Author's Note: Two or three more chapters left. Several tricks up my exceptionally long sleeves. And how I do love Cuddy POV's.

Now the story's played out like this

Just like a paperback novel

Let's rewrite an ending that fits

Instead of a Hollywood horror

How the hell'd we wind up like this?

Why weren't we able

To see the signs that we missed

Try and turn the tables?

--Nickleback, "Someday"

I watch with a weary eye as Stacy, Chase, and Foreman retreat from the room. My crazy outburst aimed at the House ghost or hallucination makes them think my anger has turned to madness. Wilson probably heard me ranting, too. I watch him with attentiveness. I can't save him (I can only save myself), but I must prevent him from following this path that I've laid.

So, Chase and Stacy want Wilson and Cameron reprimanded. Foreman thinks they're crazy. The board wants to know why my behavior's been erratic, and Steve refuses to play any tennis on account of his tennis elbow (liar)—but it all seems so meaningless, since the ghost of Greg House is standing in front of me. Again.

"Why are you here?"

"I enjoy pissing you off."

I look at the man in front of me. It's a vision of some sort, I reason. He's standing in front of my desk, cane splays to his side, and he looks cockier than ever. I'm hallucinating. Please, let me be hallucinating.

But the dogs bark. Death brings odd precursors.

"Why can't anyone else see you?"

"I'm not answering your questions. You're smart enough figure it out."

Still the same, sarcastic bastard. The afterlife has not treated him kindly, I suppose.

"Enlighten me."

"No one else wants to see me."

Cameron's crumbling, Wilson's wilting, Stacy's shattering, and they don't want to see him? Why me? Didn't I get enough of him in life? Did somebody slip something into my drink? I am going to kill whoever did it…I'll fire their ass faster than they can apologize. Apologies have never meant anything to me anyway.

"No one else wants to see you?"

"Si. Ellos no deseas mirar mi."

"Your sarcasm is bilingual."

"Oui."

"Trilingual?"

"Ask another question."

He never liked questions when he was alive. Questions now? He must be bored. Or he must need someone to play along with his game. It's twisted like it always is, but it is House (or a hallucinogenic House.)

"You have a cane."

"Good, Master Sherlock. Glad to see that you will escape without glasses for a few more years, but that's not a question."

"Could we make this a civil conversation?"

"Define civil."

"Without sarcasm."

"We're doctors, Cuddy, we don't do civil. We do feigned sympathy. The line between right and wrong is extremely fine. How many times do you straddle it to be civil? To feign sympathy?"

"This conversation isn't about me."

"No…you're right. It's about me. Ask a damn question."

"Do you still have Vicodin?"

"Amazingly, they don't seem to have a pharmacy where I am," but he nonetheless pulls a bottle of Vicodin out of his pants' pocket and shakes it around—the pills rattle along with the bounce of the bottle.

"Why do you need the cane?"

Yes, why does he need the cane? It's the afterlife, and, unless he's being punished for something, feeling isn't completely necessary.

"You ask terrible questions."

I need Advil. There's a pressure in my head. It's a throbbing pain bordering on insanity and migraine. God, it hurts.

"I don't know what to ask."

"Is your God, Dr. Cuddy, benevolent? Sure, he is, but that's not what's bothering you. Rephrase the question. Why do you see me like this? Cane, limp, meds…doesn't turn you on. What's worse, Cuddy? The guilt of knowing that you like seeing me like this—humbled—or the acceptance of that guilt?"

"Fuck you."

"That doesn't get you off the hook."

"Did you know Wilson had a homeless brother? That Cameron married her husband when he was dying? That Chase's mother drank too much? That Foreman stole things? We're the damaged ones. Look at me! Look at what I was—my team, you, Wilson, Stacy…all of us. All of us fit together in this damn puzzle. Don't you see?"

There's a tissue somewhere and I'd reach for it if I knew where it is, but I can't seem to remember where I put it. My eyes transfix on House as he limps around the room like a broken racehorse.

"You're damaged by guilt. Pay for my funeral, gravestone…makes it all better doesn't it? It doesn't and you know that. And everyone else thinks you're losing your mind to grief. No, Dr. Cuddy, you're not losing your mind to grief. You're losing your mind to guilt. But grief sounds so much better doesn't it? I thought you were supposed to be…strong, impenetrable," he sneers.

"Intimidation was your game and psychoanalysis is Cameron's."

"So? I thought sleeping with other doctors was your gig. Apparently that's fallen to Cameron now?"

"Out!"

"Do you know what they call her? They call her 'slut'. What's so wrong with her going out with Wilson? You were fine when it was me."

"Because you needed it!"

He stops his frenetic pacing around the room right in front of my desk. He swings his cane on top of my desk, in between pictures and memos and leans his head down. His eyes are the most shocking blue. As always, I forgot the little details that made him so menacing. His eyes are Santa Claus-ian, but his attitude is not. The eye color's innocence masks the rest of the body's experience.

"I didn't need anything. Get your sexual harassment policy right."

This whole thing is finally enough for me. I let my head sink on the desk against the layers of pages of desk calendars. Five pages including this month are left. Ripping each page off after each month was surprisingly satisfactory to me when I was younger. It meant life was moving. Now, it means that another month is passed and next, it'll be another useless year.

"Why am I like this?"

"I thought this conversation wasn't about you."

Damn him.
"But I don't know. It's all in that pretty head of yours."

"You? The great Dr. House doesn't know?"

"I'm not here to talk about you."

"Then what the hell are you here for?"

"That meeting."

That meeting. The one I made myself look like an asshole in. Stacy and Chase are not only going to report Wilson and Cameron to the board, but probably me as well. I wonder if the asylum is looking for any deans of medicine…?

"And?"
"Female. 32. Pregnant. Colleague and jealous woman want her gone. The boss she had a crush on has been dead for three months. Still grieving. Hang out too much with one oncologist. Differential diagnosis?"

"Sleeping with fellow doctor."

"Wrong."

"But it accounts for the symptoms. And do not tell me Cameron's the second-coming of the Virgin Mary."

"She's not. But you're missing something here. Quite like you, really, but typically you're smarter than this. You must really need me to keep you in line," he muses and looks up at the ceiling.

"What am I missing? It's not Wilson's baby. Cameron's not pregnant. Stacy's lying?"

"Everybody lies."

So it's everybody. Not everyone. It's every-damn-warm-body that can be found floating around this hospital (count the cold ones in the morgue, too—they probably lied somewhere along the lines, and thus are dead), sapping the money for their paychecks. Somebody shoot me.

"So, everyone's lying?"

"Even you're lying."

"Fill me in then. What the hell am I lying about?"

"Oh, you're not lying verbally. You're lying to yourself. Tell yourself that insanity's a better excuse than grief. Nice. I'll give you props there."

"I am not! I would never do that."

"Congratulations. Glad to hear it. Do you want a medal or a ribbon?"

"Go away."

"I'm only here because I'm protecting a friend."

"So you're a ghost."

"No, I never said that."

"So you're a figment of my imagination?"

"No, yo nunca hablo ese."

"I think you butchered whatever you said before."

"I hate conjugating Spanish verbs. Now, differential diagnosis, Dr. Cuddy. Where is Dr. Cameron today?"

"Sick?"

"With what?"

"Pregnancy?"

"Beep! You're wrong. Thanks for playing. Another dead body in the morgue for you!"

Then where is Cameron? Surely she can't be dead. If she were dead, I would have heard. House is just playing games with my mind. Apparently, he's bored.

"Overwhelming grief and hormones make people do very bad things," his voice drips with sarcasm.

"You're a hallucination."

"The mind makes us see what we want to. What we believe is another thing."

He points his cane to me and is gone. I don't want to think anymore. Cameron's going to die or is she already dead? Or am I making this all up because of a hallucinogen I don't even know I took? Stress makes people lose their minds. Grief makes people susceptible to phony schemes manufactured by a lost mind. Stress, grief, anger, guilt…

Emotions. Are. Pointless.

But where is Dr. Cameron today? I pick up the phone.

"Dr. Wilson."

"Wilson, it's Cuddy. Do me a favor—check out where Cameron is please. I know she said she's sick, but I…my insides are upset. I'd do it myself otherwise."

"Are you going to fire us?"

"I don't know. Is it your baby?"

"No, but that's pointless to tell you isn't it?"

"No. Goodbye."

I hang up quickly.

And it's the silence that is overwhelming. I grab my pen and make a note on the calendar under the date that says August 14th. My expensive pen scratches the cheap paper. Get rid of the dogs.

Three months. Three months. Three months. They say the number three is unique. The holy trinity. The three little pigs. The three parts of time (past, present, future.) Beginning, middle, end. Babe Ruth's number. The three witches in Macbeth. Heaven, Hell, and purgatory. And the list beats onward…

And three doctors who received a fellowship with House.