I just want to thank all my readers for your continued support. I'll try to update every week or two, but I can't promise anything. Thanks for sticking along for the ride, and it's not ending anytime soon. There's ALOT more in store for our favorite couple.
Chapter 46:
The days during the week after the New Year's Eve party were somewhat of a slow one at the hospital; a night of dinner and dancing, although appropriate to ring in the new year, was no doubt the main contributor behind the lack of work getting done.
After having a very relaxing morning with House, which consisted, of course, of early morning sex and then House making breakfast for her, Lisa Cuddy found herself sitting behind her desk shortly before twelve o'clock, as she began to prepare for her department head meeting that was scheduled to take place the following morning.
After about two hours of no interruptions, the door to her office burst open, the silence that she had welcomed and enjoyed suddenly cut to a halt, as House barged in, with Cameron and Foreman in tow.
Throwing a questionable glance towards the man in front of her, Cuddy redrew her attention back to her computer screen, as she scrolled through the document that was open on the screen.
"I thought you had clinic hours to do," she remarked, as she still maintained her focus on the screen, while typing furiously on the keyboard.
I did," House told her, "and now I have a case and I would like very, very much if I could get approval for a medical procedure for my patient."
"Which is?" asked Cuddy, without even a pause in her typing nor a momentary glance up from her computer screen.
"My patient may have a tapeworm in his brain, but he's being an idiot and not allowing us to do exploratory surgery."
"Do you have any proof of the tapeworm?" Cuddy asked, glancing down at the spreadsheet on her desk before looking at the screen again.
"Nope," House answered.
Finally stopping typing, Cuddy looked up at him. "So, you want me to what, give you the green light to go ahead with this surgery, and you have no proof of a tapeworm?"
"Yup," House answered her, a deadpanned expression on his face.
Chuckling, Cuddy leaned back in her chair, surveying the man in front of her with a penetrating stare. "What if I were to say no to you?" she questioned, after a mere three-second pause.
"You never say no to me," House told her, incredulously.
Cameron interrupted them. "House, we don't have to do exploratory surgery, especially if the patient doesn't want it!"
Rounding on his employee, House reprimanded her. "Oh, ok. Side with her because you know she's right and I'm wrong, is that what you think?"
"No," Cameron told him, "there are obviously other ways, safer ways, that we can go about—"
"If we don't do the surgery and she dies, then what the hell are we going to do then?" House said to her, his voice rising.
"STOP!" Cuddy finally said loudly, causing both House and Cameron to cease talking immediately and look over at her, mid argument.
"You came to me," she told House, "solely because you thought I would cave into your every whim. Personal, maybe, but this is business," she reminded him, "and you know like hell I will never let you do this, so you're not going to win," she finished out with a slight smirk.
House returned the smirk and wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Oh you're bad."
Cuddy's mouth turned upward into a grin. "The answer is still no. Just in case you're wondering." She went back to typing.
"House, she said no," Foreman told him. "Like Cameron said, there are other options besides cutting her open."
House's mouth gaped open. "I don't believe this," he said, incredulously. "I came down here with you guys because I thought you two agreed with me!"
The phone on Cuddy's desk rang, interrupting him. Before picking up the receiver, Cuddy looked up at them. "Greg, the answer is still a no. I don't care. It's still a no. Now get out. All of you. I have a ton of work to do."
And waiting until all three doctors left her office and the door was closed, she brought the receiver to her ear.
"Lisa Cuddy."
The rest of the afternoon went by slowly, with hardly any interruptions. At around 6:30 that evening, Cuddy organized everything on her desk for the next day, and her and House, when he was done with his patient and left Foreman and Cameron to look after the patient, left the hospital together.
They stopped at a local pub on the way back to Cuddy's house, and this is where House brought up the issue that he'd been thinking about for the past couple of weeks.
"I think I'm going to sell the apartment," he said, after swallowing a mouthful of his hamburger.
Cuddy slowly brought a forkful of pasta away from her mouth, as she looked at him, questionably. "What?" she exclaimed.
"I'm always over at your place anyway," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken.
"Wait, wait," Cuddy exclaimed, stopping him, "you do realize you're jumping ahead here, right?"
House looked at her. "Lisa, you can't be serious. You're really going to abide by the standard rules of dating? I hardly think they are in play at this point, considering how fast I knocked you up."
Cuddy laughed. "Yea, you screwed up the whole thing," she commented, placing an emphasis on the word 'whole'.
Chuckling, House let his eyes move swiftly down her face, without speaking.
Reaching across the table, Cuddy took his hand. "Is Gregory House asking to move in with me?"
House didn't say anything and just grinned shyly at her, admiring how beautiful she became when she smiled, and how her eyes sparkled.
"No hogging my closets," she finally told him, grinning.
Squeezing her hand back, House grinned. "Oh please, I don't have that much stuff." He paused as he bit his lip in thought, "Although, the piano is another story."
"I'm sure we'll find space for it on the main floor," she told him, reassuringly.
House's mouth dropped open. "What do you mean?" he asked her before pausing. "Lisa, I really don't want you to feel as if you have to find space in your own home for—"
She cut him off. "Greg, that piano is your pride and joy. If you get rid of it just because of the issue of not having enough space, you'll be kicking yourself!"
Pausing, she thought for a moment and then told him, "I'll call the movers tomorrow and find a price and if they are even willing to move it on their own."
House still looked like he wanted to refute this argument and opened his mouth but Cuddy cut across him.
"Greg, stop," she said, firmly, "I'm getting your piano moved. End of story." Turning her attention back to her dinner, she picked up her fork and stabbed at a carrot before bringing it up to her mouth.
Noticing that House was staring at her, she swallowed her food before speaking. "What?"
"Wow," House commented, "I thought this 'No bullshit' mode was only reserved as a 'Dean of Medicine' thing but clearly, I'm mistaken."
Cuddy rolled her eyes at him. "Oh shut up," she told him, but was grinning nonetheless.
"Oh I forgot to tell you. I have a lunch thing with my mom today at 12:30."
The next morning, House was still lying in Cuddy's queen size bed with the comforter and sheets covering the lower half of his body, while Cuddy had taken a shower and had walked back into the bedroom, as she contemplated what to wear for the day.
As she was in the closet perusing her outfit selection, Cuddy listened to what House had just told her, and she immediately spun around, glancing at him.
"Really? She's in town?"
"Yea," House said, "Oh relax," he added as a look of panic crossed her face, "She doesn't know anything."
"And you think that is a reason for me not to be worried?"
House shrugged. "She's met you before," he said.
Forcing a chuckle, Cuddy turned back to her selection of clothes. "Yea," she mumbled, "not in the best circumstances."
She was referring to, of course, the time when House had his leg surgery over ten years ago when she, Cuddy, was his attending physician.
She finally selected a crème colored pencil skirt, which complimented her curves quite well. And to go with it, a white short capped sleeved maternity top, and completed the outfit with a black waist belt and a crème colored blazer.
"I'm meeting her at Calico Grille, the place we went for dinner the other night," House called out from the bed, for Cuddy had gone into the bathroom to finish blow-drying her hair and didn't hear him.
Giving up, he rolled over and went back to sleep.
Once she was done getting dressed, Cuddy cleaned up the bathroom and then went over to the bed, shaking House awake.
"Hey. I'm going. You better get your act together. Department head meeting in an hour and a half. Don't know WHAT I was thinking placing it on a Friday morning, especially right after New Years, but it was the only day that could fit with everyone's schedules. I expect you there," she told him.
House grumbled something with his eyes closed.
"Is that a yes?" Cuddy asked him, "And you're taking the bike, right?"
Still with his eyes closed, House nodded.
"To which question are you nodding to?"
Annoyed, House opened his eyes. "Both," he responded, "And don't be a wise ass," he finished with a smirk.
"You should talk," she told him, as she rested a hand on the side of his face before bending down and kissing him on the lips.
Straightening back up, she reminded him, "Don't be late for the meeting. Be careful on the bike."
Before she turned around, House reached his hand out from beneath the covers and stopped her. She turned toward him, questionably.
"I love you," he whispered softly.
Smiling, Cuddy squeezed his hand. "Love you too."
Around 9:30 that same morning, Lisa Cuddy was seated at the head of a large twelve seat glass table, flanked by department heads of various medical divisions of PPTH, including Dr. James Wilson, head of Oncology; Joseph Parker, head of Obstetrics'; Shirley MacClaine, head of Gynecology; Linda Rivera, head of Pediatrics'; Robert Wall, head of Geriatrics, and Sandra Gomez of the psychiatric department.
"In front of each of you is the end of the year budget statement from the past year. PPTH is continually expanding and we can continue to do so, thanks to our generous and donors' continuous and extensive support," the Dean addressed her department heads around the table, after discussing business changes for the upcoming year.
"Which means," she continued, "the time to expand departments and acquire new technology is now."
Glancing down at her watch, she tried to not get too angry at the fact that once again, House was late for a department head meeting.
'He was supposed to be here ten minutes ago,' Cuddy thought to herself. However, she cast her personal thoughts aside as she listened to Dr. Rivera's proposition for more counter space in the mental health wing.
Meanwhile, as Cuddy was wondering where House was, he was in fact on his bike, en route to the meeting that he had promised his girlfriend he would be at.
After getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for ten minutes, he was finally riding at a constant pace, speeding up as he consulted his watch.
Suddenly, the motorcycle was cut off by a silver Honda, as it swerved into his lane without giving so much as a signal nor any prior warning, causing House to slam his hand down on the brake suddenly and make a hard turn to his right to avoid smashing into the rear of the Honda in front of him.
A patch of black ice was just off to the right, beside the metal guard rail and as the bike's tires hit the ice, the motorcycle began to spin ferociously out of control.
As the bike's rider couldn't do anything except grip onto the handle bars for dear life and accept that the bike he was riding now had a mind of its own, he was thrown bike first into the side of the guardrail; on impact, his body sailed over the handlebars, his left arm twisting and getting wrenched from the socket as the arm jerked off the handlebar.
As he rolled rapidly down the steep grass-and-dirt hill, he landed hard on his left shoulder as his final resting place became the bottom of a dirt ditch.
Hot, intense pain engulfed him all over his body and, not sure if he was hearing his own curdling scream or someone else's, House let himself succumb to darkness, the pain still half-blinding him.
TBC...
Sorry for the cliffhanger, people.