STRICKEN
House lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. There was a long, damp crack running across it. He had seen it many times, when his sleepless nights left him in almost the same position he found himself in now. His mind raced, thinking up every possible cause of Locked In Syndrome.
It was Wednesday night. He hadn't been to the hospital since Monday. He was unaware that Cuddy was furiously storming the halls searching for him, or that his team, unaware of where he was, covered for him, misdirecting her at every turn. The only thing he was aware of was that Wilson had been calling, every hour on the hour for the past day and a half.
He wondered how long it would take before Wilson showed up at his door. Then he heard the banging. "House, open up!" It was Wilson, his tried and true friend. More banging was followed by the turn of a key and the sound of footsteps; two sets of footsteps. One set was clearly Wilson, whose voice had betrayed him. The other was softer, feminine. It had to be Cuddy.
"Where the hell is he?" Wilson's voice sounded worried and angry. Boy was he going to feel bad about that anger.
"House?" Cuddy called out to him.
I'm in here, House said pointlessly. It was pointless because no one could hear him.
Cuddy pushed open the bedroom door. She saw his friend lying in bed. "He's in here," she called out to Wilson.
"What the hell are you doing House?" Wilson was really angry now. Angry that House hadn't told anyone where he was the past two days, angry that House hadn't answered his calls, angry that House didn't get up to face him. Then he was frightened.
"He's not responding." Cuddy sounded worried, confused. House wanted to tell her it was alright, he wasn't in pain, he was still there, but he couldn't do anything but stare at her and blink.
Wilson leaned over his friend, blocking the trapped man's view of his boss's cleavage. Thanks a LOT Wilson.
"He's breathing." Wilson had checked his friend's vitals quickly with shaking hands. He had to check twice, worried that his nerves were lying to him.
"What's wrong with him?" Cuddy was frantic.
"We're going to have to get him to the hospital." Wilson looked at her regretfully. He knew she didn't want to hear that.
I'm not going to the hospital! I AM NOT GOING TO THE HOSPITAL!!!!!! House cried silently.
Cuddy seemed defeated. "He wouldn't want to go to the hospital."
Don't want to. DON'T! I'm not dead yet!
"We have to get him treated." Wilson looked at House with pity. House hated that look.
"Can't we treat him here?" Cuddy sat on the edge of House's bed. He felt her hand slip gently into his. He would have given anything to be able to squeeze her hand, but he couldn't.
"Come on Lisa, you know that's not the right thing to do." Wilson looked guiltily at his friend. "I know he wouldn't like anyone seeing him like this, but it's the only way."
Stop talking about me in the past tense. I'm here! I'm still alive, but with the two of you diagnosing me I'll be dead soon enough. He willed himself to squeeze her hand, focused all his mental energy to his fingers, begging them to curl…but nothing happened.
"No." Cuddy was firm. "We can do this. House does this sort of thing all the time. We can do this Wilson. We owe it to him." She was pleading, begging. House didn't like hearing her beg.
"House has his TEAM do this. We're two people with major responsibilities. You've got a hospital to run. I've got patients to see." Wilson wasn't heartless, he wanted to do whatever he could to help House, but he was trying to be realistic. They needed to take House to the hospital.
"This is HOUSE we're talking about." Cuddy's voice was raised and House was cheering her on in his mind. "Refer your patients to someone else. The hospital will survive without me for a while. We owe it to him."
Wilson took her by the hands. "Lisa, you can't change what happened to him, you can't go back and change it."
Cuddy pulled her hands away. "That's not what I'm trying to do."
Liar! That's what she'd been trying to do ever since she thought of the operation that left him in chronic pain more than a dozen years ago.
"We have to take him to the hospital." Wilson remained firm in his stance.
"NO!" Cuddy did as well.
"You're going to kill him." Wilson choked on his words.
Cuddy fell into tears. She turned to House, sitting again on the edge of the bed, her moist face looking down at him. "House, if you want to go to the hospital, blink once."
"That's not fair." Wilson moaned.
"Shut up, Wilson." Cuddy snapped.
"House, blink once if you want me to take you to the hospital?"
House held his eyes open for as long as possible. He didn't want any mistake being made.
"He is in no condition to make that decision." Wilson protested.
"It's his decision to make." Cuddy snapped.
"Well, I can't have any part in this. When you realize you're making a mistake, call me. I just hope you figure it out before it's too late." Wilson stormed out.
House had watched the whole scene unfold with interest. He wondered what her conversations with Stacy had been like. Then he heard her break down and he could no longer think about the past. He just wanted to hold her. Instead he lay motionless as she fell to his side, sobbing deeply.
"Oh God, what have I done?" Cuddy collapsed to the floor. House could hear her deep, heavy sobs though he couldn't see her from his position on the bed.
She eventually pulled herself up and started pacing the room anxiously. House's eyes followed her every move, when he couldn't actually see her, he followed the sound of her footsteps. She was on the phone. He could hear her talking to someone. It didn't take him long to realize that someone was Wilson and that she was asking him, no begging him to come back.
You don't need him. You can do this. House wasn't sure he really believed that, but he didn't think Wilson was any more capable and he'd rather have her fussing over him than the two of them.
She came and sat beside him on the bed. She was so close he could smell her perfume, a light, flowery scent he knew well. Again she took his hand in hers. Her hands were cold. "I'm going to ask you some questions. Blink once for yes, twice for no, three times if you can't answer with yes or no. Okay?" He blinked once. "Good." She squeezed his hand tightly. "Can you feel that?" Blink. "Good. That's good." She smiled weakly and asked him a series of other diagnostic questions. He answered most of them with a yes or a no. Then she asked one that gave him hope.
"Have you taken any medication other than Vicodin in the past week?" Blink. Now if only he could tell her what. "Was it an illegal substance?"
Blink, blink.
She looked relieved. "Do you have a prescription for it?"
Blink.
"Is the prescription somewhere in this room?" Maybe if she could find the bottle…
Blink, blink.
"You finished it already?"
Blink. House would have found this fun if he were the ones asking the questions and trying to solve the puzzle, but he already knew the answer to the puzzle, he just couldn't tell anyone.
"Did Wilson prescribe it for you?" He prescribed most of House's other medications. House double blinked a negative. "Anyone at PPTH?" Again, no.
THINK WOMAN!!!! House screamed inside his head.
Almost as if she'd heard him she asked the right question. "Did you get the prescription while you were in New York last week?" Blink! She was finally on the right track.
Cuddy grabbed the phone and called Wilson. She instructed him to do the dirty work, researching House's trip to New York, where he'd stayed, who he spoke to, anything that would lead them in the right direction. Then she hung up and took his hand in both of hers. "We are going to figure this out House. I promise you."
He wasn't sure if she meant him and her or if she included Wilson in that we. He hoped it was just him and her. There were so many things he'd like to say to her, apologies he'd like to make, promises he'd like to offer, but all he could do was look at her and let the water building up in his sore eyes roll down his cheeks.
"You're crying?" She was surprised. She'd never seen him cry, not even at the worst moments after his surgery. She reached over him to grab a tissue from the box beside his bed. House felt her close to him. He closed his eyes tightly, breathing her in.
When he opened them again she was wiping his eyes. "Wilson's going to call me back when he has news." She furrowed her brow, trying to think of something. She asked some more questions, but didn't get anything useful out of his yes/no answers. She finally gave up and fell silent for a while.
House looked bored, and frustrated. Cuddy had to say something to him. "Things are going better with Rachel. She looks at me now when I say her name." House blinked twice, furiously. Cuddy frowned for a moment. "You don't want to hear about the baby." She sighed. "Of course you don't. I just wish I knew what to say." She searched his eyes for something, anything to tell her what to do.
This isn't your fault. He knew that's what she was thinking. That's what Cuddy always thought when something went wrong. She blamed herself for everything. If only he could speak to her, he could tell her what happened, but he was trapped with nothing to say but yes or no. If only she would ask the right questions.
"I need you to get better House." She had looked deep into his eyes and saw the pain. "I need…you." It seemed easier to talk to him knowing he couldn't answer back, knowing that he couldn't make some rude comment or smart aleck remark. Sure, those things would come later, when he was better, but if he never got better…if this was it, she wanted him to know how much he meant to her.
House felt the moisture returning to his eyes. It wasn't tears. He told himself that over and over until he almost believed it.
"When I hired you, I know you thought it was some kind of charity on my part. That I felt sorry for you or something, but that's not why." She bit her lip, wondering if she was saying too much, hoping he wanted to hear more. "I hired you because I was scared. I was in way over my head. Hell, I was barely an adult and suddenly I was running a major hospital. I felt so alone.
"And then you showed up out of the blue. I thought I'd never see you again, and there you were, and you needed a job, and I needed a friend and… I missed you." She was crying softly. She'd turned away so he couldn't see her, but if he listened closely he could hear her sniffling as she wiped the tears away.
"You can't possibly know the impact you had on me back in college. I know we didn't know each other well, but I studied you. I watched you and I learned from you and I…" There were so many things she could say here, things she wouldn't want to take back, things that wouldn't have any real consequence. Instead she said," I fell in love with you."
House suddenly felt great pity for her. Anyone who loved him deserved pity. He would have reached out and touched her if he could, a hand on her shoulder or rested on her knee, something to let her know he understood. Instead he just stared at her, wondering why she was suddenly spilling her heart out to him and fearing the worst possible reason. He was dying.
"I don't think I ever got over you." She sighed and smiled down at him. Then she leaned in and kissed his forehead gently. House felt the memory of her lips burning his flesh after she'd pulled away. If he was going to die, he wanted to do it right now, so that memory would be his last. But he wasn't going to die. He couldn't. Not now, not when he might actually have something, someone to live for.
He saw her jump at the sound of the door. Wilson was back. Damn, Wilson you have the worst timing. House watched with envy as his two friends huddled and talked about him. Wilson had been able to track down the doctor he'd met with in New York. He'd traced an email House sent a week ago on a hunch.
It hadn't been easy, but Wilson had managed to sweet talk the doctor's assistant out of a good deal of information, including the name of the experimental pain killer House had been given.
"What the hell is Trouckufessen?" Cuddy had never heard of it.
Upon hearing the word House jumped for joy, on the inside. On the outside he remained lifeless.
Wilson rattled off the chemical compound of this supposed wonder drug and pulled a sample out of his pocket to show her.
"Did you tell this idiot what happened?" Cuddy wanted to get the doctors license revoked for this.
"It happened because House lied on his form. He neglected to mention he was still on Vicodin, and that he'd been taking it for years."
If he could have, House would have protested and informed them that Dr. Malpractice hadn't ASKED if he was on anything or for how long. It was hardly his fault for not answering a question he was never asked.
"So…what does this mean?" Cuddy wanted answers, so she asked the questions.
"He'll be fine." Wilson had brought the necessary supplies to save his friend. With no delicacy he jabbed a needle into House's arm. OUCH! House would have punched him if he could have.
It took a few days for House to be back to his old, cantankerous self. Wilson moved in with him while Cuddy returned home to her daughter. She dropped by every day to check on him, and had told his team that House had bad pneumonia and would be taking a week off.
They hadn't discussed the things she'd said to him. Instead she talked about the hospital, and filled him in on what his team was doing and spoke of anything that would prevent a silence from falling between them, a silence one of them might feel the necessity to break by bringing up that night.
But one day, the third day of his rehabilitation, when he was truly starting to feel like his old, destructive self, that silence did fall, and he did feel the need to break it by asking her the question she feared most. "Did you mean what you said when you thought I was dying?"
Cuddy was caught off guard. She stared at him for a moment, hoping she'd misunderstood. "I…didn't think you were dying."
"Then why did you tell me you loved me?" House had taken hold of her arm. He didn't want to give her any chance to get away without answering. He had to know.
"Not…" she pulled back her words, double checking them before they came spilling out of her mouth. "Not because I thought you were dying."
"The only other possibility is because you meant it." House challenged her. There was no way he was going to open himself up to her until he knew exactly where he stood.
"I did…in college." She added quickly, afraid he would reject her now.
"I think you still do." His cold, blue eyes stared deeply into hers, probing for the truth. The more she tried to backtrack and cover the truth, the more he knew in his heart that he was right.
She closed her eyes tight and a single tear trickled down her cheek. House reached up and brushed it away gently with his thumb. His arm trembled at the exertion. He was still weak and had only moved a muscle here and there, a twitch of his foot, the waver of a finger, his voice was the only thing so far that had been completely rehabilitated.
She gasped. It was the first time she's seen him move since Wilson began treating him. House's hand lingered on her cheek and she shut her eyes, leaning toward it, embracing his caress with her mind.
"You're not alone." That statement meant more than he could say in words, out loud and from the look in her eyes, and the damp trails on her cheeks he knew she understood.
His hand slowly slid down her cheek and along her slender neck. She shivered as the hairs on her neck rose. Over her shoulder and down her arm he left a trail of electricity. Her skin felt alive, awakened by his gentle touch. He finally took her hand in his and pulled her close, down into his arms. He kissed her forehead gently before letting her fall against his chest.
She could feel him embracing her, burying her in his warmth. Wilson walked in, took one look at them, laying in the bed together, eyes closed, arms entwined, and decided House's shot could wait a little while longer. He smiled and shut the door behind him. Perhaps, he thought, true love could conquer all, even the unconquerable Gregory House.