"House, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry."

Cuddy's words sounded fuzzy, even in the slightly echoing surrounds of the almost empty OR. House felt as if he'd taken too many Vicodin. All his reactions were slowed, the responses of his brain working as if in slow motion. Even his leg pain felt dulled, dulled in comparison to the tearing pain tightening across his chest. He vaguely wondered if he might be having a heart attack.

"She never regained consciousness," House said, repeating the last words the doctor had said to him.

House was sitting on a rolling stool. Jess's body was lying, inhumanly still on the table, covered up to her neck with surgical sheets. House knew what he'd see if he lifted them up. They'd worked for several hours on her, but finally her injuries, the blood loss, it was all too much for her heart. All in vain.

The room had no external windows, but a translucent panel in the ceiling told him that it was no longer daylight.

"I have to call her mother," House said blankly.

Cuddy stood a few steps away and House was glad she hadn't tried to touch him or comfort him. He didn't want to have to hit her and for some reason that felt like what would happen. He vaguely wondered why Cuddy was there instead of Wilson, but then realised that this task might just have been too much for his friend.

"No, you don't have to do that," Cuddy said softly. "The police told her. She's been out in the waiting area with a sister or a cousin or someone. The surgeon gave her the news and I think she's been taken home."

"Oh." House shrugged. That was good. One less thing he had to worry about.

"House…" Cuddy took a step towards him but House could see her shrink away when he looked up and met her eyes. Obviously he looked as desperately strange as he felt.

Cuddy stepped back again and held up her hands, as if House was a wild beast who may turn on her at any time. Which was perhaps fair.

"House," she said more quietly. "You've been in here for nearly an hour. They need to come in and get…things sorted out." Cuddy winced as she belatedly realised it had been a poor choice of words. "I mean, get her…cleaned up." Cuddy shook her head, and House wondered where her normal supreme ability to deal with difficult situations of any kind had disappeared to.

St Mary's Catholic Hospital didn't have an observation room perched above the OR. Instead he'd watched from a window at the side of the room as the surgery had taken place. Watched them work so hard to keep her living for him. He'd seen her heart, cradled in the surgeon's hand as he tried vainly to squeeze it back to life. He'd seen the blood, blood that had been protecting and feeding their baby, as it dripped to the floor. He could still see the weird shape of her left leg under the drape, evidence of the ortho's attempts to repair her broken bones.

When the surgeon had declared time of death House was briefly thankful that they weren't at Princeton Plainsboro, that it wasn't Chase's voice or someone else he knew that he'd forever connect with this. Then he'd had walked slowly into the OR. No one reprimanded him for breaching the sterile barrier. Instead they all avoided looking at him. Which was good, because if he'd seen the pity in their eyes he'd have cracked right then. A nurse had shuffled everyone out, lying crisp green drapes over Jess's mangled body, and left him alone with her.

It was too fresh though. She hadn't been cleaned up the way patients normally were for relatives. The intubation tube was still in her mouth. Her eyelids were taped shut. The sheets that had been pulled over to hide the terrible aftermath of the attempt to save her life were slowly soaking with her blood and viscera.

Their baby was little more than a stumpy collection of ever-dividing cells and had no way to live without its mother's life force. In fact, by New Jersey law it wasn't even considered a person. The other motorist would not be charged with its death. Just Jess's. House recalled his thoughts when he was just getting used to the news; he'd imagined holding a baby, but it wasn't just any baby, it was his child, part of him, and he remembered the sense that it was right.

House wondered how anyone could ever be punished for destroying someone's life. He thought Stacy had done it to him and he'd punished her as best he could. But now he knew different.

"…I'm here, I'll help you get through…"

Cuddy was talking, but her words were bouncing into House's ears and then straight out again, their meaning lost.

"…Wilson said you can…."

Meaning lost.

"…and your team…"

Meaning lost.

"…you can take some time…"

Meaning. Lost.

He had a picture in his mind from that morning. Jess had come out of the bathroom, smiling at him while he still lay in bed. She'd washed her hair and had her head wrapped in one of those towel turbans that women did. She'd turned on her side and showed him her stomach, asking him if she was showing yet. Which was ridiculous, it was far too early, but it had been one of those moments, one of those freeze-frame moments that you store in your head forever, ones you can take out later and recall in every detail.

Suddenly House realised things had changed. His feet were leading him away from Jess, out of the OR, and Cuddy's arm was around his waist. His face was wet. He didn't know how any of it had happened.

He didn't know how he could ever recover.

He pulled the ring out of his pocket, having pulled it from the plastic bag the nurse had put it in. He held it up to show Cuddy, not entirely sure why. "I wanted it to be forever. In sickness and in health," he said, not sure why he felt the need to verbalise his feelings. Cuddy just nodded and patted his arm consolingly.

So he did the only thing he could do. He put one foot in front of the other and walked. And breathed. And kept going.

.

.

The End (of this storyline)