I. The Number Three
Alone at night, a mind muses. "If" is a redundant motif. "What if," even more prevalent. Probability, possibility, necessity. Choice, chance, expectation. All things the objective mind considers in the fraction of a second that it makes a decision. And if misled, the heart forces the mind to pursue the lost moment perpetually. A wrong decision is nothing more than the freedom to regret.
Lisa Cuddy is alone and it is night. In the office of Gregory House she stands, burdened by decisions and indecision. Standing so long, she finally sits at his desk with the vain hope that when she does, this burden might remain in the air, alleviated until she stands again. But it does not work, the regret, the pain, the weight is shackled to her shoulders.
In the still and deafening silence, a peculiar ray of white light, some strange combination of the moon and courtyard fluorescence is illuminating her eyeline, intensifying the unique beauty of her expression while she considers and reconsiders. Fortuities and accidents, choices, effects, a series of interconnected events, random but somehow deliberate.
One particular day is vividly replaying in her mind lately. A day of uncertain consequences, she entered this office with the intent of asking one question. And she stood here speechless, unable to form the words, smiling stupidly, ignorant to the long term effects of her inarticulation. "Thank you," was an end to tacit plans,a strange affair they had begun, that would have either left her pregnant with his child or disconnected and alone.
The smitten schoolboy had finally stopped pulling her pigtails. So unexpectedly that she didn't know how to react. A professional mature Greg House is a complete stranger in familiar form. He was actually treating her like a human being, giving her injections, overtly implying she should ask him for a donation. Saying she should ask someone she 'trusts,' someone she 'likes.' In his own way the man was letting her know he would say 'yes', if she asked. And she decided to ask. Without hesitation she entered this office and stared at him interrogatively. Then something happened, some transition, she saw something, as he sat backlit by sunset melting April into May. Potential and repercussions. But she did not see the future. And worse, she was beginning to like him. It couldn't happen. If she felt nothing, if they felt nothing at all - mutually, it could work. But she felt something, as much as she tried to resist it, deny it, she felt it. Feeling would make things obscenely complicated, their working relationship, their parental relationship, it would all change, and she wasn't ready to lose it. The last four years were spent stifling this emotion to sustain their friendship, their positions. So she stopped, the question was intercepted, formed in her brain and never allowed to escape her lips.
Cuddy realized she couldn't stop at having him be a sperm donor, an arbitrary ingredient in the recipe for procreation. She didn't want just a plastic cup. Not anymore, not really. House himself made her realize this. Cuddy needed more, more from him, more from it all. And she knew he couldn't offer her that. Even if he wanted to he couldn't. Mute, she was torn between her unending desire for a child and the universal yearning for a companion. Somebody to share the responsibility, it does after all take two people to make a third. Well, in most cases.
Women who are alone; women dealing with infertility can now joust with Mother Nature using reproductive technology. So, surreally, Cuddy like a large proportion of women today, spent the first half of her life avoiding pregnancy (when she was most fertile) in the name of liberation; and has devoted the latter half to harsh, degrading and, ultimately dangerous forms of human husbandry in an effort to achieve the traditional authentication of womanhood.
Why does this woman need such a trite affirmation anyway? She has an amazing career, a job she's completely devoted to, she runs a successful hospital. Everything she has ever wanted, she's accomplished, attained, exceeded, but it's not enough. It never has been. Incompleteness has made her miserable and House never lets her forget it. A child may provide, love, reward, fulfillment, fun; in addition to compromise, exhaustion, frustration and guilt. But in the back of her mind resides the notion that a baby now may just be a near-menopausal attempt at eternal youth; an antidote to a mid-life crisis. Whatever it would have been it wasn't. Three attempts, three failures, she couldn't make it happen.
Wanting a child (very different from becoming a mother) is, for many, a desire in part triggered by a society that plugs an idealized, highly commercial version of motherhood. Women have babies because it is expected; because they want to hold on to a partner, end loneliness or fight boredom. For Cuddy it was an alternative to resuming practice as a full time doctor. Replacing one childhood dream with another seemed sufficient. And eventually after a trio of trials ending in miscarriage, she recognized it as as much.
So she stopped. Got back on the pill, continued moving forward without ever looking back.
Until now.
Now, as she sits pensively rationalizing, many more factors are involved. It's been more than a year since the miscarriage. A death she had to mourn alone, one that House and most didn't even know about. He knew she was pregnant then, the bastard diagnosed her before she even knew. But she never told anyone. More than a year. A lot has happened. A lot has changed. Cuddy has changed. And even though she got off the pill a month ago, it could be months before she can begin the fertility meds, and a year before any realistic odds for pregnancy. Time is a hurdle in a race she's afraid she's already lost. So she sits here longer, thinking. The bus crash and the many effects felt by it commenced for Cuddy, some emotional metamorphosis. She almost lost House three times. Fears always come to her in threes. The first was mostly shock, nothing more than a near-experience, an almost-happening. House was fine when she saw him after the crash, he was functioning, he was House, so she never registered it as anything more than a convenient avoidance of cataclysm. Cuddy concealed her concern, a habit, a reflex.
The second time she nearly lost him was entirely panic. His heart stopped. His heart, she always suspected he had one. And he lay dying on the floor of a bus, having dodged this experience but a day earlier. It was deja vu. It was unfortunate. Cuddy watched him collapse, knowing that he was risking his life - giving his life, to save someone else, who he didn't even know. Without a thought she fell to her knees, if he was going to die, it would be with her at his side. But she wouldn't let him die. It wasn't his choice. She couldn't lose him like this, not now. A strange thought began forming in the back of her head, but she pushed it away, brought her mouth to his and breathed life back into him. Because she was his friend. Because she needed him as much as he needed her at that moment. She saved him. It was not the first time and it will not be the last. A bus full of mock passengers were an audience to the event. All witnesses of her loyalty, her undying love for him, platonic, established, unconditional.
The third was devastating. Despair and unendurable dread. Cuddy was certain she had lost him. Suddenly she became a doctor again, stabilized him after the seizure, monitored him closely, constantly, held his hand as he slept. Her heart broke a little more every hour he was unresponsive. She talked to him in his coma, even though she doesn't really believe people can hear anything. She'd been at his bedside before, but was never as scared, about any patient, any man, anybody. She worried more than a friend does. Cared more than a boss does. Did more than a doctor does. So afraid of losing him that she couldn't leave his side. Then, the moment he opened his eyes, her mental paralysis subsided and the conclusion her mind was avoiding in the midst of fear and probity fell upon her making those eyes brim with tears and a smile steal her mouth. She loves him. Now more than ever. It took three disasters but she knows she loves him. She's always loved him, but now it's different. Having nearly lost him so many times Cuddy regrets never telling him how she feels. And more, she regrets not asking him that question, more than a year ago. Maybe a new life then would somehow balance this loss and relieve the tension of the Amber incident.
Perhaps, she made the wrong choice.
It is strange to think what might have been. Because even small choices are significant. They are dots that form a picture we can't see until the very end. We must connect them. We must plot the dots perfectly to form the picture. We must first decide what picture we want. And be cynical and perceptive enough to recognize the relationship between each dot. Wondering if she had asked that fateful, potentially life giving question if things would be any different now. Would it have been a success? Would she have triplets? Another miscarriage? Could a relationship have formed between them? Would he have even said 'yes'?
And really: Would Amber be alive right now? Chance happenings, House getting drunk that night, calling Wilson, Amber coming to get him, and most importantly, House forgetting his cane - it all seems absurd. But, this is how things happen. Cause, effect, random really. Reality is chance.
Life is chaos.
Sometime before she falls asleep, Cuddy decides, whether she realizes it or not, that she will begin the IVF again. She's healthy, more than a few years from menopause, it will always be this vacancy, this pursuit of a lost moment if she gives up entirely. She tried to push this desire aside, deny it, demote its importance, but it may be the only thing that can make her truly happy. It is something she deserves.
a presently pertinent past
When Lisa Cuddy was a little girl, she decided two things, two certainties of her life at a very young age. One was that she wanted to be doctor and the other that she wanted to be a mother. As an only child her youth was rather lonely and spent studying, writing, daydreaming. There was tennis but even that could be played versus a wall. She had friends, but at the end of the day there was no fellow youth to reflect off of. No mirror in a sibling. At six years old, little Lisa decided she wanted three children when she grew up. How she arrived at the number three was a rather complex psychological equation for a first grader. A boy and then a girl and then another boy. The desire for children as a child was really more of a longing for siblings, the alternative to being so alone. Then, she wanted a big brother and a little brother and that has never really changed. Now, Cuddy still wants a boy and a man.
Of course a husband was part of her idealized future, some prince charming, preferably a knight in shining armor who would ride in on a white stallion and sweep her off her feet. Rescue her from a world where she had only herself. A friend, a soul mate, a companion.
And she nearly got one.
Eleven years ago, before she was Dean of Medicine, Cuddy was working in the clinic at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. An English Professor from the university came in, complaining of abdominal pain and she treated him for food poisoning. A tall, dark, green eyed doctor of philosophy. His name was Richard and he did not have food poisoning. When he returned to the ER the next day, she was reprimanded for her misdiagnosis but still allowed to participate in the differential. It was not an enigma, he had a gallstone blocking the pancreatic duct, trapping digestive juices inside the pancreas and the pain was from pancreatitis. Cuddy performed the surgery, falling in love from the inside out.
As Richard recovered he flirted, she was his attending, it was in her job description to flirt back. Upon being discharged, her long awaited white knight asked Cuddy out to dinner, and for the first time since she was six, she was consumed by innocent excitement. Not at the prospect of getting naked with a sexy, ivy league PhD. But at the possibility of this being the one, an inadvertent new beginning, the contingent love at first sight.
Their first date was the kind of fairy tales. Not a single awkward beat, their chemistry shone from a mile away. It was not some formal 500 a plate affair. He took her to his favorite diner. They talked, real conversation rather than the shallow ice breaking introductory dialogue of most first dates. They had gotten to know each other while he was her patient. Cuddy had seen him naked, seen him sick, she'd seen his entrails, the ice broke then. From the moment they met he called her Lisa, always. And she loved it. Because she wasn't just a doctor in his company, she was a woman, different with him than in any other aspect of her life. She discovered new parts of herself when they were together, Richard changed her. They filled the diner with laughter until he middle of the night, a certain naivete about her giggle. They had a lot in common. Both were left handed. Both Jewish. Both doctors. And both of them were siblingless. Richard was polite, but not insincere. The tone of his voice was persuasion. She found her hand in his the entire time and Cuddy knew then, in some Jersey diner she'd never been in before and will never be in again, that he was the one, the only one. The fact that they made love that night was complete coincidence.
april fools
They dated for more than four years. Cuddy stayed in Princeton because of him, passed up more appealing job opportunities, a chance to pursue endocrinology to its fullest, to be with a man. Sacrifice has never been difficult for her.
The first of April of their fifth year together, she found a jewelry store receipt. Certain Richard was going to propose, she did not hesitate to confess she was late. Utterly ecstatic at the possibility of being pregnant, Cuddy had finally found the man she loved and everything was somehow falling into place on its own.
And then the world ended. At least briefly. Being the only one aware of a momentary apocalypse is something impossible to ever recover from completely. When she told Richard, his face got bright red with anger, white with shock and then green with nausea. He stopped breathing. Then he would only inhale between the syllables of 'Are you sure?' asking it about fifty times, as if her response might change on the forty ninth. Cuddy answered that she wasn't certain but suspected. It wasn't just panic in his face, it was disgust. It was disappointment. All of the knots they had tied were coming undone.
Later she found the jewelry store purchase was for his mother's birthday and that Richard did not want children. The woman had been misled. Four years and she thought he wanted kids the entire time, she thought they were aiming for the same goal, racing toward the same finish line, but they were not even on the same team. He was just placating her. Humoring her childhood ambition, a girlish fantasy. Four years and everybody lies. Two inaccurate home pregnancy tests after he left, she also found she wasn't pregnant. Cuddy lost Richard, not even because of a negligent act or ignorant indiscretion but mere enthusiasm. She lost the only man she would let herself love, who loved her in return. Eventually, she convinced herself it was for the better and drowned herself in medicine. Days, weeks, she never left the hospital, just buried herself deeper, endeavoring to forget, deny, and save lives all the while. Promotion after another and then she's dean. But a day hasn't gone by that she doesn't think about him. Memory is merciless. Richard symbolized her passion for being a doctor, when he left, 'M' and ''D' followed leaving an empty space that she filled with administration.
Richard was to Cuddy what Stacy was to House. So following the infarction she understood what House was going through. She knew the catastrophe, of having hope, an entire future stolen. House lost his thigh and Cuddy lost the chance at a child, at marriage, at convention and the fulfillment of what could have been the most important component of her life.
Somehow that relationship made her the happiest she's ever been, it elevated, lifted, exalted her to new heights. Gave her joy, anticipation she never knew existed. One she suspected, longed for and when she finally experienced it was even more than she imagined. Being pushed from such great heights, left her broken, suddenly and certainly aware she may never have any of the things she really wants.
That was it. There's nothing more and she'll never get it back, she'll neverhave that again.
So after years of dwelling, trying to forget, trying to not feel the pain,the frustration, she began the IVF. Stopped searching for her soul mate, certain she had already found and lost him. Reduced the hunt to donations, somebody biologically compatible on paper. House chastised her for it, convincing her how ridiculous it all was. And then as she did before, she made a horribly wrong decision. Stood silently, overcome with the profound realization that she wanted more and was incapable of attaining it. Uncertain how, where to even start.A single question but she couldn't ask it. And now she's asleep, in an empty office, completely alone.
House is home now. Out of the proverbial woods, neurologically. Recent events notwithstanding, he is also alone. She is thinking about him,worried, even in her sleep. The vigilance, the devotion, it's more than friendship, but neither will ever admit it.
Cuddy is a woman in a man's field. In a man's world. To show emotion, to reveal weakness is not in her best interest. Nobody around her understands the maternal longing. No person is here to even pretend to understand, no compassionate shoulder to cry or lean on. And now like always, she must confront and conquer it all by herself.
It is a solitary scenario, a lonesome life she has led.
As day breaks behind her, Cuddy slips out of slumber. The first few moments awake are spent uncertain where she is, but a red and gray tennis ball confirms the location. Rubbing her eyes, she stands and takes off her suit jacket in an effort to make it look as if she's not still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Beginning the day unaware of the decision she made in her sleep, she falls into the routine of ordinary circumstances. Home is her office, it has been since she took the title. Walking to it, her stride slows when she remembers House is not here. His presence in the hospital was comforting, it was a challenge. The anxiety of having him here also brought a certain excitement. It will be boring without him.
But she won't let her mind admit she got used to him, or that he is now some integral part of PPTH (or her life). Or let her heart sink again at the thought of him never returning. Suppression of these thoughts, these feelings, is the only thing that has gotten her this far.
After dealing with a disgruntled patient in the clinic and insurance expense reports before lunch, Cuddy attends a board meeting, in the company of mostly lawyers and addressing malpractice cases of the last five years. A yawn on the return to her office, she looks around, anticipating hopefully something interesting, something rare but all she sees are the monotonous movements of patients and nurses. Nurses. One who should most definitely not be here. Cuddy had sent nurse Dickerson home with House, suspecting she would not be welcome or allowed to stay long, but also knowing that he should have somebody with him for the first 72 hours, at least. The man's head was cracked open and then electrocuted, his heart stopped, and he wasn't the picture of health to begin with. He needs somebody with him should he start bleeding or stop breathing, again.
A permanent headache did not ameliorate his disposition. Cuddy knows this.
Approaching nurse Dickerson,
"Where's House?"
"His apartment."
"What happened?"
Nurse Dickerson rolls her eyes. Then with a deadpan stare,
"What do you think happened?"
Cuddy nods, speaking almost to herself,
"He harassed, offended, abused you..."
"Don't worry, he's fine. And he's not going anywhere."
The nurse smiles and walks away.
The rest of Cuddy's workday is spent thinking about House. She considers calling him, but doesn't. If he answers she'll seem overly concerned and if he doesn't answer she will be overly concerned. She wants to see him but is having difficulty justifying a visit.
Spending the night with him days earlier (although they were in separate rooms) was both satisfying and consolatory for Cuddy. It felt not just right but perfect to be sharing a space with a man. And it was abundantly amazing to be caring for someone, again. When she became an administrator and forfeited medicine, she lost the healing, the compassion, the caring that made her become a doctor in the first place. Yes, she could live vicariously through House but that pursuit, that inborn need to nurture, it returned with irresistible coercion, meaningful strength. It's overwhelming now and visiting him will only intensify it.
The choice was made, she is who she is, there is no going back. A career in medicine does not offer do-overs. Life does not promise second chances. She must avoid him, deny the nurturing need, resist her true calling.
What are the consequences if she doesn't?
remote control
Four knuckles meet one door. A door named 'B.' They meet it three times, consecutively. Several minutes pass, nobody comes. Cuddy turns the knob, the door is unlocked. Entering the apartment, she sees it's dark, no lights on, but the television is flickering with unfamiliar pictures, projecting them sharply at thirty frames per second. It's muted so she ignores it. Taking a few steps in Cuddy closes the door and purses her lips to say his name, on the inhalation, House speaks.
"Go away, I'm fine." Then,
"Haven't you tortured me enough with your flashlight and your bedpan. I mean, my bathroom is like three fee away. And I need a new couch anyway."
Cuddy grins, moves a few steps closer, the sound of her heels giving her away before her voice.
"No nurse can tolerate you."
House finally sits up, surprised and stimulated by the sound of her voice.
"What are you doing here?"
"Dealing with a difficult patient."
House turns away from her and toward the TV again, unmuting it to reveal the desperate groans and artificial gasps of hardcore pornography.
"House."
He turns the volume up. Before she moves in her swift, pissed pace, Cuddy finally looks at the television screen, squinting and tilting her head to try and understand the anatomical amalgamation and dissect the strange position of the plastic people in the movie. Then she walks to stand in front it, one hand on her hip.
"You need bed rest - and don't come back with some joke about me joining you."
She turns the TV off from where she is. House turns it back on with the remote.
"Porn is not going to make you better."
"But it'll make me feel better."
Cuddy reaches for the remote but House pulls it away. She reaches for it again, but he switches hands. With a great deal of clumsiness and a certain amount ardor, they wrestle for the remote. And, for control.
Ironically and obliviously, their movements and efforts, their gasps and groans correspond to the evening's entertainment. But rather than end with an orgasm, this scene's climax will be the lightest touch. A simple touch. An honest touch.
Physical contact of any kind, in reality rather than in the movies, is deliberate and intimate. A faint caress can be flirtation, it can be foreplay,it can be fantastic for two souls who only touch the sick and dying on a regular basis. The act of sex corresponds in many scenarios between men and women, but with them it is constant.
Cuddy finally gets a hand on the remote, a strong grip and when House pulls on it again, he brings her down. She lands beside his lap, certain to avoid the right leg. They're close, but in an awkward position, her body language screaming that she doesn't want to be any closer. Hands overlap, his gripping hers for possession, invincible fingers wiggling beneath his palm. House pulls again, bringing them closer, against her will.
Faces align, heads tilt in opposite directions, he leans in as if he might kiss her and pauses. Both experience the exhilarating vertigo of proximity. And Cuddy lets go, a reaction to the distracting flutter of her stomach and raucous pounding of her heart. House's mouth moves away from hers abruptly and he turns the television back on. It's not dejection, it's a game.
As she stands, Cuddy's face passes the breadth of his chest and she makes the mistake of inhaling.
"God House, when was the last time you bathed?"
"Around the last time I shaved," he says, stroking his rather thick, graying beard.
"I'll run you a bath," turning the TV off as she passes it.
"But mom!" he whines.
Cuddy leers through the corner of her eye, the only one aware of the irony. The sound of water running concludes her determination.
She returns to the couch motioning with her head for him to go be clean. When House stands, he staggers and she squats to brace him. In lieu of a cane, he leans on her, and she loves it as much as she loves him. They traverse the short distance slowly. Standing by him, with him, supporting him, what a metaphor this short journey is.
"Where's your cane?"
"Nurse Dickerbitch took it."
House is enjoying having his arm around her, so he doesn't add 'I'm sure those were your orders.'
Cuddy is limping herself under his weight and falters, his body leaning into hers, he bites his tongue, his cheek scratching hers.
"Sorry."
House nods as they arrive, completely depressed at the dismally long duration it took to get them here. Limping in on his own, he tugs at his tee shirt,
"Care to join me?"
As he takes it off, she turns away smirking.
"Are you going to be okay here by yourself?"
"I'll make sure to wash behind my ears."
Cuddy turns her head back a little to see him fumbling with the button of his jeans and reaches in to pull the door shut.
Then she stops, captivated by how childlike he looks slouching in this bathroom, a pile of clothes at his feet, a certain innocence in his pure blue eyes. House is a victim. Of himself, yes. But of something more, something she can't identify. There have been many times when she recognized this in him and considered what an adorable kid he must of been.
Or, what a beautiful baby he could make.
"I'm going to submit a patient care complaint if you don't get in here and give me a sponge bath. Preferably without a bra."
Cuddy starts walking away.
"Preferably without any clothes."
The door named B shuts. She's gone.
Pulling into her driveway, Cuddy sits a long time and stares at her garage door. Her mind is convoluted with choices she's made and plagued by the promise of making more. Restless, uncertain, and irritated by her unease, she reluctantly goes inside.
The moment her feet cross the threshold a mental monologue commences,the purpose of which is to convince herself she'd rather be alone. That she likes living this way. Single life has benefits, it's liberating to be so independent. But this large and empty space taunts her and she resolves to take a bath - an activity everybody does unaccompanied, it will make the context on her consciousness less desolate.
And, it is a safe subliminal way of taking one with him. Indirectly confirming her desire to both be with House and to not be by herself, anymore. The tub is more than spacious, it's probably bigger than her garage, she thinks, she could easily park her Mercedes in here. Cuddy strips slowly, dropping her clothes piece by piece and scrutinizingthe naked body in the mirror, as if she is staring at more than flesh, trying to see her soul, lure it to the surface from deep within. But it does not come this time. The pale skin and toned muscle of this image is mocking her. And she is saddened by the possibility of no man ever really appreciating any of it, any of her. The room fills slowly with thick billows of gray steam, obscuring all ridiculing reflections, and she gets in the tub, determined to wash away her pessimism and indecision.
The heat of the water melts the ivory shade of her body away. Replacing it with a gorgeous warmth, a pink tint. As her skin undergoes an alteration in color until it is alien, unrecognizable, so does her perspective. At least it begins to, gradually. She acknowledges her decision to restart the IVF (and to ask her diagnostician to contribute). Is admitting the possibility of feeling for House. And finally realizing that everything that has happened, all of the change, may not be bad. Lathering the length of her arms now, in an almost optimistic digression - House is different . Softer, irreparably damaged, burdened by a heaviness, a weight, a guilt she once carried. He knows his arrogance, his selfishness killed someone. He knows he messed up and that it may have cost him his best friend. But he's taking responsibility for it, he's being an adult for a change. And there is something attractive to Cuddy about this transformation, this maturation. A year ago she nearly fell for it. Greg House the grown up is far more difficult to resist. Turning the taps with her toes, a sigh echoes off of the porcelain and tile. A sound symptomatic of the decision to resign resistance.
The right choice, at last.