Chapter Eleven: Gone Fishing
Cuddy didn't connect the news with House, not at first. At first, she barely heard it; it was just a series of words, taps, signals on the radio that she had set up in the corner of her office to find out when she would no longer have to worry about having all the generators up and running to combat the storm.
Then she heard the news, "A police station is said to have suffered an explosion and collapse due to the storm," and she considered that it sounded tragic. Sad. A police station of all places ought to be more secure than that.
Then it hit her – Princeton Police Station.
If House hadn't been transferred to somewhere else, if he hadn't been transferred to a jail by now, he'd be there.
But he couldn't be. He had to be safe.
House was indestructible, despite his best attempts to prove otherwise. What would be the chances that he would get caught in this? He had to be long gone, either cut loose on a technicality or transferred to another jail.
But what if the weather had been too bad to move him or for him to go home? What if he was on his way home and his car – no, no, his car was broken – his… bike? His cab? Had overturned…
She had to know. She ground a nail into her palm, trying to think of who would be best to call. And, oh, God, Wilson… If Wilson gets wind of this before we know House is safe…
Because House had to be safe. He simply had to be.
Random tragic happenstance didn't happen to Greg House; except for the fact that it already had, and more than once. A sudden infraction – a crazed gunman – it all seemed to attract to him, like a magnet to an opposing pole. Why not this? Why not a new disaster?
What had she sent him into? Or had he sent himself into it? Whose fault was it now, after all? She had pressed the charges, but this wasn't her fault. There was no way she could have predicted…
I'm getting ahead of myself. Who says he's even in that collapse? I'm seeing tragedies where there might be none at all, except for figments of a guilty imagination.
She could still get internet access, on her phone at least, for the foreseeable future, so she decided to take advantage of it. She took her phone out of her desk and brought up the local news – but still nothing, aside from what she had just heard on the radio.
Without being able to contact House, she could only guess…
Unless she could call him.
If he had actually been booked into jail, they would have taken his cell phone. But if not… if there was some sort of delay, maybe, he would still have it. She could still call him (if he would even answer, seeing the call was from her)… it was such a long shot, but weren't long shots what House had always specialized in?
It was worth a try. Always worth a try. A stab in the dark gets an answer, sometimes.
Cuddy logged off of the internet and quickly dialed House's number, lingering on the green "Call" button as she thought of all the responses she could potentially get if she let her finger press against it. She could get an angry House, telling her to fuck off and get out of his life – that wouldn't be the worse response because an angry House would be a living one.
There were things she could encounter much worse than an angry House. She could hit that button and be connected to some police officer, telling her that House was dead, in the ground, some accident or somehow shot while trying to escape. Or maybe a Vicodin overdose; maybe they had never really arrested him at all and it was all a miscommunication and instead he was lying unclaimed in the morgue. Was Cuddy really ready to hear that, if that was the case?
That was the worst, maybe… The best case scenario? There didn't seem to be one, which made her all the more reluctant to hit the button.
But she had to; there was really no choice.
She hit the "Call" button, closing her eyes and feeling more like a kid who was afraid to get a shot than a powerful Dean of Medicine. Why had she ever let her feelings get in the way of her work? But, she reminded herself, even if House had only remained her employee, she would still be worried… Of course she would be… This was normal.
She heard the phone ring, and she realized that she had been muttering "please pick up, pick up, pick up" to herself without noticing it. She needed to get herself together… She needed to be able to deal with…
"You've reached Dr. Greg House. Leave a message and if I want to talk to you, I'll call you back. If not, well, then, I guess you're out of luck!"
"House… I don't care what happened between us, that's not important right now," Cuddy said quickly. "I know you probably hate me right now, well… okay, that's understandable, but I want you to call me back if you're okay, because… I'm worried about you, and I need to know that you're okay. Call me back."
She hung up and placed the phone back on her desk. It had been a stupid idea…
But that didn't stop her from picking up the phone again and hitting "redial".
Maybe he'd have changed his mind; maybe he would pick up this time, even if she wasn't exactly sure why he might.
One ring…
She needed to keep clinging to hope. He would pick up, this police station thing had nothing to do with him, he would say something rude and nasty and she would know that he was okay and could go back to being furious with him, being done with him.
The second ring.
She knew he wouldn't pick up.
She hung up.
