22.

"I can see why you like him."

That was the first thing her mother said when they got in the car after leaving the restaurant on Saturday night. It was, of course, her mother's way of saying 'you have the worst taste in men'.

"Oh?" Cuddy replied evenly.

"I'm just saying, he's smart - you've always gone for the smart ones."

"Yes, he's very smart. But that's got nothing to do with... anything. It's not like that. We're just..." She searched for a word other than 'friends' and came up short. She shrugged. "I don't know what we are."

"All right," her mother shrugged back. "Anyway, I'm sure one of these modern arrangements will suit you just fine."

Which was her way of saying 'you'll never be a good mother when you're still so selfishly dedicated to your career'.

She just pressed her lips together to keep from responding and kept driving.

She tried not to think about that conversation now as she moved at a light but steady pace down the sidewalk. In fact, she tried not to think about her mother at all, especially not the fact that she was still here.

She hadn't even realised until the woman arrived on Saturday that she was planning a longer stay than just overnight. She had picked up her mother and her very large suitcase from the airport, only to be informed that she'd purchased a one way ticket.

But no, she wasn't going to think about that, nor the annoying habit her mother had of always questioning her judgement.

Just now she'd thought her mother would have still been asleep, only to be stopped on her way out the front door and given the third degree. Of course she was only a grown woman, not to mention a doctor of some years, who might have some idea whether it was a good idea to be jogging 'in her condition' as her mother had put it.

The fact was, she had been feeling great lately, wonderful even. And as long as she was feeling this way, healthy and strong and just plain good, then she was going to make the most of it and do the things she enjoyed while she still could. An early morning run was easily one of her favourite pastimes. It was a way to clear her mind, focus on the rhythm of her body and muscles, her feet on the ground, it left her feeling energised and ready to face another long day at work.

It was a clear, crisp morning - nice even for a Monday. She wasn't going to let her mother's lingering presence in her house or her thoughts ruin what would probably be the best part of a challenging day.

"Get into a program," she found herself telling a tense, drawn Dr Simmons a few hours later. "Get your life back together. Your record here was always exemplary, Alan," she cringed inwardly as she realised she'd slipped into past tense. "When you're ready to take on a new position I'll be happy to -"

"You'll have my resignation by noon," he interrupted her stiffly, getting to his feet.

She couldn't bring herself to blame him for the rebuff - she wouldn't have wanted to hear platitudes in his position, either. But that was all she had to offer him.

"I guess it's only the drug addicts around here who can get away anything," he said, looking angrily at the door, rather than face her. "A shame we don't all qualify for the special treatment."

Shocked, she stared at him long enough for him to reach the door. But she certainly wasn't about to let that go.

"You dropped the scalpel."

Simmons froze with his hand on the door.

"You dropped it and then you picked it up, right off the floor. Dr Hannah had to tell you to leave the room - you didn't even know you weren't sterile. What would have happened if you hadn't dropped it - what if you'd started cutting? Have you asked yourself that question?" There was no answer, which was really answer enough. She sighed. She wasn't House - there was no pleasure in this for her. "You need help," she finished, "And I can't have you working here while you get it."

"I didn't think anyone..."

"Hardly anyone knows just how close it was. It's only because the people in the room with you obviously have a great deal of respect for you, and they aren't talking."

"Well, that's something I guess."

Once he was gone she tried to put the encounter out of her mind and get back to work. It had been unsettling in more ways than one.

Turning to her computer she dismissed the PPTH logo screensaver with a flick of the mouse and started going through the email that had amassed over the weekend. A solicitous message from a drug rep went straight in the trash - she'd already told the guy no once in person and the thought of him sweet talking her over dinner was about as appealing as the substandard drugs he was peddling.

When the next email in the queue came up, it took her a moment to realise what she was looking at. There was no text, just an image. An image of her Head of Oncology, stretched out asleep on a couch - a very familiar couch, not that she needed visual evidence that this was House's doing. She didn't even need to look at the sender's address to know that.

The key feature in the picture was, after all, the hot pink toe nails Wilson's bare feet were sporting. There were even several attached close-up shots to confirm it.

She couldn't help laughing. Here, alone in her office - and especially not in the vicinity of the culprit himself, who would only take it as encouragement - she was free to find it funny.

House, she thought, grinning as she deleted the email, clearly had far too much time on his hands.

She supposed it was Wilson's turn to bear the brunt of House's boredom this week. Considering that this email looked to have been sent to every staff account in the hospital - of which there were hundreds - she realised she'd gotten off light last week.

She found herself wondering what exactly Wilson had done to provoke this. And... what she should do about it. She sighed, amusement fading fast.

House had been keeping his head down since she had announced her pregnancy, as much as he ever did. He hadn't caused any major dramas, at least. She would have liked to think he had consciously made the decision to act responsibly at a time when his (and her) behaviour was under close scrutiny. But she knew better than that. Partly it was circumstantial; he merely hadn't had any cases recently that required him to do anything too insane, destructive, or illegal. Partly, she also thought that he was reacting to all the attention. He was a private person who, as she'd told him herself on occasion, could dish it out but couldn't take it.

She'd been well aware that it was merely a grace period and wouldn't last forever, and now apparently House was ready to start making waves again with his usual disregard for consequences. It was a problem. Everyone in the hospital had seen this. If House was going to start acting up, people were going to look to her to see how she would react.

And there was no way to win in this situation.

If she brought him to heel - and succeeded - it would be because she was sleeping with him, and therefore had undue influence over him. Whereas if she let him get away with it, or simply couldn't control him, it would be for the exact same reason - because she was sleeping with him. Only in this case, people would assume that it was because he had undue influence over her.

The fact that she wasn't sleeping with him just made it that much more frustrating.

Frustrating.

Yes, that was the word for it, all right.

Later that morning she found herself on the fourth floor on her way back from the cardiology department and decided to detour past House's office. Assuming he was there, she could stop in and tell him to stop using the staff email network as a means of humiliating his friend.

When she arrived, she was presented with a fine picture of not one but two members of her staff hard at work.

Wilson was slumped down so low in his chair she could barely see his head over the back of it. House's chair was tilted far back, his feet up on the desk. Both of them looking extremely relaxed, entirely at leisure.

Poking her head in the door she demanded, "My God, do the two of you ever do any work?"

"Actually," House began, but she cut him off.

"Not you, I know how much work you do. It's the highly respected Head of Oncology over there I have to wonder about."

"The question you have to ask yourself," Wilson pondered philosophically, not moving other than to crane his head backwards to look at her as she remained hanging in the doorway, "Is which of us is a worse influence on the other?"

"Kind of a chicken and the egg scenario, though," House mused, echoing Wilson's tone. "We could be here for hours, locked in debate."

"We should get snacks," Wilson suggested seriously.

She shook her head in dismay, unable to smother her amusement. "You're like two kids who need to be separated in class."

"That's her way of saying she wants some 'alone time' with me," he interpreted for Wilson, complete with air-quotation marks. "Don't worry," he went on, addressing her now, "My friend Jenny here was just leaving."

"Oh no, I wouldn't want to interrupt your playdate. I just wanted to - wait. Jenny?"

Wilson shrugged. "I'm a girl. It's his new thing."

"I assume it has something to do with that email?"

"I'm a girl, and he wants everyone to know it. While conveniently leaving out the part where he got me drunk one night, waited till I passed out, and then assaulted me with nail polish and a camera. Hey, you wanna fire him? You can count on my vote."

She laughed. "I think the better question is, why did he have pink nail polish on hand in the first place?"

"Because red makes me look trashy," House said matter-of-factly.

She just rolled her eyes at that and prepared to duck back out of the room, because as entertaining as this was, she didn't have time to hang around all day.

"Listen," she said, "There's little point in telling you what you already know, but if you continue to use the staff email network as your personal playground, I'll... have to keep you inside at recess."

She got just five or six steps down the hall before he reached the door and called after her. "Hey!'

She turned back.

"Is that all?" he said, causing her to look at him questioningly. "You got distracted by all the witty banter, but is that all you had to say?"

She shrugged. "Well as long as this isn't the start of a prank war that's going to turn the entire hospital upside down, why would I care if you expose Wilson's nail polish fetish?"

Because this, she just now realised, was exactly what her response would have been before any of this happened between them. And so it was exactly what she was going to do now.

House of course was unfazed by her private revelation. "When what you should be worried about," he said, "Is whether I ever took pictures of you while you were sleeping."

She shook her head emphatically. "No."

"No?"

"I've got to get to a meeting. I'm busy," she hissed, mindful all of a sudden that they were in a very public place, standing in the middle of the hallway. "I don't have time to be wondering about what you may or may not have done to me in my sleep."

She walked away, sure he was smirking at her back. It was a joke, though, she told herself. He was just trying to rile her.

She told herself this several times as she reached the end of the hall and stood waiting for the elevator to arrive.

She had just returned from a working lunch with a few key members of the hospital's legal team where the main topic of conversation had been whether their asses were covered following the fiasco with Simmons over the weekend.

"How was lunch?" Marla said as she rose and followed Cuddy into her office.

"Great. Nothing like hearing the words 'no legal obligation' twenty or thirty times to really boost your appetite," she replied distractedly, as she rounded her desk and faced the piles of paperwork that seemed to amass whenever her back was turned for more than a few seconds. "Any messages?"

"Dr Wakefield called again to complain about the maintenance work that's been going on outside his office since last week. Gina from the main desk up on three wants to know if there's anywhere they can move the patients being bothered by all the maintenance work. Maintenance called to let you know they'll be at it till tomorrow, if not Wednesday. And your mother called," she finished, "Wanting to know where you keep the silver polish."

If the other messages had Cuddy rolling her eyes, this was by far the worst of the lot.

"Silver polish?" She stared at Marla blankly. "I don't even... have any silver. What can she possibly want to polish?"

"Should I call her back and tell her not to polish anything?" Marla asked mildly.

She rested her face in her palm and looked up at the older woman, wondering how pathetic it would make her if she said yes.

Her mother was driving her crazy. And it was only Monday.

"No," she said reluctantly, "I'll call her back."

"Dr Cuddy?" A voice from the open doorway got her attention then. She looked past Marla to see Brenda there, and acknowledged her with a look.

"He's doing it again," was all Brenda said. Then, having delivered her message, promptly turned around and left.

With an exasperated sigh, she checked her watch and got to her feet.

"I don't have time for this," she said to herself, even as she headed out.

"So I'll make that call for you?" Marla said.

She turned back briefly with a grateful smile. "Thank you!'

After all, she thought as she headed out into the clinic, House got to be childish on a regular basis - having her assistant run a little interference for her was hardly a crime.

The 'he' that Brenda had referred to was, of course, the overgrown infant himself. The 'it' being slacking off during his scheduled clinic hours.

He wasn't sleeping though, as she expected to find when she entered the exam room, nor was he even playing video games. He was just sitting, spinning idly back and forth on a stool.

"House," she said, coming in with hands on hips, "You can sit in here as long as you want, it won't count as time served unless you're actually seeing patients."

He kept turning a few seconds longer, then finally stopped and looked at her.

"About time you got here," he said. "I was getting so bored I was almost considering bringing one of the idiots from the waiting room in here just to keep me amused."

"What?"

"Close the door," he said.

"Why?"

She was instantly suspiciously. This wasn't how this usually went - he would be avoiding work, she would find him and bully him into doing it. They had the whole routine down at this point.

"Wanna try for a who, when, and where while you're at it?" He got to his feet and, reaching around her, pushed the door shut with the end of his cane.

"Still stuck on the 'why' over here," she remarked pointedly.

He didn't answer right away. As he returned to his seat he gave her one of his calculating looks. "You ran off before we could talk, earlier."

"I was busy. I'm still busy, so I really don't have time for whatever -"

"But you'll always make time to nag me about my clinic duty, so here we are."

"Right," she sighed. "Fine, you've got my attention, what is it?"

Again he didn't say anything and after a moment of looking at him expectantly she threw up her hands and turned to the door.

"You think it's a girl?" he said.

"What?" She faced him again.

"At dinner, you came up with one name, a girl's name."

Confused, she replied slowly, "Yeah... Because my grandmother's name was Abigail. So?"

"So, I once had a goldfish named Joe..."

She let out a short laugh. "Okay. You know what? Having a conversation shouldn't be a guessing game. If you'd like to share whatever problem you're clearly having right now, I'm listening. If not, then you can get off your ass and start seeing some patients, because I'm out of here."

"I want to name it," he said as soon as she finished.

She just blinked at him for a moment. "What?"

"The baby. I think I should do it. You're going to give it some stupid name..."

"Like one previously in use by a goldfish?"

"Poor kid doesn't deserve whatever you're going to come up with."

She frowned. "What's wrong with Abigail?"

"You owe me, remember? I was nice at dinner - you even said so yourself - and now I get something in return."

"We never agreed on the terms."

"Exactly, no terms, so I get to choose my reward."

"How about the term 'no way in hell'? Is that clear enough?"

"And now it starts to come out," he said in a superior tone. "Happy to have me around, aren't you, until something comes up you actually care about. Then it's strictly single parenthood."

She took a deep, calming breath, reigning in her frustration. "You can have a say, House. I want you to have a say," she ground out. "But I'm not letting you name this baby Joe or Elvis or something equally ridiculous just because you managed to sit through one lousy meal without directly insulting anyone. Except me, I might add."

His head cocked to one side thoughtfully. "So, what, we make a list, find something we both don't hate?"

"I imagine that's what normal people do," she drawled. "So it'll be a stretch for us, but I'm sure we'll figure something out. And now that we've got this terribly pressing issue out of the way I'm going to have to insist that you actually, oh I don't know, do your job maybe?"

He ignored that last part. "So what's on your list?"

"I don't have one yet," she told him, moving to the door again.

"Yes you do," he insisted.

Hand on the door she cast her eyes to the ceiling, knowing there was little point arguing. "Abigail," she recited dutifully, "Sarah -"

"Boring."

She frowned at the interjection, but continued. "I kind of like Georgia..."

"You do think it's a girl. Or you want it to be a girl. Or you already found out it's a girl, and just forgot to mention it."

"No, I don't know what it is. I just haven't thought of any boys names I like - girl names are easier to come up with." She shrugged. "I don't even know... whether I want to find out the sex beforehand at all."

"Oh come on, you don't want to wait."

"What's wrong with being surprised?"

He rolled his eyes. "It's still a surprise if we find out now. It's just sooner."

"Well anyway, there's no rush," she pointed out. "It's probably still a bit soon to tell. Wait till I have my amnio in a few weeks - I'll decide then."

"Not necessarily too soon. We might not be able to get a good enough look, but then again, we might."

"Now?"

"You get final say on the name - fair enough. I want this instead."

Suddenly a few things fell into place. She laughed knowingly. "Classic bargaining technique. Ask me something you know I'll say no to - just makes it harder for me to refuse your next request."

He started to pull the portable sonogram machine from where it stood in the corner, indicating the exam bed with a jerk of his head. "Lie down," he said.

She didn't move, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth as she thought about it. "It's too soon, we won't be able to tell," she protested weakly. Even in her own ears it sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as him.

"Oh but you want to know, don't you? Don't try to deny it - all that 'wanting to be surprised', 'I don't care what it is' crap..."

"I don't care."

"Just that it's healthy, right? Sure, that's what they all say. 'Girl's names are easier'," he recited mockingly. "Don't worry, my Dad's with you on this one."

"He's hoping for a girl? That's... sweet, actually," she said, bemused. "He wants a little granddaughter to spoil?"

"Something like that. Now kindly get over here."

Despite herself, she found herself grinning suddenly in anticipation as she finally moved, stepping over and sitting up on the exam table. Shaking her head at letting herself get caught up in his foolishness she said again, "It's too soon."

"No harm in looking."

He barely waited for her to get her shirt out of the way before squirting gel on her belly, impatient as he began moving the wand around. She joined him in looking eagerly up at the display as the images started appearing.

Her smile softened as she gazed, spellbound. It didn't seem to matter how many years she'd spent learning and practicing medicine, or how many times she'd witnessed or performed sonograms on other women - it all seemed different now. She was the woman on the table, and this was her baby, and somehow it was both more real and less real at the same time. Profound and deeply terrifying all at once.

She suddenly found herself blinking back moisture forming around her eyes and lifted her hands to wipe at them, laughing a little self-consciously. Hormones, she thought, were getting to be a real problem.

"Hey," he said, getting her attention. "What do you think?"

The wand had all but stilled on her stomach, she realised, and she looked back up at the screen.

"You seeing what I'm seeing?" he went on when she didn't say anything.

Another moment passed. "Yeah," she said. "There it is."

Despite what certain people might have had to say on the subject, she wasn't crazy about shopping. Since the wide majority of her wardrobe consisted of work attire, most of the time she saw shopping as a necessary task - because she of all people knew that appearances mattered. Her position being more visible than most in the medical field, she had to dress the part and that's all there was to it.

But she'd been good for hours now. She'd tolerated the Saturday crowds, she had a mass of shopping bags filled with the new clothes she needed - clothes for work, clothes that fit - and all without killing her mother, who managed to make the process of finding, trying, and buying somehow even more of a chore than usual.

Now that was all out of the way, though, and she was determined to do something she actually wanted to.

She found that even her mother's mutterings about the boutique prices were easy to ignore as she took her time wandering around the intimate little store, perusing shelves full of blankets and bibs and plushie toys, tiny little outfits, tiny little shoes and hats.

Every last thing was small and soft and adorable and she couldn't believe she'd waited till now to do this. She'd shopped for other people's babies, of course - friends, co-workers, her sister - but this was different.

She smiled as she looked through selections of achingly sweet size 000 clothes, from onesies to frilly dresses and sailor suits.

The permanent smile already fixed on her face widened as she took in a rack of cute little t-shirts, and one in particular bearing the slogan 'Born to be Wild'. She laughed softly to herself, thinking of House, how fitting it would be for any child of his. She was already trying to reign in the impulse to buy up the entire place, but this she simply had to have.

Like almost everything in the store, they came in a range of pastel colours - blue and pink, yellow and lavender. She reached for one in soft baby blue, and turned to show her mother.