Day Nine, 3 p.m.

Once again, Cuddy spent part of the break in the ladies' room, adjusting her makeup. Only this time, her stomach growled unattractively, and she was starting to wish she'd eaten some lunch. By the time she went back into the room, which seemed even more stifling now, she just wanted to get home, eat something, see Rachel and go to bed.

It started innocently enough. "Tell us in your own words, what happened the day of the Trenton crane collapse."

Putting on her best professional demeanor, Cuddy answered, "I heard about the accident at about 10:30 a.m., and immediately went into crisis mode, assigning hospital resources to the task."

"This would have been the same morning Mr. Douglas proposed to you?"

"Yes."

"And you had accepted his proposal?"

"Yes, I had."

"And this was also the morning Dr. House presented you with the rare copy of your grandfather's book, is that right?"

"Yes. My great-grandfather's book."

"Sorry… your great-grandfather's book. How did Dr. House come to be at the accident site? Did you order him to be there?"

"To be honest, I can't recall. He might just have shown up. He was doing triage." Which, it turned out, he was extraordinarily good at.

"But weren't plenty of doctors back in the safety of PPTH, working in the ER?"

"Yes, I guess there were. I know Dr. Foreman was at the site for awhile, but then the crane operator - House found something wrong with him, something that might have contributed to the accident, and Dr. Foreman went back with him to PPTH." She was starting to feel worn down by the constant barrage of challenges to her decisions concerning House. She was ready for the day to be over, for the questioning to be over. She was ready for that moment when she never had to think about Gregory House again. "House was going to leave with the patient, but I told him we needed him at the site."

"To continue doing triage?" asked the chairman.

"To do whatever was necessary," she replied.

It wasn't too early in the session for her nemesis to speak up. Cuddy caught herself just about to roll her eyes. Pasting a neutral expression on her face, she looked at her inquisitor. "So Dr. Foreman returned to the hospital, but you expected Dr. House to stay?"

"Yes." Nothing unreasonable there, she thought.

The next question confused her. "Should someone like Dr. House have been expected to treat patients in such a treacherous locale?"

Cuddy got her back up. "House was a doctor, it was an emergency, and, yes, he should have been there."

"I think you misunderstand me, Dr. Cuddy. Let me be very clear. Why was a disabled employee there in the first place? Wouldn't his skills have been better used back at the hospital, where his disability might not have been at risk? And if he'd found a potential Diagnostics patient, wouldn't it have made sense for him to return to the hospital, and leave the more able-bodied Dr. Foreman at the site?"

"Well, I don't know that I agree with that thought. He was our best triage person."

The panel chair interrupted. "Is it not also true that you began your relationship with Dr. House that same night, immediately after he had lost a patient to whom he had become quite emotionally attached?"

Cuddy sighed. "Yes."

"Describe for us your interactions with Dr. House on the day of the Trenton accident."

"I was just trying to get him to do his job," she said through gritted teeth.

"Apparently, some of the people on site overheard you yelling at Dr. House about personal matters. Would you care to explain?"

No, she really would not care to explain. She sighed, feeling a stress headache blooming behind her eyes. "I already told you. I thought he was messing with me about the book, that he was using that book as a way to screw with my engagement."

"Which still makes very little sense, Dr. Cuddy. And why would that justify your demeaning one of your doctors in public, during an emergency, at the site of an accident?"

"It was stressful, and sometimes House could be really annoying. I lost my temper, okay?!" As she had just lost it with the panel.

In a quiet, calm, soothing tone of voice, the panel chairman said, "Dr. Cuddy, we are here to get at the underlying truth of what went on between you two, and it appears that Dr. House may not have been the only one with boundary issues. Now, could you please explain what Dr. House might have done to precipitate your reaction to him?"

She huffed out an angry breath. "He'd discovered there was a woman trapped underneath the rubble. She was in an underground parking garage, I think, and he had crawled in there to try to rescue her."

"With his disability? He chose to do that over the safer avenue of triage? That sounds fairly heroic so far."

"Trust me. It wasn't. Her leg was trapped in the wreckage, and, clearly thinking of his desire to preserve his own leg years earlier, he had foolishly promised her that she could keep her leg, that it wouldn't have to be amputated."

"So he was trying to respect her wishes?"

"I suppose so. I wasn't there for most of it."

"And yet, you seem to have a very strong opinion about it. Go on."

"Well, there was a secondary collapse, and…"

"Excuse me a moment for interrupting, Dr. Cuddy. Just for clarification, did she suffer any additional injuries in that collapse?"

"Not that I know of, but it kept the EMT workers from being able to retrieve her as soon as they might have."

"Were the EMT workers caught in that secondary collapse?"

"No, I don't think so. Maybe one of them. Dr. House was in there, though."

"He was? Was he injured?"

"Yes, he was. But not too seriously. He cut his head and needed some stitches in his shoulder." Cuddy saw panel members making notes.

"Continue."

"By the time the debris was cleared away after the second collapse, so much time had passed that I felt it was necessary to amputate the woman's leg… but House disagreed with me. He claimed that he had promised her she could keep her leg, and that of all people, he knew what a leg was worth. I was sure he was reacting to her situation based on his own history, and because he was upset about my engagement… I called him on it." At which point he'd accused her of being self-absorbed narcissist.

"In what way did you call him on it?"

"I accused him of refusing to do what was necessary for his patient because he couldn't separate her legitimate medical needs from his own betrayal by Stacy." And you, she thought, almost randomly. His betrayal by you.

"This doesn't sound very pleasant, Dr. Cuddy. But at least some of what you said appears to have been a professional disagreement… with decidedly personal overtones."

Cuddy was on a roll. "Yes. I guess so. Anyway, at some point - I can't even remember if it was the same conversation or if this took place at some other point in the day, he made me so angry that I yelled at him. I'm not sure of everything I said, but I think I told him that I had moved on with Lucas, and Wilson had moved on with his ex-wife, and House was alone and always would be, because he deserved to be." Not the nicest thing she had ever said to someone.

Echoing her thoughts, Ms. Nemesis said, "That wasn't very charitable of you, was it, Dr. Cuddy?"

"I don't know," she replied. "He could be pretty nasty himself sometimes. Then I told him I was sick of making excuses for him, sick of everyone having to tiptoe around him, making their own lives worse while they tried to keep him from collapsing. I told him I was done." When she'd said it, as she remembered the moment, she'd been dead serious. She was done with him. Forever. As opposed to now, when she really was done. How many times had she said those exact words to House over the years? And how many times had it been over something simple, like when she told him she was done with him because he - the lifelong bachelor - had left the toilet seat up, used her toothbrush and not taken out the garbage?

"Let me get this straight. You said this to your disabled employee who was trying to climb through rubble to save the life and limb of a terrified woman caught in a building collapse? An employee who had spent the better part of the previous year attempting to improve his life after having spent months in a mental institution, but whose efforts at doing so had apparently gone unnoticed - and apparently unsupported - by either you or Dr. Wilson?"

Cuddy shut her eyes, remembering the stricken look on House's face as she screamed at him. She had decimated him in that one instant, and right then, she just hadn't cared. And I'm blaming him for losing his temper for one moment? she suddenly thought, with a perspective on her own behavior that she had never allowed herself to see before. She didn't like what she saw.

I'm hating his guts because he snapped? she thought. Was what he did to me any worse than what I did to him that day? The only difference is that I intentionally… systematically… destroyed him emotionally, but when he lost it, he destroyed my property. How the hell could he forgive me… ever… not to mention being willing to get involved with me that very same night? If he could forgive me, shouldn't I be able to find it in my heart to forgive him? And yet, she couldn't. She just couldn't.

"What happened next, Dr. Cuddy?"

"I climbed down to where the woman was trapped, and then he came down to convince her to allow the amputation. She pleaded with him not to do it. I think she reminded him that he had promised she could keep her leg, but he said that too much time had passed. She was very upset, understandably."

"Of course. You said he convinced her to allow the amputation?"

"Yes. I'm not sure I remember his exact words, but I seem to recall him saying that he wished he hadn't insisted on saving his own leg. If I remember rightly, I think he said something like, 'They cut out a chunk of muscle about the size of my fist and they left me with this mutilated, useless thing. I'm in pain every day. It changed me. It made me a harder person… a worse person. And now... now I'm alone. You don't want to be like me.'" Of course, it was actually her, Lisa Cuddy, who arranged to cut out that chunk of muscle the size of his fist, it was her who left him in pain every day… and it was her who had just made damned sure he knew he was alone and always would be.

"So her leg was amputated?"

"Yes. House insisted on doing it himself."

"That must have been rough on him."

"I guess it was. I had left the scene, but I could hear her screaming from up above. Then House rode with her and husband in the ambulance."

"So how did you go from saying such hateful things to starting a relationship in the same night?"

Cuddy thought back, trying to remember how her feelings could do a 180-degree turnaround in such a short time. "I'm not actually positive," she admitted. "All I know is that when he talked her into the amputation, I saw a side of him I had forgotten existed, and suddenly I knew I loved him. After I went home and broke things off with Lucas, I drove to House's apartment. His front door was wide open, and I found him sitting on the floor of his bathroom. There was glass from his mirror all around him, and he was holding a bottle of Vicodin in his hand. I guess he'd hidden some behind the mirror."

"Do you think his desire to take painkillers again was from the pain of crawling around the accident site… or from the emotional pain of your words, followed by having to amputate that woman's leg?"

Cuddy grew quiet as she remembered the emotional intensity of that day. "I… I'm really not sure. I found out later that the woman died on the way to the hospital. He was just… shattered. Shattered as badly as that mirror on his bathroom floor."

"And would you say that you understood why he wanted to take Vicodin right then?"

"I guess I did. I left the decision up to him. I remember when I told him I loved him, he asked me if he was hallucinating again. I…I think he thought he was having another delusion about me… and I guess I can't blame him for thinking that. He seemed so lost. I made him look at the Vicodin in his hand, at which point he realized he hadn't actually taken it… and so he couldn't be hallucinating."

"Your relationship began that night?"

"Yes, it did. It seems to me he said something about being the most screwed up person in the world, and I said that he would always be the most incredible person I had ever known, and that I didn't want him to change."

"I'm sure it was a very emotionally intense day for both of you, Dr. Cuddy, but didn't it ever occur to you, either then or later, that it might not be appropriate… not to put too fine a point on it… for you to seduce an employee, especially one who was so vulnerable at that particular moment?"

"All I knew was that I loved him and wanted to be with him."

"I'm sure you believed it at the time, but there does seem to be a pattern emerging here. You suddenly broke off your engagement to Mr. Douglas that night, and just as suddenly, a few months later, you no longer wanted to be with Dr. House."

"I… uh… yes, that's correct." And then there was her early marriage that lasted less than a week. Maybe her mother was right… maybe she expected too much. And maybe she did have a pattern of suddenly abandoning relationships with no warning. She'd never talked to Lucas again after that night, but after seeing what happened to House after she broke up with him, she now wondered how Lucas had fared in the wake of their broken engagement. Shaking off the unwelcome thought, she refocused her attention on the panel.

"On the night of the crane collapse, you had no problem allowing Dr. House to make his own decision whether or not to take a Vicodin, but on the day you broke up with him, you blamed the dissolution of your relationship on the fact that he'd actually taken one."

"Yes, but that was different."

"How, Dr. Cuddy? How was it different? The only part of this equation that seems to have changed was you and your expectations of him… and your rather mercurial emotions. In the one instance, you gave him free will, and in the other, you punished him for giving in to exactly the same temptation you'd been so understanding of months before."

For the first time in years, Cuddy found herself close to tears. Maybe House wasn't the most screwed up person in the world. Maybe she was.

"I d-don't know what to say," was all she could come up with.

"It's been a very long day, so I think that's enough for now. Let's reconvene tomorrow morning at 9 a.m."