The hospital lobby is always a madhouse, a rush of people and tears and blood and life shading into death.
Today, on his way out, it feels different, somehow... more electric, the air super-charged.
He doesn't think to ask why, even though Brenda - running past him, her hand at her throat - looks almost like she wants to stop and talk to him, for once.
"House," he hears someone call from behind him, and it's Wilson.
"House," Wilson says again, his voice trembling with shock, "It's Cuddy."
- - -
She didn't have a pulse, when they brought her in.
She has one now, thready and thin and barely there, erratic like the drunk driver that forced her off the road, and they're working to bring her heartbeat back the way it was - strong, determined, true.
He lingers outside the OR, and he growls at flurried nurses that scurry by, and he glares at Cameron when she asks if he's okay. Wilson is with him, but thankfully, Wilson never says anything, he just waits.
So this tightness in his chest, this white-knuckled clenching of fists - this is what it feels like, for her to watch him die and to want him to live.
- - -
He leaves her room only to pee. He treats his patient through text messages and phone calls - Taub occasionally comes by with coffee and a new suggestion - and Wilson brings him meals.
It's only three days later that Wilson finally says, "House, she's unconscious, but I'm pretty sure she still has a sense of smell. Go take a shower."
- - -
When her eyes open for the first time, he's asleep.
She shifts and sighs, a puff of pain and surprise.
He jolts awake, and as quickly as his leg allows, he's by her side, trying to ignore the sharp starburst of what he suspects is joy, lodged right between his ribs.
She can't talk around the tube, but as he whips out his penlight to check her pupils for dilation, he sees the fear - liquid, unfamiliar, dark as pitch - in her eyes.
"You're okay, Cuddy," he tells her quietly, "Now, anyway."
He presses his palm to her forehead, as much for comfort as to check her temperature.
She looks at him, through a haze of pain and questions she cannot ask, and he doesn't look away until she nods, slowly, I believe you, and closes her eyes again.
- - -
Some days later, when the tube is gone and he's doing a crossword puzzle in her room ("Cuddy, if you can give me the answer to 'six across', I'll up your pain meds"), she says, casually, "So. A little bird tells me you practically lived here while I was out like a light."
"Don't flatter yourself," he snorts, studying the little grid of monochrome boxes intently. "And Wilson is at least a mid-sized parakeet."
"Hard to deny you looked like crap though," she remarks cheerfully, "like you hadn't slept in, I don't know, six days."
"The hooker I hired with this year's bonus kept me up for at least five of those six days," he snarks back.
"Afraid word might get out that you're actually a fluffy marshmallow on the inside?" she asks him sweetly, a grin on her face.
"Just happened to be here, boss, when you deigned to return to the land of the living," he insists, and waves the crossword in her face. "I think 'two down' is 'annoying patient who asks too many questions', by the way."
She shrugs. "Just checking. I guess that explains why you didn't sign my chart for the tachycardia on the third night."
"What the hell are you talking about, Cuddy?" he protests automatically, tapping his pen against the page, "You never left my sight--"
He pauses, two seconds too late.
Damn her.
She smiles, though, and so he finds it hard to be annoyed - triumph always did look good on her.
He clears his throat, rolls his eyes as theatrically as he knows how. "Don't take it as a compliment or anything. I need you alive to sign my paychecks."
"Okay," she nods, as she reaches over and lightly touches her fingers to the back of his hand, "don't take this as a compliment either. But thank you."
- - -