Sessions II – Nine Months

Chapter 34: Revelations

The following week had proceeded better than Cate had expected after the nightmare of clearing out House's drug stash. Never in her life did she expect to be doing that in her own home, but she had, and willingly so. She had disposed of the drugs properly the very next day by crushing up the pills and mixing them with Sexy Kitty's used cat litter before throwing it in the trash so he couldn't snort whatever what left. It was a sad fact that she had to go to such lengths, but his addiction was at a near all-time high. And after that debacle with the Wilsons it was a necessary evil. House had avoided both of them for the better part of the remainder of the week. He was stressed, but he had been doing as well as could be expected.

They had managed to fully wean him from the Vicodin and had arrived at a stable dosage of Methadone that seemed to manage his pain for sustained periods of time. It was not an easy road. At first he was caustically difficult, short tempered and snappish because of the habitual mode he was in. But as she increased the dose, his pain was becoming more manageable and his temper was leveling off as he became used to not having control over his medication. He hadn't had any periods of respiratory distress, sleep apnea or decreased lung function. Cate was keeping her fingers crossed that they were in the home stretch to finding his forever dosage. His mood was a little improved but he was pretty much the same curmudgeonly old House and that ironically was a relief.

Cate had seen him more this week than she had since they came back from their honeymoon. He had been in her office three times a day for his medication and she had stayed up every night until well past midnight so she could monitor his breathing. Frankly, she loved him dearly, but it was way too much House even for her. Seeking a little respite, she had recruited Blythe to shop for baby furniture with her.

"What do you think of this one, dear?" Blythe asked her as she led her over to a white crib that had small delicate wooden slats all around.

"It's very pretty," Cate said touching the rails. "What other colors does it come in?"

Blythe meandered over to another crib that looked the same but in an ash color. "Appears to be that white, blonde and a dark brown stain."

"I think I like the dark wood," Cate said as she came around to the other choice, touching her hand to the shelf of her belly as she walked. "It seems very classic."

"Yes, indeed," Blythe agreed. "The white is very nice but I think it would be better for a girl."

"I agree," Cate nodded. "I am under strict orders to keep it 'manly'," she relayed mimicking his voice and tweaking her fingers in air-quotes.

Blythe chuckled and shook her head. "He spent his whole life rebelling against what his father's ideal of man was and now he's putting the same restrictions on his own son. They are not as different as he would like himself to believe."

Cate stood back for a second to regard her mother in law. She was a little offended that his mother would categorize him as the same as his father, because from the horrible things he had told her about him, Greg was nothing like him at all. "How is that Blythe? How are they anywhere close to being the same?"

Blythe turned to her and blinked, momentarily stunned by the harshness of Cate's tone. And then it came, the reserved, polite face that smoothed over and fixed everything. Cate had seen it happen before with other women who were in abusive situations but this was remarkable. This one was harder to take because it was personal. "Gregory and John were both too stubborn to admit when they were wrong. John was strict but Gregory pushed in ways that were meant to provoke."

Cate stepped toward her, her mouth open in shock. "When he was eight? What could he have possibly done to provoke a broken arm?"

"That was an accident." Blythe swallowed and set her chin firmly. "He was running in the upstairs hall."

"Away from his father's punishment," Cate declared vehemently.

"He was reprimanding him for leaving a mess in the bathroom sink," Blythe excused.

"By scalding him with hot running tap water?" Cate questioned fiercely.

"No, no… he was teaching him how to clean it properly," Blythe spoke in desperation, her eyes becoming a dark shade of slate blue.

"No Blythe," Cate forged on. "He was holding his hand under the hot water, burning him to teach him a lesson. Greg ran away and when John caught up to him he grabbed him by the arm and threw him into the banister."

"No…no, that's not…" she stammered, her eyes wide with confusion and fear.

"Yes, he pushed him so hard that it broke his humerus, do you know what that is?" she pressed. "That's the upper bone of the arm. It's not that easy to break unless you hit it really hard."

"No. He fell down the stairs," Blythe professed.

"No. Blythe, he didn't fall down the stairs, John pushed him against the newel on the banister and broke his arm."

Tears sprung to Blythe's eyes as she covered her mouth with her hand. "No, that's not what John told me happened." Blindly, she stumbled backward to sit on the rocking chair behind her. "John said that he fell." Se looked at her searchingly. "Greg said that he fell."

Cate watched the older woman begin to cry. She rolled her eyes heavenward and took a deep breath. My God what was it with this family and the huge revelations in the middle of stores? Why couldn't they be like the Irish and just keep it inside until they got home, like her father did? Cate was flabbergasted. This woman really had no idea what had taken place under her own roof. "Blythe, where were you when this happened?"

She shook her head. "At my girlfriend's house, I believe," she said trying to recall. "She had just had a baby. And her husband was in country." Her voice was low and uncertain. "She needed help. I…" she trailed off and looked desperately at Cate. "John lied to me?"

"Yes," Cate said gravely wondering how many things the woman had no idea about.

"And when Greg fell off his bike and split his forehead open?" she asked.

Cate sighed and frowned sadly at her. "John pushed his face into the garage door for getting into a fight with a boy at the playground," she told her.

"And the burn on his arm from lighting a camp fire in the back yard?" the older woman's voice took on a desperation that broke Cate's heart.

Cate inhaled a deep breath. How she could have turned such a blind eye to what was going on? "John took the lighter and held it under his arm to prove to him how dangerous it was to play with fire."

Blythe sobbed, overwhelmed with the news she was hearing. "Oh dear god, how could I have been so stupid? How could I have let him do those things to my boy?"

Cate sat down on the ottoman in front of her. She felt for the woman, to finally have this realization hit her so suddenly but she didn't want to absolve her of all responsibility. She should have known. She should have protected him. "Did John ever hit you?"

"No, never," she said.

"Was he verbally abusive?"

"No, he was harsh sometimes, but who doesn't say things that are cruel that they don't mean?" she said as realization dawned on her. "He was harshest with Greg, stern and inflexible. Greg was always precocious. That I did see, he would do things, experiment with tools and chemicals. Build things that would catch fire, get into arguments with kids in the neighborhood because they didn't think as fast as him. He had trouble in school because he was bored and I could never keep him occupied enough. He was always looking for more. He was happiest when John was not home, and when we lived in Egypt and Japan because he could immerse himself in the culture and learn all sorts of new and interesting things. I never knew what to do for him," Blythe breathed an emotional sigh as the words continue to tumble from her mouth. "I always thought that John was how he was because he was a Marine because I had grown up around military people. John was how my father was. I never expected that he would do those things to anyone especially to Greg. Oh Cate," her voice caught in her throat as she choked on the emotion welling up inside her. "Does he blame me?"

Cate looked at her hands for a moment and placed one on her mother-in-law's trembling hand to reassure her. She was so angry for Greg, but she couldn't blame Blythe. She was lied to and kept in the dark. The psychiatrist in her knew that this was classic denial, that his mother was blind to it because she couldn't face the reality of what was happening in her home, so she lived in oblivion, comforted by her ignorance. Cate supposed that Greg knew that too, which is why he protected from the truth, keeping up the lies that his father created. "No," she said gently. "He doesn't blame you. He loves you."

Blythe cried tears of relief and squeezed Cate's hand as a tether to reality and something stable. "I'm so sorry. I have to tell him I'm sorry."

Cate shook her head. "No. You can't."

"Why?" she pleaded.

"Because," Cate began and then paused on a breath, "I need to tell you something."

Blythe looked at her in dismay. "Oh dear! What more can you tell me? What more don't I know?"

"Greg is going through some major changes right now," she explained. "We are trying him on a drug called Methadone to fight his pain and…" she paused and looked at his mother seriously, "his addiction to Vicodin."

She looked at her with searching eyes. "This is a good thing, correct?"

"Yes, it's a very good thing," Cate told her. "You do know that he has a very serious addiction to these pain killers, right?"

Blythe nodded on a weary sigh. "Yes, that I do know. He has always had a little problem with drugs."

Cate blinked at her in surprise. Yet another revelation. His mother had no idea about the abuse that went on under her nose but she'd known all along that her son was a drug addict. "What do you mean?"

"When he was a teenager, he and his friends would smoke that awful marijuana in the basement," she began. "I used to have to burn candles and open up the windows to get rid of the smell before John would come home."

"Oh my God, Blythe!" Cate exclaimed and pressed her hand to her forehead. Cate couldn't belief the level of dysfunction in the House household. It took the term to new heights.

Blythe chuckled as she dug into her purse for a tissue to dab at her eyes. "Of all the things that boy did when he was a teenager, smoking that marijuana in the basement was the least of his trespasses, quite literally, I tell you. At least, I knew where he was." She sighed and took out her compact to check her face. "I spent more time picking him up from the police station and explaining his actions to his school principal then I care to remember." She sighed and looked at Cate sadly. "I see now that it was his way of rebelling against his father for years of not being able to fight back. I am a horrible mother. Do not ever be like me."

Cate shook her head. "No, Blythe, you did what you had to do with the resources you had and because you loved your son. That's all." It didn't excuse what had happened but much of it was not her fault.

The woman she had come to love smiled at her and touched her hand delicately to Cate's cheek. "You are a Godsend, my dear. I am so, so grateful that he found you."

Cate smiled and pressed her hand to hers. "I'm glad he found me too."

Blythe sighed with finality and tapped her hands against her lap. "Now, dear, enough of this maudlin discussion of the past." The fixer was back in full swing. Dabbed mascara and a little face powder and all was right with the world again. She sniffed a moment taking in a fortifying breath and stood. "We are here to find furniture for my adorable little grandbaby, which is a decidedly more joyous event. A fresh start for everyone." She tucked her tissue back into her purse and forced herself to smile. "I saw the most darling little basinet over there when we walked in. Let us go see if that is something you'd like for the early months, what do you say?"

Cate frowned to herself knowing that whatever revelations had just occurred were swept completely under the carpet never to be discussed again. Maybe they were a little closer to the Irish, after all. Shaking her head, she rose slowly hoisting her awkward body off of the low footrest. The bigger her belly got the harder it was to do simple things like stand. Making a mental note, she actually liked the chair Blythe had just vacated. It was upholstered and comfortable and looked like it would be excellent for breast-feeding. "I say you are right. Take me to this adorable basinet."

Following Blythe over to another room set-up, she laid eyes on the exact basinet that Blythe was talking about. The woman was indeed correct. It was darling.

"Oh Blythe, this is beautiful," she said moving her hand over the basket woven top that arced over where the baby's head would go. The entire cradle was woven out of dark espresso toned rattan. The inside was decorated thin padded bumpers tied in an adorable fashion to the edge to make it soft and cozy. There was a long, floor-length skirt that covered a shelf for essentials, like diapers and creams, and rails for rocking when the baby needed a little help sleeping. It was sweet and beautiful and everything she could have dreamed for her little boy.

"I though you would like it," her mother-in-law said, fingering the delicate quilt embroidered in little blue flowers.

Cate smiled as she thought about putting their son in there to sleep next to their bed so he could be near them. She imagined House holding her close to him while they slept with their baby just a few feet from them in that adorable little basinet. Tears came to her eyes and Blythe came to place her arm over her shoulders to give her a gentle squeeze. "Let's get it."

"Definitely," Cate said, sniffing and laughing at herself. "And let's find the rest of this furniture before I start crying like a blubbering idiot. I think we House's need to stay away from furniture stores for a while. Too much happens here."

They made fast work of selecting the remaining furniture for the nursery. They chose a dark espresso stained sleigh style crib with a delicate scroll on the ends. They found a low six drawer dresser to match and went back to get the upholstered rocking chair in a matching dark chocolate corduroy slipcover. It was a lot of dark furniture but Cate liked the contrast against the butter yellow of the walls and the brightly colored blue bedding that had little trains on the bumpers that went round the crib. They checked out and set a delivery date for the end of the month. Bonnie had told them that was when they would be ready to start moving things in once they'd closed on the house.

Cate and Blythe walked back to the car and drove over to a restaurant for some desperately needed food. It was nearing lunchtime and Cate was once again starving. They sat at a small table and looked through the menus deciding what they would order.

"Tell me dear, this medicine that Gregory is on. It will help his pain?" Blythe asked her after they placed their order.

"Yes," Cate said. "It works the same as the Vicodin but doesn't have the opiate effects."

"What does that mean?" she inquired.

"It means that he can't get high from it," she explained plainly. If his mother knew about the drugs, then she could be frank with the discussion of his addiction.

"Oh, well that certainly is good," Blythe stated.

"Yes, but just so you know, they use it to help people with addictions to heroin so it has a stigma attached to it that is undesirable, especially for a doctor, and one of his caliber."

"Oh," she repeated, this time a little less enthusiastically. "Well, I suppose that it's necessary if you both agreed that it was something he should do."

"It's good for many reasons," Cate said. "He can manage his addiction because he can take medication that still helps his pain. His pain will never be gone permanently, but the other drugs, even this one when you try to get off of them, make the pain worse. At least with this one, we can do it in a way that is slow and manageable because the emotional addiction isn't there."

"But if he needs it for his pain" she questioned, "Why would you need to do that?"

"The reason to try to come off of it is to see how much pain he really has and how much of it was because of the drugs or psychosomatic."

"So some of what he experiences could be his own mind," Blythe ask curiously.

"Possibly," Cate said. "I believe that his pain is very real. He had a large part of his thigh removed. It's a nerve pain that amputees experience and that can be very debilitating but I think the severity of it might be skewed because of his addiction. It's entirely possible that he could have lived without the drugs all these years if he had rehabilitated his leg the way he was supposed to instead of relying on the drugs. But at that time, his emotional state was too fragile and he fell into the pattern of covering it up with how the drugs made him feel."

Blythe nodded knowingly. "Yes, I can see how that could have happened. He doesn't ever tackle anything in the emotional realm head on."

"He's starting to," Cate told her.

"Only because of you," Blythe said.

"Maybe," Cate said. "It's possible that's because I don't judge him and he feels safe. But I won't take full credit for it. He has done a lot of this on his own without me."

Blythe shook her head. "No, you make him stronger. You do accept him for who he is, good and bad. And that makes him trust you. With Stacey, she was never satisfied with what he could give. She always wanted more from him. But he was younger then. His ego was enormous."

Cate chuckled. "His ego's still enormous."

"Yes, indeed," Blythe laughed. "But he was caught up in what he could get out of life, where his career would take him. He loved her, but she was secondary to the hospital."

"He doesn't talk about her," Cate said.

"I don't image that he would, she hurt him terribly," his mother commented, revealing the pain of her son's heartbreak in her eyes.

"I mean, I know what happened, but he never talks about before, the good times they had together," she said. "She lived with him for five years. There had to be some good times. What was she like?"

"There were," she expounded. "She was a very lovely woman. Intelligent, strong, independent. She loved him deeply, but she was a little hard to get close to. She wasn't open and sometimes she could be a little abrasive, just like him. Though I have to say, that she was always polite to me."

Cate sipped her water and looked around. She had never met Stacey, nor did she think that she ever would, but she was curious as to what his former lover was like. She was intrigued by this woman who had shaped his existence so drastically. Cate supposed she would have to be content to know that she herself was the one he had opened up to, the one who he had healed for and the one he married and decided to have a baby with. "Do you ever think that if, his leg hadn't happened, that they'd still be together? That she'd be the one he'd marry?"

"No," Blythe shook her head. "He wasn't the marrying kind. They were committed to each other, but it was like a business partnership and he was perfectly content to keep it that way."

"Then why do you think he married me?"

"Because, he's a different person now, he's more vulnerable. He feels much more deeply now than he ever did," Blythe told her. "You complete him."

Cate thought about this for a moment. She loved him so much to the point that she knew she could never go back to the way that she was before him. He may have relied on her for his emotional strength but she knew in her heart that he had opened up a stability in her that she never knew she had. In her profession, some would call the relationship that they had co-dependent and enabling, but she didn't see it that way. They brought out the best in each other and filled in the gaps of the traits they were missing. They balanced each other and yes, they completed each other. He gave her a sense of home and grounding, a place to belong and feel special. She gave him stability, support and acceptance. Together they were solid. And apart, they were stronger for it.

Their lunch came and they ate discussing the whens and hows of the closing of the house. They talked about what sorts of things that still needed to be done, such as buying a new sofa and possibly a new dining set, but Cate didn't want to go into any furniture store with either one of them anytime soon. No, she'd put that off for a while lest they discover another disturbing revelation about themselves. She had had quite enough of those for this month.

They finished lunch and walked out to Cate's Range Rover. As they climbed into the truck, Blythe looked at her watched. "Oh dear me, we'll will have to call it a day, sweetheart. I have a date to get ready for."

Turning the engine over, Cate peered at her mother in law with a wry little smirk on her face. "A date?"

"Yes, darling a date," she said in her motherly tone. "And you could tell my inquisitive son that he can keep his nose in his own business."

Cate smirked as she pulled out on the highway to take Blythe back to her condo. "You know, he thinks you've been seeing his biological father."

Blythe let out an airy chuckle. "Well he's right. I have seen Paul."

Cate stared at her for a second and then had to remind herself to look at the road. Oh my god, he was going to give birth to a litter of kittens when he found out this little tidbit of information. "You've seen him or have been seeing him?"

"I have seen him a couple of times," she told her more directly. "We have had dinner and caught up on our lives."

"Oh," was all Cate could say currently. She wanted to ask her just how much they've caught up on but she didn't want to intrude since she had instructed her to warn Greg off of pursuing the issue. "Are you seeing him tonight?"

Blythe merely laughed at her. "You two are a match made in Heaven, my darling."

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A/N: Back from vacation dear readers! Relaxed and a nice shade of ecru instead of paper white! Maybe even go so far as to say beige! Anyway… This chapter took a more dramatic turn then I had originally intended. I had Blythe absent-mindedly comparing House to John and I could not let Cate stand there with that going unnoticed. But it made sense and needed to be addressed. I had skirted around the abuse issue without really discussing what might have taken place. Never having experienced anything of the sort, I found it difficult to understand how House could still be as close to his mother as he is, so I needed to concoct a story to make it believable that she didn't really know. I hope it does it justice and is believable… It's good to be back. I need to get this story moving and get this baby out! I feel like she's been pregnant FOREVER!