Beautiful Lies

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Ch. 4

It had been three days. Sometime during the first night of detox, House lost all sense of time and place. All that existed in the universe was pain. Agony that rode in waves throughout his body, agony that made him wonder if Stacey and Cuddy hadn't been right in the first place to want to cut his limb off.

Somewhere in his consciousness he registered people coming in at intervals, depositing food in front of him, food that he didn't touch. How could you eat when you wanted to hurl your stomach up every minute? When all you taste in your mouth was bitterness?

There was nobody to offer him hot ginger. Nobody to hold his hand.

Why is it this bad? He wondered. The last time he'd detoxed, during the whole business with Tritter, he'd still been able to solve cases even at his worst. Now pain had misted his brain so much that he doubted he could recite the alphabet. He'd once described his pain as soul-sucking. Now it was beyond even that, it had gotten to the point that he'd begun to crave a gun to end his misery almost as much as he craved Vicodin.

Psychosomatic. The word floated into his black abyss, curiously enough sounding like Cuddy's voice. Of course. Cuddy had known. Hadn't she, years ago, when his pain was almost as bad as this, given him a placebo instead of the morphine he'd demanded? His pain was at least partially in his mind. And this—deprivation—of everything he loved in life was making it worse. He didn't have a case to occupy his mind, no music, no Cuddy.

I want her.

All his defenses were gone. He couldn't pretend anymore.

No, I need her. To be here. To take the pain away.

--

At some point, the door opened. House didn't look up, assuming it was just the intendant again. Until a voice spoke.

"House," it said softly.

He jerked his head up. He couldn't believe his eyes. Cuddy was standing in the doorway, her eyes filled with uncertainty.

"Hi," he managed.

She advanced. She was wearing jeans and one of his favorite shirts—one that, despite all his claims to the contrary, didn't have a particularly low cleavage—it clung to her curves favorably, and made her skin look luminous. She looked beautiful. When hadn't she looked beautiful?

She sat down beside him. She looked sad.

"Are you real?" he asked. Stupid question, he reprimanded himself immediately. She'd answer yes either way.

She looked even more pained at his question. "Yes," she said. She took his hand. She felt real. But then, she'd felt real before. "How are you?"

"Fine," he said. "Dandy. I was thinking of running a marathon later."

She raised a hand, and gently stroke the sweat from his forehead. He thought he'd test her.

"Would you sleep with me?" he asked bluntly.

Her lips curved upward. "Right now, or ever?"

"Right now looks good," he said.

Her smile broadened. "Then no."

"Ever?"

She didn't reply, but lowered her eyes slyly.

He sighed. "I wish I knew."

"Knew what?"

"If you're really here."

She stared into his eyes, and smiled sadly. "I guess you don't."

She planted a gentle kiss on his cheek, and stood up. Then he knew he'd hallucinated the whole thing.

She left.

--

"Cuddy," Wilson said urgently, bursting into her office. He has been doing this a lot lately, almost as much as a certain Diagnostician used to.

She raised her head expectantly. House has been detoxing for three days now. She desperately hoped that once he was clean, his problems would be gone. And he could come back to challenge and banter with her and normalcy could return to her life.

Now that Wilson made his dramatic entrance, he seemed at a bit of a loss as to what to say. House always knew what to say. Even at the times when he didn't say anything.

Stop thinking about House.

Hah. As if.

"What, Wilson?" She managed to sound annoyed, as though he was disrupting her in the middle of something more important. As though she wasn't waiting every minute of every day for his updates.

"House's…detox is going well," Wilson hedged. Cuddy's heart dropped to somewhere level with her foot. Wilson would never beat around the bush if it were good news.

"But…?"

"But he's still hallucinating."

The information hit her like a ton of bricks. She had all her hopes banked on the detox, that the Vicodin was the cause of everything and once he quit, he'd be okay. The fact that he was still hallucinating meant that the problem was deeper…perhaps irreversible.

Irreversible. Could there be a more terrifying word in the whole of English language? Irreversible meant that she'd lost her best doctor. It meant that she'd lost a friend, a soulmate…a lover, even if they hadn't slept together in twenty years. Irreversible meant he might as well be dead. It meant forever. No going back. Irreversible was what she had fought all her life, the reason she became a doctor.

"Cuddy?" Wilson said concernedly, after she'd been sitting speechless at her desk for a full minute.

She gathered herself as best she could. "Anything else?" She tried to say it dispassionately, but her voice cracked, betraying her.

"His pain…is getting worse. Than ever before. The psychiatrist says it's because he's been deprived of anything familiar in his environment. He wants someone to visit him."

"But…he's advised against that before," she stammered. She didn't know if she was capable of seeing House.

"Yes, because he didn't want anything to fuel House's delusions," Wilson said. Cuddy blinked. Wilson's whole demeanor had changed—he was slipping into cancer-patient mode! The whole let's-try-all-of-our-options-and-pretend-your-world-isn't-falling-apart thing. She knew it was unconscious, that Wilson couldn't help it. But she couldn't bear that he was doing this to her.

"Now he thinks it would be better for House if he had something to distract him, take his mind off his pain," Wilson finished.

Cuddy nodded. The psychiatrist's priorities had changed. He wasn't concerned with House's hallucinations anymore, because it looked like it was going to become a long-term thing. "I can't," she stated flatly. If she did, she might very well lose her own mind and end up in the hospital with him.

And the problem was, that option sounded appealing.

"I know," Wilson said hesitantly. "He might think he was hallucinating you anyway. I was thinking…someone who House knows he wouldn't hallucinate, someone who could occupy him with cases."

"Who?" Cuddy asked curiously.

Wilson allowed a small smile. "Taub."

Things look up next chapter as our favorite plastic surgeon comes to House's rescue! Ahaha. As always, keep those reviews coming!