Floating

Chapter 20

Cuddy awoke to the ringing of a phone. A moment of realization that she wasn't in her own bed and the telephone had an unfamiliar ring. She picked up the receiver while looking at the ancient digital bedside alarm clock. Six-forty.

"Hello?" Her voice, what there was of it, was groggy.

"Oh. Sorry, I must have the wrong…" She recognized the voice through her sleepiness.

"Wilson?"

"Cuddy? I'm sorry, I must've hit the wrong speed dial…" No, you dialed correctly, she mused.

"No, you probably didn't"

"How is he?"

"Do you have any idea what time it is? Not good." She sighed. "He asleep. I gave him Demerol as a stop-gap. Until we can figure out…"

"He told me that he half expected the pain to return, that he'd re-do the treatment…"

"Yeah. I know, but this is less than a month. He's still got some lingering side-effects from the original treatment. I don't know if…"

"Is he still hallucinating?"

"I don't think so. But the vivid dreams haven't abated much." She was waiting for the conversation to turn from the clinical, as she knew it would. "I think we'll just have to play it by ear. For all we know, he could wake up this morning feeling great. Maybe he just needed some rest. Who the Hell knows?"

"How long's he been out?"

"About three and a half hours. I'm hoping he'll get a lot more. He told me that his sleep has been pretty intermittent these past several weeks. Maybe that's all this is…" She found it hard to keep the resignation from her voice.

"Why didn't you admit him?"

"I didn't want to overreact. What if this just is a blip? How would he have felt about landing back in the hospital?"

"How did you get him to even let you help? He's usually…"

"I'm persuasive." She didn't like where this was headed. "Listen, I think I hear him stirring, so…"

"I'll be over in half an hour. Sounds like you can use some rest yourself. You don't know how he'll be when…"

"No. We're fine. It's Saturday and I don't have anywhere I need to be." She didn't mean to sound defensive.

"Look, Cuddy," he began. "I don't know how involved the two of you are, and it's really none of my business.."

"Right. It is. None of your business…"

"It's not going to do him any good to have a fling right now." He waited, expecting a retort. None came. "He's more sensitive than he lets on. He's…"

"You have no I idea what I know and what I don't know." She shut up before she blurted out anything she'd regret in an hour. "Besides, you're jumping to an awful lot of conclusions..."

"Who's on the phone?" Cuddy jumped, startled. She pulled the duvet around her, embarrassed, realizing that she had gone to bed unclothed.

"Wilson," she mouthed. House shook his head. He didn't really feel like dealing with Wilson right now.

"I've got to go. He'll call you back when he gets up." She hung up and House cracked a weary smile. "Great. The town gossip now knows that you spent the night with me. Your virtue will be sullied within a matter of hours."

"He's concerned."

"Yeah." Noncommittal. He looked away, trying to conceal his own anxiety. Cuddy patted the bed.

"Sit." He deposited himself on the edge of the bed, next to her. Well, that was something. "Did the phone wake you? I was hoping you'd have gotten a little more sleep."

"Look, Cuddy. You really don't have to do this. I'll be fine, and this is getting a little too domestic to be comfortable for either of us. So…" He seemed pretty calm this morning. She ventured.

"How's your leg?"

"How much Demerol did you give me?"

"I was hoping you'd sleep. Why? Pain any better? It's been less than four hours, so…"

"Pain's not terrible, but as you say…" He paused. "I can't stay on it forever."

"Look, House, I want to go back through everything again. All the notes; the translations. I think it's way premature to give up on the Ketamine treatment. But right now, it's early. It's Saturday and I'm wiped out; I know you can use some more sleep…" Cuddy slid over to the far side of the bed, beckoning House to get in beside her.

"Cuddy, I don't think I can…"

"Can what? Sleep? Then just doze. You need to be off that leg…"

"That's not what I'm…"

"Well, it's what I'm talking about. G'night House." She turned her back towards him, cuddling the soft down pillow and waited. Ten minutes passed before she felt him stiffly lower himself into the other side of the bed. Cuddy finally let herself breathe.

It was 11 a.m. when Cuddy stretched, finally awake for good. She turned under the duvet and regarded House, who was still stiffly lying on the far edge of the bed, where he had been four hours earlier. It had been nearly eight hours since his last hit of pain meds and she wondered if he was asleep.

Cuddy slipped over to House's side of the bed, careful not to disturb his sleep. He hadn't moved. She quietly got out of bed and looked at her clothing. She really didn't want to put on her work attire. It was, after all, Saturday morning. A laundry basket of House's clean clothing sat on the floor near the window. She didn't think he'd mind, under the circumstances. She hoped not, anyway.

She selected a t-shirt, charcoal gray with a Pink Floyd Logo. She'd never seen him wear it before, figuring it was in "strictly for home use" collection. The shirt came down to her knees, and the short sleeves to her elbows. She moved around to the other side of the bed. House still hadn't moved. He was curled into a fetal position, his eyes wide open. How long had he been lying here, stock still and awake?

"House? Hey, you awake?" His eyes moved to her face, although the rest of him was eerily still.

"What the hell do you think?" they said to her, accusingly in his silence. She crouched to eye-level. She touched his face. He flinched at her touch. She knew that the pain level had gone severe again.

"Do you still have your supply of morphine?" He didn't know what she was asking. He looked at her half defensive, half questioning.

"I want to give you an intrathecal injection. Low dose. Do you have an appropriate syringe for spinal injection?" House's eyes went wide with surprise.

"No saline, this time?" he replied with some difficulty.

"No saline. The spinal injection will give you 24 hours. We need to figure out what's going on and how to…"

"Not that I'm turning down morphine at this point, but we don't need 24 hours to figure it out. I don't need five minutes. And it's not because I'm a world famous diagnostician, either." She was not going to argue with him. Not while he was in this much pain.

"Can you give me a number?"

"Seven…creeping with unnerving rapidity to eight. My 'first aid kit' is on the top shelf to the right of the fireplace. It's not easy to find. It's under about 50 old National Geographics and behind some textbooks." She turned to go. "Hey, Cuddy. Like the t-shirt on you." House closed his eyes, trying to relax against the throb in his right quad.