Friend in need

"Come to tell me you told me so?" House asked as Nyx joined him.

"No," Nyx answered quietly. "Sure I could berate you and try to get you to try to get her back, but you don't really believe that you deserve to be happy with a woman. I could try to get you see things differently, but right now you're really not interested. You have something more important to deal with."

"Nothing I can do," House sighed. "He has been diagnosed and he is the oncologist: he knows all the treatments that there are. And I don't do hand-holding."

"He told you because he needs you," Nyx pointed out. "The real you. He doesn't want hand-holding, at least not from you. He wants someone who helps him fight. And fighting is what you do. He also needs someone who will look at all the treatments he knows with objectivity. He needs someone who isn't freaked out over the word 'cancer' but who still cares about him. He needs someone who will not give him false hope and all kinds of platitudes about miracles and such. He needs you, because you will tell him how it is, but you will not give up until it really is over."

"I don't know if I can be there for him," House said. "I wasn't there for Cuddy."

"Sure you were," Nyx countered. "Just not in the way she imagined she wanted. Yes, you failed at the hand-holding but you figured out what was wrong with her. She might have liked it better had you been able to sit by her and hold your hand, but it was much better for her and her daughter that you found out what was wrong and how to fix it. Hand-holding really is much over rated."

"I wasn't there for Wilson, either, with his brother," House tried. "Not the way he wanted."

"But you were there the way that he needed," Nyx insisted. "You were with him when he drove there and then when he drove back. So you didn't actually pat him on the back with words of encouragement when he went in, but was that really what you were there for? If he needed words of encouragement he could have told just about anyone else about his brother and he would have got exactly that: lots of words but no real support. You didn't give him words, but you were there. You even let him absorb his visit in peace on the drive back and only asked how it had gone the next day. That is what he needs now as well: support without platitudes. Platitudes he can get from anyone. But you are the only one who will see him still as Wilson and not the one with cancer."

"He has said often that when the C-word is said, then everything is suddenly about the cancer and not about you," House nodded. "Every conversation is about that, or will turn to that. Suddenly Cancer is your identity. You are no longer a mother or sister or father or a trained professional, you are just Cancer. He hates that even when he is just seeing it. I don't think he will hate it any less experiencing it; being the one with Cancer."

"No, I don't believe that he will like it," Nyx agreed. "That is why he needs you. As strange as it may seem, you always see the person behind the illness."

"Usually who and what the patient is, is relevant to the reason why he or she is sick," House pointed out.

"True," Nyx accepted. "But you don't over- emphasise it either. Most people will note the irony of an Oncologist having cancer – and they will probably march out the old belief that doctors die of their speciality."

"That's because people are stupid," House observed. "They only notice the cause of death when there is a coincidence like an Oncologist having cancer. Other times they take no notice so when another Oncologist has cancer they will remember the previous times and extrapolate from there. Mind you, cancer is not that uncommon among Oncologists but that has nothing to do with irony. Most doctors choose a speciality that is close to them: if someone close to you has died of cancer, you become an oncologist, heart decease and you become a cardiologist and so on. And that is why you may be genetically more likely to fall victim to your own speciality. Perfectly rational."

"And that is what Wilson needs," Nyx smiled. "Perfect rationalism. Your speciality."

"Are you suggesting that I may die by rationalism?" House smiled back.

"Not completely impossible," Nyx stated. "Though some of it may be rationalization and not rationalism. After all, you can rationalize almost anything."

"Are we now suddenly back with the 'I told you so'?" House asked. "Because I'm fairly sure you said you weren't going there."

"I'm not," Nyx denied. "I don't need to."

"I suppose you were vocal enough before," House pondered. "And not wrong."

"All she wanted was to be legal," Nyx pointed out. "Other than that, she was content. And you were friends – in a weird way, but then, your friendships are always somewhat weird."

"I broke that," House accepted. "She believed that there was at least trust between us and when I broke that, she left. She didn't even ask me why I had done it because it didn't matter."

"Not when trust was the real issue," Nyx agreed. "What your motivations were doesn't really matter because what it boils down to is that you didn't trust her to stay without compulsion so you took the choice away from her. She might have felt less betrayed had you just thrown away the letters but in addition to that you also lied to her face. There is no good explanation for that. Not even love."

"I don't know if I love her," House sighed. "Just that I miss her. And now I may lose Wilson, too."

"Stage two Thymoma isn't that bad as Cancers go," Nyx reassured him. "There are effective treatments and he knows them all. I wouldn't order the undertaker just yet."

"And did you get that insight from your Daughter?" House asked.

"I don't discuss death with Death," Nyx stated. "Besides, for her and I time is a very different construct than it is for humans. What is 'soon' for us may be an eon for you, or the other way around depending on the case."

"So Death and taxes are certain to come, but even knowing that, both may surprise you," House concluded.

"Yes, I think so," Nyx affirmed. "Though I don't know anything about taxes."