Decisions and Revisions

by Merlynnod

Prequel to my first House fic, "Home Invasion". Gregory House had never liked children...but sometimes fate has other plans. Daddy!House and Huddy. :

All usual disclaimers still apply. I don't own, only playing, don't sue, I'm a 26-year-old college student…I've been in college for the last 8 years. Do the math. I have NOTHING. ;)

House and all associated characters and trademarks are intellectual property of David Shore and physical property of the Fox network. No financial gain is made or sought from this work of fiction.

Title blissfully stolen from a line of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.

Here there be Dribbling. Too long and untidy for drabbles, too short for vignettes, too pithy for essays, and not nearly complicated enough to truly be called stories. Nope. These are the Dribbles, little bits of my brain that leaked out onto my papers…I had to clean them up…it was very messy for awhile. ;)

Another note, most of these are written in the same third-person omniscient view point, but occasionally that faltered a bit, and things became a bit more connected. I decided to leave them as is, as it flowed better in certain sections. And…despite my intentions for these to be an only vaguely interconnected series of dribbles…they seem to have become a sort of story in themselves…who would have known? :) Now, I'll shut up, and happy reading!

1. He had never liked children, they were loud, obnoxious…they smelled. No, Dr. Greg House had never had any desire to be around children for any length of time, and wouldn't be caught dead fathering any if he had any say in the matter. Stacy agreed with him, and on his runs through the park he had never thought twice about the young boy with the patch on one knee playing on the swing set, and the little girl with the strawberry blonde curls climbing the big oak tree. Children existed, but only in the way that trees and benches existed. They simply were a part of the landscape unless they were screaming, and then they were just nuisances.
Greg House had no place in his universe for children.

2. His mother had insisted that he play indoors today, telling him that he wasn't permitted to run about outside in the late January sunshine, not with the racking cough and bronchial inflammation just beginning to subside. For the most part, ten-year-old Greg wasn't too terribly put out by what he felt was his mother's overprotective nature, he would simply play in his bedroom, working on the model plane he had been building, reading, or possibly even playing with his new chemistry set, a Christmas gift not yet properly tried out. His father was away on army business for a few days, a time to be cherished, and Greg House was not one to let a mere infection get in the way of his enjoying himself. That is…until SHE showed up. His mother was insistent upon keeping the neighbors' little girl from time to time, saying that it was good for Greg to be around other children, and that the Jenkins' child was a pleasure to have about anyway. Her son did not share his mother's opinion of the five-year-old girl. Safe up in his room, Greg ignored the sounds from below, only absently listening as his mother spoke to their young neighbor, and he completely missed the small, quiet footsteps as they mounted the stairs to his room. So it came as some surprise to the boy when a lisping " 'ello" and two large, dark-brown eyes perched just to the right of his elbow startled him out of his concentration. A half-hour later, and Greg was nearly terminal with frustration at this midget-sized person who had invaded his space, his room, his life, and refused to leave, and, furthermore, insisted on touching everything…
Even at ten years old, Greg House did not like children.

3. Through all his years in medical school and residency, the thing that bothered him most was his rotation in pediatrics. Sick children bothered in him a way that nothing else could. When they were happy and well, he could be irritated by them, ignore them, he could avoid them, pretend they didn't exist…but when they became his patients…all of his mechanisms for dealing with them were suddenly useless. And with his specialties in infectious disease and nephrology, the children he was forced to work with were usually very ill. There was nothing so difficult as seeing those tiny forms in fear and pain, the pleading eyes of their parents willing him to save their offspring. His belief in his motto, his dictum, his view of humanity: "Everybody Lies" was never more tried and battered than when dealing with his smallest of patients. Time and time again, Greg House had seen first hand not only the idiocy of the general public, but their singular ability to fabricate the most elaborate stories for what often passed as the stupidest of reasons. But children didn't lie, not in the way that adults did. When children were sick they wanted to get better, they would answer anything you asked them, completely unaware of the consequences and sometimes the embarrassment their announcements could make for their parents. Children had not yet developed that adult sense of self-preservation, of innuendo, of shame, that made working with adults so difficult and often maddening. And in the face of that guileless innocence, all his hard-won and carefully maintained defenses and fortifications tumbled down.
Greg House could not face sick children. And anything he couldn't face, he avoided and disliked.

4. He lay there, dying, systems failing one by one…and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Cuddy had forbidden him from any more tests, any more prodding, the only thing to do now was wait for the inevitable. Greg House could not accept that fact. Would not accept that fact. He had failed Esther, she had died because he had been unable to diagnose her disease until it was too late. But Esther was in her seventies when she had died, with children and grandchildren to mourn her. She had lived a life, at least for a time. That thought didn't really do much to ease her doctor's personal guilt over what he perceived as his failure, but the thought somehow made this little boy's imminent demise so much worse. Ian was so young, so small there in that big bed, by rights he should be at home playing with his toys and his friends, begging for candy at the grocery store, running around making adults in his vicinity grit their teeth at his louder childhood antics. But he was not. Ian was here, lying in a big strange bed surrounded by machines and wires, tubes running down his throat and into his lungs…dying. The child before him was fading and there was nothing he could do about it. It had to be Erdheim-Chester, there was nothing else it could be. The symptoms, the progression, the rapid onset, everything matched Esther's file, they could be the same patient…and yet the test was negative. How could the test be negative? Three pieces…three tests…how could he possibly save this child with only three pieces of the puzzle?
Greg House could only sit helplessly by as a little boy succumbed to a disease he couldn't diagnose, and couldn't cure.

5. She had almost asked him. He had known why she had come to his office that early evening. He had understood why she hesitated and why she hurried so quickly away. But she hadn't asked, and he hadn't offered. And for a time he had not thought about the instance any more, simply filed it away as another curious incident in his career at the hospital, and his longer acquaintance with one Dr. Lisa Cuddy, MD, former undergrad, then med student, now doctor in her own right, and furthermore, Dean of Medicine at PPTH, and his boss. Later, when she gave him more files for potential donors, asking him sheepishly to look them over, and when he interrupted what he knew were calls to dating services he had felt an odd and rather unpleasant sensation skipping through his insides, if only for just a moment. But she had not asked, and he was not about to offer. After all, what sort of a father could he be, even if only in the most basic and fundamental senses? The child would still be his, and he would not allow himself to take on that kind of responsibility. How could he be a father to another person after what had been done to him? He had sworn a long time ago that he would never treat another child the way his father had treated him…And he had been happy with that arrangement. No harm, no foul.
So the recurrence of that nagging, gnawing, disappointed sensation there in the pit of his stomach was an anomaly…and Greg House did not like anomalies.

6. It happened one night, one rainy, cold, blustery evening when he'd lost a patient the afternoon before, and had returned to his townhouse with the singular intention of getting spectacularly and insensibly drunk. He would have the hangover from Hell and the death of his patient hanging over him even more in the morning, but for a few blissful hours…everything else in the world would simply melt away in a wave of amber colored alcohol. And then his phone rang. More than three-quarters of the way through a fine bottle of Makers Mark, and Lisa Cuddy's tear-filled voice rang out from his answering machine following the strident three rings of the apartment phone. Her sister, her younger sister, was dead, involved in a hit and run while coming home from the market around the corner from her home earlier that day. They'd tried to call Lisa all afternoon, but she had been stuck in board meetings and hadn't received the messages until late that evening, a pitiful little pile of neatly marked slips written down by a bored secretary. He had known not to interrupt the meetings, and so the young man had faithfully kept a record of all the calls, taking down names and numbers for his boss's convenience once she returned to her desk later that afternoon, completely unaware of the horror he was noting down for her so faithfully. The strong and determined, capable and smart, Dean of Medicine had been completely undone by the unexpected tragedy and was beside herself in shock and sorrow. Dialing on autopilot, Lisa had punched up the first number that came to mind, that of her grumpy diagnostician, coincidentally one of her few friends left over from med-school days. Slurring and tired, House had picked up the phone half-way through her sobbing message and had told her to come to his flat, that he wasn't fit to go anywhere at the moment, but if she wanted she could come over, not that he was any good at the comforting thing anyway, but he told her that the offer stood if she wished.
A half-hour later the cab pulled up in front of 221B and that night a drunk diagnostician and a mourning Dean inadmitantly changed Greg House's view on the nature of children.

7. The day had begun like any other, a few quick remarks thrown out to his ducklings, a round of test results reported back upon, a DDX debated, and his minions were sent back out into the wilds of the hospital to snoop, badger, poke, and prod their patient into a diagnosis and a recovery. House remained in his office, almost certain that they had finally found the source of their patient's illness, and was content for a half-hour of General Hospital, and then perhaps a quick trip over the side of the balcony to pester Wilson. All in all, a productive and entertaining Diagnostics department morning. That is, until his pager went off. The message was marked urgent, signed by Cuddy, and immediately House tried to think of ways he might avoid the apparently rampaging Dean of Medicine and what he was sure would probably be a chewing out over his recent lack of clinic attendance. Unfortunately for House, his boss was well aware of his tendencies to ignore pages and generally hide from her, and was on her way up to the Diagnostics department even as she had sent the page via cell phone. Just as the older doctor was carefully picking up his game leg from its resting place on the desk, his intentions were interrupted by a sight he had rarely ever seen. Lisa Cuddy in nothing less that near absolute panic. Ten minutes later and the truth was out…and House's plans for the future suddenly took a sharp detour into the unknown. She was pregnant, nine weeks, the baby was most certainly his…and he had a choice to make. Donor or Dad.
In the space of a morning, Greg House was going to have to decide just what sort of a father he wanted to be after all.

8. Deciding that the jogging park was probably his best bet, House set out as quickly as possible for his hiding place, leaving a fretting Lisa Cuddy to her own devices in the meantime. Upon arrival at his preferred table, House was immediately aware of what he considered to be the teeming masses of tiny humanity that were evidently out of school on this fine fall afternoon. There were five of them he noted, four boys and a little girl, quite probably related to one another based on their physical characteristics and their interactions. The oldest looked to be about nine, the youngest, the little girl, about four, causing the diagnostician to shake his head in wonderment at the proclivities of some families. Five kids in as many years…though two of the boys looked to be fraternal twins…still…How on earth was he planning on doing this? What had he been thinking--well, that much he was quite sure of…He knew exactly what he'd been thinking, or, well, not thinking exactly…. that night. He'd just never expected it to come back and bite him quite like this. After all, Cuddy had been trying to get pregnant for almost a year, and now, now, she was more than two months along, and she had given him the choice. To be as committed or as absent as he chose. After all, what she really wanted was a baby, not a husband, right? I mean, after all, she had tried the donor route already, no strings attached, just a baby. Yeah, and then she had tried those dating services…maybe she was looking for more, maybe she'd had second thoughts about the whole single parent thing. Where did that leave him exactly? Well, that much was obvious. It left him in just this precarious situation….
Greg House, was not anyone's idea of father material, but sometimes fate had other plans.

9. He had seen her walking the halls, seen her behind her desk, watched as her moods changed and her situation became more obvious. He heard about it from Wilson when she told the board, and had wondered after if she had told them who the father was. He rather doubted it, but still wondered, as for a few weeks afterward some of the bolder doctors would catch his eye and smile, or shake their heads and hurry by. She was at twelve weeks when she told them, and it was just beginning to be obvious at the time. She had waited until the "safety date" had come before she announced it, just as he knew she would. She was too careful, too cautious to do otherwise. He still hadn't confirmed to her his status on his impending parenthood or lack thereof, and she had left him to it, clear to think and muse, ponder and brood about it all that he needed. From her point of view, he had another six months to make his decision, and she wasn't going to push him. Not yet. He was on his best behavior, not wanting to cause her any undue stress, even if he wouldn't admit it, even to himself. He did know that despite his own ambiguous feelings on parenthood, hers were very definite, after all, she had all but given up before their "accident" and he didn't want to do anything to her that might cause her and the parasite any higher risk than she already carried.
Greg House found that he was changing, for the first time in a long time he found that he might actually want to care about another person beyond his own needs…

10. It had been a month, a month since she had burst into his office that day, and more than three months had passed since that fateful evening that should never have been…But it had, and life had gone on. To all observers, Gregory House was still the same self-centered jerk that he had always been, but to others, to the occasional few, and to those who knew him well, a change had occurred in the demeanor of the crotchety Diagnostician. He was gentler now, less likely to retort with such vitriol in his voice, and he could be found far more often at the jogging park, though not on his usual bench watching the joggers as they passed by. No, now his place had changed, and the difference was a reflection upon him and his recent status in life. For now he could sometimes be found on another bench, this one at a diagonal to the set of swings and the jungle gym there in the park. It was not obvious, not directly in front of the shrieking, yelling, running, scraping, giggling, laughing, falling, chasing children; but from its vantage point one could easily look from the corner of one's eye and view all the goings on in that sawdust covered area which regularly saw so much childhood-filled humanity. And if you were observant, and lucky, passers-by would sometimes note the single, gruff man with the dark wood cane propped unobtrusively by his side, sitting, and watching, staring unblinkingly at the happy families as they played, before pushing himself up off the bench and making his slow, limping way back down the path from which he had come.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Gregory House might not dislike children as much as he had previously believed. After all, everybody lies…

11. Just as he had changed emotionally, she had changed physically. He had kept an eye on her, watching from the time he had suspected until the day she had confirmed it, and on into the present, when she was three months from her due date, and life was becoming more difficult for her. Almost immediately the nausea had set in, his first clue that she was pregnant, almost a month before she realized it herself. She had passed the feeling off as a touch of the 'flu, but he had suspected, and after a week of watching and tracking her whereabouts and her avoidances of certain smells and areas, he was nearly certain. At four months she had switched to flat dress shoes, decreasing her already small size into something even more diminutive. He, of course, teased her about her new status mercilessly, but secretly he had come to find that this new version of his Dean was awakening something in him, something foreign, something he did not know he possessed. He wanted to protect her, care for her, for the first time there was a fierce feeling of annoyance when another doctor looked at her in a manner he did not consider appropriate. At first he shrugged it off, not wanting to admit that she had any sort of hold over him, but the feeling became more pronounced as the months went by. At five months she had completely abandoned any sort of regular business wear, and had switched entirely to maternity skirts and jackets. She also bought a larger lab coat, one that was better able to cover her expanding waistline. He watched her as she now spent more time in her office, more time on her couch and less time wandering the hospital halls. By six months she was obviously pregnant, and clinic patients would occasionally ask after her due date and about the gender of the baby. He watched as her ankles began to swell slightly and she could most often be seen holding her back whenever she wasn't sitting down.
Greg House watched, and waited, and wondered, not for the first time, just what sort of mother Lisa Cuddy might be to a child of his.

12. She had met him in his office that day, already tired at only eleven in the morning, but still with that ethereal beauty that House had come to recognize as something peculiar to her while pregnant. He had always thought she was most enticing when she was angry, but this quieter version of her was quite possibly even more attractive. He had strolled through his office door, not particularly observant as he checked the conference room for his Ducklings before turning to his desk, only just barely able to hide the shock of seeing her seated in his place, two small hands resting comfortably on the baby and a solicitous look in her eye. Before he had a chance to badger her or make a typical sexist remark, she spoke up, asking him, bluntly, if he would be free that afternoon. Curious as to what she might have in mind for him, he answered in the affirmative, and was given a cryptic response in return. He found that the rest of the morning and early afternoon passed far too slowly, and he was ready and almost eager to discover what might be waiting for him on the second floor, room 214 at three o'clock that afternoon when five till three finally rolled around. He was surprised when he stepped off the elevator that he hadn't remembered that the second floor housed the maternity ward, which only meant one thing that he could think of. House wasn't at all certain that he wanted to share in this particular moment, but his curiosity was, as always, a far more demanding ruler of his actions than his fears. He found room 214 to be a waiting area, five women sitting in chairs along the walls in various stages of maternity, and two small children playing quietly in a corner. He looked around for a moment, suddenly feeling uncomfortable in the extreme, before being hailed by the receptionist and lead down a short corridor to another smaller room. Inside he found just what he had expected. A very pregnant Lisa Cuddy, and an ultrasound machine. She had decided to find out the sex of the baby, and had wanted him to be present at the time.
That evening, Gregory House taped a peculiar picture to his refrigerator door and began to wonder about the nature of fatherhood.

13. At eight months pregnant, Lisa Cuddy was officially on maternity leave, and finally found time to finish the guestroom turned nursery that she had been too busy to complete over the past six months. The crib had been put together, the bassinet and blankets ready and waiting, walls painted a pale sky blue, and thick carpeting stretched from wall to wall. The changing table was fully stocked and the diaper pail was ready for use. And still the room seemed to be missing something, something she couldn't quite seem to put a finger on exactly. It was into those thoughts that a familiar thumping of wood on wood reached her ears, and Lisa Cuddy knew exactly who was at her front door. He greeted her with a sheepish smile and an uncharacteristic caress before calling to Chase who was lugging a large box from the car to the porch. An hour later and the glider had been put together and was placed in the corner of the nursery, and a grubby Dr. Chase made a hurried exit from his boss's home. Cuddy was surprised to find herself on the couch a few hours later, awakening from an impromptu nap and wondering just whose chest she had been sleeping on. Looking up, she found that her "pillow" had likewise nodded off, legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed, two big Nike tennis shoes planted on her coffee table. Cuddy smiled slightly to herself, and was about to get up when she realized that she was rather trapped in her current position by two long arms, one around her shoulders and the other hand resting splayed on her abdomen.
Gregory House dreamed of a petite little girl with laughing blue eyes and dark ringlet curls, a stethoscope around her neck and a giggled cry of "Daddy, look, Daddy!" echoing in his ears.

14. It started, appropriately, if annoyingly, enough, a week and three days early, at about two in the morning. House was asleep, having only gone to bed an hour before, and was not pleased to be awakened by the strident ringing of the phone next to his bed. A groggy set of meaningless syllables was muttered into the receiver before the sound of her voice, breathless and a bit frightened, met his ears. She told him to come over, to pick her up, that it wasn't a false alarm and that she had been in labor for most of the evening, but that her contractions had finally become regular. House struggled up from his bed as quickly as a middle-aged cripple could, assuring her that he was coming, and would be there shortly. He was surprised to find that she had sounded so panicked. He knew, first hand, that she had everything planned out for every eventuality, and her fear somehow shook him far more than the end result of the next few hours could. The drive to her house took only a few minutes, and soon he was barreling down her entryway, calling all the while. She met him in the hall, moving slowly and deliberately, and he lead her to the car before starting the short drive to the hospital. Once there, she was taken to her room, given a gown, and was hooked up to various monitors and IV lines. The rest of the night and the following morning found her walking up and down the hallways, pushing an IV stand with one hand and clinging to a middle-aged diagnostician with the other. For House, the hours seemed to drag into eternity as he watched her fight off pain and fatigue, progress coming slowly due partly to her age, but moreso to her status as a first time mother. All three of the Ducklings and Wilson stopped by at various points of the morning, happy to send their congratulations and to lend moral support . Wilson even walked with Cuddy for a time, to give House's leg a rest. Finally, at eleven that next morning, Cuddy's water broke and she moved into transition. By lunchtime she was in bed to stay, and had found new and creative things to call the father of her baby, his family, his parentage, his huge head and wide shoulders, not to mention his more sensitive anatomy, and general existence. Four o'clock found the Dean of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching hospital wheeled into delivery and House found himself amazed at the strength of her grip. By five the House/Cuddy baby had yet to make an appearance, but everyone was well aware of the fact that she had dark hair, and lots of it. There was even some later jokes made over the fact that the baby's hair and the baby could have two different times of delivery on the birth certificate. By seven the ordeal was over, with the newest member of PPTH, Abigail Elizabeth House-Cuddy weighing in at a healthy 8lbs. 4oz, and 20 inches. And, of course, the famous black Cuddy hair was at least 2 inches long, making a more accurate measurement of twenty-two inches, according to a certain gimpy diagnostician. House wanted to amend the measurement officially, but Cuddy threatened to beat him to death with his own cane if he did.
Gregory House discovered that he had never actually known a feeling quite like what assailed him at 7:07pm on a Sunday evening in May when he looked down upon the wailing form of his tiny daughter for the first time.

15. She was tiny, she was red, she was wrinkly…and she was the most amazing thing he had ever seen. For once, not even the great Houseian intellect could puzzle out how such a tiny little creature could have so suddenly become the center of his bustling and bristling universe. But there she was. And there he was. And anyone with half a brain could see that she already had the grumpy diagnostician fully enveloped in her tiny feminine wiles. It was only a matter of time before she ruled his existence. She was wrapped in a pink blanket, as befitting her status as a baby girl, the mandatory, though ridiculous looking, beanie covering her tiny head, and most of her now famous hair. Her eyes were dark, dark blue, nearly black, giving no hint as to what shade they would lighten into in a few weeks time. She was so tiny, so incredibly small and fragile there in his hands. His long pianists fingers were easily the length of her tiny arms, and her head fit comfortably in one large hand. He sat with her, staring down as she pondered right back up at him, eager and curious already, though sleep would soon claim her, as it had already done her exhausted mother. He had never known a feeling like his current state, it was beyond explanation, and certainly beyond words. For a few moments, Gregory House was not the gruff and grumpy diagnostician, nor was he the middle-aged cripple on the park bench; he was not the narcissistic bastard of clinic fame, no.
For in those few moments, Gregory House had become a Father.