Chapter 6: Questions

Elisabeth sat underneath the tree in the shade while Donnie went to go get her something to drink. Looking over, she saw Rachel and Gerald together with a few of Rachel's friends, all talking about something amusing. There were a lot of times that she wished she could be more like Rachel. Open up and allow herself to become close to more people.

Besides Jessica, she had one close friend, Sophia. She, like her, was distant and more often by herself. When ever Jessica would go off to be with her friends, Elisabeth would go with Sophia. Most of the time, she avoided people. It was hard to explain to them why she couldn't talk, and why there were times where she just couldn't do normal things like run around and play games, that sometimes she just had to stay home.

Also, in the back of her head, she knew that she never had that long to live. From the time that she was eight, she had been trying to get herself used to the idea. That was a time in which she was back in the hospital due to breathing problems and Cuddy had went in there, crying, asking her if she knew what was going on. At that moment, she didn't need an explanation.

"Grape all right?" Donnie asked, holding up a juice box.

Elisabeth looked up and started to laugh. Nodding her head, she accepted the drink.

Donnie smiled to her and took his seat next to her. "Just wondering, why can't you talk?" he questioned. It might have been a little rude to ask, but he wanted to know. Besides, he never saw Elisabeth as one who is really all that sensitive.

Elisabeth looked down and grabbed a notepad that she had brought with her. She wrote down that she had a growth on her vocal chords when she was little and then handed the pad over to Donnie.

"Nice," he said and then handed the pad back to her. "Two years ago I had one removed from my liver. It wasn't cancer though, just a growth," he explained. He then looked up and watched her smile to him. "Can you make any noise?" he implored.

Elisabeth held her finger up, motioning for him to wait a second and then took her other hand and pressed down on the bottom of her neck. She made a small squeaking noise, but it was obvious that it was painful for her to do.

Donnie cringed a little. Not at the noise, the noise he thought sounded kind of cool. But he could just tell that it felt bad. "You didn't have to do that, you could have just told me that it hurt," he informed her.

Elisabeth shrugged and then took a drink of her juice. It didn't really matter, it wasn't excruciating, and it didn't last long. Besides, she liked that he was straight forward. Some people when they asked, they took twenty minutes just to explain to her that they didn't mean to offend her and they would tell her how bad they felt for her.

Now, it was her turn to ask him a question. She took her paper and pen and smugly peeked up to him over the paper as she wrote. After she was done, she handed the note to him.

"Why did you pick me?" Donnie read out loud and then looked up to her and shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "I think you're pretty, and I can tell that you're smart. You don't go on and on about yourself, which a lot of girls in our class do," he explained. "You're different."

Elisabeth began to blush. Smiling, she looked off to the side. Turning her attention back to him, she saw him covering the fact that he was beginning to laugh at her reaction. She didn't care though. Instead, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It was her way of saying thank you.

Donnie now sat back and slightly smiled. He wasn't quite sure what to say to that. Now, it was Elisabeth's turn to laugh at him.

O o o o o o

Gabrielle had Jason on her lap as she sat with House on the couch. It was Jason's nap time and he was starting to fall asleep.

"Just yesterday he was telling me that he was too grown up for naps," Gabrielle stated, smirking down at Jason.

"I take them when ever Lisa isn't looking," House stated.

Gabrielle looked up to him. "Well hey, a smart mind like your's needs a break here and there to keep functioning at it's best," she remarked. "That and the fact that you pop so many pills you probably just pass out."

"I happen to have an ailment," House informed her.

"Yeah," Gabrielle laughed. "Insanity."

"Says the girl who still sleeps with her blanky," he said.

Gabrielle just stared to him for a moment, trying to think of a comeback, but instead just raised her eyebrows and nodded. "Point taken," she admitted.

Cuddy walked in the door with a couple of grocery bags in her hand. "Hey Gabi," she greeted as she walked through to the kitchen.

Gabrielle turned back and smiled to her. "Hold on a sec. I want to talk to you," she stated and then looked over to House. "You think you can watch him?" she requested.

"Sorry, I don't like kids," House informed her.

"Just the sex then huh?" Gabrielle questioned as she scooped the little boy into her arms. Carefully, she stood up and then gently laid him back down on the couch.

"Momma!" he cried, lifting his head up.

Gabrielle leaned down and brushed his blonde hair back from his face. "You think you can stay with grandpa for a minute?" she gently implored.

Jason looked around and spotted House. He then went on to crawl over and climb onto his lap.

Gabrielle could see House slightly cringe as the toddler jabbed his knee into the scar on his leg. "Watch his leg," she warned.

House shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he assured her. It wasn't something that he wasn't used to with his own kids.

Gabrielle watched the two for a brief moment before going into the kitchen. She sat down as she watched Cuddy put the last of the groceries into the fridge. "I brought something for Elisabeth," she announced.

"Yeah?" Cuddy responded as she closed the fridge door and looked over to Gabrielle. "What's that?"

"That scrapbook that I had from elementary school through high school. Last time everyone was over at my house, she spotted it and got mad when I told her that she couldn't look at it," Gabrielle explained.

Cuddy suspiciously looked over to her as she made her way over to the table and joined her. "Why wouldn't you let her see it then?" she questioned. There had to be something in there that was bad. She herself never actually saw it, but then again, it was never really brought to her attention that she even had a scrapbook.

Gabrielle shrugged. "There were pictures of me being stupid," she answered.

"Embarrassing?" Cuddy asked.

"Kind of, but not really. I just don't like giving a twelve year old with an expiration date ideas of what she might want to try," Gabrielle replied. She wasn't fully thinking when she spoke, and noticed Cuddy's subtle change of expression when she used the term expiration date. "I shouldn't have put it quite that way," she confessed, trying to fix her error.

"It's fine," she responded. Cuddy just let it go and decided to just bypass the whole thing. "Where is this scrapbook?" she questioned.

Gabrielle stood up. "Hold on," she said and then headed out the room. Within a few seconds, she came back into the room carrying a photo album. "Here it is," she announced, setting it down before Cuddy and then taking her seat next to her.

Cuddy opened it. On the first page of course, there was a picture of Gabrielle on her first day of kindergarten. There were pictures from class parties, gatherings with relatives.

"I take it she was your best friend?" Cuddy inquired, pointing to a picture of Gabrielle and a little girl with light brown hair and dark eyes, the same girl that she had been seeing over and over again.

Gabrielle laughed. "That was Amelia," she answered and then looked up to Cuddy. "Resemble anyone you know?" she implored.

Cuddy studied the picture and then shook her head. "I don't know," she stated.

"Andy's little sister," Gabrielle informed her. "That was how I knew him so well. I was always over at his house. Amelia and I would play up in her room and he would be with his friends."

The next page, there was a picture of the two standing next to each other in their first Communion dresses with Andy standing with them, looking slightly annoyed. "You still have those pearls," Cuddy mentioned, noticing the necklace she was wearing.

Gabrielle laughed. "Yeah, my mom got them for me. I felt so grown up wearing them," she replied, smiling down at the picture.

There were some more pictures. Less and less with Maria and her family and more with Amelia and Andy. Then, suddenly, when Gabrielle was about ten, she saw the pictures go from Toledo, to out in Maine with her Aunt Eloise. There were less pictures, and they were with Gabrielle dressing up. A little later on, while still up in Maine, there were a lot of pictures of her and a young boy. One of them drinking together. One of Gabrielle and the boy kissing. In all those pictures, she was wearing dark eyeliner and dressing all in black.

Cuddy found those pictures to be slightly disturbing. Gabrielle looked older than she was. She looked tired, and almost scary thin.

Those pictures lasted through fourth and fifth grade. The pictures of her drinking, hanging around the docks at night, glazed over looks indicating that she had taken something.

"Dave Benson," Gabrielle said. "He was my best friend up there. I would sneak out at night after Eloise went to bed to hang out with him," she explained. "Last I heard, he overdosed when he was seventeen."

Cuddy kept her eyes on the pictures before her. She then went on, noticing that the pictures were now with Andy again, but no Amelia. "What happened to your best friend?" she questioned.

Gabrielle shrugged. "I don't know actually. When I came back, she was just gone. Andy never told me what happened to her. I don't even know if she's still alive," she responded.

Cuddy looked back up to her. There was something in her eyes, a hint of melancholy. She knew something, maybe not completely, but she had an idea of what had happened.

"I think this is how I remember meeting you," she mentioned, moving onto the more recent pictures of her in high school. The first one she saw was of Gabrielle with long, purple hair. Her, Marcy, and Veronica were outside on a trampoline with water guns.

"I had shorter pink hair when I showed up here," Gabrielle replied.

Cuddy shrugged and then continued on. There were more pictures in this section than there were in the rest of the book. Finally, she got to the Christmas pictures, the last ones of her and Maria together. Then the first one of her and House together. She could tell Gabrielle was holding the camera as she sat next to House, who was visibly irritated as he looked to the camera.

"There's the Hawaii pictures," Gabrielle mentioned as she looked at the one of her trying to build a sandcastle while Rachel destroyed it. Then the one that she had given to House as a Christmas gift a while back.

"Most of that trip was good," Cuddy said, thinking back on House backing out of the wedding.

Then there were the random pictures of Gabrielle with her friends. Some with her and her sisters. A few of just House and Cuddy together. Proms and dances. Then House and Cuddy's wedding where Gabrielle was the maid of honor and Wilson was the best man. All the way up until graduation day.

"I would have included Tommy in there, but he was born after," Gabrielle explained as she saw Cuddy close the book.

"Not too long after. He was born that night," Cuddy responded, handing her back the book.

"Four in the morning is early the next day. Way too early if you ask me," Gabrielle stated. "I came straight to the hospital at one in the morning because I finally decided to check my phone."

"Yeah, I could tell I pulled you from a party. I could smell the alcohol on your breath," Cuddy remarked as she rolled her eyes.

"I wasn't drunk!" Gabrielle defended herself. "I had only had a couple of drinks."

Cuddy knew that she wasn't drunk when she came in there, but there was no doubt that she was a a little buzzed.

"Anyways," Gabrielle sighed. "I think you can see why I was a little iffy on showing Elisabeth this. The more I thought about it though, she's a smart girl and you and daddy watch her like a hawk, so I don't think you would ever let her even have the opportunity to do these things," she explained.

"That's true," Cuddy mentioned. "Besides, she doesn't go out too often at night, and when she does, it's somewhere nearby where we know the parents."

"I just hope that my kids don't get into all the things I did," Gabrielle said.

"So far Jason seems promising," Cuddy stated, softly laughing.

"Well I would hope so!" Gabrielle replied. "My God, if he's doing this stuff now at two, we've got huge problems ahead."

"Something tells me you'll watch him pretty closely," Cuddy informed her.

"Yeah, and if this next one's a girl, I'm putting a tracking device on her," Gabrielle responded.

Cuddy looked up to her with surprise, to receive a giant grin from Gabrielle. "Yeah, I'm pregnant," she announced.

Cuddy smiled and hugged her. "Congratulations!" she said and then pulled back. "How far along?"

"Ten weeks," she answered with a smiled. She loved how excited Cuddy would get for her, she foud it to be cute.

"Have you told your father yet?" Cuddy questioned.

Gabrielle shook her head. "I don't really like telling him. At first, he seems happy for me, and then it's like it hits him that this is a confirmation that Andy and I doing it, and I don't think he likes that idea very much," she explained.

Cuddy laughed. "Yeah, I was there the last time you told him," she responded.

"You think I should go tell him now?" Gabrielle implored.

Cuddy shrugged. "Your baby. You tell him when ever you want," she answered.

Gabrielle got up. "I think I'll do it now," she said and then headed into the living room. "Hey daddy! You're gonna have another grandchild!" she bluntly announced.

House looked up to her. "Congrats," he said, showing some happiness. Then, there was the look, the same one she got last time, the one telling her that he wanted to kill Andy.

"Thank you daddy," she replied and then left it at that.

To the class of 2012! My class officially graduated yesterday. Also, congrats to anyone else who has, or is getting ready to graduate this year.