A/N: There will be a lot of mental reminiscing going on in Greg and Livi's minds only to establish the back story of their relationship.
Also, anything resembling the sex scenes in the House premier and this chapter are totally coincidental. I started this chapter in the middle of August. Work has been insane, and I'm just finishing up now.
CHAPTER TWO
House stayed a half block behind Livi all the way to her house. As she pulled her car into the driveway of 1632 Bouquet street, she still didn't realize she had been followed. House didn't get any closer, checking out her house as best as he could from that distance.
"Nice." he said to himself, even though he wasn't a suburbs kind of guy.
Livi had bought a one story, four bedroom ranch house with a garage that looked big enough to hold three vehicles. The yard was beautifully landscaped, with all the rhododendron bushes that ringed the house trimmed to just below window level, and House noticed the house had a security system. Now he would only worry slightly less about her living alone. Then he closed his eyes and chuckled to himself. She would go nuts with Christmas lights outside. He'd deal with it.
House could see the big fenced in backyard from his vantage point and correctly guessed there was a pool there. Actually, as far as he could tell, it looked like there were maybe three or four other houses in the neighborhood had pools and there were a lot of kids running around.
"Big deal." House thought to himself. In spite of his reputation as a first-class grouch, House actually liked kids. He had always doubted his parenting abilities, so he just never had any. Knowing Livi, if she had made friends with her neighbors since she moved in, the kids would swarm on her house to get her to come and play with them, and she wouldn't think twice about it. It looked like a neighborhood where people looked out for each other. He could handle this if everything worked out with Livi.
House watched until Livi got out of her car, closed the garage door and disappeared from view. Satisfied that she was safely home, he put his helmet on and headed home himself, not realizing Lucas had tailed him.
The coffee shop meeting Lucas had with Cuddy was brief and to the point, and he had hurried out to see if he could spot Livi's red Mustang anywhere as he slowly drove the streets between St. Sebastian's and her house. By sheer chance, he spotted House on his bike and followed him at a distance, hoping he was following Livi.
Poor Lucas. He knew this investigation was a waste of time. When his quick, initial investigation of Livi turned up nothing but basic information this morning, he knew no matter how far he dug, there would be nothing there for Lisa to use. The woman was clean as could be. The worst thing that had happened to her was losing both her parents when she was six. Besides, if Lisa had told him the entire truth about what happened at the picnic, House had been sorry about their relationship from the second it started.
Lisa's bossiness and need to be in control was the reason the relationship tanked so quickly. Livi was actually Wilson's guest at the picnic, and Lisa should have been mature enough to handle it. That House decided to break up with her then was coincidental but inevitable. Livi had been in town since January and had not even tried to contact House even though she knew where he lived and worked. That puzzled Lucas and he would try to find out why that was so, but not right this second.
Lucas wasn't an Alpha Dog like House or Lisa. He was more laid back and he could deal with Lisa's bossiness, giving the appearance that she was the one who "wore the pants" in their relationship. To all outward appearances, Lucas was the bumbling boyfriend of a powerful woman with a prestigious job and did as he was told. In reality, he was the one who unobtrusively controlled her, and she never realized it.
Lisa Cuddy struck like a hammer, and it suited him to play the goofy, inept young suitor. It worked until Lisa decided that she was in love with House. House would have eventually left her, but it might have been on more civil terms if Livi hadn't shown up. It was all about timing. Lucas followed House until he saw that he was headed home.
Lucas knew House well enough to know that for the time being, he was satisfied that he knew where Livi's house was, so Lucas could go home and get a few hours of sleep. House wouldn't move from his apartment for the rest of the day. After dark, Lucas took up surveillance on Livi's house just like Lisa had asked him to do. She was paying him to watch her every move.
It was a wasted night. Livi wouldn't budge from her house either, and she didn't make any phone calls. Lucas had found out who her Internet carrier was and hacked into their server. She wasn't online emailing or Instant Messaging House, either.
Livi had fallen asleep almost instantly after her shower. She had no clue that Greg had followed her home or that Cuddy had hired a private detective to tail her every move. She woke up around five to her stomach growling.
Still tired, she wandered into her kitchen to make herself dinner. Hopefully, she wouldn't have a hard time going back to sleep later because she slept all day.
Livi looked in her refrigerator trying to decide what to eat. She was a good cook, but she hated cooking for just herself. Her grandmother had taught her how to cook very well, but the problem was Italians have trouble cooking on a small scale. Livi and every other Italian woman on the planet had trouble cooking for less than five people. Since she had been in Princeton, she had found herself bringing tons of leftovers to work and feeding her staff lunch whenever she cooked.
Back in Pittsburgh, leftovers were rarely a problem. Everyone of her relatives still lived in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh or a ten minute drive away. Someone was always dropping by, friend or relative, and in typical Italian fashion, you were always fed something when you stopped for a visit, family or not!
Livi settled for a Stouffer's microwave meatloaf dinner. She put it on a tray with a glass of lemonade and went into the den to watch some TV. Settling down to watch an NCIS rerun, she looked at her dinner and remembered that meatloaf was one of Greg's favorites. Thinking about Greg made her think about the picnic yesterday.
"Why had Greg been "lusting" after Lisa Cuddy all these years?" Livi wondered to herself.
What Livi saw yesterday was not a successful career woman, one of the very few women deans of medicine in the entire country. She saw a very attractive but incredibly insecure woman. No, wait, take that back. She saw an insecure bitch and proof of what a relationship based on sexual attraction and nothing else was like.
Greg had been sexually attracted to Cuddy all these years, and finally realized that they could never have anything lasting. Livi doubted the sex was any good after the buzz of finally winning the prize wore off for Greg.
And poor Greg. Livi knew Wilson hadn't told her all the details that led up to Greg's breakdown (There really was a lot Livi didn't know but would soon find out!), but it was obvious he was still having issues. He had a lost look about him. She had to do something, but what? The Greg House she saw yesterday wasn't the one she grew up with. He had a haunted, lost look in his eyes. Livi did see a glimpse of the old Greg when he tried to embarrass her by mentioning Sanibel Island and inviting her to lunch, but for the most part, he was just a shadow of the man she still loved and always would.
Over the years, Livi had occasionally wondered why they hadn't gotten married. They knew each other so well, it bordered on scarey. On the outside, it seemed that they had nothing more than a sexual attraction to each other, but there was more.
Livi had seen first-hand how Colonel House treated his son, and whenever it was feasible, she would get Greg to come to her grandparents until John House cooled off. They connected on all levels, but Greg never showed any desire to have a permanent relationship with her.
Livi blamed a lot of Greg's problems on John House and the way he raised Greg. She had often wondered why Blythe had never divorced the Colonel and took Greg away, giving him a chance to be "normal", whatever that was.
Just because she and Greg only got together when one of them (usually him) needed some type of comforting didn't mean that Livi sat around waiting for Greg's next call. She dated a lot, but the few relationships that had serious potential quickly cooled once they knew she couldn't have children. Whether it was deliberate or a stupid knee jerk reaction, she was made to feel like she was damaged goods because she couldn't have children, and the relationship soon ended.
It hurt a lot at first, but she buried the hurt of being thought of as "damaged goods" the same way she buried the hurt of not being able to have children. Livi should have tried to talk those feelings out instead of burying the pain, but what was the point? Control had been taken from her and she couldn't have children. That was that. Her uterus couldn't be put back. She had no choice but to deal with it. She had looked into adoption, but that was a long, tedious process that she hadn't had any luck with so far. The adoption agencies had approved her, but had a tendency to give a child to a two-parent family before a single mother.
Slowly, she began limiting her socializing to group activities with co-workers and family or non-committal relationships. That probably wasn't a good idea either, but she wasn't depressed and her life was full.
Livi knew she had made a mistake had been in not trying to have a baby, married or not, before her endometriosis got so severe she had to have surgery. First, she wanted to get through the craziness of her residency and she worked all kinds of crazy shifts to complete her requirements. She should have known better, but she thought there would still be time to try once that was all out of the way.
Unfortunately, Livi ran out of time. She had won one of the three fellowship spots at UPMC's Sports Medicine Center and was such a stand out, they kept her on staff when it was over. Livi was thirty now. She had been on the Pill since she was a teenager, but it wasn't helping her any longer. Neither were the D&C's she had been having almost twice a year. The D&C's had been keeping fibroids at a minimum, but not anymore.
In spite of the severity of her condition, the only thing that went right for Livi was sex. She never had any pain and she enjoyed it immensely. She reluctantly agreed with her doctor that it was time for surgery, so they scheduled it for a time when Livi would be able to stay home and recuperate for six weeks.
Dr. Sorenson filled out the papers for a short-term disability leave for Livi and forwarded them HR. She also gave Livi's boss a call and explained the what was going on to him and suggested she take a few days off now to adjust to the situation.
Devastated and not thinking clearly, Livi stopped taking the pill in the middle of her cycle. Why bother with it anymore? It wasn't helping her and now she was going to permanently lose her chance at having a baby sooner than she thought.
She called Greg to tell him what was going on, and he got her a ticket on the first flight to Philly and she stayed with him for a week. Two doctors who knew better gave no thought at all to using birth control one night because they were too drunk to think about it, and Livi got pregnant.
Before she had a chance to tell Greg, she had a miscarriage, bleeding so severely that her doctor ending up doing the hysterectomy right away instead of when it was scheduled. Dr. Sorenson left Livi's ovaries in because they weren't diseased and there no were fibroids on them. No point in going through menopause at the age of thirty.
Livi had lost a lot of blood and her doctor kept her in the hospital for ten days. When she was well enough, she called Greg to tell him what had happened because he had promised her he would come to Pittsburgh for awhile after her surgery.
Surprisingly, hearing Livi had lost their baby hurt him more than he could have imagined, but Greg brushed it off. He came to stay with her for two weeks and said everything Livi needed to hear and she believed him, which had been his goal. He was surprised that he had been able to comfort her because he didn't believe his own words.
Greg had a brass set on him, and the first thing he did was visit Livi's doctor and review her file for himself. It was highly unethical, but Dr. Sorenson let Greg see the file anyway. Somehow, she sensed that Greg was in love with her patient, although he didn't seem to realize it, and he was making sure everything had been done to spare Livi needing a hysterectomy. Greg's reputation had preceded him to Pittsburgh.
In Dr. Sorenson's conference room, Greg poured over Livi's entire file, going back to when she still lived in Quantico and the base doctors were treating her right up until the present. He read and re-read the file, obsessing over every period and comma, and even made his own notes in the margins and he stared at the ultrasounds that had been done, especially the ones when Livi started to lose the baby. He saw the tiny beginnings of what would have been his child.
Finally, Greg was satisfied beyond any doubt that medically, everything possible had been done to avoid a hysterectomy and he wouldn't have treated Livi any differently, that the surgery was necessary to save her life. Even though his logical mind told him surgery had been necessary, that it was going to happen one way or another, Greg blamed himself for the timing. He was just as drunk and horny as Livi was, but he should have protected her. He felt like he had let her down in some way, but neither one of them had counted on a pregnancy or miscarriage.
He wasn't sure about his ability to help raise his own child anyway, so he tried to convince himself that losing the baby was the best for all concerned. He never voiced those thoughts to Livi because he wasn't able to convince himself, startled to realize he had wanted a baby with her. Livi wasn't the only one who dealt with things by trying to ignore them when she couldn't find a logical answer, but in the long run, she handled it better.
Livi recovered quickly, Greg went back to Princeton and they went on with their lives. Once Livi had gotten over the shock that she had actually gotten pregnant and almost immediately lost the only chance she might have had to have her own child, she threw herself into to her career (developing her own medical reputation as well), and being a surrogate mother to her cousin's kids as well as half the kids in the neighborhood.
It wasn't the real deal, but Livi loved them as much as she would have loved her own children. It was a poor substitute because she lived alone now. Her grandfather had died peacefully in his sleep like his wife had, a year after Livi started her residency at UPMC.
Before she had started her junior under grad year at Pitt, Livi had finally been able to convince her grandfather sell his house in Quantico and move back to Bloomfield. He and Livi had moved back into his parent's old home. The outside was immaculate, so they completely renovated and restored the interior, knocking down walls on the first floor to make the living room, kitchen and dining room larger and had a pool installed.
They made the six incredibly small bedrooms upstairs into three larger ones and had all the plumbing redone, and turned the basement into a fully furnished family room. Whole house air conditioning was installed and the attic space was renovated into a sitting room for Livi so she could study in peace and quiet. It was one of the few houses in the city with an attached garage. The house had been left to her, and Livi gladly hosted most family holidays at her house. Being hostess to all filled some of the emptiness she felt inside.
Around nine, Livi's eyes started to droop. She took her tray back to the kitchen, double-checked her doors and alarm system went back to bed. She decided she was going to try and help Greg, at least with his pain, but he had to come to her first. As much as she loved a good fight, she was not going anywhere near Greg because of Cuddy since she obviously wasn't accepting the fact that Greg broke it off with her. The ball was in his court now.
Livi had probably added more than enough fuel to the fire by deliberately kissing Greg goodnight on the lips, but what the hell! Even a quick kiss like that from Greg was enough to send a shiver down her spine! Other than Greg, she couldn't remember anyone else giving her that same shiver!
Since Cuddy was his boss as well, Livi didn't want to make trouble for him at work and possibly get him fired. She wasn't going to make life easy for Greg now, especially after a public break up.
Knowing about her relationship with Greg, Dr. D'Antonio had told her they had been trying to woo him away from PPTH periodically for the past five years. Livi was surprised to hear that. Although they had only been in contact infrequently for the past few years, it was unlike Greg to crow and brag about any job offer he got, even to her, because other than Blythe, Livi was the only other person on the planet who would be truly happy for him.
Dr. D'Antonio was hard to impress, but even with all of Greg's problems, he had made a lasting impression on him after he had referred a couple of difficult cases to him and periodically kept trying to get him to work at St. Sebastian's.
Livi knew Wilson well enough to know that by tomorrow morning, Greg would know what kind of car she drove if he hadn't blabbed it already, and he would probably start following her home, but for once, Livi under estimated Greg. She didn't know that he didn't wait for Wilson to give him that little tidbit of information, and had gotten up early (for him) to take her to breakfast this morning.
Livi got in bed and turned her TV on, not really watching. Greg kept intruding into her thoughts. Judging by the look on his face and how heavily he leaned on his cane when he was stretching his leg during the fireworks, the Ibuprofen he kept swallowing yesterday was not helping him at all, and Livi suspected that there was more going on there than he would admit to.
Whose brilliant idea was it to give him Ibuprofen? With the way he was tossing it down, he was risking an ulcer or kidney damage, especially when combined with alcohol. At the very least, he needed some type of muscle relaxant and maybe a prescription strength, non-narcotic pain killer to at least take the edge off. It was hard to decide a course of treatment without running tests and seeing his medical file.
Just the thought of all the agony Greg was in now irritated Livi to no end and without wanting to, her mind wandered back to when Stacey left Greg and she found out about the infarction.
When Livi had found out that Greg and Stacey had moved in together, she was happy for him. Livi had met Stacey once, at Greg's insistence, and she didn't really care for her. Greg seemed to want her approval, not realizing how much Livi was hurting. He appeared to be happy, and that's what Livi wanted for him, so she wished them well, hiding the pain of losing Greg so well that he never noticed.
She went back to her job in Pittsburgh and her every day life, not looking back, but regretting she hadn't done more to make Greg love her enough to ask her to move in with him or marry him.
"Maybe he thinks I'm damaged goods now, like everyone else has." she told herself. "I couldn't even have his baby."
She buried that pain, too. That wasn't any better than her burying her pain of not having children, but she couldn't come up with a logical way to deal with it. She had been known to hit the bottle now and again, especially when she was with Greg, but she just couldn't picture herself drowning her sorrows and becoming an alcoholic.
Livi had been raised to try and solve her problems on her own and to learn to live with it if things didn't work out the way she expected them to, but what good would it do to talk to Greg now? It was too late. Since she had been taught to work her own problems out, it was natural for her not to believe in therapy or medicating herself into oblivion, even if she was watching the man she had been in love with since she was ten years old declare his love for someone else.
One night, about five years after Stacey had moved in with Greg, Livi was working late at the hospital, finishing up her paper work. It was early spring, and she was leaving for a three week vacation in Florida the next afternoon and she wanted everything in order and out of the way when she came back. On her way out of the hospital, she got a 911 page, and she recognized the number that went along with it.
Frowning, she hurried back to her office to call Greg. He picked up the phone on the first ring and started babbling away about how Stacey had left him. He sounded pretty drunk, so Livi patiently waited for him to calm down a little.
Finally, he got him calm enough to talk coherently and she asked him what was wrong. The whole story spilled out, including the part about Stacey moving out of Greg's apartment and Princeton as well. Greg had had an infarction in his right leg almost a year earlier which had gone undiagnosed for four days. Amputation was suggested because the delay in diagnosing it had caused muscle death, but he insisted the clot be removed in spite of the risks involved in restoring the blood flow in his leg.
The procedure was successful, clearing the clot, but the pain had gotten much worse, even with morphine. He had a heart attack. Once he had been stabilized, the pain was more excruciating than ever. He asked to be put in a coma to get through the worst of it. He was already maxed out on his morphine, and it was entirely possible that the pain itself could kill him.
Stacey had still been trying to talk him into amputation, and he adamantly kept refusing. He kept insisting on the medically induced coma, sleeping through the worst of the pain. Finally giving in, Cuddy did that and as soon as Greg was out, Stacey questioned her about another procedure she had previously mentioned, a sort of middle ground that would allow Greg to keep his leg and possibly live pain free.
Stacey authorized the surgery because she was Greg's medical proxy, but it didn't go as exactly as planned. Quite a bit of his thigh muscle had been removed, leaving an ugly hole in his leg, along with a lot of nerve damage. The pain levels had barely decreased, but morphine was helping a little now, and the pain eventually leveled off to a point where he was discharged with a prescription for Vicodin and a schedule for physical therapy.
Greg was angry with Stacey for going against his wishes. He refused to do his physical therapy after a certain point and all they did was fight. Basically (and understandably at first), he was throwing his own pity party and taking everything out on her. He felt betrayed.
Stacey stood it for as long as she could, but eventually moved out. Within a year, she had married Mark Warner, but Greg wouldn't find that out until Stacey showed up at PPTH several years after that, begging Greg to save her husband's life. That little episode led Greg to attempt to break Stacey's marriage up so she would come back to him, but in the end, he realized he couldn't give her what she wanted and told her to go back to Mark.
Livi didn't need to hear anymore. Greg needed help.
Greg, I'll be there sometime tomorrow. Everything will be fine."
After a few seconds of silence where all Livi could hear was Greg breathing, he finally said, "Thanks, baby. I'll get Wilson to pick you up up at the airport."
"Greg, I don't know what flight I'll be able to get on. I'll rent a car at the airport. I don't need Wilson on stand by. I'll be there tomorrow. Have you gone back to work?" Livi questioned.
"Yeah, baby. I'm usually home by five unless I have a case." Greg sounded more coherent now.
"All right. If I get there before five, I'll find the super and have him let me in, okay? Just remember to tell him it's okay for me to be in your apartment. Don't forget."
"Okay, Liv, I'll tell him." Greg replied slowly. "Thank you, baby."
"It's all right, Greg, I'll be there as soon as I can." Livi said. She hung up the phone and hurried home. The first thing she did was call the airline and cancel her tickets for Florida and get tickets for Philly instead. She had just missed the last flight out for the day or she would have headed out now. Knowing she wouldn't get a lot of sleep tonight, she tried to get out first thing in the morning on the business men's flight, but the earliest flight she could get into Philly would land at ten, putting her in Princeton about an hour or so later, depending on traffic. Trying to fly into JFK or Newark was worse. The only flights available at those two airports didn't land until after six. That was too late.
Livi booked a first class ticket into Philly, reserved a car, then called the hotel in Florida to cancel her reservations there. She got hit with a fifty dollar cancellation fee because she cancelled less than twenty four hours before check in, but she didn't care. She re-packed her bag, substituting jeans, t-shirts and some dress pants for the beach wear she had originally packed. She barely got any sleep that night and got up at four. She decided to leave for the airport and maybe get on the first flight if there were any cancellations. She didn't get that lucky.
Once she got to the airport, she called her boss and one of her aunts and told them about her change in plans and where she could be reached if need be.
When her plane landed in Philly, Livi claimed her suitcase and found the car rental counter. Traffic was picking up a little, but she made Princeton in little less than an hour because she drove like the devil was chasing her whenever she could. When she got to Greg's apartment, she saw his car parked outside the building. Livi didn't know what to make of that, considering the state Greg was in last night. There was no way to be sure until she got in his apartment.
"Maybe he called off to wait for me." Livi said to herself as she tried to think positively as she pulled into an empty parking space and got her luggage out of the car. "I won't have to go look for the super."
She knocked on the door. No answer.
"Greg, it's Livi. Are you all right? Come on, open the door. Let me in." Livi said. The silence on the other side of the door was deafening and making Livi nervous. It was almost impossible to make her nervous.
Greg had gone into mule mode and wouldn't answer the door for Livi. When he woke up that morning with a hangover, he vaguely recalled last night's phone call and Livi's promise to be here today. Until he heard her knock on the door, he had been unrealistically hoping he had imagined the entire conversation because of the bourbon he had been drinking.
His stubbornness wouldn't let him pick up the phone that morning to try and stop her before she left Pittsburgh to tell her it was all a false alarm, that he was drunk when he called her (as if she didn't know!). A phone call would have been pointless because she was probably on a plane already, and he really didn't want believe she would come, that she would get Wilson over here to see what was wrong. Wilson had yet to show up, so Livi wasn't delegating responsibility to anyone but herself. She wouldn't let him down if she could help it.
Livi began pounding the door with her fist because he wouldn't answer her.
"Greg House, open this door now!" she yelled loudly.
"Go home, Livi! This was a mistake!" Greg bellowed from inside his apartment as he swallowed a Vicodin.
Livi just stared at the door for a few seconds, stunned at what she had just heard. She couldn't believe her ears. Then she lost it.
"Go home?" Livi hollered back at him."Go home? I don't think so, Skippy. I cancelled my vacation for you, you son of a bitch! Open this damn door now!" she yelled as she kept pounding on the door.
Last night, House had actually remembered to tell the super about Livi coming to Princeton, and he had been hanging around within earshot of House's door waiting for Livi, even though he knew House hadn't gone to work. He knew House could be even more stubborn than a jackass. As soon as he heard a female voice cussing a blue streak and pounding on House's door, he hurried right over.
Livi hadn't heard him come up behind her and jumped when he put his hand on her shoulder. House was right. She was beautiful. And royally pissed off.
"Excuse me miss, can I help you?" Bill asked Livi in as calm a voice as he could. He considered House a buddy, even if House didn't always reciprocate (he was part of House's poker playing posse). He and his wife had tried to keep an eye out for him ever since his girlfriend had moved out, sometimes inviting him for dinner if he was available.
House's behavior troubled him and he was glad he was able to get a friend to help out, even for a short while. The only females Bill had seen visiting House now were ones he picked up in a bar or of the type you got from an escort service. He was obviously using a high priced service, but it was a shame a guy like House had to resort to that for female companionship.
"Are you the super?" Livi asked, then without waiting for an answer, she went on, "That jackass in there called me last night saying he need help and now he won't let me in!" Livi fumed.
The super laughed. "Miss, ah, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?" Bill Shelton the superintendent said as he extended his hand to her.
"I didn't throw it!" Livi snapped back at Bill.
Wisely, Bill stifled his laughter. "This one's a handful and then some!" he thought to himself as he took in the whole package that was Livi. Livi was borderline voluptuous and hot as hell. She was of medium height, long legs encased in a perfectly fitted pair of jeans. She was wearing a light weight purple sweater that clung to every curve and a simple black blazer. Her long, curly coppery brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and stuffed into a baseball cap, midnight blue eyes snapping with anger. Even with no make up, she turned heads. A pair of very comfortable looking Reebocks were on her feet.
"It's Livia Bonofiglio. Dr. Bonofiglio." Livi grumbled loudly as she remembered her manners and held her hand out, not the least bit embarrassed that a stranger had overheard her cuss Greg out.
"If you're the super, will you please let me in? And if you're not, please tell me where the hell he is so I can get in there and see if that jackass is all right!" This time, Bill chuckled.
"Well, doctor, as it happens, I'm the building super, and Dr. House did tell me you would be coming today and to let you in if he wasn't home. I'll let you in anyway, even though we know he's home." Bill reached into his pocket for his master key and unlocked the door. Livi charged right through the door, leaving Bill to bring her suitcase in.
Greg was still in his pajamas. When he woke up hung over, he stumbled into the shower, and when he was through, he decided not to go to work, even though he knew Livi was probably on her way. He just put on clean pajama pants and a t-shirt and decided not to answer the door when she showed up.
He didn't have a case, so why go to work? Cuddy would only make him work in the clinic (he hated clinic even then). When Livi had started pounding on his door, he mentally kicked himself, especially when he heard she cancelled her vacation.
He hadn't meant for her to cancel her vacation plans because of him. Angry with himself, he limped down the hall to his bedroom, hoping she would go away. He had forgotten he had asked Bill to open the door if he wasn't home when Livi got here.
The pounding had stopped, so Greg thought it was safe to go back out and watch TV. He had left his Vicodin out there anyway and he wanted another one. His timing was very bad. He was walking into a mine field that sometimes went by the name of Livia Bonofiglio.
He had barely swallowed the second Vicodin when Livi bolted through the door. Belatedly, Greg remembered he asked Bill to let Livi in if he wasn't home. He must have been hanging around outside the door waiting, guessing correctly that he wouldn't voluntarily it for her.
Livi dropped her purse and carry on bag on the floor and marched straight over to Greg. She had her hands on her hips and was glaring at him like she would like to strangle him.
Bill stayed long enough to put Livi's suitcase by the piano and quickly left because he correctly guessed the redhead was going to blow her stack at House and he didn't want to be a witness, although it had the potential to be quite funny. Wait until he told his wife! This time, House deserved getting reamed out.
Still very angry that Greg had nerve enough to tell her to go away, especially after she had cancelled her vacation to come here, Livi didn't bother with any niceties. She tossed her blazer on a chair, and as soon as she heard Bill close the door behind him, she gave Greg's pajama bottoms a yank and knelt down so she could examine his leg.
"Livi, what the hell are you doing! If you want sex, just ask." was all Greg could say as she continued her examination. He didn't want her to see the damage to his leg, but the pleasant numbness from the Vicodin was beginning to spread throughout his body and he didn't resist.
Livi glared up at him. "What the hell does it look like I'm doing, you jackass? Giving you a blow job? I'm examining you. I thought you went to medical school. Did you flunk Exam 101, genius?"
Livi was madder than a nest of disturbed hornets and Greg didn't try to calm her down. It would be a waste of time anyway. The second Vicodin he swallowed just as Livi came charging into his apartment was working full force with the first one, and her hands were soft gentle on his leg even though she was throughly pissed off.
Livi's eyes widened slightly at the extent of the damage done to Greg, but she maintained a professional attitude through her shock and anger. When she was finished, she got ever more pissed than she was when she bolted into the apartment.
"Who the hell did this to you Greg?" she demanded as she stood up. "I know this isn't what you wanted!" She was pacing the living room in his apartment furiously, still cussing a blue streak.
Greg pulled his pajamas back up and limped over to the couch and sat down. "Nice bedside manner you have there, Dr. Bonofiglio." he said in response.
"Bite me!" she snapped back.
Thanks to the Vicodin, Greg just grinned stupidly at her. Although he wouldn't admit it yet, he was already addicted to it. He was popping more and more pills, sometimes chasing them with bourbon, but he hadn't developed a tolerance to them yet. They were still relieving his pain somewhat. He liked being stoned, and the best part was it was all legal. He could get a scrip from Wilson anytime he wanted one.
Wilson felt guilty because he hadn't been around when he had the infarction and therefore couldn't convince Stacey to do things his way, so whenever House asked, he wrote the prescription, although it was always accompanied by a lecture about him taking too much and so forth. The Vicodin let Greg function like the rest of the world and he was positive he could quit anytime he wanted to.
"Livi, this was all done against my wishes. I had asked to be put in a coma until the worst of the pain was over, and while I was in a medically induced coma, Cuddy suggested this surgery. Stacey had my medical proxy and she signed the papers." Greg managed to get out before Livi started ranting again.
"You're an idiot, you know that!" Livi snapped back. "Why didn't you make me your medical proxy or get me or someone from my hospital out here for a consult? This is what we do! We could have been here in three hours!" Before Greg had a chance to answer, she jumped right back in. "Don't give me that crap about how you loved and trusted each other! Where the hell was Wilson?"
"He was out of town and couldn't get back here until it was too late. Livi, she claimed she was afraid I would die." Greg mumbled. He knew Livi was right.
"She loved you and were afraid you would die my ass!" Livi said as she continued pacing his living room "If that was the case, where the hell is she now? Why didn't she stick this out with you? All she was trying to do was make sure she could keep you around for her sake. She didn't do it for you! I know you're capable of driving everyone away from you, but if she loved you, she'd be here now instead of me! When the going got tough, she got going, didn't she?"
"Livi, it wasn't like that." Greg said, although she didn't know how close she was to the truth. He still had feelings for Stacey, but he now he knew he had never been in love with her. He had convinced himself that he was in love with her because he wanted that in his life. Their relationship was already unraveling at the time of his infarction.
Stacey socialized a lot for her career and wanted Greg to join her. That just wasn't his thing, and most of the people she wanted him to meet were real morons as far as he was concerned. He just wasn't interested in her career anymore. His solution was to be as big an ass as he possibly could when Stacey managed to drag him someplace, and eventually she got the hint and stopped asking, but it didn't stop the fighting, and their love life suffered as well.
With a furious Livi in front of him, he now realized how much it must have hurt her when he insisted that she meet Stacey. He knew Livi had always been in love with him, even when she was a little girl, but it didn't really register how much pain he had caused her the time because he was riding the Stacey high. Now Greg finally admitted to himself how much Livi must love him, and he still didn't know what he had done for her to love him and rearrange her life every time he needed it.
Regardless of what her plans were, Livi had always changed them for Greg every time he needed her, no questions asked, and never asked him for anything in return. It was natural for her to give comfort to him. He had only done that for her once, but she had only needed him like that once. He chased Stacey away with his behavior in general and his anger over what she had done when he had the infarction. He could never chase Livi away, at least for very long, no matter what he did. She was here now, wasn't she? Beside the persistent pain in his leg, Livi was the only constant in his miserable life.
He now realized that he had always been in love with Livi, but he didn't feel like he deserved her or her love, especially now. He had practically rubbed her nose in his relationship with Stacey, and yet here she was, responding to a drunken phone call that everyone else would have ignored.
She loved him, she was beautiful, smart, successful and never took his crap. She threw it right back at him. He pushed her away, but not with blunt force like he did with everyone else. He could never cut that tie he had with her and he didn't want to. They had known each other too long. She knew him but never judged him. Why was he such an ass to her?
"Greg, I've assisted with this type of surgery before. Why haven't you sued the butcher that did this to you? They should lose their license! They tried to cover their ass, but they took too much muscle and did a lot of unnecessary nerve damage. If you don't do your PT, the pain will get worse. Those pills you're popping won't help you anymore. You'll be addicted. Don't do that, please!"
Livi's anger had finally given away to tears and she stood in the middle of the living room, crying like a little girl. That broke Greg's heart and he got off the couch and slowly limped over to her.
He didn't answer her because he knew everything she said was true. He just put his arms around her. He had only seen her cry like this once before, after her grandmother died. Greg's mind went back in time.
Livi and her grandfather had gone to do grocery shopping and other errands while Rosa cleaned the house. Suddenly tired, she decided to go upstairs and take a nap. Rosa never woke up from that nap. Livi had run upstairs looking for Rosa and screamed when she found her. Tony flew up the stairs and found Livi frozen in the doorway and Rosa lying peacefully on the bed. One look at his wife told Tony they were too late.
An autopsy had been performed, but nothing was found. Rosa's heart just stopped beating. Tony was beating himself up because he was convinced if he had put the shopping trip off until a later time, he could have saved her, even though his logical mind told him no one would have been able to save Rosa.
Livi was heartbroken. She had lost a mother twice now. In all the upheaval and sadness death causes, Tony decided to send Livi to live with one of her uncles in Pittsburgh after the funeral. The entire family lived in or near Bloomfield. She would have an extensive support system there. Livi was refusing to go. She didn't want to be away from the man who helped raise her.
Greg was eighteen that summer and was getting ready to go off to college. He and Livi were sitting on the back porch of her grandfather's house. Then and now, Greg didn't know how to handle her tears. Livi hadn't been able to stop crying for more than ten minutes since she found her grandmother.
"Livi, your grandfather thinks it's the best thing for you to go to Pittsburgh now. He still loves you, but he doesn't want you to sacrifice yourself for him. He'll be fine here. My mom's just across the street. She can keep an eye out for him."
For someone who could speak so eloquently off the cuff and argue rationally and logically about pretty much any subject you could think of, those were the only words Greg could come up with and he thought they were pretty lame at best.
Livi had been sitting on the ground at Greg's feet. She turned those eyes on him. "You don't understand and neither does he! I don't want to leave all my friends and I can't leave him alone! He needs me! I need him!"
"Livi, he can take care of himself, and you can make new friends. What are you going to do when you go to college? He'll be alone then. He's only thinking of you." was all Greg could think to say. Right now, all he wanted to do was kiss her, and he was having trouble processing that feeling and why he had it.
Still crying and nearly hysterical, she jumped to her feet and tried to run away from Greg. "I won't go to Pittsburgh!" she cried. "I'll run away!" she said as she jumped to her feet.
Greg quickly got up and grabbed her and held her against his chest. She struggled with all her might, but she was no match for Greg. Her tears eventually got the better of her and she just went limp against him and put her arms around him while he tried to quiet her.
Greg didn't really know it, but holding Livi and listening to her was what she needed right now. He was just acting on his instincts. Besides, he realized he actually liked holding her, even if she was just about hysterical. He didn't understand that, either.
Blythe House had been watching and listening to the entire scene from inside the house. Good-hearted woman that she was, she came over to help the family with the cooking and cleaning during the three days Rosa was laid out at the funeral home. A memorial service had been held that morning, and there would be another viewing in Pittsburgh before Rosa was laid to rest in the family plot at St. Mary's Cemetery in Bloomfield later in the week.
Tony had planned on leaving his granddaughter there afterward and sending her things to her later. Blythe thought he was making a huge mistake, but said nothing. It wasn't in her nature to interfere.
She waited a few minutes after her son grabbed Livi when she tried to run away, then she went outside. He did as much as he could, now a woman's touch, a mother's touch, was needed.
Blythe knew that deep down somewhere, Greg loved this girl, and it was obvious how Livi felt about him. If it were up to Blythe, she would pick Livi for her daughter-in-law, but the timing was a little off. Once they both finished college, the four-year age difference wouldn't be a big deal. This wasn't the right time. They still needed to explore their feelings for each other. Right now, Livi was jail bait for Greg.
At the sound of the back door opening, Greg nearly jumped out of his skin but didn't let go of Livi. He thought it was his father, who would immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and give him hell. John House didn't care much for Tony Bonofiglio and blamed him for Greg's desire to become a doctor. John wanted his son to follow him into the Marines. Greg had had enough of military life and refused.
When John House refused to pay one penny of Greg's college tuition, Greg told him to stuff it, that he didn't need his money. Greg's grades were more than good enough to get him a full scholarship, including room and board, to Johns Hopkins and a job in the college bookstore. It wasn't the first time John House had overlooked his son's intelligence or his determination to get away from him.
"Mom!" Greg stuttered. "It's not what you think!"
"Greg, dear, how do you know what I think? I know exactly what's going on out here. Livi, what's wrong? " Blythe said kindly. Livi let go of Greg and ran straight into Blythe's arms.
Livi started to get even more upset than she had been. "Please, Mrs. House, talk to Pap Pap!" she managed to say between sobs. "Why does he want to send me away? I don't want to go to Pittsburgh! I want to stay here!" Blythe had led her to the porch swing and sat Livi down next to her, rocking her like a baby.
"Livi, your grandfather only wants what's best for you." Blythe had said softly "He loves you very much, you know that." None of them realized Tony was watching and listening from inside the house.
"I don't want to go to Pittsburgh unless Pap Pap comes with me!" Livi's tears and sobs were breaking Blythe's heart as well as Greg's and her grandfather's. Livi was so worked up, she couldn't catch her breath. She was starting to hyperventilate.
Before Blythe could motion to Greg to get Tony before his granddaughter needed medical attention, Greg got up on his own to do it. He had never seen Livi hysterical before. It wasn't necessary for Greg or Blythe to do anything. Tony couldn't take Livi's tears anymore and came outside in a hurry.
Livi looked at him with her tear-stained face, swollen eyes pleading with him not to send her away. She was having so much trouble trying to breath that she couldn't talk. All she could do was shake her head, trying to tell her grandfather she wouldn't go, but that made her breathing worse. Tony knew he wouldn't last long without his granddaughter. He changed his mind on the spot.
"Livi, you don't have to stay in Pittsburgh unless you want to. I want you to stay here. I need you too, faccia bella." Tony said. Livi looked at her grandfather in disbelief. He changed his mind! She could stay here! She slipped away from Blythe and ran to her grandfather and literally collapsed against him. Tony held her and talked softly to her until she calmed down and her breathing returned to normal. Tony silently mouthed his thanks to Blythe and Greg and took Livi inside and put her to bed.
Blythe looked at her son and said, "Let's go home, Greg. You did a good thing here tonight for Livi. I'm proud of you."
"Mom, I didn't do anything!" Greg was a bit confused.
"Greg, Livi needed you to listen to her tonight and you did. I heard all of your conversation and I think she probably would have run away. She was too upset to realize that her grandfather would have eventually changed his mind about sending her to Pittsburgh."
As he always was, Greg was in awe about his mother's intuition. But one thing always puzzled him. Why hadn't her intuition told her John House was a bastard? Had he been that different when she met him? It would be many years before Greg would find out about his true parentage.