Rachel was sitting against the hallway wall when her mother walked out of the master bedroom. She had been lost in a web of complex, convoluted, and incomplete ideas about what was going on ever since she'd realized what had been wrong with House last night.
"Rach?"
Rachel blinked and glanced up at the sound of her mother's voice. "Is he okay?"
"He will be," Cuddy said with as much conviction as possible. She extended a hand to her daughter and gestured down the hallway. "Let's go to the kitchen."
The two women made their coffee and toast then sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Without really knowing where or how to start, Cuddy began.
She had kept House's addiction hidden in a glass closet for as long as they'd been together. In the honeymoon phase, way back when Rachel was only a toddler, his addiction was a negligible part of their relationship. She knew she had seen him at his worst, but in the first few months of their relationship, he had appeared much improved from that dark time. She knew his leg hurt, she knew he was screwed up in about a dozen ways, she knew he had been an addict. She knew all of these things, but on the whole, they were vastly overshadowed by how good he seemed.
Then, suddenly, they weren't.
Neither of them liked to remember the morning Cuddy found blood in her urine and the days that followed. They didn't like to remember how terrified and alone they'd both felt, or how House had slipped back into old habits before visiting her in the hospital. When she first realized what he'd done, Cuddy had been livid. After all, she had sat by hospital bed too many times to think about, yet he was apparently incapable of reciprocating. She was in love with him, but she was prepared to end it, to relegate their relationship back to that of an employee and an employer. It wasn't until she was at his apartment door late one evening when she realized what a massive mistake she'd been making.
House wasn't a former addict. He was an addict.
She was ashamed for allowing the thrill of their long-awaited relationship to overshadow reality. She was ashamed of forgetting the severity and chronicity of House's pain, both emotional and physical. She was ashamed of forgetting that his addiction was a disease, not a choice, and for forgetting all of the horrors he'd experienced because of it.
Despite her intentions to deliver a well-rehearsed speech about the inevitable failure of their relationship that evening, Cuddy ended up revealing to House her sorrow and shame, her hurt and her fear. She had asked questions, too. First, she needed to confirm if he'd used before visiting her in the hospital. House had readily confessed, sounding almost relieved to no longer be bearing the burden of his secret. He'd been ashamed, too, he'd revealed: ashamed that he couldn't make himself see her, ashamed that he'd given up two years of sobriety, ashamed of his fear.
"What was he afraid of?" Rachel asked quietly.
"The same thing I was afraid of, I guess," Cuddy gave her daughter a soft, sympathetic smile. "He didn't want to lose either of us, and I didn't want us to lose him. But we also need to protect ourselves, our relationship...you."
Rachel nodded slowly, considering. After a long moment, she asked, "What happened next?"
Cuddy continued, explaining how things had progressed. First, House had agreed to contact Dr. Nolan. She didn't divulge the circumstances under which House had met Nolan, however. Rachel didn't know about the extent of House's addiction, nevermind his stint in Mayfield when Rachel was just a baby, and Cuddy knew it wasn't her place to reveal that. She thought she was perhaps getting a bit too close to overstepping her boundaries as it was.
The next day, Cuddy had dropped Rachel off with her Aunt Julia and had then driven with House to Nolan's office. She had fully anticipated spending her afternoon in the waiting room while the two men talked; as far as she was concerned, she had just come along for moral support. She'd therefore been surprised when, only twenty minutes into his appointment, House had come back into the waiting area and gestured for her to follow him to Nolan's office.
The following hour had been devoted to discussing the ins-and-outs of the past week. Nolan had asked them both to describe how the events surrounding Cuddy's health crisis had made them feel. Terrified had been the general consensus. They ended the appointment on a positive note, set up a string of appointments - one per week for House alone, one every other week for him and Cuddy - and went back to Princeton. House remained sober for five years after that.
Though Rachel didn't know exactly what was coming next, she trusted her memory and intellectual capacity enough to form an educated guess.
"The spring Nana Blythe died. You weren't here." Rachel revealed a couple small slivers of her memory.
Cuddy nodded solemnly. As much as she hated remembering House's first small slip, she absolutely loathed thinking about the relapse. Rachel was right: House had relapsed late that May. His mom had died suddenly and unexpectedly, just two weeks after she and her husband, Thomas, had visited them in New Jersey. At the same time, Cuddy had been 1,000 miles away, delivering the keynote and moderating multiple panels at an AAHAM conference.
"But he...he didn't….I was fine," Rachel interjected, her statement fragmented. She felt the need to defend House's actions despite the fact that they'd occurred over a decade ago. "He took care of me."
"Oh, sweetie, I know he did," Cuddy said. She knew that House had made it three straight days after learning of his mother's death before finally agreeing to bring Rachel to Julia's. Blythe's husband had insisted on taking care of the arrangements in Florida, and Cuddy was stuck at the conference until Thursday at the earliest, so for the following three days, House had been alone.
And he'd used, multiple times and with abandon. But by the time Cuddy had arrived home late Thursday night, both the side effects and his stash had been hidden expertly. So expertly, in fact, that it wasn't until they arrived home from Florida the following Tuesday that Cuddy had realized what had been happening right under her nose.
Unlike the first time House had slipped, five years prior, Cuddy's initial reaction hadn't been to end their relationship. She wasn't even angry, at least not at House. She was, on the other hand, beyond furious at herself for a whole slew of transgressions. First, for not leaving the conference the moment House called her. Second, for not even considering the possibility of him relapsing. And third, for it taking five whole days of near constant contact with House to realize that he had relapsed. She knew deep down that his relapse wasn't her fault, but that didn't stop her from being saturated by guilt.
Also unlike House's first slip, its effects were much more profound. After over a week of using regularly, of finally feeling immune to his chronic physical and emotional pain that was so amplified by his mother's death, House couldn't stand the thought of getting clean. But after nearly a decade of being mostly sober, he also couldn't stand the thought of staying high. There had been no way a couple months of weekly appointments with Nolan and a dose of couples' counseling would be enough to nip that in the bud. All relevant parties agreed that he needed to go to rehab. 30 days inpatient, and another 30 days of intensive outpatient after that.
"I don't remember any of that," Rachel said. Why couldn't she remember?
"It was a long time ago," Cuddy explained. "You stayed with Aunt Julia during the funeral, came home for a couple days, then you were off to camp for a month. By the time you came back, House was home and doing a lot better."
Rachel remembered that, at least. It had been her very first summer at sleepaway camp up in New England. She'd been excited for about eight months prior, thrilled to finally get to go to the summer camp her older cousins had always told her about. Naturally, she had loved every second she'd spent there. In all the years since, however, she never considered that that summer had been anything but normal for her parents.
"But he was okay after that?" Rachel asked.
"He didn't want to keep using, and he got the help he needed." Cuddy assured her daughter. If Rachel didn't already know about his most recent slip, the one that neither Cuddy nor House ever voluntarily lingered on, Cuddy wasn't going to bring it up. It had just been an anomaly. She proceeded accordingly. "But this is different, Rach. He hasn't relapsed - it was just a slip; a small mistake."
The younger woman understood the difference and nodded. What she still didn't quite understand, however, was what she'd seen last night or why she'd seen it. Her dad was a good person, the strongest and most intelligent man she knew. There had been so many times during her childhood that he'd been under immense pressure, whether at work or at home or both, yet he'd only very rarely resorted to his old ways. What had happened over the past couple days to push him to that point? They had to know what happened so the could fix it, didn't they? She voiced her concerns.
Cuddy shook her head slowly and opened and closed her mouth a couple times before actually speaking. "I...that's not something I know, sweetie. House will tell us when he's ready."
"What should I do until then?"
Her mother's smile radiated a sense of pride that made Rachel feel warm. "Keep loving him, just like you always have."
A/N: I think this story should have just one more chapter, which will feature a conversation between House and Rachel. And as always, thanks to everyone who has read and/or reviewed so far - it is so very appreciated.
