Hello everyone!
Well, this is it - the last chapter. There'll be an epilogue coming up soon, I'm still working on it at the moment. I'll write a proper goodbye to this story then. :P
In the meantime, I'd like to thank you for reading this story, leaving a review, adding it to your favourites and/or your alerts. It still means a lot to me.
I'd also like to thank antares.78 for her precious medical advice. Grazie mille dottoressa!
I'll let you read now. I'll see you guys soon!
Chapter Fifty
"Incoming contraction. Get ready to push."
Cuddy looks at her doctor, a little bewildered. She's lost count of the hours she spent waiting for this exact moment since the day before, the hours that her body took to accommodate pushing a baby out of her womb. In a split second, her confidence has deflated like a balloon. Her back is sore, her skin sticky with sweat. She's exhausted. She just wants it to be over. But she's not sure she can do it.
"Cuddy." House squeezes her hand, catching her attention. He looks at her with such devotion, with the strength she's not certain she can muster. "You can do this," he says – he asserts, even. It's enough for her to rebuild her confidence again, in a split second.
She stares right into his eyes as the contraction hits and she starts pushing with a scream. He holds her hand tight and encourages her, until she falls back on the bed, breathless.
"Is she out yet?" she asks, her eyes still closed.
"No, but you're doing great," Westhall answers. She laughs nervously. House wipes her forehead with a towel, whispers into her ear that he's proud of her.
"I think I want to sit up more," she says, groping for the button that will allow her to lift the top of the bed. House does it for her, and helps her re-adjust the pillows.
"Incoming," Westhall warns her, glancing at the monitor. She follows his eyes, but she's more interested in the foetal heart rate – fast and steady. Alive.
House squeezes her hand. Taking a deep breath, her eyes riveted to her baby's heart, she gives another push, trying to last longer than last time. She holds House's hand in one of her own, the sheet in the other. She tries to reassure herself by thinking Mary is just a few pushes away, but when the contraction ebbs away, Westhall doesn't say anything other than 'you're doing great'.
"Can you see the head?"
"Not yet," he admits.
"Why isn't she coming out?"
"Sometimes it takes time, Doctor Cuddy," he tells her in a warm voice, and rationally she knows it should be enough to soothe her. He's assisted hundreds of women – he knows what he's talking about.
"Is she okay?" she asks, inexplicably on the verge of tears. House rests his other hand on her shoulder.
"Foetal heart rate is normal. Doctor Cuddy," Westhall calls out, making sure she looks into his eyes. "It just takes time," he says with the same warm smile. "She's just getting ready. It's not that you're doing something wrong."
House squeezes her shoulder. "Okay," she nods, before turning to House. "Fucking stubborn, just like you."
"Well, with your stubbornness, she didn't exactly win the genetic lottery, either." She laughs like it's the funniest thing she's ever heard. His heart feels like it's bursting with joy, so he keeps going. "Right now I'm picturing all the sleepless nights we're going to suffer through because of her crying."
She feels a sudden, overwhelming surge of love and tenderness towards him – she blames it on her hormones. "I love you," she says, her eyes wet with tears – from worrying, suffering, laughing. Loving.
"Incoming," Westhall warns her then. House kisses her on her forehead and nestles his face in her hair, whispering in her ear that she's a boss-ass bitch and she can do it.
But it takes a few more pushes before Westhall can finally see the baby's head. By then she's been pushing for an hour – an eternity. She's this huge ball of worry and restlessness and asks House to stop whispering encouragements in her ear because holding her hand is enough and she needs her space and she needs to focus.
Westhall for the umpteenth time tells her that she's doing great, but he's interrupted by loud beeping noises coming from the monitor.
She doesn't wonder who is sending alarming numbers, her or the baby, because she knows. She knows.
She and House turn towards the screen, and see that the number indicating the foetal heart rate is now red and half what it was a minute ago. She is vaguely aware of nurses invading the room and Westhall ordering them to get her to an OR, of House looking at her with terror in his eyes. He holds her hand tighter and tries to follow her, but in the hallway his hand slips from her grasp because they're wheeling her away too fast and with his mangled thigh he can't keep up.
"House!"
"Right behind you!"
He watches them take the elevator, Cuddy looking back in his direction as the doors slide shut, before reaching for his ibuprofen and limping towards the call button. He waits for the next elevator, but it takes too fucking long even though they can't have been apart for more than two minutes.
When he reaches the OR, all scrubbed in – just in case – he sees her craning her neck to watch the sliding glass door behind her, and she hasn't even seen him yet – he can tell she does when their eyes meet and she holds out her arm even though he's too far to touch her.
When he finally clasps her hand he wonders why she chose him of all people to support her and be with her at that moment – him who's crumbling inside and running high on adrenaline, the only reason why he's standing there – but that adrenaline rush won't last and there's no telling how he'll be able to deal with everything once it plummets.
It's pure, unadulterated panic and terror he sees on her face, and he's never seen her – Cuddy, his rock – in such a state and it terrifies him.
"Emergency C-section?" he hears himself ask Westhall.
The obstetrician shakes his head. "Baby's too far out. I think the cord is stuck between the head and the pelvis. We have to push, maybe use forceps."
"Incoming," a nurse tells Cuddy, but Cuddy looks lost, distracted by the bustle of people in scrubs at her feet, the alarming beeps from the monitors, the foetal heart rate that is still too low.
"Cuddy," he calls out. She immediately recognises his voice amidst the mess and stares straight into his eyes. He grabs her hand and holds it tight, resting his forehead against hers. "You have to do this. Save her. It's on you. You can do this."
Closing her eyes, she focuses on his hand and his forehead and his words and shuts out everything around her. She gathers her strength and pushes as hard as she can. Come on, come on, come on, she hears House almost chant. The nurses and her doctor encourage her, urge her, and they're more pressing with each contraction – she's almost there.
At this point, he's not sure whether he's encouraging her to push or himself to believe that it will end well. He doesn't pay attention to what he says, it may be utter gibberish, it may not be of any help to her. He holds onto the words that come out of his mouth to anchor himself to reality. They're in this awful purgatory, they're in this together and he's not sure they're two separate persons anymore, in this moment suspended in time, seconds away from the event that will change their lives for the worse or for the better. There is nothing to do but wait as each second passes by, agonizingly slowly, and it's out of their hands and he's sure that by now even God has left the room.
Finally, finally, Cuddy gives one last push with her loudest scream, and he sees Westhall cut the cord and take the baby away and nurses following him.
His ears ring with the other scream that he's not hearing.
Cuddy's voice he definitely hears above the chaos, "House, why isn't she crying?"
When Cuddy eventually felt tired, House took the baby back downstairs. As soon as he came back, he climbed in the bed beside her and helped her disentangle her IVs so she could lay on her flank to face him as best as she could.
They lay face to face for a moment, her breathing in the mask the only sound in the room. He caressed her arm gently and they looked in each other's eyes.
"House," she spoke up softly, removing her mask. "No funny business when I'm gone. Rachel needs you."
He sighed and rolled his eyes a bit. "Not what I want to be talking about right now."
"Promise me," she insisted firmly.
"Fine."
"Promise me."
He turned to her again. She was staring straight into his eyes.
It was the one last thing he'd have to do for her.
"I promise," he said, meaning it. She put her mask back on and he squeezed her hand.
At this instant, he would have given her the moon if she had asked.
"I'm sorry for what I said," he whispered then. "I said it was your fault." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Cuddy."
She removed her mask again. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."
There was a pause. His overactive mind was slowly coming to a conclusion. "You did the right thing," he told her. And he meant it.
"I killed us both." Her eyes were wet and she squeezed them shut. "Forgive me."
He caressed her face, trying to stop her tears. "Cuddy, it wasn't your fault," he said, but his words didn't sound right to him.
That's when he realised it – sucking up his resentment wouldn't be enough. He needed to forgive her before he let her go. For both their sakes.
"I forgive you." She let out a sob of relief and he kissed her mouth. "I love you."
"I love you."
"I don't want to die, House," Cuddy whispered when the first light of dawn filtered through the blinds. They'd lay on the bed together all night – still were.
"It's okay." He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead so she wouldn't see him cry.
"I'm scared."
"Well, I'm more scared than you, so shut up." His quip amused neither of them. He inhaled the smell of her hair to find some courage. "It's okay. You'll just fall asleep. I won't leave your side."
She held onto him tighter.
"Tell her I love her. Tell her I'm sorry."
She nodded.
He watched her score on the Glasgow scale slowly decrease as the sun went further up and ignited the room. She only opened her eyes when he called her name. She stopped talking. She stopped opening her eyes.
He caressed her arm and her hair all the time. He watched the red highlights of her hair shine and her grey eyes look translucent in the sunlight.
When it was time to intubate her, he got off the bed and turned away as Wilson and a nurse inserted a tube in her trachea.
He sat back in the chair beside the bed and held her hand.
"Eat something," Wilson advised him in a calm voice. "Get some rest. Nothing more you can do."
"I'm staying. I promised."
Wilson gave him a sad nod and squeezed his shoulder, before he left the room.
When she flatlined, a few hours later, there were no doctors or nurses rushing into the room to revive her.
She left quietly and in peace, her hand clasped inside his. He hoped she wasn't afraid for he was by her side.
House stood up and disconnected the monitor. He looked at the lifeless body in the bed and, before he knew it, he was hunched over her, sobbing.
