Cuddy turns away from the window, and puts the receiver of her phone back in its dock. She sits at her desk, shaking her head calmly, thoughts of how she could get Greg House to spend more time doing paperwork, and less time coming up with snappy retorts floating across her mind.
As she rifles through the files stacked on her desk searching for something to assign House, she can't help but glance over to the picture of the two of them sitting on the corner of the desk. She usually keeps this particular picture in the desk, but for some reason today she felt compelled to have it out, where hopefully the world wouldn't see it. She rethinks her judgment from earlier that day, and opens a drawer in her desk. She gingerly lifts the photo by the frame, and holds for a moment, studying it for the two hundred fortieth time.
There was sun that day, even though it was the middle of November. She had spent the day with him in Atlantic City, just to get her mind off the hospital. He had insisted she leave it behind that day, telling her that four years with no off time wasn't healthy, and it was the ten-year anniversary of the death of her father. So he had taken her that day down to the coast, in the hope that everything that was affecting her mentally and physically would fade away.
It had been quite a plan, too, and would have worked, had a man not collapsed in the booth next to them in the diner where they ate lunch. The amount of salt in his diet triggered by a certain alcoholic draft had caused his throat to contract, cutting off his air supply. She remembers vividly watching him first realize that he couldn't breathe. She visualizes the look of shock on his face as his lips slowly turned blue, and then purple. She can hear the thump and clatter as he fell to the floor, punctuating something House had been trying to tell her.
He, of course, had leapt to help the man, but Lisa herself had been stayed by something much more powerful. Frozen to her seat, she could do no more than attempt to process the information that House had just confessed to her. She relives the moment now, wishing it had been different. If only they had come in five minutes later, and been seated across the room. He wouldn't have been interrupted in his speech. She reconsiders this last thought, and adds another: he probably wouldn't have been making that speech.
This particular picture, however, had been taken much earlier that day, by a woman on her way to pick up her son, Joel, from his Nanny. She had seen the two doctors sitting on the grass, talking, and had seized the moment to snap a few photos of them on Greg's camera.
There is a knock on her door, and she drops the photo into the drawer and closes it hurriedly. In the next instant, Eric Foreman, a doctor on House's team, is bursting in, not waiting for her response. He walks to her desk quickly, clearly upset about something.
"Can I help you with something?" she asks, not impressed by his display.
"Do you know what House did?" He asks, as if his boss had just run over his dog.
"I'm sure you're going to tell me." She replies, resting her head on her hands.
"He took Chase's side in a Neuro case. Chase! The man couldn't tell his left hemisphere from his left testicle, and House is trusting him over me!" Foreman paces in front of her desk.
Cuddy sighs. "Whatever his decision, I'm sure House has a reason for it. He doesn't take random suggestions and try to make them work, it just wouldn't be House. Probably he thought there was some merit in what Chase suggested." She realizes the hilarity of what she's doing, and asks him forcefully, "And are you in the third grade?"
He shoots her a death glare, and snaps, "Chase got his suggestion from me! We were talking about it before House came in, and now Chase is getting the credit for it!"
"Well, if it was your suggestion House took from Chase, why are you making a stink about House not taking your suggestions? Even if he didn't give you credit, I'm sure House knows where it came from. You should be grateful Cameron's not holding this over you, saying that it's karma."
He looks at her without saying anything, and she instantly knows that this is exactly what has been happening. A few weeks earlier, Foreman had stolen something Dr. Cameron had written, and used it as his own in an article he wrote for a medical journal. Cameron was pretty upset, and apparently wasn't over it yet.
She rolls her eyes, and instructs Foreman to ignore Chase, and to go talk to House if he has further issues. He walks out, much calmer than when he walked in, and heads for House's office.
