Edge of Chaos (14.3/15)

[lieueitak]

Title: Edge of Chaos, Chapter Fourteen (Part Three)
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), Chapter Fourteen (Part One), Chapter Fourteen (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.


Resolved to not say a single word, she remained quiet until Wilson started examining her lip. “It’s a little deep,” he explained, pulling his latex gloves off. “It could use a few stitches - unless you don’t care about the possibility of a scar.”

In truth Cuddy wasn’t particularly concerned about that; she was too drained from fighting to worry all that much about anything. But nevertheless she nodded her head in consent to the procedure. “Just do it. Sutures are preferable to bleeding all over everything,” she told him dryly.

“I can call Reeds in plastic -”

“No. I don’t care about that.”

He nodded his head once. “Okay. Then I’ll sew you up.” When she didn’t say anything, Wilson added, “I just need to get some lidocaine.”

Although he didn’t mean to prompt her, mentioning the lidocaine reminded her of what had started this whole ordeal. And she had to ask him right then and there, “Have you ever known someone to be addicted to it?”

His eyebrows raised in confusion, he asked, “To lidocaine?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he answered immediately. “Why?”

Her gaze was focused on her fingernails - or rather, on the blood trapped underneath them when she explained in controlled tones, “That’s what he wanted. Lidocaine. And I don’t understand why…”

She didn’t trust herself to finish the thought.

But thankfully for her, Wilson didn’t press her on the matter and instead did the kind thing by trying to make a joke out of it. “Maybe he was planning on a little home dentistry.”

She smiled but didn’t say anything, and they fell into silence once more. Only when he was suturing her up did he make another suggestion. “Maybe he was so high he didn’t know what it was he asking for.”

Yet that sounded even less likely than the idea of a homemade root canal. And she decided to tell him so. Forcing him to pause as he stitched her up, she asked doubtfully, “A drug addict who doesn’t know what he’s addicted to?”

Wilson shrugged. “It’s possible… unless we’re completely wrong about the addiction and he had a medical reason for wanting the lidocaine that badly.”

She winced as he finished the last stitch. “Like?”

“Like…” His voice trailed off as he tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for what had happened. Frankly, Cuddy didn’t think he would find one. Nothing about this day made particular sense, so really, it would just be more of the same for there to be no reason behind the man’s actions.

But surprisingly enough, as he dabbed her knees with antiseptic, Wilson did give her a possibility. “You know, I have heard that lidocaine’s been used to treat tinnitus.” He paused for a second to throw away the cotton swab before adding, “And Meniere’s, so maybe he -”

“Thought strangling his doctor was a good idea?”

There was more than a hint of disbelief in the question, but thinking about it for more than a second, Cuddy realized that it wasn’t completely ridiculous. For the last several weeks, she’d seen how House’s tinnitus had affected him. It had made him irritable (well, more so than usual) and distracted to the point that sometimes she couldn’t completely follow his logic. And asking herself whether or not he would have hurt someone to make the ringing in his ears stop, she knew what the answer to that question was.

Honestly, Cuddy didn’t want to say yes; she didn’t want to believe that he was capable of hurting someone. But she knew that, in his current state, he might. Certainly if the person trying to give him the drugs was someone he didn’t know, it was possible.

Interrupting her thoughts, Wilson echoed the sentiment. “Of course it’s not a good idea. But if the lidocaine is the one thing that relieved his condition…”

Wilson kept talking, but she’d stopped listening by that point; she’d thought of House, and now that she had, she couldn’t easily push him out of her mind. In her defense, Wilson had mentioned a treatment for tinnitus, a condition that House had and a condition that she had spent the last month - almost two months - dealing with. And frankly she was more interested in knowing if lidocaine was the miracle cure for the irritating problem in House’s life (and therefore hers as well) than anything else.

It was perfectly reasonable to be considering that and not her attack, she told herself.

But she knew better than to share any of that with Wilson; they might have been on better terms, but it was too soon to talk about House with him.

So she decided to approach the subject in the vaguest of ways. Suddenly, she asked, “You think it’s possible - the lidocaine being a treatment that he needed?”

“Sure,” he said immediately. And then he looked as though he were rethinking his response, because he was quick to add, “But there’s nothing for you to feel guilty about. From what I’ve read, all of the studies conducted showed that lidocaine as a treatment isn’t very effective. Even if you’d prescribed it for him, he’d probably suffer from -”

“But his tinnitus would be gone,” she interrupted, her eyes narrowed on him.

“For twenty minutes maybe.” Moving towards her, Wilson once more placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “He attacked you. You don’t need to feel guilty.”

Of course, by that point, she did feel guilty - not for being unable to treat her attacker but for being such a liar.

Here Wilson was trying to console her, and she was manipulating him. Without any compunction or second thought, she’d decided to use him in order to help someone he hated, and her complete lack of guilt made her, oddly enough, feel guilty.

But obviously she couldn’t tell Wilson that. So she just nodded her head and said quietly, “You’re right.”

As he helped her off of the exam table, he suggested to her, “Maybe you should take the advice you gave me earlier: go home; relax a little.”

There was no denying that that sounded nice. Even though she was sure to come home to an angry House and a dead hospice worker, being there still sounded preferable to being stuck here in bloody clothes.

“Okay,” she said in agreement. “I suppose I could wait until tomorrow to fire security.”

Wilson smiled before offering, “I’ll walk you out.”

And although it was a kind gesture - one she clearly hadn’t earned - Cuddy knew she had to refuse it. As ineffective as Wilson had made the lidocaine sound, it was still a viable treatment for House.

But in order to get the drugs for him, she understood she wouldn’t be able to have Wilson peering over her shoulder; getting the lidocaine in front of him would just make him suspicious… and eventually angry if he discovered what was going on.

Shaking her head, she told him, “No, that’s okay. I’m fine.” The words came out too rushed to sound believable, so she immediately added, “Really, you don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’re sweet,” Cuddy said quietly as he held the exam room door open for her. “But if I accept any more of your help… if I have to think about why I am getting your help…” She swallowed hard and forced herself not to think about today’s events. “I will lose it,” she finished forcefully.

And although that wasn’t the main reason she was telling him no, Cuddy suspected that that was part of it. Being treated differently would absolutely make what had happened all the more real, and she wasn’t sure that she could handle that for the time being; Amber’s death, Wilson’s sadness and resentment, House’s physical and mental state at the moment - it was all more than Cuddy knew what to do with.

She couldn’t deal with this on top of all of that.

So she was happy when Wilson gave her a sympathetic look. “Okay. Walk yourself to your car,” he said with a smirk on his face and a playfulness in his voice that she hadn’t heard in a very long time.

Granted, joking with her had never been a common occurrence; they might have been friends, but they weren’t ever really at ease with one another. Not even that bondage exhibit he’d accidentally taken her to had loosened the cummerbund around their relationship, and since then, she’d accepted that that was the way things were.

That was the way they were together.

At some point she was still his boss or a girl - or something that made it impossible for him to be able to relax with her.

Which was why it was so exceptional that he was calm and, quite frankly, jovial with her now. He’d never been like this before, and given how angry he’d been with her the last several weeks, he shouldn’t have been that way with her now.

Rationally she understood that the chances were he was just being kind because of what had happened. And though she didn’t want to believe it, she knew that equally likely was the fact that things would revert back to the way they had been once he felt she was okay.

It was a truth she wished to ignore, one she wished she could pretend was avoidable. But in her heart, she knew that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be avoidable. Wilson’s pain, the things he was angry at her for doing - all of it couldn’t be erased by one incident. Not even if she’d died today would he have forgiven her for all of her sins, Cuddy recognized regretfully.

Oddly enough though, knowing that made it almost easy to accept his momentary humor for what it was. They clearly weren’t going to magically be best friends; they weren’t going to move past what had happened with grace and ease and expediency. They were going to be awkward with one another at some point. There was no doubt in her mind that she would be grappling for some solid ground with him, for some commonality that would let them get past Amber and House. So she, understanding what lie ahead, supposed that there was no point in over thinking the joke; she should just accept Wilson’s kindness while she had it.

Smiling at him, she said, “Thank you.”

One of his hands lightly touching her wrist, he asked, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She nodded her head, and they ended the conversation at that, giving her plenty of time to visit the pharmacy and grab her things before the morning-to-evening-shift changes.

But by the time she’d returned to House’s apartment, she realized that she’d left way too late. At least, she’d left too late to stop whatever fight had clearly occurred between House and his nurse while Cuddy was gone. That much was completely obvious, as the young woman standing in the hallway proved as much.

Keys in hand, Cuddy asked, approaching the woman slowly, “Cassandra? What are you doing out here?”

The young woman turned angrily to face Cuddy. “He threw me out. He…” Her fingers shook as she pointed furiously at Cuddy. “He stole my phone and threw it out in the hallway and then he locked me out!”

Cuddy thought the nurse looked as though she were about to cry - not an uncommon occurrence among those who had just met House.

“I apologize for that,” Cuddy said calmly. “But -”

“He broke my phone,” Cassandra snapped back.

“I’ll replace it. Lets just get inside, and I can write you a check.”

But that was easier said than done.

Although Cuddy had keys and could unlock the door, House had used the chain lock. Which meant that she could open the door maybe four or five inches but couldn’t actually get inside.

Frustrated and angry, Cuddy slammed her palm loudly on the slightly ajar door. “House!”

He didn’t immediately come, which was irritating as hell, and peeking inside, Cuddy couldn’t see him at all (which was even worse as it was harder for him to ignore her when she was right in front of him).

“He’s not going to let you in,” Cassandra spoke up. “I’ve been trying to get in there for two hours, and he didn’t come to the door once.”

Cuddy turned to look at her. “He’s been alone in the apartment for two hours and you didn’t call me?”

“I tried,” the other woman urged. “But nobody ever picked up your office phone.”

There was no doubt in Cuddy’s mind that what she was saying was true. After all, thanks to House, Cuddy had told her assistant to ignore the number.

And maybe, Cuddy suddenly considered, that had been his plan all along. Perhaps he’d called her, harassed her with the intention of angering her to the point of ignoring all calls that came her way. Because then, once she was refusing to answer the phone, he could torment his nurse until she left, effectively leaving him in the apartment by himself.

Realizing that, Cuddy instantly understood what kind of situation they were in. Licking her lips, she hurriedly asked, “Has he been alone all of this time with his medication?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly plan on being thrown out over a sandwich. Which, by the way, I did not put pickles in, because in case you didn’t realize, there aren’t any pickles in the house. So no. I didn’t have time to grab all of his meds,” Cassandra replied irritably.

It was the answer Cuddy had hoped not to hear.

It was the one thing the other woman could say that would make Cuddy more concerned than she thought possible.

It was the response that meant that House had been alone in an apartment filled with drugs.

Fear flowing through her in organ-battering waves, Cuddy turned her attention back to the door. Using the palm of her hand to pound against the slab of wood, she called out to him a few more times.

But he still didn’t come.

In fact, there wasn’t even a sign that he was still present (or conscious) in the apartment; there were no footsteps, no sounds of whining (which he surely would have done if he’d heard her make this much noise). And that sent terror through her veins, the idea that something was terribly wrong binding with her blood cells as though fear were oxygen and the need to breathe simply a way to feel.

Her fingers shaking as she pounded them against the door, she glared back at the hospice worker. “Did he leave the apartment?”

“No. Of course not,” the other woman said, almost affronted by the idea. “Do you think that if he’d opened the door to get out, I would have just stayed standing here?”

Cuddy’s eyes narrowed on her. “Did you see him take anything?”

The young woman’s response was an irritatingly stupid question. “You mean, like, drugs?” Cuddy’s anger must have been easy to read off her face, because Cassandra was hasty to add, “No, I didn’t see him take anything.”

But that hardly made Cuddy feel any better.

House was nothing if not a fantastic deceiver. He had an uncanny ability to sneak, to manipulate, to flat out lie as though he were speaking the truth, and though Cuddy herself had aimed to uncover his machinations, day in and day out, he beat her. So it really wasn’t that much of a stretch to think that House had managed to best Cassandra. Realistically speaking, it was probably safe to say that he could have done any number of things without her noticing.

And each and every one of those things was running through Cuddy’s mind at that moment.

What if he’d taken too many Vicodin?

What if he’d forgotten to take the Vicodin and was writhing in the apartment right now, too lost in his pain to get up?

What if he’d decided to take a bath and hit his already fragile head on the tub?

What if he was just sitting in the bedroom, hands folded behind his head, listening to her pound on the door?

Nearly everything was a possibility, was something she couldn’t blatantly ignore, thanks to the person she was dealing with.

And that made the urge to panic seem all the more reasonable. Because she didn’t know if he was okay or if something horrible had happened to him, if he was just being a dick or if something had happened to him. She didn’t know what to expect when she did find him (she refused to let herself think that she might not find him).

Really, she didn’t know anything.

And as someone who prided herself on being intelligent, on being able to predict and anticipate and ultimately solve problems, it angered her to know that she was in the dark on this; it pissed her off to be completely helpless and to have absolutely no idea what to do to fix the situation.

Frustration, fear, and fury mixing together inside of her, there was only one thing to do, only one way to stop it from totally taking control of her: place all of the blame on the one person she’d hired to prevent this from happening.

Her voice was cold and accusatory when she asked, “How could you let this happen?”

“Dr. Cuddy… I -”

“I warned you that something like this would probably happen.” It had been one of the few things she had seriously discussed with all of the hospice candidates, Cuddy knew. Given that there’d been such short notice, she’d had to be more lenient in the worker she hired, and she’d known that at the time. But one thing she hadn’t been willing to compromise on was the nurse’s ability to deal with these kinds of situations.

And this idiot had sat across from her with a smile on her face and said that she’d be able to handle anything thrown her way.

Recalling the lie, Cuddy viciously snapped, “I told you that House would more than likely try something like this.”

The young woman looked as though she were about to cry. “Yes, but -”

“I don’t need an excuse,” Cuddy cut across quickly.

“And I guess you don’t need me to say that I won’t be coming back after today,” Cassandra replied snottily, which made Cuddy want to kill her.

Truly, it was bad enough that House and Wilson hadn’t been talking to her this morning. It was bad enough that she’d been undermined at work and then attacked. It was absolutely bad enough for her to come home to House missing.

But to have, on top of all of that, the person responsible for House missing quit?

There was an irony in the whole situation that Cuddy couldn’t appreciate.

And though there was a cruel urge inside of her to laugh at the stupid girl for even thinking that she still had a job, Cuddy didn’t. She had enough restraint to stop herself from doing that, knowing full well that it would make her look insane if she were to start laughing.

That didn’t mean, however, that she had the ability to stop herself from shouting.

“Believe me, if something has happened to him, you won’t need to worry about coming back tomorrow,” she snarled. “I’ll have your credentials so fast you won’t be able to get a job anywhere on the east coast.”

Cassandra opened her mouth to say something in response, but the voice that was heard was decidedly not hers. Nor was it one that Cuddy was expecting (though she secretly thought she should have known this would happen).

“Huh. That worked perfectly.” Both women spun around to see House, his eyes wide with delight, standing in front of the slightly ajar door. “I mean, I figured your head would explode over this, Cuddy, but…” He pointed at Cassandra and with a smirk said, “I had no idea you’d be such a willing lamb being led to slaughter.”

Cuddy scowled at him, bitterly understanding that he’d set up this entire situation. Her gaze quickly flitting to Cassandra, it was easy to see that the young woman was still trying to work out what had happened. Which wasn’t all that surprising, to be honest, because it wasn’t like she’d dealt with House long enough to know when he’d set certain events in motion.

Cuddy did, of course, and in a way, she thought that that should have made her less prone to getting caught in his traps.

But it hadn’t.

And that infuriated her.

Her gaze snapping back to House, she snarled, “You stupid bastard.” His smirk turned into a wide grin. “Let me in. Now.”

House pretended to contemplate the request for a moment. “Calling me names… that’s not very nice. Doesn’t make you sound like you really want to come in -”

“House,” she said in a falsely sweet tone. “I have had one of the… worst days I’ve had in a while. And though you’re not completely responsible, I have no qualms about taking all of my frustration out on you.” She threw a smirk back at him. “So. Unless you want my shoe rammed up your rectum, let me in.”

Anyone else would have blanched at the threat. The way she’d spoken, the darkness and anger bleeding through her otherwise calm tones - it would have been enough for anyone else to know that they needed to back off.

But House wasn’t just anyone.

He rarely flinched at her threats and almost always looked for ways to appease her without actually giving her what she wanted. So it came as no surprise that this was no exception. “You look like you’ve been fighting with a rabid dog,” he said with a sneer. “As impressive as your threat is, I wouldn’t want to catch anything.”

For a brief second, Cuddy considered responding to his very obvious needling of her. But it was only for a moment or two before she realized that they could go back and forth for… hours if he wanted to. And frankly, she didn’t have the patience for that.

At the moment, all she wanted to do was get inside so she could take a shower and soak the aching muscles in her neck. Changing her clothes, which were stained with blood, would have been nice too, but it really was the subtle reminder of being choked that she wished to ease if not completely erase.

In any case, regardless of what she wanted to do first, it all added up to one unmistakable truth for her: she had no desire to play House’s games. Not even for a second, so she decided to end his fun right now.

It was easy to do, really. Thanks to House’s weakened state, she knew it wouldn’t take long to wear him down. And though it took her a few seconds to remember that there was a doorbell only a couple of inches from her hand, as soon as she did, Cuddy knew she had House beat.

A smile on her face, she reached for the doorbell. As her fingers hovered over the lightly glowing button covered in rubber, a voice inside of her argued that this was wrong; hurting him was wrong on so many levels, and she should stop herself from intentionally causing him any harm.

She knew that was what she should do.

But that wasn’t what she did.

Instead, she didn’t say anything, didn’t give him a warning of what would happen if he didn’t let her in immediately. Although a warning would absolutely work, she was beyond willing to give him one. And maybe it was cruel to just ring the doorbell without giving him an option, but honestly, Cuddy was beyond caring. As wrong as it might have been, she felt as though he’d earned all of it.

Repeating the action over and over, she pressed the doorbell. The tinny, shrill noise ringing in short, loud bursts, it was an attack House couldn’t withstand. He hissed loudly, wincing as the tinnitus clearly ratcheted itself up another notch.

Whining he said, “What the hell!”

“Let me in,” she ordered, pressing the doorbell to punctuate each and every word.

House reacted hastily, shutting the door as quickly as possible without slamming it. His fingers must have fumbled to unlock the chain, as Cuddy could hear the metal links scraping against their wooden frame. But even then, he was obeying her orders with a speed she didn’t know existed. And because of that, she felt nothing but relish at her own behavior; not even the disgusted look Cassandra was giving her made her feel bad, and Cuddy decided to tell the other woman that.

“If that look on your face is supposed to make me feel guilty, it doesn’t.”

The young woman shook her head in sadness. “You’re being abusive to him. You shouldn’t -”

But she didn’t finish the thought as the door swung open once more. Cuddy wasn’t really sure why that was; if Cassandra were afraid of talking about House in front of him like this, it probably hadn’t been the smartest thing in the world to talk about him when there was only a thin door protecting her privacy.

Then again, this girl was pretty stupid in Cuddy’s opinion, so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise that discretion was not one of Cassandra’s strong points. She was an idiot, and idiots tended to do moronic things; it was in her nature.

Just as it was in House’s nature to know and to use to his advantage exactly what was being said about him. So it didn’t even make Cuddy flinch when, as the two women crossed the threshold, House told Cassandra, “You should see what she did when she discovered I use wire coat hangers.”

The hospice worker clearly didn’t get the joke, the lines of her face remaining impassive and unimpressed. But Cuddy didn’t particularly care about that fact; frankly, the fewer jokes about abuse Cassandra got, the better it was for them all.

House, however, was obviously unsatisfied by the lack of response. As much as Cuddy had tried to ignore it, the fact was he needed - desperately needed - attention in order to be even remotely satisfied with himself. Which meant that denying him the reaction he so craved only made him worse, made him more of an asshole.

So really, it came as no surprise that as she went to close the door behind her, House said, “You look like crap.”

A feeble attempt at an insult, to be sure, but it still annoyed Cuddy nonetheless. As true as his assessment of her might have been, it definitely wasn’t something she wanted to hear. And if she returned the favor by slamming the door loudly, making him hiss in pain, she didn’t feel guilty about it at all.

But if she’d thought that aggravating his tinnitus would get him to back off, she realized quickly that she’d been wrong.

Well, of course, she was wrong; retaliation always amounted to escalation when the opponent was House, and it had been shortsighted to think otherwise. And as if to prove that point in the most painful way possible, House stepped into her personal space.

The act echoing one she’d already experienced today, it was unnerving to her. Although she didn’t believe House would hurt her, there was no denying it was creepy.

Especially when he started to sniff her.

“What are you doing?” She tried to sound more exasperated than bothered, but she wasn’t sure if she succeeded in doing that. Certainly her words had failed to give House pause, the tip of his nose skimming along the landscape of her shoulder.

“You smell,” he replied.

Her cheeks blushed with embarrassment, and realizing that this day just kept getting worse and worse, she had half a mind to bang her head against the door until she lost consciousness.

“Of course, I do,” she snapped back, completely fed up with every aspect of her life at the moment. “I’ve been in a hospital all day, and -”

“You don’t smell like the hospital,” he interrupted. His voice was distant, affected by a drawl he only got when he was contemplating something seriously. “You smell… fruity.”

Cuddy scoffed and pushed him away. “I know your understanding of hygiene is incredibly lax, but some of us like to shower and smell nice.”

“I didn’t say you smelled good,” he replied hastily, almost as though he were affronted by the idea of his words being a compliment to her. Actually, thinking about it for a few seconds, Cuddy realized he probably was upset about being unintentionally kind. And maybe it was because of that fact that he added immediately, “And your point doesn’t make sense. You can’t say you smell bad because of the hospital and then thirty seconds later defend your stench with claims of hygiene.”

He moved in to sniff her once more, but Cuddy held him literally at arm’s length with a hand pressed firmly into his chest. Her fingertips digging into the softly fuzzing material of his shirt, she said, “I’m not a life-size scratch-and-sniff.” Still he persisted by trying to step forward, and that only elicited an angry response. “I don’t know what it is exactly that your paranoid, bored mind has cooked up, but stop it.”

Of course, it went without saying that the chances of him actually obeying her were slim to none. And he looked as though he were about to say something in response when, thankfully, Cassandra made her presence known once more. “Dr. Cuddy?”

Both House and Cuddy turned to look at the young woman, who seemed more embarrassed to interrupt them than anything else. “I need to leave now,” she explained slowly. “So if you could pay me…”

“Of course,” Cuddy responded happily. Although she wasn’t exactly a fan of the girl, dealing with her was certainly better than Cuddy having to deal with House sniffing her with the same voracity a dog would smell a fire hydrant.

Knowing that she quickly extracted herself from the situation with House. And moving into the kitchen with Cassandra, Cuddy noted the controversial sandwich sitting pathetically on the island. There was only a single bite missing, a pristine set of teeth marks in one triangle of the Reuben. As she placed her briefcase on the kitchen counter, Cuddy lazily wondered if Cassandra had been telling the truth about the sandwich.

Really it made no sense for her to lie. She’d already made it clear that she had no interest in keeping this job, and it wasn’t exactly like putting pickles on a Reuben was a crime.

But then why would House lie?

As Cuddy pulled out her checkbook, answers immediately popped into her head. He would lie, because he was angry with her over leaving. He would lie to hurt her, to distract her from her job. He would lie, because…

He was House.

Sighing Cuddy pushed that thought into the back of her mind. She’d deal with him in a moment; first though, she needed to get rid of the young woman who was looking at her with expectant eyes. “I’m adding some money in case you need your phone replaced,” Cuddy told her quietly.

“Thank you.” Cassandra looked around as though she were afraid House was going to jump out and interrupt their conversation.

… Which wasn’t exactly an impossibility. The jumping part might have been but certainly not the interrupting part. Cuddy knew that much.

Cassandra, however, hadn’t picked up on that fact, it would seem, because after a second, she spoke up. “You know… I don’t quite know how to say this,” she told Cuddy in something just above a conspiratorial whisper. “But I’m not sure Greg is ready for hospice care. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of patients with T.B.I., but if I’ve seen someone more argumentative and agitated, they’ve been in a -”

“Here,” Cuddy said coldly, ripping out the check and handing it to the other woman.

Cassandra took the proffered item and immediately began to apologize, rightly sensing that Cuddy wasn’t pleased. “I’m sorry. I just -”

“The way House behaved today for you isn’t an indication of the severity of his condition,” Cuddy muttered quickly. “It must be hard for you to imagine someone being that big a jackass by choice, but… he is.” Brushing back a messy curl, she added in a stern voice, “Now I think you can see yourself out.”

It was an effective way to end the conversation… with Cassandra at least. House, who had clearly heard what both women had said, was going to be a lot harder to appease. Entering the kitchen seconds after Cassandra left, he asked, “You really think all of this is as natural as your breasts?”

With a smirk on his face, he gestured to himself by running a hand lightly down his rumpled t-shirt.

“Believe me. I wish it wasn’t,” she said darkly, turning away from him to examine the long forgotten sandwich.

She tried to remember how old it was but couldn’t. She’d received so many phone calls from House today that it was impossible to recollect the exact time he’d complained about pickles. And even though she knew that he’d harassed her around the same time as her donors, it was hard to say when he’d actually gotten the sandwich.

Picking up a half, she could feel that the bread had begun to harden from being in contact with the air for so long. Even more disgusting was the meat. Not that she was particularly prone to thinking corned beef ever looked good, but this was worse than normal. The red meat had a thin layer of condensation on it, as deli meats sometimes did when they too had been sitting out for a long period of time.

Admittedly common sense dictated that she dump the sandwich down the garbage disposal. But Cuddy knew that if she did that, she wouldn’t have any conclusive proof that House had been lying to her; at best, she would just suspect that he had.

Suspicion, of course, was usually good enough for her. There were plenty of times when she’d crucified him, blamed him for things at the hospital that she couldn’t prove. Generally speaking, when it came to mayhem at work, he was behind it in some way. And even if on the off chance he wasn’t responsible for the event she was blaming him for, guaranteed, he was up to something else. So why not yell at him?

Under these circumstances, though, yelling first and figuring out what he did later didn’t seem like the right course of action. Because if the issue was lying about the sandwich, then she needed proof of that; she needed to know that there weren’t any pickles hiding between the layers of corned beef. Or if there was the offending food in the sandwich, then she needed to know that much as well, so that she could simply yell at House for not understanding what kinds of situations were worth calling her over.

Obviously, chances were she was going to be shouting about that anyway. Pickles or no, this whole entire day had been filled with bizarre, stupid, and completely unnecessary drama. Some of that, of course, wasn’t House’s fault, but Cuddy was going to make damn well sure he was held accountable for the parts he had had a hand in.

Anger overwhelming her, she turned to glare at House who was watching her with intent interest. He was studying her as though she was one of his puzzles, and it unnerved her a little. But she’d barely had time to look in his direction before he asked, “You drink today?”

Her eyes widened in shock and confusion at the question. Of all the things he could have said, she wasn’t expecting that. Her eyebrows knitting together, she answered belatedly, “Of course not. Why -”

“Alcohol would explain the smell,” he replied, taking steps closer to her.

It was painfully obvious by now that he had no intention of dropping the matter, and it frankly made Cuddy infuriated. She angrily slapped her hand against the kitchen island. “Oh, enough with the smell already. I know you like to watch Scooby Doo, but you’re not a bloodhound sniffing out little Timmy in the well.”

House sighed dramatically. “Okay, well, first of all, Scooby Doo is a Great Dane - not a bloodhound. And he doesn’t rescue Timmy or anyone else from wells; he solves mysteries, is afraid of his own shadow, and eats food like you do when you’re menstruating,” he explained snottily.

“I don’t -”

“Lassie, a collie with even more masculinity issues than Chase,rescues Timmy. From quicksand, cliffs, and mine shafts but never wells, because Timmy never fell into a well.”

There was something incredibly amusingly lame about the bravado with which House spoke, and as annoyed as she was, she couldn’t help but smile a little. “I can honestly say that I didn’t need to know - or care about - any of that. Still, my point is the same: you’re looking for a puzzle… and there isn’t one.”

But he clearly wasn’t ready to agree with her. “I’m assuming the blood on your shirt is from your lip.”

“I bit through it on accident,” she explained vaguely. There was no need to go into detail if she didn’t have to.

“Nauseous?”

Her eyes narrowed on him. “What?”

His voice was a lot colder this time. Talking to her as though she were an idiot, he asked her, “Are you nauseous?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Abdominal pain? Excessive thirst or urination?”

“House, I’m fine,” she snapped. But when he just continued to look at her as though she were supposed to answer the question, Cuddy sighed and begrudgingly added, “No, no, and no - to all of it.”

Even then though… his eyes kept surveying her for some answer or explanation to a question she didn’t know. And it worried her to see that he wasn’t dropping the matter.

Not that letting things go was his strong suit, but in this particular instance, he had no reason to suspect that something was wrong. He’d seized hold of something she had no idea how to talk him out of, and she didn’t know how long he would persist or how far he would go to find what he wanted.

Frowning, she took a step towards him. “House,” she said gently. “I’m fine. There’s nothing -”

Suddenly House’s eyes lit up, and he asked, “Who’d you see today?”

Her hands clenching into fists, she spun around and stalked back towards the island. If he wasn’t going to let the matter slide, then she was going to change the conversation by bringing it back to the damn Reuben. “You’re not my keeper, and I don’t need to tell you who I saw.”

And then, without any consideration for her stitches, Cuddy grabbed the sandwich and took a big bite out of it. She chewed it quickly, viciously, and noted almost immediately that there wasn’t anything even remotely like a pickle nestled in the delicate slices of beef.

“Tell me anyways,” House said sternly.

Cuddy tossed the sandwich back onto the plate and swallowed harshly. Ignoring the command, she told him accusingly, “You lied. There’s not a single pickle in this sandwich. You -”

“That’s not possible.” He sounded more annoyed than concerned, and after a second, he added, “She must have picked them out before I tossed her. And anyway, who -”

“Or you lied,” Cuddy accused. “Because if there had been pickles on the sandwich, then the taste would still be there. Since it’s not, you either lied or hallucinated a condiment. And like I told Cassandra, you’re insane, but you’re not that insane.”

House reached around her and grabbed the controversial lunch. He inspected it carefully, his gaze roving over it as though he expected it to be poisoned. Eventually though he seemed satisfied that it was safe, and he took a bite, defiance in his eyes.

At first there was boredom flitting through his features, and it was obvious that he was anticipating a mouthful of pickles with the only upside of being right. But as he chewed, Cuddy noticed the expression on his face changing.

He was accepting what she’d already figured out - that there were no pickles and his lie had been unveiled.

But if she expected him to concede the point, his reaction was nearly the opposite. Now granted, he didn’t swallow the bite of food and continue fighting her on the sandwich. Yet he didn’t apologize or admit that he’d been wrong either. Instead he just kept eating the Reuben while veering the conversation back to what he wanted to talk about. Swallowing eagerly, House asked, “So who were you with again?”

“Let it go,” she told him in a frustrated voice.

Taking another bite, he said casually, “Just answer the question. You don’t think your rank odor is important; I do. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. How much of an inconvenience is it to you to say who you were with?”

At that moment, she realized there wasn’t a good enough response she could offer him. There wasn’t anything she could say to make him drop the matter at the moment, so she had to answer the question.

Scowling she told him, “Fine. I was with donors for part of the morning and with your team and Wilson for the rest.”

He looked at her carefully. “Any of them smell funny?”

“Of course not.”

“I assume you’re discounting Kutner’s normal scent of -“

“I have no idea what he normally smells like,” Cuddy cut across quickly, fearing she would learn more about Kutner’s life and scent than she ever wished to know. “And I don’t want to know. So assume that I am discounting that, yes.”

There was a brief lull in the conversation before House asked, “You didn’t see patients?”

“No,” she replied absent-mindedly. “I spent most of my day trying to keep your team organized and catching up on paperwork.”

Her answer was obviously unsatisfactory to him. His eyes narrowed on her even more than they already had, and though his tone was almost conversational, there was no missing the directness in his words. “So then which one of those people tried to strangle you? I mean I know Taub’s been known to smack a bitch, and I can certainly understand the impulse, but…”

On instinct her hands journeyed to her neck, her fingers lightly pressing into the injured sinew and tissue. The area was sensitive, which was to be expected, and it took all of her effort not to hiss in pain at her own actions. “I’m bruising that badly already?”

“I can make out a thumbprint,” House told her with a shrug.

The casualness in his voice angered her, pained her. As much as she might have suspected that he didn’t care, she didn’t want to hear him confirm that. “Thank you for being oh so concerned with my well being,” she said sarcastically.

Scoffing House replied in a similar tone. “I’m glad you’re okay. But if you wanted someone to hold your hand and tell you everything was going to be okay, you’re old enough to call Mommy or say that that’s what you need.” Finishing off half of the sandwich, he added, “You didn’t say anything, which I took to mean that you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Cuddy sighed in defeat. He was right, of course; he was always right, it seemed, and in this particular moment, she didn’t have energy to fight him. “You’re right,” she conceded.

“What was the diagnosis?”

It certainly wasn’t the question she was expecting. “Hmm?”

“Again, although I understand the temptation to strangle you, I’m guessing there was something medically wrong with this person to actually make him give into that temptation.” He sounded as frustrated with her as she felt with him. “So what was the diagnosis?”

“There wasn’t one.”

It was an answer that he didn’t like; she could tell that much by the way a sigh caught in the back of his throat. But it was the truth. She’d been attacked before any diagnosis or understanding could be reached. And though it was annoying to House to not have an answer to the question, she wasn’t going to pull something out of her ass just to make him happy.

“What do you mean there wasn’t one?”

She gestured to her throat and face. “This happened before -”

“What were his symptoms,” House demanded to know. The way he said it, it didn’t even come out as a question, and she balked at his attitude.

“It wasn’t that kind of situation,” she explained in irritation.

“Then -”

“He came in… agitated. The nurses thought he was a drug seeker. They called security and me. I tried to distract him while security got off of their asses.” She shrugged. “I failed, and they were slow.”

She thought that it would end there, that he would stop there.

But he didn’t.

He just kept pushing.

“And you didn’t notice anything wrong with this guy?”

“He tried to strangle me, House,” she said in a mournful tone. “I noticed something was wrong. Yeah.”

House picked up the second half of the sandwich and began to eat it. “He eeeHe smell?”

The question sparked her memory. The events in the clinic came to life once more, flashes of it burning a path to the forefront of her mind. And she didn’t even have to think twice before nodding her head. “Yeah,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Diabetic ketoacidosis,” House announced proudly. “You probably thought he was drunk or wearing too much cologne.”

“But…” She sounded more dazed than she would have liked, her head suddenly beginning to pound as the connection between everything was made.

“When he attacked you, his scent must have rubbed off on your clothes and skin. It explains why I could smell it on you, but you don’t have any symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis.”

He was so at ease with the medicine. Not a single instance of hesitation, not a moment’s pause - he was completely comfortable with diagnosing someone he’d never even seen. And the most amazing part about that was that… he was right. She didn’t want to believe it, but everything he was saying was making sense.

Shaking her head a little, Cuddy admitted, “I thought…” Her voice trailed off, and she swallowed hard, unable to wrap her head around his diagnosis. “But he wasn’t in the clinic to be treated. He just wanted drugs. He wanted lidocaine.”

House thought about it for a few seconds before hypothesizing, “Coke dealers use lidocaine to make their product seem more potent than it is, and cocaine use can cause diabetic ketoacidosis.” Cocking his head to side, he also offered, “Or… try this on for size: he knows he’s sick, so he goes to the hospital. But like every moron with a computer, he Googles his symptoms before deciding he needs a doctor.”

Cuddy nodded her head to show that she was following along, and House continued. “He diagnoses himself, and lets pretend that he’s got an ounce of intelligence and he actually gets it right. Unfortunately, by the time he gets to you after waiting for a couple hours in the clinic, his body’s producing acidic ketone bodies as quickly as you’d hop into bed with the first guy who -”

“I get the point,” she interrupted quickly.

He shrugged. “There’s a logical explanation for all of it.”

“And I missed it,” she said, feeling the guilt seize hold of her in a way she couldn’t hide.

“Doctors tend to get sloppy when they’re being strangled.”

In his own way, he was trying to comfort her. She could tell that that was what he was aiming for with the softly lobbed sarcasm. But the truth was it really didn’t make her feel any less culpable. If anything, his attempts to make her feel better only accentuated the knowledge that she’d screwed up. Because if he felt the need to cheer her up and not mock the hell out of her, what she’d done couldn’t have been something small and meaningless; it had to be something he deemed bad enough to feel guilty about.

“Yeah? Well… it probably means he’s dead - or going to be dead,” she said in a bitter voice. “Security never caught him, and I don’t think it’s likely he’ll come back to the hospital.” Or go to any hospital, she thought to herself; if what House was saying was true, then the man who’d attacked her was close to death, terrified, and confused by her refusing to help him. And if all of that were true, it was probably likely that he was too stricken by fear to know where to go next, to know how to get the help he needed. So…

His disease would ravage him.

And he would die.

Of that she had no doubt.

But House didn’t agree, because he said, “If he has any understanding that something’s wrong with him, he’ll choke as many people as he has to in order to live.” She nodded her head feebly but didn’t reply.

Which he was clearly annoyed by. She didn’t understand it, but apparently, he was taking her silence as a way of disagreeing, as a way of rejecting his support. And maybe he felt affronted by her, because he wasn’t used to putting himself in this position. He really wasn’t the type to go to for support, obviously; so maybe the fact that he had done just that - and she’d resisted his efforts - pissed him off.

Really, it was idle speculation on her part, but she could definitely tell that he wasn’t pleased by her silence. Because even if she hadn’t noticed the hardening of his facial features, she couldn’t miss the bitterness in his words. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe he’s wandering around like a wounded puppy, dying slowly and in agony. Your narcissism would like that a lot more, huh - if he died, because you didn’t magically see what was wrong with him.”

One of her eyebrows raised, she immediately asked in confusion, “I feel guilty, and the way you want to stop that is to call me a narcissist?”

House scoffed at the question. “I think I did try to be nice about it. But you didn’t want to believe that things could turn out okay, so I thought I would go ahead and state the obvious: you think that you’re the only one who could save this guy. You think that there’s nobody else anywhere who can diagnose him.”

“This isn’t about my ego,” she defended, rubbing her temples with the tips of her fingers; she could feel the beginnings of a migraine coming on, the inkling sensation of a pounding head looming over the conversation. “I realize that someone else could diagnose him. Someone else did diagnose him: you. So as much as I would like to believe that my medical prowess is leagues above everyone else’s…”

Her voice trailed off into a sigh. She realized just how pathetic it sounded. Even to her own ears, there was something so abysmally shameful about almost admitting to House that she wasn’t blessed with the same intellect. “I didn’t see it,” she said finally. “And I feel guilty about that, which is hardly indicative of narcissism.”

“You missed the diagnosis,” he replied breezily. He was acting like it was a small mistake - hell, like it wasn’t even a mistake to him at all. And it bothered Cuddy to know that, because she doubted he actually felt that way at all. How could he, when he despised being wrong and having incorrect answers?

Swallowing hard, she said in a much less confident voice, “You can’t tell me that that’s not a big deal to you.”

“You were attacked. You got distracted. You made a mistake,” he said with a shrug that was somehow anything but casual. “Get over it.”

Each sentence he uttered came across as a stark statement that left no room for disagreement. Apparently, he’d decided that his version of events was the correct one, and anything she had to say, any reservations she might have had, was all frivolous and ultimately meaningless. Her input deemed useless in his eyes, he meant every word he said.

He expected her to get over it.

And that infuriated her.

He was brushing her opinion to the side, which was annoying enough; although she’d just conceded that he was probably smarter than she was, Cuddy did not think that that meant he could just ignore her views. Especially since she’d spent practically the last two months caring for him, consoling him, tending to his every physical and emotional need as best as she could….

It was heartbreaking to realize that he had no intention (if no ability) to reciprocate.

And knowing that, she couldn’t help but respond in kind, “You were in an accident. You killed Amber. Get over it.”

Continue on to the rest of the chapter