CHAPTER THIRTY: Peace Talk

"What the hell am I doing here, House? And why are you alone; where's Wilson?" Cuddy is confused, and angry, and it's the third time she's asked the questions—she'd been a lot more polite the first two times. When Wilson had called and asked her to come up, she'd been working on staffing to cover the time off they'd need for House to recover. Wilson had said no emergency, House just wanted to speak with her. So here she is, she's been here a couple of minutes, Wilson's gone, and House isn't talking. He hasn't even looked at her yet. So she sits. And waits.

As she's about to ask House the same two questions for the fourth time, he finally makes eye contact with her, and speaks.

"Wilson's off the case." That's all he says, but his eyes are telling her the rest of it; they're aching with hurt, the kind that even morphine won't ease.

So Cuddy waits some more. He's not gonna talk until he's ready. Maybe I should've insisted on staying when Wilson spoke with him; I knew it wasn't gonna be pleasant, just figured they'd work it out somehow, they always do. Damn you, House, just talk to me, let someone help you, okay?

Finally, House speaks. His voice is weak; it's clearly an effort. "I sent him away. He wanted to be my babysitter—no go. He thinks I can't be trusted to handle my own life, my own—" He indicates the right leg with an angry sweep of his arm. "I don't need that. I don't need him."

Only Cuddy would be able to hear the hurt, rejected little boy behind those words, and she does, and she responds the only way she knows how, by forgetting the brilliant doctor in front of her, forgetting even the vulnerable patient in front of her. She responds, by instinct, to the frightened child who's lost his best friend.

"House, I know you're hurting—"

He interrupts her angrily, "You don't—"

"Shut up, House. You've gotten so good at denying your feelings that you won't even take comfort when it's offered. I'm speaking here; you're listening. Got it?" She glares at him. "Answer me."

He cocks his head at her. "You told me to shut up; I was just following orders."

"Then you picked a fine time to break out of your usual pattern and start listening. I'll try this a little slower, purely out of consideration for your drug-addled mind. I'm going to tell you some things you need to know, and you're not going to just hear me, you're going to listen to me. Got it?"

Despite himself, a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. "Yes ma'am, oh scary, dominant, boss-lady, sir."

Cuddy bites back her own smile. "Good. Now that that's settled, where was I? Oh, yeah, your feelings. Emotions aren't a disease, House, you can't cure them. You can pretend they don't exist, if you want to, but guess what? Then they come back and bite you on the ass. They're funny like that, forcing you to acknowledge 'em when you least expect it. And the longer you exile them to some locked room in your brain, the stronger they are when they break out."

Cuddy realizes it's 12:30pm, and since she's apparently inherited the patient, she says, "Just let that sink into your brain a minute while I play doctor here. Wilson'll kill me if I neglect you, just a quick assessment, and then back to it."

"Wilson doesn't care; I was just his bald-headed cancer kid for the weekend. Probably couldn't get a date or something."

Cuddy almost drops the bag of saline she's hanging to replace the one that's just about run dry. She takes a deep breath, finishes up, then pins House with her fury.

"Why, you insufferable ass. How. Dare. You. How dare you? You know, House, you've always had 'blind insensitivity' down to an art, but you've outdone even yourself this time."

She stands over him, hands on hips, eyes flashing—even House has never seen her this furious. "Hey, Cuddy, take it easy. I only meant that Wilson's got a whole 'need to be needed' thing goin' on; he picked me for his current project. I'm just not interested, that's all; okay?"

"No, it is not okay." She sees on the monitor that his respiratory rate's climbing; he's even paler than he was before. Back it down, Lisa; you can get your point across without worsening his condition. Remember that little boy? Lost his best—his only—friend.

She forces herself to sit down, breathe deeply. When she speaks again, her voice is calm, almost gentle. "I'm gonna tell you some things that you don't know, but you should, and I'm also going to tell you some things that you could've figured out for yourself. Just close your eyes and listen. But don't fall asleep on me, okay?"

She watches as he gratefully closes his eyes, watches as the numbers on the monitor fall back to within normal limits. "First of all, just so it's out on the table, I care about you. Wilson cares about you. God only knows why we do, but it's the truth, and you'll just have to accept it, like it or not. And we worry. But I don't have anything on Wilson; he couldn't care about you more if you were family. You're vital to him, actually, the one constant he has in his life, an anchor for him—and that gives you a responsibility. You've made it clear that you're not big on responsibility, but you can't shirk this one. I won't let you."

She touches his arm lightly, and he turns toward her, opens his eyes. She smiles, says "Close 'em; I'm not done. Now, that's the part you could've figured out for yourself if you didn't have a full-time job pushing people away, but hey, I'm happy to enlighten you. Not often I get to tell the great Dr. House my diagnosis."

She sees him smile a bit at that. "Here's the part that you couldn't know. Wilson is not only the doctor we all wish we were, he's the friend we all wish we could have. He hasn't just taken care of you this weekend; he's cared for you. In my entire career, I've never seen any patient have all of their needs met during hospitalization—but I've been privileged to watch that happen over the last 40 hours. And he not only worried about you—he paged me when I was on my way home last night to tell me to go by your place to look after your stupid rat. So I fed it, but I did draw the line at socializing with it. Sorry about that." And you don't need to know that I overcame a huge rat-based phobia to do it, either.

"What I'm trying to get you to see here is that he thought of everything. He talked to you as if you could hear him. He handled you as if you were a preemie. He insisted that you not miss one dose of eye drops, not one glycerin swab for your mouth. He advocated for you when I wanted to put you in the unit. He totally disregarded his own needs in favor of yours."

She sees House frown at that, and she knows he's listening. She rests her hand on his arm; he doesn't pull away. "He wouldn't rest until he made sure I knew everything about properly caring for you, right down to arranging that leg just the right way, not letting it get stiff, even how to set up the pillows. And after your dream this morning, he was ready to collapse; he could barely stand, his hands weren't even steady anymore. And still he refused to leave your side. I had to threaten to sedate him, and I had to lie to him about the length of time he needed to rest."

House opens his eyes at that. His voice is anxious, worried—and he doesn't bother to try to hide it. "You threatened sedation? He was that bad? Did he get any rest? Is he okay?"

Cuddy looks at him, hard. Ah, I've gotten through! "Unlike another, less cooperative, physician on this staff, eventually he follows orders. I made sure he got a few hours. He'll be fine. Now I've got a question for you. Did all that sound like a nice little Home Depot weekend project to you?"

"Go get him," he orders her. He realizes how it sounds, and amends it. "Please."

"I don't know where he is; you threw him out before I got here, remember?"

"If what you said is true—and I don't doubt that it is," House sighs, "you'll find him just outside. On the balcony."

Cuddy walks to the balcony doors and sees Wilson, just as House had said. It's still raining, and he's soaked, but there he is, as close to his ill friend as he can figure out how to be. She steps out, motions him over to House's side of the balcony, puts an arm around him, and ushers him in.