Cuddy stood a foot away from the gurney in a daze, staring at its unmoving occupant in disbelief. The last time she had seen him he had given her such an enigmatic look. One she still hadn't figured out. Eyes wide and intense as they strived to tell her everything but told her nothing. Something about them had haunted her every waking moment since.

Until now. Now every time she closed her eyes she would see this image.

By the time she and Wilson had raced to the emergency room, House had already been sedated and intubated. All the blood tests had been taken and sent, CT's ordered and the bed manger was already hunting down a bed in intensive care.

Dr Chase had everything under control. So she had nothing to do but listen to the other doctor's account of the morning and stare at the man in the hospital bed. She wished she could rewind twenty-four hours and made Chase and Foreman go to the site, it made more sense for them to have gone, than to go herself. But she had needed the distraction from Lucas's proposal and the turbulent feelings it had left in its wake.

She should have sent him back to the hospital with the crane operator. Then he wouldn't have been crawling around under buildings or involved in a cave in…

He wouldn't be dependent on a machine to breathe.

And he was dependent on the respirator. Even on the machine, his oxygen levels were poor. You didn't even need to look at the monitors, just the unnatural shade of his skin.

His face was dirty. The thought flittered though her head as she noticed the dark dust on his skin. He hadn't made it home to shower. He hadn't made it home at all. He now wore one of the despised hospital gowns, a fresh bandage covered the long cut on his neck, the surrounding skin looked angry and red against the stark pallor of his skin. Even from a distance she could see the sweat beaded on his forehead.

He was still. No twitching or fiddling with his hands, no voluntary motion what so ever. Wires covered him. Tubes pushing lifesaving fluid into his body, monitors recording every rise of his chest and every beat of his heart.

"You didn't notice anything last night? At all?" Wilson was demanding. "You found him sitting on a picnic table in the middle of the night and thought everything was hunky dory?

"No. I found him sitting in the park. He was tired and said he didn't want to go home or back to the hospital. I think he would have stayed out there all night if I hadn't come along. He didn't look well but had no respiratory symptoms or signs of a fever."

"You should have checked him out then." Wilson insisted. "He had been in a cave in, for Christ sakes he should have been looked at."

She had checked him over, Cuddy remembered. When he had been half dragged from the rubble, blood down his shirt, she had given him the once over, dressed his wound. Had she missed something?

"It doesn't always present itself until hours after the initial injury. Pulmonary contusion tends to progressively worsen slowly over a few days." Foreman backed up his colleague and stepped slightly between the two frustrated men.

"He had been checked out, Wilson." Chase insisted, "There were no symptoms to see. He didn't even know something was wrong until this morning..."

She could hear them talking but allowed their voices to fade into the background as she stepped closer to his gurney. She kept expecting him to open his eyes and lifting his head, but that wasn't going to happen. Not today.

"I've found a bed in the intensive care unit." The bed manager had hung up the phone and interrupted the three men. "We need to move him upstairs whilst he's still stable. Room 115."

"I'll take him up and get him settled." Taub volunteered as the Nurse's prepped their patient for transfer. Cuddy felt herself being gently moved aside by Dr Hadley who had appeared by her side.

"We tried to ring his mother. She's down as his next of kin, but we can't get a hold of her. You and Wilson are down as second and third contacts, so I guess until we get a hold of her…"

Cuddy nodded absently

"Dr Cuddy!" A face appeared in front of her and she blinked, finally focusing on someone other than House.

Alex, her assistant had a troubled look on his face.

"I can't find a replacement for Dr Richardson. I've rang all the surrounding hospitals but I can't find anyone. We have to shut the ER and transfer the ICU…"

"We can't do that." He can't be moved.

"Dr Cuddy we have no choice."

"Where is Dr Richardson now?"

"He's at home."

"OK." Cuddy's mind went into over drive, "Chase, Hadley. Go to Dr Richardson and bring him back to the hospital and figure out what's going on with him. I need him here on site or I'll have to close the ER and the ICU."

As she spoke she watched as House was wheeled out of the room, his bed loaded with machines and supplies, Wilson following, his head in his best friends chart. Tearing her eyes away she ushered Alex back to her office and ordered him to start calling hospitals further afield.

Closing the door she stumbled over to her desk and collapsed on her chair, letting her head fall into her hands. Her hands shaking she took a deep breath followed quickly by another as she tried to force back the tears she wanted to cry.

She kept picturing House sat on a picnic table, afraid to go home. What if Chase hadn't walked home and found him? Would he have still been there? Would he still be alive?

Had he known he was ill? Did she miss anything at the site when she checked him out?

A sob escaped her lips.

Her hospital was in danger of closer but her thoughts were on the man fighting for his life up stairs. The man she had failed.

If he died, without knowing just how sorry she was, just how much he meant to her she would never forgive herself.