Chapter 6: Ah Get Born, Keep Warm
Rachel Cuddy had always been a headstrong child. This singular feature of her personality was most probably a remnant from the difficult circumstances surrounding her birth and the first few perilous days of life.
Rachel had not been breathing regularly when she was born. Her frightened, teenage mother, assuming her baby was stillborn, left Rachel on the floor of an abandoned tenement building after covering her with a winter coat out of respect for the tiny life she had carried inside her but now was no more.
But true to what would become her most distinguishing attribute, Rachel did not die. Instead she tenaciously clung to this new, harsh existence. She wailed. She howled. And someone heard her.
She was found. She was made warm. She was fed. And she stayed alive, surviving long enough for Lisa Cuddy to find her and carry her away from the homeless woman who had rescued Rachel but no longer had the means to care for the infant.
In a way, Rachel had hit the ground battling for her very life. And she seemed to have been fighting ever since.
Not that this was a negative trait when one was adopted into the Cuddy clan. Within that circle of the council fire run exclusively by the overbearing female members of that family, having a pugnacious character was not simply an asset. It was a necessity if one was going to avoid being emotionally steamrollered by their nearest and dearest.
As soon as Lisa Cuddy brought her home, Rachel waged war with her mother on nearly every score a young child can. From the first, she asserted herself as an individual in her own right, fighting diaper changes and being fed. She even fought back sleep, waking Cuddy in the middle of the night merely because she could.
It seemed that her early brush with death made her more aware of the finite quality of this life and she simply didn't want to miss out on anything just because her mother needed a few hours sleep.
But the one aspect of her mother's life that Rachel had always shown the most opposition to had been Lisa's choice of male companions. Lisa Cuddy tended to choose boyfriends according to how much she could control them and boss them about.
That was until the day she'd brought home Gregory House.
From the very first, little Rachel experienced what was for her the closest thing to love at first sight for she found in House a true kindred spirit.
House's gruff exterior could not hide the purity and sensitivity of his heart from the child's astute gaze. And like Rachel, House had always been a fighter.
House too, from the time he'd been born, had hit the ground fighting. But unlike Rachel, the young Greg House had not fought merely to be noticed by a workaholic mother or to gain the attentions of other boisterous family members.
No, House's battles had been singularly different. Waging his war against an abusive father and an uninvolved mother, Greg had to fight, not just at the beginning of his life but throughout its entirety. Survival, not attention, was his main objective and if House had ever concerned himself with looking back, he might have marveled at the fact that he was somehow able to endure the many beatings to finally reach adulthood, albeit with countless bruises, broken bones and bloodletting along the way.
House was an old campaigner who had been dealt more than his fair share of severe blows and pain. Likewise the boy who fought back grew into the man who continued to do so as House stood up against all manner of injustice, as a doctor and in his personal life.
For these attributes and more, Rachel Cuddy had taken an instant liking to him. By the same token, House nursed a soft spot for the little girl who had a recognizably obstinate spirit. He'd taken to her just as she'd taken to him despite his deflections and assurances to the contrary. Rachel and House formed an early and unbreakable bond that was not to be severed, not by her mother's callous breakup with him, not by his subsequent forced exile, not even by Cuddy's forbidding Rachel to ever mention House again.
Here once more, Rachel showed the stubbornness that defined her character. For once she had embraced House her heart simply would not let him go.
At last, after so many long months, her faith in him had been rewarded. House had come back. She saw him standing across from her grandmother's house. She ran to him. But before she could speak to him, a terrible thing had happened.
Her moment of joy at seeing him again took a sudden, terrifying turn. What was more frightening still was that after that brief glimpse, House had been lost to her all over again. And no one, not her mother, her aunt or her grandmother would tell her what had happened to him.
Where had he gone? Why couldn't she see him? No one would tell her.
Everything in Rachel's young life had taken on both a frightening and confusing overtone. A few days afterward, she remembered little about the accident itself, just bits and snatches of sound and emotion; the cries of her mother, aunt and grandmother from the living room, the euphoria at seeing House again, splashing through puddles as she ran toward him, a blaring car horn and House's face, her pirate king's handsome face contorted in fear and agony.
Rachel knew that wherever he was she had to see him, even if it was only once more.
Her mother threatened punishment and ordered her from the room when she talked with her grandma Arlene. Rachel knew instinctively by their hushed tones as she exited that the subject of conversation was House.
She crept close to the door of her bedroom at her grandmother's house so she could listen to the heated discussion. Rachel could hear the tone as well as most of the words thanks to the angry, raised voices. Her mother was saying she wasn't sure if she could go while her grandmother insisted Lisa do so.
The next day, Rachel's mother took her leave without an explanation. Cuddy's only words to her daughter were her insistence that Rachel mind her grandma until she got back and then they would make the two-hour drive to their own home before dark.
The child knew this was her last chance. House was somewhere nearby and once they left to go home, her mother would make sure she would never see him again. And the idea that she might never see her brave pirate king was set to break her innocent child's heart.
Lisa Cuddy had not been gone for more than five minutes when Rachel approached her grandmother.
"Grandma? Where's mama gone?"
"She . . . she had to run some errands," the older woman said sadly. "She'll be back. Are you feeling okay? Is the booboo on your head hurting?"
"It's fine grandma. Grandma? Please? I wanna see House."
Arlene looked at Rachel, a shocked expression flitting across her features. She let out a deep sigh. "I know honey. But your mama said . . ."
Rachel felt the tears come into her eyes. "Please bubba," she said, using the Yiddish name specifically intended to melt her grandmother's heart. "You said last night. I heard you tell mama that House saved me, saved my life. Please bubba. I wanna see him."
Tears had pooled in Arlene's eyes too. "I know you do bubbala." She opened her arms wide and Rachel walked into her grandmother's warm embrace. "And you will. Your mother said you needed to be kept away from him. But your mother's ferblunjit. Just plain ferblunjit."
Arlene gave her granddaughter another quick squeeze before she stood up saying, "Well come on! Mach shnel! Get your coat and let's go."
Rachel did as her grandmother bade and by the time she reached the door, Arlene was already standing there, her coat over her shoulders and her car keys in her hand, ready to go.
"You must promise me something. You must promise me that you will keep this a secret just between us. You must NEVER tell your mother that we went to see House. Promise?"
"I promise bubba. I promise on Davy Jones locker and all the scalawags from hell that ended up there."
"Okay, who taught you that? Who taught you to say hell?"
"House."
"Should've known. Only the biggest shaygets of them all would teach you to swear. Now c'mon before your mother comes home and tries to stop us or I come to my senses and change my mind."