Part 9/10 This is the ending I originally intended but, there will be an alternate ending
Please read, review compare contrast both. Thanks
IX. August and Everything After
Forwards, backwards, it's all the same. Life is a palindrome. Experiential recurrence. Inevitable motifs, chances, fortuities, accidents happen. And happen again.
For Lisa Cuddy it is an ending the same as the beginning, the absence of life, the adversary of infertility. Miscarriage now because of miscarriage then. The injustice of existence and the force of its symmetry.
Standing at one side of her hospital bed, House is recognizing the absurdity, the ridicule, the ugliness of coincidences.
Five months earlier he went to a bar, called Wilson, Amber happened to answer, a life was lost because of the coincidence. He nearly lost his own life three times, but Cuddy happened to be there, gave him mouth to mouth, brought him back to life. If she hadn't been there, he may not be alive, Amber would still be dead, and Cuddy never pregnant.
Five months earlier Cuddy kissed him, and he took her hand, and they slept beside each other. But this only happened because she didn't get pregnant sixteen months before, if she had, they would not have fallen into each other's arms. But because of that absence of a life (infertility) and the loss of a life (Amber) a life was saved and a life created. House happened to get shot because a man's daughter was dying. And Cuddy miscarried because they happened to order take out. A life saved, a life lost. A life lost, a life saved.
Absurd is an understatement. Life and death are quantitative misgivings on a scale with a bias for subtraction, not addition. With a ruthless requisite for certain symmetry. Recurring balance.
So many fateful decisions resting on so fortuitous a love, a love that would not have existed if by coincidence they did not meet at Michigan. A love they would never have had the circumstances to recognize or consummate if House hadn't happened to have the infarction, years earlier.
Decades since this all started, it leaves him in a strange state of melancholy realizing how much of it is only a matter of chance. The entire realm of love, life and death with infinite possibilities and impossibilities, dependent on choices they had no choice but to make.
Staring at her beautiful body he sees now the stigma of his own mistakes. And feels that maybe he should just have stayed out of her life completely.
The number of years they have both spent pursuing lost moments seems impossible. He feels old, sick but somehow certain this pursuit will continue. They will keep trying to recapture something they never had a hold on in the first place. Fools, friends, just trying to make it happen. Again.
Lisa Cuddy is still asleep, unaware of her loss, the fever dream is becoming more a vision of unrealized possibility.
It is her wedding day.
In an orchard, a grove on an endless, magnificently green meadow, she steps slowly through abstracted air. The sun is lingering in the east illuminating wreathed and dewy rows of trees and shining down the quiet aisle between the bride and her groom. In an elegant ivory gown with a full skirt, long train, mounds of tulle and exquisite lace she moves with confidence, with no hesitation toward the man. A stranger.
The distance between she and this unfamiliar stature gradually diminishes but his details remain shrouded in flowers fresh as an April shower followed by a lovely spring day could make them. Red, pink, yellow roses. Baby's breadth. Lilies and clover. Dandelions at her bare feet. Doves soar in splendor overhead, the cloudless sky a tranquil shade of blue.The music, the only thing she can hear other than beat of her excited heart is the song of birds in the tree tops. There are no guests at this wedding only these two souls, adorned in the purest white.
The altar is an arch lined with ivy, and suddenly aware of how alone she is in this path, she realizes she has no control over the speed of her stride. Satisfied still, knowing reunion is inevitable. The intoxicating floral perfume inspirits her as she continues the journey, trying to identify the groom. There is no cane, and as she slowly bridges the gap she can see his cravat is black. A half blown rose in the pleat of his jacket is crimson, above his heart.
Hands are the only part of him she sees. And though they tremble a little, the motion is not what steals her attention. The ring in his grasp is gold. Infinity, purity, and he's passing it on to her. It is a gift more than a commitment. There's a strange perpetual permanence about the ceremony but it doesn't really feel like marriage. Lifting the veil, he kisses her to confirm the completion and it's such a placid, listless embrace that she opens her eyes. And sees him, at last.
House.
His eyes the same lucid hue as the sky, his lips fervid and familiar on hers. It is comfort, it is success somehow.
It is just a dream.
But dreaming is not merely an act of coded communication, it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened- is the most universal necessity.
And this dream is beautiful, eloquent, it will not be forgotten, which makes it dangerous.
The dream revealed what she really wants, and she can not run from it, she will hold onto it. She will want to have the dream again, night and day will compete for her heart, reminding Cuddy of what she needs, until she admits it. Until she pursues it.
Until the dream is reality.
Standing still, House isn't facing her, but looking out the glass door into an empty hallway. Rain is drowning the world outside theses walls, a dismal summer deluge. Paralyzed by the static sound of the downpour, he stares straight ahead until he sees the movement of her reflection on the glass when she awakens.
"House," she says to his hand clutching the cane.
He turns around reluctantly. Afraid of looking at her. Not wanting any of this to be true.
"You're in the ICU."
"Why?
What is it?"
The levity of a dream sinks into the burden of fact,
"Listeriosis."
"No... "
Impending tears brim, her weak utterance wavers.
Is the baby...?"
House closes his eyes to shake his head, incapable of saying the words.
Cuddy's head collapses into her hands. A quiet voice in her head whispers, 'This was your greatest fear. It's happening.' She feels numb, guilty, alone, so alone.
But she isn't.
"I... " He starts.
"I'm so sorry."
She hears him but doesn't make a sound. House can't cry, dying is fine but it should have been him.
They spend a long forever in silence. The solemnity of sorrow slowly burying the both of them. A warm hand runs down her arm and wet fingers weave together. House swallows his own sobs, trying to be a pillar, a friend, the compassionate doctor that he's not.
As he gently rubs her palm Cuddy struggles to understand why everything is ending the way it started. One of them at the other's bedside, holding hands, a death and its destruction looming over. Guilt blanketing all other emotions.
All of their progress disappearing before them.
"House," as their clasp disconnects.
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," he says with the sincerity and conviction of a diagnosis.
As he stands beside her, aphonic and broken, he feels something he has never felt before. The compassion is warring with his objectivity, their only common thread is his loyalty,to his job, to her.
But in this moment neither is enough.
Cuddy's soul is lost again. Hidden beneath the residue of defeat. Obscured by absurdity, murdered by an unjust intervention. Some part of both of them has died. They've died together. A shared future extinguished. Potential, expectation stolen. They wanted more, they could have had so much more. They were so close, so elevated. Lightness in a somber world of clumsy physics.
it's not the fall that kills you (it's the sudden stop)
Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to experience vertigo. But vertigo is something more than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below that tempts and lures us. It is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
And now two separate souls are free falling from the greatest heights they've ever known. The summit they finally found the courage to climb together. Their worst fear is before them.
House's powerlessness is his insuperable longing to fall. A man living in a constant state of vertigo, plagued by cynicism and suspicion. The expectation of falling. He was waiting for the loss, the disappointment but thought it would come in the form of her rejection of his proposal, of him, and never this.
They are plummeting into bottomless black, an uncertain abyss, the ground imperceptible, the air angry, the devastation of landing imminent. A fall into cold empty space, the culmination of all gravity, all pain. The light of day lost.
A fall after which nothing will be the same.
Anger is the dominant emotion for them both, initially. Cuddy doesn't understand why she was allowed to get this far, this close, just to have it end. Happiness was in sight, completion near, but fate taunts her. The same as it did with Richard, the same as it did more than a year before this. It's as if each consecutive blow is intensified, magnified exponentially, added to the potency of all the others, testing her strength, how much weight she can bear before breaking completely.
But life is a persistent window. She has been allowed to look through this window twice, certainly she can't resign now aware of it's an attainable perspective. Knowing she created life she saw it, felt it move, heard its heartbeat and she can again.
The thought of another miscarriage has always brought a premonition of anesthetized gloom but the idea of never having a child gives her an overwhelming sense of despair, as much grief as another inadvertent failure. Lisa Cuddy is not ready to give up yet.
Guilt is plaguing her in a way it hasn't since the infarction. She will blame herself for ordering take out, when she knew sheshouldn't have. She will blame herself for going home, believing nothing was wrong. She will blame herself for choosing such an incompetent doctor. But she will not blame House for not curing her sooner. Even if she had died, she could not unlove him. In fact, somewhere in her celestial enlightenment she would love him all the more, for giving her the opportunity to be pregnant, a mother, to create life before her own death.
No, House she still loves, it is herself who Cuddy now despises.
He is just as angry. Furious with himself. Cursing a God he doesn't believe in for being such an indian giver. House mourns in his own way, stays at a distance while the infection loses to science. Neither wants anybody to suspect, especially now.When it's time, he discreetly schedules her D and C, never so nauseated by two letters.
The day of the procedure he's apprehensive for her. His compassion still has yet to dissipate completely. She's having it alone, he knows and is restless at the thought of it. In his office, memory is his sole companion, their briefest bliss now only in his imagination. And then he remembers, it's not.
It's in his wallet.
A kiss. Tangible proof of what they had, what they nearly had. He pulls out the picture from the photobooth. Their wedding portrait. A kiss. Black and white, shades of gray, dull tonalities in a now colorless world. A monument to time past. A kiss. A private continuation of the affair, a hymn to their still unrequited love, a sentimental summary of an unsentimental story as it disappears in the distance. Each frame reanimates their potential, revives their passion, it makes it real again, visible, unmistakable.The shape of her smile, the light in her eyes, his lips on her cheek, it was so perfect, so right.
And before he feels another pang of loss, House stands andstarts toward outpatient surgery.
The waiting room is crowded and House is disguised as a concerned loved one, legs crossed, a magazine in front of his face. He sees her shoes when she steps out and treads unevenly, but not far behind.
Once she's outside, alone and overwhelmed by this horrific ending, a sob escapes, her bottom lips quivers, but the flow of the pain from her eyes is interrupted when she's startled by his limping frame at her side. Cuddy starts to walk away speechless, heartbroken, not wanting to believe any of this is true. It is all just some awful nightmare, she will wake up soon.It started when she fell asleep, she has to wake up.
As summer's sweat streams into inevitable tears, she looks back at him through the corner of her eye, silently begging him to follow. The hot pavement of the parking lot spurns their feet and the sun, the season makes this hell more than anything. House drives her home, both mute, confused- everything but alone in the car as an unforgiving reality stalks close.
The quiet façade of Cuddy's strength disintegrates when they arrive at her doorstep. As House reaches to rest a hand on her back, to say something, though he knows not what, she turns around and buries her face into his shoulder, weeping softly. With one arm around her waist, and the other stroking her head, each tear is a reinforcement of his failure. He kisses her high on one cheek, his nose pressed to her hair and when her sobs subside he pulls away quickly, resisting the temptation to kiss her again. And again.
"You can always try again," he whispers.
And she knows it's not optimism or a platitude, he's answering the question that started all of this, the question she never asked.
They almost forget the struggle in this embrace, a composed compassionate hug was how this all started and it is how it must end. It's warm, it's refuge.
But it doesn't last.
The silent release ends, separating them again. Cuddy turns toward the door, digging for her keys. And she finds it. Gold, ardor, infinity - at the bottom of her purse. A sardonic smile almost steals her mouth at the dissonance of the rediscovery. For an instant the wedding dream flashes forth but, jaded by such naive hope, she reaches a hand out to give it back.
Staring at the gold between her fingers, House doesn't blink or consider,
"Keep it."
It is a gift.
No romantic gesture, only a shared sense of beauty in the purity, the simplicity of a ring. A remedy to cure her depression and imbue this anguished woman with a new will to live. Tepid teardrops fall from her smiling face, it is a strange redemption to hear his voice echoing in her consciousness, inscribed on her soul.
Two words with more meaning than the three they could never say.
With no goodbye, he feels it is impossible to leave her, even for a little while. They're running against the years, their past, toward a bleak future by themselves. It is a deep and desperate time-need, a clock ticking with his heart, urging him against the whole logic of his life to walk past her into the house now—and say "This is forever."
But one foot in front of the other, without looking back, he goes. They have been with other people, they will be with other people. But they will always return to each other. Their relationship is the last palindrome they will know. Their fidelity is a recurring refusal to ever let the other be defeated.
almost
They will cope, they will recover, they will eventually see how everything has changed. It is still a secret. But they will never forget that once they got something right, both nearly died to save a life both are alive and still chasing the light.
House returns to his office, downs the contents of his vicodin bottle with the remainder of the bourbon bottle. He may die from medication, but at least he'll kill the pain. Time doesn't heal such wounds, he knows. Miscarriage is still bereavement, it never goes away. He's a realist, he knows this isn't the end of some tragic love story, it's life.
It was life.
His son lived, his son died. He lost, and he tried. The pregnancy was an accident, like everything else. But even House, as calloused, abrasive and solitary as he may be, feels robbed. He wants to recover something, some idea of himself that was stolen by all of this. By the same chance that gave him the idea in the first place. His life will not be the same until he finds it.
Trying to connect the nubs and voids of the puzzle of his recent past, he's detaching himself from it slowly. He still thinks this is all his fault, detachment is all that's keeping him from willing his heart to stop beating.
Color blind now, the absence of life subtracts the entire spectrum one shade at a time, until there is nothing but an abominable lack of color. Until there is nothing left worth seeing. Not without desperation he has long felt the failures in his profession dissolving into a lifeless mass.
He will never forgive himself.
Because just this once he has pandered to the last and greatest of human dreams; a transitory enchanted moment of holding his breath, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor recognized, face to face for the first time with something commensurate to his capacity for knowledge, for connection- a life. One he created. The significance of all else seems dim and fading quickly before his eyes.
Still he is trying to decipher the underlying reason for it all. Why the number three taunts him. A number so frequent in his life, now he's being denied it. It could have been the three of them, in some formation, conventional, official or not.
He was nearly a father, something more than a limp and an ego, something more than a doctor and manipulative bastard. But there's no 'I' in threesome. Maybe his concern, this robbed feeling is just his selfishness, his pride. A part of the man literally died.
But it was their tern.
More than 'if' or 'what if' the most prevalent possibility motif for Greg House is 'almost.' He almost had something more than this tennis ball, and that white board. He almost had a snapshot of a ternate and unexpected future. He almost asked a question that would change three lives forever. He almost confronted and conquered his nihilism, some element of loneliness that made it so easy to be loved, so hard to love.
'Almost' is all he has left.
A window has closed.
An embrasure of existence extinct, what nearly fell in place has fallen apart. With every sip, every pill he draws further and further into himself, preparing to give up. But the dead dream fights on as the day slips away, trying to touch what is no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room. An empty windowless room, with no view but four blank, black walls.
But perhaps an opening of another kind has been created.A threshold with a knob and a keyhole, a door on the interior wall of this claustrophobic chamber. And though they have no idea what is on the other side, they now possess the key to opening this door.
A gold key, a round key, an honest key.
They did this, which means it's possible. They can do it again. Refuse to be discouraged by this change in plans, by their deviated destinies. House is willing and Cuddy never really intended for any of this to happen the way it did. She was going to restart the IVF and doesn't want to stop now. The woman simply can't resign the lifelong aspiration of convention - of a child and a husband. She can still ask him.
She has to ask him.
They can open this door at any time.
But the door is not opportunity without obstacle. Passing through it will not be easy, especially together. They have to unlock the door for each other, cross it with each other, find the courage to face whatever may be on the other side. Rejection, failure or sweet new life. House is reconsidering the symmetrical composition of all the lives effected by this strange series of events. Such a ridiculously convoluted machine that Rube Goldberg could not have devised a more indirect way of arriving at this destination,this very moment. He's beginning to see it all very clearly.
Questioning if it is fate who has made a mistake, an irreconcilable blunder. Perhaps Cuddy did not miscarry now only because she did then, perhaps the symmetry is coincidence, that the life they created, against all odds, lived and was meant to live to create another symmetry. To balance the life lost that was Amber Volakis, An asymmetrical flaw in the scenario of three lives. A life created to negate this mistake, to reestablish equilibrium, to right a wrong.
To give long sought happiness and endless joy to his mother and grant amnesty for his father's treason. Absolution of sins. Erasure of mistakes. Reward and forgiveness.
It was another chance.
Maybe there will be another still. The repetition may work in their favor eventually. Maybe they will live, be together until they get this right.
The end has no end.
Each opposition, each failure is just a catalyst, cementing their commitment, their loyalty, their dedication to each other, to this dream. And they'll keep their levels, fulfill their promises, somehow be buoyed up by the inevitability of success or at least distracted from their strife by trying.
Happiness is a light that casts no shadows in the aftermath of some especially intense misery. And he was happy. Somehow after the bus crash, after everything. And with her.
Life belies when there's nothing to believe in. Truth begins in lies. If truth is his only credence, he needs her, a child, something more than this. And so does she. They have so little, have been denied so much. House had to lose this vantage to realize how much he wanted it. Now the cruel summer's sun sets and a part of him is missing.
Probability, possibility, necessity. Choice, chance, expectation. The return of his objectivity makes the prospect of reunion skewed. Both are lost again, scarred. Regret is what they are left with, no hope and little grace. But of all the things they possess in common, the only one that matters at all is the corresponding space they fill in each other's hearts. The struggle to fill this space seems the only thing worth while. Or so a mind muses, at night. Alone.
