Edge of Chaos (14.1/15)
Title: Edge of Chaos, Chapter Fourteen (Part One)
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint. This chapter also features some Foreman, Kutner, Taub, Chase, Cameron, and Thirteen.
Summary: House wakes up from the deep brain stimulation to a life without Wilson. Now, as House's life begins to falls into chaos, he searches for meaning, forgiveness, and friendship. House/Cuddy, Wilson/Cuddy, and House/Wilson friendships
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), Chapter Eleven (Part Two), Chapter Eleven (Part Three), Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen (Part One), Chapter Thirteen (Part Two)
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.
“In the beginning, there was nothing. Well, not quite nothing - more of a Nothing with Potential. A nothingness in which packets of energy fleeted in and out of existence, popping into oblivion as quickly as they appeared. One of these fluctuations had just enough energy to take off. It inflated wildly out of control - one moment infinitesimally small, moments later light-years across. All of space and time was created in that instant…. This baby universe kept expanding, over billions of years, and those particles coalesced into stars and planets and eventually humans” - “The Big Bang Theory,” Source Unknown
There were many times Foreman hated Cameron.
When she proved his theories wrong, when she slept with Chase and ruined the whole differential dynamic, when she interfered with his patients - yeah, there were times when he hated her. But all of that seemed almost petty compared to the disgust he felt for her in this particular moment.
It had been building all day, all week actually. It had started when she’d first brought him the case. Although he’d recognized that she was trying to be nice, it hadn’t really felt like an act of kindness. Because as much as he wanted to diagnose and save this ten-year-old girl, the shame of having to admit that Cuddy had rescinded his treatment privileges had made him resent Cameron for even bringing the matter up.
And maybe he could get past that fact if everything after that awkward conversation had gone his way.
But it hadn’t.
First Cameron had gone to Cuddy and gotten their boss to okay giving him the case with the caveat of Wilson being involved. Which Foreman probably could have handled if the oncologist’s involvement had been nominal.
But it hadn’t.
Wilson had come in - two days after the fact, mind you - and taken over everything. He’d exploited the team’s current dynamics in order to gain control, and Foreman had been so appalled that he hadn’t been able to accomplish that himself that he’d barely been able to do his job for the last five hours.
Of course, it was possible that he would have been able to get over Wilson's presence if Cameron hadn't also decided that she'd wanted to get in on the action. But since she had dipped her fingers into the pie, Foreman didn't really know how he would have reacted without her there. And at this point, it didn't really matter to him all that much; in the end Wilson and Cameron were a part of the diagnostics team, and it pissed Foreman off.
It really did. Because even if Foreman could ignore the fact that their presence undermined his control over the department, he was still angered by two outsiders deciding randomly that they should get involved with the differential. Wilson didn't even work in diagnostics, and Foreman was incredibly tempted to ask his colleague how it would feel if another unqualified doctor suddenly took over oncology.
But Foreman didn't ask that question, naturally. He was too busy trying to save his ten-year-old patient (and prove that she really did have an infection) to take the time to chat.
Besides, if he had taken the time, he would have been more interested in talking to Cameron. Unlike Wilson, she did have diagnostics experience; she'd worked for House for a little less time than Foreman himself had. But nevertheless it had been several years of dealing with House, which technically, Foreman supposed, made her qualified to treat this particular patient.
And yet her officiousness still bugged him.
The simple explanation would have been that his ego couldn't handle sharing control, and while he had no desire to deny that, he also couldn't deny that reality was more complicated than that. Or maybe not more complicated, because Foreman realized he could explain his irritation pretty easily. Very easily actually, because the truth looked something like this:
Cameron had quit.
Yes, he had as well, but he'd quit to be a diagnostician somewhere else. He'd quit, because he didn't want to be House, and he felt, even now, that there had been a nobility to that.
But her choice lacked the same shiny veneer of morality, because she'd left for Chase. She'd thrown in the towel to follow her boyfriend, whom she clearly didn't love all that much. She'd sacrificed a good thing for someone who wasn't so great in her eyes. She'd traded in an exciting job for one a monkey could do for a terrible reason.
So while they might have made the same decision to quit, Foreman felt that his choice was better than hers, had more dignity in it.
And it was for that reason that he truly opposed her presence in this; he didn't think she should be allowed to discard something so great so easily and then reclaim it whenever she wanted.
Of course, that didn't mean that Cameron wasn't annoying him for other reasons.
She definitely did.
Oh, she might have only decided to join in on the fun a couple hours ago, but it was already perfectly clear: she was annoying the hell out of him. Because aside from getting Wilson and herself involved, aside from her choice to quit in the past, there was the remaining fact that she too didn't feel that their patient had an infection.
If anything she'd actually agreed with Wilson about paraneoplastic syndrome. Even though the MRI had come up clean, both Wilson and Cameron had held onto the belief that there was cancer somewhere in this girl's body. They'd argued for micro tumors, for improbable problems with the MRI machine, for a second series of scans on the off chance that there'd been an error with the tests.
They'd been unwilling to let go of their diagnosis in order to see what was blatantly in front of them.
And at first Foreman had thought that Cameron was just siding with Wilson, because they shared the whole dead spouse thing. But Foreman knew Cameron well enough to know that that wouldn't be enough to kill someone over, so he thought that maybe she was trying to teach him a lesson by showing how ridiculous he was being about an infection.
However that hadn't seemed likely after an hour of back and forth that had ended with them all (besides Thirteen who had once again gone missing) trudging down to Cuddy's office. They'd barged in, a group of angry faces needing their boss to decide for them (as though she were the most qualified person to do that) once and for all what they should do.
Within ten minutes it had become immediately clear what they were not allowed to do. “You’re not breaking into someone’s home,” she’d snapped, her eyes narrowing on Kutner and Taub.
But Taub hadn’t been willing to let it go. “You don’t think it’s a toxin or -”
“I think it’s more likely an infection or paraneoplastic syndrome,” she’d cut off deftly. “And even if I believed the problem is a toxin, you’re not breaking into a patient’s home.” Slapping the patient file on her desk, Cuddy had added, “And for future reference, if you do wish to commit a crime, it would be best not to tell me, your boss, about it.”
And that alone had made Foreman feel like this conversation was worthwhile; seeing his colleagues shot down like that had absolutely made his day, had made all the frustration seem worthwhile.
But then the differential had turned to paraneoplastic syndrome.
And now Foreman was more sure than ever that Cameron was one of the most annoying people he’d ever come across. Because it was bad enough that she’d gotten Wilson involved; it was bad enough that she’d gotten involved. But that was nothing compared to what happened when Cuddy finished telling Wilson that she wasn’t going to okay an exploratory surgery on a whim.
Wilson audibly scoffed at being shot down. His voice sounding not unlike a child being told no, he demanded, “Why not?”
“I’m not going to let you dig around a little girl’s body when there are other theories you haven’t ruled out yet,” Cuddy said sharply.
Cameron shook her head immediately. “But that’s the thing. We know that it’s not an infection or a toxin.”
“The rest of your team, besides Wilson, disagrees,” Cuddy replied.
But Cameron wasn’t willing to give up that easily. “They’re all trying to take control over the department by being the one who gets the diagnosis right. Wilson and I are the only ones who have no interest in impressing you; we just want to help the patient.”
As her comment washed over him, Foreman felt his anger and resentment for her build. His motives, he told himself in a vicious tone, were just as pure as hers were - maybe even more so, because at that moment, she flashed a sympathetic smile towards Wilson. And it became oh so clear that it really kind of was about the whole dead spouse thing.
They’d bonded over it in some weird way, and Cameron was definitely here to protect him.
Not to help their patient.
So Foreman spoke up. “We all have things to lose and gain by either killing or saving this patient. Lets not act like any one of us is doing this out of pure altruism.”
But his words were completely ignored, as Wilson demanded once more, “Why can’t we do the surgery? You would let -”
“Don’t you dare finish that thought,” Cuddy warned in clipped tones.
The threat was audible in her words, and it wasn’t hard to see then how an unassuming woman like Cuddy could become Dean of Medicine and Chief Administrator of the hospital; she knew how to command a room and demand the attention and obedience of everyone in it.
There was no room for discussion, no area for debate. Unless you wanted to have your head bitten off, it was understood that you were to shut up and let her make her point; Foreman knew that much, and he dutifully remained quiet, knowing that speaking would not help his case.
“I know you think I give House special treatment,” she said, breaking the tentative silence everyone else had fallen into. “But when he comes to me with the medicine to back his claims up, I’m willing to take that leap of faith. And I will the same for you when you bring me the same amount of - ”
“If House were here right now, you’d sign off on the surgery,” Wilson snarled with certainty. “You wouldn’t even hesitate.”
Cuddy folded her arms across her chest and jutted her chin out in anger. “I think I am the expert on knowing what I would or would not do in a given situation.”
“You’re having sex with him,” Cameron interrupted, her tone holding just the slightest bit of disgust. “Of course, you’re going to react differently to -”
“I am not sleeping with House,” Cuddy cut across.
And it was odd, Foreman thought; her voice contained the same strength it had earlier when she’d told Wilson that he shouldn’t finish his train of thought.
But this time, no one seemed to be eager to take her word for it.
Of course, everybody had the good sense, it seemed, to stay quiet. But then again, nobody really needed to say anything; their looks of disbelief said it all. So naturally Cuddy kept talking. Her hand shooting out as though she were reaching for Wilson, she told him, "I'm not sleeping with House." She stressed each and every word greatly, a desperation in her voice that made it seem like she was genuinely worried about upsetting Wilson.
That fact made Foreman snort a little. As much as he understood that, out of all the people in the room, she was closest to Wilson, Foreman couldn't help but think that she should be worried about everyone’s opinion; each and every one of the individuals in this room could make or break her career with the information Cameron had unleashed. And as much as Cuddy's friendship with Wilson seemed to be on the line, Foreman thought she should be worried about her job at this point as well. Especially since Kutner and Taub, the two greatest gossipmongers in Princeton, were privy to this conversation, Foreman believed that she should be foreseeing an even more painful conversation with the board in the future. He thought she should be considering how easily she could be fired if this got out.
Which Foreman wouldn't really care about if it were just her career on the line. Seriously, if Cuddy being fired only affected her, he probably would have rejoiced at the opportunity to move up the PPTH career ladder.
But nothing had really changed since Cuddy had hired him back. Although Foreman wished something had, the fact still remained that his current boss was the only one with balls big enough to employ him these days. It had been almost a year, but the incident at New York Mercy would continue to be a big black stain on his record for much longer than that. And if Cuddy were fired, Foreman understood that he would also be done for; whomever the board replaced her with wouldn't be quite so daring or supportive. They might keep him until the first round of budgets came in and then do a little housekeeping by scratching him off of the payroll as quickly as possible.
Of that Foreman had no doubt.
And it scared him, although he didn't want to acknowledge the fear inside of him. So it was with hope and baited breath that he waited for Wilson to react.
But Wilson didn't.
He didn't speak or shake his head; he didn't storm out of the office or throw anything.
He just looked at Cuddy with sad dark eyes that seemed to be attempting to calculate just how honest she was being.
And that was when Cameron, being the officious bitch that she was, asserted her presence. "You can't deny it, Dr. Cuddy. I saw you with him."
The revelation made Kutner and Taub share an eager glance with one another, the kind of hungered look that people had when someone else's personal drama was about to get really interesting. So it came as no surprise that Kutner leaned forward on the couch to get a better look at the events unfolding.
"You saw me in his apartment," Cuddy pointed out. "Which is where I have said I would be for the last six, seven, weeks."
And Foreman breathed a sigh of relief. Because if that were really all the proof Cameron had, he was safe (for now, anyway).
"You were wearing his bathrobe," Cameron accused as though that were the smoking gun.
Foreman had to resist telling her with relish that it actually wasn't.
Cuddy rolled her eyes. "When you came to the apartment, I'd been sleeping. You woke me up, and I grabbed the first thing I could to cover up," she explained easily. "Although it's probably a sign of respect in some cultures to answer the door in a sheer shirt -"
"That's hot," Kutner interrupted, earning him a dark glare from everyone in the room. Everyone's attentions now on him, he very quickly realized that that was something he did not want. Swallowing hard, he immediately added, "No. No, that's not hot. My bad. Keep talking."
Cuddy looked absolutely livid at the remark, but luckily for Kutner, Cameron drew the attention back to herself. "House admitted it."
At that point, Kutner and Taub actually gasped, the conversation unfolding before them not entirely different than the soap operas they sometimes watched in the doctor's lounge. But if they were excited, Cuddy seemed to be anything but.
"House says a lot of things," she defended. "He once claimed that he brought a prostitute to the hospital to... service him.” She scowled at the memory but pressed forward. “He was the one who started the rumor about me being a hermaphrodite,” she seethed.
She looked like she was about to say more, but Taub piped up, “If you ever need someone to verify that…”
“You are married,” Cuddy snapped in irritation. And thankfully for all of them, her ire was enough to shut Taub up and prevent them all from witnessing an awkward moment involving Cuddy undressing for Taub.
Returning to the topic at hand, Cuddy said, “The day before Wilson's third bachelor party, he claimed to have found a woman who could give herself oral sex.” Cuddy's eyes lit up with the spark of memory, and quickly she added, "The day after Wilson's second bachelor party, House tried to convince me that something illegal had happened with a duck."
Foreman, Kutner, and Taub shifted their gazes immediately to look at Wilson. And though it was obvious that Cuddy didn't believe the rumor House had tried to start, it was just as plain to see that he hadn’t been making that up.
Wilson looked too guilty for that to be the case.
So much for avoiding an awkward moment, Foreman lamented to himself.
“House lies,” Cuddy said, arriving to her point finally. “He makes things up to get a rise out of people, which is why he told you that we were sleeping together.”
“I love Chase,” Cameron retorted in a way that wasn’t going to convince anyone. “And House knows that, so if he was just trying to upset me, then he wouldn’t have said that.”
Cuddy scoffed. “Right. You don’t feel anything for House. You just chose to bring up the idea that I’m sleeping with him, because of… why exactly?”
“Actually,” Wilson said, speaking up for the first time in minutes. “I believe I’m the one who brought it up.”
At that moment, Cameron looked at him gratefully, as though he had just spared her a potentially very damaging conversation. Which was probably true, Foreman conceded; knowing how wishy-washy she really was about Chase, there was a good chance that Cuddy pressing Cameron would result in Cameron admitting that she really didn’t love Chase as much as she should have.
“That’s right,” Cameron agreed eagerly. “I didn’t bring it up. I was just trying to help Wilson prove a point.”
Cuddy took a step closer to the other woman. “Then let me prove mine,” she said in a dangerous voice that threatened despite being barely above a whisper. “I’m not sleeping with House. He’s had an incredibly traumatic accident made worse by the fact that he had surgery on his injured brain. He is in no condition to do any of the things he would probably like to claim we’ve done together.”
She paused to let her words sink in before reiterating, “We are not sleeping together. But even if we were, I would hold him to the standards that I’m holding you: I need proof. Give it to me definitively, show me that it’s cancer, and you can do your surgery.”
Wilson shook his head. “We don’t have time to find the proof you want. We’re doing the surgery now.”
“Then I’m going to have to put a security guard outside of that little girl’s room,” Cuddy said defiantly.
She didn’t bother to explain why that would be a threat, but she didn’t exactly need to; they all understood that they’d have no chance of sneaking their patient out and wheeling her to surgery.
Wilson looked at her in amazement. “You’re going to kill her,” he warned.
“No,” she snapped back. “You are if you can’t find the evidence you need to diagnose her.”
And it was clear to Foreman and probably to everyone else in the room that the conversation was over. Cuddy wasn’t going to let them do the surgery or break into anyone’s home, and since they couldn’t take their patient out of the room, it seemed like she’d chosen to go down the path Foreman had suggested.
Which he obviously liked quite a bit, because he’d been arguing that it had been an infection this entire time. Of course, he was the only in the room who seemed thrilled by the end of the conversation, but Foreman didn’t particularly care about that. Instead he smiled and stood up and tried to once more rally the team behind him by saying, “Okay. Thanks for your time, Dr. Cuddy.”
“We’re not done here,” Wilson said bitterly, holding his hands up in the air to halt Kutner and Taub who had stood up as soon as Foreman had.
“Oh, yes, we are,” Cuddy replied smoothly. “You’re not getting the surgery, and frankly, if you stay any longer, you’re also not going to have any of your treatment privileges.” She smiled as she warned them, her face devoid of any joy or happiness.
And though Foreman expected Wilson to continue to fight, he didn’t. In fact, Wilson seemed to capitulate at the threat, easily caving. “You’re right,” he said apologetically. “You’re right.”
Cuddy looked at him as though he’d lost his mind; she too was clearly expecting a fight and was even more obviously surprised to have not gotten one. Her mouth slightly agape, she looked as though she wanted to say something. But unfortunately for her, she never got a chance.
Wilson was already out the door before she had the opportunity to utter a single word.
Quickly the rest of the team followed suit, because nobody cared to stick around for Cuddy’s reaction. At least Foreman assumed as much as that was his reason for shooting out the door.
But he very quickly deduced, within seconds of leaving actually, that everyone also had other motives. Because they’d barely made it out of the clinic, their large group uncomfortably making its way through a throng of would-be patients, before Wilson started talking. “She needs that surgery.”
Cameron nodded her head. “I’ll get Chase; you get our patient and her parents’ consent before Cuddy has a chance to get a guard at the door.”
As far as plans went, this one wasn’t particularly imaginative. If anything, it was a pretty dumb one, its success hindering on how quickly those two could move. But as Foreman didn't believe the diagnosis involved cancer, he could live with the stupidity of their plan and rightfully chose to keep his mouth shut.
Unfortunately Taub did not.
"You're going to operate on her, even though Cuddy said -"
"Cuddy wants results," Wilson pointed out knowingly, as Cameron scurried away to, apparently, go get Chase. "She likes to pretend that she cares about the ethics, but you've seen her shove all of that aside." Kutner opened his mouth to protest, but Wilson stopped him. "Look. If something goes wrong, she's going to come after me. That much should be very clear to all of you. It's not going to be your jobs on the line."
"And our patient's life?" Taub posed the question calmly with just a hint of derision. "We just ignore that her life is -"
"We're doing the surgery," Wilson replied stubbornly. "And in the meantime, you and Kutner should break into their home. Just in case."
Kutner's eyes widened. "You want us to -"
"If I'm right, then she's okay. If it's a toxin, then we're ahead of the game," Wilson said in an assured tone that Foreman recognized as dangerous. As important as it was to follow through on your ideas, as useful as hunches could be, Wilson's convictions were blinding him to everything else.
Granted, in this light, Foreman realized that it wasn't just the oncologist who'd been acting like this all day. Foreman himself was guilty of it as well, his mind clinging to the notion of an infection as though there were no other possibilities.
But he believed - or at least wanted to believe - that there were differences between Wilson and himself. Unlike Wilson, Foreman wasn't recommending, much less performing, a dangerous surgery. And he certainly wasn't going to do it while duping the one person who was willing to take risks when the situation warranted it. Which was why he shook his head no when Wilson looked at him and asked, "Are you willing to help me prep her for surgery?"
As Kutner and Taub rushed to the elevator, presumably so they could go to the office and get their things, Wilson and Foreman stood in the lobby in silence. In disappointed silence, Foreman corrected after a split second; although Wilson wasn't saying anything, Foreman could tell that his colleague was upset by the rejection.
And for a reason Foreman didn't really understand, he immediately worked to amend the tense situation. "I don't think you're right for doing this. But -"
Wilson sneered. "You don't agree with my diagnosis. You think an infection is still the answer, despite the fact that our patient hasn't responded to any antibiotics."
"That's not what this is about," Foreman said, shaking his head slowly. "I don’t think you're right about the diagnosis. But my bigger problem is going behind our boss’s back."
"Don't worry about Cuddy. She'll get over it," Wilson replied breezily in a way that suggested that he didn't care if she did either way.
"She's done a lot for me," Foreman acknowledged. She really had, and he knew that much; to be honest, each time he helped House or anyone else collude, he felt a little guilty for doing it. And maybe it was a bad time to change his mind, especially since he'd always kind of liked Wilson. But seeing the older man act so... childishly, so selfish and inconsiderate... well, it made Foreman rethink his own behavior.
"I won't tell her what you're doing - on the off chance that you're right," he said, knowing that it was the most he could do. "But I'm not being a part of it."
Wilson clenched his jaw but only uttered a terse "Fine."
Clearly though things weren't going to be fine between them, regardless of how the case resolved itself. Foreman recognized that, although, at this point, he wasn't sure if he wanted to be right or wrong about the diagnosis in the end. After everything that had happened today, he just didn't know if it was better to let the surgery occur, knowing that it was the wrong course of treatment, or to let it happen, have Wilson be right, and end up being in the wrong.
Thinking about it for a few seconds, he realized easily that it didn’t matter how it ended; he was going to feel terrible either way.
And faced with a lose-lose situation like that, Foreman did the one thing that would help him cope the fasted: he headed for one of the many nearby bars.
But it wasn’t to get drunk. Although it was four-thirty in the afternoon and close enough to happy hour, he didn’t feel like spending the rest of his day hunkered down in a booth made of well-worn oak with a frosty mug in his hands. As much as this day had probably deserved that kind of ending, Foreman had another pick-me-up in mind. Because as good as beer was, it really couldn’t compete with the way hearing other people bitched about their lives made Foreman feel.
Pausing in his train of thought, he realized how awful it all sounded. He was making it seem as though he enjoyed other people’s pain, which wasn’t the case; he didn’t take pleasure in knowing that others were miserable or anything like that. It was just that there was something about hearing other people whine that put Foreman’s own problems into perspective.
Again, it wasn’t about relishing their pain. Nor was it about comparing his own issues with theirs; there was no thinking, “Oh, I’m much better off than they are,” or anything like that.
Truly, there was just one thing that Foreman got from listening to other people complain about their lives, and that was the reminder that nothing in life was worth the humiliation of whining to a complete stranger about your life. Things could be bad, awful even, but none of it ever warranted relinquishing your pride for someone’s pity.
And though it had taken him a long time to realize that fact, he had come to accept the truth: your pride mattered.
Very few people would agree with him, of course. Foreman might not have known for sure what was wrong with his patient, but he was smart enough to know that much. Because it was also a fact that everyone was taught as a kid that pride was a bad thing, a sin even, and it was hard to ignore the things that had been ingrained in you for an unwelcome reality.
But it was a reality nevertheless, one that he liked to be reminded of when he felt his world spinning out of control and the answers he desperately needed remaining out of his reach. And he would use this trip to the bar to do just that - remind him of what mattered in the world. He would use the drunken patrons bitching about their lives to remind him of just how important it was to maintain control of his emotions.
And he wouldn’t feel bad about it.
He used to, to be honest, but he’d very quickly learned that the people he talked to didn’t care. If anything, they were using him as much as he was using them; they saw him as a kind, sympathetic ear to blather on to, and that was all they really cared about.
So why should he feel bad?
Unfortunately what Foreman hadn’t counted on was the guilt he could feel when the person he was using was someone he knew.
The second he entered the bar, he regretted choosing this particular dive. Because even though she was sitting in a booth in the back corner, it was impossible to miss Thirteen miserably nursing a scotch. She might have been going for inconspicuous, but Foreman couldn’t help but think that she’d failed. After all, she was the only woman in the bar, so it was kind of hard not to notice her among the beer bellies and thick beards.
But then that also seemed to apply to him, as he was the only one wearing a freshly pressed suit and the only one with dark skin. And oh yeah, he was the only one who had the awareness sobriety brought with it. And although none of those things made him want to leave, when Thirteen’s gaze caught sight of him, that did.
Her eyes trained on him and his trained on her, there was no turning back. As much as part of him wanted to leave, he knew that he couldn’t. She’d clearly seen him, and walking out the door now would only make an awkward conversation in the future inevitable.
Besides, there was no real reason why he couldn’t use her as his reminder. He’d never done it before, but that didn’t mean it would necessarily end badly. And considering she was bringing her problems into work by disappearing for hours, days, and even weeks at a time, Foreman wondered if talking to her wouldn’t also solve that annoying problem. He didn’t know how likely it was that she wanted to talk, but if he could get her to tell him what was wrong, then maybe he could make it better. Or at least, maybe he could make it better enough that she started doing her job again.
As he thought it over a little more, he kept coming back to the idea that this really was a win-win situation. He looked for a way for this to fail, but he couldn’t spot one; even if he learned more about Thirteen than he cared to know, he doubted her problems would be so exciting, so troubling that he couldn’t forget them.
His decision made, he confidently made his way to her booth. His voice low so that only she could hear him, he asked, “Mind if I join you?”
Thirteen shrugged in a tense sort of way. Her shoulders moved up and down awkwardly as though she couldn’t quite manage the ease she wanted to have. What she said to him in response to his question didn’t help either. “That’s fine,” she said in a flat tone. “Did Wilson kick you off the team too?”
His eyes widening in surprise, Foreman slid into the booth across from her. Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. And though he’d hoped that she would be the one to renew his spirit, he quickly realized that if Wilson really had removed her from the team, his misery was just beginning. “He kicked you off the team?”
“Not in so many words,” she admitted. “But he made it very clear that the only one in the room who could be affected by their personal problems was him. So I left.” She gave him a small smirk before taking a swig of scotch. “Why’d you leave?”
He must have looked taken aback by the question, because Thirteen pressed, “I assume you don’t like to visit bars in the middle of the afternoon for the fun of it. So why’d you leave?”
“Wilson’s going to perform exploratory surgery against Cuddy’s direct orders,” he explained simply.
“And you don’t want to be seen as an accomplice when our boss finds out,” Thirteen deduced, as he waved a waitress, who was visibly pregnant, in leather chaps over to take his drink order.
“I’d rather not have Cuddy on top of me for something I didn’t agree with to begin with,” he replied.
Not missing a beat, Thirteen asked him, the corners of her mouth turned upward in the barest hint of a smile, “Why not? Cuddy’s pretty hot. It’d be fun to be underneath her.”
“Not when she’s ripping my balls off.”
Of course, as luck would have it, it was at that moment that the waitress managed to waddle over to him. Placing his order - a Sam Adams Summer Ale - in a choked voice, he forced himself to ignore the way Thirteen was beginning to chuckle over her own drink. If he didn’t do that, he would either start to laugh with her or become annoyed that she was laughing at all. And neither were going to be particularly conducive to getting his reminder, so he spoke to the stranger only what was necessary, ignoring Thirteen as best as he could.
Finally, when the waitress left, Foreman asked in an annoyed voice, “You enjoying this?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
They shared a small smile that left him feeling uncomfortable. A faked connection that he could exploit was one thing, but the intimacy contained in such a tiny act was another. And it left him squirming a little in the booth, the leather making odd noises with each shift of his weight, before he got back to his original reason for being here. “Now you know why I’m here. But I still don’t know why you are,” he said pointedly.
“I told you,” Thirteen said tersely, offering the waitress a forced smile of thanks when she brought back Foreman’s beer.
“You implied that your personal problems were getting in the way, and Wilson didn’t like that. You never actually said what those problems were.”
It was not, admittedly, the most tactful way of putting things. Of all the words he could have chosen, he knew those were not the nicest, the most inconspicuous, or the least threatening. And so it came as no surprise that Thirteen rebuffed his advances. “Well, I know I’m supposed to confess to the deepest, darkest secrets that I have, but I think I’ll pass this time.”
But although he expected her response, he still couldn’t help but be annoyed by it; acting like she didn’t want people to know her issues when she clearly did - it was all a ruse he didn’t feel like wasting time on. “Yeah,” he said sarcastically. “Cause this public of display of my-life-is-so-miserable-I-need-to-drink-in-the-middle-of-the-day doesn’t beg people to ask what’s wrong.”
She rolled her eyes, clearly unamused by his deduction. "I felt the need to get drunk. That's not exactly a display of anything... other than a testament to liver function." Swallowing another long sip of booze, she added as an afterthought, “And when I go home with one of the guys here, that’s not a cry for help either.”
Foreman glanced around the room distastefully. Who the hell was she going to go home with? Out of the small crowd of people, the person that looked the most attractive was the guy, who looked as though he hadn’t showered in a week, digging around the bar nuts as though treasure were at the bottom of the dish.
Turning to look at Thirteen once more, Foreman told her, “No, sleeping with one of these men would be proof that you have no taste.”
She nodded her head. “I felt the same way when you were banging that nurse in radiology.”
“She wasn’t my best,” he conceded. “But I stand by my choice. In addition to working in radiology, she taught those classes at Princeton Gym - you know, the workouts that involve women dancing on stripper poles?” Foreman had to swallow back a sigh of contentment at the memory of Becky and all that she knew how to do…
He shook his head to clear the thought from his mind before adding, “She wasn’t the hottest, but she could do things with her thigh muscles that would make -”
“And how do you know that the guys in here don’t have similar hidden talents?”
But Thirteen’s question kind of answered itself. Simultaneously they both looked around the room, hoping to find the prince dressed like a frog… only to see a room full of 100% amphibians. No one - not one of the men in the joint - seemed to have hidden qualities, and Foreman relished in that fact (it meant he wasn’t wrong).
His gaze settling back on Thirteen, he said nothing; his smile said all that he needed to say.
“Fine,” she capitulated. “You’ve made your point. I’ll just go to a different bar when I’m done here.”
He looked at her carefully at that moment, his fingers toying around the lip of his mug. He didn’t know her that well; it was the way she wanted it, of course. But he couldn’t help but feel like this was out of character for her. And he didn’t know if that was because she was playing him or because there really was something bad going on in her life.
Wondering what the truth was, Foreman was about to ask her straight up what was going on. But he stopped himself from doing so before he’d even had a chance to open his mouth. Because he realized, albeit belatedly, that he knew what the answer was.
Taking a sip of beer, he understood intuitively that this was more than a ruse.
This was real.
And it was nothing new.
She’d disappeared for a while right after Cutthroat Bitch had died, and when Thirteen had come back, she’d been just as distant, just as out of character as she was being now. And although he couldn’t name the cause, he was convinced that something very real was going on with her.
But before he had an opportunity to say that to her, she interrupted irritably, “This is the part where you try and dissuade me from doing something stupid.”
“Is it?” The uninterested lull in his voice made it absolutely clear that he wasn’t seriously asking the question. “Because I’m thinking that you’ve spent the last month and a half or so perfecting this whole act and -”
“This isn’t an act,” she snapped.
He rolled his eyes and put his elbows on the table to lean forward. “I’m not saying your pain isn’t real,” he told her with sincerity. “But if you didn’t want to talk about it, you wouldn’t put it out there like you’ve been doing since Amber died.” Pausing for dramatic effect, Foreman eventually added, “Either talk or don’t. It doesn’t really bother me one way or the other. But whatever’s wrong has clearly been eating away at you. So if you’re really looking for someone to talk to, I’d do it now - before you annoy everyone else into not caring.”
His words were met with silence - heavy, unyielding silence. And he didn’t need to think about why that was, because he understood all too well how cool his words had been. He hadn’t been intentionally cruel, but there was no denying that he hadn’t been particularly kind to Thirteen.
So it was no surprise that she responded with an equally vicious tone. “You act like I demanded you to care, like I forced you to ask how I was doing.”
“I work with you every day,” he defended. “And in case you haven’t noticed, lately, you’ve been pretty terrible at your job. So -”
“This is about you and work and impressing Cuddy,” Thirteen finished in a voice that didn’t sound all that surprised.
“No,” he said hastily. Although he couldn’t deny that that was part of it, the way her behavior was screwing him over wasn’t his point. “All I’m saying is that you’re not going through this alone. What you’re doing has an effect on other people.” As an afterthought, he willingly conceded, “Yes, that includes me. But my point is you are affecting other people. So you can either use that to your advantage or keep doing what you’re doing until no one cares.”
To be honest, Foreman was glad to see her mouth shut and her eyes glaze over in the sort of way only possible when you were weighing the pros and cons of a particular action. At least those things meant that she was considering what he was saying.
And as she did so, he couldn’t help but recognize that his whole reason for being here had shifted. When he’d come to the bar, he’d intended to use someone to remind him that his pride was more important than someone else’s pity.
He still believed that to be true, of course. But for whatever reason, seeing Thirteen… well, it had made him realize, at some point in the conversation, that her issue was more important than anything else at the moment. It was more important than re-learning a lesson, more important than escaping Wilson’s stink and Cuddy’s wrath.
Thirteen’s problem was something Foreman needed to address on its own terms - not just because it affected him, but because he knew her well enough to know that something was seriously wrong. And that he should have ever aimed to use her troubles for his own benefit…
It made him feel worse than he’d ever thought possible.
It made him every bit the opportunist he’d never really wished to be.
So he supposed it was the appropriate punishment that Thirteen should finally confess to her problems, that she should amplify that achy guilt inside of him by saying in a soft voice, “I have Huntington’s.”
He blinked.
He swallowed.
Both muscle contractions were slow and forced, and if the situation weren’t so serious, he would allow himself to make (to himself only, of course) the dark, offensive comment that he was acting like someone with Huntington’s chorea.
But as things were, he couldn’t make such a joke… or any other remark; her admission was too stark, too serious for him to know what to say in response. All he knew was what her future entailed:
A long, drawn out, humiliating death.
And he didn’t know what would be the bigger blessing - to get the symptoms sooner or to go through most of your life relatively physically well while knowing what had to happen to you.
He didn’t ask.
He didn’t say anything at all.
But then again, he didn’t exactly have a chance to do that, because it was at that moment that his cell phone rang. And as much as he didn’t want to answer it, the ring tone signaled that it was the hospital calling. Which meant he had no choice.
Glancing sympathetically towards Thirteen, he explained, “I have to take this.” She nodded her head in understanding before heading towards the bar. But somehow that didn’t make him feel any better. If anything he just felt worse for having to interrupt their conversation for something that seemed so… distant at this point (even though it really wasn’t).
And so it really came as no surprise that he felt even more awful when the person on the other end of the phone was Cuddy’s assistant. “Dr. Cuddy needs to see you. Now,” she told him in a voice that was just forceful enough to make him imagine how angry Cuddy was.
Swallowing a sip of his beer, Foreman asked, “Why? What happened?”
“Dr. Wilson just killed your patient,” the assistant replied. “She wants you here now… and Dr. Foreman, she was really angry, so…”
“Yeah. I’ll be there,” he muttered, reaching for his wallet. As he flipped through the contents to grab a few bills, Thirteen sat back down. “I have to go,” he told her quickly. “Wilson killed our patient.”
He wasn’t sure how he expected her to react. But when Thirteen just shrugged, he felt distinctly ill at ease by the gesture. Or maybe he just felt bothered by his own inability to finish this conversation right now. “I’m sorry,” he apologized abruptly, knowing how lame it sounded.
Of course, that paled in comparison to how lame his next words sounded. “Do you… want to continue this later?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I’m good.”
It was hard to say how sincere she was being, and it was even harder to let the comment go because of time. Honestly, there was nothing that Foreman wanted to do more at the moment than to sit and talk to her about her diagnosis.
But there wasn’t time for it, because he still had a job to do.
Standing up, he asked her, “Should we go then?”
“No.” And indeed, she made no move to stand up with him, instead choosing to nurse her scotch slowly.
“No?” He repeated the word in confusion, his mouth moving oddly as he parroted her response.
She shrugged once more. “No point really. I’m gonna stay and get drunk, I think.” Her gaze shifted from him to focus on everyone else in the room, her line of sight never staying in the same direction for more than a few seconds at a time. Although he couldn’t say for sure, it was felt as though she were assessing the situation, trying to decide where her place in all of this was. And unfortunately for him (and for her as well), Thirteen made the choice to stay exactly where she was. “I’m good,” she told him after a few seconds.
At that moment, he realized he should say something to stop her from doing this - from drowning in self-pity and ruining what few good years she would have in life. But everything he thought of, every possible thing he could tell her, just sounded like a useless platitude, a cliché that she would never accept. And coming from him, the words would sound even more empty, he realized, because he hadn’t ever bothered to be her friend in order to gain the benefit of the doubt.
So he had no choice but to nod his head and capitulate. “Okay. See ya.”
He grabbed his things and turned to leave. But as he did so, Thirteen told him, almost as though it were meant to be a conciliatory gesture, “You were right, you know. It probably was an infection.”
And though he believed she was trying to be nice by agreeing with him then, Foreman could only resent her in that moment. Because she was ruining her own life, and a patient had died, and…
Some of that pain had been avoidable.
Some of it was still avoidable if she were to accept what was going to happen to her.
But he already knew that that was an argument he would probably never convince her of, so he gritted his teeth and left.
Continue on to the rest of the chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint. This chapter also features some Foreman, Kutner, Taub, Chase, Cameron, and Thirteen.
Summary: House wakes up from the deep brain stimulation to a life without Wilson. Now, as House's life begins to falls into chaos, he searches for meaning, forgiveness, and friendship. House/Cuddy, Wilson/Cuddy, and House/Wilson friendships
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), Chapter Eleven (Part Two), Chapter Eleven (Part Three), Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen (Part One), Chapter Thirteen (Part Two)
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.
“In the beginning, there was nothing. Well, not quite nothing - more of a Nothing with Potential. A nothingness in which packets of energy fleeted in and out of existence, popping into oblivion as quickly as they appeared. One of these fluctuations had just enough energy to take off. It inflated wildly out of control - one moment infinitesimally small, moments later light-years across. All of space and time was created in that instant…. This baby universe kept expanding, over billions of years, and those particles coalesced into stars and planets and eventually humans” - “The Big Bang Theory,” Source Unknown
There were many times Foreman hated Cameron.
When she proved his theories wrong, when she slept with Chase and ruined the whole differential dynamic, when she interfered with his patients - yeah, there were times when he hated her. But all of that seemed almost petty compared to the disgust he felt for her in this particular moment.
It had been building all day, all week actually. It had started when she’d first brought him the case. Although he’d recognized that she was trying to be nice, it hadn’t really felt like an act of kindness. Because as much as he wanted to diagnose and save this ten-year-old girl, the shame of having to admit that Cuddy had rescinded his treatment privileges had made him resent Cameron for even bringing the matter up.
And maybe he could get past that fact if everything after that awkward conversation had gone his way.
But it hadn’t.
First Cameron had gone to Cuddy and gotten their boss to okay giving him the case with the caveat of Wilson being involved. Which Foreman probably could have handled if the oncologist’s involvement had been nominal.
But it hadn’t.
Wilson had come in - two days after the fact, mind you - and taken over everything. He’d exploited the team’s current dynamics in order to gain control, and Foreman had been so appalled that he hadn’t been able to accomplish that himself that he’d barely been able to do his job for the last five hours.
Of course, it was possible that he would have been able to get over Wilson's presence if Cameron hadn't also decided that she'd wanted to get in on the action. But since she had dipped her fingers into the pie, Foreman didn't really know how he would have reacted without her there. And at this point, it didn't really matter to him all that much; in the end Wilson and Cameron were a part of the diagnostics team, and it pissed Foreman off.
It really did. Because even if Foreman could ignore the fact that their presence undermined his control over the department, he was still angered by two outsiders deciding randomly that they should get involved with the differential. Wilson didn't even work in diagnostics, and Foreman was incredibly tempted to ask his colleague how it would feel if another unqualified doctor suddenly took over oncology.
But Foreman didn't ask that question, naturally. He was too busy trying to save his ten-year-old patient (and prove that she really did have an infection) to take the time to chat.
Besides, if he had taken the time, he would have been more interested in talking to Cameron. Unlike Wilson, she did have diagnostics experience; she'd worked for House for a little less time than Foreman himself had. But nevertheless it had been several years of dealing with House, which technically, Foreman supposed, made her qualified to treat this particular patient.
And yet her officiousness still bugged him.
The simple explanation would have been that his ego couldn't handle sharing control, and while he had no desire to deny that, he also couldn't deny that reality was more complicated than that. Or maybe not more complicated, because Foreman realized he could explain his irritation pretty easily. Very easily actually, because the truth looked something like this:
Cameron had quit.
Yes, he had as well, but he'd quit to be a diagnostician somewhere else. He'd quit, because he didn't want to be House, and he felt, even now, that there had been a nobility to that.
But her choice lacked the same shiny veneer of morality, because she'd left for Chase. She'd thrown in the towel to follow her boyfriend, whom she clearly didn't love all that much. She'd sacrificed a good thing for someone who wasn't so great in her eyes. She'd traded in an exciting job for one a monkey could do for a terrible reason.
So while they might have made the same decision to quit, Foreman felt that his choice was better than hers, had more dignity in it.
And it was for that reason that he truly opposed her presence in this; he didn't think she should be allowed to discard something so great so easily and then reclaim it whenever she wanted.
Of course, that didn't mean that Cameron wasn't annoying him for other reasons.
She definitely did.
Oh, she might have only decided to join in on the fun a couple hours ago, but it was already perfectly clear: she was annoying the hell out of him. Because aside from getting Wilson and herself involved, aside from her choice to quit in the past, there was the remaining fact that she too didn't feel that their patient had an infection.
If anything she'd actually agreed with Wilson about paraneoplastic syndrome. Even though the MRI had come up clean, both Wilson and Cameron had held onto the belief that there was cancer somewhere in this girl's body. They'd argued for micro tumors, for improbable problems with the MRI machine, for a second series of scans on the off chance that there'd been an error with the tests.
They'd been unwilling to let go of their diagnosis in order to see what was blatantly in front of them.
And at first Foreman had thought that Cameron was just siding with Wilson, because they shared the whole dead spouse thing. But Foreman knew Cameron well enough to know that that wouldn't be enough to kill someone over, so he thought that maybe she was trying to teach him a lesson by showing how ridiculous he was being about an infection.
However that hadn't seemed likely after an hour of back and forth that had ended with them all (besides Thirteen who had once again gone missing) trudging down to Cuddy's office. They'd barged in, a group of angry faces needing their boss to decide for them (as though she were the most qualified person to do that) once and for all what they should do.
Within ten minutes it had become immediately clear what they were not allowed to do. “You’re not breaking into someone’s home,” she’d snapped, her eyes narrowing on Kutner and Taub.
But Taub hadn’t been willing to let it go. “You don’t think it’s a toxin or -”
“I think it’s more likely an infection or paraneoplastic syndrome,” she’d cut off deftly. “And even if I believed the problem is a toxin, you’re not breaking into a patient’s home.” Slapping the patient file on her desk, Cuddy had added, “And for future reference, if you do wish to commit a crime, it would be best not to tell me, your boss, about it.”
And that alone had made Foreman feel like this conversation was worthwhile; seeing his colleagues shot down like that had absolutely made his day, had made all the frustration seem worthwhile.
But then the differential had turned to paraneoplastic syndrome.
And now Foreman was more sure than ever that Cameron was one of the most annoying people he’d ever come across. Because it was bad enough that she’d gotten Wilson involved; it was bad enough that she’d gotten involved. But that was nothing compared to what happened when Cuddy finished telling Wilson that she wasn’t going to okay an exploratory surgery on a whim.
Wilson audibly scoffed at being shot down. His voice sounding not unlike a child being told no, he demanded, “Why not?”
“I’m not going to let you dig around a little girl’s body when there are other theories you haven’t ruled out yet,” Cuddy said sharply.
Cameron shook her head immediately. “But that’s the thing. We know that it’s not an infection or a toxin.”
“The rest of your team, besides Wilson, disagrees,” Cuddy replied.
But Cameron wasn’t willing to give up that easily. “They’re all trying to take control over the department by being the one who gets the diagnosis right. Wilson and I are the only ones who have no interest in impressing you; we just want to help the patient.”
As her comment washed over him, Foreman felt his anger and resentment for her build. His motives, he told himself in a vicious tone, were just as pure as hers were - maybe even more so, because at that moment, she flashed a sympathetic smile towards Wilson. And it became oh so clear that it really kind of was about the whole dead spouse thing.
They’d bonded over it in some weird way, and Cameron was definitely here to protect him.
Not to help their patient.
So Foreman spoke up. “We all have things to lose and gain by either killing or saving this patient. Lets not act like any one of us is doing this out of pure altruism.”
But his words were completely ignored, as Wilson demanded once more, “Why can’t we do the surgery? You would let -”
“Don’t you dare finish that thought,” Cuddy warned in clipped tones.
The threat was audible in her words, and it wasn’t hard to see then how an unassuming woman like Cuddy could become Dean of Medicine and Chief Administrator of the hospital; she knew how to command a room and demand the attention and obedience of everyone in it.
There was no room for discussion, no area for debate. Unless you wanted to have your head bitten off, it was understood that you were to shut up and let her make her point; Foreman knew that much, and he dutifully remained quiet, knowing that speaking would not help his case.
“I know you think I give House special treatment,” she said, breaking the tentative silence everyone else had fallen into. “But when he comes to me with the medicine to back his claims up, I’m willing to take that leap of faith. And I will the same for you when you bring me the same amount of - ”
“If House were here right now, you’d sign off on the surgery,” Wilson snarled with certainty. “You wouldn’t even hesitate.”
Cuddy folded her arms across her chest and jutted her chin out in anger. “I think I am the expert on knowing what I would or would not do in a given situation.”
“You’re having sex with him,” Cameron interrupted, her tone holding just the slightest bit of disgust. “Of course, you’re going to react differently to -”
“I am not sleeping with House,” Cuddy cut across.
And it was odd, Foreman thought; her voice contained the same strength it had earlier when she’d told Wilson that he shouldn’t finish his train of thought.
But this time, no one seemed to be eager to take her word for it.
Of course, everybody had the good sense, it seemed, to stay quiet. But then again, nobody really needed to say anything; their looks of disbelief said it all. So naturally Cuddy kept talking. Her hand shooting out as though she were reaching for Wilson, she told him, "I'm not sleeping with House." She stressed each and every word greatly, a desperation in her voice that made it seem like she was genuinely worried about upsetting Wilson.
That fact made Foreman snort a little. As much as he understood that, out of all the people in the room, she was closest to Wilson, Foreman couldn't help but think that she should be worried about everyone’s opinion; each and every one of the individuals in this room could make or break her career with the information Cameron had unleashed. And as much as Cuddy's friendship with Wilson seemed to be on the line, Foreman thought she should be worried about her job at this point as well. Especially since Kutner and Taub, the two greatest gossipmongers in Princeton, were privy to this conversation, Foreman believed that she should be foreseeing an even more painful conversation with the board in the future. He thought she should be considering how easily she could be fired if this got out.
Which Foreman wouldn't really care about if it were just her career on the line. Seriously, if Cuddy being fired only affected her, he probably would have rejoiced at the opportunity to move up the PPTH career ladder.
But nothing had really changed since Cuddy had hired him back. Although Foreman wished something had, the fact still remained that his current boss was the only one with balls big enough to employ him these days. It had been almost a year, but the incident at New York Mercy would continue to be a big black stain on his record for much longer than that. And if Cuddy were fired, Foreman understood that he would also be done for; whomever the board replaced her with wouldn't be quite so daring or supportive. They might keep him until the first round of budgets came in and then do a little housekeeping by scratching him off of the payroll as quickly as possible.
Of that Foreman had no doubt.
And it scared him, although he didn't want to acknowledge the fear inside of him. So it was with hope and baited breath that he waited for Wilson to react.
But Wilson didn't.
He didn't speak or shake his head; he didn't storm out of the office or throw anything.
He just looked at Cuddy with sad dark eyes that seemed to be attempting to calculate just how honest she was being.
And that was when Cameron, being the officious bitch that she was, asserted her presence. "You can't deny it, Dr. Cuddy. I saw you with him."
The revelation made Kutner and Taub share an eager glance with one another, the kind of hungered look that people had when someone else's personal drama was about to get really interesting. So it came as no surprise that Kutner leaned forward on the couch to get a better look at the events unfolding.
"You saw me in his apartment," Cuddy pointed out. "Which is where I have said I would be for the last six, seven, weeks."
And Foreman breathed a sigh of relief. Because if that were really all the proof Cameron had, he was safe (for now, anyway).
"You were wearing his bathrobe," Cameron accused as though that were the smoking gun.
Foreman had to resist telling her with relish that it actually wasn't.
Cuddy rolled her eyes. "When you came to the apartment, I'd been sleeping. You woke me up, and I grabbed the first thing I could to cover up," she explained easily. "Although it's probably a sign of respect in some cultures to answer the door in a sheer shirt -"
"That's hot," Kutner interrupted, earning him a dark glare from everyone in the room. Everyone's attentions now on him, he very quickly realized that that was something he did not want. Swallowing hard, he immediately added, "No. No, that's not hot. My bad. Keep talking."
Cuddy looked absolutely livid at the remark, but luckily for Kutner, Cameron drew the attention back to herself. "House admitted it."
At that point, Kutner and Taub actually gasped, the conversation unfolding before them not entirely different than the soap operas they sometimes watched in the doctor's lounge. But if they were excited, Cuddy seemed to be anything but.
"House says a lot of things," she defended. "He once claimed that he brought a prostitute to the hospital to... service him.” She scowled at the memory but pressed forward. “He was the one who started the rumor about me being a hermaphrodite,” she seethed.
She looked like she was about to say more, but Taub piped up, “If you ever need someone to verify that…”
“You are married,” Cuddy snapped in irritation. And thankfully for all of them, her ire was enough to shut Taub up and prevent them all from witnessing an awkward moment involving Cuddy undressing for Taub.
Returning to the topic at hand, Cuddy said, “The day before Wilson's third bachelor party, he claimed to have found a woman who could give herself oral sex.” Cuddy's eyes lit up with the spark of memory, and quickly she added, "The day after Wilson's second bachelor party, House tried to convince me that something illegal had happened with a duck."
Foreman, Kutner, and Taub shifted their gazes immediately to look at Wilson. And though it was obvious that Cuddy didn't believe the rumor House had tried to start, it was just as plain to see that he hadn’t been making that up.
Wilson looked too guilty for that to be the case.
So much for avoiding an awkward moment, Foreman lamented to himself.
“House lies,” Cuddy said, arriving to her point finally. “He makes things up to get a rise out of people, which is why he told you that we were sleeping together.”
“I love Chase,” Cameron retorted in a way that wasn’t going to convince anyone. “And House knows that, so if he was just trying to upset me, then he wouldn’t have said that.”
Cuddy scoffed. “Right. You don’t feel anything for House. You just chose to bring up the idea that I’m sleeping with him, because of… why exactly?”
“Actually,” Wilson said, speaking up for the first time in minutes. “I believe I’m the one who brought it up.”
At that moment, Cameron looked at him gratefully, as though he had just spared her a potentially very damaging conversation. Which was probably true, Foreman conceded; knowing how wishy-washy she really was about Chase, there was a good chance that Cuddy pressing Cameron would result in Cameron admitting that she really didn’t love Chase as much as she should have.
“That’s right,” Cameron agreed eagerly. “I didn’t bring it up. I was just trying to help Wilson prove a point.”
Cuddy took a step closer to the other woman. “Then let me prove mine,” she said in a dangerous voice that threatened despite being barely above a whisper. “I’m not sleeping with House. He’s had an incredibly traumatic accident made worse by the fact that he had surgery on his injured brain. He is in no condition to do any of the things he would probably like to claim we’ve done together.”
She paused to let her words sink in before reiterating, “We are not sleeping together. But even if we were, I would hold him to the standards that I’m holding you: I need proof. Give it to me definitively, show me that it’s cancer, and you can do your surgery.”
Wilson shook his head. “We don’t have time to find the proof you want. We’re doing the surgery now.”
“Then I’m going to have to put a security guard outside of that little girl’s room,” Cuddy said defiantly.
She didn’t bother to explain why that would be a threat, but she didn’t exactly need to; they all understood that they’d have no chance of sneaking their patient out and wheeling her to surgery.
Wilson looked at her in amazement. “You’re going to kill her,” he warned.
“No,” she snapped back. “You are if you can’t find the evidence you need to diagnose her.”
And it was clear to Foreman and probably to everyone else in the room that the conversation was over. Cuddy wasn’t going to let them do the surgery or break into anyone’s home, and since they couldn’t take their patient out of the room, it seemed like she’d chosen to go down the path Foreman had suggested.
Which he obviously liked quite a bit, because he’d been arguing that it had been an infection this entire time. Of course, he was the only in the room who seemed thrilled by the end of the conversation, but Foreman didn’t particularly care about that. Instead he smiled and stood up and tried to once more rally the team behind him by saying, “Okay. Thanks for your time, Dr. Cuddy.”
“We’re not done here,” Wilson said bitterly, holding his hands up in the air to halt Kutner and Taub who had stood up as soon as Foreman had.
“Oh, yes, we are,” Cuddy replied smoothly. “You’re not getting the surgery, and frankly, if you stay any longer, you’re also not going to have any of your treatment privileges.” She smiled as she warned them, her face devoid of any joy or happiness.
And though Foreman expected Wilson to continue to fight, he didn’t. In fact, Wilson seemed to capitulate at the threat, easily caving. “You’re right,” he said apologetically. “You’re right.”
Cuddy looked at him as though he’d lost his mind; she too was clearly expecting a fight and was even more obviously surprised to have not gotten one. Her mouth slightly agape, she looked as though she wanted to say something. But unfortunately for her, she never got a chance.
Wilson was already out the door before she had the opportunity to utter a single word.
Quickly the rest of the team followed suit, because nobody cared to stick around for Cuddy’s reaction. At least Foreman assumed as much as that was his reason for shooting out the door.
But he very quickly deduced, within seconds of leaving actually, that everyone also had other motives. Because they’d barely made it out of the clinic, their large group uncomfortably making its way through a throng of would-be patients, before Wilson started talking. “She needs that surgery.”
Cameron nodded her head. “I’ll get Chase; you get our patient and her parents’ consent before Cuddy has a chance to get a guard at the door.”
As far as plans went, this one wasn’t particularly imaginative. If anything, it was a pretty dumb one, its success hindering on how quickly those two could move. But as Foreman didn't believe the diagnosis involved cancer, he could live with the stupidity of their plan and rightfully chose to keep his mouth shut.
Unfortunately Taub did not.
"You're going to operate on her, even though Cuddy said -"
"Cuddy wants results," Wilson pointed out knowingly, as Cameron scurried away to, apparently, go get Chase. "She likes to pretend that she cares about the ethics, but you've seen her shove all of that aside." Kutner opened his mouth to protest, but Wilson stopped him. "Look. If something goes wrong, she's going to come after me. That much should be very clear to all of you. It's not going to be your jobs on the line."
"And our patient's life?" Taub posed the question calmly with just a hint of derision. "We just ignore that her life is -"
"We're doing the surgery," Wilson replied stubbornly. "And in the meantime, you and Kutner should break into their home. Just in case."
Kutner's eyes widened. "You want us to -"
"If I'm right, then she's okay. If it's a toxin, then we're ahead of the game," Wilson said in an assured tone that Foreman recognized as dangerous. As important as it was to follow through on your ideas, as useful as hunches could be, Wilson's convictions were blinding him to everything else.
Granted, in this light, Foreman realized that it wasn't just the oncologist who'd been acting like this all day. Foreman himself was guilty of it as well, his mind clinging to the notion of an infection as though there were no other possibilities.
But he believed - or at least wanted to believe - that there were differences between Wilson and himself. Unlike Wilson, Foreman wasn't recommending, much less performing, a dangerous surgery. And he certainly wasn't going to do it while duping the one person who was willing to take risks when the situation warranted it. Which was why he shook his head no when Wilson looked at him and asked, "Are you willing to help me prep her for surgery?"
As Kutner and Taub rushed to the elevator, presumably so they could go to the office and get their things, Wilson and Foreman stood in the lobby in silence. In disappointed silence, Foreman corrected after a split second; although Wilson wasn't saying anything, Foreman could tell that his colleague was upset by the rejection.
And for a reason Foreman didn't really understand, he immediately worked to amend the tense situation. "I don't think you're right for doing this. But -"
Wilson sneered. "You don't agree with my diagnosis. You think an infection is still the answer, despite the fact that our patient hasn't responded to any antibiotics."
"That's not what this is about," Foreman said, shaking his head slowly. "I don’t think you're right about the diagnosis. But my bigger problem is going behind our boss’s back."
"Don't worry about Cuddy. She'll get over it," Wilson replied breezily in a way that suggested that he didn't care if she did either way.
"She's done a lot for me," Foreman acknowledged. She really had, and he knew that much; to be honest, each time he helped House or anyone else collude, he felt a little guilty for doing it. And maybe it was a bad time to change his mind, especially since he'd always kind of liked Wilson. But seeing the older man act so... childishly, so selfish and inconsiderate... well, it made Foreman rethink his own behavior.
"I won't tell her what you're doing - on the off chance that you're right," he said, knowing that it was the most he could do. "But I'm not being a part of it."
Wilson clenched his jaw but only uttered a terse "Fine."
Clearly though things weren't going to be fine between them, regardless of how the case resolved itself. Foreman recognized that, although, at this point, he wasn't sure if he wanted to be right or wrong about the diagnosis in the end. After everything that had happened today, he just didn't know if it was better to let the surgery occur, knowing that it was the wrong course of treatment, or to let it happen, have Wilson be right, and end up being in the wrong.
Thinking about it for a few seconds, he realized easily that it didn’t matter how it ended; he was going to feel terrible either way.
And faced with a lose-lose situation like that, Foreman did the one thing that would help him cope the fasted: he headed for one of the many nearby bars.
But it wasn’t to get drunk. Although it was four-thirty in the afternoon and close enough to happy hour, he didn’t feel like spending the rest of his day hunkered down in a booth made of well-worn oak with a frosty mug in his hands. As much as this day had probably deserved that kind of ending, Foreman had another pick-me-up in mind. Because as good as beer was, it really couldn’t compete with the way hearing other people bitched about their lives made Foreman feel.
Pausing in his train of thought, he realized how awful it all sounded. He was making it seem as though he enjoyed other people’s pain, which wasn’t the case; he didn’t take pleasure in knowing that others were miserable or anything like that. It was just that there was something about hearing other people whine that put Foreman’s own problems into perspective.
Again, it wasn’t about relishing their pain. Nor was it about comparing his own issues with theirs; there was no thinking, “Oh, I’m much better off than they are,” or anything like that.
Truly, there was just one thing that Foreman got from listening to other people complain about their lives, and that was the reminder that nothing in life was worth the humiliation of whining to a complete stranger about your life. Things could be bad, awful even, but none of it ever warranted relinquishing your pride for someone’s pity.
And though it had taken him a long time to realize that fact, he had come to accept the truth: your pride mattered.
Very few people would agree with him, of course. Foreman might not have known for sure what was wrong with his patient, but he was smart enough to know that much. Because it was also a fact that everyone was taught as a kid that pride was a bad thing, a sin even, and it was hard to ignore the things that had been ingrained in you for an unwelcome reality.
But it was a reality nevertheless, one that he liked to be reminded of when he felt his world spinning out of control and the answers he desperately needed remaining out of his reach. And he would use this trip to the bar to do just that - remind him of what mattered in the world. He would use the drunken patrons bitching about their lives to remind him of just how important it was to maintain control of his emotions.
And he wouldn’t feel bad about it.
He used to, to be honest, but he’d very quickly learned that the people he talked to didn’t care. If anything, they were using him as much as he was using them; they saw him as a kind, sympathetic ear to blather on to, and that was all they really cared about.
So why should he feel bad?
Unfortunately what Foreman hadn’t counted on was the guilt he could feel when the person he was using was someone he knew.
The second he entered the bar, he regretted choosing this particular dive. Because even though she was sitting in a booth in the back corner, it was impossible to miss Thirteen miserably nursing a scotch. She might have been going for inconspicuous, but Foreman couldn’t help but think that she’d failed. After all, she was the only woman in the bar, so it was kind of hard not to notice her among the beer bellies and thick beards.
But then that also seemed to apply to him, as he was the only one wearing a freshly pressed suit and the only one with dark skin. And oh yeah, he was the only one who had the awareness sobriety brought with it. And although none of those things made him want to leave, when Thirteen’s gaze caught sight of him, that did.
Her eyes trained on him and his trained on her, there was no turning back. As much as part of him wanted to leave, he knew that he couldn’t. She’d clearly seen him, and walking out the door now would only make an awkward conversation in the future inevitable.
Besides, there was no real reason why he couldn’t use her as his reminder. He’d never done it before, but that didn’t mean it would necessarily end badly. And considering she was bringing her problems into work by disappearing for hours, days, and even weeks at a time, Foreman wondered if talking to her wouldn’t also solve that annoying problem. He didn’t know how likely it was that she wanted to talk, but if he could get her to tell him what was wrong, then maybe he could make it better. Or at least, maybe he could make it better enough that she started doing her job again.
As he thought it over a little more, he kept coming back to the idea that this really was a win-win situation. He looked for a way for this to fail, but he couldn’t spot one; even if he learned more about Thirteen than he cared to know, he doubted her problems would be so exciting, so troubling that he couldn’t forget them.
His decision made, he confidently made his way to her booth. His voice low so that only she could hear him, he asked, “Mind if I join you?”
Thirteen shrugged in a tense sort of way. Her shoulders moved up and down awkwardly as though she couldn’t quite manage the ease she wanted to have. What she said to him in response to his question didn’t help either. “That’s fine,” she said in a flat tone. “Did Wilson kick you off the team too?”
His eyes widening in surprise, Foreman slid into the booth across from her. Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. And though he’d hoped that she would be the one to renew his spirit, he quickly realized that if Wilson really had removed her from the team, his misery was just beginning. “He kicked you off the team?”
“Not in so many words,” she admitted. “But he made it very clear that the only one in the room who could be affected by their personal problems was him. So I left.” She gave him a small smirk before taking a swig of scotch. “Why’d you leave?”
He must have looked taken aback by the question, because Thirteen pressed, “I assume you don’t like to visit bars in the middle of the afternoon for the fun of it. So why’d you leave?”
“Wilson’s going to perform exploratory surgery against Cuddy’s direct orders,” he explained simply.
“And you don’t want to be seen as an accomplice when our boss finds out,” Thirteen deduced, as he waved a waitress, who was visibly pregnant, in leather chaps over to take his drink order.
“I’d rather not have Cuddy on top of me for something I didn’t agree with to begin with,” he replied.
Not missing a beat, Thirteen asked him, the corners of her mouth turned upward in the barest hint of a smile, “Why not? Cuddy’s pretty hot. It’d be fun to be underneath her.”
“Not when she’s ripping my balls off.”
Of course, as luck would have it, it was at that moment that the waitress managed to waddle over to him. Placing his order - a Sam Adams Summer Ale - in a choked voice, he forced himself to ignore the way Thirteen was beginning to chuckle over her own drink. If he didn’t do that, he would either start to laugh with her or become annoyed that she was laughing at all. And neither were going to be particularly conducive to getting his reminder, so he spoke to the stranger only what was necessary, ignoring Thirteen as best as he could.
Finally, when the waitress left, Foreman asked in an annoyed voice, “You enjoying this?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
They shared a small smile that left him feeling uncomfortable. A faked connection that he could exploit was one thing, but the intimacy contained in such a tiny act was another. And it left him squirming a little in the booth, the leather making odd noises with each shift of his weight, before he got back to his original reason for being here. “Now you know why I’m here. But I still don’t know why you are,” he said pointedly.
“I told you,” Thirteen said tersely, offering the waitress a forced smile of thanks when she brought back Foreman’s beer.
“You implied that your personal problems were getting in the way, and Wilson didn’t like that. You never actually said what those problems were.”
It was not, admittedly, the most tactful way of putting things. Of all the words he could have chosen, he knew those were not the nicest, the most inconspicuous, or the least threatening. And so it came as no surprise that Thirteen rebuffed his advances. “Well, I know I’m supposed to confess to the deepest, darkest secrets that I have, but I think I’ll pass this time.”
But although he expected her response, he still couldn’t help but be annoyed by it; acting like she didn’t want people to know her issues when she clearly did - it was all a ruse he didn’t feel like wasting time on. “Yeah,” he said sarcastically. “Cause this public of display of my-life-is-so-miserable-I-need-to-drink-in-the-middle-of-the-day doesn’t beg people to ask what’s wrong.”
She rolled her eyes, clearly unamused by his deduction. "I felt the need to get drunk. That's not exactly a display of anything... other than a testament to liver function." Swallowing another long sip of booze, she added as an afterthought, “And when I go home with one of the guys here, that’s not a cry for help either.”
Foreman glanced around the room distastefully. Who the hell was she going to go home with? Out of the small crowd of people, the person that looked the most attractive was the guy, who looked as though he hadn’t showered in a week, digging around the bar nuts as though treasure were at the bottom of the dish.
Turning to look at Thirteen once more, Foreman told her, “No, sleeping with one of these men would be proof that you have no taste.”
She nodded her head. “I felt the same way when you were banging that nurse in radiology.”
“She wasn’t my best,” he conceded. “But I stand by my choice. In addition to working in radiology, she taught those classes at Princeton Gym - you know, the workouts that involve women dancing on stripper poles?” Foreman had to swallow back a sigh of contentment at the memory of Becky and all that she knew how to do…
He shook his head to clear the thought from his mind before adding, “She wasn’t the hottest, but she could do things with her thigh muscles that would make -”
“And how do you know that the guys in here don’t have similar hidden talents?”
But Thirteen’s question kind of answered itself. Simultaneously they both looked around the room, hoping to find the prince dressed like a frog… only to see a room full of 100% amphibians. No one - not one of the men in the joint - seemed to have hidden qualities, and Foreman relished in that fact (it meant he wasn’t wrong).
His gaze settling back on Thirteen, he said nothing; his smile said all that he needed to say.
“Fine,” she capitulated. “You’ve made your point. I’ll just go to a different bar when I’m done here.”
He looked at her carefully at that moment, his fingers toying around the lip of his mug. He didn’t know her that well; it was the way she wanted it, of course. But he couldn’t help but feel like this was out of character for her. And he didn’t know if that was because she was playing him or because there really was something bad going on in her life.
Wondering what the truth was, Foreman was about to ask her straight up what was going on. But he stopped himself from doing so before he’d even had a chance to open his mouth. Because he realized, albeit belatedly, that he knew what the answer was.
Taking a sip of beer, he understood intuitively that this was more than a ruse.
This was real.
And it was nothing new.
She’d disappeared for a while right after Cutthroat Bitch had died, and when Thirteen had come back, she’d been just as distant, just as out of character as she was being now. And although he couldn’t name the cause, he was convinced that something very real was going on with her.
But before he had an opportunity to say that to her, she interrupted irritably, “This is the part where you try and dissuade me from doing something stupid.”
“Is it?” The uninterested lull in his voice made it absolutely clear that he wasn’t seriously asking the question. “Because I’m thinking that you’ve spent the last month and a half or so perfecting this whole act and -”
“This isn’t an act,” she snapped.
He rolled his eyes and put his elbows on the table to lean forward. “I’m not saying your pain isn’t real,” he told her with sincerity. “But if you didn’t want to talk about it, you wouldn’t put it out there like you’ve been doing since Amber died.” Pausing for dramatic effect, Foreman eventually added, “Either talk or don’t. It doesn’t really bother me one way or the other. But whatever’s wrong has clearly been eating away at you. So if you’re really looking for someone to talk to, I’d do it now - before you annoy everyone else into not caring.”
His words were met with silence - heavy, unyielding silence. And he didn’t need to think about why that was, because he understood all too well how cool his words had been. He hadn’t been intentionally cruel, but there was no denying that he hadn’t been particularly kind to Thirteen.
So it was no surprise that she responded with an equally vicious tone. “You act like I demanded you to care, like I forced you to ask how I was doing.”
“I work with you every day,” he defended. “And in case you haven’t noticed, lately, you’ve been pretty terrible at your job. So -”
“This is about you and work and impressing Cuddy,” Thirteen finished in a voice that didn’t sound all that surprised.
“No,” he said hastily. Although he couldn’t deny that that was part of it, the way her behavior was screwing him over wasn’t his point. “All I’m saying is that you’re not going through this alone. What you’re doing has an effect on other people.” As an afterthought, he willingly conceded, “Yes, that includes me. But my point is you are affecting other people. So you can either use that to your advantage or keep doing what you’re doing until no one cares.”
To be honest, Foreman was glad to see her mouth shut and her eyes glaze over in the sort of way only possible when you were weighing the pros and cons of a particular action. At least those things meant that she was considering what he was saying.
And as she did so, he couldn’t help but recognize that his whole reason for being here had shifted. When he’d come to the bar, he’d intended to use someone to remind him that his pride was more important than someone else’s pity.
He still believed that to be true, of course. But for whatever reason, seeing Thirteen… well, it had made him realize, at some point in the conversation, that her issue was more important than anything else at the moment. It was more important than re-learning a lesson, more important than escaping Wilson’s stink and Cuddy’s wrath.
Thirteen’s problem was something Foreman needed to address on its own terms - not just because it affected him, but because he knew her well enough to know that something was seriously wrong. And that he should have ever aimed to use her troubles for his own benefit…
It made him feel worse than he’d ever thought possible.
It made him every bit the opportunist he’d never really wished to be.
So he supposed it was the appropriate punishment that Thirteen should finally confess to her problems, that she should amplify that achy guilt inside of him by saying in a soft voice, “I have Huntington’s.”
He blinked.
He swallowed.
Both muscle contractions were slow and forced, and if the situation weren’t so serious, he would allow himself to make (to himself only, of course) the dark, offensive comment that he was acting like someone with Huntington’s chorea.
But as things were, he couldn’t make such a joke… or any other remark; her admission was too stark, too serious for him to know what to say in response. All he knew was what her future entailed:
A long, drawn out, humiliating death.
And he didn’t know what would be the bigger blessing - to get the symptoms sooner or to go through most of your life relatively physically well while knowing what had to happen to you.
He didn’t ask.
He didn’t say anything at all.
But then again, he didn’t exactly have a chance to do that, because it was at that moment that his cell phone rang. And as much as he didn’t want to answer it, the ring tone signaled that it was the hospital calling. Which meant he had no choice.
Glancing sympathetically towards Thirteen, he explained, “I have to take this.” She nodded her head in understanding before heading towards the bar. But somehow that didn’t make him feel any better. If anything he just felt worse for having to interrupt their conversation for something that seemed so… distant at this point (even though it really wasn’t).
And so it really came as no surprise that he felt even more awful when the person on the other end of the phone was Cuddy’s assistant. “Dr. Cuddy needs to see you. Now,” she told him in a voice that was just forceful enough to make him imagine how angry Cuddy was.
Swallowing a sip of his beer, Foreman asked, “Why? What happened?”
“Dr. Wilson just killed your patient,” the assistant replied. “She wants you here now… and Dr. Foreman, she was really angry, so…”
“Yeah. I’ll be there,” he muttered, reaching for his wallet. As he flipped through the contents to grab a few bills, Thirteen sat back down. “I have to go,” he told her quickly. “Wilson killed our patient.”
He wasn’t sure how he expected her to react. But when Thirteen just shrugged, he felt distinctly ill at ease by the gesture. Or maybe he just felt bothered by his own inability to finish this conversation right now. “I’m sorry,” he apologized abruptly, knowing how lame it sounded.
Of course, that paled in comparison to how lame his next words sounded. “Do you… want to continue this later?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I’m good.”
It was hard to say how sincere she was being, and it was even harder to let the comment go because of time. Honestly, there was nothing that Foreman wanted to do more at the moment than to sit and talk to her about her diagnosis.
But there wasn’t time for it, because he still had a job to do.
Standing up, he asked her, “Should we go then?”
“No.” And indeed, she made no move to stand up with him, instead choosing to nurse her scotch slowly.
“No?” He repeated the word in confusion, his mouth moving oddly as he parroted her response.
She shrugged once more. “No point really. I’m gonna stay and get drunk, I think.” Her gaze shifted from him to focus on everyone else in the room, her line of sight never staying in the same direction for more than a few seconds at a time. Although he couldn’t say for sure, it was felt as though she were assessing the situation, trying to decide where her place in all of this was. And unfortunately for him (and for her as well), Thirteen made the choice to stay exactly where she was. “I’m good,” she told him after a few seconds.
At that moment, he realized he should say something to stop her from doing this - from drowning in self-pity and ruining what few good years she would have in life. But everything he thought of, every possible thing he could tell her, just sounded like a useless platitude, a cliché that she would never accept. And coming from him, the words would sound even more empty, he realized, because he hadn’t ever bothered to be her friend in order to gain the benefit of the doubt.
So he had no choice but to nod his head and capitulate. “Okay. See ya.”
He grabbed his things and turned to leave. But as he did so, Thirteen told him, almost as though it were meant to be a conciliatory gesture, “You were right, you know. It probably was an infection.”
And though he believed she was trying to be nice by agreeing with him then, Foreman could only resent her in that moment. Because she was ruining her own life, and a patient had died, and…
Some of that pain had been avoidable.
Some of it was still avoidable if she were to accept what was going to happen to her.
But he already knew that that was an argument he would probably never convince her of, so he gritted his teeth and left.
Continue on to the rest of the chapter