Hey guys! Thank you again so much for all the reviews - they've been coming in dribs and drabs for the last couple of days an each time I get a new one it makes me smile incessantly. So yes, thank you!
I just want to apologise; I really love the suggestions you guys have given me as to where to take the new part of the story, but I had already written this chapter and have already written 90% of the next chapter during NaNoWriMo, so it'd be really difficult to worm your ideas in under the circumstances :( But your opinions are much appreciated and hopefully I will be able to be much more proactive with them after Chapter 12 because then I'll be writing as we go along.
I really hope you enjoy this chapter; we really are approaching a very important plot point which I'm excited about XD But also your feedback is great - I was really nervous writing this bit and when proof-reading it, because a certain character in this chapter I've never really written before so I hope I've got his characterization right..! Anyway, I'll sssh now and let you get on reading. I really hope you like and I'll really love you if you leave me a review when you're finished. Lovee xxxxxx
P.S. HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY EVERYONE!
XI
For the first time in a long time, the lights were dimmed in the living room, the television was on, Rachel was upstairs asleep in her cot, the baby monitor was silent, and Cuddy was curled up on the sofa in her pyjamas and bare feet with a glass of red wine in her hand. In fact, even more surprisingly, the situation had been the same for almost the past two hours. After the excitement of the past couple of days, Rachel slept almost the moment she put her down, Lucas was at work and House was actually avoiding her because he knew the next time they came face to face she'd give him a new case to work on. She hadn't bothered to cook because she didn't know when Lucas would be home and didn't want to eat without him, so she'd even treated herself to a couple of chocolates and a slice of the chocolate fudge cake from the bakery down the road that was absolutely to die for. For the first time in a long time, Lisa Cuddy was calm, relaxed, content and happy.
She was so relaxed that she hadn't even noticed the front door open and Lucas let himself in. He could hear the television was quiet so he assumed that meant Rachel was in bed, so he crept quietly in to the living room. "Hey gorgeous, how was your day?" However, the end of his sentence was slightly obscured by a very large yawn which he attempted to quickly stifle.
"Oh, I didn't hear you come in!" She answered with surprise, but shuffled up on the sofa so he could sit down too because he looked absolutely exhausted. "It was… annoyingly uneventful. You would have thought after giving up our vacation weekend, something dramatic would at least have the decency to happen and make it worth it? But no. House spent all day avoiding me because he solved his case last night and knows I need to give him another one. And the air conditioning broke in the gynaecology ward, and maintenance took their time to fix it so I had to go and sort them out with temporary fans. And since nothing else happened I took the once in a lifetime opportunity and came home early, so I've been back for a couple of hours. How about yours?"
Lucas smiled as he slipped down on to the sofa next to her and lifted her feet on to his knee so he could play with them attentively. "Oh, nothing really, the client who called me out today is a total prat. I'm sure he has me on speed dial – he calls me every other month to tail his wife for twelve hours solid because he's convinced she's cheating on him, then when I come back and tell him she did nothing untoward and tell him the amount I'm going to send him an invoice for he decides it's not worth paying that much and gives up the crusade for a couple of months, then starts all over again. But hey, if you got home early, you could have called me, I would have come home early too. I was contracted for twelve hours but she went back home to him after nine so it was a waste of time. I just decided to do the extra three hours anyway because I thought you'd still be at work and he wouldn't pay me for work I didn't do."
"Oh, sorry sweetheart, I thought you'd be busy. I don't like calling you when you're at work in case you're like, hiding from someone or something and I reveal your position by calling you at the wrong time!" She giggled to herself at the thought of him hiding behind a lamp post from someone as he trailed them around the streets of Trenton.
"Do you really think I'm an idiot? I always have my cell phone on silent when I'm working!" Smacking her foot playfully, he tickled the bottom until she giggled and squirmed and begged for mercy, just to punish her for assuming he was stupid enough to make an amateur mistake like that. "Anyway, I was expecting your call, so it's not like I would have been unprepared. I left you a message on the answer machine."
After recovering from her giggling fit whilst trying not to spill the glass of wine in her hand on the cream carpet, Cuddy processed what he said and looked highly confused. "You left a message on the answer machine? That's weird… There wasn't one there when I got in. The light wasn't flashing but I always check anyway, just in case, and I had no unread messages. When did you leave it?"
"About lunch time, when I gave myself a lunch break. I was just asking if you wanted me to bring a takeout home with me because we've had a long weekend and you've been at work and I didn't think you'd really be in the mood to cook." Lucas continued massaging her feet slowly but firmly in order to make sure she didn't get stressed – because she was prone to getting stressed about the smallest things. "Don't worry about it, if you do want one, we'll just order one to deliver. What do you want, pizza? Chinese? Curry?"
However, it was clear although she was enjoying the foot massage very much, it wasn't stopping her from getting stressed out. She shook her head at him, signalling him to stop for a second, and she was obviously very distracted and thinking something through slowly in her head. "I went to his office just after lunch and he wasn't there, and Wilson knew nothing about the argument we'd had or where he was. That means he either didn't speak to Wilson at all, or he'd gone somewhere the Wilson wouldn't approve of. He obviously wasn't just hiding from me because Wilson wouldn't disapprove of that – he's used to it." She it was almost like she was working through a problem methodically using assumptions, much like House did – she seemed to be attempting to use his own tricks against him. "Wilson is rubbish at lying, especially to me, and I really wasn't that distracted that I wouldn't have noticed this morning, so he must've known absolutely nothing at all. So if he didn't speak to Wilson he must have been out all morning, well, between him arriving at the hospital and me arriving." She looked up in shock and worry at Lucas with almost a dawning comprehension on her face, and she really didn't like what she was realising. "He was here. That's why I couldn't find him anywhere, and why Wilson didn't have a clue what was going on – House would never tell him if he was going to break in to my house illegally, because Wilson has spent the last god knows how long trying to convince me that House is a changed man, and by doing that he'd only prove that I was right all along so Wilson would kill him. But it's the only explanation – it's something he'd do and after last night, it's definitely something he was in the frame of mind to do, and it explains why…" And then she stopped talking in mid sentence and pulled up foot out of his grasp, got up, put her glass of wine down and ran out in to the hallway as if she'd been struck by another idea.
"Lisa, for God's sake will you calm down?" Sighing, he got up and followed her and resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. He was much calmer – he knew how exceptionally prone to overreacting to things she was. When he stepped in to the large hall way, he found her on her knees at the spindly table on which the telephone stood, fiddling around the answer machine. He opened his mouth to speak again but before he got to say anything, she gestured for him to be quiet by pressing her finger to her lips, then pointed to the box she had in her hand. He fell silent obediently and waited slightly impatiently for what he was supposed to be listening to.
An automated female voice broke the silence. "You have no new messages. You have one saved message. First saved message left today at 14:32pm."
Then a slightly distorted but definitely recognizable recording of Lucas' voice began playing. "Hey babe, I can imagine you will have probably had a stressful day at work today, well, more stressful than normal anyway, so I thought I might bring a takeout home with me to save either of us having to cook? It's fine if you don't want one, just let me know. By the time I'm finished you'll probably have already put Rachel to bed, so give her my love. See you later."
Cuddy cut the call off without deleting the message, just as House must have done, and gave Lucas a panicked look. "I told you. He knows; it must have been him. Either that or someone we don't know broke in to the house and didn't take anything, and had the courtesy to leave everything where it was, or at least put it back when they were done, after listening to our answer machine messages."
Holding out his hand to her, Lucas helped her up from her sitting position, put his arm around her waist gently but firmly in an attempt to calm her down, and steered her back towards the sofa in the living room where he sat her down. It pained him to say that actually, it sounded like she was right, and it also sounded exactly like he sort of thing House would do – it was extremely insane and convoluted. "Look Lisa, if you're right and he does know, well he's had a chance to come and confront you about it, hasn't he, and he's not usually one to bide his time, and he hasn't done it yet. So maybe he's just not going to do it at all. Maybe he might actually respect me enough, even if he doesn't respect you enough, to leave us alone and accept that some people might just have a right to be left alone to be happy. And I know it doesn't sound like him but at the end of the day, Wilson has been telling you he's changed. So maybe he has." He spoke to her in a calming voice as he sat back down next to her; but it was with much more conviction than he felt, and he was must more concerned than he was letting on.
The next day, she put slightly more make up on than usual, to hide her red eyes and the bags underneath them. Despite how much Lucas had attempted to calm her down, and how successful he had actually been, because he knew her well enough to know exactly what to say to her when she was stressed out, she still didn't sleep very well. Because not only was she scared about his possible reaction to finding out she was dating Lucas, someone he thought was loyal to him, but she was also scared of what he'd say to Lucas. She was scared that in a fit of anger or bitterness, he'd accidentally on purpose let it slip about their kiss. That burden of guilt, that weight that she'd been feeling in the pit of her stomach since it happened, had redoubled, quadrupled even, and she once again had a permanent feeling of nausea.
She left for work before Lucas woke up, leaving him a note on the kitchen bench, because she didn't want to face him. She felt like she was lying to him every minute of every day again, even if it was only by omission. She was also plagued with her own self hatred – she kept punishing herself, because the fact remained that the guilt had previously subsided when she was comforted by the fact that there was no reason that Lucas should ever find out about her infidelity, and it had only returned when that possibility became real. Her office provided one of the only remaining comforts to her – at work she was the boss, and she'd got there by a mixture of hard work and being extremely good at what she did. She has earned that office and the respect from her employees and colleagues that came along with it. It was one thing she hadn't screwed up at least.
However, she had to leave the sanctity of her office and instead go in search of the last person she wanted to see right now, because she knew that was her job. Her mind was so preoccupied as she left her office and the clinic that she wasn't watching where she was going, and she almost walked straight in to him, as he entered the building for the day. She had the file she intended to give him in her hand, so she held it out for him to take. "Ah, Dr. House, I was just about to come looking for you. Seen as you seem to be getting through your cases at a remarkable speed lately, I thought you might like another one to keep you busy." When he didn't take the file out of her hand, she pushed it further in his direction.
House lifted the rim of his flat cap so he could look her in the eye, but actually found it remarkably easy to act like absolutely nothing had happened and like he hadn't found out anything of significance at all. He completely ignored her repeated gestures for him to take the file in her hand off her, and instead busied himself taking his gloves off and pushing them rather forcibly in to his pockets. "And what on earth would make you think that Dr. Cuddy. The holiday season is approaching us, don't you have small dying children on cancer wards to comfort rather than bothering me with petty, mundane things like work?"
"It may seem mundane to you, but seen as you're so concerned about me making people happy this holiday season, why don't you make somebody happy and save their life? Or in case I didn't make myself clear, you don't actually have a choice in the matter." She jabbed him rather fiercely in the arm with the blue file, still attempting to get him to take it off her. As they stood in such close proximity as if nothing at all had happened between them, it was like nothing had even changed and everything was just the way that it always was, yet even conversing with him was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end – and not in a good way. It was almost as though she feel threatened by him, even though he'd done nothing to indicate she had anything to be scared of, past experience of him told her that things were never going to be this simple. She felt like he had a hold, a power over her, and she didn't like that, and she felt trapped by her own guilt and his knowledge of exactly what she'd done. And she was starting to get extremely claustrophobic.
"Oh, you're going to pull rank on me, are you?" To anyone else in the world watching in on this conversation, he knew not one of them, even Wilson, would be able to detect anything wrong or abnormal between the two of them. This was natural, this was how it always was. Except, it wasn't. There was something contrived about this conversation – her body language was tense and her unconscious mannerisms were conspicuous by their absence. Her mind was elsewhere – either that or she was thinking and over thinking their exchange far more than usual, far far more than was necessary. She wasn't relaxed. Whenever the game passed back and forth between them, it may not have always helped her stress levels, but she was always comfortable with it. Lisa Cuddy was a very self conscious person and wasn't always comfortable in her own skin; with who she was, and what she did. But on those very common occasions, she was comfortable – it was a role she had to play that she understood well, could play well, and enjoyed playing. It excited her. And now she wasn't comfortable or excited. She was anxious, but clearly trying to hide it. And least he could take comfort in the fact that he was a much better actor than her.
She had that paranoid feeling, she knew he was watching her. She knew he'd sensed that there was something not right about her today and he was latching on to every imperfection in order to figure out what it was that was bothering her but she tried to act like she hadn't noticed. Instead, she pushed on with the conversation. "Yes, I am going to pull rank on you. I'm your boss and you will do as I say. Now either you take this file off me or I go upstairs and give it to your team personally so you can't pretend for the next couple of hours that you haven't got a case." She raised her eyebrow questioningly at him, to see if he was going to take her up on the offer, and when he hadn't flinched within the space of twenty seconds, she simply turned her back on him and made her way towards the elevators without a word.
Hoping to call her bluff, he didn't react, but when she made no indication that she was going to stop, he followed her as quickly as his bum leg and his cane would allow him – which wasn't exceptionally fast, especially when wearing a thick coat and a scarf. However, the elevator took a while to arrive at the ground floor which gave him a chance to catch up with her, and slide in the same elevator as her. He stood silently by her side to begin with, but as it began to move, he leant towards her and stage whispered in her ear, ensuring everyone else entering the elevator could hear every word. "I hope you can still walk this morning, I'll be a bit more gentle next time." The words wanted to stick in his throat the moment he thought about how untrue they were, however, he managed to continue as if nothing was bothering him at all.
If looks could kill, she made sure she murdered him fifteen times over. She wasn't quite sure if that was a sneaky dig, and the pit of guilt made a particularly painful burn like acid in the pit of her stomach when she thought about it, but she tried desperately to tell herself that she was over thinking, and he was just trying to annoy and rile her just like he usually did. As the elevator reached the third floor, she stepped out of it, again without a word to him, and stalked towards his office.
"Oi! Come on, with the length of that skirt, you might as well not be wearing one at all? You call yourself professional? The only thing that could be called professional in reference to would be a professional hooker." He knew it was below the belt, especially considering he shouted it at her down a crowded corridor as he was lagging behind her significantly, but he was desperately trying to find something to stop her going in to his office – he didn't think it was too advisable that she should be enlightened of the fact that he'd 'borrowed' the games console from the children's ward and installed it in to the flat screen television from the doctor's lounge that he'd blackmailed her in to giving to him.
Upon hearing that, she span around immediately, a face of complete and utter disbelief coupled with slight amusement, which was actually quite a relief to her because amusement wasn't an emotion she was too used to feeling at the moment. "Oh, you really are unbelievable." With every sentence, she took a slow step back towards them until they met in the middle, not too far from the door of his outer office. "You don't think I know, you're just trying to make me angry? I mean, you could have picked a better insult than that, really. You're always happy about the length of my skirts – the shorter the better in your opinion, so don't act like it's suddenly a problem for you now. So there's obviously something in your office you don't want me to see. However, it might delight you to know, that if there's something you don't want me to see that badly then I don't want to know what it is, because then I might have to deal with it, and you. And God knows what shit you're going to make me sort out next." She paused for a second, quite shocked at herself as cursing was something she reserved for particular occasions - so it just proved how much he was screwing with her head at the moment. "So instead, you can take the case and stay out of my way, preferably for at least the rest of today. Which includes not doing anything ridiculously stupid." She pressed the navy blue file in to his chest, gave him a contemptuous but satisfied look, and walk straight past him, back thought the open doors of an elevator that people were just exiting, and let the doors close in front of her. However, as they did close and she knew she was out of his sight, her self-satisfied smirk faded and she returned to being the nervous wreck she had been ten minutes ago. It made it even worse that she still got a thrill and a buzz from arguing with him – the intellectual confrontation and the battle of wills was one of the reasons she didn't just fire him on the spot for total disrespect to patients, colleagues, authority and hospital protocol. But she hated that fact – it just reminded of why they'd ended up kissing, and that just made her think about how wonderful Lucas was to her and Rachel, and how ungrateful she must be to have hurt him like that.
House blinked a couple of times in slight shock after the exchange, but it only took him a couple of seconds to process the fact that she in fact was not going to search his office for what he was obviously hiding from her because she actually really did not want to know. He entered his office, still pondering about what was wrong with her, and wondering whether he really was being slightly over analytical, because a performance like that only came from Cuddy on her best form. As per usual, as he entered the room, he tossed the file in his hand on to the table almost like a Frisbee, but didn't say a word to his fellows, still deep in thought. He was only brought of his trance when Taub spoke, without even opening the file.
"What were you and Cuddy arguing about out there? She usually likes to have her arguments with you in here, in front of us, presumably to try and humiliate you a little bit, if that's even possible…"
"Oh, we were arguing about something she wouldn't want you guys to hear, you know. She's finding it difficult to walk today and she insists she told me to stop last night but I swear I heard her begging me not to. It's just a little communication issue, nothing you kids need to worry about." After taking off his coat and manly scarf, and dropping his flat cap on top of the computer, House moved slowly towards the whiteboard that stood in his office, picked up the pen from the ledge and twirled it carelessly in his fingers seemingly waiting for something. When no one spoke up, he looked at his three employees expectantly. "Come on then, someone tell me what we're dealing with here? I haven't actually read the file, Cuddy just thrust it at me and I took it, out of habit." He smirked at his own joke then continued to watch them impatiently.
Foreman lay back, almost as if he was at home and relaxed, in his chair and recited a fair patient history by heart, even after only looking at the file a mere two minutes earlier. "A forty two year old female who has been deaf and blind all her life, and has present with unexplained renal failure. She has terrible health since she was a young girl but nothing has ever been pinned on one single cause. She's on dialysis at the moment but unless she wants to stay that way for the rest of her life, we need to find out why her kidneys are shutting down." He then clasped his hands under his chin matter-of-factly, as if he'd just proved a point.
At this, House turned to his white board and wrote 'kidney failure' in as large letters as he could possibly imagine, and then turned back around acting as if he were a teacher, teaching a kinder garden class. "Now, can anyone expand on what Dr. Foreman told me, or is he really as much as a show off as that made him look?"
"Aren't you including her other health problems in the differential? I mean, it can't be a coincidence that this woman has been plagued by so many things since birth and now her kidneys have completely given up when she's only middle aged? Even if you excluded things that have occurred in single instances, surely we should at least include her deafness and blindness?" Thirteen swung her long, straight, brunette hair over her shoulder, and raised her eyebrows at him as she asked what she thought was a very adequate question.
"If we were treating an amputee, would we include his lack of some limb as part of the differential? No, I didn't think so. Her inability to see or her may have absolutely nothing to whatsoever to do with her kidneys failing – but then only way we can know that is if we find out why her kidneys are failing. And if we include deafness and blindness in the ddx and they actually aren't symptoms at all, it could take us a whole lot longer to work out what actually is wrong with her kidneys." House made a gesture to suggest she was completely and utterly stupid for even asking that question.
However, not convinced at all by his argument, she continued to press the subject earnestly. "But that's ridiculous, she's had her problems hearing and seeing since she was born – so if anything that could strongly suggest a genetic factor. I know infants can develop lack of sight or hearing but the chances of a baby being born without both and then going on to have kidney problems too in later life – the odds are astronomical. And adding them in to the mix decreases the differential massively – there are a million and one things that can cause renal failure, you know that. But there are very few things that cause renal failure, and deafness and blindness as a child."
House just repeated his look of slight disgust and decided it would be quicker and easier to try and move on and completely ignoring her attempts to get her point across because as far as he was concerned, her point was completely invalid. "If there are so many – a million and one actually, if we take the medical dictionary by the words of Dr. Remy Hadley – possible causes for kidney failure, we shouldn't be sitting here in silence, you should be suggesting those million and one causes to me. Come on, come on, wake up! We haven't got all day! This patient's kidneys aren't going to wait for you lot to wake your brains up and start thinking like doctors."
"Kidney stones?" Taub obeyed, however spoke in a rather dull and monotone voice as if this was actually the last place in the world he wanted to be right now and this was the last patient on the earth he wanted to be treating right now.
"Come on Taub, with a bit more enthusiasm than that! This a woman who has struggled through life from birth with terrible disabilities and she's got to the respectable age of forty two only to hit another life threatening hurdle – kidney failure. You could sound a bit more sincere about finding out what is causing that kidney problem, couldn't you?" House's voice was extremely fake, high pitched and completely patronizing, just as he'd intended it to sounds as he was doing his best to wind Dr. Taub up.
Usually, Taub would greet blatant sarcasm like that with a sarcastic witty comment of his own, but as it happened that morning he was extremely tired and without the energy for the argument it was bound to provoke, so he simply did exactly as he was told for once in his life. "Oh, well, kidney failure? I wonder if that could be caused by kidney stones?"
It was only then did House choose his moment to twist the knife in in the absolute worst way possible – taking advantage of the fact that Taub had actually been willingly compliant for once. "Oh course it's not kidney stones, you moron. I thought we established that it was unexplained kidney failure? It would not remain unexplained and reach my desk through the delightfully skilful hands of our dean of medicine if more than one person had not done the simple imaging test it takes to confirm kidney stones and found the negative. Really, how on earth did you get through medical school if being slightly tired wipes all ability to give a half decent explanation for a symptom from your mind?" After his ridicule of his oldest fellow, he turned to the other two for more appropriate ideas.
"She could just have, over her life time, pumped far too many different drugs in to her body in too high a quantities? They still to this day haven't found out the source of the issues she was born with and they've given her a lot of experimental drugs in the hope that one of them will have some effect on whatever has done this to her. They could have become toxic." Thirteen chipped in but very briskly, as she was still extremely annoyed by, at the very least, his methods of attempting to silence her ideas.
"If the medications she'd been given had poisoned her kidneys, they wouldn't be the only things that were failing. There are a huge amount of different combinations of different trials she's been – there's only the tiniest chance that they would only target her kidneys and nothing else. That's also probably why she's had so many health problems – all these drugs are bound to have had side effects, but just like nobody else does, she didn't read the leaflet inside the box with her medication which told her what the side effects could possibly be. It's not toxic shock from too much medication." Though House was noticeably kinder when dismissing Thirteen's idea. Not kind, he was never kind, it seemed to be physically impossible for him to be kind at all, but remarkably kinder than he was to Taub when he came up with a ridiculous idea.
Having not flinched throughout the whole massacring of Taub and the rejection of Thirteen's perfectly valid theory, Foreman then opened his mouth to offer a suggestion."What about polycystic kidney disease? If the cysts were relapsing and recurring, they could come and go, and could have just happened to be gone when any of the imaging studies were taken. The only way we can catch them for sure is to open her up and inspect the kidneys for any signs of constant breaking of skin and cysts forming."
House cursed himself for not being able to find anything to use in that suggestion to rip Foreman apart with along with his other two colleagues. He sighed in resignation and reluctantly nodded. "Okay, I don't actually have any objections to that one so you seem to be off the hook for once Dr. Foreman. So as a reward, you can go and inform little miss unlucky that her luck may have changed because the amazing 'Dr. House' and his team have figured out what is wrong with her and she should make a good recovery. And I'll go and busy myself trying to convince Dr. Chase that we have perfectly good grounds for exploratory surgery and that we actually have permission from hers truly. Enjoy yourselves my little cherubs!" With that, he walked straight out of the room without another word and left his fellows in almost a stunned silence.
It wasn't very often you would find him in the viewing gallery of the operating room – because very rarely did he care enough about any of his patients to go and waste his own time watching their surgery, or any surgery at all. Therefore, when he was found there, it was always for a completely different reason – usually that he wanted something. House had been standing there for upwards of twenty minutes for the surgeon finally gave up pretending he wasn't there, looked up from the patient he was operating on and to the large window situated above one end of the OR. "House, what do you want?"
Using his cane to press the intercom button to allow the surgeon to hear him, House made his voice sound extremely innocent. "Well you're very cynical Dr. Chase, why do I need to want something to come and watch my patient's surgery?"
"Don't make me waste my time answering that question and playing games, this man's intestines are hanging out in front of me and I'm supposed to be removing a cancerous tumour from his liver so that requires more of my concentration than you do. So just spit it out, please." It was clear that Dr. Chase felt under a huge amount of pressure as his voice was wavering significantly as he spoke.
"I need you to do an exploratory surgery on one of my patients. We think she's got polycystic kidney disease, but the cysts seem to be relapsing and recurring and that's why we're not finding them on the imagers. So I want you to open her up and look for scarring on her kidneys and we'll have our confirmed diagnosis and all will be well in time for thanksgiving."
Despite the fact that he had a patient open and under anaesthetic in front of his and he was supposed to be performing an operation in a certain time limit, Chase turned around to raise his eyebrow at House. "I'm sure you do. And I'm sure Cuddy's also already said no which is why you're coming to ask me directly. But fortunately for me, rather unfortunately for you, you're not my boss anymore therefore I can actually say no to you. Because she is my boss and she's bloody terrifying."
Pressing the intercom button again and this time leaning on his cane as it was pressed on the button as if it was going to help his case in some way, House retaliated immediately. "Oh, don't think I don't still have a great number of ways to make your life miserable, Dr. Chase, even if I'm not your boss anymore. But that's beside the point and also not in the interest of my patient or that patient down there right now so I'll get to the point. What would you say if I told you Cuddy didn't say no?" He even winced a bit as he said it, knowing it was a long shot.
"Then I'd go and ask her because that either means you're lying to me, or you haven't actually asked her at all yet, but I'd assume the former on the basis that your own philosophy is 'everybody lies' and that must include you." Chase stopped talking but was still concentrating hard on the slow incisions he was making in to the patients liver, being careful to ensure he didn't bleed out while the tumour was being removed. However, when the reply he was expecting didn't come, he was left to assume that it was actually the unexpected answer. "Oh, so you haven't even asked her yet? That's weird. I mean, I know you avoid contact with her at all costs but this is extreme, even for you. Coming straight to me to ask me to do a procedure without her permission when you know I'm going to say no, without even giving her the chance to say no in the first place? That's a whole new level of avoidance, that is. What's going on?"
House cursed himself for even getting in to this conversation without Chase – he should have seen it coming – because he knew he'd never drop it until he got answers, which meant that he was going to have to answer the questions, or be persistently annoyed for the next week. And frankly, House didn't think a week of persistence and harassment and being subjected to Chase ten times more than usual was worth refusing to answer him now. But that didn't mean he wasn't going to at least attempt to get out of it first, before giving in. "Oh for Christ's sake, if I'd known this was going to turn in to an interrogation, I never would have bothered coming. What is it with everyone trying to psychoanalyse me at the moment? You, Wilson, Cuddy… Everything I do, every tries to work out the meaning behind it. It's getting really boring you know…"
However, Chase had worked with House for long enough to know when he was trying to manipulate someone and the down side of that meant that he was basically immune to it. "Well maybe if you stopped doing to every person you met, then people would stop using your own weapons against you. Anyway, don't try and distract me, why are you avoiding her so obsessively? What's happened? Have you said something to her about how you feel?"
"That's another thing, you know, why is everyone so obsessed with the idea that I feel something about her? I do not feel anything but increasing lust which she dampens extremely effectively when she acts like the uptight screeching hyena that she is. Oh, yeah, and the only other thing I feel for her is pity – I mean she's very rapidly approaching forty and she's bringing up a baby on her own, she has no life whatsoever outside of work and no prospect of the long term relationship she's been pining for for as long as I've known her, and not only that but none of her staff respect her – well, I don't and I'm her most important, influential and talented employee anyway. So, she's got it pretty grim, hasn't she? So of course I feel pity for her, but who wouldn't?" Unconsciously, House spoke every word of that extremely fast, even though apart from that he was highly convincing.
"Stop deflecting. I'm not asking you to get personal with me and have a heart to heart, I'm only asking you why you're so insistent upon avoiding her for no apparent reason. If I knew the reason, I wouldn't be harassing you." But, panicking a little, Chase could see as he made another careful incision with the scalpel that he was nearing the hepatic artery, and he knew he had to be careful not to nick it, therefore it would need his full concentration. It was only because of that that he gave up the game and let House get out with the answer he cleverly given, but not without some man to man advice first. "Oh fine, whatever you say, but for God's sake please go and tell her how you feel and get it over with. I can't believe how much of a coward you are. Oh, and by the way, I'm not doing the surgery until you get her approval for it so you're going to have to go and speak to her at some point or your patient will die, and we couldn't have that, could we?"