Okay, so I wrote this originally for National Novel Writing Month, and I haven't really done much editing since, so I apologise if it is really abysmal. I haven't written anything in quite a while, but I'm hoping to finish this off, and hoping that posting it on here will give me the incentive to do so. Also, I apologise in advance that the chapters are so long - at the time I was going for writing as much as humanly possible.
I apologise for a seemingly extremely slow start, but I'm hoping you'll all like it all the same. I'm posting the Prologue and the first Chapter at the same time, seen as the Prologue isn't very long!
It's supposed to be set after House comes out of Mayfield - he has his medical licence back and Taub/Thirteen never left, however him and Wilson don't yet know about Cuddy and Lucas. Oh, and Chase and Cameron are still living happily ever after and working at the hospital!
I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for reading!
Prologue
He clenched his hand tightly into a fist and gripped hard onto the fabric of the pillow, not quite sure if he was awake or asleep. The darkness was so thick, his view was no different even when he forced open his eyes, and the silence was deafeningly still. Nothing to distract him, nothing to take away from the pain that had awoken him from his slumber. It was almost like knives were piercing every inch of skin covering what was left of his right thigh muscle, before cleaving deep wounds, burning with agonising pain. He braced himself, burying his face deep into the feather pillow, stifling any gasp of pain almost to the point of suffocation. It was at this time every night that he asked himself why he'd ever willingly invited the crippling pain to haunt him once again. And it was at this time every night he answered himself – because if he inhaled deeply enough into his bed sheets he could still smell her on them. He closed his eyes once more, the memory of his fantasy almost as painful as his leg, and begged the darkness to swallow him and sleep to take him once more. There was a long night ahead. Long, and alone.
Guilt was something she succumbed to very easily – it was her nemesis, and had been ever since she'd been able to understand the concept of responsibility. Staring at the ceiling, she was forcing her eyes open as her ritual act of punishment to herself. She knew he wouldn't be sleeping, and she felt responsible for this, therefore she wouldn't sleep either. It was in some ways masochistic, it relieved her guilt and her burden when she felt she had endured the same punishment she had bestowed upon him. Tossing and turning, she wrapped the duvet tightly around her as if she was trapped in some sort of cage – yet it somehow made her feel less alone. Fighting with sleep, she was losing the battle and just as it lead her into the depth of dreams, a baby cried, and she jolted awake. The digital clock to her bedside blinked a green glow of 4:54am, and she surrendered her dreams to attend to her baby girl.
Dressed only in her silk night gown, Lisa Cuddy climbed out of her tangled mess of bed sheets and tread the familiar path to the room of her little girl, Rachel. It was a journey she'd made so many times before in the dead of night; it was imprinted in her mind and no longer required any amount of thought, memory, or light. She reached the wooden barrier of the cot, the only thing separating her from her daughter, reached in and brought the crying small child into her arms, cradling her to the warm body of her mother.
"Ssssh, there there Rachel, mommy's got you. I know darling, I know you're hungry, just give me a second." She was well aware her daughter had no grasp or understanding of her words, she was speaking mostly to herself, merely for company, and self-assurance. Her surroundings were slowly coming in to focus as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she let out a long sigh of exhaustion. There was a long day ahead. Long, and alone.
I
As difficult as many people find it to separate and compartmentalise their life, it was something Gregory House had never struggled with. And regardless of how many aspects of his life had changed in recent months, he would never surrender the ability to goad and sexually harass his boss, even though the image, smell and taste of her was haunting him every moment he spent in his apartment. He limped into the lobby of Princeton Plainsboro teaching hospital, the rubber cap on the end of his cane damp from the white blanket of snow coating the ground outside, causing it to make a highly irritating high pitched squeaking noise as it made contact with the polished floor with every other step he made. In a tight fitted, suspiciously secretarial looking black skirt, complimented by a remarkably open, body hugging red shirt and a black, elasticated belt around her waist, the Dean of Medicine stood at the nurse's station with an extremely distasteful expression on her face.
"Really, must you be so loud?" As Cuddy spoke and he approached, she straightened her back, presumably in an attempt to assert her authority, and be looking up to him as little as possible, as she was a considerable distance shorter than him. Also, her last word was laboured, and quieter than the others, as if really thinking she could lead him by example – she was wonderfully optimistic.
"Yes, Dr Cuddy, I must. Really, must you be so…" He widened his eyes as they found her cleavage, and a dazed expression slipped onto his face, as if he were hypnotized into a trance. After a few seconds, he shook his head and apparently became alert and aware of reality again, though looking marginally confused. "Sorry, what was I saying?" He blinked several times in surprise.
A look of scorn replaced her look of disgust, but she merely clicked her tongue impatiently and refused to dignify his performance with a response. She thrust a navy blue file in his direction with rather more force than was really necessary. "You've got a case."
"No I don't." With the reflexes of a much younger man, he tossed the file back on top of the keyboard of the nurses' station computer, from which it very much accidentally slipped on the floor, and as she bent over to pick it up, after a fleeting glance of admiration of her ass, he limped in the direction of the elevators.
With the speed of a woman not wearing 3 and a half inch heels and the file back in her hand, she caught up with him as he hit the elevator button with his cane. "Yes, you do." She didn't even look the slightest out of breath, and she pressed the file into his chest with a significant and surprising amount of force. "You've been without a case for 10 days House, so I found you one. Well, actually, Cameron found you one."
House had no choice but to take the file that had most likely now left an imprint on his chest, considering the force with which they made contact with each other, and grimaced sarcastically. "I'll be sure to thank her in the most appropriate way. Most likely by bending her over my good knee and spanking her, I'm pretty sure she'd like that… I'll have to ask Chase." The silver elevator doors to their right opened and various members of the Princeton Plainsboro staff spilled out, along with a patient in a wheelchair, all of whom he disregarded and marched into the middle of, slamming the 3rd floor button repeatedly, presumably to board the elevator before his boss had a chance to pursue him.
Cuddy, with many polite apologies, slipped with much more ease through the crowd of people vacating the elevator and joined him inside it easily before the doors slid shut. As they did, and they were left alone, she swept her hair out of her face in an attempt to be elegant, and cleared her throat. "You know, I'm sure Cameron would like that… You just got to do it just right."
For the second time in the space of ten minutes, his eyes widened in surprise, but this time his jaw dropped in shock too. "Oh no you didn't sister. You're too anal to have slept with Cameron. You wouldn't jeopardise your working relationship with her. Besides, if you had, I'd already know." By the time he had finished speaking, rather than looking surprised, he looked self satisfied, but refrained from turning his head to the left and looking at her, as the images in his mind had no need to be any more graphic than they already were.
"By that logic, I'm too anal to ever sleep with you, either. Bad luck."
With no clever escape from being trapped in such a sticky honey trap, he knew he wasn't going to win this argument and therefore changed the subject. "Aren't you a little confused Dr. Cuddy? I'm on my way to my office to consult my highly bored team – who, might I add, have not constructed a make shift table tennis tournament out of bally, some books and a pair of your stockings I stole – on the case you have just ordered me to take, like a good little employee. That should usually result in you returning to your office, which is conveniently located in the opposite direction, and not bothering me for the rest of the day. Or until I do something insane, whatever comes first."
"I am well aware of the location of my office House, believe it or not I've got it memorised by now." The elevator doors swept open in front of them, and out of politeness she stepped back and allowed him to leave first. In reality, she just didn't want him spending the 50 yards to his office staring at her ass rather than listening to her words, but politeness and genuine concern for a cripple was a much more politically correct and admirable excuse. "In fact, I am intentionally joining you in your office. I have a few things to clear up, and make you and your team aware of in regards to the case before you begin your differential diagnosis." Her heels clicked against the hard floor as she hurried to catch him up as he pushed open the glass door and entered his outer office.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot think of anything at all about this patient that me or my team would be mildly interested in hearing before we begin the ddx. In fact, almost everything I would be remotely interested in can wait until after the ddx, which enables you to turn around and leave, and not invade the creative juices of my team." A sarcastic and very enthusiastic hand gesture accompanied the final metaphor. "Unless you're about to tell me that my patient is a blonde and insanely younger look a like of Angelina Jolie, with a better body than the woman herself, which you can tell me now and then turn around and leave." As he walked into his office, he dropped the door on his boss and tossed the file down the glass table so it skidded to a halt in front of Foreman, who was sitting at the other end glaring at House and didn't flinch.
After quickly stepping backwards to save herself from a rather embarrassing collision with the glass door, she entered the room with much more grace than her employee managed, and it was only upon her entrance that Thirteen stirred from her magazine and Taub looked up from the computer screen. However, she continued the conversation as if there was no one else in the room. "You may not be mildly interested in what I have to say, but you're still going to listen to it because as far as I can remember, I'm still your boss." Then, she turned to address the three other doctors in the room, with a well practised smile. "You've got a case. A sixteen year old female presented with intermittent blurred vision and blindness, and a hard rash on the palms of her hands. But we have a problem. The parents are also claiming she's delusional, and is experiencing neurological symptoms, because she came out as gay last month. They want assurance that none of her doctors will discuss the content of her 'sinful hallucinations' with her, they will be referred to as such, and they will be treated as every other symptom."
It was a rare moment in which House was rendered speechless, but it was hard to tell whether this was a symptom of moral outrage, or disbelief at the stupidity of some members of the human race. It was most likely the latter. To rectify the situation, he quickly recovered. "Oh so that's why you were thinking about Cameron this morning? You were considering experimenting yourself, to see if it really is 'sinful'? Well if you're going down that route, I would have thought Thirteen would be a more appropriate candidate, she's had much more experience in that field. Unless you've already had some experience yourself…"
With huge effort, Cuddy ensured that despite his speculation about her previous sexual experiences, she didn't even allow her cheeks to glow pink. She merely ignored him and turned to his team, addressing them alone. "As I'm sure, as usual, Dr. House will not be participating in any patient contact I'm predominantly speaking to you three. The parents are highly influential parishioners with a ton of money and I don't particularly want lawyers on my ass because anyone couldn't keep their mouth shut, regardless of their personal opinions. Especially Thirteen, okay?"
Remy Hadley looked highly affronted by the direct address from the Dean of Medicine, and also marginally insulted. "You think just because the parents are prejudiced idiots and I happen to inhabit the minority of which they are insulting, I'll be the one to tell their daughter to rebel and give in to her urges? Thanks, Dr. Cuddy…"
Seemingly oblivious to the exchange between his boss and his colleague, House continued to press the matter of the former's sexual experimentation. "I mean, you'd more than likely fall into the arms of a woman because you're too whiny for any man to put up with you and a woman would provide you with the tender sensitivity you so desperately need, but then would you actually have the balls to do it… Because we both know, it's a slippery slope – and once you've ventured into the jungle, you could never go back…"
Cuddy frowned so deeply in response to House's persistence that many lines appeared on her face, but she didn't even turn to look at him. "No, Dr. Hadley, what I'm saying is you shouldn't let your personal experience interfere with the case and you should ensure you keep your emotions under control because the parents are likely to say something that at the very least will offend you, if not outrage you. Now, I'll leave you to get on with the diagnosis." With that, she turned on her heel and walked out the door, without even a backwards glance at House, which everyone in the room thought was impressive.
As she left, he couldn't resist raising his voice and calling behind her, watching her ass through the glass walls of his office. "Well if you ever decide to venture down that route, be sure to let me know so I can order ring side seats!" And then he turned back to his team as if nothing had just happened. "Okay, so intermittent blindness, rash, and 'hallucinations'. Go."
"Wait a minute; you are actually considering hallucinations as a valid symptom?" Foreman raised his eyebrow sceptically, his hands clasped in front of him, having spent long enough around House to know that if he was honouring the parents' wishes, especially in a situation such as this where and extra symptom could throw their whole diagnosis off, there was a reason to be highly suspicious.
"Well mummy and daddy said so and the scary administrator said we had to keep mummy and daddy happy…" House would never be able to pull off any sort of innocence, so his effort was clearly with the intention of irony.
"But, there's clearly nothing wrong with her brain, so we're going to end up with a completely irrelevant diagnosis and she'll never get bett-"
Taub's irate sentence was cut short. "Well I know that, and you know that, but why do they need to know that? As they requested, we'll treat her delusions as we treat every other symptom – every other symptom that we know isn't really a symptom, that is. Humour and lie to the family whilst treating for what we think is actually wrong with her. It didn't take a genius to work that one out, did it? You would have thought you would have one or two brain cells in such a huge head… Or does it just look that big because of your nose?"
Thirteen cleared her throat impatiently. "Can we get back to the medicine please? As fascinating as lying to patient's families and the size of Taub's head is, we have a sick and potentially dying teenage girl which I thought was a more pressing issue… Blurred vision and a rash could be indicative of leukaemia – she's the right age too."
"Blurred vision, a rash and hallucinations." House corrected her matter-of-factly.
She tutted in annoyance and revised her statement. "Blurred vision, a rash and hallucinations could indicate leukaemia."
"No blood in the stool." Foreman shot back. "It could be lupus erythematosus?"
"She hasn't had a seizure since she got here, and if the parents think her being gay is a neurological symptom, I don't think it's likely they would miss a seizure. There's a note in the file to say she's lost weight over the last couple of months but the parents just assumed it was a typical teenage thing – worrying about body image – but what if it's a symptom? Loss of appetite could suggest sarcoidosis." Taub seemed as though he was determined to prove there was more than one or two brain cells in his head.
Highly unimpressed by this stroke of inspiration, House merely addressed the rest of the team. "No objection to sarcoidosis? Okay then get our little teenage drama queen a CT scan, and draw some blood to check her liver and kidneys. If that doesn't tell us anything, get consent to stick a needle in her eye and get a biopsy."