Since my three loyal reviewers were quick with their comments, I decided to give you guys a bonus tonight -- an extra chapter! All of you other readers out there, come on, throw me a bone! Let me know even if you hate it.
Chapter 54
Michael came home to find his mother packing things into boxes.
"Mom? What's up?"
With as much of a smile as she could muster, she told him. "I'm moving back to New York."
"Why?"
"Lots of reasons. You have a new wife and you don't need a meddling mother around."
"You're not meddling."
"Plus, I know the two of you can't wait to move into this room."
"That doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does. This is your house. Besides, it's just time. This was good for me. I needed to get away from the city for awhile. But now I need to go back. I missed it."
"What about House?"
"What about him?"
"I thought you two were…"
"We were, for awhile. And it was so nice to see him again. But we've both changed too much. It's not going to work between us."
He looked at her with a strange expression. It was hard because his eyes were so like Greg's. And the look he gave her said he didn't really believe her. The same sort of look that Greg had.
She swallowed her tears and smiled at him. "He's your father and I'm really happy you got to know him. I hope you two can continue to build your relationship. It's important. But I'm ready to move on."
He hugged her. "If this is what you want, Mom, that's fine."
She closed her eyes tightly and held on to him. "This is what I want."
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"I don't believe her." Michael told Wilson the next day.
"Why not?" Wilson asked him. He had his own idea, but he wanted to hear what Michael thought.
"She was sleeping with him. Since Dad died, she slept with two other men. Two men in ten years. What does that tell you?"
"She's particular. She won't sleep with just anyone."
"She won't sleep with anyone she's not in love with. Or least cares about a lot. I don't believe she slept with him for old times sakes or something. She was in love with him when she was sleeping with him. I don't think she stopped loving him."
Wilson sighed, then said, "Well, it wouldn't be the first time he's pushed away a woman he loved."
"Like Allison?" Michael asked cautiously.
"No, they never got that far. It was one disastrous date. I'm talking about Stacey."
Michael chimed in. "Right, he lived with her for five years, they broke up after his infarction. She gave the order to remove the dead muscle. I know all that. It's not the same. Mom didn't cripple him."
"No, what you don't know is that she came back. She got married and her husband was sick. House treated him and she had to work here for a while. They got close again, but just when they got to the point of her leaving her husband, he broke it off. He told her it wouldn't work, he couldn't make her happy, and he didn't love her. He convinced himself that he didn't love her. He was a mess for months afterward."
"You think that's what he did to Mom?"
Wilson nodded. "I wouldn't be surprised."
"Why? Why would he do that? He seemed to really care about her. He told me he did, well, implied that he did."
"He did, he does. I'm sure of it. He's in love with her."
"Then why?"
"Because he doesn't know how to be happy. Anytime he starts to be, he has to stop it. He's afraid he'll lose who he is if he's not miserable."
"So he has to make Mom and everyone else miserable?"
"Well, as they say, misery loves company."
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House was miserable, well, more miserable than usual. He was swallowing more Vicodin than he normally did. It didn't seem to help the pain. He alternated between snapping at his team or ignoring them. Wilson suggested things they should do together, but he refused. He stayed up late drinking. He tried music to relax, but it all sounded wrong to him. In the mornings, he was tired and hungover, barely able to get out of bed and drag himself to work. Concentrating on the patient was even harder. Michael ended up leading the differential diagnosis more often than not.
Whenever Michael talked to Marianne on the phone, they were both careful not to mention House. But she sounded quiet and sad to her son. Allison was ready to attack House, to try to make him see what he was doing to himself and to Marianne. But Michael stopped her.
"Mom won't want us to do that. She sounds okay, not great, but okay. We need to let them work this out."
"In the meantime, we'll all suffer."
"Yeah, looks like it. But I'll make sure he does too." Michael said with a grin.
From then on, Michael was extra cheerful to House. He greeted him each morning with a big smile and a hug. He brought him coffee and donuts. He told jokes that House refused to laugh at. House growled at him, ignored him, yelled at him, but nothing stopped the younger man from his campaign of 'niceness.'
House ended up trying to escape his own office, which is what the team wanted anyway. He couldn't escape to Wilson's office, because he didn't want the lecture that he knew would be coming from his friend. He went to his hiding places, but unfortunately, Michael had smoked most of them out and would often find him and try to 'chat'.
Sometimes he was forced to escape to the clinic, but if possible, he was ruder than ever to the patients.
Cuddy went to his office to blast him about it, but one look at his pale face and bloodshot eyes stopped her. Wilson had told her about the break-up, but she didn't realize it would hit him this hard. It was much worse than either time that Stacey had left. She tried to be compassionate, but firm.
"House, you can't continue like this." She told him gently. "Your work is suffering which means the entire hospital is suffering. You need to do something."
"Gee, Tinker Bell, why don't you sprinkle some pixie dust and make everything wonderful."
"I can't make everything wonderful, but you can make things better."
"Yeah? And how would I do that?"
"Go see Marianne. Get back together with her."
He looked down at the floor, banging his cane as he said, "Not going to happen. Burned that bridge."
"It doesn't have to be House. I saw the two of you together. She loves you. She'll forgive you."
His blue eyes flashed at her. "Yeah, but I don't love her."
Cuddy shook her head and sighed. "Keep telling yourself that. Maybe someday you'll actually believe it."
