Chapter 2: Questions in The Night
House lay on his bed as he stared up at the ceiling. He had not been there that long, but it had started all just feeling like a dream. It was so surreal at times, the fact that he had ended up in a mental hospital. He had known that the drugs he was taking werProxy-Connection: keep-aliveCache-Control: max-age=0't good for him, but they had never affected him that badly. It felt like some kind of alternate universe, as if this was what could be.
His memories of the last couple of weeks before he got there were somewhat dreamlike, making his entire life feel like a huge hallucination. There were still somethings that he had been wondering about. He was starting to wonder if he had even really spoke to Cuddy. There were so many things that could have happened instead. He could have been brought there when Wilson was originally going to take him, the night with Cuddy could have really happened and there conversation before Wilson too him could have never happened, there were just too many possibilities to sort through.
House stood up and looked out the window. The dark night let a small faint glow into the room. This was his time to figure out what had happened. He went out of his room and down the hall to the phone. It was late, but if he was lucky, he would catch her during one of Rachel's feedings or something.
Cuddy stood in the doorway of the nursery. All she had been doing for a while was watch Rachel. It had started to seem like that was all that she really had anymore. Everyone else in her life was moving on or doing something else or just plain changing, while she was staying static. She had gotten a phone call earlier that week that her sister had been proposed to, and that now her parents had another reason to nag to her asking why she isn't married yet. Wilson always had his nurses to flirt with and his job to move up in. He was there, but he had been busy lately. The only problem was that she didn't know with what. Then her friend Todd who was now going to teach at a college, the only other people left were House and Rachel. She knew House was going to come back, but, was it really going to be House that came back? What if he had decided to move on and switch jobs, start over. None of that really sounded like him, but it was possible. The more likely thing would be that he would finally find some one he was interested in and completely leave her. All that left was Rachel. She loved Rachel, but she needed some one that she could actually talk to right and know that they wouldn't leave in a few days.
The phone rang and disturbed the silence. Cuddy jumped and then walked over to the kitchen so that she could answer the phone, and hopefully quickly enough before Rachel would hear it and wake up. "Hello?" she asked with her tension evident in her voice.
"Cuddy? I need to ask you a question," he said. It had been a while since he had talked to anyone that he knew outside of those walls. This was going to be one of his only phone calls and he wanted to make sure that it would be one worth while, so why not call some one that he trusted?
"House?" she asked. Now there were many things running through her head. Everything from something being terribly to him just trying to annoy her. "Is there anything wrong?" she asked wanting to quickly get to the point of the phone call. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to him, but she had a baby that she didn't want to wake and a friend who had an interview to wake up for, she couldn't afford to wake either of them.
"Right," he said picking up on the hint. He knew that this was late, but there was just that one question, and as soon as he got the answer, he could sleep. "Did we sleep together?" he bluntly asked.
Cuddy's face instantly dropped. "You called to ask that?" she asked with a tone of disappointment.
"I guess that answers my question," he said. Now he could certainly tell which one had happened. He now knew what he had told her before Wilson brought him here. He could remember telling her that he hallucinated and that he thought she stayed with him while he detoxed, but he never mentioned anything about sleeping with her, getting closer, and kissing maybe, but never sleeping together.
"Wait, you were serious weren't you?" she asked. It wasn't really that hard for her to believe, but it still surprised her. It was that moment that the baby started to cry.
"That's all I needed to know," he said. He could hear Rachel crying on the other end and figured that she would have finished the conversation anyways.
"Are you sure there's nothing else?" she asked. Rachel continued to cry, but she would have felt guilty if there had been anything else that he had needed to tell her.
He was about to say something, but thought that he had better let her go. "Nope, that's it," he said and then hung up. The only thing left to do was to get better. It was as if he had had something for a moment, and then suddenly lost it. Of course, knowing was better then going on thinking about something that had never happened. "I'm fighting my own mind and it seems to be winning," he said to himself and then walked back down to his room.
Cuddy just stood tehre for a second with the buzzing in her ear from the phone. There was no way to react to that. All the sudden it had brought back memories and feelings that she hadn't had in a while. Now she wanted nothing more that to hear his voice again, or taste his lips, or even be the subject of one of his cruel remarks. He had his mysterious ways about him, and without them, there was certainly a lot missing.
Cuddy hung up the phone and turned around to go back to get Rachel. That was when she paused and noticed that the silence had once more over come the house. Cautiously, she continued her way and stopped at the doorway. In the nursery she found Todd sitting with Rachel. It was something that she had always wanted to see, Rachel and some one that she could trust. That was something that she had never had with House, but had always longed for it. Instead, House had this jealous streak of him, he needed to have her to himself. He couldn't just do like Todd was doing right now.
"I'm sorry, am I intruding on your territory?" he asked as he turned and saw Cuddy standing there.
"No," she said as she smiled. "I should be the one apologizing though. You have the interview to wake up for in the morning." Cuddy walked over and sat down next to him.
"It's fine, you were on the phone, and it wasn't like I was actually going to get any sleep anyways," he laughed and then looked up. "Who was that on the phone anyways?" he asked.
Cuddy just shook her head, she didn't want to get into the entire story right now. To Todd, everything that had happened to her since high school graduation was something new. He had no idea about House and what had happened between them. "It's nothing, really," she said.
Todd smiled. "Damn Lisa, if you ever tell anyone anything they'll put it in the paper that you might actually trust some one," he said.
"So what? I was cautious about what I said in high school. That doesn't mean anything now," she said. That might be true, but he did have a point, she couldn't just tell anyone anything, they had to earn her trust, but there weren't many people who didn't need to do that.
"Are you trying to hide a boyfriend from me?" he smugly asked.
"No," she answered. Anything else might get him suspicious.
"Girlfriend?" he asked.
Cuddy looekd to him with shock. "No!" she said and then laughed.
"Really? Because that would have been kinda hot," he started.
"And you apparently haven't change one bit," Cuddy remarked.
"Is that a good thing?" he asked.
"I don't know about that," she teased.
Todd laughed and then let the room fall silent again as they both sat there. "Will that no one call again tomorrow night at around the same time?" Todd jokingly asked.
Cuddy honestly didn't know. There were just some things that you could not tell with House. "I doubt it," she said trying to convince him that she doesn't always get mysterious calls in the night.
"Well, even if he does call," he said and then paused as she looked like she was about ready to say something, "I don't try to tell me that it's not a man. But either way, I need sleep." Todd handed Rachel over to Cuddy and wished them both good night as he left the room.
Cuddy just sat there and sighed. "Good night," she said.
