House sat on the table, with Rachel in the stroller next to the table, because this was just an evaluation, not a real session.
Carla looked at him.
"I have two sets of bad news. One of them is worse than the other. Which do you want to hear first?"
"The better one, I guess."
"You can't do anything but keep it at this level of strength until you get your pain under control. Keeping going like this is cruel and unusual punishment, and you haven't even done anything."
House reached down, as Rachel started fussing, and picked her up, holding her against his shoulder.
She was really getting big…
"What's the worse news?"
"It's about Cuddy."
House stiffened slightly.
"I can't tell her this, because I know it'll affect how hard she tries… but I'm not sure how much more improvement she's going to get."
"She falls, using the walker. It seemed like she was ready for it, but…"
"I know. I made a mistake with that, House. I'm sorry."
House sighed, and nodded.
"You should tell her."
"You think she should hear it from me?"
House snorted, "no."
"Then you might want to be the one who tells her."
"She doesn't know I'm talking to you on a regular basis."
Carla frowned.
"What?"
"I didn't tell her about the PT. She's not at the hospital, she always calls me on my cellphone because I'm never in my office anyway, the kids know not to tell her, and Wilson doesn't know I come."
"Why haven't you told her?"
"Because I'm looking after Rachel. Because I'm helping her. Because she gets put off if someone tries too much to take care of her. She doesn't want someone who thinks she's some damsel in distress."
"House, she's known you since you were in med school, she's not gonna think you're that kind of guy," said Carla, tone flat.
House shrugged.
Rachel fussed.
House sighed, and held her out in front of him.
"Hey, say hi to Carla."
He handed her to the other doctor, who smiled, taking her.
"Well aren't you getting big?"
Rachel waved her arms and legs, excitedly, then put her hand in her mouth and sucked on it.
House snorted.
"You should tell her," he said, getting off the table and pulling a teething ring out of the leather bag, "she has a right to know what she's fighting for."
"Are you still coming?"
House shrugged, "Rachel isn't getting any lighter, and the pain's down some since the muscles have been getting stronger. I don't want it to atrophy again, and I don't have to deal with someone who wants me to do cheesy mind tricks to try to keep my morale up. Yeah, I'll keep coming."
"Make another appointment with Marian. Okay? Talk to her. Because what you're on now isn't helping enough."
House nodded, taking his gurgling baby back from the grey-eyed woman.
He stopped, cold, and Carla instinctively put her arms back out in case he dropped Rachel.
He didn't, though, just shook his head, and set Rachel in the stroller.
"What?" asked Carla, "spasm?"
House shook his head, "I just thought of her as my baby. In my head, she's always just been Cuddy's baby. But… I just… thought of her as mine. Mine and Cuddy's."
Carla smiled.
"Ah, the wonders of parenthood without marriage. Just wait until age two. Then you'll be wishing she was still just Cuddy's baby—that's what happened when Marian had Aaron."
House snorted.
*
Cuddy came out of the PT lab, using the walker, expression defiant.
House stood, putting Rachel in the stroller next to him, and they started to move towards the exit of the hospital.
Cuddy fell.
House stopped, kneeling by her.
She started to cry, and he knelt, utterly taken aback.
Lisa Cuddy didn't own tear ducts, as far as he knew.
But he hesitantly reached forward, touching her shoulder.
She scooted close to him, and buried her face in his shoulder, wrapping her uncooperative arms around his chest.
He sighed, and awkwardly patted her on the back.
She cried.
So did Rachel.
House sighed again, and looked at the ceiling.
*
They finished turning Cuddy's room into a nursery and Rachel started sleeping through the night again.
6:39
9:27
11:51
2:48
5:14
House sat up, rubbing his face, and looking over at the woman next to him.
She smiled, and reached up, laying her hand along the side of his face, as best she could with her arm still not cooperating all the way.
7:53
*
House pushed the stroller into the differential room, and sat down, watching his team.
They all seemed to have taken fairly well to their misanthropic boss cooing over a baby.
Well, not cooing.
Never once had the syllable "coo" exited his mouth.
Well, except, in saying Coumadin, or something.
Wilson looked up, as House came in, carrying Rachel on his left hip.
"Yes?" he said, before looking at his friend, then, "you look cheerful."
House sat down on the couch, and handed Rachel a red, yellow and blue teething toy shaped vaguely like a rocket ship.
"Yeah," he said, looking at his friend with a grin, "I am."
Wilson's eyebrows went straight up.
"She finally decided she wants a relationship with you?"
House nodded.
Wilson smiled.
"I'm glad."
House nodded, "so am I."
Rachel gurgled at him.
He picked her up, and sat her in his lap.
She smiled, dropping the teething toy, which fell on House's bad leg in a very bad place.
House grunted, facing losing color for a moment, "dammit!"
She looked up at him, eyes wide, then started crying.
House stared at her.
Wilson frowned, "House?"
House didn't even seem to hear him.
He was looking in horror at the crying baby girl in his lap.
"House, what's wrong?" asked Wilson, getting to his feet.
House gently lifted Rachel off his lap, set her very carefully on the cushions, and limped out onto the balcony.
Which he leaned over the wall of, and threw up.
Wilson handed Rachel her toy, then followed House out onto the balcony, rubbing his friend's back as the older doctor retched.
"What… just happened?" asked Wilson, as House sunk down to sit on the concrete, trembling.
"I swore at her," he said, looking up at Wilson with something approaching fear in his eyes, "she just dropped something out of her mouth, and I yelled."
Wilson stared down at his friend.
"House, you swear if *you* drop something on yourself."
House shook his head, "I shouldn't be doing this. I've seen the statistics. I shouldn't be doing this."
Wilson looked almost a little frightened, "House, what…?"
House shook his head, kneading his forehead with the balls of his palms.
Wilson knelt.
"House. Listen to me. There is *nothing wrong* with what just happened."
"Yes there is. What kind of person yells at a baby for dropping something."
"House, you didn't yell at her, you made an exclamation because your leg hurt because something was dropped on it."
House shook his head, "I shouldn't be doing this."
Wilson kicked his friend in the shin.
"Dammit Wilson!" yelled House.
"There, see the difference?"
House looked up at him.
"You said dammit Wilson when you were pissed at me. You didn't say dammit Rachel."
House kept eye contact with his friend for a long time.
Then he nodded, and got to his feet, limping back inside the office, and picking Rachel up, holding her close to his chest, and stroking her back.
She slowly stopped crying, and fell asleep against his shoulder, as he held her tight.
He left, and Wilson watched him go, wondering what that had been all about.
*
Over the next two weeks, House spent less and less time with Rachel, left her with Cuddy or the team or Wilson more and more often.
Cuddy finally confronted him about it, yelling at him, asking him if the entire thing of taking care of Rachel had just been to get into her pants.
He shook his head and limped away without a word.
He locked himself in his office in the apartment for a week, and wouldn't come out except once, to get a large box of crackers and a gallon of orange juice.
Wilson finally came, and shouldered the door in.
House was sitting on the floor in a dark corner, shivering.
Wilson knelt, and took his friend's pulse.
"House," he said, quietly, taking in his friend's shivering body, sweaty face and clothes, red-rimmed eyes, and pale, pasty, greenish face, "you're detoxing. And bloody."
He gently pushed his friend's sleeves back, revealing jagged cuts.
He sighed, and went and found House's meds, and brought them in, handing one of each to his friend.
House threw them across the room.
He looked at Wilson, trembling.
"Kiss Cuddy. Move in with her."
"What?"
"She needs someone. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be alive. Be here for her."
He grabbed a knife, and Wilson kicked him in the balls, which made him drop it.
Wilson took the knife away, and tossed it across the room.
House looked at it, then at his friend.
He shook his head, starting to cry, "I shouldn't be alive."
*
When Wilson called his best friend's mother to tell her that her son had gone insane, he did not expect to get the answer he received.
He did not expect her to ask if House was having something to do with a child.
He did not expect her to ask if House had gotten angry with the child, or even near the child.
He did not expect her to say she was driving out as soon as she could, and not to admit Greg to the crazy ward just yet.
But she did.
*
House sat in a corner of his office, crying silently, as he had been for an entire day, since Wilson had taken the knife away.
The door opened, and a person came in.
"Go away," he said, "I shouldn't be alive."
Arms wrapped around his shoulders in the darkened room, and a familiar voice whispered in his ear, "you are not your father, Greg. You are nothing like him. You are not capable of doing the things that he did."
He cried, as she continued to speak.
*
Hours later, as Wilson and Cuddy sat on the couch, waiting, Rachel in asleep in her crib in the nursery, they heard two sets of footsteps coming out, one steady, the other stumbling and uneven.
Wilson stood, and caught his friend as House collapsed, and blythe gripped his other side.
"He just needed to hear some things," said blythe, with a small, sad smile, "he'll be fine."
Wilson sighed, "I'm going to take him to the hospital. He's really dehydrated. You're okay with Rachel, Lisa?"
Cuddy nodded.
Wilson lifted his unconscious friend and carried him out to the car.
Blythe sat on the couch next to Cuddy, and covered the younger woman's hand with her own.
"He isn't unstable," she said, quietly, "he just thought the thing he fears the absolute most came true."
Cuddy looked at Blythe.
"What? Wilson said all he did was curse when Rachel dropped her teething toy on his bad leg, and then he snapped."
Blythe sighed.
"He will never tell you this. And I want you to never let him know I told you. But Greg's father hurt him. Hurt him in ways I couldn't bear to watch. And my sweet, sweet boy fears, more than anything else, becoming like his father was, doing the things his father did. Greg is nothing like his father. He never was, and he never will be. That man was a mistake I never should have made. Greg is not capable of anything his father did. But he thought he was like his father. And…" she shook her head, "he couldn't live with the thought that he was like John. He thought that anyone like John didn't deserve to live."
Cuddy swallowed.
She nodded, once, "thank you for telling me what this was all about."
Blythe shook her head, "just promise me you won't tell him I told you."
"I promise."
Blythe hugged her, "may I see the girl?"
Cuddy nodded, smiling, and pulling herself across into the wheelchair, "in here."
*
Later, Wilson brought House home from the hospital, and they sat on the couch while Blythe held Rachel and told stories about House's childhood.
House looked much, much better, now that he didn't think he had become something he hated, and wasn't detoxing from three drugs at once.
Wilson left, and House offered his mother the bed that used to be Cuddy's.
She smiled, and accepted.
He looked at her, and spoke again, "you told Cuddy why I went nuts."
Blythe sighed, and nodded, "I'm sorry. I just thought—"
"Thank you," he said, and got up, limping out into the bedroom, "sorry, I'm pooped. I'll see you tomorrow, Mom."
Blythe smiled, and watched him go.
She looked back at Cuddy, who smiled as well, looking almost as tired as Greg had, and followed the older woman to put Rachel in bed.
"You should get some sleep, dear," said Blythe, giving Cuddy a warm hug.
Cuddy nodded, pushing herself into the bedroom.
She crawled into bed next to House, and rested her head on his shoulder, her arm across his chest.
He looked at her with a tired smile.
"Do you remember what tomorrow is?"
"Um," said Cuddy, sleepily, "Monday?"
House brushed his thumb along her jaw, "it's your first day back at work."
She looked at him.
Then smiled, and rested her head back down.
"No," she admitted, "I honestly forgot."
"I'm sorry."
"For not wanting to hurt Rachel? I think you can be forgiven."
House chuckled, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
*
He didn't wake the next morning… or rather, he did, but he was so exhausted and screwed up from the last week that he could barely sit up.
Cuddy smiled, and Wilson drove her to the hospital, and House stayed at home with his mom and Rachel.
He slept for most of the day and through the next night and a lot of that morning.
Finally, he was able to get up and move around.
He spent a lot of time talking to his mom… something he had never before in his life had a chance to do. He had never had time alone with his mother.
She sat on the couch next to him, as he held Rachel up by her arms, and she balanced somewhat precariously on his knees.
He talked to her about the ducklings and the kids.
She talked to him about their neighbors, and his relatives.
He sat, and finally Rachel fell asleep, and he picked her up, carrying her to the crib, and sitting her in it.
His mother followed him, and watched her as Greg pulled a blanket up over her.
Then she looked at Gregory, and gave him the biggest hug she had ever given him.
He grunted, standing stiffly, blinking.
*
House left the sleeping baby girl with his mother, while he went to pick Cuddy up from the hospital.
She wheeled up to the curb, and pulled the door open.
House got up, and picked up the wheelchair as she transferred herself into the passenger seat.
He put it in the trunk, and limped around to the driver's side, slipping back into his seat.
He leaned over, and kissed Cuddy, which made her snort.
"You're not saying hello, you're just horney."
House smirked, and drove back to the apartment.
Blythe was sitting on the couch, Rachel sitting next to her and giggling as she sang a song House hadn't heard since he was seven.
Cuddy smiled, and watched House pick Rachel up, and hold her above him, where she wiggled and giggled and laughed and buzzed.
Blythe met her eyes, and she knew that she was not the only one who was enjoying seeing House being a father this much.