Author's Note: Cuddy's story at the beach will be spun off. I've started writing some more of that and am working on "STiYSoD" (never fear!) I am going to continue with the women of "House" storyline. There isn't enough good fic out there about all of the female characters.

He had a home

The love of a girl

But men get lost sometimes

As years unfurl…

Lying here in the darkness

I hear the sirens wail

Somebody's going to emergency

Somebody's going to jail…

On some solitary rock

A desperate lover left his mark,

"Baby, I've changed. Please come back."

--Don Henley, "New York Minute"

There's this feeling that I've started to get. It comes when James doesn't talk to me and when we just barely acknowledge one another. It comes when I see James' crestfallen look when he watches our nieces and nephews celebrate holidays. It emerges now, when he doesn't come home—dread's an awfully heavy weight.

He doesn't love me and I understand that. It's surprising that I'm so resigned to my fate, honestly. I'm a fighter.

The clock's digital numbers change with little fan fair. It's two in the morning and he's not home. I can't help but worry that he's lying somewhere in this sweltering heat being beat or killed—but that's not true. He's probably over Greg's house. I've seen him come home smashed one too many times for me to be happy when he tells me that he likes to go over there. It's good for him to have friends—I do. But…I need him some time, too.

I roll over in bed and give a half-hearted, world-weary smile to the adoring fans (well, my alarm clock.) My smile reminds me of a welcome mat that's been trampled on too many times—worn and no longer welcoming. (Maybe that's why James thinks it's time to get a new one.)

As the numbers tick away on the clock, I can't help but resent them. They have a purpose. They have meaning. They are important.

At least James still looks at them with a decent amount of love and tenderness.

In an unimaginable fit of rage, I shout at the imaginary demons in the clock and rip it out of the wall. The wire swirls around and thumps against the side of the bed—a useless snake. Somewhere in the distance a siren wails and I can't help but think of James. But it doesn't matter because he's not home.

As I sit on the bed I should be sharing with my husband, I'm left holding out with two hands a dismembered alarm clock. I'd laugh at this scene if I was an outside observer, but it breaks my heart, because this is my life. I've pissed the past few years away being someone's wife. It all thunders down on me with a lightning bolt of clarity—I'm wasting my life.

It's a terrible observation and my body falls slack. The clock thuds against the unforgiving floor and I thud against the pillow. My body aches, my back breaks—nothing figures anymore.

Ampersands connecting words that are insignificant float through my head. James is kind & caring & loving & sometimes attentive...but he's a cad & a late-worker & sometimes inattentive…

He doesn't know how much this kills me, sitting here, waiting in the dark. The inevitability of moving time (of moving years) creeps up on me, suffocating me. There is no way out, because there is no way of knowing that the solution will be better than the problem. James and I can dance our tragic ballet, but one day the crowds stop coming and the people stop paying…and the curtain falls. What's our final bow? The signatures on the divorce papers?

I can't believe this is what he wants. I just don't…I just don't know. He doesn't come home—what does he think that means to me? Oh, everything's fine. It's not! It's not. It's not all right. It's not okay. Nothing's okay…

The only noise in the room is Don Henley's voice. I'd listen to Bob Dylan like I normally do, but I can't deal with political and social commentaries in the form of song lyrics. No, I need The End of Innocence. And happily ever after fails and we've been poisoned by these fairy tales…why does it have to be so true? So painfully true.

My first marriage isn't supposed to end like this! My first marriage isn't supposed to end. In this throwaway culture, aren't we supposed to love each other through sickness and health? Good and bad? I smell the superficiality of bleached blondes and flirting women on James' clothes when I wash them. If he wants fake, he can have fake. But I want real. I am real. I am real.

Sometimes, I have to convince myself I even exist. I go to work and I come home. And I wait. I wait.

There's nothing more for me to do here. Nothing. If James wants to spend his time with his crippled friend and his dying patients, it's all the same to me. But I love him. God do I love him. The smiles, stubborn hair, his mouth as he trails kisses down my stomach…

It's not easy. We'd probably be better off as friends because there can never be two generals in the room. And it's always one of us buckling under the other's demands. I've always been a leader and so has he. We're so competitive. Our marriage is a competition (of whose words sting more, of whose taunts hurt less.)

I'm a bit of a romantic, but I'm not so naïve to think that James would be home every night with flowers. Is it too much of me to ask him to at least come home? I hate going to sleep with a broken alarm clock as my only companion.

This…this undefined marriage would be so much easier if I didn't feel so conflicted about him. If I could possibly be indifferent to him…but numbness isn't an option because I'm a human being and human beings like to feel. But I'm not sure about James. Perhaps he's spent too many nights dulling his pain and feelings with House's Vicodin. Oh, God, if he's indifferent to me…

Then it's all over. All of this—this fractured egg of a marriage, it'll all be over. But I don't want it to end! I've always held on to things I shouldn't…but it's all I have. My job's meaningless, it truly is. All I want is love. Someone to love me and someone to say I'm not crazy for wanting human contact!

I hate being in love. I hate it. It's never done me any good. It makes me weak, dependent, and emotional. Love…

But do James and I even love? Have we ever loved? Maybe he loved me once…maybe. But he doesn't love me anymore. At this point, James and I are puppets being controlled by nothing more than our own expectations.

We shouldn't have gotten married. It was wrong from the start. But we're passionate and annoyingly stubborn people—we get what we want. We always have and we always want to. But I've become so broken…I've let myself break.

If I leave in the morning, James won't have to apologize. He walks in the door night after night and he apologizes and I'm not sure what it means after he does it for the thousandth time. Of course he's sorry for not coming home, but I can't help but think he's sorry for being something else—for what everyone apologies for being—human.

Will James miss me if he finds my bags packed and myself long gone? Or will he shrug his shoulders and move on to the next woman?

So, I'll have to spend my nights from now on watching mind-numbing television. I won't wait again. I won't love again. I won't contemplate changing my name from Wilson again.

I'll simply be numb.