A/N: Well, here goes. It's Tuesday and House goes to therapy. Remember, opening up is not easy for House but he knows if he wants a chance at life he has to do this. Enjoy and please leave a comment on your way out!

Thank you to Veronique for her M.D. expertise regarding the various treatments of House's leg pain!

Thank you to everyone who is reading this story!

House arrived at Nolan's office around 9:30 am Tuesday morning. He'd called the psychiatrist to let him know he was running late because the case he'd been working on had kept him up most of the night. House knew if he stuck with it, they could solve it and they did. The patient had begun deteriorating rapidly and suffering from drowsiness, disorientation and slurred speech. His physical, neurological exams and all other tests revealed nothing. The family had lost all hope and decided he would undergo no more tests but House talked to them and convinced them to give his team just a bit longer. Around seven in the morning, somebody, nobody remembers who it was, had an epiphany and after more tests including anion gap and bone marrow, it was determined the patient had multiple myeloma. House told his team to treat and inform the family that the patient should show significant improvement in about fourteen days.

When House entered the building, Nolan's secretary Alice greeted him and waved him into the office. Fortunately, Nolan had a carafe of coffee and two large mugs ready. House took his usual spot in the recliner and put his feet up. He rubbed his right thigh which was hurting more than usual.

"Greg, is the pain worse today?"

House nodded. "Yeah, sleeping in that chair bites."

"We could have rescheduled our session."

"If I reschedule there's a chance I don't come at all."

Nolan nodded his head in understanding. "How's the pain regimen?"

"Acetaminophen, gabapentin, muscle relaxing patches, combined with hydrotherapy, massage therapy, and exercise seem to help quite a bit. Docs offered me percutaneous fentanyl patches and oxycodone for breakthrough pain but I'd like to avoid opiates if at all possible."

"But is what you're doing now working?"

"Most of the time the combination of things helps, the pain varies depending on the level of activity. If I sit, stand or lie down too long it will hurt. Unfortunately muscle tissue can't regenerate on its own but the physical therapy is at least helping to increase the remaining muscle to compensate which helps when I put weight on it. It's the best I can do." House said before taking a swig of coffee. The pain was subsiding and he was beginning to feel up for his session.

"Do you ever wish you were back on Vicodin?

"Sometimes."

"Why?"

"Vicodin numbed the pain."

"In your leg?"

"Where else?"

"It's important for us to talk about your pain, both the physical and the emotional."

It was still difficult for House to talk about his emotional pain; there was so much of it. It would hit him with random flashes of memories provoking feelings he couldn't control. Sometimes when he wanted to discuss his emotional pain he didn't even know where to start and he was afraid of what he'd say once he got started. He took a deep breath and relaxed his head against the back of the recliner.

"I know a lot of my pain is real and that my leg really hurts. I also know that some of this is psychological. When I was on Vicodin, the leg didn't hurt so much, and I was so high, well at least high enough that I didn't care if people tried to hurt me because I couldn't feel it. I didn't want to feel it. Problem was my body got used to the Vicodin so I had to increase the dosage. It's how I wound up here in the first place."

"You did the right thing, it would have killed you. You know that right?"

"Yeah."

"Greg if there's anything I can do."

"There's nothing you can do. This…" he motioned with his hands between himself and Nolan "this helps, talking about stuff."

"I'm glad. What shall we talk about today?"

House sighed. He had no idea where to begin.

"My mother's coming to visit this weekend."

"Is that a good thing?"

"I don't know."

"Was this her idea or yours?"

"Hers."

"Are you going to talk to her about everything that's happened?"

"Shit, I wouldn't know where to start."

"Don't plan it out, just play it by ear. Enjoy some quality time with her and just be honest with her. She's your mother; she's not going to hate you."

House let out a dry laugh. The thought of his mother hating him sent a shiver up his spine. She was the only person who'd ever stood by him and never wavered. He still felt an immense amount of guilt for not being the kind of son she deserved.

"Greg I sense something's bothering you, what is it?"

House waited a few moments before answering. "My mother is the only one who's never turned her back on me. Stacy, Wilson, Cuddy, my dad, they gave up on me eventually. Sure, Wilson came back but mom, she never gave up on me, ever. She's the only one." House had a kind of distant look in his eye as if he were conjuring up a memory.

"Are you worried about disappointing her?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"She defended me to my father, protected me as much as she could from his crap, all she wanted was for me to be happy and I screwed up every chance I ever had. I don't know what in hell she's going to think when she finds out about what I did."

"She's your mom, she's always going to love you."

"I don't deserve her. She's a good person. We're so different."

"How are you different?"

"Mom has a good heart. She's the kind of person who takes in all the strays and cares for them, always going out of her way to help people, do good things for them and not because she has to but because she wants to. My father used to have a fit over it. Told her she was too nice. He even told her more than once that she didn't deserve an ungrateful asshole like me as a son."

Nolan could feel the sting in that last comment and he filed House's words away in his mind for for future reference. He knew House had been adamant about not deserving this or that in life and he wanted to address it but at a later time. Right now he was hoping House would continue talking about his mother.

"I take it she wasn't a confrontational type of person?"

"No, but she inherited a slightly rebellious streak."

"Oh?"

"My grandmother, mom's mother was born into a wealthy family but she married beneath her. She married my grandfather who was a tailor. My grandfather was a master of his trade and made a good living but his mother-in-law didn't like him. No matter how hard he worked and took care of his family, it didn't matter to her, she refused to accept him. My grandmother started a trend because it seems my great-grandmother didn't like my father either and yet my mother married him anyway. My mother was a smart woman, her grandmother kept insisting she should marry a wealthy respectable young man from a good family. So what does she do? She marries a Marine, a guy from a blue collar working class family."

"What did your mom's parents say about that?"

"They encouraged her to do whatever she wanted to do. But my great-grandmother, she was pretty insistent and intimidating. She tried a few times to set my mother up with what she considered respectable young men. According to my grandmother, my mother met them at the door and politely told them she wasn't interested and continued dating my father."

Nolan laughed."It would explain where you got your rebellious streak, wouldn't it?"

"I guess."

"So your mom was no pushover. Apparently she knew what she wanted and didn't let anything stand in her way."

"You could say that."

"Do you wish she had stood up to your dad and said something to him about how he treated you?"

House felt a little uncomfortable talking about this and it showed. He began fidgeting with his cane though he knew he had come too far to turn back now.

"Back then I wish she had, I wanted her to stand up to him in his face and tell him what a son of a bitch he was and then just pack her shit and take me with her but that never happened. My mom was more subtle in how she stood up to him. She did everything she could for me while placating him at the same time."

"How?"

"As I told you once before, mom taught me a lot of things. She taught me to read and bought me lots of books all the time. She also bought me my first piano and taught me to play it. My dad thought she was spoiling me and piano made me a wuss so he tried to toughen me up. One weekend when mom was away visiting her parents, he threw away my books and sold my piano to the wife of one of his fellow officers. When mom got back and found out, she was mad as hell but she didn't yell at him. Instead, she replaced all my books and bought me another piano out of her own money. He never said a word about it to her at least not in front of me. I never heard them discuss it. But after that dad didn't touch my books or my piano again. I knew he hated that she'd defied him by the way he looked at me when I played that piano."

House seemed anxious to talk more so Nolan nodded, acknowledging him to continue.

"Whenever dad would pick on me, mom defended me by talking to my father in an effort to convince him that my actions were just a boy being a boy. She told him I was a bright, intellectual young man and that there was something special about me. She'd tell him there was a gift I possessed that was going to change the world someday. She tried to convince him that my unusual curiosity and way of thinking was part of what made me special and that I should be encouraged. She really believed in me like nobody else did. She encouraged me to indulge in everything that interested me like books, piano, and sports. If it weren't for her I never would have become a doctor."

House took a deep breath and sighed. That was a lot of talking, even for him.

"Your mom sounds like one hell of a woman."

"Yeah I suppose she is. She never said this out loud but I sensed that when dad was gone, she was relieved. It seemed we spent a lot of time together when he was gone. It was peaceful for both of us, they were the best times when it was just us."

"And yet you are worried about her coming here."

"I spent my adult life avoiding her mostly because of him. Now he's gone and I'm still avoiding her only this time it's because of me. Fuck! How do I talk to her about what I did to Cuddy? I mean she already knows what happened but now she has to hear it from me. How do I face her? She sacrificed so much for me and I wound up in prison."

"I think you may underestimate your mother. You went through some serious life changing events all within a very short period of time. You were under an immense amount of stress and you just cracked. Be honest with her about everything that happened. You have taken responsibility for your actions, you paid for it and here you are in therapy trying to fix your life and repair the damage you've done to yourself and others. You could have said the hell with it and continued your old lifestyle when you got out of prison but you didn't. You want to change Greg, you just don't know how. I'm telling you, right now you're on the right path."

"I've tried before and I've failed."

"That's true and yet here you are again. What does that tell you?"

"Trying means nothing, succeeding means everything. I was off Vicodin and clean for almost two years then I thought Cuddy was dying and I slipped right back into old habits and after the breakup it only got worse. It ruined my life. Again."

House sounded frustrated and as he spoke he got out of the recliner, grabbed his cane and headed for his favorite spot by the window. There were times it was easier for him to talk while looking out the window than facing Nolan.

"I'm tired of trying and never succeeding. I'm supposed to be one of the smartest goddamn people in the world and I can't even figure out how to fix my own life. I keep fucking it up time and time again."

"Greg, life is about making mistakes, learning from them and trying again. Sometimes when we try succeed, other times we fail. There's no manual for how to live our lives, we just have to keep going and hope we're doing it right and when we don't we learn from that and move on. Imagine where the human race would be if we never picked ourselves up after falling down. You are not alone Greg, many feel as you do."

House didn't say anything. He just kept looking out the window. "What if I don't want to try again? It just hurts. Every goddamned time it hurts worse than the last."

"I know it hurts and I know that sometimes you just want to give up but that's the easy way out and that is just not who you are. Listen, I can't do anything to take away your pain but I can help you realize that you are not a failure, that you can change and be the person you want to be. You just have to fight for it, more than most. It's going to take time, it won't happen overnight. But if you just keep on trying, you can do this. The question is what do you want to do? What do you want out of your life?"

"I don't know what I want but I know what I don't want. I don't want to feel like I've lost control of my life. I don't want to be miserable but I've been like this so goddamned long I'm not sure how to be anything else."

"You've got a long road ahead of you Greg. You have two choices. Move forward or stay where you are you. If you move forward, you can change things. If you stay where you are you, nothing changes and in fact you'll likely fall backwards. You once told me that doing nothing changes nothing."

"You picked a hell of a time to quote me you know that?"

Nolan just smiled. "Okay Greg, we've got a little time left, why don't we talk more about your relationship with your mom. Are you okay with that?"

House moved back into the chair and set aside his cane. "I can't seem to get a break can I?"

"Not with me you don't." Nolan settled back in his chair, folded his hands in his lap and listened.

Later that afternoon House arrived home exhausted. He'd spent an extra half-hour with Nolan talking about his mom and that turned out to be a very good conversation. It made House realize how much he missed his mom. He was still apprehensive about telling her what he'd done but he knew he would tell her. He hated to admit it, though he wasn't quite sure why, but talking to Nolan really was helping him. He felt an incredible weight lifted after every session.

When House returned to Princeton he had a light lunch and made it right on time for his physical therapy appointment. He ended his session with an intense massage from Lucia, the sixty-something year old "masseuse from hell" as he liked to call her. Lucia was brutal but House always felt more relaxed after she was done with him. She knew he was in pain and yet she was relentless and he was thankful for that. He didn't like to be coddled or pitied and he was glad that neither Nolan or any of his physical therapists did that to him.

The first thing he did upon arriving home was strip down and get into the shower. The hot water felt good on his tired muscles. He dried off and put on his favorite Ramones tee shirt and pajama pants. It was still daylight but he wasn't going anywhere for the rest of the day. Tuesdays took a lot out of him both mentally and physically and he needed time to recuperate from it. Since Chase was now his right-hand man he'd told him he expected him to run the team on Tuesdays unless it was an emergency. So far he'd received no phone calls and for once he was grateful for that.

He sat at the piano and played while processing the day's events. He didn't pay much attention to what he played, he just closed his eyes and let his hand drift over the keys, his fingers gliding back and forth as if they had a mind of their own. Somehow he found himself playing Cuddy's Serenade, one of his personal favorites. He smiled remembering how he felt when he composed it, all the love and passion he'd felt for her was present that night, even though he'd been sitting alone at the piano drinking scotch kicking himself because he'd been too stupid to just tell her he wanted to be at Rachel's Simchat Bat. In all the time they were together, House had never once played that song for Cuddy. He'd thought of giving it to her as a gift but he never did. Their entire relationship which began the moment he first laid eyes on her back in college, was wrapped up in that serenade and he could not bear to part with it, not even to play it for her.

As he finished playing the serenade he opened his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. For him moments of serenity and peace were few and far between but at that particular moment in time, he was feeling it and it felt good. For a fleeting moment it actually made him...smile. Feeling a second wind come over him, his fingers resumed their place on the keys as he closed his eyes and threw himself into one of his favorite Rachmaninov Piano Concertos.

Thanks for reading!