Disclaimer - We do not own House M.D. It all belongs to David Shore and Fox.

~Chapter 26~

After the Board meeting in Cuddy's office. Wilson hurriedly followed Cuddy in.

"I observed you the entire meeting." Wilson announced as he closed the door behind him.

"Really? His boss asked in a fake surprise, her back still turned to him. "I thought you were supposed to pay attention to the staffing changes we made. Silly me!" Cuddy rolled her eyes very quickly, is a classic sign of intolerable annoyance, and threw her briefcase on the nearby couch spinning around on her heels to face Wilson. Then she crossed her arms defensively and lifted her chin, drawing the line of authority between them, almost daring him to cross it with her cold glare.

"You're having trouble breathing. Cameron was right." Wilson squeezed his eyes skeptically as he noticed Cuddy's strained gasps. Her behavior threw him off balance for a brief second but then he instantly remembered how stubborn the woman if front of him was. A female version of his beloved best friend.

"And you two are having trouble minding your own business and leaving me alone. Why don't you go ask her where I suggested her to keep her advice? The same location applies to you too." She said it with the ice in her voice more keen that the edge of a surgical knife. She was so determined to hurt the young oncologist as if that represented hurting House for some inexplicable reason.

"You came back too soon, Lisa. You should have stayed home recovering like your doctor told you to. Why are you doing this to yourself?" Her longtime friend asked compassionately, clearly concerned for her health.

"Nobody tells me to do anything. Especially not my doctor." Cuddy hissed through her clenched teeth, as she looked straight into Wilson's eyes. "And this hospital needs me." Deep down in her, the uncontrollable fear and insecurity were her prisoners. She sensed that those prisoners inside put up a moan, and assaulted her ears with demands to open the gate, to let them out. Sooner or later she would have to comply with their wishes.

"This hospital had Aaron, and yet you threw him out." Wilson pointed out matter-of-factly, remembering how she treated the poor soul in front of everybody and his pale face when he realized he was out of job.

"Which part of this hospital needs me didn't you understand?" Cuddy said cynically and Wilson could swear that her porcelain face was about to crack from all the coldness she was diffusing through her pores.

"Excellent disguise, House." Wilson responded, attempting to add some comic relief to the gloomy atmosphere that suddenly enveloped them; but more that anything he tried to provoke her reaction.

A cold shudder ran through her body at the mention of his name, rendering her speechless. Cuddy glanced away, over Wilson's shoulder, and focused distantly on an imaginary object. Her body was taut and on the edge, her thoughts were no better, and she secretly hoped she could escape the tormenting yet proverbial visions of him that followed her around, like a conscience soaked in guilt.

"I'm not giving up on trying to help you, so you know." Wilson winced at the coated frost of her words, the edge in her posture and the hurt in her eyes, and he moved over to her offering both his physical and emotional support. But her guard was already up on the defensive.

"Really? Too bad, because I've already given up on listening to you. Long ago. And go do your clinic duty unless you'd like to join your best friend in cutting out food coupons." Cuddy's despair was palpable as was her anger. Wilson felt trapped, uneasy, and almost coerced by her attempts to completely, both physically and emotionally, distance herself from everyone that cared for her. Yet, he resisted, for her own good.

"Did you cut House's paycheck?" Wilson asked visibly shocked. His eyes widened as he focused on his boss. All of a sudden Cuddy seemed like a stranger to him, a new acquaintance of sorts, and he observed her curiously, wondering by what transitions she had reached her present pitch.

"Thirty percent." Cuddy affirmed with a vicious gloat in her voice and added, delivering yet another professional threat, "I did, and I intend to do the same to every employee in this hospital who insists on lingering around me instead of doing their job."

"Thirty percent, plus the inventory damages from the ER and the morgue?" Wilson asked, clearly remembering her motion at the Board meeting. His voice was palpably coated with an unpleasant surprise as he tried to understand Cuddy's ulterior motives.

"Yes. Why does that surprise you?" She raised her eyebrows very slightly and waited, overly confident that Wilson had a point to make. There was always that twisted pitch at the end of his sentences, accompanied by a small head tilt, when he wanted to make a point.

"He did it because of you, Lisa." Wilson said slowly and softly, trying to convince her with his gaze of the truthfulness of his word. But this new Lisa refused to budge an inch.

"No, James. He did it because he couldn't solve the puzzle. The same selfish reasons that drive him insane everyday." She furiously bit her lower lip and lowered her gaze as if to justify her next sentence. "I am not qualified to deal with his insanity. You can refer him to the psych ward for all I care." Then she slowly wrapped her right arm across Wilson's back, urging him to move, and at the same time indicating that she wanted him to leave. Then with a small force she pushed him towards the door still feeling guilty about her last sentence.

He turned around in the doorway, locking his gaze on hers, making sure that she understood what he was about to say, "Lisa, one of our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Don't give up on him."

"James. Wait." Cuddy inhaled deeply before delivering the question that had bugged her all along, drawing her eyebrows together, "You knew?" In that moment of overwhelming sorrow and complete bewilderment, she felt her voice quiver as her shaky hand unintentionally flew to her lips.

"Yes, but it wasn't my story to tell." Wilson said as he closed the door behind him, leaving the uttered words to resonate in Cuddy's ears like African tribal drums.

Cuddy touched her chest, before sitting in her chair and burying her head in her palms. "Michelle, could you get me a cup of strong coffee…" Cuddy said as lungs scrabbled for breath, but she desperately tried to hide it. "…yes, straight black, and no sugar. Yes, thank you. And the last Board meeting's minutes, please."

Minutes later her assistant hurriedly walked in but Cuddy's attention remained on the computer screen. "Here you go Dr. Cuddy." Michelle efficiently placed the coffee and the files in front of her, and only when Cuddy raised her eyes over her reading glasses to thank her, Michelle added, "This also came in for you earlier this morning…" the assistant pointed to a package she had placed on one of the office chairs, and sheepishly asked "…I hope you don't mind that I brought it in?"

Cuddy looked at the label on the box and her face immediately lost all color. Carter's. The mix-up order she completely forgot about, finally arrived. As the world around her imploded, the time suddenly stopped.

Cuddy sat perfectly still, staring at Michelle. But she didn't see her. She saw nothing. Trapped in the ice of shock, the pain was dormant. She narrowed her eyes and let the blood surge desperately through her veins until it dissonantly screamed in her ears. Her heart clenched as her uterus knotted painfully against her pelvis. Realization hit her hard and she felt the first real stab of pain. Seconds later Cuddy heard a soft, despairing cry without realizing it was hers; a cry of a mother that had lost her child.

"Dr. Cuddy, is there anything else I can get you?" Michelle offered helplessly, visibly touched and endlessly guilty for being the one to bring her boss such a painful reminder of her inconsolable loss.

Cuddy motioned, barely moving her shaky hand, for her assistant to leave possibly without saying a word. Michelle humbly complied and tiptoed out, leaving her boss in the eerie silence of her office. Once alone, Cuddy reached for the box and slowly pulled out a small, white garment specifically designed for her newborn, with the funky kid's script scribbled across it now staring at her like a premonition: Mommy's Little Angel. Sometimes you just had to watch what you wished for, she said to herself as the painful realization nested itself in her brain. Her baby boy, her angel was now in Heaven, indeed.

"Oh, God!" Cuddy let out an agonizing screech as an invisible hand squeezed her heart through its iron-tight grip, leaving it to falter to death. Then the tears came, pouring out of her heart and soul like a mountain river that had just broken the sturdiest dam. She choked on them, feeling the salty poison build up in her throat, totally oblivious to her surroundings and the fact that the blinds were not shut. She finally released her true feelings, the pent up anger, sorrow and distress that she had suppressed for the past 3 days. Cuddy failed to recognize that they had started eating her alive, chipping pieces of her like the deadliest vulture.


House uneasily stood in front of her office, motionlessly lingering in his deliberation whether to enter or not. Cuddy's head was buried in her palms and he waited for her to raise her eyes to him, to silently tell him it was all right to enter. As in a parallel universe, he relived his shameless confession in his mind, for the hundredth time that day.

He hadn't left her hospital room in anger. It would have been easier for him if that had been the case. He had left because Cuddy asked him to, because she demanded it. He didn't blame her, and that too made it impossibly frustrating. Why should she listen to him, or understand? There had been enough truth in what she had flung at him to make the rest difficult to overturn. He had lied, or at the very least, he hadn't been honest. To Cuddy, one was the same as the other.

He had hurt her. He had put that look of helpless despair on her face. That was unforgivable. House pushed his long, lean fingers through his disheveled hair and quickly closed the distance between his body and the door knob, wrapping his shaky fingers around it in fear. Damn it, if she had only listened to him! If she had only given him a moment. He stepped back, refusing to remove his eyes from her little fragile figure and silently cursed himself.

When she lifted her teary eyes to him, slightly shocked to see him standing there, she quickly wiped her eyes and her cheeks, attempting to hide her sorrow, her grief, her ultimate weakness. As they stared at each other, their souls silently embracing one another, Cuddy purposefully restrained herself from biting her lower lip nervously. She held her breath in anticipation.

He saw her tears building up just before they were going to fall down her already stained cheeks. He witnessed the despair painted on her face as she pressed the little baby clothes against her chest but Lisa Cuddy was still beautiful, he had to grant that out of fairness to the universe. The bridge of her nose was still like porcelain, her clavicles, damn it, still jutted out like a delicate French violin clef and she still wore that pale, almost livid expression of a princess with no kingdom that he would have died for in the prehistoric days. He could still see the wind in the depths of her eyes and there he knew, as he had always known, that he would have turned every aspect of his life upside down all over again, all of it, to see those little, amazing dots in her eyes dance again.

The weight of her sorrow and profound agony descended onto his clouded mind, and no matter how much he told himself it had been his fault all along, House always lacked the courage to make that first significant step. Instead of entering and fighting for what he cared, for what he deeply believed in, he lowered his guilty eyes to the floor avoiding her probing, inquisitive gaze and turned around, literally running away. He just couldn't take her tears; anger, disappointment, rage, even indifference yes but not her tears.

Still staring at the physical void he left behind Cuddy felt betrayed by all those years she stood by him, loving him silently, fighting for his place in this world. Betrayal, in the House trademark way, was the willful slaughter of hope. As she faced the world today, Lisa Cuddy had nothing to hope for.

"Michelle, I am taking the rest of the day off. Cancel all my meetings." Cuddy ordered as she pressed her fingers against her temples. "No, I am not OK!" she jerked in her seat and added, as the hot tears threatened to fall again, "I don't know if I'll ever be!"