CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cuddy shook her head, trying to make sense of House's latest interruption, but no sense would come. Then she set back to work trying to ignore the nagging questions in her mind, but ignorance escaped her. Had she gotten up and followed him, she'd have found House standing outside her door, just beyond her view.

That had gone badly. He wasn't sure what he'd meant to say or do when he burst into her office, but he knew it had nothing to do with a red pen. He didn't even have a red pen, at least, he didn't remember having one. If he did it was lost somewhere in the jumble of office supplies strewn about his desk drawer, unused.

He had meant to ask why she'd left him but he knew the answer to that, so it seemed pointless to ask. She left his office because she couldn't stand being around him. He didn't blame her. He'd made her one day with him a living hell, and before last night he'd intended on making today even more hellish.

Then the light bulb went off and House scurried away.

Cuddy was in the middle of a meeting with the head of the Medical Review Board. It was nothing more than a yearly meeting, no crisis had arisen that gave the Board reason to doubt Cuddy's abilities as head of PPTH. Nothing House had done had sent them rushing to her office in protest. Nothing, yet.

A knock on the door seemed innocent enough, so Cuddy bade the knocker entry.

"Dr. Cuddy, there's an officer Dixon to see you." Linda seemed nervous as her eyes darted from Cuddy to the stuffy looking older man with the slightly bulging stomach and more than slightly balding head.

"Can it wait?" Cuddy knew it couldn't or Linda wouldn't have interrupted in the first place. The question was just a pretense to show the blowhard across from her that he was her first priority.

"He says it's urgent." Poor dear Linda was instructed to show him in, and she did.

Office Dixon was a tall, well built man with smooth dark skin and a wide grin. "Dr. Cuddy, do you have a doctor in your employ by the name of Gregory House?" He had to look down at his pad to get the name right.

Cuddy's heart sunk. What had House done now? "Yes," she said tentatively. She might have lied had Carson Bentley not been sitting across from her with a list of employees on his lap. She saw him scanning through the names quickly. "If you're here to arrest him, he's on the second floor. When you get off the elevators take a right and follow the signs to Diagnostics." House was going to have to fend for himself today. She was tired of cleaning up his messes.

"Actually, I've come for you." Officer Dixon smiled as he removed his hat and tossed it into Bentley's lap.

Cuddy's eyes grew wide as her mind processed the police officer who was now slowly unbuttoning his crisp blue shirt as he walked toward her with a swagger that could only belong to an experienced stripper.

"Oh good God," she groaned, her hand rushing to her cheek to make sure she wasn't blushing. "You can't do that now."

"Is this some sort of joke?" Bentley asked, rising to his feet and huffily dropping the policeman's hat on Cuddy's desk.

"I assure you, I have no idea what this is." Cuddy also rose, or tried to, but the Officer pushed her back into her chair as he attempted to mount her.

"Enough!" She demanded. "I don't know how much House paid you to do this, but I'll pay you twice as much to stop, right now!"

"Are you in the habit of paying off strippers at work Dr. Cuddy?" Bentley stared at her harshly, like the bright light of an interrogation room shining down into her face.

"This has never happened before Dr. Bentley," that part was true. She had never had a stripper in her office when a member of the Medical Review Board was present. There was that one time, when she'd first gotten the job, that her dear friend Sandra had hired her a candy striper stripper to celebrate, but only Sandra had been there for that.

"And I'm going to make damned sure it never happens again." Bentley had picked up his coat and briefcase and was headed out the door. "You will be hearing from us soon Dr. Cuddy." It was a threat.

Dixon had stood quietly and watched the proceedings with interest. "Does this mean you don't want me to finish the dance?"

"No." Cuddy snapped harshly.

Dixon was fine with not dancing. He was getting paid either way and Princeton wasn't cheap. He grabbed his discarded hat and left.

House had gone to see Carly. He dragged his feet over it, not wanting to face her. She was the one who'd forced him to ask Cuddy out in the first place. This was all her fault. "This is all your fault," he proclaimed as he stormed into her room.

She looked horrible. Her skin was a pale, sickly green, her eyes rimmed red and watery, her lips practically vanished into her skin because of the lack of color in them.

House was stopped in his tracks and felt a strange pang of guilt at his entrance.

"Dr. House," she whispered hoarsely. "What's all my fault?"

"Nothing." He said, and sat by her bed. He reviewed her chart but it didn't do justice to the young woman wasting away before his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, barely audibly.

"For what?" Carly was confused, but she figured it was do more to her medication than any cryptic behavior on House's part.

"I don't know what's wrong with you." In his twenty plus years as a doctor there had only been three cases he had never solved. Three cases that haunted him to this day. Three riddles he'd never found an answer to. He didn't want Carly to be the fourth.

"You'll figure it out," she said weakly. She had complete trust in Dr. House. His team of doctors assured her that he was the best. The nurse's spoke of him like he was a god, not a particularly nice and loving god, but a god none the less. She knew he would solve this riddle before she died.

"I'll try." He wasn't one for giving false hope unless it was to manipulate his patient into fighting, but Carly was a fighter. She didn't need his pep talks. She needed his medical expertise, and all he could think about was Cuddy. "Damn!" He slammed his cane on the ground sharply.

"What's wrong?" Carly would have jumped, but her body couldn't react that quickly. Instead she slowly turned her head to look at him with the swift speed of a turtle looking to its side for no particular reason. She saw something in his eyes. She almost thought it was a tear, but it wasn't. It was pain though, clear as day and hard to look at.

She stared at him, hoping to somehow absorb some of it. She didn't like to see Dr. House in pain. It was somehow worse than seeing anyone else in pain. Perhaps it was something to do with the clarity of his eyes, that pained expression seemed so much more powerful in those clear blue eyes. She thought she might be developing a crush on him, but laughed it off. He was far too old for crushes. He was older than her father even. She wrinkled her nose a bit.

House watched her watching him. He knew she was looking beyond what the normal person would see. The normal person would dismiss the hurt expression for more leg pain, the typical physical pain one expected to affect a man more than anything emotional. But she saw deeper, and it frightened him.

"I asked Cuddy out like you wanted." He blurted it out, trying to distract her from rummaging through his soul.

"Oh, and?" She lit up, as well as a nearly dead girl can light up, but the change was startling, like watching life poured back into a corpse. Then she saw the look in his eyes again and realized where the pain was coming from. "What happened?" She asked, more consolatory than excited.

"We fought." House didn't need to shower Carly with flowery words. She was a straight forward young woman. She would have seen through his bullshit easily.

"What about?" Carly was genuinely interested. It had started out as wanting gossip, something to hear about when her soaps weren't on, but it had become more than that. She had come to care about this man who was trying so hard to take care of her. She knew he didn't feel the same way, that he couldn't. If he got attached to his patients he wouldn't be able to do his job, but she didn't mind. He was going to save her life, and that was enough.

"She wants a relationship," House grumbled. The truth, if he ever bothered to tell himself, was that he wanted one too.

"You're very lucky." Carly had wanted a relationship once, with Ned Parker. Ned only wanted to sleep with cheerleader Buffy Saunders. Carly had her heart broken for real for the very first time.

"I don't feel lucky." House leaned back in the chair. Carly was easy to talk to. She didn't judge him, she didn't lecture him, she just listened, and she seemed to understand as well as a teenage girl could understand such things.

"Because you screwed it up?" it was obvious.

"Of course I screwed it up. That's what I do."

"Well, unscrew it." It seemed perfectly logical to her. You mess something up you need to go and fix it.

"How?" He was really asking. He wanted someone to come and hand him a book that told him everything he needed to know about relationships. No one seemed to want to give him that book, and he was too proud to ask, until now.

"I can't tell you what to do unless you tell me what happened, all of it." Carly made herself as comfortable as she could. The IV prevented her from really being comfortable, and a hospital bed really was no place for comfort, but she gave it a try and found a not entirely uncomfortable position in which to listen to his story.

When House was done telling her all the grizzly details, she thought about it for a moment. "You need to tell her the truth. Tell her what you're really feelings. Don't pretend you're this big tough guy, don't make her come to you. You've got to go to her, sweep her off her feet, be heroic."

"Life isn't a fairytale," House grumbled some more.

Carly glared at him and he saw something in her eyes he hadn't seen there before. She was angry. The anger brought a pink flush to her ashen face and brightened her watery, sleepy eyes for a moment. "Do you really think I believe in fairytales Dr. House? Because I don't remember reading the one where the Princess gets some mysterious disease that not even the greatest wizard in the world can fix, and I don't recall the Princess dying before she's even had a chance to live. So, I know life isn't a fairytale Dr. House, but that doesn't mean you can't have a happy ending."

"Death is the universal ending," House said defeated.

She sighed and the effort of her sign made her body deflate a little more. Still she soldiered on. She believed in him, even if he didn't. "I get it. There are no happy endings. But I'm not talking about the end of your life. I'm talking about your love story."

"I don't have a love story."

"Only because you refuse to have one." She wanted to smack him upside the head like she'd seen her mother do to her father every time he got in one of his moods. She wanted to make him snap out of it. "Dr. Cuddy loves you."

"You don't even know her."

"I know what you've told me. I know that she's put up with a lot more from you than any woman I know would do, so she's either a Saint, or she really likes you."

"She's not a saint," House mumbled.

"Exactly. So that means she likes you. Go talk to her. Tell her you're scared. She's probably scared too." Carly was scared. She was scared she was going to die. She was scared that she'd never feel a guy's arms around her, or his lips on hers. She was scared that she would never hear the words 'I love you' from anyone who didn't share her blood. She was scared she wouldn't graduate from school, and get a real job and get married and have children. House's fear seemed pale in comparison.

House had never said the words 'I'm scared' to another living soul, not even when he'd snuck downstairs at the age of eight to watch Psych from behind the couch and then spent two days afraid to use the bathroom for fear that Norman Bates was hiding behind the shower curtain.

Carly took his silence for what it was, a refusal to do what she'd said. She couldn't take it any more. "Oh My God! You're so pathetic. This woman likes you, and you like her. What's your problem?"

"It's not that simple. Grownups are more complex than that."

"Oh please! Don't give me that. I've been around grownups all my life and if they're complex, it's only because they make things complicated. She likes you. She wouldn't have gone out with you if she didn't. I'm worried about whether or not I'm going to wake up ever again, and you're all pissy because you might get turned down by a woman?"

"Don't compare our issues. Dying or not, you'll lose."

"At least I haven't given up. Only losers give up." Her father had always told her that. When she'd wanted to give up soccer because her team hadn't won a game all season he told her she was only a loser if she walked away. He taught her it was better to fight and lose than to just hand over the prize.

"I feel sorry for you Dr. House. You are so close to having what you want and you won't even reach your hand out to take it. You just sit there hoping it will fall into your lap. Well, in the immortal words of YOU, life isn't a fairytale, and we aren't Princes and Princesses. We have to fight for what we want. I'm fighting for my life. What are you fighting for?"

House thought about this. "I'm fighting for the answer." It was true. He could have said something insincere like he was fighting for her life, but she would know it was a lie. It was the answer that fueled him. It had always been the answer that pushed him further than he thought he could go.

"That's sad." She frowned at him. "While you're obsessing about the ending, you're missing your own story." She was fading. He saw it in her eyes. First they glassed over and stared into nothing, then her mouth went slack. House leaned in to make sure she was still breathing. She was.

He sighed heavily and sat back down. Was he missing his own story? What was there really to miss? He was a miserable crippled with no friends, expect Wilson, and no family, though there was his mother, but he didn't talk to her. He had no one in his life, though he might have Cuddy if he let her in.

He slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. He'd just solved the case.