Usually, Lisa Cuddy's phone didn't ring at midnight.
In fact, Cuddy's home phone rarely rang at all, because all business calls (and the calls from her boyfriend) went through her cell phone.
So of course, her drowsy mind came to the conclusion that someone who didn't know the rules had phoned her in the middle of the night.
Or, of course, someone who simply disregarded the rules.
"Hello?" Lisa Cuddy mumbled into the seldom used receiver, and was met with silence.
Perhaps her brain had just been playing tricks on her, waking her up in the middle of the night for a phone call that had never been, or perhaps-
"Cuddy?" a low voice said, and she recognized it, even in her half-awake state, to be Gregory House's.
"Yes?" she whispered, suddenly afraid. House was furious with her; there was no reason for him to call in the middle of the night other than…
"Are you okay?' she asked softly, bracing herself for the answer. It never came, though, and she waited another minute for him to say something.
"House?" Her voice was the only thing she could hear in the silent, almost winter night, and she was sure he could hear her careful, shallow breaths through the phone.
"I'm not… hurt, or anything." he said after a pause. She let out a sigh of relief, and her body relaxed against the bed.
And then-
"But Wilson is."
And her fear turned back on, her heart beating faster and her hair standing on edge.
"Where are you?" she asked urgently, and the answer came soon after, the words stumbling out of his mouth in such a tone that her heart broke for the pain he must have been feeling.
"At the hospital." And then came the most painful pause she had ever been through in her life, and she willed herself to keep breathing. "Wilson tried to kill himself."
A gasp escaped her lips, but her brain put words in her mouth.
"I'll be right there." she said, maintaining a façade of control through the churning of her insides. "And House," she paused, and she could now hear his heavy breathing in the background. "I'm sorry."
***
Her hair wasn't done, her make-up was smeared, and her clothes were not up to her usual standard, but when one's friend has tried to kill himself, one generally does not put much store in appearances.
Her miraculously sneakered feet carried her to the room that she now knew to contain James Wilson.
Tears tried to fight their way out of their ducts, but her determination kept them in.
She opened the door, and was greeted by what had to be one of the worst sights in her life, worse, even, than House lying in a hospital bed, comatose because of his infarction.
The acerbic bastard diagnostician stood at Wilson's bedside, stroking his best friend's hand.
Cameron was on the other side, and she had obviously been crying quite heavily.
House, on the other hand, simply looked numb, and that she understood; that he had experienced so much pain he couldn't feel anymore wasn't a foreign concept to her.
Not after her miscarriages and Joy.
She silently walked up to him and rested her hand on his forearm.
He didn't shrug it off.
"What happened?" she asked softly, looking up at the diagnostician.
It was Allison Cameron who answered.
"I took him to my hotel." she began quietly, looking down at the floor. "I got him a room. I went back to the hospital, to collect my letter of recommendation from House. I went to the grocery store, to get some food for my suite. I cancelled my flight. I went to the spa, for a massage. I got back to the hotel around ten o'clock, after going for dinner with an old friend, and I went into my room. Then I remembered the cake I had bought for Wilson. I went to his room, and knocked on the door, but no answer came. I had a room key, though, and I thought I would just slip in and put it in his fridge. I found him-" She had to stop and take a breath, before continuing. "I found him in the living room, with a gun at his temple. I did the first thing I thought of. He was about to, to pull the trigger. So I leapt at him, and… it went off. Angled so it just missed his heart and went through his right kidney. I called an ambulance. I called House while we drove over. He called you when we knew Wilson was stable."
Cuddy looked at House, for confirmation, but he just looked at Wilson, his fingers still absently tracing a pattern on the oncologist's hand.
There was a question hanging in the air, a question that demanded to be asked every time someone tried to commit suicide: you didn't have any idea?
But she knew the answer.
The look on House's face gave it all away.
No one had seen it coming, not this soon, but to say that it was a surprise James Wilson had tried to kill himself would be a lie.
Someone had once said to her that Wilson was the saddest man in New Jersey.
And here was the proof that perhaps, he was.
"He should be waking up soon." Cameron said, breaking her out of her thoughts. "The anesthesia from the surgery should be wearing off. We were really lucky; the bullet was a small caliber and didn't do too much damage." She didn't bother to mention the fact that if they hadn't been lucky, James Wilson would likely be dead.
After all, he had pulled the trigger; if Cameron hadn't thrown herself at him…
House couldn't stop dwelling on these things.
His mind was hazy, and he kept going back to the moment when he had received the call from his former employee, the call that had silenced his bitter, brooding mind, all thoughts grinding to a standstill as he heard the magic word, suicide.
Never before had he truly realized how much Wilson meant to him, never before had he realized how much the man was a part of his life.
Even the attempt at suicide had rent a burning hole in his chest, and that hadn't done anything to sooth the wound of his continued failure with Lisa Cuddy.
He didn't know what he would have done if his best friend had actually succeeded in killing himself, but there was a high chance that he would have been dead twenty-four hours later.
It pained him, thinking about what must have been going through Wilson's head, what had driven him to such a drastic solution, and he didn't want to think about it, didn't want to feel so many intense emotions.
He had finished his crying a while ago, but he was numb; he barely registered Cuddy's presence beside his body, could barely hear the softly spoken words of Allison Cameron, couldn't move a muscle, the pain in his leg dulled from the crushing burden of why that had fallen onto his chest.
He was lucky the worst of the blow had been dealt with, for all he could feel now was a strange dizziness, a separation from his body, his mind floating high above the body that was shakingly standing beside James Wilson's bed.
The coward's way out, he had always thought of it, and now, the man who had always blamed him for running away from problems had tried to commit the biggest evasion that someone could.
Never had Wilson mentioned suicide, never had he talked about the small handgun he had purchased years ago, aside from a small comment about self defense, never had he seemed to be deeper into his depression than the average person.
Perhaps Amber Volakis would know, if she could tell him everything that he had whispered to whatever was left of the person she had been, late at night, just loud enough to be heard through the vents.
Wilson had always been a pillar beside House, shaky at times, perhaps, but always there, even through weddings and divorces, arrests and vomit, death and delusions.
Perhaps his own death was the only thing that could separate James Wilson from the savage black hole that was Gregory House.
He would wake up soon, and the diagnostician didn't know what to say to his best friend, not after something so ridiculously…
He couldn't even come up with a good word for it.
He felt a hand on his arm, and he turned to see that it was Cuddy's; she looked up at him with a mixture of shock, sympathy, guilt and sorrow.
He didn't remove his hand from its position on Wilson's, but he pulled Cuddy into a hug, and she sobbed into his chest, as his free hand rubbed her back soothingly, his appendages on autopilot as his mind whirled around theories.
Unlike when Lawrence Kutner had killed himself, there had been a witness, and she had seen the entire affair, preventing it from ending up like the event that had likely triggered his mental breakdown.
But that meant that there was no questioning to be done, no desperate theorizing about what had really happened.
He had no idea how long he had been standing by his friend's bed, it could have been hours, it could have been minutes.
His left leg was starting to hurt; he had been leaning on it to take the pressure off of his injured thigh, but he was vaguely aware of a slight shaking in his one good leg.
Cuddy seemed to have noticed it to, for she began to guide him into the seat off to the side, a seat meant for friends and family of patients, something House was not used to being.
"You need to sit down." she said, and he nodded briefly, his eyes glassy and blank.
She sat down next to him, Cameron brought another seat to sit next to them, and Lisa Cuddy grabbed Gregory House's hand, interlocking their fingers, placing them on the arm rest between them.
And he looked at her, a tear stubbornly forming in his eye, before letting her rest her head on his shoulder, as the trio waited for Wilson to wake up.
It's strange, how much one's priorities can change in the course of twenty-four hours, but suddenly, the arguments that they had been having about who loved who seemed petty and insignificant when compared to what had happened to the brown-eyed, boy-faced oncologist.
***
Cameron didn't know how long she had been in the room, but the beeping of machines alerted her to changes in Wilson's brain activity, and this lifted her out of the haze she had been in.
She slid herself off of the chair, and walked over to him, seeing his brown eyes opened just slightly before closing.
She gave him a brief check-up before walking back over to House and Cuddy, who were both asleep and resting on each other, Cuddy on House's shoulder, House on Cuddy's head.
She thought, with a small smile, that for all of their differences, their conflicts, their insults and their misunderstandings, that the two doctors really fit together.
They had a casualness to their friendship that could be eliminated in an instant, but rarely did they lose the playfulness in their relationship that everyone in the hospital could indentify, his crude remarks about her body, her well placed shots about the handicap that she had helped create.
Until now.
She had heard the rumours, had seen them together, and now, she had heard House's take on the whole situation, and she could tell that for once, House was allowing his emotions to surface, to the point that he was really trying to do something about it.
As much as she was aware of House's caustic nature, Cuddy was a woman who could put up with his crap, something that she had never been able to do.
Her infatuation with him had been understandable, after all, she was a damaged woman, and her compensation for that was to fix other people.
When she had set eyes on Gregory House, she had seen his pain, and was drawn towards it; his tortured view on life more attractive than any physical feature (although it didn't help that he was damn sexy).
Every crack, every deformation, every missing piece was something she needed to fill in; she gave him words of encouragement, she tried to fill him with her positive outlook.
But of course, being highly intelligent, he was able to see through her efforts, and he soon discovered her motivations.
He tried to let her down easy, in a rare moment of humanity, but even his version of gentleness broke her heart, for what young woman wants to hear that they don't love, they need?
She grew up, maturing into someone who wasn't afraid to fight for what was right for the patient, a woman whose morals guided her decisions.
She saw Chase torture himself over the woman he had killed, she began a friends-with-benefits relationship with him, and eventually, fell for the romance that he had given her, a routine that she would never have gotten from Gregory House.
She moved on, leaving her place in the diagnostics team to be a senior attending in the ER, a place where many broken people came to be patched up, a job that she was only too happy to do.
Yes, people died there too, but they often didn't have a recognizable face, nothing to attach her compassion towards, much easier to be objective towards than a young boy who still had a voice, one who could tell her his hopes and dreams.
It always hurt her when they died, but House was right, attachment rarely gave her anything good, not when they died or met a more horrible fate.
She stitch up wounds, gave fluids to victims of dehydration, and was generally busy.
But never was she able to lose the pull of House, never was that connection severed, never was she able to go a day without being affected by some way by the world famous bastard.
Even when her relationship with Chase had reached its high point, House was always there in the shadows, and when she had found the ring in the sock drawer, he had provided a convenient excuse.
Of course she still had feelings for him; he wasn't the sort of person to just get over.
And yet, when she had discovered Chase's secret, she had immediately blamed him, not fully dwelling on the fact that her husband had killed someone.
He did corrupt everyone he met; there was no denying that he had an effect on all the people he came into contact with.
Even through his faults, she wanted to improve him.
Even through her anger at him, she felt empathy, and perhaps that was where she had gone wrong.
If she had just been able to remove herself from his gravitational pull sooner, maybe she could have escaped without a broken heart.
She knew that he had difficulty acting properly, and that he often couldn't do what was best for other people, but she still believed that he could try, and his stunts over the years had angered her, to the point that his games with Taub and Thirteen had been the last straw.
She didn't know if he had really been toying with the patient's life, but that was what it had felt like to her, and her parting words reflected that.
Seeing him on the bench, a week later, had done nothing to curb her compassion towards him, and so, on the last day she was supposed to be there, she had been drawn into his field again, one last time.
She didn't regret sleeping with him, not the act itself.
He had been sweet, incredibly tender, and had left her with a sense of satisfaction she regretted to say Robert Chase never had.
But what had happened to Wilson, that had most certainly been her fault.
The chain of events from the kiss she had given him had led Wilson to put a gun up to his temple, and while she had saved him from himself, she had been the one to set the act up.
She had saved him, though, and that was all that mattered.
At least, that was all that should have mattered.
But she was a feeling person, and all that she felt at the moment was guilt.
She tapped her former boss lightly on the shoulder, after giving Wilson a few minutes to get his doubtlessly jumbled thoughts together, and the tap, of course, didn't rouse House in the least.
It did, however, wake Cuddy up, and she gave him the kind of look that asked a thousand questions.
"He's awake." she whispered to the older woman.
"Wilson's awake." Cuddy whispered into House's ear, and he woke up immediately; whether it was a reaction to her words or her presence was unclear.
House blinked his eyes a few times quickly, and lifted his head off of Cuddy's, before slowly getting up, reaching into his pocket for a bottle of medication and swallowing a few pills before making his way over to Wilson's bed.
He was nervous, Cameron could tell that much.
And for good reason.
She had no idea what to say to the man, she had simply taken on the role of doctor and given him a check-up, before stepping aside for his best friend to take over the first conversation.
She had seen many suicide attempts in her career at the ER, but never before someone she had known.
And that, of course, made it all the more tragic.
It was hard enough not to be affected by the myriads of strangers that came through the hospital doors, but seeing James Wilson, resident House enabler and advice man, in a hospital bed, after trying to kill himself, hit an area of herself that she hadn't been in familiar terms with since the death of her first husband.
She chuckled sadly to herself; at this rate, she was going to have as many marriages as the man lying before her.
House had finally made his slow way to Wilson's bedside, and he was now leaning over the oncologist's face, obviously trying to find words to say.
"You idiot." he said finally, and a tear fell off of his face onto the man's nose, and Wilson half-heartedly wiped it off. "You complete idiot. You complete and total idiot." He continued to mutter about Wilson's utter idiocy, before the man in question raised a shaky hand.
House's eyes widened and he fell silent, waiting for his best friend to speak.
"There wasn't anything else I could do." he said mournfully, and House continued to stare at him, before Wilson looked away in shame.
"There was always something else you could have done." House said quietly. "Always something better than ending your own life. Life is all we have. Life is all we're going to get. I know I've nearly lost mine more than I can count, but you… you're worth something. You shouldn't have to have sunken this low."
Wilson didn't say anything, and looked down at his chest.
"We were lucky." he continued, still looking at his best friend. "Cameron leapt at you when she saw the gun at your head. It just missed your heart and entered through your kidney. We were able to get you into surgery on time, and not much damage was done. You'll have to take it easy for a while… and I'm not letting you out of my sight. I'm serious. I can't take any more drama right now, what with…well, it's probably not good for you to think about everything that's been going on. You should… just rest. I can bring you something to eat, I'm sure you don't want to suffer through hospital food as well as an internal injury. Although you are a HUGE idiot, so maybe I will let you suffer. If you do something like this again…"
Wilson laughed lightly.
"What?" House asked, narrowing his eyes at the man.
"You're usually the one on the bed, me telling you… not to be an idiot."
"Yeah, I get it, reversal of roles, how ironic, yadda yadda yadda… Promise me that you'll never try to kill yourself again."
"House…"
"Promise me." Cuddy could hear the intensity in House's voice, and looking over at teary-eyed Cameron, she was sure that she could hear it too.
Wilson was House's better half, without him, she was unsure of how well he would function.
"I can't…"
"I've been here for over twelve hours, worried SICK about you. You never talked to me about killing yourself, not once! I would have helped!"
"No you wouldn't have." Wilson said sadly, giving him a small smile. "You would have told me that I was being too dramatic, that I needed to get a grip and stop whining about my problems."
"I would have known that you were serious." House replied, regarding his best friend darkly. "I would have done something. I wouldn't have done it well, but I would've done something. I wouldn't have let this," he said, gesturing to Wilson's body. "Happen. I would have gotten you help, I would have watched you twenty-four hours a day until you gave up the idiotic notion that you couldn't do anything but end your own life."
Wilson's eyes teared up, and he rolled over to look at his friend.
"Seriously?" he asked, hopefully.
"Seriously." House replied, and he reached over for Wilson's hand, and the oncologist looked at his best friend with incredulity.
"House…?"
"Shut up. I'm only going to say this once, so you better listen." Wilson turned his full gaze to House, and the older man took a breath before trying to continue.
"I love you," he finally said, looking at an incredibly surprised Wilson solemnly. "In some twisted, brother-I-never-had kind of way, and if you died, I'd probably try to off myself, and you know how much that would affect Cuddles over here. And Cameron too. Oh hell, and Chase and Foreman and the rest of the ducklings."
Wilson looked around and saw Cuddy regarding him forlornly. Cameron had left a few minutes ago, sensing the arrival of a House/Wilson/Cuddy moment.
Cuddy walked over to his bedside, and stood by House, surprising him by taking his other hand, just like they had stood before Wilson had woken up.
"Wilson, if you ever feel the need to do something like this again, you can talk to me." she said gravely, looking him in the eye. "I'm always there to listen, even if I brush you off because I know you're going to try to convince me to jump House or something." House squeezed her hand unexpectedly, and she felt a tingle travel up her spine, though she attributed it to the emotions she was feeling towards their trio.
"When you get out of here, we're all going to go to the apartment and eat Chinese food and watch old movies from our college days, okay?" House said, trying to crack a smile, but failing. It was an unusual enough expression, but in the circumstances, it had become nearly impossible.
Wilson nodded, and House pressed his hand, before removing his.
"We'll let you get some rest." Cuddy said, walking away from the bed.
House followed, sparing one last glance at his friend, before walking out of the room with Cuddy, still holding her hand.
Wilson smiled sadly. He didn't know what had happened to the two since he had last seen them, but something seemed to have changed.
He wanted more than anything for his two best friends just to be happy.
And if they could just accomplish that, without any of their idiocy, then perhaps there was hope for Wilson.
Perhaps he could get over the depression that seemed to follow him wherever he went, and perhaps he could finally let Amber go.
But there was one thing for sure, after hearing House (House!) say that he loved him, he wasn't likely to try to commit suicide again.
Not when he had realized how much the man really cared for him, and how much he really was trying to change.
He slipped easily back into sleep, thoughts of love and life drifting around his head.