Disclaimer: Not mine.
Before the sadness kills them both
-l-l-
On the first day, she doesn't cry. She watches. Hides the shock in the depths of her blue eyes and observes Wilson as he goes back to his car, apologizes.
'You didn't have to tell me in person, James,' she mutters. It's a five-hours drive back to Princeton and she wants to ask him in, offer her support and prevent the car accident she knows is waiting to happen. But she can't, really. Can't let him back in her life. Can't – won't – let herself remember.
'I know,' he smiles in spite of himself, eyes puffy and red. 'I just felt like I had to –' but then he trails off and it's silent again. She tries to say she understands but the words get stuck in her throat and she swallows heavily, wonders why it doesn't feel as good as she thought it would.
-l-l-
The next day, her alarm goes off at five and the news start to resurface slowly, surreptitiously. She takes Rachel to school and discusses the girl's latest improvements with her teacher; keeps her eyes fixed on the car in front of her as she drives to work, studies its 'baby on board' bumper sticker until she can practically draw it by heart. In her office, she doesn't let herself think, shuts down all the openings her conscience could have used to creep up and ingests as much coffee as she can to keep her gaze focused on the various files and sheets of paper that litter her desk. But after a while, the writing grows narrower and narrower and the same myriad of patients keep showing up hour after hour and the point comes where she can't even recognize the men from the women anymore. Around one, when the amount of unsolvable problems lying on her shoulders becomes almost unbearable, she forgets to eat and falls asleep with her head flat on her keyboard and she sees herself in another office, at another time, buried under the exact same budget reports. He bursts in, asks her for a piece of her liver and she can't help him. Her eyes snap open before she can see how the nightmare ends.
At 3 pm, she calls Gabriella and tells her not to pick Rachel up from school today, smiles at her daughter when the little girl spots her mother waiting for her outside the building. She packs up a few clothes, puts Rachel's backpack in the trunk and heads north – because the sun doesn't fit her mood – but nowhere near home.
God knows she doesn't need anyone else.
-l-l-
On the third day, she calls David saying she's needs a few days off with her daughter and it's been so long since she's last done that that no one in her world dares to complain. She turns to Rachel and fails to explain why she's not going to school today. Her phone is off and she looks around, realizes the motel they crashed in looks like it got stuck in the 1950s. It's a funny tribute to him, she tells herself, considering all the money he's spent on room service, hookers and champagne in his life.
Who cares? she asks. He didn't even give a damn about what she thought of him, anyway.
-l-l-
She takes Rachel to the beach, watches her play in the sand, continuously splashing water around herself. Cuddy listens to her as she invents stories that only she can understand: there's a castle and an flood and boats and pirates trying to take over and so much happiness in her daughter's voice it could fill the whole ocean. She hates him for saying she'd make a horrible mother.
Then she remembers there's no one to hate anymore.
-l-l-
Around six, they run back inside under the pouring rain and Cuddy decides to stay another night. The light in the bathroom seems about to go off at any moment and she washes Rachel's hair quickly but stops when her daughter asks with all the innocence of her youth, 'Mommy, why are you sad?'
'I'm not sad, baby.'
'Is it because there's a car in our house again?'
Cuddy's breath gets stuck half way through her throat, her blood frozen in her veins, but she hides it behind a smile and the sound of the running shower. 'What are you talking about, honey?'
'You know, when I was little. You were sad.'
Cuddy closes her eyes, sends Rachel to bed and lies down next to her, hand brushing through her child's soft, brown hair, but doesn't sleep.
-l-l-
On the fourth day, she only finds bacon for her daughter's breakfast and can already hear her mother's Jewish reprimands in her ears. She tells her that the poor kids who die of hunger in Africa everyday would probably be really happy to eat non-kosher food.
She drops Rachel off at Gabriella's and wins the imaginary argument.
For once.
-l-l-
When it's time for her to exit the car and head to work, her body just won't cooperate. She doesn't get out – she just can't do it. She stares. Sees her life go by before her eyes, remembers how scared she was when she left Princeton, how her sweaty palms kept shaking when she gripped the steering wheel. For the last four days she's been telling herself that what happened doesn't affect her, that she doesn't have the right to feel affected. She's already grieved for his loss.
Now, she's as independent as her childhood cat was when he decided he'd prefer living with the neighbors. She moved, met new people, looked for a job, found one. She saw lots of deans and lots of interesting offers scribbled on sheets of paper that made her eyes blurry and she had the dignity to turn them all down. Once David called out of blue asking for her help, her choice was already made.
She knows him from med school. He was taking over a small clinic out of state. He invited her over, showed her the building and she remembers driving there, walking in and just gaping. They needed everything: money, doctors, equipment, and it looked exhausting but so much more appealing than anything she'd ever seen before. It suited her mood, she thinks, the need she had to start over with something entirely new.
She's come a long way, she thinks as she locks her car. Today, five years later, every time she walks in, she knows she has a reason to be proud of what they did.
Of what she did without having House's reputation trapped inside four walls.
-l-l-
It's 6:58 pm. and she's about to leave when her beeper goes off. A drunk driver just lost control of his truck on the freeway and ended up lying flat in the middle of the road. The ER is packed within seconds, and Cuddy calls Gabriella immediately, asking her if she can watch Rachel for the night. They negotiate a little, talk about extra hours and college fees but the girl agrees eventually, under the condition that she can drop Rachel off before her morning class. She's a good kid, Cuddy knows, twenty-six and trying to go back to school while nannying on the side. Around one, one of the victims dies and David tells her there's nothing else she can do, hugs her and tells her to go home, then calls her back.
'Lisa!' He says. 'I know it's none of my business but,' then pauses. Typical. David reminds her a bit of Wilson that way – even if she doubts Wilson ever had an African-American grand-mother who could have given him David's dark skin and ebony hair – like an investigative journalist who apologizes before destroying a politician's career. Look, I'm really sorry to insist but did you sleep with that call girl or not? Its starts with an apology, something innocent and turns into the one question you've always wanted to avoid. 'I heard about Gregory House. I know he worked for you in Princeton. If you want to talk about it…'
She really does like David; he's a good friend, a good doctor. She knows he'd like to be a good boyfriend too, a good father to Rachel, but she just can't do it anymore. Can't let her trust fall into anyone else's hands. So she won't. 'I'm fine, David,' she tells him. 'I'll see you tomorrow'.
-l-l-
When she pushes past her front door that night, she lets her bag hit the floor and stares at the red light on her answering machine for a moment, terrified and speechless. It's Wilson, she knows, telling her what needs to be told. His voice is soft on the other end, distant. He's been crying, she can hear it. She hopes he has a shoulder to lean on. He gives her the date and time of the ceremony because he can't call it a funeral and she, she, she –
Oh, God.
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, out, in, out, in –
The message ends and it swims in her head.
She'd grown accustomed to him not being there. To thinking he was always somewhere else. To thinking leaving him was the best decision she'd ever made. To hating him and everything he was ever related to, because he tried to kill her and he tried to kill her daughter and she, she – she forgot how much it could hurt. How much he could hurt. He's gone, she thinks and all the memories start to flood back just like the ocean destroyed the fences Rachel had built around her tiny castle.
'House is gone,' Cuddy tells the woman on the other end of the phone in a whisper.
'If you want to delete this message, press 1 now,' is the only answer she gets.
So she hangs up and goes to bed. Closes her eyes and cries. And shakes. And it hurts. And she screams. And she feels like she's about to throw up but it hurts so, so much she can't even move and it lasts all night long and she's thankful Rachel's not there because she doesn't know what she'd do if she had to keep it quiet.
On the fourth day, it feels like the pain will never, ever stop.
-l-l-
The next morning, Gabriella drops Rachel off and Cuddy takes her to school in yesterday's choice of clothes, then collapses on the couch once again as soon as her daughter's gone. It's Friday today and she remembers all the times he told her to sleep in, come home early or every other alternative he could come up with so that they could spend more time together without having Rachel interrupting their make-out sessions. She remembers what the old days were like in the hospital, how she could talk to him, laugh with him, trust him. She remembers the thousand times he didn't help with her baby issues and the one time he did, with his tongue down her throat and her body shakes with tears when she realizes she's not even sure how that felt like anymore; what his chest felt under her fingers and how his heart used to beat against her ear. She remembers the first night she told him 'I love you' and the debris of his broken mirror scattered on the bedroom floor that hurt her bare feet the morning after. She remembers Vogler and Tritter and lies to herself. 'It's not my fault,' she says, 'it's not my fault, it's not my fault, it's not my fault,' because she knows she was always there to take care of him until the one time she wasn't. She understands quickly it's the memories that kill you, the images, the sounds, the breaths, the feelings that you can't just set on fire and watch turn into ashes. She didn't give a damn as to why he got back on drugs in the first place and left him for good when he crashed into her house.
She was right to do that, she knows, (or so everyone said), but it doesn't make it hurt less.
-l-l-
David shows up on her doorstep at two in the afternoon. He sees her messy hair and her red eyes but strangely enough, the first thing he asks her is, 'how long has it been since you last ate?'
She must look thinner, she thinks, but doesn't really care.
-l-l-
David cooks something for the both of them while she takes a shower and changes into a tank top and a pair of sweat pants. They eat on the couch with plastic cutlery and it's nice, until one thing leads to another and it gets – well – different. She forces herself to meet David's dark brown eyes when his knee parts her thighs and she wonders if maybe, just maybe, it can also drive a bit of her guilt away.
It's not the first time they've done that (the first time she was drunk, the second one he was getting divorced, and the third one they had lost a patient) but it's the first time it happens in the middle of the day and he can't just let her sleep and sneak out before dawn. She guesses the stereotypical good guy he is does it because he cares, because he knows it's easier this way. She's not yearning for commitment, acts like she doesn't trust anyone and he respects her wishes, decides he can just be content with the thought of helping her whenever she needs the emotional support.
He doesn't know who Gregory House was to her but he has a feeling this guy was more than a colleague, more than a friend, and hopes that the day he dies, Lisa will be at least half this shaken. 'You should go to that funeral,' he says, putting his tie back on. 'You need to get closure.'
She says she'll think about it then closes her eyes, her decision already made.
-l-l-
She spends the sixth day driving, first to her mother's house to drop off Rachel. Her sister opens the door and Cuddy wonders how much time she actually spends here, but she's too worn out to ask. She has lunch with the three of them and leaves right after, tells them it's because she doesn't want to get there too late. Her sister pretends she doesn't notice the dark circles under her eyes but Arlene doesn't have the tact to do so and she declares in her most patronizing tone 'you shouldn't go to that funeral, Lisa. No one should even care for that guy.' But Cuddy doesn't have the heart to fight so she says 'sure, Mom' and 'yes, Mom' and goes anyway.
-l-l-
It's another two hour drive to Princeton plus one more hour spent in front of Wilson's building, wondering if she should go in or not. When she finally works up the courage to ring his bell he's not even there (or he's sleeping – she's not really sure) so she just sticks a piece of paper on his door saying 'I'll be there tomorrow – Cuddy' and walks out, driving to the nearest hotel she can find.
-l-l-
On the last day, it feels like it's finally over when she walks inside the church, still operating under the impression that she doesn't really belong here. Surprisingly enough, she realizes, there are quite a lot of people at House's funeral (real people, she means, breathing, living souls), and it comforts her a bit, even if she knows that half of them are actually here thinking they'd like to be the one consoling the teary best friend. Brenda nods when she sees her and a few other nurses whisper as she gets closer to Wilson but Cuddy decides she really, really doesn't give a damn what people think of her at PPTH anymore.
House would be proud. She smiles.
She sits next to James (the one seat that no one else has dared to take) and puts her hand on his knee, squeezes gently, just to let him know she's there. 'You didn't have to come, Cuddy.'
'You didn't have to come tell me in person either and yet…'
He smiles, and a priest comes in. Behind him, she notices a large, closed, wooden box she hadn't seen before with a picture on it, the one that photographer took when she came in with her big belly and her Mirror syndrome. That memory sends Cuddy to places she'd rather not go back to and she'd like to tell him that he was right all along, that it was crazy, that she was crazy to risk that woman's life like that but it's much, much too late for that now. She breathes out softly, trying to control the tears stuck in her throat and whispers, 'This is a religious ceremony, Wilson.'
'Yeah.'
'So much for "there is no God", huh?'
'It's what his mother wanted. Since he doe – didn't believe in the afterlife, I didn't think he'd mind.'
She eyes the other end of the bench and sees an old woman crying. She looks over seventy, dressed in black, traditional, grieving. Her blond hair is pale, dried in that way that only old people know the secret of and tied up above her head in an elegant chignon. 'It's Blythe,' Wilson says to fill the silence. The priest starts speaking and Cuddy stops listening.
-l-l-
It's not until she finds herself staring at the hole in the ground that she realizes how tall he was. House would have been glad to give the workers some extra work, she thinks. He'd have called them stupid, not digging fast enough, not accurately enough. The coffin fits in perfectly though, and she wonders if they rehearse for funerals too, just like they do for weddings. She remembers him complaining about his feet not fitting inside her bed and herself telling him to suck it up or else she was going to go buy one of those ones with water in them, just so she could feel sea-sick and throw up on him while they had sex. She looks at his sobbing mother from the corner of her eye as the priest says something about how the dead keep living in our hearts and thinks his father must have been the tall one.
-l-l-
She didn't mean to, but she lingers. She knows she shouldn't, knows the ones who stay are just supposed to be part of the family but she can't help it. She sees Wilson's fan club go first, some of his mother's close friends, and then a crying Cameron, Chase, Foreman, Hadley, Taub and a woman who's not his wife. She wonders what happened to him when he got out of prison, what happened to the fellows, if he kept working at PPTH, if they gave him his license back. All she knows is that he took two years and got out after eighteen months, and that she didn't oppose his parole. Her lawyer said she could, her mother said she should, but she realized she didn't care all that much, as long as he didn't come anywhere near her. She had a few nightmares about it, but he didn't.
As the crowd gathered around his body empties progressively, she notices someone she hadn't seen before inside the church. Her eyes are red, her hair now cut short but Cuddy recognizes her instantly, with her dark brown eyes and the golden cross hanging from her neck and the weeding ring draped around her fourth finger. 'She's still with Mark, then,' she tells Wilson.
Stacy stands still for five more minutes before she moves, goes to talk a bit with his mother – a privilege that comes with having lived with him for five years, Cuddy thinks, (and realizes eleven months comes nowhere near it). It doesn't hurt anymore, though, not as much as did to the first time she saw the both of them together. Just like everything else in life, jealousy fades with time, disappears, dies. Wilson fidgets a little next to her, wondering if he's ever going to be forgiven for siding with his best friend during his first break-up and breathes again when Stacy makes her way towards them.
She hugs him and nods at Cuddy, because she's civil and well-educated. She tells him House was a doctor and knew what was coming, knew his liver wouldn't cope with his Vicodin abuse forever. She utters platitudes in his ear that are supposed to make him feel better, things like 'he lived life to the fullest' and 'he did care, you know. Just didn't know how to show it' and Cuddy wants to laugh at the irony. Stacy has always had this incredible ability to find excuses for his behavior. 'I'm sorry for what he did to you, Lisa. He was just scared to lose what you guys had.'
But Stacy's the only who knows how high the highs are and how low the lows are and how much the guilt weighs on your shoulders when you finally have to give up.
-l-l-
With time, Cuddy's body goes numb from standing in the cold for too long and Wilson has to squeeze her arm a little to snap her out of her haze. 'Lisa,' he says, struggles to find the right words, 'I'm going to go back inside. But you can stay if you want.' So she thanks him and hugs him and tells him to take care because she knows she'll probably be gone tonight.
-l-l-
In the end, his mother's continual sobs make her sick to her stomach when she thinks what it would be like if something happened to Rachel and she decides to go. Kids are not supposed to die before their parents. She knows that when it happens, it's not always a tragedy people can overcome. So she takes one last look behind her – at him – then goes back her own way. Until she hears a voice calling her back, 'I did everything I could,' it says and Cuddy stops.
'I did everything I could,' it starts again, with more strength this time. 'I raised him the best I could. I gave him everything a little boy would want to have.'
'Ms. House, I –'
'I know it wasn't always perfect at home, I know John wasn't always very kind to him, but I – all this hate he had inside him it just…' Well, it's easy to say that now, Cuddy thinks, and not do anything when you see your husband mistake your son for a punching bag every day, but she doesn't say anything. 'Now, of all the people who came here today, very few of them really appreciated him, you know. He was just so – angry, I guess, he took it out on everyone else. Today his best friend came, his ex-girlfriend and all the others were co-workers who didn't really know him; and you, but I'm sure you're only there because you were a good boss and thought it was important to pay your respects.'
Cuddy opens her mouth but no sound comes out. She watches the tears silently rolling down Blythe's face and begins to wonder if she should join her. 'I know my –' his mother struggles, 'I know what my son did, Dr. Cuddy. I don't know why he drove into that woman's house and – and he never told me who she was so I can't really tell but Greg – Greg was mean to some people in his life but he was a good kid, you know?'
Cuddy watches her struggle to breathe for a moment, sobs altering her breathing, before she realizes she was actually expected to say something. 'I'm sure he loved you very much Ms. House,' Cuddy mutters, her throat tensing a bit more with each word. He never told his mother, she repeats to herself, he never told his mother.
A moment passes but neither of them moves, each caught up in their own thoughts. 'I hear you have a little girl now Dr. Cuddy?'
'Yes,' she nods.
'How old is she?'
'Six years old'
'Oh I remember him at that age, a little bundle of joy,' Blythe says and Cuddy's not sure whether to believe her. She can't really imagine House being happy. Ever. But again, she didn't know him at that time. 'You should go Dr. Cuddy. Go and hug her for me. Nobody lasts forever, you know?'
'Yeah,' Cuddy says. She does know.
-l-l-
A/N: Heart-breaking, I know, just wanted to do something different. Hope you liked it anyway. For my usual readers, just know that 26 letters will be updated shortly, the next two chapters having just been beta-ed. By the way, I'd also like to thank my wonderful beta Pandorama for everything's she's done for me.