Edge of Chaos (11.2/15)
Title: Edge of Chaos, Chapter Eleven, Part Two
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint...
Summary: Somewhere between order and chaos, House searches for meaning and healing in his life. Can he recover what he's lost? Can Wilson learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness? Can Cuddy bridge the gap between them both? Or are their friendships just another casualty of the bus accident?
Previous Chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three (Part One), Chapter Three (Part Two), Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven (Part One), Chapter Seven (Part Two), Chapter Eight (Part One), Chapter Eight (Part Two), Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten (Part One), Chapter Ten (Part Two), Chapter Ten (Part Three), Chapter Ten (Part Four), Chapter Eleven (Part One)
Disclaimer: I don't own the show!
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Wilson's Heart." Some chapters are split into parts because of Livejournal's character/word limit. Reviews are greatly appreciated.
But to be honest, Cuddy hoped that that was the case - that Wilson wouldn’t have the ability to drink himself into oblivion for an indefinite period of time. Frankly, if she’d known that he was going to handle losing Amber that poorly, Cuddy would have had Foreman and Thirteen clear out her liquor cabinet as well before letting Wilson stay there.
Having remained confused as to what role she should play, if any, in House’s recovery, Cuddy had decided to try to distract herself with a magazine for a while. She’d contemplated leaving all together, of course. But given that Wilson was still in her home, she’d known that she didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go. And even if she did, she hadn’t been sure that it was the right thing to do - to leave, especially when House was holed up in the kitchen with a bottle of Vicodin.
So she’d settled down with a magazine. Part of her had known - still knew - that keeping her preoccupied was an impossible task for the glossy, colorful pages. And it had come as no surprise that she’d kept finding her thoughts wandering back towards the situation in hand. In this particular case, a bright ad for Absolut Vodka made her think of Wilson, of the drinking he’d done in her presence.
She’d never seen him like that before.
Drunk? Yes. Angry? Yes, she’d seen him that way enough times to know that he was capable of both qualities, but never to the extent he’d been when she’d been with him the other day. That had been… completely unlike him, had been totally out of control. And maybe thanks to House’s problems, she’d been able to avoid thinking about it too much. But now that she was also trying to avoid thinking about House, Wilson’s drinking became all that she could think of.
If it weren’t a problem already, Cuddy knew that it would be. Consuming alcohol like that… he wasn’t drinking for fun; he was drinking in order to escape everything he was feeling right now. And if that was how he was choosing to cope with losing Amber, Cuddy doubted that he would stop, or be able to stop, if and when he returned to work.
She groaned, flipping the magazine shut and dropping it onto the floor. She hated putting all of their personal issues into professional terms, hated when she did it anyway. When she put their lives in those terms, it sounded, even inside of her own head, as though she only cared about them as hospital resources.
It sounded as though she were little more than a hospital administrator/bitch without any personal life hell bent on making everything about the job. And although she probably didn’t have any personal life at this point, Cuddy didn’t want to be one of those people who could only interact with others in a professional setting. Certainly she didn’t want to be the kind of person who couldn’t appreciate the relationships she had with House and Wilson… such as they were.
Nevertheless, she wasn’t wrong to be concerned how Wilson’s drinking might affect his professional life. House was an addict on her staff, yes, but he had a medical reason for taking Vicodin. Wilson… would not have the same pass, and if he tried to treat patients while intoxicated, if he made a mistake while intoxicated, she would have to fire him. And then where would he be?
The prospect worried her beyond words, but… given what had happened with House, Cuddy wasn’t sure that she could help anyway. And it was that thought that once more brought her back to her current situation.
She’d screwed up.
If she’d recognized that Wilson wasn’t ready, if she’d gone slower, if she hadn’t forced House to make that call… they would have all been better off. Wilson wouldn’t be drinking like he undoubtedly was right now; House wouldn’t be brooding in the kitchen with a bottle of Vicodin like a little five year old sulking a corner, and the black and white rabbit that was mere feet from her wouldn’t be hiding, terrified, in the back corner of its cage.
Yeah. She’d screwed up, she thought bitterly, realizing how much she was understating her failure.
And the worst part of all was that Cuddy had no idea how to fix any of it. For a brief moment, when she’d been talking to House, she’d thought leaving him to his own devices was the right thing to do; clearly he couldn’t do much worse managing his own life than she had.
But given that he’d been alone with the Vicodin for almost an hour now, given that he’d seemed almost… hurt by her words, she had to wonder if she hadn’t made yet another mistake.
To be honest, she was a little afraid to find out either way. If giving him that tiny bit of freedom back made him miserable, then Cuddy would feel immensely, indescribably guilty. The last thing she wanted was to cause him more pain.
On the other hand, if he were thrilled by her choice, then she didn’t think she would like that either. As much as she didn’t want him to be miserable, she didn’t want to have the confirmation that she’d literally just wasted the last month of her life thrown in her face.
It seemed like a lose-lose for her, and because of that, part of Cuddy had absolutely no desire to move from the chaise that she was sitting on. Not entirely unlike an ostrich with its head in the sand, part of her preferred to not know the answer. But in the end, she was too curious, too… insistent on knowing how badly she’d messed to stay where she was.
Quietly padding into the kitchen, Cuddy wasn’t surprised that House, standing over an open Vicodin bottle, didn’t acknowledge her presence; his brow furrowed in concentration, he looked way too distracted to pay any attention to her. So she decided to force the recognition by speaking up, “House?”
He slowly spun around, the movement awkward because of his thigh. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead; she could see his right leg trembling slightly, and even if she hadn’t noticed either of those things, there was no missing the look of agony in his eyes. And so she supposed it wasn’t all that shocking when he responded with anger in his words, “Change your mind already?”
She refused to take the bait and start a fight. “How many did you take?” She tried to sound as warm and compassionate as possible, but truth be told, Cuddy wasn’t sure she’d achieved that... especially when he reacted with an almost exponential amount of ridicule.
“You really don’t trust me,” he replied knowingly. “You’re truly convinced that if I don’t have you wiping my ass and cooking me dinner, I’ll starve to death in a pile of my own crap.” Laughing a little at the thought, he told her, “At first I chalked it up to your barren womb. I guess I should have known better.”
“I’m not -”
He interrupted, supplying, “Sterile?” He shrugged, twirling the bottle of Vicodin in his hand. “You can deny it all you want, but your shriveled up uterus says otherwise. Your medical file at the fertility clinic...” He drawled out the revelation slowly, almost hesitantly. “It agrees with your uterus,” he finally finished.
There was no good way to describe how she felt as his words began to seep into her mind. There were no appropriate quotations, no clichés or words of wisdom to describe the cold feeling of realization and betrayal hitting her at the same exact moment. Nor was there any way to accurately describe the way fury and a sense of violation consumed her in equal measures at that second. Because she had never felt like this before, never so close to losing all faith in everything she’d told herself about House that was good.
Years of implicit trust, of hoping that he could, in some way, put aside his need to be an asshole and be her friend evaporating, the empty spaces within her quickly filled with anger. And it wasn’t surprising to her when she snarled loudly, “You son of a bitch.” Every muscle and sinew in her neck straining with effort, she nearly shouted, “You looked in my file without my permission. You stole it.”
House had this look on his face that she wanted to smack right off. It wasn’t quite amusement nor bemusement but some combination of both. “You stopped in vitro. I was curious,” he explained calmly, his own anger somehow dissipating at the presence of hers. “But I didn’t know then what I clearly know now: you have a habit of quitting when things don’t go your way.” She scoffed loudly, but that didn’t stop him. “IVF, playing nursey with me… having sex this decade - it all fits a pattern.”
Whatever calm she’d imposed on herself after their last conversation was now completely gone. The guilt she’d felt, the tears of sorrow over feeling like a failure - it all seemed foreign to her now. His toxic words wearing down whatever sympathy she’d had for him, erasing it completely, Cuddy was now nothing except furious. “There’s no pattern, jackass.” Shaking her head, she explained in terse, angry tones, “With in vitro, I quit…” The last word came out bitterly, a sneer contorting her features in what had to be an unflattering manner. “Because, as you so kindly put it, my barren womb wasn’t ever going to get pregnant.”
It was a lie.
Her reasons for stopping IVF were more complicated than that, the decision one that she’d agonized over for months. But the fact of the matter was a lie was much easier to tell in these circumstances. She was angry, annoyed at his constant need to railroad whatever personal relationships he had for the dumbest of reasons, and that didn’t exactly make her want to explain herself. So she went with a lie that he probably didn’t believe and she didn’t care if he believed.
“But I suppose,” Cuddy continued bitterly. “That, if after all of these years with you, I was still willing to assist you in your recovery, it would have fit the goddamn pattern for me to continue with in vitro fertilization until I was 90.”
She was seething. Heat burned within her, a light rouge blossoming along her chest and cheeks, as did the knowledge that she’d been so stupid for feeling guilty about encouraging House to call Wilson; considering the former’s complete inability to be a human being, she couldn’t help but believe that his failure had nothing to do with her.
“I was feeling guilty,” she said, self-loathing evident in every word. “I thought that it was my fault your conversation with Wilson went… badly. I thought I’d failed you both so horribly that the only responsible thing for me to do was to take a step back from both of you.” Her arms folded across her chest, she finished, “I guess I should have known that that wouldn’t be enough for you. You’d have to try to humiliate me as well by bringing up something you never had the right to know.”
She was practically growling the words out, making no attempt to hide the disgust she felt for him. Her hands were curled into fists against her ribs, and if she hadn’t been completely taken aback by the surprise in his gaze, she thought she would have been too tempted to hit him to resist. But instead, she simply watched him, her eyes focused on the way his lips seemed to twist and contort as he looked for the right thing to say.
Eventually he said in a hesitant voice, “I wasn’t trying to humiliate -”
Holding up a hand, Cuddy interrupted, “Don’t. Just… stop talking.”
Really, she didn’t think she could take anymore. Her resolve had been clearly wearing for the last month, and today had truly been the final straw. There’d been moments before where she’d considered giving up, moments where she’d actually believed that she’d reached the end of her rope. She’d felt that way only a few days ago when House’s behavior had driven her to Wilson.
But that seemed like nothing compared to this.
House’s behavior today was beyond anything she knew how to deal with - the rabbit, the violation of her privacy; it was just too much at the moment for her to handle. And although part of her still wanted, for whatever reason, to help him through essentially losing Wilson, the majority of her knew that, at this particular second, she couldn’t do it. She was too angry with House to help.
Knowing that she turned around and started to walk out of the kitchen. Of course, it was impossible for her to not notice that House was following her, his uneven footsteps loud on the flooring. “Don’t follow me,” she ordered coolly.
It came as no surprise that he didn’t listen.
“House, I’m angry - annoyed. And I’m tired.” Picking up the rabbit’s cage with both hands, she turned and explained to him in an exhausted voice. “I’m going to bed - your bed, to be exact.” His eyes widened a little bit, though probably not due to shock. If anything, Cuddy supposed that he was merely excited about the prospect of using her words against her. Not that she was going to give him a chance to do that. Outside of the bedroom door, she told him in defeat, “We’ll talk in the morning.”
She closed the door shut behind her and held her breath. It wouldn’t exactly be unheard of for him to barge in behind her, ready to continue the fight. Nor would it have been insane to believe he’d spend the next twenty minutes banging on the door like a pathetic dog scratching to come inside.
That he did neither of those things gave her pause. She really had expected one or the other, and having never considered a third option - to just walk away - Cuddy wondered what else she might have missed when it came to understanding House. No doubt, there were things she would never know about him, things he would never let her have access to; to think that she could ever understand him completely was stupid. But nevertheless, sometimes she felt as though she had no clue who he was.
Suffice it to say, nearly everything that had happened today fell under that category.
Hoping that tomorrow would be different, she placed the cage with the rabbit on the floor by the foot of the bed. Part of her supposed that she could have left it in the living room, the chances of House trying to hurt the small creature again miniscule - in her estimation, anyway. But in any case, she’d decided without any hesitation to bring the animal into the room with her… just to be sure. Not that the rabbit would be a problem much longer, she realized, her plans to return it to the pet store the next morning still set in her mind.
Silently sitting on the edge of the bed, Cuddy began to take off her shoes and clothes; there was no way she was going to go back out into the living room, where House was, to get pajamas.
A voice inside of her began to ask what she would do if the pet store refused to take the creature back, and realizing she had no response to that, Cuddy forced herself to think of something else. Of course, what she was left to think about was the fact that she was crawling into House’s bed in her underwear and one of the tank tops she wore under nearly everything.
God. Just hearing those words in her head made her feel awkward and a little embarrassed. Because even though there was nothing inappropriate about it, she realized how some people might look upon the situation. And considering half her staff (and the entire board of directors) were already convinced that she gave House special treatment, Cuddy knew all too well what they would think was going on here if they were to see it.
Granted the chances of that happening were close to non-existent. But the thought crossed her mind nonetheless. And after everything that had happened today, it was something she wished she’d concentrated on what to do with the rabbit instead.
Crawling under the covers, her heart heavy, she wondered if it were even possible for things to improve.
Continue to the next part of the chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint...
Summary: Somewhere between order and chaos, House searches for meaning and healing in his life. Can he recover what he's lost? Can Wilson learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness? Can Cuddy bridge the gap between them both? Or are their friendships just another casualty of the bus accident?
Previous Chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three (Part One), Chapter Three (Part Two), Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven (Part One), Chapter Seven (Part Two), Chapter Eight (Part One), Chapter Eight (Part Two), Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten (Part One), Chapter Ten (Part Two), Chapter Ten (Part Three), Chapter Ten (Part Four), Chapter Eleven (Part One)
Disclaimer: I don't own the show!
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Wilson's Heart." Some chapters are split into parts because of Livejournal's character/word limit. Reviews are greatly appreciated.
But to be honest, Cuddy hoped that that was the case - that Wilson wouldn’t have the ability to drink himself into oblivion for an indefinite period of time. Frankly, if she’d known that he was going to handle losing Amber that poorly, Cuddy would have had Foreman and Thirteen clear out her liquor cabinet as well before letting Wilson stay there.
Having remained confused as to what role she should play, if any, in House’s recovery, Cuddy had decided to try to distract herself with a magazine for a while. She’d contemplated leaving all together, of course. But given that Wilson was still in her home, she’d known that she didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go. And even if she did, she hadn’t been sure that it was the right thing to do - to leave, especially when House was holed up in the kitchen with a bottle of Vicodin.
So she’d settled down with a magazine. Part of her had known - still knew - that keeping her preoccupied was an impossible task for the glossy, colorful pages. And it had come as no surprise that she’d kept finding her thoughts wandering back towards the situation in hand. In this particular case, a bright ad for Absolut Vodka made her think of Wilson, of the drinking he’d done in her presence.
She’d never seen him like that before.
Drunk? Yes. Angry? Yes, she’d seen him that way enough times to know that he was capable of both qualities, but never to the extent he’d been when she’d been with him the other day. That had been… completely unlike him, had been totally out of control. And maybe thanks to House’s problems, she’d been able to avoid thinking about it too much. But now that she was also trying to avoid thinking about House, Wilson’s drinking became all that she could think of.
If it weren’t a problem already, Cuddy knew that it would be. Consuming alcohol like that… he wasn’t drinking for fun; he was drinking in order to escape everything he was feeling right now. And if that was how he was choosing to cope with losing Amber, Cuddy doubted that he would stop, or be able to stop, if and when he returned to work.
She groaned, flipping the magazine shut and dropping it onto the floor. She hated putting all of their personal issues into professional terms, hated when she did it anyway. When she put their lives in those terms, it sounded, even inside of her own head, as though she only cared about them as hospital resources.
It sounded as though she were little more than a hospital administrator/bitch without any personal life hell bent on making everything about the job. And although she probably didn’t have any personal life at this point, Cuddy didn’t want to be one of those people who could only interact with others in a professional setting. Certainly she didn’t want to be the kind of person who couldn’t appreciate the relationships she had with House and Wilson… such as they were.
Nevertheless, she wasn’t wrong to be concerned how Wilson’s drinking might affect his professional life. House was an addict on her staff, yes, but he had a medical reason for taking Vicodin. Wilson… would not have the same pass, and if he tried to treat patients while intoxicated, if he made a mistake while intoxicated, she would have to fire him. And then where would he be?
The prospect worried her beyond words, but… given what had happened with House, Cuddy wasn’t sure that she could help anyway. And it was that thought that once more brought her back to her current situation.
She’d screwed up.
If she’d recognized that Wilson wasn’t ready, if she’d gone slower, if she hadn’t forced House to make that call… they would have all been better off. Wilson wouldn’t be drinking like he undoubtedly was right now; House wouldn’t be brooding in the kitchen with a bottle of Vicodin like a little five year old sulking a corner, and the black and white rabbit that was mere feet from her wouldn’t be hiding, terrified, in the back corner of its cage.
Yeah. She’d screwed up, she thought bitterly, realizing how much she was understating her failure.
And the worst part of all was that Cuddy had no idea how to fix any of it. For a brief moment, when she’d been talking to House, she’d thought leaving him to his own devices was the right thing to do; clearly he couldn’t do much worse managing his own life than she had.
But given that he’d been alone with the Vicodin for almost an hour now, given that he’d seemed almost… hurt by her words, she had to wonder if she hadn’t made yet another mistake.
To be honest, she was a little afraid to find out either way. If giving him that tiny bit of freedom back made him miserable, then Cuddy would feel immensely, indescribably guilty. The last thing she wanted was to cause him more pain.
On the other hand, if he were thrilled by her choice, then she didn’t think she would like that either. As much as she didn’t want him to be miserable, she didn’t want to have the confirmation that she’d literally just wasted the last month of her life thrown in her face.
It seemed like a lose-lose for her, and because of that, part of Cuddy had absolutely no desire to move from the chaise that she was sitting on. Not entirely unlike an ostrich with its head in the sand, part of her preferred to not know the answer. But in the end, she was too curious, too… insistent on knowing how badly she’d messed to stay where she was.
Quietly padding into the kitchen, Cuddy wasn’t surprised that House, standing over an open Vicodin bottle, didn’t acknowledge her presence; his brow furrowed in concentration, he looked way too distracted to pay any attention to her. So she decided to force the recognition by speaking up, “House?”
He slowly spun around, the movement awkward because of his thigh. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead; she could see his right leg trembling slightly, and even if she hadn’t noticed either of those things, there was no missing the look of agony in his eyes. And so she supposed it wasn’t all that shocking when he responded with anger in his words, “Change your mind already?”
She refused to take the bait and start a fight. “How many did you take?” She tried to sound as warm and compassionate as possible, but truth be told, Cuddy wasn’t sure she’d achieved that... especially when he reacted with an almost exponential amount of ridicule.
“You really don’t trust me,” he replied knowingly. “You’re truly convinced that if I don’t have you wiping my ass and cooking me dinner, I’ll starve to death in a pile of my own crap.” Laughing a little at the thought, he told her, “At first I chalked it up to your barren womb. I guess I should have known better.”
“I’m not -”
He interrupted, supplying, “Sterile?” He shrugged, twirling the bottle of Vicodin in his hand. “You can deny it all you want, but your shriveled up uterus says otherwise. Your medical file at the fertility clinic...” He drawled out the revelation slowly, almost hesitantly. “It agrees with your uterus,” he finally finished.
There was no good way to describe how she felt as his words began to seep into her mind. There were no appropriate quotations, no clichés or words of wisdom to describe the cold feeling of realization and betrayal hitting her at the same exact moment. Nor was there any way to accurately describe the way fury and a sense of violation consumed her in equal measures at that second. Because she had never felt like this before, never so close to losing all faith in everything she’d told herself about House that was good.
Years of implicit trust, of hoping that he could, in some way, put aside his need to be an asshole and be her friend evaporating, the empty spaces within her quickly filled with anger. And it wasn’t surprising to her when she snarled loudly, “You son of a bitch.” Every muscle and sinew in her neck straining with effort, she nearly shouted, “You looked in my file without my permission. You stole it.”
House had this look on his face that she wanted to smack right off. It wasn’t quite amusement nor bemusement but some combination of both. “You stopped in vitro. I was curious,” he explained calmly, his own anger somehow dissipating at the presence of hers. “But I didn’t know then what I clearly know now: you have a habit of quitting when things don’t go your way.” She scoffed loudly, but that didn’t stop him. “IVF, playing nursey with me… having sex this decade - it all fits a pattern.”
Whatever calm she’d imposed on herself after their last conversation was now completely gone. The guilt she’d felt, the tears of sorrow over feeling like a failure - it all seemed foreign to her now. His toxic words wearing down whatever sympathy she’d had for him, erasing it completely, Cuddy was now nothing except furious. “There’s no pattern, jackass.” Shaking her head, she explained in terse, angry tones, “With in vitro, I quit…” The last word came out bitterly, a sneer contorting her features in what had to be an unflattering manner. “Because, as you so kindly put it, my barren womb wasn’t ever going to get pregnant.”
It was a lie.
Her reasons for stopping IVF were more complicated than that, the decision one that she’d agonized over for months. But the fact of the matter was a lie was much easier to tell in these circumstances. She was angry, annoyed at his constant need to railroad whatever personal relationships he had for the dumbest of reasons, and that didn’t exactly make her want to explain herself. So she went with a lie that he probably didn’t believe and she didn’t care if he believed.
“But I suppose,” Cuddy continued bitterly. “That, if after all of these years with you, I was still willing to assist you in your recovery, it would have fit the goddamn pattern for me to continue with in vitro fertilization until I was 90.”
She was seething. Heat burned within her, a light rouge blossoming along her chest and cheeks, as did the knowledge that she’d been so stupid for feeling guilty about encouraging House to call Wilson; considering the former’s complete inability to be a human being, she couldn’t help but believe that his failure had nothing to do with her.
“I was feeling guilty,” she said, self-loathing evident in every word. “I thought that it was my fault your conversation with Wilson went… badly. I thought I’d failed you both so horribly that the only responsible thing for me to do was to take a step back from both of you.” Her arms folded across her chest, she finished, “I guess I should have known that that wouldn’t be enough for you. You’d have to try to humiliate me as well by bringing up something you never had the right to know.”
She was practically growling the words out, making no attempt to hide the disgust she felt for him. Her hands were curled into fists against her ribs, and if she hadn’t been completely taken aback by the surprise in his gaze, she thought she would have been too tempted to hit him to resist. But instead, she simply watched him, her eyes focused on the way his lips seemed to twist and contort as he looked for the right thing to say.
Eventually he said in a hesitant voice, “I wasn’t trying to humiliate -”
Holding up a hand, Cuddy interrupted, “Don’t. Just… stop talking.”
Really, she didn’t think she could take anymore. Her resolve had been clearly wearing for the last month, and today had truly been the final straw. There’d been moments before where she’d considered giving up, moments where she’d actually believed that she’d reached the end of her rope. She’d felt that way only a few days ago when House’s behavior had driven her to Wilson.
But that seemed like nothing compared to this.
House’s behavior today was beyond anything she knew how to deal with - the rabbit, the violation of her privacy; it was just too much at the moment for her to handle. And although part of her still wanted, for whatever reason, to help him through essentially losing Wilson, the majority of her knew that, at this particular second, she couldn’t do it. She was too angry with House to help.
Knowing that she turned around and started to walk out of the kitchen. Of course, it was impossible for her to not notice that House was following her, his uneven footsteps loud on the flooring. “Don’t follow me,” she ordered coolly.
It came as no surprise that he didn’t listen.
“House, I’m angry - annoyed. And I’m tired.” Picking up the rabbit’s cage with both hands, she turned and explained to him in an exhausted voice. “I’m going to bed - your bed, to be exact.” His eyes widened a little bit, though probably not due to shock. If anything, Cuddy supposed that he was merely excited about the prospect of using her words against her. Not that she was going to give him a chance to do that. Outside of the bedroom door, she told him in defeat, “We’ll talk in the morning.”
She closed the door shut behind her and held her breath. It wouldn’t exactly be unheard of for him to barge in behind her, ready to continue the fight. Nor would it have been insane to believe he’d spend the next twenty minutes banging on the door like a pathetic dog scratching to come inside.
That he did neither of those things gave her pause. She really had expected one or the other, and having never considered a third option - to just walk away - Cuddy wondered what else she might have missed when it came to understanding House. No doubt, there were things she would never know about him, things he would never let her have access to; to think that she could ever understand him completely was stupid. But nevertheless, sometimes she felt as though she had no clue who he was.
Suffice it to say, nearly everything that had happened today fell under that category.
Hoping that tomorrow would be different, she placed the cage with the rabbit on the floor by the foot of the bed. Part of her supposed that she could have left it in the living room, the chances of House trying to hurt the small creature again miniscule - in her estimation, anyway. But in any case, she’d decided without any hesitation to bring the animal into the room with her… just to be sure. Not that the rabbit would be a problem much longer, she realized, her plans to return it to the pet store the next morning still set in her mind.
Silently sitting on the edge of the bed, Cuddy began to take off her shoes and clothes; there was no way she was going to go back out into the living room, where House was, to get pajamas.
A voice inside of her began to ask what she would do if the pet store refused to take the creature back, and realizing she had no response to that, Cuddy forced herself to think of something else. Of course, what she was left to think about was the fact that she was crawling into House’s bed in her underwear and one of the tank tops she wore under nearly everything.
God. Just hearing those words in her head made her feel awkward and a little embarrassed. Because even though there was nothing inappropriate about it, she realized how some people might look upon the situation. And considering half her staff (and the entire board of directors) were already convinced that she gave House special treatment, Cuddy knew all too well what they would think was going on here if they were to see it.
Granted the chances of that happening were close to non-existent. But the thought crossed her mind nonetheless. And after everything that had happened today, it was something she wished she’d concentrated on what to do with the rabbit instead.
Crawling under the covers, her heart heavy, she wondered if it were even possible for things to improve.
Continue to the next part of the chapter