* Thanks for keeping the review coming!! I love it :-)
Hit by the cold February air, Cuddy had somewhat snapped back to reality as she walked out of the hospital early around 4pm. She would be glad to head home to the comfort of Rachel, some tea, and her own bed after such a trying day, and Cuddy was thankful that Myron had saved her an out-of-the-way trip to Walgreens by presenting her with a gigantic bottle of pre-natal vitamins. Once she was driving, Cuddy tried to take a few deep breaths and allow herself to absorb the events of the last three hours, and in some sense, the last three months, as well.
It turned out that Cameron's estimation of the timing of Cuddy's pregnancy was pretty accurate. Dr. Myron, who Cuddy had known since undergrad, put Cuddy at nine weeks along, giving her an estimated due date of August 20th. Myron had been surprised about Cuddy's pregnancy, to say the least, but she had agreed along with both Cameron and Wilson to keep her condition under wraps until she was ready to start telling people.
At first, Cuddy had mentally and verbally beat herself up for missing all of the signs that now, looking back, should have seemed glaringly obvious, especially to someone with an "M.D." after her name. When Myron asked her, for instance, she realized that she indeed hadn't had a period since early in November.
"How did I miss that?" Cuddy had asked Myron, feeling like a complete idiot.
"Easily," Myron said reassuringly. "Lisa, I've been your doctor for the last 5 years, and even before I.V.F. your periods were never what I would call 'regular.' And when you take those hormones for an extended period of time, they can mess with your cycles even more."
"I guess," Cuddy had agreed half-heartedly. "But the nausea, and the exhaustion…"
"…They can all be explained by stress and being overworked," Myron interjected. "And between taking care of a new baby and running a hospital, I'd say you highly qualify for both of those." Continuing, Myron's next question for her had been on the embarrassing side. "I can assume based on the outcome that the sex was unprotected… do you know who the father is?"
"Of course I know, Angela!" Cuddy had responded, taken aback. "I don't exactly sleep around do, I?"
"No, Lisa, of course not," Myron had said apologetically. "I didn't mean to imply anything…"
"I know you didn't, I'm sorry," Cuddy immediately apologized . "This is just a lot to absorb in such a short time, and I don't feel like I'm handling it very well."
"Don't sell yourself short Lisa, you're doing great," Myron said encouragingly. "Anyone… and I do mean anyone… in your shoes would feel caught off guard."
"Thanks," Cuddy offered sincerely.
"Back to the issue at hand, though," Myron had continued. "I just meant that anytime you've had unprotected sex and you aren't in some kind of a long-term relationship, you should be screened for STD's."
"Actually, I thought of that," Cuddy had told her. "I realized that was a possibility, and I got myself tested when I applied to be a foster parent."
"Well, that's good," Myron had said. "But you didn't think about the chance of pregnancy?" she had added cautiously.
"No," Cuddy had answered quietly. "After all that I.V.F., and nothing? I didn't think getting pregnant in any way, shape, or form was even possible for me anymore."
"Well," Myron had said with a laugh, "I see a lot of women go through a lot of trying, both the natural way and In Vitro. And you know what? Sometimes it just takes some spontaneous passion and good old fashioned romance."
Cuddy had remained silent after Myron's last comment, but she realized that she was right. The conception had most certainly been an act of spontaneity, and in actuality she grudgingly admitted also one of intense, undeniable, unforgettable passion. But "old fashioned romance," she sadly mused, had not fit into the equation in the slightest.
That last point brought Cuddy into her true reality as she pulled into the familiar path of her driveway. She recognized, right then and there, that the most difficult facet of the entire situation was going to be dealing with the issue of the paternity. Attempting to sort it all out, she gingerly lay her head on the steering wheel and closed her eyes.
Cuddy knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who the dad was, that wasn't the issue. The dad himself was the issue. That single point was going to make the next six months of her life hell at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and it was a lose-lose situation. It was most definitely hell if she kept it a secret, but it was a familiar kind of hell that was in her office harassing her every day anyway, so that scenario might not deviate all that much from the current state of the union.
The prospect of outing the dad, on the other hand, held the potential to drag Cuddy into the most unimaginable emotional hell of her life. She pondered these two facts as she carefully got out of her car, but the blaringly pessimistic side of Cuddy's brain refused to acknowledge that telling the father could also turn out to be one of the most complicated, wonderful things that could ever happen to anyone.
**************************************************************************************************************************************************
After such an eventful Thursday, both Myron and Wilson had positively insisted that Cuddy take Friday and the rest of the weekend completely off and just focus on taking care of herself. Cameron had even offered to take Rachel on Saturday afternoon and for awhile on Sunday when the nanny had her time off. Cuddy knew that she wasn't in for an easy ride on this hurricane of an adventure, but at least she had good friends that looked out for her best interest and her children's.
Children's. Plural. It would take some time to get used to that, and truly in some ways Cuddy was still adjusting to one children. She resolved to do her best, though, and continued to let the events of the last 24 hours settle in her consciousness on that Friday as she enjoyed some of her first actual breakfast in almost a week.
In addition to the gigantic bottle of pre-natal vitamins, Myron had also given Cuddy some Zofran for her nausea. So, while the nanny kept Rachel entertained in the living room, Cuddy was enjoying some orange juice and dry toast in the kitchen while reading the morning paper.
She noticed a large Bloomingdale's ad for a sale that weekend as she was skimming through the world news section of the "Times," and Cuddy figured that would be the perfect opportunity for adding a few more bulky sweaters and shirts to her wardrobe. Provided she felt well enough to go shopping in New York on Saturday, that was. Cuddy figured the sooner she started transitioning her clothes, the less noticeable the shift in her dress would seem to others. Oh, let's face it, she thought to herself. You're really only worried about House.
Oddly enough, until this point House hadn't entered Cuddy's thoughts that morning nearly as much as she would have expected him to. As much as the prospect of the entire hospital knowing about her "delicate state" embarrassed her to some degree, all the lengths she pondered going to in order to keep her secret under wraps came down to keeping said secret from Gregory House.
As anyone who knew him could attest, the problem with House and trying to keep any kind of secret from him was his tremendous abilities of observation, intuition, and deduction. Concealing something of this magnitude from him, therefore, was at best a double edged sword; the clothes, for example.
Cuddy knew that if she started dressing in bulky sweaters and more flowing skirts, House would wonder why, and wonder loudly enough for all to hear and over-hear. In the worst case scenario, he might actually resort to harassing her about being pregnant like he did when she was going through I.V.F.
If she kept to her current and much tighter attire, however, House would most certainly notice her expanding waste-line and either malign her weight gain, or notice the particular area of the weight gain, which would leave Cuddy right back where she started. Damn him, she thought, quite exasperated. Always putting me in a lose-lose situation. For Cuddy, the most explicit of those lose-lose situations with House was exactly what had landed her in her current physical state in the first place.
During that past November, she had felt like she was really starting to lose her sanity in the ever-present "Tom & Jerry"-like game that she and House were always playing. Or maybe at that point, it was turning out to be a little more like Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. They would get closer, and then pull apart. They would lock horns increasingly at every turn only to end up locking into even more intensely heated looks and embraces.
All throughout this tango of wits and hearts that had gone on between them for so long, there had only ever been two possible outcomes; either kill each other, or sleep together. And rather unfortunately, Cuddy was beginning to think, they had fallen all over each other into the latter.
Finally, her thoughts had stumbled their way to that night. She knew that memory was going to come stomping back at some point, but Cuddy wasn't going to relive it at that particular moment. She didn't feel ready to remember it just then, and she certainly didn't want to admit to herself that she wanted to remember it at all.
Hearing Rachel fuss from the living room, Cuddy's mind was brought back to the present. As she got up to check on her baby girl, part of Cuddy wondered what kind of gossip was already circulating the hospital regarding her "fainting spell" by this hour of the morning, but she tried not to focus on it too much. Wilson had promised to call her during lunch to report all the goings on, including whatever stunt House was currently trying to pull.
