Chapter 3: Wonderwall

The room was so unfamiliar, like nothing House had ever seen before. Ironically enough, he had been in this very room thousands of times throughout his career at PPTH. He had glanced through the streaked glass windows at his patients; he had looked down upon them from the room just above. He would stand there, cane in hand, watching as the surgeons scurried below, poking and prodding at the unfortunate soul in the chair. Now, the room, and the entire hospital was foreign to him, an unforgiving, outlandish world.

In rushed the doctors, like ocean waves, each dressed in blue. Their hands were covered in latex gloves, and their mouthes were hidden behind masks. They were monsters, every one of them, mouthless figures with no emotion, no souls. They flooded the space, every one mumbling what seemed like another language. The room itself, though, was blindingly white, like heaven on Earth.

For the "patient" and her lover, it was hell on Earth.

Cuddy stared up at the surrounding faces, straining to fill her lungs. It seemed, no matter how large a breath she managed, that there was not enough air. The doctors were staring at one another, talking she guessed, but the majority of their conversations escaped her. Their voices all melded, becoming one incomprehensible murmur.

A surgeon with wiry glasses broke free from the crowd, straying from the group gathered around the medical instruments and walking to stand where Cuddy's waist was resting, now in the operating chair.

House hurried to the man's side, helping him pry the saturated sweatpants from her body. The legs on the woman House would usually call a "leggy brunette" were limp and gaunt. Her skin, that which was not smeared with blood, was ashen. Her body convulsed in the chair all the while, and it took three doctors to examine her, two of which were struggling to hold her legs in place.

"-tal abruption," was all that Cuddy could perceive.

"We need an anesthesiologist," one of the various doctors stated, but it went left unheard by the Dean of Medicine.

"You are an under-qualified idiot," House interrupted, stepping in front of the man who had spoken and forcing him backward with his cane.

The doctor in the glasses, which drifted slightly lower down the bridge of his nose, looked up at the "under-qualified idiot", "Anesthesia is too much of a risk at this point." His brown eyes flickered back down onto the patient. House, meanwhile, was too afflicted, at least internally, to follow up with another snide remark.

"Start the emer-," the man's voice was muted out temporarily by the overall chaos, "-ction."

Cuddy tried hopelessly to sit up, to comprehend what was happening, to distinguish at least a sentence of what the doctors were discussing. It was, after all, her life that they withheld in the palms of their hands. Somewhere within herself, despite the biting pain, she knew what was to follow. A glimmer of hope existed still, and it was that single inkling of hope that made Cuddy's pain somewhat more bearable.

House asserted himself past two more doctors, and grasped the bottom of Cuddy's shirt gingerly between his fingers. It was his t-shirt, he realized. Her delicate frame was lost in the v-neck. In the center was an intricate bronze design and the rest was off-white, or rather, it was off-white just an hour before, he thought to himself.

He lifted it from her taut abdomen and torso, and tucked it beneath her, revealing just enough skin for the doctors to continue. Cuddy's eyes were clouded by tears, and she looked, in that moment, the most vulnerable that House had ever seen her. She was more fragile than a raindrop, plummeting to Earth from the skies, destined to splatter on contact with the pavement. House's eyes, the color of glaciers in the dead of winter, bore through her.

"If anything ha-," she started, her speech delayed by her need to breathe, "happens, I w-"

This time it was House who cut in, "Dont worry, I'm supervising. I'll make sure none of these imbeciles try to kill you so they can take steal your job. If anybody's replacing you I'm making sure it's a curvy blonde with a wild side."

Cuddy's lips curled upward at the corners for a fraction of a second, forming the slightest smile before the pain wiped her face clear of any trace of happiness. "I love you," she mouthed to him, her eyelids like weights as she forced them open. He nodded in response, his heart blockaded by a brick wall, as his precious dynamiter lay wearily in front of him.

"Scalpel."

He was screaming on the inside; he could hardly resist the urge to shout aloud, curse the fates, and denounce whichever Gods inflicted this pain upon her. He did none of this.

He decided instead on brushing a stray curl from in front of her eyes and tucking it behind her ear.

"Mark the location."

"Which tri-," the sentence faded to mumbles.

"Beginning of the last, it looks like. Give me 15 centimeters."

House listened intently, and nodded toward them, confirming their estimations to be true.

"Making the incision, keep the scissors on hand."

Cuddy leaned into his touch, and then yelped, her lip quivering. Blood surged from the area of the incision, and House, noticing Cuddy growing paler, pressed his hand to her forehead. "She's lost too much blood. Give her a-," his words blended with those of one of the other doctor's, "-ne milligrams."

The light beating down from above frustrated her already bloodshot eyes and hindered her vision. The picture before her was swaying, as if to lull her into a deep sleep. Left. Right. Left. Right. She let her eyes fall shut, but she could not control the vertigo-like sensation. "Keep your eyes open. You've got to stay awake," House commanded sternly. He knew that if she succumbed to the darkness, to the temptation of sleep, she might loosen her grip and let her life slip away. Cuddy bobbed her head, acknowledging his statement, knowing it was for her own good. It took every ounce of strength she had to do so. She bit down hard on her lip as if to wake herself and awaken her mind. She was still a doctor, and her medical knowledge was an enormous asset to her in a moment like this. All she had to do was be awake and aware.

"Scissors."

There was a snipping sound that nearly caused House to gag. He was clearly not squeamish, as an MD he couldn't afford to be. This sensitivity was unfamiliar, and luckily, temporary. He would realize later that the nausea came about solely because of the patient, the patient who, coincidentally, was the person that mattered most to him. As he oversaw the procedure, he glanced up at her, amazed by her strength and vitality. She proved that in just remaining conscious. He never doubted Cuddy's tenacity, she put up with him, after all, and she combatted him well. Most of the time, it was as if they were on an even playing field, even in a battle of wits.

The irony was, and had always been, that he claimed to like the clueless blondes and gravitated toward the senseless, thin brunettes. All he really wanted was Cuddy, intelligence and all.

"Cut the c-," the surgeon wearing spectacles grasped the scissors. House turned his head so quickly he might have given himself whiplash. Seeing the sudden change in his demeanor, Cuddy looked from side to side, her own expression becoming one of panic.

The doctor prodding around on Cuddy's insides had wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and skin that had clearly deteriorated over the years. "Get the nasa-," he was muted out, "eaner, and prepare an oxy-," a noise muffled his words, "-bator." Everything became suddenly silent, and there was another snipping sound. With that the doctors began moving again, quicker than before, racing around. Everything, at that moment, hung in the balance.