RE-POSTING FOR GRAMMATICAL CORRECTIONS (HOPE I GOT 'EM ALL!) AND MINOR TWEAKING.
After watching DS and crew's offering of the House episode "Bombshells" and based on two previews I've seen for the next episode, this is my fan fiction take on what should happen next for House.
I'm not too pleased that DS and company have chosen to shove House ten steps back into at least a serious relapse after he went through so much to get clean. Yes, I know addicts have relapses, but the "creative writers" of the show decided to let "The Big Break Up" send House into a tailspin to end all tailspins. Anyone who has a story posted here, even those who specialize in Huddy, could have done a better job.
To that end, I'm bringing one of my OC's, Lucy (Wilson's half sister) out of her story into this one. To know the cast of characters in this fic and get the details of their relationships, you should read Greg and Lucy A Love Story, also posted here, after you read this. There are a few spoilers here for that story, and I apologize to my readers, but I needed some of those details for this story.
Usual disclaimers (and I'm only saying it once!): House and company belong to David Shore and Bad Hat Harry Productions. Some canon involved and the time line may be a bit skewed, but the story around it and the OC's are mine!
CHAPTER ONE - Prologue
Orlando, Florida, March 15th, 2011
Lucy Mazzelli slammed the phone in her kitchen down hard. Damn Jim any way! He had just called her to tell her Greg had jumped from a hotel balcony into the pool below after going on a bender because Cuddy broke up with him. Not that it was Lucy's business anymore, but what the hell had he been doing with Cuddy in the first place?
He was in the hospital, under suicide watch, but he wasn't restrained or in the Psychiatric ward. He was in a private room, mildly sedated and in plain sight of the nurse's station while all the booze and whatever else had had been binging on cleared his system. He acknowledged your presence in the room, paid attention to you, but had refused to utter one word to anyone since he had been admitted.
Jim gave her more bad news (as if that wasn't enough). Greg's Vicodin addiction had earned him a stint in a psychiatric hospital a little over two years earlier and he almost lost his medical license. Of course, Lucy knew after the fact that Greg had had an infarction in his leg and surgery he didn't want and was taking Vicodin because of the pain, but she had no clue as to how badly addicted he had become. Her family, on their own or at Greg's insistence, had only fed her bits and pieces of what was really going on in Princeton.
Lucy hadn't been back to Princeton since the divorce except to visit her parent's graves. She was still in love with Greg and knew it would hurt her too much to see him, even briefly, especially if he was with someone else. Even though he would never say it, he hated being alone, and she would never deny him anything that would make him happy.
Jim had had a long conversation with Greg's psychiatrist from Mayfield and they agreed that Lucy might be the only one able to reach Greg even though they hadn't spoken to each other for several years. Now he was begging her to take emergency family leave get on the first flight she could and to let him know when she would arrive. He would take her to Aunt Loretta and Uncle Tony's house and he give her all the details he could before they met with Dr. Nolan and then went to see Greg.
Lucy didn't know whether to be furious at not being told everything until it was almost too late or blame herself for everything that happened to Greg since they divorced in 2000. God, had it been that long ago? They had been so happy until her parents were killed by a drunk driver. The entire family had been stunned by the senseless loss of Frank and Lina, but they got through the worst of it because they supported each other. The problem was that Lucy didn't realize it affected Greg worse than it had her or her brother until it was too late. Lucy started thinking about how their romance started and what made their marriage disintegrate.
When Greg moved to Princeton in 1997, her parents had taken him into their home and accepted him as family. After a few months, Greg began to realize that these people accepted him flaws and all. He could be himself, no longer feeling like an outsider. He began "courting" Lucy and they carried on their affair behind her parent's backs (or so they thought) for almost eight months before Greg convinced Lucy they should elope instead of waiting for her to finish her residency to get married. He knew he wouldn't be able to avoid a church wedding, but he wanted Lucy as his wife and didn't want to wait that long. They eloped to Virginia and Lucy's parents couldn't have been happier to have him as their son-in-law.
Lucy and Greg had been married a little over a year and a half when they found out she was going to have a baby. Everyone was over joyed because they knew the odds were against Lucy getting pregnant and carrying a baby full term. Unfortunately, she lost the baby about fourteen weeks into the pregnancy. Lucy was devastated, but got through it. Their lives had just returned to normal when Frank and Lina were killed, their car hit head on by a drunk truck driver.
Greg stood stoically and protectively by his young wife at the funeral. Lucy was practically catatonic, going through the motions like a robot. Inside, Greg was dying. He had come to view Frank and Lina as his parents and he was floundering again. He had been closer to Frank and Lina than his own parents, whom he avoided whenever he could.
After the funeral, Lucy and Greg tried to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, at least Lucy did, but Greg just wasn't there for her or anyone else for that matter. When he wasn't working, he was hitting the bottle pretty hard. Lucy let most of it slide because she was hurting inside herself and prayed that the worst of the pain would pass quickly for both of them. She didn't know what else to do. She tried talking to Greg, but he would just make himself another drink and walk away from her. No one realized the agony the two of them were going through because they were so good at keeping their emotions off their faces.
To make matters worse, she wasn't quite finished with her residency and her crazy schedule was annoying to Greg, even though there was less than a month left to it now. Instead of him coming to the hospital when she worked odd shifts and finding an empty room to make love in, he wanted her home when he was.
Their love life, which had be indescribably good from the beginning, suffered big time. No more hot quick trysts in the hospital. They were two intimate strangers sharing the same bed, going through the motions of love. Lucy never refused Greg, no matter how tired she was, what he wanted or what mood she was in.
Then came the night when she had to work later than usual and came home and found Greg in the family room, drunk as usual. She quietly tried to get him up and to bed. This wasn't the first time she had to go through this, another thing she was too embarrassed to tell her family about. Lucy usually managed to get him on his feet and upstairs and into bed, but tonight was different. Always belligerent when he drank, tonight he became verbally abusive with her, something he had never been. Ever.
There was no point in trying to talk to him or get him to bed when he was in this mood, so she picked up the room as he poured himself another drink from the bottle at his elbow.
He managed to get himself up and said to Lucy, "A toast!" he shouted as he raised his glass of bourbon in the air.
Lucy turned quickly. She thought he had passed out. She just stood there staring at him, not knowing what to do or what would happen next. For the first time since she had known him, she was afraid of him. She kept her mouth shut.
"To Princess Lucy! Poor, poor Princess Lucy. Doesn't know how to be a wife because she lost her parents and there's no one around to tell her how to take care of her husband anymore. Wouldn't even change her name for him Hah! She can't even give him a good screw anymore! What a waste of time this marriage is!" Greg said with a drunken shout.
The look on his face was pure evil.
He might as well have stabbed her. She dropped the things she had picked up as her hands covered her mouth in shock and horror. As compatible as they were, Lucy just realized now how deeply her parent's death had affected him, that this what all the drinking was about. She should have seen it sooner, but she was hurting and trying to heal herself while trying to talk to the brick wall her husband had become and help him as well. They should have been helping each other.
"Greg, what are you talking about, what do you mean I'm not taking care of you? I don't now how to take care of you without my parents around? I've always been here for you! I don't care how drunk you are! You're not being fair!" Lucy said in a shaky voice, refusing to cry.
"You heard me, Lucy. Our life together is a joke. I made a mistake. I should have never married you!" Greg said as he sat back down and chugged the rest of his drink.
Lucy was speechless. Though drunk, Greg had deliberately played into her fears that she was too young and inexperienced to be his wife. She hurried out of the room and upstairs to their room and locked the door. She leaned against the door as she finally let the tears fall.
"He had no right to say that!" Lucy said to herself as the tears rolled down her face. "I've been a good wife."
Downstairs, Greg realized what he had said to his wife and how deeply he had hurt her. He shouldn't have lashed out at her, he should have just told her how much he was hurting too. Why wouldn't the words come out? He had always found comfort in her arms and that's what he wanted. In hindsight, he also knew that she had been trying to comfort both of them when they should have been comforting each other, but he was too busy burying his own pain in a bottle to notice. He was just having a pity party for himself. He had to fix this. He couldn't live without Lucy.
By the time he made it upstairs, Lucy had gone into the bathroom to cry where Greg wouldn't hear her. She didn't want to deal with an angry drunk anymore tonight.
Greg tried the door. It was locked. Knocking on the door, he begged to be let in. "Lucy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean any of it. Please let me in." Greg said from the other side of the locked door.
Lucy could hear him but wouldn't let him in. She didn't even answer him. She took her shower and got into bed, still crying.
Out in the hall, Greg slowly slid down against the wall, still begging Lucy to let him in. Nothing. He finally passed out on the floor.
Lucy got very little sleep that night. The next morning, she got up and quietly got dressed, holding a cold wash rag on her eyes to take away some of the swelling her crying had caused, but the only thing that would help the swelling go down was time.
She quietly unlocked the bedroom door and almost tripped over Greg where he was sprawled on the floor. She caught herself and went to make a pot of coffee and some breakfast for him, putting a plate of bacon, eggs and toast in the oven to stay warm. Then she called her cousin Tony and asked him to draw up divorce papers for her.
"Lucy! What happened!" Tony was shocked. He and his wife had gone to Virginia and stood up for Greg and Lucy when they eloped.
"Tony, I'll tell you when I get to your office. I'm off today, I'll be there in an hour."
Lucy made a few phone calls and left the house quickly before Greg woke up.
When Lucy got to her cousin's office, his assistant took her straight back to the conference room.
"Lucy, what's going on? What happened? Did he hit you?" Lucy had taken her sunglasses off and her eyes were still swollen from all the crying she had done. Tony was shocked at her appearance and tried to look for bruises.
"Tony, he didn't hit me. If you don't believe me, get your assistant in here and I'll take my clothes off. Just draw up papers for a no fault divorce. I made a big mistake marrying him. It's over. I don't want anything from him at all. I'm accepting a fellowship in Orlando, Celebration Health. I'll be leaving Princeton for good in three weeks.
"Lucy, are you sure this isn't an impulse? Have you tried to work things out? What about the house?" Tony asked his cousin gently. He had never seen Lucy in a state like this.
"The only thing I've ever done on impulse is marry Greg. Of course I've tried talking to him, Tony! He won't talk to me! Do you think I give a damn about that house? The life I had planned for, thought I had, is over! Do you think I can live there alone now? Without Greg or Mom and Dad? Let Greg keep it. Jim can live there, or you sell it and donate the money to the hospital in my parent's name, whatever you think is best. I don't care anymore. You and your father have my power of attorney. Take care of it. Draw up those divorce papers now. I want to make a clean break. Make sure you give me the papers to legally change my name back to Mazzelli." Lucy said in a determined voice, trying not to break down in front of her cousin.
"If that's what you want, I'll start them now and you can sign them and I'll take them over to the hospital this afternoon for Greg's signature. I'll use the hospital's notary and file the papers. As long as Greg doesn't contest this, it should be final in about a month." Tony said while dialing for his assistant, asking her to draw up the necessary papers and bring them in for Lucy's signature.
As Lucy started to sign the papers, tears came to her eyes as she remembered Greg taunting her about not changing her name. When they got married, it was more his idea than hers that she be "Dr. Mazzelli" at the hospital in honor of her father, who had stood behind her choice of becoming a doctor. Lucy wanted to hyphenate her last name, paying tribute to her father as well as her new husband, but Greg had convinced her not to.
Lucy wiped the tears from her face and deliberately and neatly signed each paper Tony handed her with her legal name - "Lucia Anna House". Tony's assistant notarized each paper as Lucy signed them. She wrote a check for the filing fees and left, asking her cousin to make sure the filing wasn't made public. She had more business to take care of and was glad it was her day off. She wouldn't have to be around to see Greg's reaction to her asking for a divorce until she finished the list of things she needed to do to get ready to leave town.
Lucy worked fast. She went to a real estate office with connections in Orlando and quickly picked out a two bedroom townhouse with an attached garage and pool. She thought the price was a bit high, but money wasn't an issue, never was for her or her family, even less so now.
After her parents were killed, Uncle Tony filed a lawsuit on behalf of the entire family against the employer of the truck driver who had hit them head on. Not only was he drunk, but he had a hooker in the cab with him and she was giving him a blow job while he was driving. They came out of it without so much as a scratch, but Frank and Lina died from massive internal injuries soon after they were brought into the hospital.
The quick financial settlement effectively put the trucking company out of business, but the owner didn't regret it. He had been lax in his hiring policies and he deserved to be bankrupt because of it.
After Lucy left the realtor's office, she went to a local moving company to get what she needed to start packing. She would buy furniture when she got to Florida.
By the time she got home, Greg was there, holding the papers in his hand.
"Lucy, I'm sorry about last night. I don't want a divorce. I want to try and work this out" Greg said quietly.
It was just a statement, actually the beginning of an apology. He remembered every hurtful word he had said to her last night, childishly playing on her fears that she was too inexperienced for someone like him. He also felt guilty that she had cried so much her eyes were still swollen. He wanted to put his arms around her and make all the pain go away for both of them. He took a step toward her, but something in Lucy's posture told him to keep his distance. He would have to try and reason with her.
"I'm sorry, Greg. I can't do this anymore. I know we've been through a lot in the last few months, but I've been trying to talk to you, trying to get you to tell me exactly what's wrong or what I've done wrong and all you've done is make yourself another drink and push me away. I didn't understand why until last night. My parent's death is affecting you as bad or worse than it did me." Lucy's voice started to crack and she stopped talking, trying to compose herself.
"We're both hurting," she went on after a few seconds. "but you're not being fair to me when I'm trying to help you. If your solution is to crawl into a bottle instead of talking every time something goes wrong, we don't have a marriage. We're just two strangers sharing a bed now. Drunk or not, you were right last night. It was a mistake for us to get married in the first place. I don't want anything from you and you can have the house. I've accepted a fellowship in Florida. You'll be shed of me by the end of the month." Lucy said as she turned from Greg, tears falling down her face again.
She got some boxes out of her car and went upstairs to start packing. Greg just sat down at the kitchen table, staring straight ahead. His life was over. Every word Lucy had spoken was true. She was hurting too, but she had kept trying to reach out to him and he had been stubbornly ignoring every effort she had made, although he did try to stop her from leaving right up to the day she left. Unfortunately, his attempts were made while he was drunk.
Lucy's mind quickly returned to the present, not wanting to recall how miserable she was when she first moved to Florida, completely alone for the first time in her life. In many ways, she was still miserable, but she pushed those feelings down to survive. Greg needed her now. She felt like she had failed him somehow when she divorced him.
Lucy didn't know if she could help undo some of the damage life itself had done to their relationship and marriage, but she owed it to Greg and herself to try and undo what she herself did by divorcing him.
Lucy called her boss and said she had to go back to Princeton to deal with a family emergency and needed at least a month of family leave time. Her boss emailed her the paperwork, Lucy printed it, signed it and scanned it back. She wouldn't hear from HR until sometime tomorrow. She picked up the phone and called the airlines, booking a first class ticket into Philly.
The last phone call was to her brother, telling him when her flight was arriving. Lucy asked her brother if he had a key to Greg's apartment so she could stay there.
"Lucy, I have a spare key, but why do you want to stay there and not with Aunt Loretta?" he asked.
"Listen, Jim, you and the family have chosen to keep most of Greg's problems from me until now. Why? To piss me off or blame me for everything that happened to him since I left? I already blame myself. I don't need anyone else blaming me. Just because I divorced him doesn't mean I stopped loving him. I still do. If I had even an inkling of how bad things were, I would have crawled back to Princeton on my hands and knees to help him. I'm really pissed at all of you for keeping me in the dark. Do you really think it's a good idea for me to stay with Aunt Loretta and fight with her about what I've done in the past or might do down the road? I don't think Greg will object to me staying in his apartment." Lucy snapped at her brother. "Do you know who holds his medical proxy now?"
"I do, Lucy. Why?" Jim asked.
"I want to see all of his medical records, even the ones from Mayfield and the psychiatrist." she snapped at her brother again.
"Lucy, do you think . . .?" Jim started to ask.
"Look, Jim, I need to see those records. You've missed something physically and mentally with Greg because you were always judgmental as far as he was concerned. You judged him guilty without the benefit of a trial. I always expected him to be himself, I never judged him. Get me those records! And get me temporary privileges at PPTH, I don't care how you do it. " Lucy hissed at her brother and hung up on him. She packed and sent a text message to one of her co-workers to house sit for her. Lucy spent a sleepless night.