Cuddy had, rumour had it, been trying to get pregnant for years. Then one day she came in with a smile like sunshine and Cameron just knew.
She snapped at House for making jokes, silenced Foreman with a glare and sent Chase fleeing to the other side of the conference room, where he leaned against the wall and tried to look as if he'd been there all along.
"Latest date didn't work out?" House asked mockingly. "Guy not injured enough for your tastes?"
"Bugger off," she returned angrily, and buried herself in her coffee. House looked faintly injured. He tried a few carefully-aimed insults, which Cameron ignored in favour of her drink. After a minute or two, he gave up – for the time being, although once something grabbed House's interest he was like a dog with a bone – and headed in the direction of his desk and began flipping through his mail. One inter-departmental envelope caught his eye, and he slit it carefully open with the glossy wooden letter-opener that floated permanently round his office.
Chase and Foreman watched with open interest and, although Cameron wouldn't have admitted to it under any circumstances less than and perhaps including torture, she too was intrigued. House never opened his post first thing in the morning; he thumbed through it, threw half of it away and tossed the other half into the pile for somebody else to deal with.
House placed the letter opener down on the desk and looked into the open envelope for a moment. A grin twitched the corners of his mouth, but he didn't even bother extracting whatever-it-was for closer examination. Foreman and Chase exchanged glances. House double-checked the contents of the envelope – definitely smug about something – and then threw it into the bin along with three unopened memos about Clinic duty and two letters from pharmaceutical companies.
Cameron watched as he left the room. There was something cheerful in the way he limped off down the corridor.
Foreman and Chase dived for the bin – Foreman, being bigger, knocked Chase out of the way – and a moment later Foreman was holding up a used pregnancy testing stick: positive.
Cameron felt her insides flip over. As Foreman and Chase argued over whether the stick was one of House's games (Foreman's view) or from a genuinely pregnant woman with whom House had been in contact and had quite possibly got pregnant himself (Chase's view,) Cameron left. She wandered through the hospital and finally found herself looking down over the reception area. House and Cuddy were standing side by side, talking softly. Cuddy was grinning, and House – House had a little smile playing round his lips and a sparkle in his eyes.
Cameron took the day off, and went to a pub and got drunk.
xxx
Months passed and Cuddy's pregnancy became common knowledge at the hospital. People gossiped about it in corridors and behind hands and in the ladies', and Cameron watched as Cuddy's bump started to show.
She wasn't jealous, she told herself when she saw Cuddy's shining eyes and heard her laughing. She wasn't jealous.
Cuddy and House were soul mates one moment and worst enemies the next; Cameron overheard House shouting at Cuddy that he didn't know how to be a father, he'd injure the child, he didn't want to be a part of this kid's life.
Cameron fled before they saw her, but the sound of Cuddy's tears stayed with her as she worked in the lab that night, working as ever to save a life.
xxx
Cuddy's baby was born almost a month early, one dark night while House paced in the conference room and snarled at Cameron, Foreman and Chase to come up with something new or their patient would die.
They knocked around the same ideas half-heartedly, and they'd just got back to whether the blood clots could have a separate cause entirely – a messy theory, but the best one they had – when Wilson stuck his head round the door and told them that Cuddy was in labour.
"Come back tomorrow," House said. "Our patient will either be dead or cured by then, so I'll have time to visit Cuddy Junior and give him that nice new pair of cotton-soft babyshoes I stole from one of the dying kids in the NICU."
Wilson looked at them, all drinking coffee because when you have a patient dying almost every week even that fear can't always keep you awake after twenty-four hours of tests and house-breaking and coming up with idea after useless idea.
"I'll tell her you're thinking of her," Wilson said.
"We're not," House answered bluntly. "Much more important things to do. Lives to save, coffee to drink, late-night reruns of General Hospital to watch…"
Wilson just rolled his eyes and walked away, back along the corridor. Cameron looked over at House and saw that one of his hands was resting on the handle of the drawer which he didn't know they all knew contained a tatty old stuffed dog, a story book about bears in labcoats and a permanent sleeping pill prescription which bore the words Congratulations! You'll be needing these – House where the reason for prescription was meant to go.
"We haven't got all night," he said after a moment's silence. "More ideas, people!"
"Heroin overdose and autoimmune could account for practically all the symptoms," Chase suggested hesitantly.
"Autoimmune tests were negative, and she said she'd never done drugs," Cameron returned over House's scoffing about 'practically all' being drastically different from 'all.'
And so the night went on.
xxx
They diagnosed their patient, House reckened, about fifteen minutes before her system went into total shut-down. With the right meds pumping into her system, though, they'd be seeing some improvement in an hour or so, and once that happened they could all go home and get some of that much-coveted luxury, sleep.
But that still left them with an hour to kill, and there was no getting out of it. They were going to visit Cuddy.
The baby was small, skinny and red-faced, and Cuddy looked at him as if he was the most beautiful creature on the planet. She beamed tiredly up at them as they filed in, House plonking himself unceremoniously down on the bed, Foreman bagging the chair, Chase leaning against the wall and drinking yet another cup of coffee, and Cameron hovering awkwardly in the doorway.
House studied the baby critically and said thoughtfully, "He looks like a prune."
"Thank you for that kind vote of confidence, House," Cuddy said dryly, but she was grinning.
Chase leaned over and offered the baby his finger, completely at home with new babies and tired mothers. Everybody watched, Foreman and House looking slightly irritated and Cuddy amused.
"He's a tough one," Chase said finally, gently prising the baby's hands away from his finger and giving Cuddy an easy smile.
Cameron drifted a little closer in spite of herself, watching as Chase eased the baby out of Cuddy's arms and held him briefly, then passed him on to a mildly protesting House. The baby's eyes were unfocused but they were a definite, stubborn blue, two shades darker than the norm.
She saw the baby's tiny hands, his wrinkly little face peering up, his body, oh so small, already in clumsy, wriggling motion. She saw House's care as he returned the baby to Cuddy's arms, supporting that fragile little body as if it was made of fine porcelain. She saw the way Cuddy held him, hesitant and proud and utterly in awe. She saw the look of pride hidden below indifference on House's face.
He's got House's eyes, she thought wearily. Now Cuddy doesn't just have House, she's got his son, too.
Cameron fled, tears welling, suddenly remembering the pain of waking up in the morning, reaching over for her husband as she always did, finding him gone as she always did, and then seeing the blood all over the sheets. It was like being torn in two, like watching him die all over again only worse, so much worse, because this time she'd had so much hope.
She runs away from their happiness, because she cannot bear it. Envy is not a sin to pay penance for; envy itself is the penance, penance for loss and pain and suffering. Cameron has paid too much penance already, has seen green with envy for what others take for granted, has felt the ache of loss for something that she has never had and never will. It doesn't ever get easier.