Sessions II: Nine Months
Chapter 10: Father Figure
House slid the glass door open and entered Yeasty/Head Trauma/ Seizure Ridden Cheerleader's room. God he had to get her out of here because her name was getting too long to keep tagging on her afflictions. Thankfully, the Swiss Family Robinson was out to lunch and he could talk to her without having to deal with all of the drama. She was texting on her phone as her lunch sat untouched on the tray to the side of her bed. He was about as bored as she looked.
"Macaroni and cheese not doing it for you," he asked as he limped over to the bed.
"It's all carbs and fat," she said disgustedly, "and totally gross. I refuse to eat that."
He looked around for a stool but didn't find one and she motioned for him to sit down on the edge of the bed. "Good choice because it is gross. I never steal that for lunch. But, I will take your pudding." She shrugged and he leaned over to grab it and the spoon.
"They came to change my medication this morning, does that mean I'm going home soon," she asked him. Her face was scrubbed clean of all make-up and her hair was shinny and strait. House shook his head. She looked so young, so innocent.
"Yep," he said taking a taste of the chocolate pudding. "Did they explain what was wrong?"
"They said I have Addison's Disease," she replied with an air of uncertainty.
Licking the spoon he eyed her for a moment. "Do you know what that means?"
"They said something about my kidney's not producing enough corti-something," she shrugged.
"Cortisol. Your pituitary gland produced too much corticotrophin to counteract the overload of cortisol which caused all sorts of things to go kaplooey," he explained.
She laughed at his goofy expression. "Is that an official medical term, kaplooey?"
"Yeah, you learn it the first year in med school," he muttered. "Corticotrophin excites the body into making excessive melanocyte-stimulating hormones and that's why your skin started to get tan around your knees and elbows which you… being the vainglorious teenager that you are… promptly covered up with extreme fake baking sessions making it oh so easy for us to tell that was going on thank you very much."
She looked down at her hands and gave him a small smile. "It was gross looking. I couldn't be all uneven like that especially with Mid-Winter Break coming up."
"God, going to Cabo all brown in weird spots is like so totally embarrassing," he mocked in his best valley-girl impression.
She rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue. "Please, you have no idea, what it takes to get into bikini shape."
"Went to Jamaica with the wife, believe me, I know," he said with an air of gravity placing the empty pudding cup back on the tray. The whole preparation thing from the waxing to the pedicure to the packing of just the right clothes was a strategic air strike planned by NATO. Put clothes in a bag. How hard was that?
"The grumpy old troll doctor said that I'd have to take this medicine for the rest of my life," she remarked in a small voice.
He nodded and laughed. Taub… at least he had been usurped as the grumpy old doctor in this case. "Yup. Any kind of stress, extreme heat and sweating can throw you back into an attack so you have to keep corticosteroids with you at all times. And you should get yourself one of those medi-alert bracelets."
"Do you think Tiffany's makes one," she mused optimistically.
He shrugged. "Who knows, probably… Shallow rich people have medical conditions too."
She made a face at him. "I'm not shallow."
He laughed. "Oh, ok, little miss I can't go to Cabo all uneven girl."
"Whatever," she griped and then checked her phone for a new text message. She flicked it shut and placed it back in her lap.
House looked at her and sighed as a nurse passing by the windowed wall with a cart caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He needed to address the real reason why he had come in here and the time was ticking away. There wasn't much time before Tritter or the mother hen returned from lunch. "Listen, I need to tell you something before your parents come back. It's something that they don't need to know about but it's important that its addressed right away."
She peered at him through her thick dark lashes and took a deep breath in. "I know what you're going to say."
He leveled his eyes at her. "You're pregnant."
Her sigh came out on a little shudder and she ran her hand through her hair. He found himself letting out his own pent up breath feeling very ill at ease with her condition. He told himself it had nothing to do with his own situation with Cate and that he had these new, unfamiliar feelings about becoming a father. He convinced himself that it had nothing to do with how he would feel if his own daughter had become pregnant at seventeen, let alone was having unprotected sex. But, it was what she told him next that almost had him crawling out of his skin.
A tear slid from the corner of her eye and she turned her dark brown eyes at him. "It's my gym teacher's."
Thankfully, House was already sitting on the bed because he thought he might have fallen over if he was actually standing up. "You're having sex with your gym teacher?" His stomach turned at the thought of some perverted old man touching this beautiful young girl. He wanted to bludgeon this guys with his cane until he was a bleeding pile of mottled flesh. Good God, what was it about these girls that brought out these fierce protective feelings that made him want to kill this guy for violating her?
She nodded, tears free flowing down her cheeks. "He's also the basketball coach. We've been seeing each other for a few weeks."
House closed his eyes and took a breath. "Why are you dating a teacher? Aren't there plenty of horny teen age boys running around your school?"
"He's just so hot and he paid extra attention to me, " she said remorsefully. "It made me cooler than all the other girls." So evidently he wasn't an old guy. But that didn't matter. It was still revolting. And he still wanted to hurt him severely.
"Does anyone else know about this," he asked her.
"No," she replied. "I haven't told anyone, not even Chelsea and Kara. They would have told me not to."
"They would have been smart!" he shouted and then immediately calmed himself down looking up at the ceiling. "Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me? Didn't I tell you never to have unprotected sex? Ever?"
"He said that he loved me," she cried.
"After a few weeks? I told you boys, men, whatever… we're all pigs. We'll say anything to get into your pants," he exclaimed.
"I know that now," she said wiping at her tears. She dropped her hands defeatedly into her lap on the blanket. "What am I going to do? My father is going to shoot him."
"He should shoot him," House barked roughly, realizing the irony of that statement coming from his own mouth. Never in his life did he think he would be on the same side of the fence as Tritter. "You know that this is statutory rape and I am obligated to report it because you're a minor."
Frantically she clutched at the sleeve of his sport coat. "No. Please. You can't. He'll kill him."
"It's abuse," he told her.
She cried harder. "I'm going to be eighteen in two weeks. Please Dr. House," she begged. "Please! You can't tell my dad."
"What so he can come after me when he finds out?" he countered. "That's not an option for me. If it comes down to me or the gym teacher who can't keep it in his pants, that's a no brainer. It's going to be him."
"He'll never have to know," she pleaded. "I want to make it all go away; I want to have an abortion."
"Why would you defend this guy and cover it up for him," he asked her confounded in her insistence to save this guy's ass. "He used you."
"Because," she began and looked away, shame slowly covering her features. "I pursued him."
"What?" he stared at her incredulously.
"I came on to him," she admitted. "He just didn't resist all that much."
House ran his hand over his face. When did the world change to a place where seventeen year old girls seduced older men? And why did he get the memo?
"That doesn't make it any less his fault," he admonished her. "He was the adult. You were the child. That makes it rape." He had a brief flashback to his little stalker a few years back, oddly enough during the same time Cheerleader's father was getting his kicks out of stalking him. His stalker practically threw herself at him and oh how he would have loved to take advantage of that singular opportunity. But, somewhere in his mind the lurking fear of prison kept his hands off of her. She young and a nubile and pert… and definitely every man's fantasy, but it was just so not right.
She frowned at his use of such a harsh term as 'rape'. "He didn't rape me," she whispered it like it was blasphemy. "I consented. I'm an idiot. I know."
"You're a dumb kid," he said. "What he is, is a selfish asshole."
"I thought I loved him," she argued. "That doesn't make me dumb."
"Whatever happened to having a crush on some guy but not acting on it?" he asked stupidly showing his age. He sighed when she rolled her eyes at him. He could practically hear her eyes screaming 'You jut don't understand'. "It was dumb to engage your teacher into an affair. It was really dumb to have sex with him and it was exceptionally dumb to do it without protection because now you're pregnant."
She leveled her eyes at him seriously. "I don't want to have this baby. I want to go to prom, to go to college, to have a life."
"You want to terminate this pregnancy?" he asked her pointedly.
"Yes, I do," she replied.
He ran his hand over his jaw. "I can't schedule you for an abortion without your parents' consent."
She grabbed at his jacket again. "No! Please…"
He stared at her hand clutching the wool fabric of his jacket. "You can walk into any free clinic in the state and have it be totally confidential."
Her face softened and her eyes became less panicked. "I don't want to do this all by myself. You can't help me?"
He shook his head. "No. You want to be an adult then you have to handle it like an adult. I can get you information about where to go, but that's it."
"You promise you won't tell my dad," she pleaded.
"I won't," he promised her.
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What House didn't promise her was that he wouldn't go over to the high school to have a word with this pedophile Basketball Coach. It was after 9PM when the game let out and everyone in the crowd filed out of the gym leaving a few cars in the parking area around the gym exit. He wasn't really sure what possessed him to come to high school tonight but he kept telling himself that it was just a morbid curiosity. He wanted to see just what kind of asshole this guy was.
When the coaches finally left the building, House picked him out at once. He was a practically a kid. Broad shouldered, dark haired and baby faced. He couldn't believe any board of education would let a guy that looked like that work within a hundred yards of hormone ridden teenage girls. For the love of Christ, it was like dangling raw meat in front of a room full of starving cheetahs. Not that that made the situation any less reviling. For as young as this guy looked, he was still much older than his little cheerleader and he should have known to keep his dick in his pants; that you don't shit where you eat.
House waited until the coached waved goodbye to his co-workers before he approached him by his car. "Coach Douglas?"
The young teacher turned to the voice calling him from the behind. "Yeah, what can I do for you?"
House limped casually toward him and came to a stop right in front of him but a little close for comfort. "Good game tonight."
The coach eyed him warily because he didn't recognize him and because he was encroaching on his personal space. "Yeah, I'm proud of how they played tonight. The boys did good."
House nodded and looked around the empty parking lot illuminated in the amber light of the street lamp overhead. "It was too bad Amanda couldn't be here to see it."
The guy narrowed his eyes at him. "Who?"
House snorted a derisive laugh. "Aw come on, you know Amanda, the sexy little cheerleader you've been tapping for the past three weeks."
Coach Douglass shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Right, you know nothing about it," he said.
"Look man, I don't know who you are or what your beef is but…" he said turning to unlock his car door and blowing him off.
Suddenly, something in House snapped. He brought his cane up to the guy's neck and pushed him back forcefully against the door of his car getting in his face. He leaned his weight on the strong wood against this guy's throat effectively choking him. "You know exactly who I'm talking about. She's seventeen you stupid fuck. If I ever hear that you even so much as looked in her direction again, you'll be wishing you were able to breathe through only a tube."
Struggling for breath with the edge of House cane pressed up against his trachea, he swallowed a gulp of air with difficulty. "I get you, man. I won't touch your daughter again."
House pushed the cane harder and then backed it off and laughed at him menacingly before taking it down by his side stepping away from him. "Oh, she's not my daughter," he relied with twisted sense of mirth before becoming deadly serious. "If she were my daughter, I'd be removing your spleen through your asshole with my cane instead."
The kid brought his hand up to his throat and dragged in a large gulp of air. "I'm sorry. I swear."
"Good, because her father's a hell of a lot scarier than me," he said leaning in closer. "And he carries a gun." House limped off leaving the terrified kid shaking in his wake. He shook his shoulders inside of the sleeves of his coat. God, that felt good.
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When House entered the apartment, only the side table light was on. Cate had texted him that she was going to bed shortly before he had his 'conversation' with the coach so he already knew that she was in bed asleep before he made it home. The place was eerily quiet except for Sexy Kitty's sweet little percolating as she rubbed against his pant leg in greeting. He shook his head as he hung up his coat. For ten years he had lived alone in a silent, empty apartment and in just a few short months, he was already used to the little noises and physical presence that came with sharing a home with someone. Since he's been home late the past couple of days, he missed seeing her sitting on the coach by the TV when he got home but it felt really good to know that someone was there waiting for him. It felt incredible to know he wouldn't be sitting alone on his couch drinking himself to sleep anymore.
Switching out the light, he hobbled down the hallway without his cane, and weapon of choice, and went to the bathroom. He took care of business and came into the bedroom through the adjoining door to the room. He could see her outline under the covers as he stripped his clothes off and stepped into his pajama bottoms. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed at the ache in his thigh. He was body tired but he didn't think he could sleep. There was so much stuff running through his head, so many thoughts about the predicament the cheerleader had gotten herself into, what he had just done in her name and how he would have felt if she had been his daughter. Daughter… the possibility that he was going to have a daughter in the coming year was kind of terrifying, especially after today. He didn't know if he was going to be ale to handle it. Somehow he thought that boys would probably be easier. Right?
Cate stirred behind him and turned over to face him. She ran her hand up his back and sighed contentedly.
"You're home," she murmured.
Slowly, he lay back against the mattress and let his head sink into the pillow before he rolled onto his side. She snuggled up against his back wrapping her arms underneath his, tucking her hands against his chest. He clasped her fingers in his hand and kissed them lightly before he tucked them closer to him snuggling into her warmth on a heavy sigh.
"What's bothering you," she chuckled.
"Who says there's anything bothering me," he said burying his smile into the pillow.
"The big puppy dog sigh you just let out," she replied. "That always means something's bothering you."
He chuckled and squeezed her fingers but his laugh died into the air. "Please tell me that we're not going to have a little girl."
Cate smiled against his neck. "Why? Would that be so terrible?"
"Yes."
This time she laughed lightly in his ear. "Why?"
"Girls have vaginas," he replied simply.
"Yes, girls tend to have vaginas," Cate said with an amused little tone.
He began to sigh again but then caught himself because she had told him it was his give away. "Girls have vaginas that boys like to put penises in."
"Ah, yes, that does happen. You are one of those boys. That's how we got this way, in case you forgot."
He sighed because he couldn't help it. "My little cheerleader is pregnant and I had to give her information where to go for an abortion so Tritter doesn't kill her and the gym teacher who got her pregnant."
"Oh," she said quietly against his shoulder. "That's not good."
"Now you see why I don't want a girl?"
"But it would be ok to have the boy who'd be putting his penis in her?"
"No, but it doesn't make me want to lock him in a closet until he's forty like I would if he were a girl."
Cate chuckled. "Don't you think my father feels the same way even though we're married now?"
Closing his eyes, he burrowed further into the pillow avoiding her question. It was stupid and irrational to feel this way. He knew it. And he didn't like that he was having these misgivings at all, because they were so not him. House didn't do protective, he didn't do fatherly. This was an anomaly and completely not in his genetic make-up, or so he thought.
"We have an appointment on Monday to see Sheldon," Cate said to him.
He flicked his eye open even though he could barely see her over his shoulder. "You're really still going to see him? Seriously?"
"Yes," she replied stubbornly. "And until some one gives me a valid reason why not other than 'you hate each other' then he's our guy."
House frowned. "Fine." He wasn't going to get into why they couldn't stand each other; there was already too much drama for one day and that was not a bridge to be crossed with out protection.
"Do you want to know the sex of the baby," she asked curiously out of the blue.
He shrugged and rolled over so that he could see her. He hadn't really thought about it until now, but it was a good question. "I don't know. Do you?"
She placed her hand on his chest and rested her chin on it. She eyed him sheepishly. "I'm a little bit of a control freak."
Laughing, he ran his hand over her hair. "A little?"
She eyed him pointedly through the darkness of the room. "Uh, so are you."
"It's way too early to tell," he reminded her continuing to run his fingers through her hair.
She shrugged. "It's something to think about."
"Yes, definitely something to think about," he agreed. Though, he wasn't sure if knowledge either way was a necessarily a good thing in this case… He might just be a little freaked, boy or girl.
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A/N: Yeah, ok, maybe a little OOC. But then again isn't the whole thing OOC? Sorry for the late update, I really do hate to keep my peeps waiting!