Cuddy was worried, and not just her normal level of worried, she was pacing frantically and going over every possible heinous scenario conceivable. Her heels clacked incessantly on the oak wood flooring of her well-preserved antique craftsman home.
The noise and aching of her stilettos finally irritated her sufficiently enough to fling them off leaving her barefoot in her living room.
It was 4AM and she had expected him hours ago.
She had already been to all his regular hiding places and called anyone who he would have potentially been in contact with him. His team is clueless, running mindless tests on a patient that came in yesterday with a subdural hematoma that ruptured without any clotting factors in his blood.
If he were here, he would have loved this puzzle. All the testing and imaging has been negative, and nobody has been able to locate a cause for the rupture.
It has only been 20 hours since she'd last seem him. The police had told her to wait at least 24 hours before officially reporting him missing. Meaning by morning if nobody had seen him, she would have to make the report.
This could simply be some elaborate prank to get back at her for turning up the AC in his office in January. Even so, this was way beyond retaliatory. The last time he disappeared he at least had the decency to contact Wilson with some lie about consulting with the CIA. Although very unlikely, at least he stayed in contact and had Wilson convinced.
20 HOURS EARLIER
House knocks his cane against the glass door of Cuddy's office. He enters nonchalantly hold a file in his left hand.
Cuddy doesn't notice him at first looking down at some paperwork while holding a phone in other hand. House stands immediately in front of her waiting for her to acknowledge his presence to no avail.
He clears his through sarcastically insisting that she look up from her work and direct your attention to him immediately.
"Where did you go this morning?"
Cuddy sighed, "I had an urgent meeting with the board, I'm sorry" Cuddy got up from her desk and sauntered over to House to give him a late good-morning kiss.
"Did Marina take Rachel to school?" Cuddy's pink silk blouse distracted him for a moment before he looked up and responded "yeah, although it took some convincing to get her wear her school clothes, I promised to pick her up if she didn't leave home naked" house smirked "like mother like daughter" before he returned his gaze to Cuddy's cleavage.
Cuddy ignored House's snide remark turning away from him and back toward her desk.
"If you are picking her up then she finishes at 2:30 today, which I doubt you'll do because a new case came into the ER, 31-year-old male with chronic migraines, fatigue, and a clotting disorder. He's been to 5 specialists; nobody can figure it out" Cuddy handed the file over to House.
"That's weird because I found this file in the clinic that seems much more interesting" House dramatically licks his finger before opening the file.
"45-year-old female with history of lying and deluded excuses" he closes the file looking up at Cuddy. "you're losing your touch Cuddy."
Cuddy takes a step back towards her pain-in-the-ass boyfriend. "Really? Why would I be lying about a board meeting at 8 AM?"
House immediately turns the open file towards Cuddy's face revealing, to her surprise, that the file is actually hers.
"What are you doing with my medical file?!" Cuddy's annoyance is evident as she snatches the file from Houses grip.
"Why was it at the top of the pile at the nurse's station? Take a quick trip to the clinic this morning, did we?"
House leans in towards his girlfriend pensively analyzing her for a hint from her demeanor.
"You already know don't you" Cuddy sighs looking into his eyes.
"I know that some tests were conducted, and you are waiting for the results that should be in…" house looks down at his imaginary watch "any minute now, so you are distracting yourself with work, specifically the paper charts and your laptop is closed because you are avoiding a certain e-mail with test results." House looked directly at Cuddy looking for that tell tale tilt of the head showing that she was about to lie to him.
Cuddy signs heavily. "I'm not sure about it, and I didn't want to worry you until I was certain" Cuddy struggled to meet house's gaze.
"That's why you were going to keep me busy with this case from the ER today" took a step toward his girlfriend who still refused to meet his gaze.
"There is nothing to talk about until I get those results" Cuddy finally looks up at House who had closed the space between them.
"you're the only person that can evade my unsolicited diagnostics, I blame the kid, she keeps me occupied too much."
Cuddy chuckled at the relief of tension from his comment. House kissed her forehead before turning and exiting her office with the new casefile.
According to his team, nothing unusual came up in the DDX, normal House-like comments comparing patients' blood to Kool-Aid and some mention of potential inbreeding in the patients' genes. The conclusion was to run tests to rule out brain tumours and leukemia.
18 HOURS EARLIER
His team disappeared to run the routine tests leaving House time to pay his daily visit to the Wilson soup-kitchen for late-breakfast or early lunch. He sat across from him in the cafeteria eating French fried right off his plate and taking a bite out of his apple.
Wilson looked up from the file he was reading next to his tray of food waiting for House to unleash a string of insult laced sarcasm. However, he seemed distracted. Less 'House' than usual.
"Seriously… you haven't even commented on my new tie" Wilson motioned to the blue tie. "Are you sick?"
House looks down at the tie "your fashion choice was clearly aimed at providing me with some form of distraction today which is unsuccessful, so what does that tell you?"
Wilson rolls his eyes, clearly his feeble attempt at distraction wasn't thoroughly thought through.
"You know" Wilson closes the file he had been reading. "She called me early this morning, didn't give me a lot of time to pack my trunk of woopie cushions." He sighed looking defeated from his poor attempt at distraction.
"What did she tell you?" House took another bite from the apple.
"She said that she was having some medical tests today and that you'd probably be snooping around her all day unless there were some distractions to keep you occupied" House looked for Wilsons 'tell' a flick of his eyes to the left tell him that he was lying about something.
House leans back in the chair confirming his analysis of Wilson but wanted to have him squirm in his own discomfort a little while longer.
"and…." Wilson let out the hitch in his breathe that he had been carrying.
"She told me about the test… she didn't want you to worry about something that may not be anything" Wilson started eating the remaining food that was on his plate.
"I'm here when and if you want to talk about it. I know something like this is huge for you and I know that it takes some time to process so if you want to talk or rip into me about my fashion choices go nuts" Wilson put his hands in the air signalling his surrender.
"She hasn't received the results yet so there's nothing to talk about yet" House looked up from the plate of food offering Wilson a sarcastic smile.
"Well, whenever she does, I'm sure you'll be the first to know since you know all her e-mail passwords" Wilson nods.
House returned to munching on the fries.
"House. I know you don't want to hear this, but it's okay to be worried. This is Cuddy we're talking about. This isn't some random woman you hooked up with. You two have been together for two years, you live together. You're practically Rachel's father. You will get through this."
House put down the fry that he was about the eat "Thank you for the vote of confidence Dr. Phil" House stood up and limped away.
10 HOURS EARLIER
"We did a full body MRI, but he keeps going in and out of consciousness when we lye him down on his back. His BP bottoms out and he flatlines. We couldn't scan the rest of his body but his brain is clean, no tumours or lesions besides the hematoma we already caught" Thirteen stands in the differential room with House holding the black marker at the whiteboard.
"okay new symptom" House writes BP and fainting on the board.
"Could be related to the blood disorder" Taub voices from his seated position at the table. "Low BP is consistent with the amount of blood he lost from the rupture."
House turns toward Taub "No wonder your wife is sleeping with other men." Taub rolls his eyes.
"Endocarditis? Could be problem with the heart" Foreman chimes in.
"Do an echo and ultrasound the liver and kidneys, if it's not a problem with the pump it could be a problem with filtration system."
The team gets up to begin the new round of tests while House continues to stare at the whiteboard list of symptoms.
A PING sound from his computer alerts him of a new e-mail. House knew if wasn't for him since he hadn't signed in to his hospital e-mail in over three years. He had his computer signed in to Cuddy's account, meaning the constant pinging could be a variety of boring administrative reminders and briefs. He knew she wouldn't be looking at her e-mails regularly today, so he wanted to make sure nothing urgent was happening. By urgent he means by House standards and not anal Cuddy standards.
He reads through the latest dozens of e-mails looking at subject lines about budget changes and project briefs. So far, nothing nuclear and nothing results related.
8 HOURS EARLIER
Houses efforts to monitor the dean of medicines correspondences for the day in hopes of obtaining her test results was inconclusive. Nothing, even hours after the results should have already been sent out. House thought about paying a visit to Dr. Sanders who ran her blood panel. However, he knew he wouldn't get anywhere with her, since she was one of those ethical doctors who believed in confidentiality.
He descended to the main level of the hospital and poked his head into Cuddy's office with his cane. He saw it was vacant, so he sauntered in over to her now open laptop at her desk.
"You won't find them on there" House looked up from his position behind the desk to Cuddy standing with one hand on her hip.
"Well, I already checked your personal e-mail and there's nothing in there, so I have to assume that Dr. Sanders sent the results to your admin e-mail" House played dumb.
"I know you have the password to my admin e-mail, so you already know there is nothing there" she folded her arms across her chest.
Cuddy continued "Which means you're coming here to snoop through the paper charts you don't have access to" Cuddy closed her laptop from the other side of her desk and folded the open files that were sitting next to it.
"People are right when they say couples start to mimic their partners mannerisms" House put his injured leg on her desk.
Cuddy looked back to ensure that the blinds in her office were closed, an action she assumed House did when he broke in.
"I told Dr Sanders to deliver the results directly to me instead of e-mailing them" House looked at her probing her to continue.
Cuddy exhaled sharply. She sat down.
"It's positive house" Cuddy looked up at her boyfriend.
Before he could respond he got an urgent page from his team alerting him that his patient declining rapidly.
"go" Cuddy could tell he couldn't handle having this conversation with her right now. She wasn't ready to have the conversation. They both needed time to process for themselves.
It was late and Marina had already put Rachel to bed by the time Cuddy had made her way home. She knew House's patient was still touch and go so she assumed he was be occupied for the evening.
She glanced down at her phone scrolling through e-mails, noting that his team was treating with dialysis and chelation.
She messages Wilson to warn him about House's potential state of mind, and to watch for any unusual addict behaviour.
Wilson, who had been home for several hours assured her that he had not been by apartment, nor had he received any drunken calls from an inebriated House.
"Give him some time to process the news, I'm sure he'll be home later tonight if not tomorrow" Wilson wrote back.
"congrats!" Cuddy closed her phone and went to bed, tossing and turning from a resetless sleep without House.
PRESENT
The next day Cuddy saw no signs of life from House. His team notified her that he swung by the room when he was in cardiac arrest and told them to put him on dialysis and chelation and then left.
Foreman and thirteen were instructed to break into the patient's home and look for environmental factors, where they found mold from an old AC unit in the window and a set of rusted knives that he was clearly using to cook.
He had tetanus, house was right to start him on chelation, he is starting to respond, and his BP had stabilized.
House had left the hospital at 6pm last night and had not been seen by anyone since.
Cuddy called the bars he would have frequented if he had slipped up, nobody had seen him.
She went to his old apartment which had been emptied when he moved the remainder of his things over to her home 4 months ago. He was planning to rent it out, but nothing had been done just yet. She knew how attached he was to that place and didn't want to force him into giving it up entirely. She knew he was the self-sabotaging type, giving up his place would be a huge step and she was comfortable with him taking his time.
No sign of house in the empty apartment.
She called him, but it went right to voicemail. She called local pharmacies posing as his doctor asking if anyone with his name came into fill a prescription for Vicodin. No Vicodin, no House.
By afternoon she'd given up trying to reach him and decided to follow Wilson's advice of letting him process the news on his own and in his own way.
She attempted to distract herself with work and following a new case she had found for House' team. She told them she made House attend a conference in Boston so he would be out for the next couple of days. They weren't surprised he didn't tell them; he has no clue what's on his schedule unless it's related to monster trucks.
By 6pm that evening, after exhausting all possibilities, Cuddy returned to her home alone. She put Rachel to bed and sat on the living room couch wrapped in a blanket and cried. She grabbed her phone and started dialing the police department.
"I'd like to report a missing person.… yes, it's been about more than 24 hours… yeah okay."
Cuddy gets up from the couch moving towards the front door to lock it while holding the phone against her ear.
Before she could lock it, the door pushes open revealing a dishevelled and dripping wet House.
"Hang up" House looks at Cuddy in her PJs wrapped in a blanket with tearstains on her cheeks.
Without breaking eye contact with him, she ends the call. She wanted to jump into his arms and cry with relief, but she remained composed.
"Where the hell have you been?!" it came out harsher than she intended.
"Connecticut picking something up… can I come in?"
Cuddy moved away from the entrance and allowed house to come inside. She disappeared and reappeared with a towel handing it to him to dry himself off.
Anticipating her line of questioning following his travel revelation he continued.
"Did you know that one of the best trades that you could have in the middle-ages was blacksmithing, they were the only ones who knew the correct ways to fashion horseshoes, weapons, chains, if they were talented, they could even make jewelry for the nobility. Each smith had a particular signature for their products. This symbol would be passed down from father to son (no offense) for generations. When these smiths took the mayflower cruise they'd trade their fine commodities for food, shelter, whatever they could."
House limped closer to Cuddy.
"Are you saying you went bartering in Connecticut" Cuddy retorted sarcastically.
"No, great-great-great-great grandpa House kept one thing from his smith collection in the family" House closed the gap between them.
"I read a rule that cripples don't have to kneel" House fished a small box out of his pocket revealing a small gold ring with a tiny green emerald and an 'H' carved into it.
"Marry me Cuddy"