House is a lost case.” He gets up, ending the interview. Cuddy watches him walk quickly across the cafeteria, straightening his tie in a reflex action. She's heard House discussed at conferences. This man is supposed to be one of the finest medical minds of his generation.
Months go by, and Cuddy tries, without success, to convince House to take on more cases or do more work. He’s grown used to his quiet, lazy life in the hospital. Cuddy thinks that maybe he is a lost case, that he'll sit in his dusty office until the hospital finds a way to leave him by the wayside. One day, after Cuddy has had three interesting cases in as many weeks delivered to House's office, he personally returns the third file.
"What's this?" Cuddy tries not to flinch as he slaps the file down on top of the schedule she's about to okay and forward to Payroll.
"Haematemesis with no inflammatory markers? I thought you'd--"
House leans forward over her desk, and Cuddy moves back in her desk chair. His face is red, and his eyes are very bright.
"You thought what? I'd like to play doctor on the short bus? Elevated WBCs and sed rate? It's a stomach ulcer, Cuddy, and Mr. Magoo could see that. Stop wasting my time!"
Cuddy inclines her neck, looking straight up at him.
"You've got plenty of it to waste."
House snarls, his hands spread flat on Cuddy's desk. "I should have known you'd be a jaffa. Well, fuck off, Cuddy. I don't need you and I don't need your bullshit excuses for work. Go rescue someone else, or find a way to fire me." JAFFA. Just Another Fat Fucking Administrator.
"House, that's-"
He slams her office door behind him, the tension pushing his shoulders up so he lists from side to side as he walks. Cuddy sees that he's left two big palm-shaped sweat marks on the wooden surface of her desk. She thinks of a lot of things, the way the only time she's ever seen House animated is pushing against her. She takes a large gulp of coffee, still smarting from House's infuriating ability to get the last word.
In Wilson Cuddy has found a more than worthy replacement for Richard. She doesn't know for how long, but she's looking for someone to come home to occasionally, not bridesmaids and a honeymoon in Mexico.
She comes home to a warm garlicky smell, to Wilson reading at her kitchen table. He pushes a bowl of stir-fry across at her, the window dark behind him. Cuddy eats, and they talk about small things. When she's halfway finished she becomes aware that Wilson has put his book down. She looks up to see that he's looking at her, an odd look on his face.
"I heard you had a run-in with House today." He smiles weakly.
"In wonder who you heard that from." Cuddy wipes her mouth and puts down her fork.
Wilson reddens slightly. "He didn't come crying to me. He called me to rant about you." Cuddy makes an exasperated noise around her mouthful of stir-fry. "What did he do?"
Cuddy stares at one of Wilson's little carrots. Comfort food. "He came into my office, stood over my desk, and screamed at me." She picks up her fork again and stabs a snow pea. "Of all the reactions I expected, anger wasn't one of them."
Wilson gets up and starts running water into the sink. "You don't need to do that," she says. He doesn't answer.
There's a pregnant silence. Then Wilson says "You've got to understand how he sees it."
Cuddy spreads her hands. "It was just another case! Just another--"
Wilson doesn't turn around. "--to House it's never just another case. It's a reminder of what he doesn't do anymore, Cuddy. You think you're helping him. All you're doing is rubbing it in."
Rubbing what in? "He diagnosed the patient in twenty seconds," Cuddy says. "What do you mean? House can't work?"
Wilson wipes his hands. "I don't know." He turns around, but he still doesn't look at Cuddy. "But he won't. And that's the problem."
The next morning, she wakes up first. She watches Wilson sleeping as the late-morning sunlight streams in through the crack in her bedroom curtains. She goes to the kitchen and opens the window, welcoming the rush of clean spring air.
As Cuddy makes coffee and looks out the window onto her street she finds herself thinking of House, about how when people like she and Wilson climb to the top they step on people like him, whether they mean to or not. She sips the rich coffee Wilson bought for her machine and thinks of the savage rage in House's eyes, about how people like House hit out at the people who want to help them. About the deep, uncontrolled anger that helplessness brings.
A week later, she comes in one morning to find a hastily-filled-out application for an open-ended leave of absence on her desk. It's from House. Cuddy shows it to Wilson, and he says that House has often talked about taking time off and taking his motorcycle on the road. This surprises Cuddy, who had no idea he had a bike. She says to Wilson, "Will he go?"
Wilson says "I hope so. I think so," and so Cuddy signs and approves the application.
Cuddy decides to give House a couple of months. Whatever he does, it will be purposeful movement. She hasn't known House as long as Wilson, so she asks him what he thinks. "Do you think he'll come back? Do you think he'll come back and work?"
"I don't know," Wilson says, and Cuddy decides that's at least a step in the right direction.
House sends her a postcard from somewhere in Colorado, a deep blue sky above chocolate cliffs. When she turns it over she finds a quote in fine black scrawl: What is it, Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert? / It's clean. He's signed it House.
Cuddy smiles and sticks the postcard on her fridge. She wonders how someone as damaged as House goes about finding that broken part of himself, the scrap of life piercing his heart. If he ever will.