18.

Wilson strode quickly into Cuddy's office, pausing just long enough to allow his eyes time to adjust to the relative darkness.

All the things he'd thought to say, all the arguments that he'd raised and contested in his own mind as he rode the elevator to the main lobby, all the pent up anger and frustration he'd felt ever since his two best friends had set about destroying their own lives and any chance they had individually or collectively for some kind of real happiness all vanished as he found himself dumbstruck at the sight laid out before him.

Lisa Cuddy, PPTH's uncompromising Dean of Medicine and one of his best friends in the world was sobbing uncontrollably in the dark.

Pain. They were all in such incredible pain.

Wilson bowed his head as he tried to think how he, House and Cuddy had reached this point. More importantly, how were they ever to climb out of the deep, dark hole wherein they all now found themselves?

And who had been the first to fall?

The answer to that question was obvious. It was, would somehow always be House. House dug the hole into which first he, then Cuddy and now Wilson were all entrapped.

Battered and heartbroken when the woman he loved callously dumped him, House set about his self-destructive, downward plunge immediately after Cuddy had abruptly cast him off. But though it may have been House who first set about excavating the hole, Wilson mused that it was undeniably Cuddy who had handed House the shovel.

Unwilling to talk to House or give him another chance and totally disinclined to listen to her own heart, Cuddy had been the true engineer behind the suffering they were all currently experiencing.

Yet oddly enough, though Wilson was more disposed to seek out a scapegoat, House himself had never actually blamed Cuddy for their resultant misfortunes.

Angry? Yes. Hurt? Without a doubt, especially when Cuddy reconciled with Lucas.

But while Wilson seemed to be desperately searching for someone on whom he could pin the blame for their present troubles, reproaching Cuddy for her abandonment of him did not seem to be in House's makeup. It was more like House had actually expected her at some point to desert him, as if their entire relationship were merely a pleasant dream from which he must too soon awaken.

The fact remained that House simply anticipated nothing but misery in his own life. He saw it stretching out before him like a long grey highway on the edge of darkness with no end in sight, the only variance to his usual levels of suffering, the occasional greater degrees of torture interspersed like road signs along the way. It was as if, after Cuddy had left him, House had finally accepted his fate: that he had no right or even hope to be happy, that the only thing he could expect from life was ceaseless sorrow and loneliness to the end of his days.

Only now did Wilson consider that perhaps it was House's unvarying concentration of pain, both physical and emotional, which enabled him to handle true hopelessness better. For House it seemed would forever be too well acquainted with his constant companions, despair and pain and so somehow forced to deal with them.

Yet no one else could possibly take the credit for House's persistence in punishing himself when things went wrong. It was always House who made matters worse by deciding to soak himself in booze, take too many pills and push people away who were only trying to help.

Or maybe Wilson just needed to try and assuage some of his own guilt by tenaciously clinging to that conviction.

For Wilson had to believe that he and Cuddy were different.

Unaccustomed to suffering, Wilson and Cuddy tended to think they could rise above it. Indeed, they kept themselves aloof from those who experienced it, including House. By wrapping themselves in the cloak of security of the impartial medical professional, they purposefully set themselves apart as they stood outside the fray. But this extreme disconnect gave them a false sense of security, even superiority to those who remained writhing in agony down in the trenches.

Like House and his daily, constant struggles with pain as well as his preferred method of blocking it, prescription drug abuse.

Only now did Wilson realize that their detachment served, not to strengthen them but rather to tire and weaken them whenever true adversity came along.

Like now.

"Well Wilson?" Cuddy said, the timbre of her voice jerking him from his own, depressed thoughts. "What did you want to tell me? Did you come here to tell me how badly I've screwed things up? Again? Why don't you say it? Why don't you just say what you came here to say and then get out and leave me in peace?"

"Do you honestly think you deserve to get off that easy?" Wilson replied, surprising himself with his own candor.

Cuddy let loose a high-pitched, almost maniacal laugh that sent a thrill of fear along his spine.

"Deserve? Deserve? I don't know Wilson. Why don't you tell me what I deserve? You told me after I broke up with him what House deserved, that he deserved another chance. So now what do I deserve?"

Wilson shook his head. "I . . . I don't know. I really don't know Cuddy. What do you think you deserve?"

Cuddy's chilling laugh echoed through the room again. "To go straight to hell, if there is one."

"No you don't. You don't believe that. I don't believe that. Not even House believes that."

Cuddy looked up at Wilson. Even in the dark, he could see her red, swollen eyes, her tear-stained cheeks.

"House doesn't believe in heaven or hell," Cuddy spat out. "But I do. I know there's a hell because I'm already there."

Wilson folded his arms across his chest.

"Only because you put yourself there. But you can escape a hell of your own making Cuddy. If you got yourself in there, you can get yourself out."

"Really? How?"

He cast his eyes to the floor and relaxed his shoulders almost imperceptibly. "You're the only one who can answer that I'm afraid. Because you're the only one who knows how you got there."

"But I don't know. I don't know how I got here, to this point. Don't you understand?" she nearly shrieked as she continued. "I have no idea how I pushed the only man I've ever loved out of my life and nearly married the wrong man. And I have no idea how to get the one man I'll always love back. I don't even know if I deserve to have him back."

"Cuddy, one thing House has taught me is that none of us get what we deserve. NONE OF US. We only get what we get or only what we're willing to go after. So I guess the question really is, are you willing to go after what you want? Are you willing to go after the man you SAY you love? Are you willing to go after House and be there for him?"

The room was hushed and silent. The only sounds were Cuddy's regular sniffing. Wilson finally raised his eyes to meet hers just as she spoke. Her voice shook so badly and was so quiet, that he nearly could not hear her words.

"I don't know."

Wilson closed his eyes, a flood of emotions roiling inside his chest. He desperately wanted to shout, to yell at her or grab hold of her and lift her out of her too high heeled shoes and shake some sense into her.

"How can you NOT know? After ALL that's happened? After everything you've seen and heard and felt? After EVERYTHING House did? Or more importantly, didn't do?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Cuddy!" Wilson shouted. He had reached the end of his tether. All of his worry for House's life, his frustrations with him and Cuddy both, his argument with Cuddy's mother, all of his own trepidations, his fears, his anger, his guilt over his inability to fix the problems in his own life or the lives of his friends seemed to bubble over, blurring his vision and settling a weight, like a huge stone upon his heart and lungs.

"House drank himself into oblivion the night before your wedding. Then he showed up at your wedding. But then what? He DIDN'T try to ruin it for you. He doesn't make a scene. He doesn't scream at you from the rooftops about what an idiot you are. All the socially unacceptable, embarrassing, crazy things that we both know are within the realm of what House is capable of, NONE OF IT. He doesn't do ANY of it. He doesn't start a fight with you or your mother. Hell, he doesn't even start a fight with Lucas. Crap! Lucas who deserves a first class ass-kicking. Okay, so I take back what I said before about no one deciding whether people deserve stuff. Because Lucas sure as hell deserves to have House insert his cane so far up his ass that it can only be removed by surgery."

Cuddy paused for a moment and then she began to laugh. Her laugh this time however did not sound quite so hollow and erratic.

Wilson's vivid description of House brought back a flood of memories. She remembered House as he looked when he had first walked into her bedroom on Saturday. How familiar and yet exciting it felt when their lips met, how wonderful it was to see him again, hear his voice again, kiss him again. And how terrible it was to see him walk away as he wished her nothing but happiness, telling her that was what she deserved.

She laughed again, her love for House infusing itself into the sound, giving it a warmer more mellow tone.

When Wilson heard Cuddy's laugh, now robbed of its former bleakness, he chuckled too in spite of himself.

"Well?" he said. "Am I wrong?"

"No. You just gave me quite an image. After what Lucas did to House . . ." She broke off. The smile melted from her face and she looked down at her desk.

"It's too late Wilson. There's been too much that's happened, too much said and way too much unsaid. If you're going back on what you said about people getting what they deserve, then so am I. House . . ." His very name made her tremble inside. "House deserves so much more. More than I can give him."

"And it doesn't matter to you, even now, what HE wants? Are you still going to be that selfish about this?"

Cuddy stood up abruptly. Even in the darkened office, Wilson could see her anger coloring her cheeks.

"Is that what you think? That I'm being selfish? That I'm . . ."

"Yeah! Either selfish or scared or just plain stupid. Pick one Cuddy. You can't have it all. Not now. Not when House is a couple floors above us, fighting for his life!"

Cuddy reacted like she'd had the wind knocked out of her. With a slight moan, she collapsed back into her chair.

"Didn't it ever occur to you that I'm poison to House, to his recovery, to his life? I drove him back to his pills after nearly two years of him being clean. That was all me Wilson. All my fault."

"His choice to take Vicodin again was NOT your fault. Just like it had nothing to do with you when he kicked his habit . . . again."

"What?"

"House didn't tell me but I've seen the changes in him. He's off the Vicodin again. He's in more pain but he's been managing. And, more importantly, he hasn't been stealing scripts from me or anyone else. He's clean Cuddy. And he did it on his own. Without you or me or Mayfield or anybody else."

Cuddy's eyes burned with the fresh tears that welled up into them.

"I'm scared Wilson," she said quietly. It felt like some of the weight had lifted from her shoulders at this simple statement of fact, the first time she'd ever said it out loud or admitted it to another soul.

Wilson took a step forward, uncrossing his arms so he could use his hands to lean against the edge of her desk.

"I know," he replied. "I know you are. But so is House."

Cuddy released one short bark of a laugh. "House is the bravest man I know. He's never scared."

Wilson would not let go of Cuddy's gaze but held it, letting her recognize the truth of his next words.

"House has ALWAYS been afraid. How can you love him and know so little about him? How can you not see that he's always been afraid . . . of pain, of being alone, of losing you? And mostly, House was afraid of how very much he loved you. Because maybe for the first time in his life, he let his rational mind take a backseat to his emotions and it scared the hell out of him."

He shook his head but still looked into her eyes.

"Both of you have let your fears win and your hearts lose," Wilson continued. "You let your fear of public opinion and House's instabilities keep you from the only man you've ever loved."

Wilson cut her off before she had a chance to protest. "Your words, not mine Cuddy. And House, House has let his fear of eventual pain and not being good enough for you paralyze him, making him unwilling or unable to show how deeply he loves you."

It was Cuddy who was now shaking her head. "But how do you know? How can you be sure?"

Wilson straightened up. "Because House believes that actions are more important than words." He sighed. "And how did he act to you on the day of your wedding to another man?"

Cuddy sat in stunned silence for several moments and then said sadly, "He said he wanted me to be happy, that I deserved to be happy."

"But what did he DO Cuddy?"

"The whole time, he acted like . . ." She bowed her head, no longer able to meet the sincerity of Wilson's eyes. "He acted like a man in love."

Wilson slowly nodded just as his pager went off. He took the device from his pocket and saw that the call was for House's room.

"I'm needed. House needs me. Are you . . . will you come?"

Cuddy looked up into the handsome features of her friend's face. But she gave him no answer.

Wilson turned and walked to the door.

He stopped just as he placed his hand on the doorknob. Without turning, he said, "How can you do this?" There was a quaver in his voice. "How can you throw away your love, his love, probably his life just because you're afraid?"

"I saved his life Wilson. By saving his leg . . ."

"No Cuddy. If you won't go to him now, if you can't see . . . by saving his leg you've only postponed his death. His leg doesn't mean as much to him as you do. Nothing means as much to him as you. Not even his life. Only you. You ARE his life Cuddy."

And then with a sound that could have been a cough or a sob, Wilson left Cuddy all alone in the dark once more.