A/N: Things are getting VERY busy. Which is good, in a way, but does impact writing time. I'll try to keep updating, but it may be in smaller bites. I'm glad people enjoyed the girls playing Breyers. Ann Marie and I could do that for hours. We never incorporated stuffed animals, though; that's a Rachel addition. Nor did we regularly have vet emergencies. The only non-equine we had was a rubber German Shepherd named Benjamin who guarded the stable. Fine dog he was, too. Ah, pleasant memories.

(H/C)

House entered the hospital with a girl on each side, Rachel holding his left hand, Abby hooked to just one finger on his right so she wouldn't interfere with the cane. Both of the girls were used to this arrangement and tried very hard not to interfere with their father's gait. Normally, House was conscious of them holding back some when the family was walking together; they were faster than he was by this point.

Today, though, they were glued to him, matching his pace subconsciously rather than consciously. Abby didn't even move to punch the button in the elevator until he prompted her, very unusual on her part. Normally, she was very eager to push the buttons (though only the correct one) and got a little annoyed that she couldn't reach all numbers by herself from the floor and required vertical assistance.

They exited the elevator at Cuddy's floor and walked down the hall. House caught one nurse looking at him and the girls with an "aren't they adorable" look that encompassed all three of them, and he glared at her, causing her to suddenly remember urgent business elsewhere. Then they were at the door, turning in.

For the first time, Rachel surged ahead. "Mama!" She ran up to the bed, and Thomas picked her up.

"Hello, Rachel." Cuddy smiled at her daughters. House came up to the bed and picked up Abby himself, meanwhile running a differential on Cuddy's body language and expression. She had had some more pain medicine since he left earlier, he concluded. Probably not as much as she should have had, but at least the girls weren't going to see the worst of it. Good. Of course, they would have front-row seats for her convalescence, but really, the pain should be much better once the fracture was fixed. No point in scaring them worse than they already were.

"You got hurt," Rachel said.

Cuddy squeezed her daughter's fingers. "Yes, I did, but I'll be all right, Rachel. It's just going to take a few weeks."

Abby, meanwhile, had started out by reaching to put one hand on her mother's chest, verifying that she was breathing, a test of all-rightness that they had learned long since. After a minute satisfying herself on that score, she looked down to the foot of the bed. Cuddy had a sheet over her, but the ankle was a large bump beneath it due to the splint and the ice packs. "It won't be hell leg?" she asked.

"No," Cuddy assured her. "This isn't going to be hell leg. It will get well. I'll be fine." Those weeks of healing loomed for her, though. She fought back the sense of frustrated failure once again. Right now, she needed to focus on her daughters.

They stayed like that long enough, with the girls asking questions and the adults reassuring them, that the strain started to get to House, and Thomas eventually pulled a visitor's chair over right next to the rails, letting both of them stand in it for easy view of their mother. House, with a small sigh, sat down in the other visitor's chair.

"You fell down the stairs?" Abby asked. She was starting to relax enough to be curious.

Cuddy cringed. "Yes, I fell down the stairs."

"Did you forget how?" Rachel asked. She had had her own difficulties learning to navigate stairs, which she had mostly overcome by this point, but when she was younger, she had a tendency to take them too quickly, not paying attention to each step. Therefore, she could understand her mother doing the same thing.

"No, I -" Cuddy sighed. "Well, maybe I did forget."

Rachel nodded wisely. "You have to watch. Every foot. Step, step, step."

"I know. I'll try to do better next time." Next time, which would be several weeks removed from this last time. She gritted her teeth and tried to keep a pleasant expression.

Abby came to the rescue with a change of subject. "Where are the beeps?" she asked.

"The beeps?" Thomas was totally lost on that one.

House got it, though it took him several seconds. "You mean the monitors?" Abby didn't know the word, and he realized that at once. "The things that beeped back when you were sick and in the hospital."

His younger daughter nodded vigorously. "There were beeps. But Mama doesn't have beeps."

"That's because she's perfectly fine, except for a hurt ankle. Abby, the beeps tell us how somebody's body is working. So the doctors and nurses know if there's a problem. We use them for people where we think there might be a problem inside, or where there has been a problem inside, like you had, and we want to make sure we fixed it. But your mother isn't sick. The only problem she has is her ankle, and we don't need monitors for that. Everything else is working perfectly."

Abby tilted her head, absorbing this speech.

"It means we don't have to be worried about her," House said. "The doctors and nurses aren't worried about her. They know she's all right except for the ankle."

Abby nodded after a minute. "So no beeps are good?"

"Right. They save the beeps for people they need to keep an eye on."

Thomas shook his head slowly. "Abby, you are remarkable," and House and Cuddy both felt a glow of pride in their daughter's scientific curiosity.

Rachel had listened to this conversation, following it on one level, but she then turned back to her own concern. "I'll teach you, Mama."

"Teach me what?" Cuddy asked.

"How to go on stairs. When your leg is better, I'll teach you. Then you can do it better. I know stairs by now; I'm good at it." She was so serious in her instructor pose that the adults laughed, and the events of the day retreated slightly.

They stayed there for over an hour, talking, but by the end, House could tell that not only was Cuddy getting tired but the pain meds were wearing off. Thomas saw it, too. "Girls, I think we need to let your mother rest. She needs a good night of rest tonight, and then tomorrow, they'll fix her leg."

"Can she come home tomorrow?" Rachel asked.

Thomas and Cuddy both deferred to House with a look. "Hopefully," he said. The surgery was first thing tomorrow morning, and it was a simple one; barring complications, she probably could be released late tomorrow afternoon. "Definitely by day after tomorrow, but probably tomorrow." He pulled himself up on the promise. He shouldn't tell them definitely. If anything delayed it, they would remember, and he would have let them down.

"Meanwhile," Thomas said, "I have a very important errand that I need help with."

"What?" Abby asked.

"I need to feed Jet and Karma and talk to them and pet them a little while."

Rachel perked up at once. "I can help pet them."

"Good. I need extra help, because they've been alone all day. They keep each other company, but they probably still wonder where I am. So we'll see them, and then we'll go back to your house. I'll stay with you tonight. Okay?"

Rachel looked from her parents to him. "Okay," she said.

"Come on, girls. And of course, we need to feed ourselves, too. What about IHOP?"

"That's breakfast," Abby pointed out.

"I'll let you in on a secret, girls. You can eat pancakes at any meal, any time you're in the mood for them. They don't have to be for breakfast."

"Really?" Rachel asked.

Thomas crossed his heart. "Word of honor. I guarantee, there are thousands of people in the world eating pancakes tonight."

That settled it. Rachel scrambled down from her seat. "Okay. Night, Mama, Daddy."

"Good night," Abby said. She slid down herself, and Thomas collected them, one on each side. With a nod to his family, he left.

Cuddy let out a deep breath, releasing the front she had been progressively holding as the meds wore off. House pushed the call button, and she didn't protest. The nurse came with more pain medicine, and after Cuddy took it, she lay there in the bed, looking at her bulging ankle beneath the sheets, and finally, the tears came. House moved away long enough to close the door, then came back and sat down in the visitor's chair right up against the bed, leaning across the rails, just holding her.