Of Catcalls and Closecalls
Disclaimer: I do not own House or CSI, or L&O:SVU. I just couldn't help using some of their characters.
THANKS TO ALL WHO REVIEWED! YOU GUYS REALLY KEPT ME GOING THROUGH ALL THE WRITER'S BLOCK!
--
Catherine hurried from the interview room, asking Olivia to hold the call to his lawyer for a few more minutes. She had the nagging urge that she had missed something, something important. She made her way into the layout room and started ripping open bags. She found what she had been looking for in the third bag marked scrapbooks. She started flipping frantically through the pages. On page five, she found what she had been looking for.
--
She rushed into the viewing room and held the photograph up to Grissom and House. House felt his blood run cold at the sight of it. It was of her and him laughing at a small diner the day after he had been set free from jail. Memory surged.
"Come on House, on your feet." She said softly, sliding an arm underneath his shoulders. Someone catcalled from the cell across and House felt his jaw clench at the sound of such disrespect toward the woman beside him.
He lurched to his feet and slid his arm over her shoulders, catching a quick whiff of her perfume. Together they limped out of the small cell that reeked of urine to the security desk where she got him back his cane. She had taken him out to breakfast and they had caught up in each other's lives over runny eggs and bitter coffee. He had felt a familiar feeling travel back into the center of his chest. Something that made him look at her more intently, listen to her more closely, craving small moments when their hands grazed each other by accident.
His whole demeanor toward her had changed from that moment on. He had newfound respect for what she had risked to save him. Surprise and glee that she had stepped so far over the line of safe behavior for him. That she cared enough to risk her own freedom for his. That was the first time that he had held the door open for her since their days at Michigan.
"This is the trigger." Catherine said, pointing at a male figure in the next booth to them. "This is what set him off."
"Makes sense." Grissom said. "Tritter must have vented about Dr. Cuddy's involvement in his revenge case and I'm guessing that that's when Walter found her again and started to tail her."
House's fist clenched over his cane. "I want to talk to him." He hissed.
Catherine tried to put a calming hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her off. "I want five minutes with him. I just need to know why and he needs to know what he's done."
Grissom was about to object when Catherine interrupted. "Walter's angry that Cuddy started seeing House. Maybe House will trigger an outburst."
"He has to waive his right to an attorney first before it's admissible." Grissom mentioned.
Catherine pursed her lips in a thoughtful expression. "Dr. House, if you promise to do exactly what I say for the first two minutes of going in that room, I think I can make it happen."
--
Catherine timidly opened the door and allowed House entry into the room as soon as he stepped into the light. Walter jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair.
"You!" He spat.
House opened his mouth to retort, but Catherine jabbed him gently in the ribs with her elbow.
"Mr. Tritter, I'm sorry but I can't let you talk to Dr. House. You asked for an attorney and thus you cannot say anything else unless you waive your right to one." She said.
Turning to House, she added. "I'm sorry. Dr. House, I brought us to the wrong interview room, but you have valuable information concerning Dr. Cuddy and I would really like to interview you so please have a bit of patience with me."
"Really valuable information?" Walter yelled. "The asshole was shit to her! He—"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Tritter, unless you waive your right to an attorney, I cannot let you speak." Catherine insisted, cutting him off.
House saw Walter's face turn three shades darker of red.
"Then I waive my right to an attorney. I want to make this absolutely clear to this asshole what Lisa was." Walter said, fuming.
To Catherine's trained eye, she saw that House was on the verge of losing control of his own temper. The muscle in his jaw was twitching violently and his hands were clenched so tightly that the blue veins of his worn hands were popping out. She showed him to a chair and took a seat beside him.
"Dr. House, we meet in person at last." Walter said, regaining his calm composure as House was losing his.
"Yeah, too bad there's a table and a cane between me and your face." House said. "Why'd you do it?"
"I really have no inkling what you're talking about." Walter responded without missing a beat.
"You stalked her. You followed her even after she rejected you. You never interested her, you never understood her and you just couldn't deal with that could you? So what, since you couldn't have her, no
one else could?" House said, his voice quiet. The softness actually frightened Catherine more than if he had yelled.
Walter's eyes turned hard. "Do you know that she cried for weeks after you left?" He said.
House froze at this new line of attack.
"Did you know that after you left her, she stopped going out to parties and instead spent nights alone in her apartment?" He asked.
House slammed his cane down onto the metal table, surprising a jump from Catherine and Walter. He leaned his face closer to the other man's.
"What'd you do to her Walter?" House asked quietly. "Did you beg her to love you? Did she say no and being unable to handle that rejection you killed her? Did she stare at you, accusing you as she died?"
"NO!" Walter roared. He was livid with rage as he thought of the last moments Lisa Cuddy had spent on earth. "She wouldn't look at me!"
Silence filled the room and Walter rushed to fill it.
"At Michigan, I was a star. Girls wanted me left and right, but her. She was different. I saw her in the library once and I saw her smile at me. I knew right then that we were right for each other, but she never saw it." His tone turned bitter. "So I tried to convince her that we were right, but she never had time to talk to me. I thought it was because she was so dedicated about her work, but it turned out she had a thing for you."
House waited, knowing that this confession was required, that holding in his raging temper until this bastard confessed was something he owed Cuddy. It was the least he could do.
"I saw you and her, laughing and talking after your trial. My brother told me what had happened. I remember hating you for wrapping her around your finger the way you did. So I started watching her more, hoping she had just done it to be nice. Instead, I see you and her everywhere. You teasing her and her responding as if she didn't care."
"She didn't." House interjected. "She and I always had our method of communication. Idiot like you wouldn't understand."
"What happened on Valentine's Day?" Catherine asked, laying a hand on House's arm.
Walter swallowed. "I followed her home. Then I saw him show up and then I saw them through the window with my binoculars. He was all over her. And she liked it! The whore liked it! She kissed him good bye when he got a phone call. I lost it."
House braced himself for the punchline.
"I went in and argued with her. I didn't mean to kill her I just wanted her to know that I was there, that I had seen. Then she was dead and I called my brother for help." He finished.
"Did Tritter help you clean up the scene?" Catherine asked.
Walter nodded. "He slit her wrists and held it up to cover the walls and stuff. I helped wipe down the fingerprints."
House rose, trembling in anger and grief. "You son of a bitch." He whispered. "You took something from me. You took something from the word."
He threw the scrapbook Catherine had brought onto the table and it opened. He moved behind Walter and pointed at the picture.
"Look at her!" He roared. "Look at what you took away!"
He grabbed Walter by the neck and forced his head to look at the pictures. He shoved his head down onto the metal table, over and over again. Catherine ran to them, trying to pry House's fingers from Walter's throat and to keep from causing some brain damage. Grissom rushed in to help as did Olivia.
The three of them finally got House off, the doctor had been inhumanly strong due to his rush of adrenaline.
He calmed under the restraints. "I should kill you. I want to kill you. But I won't."
Walter smirked, holding his forehead.
House ignored him. "Not because I'm scared too. Oh no. I won't kill you because Lisa wouldn't want me to. She wouldn't have given a damn about your well being either, but she did care about me. She would care that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life in jail, short as it may be." He said.
He pushed the scrapbook toward him again with his cane. "You do, however, need to know what you had taken away. She was a second rate doctor but a good boss. The most loyal friend I've ever had. A sister and daughter." He hesitated and then flipped the page to the picture of the two of them in that diner. "And the person that kept me alive."
He then leaned in close and with one fluid movement, too quick for Catherine and Grissom to either predict or stop, House's closed fist met with Walter's nose. A sickening crunch filled the room followed by a cry of pain and blood gushing onto the metal table. Catherine and Grissom sprang forth to restrain House, but he was already limping out the door, his back hunched like that of a defeated man where life had beaten him senseless.
He hadn't meant to say so much.
"House!"
Her voice sounded so far away. He felt himself swimming to the surface, the current pulling him above water against his will. She had her fingers against his neck, her eyes on her watch as she counted softly under her breath.
"You dratted idiot! What the hell were you thinking?" Cuddy demanded, her voice rising angrily.
"I just wanted the pain to stop." House moaned softly.
He had never known such pain both physical and emotional. His leg burned with a fire that refused to be quenched, while his chest ached with the dull sense of betrayal when he had learned that Stacy had knowingly gone against his wishes and taken out the muscle of his leg.
In blinding pain, he had taken too many of those blessed white pills and collapsed, hoping for the end of his misery. No such luck. Cuddy had stormed in and after assessing the situation and her options, had purposefully slipped a finger into his mouth, causing him to vomit violently, forcing the poison out of his system.
"Why are you here?" he asked, before he turned once again to vomit the bottle of pills he had downed along with everything he had eaten in his lifetime.
"Stacy asked me to check on you while she's in Baltimore." Cuddy answered simply. Despite her anger at his behavior, the hand that wiped a cool wet cloth across his forehead was gentle. "House what were you trying to do?"
"Do you understand English Cuddles? I was trying to make the pain stop." House said, his voice too tired to fully carry the weight of his sarcasm.
She looked at him with sadness. "Greg, you can't do this to your system. Your liver won't be able to take the strain if you keep going at this rate. It's only been a week, give it time."
"I don't want time!" He said hoarsely. "I want this to stop."
She stroked his hair, gently running her delicate fingers through it. House found himself closing his eyes enjoying the contact in spite of himself.
"You can't keep doing this to yourself." She murmured.
"Why not?" House demanded weakly. "Nothing matters very much anymore. No one would miss me. I don't have a job. Don't have anything."
"I think that can change." Cuddy said slowly.
"How?" He asked. His weakness making him more agreeable than she had ever seen him.
"I can offer you a job."
He scoffed. "Really Cuddy? I refuse to be your sex toy woman."
She chuckled in spite of herself, used to the jokes he always used on her.
"I got promoted this morning." She said. "I'm Dean of Medicine."
"Dean of Medicine with funbags like yours?" He asked.
She ignored this although feeling more confident in his condition now that he was able to use his biting sarcasm.
"I want you to head a newly made diagnostics department."
Cuddy had saved his life. When he was lying in that hospital bed, she had offered a middle ground to Stacy that had saved his life whether he wanted it or not. Every time he overdosed after the infarction, she had been the one to check his pulse and nurse him back to health. She had his best interests at heart. He always knew that.
When she had given him his job, she had pulled his mind from the misery that was his life. Although she had no cured it, she made it bearable. She brought him back into the world. Back to people. She had hired Wilson then, not long after. She had always insisted that it was because Wilson was a very good oncologist and House didn't argue with that, but some part of him always thought that perhaps she had hired him was to make sure House would not be alone when Stacy left.
He hadn't lied when he said Cuddy had kept him alive. He felt the most alive when he was with her. Bantering, bickering, cracking comments that would offend most, but knowing that they would just wash off a strong woman like her. She had been the spark. The one person that could make him keep his eyes open.
House leaned his head against the cool wood of his cane, breathing in deeply, gasping against the pain in his leg. He stumbled back into the hospital and sat down heavily in his chair, still trembling from the ache that refused to lessen no matter how many pills he took.
--
Author's Note: I think I can say that I really am back. I'm going to try and update as much as I can from now on. For this chapter, I thought that maybe Cuddy hired Wilson because when House had his infarction, Wilson was never there, so I thought maybe he didn't know until after he started working at PPTH. Hehe. Anyway enjoy!
