20.

The sound of his own heart hammering a regular cadence deep within his chest was deafening. After all the punishment that he'd doled out to himself over the years, the drug and alcohol abuse as well as his habit of chain smoking, that particular muscle remained surprisingly steady and strong.

Damn it all to hell.

What was wrong with the stupid thing anyway? Couldn't it take a hint? Or in this case, multiple hints?

More importantly, how could it go on beating when the woman he loved had smashed it into a million pieces?

It just couldn't be made of muscle, House knew. To him his heart felt more like blown glass, fragile, ephemeral and terribly transparent. Yet though it felt so very brittle, after all he'd endured, somehow, someway House's heart kept going, kept right on beating as if it were made of iron or steel.

Regardless how often he'd faltered, stumbled and fallen under the weight of misery that had become his daily existence, House too, like his heart, had always found the wherewithal to keep going. And because of that, because he had the courage to persevere, his pain and the consequent resilience he possessed in facing the hazards of this life were often minimized or worse, dismissed entirely.

No one ever guessed his true, breakable nature so well hidden inside the rough exterior he presented to the world at large. For Gregory House had always been an expert at protecting and concealing himself.

He had to be.

No matter the terrible blows his wrathful father struck upon his young frame. No matter that and worse, far worse, the brutality and tortures John House had with cruel regularity inflicted upon him as a child. And despite the many times his mother's eyes filled with tearful comprehension yet still turned away from her helpless, injured son, having grown up with a father who was prone to fly off into spectacular rages, making his only son the brunt of all his own disappointments and shortcomings, and a mother who simply ignored Greg's anguished cries for help, House had become, from an extremely early age and out of sheer necessity detached, hard and remote.

Or at least it seemed that way.

How different would it all have been if even one other person had bothered to look into his eyes? If only someone, anyone had taken the time to look past his carefully constructed outer shell?

It was all there in his eyes. There he could not hide. In the depths of that lavish blue, all the pain, all the sorrow, all the agony as well as all the intensity of feeling House both carried and experienced was written the emotional manuscript of the book of his heart. Indeed, his true inner nature could be glimpsed in his eyes, bound between the covers of House's grouchy, misanthropic, son-of-a-bitch exterior.

It was in fact the most brilliant of disguises, fashioned by House during his formative years and refined to a keenly-edged binding as his life careened through an unending series of cruelties compounded by tragedy all of which he took so deeply to heart.

Conceivably the most mortal blow fell when he'd suffered the aneurysm that caused the infarction that destroyed both his leg and his life. Plunged into daily, excruciating pain, that and his feelings of betrayal surrounding the incident had successfully stolen away Stacey, the woman he loved. When she left him, she took with her the last vestiges of hope that he could ever be happy.

Yes, that had been the last time he'd foolishly allowed himself the luxury of hope . . . until Lisa Cuddy became part of his life.

Then everything he'd ever wished for or cared about seemed to crash in upon him like the last wave of a tsunami. All his veiled feelings, all his private dreams and expectations had come together into a single individual.

And that had been his crucial mistake, to put all his faith and hope in another person, in ONE other person.

House fell for her, fast and hard. To him, Cuddy was like a star upon which he'd hoped to ascend to the heavens.

In reality she had been merely a meteorite that crashed him violently back to earth leaving him in a deeper, darker pit of despair than he'd ever experienced before, even during the wretched days following his infarction and breakup with Stacey.

Yet House couldn't or more accurately wouldn't blame Cuddy. He could never find it in his heart to do so. No matter how badly she'd injured him and torn his heart asunder, he'd found to his own amazement, that he still loved her.

He loved her. And he kept right on loving her after all that had happened between them, all the anguish she'd forced upon him, all the pain she'd put him through. He knew he would continue to love her even after she was married to another man.

And House, the ultimate atheist, believed that he would not stop loving her even after the last breath stole from his tired, battered body, the final pulse stilled his weary, broken heart.

Yes, House still loved her and at the same time hated himself for loving her. And he just plain hated himself.

But how could he not? He would never deserve someone like Lisa Cuddy. Yet he had dared to covet her anyway.

Stupid dreams. False hopes. Foolish heart.

House continued to lay there in the twilight of his dreams and waking nightmares, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. And resenting every single beat it metered out.

Why couldn't he just . . . die? House both feared and craved that lasting end. He knew it was not death itself so much that he wanted, but an end to his agony, to the thoughts that plagued him at off times in the middle of the night. Or even now while he lay in a coma.

For him there was never any escape. House felt the full spectrum of human emotion. His love for Cuddy was all-encompassing even as his own self-loathing was absolute.

When had this supreme hatred of himself been born? Was it something that had been transmitted through every kick and blow and lash his father had rained down upon him? Had all the persecution House endured occurred with such regularity that the bruises eventually penetrated his physical body into his very soul? Or had his father's brutality been merely a reaction to the evil that already existed within Greg from birth?

House didn't know.

All he knew was the beatings meant that he could never be loved. Not by someone as universally respected and feared as his father. Not by someone just as unanimously loved as his mother. No, not by anyone.

It was simple logic. House must have been bad from the start. That's why he'd been tortured as a child.

And then as an adult, everyone treated him as an outcast. So House, acting within the parameters of logic, of cause and effect, felt obligated to fill that role. Everyone was happy.

Except of course for House.

But could he help it if no one took the time to understand him, to really see him for who he was? Was it his fault that no one, not even those closest to him, saw that he really did have a heart, a conscience and that he really did care about others?

Yet House reasoned that perhaps it was better in the long run to be despised for a part you played rather than to reveal your true nature . . . and then be rejected because of it. House had played his part so long and so well that he was no longer sure where the façade ended and he began, only rarely revealing the sensitivity that was his true nature.

As he had done with Cuddy.

Why had he opened his heart to her in the first place? And why were the shattered remnants of his heart STILL filled with thoughts and memories of her, only of her?

He should have known. He should have followed his head and not his heart. Cuddy had proved herself unworthy of his trust years ago . . . when she colluded with Stacey to perform the "middle ground" surgery which removed a huge portion of his thigh muscle against his wishes while he was in a chemically induced coma.

He knew it too from that very first day, instinctively knew that she would break his heart.

House had given her an out, several in fact. He'd reasoned with her about how he was "the most screwed up person in the world," how they could keep their relationship casual and continue to see other people (for her benefit of course, House did not want to see anyone else) and he explained to her that eventually she would realize that as a boyfriend, he was a terrible choice for a woman with a child.

But she'd argued him out of every deficiency, every possible snag in a shared romantic relationship. Cuddy told him that she loved him, that he was the most incredible man she'd ever known, that he didn't have to change for her or her daughter.

She lied. The fact that House believed that everybody lies was no consolation to him.

So how much worse had it been afterward, after he'd fallen in love with her, had gone ahead and given her everything, given her his heart while going against his own better judgment only to then have his initial suspicions proved right in the end? Then to have her take the heart he'd so honestly given her and smash it, throwing the remnants of it back in his face?

With Cuddy, House had tried, really tried to show her his authentic self, to be worthy of her love.

But it had all been for naught.

She had rejected him and in so doing, she had rejected the truest self he had dared show anyone. In so many ways, Cuddy had been like his father, demanding he be better, that in his race he run faster and leap higher than was humanly possible. Not to mention completely impossible for a man with a crippled right leg.

Cuddy's provisos for him had been so extreme that House could do nothing but fail and fail stunningly. His inevitable fall from such a great height and from a pure state of grace would unavoidably do more than hurt him.

It had destroyed him.

Yet, after all of this his aching heart kept resolutely beating.

And sleep, not even a coma could bring respite from the maddening regrets that plagued Gregory House. Nor was he spared the pain that tortured both his body and soul.

The anguish of this life would go on forever or so it seemed, leaving in its wake a shell of a man, misunderstood and wretched, without hope, without faith, without love.

House's groan sounded foreign and distant to his own ears. Yet he knew that it was he who had uttered the sound. The nightmares of his memories crowded round him like familiar strangers on subway. They pressed in upon him, making it difficult to breathe.

House groaned again, much louder this time, and the aching fog seemed to lift briefly before he was plunged into its lower depths.

Someone was hurting him. It must be his father. His terror at receiving another blow, another near drowning in ice-cold water, another stabbing and humiliating pain was too much to bear. House shook his head and began to tremble in near hysteria.

And then a voice, silken and horrible floated toward him, piercing his eardrums and muddying his mind.

"I told you to stay away from my wife you arrogant son of a bitch."

It was Lucas Douglas.

House's regret and self-pity were suddenly thrust aside in favor of the more dominant part of his personality . . . the fighter. He instinctively knew he must move to help himself.

And even more important than his own safety, even though she'd hurt him terribly, he knew he had to save Cuddy.

But the more he moved the more pain he incurred. It felt like Lucas was driving white hot spikes through his leg and chest. The pain worsened as House finally shirked his silent agony and began screaming.

He heard movement and voices around him but couldn't see, couldn't distinguish anyone, friend or foe. The pain was making House's brain sluggish and blotchy. He no longer defined anything in time or space. Suddenly there were more voices but he wasn't sure whether they we real or only in his own distraught mind.

He heard a laugh. It was his father, laughing at him as he pushed House beneath the surface of the tub filled with ice and water. For a moment, all was silent except for the sounds of his own breathing and heartbeat before a non-stop screaming began to echo through his head.

And then from a distance, he heard a familiar voice.

"What the hell is going on here? What the hell happened?"

"Wilson!"

House reached out wildly in his fear and pain for the only friend who'd ever stood by him, for the only one who could possibly save him.

In the darkness and escalating pain, House suddenly felt Wilson's hand clasp his own.

"What happened?" Wilson repeated. "Who did this to you?"

House was panting now, sweat coursing from every pore on his body.

"Dad!" And then more quietly. "He's coming. He's coming back. He'll kill me this time."

"House, your father's been dead for two years," Wilson reasoned. "Your father wasn't here. He didn't rip your cast off. He didn't do this to you." And then Wilson's voice sounded more distant as he addressed other unseen entities in the room. "Did anyone see anything? He couldn't have done this himself, removed his restraints and then his cast. Did anyone see someone enter or leave this room?"

"Just doctor Cuddy's mother," said another voice.

House felt a needle being jabbed into his arm and soon after relief, blessed liquid relief started flowing through his veins.

"Lucas," House said sluggishly.

"Call Cuddy. She needs to have security put the hospital on lockdown," House heard Wilson say.

"I'm here."

It was her. In the midst of his pain, out of the suffocating gloom, she had finally come. Hers was the voice he heard when he lay lost and alone at night unable to sleep. Her voice was as recognizable to him as his own, as familiar as the sound of his own heartbeat.

For she was his heart.

"I was informed of the emergency here and already put the hospital on lockdown."

Still holding Wilson's hand in his right, House reached out with his left, extending his long fingers into the very heart of his own shadowy despair.

"Cuddy?" House said desperately.

"I'm here," the reply floated to his straining eardrums. He felt her small fingers interlace with his larger hand. "I'm here."

Closing his eyes, he began to drift again as he felt his heartbeat slow.

And then he smiled.