The next few days passed with Samantha fairing quiet well with maintaining a level of professionalism. House seemed to be terrorizing everyone on her staff and enjoying it, and still throwing little remarks her way but she coped quite well. She had even found the courage to call Foreman and apologized.
Samantha made her rounds, knowing after lunch she would have to come face to face with House alone in her office for his one on one and hoped that she could continue to ignore his sexual jargon and jabs about her relationship with Foreman. She had just finished a pre-discharge order when her cell phone rang.
"Dr. Brady,"
"Hello, beautiful," Foreman murmured, "how's my girl?"
Samantha felt a flicker of annoyance race through her at being referred to as his girl, but she pushed it down. "I'm good. And you?"
"Good," he answered, getting right to the point, "Look, I was hoping we could have lunch together today. I could pick you up, take you to that little café you love…"
"Sure, sounds great," Samantha answered, forcing herself to sound more cheerful than she felt. "I can be free in half an hour."
The truth was she hadn't been feeling well. She knew that she hadn't really been taking proper care of herself lately, working too many doubles on not enough sleep and rarely eating, so of course she wasn't going to feel well. She actually felt really weak, but pressed on because in some weird way her work was all she really had.
"Good, I love you baby."
Samantha hung up without responding. She wasn't going to lie to him. Foreman deserved better than that. In fact, he probably deserved a lot better than her. With a sigh, she finished the discharge papers for the patient and basically killed time until her secretary announced Foreman was on his way in. Samantha stood and prepared herself to see him for the first time in three months.
When he walked through the door, Samantha couldn't deny that the sexual attraction was strong as ever. In fact, just seeing him again seemed to awaken all her sexual feelings. She allowed him to kiss her, and maybe she even kissed him back a bit.
"You look great," He murmured, kissing her hair. "ready to go?"
Samantha nodded, breathing in his cologne. He smelt good as always, smelling of Safari and Ivory, and interesting and pleasurable mix. But those feelings could be dangerous. She wasn't prepared to throw herself full fledged back into a relationship with him until she could figure out what had went wrong for her the first time. It was deeper than just not being ready for marriage. But she had yet to figure out what it was.
The pair made small talk as they drove to the restaurant and Foreman could feel Samantha was guarded. All he had done was asked her to marry him, not insisted that she have his child. He couldn't understand how that had completely wrecked their relationship. Even as he took her arm and lead her to their favorite table he could feel her resisting him. Once they were seated, he decided to confront her about it.
"Sam, what's going on," he asked, taking her hand in his. "You're purposely distancing yourself from me. What have I done so wrong?"
Samantha sighed. It was moments like this, that she felt like she was being a total idiot by not jumping right back into his arms. Foreman was a giant teddy bear, gentle, and loving. "I just don't want to hurt you Eric." She admitted, "I don't want to just jump back into dating you and pretend nothing happened. I need to figure out just what went wrong."
Foreman sighed. She did have a point, and he suspected that part of the breakdown in the relationship was due to the stress he was under when he was having so many problems with House. Cuddy had even told him that he was becoming House, so maybe that was also the reason why the relationship had come to a screeching halt.
From that point on he focused their conversation on other things. By the end of the lunch date, Samantha seemed more relaxed and like old self, and for the first time in a long time, Foreman felt hope.
Even the ride back was less strained, and she even allowed him to kiss her, really kiss her, and promised to see him again later that night.
Samantha even felt a bit of renewed hope. Maybe she and Foreman would be okay after all. She allowed the possibility of actually marrying him, and bearing his children, and even being happy with him, until death do them part. However, those thoughts were soon forgotten when she opened the door and saw House sitting behind her desk, shuffling through her doors,
"You're late," He said, propping his feet up on her desk.
Samantha bit back a smile as she set her purse down on a filing cabinet. "last time I checked, I was the attending doctor, and you were my patient." However once the words were out of her mouth she felt as if all the blood drained from her face, and the next thing she knew, everything was black.
When she opened her eyes again, House was cradling her in his arms, staring at her. "And the last time I checked, the attending doctor didn't chose to have a seizure to avoid me."