The Huddysucker Proxy
A/N – this is a one shot alternative ending to last Monday's episode. If Cuddy wasn't in this relationship just for herself, she'd have cared enough to notice the lost and sad look in House's eyes and the episode would have ended after an extra scene. This is the extra scene. It's loosely based on the 1994 movie The Hudsucker Proxy where a young business school graduate was hired to be in charge of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam. Picture Martha Masters being groomed as the next Dean of Medicine at PPTH, and you get "The Huddysucker Proxy." If you're a Huddy fan or if you're a fan of the Martha Masters character, you probably ought to skip this story.
"Lisa Cuddy MD, Dean of Medicine" read the nameplate on her office door. She'd studied that nameplate more often recently, wondering if she really still deserved that title and that job. For fifteen years she'd been overseeing her own mother's medical care every time her mother came through those clinic doors. For fourteen years and eleven months, she honestly thought her mother was a hypochondriac. Lisa Cuddy was afraid of her mother, so afraid of her mother that she would not grow enough of a backbone to insist that her mother go to another internist. She had to admit to herself that what she was really afraid of, in regard to Arlene, was losing what little respect she thought her mother had for her. She thought that as long as she continued prescribing fake treatments and ordering tests that she had no intention of following up on, she and her mother could maintain this fragile relationship. Her mother would think Lisa was providing expert medical care and everything would be fine. She claimed that ever since her father died, she and her mother didn't lie to each other "when asked questions directly".
When Arlene Cuddy presented to the hospital acutely ill, her boyfriend tried numerous times to point out the reasons why neither of them should be treating Arlene. Her boyfriend, who up until recently appeared to have little regard for ethical propriety, had been pointing out to her all along why neither of them should be involved in Arlene's medical care. Maybe Masters is having a good influence on him, Lisa thought initially as she walked through her office doors the first time House tried to refuse Arlene's case. Lisa had just laid an incredibly heavy guilt trip on him, saying Arlene was her mother, trying to convince him that if he really loved Lisa, he'd take Arlene's case. He tried to refuse to take Arlene's case, and Cuddy had to resort to an all-time low in order to coerce him into taking her case against his will. After she sought out the safety of her office, Cuddy secretly had to admit he was right. He should have refused Arlene's case. So should she. Masters was right, and so was House. This case posed ethical dilemmas that neither of them should be involved in. Not even Arlene wanted House taking care of her. Yet, even though it went against what she knew was the right thing to do, Cuddy was afraid of losing her mother's respect and she was afraid of ending up alone. She'd frequently accused House of stooping to all-time low behavior (childish, underhanded, in poor taste) yet she'd just done something even he would never do.
Arlene came close to dying several times while they tried to figure out what was wrong with her. Numerous times during the diagnostic process, House tried over and over again to convince Cuddy that they should not be taking care of Arlene. When he was forced to take care of her, Masters objected, and House had to find ways to throw Masters off the trail. It took Masters awhile to catch on to the trickery, because contrary to what Lisa Cuddy bragged to everyone else, Masters was not House's intellectual equal. House could out-con her any day of the week. So it took Masters awhile to catch on to what House was doing. When she finally did catch on, she did what she always did, and made a beeline to Lisa Cuddy's office to rat on her boss.
It took watching House cut into her mother's hip without any local anesthesia, and seeing her mother gasp in pain while she was literally on her deathbed, for Lisa to realize that her mother was not a hypochondriac. For fifteen years the symptoms she had been reporting were due to the faulty hip implant, a device that Lisa had just found out was the subject of a class action lawsuit. She'd ignored her mother's complaints, treated her like the hypochondriac she thought her mother was, and in one swoop of a knife her boyfriend proved exactly how out of touch Lisa Cuddy actually was. Perhaps she wasn't really "a real doctor" like her mother claimed, and like House had told her many times in the past. She was beginning to focus on the idea of giving up her medical practice and focusing all of her attention on becoming a better hospital administrator.
For years and years now, she'd been watching House even more than he watched her. She would say, over and over again, how much he turned people away because of his broodiness, his lack of ability to commit to a relationship. Even while sitting next to her dying mother, her mother said she could do better than being with a gloomy guy like House and Cuddy never refuted that statement. She professed to love this man, yet she had no comeback when her own mother verbalized the same thing Cuddy had been saying for years.
It took House cutting into her mother's hip for Cuddy to realize that she'd been wrong on so many levels. On the surface, she was wrong for assuming that fifteen years of medical problems could be attributed to hypochondria. She was wrong for forcing her boyfriend to do something that even he knew was wrong. She had strong-armed him into taking Arlene's case by threatening that if he didn't, it would somehow doom their relationship even more than it was already doomed. She was wrong for forcing House into a relationship that neither of them really wanted, simply because both of them were just afraid of ending up alone.
She liked to think that she was morally superior to House, that her moral superiority would somehow be a good influence on House. Lisa had to admit to herself that this was probably the reason she herself hired Masters rather than letting House do his own hiring. Masters was like Cuddy in one way only. Lisa looked at Masters and saw what she thought was a reflection of herself; someone who always took the moral high road. Since House never let morals and ethics get in the way of good medical decision-making, Lisa thought that Masters would be a good influence on him.
Now all of that just blew up in her face. Just because someone always takes the moral high road doesn't make them morally superior to anyone else. Taking the moral high road is fine if you're willing to compromise when necessary; if you're willing and able to see when the moral high road isn't the best thing for a patient. Masters was young and if Cuddy hadn't forced Masters to work for House before she was really qualified to do so, maybe Masters might be able to learn that lesson before she actually became a doctor. Lisa Cuddy didn't have a similar excuse.
So here she laid in bed pretending to be asleep, trying to ignore the regret that was growing inside her. Her boyfriend was wide awake next to her, caressing her elbow with the saddest, loneliest look in his eyes that she'd ever seen. He's not alone, yet he's lonely, she thought.
Unbeknownst to her, Wilson was lying alone in his own bed at his home, comforted only by a cat. Wilson was clutching the cat like a lifeline, wishing that someone else besides Sarah was with him. He kept petting Sarah, talking softly to her, running his hand through her fur, wishing he'd never kicked House out of the condo. If he'd never kicked House out, maybe this whole nightmarish thing with Cuddy and Sam never would have happened. But it did, and Wilson was finding it more and more difficult to tamp down the regret he had for continuing to deny feelings that were so blatantly evident.
Lying next to her boyfriend, Lisa finally stopped trying to tamp down the regret that just wouldn't go away. She opened her eyes, had to catch herself to keep from crying.
"House, we need to talk."
.