"What in Heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
"I came for the waters."
"The waters? What waters? We're in the desert."
"I was misinformed."
Casablanca, 1941
#
"He's gone."
She didn't expect it to hit her like it does. She had a feeling, when she saw his name on her phone at this time of night, what news he'd be bearing. In the two seconds it took her to click Accept, she knew unequivocally what was waiting for her on the other end, so when he said the words, she didn't expect to be rendered utterly stunned, the only awareness being of her own pulse in her ears and the plummet of her stomach so violent she wanted to throw up.
"I'm sorry," she says reflexively, to the dark room, to Wilson, to him, to herself, over the roar of her blood.
Rachel shifts sleepily in the bed next to her, dark hair falling on her forehead which is glowing by the television light as Casablancaplays across the room.
"I just thought you should know."
"Thank you." She says it softly so as to not awake the little girl, with a numb mouth, the words feeling woolen on her tongue. She doesn't invite further detail, and hears Wilson's sigh belatedly as she lets the cell phone drop to her side.
#
"I like Michigan," Rachel says matter-of-factly. "But when are we going home?"
"This is home," Cuddy replies, easing the car into the traffic outside of the best Montessori school in the state. "Our new home, our new adventure together."
"I know," Rachel says, twirling her hair as she rests her head against the headrest on her booster seat. "I liked old home, too. I wish it wasn't broken."
"Me too," Cuddy replies, looking at her daughter in the rearview mirror, briefly having a horrific vision of her porcelain skin bloodied and her body lifeless under the rubble that had been her beloved home in Princeton. It didn't happen, it didn't happen, it didn't happen, she focuses on the words with her whole body as cold sweat ripples across the back of her neck and her stomach sours. She beats down the panic attack just barely, Thank God, and keeps driving. It'd been months since a major one, but the well of it still churned deeply within her, waiting for even a tiny opening to rush up, pour out, and drown her. Therapy and medication and her refusal to be ruled by it were the only things that managed to keep it at bay.
Later as dinner simmers on the stove, she reaches into the kitchen cabinet next to Rachel's vitamins and slowly twists the cap on the Ativan, has a flash of his thumb popping open a Vicodin bottle, and takes the pills dry over the sink.
#
She takes leave the week of his funeral but they go to San Diego and stay with her cousin who is an attorney with no kids of her own, so she gleefully shows Rachel the beaches and aquariums and museums and takes the drive to La Jolla to see the seals.
Cuddy runs. Runs on the beach. Runs through the city. Runs through her cousin's hilly, upscale suburban neighborhood. Each time pushing past her personal bests, despite the heat and that her running sneakers haven't seen this much wear in years.
She doesn't stop running until her legs hurt. She relishes it, and looks straight ahead as the pain rolls up and down her in waves instead of up to the heavens.
#
Wilson is cremated. She returns to New Jersey for the memorial. She checks into a hotel under an assumed named for reasons she doesn't understand even after the words leave her mouth, and considers stopping for Turkish coffee at her favorite cafe, or sushi at her favorite Japanese lounge, but as she's leaving the memorial she feels the familiar heat on her like he's there, watching her, appraising her, so it becomes that every movement in her periphery is him, and she hears his voice in the wind, in voices of other men, and no number of Ativan can dull it, so she checks out early and pays $400 to bring her flight back a day earlier and doesn't feel free of him until she disembarks and Rachel runs into her arms at the gate.
#
"Did you mourn him?" Dr. Conway asked it on a Tuesday in November.
"Mourn…him?" She is affronted by the insinuation. "Why on Earth would I mourn him? The man was a destructive—devastating force in my life for two decades. Mourning him would be like mourning a bout of cancer that almost killed me. Worse—that could have killed my child."
"It's not mourning for him," Conway corrects her gently, and Cuddy grinds her teeth. "It's mourning what you loved about him, the parts of him that are gone forever. That's different. That's for you, for your heart."
Cuddy shrugs dismissively even as tears bite at the edges of her eyes.
"I just don't see how that's productive. Would you advise every patient to mourn an abusive relationship, or an abuser?"
"No," Conway says quietly, patiently. "But I would be worried about a patient who didn't allow themselves to acknowledge the truth that people we love can hurt us in unforgivable ways. That despite our love, we have to let them go. That's what enables us to move forward. We aren't forgiving the abuser—we're forgiving ourselves."
She swallows around the ball in her throat that feels like a fist. Her chest aches at the effort to keep from bursting into tears. Rain begins drumming on the window and is the only sound in the office.
"I don't deserve forgiveness," she said hoarsely.
"I know. You're blaming yourself, as you always have."
A humorless laugh exploded from her chest. "Oh, I blame him, too."
"He deserves the blame, he deserves your anger. But what I'm saying, is this—forgive the Lisa that fell in love with House." Before she can object, he adds, "And mourn the death of that man, the one who at one time deserved that love."
#
It takes three years to wean off of the Ativan. The last prescription she fills gets pushed, 3/4 empty, to the back of the kitchen cabinet. She isn't conscious of it until the day in spring when she cleans out the cabinet and finds it collecting dust. She turns it in her palm, considers keeping it, as the hellhounds of her anxiety nip at her gut. They'll always be there, she knows, as she tosses the bottle into the trash. But she's bigger, she's stronger, she's finally a little bit scarier, now.
#
"What's this?" Cuddy asks as a padded envelope drops out of the stack of mail she picks up on the counter. Rachel, parked at the island in the kitchen supposedly doing homework but actually uploading photos to her social media account, looks up.
"Oh, I dunno. I thought it might be my birthday present, but you couldn't possibly fit a Jeep Wrangler in that," she says with a gleam in her eye. Cuddy rolls her eyes hard.
"Keep dreaming, kid. My first car was a 12-year-old Buick with red velvet interior." She sets the rest of the mail aside. "I wonder if they still make those…"
Rachel shudders a full body quake. "That's not even funny."
Cuddy chuckles as Rachel goes back to her phone, and opens the slice in the envelope. It holds a letter and a small sachet bag.
She unfolds the letter first, frowning at the unfamiliar letterhead.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy
1440 Burgundy Road,
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
TO THE HEIRS OF EGOR HUGES:
We are making a final distribution to the heirs at this time of the following assets of the estate.
A copy of the Inventory and Final Accounting for the above-referenced estate is also enclosed.
Taxes on distributions are the responsibility of the receiver.
If you have any questions regarding the distribution or enclosures, please contact me at (202) 550-1205.
Sincerely,
Attorney Molly Hooper
She turns the sachet over in her hand, her fingers separating each identical item slowly. The edges of the four tiny tiles are sharp through the fabric.
Rachel looks up from her phone, takes in Cuddy's expression, and lowers the device.
"Mom, are you okay?"
Cuddy faints for the first and last time in her life.
#
She's dreaming. She knows it as soon as she opens her eyes and she's in her office in Princeton Plainsboro. The awareness whispers itself in the back of her mind but isn't strong enough of a kick to wake her. So she stands, wobbly like a fawn, and makes her way to the door.
She opens it, and her subconscious fluidly transforms the clinic into a bar.
It's crowded and chaotic. It's the clinic but it's not the clinic. Waiters in formal wear bustle around her, smoke thicker than cigarettes clouds her vision and her senses, and she tries to pick out something, or someone. It's familiar even though it's bizarre. She isn't scared though, just puzzled.
The first familiar face is Cameron, Allison Cameron, at the bar, and Cuddy still isn't jarred or surprised at the absurdity. Tears are in Cameron's eyes as she regards Cuddy jealously, then slams a shot of clear liquor.
"What are you doing here?" Cuddy asks, her voice floating surreally between them. Cameron stares but doesn't speak, and Chase appears unhappily next to her behind the nurses' counter which is at the same time a bar top, watching her as she takes another shot of liquor.
"What are you doing here?" She repeats this time to him, and he doesn't speak, but flips a bar towel over his shoulder and moves down the bar. At the end of the shining dark bar where Chase pulls on a beer draft is Eric Foreman, in some kind of police uniform, nursing a drink and also staring at her.
"What are you waiting for?" she asks him, and he smiles, at least, but doesn't speak either.
Cuddy turns to the rest of the room, brimming with blurred faces and bodies.
A piano is at the center of the din, playing Baba O'Riley, and when the pianist stops abruptly and turns as if he could possibly perceive her entrance above the din of the room, she meets James Wilson's eyes and he smiles. Not like Foreman, who seemed to know something she did not, but like the friend she remembers him as.
She takes a step toward him but stops when she sees his eyes go beyond her, and the smile fall from his face. She follows his gaze and that's when she sees him. He emerges from the blur, walking smoothly and unhindered, hands tucked in the pockets of a white dinner jacket. As cliche as it seems it's as if he's been waiting for her, just her, and never takes his eyes off of her.
"Of all the gin joints," she says slowly, an mix of dread and joy making her voice thready. She feels a distant shock of her conscious self, but her subconscious is not surprised at all.
He smiles through the haze.
She wakes up from her own sob.
#
She buries the Scrabble tiles, her bare hands raking up the dirt, in a random spot on the quad at the college. She ruins her manicure.
#
"About damned time you got here," he said from the barstool as she sidled up next to him and dropped herself in the stool beside his. "You might be hot but I can't let you ruin my reputation by keeping me waiting for you in seedy bars."
"Frederick's organic chemistry lab kicked my ass today," she grumbled, signaling the bartender for the same beer that House was holding.
The game was on the television overhead and they could have gone together, as it was just a few miles away at the stadium, but of course House wanted to forgo the crowd, and to be honest, so did she. After finishing her intensive lab work the rest of her Saturday had yawned lazily, and mid afternoon beers and banter with Greg House was her favorite way to pass the time, though she'd never admit it to herself, him, or anyone who might ask. Possibly because with him, anything could happen, and it held a lot more excitement than even the deepest college football rivalry.
"And what a formidable ass it is," House murmured, watching as she wrapped her hands around the bottle. She took a long pull from it and sighed heavily. That's when he snagged her hand.
"What the hell is this?" He said accusingly, turning her hand over in his. She snatched it away.
"Obviously, I was biting the hell out of my nails. Some diagnostician," she snapped, growing red from embarrassment. House laughed and rolled his eyes.
"Why would you let some imp like Fredericks drive you to self mutilate?" He snagged her hand again and she folded her arm to fight him. He unfolded her arm it but she fisted her hand and he laughed harder.
"House, stop," she laughed now, the tension fizzing out with the slight roughhousing, as he tries to peel back her fingers to see the carnage. "You are such an asshole, you know how much I hate that stupid habit!"
"The infallible, unshakable Lisa Cuddy doesn't have a stupid habit—it's a disgusting, neurotic, stupid habit."
Cuddy leveled him a gaze. "I guess we can't all be as perfectly composed as you at all times."
She waited for the next barb, but as always, he took her completely by surprise. He held her gaze, half smiled, and then turned her hand over gently and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. The room came to a standstill in her mind and she felt the momentary pressure all the way to the pit of her stomach and would never forget the visual of him gently bowing his head to make the gesture.
"I'm sorry, Cuddy."