I know I promised you a one shot in the far future, however, a sleepless night caused by stomach pains gave me this story and it had to come out. Sorry for the angst and the corny storyline...but as I said: it needed to be out there and shared with you.
The wet street wound itself like a silver ribbon through the dark landscape and Cuddy found it hard to concentrate on the road. She had been taking this way back and forth for years. At least twice daily. Yet, she had always found it hard to drive in the dark when it had rained. Because it made everything look unreal, turned it all upside down, with traffic lights being reflected in the puddles in the streets and raindrops defracting spots of light into twinkling stars.
When she finally had to pull over to take a break she knew this day would be different.
House was standing at the window in his office, watching the raindrops running down on the glass, each one of them on its own odd path, only to ultimately give up their individuality by merging into one wet stripe in the rim of the window sill. Subconsciously, he was massaging his thigh when he noticed that it wasn't at all hurting as much as it usually did on rainy days. Maybe the new pain management regimen was finally starting to work.
Though, when he turned away from the window and felt the familiar throbbing fading in he knew this day wouldn't be any different from the other days.
It wasn't until long after noon that he was proven wrong.
He was on his way to the cafeteria when he noticed an unusual rush in the corner of his eye. Since rush in a hospital almost always meant that there was a 'code blue' going on somewhere, he turned around. However, his eyes must have played a trick on him since the scene in front of him displayed nothing but people of various sizes and colors passing him, working at their usual pace, chatting with each other, each one of them following the simple determination of somehow getting through another ordinary day.
Except for one person that seemed out of the ordinary, running down the hallway, heading for her office.
House was intrigued. For two reasons. Because it was an aberration. And because that person was Cuddy.
When he entered her office a few minutes later, his eyes fell on her lab coat that had been thrown over a chair carelessly. Then he noticed the door to her private bathroom being ajar.
That moment Cuddy came out of that bathroom, looking caught. House noted the redness in her face and the lack of color on her lips. As if she had just splashed her face and rinsed her mouth with cold, fresh water.
Their looks met and suddenly, he felt caught, too.
"It's a little late for morning sickness, don't you think?" he freed himself of the awkwardness and Cuddy instantly reacted.
"Food poisoning", she shot back.
"Good", he replied, noting the relief he felt. "Though the irony of you being pregnant now that you already have a child would be funny", he added and she passed him, picking up her coat from the chair and putting it back on.
"Yes, hilariously", she replied sarcastically and left him alone in her office.
House watched her and cocked his head.
"Really funny...", he mumbled to himself thoughtfully.
* * *
Cuddy rolled up her sleeves and smiled at the doctor in front of her.
"Thank you for taking care of this on such short notice, John", she said, trying to hide her discomfort with the situation.
The gastroenterologist smiled at her as he drew her blood. "No problem. You'll see. By tomorrow afternoon you'll be back on your feet, bossing us slackers around again as if nothing ever happened."
Though it was meant as a comfort coming from an old friend and colleague Cuddy blushed irritatedly.
Being sick was nothing she could relate to. It was something that happened to others. Therefore it unsettled her, just as much as it unsettled every doctor at the notion of a symptom, instantly thinking of a countless number of differentials with lethal outcome.
She got up, feeling a little shaky and left the gastroenterology office where she had just scheduled an upper GI endoscopy for herself first thing in the morning.
When the door had closed behind her and she was already heading for the elevator at the other end of the floor, House's head appeared from behind a corner.
His eyes followed her noting a flaw in her usually so determined, elegant gait.
* * *
Bursting into her office an hour later he found her sitting on her couch, leafing through a brochure of neurosurgical microscopes.
She looked up at him.
"You're anemic", he accused her and she hesitated.
"Slightly", she replied, already regretting giving him an answer at all. "And I've always been. Hence, the routine control", she quickly added.
"Which you could have had done down here where there's a dozen of nurses willing to stick their needles into anything that would give blood", he retorted.
"Only I actually care for confidentiality. Something you might wanna look up in the dictionary again", she said and put the brochure aside, folding her hands in her lap. They felt cold and stiff.
"How did you find out this time?"
"Please, that endo-scoper is as predictable as the outcome of a moth in a room with a lit candle", he rolled his eyes. "I didn't know there were actually people out there using their mother's maiden name as a password."
"Weird enough that you know his mother's maiden name", Cuddy answered, feeling a wave of nausea crawling up on her again.
"Also, if it was a routine test, then why did you order a coagulation panel?" he dug deeper.
"To - routinely - check if my coagulation is intact", she replied, stressing her words annoyedly.
House squinted at her skeptically.
She seemed distressed, barely able to hold herself straight.
And judging by the alarmed look on her face when she realized he was eyeing her, he was right.
"Stand up", he commanded her all of a sudden and she froze.
"Why? You wanna dance?", she tried to seem unimpressed.
"You can hardly pull yourself together", he said, now sounding almost worried.
Cuddy clenched her teeth and got up, in an attempt to prove him wrong and looked at him sourly.
"Don't you have Foreman to annoy?" she tried to get rid of him and moved to her desk in need of something to hold on. The nausea was now turning into tearing cramps.
"Yah, but he's not the one who sprays his vomit all over China today", House replied and Cuddy glanzed at him censoriously.
"I'm not one of your puzzles", she stated. "Go. Play with the other kids."
That moment her body gained control over her discipline and she rushed to her bathroom.
House followed her, but remained outside, leaning against the wall next to the bathroom door, not granting her any privacy in punishment of her denial.
"You want me to hold your hair?"
"No", she shouted between two gag reflexes.
"Aw, have you no sense of romance?" he shouted back and noticed the absence of any kind of reply.
When nothing but silence followed for another three seconds he dared to open the door and peeked inside.
"Oh", he comprehended at the sight in front of him, and felt a twitch shooting through his spine.
Cuddy was half kneeling, half sitting on the floor. Her right hand and arm were basing themselves on the floor, holding up her body that was possessed by a tearing pain. Visible and tangible to someone like him who woke up to pain and went to bed with pain every day of his life. With her left hand she was holding on to the toilet lid that she had just closed to cover what she had obviously been trying to cover all day.
But the bloody fingerprints on the white porcelain gave it away.
House rushed in and grabbed her blood-smeared hand, seeing that she had used it to wipe her mouth with it.
Their eyes met.
But Cuddy was calm, dissociating from a body that was not hers. Not willing to surrender to a medical emergency she usually was on the other side of. Now being out of control.
However, the only person she would ever trust her life with was with her.
Therefore, she didn't move when House checked her carotid pulse and just let him, closing her eyes in embarrassment.
"You're tachycardic", he stated and avoided her eyes, afraid of meeting the fear in them that he felt inside. "Has it been looking like this the whole day?" he asked her pointing at the blood on her hand.
She shrugged her shoulders in annoyance. "I don't know, I didn't look at it", she snapped back.
"You're a doctor, for God's sake. Now was it mainly blood, coffee-ground, bile?"
"Maybe coffee-ground", she finally admitted unwillingly, just to make him stop asking questions.
House nodded and looked at her to assess the severity of the situation.
She was pale and panting, but pulling herself together with such discipline that it made House wonder how long she must have been feeling this way without anybody noticing.
"Are you still able to stand up?" he asked her, knowing there was not much time until she would go into schock.
She shook her head. "No." It sounded meek, but stubborn.
"I thought so", he said and left her in the bathroom to get help.
Two minutes later a team of nurses came in, bringing a stretcher with them.
And another two minutes later House left Cuddy in the hands of the gastroenterologist whose predictability he somehow suddenly felt comforting.
* * *
It took the gastroenterologists ninety minutes to stop the bleeding from two gastric ulcers via emergency endoscopy and after those ninety minutes House found himself standing at her bedside, looking down at her like at any other patient.
But she was right. She wasn't one of his puzzles.
Gently tapping his finger against the back of her hand he woke her.
After the blurry shapes in the room around her had transformed into actual things Cuddy turned her head and was surprised to see him.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
No guards, no mask to hide behind. For either of them.
"Hm", she mumbled. "I'm drugged. So, I guess I'm okay."
Her drowsy hoarse voice somehow turned him on and he smiled.
"Finally you learn to embrace the concept", he replied and she smiled in return.
"Well, I wouldn't say 'embrace', but it's appreciated."
She closed her eyes again and let herself fall into the indifference.
"Enjoy it while it lasts", he mumbled and turned away to leave her.
* * *
He didn't know where to go, though. On days like these when things were out of balance anything that was still in balance felt wrong.
Like the ignorance of time that simply passed, finishing this day with a setting sun in the West, just like any other day.
Today he didn't feel like driving home, or sleeping, watching an x-rated movie late at night or downing drinks with Wilson, even though he had offered that.
He just felt like stopping time to acknowledge the oddity of this day.
So he decided to stay in the hospital and eventually fell asleep in his chair in his office.
"Have you been here all night?" Wilson's voice woke him hours later and House flinched, giving him a grim look.
"What time is it?" he asked, collecting himself.
"Ten past five."
"And what are you doing here?"
"A Leukemia patient died", Wilson replied with a strange mixture of casualness and caring in his voice. "Are you okay?" he asked and House broke eye contact.
"Why wouldn't I be? I'm not the one with the bleeding stomach."
"Yet, you aren't at home in your bed, where most of the other sane people are right now."
"Not in Europe they aren't", House childishly retorted and Wilson rolled his eyes.
"I just think it's a good sign. She is a friend. It's good that this gets to you. It's human", he explained.
"Yes, I'm a human. Great breakthrough, Dr. Freud. Therapy session's over", he grunted and got up.
Wilson watched him leave and shook his head in defeat.
* * *
House pushed Cuddy's office door open with the rubbery tip of his cane. The pale morning light was filling the room with a fresh glow and House walked around.
The bathroom had already been cleaned, only a black trace on the floor from one of the stretcher wheels reminded the insider of the incidents of the previous day.
Not really sure what he was looking for, House sat down behind her desk and leaned back.
His eyes wandered over the desk, that was now so naturally part of her office while it was actually coming from another time. Another place. Almost another life.
He hesitated when he spotted something small white jammed between the floor and the leg of a chair across the room, almost glowing in the sallow light of the approaching morning. He got up and found the white object to be a pill. From its shape House could tell he had seen the pill before. This was a hint and there weren't many places where people usually hid things.
Especially medication, which needed to be available at any time and also safely stored away not to reveal any weaknesses of the owner to the public.
Within a minute House had broken the lock of her desk drawer. Inside he found three boxes of proton pump inhibitors and antibiotics, all of them parts of the treatment of peptic ulcer.
House sat down on her chair again, brooding with a glare in his eyes. In front of him on her desk he saw numerous silver-framed pictures of Rachael wearing all shades of pink and purple, smiling at the camera, crying into the camera, displaying no teeth, one tooth, two...and then he understood.
It hit him like a wall.
Had he really missed all this? That all this time she had been out here. Her life had moved on just as much as his had, her struggles continuing while he was fighting his own battle inside the safe halls of a mental institution. But she hadn't been safe at all out here.
While he had lost control over his pain and had it allowed to take over, to drown his sanity in an addiction, she herself had tried to stay in control all the time, afraid of what would happen if she didn't.
She had tried to conceal that she herself had her own share of pain, had a weakness, a human side. And just like him she had not seen when it had got out of control, when it had put her in danger.
Like him she had been in denial of her vulnerability, not willing to admit that she, too, had the right for a breakdown every now and then. And that had hurt her even more, and she had kept ignoring it, struggling to regain control of her pain. And her life. That had been out of balance without him.
The door fell shut with a shattering noise when he left her office to see her.
* * *
The sun still lurking beyond the horizon it was already drawing diffuse shadows on the walls and floors inside the hospital.
House looked at Cuddy in the distance, spreading the curtain in front of the glass window of her room apart with his cane.
She was lying in the blue pallor of dawn, curled up on the side, like an embryo. Sound asleep, looking so small.
And he understood why she hadn't paid him a single visit in all that time he was gone: It had hurt her, too.
Her pride would never allow her to let it shine through. Except for those few moments of weakness when their eyes would meet across a room in silent concordance. Or their lips…
His hand reached for the doorknob and he entered her room. When he was standing right by her bedside he smiled mischievously.
With a loud "Whoopsie", he gave an empty glass on her table a shove, so that it fell, waking her up as it landed on the floor and broke.
Cuddy startled and opened her eyes, firing angry looks in his direction. House didn't know she could look that angry so early in the morning and smiled, pleased with himself.
"Oh God, I hope I didn't wake you", he faked his consternation.
Cuddy sat up in her bed, noting the different quality of the pain she was feeling now.
She looked at him grimly.
"You look tired", she stated.
"Yah and you look dead", he replied. "The only thing giving you some color is that tube sticking out of your nose with the bloody stomach content in it."
That silenced her and she looked down on her hands, that were still feeling cold and stiff.
"So. How long has this been going on?" he asked while sitting down on a chair next to her bed and she looked up in surprise.
"A while…", she replied. "A month, maybe two", she added, shrugging her shoulders in fake indifference.
He nodded, not believing a word. "Well. Kudos. That was quite a show", he retorted.
Looking at her sitting upright in her bed while she was obviously still in pain made the pictures of the previous evening painfully reappear in front of his inner eye.
He felt like he was choking on the inside and he averted his gaze.
She smiled shyly, concerned to see him being so obviously affected by this.
"Thank you", she tried to ease off the heavy silence between them.
This made him look at her again. "No need to thank me. I just happened to be there."
She nodded, understanding the meta level of this reply.
But there was something else working inside him and Cuddy patiently sat in silence with him, hoping for it to find its way out instead of merely resolving, like it usually did.
After what seemed like a minute their eyes met again and somehow the heaviness in the room had lifted.
"You know, eventually you'll have to start eating again", he started and she leaned back in her bed, feeling the pain decreasing.
"I hope so", she replied and he looked down again.
"But maybe you wanna eat something real for a change. Instead of that low-carb-tofu diet you usually indulge yourself with."
"Like what?" she asked, suddenly intrigued.
"A home-cooked meal…" his voice trailed off mysteriously.
"Home as in 'House'?" she helped him when she realized this was his screwed up way of inviting her for dinner.
Along with that realization she felt heat burning up inside her.
He nodded and looked at her, lurking for an answer displayed in her face.
"I recently developed some cooking skills", he tried to make his invitation sound as casual as possible. But for that it was already to late.
"I noticed that", she replied, almost sounding flirtatious.
She bit the corner of her mouth on the inside, pondering, enjoying his insecurity. But then she noticed she still owed him an answer.
Slowly, almost as if she was trying the words herself, testing what they would sound like, she gave him that answer.
"Well, I guess I'd like to see you prove that...", she said, completely weirded out and it sounded like an estranged staccato of words whose meaning only slowly reached her own ears.
But it was all he needed to hear to allow himself breathing again.
"Perfect", he said, sounding almost chipper, and got up from the chair, leaving her still startled.
On his way out he turned around again.
"But that kid of yours will have to stay home. I'm allergic to pink", he said and she nodded in agreement.
If all the built-up tension between them found some outlet on that date at all, there would be no room for a child anyway, she thought to herself, biting her lip, still mildly freaked.
House noticed the complete absence of pain in his thigh as he left her room. He seized that moment and hesitated, breathing in the fresh air of a new day before he took his next step.
At the moment, neither of them felt afraid of what might happen between them. They both had allowed their brokenness to surface, displayed for the other one to see it.
Just in different ways. And now that their vulnerability was out in the open they were ironically ready to let go.
Knowing they could face the pain.