new chapter: House may appear to be the most self-righteous and cantankerous man, in the end, it's just to hide how fragile and unsure he is...
** CHAPTER 19 **
The next morning, House woke up and saw there were five missed calls on his cell. But as he'd set his phone on buzzer during the night, he hadn't heard it ring through his agitated sleep. All messages had been left by Foreman to update him about the patient: It seemed that the treatment wasn't working as well as planned, after all. In the evening, the patient had started to complain about abdominal pain and around 11 p.m., she'd inexplicably begun to lose a lot of blood.
When House arrived at the hospital, with a bit of a hangover from the previous night, he went directly to his office to ask for more details about the case. He was grumpy and needed to focus all his energy on the medical case to be able to distract his mind from Cuddy.
She hadn't shown up at his place and it'd hurt. But, goddammit, he was an adult, and he was perfectly capable of understanding those kinds of signals whenever they were sent to him! So, Cuddy didn't want to go to his house? Fine! He didn't need further explanations: Her not showing up at his place was enough for him to understand that it meant she didn't want to be with him and that she'd probably used him to comfort herself after the loss of that newborn kid she wanted to adopt.
But now she'd moved on. And she'd probably considered it wouldn't be that important since it was him. He was House, after all: The jerk that slept with hookers, the man that was incapable of being in a serious relationship, and hadn't been in years because to everyone's eyes, he simply was not that kind of man. And based upon that convenient assessment, Cuddy hadn't thought it was necessary to even call him or explain.
He couldn't really blame her, could he? But the feeling… the feeling it'd left him with was beyond words. But as he was House, somehow in his twisted own way, he'd managed to blame himself for that. And of course, right after that, he'd started to hate others for having had the weakness to blame himself first.
That's why, when he arrived at the hospital in the morning, he was in his best cantankerous state of mind. His leg was hurting like hell, perfectly mirroring the pain he was experiencing in his soul, but he was still refusing to acknowledge it. He'd walked through the main lobby without glancing at the clinic, striding as fast as he could to the elevator.
When he arrived in the conference room, he forcefully pushed the door open with his cane to provide him with the last, perfectly faked fit of energy he needed to display to barge into the room and look determined enough to conceal everything that would otherwise betray his real state of mind.
The team quickly updated him on the patient: The bleeding was coming from the uterus as it appeared she had a miscarriage due to an undiagnosed extra-uterine pregnancy. They hadn't been able to see it before because of all her latest, confusing symptoms as they hadn't had the opportunity to do any scan or echo of her abdomen which would have otherwise led them to identify what was wrong sooner.
The pattern of her successive crashes from the nausea to the peritonitis then the seizure had prevented them from taking the time to make those simple exams. They had to treat the urgency and that's what they'd done but they had now clearly reached the limits of their omniscience as well as the limits of what they could handle at the same time.
The external egg had ruptured, causing the wall of her uterus to tear. Combined with the pelvic phlegmon, it had caused an internal hemorrhage, and there was no way they could have anticipated it. The only thing they'd been able to do was to react, again in urgency, and face the unpredictable.
Waiting for House all night, the team had to treat the bleeding first, so they'd given her all the blood transfusion she needed to compensate the loss, but they knew a bigger decision had to be made. And House was the one that could make it. The alternative was simple: Either they decided to risk her undergoing another surgery or they chose to keep her on antibiotics for the phlegmon and hoped it would finally work.
"You didn't answer your cell tonight," Thirteen stated, in a neutral tone not even blaming House for his silence.
"And?" he barked. "You think if I did, I would have magically prevented the patient from bleeding out with the power of my reassuring voice over the phone?"
Thirteen looked down and set her lips, immediately understanding that it was apparently one of House's really bad mornings and that it would be stupid to even try to tread one step further into that stormy road.
"That girl is a moron!" House almost yelled, practically blaming everyone in the room for it. "More than one abortion and it didn't even teach her a lesson. No, she had to be pregnant again! God, even trollops are smarter! At least they know they have to use condoms."
"What do you think we should do?" Kutner asked cautiously, already knowing it would trigger House's next bark and resignedly waiting for it to blow out.
"What do I think we should do? Umm, let me think … I don't know, how about, just let her die!?" House snarled. "It certainly won't be a great loss for the world. And, obviously, there'll be no poor children crying over her since she's incapable of having one until the process is completed anyway."
After all these years spent working by his side, Foreman had learned to know House a little, at least, a little more than the other fellows. It was easy for him to see that House's behavior in that moment had nothing to do with the case and that, even though he probably had good reasons to react like he was, they surely weren't medical ones.
He wasn't taken in by House's little act. He stared at him angrily, silently exhorting him to stop overreacting like he was, venting that uncalled-for frustration of his in such an inappropriate moment because it was only slowing down the process of making the final decision, while it'd become really necessary to make one. House caught Foreman's silent, intense glare and it mentally slapped him back to the matter at hand. He softened a little, refocusing on the medical purpose.
"How much blood did she lose?" he asked, trying to gather the important facts from this nightmarish scenario.
"A lot," Foreman stated simply. "But we've managed to control it. The bleeding stopped two hours ago. She's stable now. But she's still weak and the fever has come back."
"Which means," House started to think out loud, "the infection is back. And it's getting worse, which means her uterus must be sceptic or even necrotic because-"
He interrupted himself mid-sentence, and stared blankly straight ahead, with his head slightly tilted to the side. Then he put his hand in his pocket and in one quick, impatient gesture, fished his bottle of pills and threw two pills into his mouth, swallowing them dry by pushing them down his throat with a swift tilt of the head back.
"We need to book an O.R," he finally announced to his team. "Looks like our little slut just earned herself the radical solution to her lack of responsibility issues."
Taub raised an eyebrow in disbelief, not really sure he'd understood what he thought it meant.
"Are you saying you want to-" he began, incredulous.
"Do a hysterectomy?" House finished, cutting him short. "Yes! That's precisely what I'm saying."
"But… you can't!" Taub exclaimed baffled and a little shocked by House's radical solution, "She's too weak, she could-"
"Die? Oh, really? How about she's dying now!" House barked. "She's suffering from a massive infection and it's coming from… oh wait… her uterus! So yeah, you're right, we should totally not remove that, at all. We should try random other organs, instead. See if it works."
Taub tried to stare challengingly at his boss and House jutted his chin out, sustaining his gaze with a sarcastic smirk plastered across his face. Taub really didn't stand a chance. After a few seconds, he sighed heavily and looked away. There was nothing much to say to try and fight House's determined and most stubborn ideas when he had his mind set on one, like he had now, anyway.
# # # # #
Foreman was alone in the conference room. The team had to go check for the patient and prep her for the surgery. House was, God only knows where and Foreman was the only one still around, seated at the table and reviewing some medical articles about pelvic infections, as he was trying to find an alternate solution to House's radical one, even though he knew it would certainly be useless, considering how determined House was about the surgery.
House almost seemed personally angry at the patient, while he'd never seen her and it was kind of puzzling, too. But it was House and, even if it was still a little confusing from time to time, Foreman had learned not to pay attention to his boss's moods. The only important thing was that no matter how quick-tempered he could be, House rarely screwed up a medical decision and still remained, by far, the most reliable asset when it came to diagnose a patient.
"Where's House?"
Foreman looked up to see Cuddy standing at the door and questioning him impatiently with an annoyed face. He straightened in his chair and put the review down on the table.
"I think he's… in the lab?" he suggested, knowing that was most probably not the case.
Cuddy shook her head and rolled her eyes, showing how dismayed she was by his obvious lie. She wanted to say how exhausted she was to always have to run after House to try and prevent his next crazy move, but she didn't have time for that now. Instead, she took a step into the room and sighed in exasperation to show she wasn't that naïve.
"House is not in the lab. He's not in the clinic, and not with the patient either. He's actually nowhere he should be if he were properly earning the money I pay him to do his job!"
Foreman shrugged and looked at her, as if saying: Don't blame me. It's not my fault if you can't control the man. Cuddy saw that look and took it as a provocation toward her ability to manage House. Proud as she was, it immediately lit the anger fuse in her.
"He's booked an O.R for this afternoon, can you explain why?" she snapped, with a bossy voice.
Foreman looked at her feeling a bit embarrassed but still chose to remain silent. Cuddy sucked in a sharp breath and glared at him.
"Fine. Don't tell me," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. "Here's what you're going to do, instead. I don't care where House is now. And I don't care if you have to drive across the city to a stripper bar to find him but you're going to find him, stat! Then you tell him to get his ass in my office by the end of the hour."
Cuddy turned on her heel and left before Foreman had the chance to answer anything.
# # # # #
The team came back from the ICU not long after Cuddy's visit and Foreman instantly inquired about House. Kutner told him that the last time he'd caught sight of him, he was going to see Chase to set the details of the surgery and show him the patient file.
"We need to page him," Foreman said looking worried. "I'm not so sure that surgery is going to happen."
"What do you mean?" Thirteen asked, bewildered. "Is there something wrong with the patient?"
"No. Nothing's changed," Foreman answered.
"I don't understand. House made himself really clear. If we don't do the surgery-"
"House is pissed. From the moment we've gotten that case there's been a lot of things he's missed in the patient's condition."
"He's the one who found out about the phlegmon!" Kutner exclaimed, shocked that Foreman could imply House had messed up with the case.
"I know," Foreman answered. "But does it mean he's necessarily right about the hysterectomy, too? That's quite a radical decision."
"Are you saying we shouldn't do it?" Taub questioned, a little surprised by Foreman's sudden U-turn in what he thought was a collegial medical decision.
"No. I think he's probably right. But maybe someone else thinks he isn't. And she's waiting for him in her office right now."
# # # # #
The team finally managed to locate House. The fact that he would have to confront Cuddy about his decision to put the patient into surgery was inevitable and yet, unconsciously, he still hadn't realized he would have to. When his fellows informed him that she was waiting for him in her office, House pretended that they all needed to go there because it would be more convincing and effective, in as much as it wouldn't be a waste of time, unnecessarily spent on arguing while the patient needed an intervention. But the truth was that the simple idea of seeing her just gave him a tight throat and he didn't want to confront her alone.
Cuddy, of course, really needed to have an explanation about House's decision. As a doctor, as soon as she'd found out about what he was planning to do, she'd immediately thought it was risky, considering that the patient already had surgery less than two days prior and was clearly weakened by a very severe infection.
As Dean of Medicine, that was the kind of risk she didn't want to involve her hospital in, at least not without having heard strong medical arguments that would convince her that there was no other choice first. Now, her pragmatic mind was telling her there were other solutions because the patient was young and she would have more valuable chances to fight the infection with an appropriate treatment, should it require to double the dosage if needed but the surgery seemed a little reckless to her at that moment.
Not to mention that she wasn't yet resigned to deprive such a young girl of her uterus, either. She knew it wasn't reasonable to let that kind of feelings interfere, but she couldn't help it: She was a doctor, but she was a woman with emotions, too, and she wasn't ashamed to think with her heart as much as with her brain when it came to make radical decisions that could change a patient's life forever. And in that girl's case, a hysterectomy while she was still young and had no children yet was, of course, something that triggered some personal issues which she couldn't deny. Deep in her heart, Cuddy was convinced she had to give the young girl a chance. There were other options, she was sure about that, and she wanted to explore them with House before rushing to the O.R and cut into that poor girl's abdomen.
She was prepared for a fight, and she knew it would feel utterly strange, should it happen. Especially when she hadn't had the chance to see him the night before and knew she'd rather not spend her time arguing with him. Her morning had been awfully busy, so far. She had to deal with the annual budget report, and she was exhausted. She really needed to be with him. Of course, the hospital wasn't the ideal place to make out but, just seeing him and exchanging glances and smiles, which would bear upcoming promises of better, more intimate moments would be enough a comfort for her.
So, Cuddy was waiting for House, feeling a little impatient and stressed because that discussion would be a test and she knew that the way things were about to go in that particular situation would set the tone for the future and give her hints about whether or not they had a reasonable chance together. There was no denying the fact that she was a little excited, too, because this – neither of them could deny it - was also what had fueled their hunger for each other during all the years they'd spent working together.
This was the fuse of the blasting attraction that had irrepressibly drawn them to each other, and Cuddy was impatient to ignite it…
A/N
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR KIND REVIEWS!
I'm back from my weekend! :-) actually, I was there yesterday, and the truth is I published a new story (only the first 2 chapters for now) but if you want to check it, I'd be very pleased if you'd join me there too...
have a nice day! ~ maya
ps: je vois tout à fait l'allusion à Joey le réceptionniste de E.R!... (j'étais fan de cette série... moins maintenant mais bon...) donc tout ça pour dire que oui, pas de panique: Warren n'est là que pour servir de vecteur à certains moments de l'intrigue... quant aux interactions entre House et Cuddy, il y en aura pleins, pleins (verticales et… horizontales !) mais aussi bcp de "prises de tête" ben oui... pour moi, ça n'serait pas vraiment Huddy si tout était rose au pays des Barbapapa!
Oh, and don't worry: House and Cuddy have to be together so, I won't torture you... not too long, I hope... :-)