15.

Arlene turned to her daughter. She knew that anything she said at this point would ring hollow and insignificant. Once again, Lisa and Greg's timing had been all wrong.

"They gave him a sedative. He just fell back to sleep," Arlene said in a subdued voice.

Cuddy stood staring blankly at her mother for a millisecond before comprehension and despondency swept across her delicate features. She could hold in her tiredness, her fear, her sorrow no longer. She burst into tears.

Arlene crossed to her daughter and took her in her arms. She rigidly patted Lisa's back as her daughter continued to cry, spending her emotions out in a long trail of tears and incoherent sobbing.

"Help me out here Lisa. Your mother's an alter cocker with a bad hip. C'mon and let me get you to a chair."

Cuddy shuffled blindly next to her mother, allowing herself to be led to the chair closest to House. Upon reaching it, she slid down gracelessly, weeping with such increased energy that Arlene began to wonder whether she might physically injure herself.

Arlene went out into the hall and asked a nurse to have James Wilson paged to House's room. Wilson was a doctor and could give Lisa something that might take the edge off and calm her down.

When she walked back into the room, Lisa was nearly hysterical. She was sprawled across both the chair and the bed, clutching House's long, thin arm and weeping uncontrollably into his shoulder. Arlene knew that she needed to shake her daughter out of her agitated state.

"Lisa! Control yourself! Do you want to make a shanda fur die goy? Do you want your staff to see you behaving like this?"

"I don't care!" Cuddy wailed, "I can't lose him now, I just can't. And he's slipping away! I know it. I can feel it."

"Cuddy?" Wilson's familiar voice floated over from the doorway. Although he was walking into the room, his increased respiration and a few beads of sweat on his forehead revealed the fact that he'd probably run as fast as possible in answer to the page.

"What's happening? What're you doing?" he said.

"Wilson," Cuddy said with a quavering voice, "Please. I've got to do something. I can't let him . . . he can't die without knowing how much I love him."

"House isn't going to die," Wilson said more confidently than he actually felt. "You made sure of that. You've done everything possible for him. He's in good hands Cuddy, yours."

Cuddy looked up to meet Wilson's fixed gaze. His large, luminous brown eyes fortified her, drying her tears as easily as turning off a flow of water from a faucet.

Unspoken affection passed between them. They would see this through together, united in their mutual love and friendship for House.

"I'm going to go down to the pharmacy and get you something," Wilson said gently. "Will you be alright here with your mother while I'm gone?"

"Take your time James," Arlene said. She was impressed with the way in which Wilson's mere presence and a few, well-chosen words on his part had immediately calmed her daughter. "Lisa just needed to get a handle on her disappointment of missing Greg when he woke up."

She turned to give her daughter a bracing look. "Lisa realizes now it won't be too long before he wakes up again and she'll be able to talk to him."

Wilson nodded. "Fine. Then I'll leave you two alone for awhile.

As Cuddy turned her full attention back to House, Arlene mouthed a silent and uncharacteristic "Thank you" to Wilson. Wilson nodded a second time as he moved past Arlene and approached House's bedside. He laid a hand gently on House's shoulder and murmured something that only House and the ever-vigilant Cuddy could hear. Then he silently turned and left the room.

Arlene took note of the tears that stood in Wilson's eyes as he walked past her. House was indeed an extraordinary individual. He engendered incredible emotion from the people in his life. Arlene realized that while Greg House might at times be a hard man to like, apparently to those who knew him well, he was an easy man to love.

She sat down in the chair opposite her daughter to wait for what would likely be hours. As she settled in, Arlene considered how fortunate her eldest daughter was in her current alliances. James Wilson was a steady, good-hearted friend. And Gregory House was . . . well, House was a force of nature. And he was so obviously, hopelessly in love with Lisa that his passion had swept all of them up within the flood of his sentiment.

Not one of them had been left unscathed. Not one of them was unaware of the power and magnitude of his love. It was at the same time beautiful and heartbreaking to witness. The beauty lay within the possibilities for happiness that Lisa and Greg could achieve together. The heartbreak was in their own fears that could and so far had, subverted that happiness and their future lives together.

Arlene made a decision. She needed to talk to Lisa, not only for her daughter's sake but for Greg's as well.

Cuddy meanwhile had found her emotional footing again. She continued to gaze at House and stroke his bicep. She had gained a second wind, she had composed herself. Arlene knew that the time to set her daughter straight, to shake some sense into her had come.

It wouldn't be pretty. In fact, it promised to be quite the opposite. But it was necessary. For all of them.

"Lisa," Arlene began. "What are you going to say to Greg when he wakes up?"

Cuddy raised an eyebrow as she looked over at her mother. "What do you mean? Of course I'm going to tell him I love him."

Arlene inhaled deeply. "And how much do you love him?"

"What do you mean Mom?" Cuddy said, her voice already beginning to color with defensive anger.

Arlene inclined forward in her chair. Now that she'd broached the subject, she was determined to see it through to the bitter end.

"Greg's going to be laid up for quite awhile. It's going to be a very long time before he's walking again, if ever. Are you really prepared for everything that comes with that? Are you really ready to be committed to a man who may never walk again?"

Cuddy too, seemed to brace herself. She'd known her mother long enough to know that Arlene was not merely casting about indecisively. There was something definitive on her mind.

"What are you saying mother? That I'm going to run out on House when he needs me the most?"

Arlene rolled her head down, looking at her daughter from beneath her brows. "You've already done it at least once before."

Cuddy's face turned red, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

"How dare you!" she hissed. "You don't know anything about it! You don't know what . . ."

"I DO know about it. I'm not just some ignorant shlemiel you're talking to. I spoke to Greg. I saw his eyes. And I KNOW that man would never have given up on you. Never. So then it's you who must have given up on him."

Cuddy lowered her eyes in shame for a brief moment. But Arlene caught the look and understood its meaning.

"You broke up with him and went scampering back to Lucas because something scared you," she continued. "And I'm sure that whatever frightened you wasn't half as scary as what Greg's facing now, the pain, the medications, the months of physical therapy . . ."

Cuddy's voice grew louder, emboldened by the familiarity of arguing with her mother. "I'm a doctor mother. I'm well aware of what's ahead for House."

"Lisa," Arlene's tone and features turned stonily serious, "All I'm saying is that it's you who has to be strong now. Strong enough for him to lean on, strong enough to keep going even when you want to quit, strong enough for the both of you."

Indignation blazed in Cuddy's blue-green eyes as she stood up and walked round the bed toward her mother. "I HAVE been strong! I saved his leg! I saved his life! The others were ready to give up. I saved him! No one else did that! Only me!"

"I'm not talking about being strong as a professional, as a doctor," Arlene said, cutting across her daughter's impassioned speech. "You've always been strong in that regard."

Cuddy's eyes widened. Her mother rarely, if ever, paid her a compliment. Before she found her voice however, Arlene went on.

"I'm talking about being strong as a WOMAN. Because that's what Greg needs now."

Cuddy stepped back, a shocked look on her face. "I've always been strong when it comes to House. I . . ."

"No," Arlene interrupted her again. "Just the opposite. You've NEVER been strong when it comes to Greg. If you had been, you would never have dumped him and taken back up with Lucas."

Cuddy's mouth moved, but no sound came out.

"The kind of strength I'm talking about doesn't come from your medical knowledge," Arlene said. "It's not gathered from what you've learned in your education, in books or your career. A woman's strength comes from her heart. And so far, you've let Greg down on that score. And by letting him down, you've let yourself down too. The kind of strength you're gonna need now is the kind that makes you fight for the man you love, fight everyone, the whole world, even Greg himself for what you feel in your heart, for what's right. Greg already showed you his strength, that he was willing to sacrifice everything, even his love for you for YOUR happiness. Are you certain you're ready to do that for him? Because if not, then you'll never be worthy of him or of his love. You can't only love someone when they're at their best. That's when they need it the least. You have to love and accept the other person when they're at their lowest because that's when they need your love the most."

Cuddy continued to stagger back. She was halfway across the room when she finally spoke.

"I love him. I do," she whispered. Cuddy exhaled heavily, slumping her shoulders forward as if a huge invisible weight pressed down upon her. "But . . ."

"But what?"

Cuddy rolled her eyes to the ceiling and closed them. "It's just so . . . hard. I didn't know . . ." She stopped, too choked up to speak.

"Of course it's hard," Arlene said softly. "Everything easy passes away and is forgotten quickly. The only things in life truly worth having are hard."

"I don't know if I can . . . I don't think I can . . ."

Arlene straightened up in her chair. "Then you're a fool who doesn't deserve him."

Cuddy looked back at her mother, her eyes filling with tears.

"Mom, I . . . I don't know what to do."

"If you can't take the bitter with the sweet, if you won't fight for him, if you only want what's easy then he'd be better off if you abandoned him right now instead of when he's crippled and broken and he's had the heart ripped out of him because he's shattered in body and spirit."

The tears flowed freely down Cuddy's pale cheeks as her gaze shifted from her mother to the sleeping House and back again.

"You CAN do it Lisa. I KNOW you can. You just have to stop doubting yourself. You have to stop being afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Of life. Of love. Of the power of the love that this man STILL, even after everything that's happened, has for you. And don't be afraid of your own feelings for him. Let your love for each other strengthen you. Let your love conquer your fear. That's the only way you two can ever be together."

Cuddy stood frozen in place, her tears continuing to fall in rivulets along the sides of her nose.

Arlene smiled with satisfaction as her daughter moved back around to House's other side. Her smile quickly faded however as Lisa made no move to sit down in her former place. Instead, Cuddy leaned forward, closing her eyes as she planted a lingering kiss on House's cheek.

She straightened up and met her mother's confused gaze.

"I can't," she said. And without another word, strode quickly from the room.