Week Fourteen: Maybe in Another Life, I'll Find You There
"There's really nothing else I could have done." Cuddy was sitting across from her sister and looking at her mother, too, answering a question that she hadn't been asked.
"You haven't answered the question. Why is he even still employed by you? No matter how smart you keep saying he is, you can't keep justifying having him around. If he's really that much of a genius, wouldn't some other hospital be lucky to have him? Oh, so lucky."
"Can you please just let it go?" Cuddy snapped.
She thought back over the years, remembering each and every time that her sister had driven her nuts. Suddenly, any and all good times of their childhood felt as if they were replaced by a never-ending series of events in which Julia had messed up anything good that Cuddy had wanted for herself, always making herself the prettier of the two even as Cuddy herself had always been considered the smarter of the two.
"You never let it go," Cuddy continued angrily. "You just keep on, you keep pushing it until there's nothing left!" In her mind she added, Just like House does.
"There's no need to get like that about it," Julia replied with an offended air. "You're the one who is supposed to be running a hospital, teaching people how to be better, how to be healthier, but you surround yourself with the most unhealthy person you've ever known in your life. If you were giving someone advice, if you were telling someone how to live…"
"I'm not a psychologist, Julia. I'm an administrator. I keep things running smoothly. That's my job. That's what I do."
"Sometimes things aren't running smoothly because they aren't meant to, Lisa."
"Meant to? By who? Some omnipotent being?"
"I didn't imply that."
"Yes you did. You're assuming that there is some kind of great scheme to all of this. Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn't, but all of them is above my pay grade, okay? I'm just here to run my little hospital and try to save some lives. And right now, one of those lives is the one that House has. He's sick. He needs help."
"That's the truth," Julia muttered dryly, and Cuddy glared at her but didn't respond.
"He's gotten a woman pregnant." Cuddy said it under her breath, wanting to take back the words before a second had passed. They did not need to know about this, especially given the conclusions they would jump to as soon as she said the words. She rose from her seat and looked between the two before adding, "Not me" and walking back into the kitchen.
"If this place started running like a hospital again, and not a soap opera, some of us would be really appreciative."
Chase looked up to see Foreman frowning at him, holding a black pen in his hand as he delivered the words.
Chase sighed. Of all the people who were likely to call him to task, Foreman was definitely one of the more likely. The man might as well have his face in the dictionary next to the phrase "no nonsense", even though he and Thirteen had had a few drama-filled arguments in their day.
Thirteen was avoiding Chase unless it was necessary to discuss a diagnosis, and Taub was generally rolling his eyes with anything Chase had to say to him, dropping half-lidded hints that he didn't think much of the whole situation, either.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Chase asked, trying to act as if he didn't know. Perhaps deflection was the best strategy here, as confronting the situation head on didn't seem to be in his immediate future. He couldn't talk to Cameron – not again, not about this. He'd have to wait until she had the baby and then, maybe if this kid was out of sight and out of mind, Chase could pretend things were back to normal. Back to how they were before Dibala, before House got sick, before Chicago and the reality that Cameron had actually slept with House.
"He means that we're all tired of you," Thirteen spoke up, her voice laced with cynicism. Chase sighed – it wasn't that he didn't care about Thirteen. He would have to be a fool not to. She was beautiful, and a sharp doctor, and a good companion if he had ever wanted to make it go that far. The problem was that he didn't. He couldn't picture himself being married to anyone other than Cameron, and Cameron had come and gone. Perhaps it was the old Catholic guilt, some kind of need to punish himself (and, Thirteen would probably hasten to add, everyone around him.)
"Okay, if this is going to turn into Mean Girls, you'll find me in the other room," Taub said with a shake of his head. "I'm already going to have to deal with this in fourteen years from both sides…"
No one, however, was paying attention to Taub pre-emptively reminiscing about the teenage years of Sophie and Sophia. House had just walked into the room.
"Differential diagnosis," he said, walking over to the whiteboard as if there was nothing at all weird about him walking in during the discussion of yet another crisis he'd brought about.
"For who?" Taub replied dryly. "We're working on a case, but I don't think you've really been paying…"
House ignored him and wrote on the whiteboard, "Nausea, vomiting, groin rash."
"If these are his own symptoms," Chase muttered, "I'm leaving." At least, however, with House being House for the moment, Chase could pretend that nothing had changed. House was simply his mentor, and he was simply the man's fellow, and Cameron was still in Chicago because of, what did they call it? Irreconcilable differences. The nicest, most tactful possible way to say "hey buddy, you had a chance, and you blew it. You blew it straight to hell."