Chapter Four: Eric Foreman

"Dr. Cuddy, didn't it strike you as strange when you heard Foreman's reason for quitting? He didn't want to become like House? Is that reason really consistent with the Dr. Eric Foreman we've all known and come to love?" Cameron smiled.

"No. Not even remotely. The same Foreman who showed up here with not only a medical degree, and neurological specialty, the hardest, but also a MBA. The Foreman who wanted to be the de facto Department head of Diagnostics, running the operations while House did all the work. The Foreman who..." began Lisa Cuddy. Cuddy mentally kicked herself. Part and parcel of being Hospital Administrator was to understand people, understand the doctors who worked for her.

"...always had the attitude 'I am as good as House, but nicer'. Robert called it. Foreman had walked into this job believing if he just stuck around long enough, put up with House, he'd inherit the mantle as the favored Protégé, House's best pupil. Then Robert diagnosed Alice. He wasn't the smartest of the three of us anymore. I've always suspected that Foreman has always been...insecure? I mean, graduating at the top of his class at Hopkins...for me it was hard enough graduating near the top of my class at Columbia, so I know what its like to make the push to end up as Valedictorian. To me, the clincher was his MBA. I think he's always had something to prove, something that drove him to excel. He's always had to prove himself to be smarter than everyone else. When we lost Lupe, the girl with the Staph aureus endocarditis, it was Foreman who pushed when House...couldn't come up with anything. It was Foreman who blamed himself for failing. It was Foreman who failed to live up to his own expectations of himself." One thing had always bothered Cameron. Had House deliberately abandoned Lupe's case just to...test Foreman? To see if Foreman had the chops to make a great doctor? Yes, House was that ruthless. He was completely capable of risking and losing a young girl's life just to test someone. But he was no colder than Lisa Cuddy, who was capable of sacrificing Abigail's life, the young dwarf girl who wasn't a dwarf, just to keep House. Cuddy had weighed the life of one girl against the hundreds House would save in the future, and found her wanting. She had listened outside Cuddy's door when she was talking to Wilson.

"And Foreman left because..."

"He was starting to feel. He said he didn't want to become House, but the truth is that he's always envied House's coldness and detachment, and Lupe scared him. Her death and his reaction terrified him. He started caring for her, and lost that emotional distance he had when he started here." Cameron bit her lip, in an effort to condense three years of observing and assessment into something brief, something that Dr. Cuddy could understand. She didn't have House's or Robert's ability to understand, process and winnow through the huge amount of information they gathered about a patient, and make an accurate and complete diagnosis. She was the slow plodder, double and triple checking things. But the things she did understand, she stood by and had faith in her conclusions.

"Foreman came here three years ago, with his goal firmly in mind. He wanted to use House's reputation as a steppingstone to get his own department, and quite possibly his own hospital in the far future. That's why he was always so...antagonistic, driven to prove House wrong. For a long time, he believed that House had been...lucky? Or he didn't deserve the reputation he has in the medical community. Which is what made him so valuable to House. House wanted, needed someone who's always ready to point out an error, looking over his shoulder to instantly criticize any mistake, any lapse in work. Of the three of us, House needs Foreman the most. And then, Foreman found out with Lupe and other patients, that he's...human after all, that the goal he's been after all his professional life didn't seem quite so important as trying to save a dying young woman. So he got scared. Scared that his goals didn't matter as much as they used to, scared that he didn't have what it takes to reach what he'd been working so long for. Notice his first choice for job application, New York Mercy? He wanted something safe and boring, just to...ease himself back into what he thinks he should be, what he thinks he wants to be. Another House." Trying to pin down Foreman's motivations was difficult, because he himself wasn't sure what he wanted, and over the past year, he's been changing. Ever since he was infected with Naegleria, Foreman had been taking a deeper look inside himself, and finding he didn't much like what he saw. House was right, and wrong. The changes Foreman had from a near-death experience hadn't lasted, but it had caused Foreman to re-evaluate himself, and the process, while gradual, (spread out over a year) it had inevitably led to Foreman quitting.

Cuddy leaned back, and tried to digest Cameron's words. Cameron had always underestimated herself, she may not have House's brilliance and Chase's potential, or Foreman's academics, but her insights were dead on the money. She...understood people, she...understood House, a feat in and of itself. Cuddy remembered the unfocused, unsure and young doctor she hired three years ago. Cameron was...more Cameron than when she started here, she had become more of who she was. She had made decisions on what type of person she wanted to become, and worked to become that person. House. Not entirely his...tutorship, no, the job of a doctor made people grow up.(Something that House never quite managed!) But she could see the subtle touches of the master in Allison Cameron, the constant questioning and attacks had made her discard the parts of her personality that she had created just to please others. She was who she was, she had become the person SHE wanted to be.

"Um...Cameron, there is something that I'd like to ask you...I know you want to quit, and I respect your decision. I know your accrued vacation and sick leave is more than three weeks, so you don't have to worry about your three week notice, but I'd like to ask you to come in and help House out during the transition. Please?"

"I...can't, Dr. Cuddy. Besides, it's June, remember?"

"Oh yeah, you always take two week off in June. Why?"

"I visit my sister in Seattle, and we visit our mom in Chicago. We live far apart so our annual visits are precious."

"Ok, but Allison? Can I ask you one last question? Why are you leaving him?" They both knew who "him" was. There was only one true "him" in their lives, only one "him" for both of them.

Cameron stood up, and grabbing her coat and purse, turned to leave. Cuddy hadn't really expected an answer anyway.

"I can't stand to be crushed anymore." Cameron whispered to Cuddy before leaving her office, praying that "he" was late as usual, so she wouldn't run into "him". The real reason was heartbreakingly simple. If she stayed, someday, he might let her in. He might let her inside, allow her to love him. And when he left, she would be broken past bearing, past mending. It was better that she was gone.

TBC...