Sessions II: Nine Months
Chapter 26: It's a…
House slid his eyes at Cate who sat stock still next to him in the chairs outside Sheldon's office. Her tension practically engulfed him and he didn't know what to do to calm her down. They were here for the amniocentesis and she was petrified. She didn't say it, but by her tight body language she didn't have to. Even the Russian guy at the gas station who barely spoke English could tell that she wasn't quite herself this morning.
He rolled his head to the side and looked at her. Her lips were taut and her eyes were focused on nothing in particular in front of her. "You know this is a routine procedure."
"I know."
"They do it every day."
"I know."
"It's 99% accurate."
She swallowed. "Uh huh."
"You know you're not at risk for anything, right?"
She closed her eyes. "I know."
"Then why are you freaking out?"
She snapped her eyes to him. "I have an irrational fear, ok?"
"Your word not mine," he said. He'd never used that word in her presence again since the day of their very first fight. Come to think of it, that was quite impressive…
She rolled her eyes at him. "Yes. It's my own self-diagnosis of irrational, paranoia and phobia of needles and all things doctor related upon my body."
He shifted to slouch a little more in the seat. His leg was complaining admirably today as if he'd been ignoring it and it just needed to make its presence known lest he'd forgotten. "So I guess playing doctor is out then, huh?" he joked, palming two Vicodin into his mouth.
"With this belly, I think all sorts of dress up is out for a while," she muttered smoothing her shirt over her rounded stomach.
He raised his eyebrows intrigued by that statement. "So that means after… we can play dress up? I personally like the little school girl look…"
She sneered at him. "You would."
"Drs. House, we're ready for you," the nurse called cheerfully from the door to the inner office.
He rose slowly from the chair and held his hand out to her. "Come on. Get it over with and be done with it."
She sighed heavily and placed her hand in his. He could feel her trembling already and she wasn't even on the table yet. This was not going to be fun.
The nurse brought her back to be weighed and then placed them in the procedure room where the amnio would take place. "You don't have to change you can just lie on the table and Dr. S will be in shortly." House groaned inwardly. Dr. S… he still hated that. It was so … touchy feely. Leaning against the wall, he watched her hoist her rotund self onto the exam table. She looked at him with her big chocolate brown eyes and his heart broke. So this is what it was like to care about a scared patient. How did Cameron stand it? Racking his brain, he tried to think of something she would say in a situation like this. Something nice. Something comforting.
"The needle's really not that big," he said.
She whimpered and looked away from him. Oh god, she was going to cry. Oops… Wrong choice.
"It's ok. You're going to be fine," he tried, hobbling over to her. He ran his hand down the back of her head and tucked her against his chest. He knew what to do to comfort her; he was just an idiot. "I'm right here. It will be over before you know it."
She nodded against his shirt and held onto him for dear life.
The door opened and Sheldon entered in his usual scrubs and lab coat ensemble with a nurse in pink teddy bear decorated scrub top. Maternity people, always so damn cheery.
"How are we doing today Cate?" the doc asked jovially as he checked her chart for her weight. We… the guy always spoke in the plural.
"She is extremely nervous," he growled. "Tell her there's nothing to worry about."
Sheldon smirked at them and began taking out the tools necessary for the procedure. "As much as I hate to agree with your husband, he's right. There's nothing to worry about."
Cate shook her head and scooched back on the exam table. "I know. I'm just…"
"Terrified. I know, believe me, I do at least two of these a week," he told her. "I haven't lost a patient yet."
Cate let out a strangled little cry as she tried to laugh but failed miserably.
"Oh that's comforting," House groused. "Gold star for you, Dr. Feelgood."
Sheldon laughed. "Lie back on the table and let me see that belly." He prepped the transducer probe for the ultrasound as she lifted the hem of her shirt and pulled down the elastic panel of her pants to expose the skin of her stomach. "This is a routine procedure. As we discussed earlier, there's only a small chance of miscarriage. 1 in 400."
"That doesn't make me feel any better about you shoving a big needle into my stomach near my baby," she said.
Sheldon chuckled and squirted some jelly onto her skin before placing the probe over her. The heartbeat came out immediately; strong and solid at 150 beats a minute. "Woo, little stinker's kicking up a storm. It's doing a work out."
He moved the probe around and they could see the skeletal structure: spine, ribcage, femur, tibia, and all of the phalanges. House shook his head. He'd done this a hundred times before but it always floored him when he looked at his own kid in there. It had to be the damned coolest thing on the planet. "See if you can tell what it is," he blurted out surprising himself.
"You want to know?" Sheldon asked looking at both to be sure.
House looked at Cate. She pursed her lips together looking uncertain. "I don't know…"
"You know I can't live without knowing," he urged her. There was no way he was going to wait another four months to find out.
She smiled briefly at him and nodded. "Ok."
Sheldon poked and prodded for what seemed like an eternity to get the baby to turn in the right way. "Gee, shocker, the little bugger is uncooperative. Hmm, wonder who that comes from?"
House rolled his eyes and kept his focus on the monitor ignoring the comment. And then it passed in the blink of an eye. Coming into focus, he saw it again. "There," he pointed at the screen.
Sheldon missed it.
"You saw it?" Cate asked, her voice taking on an excited tone for the first time today.
"Give me the probe," he all but grabbed it out of Sheldon's hand as the other doctor held his hands up stepping out of his way.
He ran the probe over her belly, jiggling it to get the baby to flip over again. Ha! There it was, he saw it. He let out a nervous laugh and swallowed. "It's a boy."
"What? Really?" she sat up on her elbows a little to see the screen better.
Zooming in, he focused on the little mass of gray in the shape of a peanut. "Penis and testicles hanging right out there."
"Oh my god, it's a boy," Cate exclaimed with a happy little cry.
He looked at the screen and his heart swelled in his chest squeezing out all of the breath in his lungs. "Whoa, a boy," he said quietly as the realization hit him like a twelve ton pile of bricks. He wasn't prepared for that. No, he wasn't prepared for a boy at all.
Shaking his head, he brought his attention back to Sheldon who had just said something he didn't hear. "What?"
"I said do you want to hold the transducer while I take the sample?"
"Oh, yeah…" he snapped to and pushed it to reveal an area of black space where the baby was not moving. Where his son was not moving. His son. That was freaky…
Cate clasped his free hand almost crushing the metacarpal bones in sheer fear as Sheldon approached her with the needle.
"Now you're going to feel a pinch and then a slight pulling sensation," he informed her swabbing the area with alcohol.
"Look at you husband," the nurse instructed gently, standing behind her as she placed her hands gently on her shoulders to calm her and hold her still if need be. "Don't watch the doctor."
House watched the screen and kept an eye on the empty black area. He saw the need come in and heard her whimper as Sheldon extracted a small amount of fluid from the sac. He removed the needle immediately and was done. One, two, three, just like that…
"Stay flat for a minute or two and just breathe," Sheldon ordered gently and handed the sample to the nurse for processing. He made notes in the chart as he spoke. "After an amniocentesis, it is best to go home and relax for the remainder of the day. You should not exercise or perform any strenuous activity; no lift anything over 20 pounds and you should avoid sex. We'll get the results back in a few days and I'll run a chromosome test to confirm the sex."
She nodded quietly as the nurse cleaned her belly and replaced her clothing.
House stood off to the side silently as he waited for them to finish. He was numb and he didn't really know what to think. A boy? A boy. The door shut and he let out a pent up breath between his lips. He didn't know how he felt about this. He didn't know why, but he had assumed it was going to be a girl. This one he didn't see coming. It was stupid, he knew. It was fifty-fifty odds. But, damn… he was blindsided.
"Are you ok," he heard her asked him in a small voice from the table.
He blinked. "I don't know."
"Come here," she held her hand out to him.
Pushing himself off the edge of the counter, he came over to her and laced his fingers with hers. He looked into her eyes and ran his hand over her head. "It's done."
She smiled at him and pressed her cheek against he back of his hand. "I love you."
He smiled thinly, regrettably knowing that it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I know."
"It's going to be ok."
"What is?"
"You won't be like your father."
He looked away from her and closed his eyes on a sigh. She could read exactly what he was thinking. "If it were a girl…"
"Either way, you will not be like your dad," she insisted. "You are not like him."
"How can you be sure?" he questioned her doubtfully.
"Because I know you," she boasted with conviction.
He scoffed and released her hand stepping back from the table and running his thumb over his brow at the headache settling deep in between his eyes. "You can't know that. You can't predict how I will be."
"Yes, I can," she said with confidence. "I know who you are. I know you would never do anything to hurt us…"
"But you don't know…" She didn't know just how terrible it was.
Slowly, she eased herself up to sitting. "I know that I love you. I know that you are a good man. And I know that I won't let you become a monster."
He looked at her and his tongue flicked out to lick his dry lips. "You promise?"
"I promise."
He almost believed her.
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House strode, well if he could actually stride, it would have been called that into the office. It was really more like a purposeful limp, but nevertheless, he raised his hand with the ultrasound picture and held it aloft like a trophy.
"It's a boy!"
The ducklings rustled around the table and chorused their cheers and congratulations as he made his away over to the white board. He contemplated hanging up the picture but then tossed it down onto the table for them to examine.
Kutner went to grab for the photo but Thirteen snatched it out of his reach. "Give me that. Me first." Taking the picture in her hands she looked for a moment. "Aww," she cooed peering at the image. "I see a little penis."
House made a face of outrage. "Little? The boy takes after his old dad. And there ain't nothing little about it," he postured holding his hands out about two feet apart to indicate actual size.
"Objects in mirror are larger than they appear," Taub commented dryly coming over to look at the picture.
"I know you're species is notoriously microscopically hung, so I take your ignorance in kind," he fired back, ambling over to pour himself a cup of coffee. "Now, Foreman on the other hand, we share the same DNA." He held his fist out for a solidarity bump.
Begrudgingly, Foreman half-rose out of his chair to return the gesture. "Yeah, like brothers from a different mother…" He sat back and rolled his eyes with a bored huff.
Still holding onto the picture like a blood related aunt, Thirteen beamed a smile at him. "You can see his little eyes."
"And his ribs and all thirty-three vertebrae," he announced proudly.
"That is so cool," Kutner said peering over Thirteen's shoulder. House watched the young man linger a little longer than he should have next to her hair, basking in the scent that was distinctly Thirteen. House raised an eyebrow at him and he immediately stood up and blushed in his mocha tinted skin. He gave him an embarrassed smile for being caught acting like a creepy stalker. Fortunately for the lovesick fool, the object of his affection was completely oblivious to his general presence as she continued to look at the photograph.
Fingering the photo in amazement, she raved. "Babies are just so neat."
Foreman raised his eyebrow in a look of alarm. He reeled back and stared at his girlfriend with a sense of foreboding. Uh oh, different opinions on the reproduction topic. Very interesting.
"Neat?" the neurologist questioned.
Thirteen stared at him. "What, you don't think babies are remarkable? They're little tiny humans, miniature versions of ourselves."
"I think that babies are a lot of responsibility, not something that you go into without a lot of thought," he replied.
"Nah, who needs to think in the heat of passion," House tossed in. "Ride bareback, I say."
Neither one of them reacted. Instead, they locked eyes in an uncharacteristic fierce battle of wills.
Thirteen regarded Foreman with a humorless set of eyes. "Are you saying that you don't want children?"
He leaned against the back of his chair and tossed his pen onto the table. "No. I'm saying that you need to make sure it's the right time and the right decision to bring a child into this world."
Taub sat at the one end of the table casually observing the discussion as he crossed his trousered legs in front of him.
Kutner sat down next to Thirteen, a little closer than normal in a show of solidarity. "I think babies are neat too."
"Shut up…"
"Shut up…"
Both Thirteen and Foreman glared at him and he held his hands up in defense. "I was just saying…"
"Well, don't say. It's none of your business," Thirteen shot at him.
House watched him instantly deflate like a popped balloon. She had essentially just pierced his heart, poor bastard.
Thirteen turned back to Foreman and fixed him with an icy glare. "So you're saying that it's never going to be the right time or the right decision for me, because I have Huntington's? And why bring a child into this world if there's a fifty percent chance it's going to die eventually?"
Foreman scoffed at her, his face devoid of any emotion as usual. "That's not what I'm saying…"
"It sure sounds like it," Taub interjected finally.
Foreman shook his head and rolled his eyes. "All I'm saying is that creating another life is a big responsibility, Huntington's or not. You're bringing another life into this world and you better be damned sure that you're willing to make all of the sacrifices that go with it."
House sipped his coffee. He had a hundred different sarcastic retorts to shoot down Foreman, but he held his tongue. The man was right and that scared him. Not only was he agreeing with Foreman but the responsibility of raising a son was still weighing heavily on him. Three hours ago it was an anonymous baby. Now it was his son. This was something that was going to take some time to wrap his head around. He was shocked. He was scared. He didn't know how to reconcile that.
Grabbing the ultrasound photo off the table, he swiftly left the room, leaving them to stew in their ridiculous pseudo-intellectual debate. He had his own problems to deal with.
He rounded the corner and pushed the door open to Wilson's office.
"Ah thank God, I thought the 'Wilson's doing paperwork light wasn't working' and I'd have to call a repairman."
House ignored him and traipsed into the office folding his lanky frame into the chair in front of his desk. He tossed the photo onto his open folder and ran his hand over his forehead. His headache was still going fast and furiously. And now his leg was gnashing its teeth against the good muscle he still had left. He popped two more Vicodin vaguely aware that he'd taken two only an hour ago after he'd dropped Cate at home.
Wilson studied the picture for a while and then raised his eyes up in surprise. "It's a boy?"
"Come on, penis, testicles. If it's a girl, I'm definitely sending it back."
He put the photo down and smiled. "Mazel tov."
"No it is not 'good fortune'," House ground out.
Wilson drew his eyebrows together. "Why not?"
"I'm going to be a shitty father to a boy. Hell, I was going to be a shitty father to a girl but at least I was ok with that."
"House, come on. Don't you think you're being a little hard on yourself?"
"Nope." He shook his head.
Wilson sighed and leaned back in his chair lacing his fingers over his abdomen settling in for the long conversation. "What makes you feel this way?"
"Spoken like a true therapist. I can go to Cate for this, you know?"
Wilson shrugged. "You could. But you came here. So spill. What's so bad about having a boy?"
House ran his hand over the back of his head scratching furiously at the itch in the back of his brain. Unfortunately his skull was in the way. Dropping his hands down into his lap, he let out a sigh. "I don't want to be a shitty father and have my son hate me."
"So you think that because you had a bad relationship with your father, that you will automatically make the same mistakes with your son?"
He nodded. "Yeah. That's the gist of it." That sounded about right.
"House, that's illogical."
"What? How?" He rolled his eyes. "We are essentially the sum of our upbringing. We don't change, because people don't change."
Wilson laughed out loud. "Ha. That's bullshit and you know it."
"How is that bullshit?"
"Look at yourself. You of all people should know how much you've grown and changed over the past what, six months?" Wilson exclaimed. "You are completely different."
House scoffed. "Different? How? I'm still an asshole to everyone around me. Or so I'm told."
"Well, this is true," he admitted. "But, you're not an asshole to her. And she loves you, God only knows why. That baby is a part of her. Wouldn't it stand to reason that your non-dickish attitude that you display towards her would carry over to the product of your unnatural union?"
"Fuck you! You make it sound like I'm involved the Queen of the Damned, oh wait that's you."
"Yes, and our demon spawn will beat the crap out of your demon spawn," he retorted.
"Ha! I think not, ours will have like fifty IQ points on yours! He'll be witty and quick."
"See you're already taking pride in your son," he pointed out victoriously.
House rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah…" He leaned forward and rested his chin on the curve of his cane. He swallowed hard and looked at the speckled gray carpet below his sneakers. "I don't want to be violent."
"House… you are not like that." Wilson's tone was serious and full of the wisdom of knowing him better than anyone in the world.
"Aren't I?" he raised his eyes to him.
Wilson frowned at him. "House, you are not violent. You live in violent pain everyday, if anything you self-flagellate. The only person you've abused physically is yourself because for some reason you feel you're unworthy of living life and enjoying its perks like a regular human being; like you somehow don't deserve it. Now, I'm sure that comes from growing up with your dad and all that encompasses, but don't you think that alone would keep you from being like him. Knowing how you turned out, knowing how bitter and angry you became. Wouldn't that make you do it differently?"
House ran his stubble against the smoothness of the well-worn handle of his cane. He considered everything that Wilson was saying. Did he believe him? Was he right? Was he capable of being that person, the person that Cate saw?
"I don't know. Maybe."
"You can make a conscious choice to do it differently."
He worked his jaw and raised his eyebrows, not saying anything.
"You make conscious choices every day to do the right thing for your patients, to be kind a loving to your wife. You're completely capable to make this choice too. It's not born in you to be a violent abuser. And as you well know, he wasn't even your biological father so it's definitely not genetic."
Taking a deep cathartic breath, House stood. He dragged his thumb over his brow and then pointed at the picture. "Did you see the size of that package? The boy's hung like the old man."
Wilson snorted and shook his head, knowing full well the serious conversation had closed. "Like an anaconda."
House jerked his thumb proudly at his chest and picked up the image. "Who's got good genes? This guy. That's who."
Wilson nodded with a smirk tipping forward in his chair to return to his paperwork. "Goodbye, House."
House paused with his hand on the doorknob. He nodded once at Wilson. "Goodbye, Wilson." And thanks.
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A/N: just a little note to explain why she had an amniocentesis. Here in the states it's standard practice to perform and amnio on women over thirty-five. Cate's thirty-nine, incase anyone doesn't remember that! She's not like those other spring chickens running around PPTH. BTW, Cuddy will have one too, because she's older than God! And we'll find out what Wuddy's having in the coming chapters. Happy reading!