Chapter 78 — The Needs of the Many

A/N: Thank you to DawnneAndSkipper, MiaEther, lvdmadeon, HeatherSS1, XLucyInTheSkyX, honeybeebikes, Robin, Hollow Lives, and all the guests for their reviews on the last chapter!

Slept on the couch in Wilson's office. Got ready in the lobby bathroom. Ended up in Cuddy's office one minute late, head throbbing, wishing desperately that I'd had time to chug a cup of coffee. I'd managed just barely three hours of sleep after me and House's...fight? Maybe that wasn't the right word. I wasn't angry at him. I was relatively sure he wasn't angry at me. Irritated, sure, but House found me irritating on the absolute best of days.

I'd stood up to him. And...I didn't know where that put us.

But I didn't have time to think about that now, because Cuddy was talking to me, and I realized I'd been tuned out for at least the past few minutes.

"—so you can use all of the same information for your log-in and your email here that you do for your clinicals," Cuddy was saying, leaning over me. I was sat in the desk chair, my desk chair, I guess, which did not, surprisingly, have any C4 taped to the bottom of it. Yes, I'd checked. In my desk chair at my desk in my...office. More of an anteroom, really. Office seemed a strong word. But it was a space, and it was kind of mine, and that seemed...very adult.

I once again realized I was not listening to Cuddy. And she finally noticed. "Anya, you're a million miles away. What's going on?" I shifted to look at Cuddy, and I had her full attention. Great. The last thing I wanted.

I felt compelled to lie, but I decided for a half-truth instead, "To be honest, House and I got into it last night. I didn't get much sleep. I'm sorry, I—I'm not gonna be like this the whole time, I promise. I'm just still waking up."

Cuddy pursed her lips, but she nodded. To my surprise, she disappeared without another word. The blinds were still drawn over the windows of her office, so when she entered, I had no idea what she was doing. She came back a few moments later with a tall styrofoam cup. She offered it to me with a knowing smile, and I accepted it gratefully.

"You're a saint," I said before immediately chugging the coffee for all it was worth. More bitter than I would've liked, but it would hopefully give me the pep in my step I so desperately needed.

"I've known your father for a long time. And I know he's exhausting. And I know he's probably been especially exhausting since he found out you accepted this position," she told me.

"Regardless, I'm...I'm grateful you gave me the chance to do this. I'll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed from now on, honest."

Cuddy seemed to find that deeply amusing. "You're a nursing student. If you show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every day, I'm going to drug test you."

That actually got a laugh out of me. "Okay, fair." I set my fingers on the keys and logged in. "Still. I'm gonna give this my best. I just...I need to know what you need from me. There's got to be more to this job then just dealing with—"

The second I logged on, I was inundated by the sound of moaning, and several dozen pop-ups of people in various states of undress.

"House," Cuddy and I chorused as one, harmonizing in one exasperated groan. Cuddy grimaced, grabbing the phone on my desk and tapping in an extension with a laquered nail.

"Who are you calling?"

"IT."

Cuddy and I sat in her inner office, watching the IT guy work on my computer through the window as we both nursed our coffees.

"You asked what I need from you," Cuddy said between sips. "What I need is someone who understands what I need."

"...Okay."

Cuddy sighed, grabbing a full-to-bursting day planner out of her desk drawer and dropping it in front of me with a notable thunk. "Do you know how many appointments I usually have in a day?"

"I do not."

"Neither do I. Because it's impossible to keep track when you're being pulled in one hundred different directions one hundred percent of the time." Cuddy leaned forward, seeming to consider her next words. "This is a hospital with an incalculable amount of moving parts, and we need all of them. The problem with that is, everyone knows that they're crucial to this hospital staying on its feet. Everyone from housekeeping to dietary to registration to the nursing staff thinks that what they need is of paramount importance. And, to some degree, it all is."

"But...no two problems are created equal," I said slowly, trying to follow along with Cuddy as best I could.

She seemed satisfied with my response. "Exactly. Let's say...Meditech is down. Registration can't do their jobs. Which means Admissions can't do their jobs. Which means there's delay in patient care. That's something that we need to deal with immediately. If the patient census is so high we can't take incoming ER admits, direct admits, transfers, you get the idea...delay in patient care...a problem that has to be addressed. The linen depart being out of fitted sheets—"

"Isn't something of world-ending importance."

Cuddy nodded. "There are issues that need to be dealt with this year, this month, this week, today, in the next hour, and right this second. What I need you to learn is how to priortize. Something I think you're going to be decent at, given that you've seemingly been living in the hospital since you met House. You have a grasp of how everything fits together. You can tell catastrophic from minor. Or at least, that's what I'm hoping."

I could probably do that. I wasn't brain-dead, and I was learning more about how PPTH ran each day. "So, I'm like your filter?"

"You are. Phone calls come to you first unless I'm free, which is rare. As my executive assistant, you'll get CC'd in on almost all of my emails. You'll be writing ones yourself, signing under both of our names. I'm not going to tell you this isn't a lot of responsibility. But..." Cuddy smiled. "You are House's daughter. And while I could call House every name in the book, no one has ever accused him of not being capable. If how well you did in your classes is any indication, you seem to have inherited that."

"Thanks, I—wait, how do you know about how I did in school?" I had a very difficult time picturing House being the proud papa, bragging to Cuddy about me being second best in my class. He'd be a lot more likely to openly ridicule me for being first loser. Maybe Wilson had told her?

"I had ATP fax your transcript to me," Cuddy said, surprising me. "Not every nurse that does their clinical rotation here ends up at PPTH. Actually, most of them don't. Princeton General has been scalping nurses from me the entire time I've had this job. I like to know who I need to fight for."

That was...oddly touching, in its own way. "I want to work at PPTH. But, Dr. Cuddy, I have to ask...you realize once I get licensed, I'm going to be looking for a nursing job? And chances are, I'm not gonna—"

"—Have time to do this as well," Cuddy filled in. "I know. But help is help, even if it's temporary. I've never had someone stay long enough to become decent enough at this job to even train a replacement. I want this time to be different."

"I...appreciate your confidence in me?"

Cuddy snorted. "You don't know what to make of me at all, do you?"

My eyebrows lifted. She'd cut straight to the core of how I was feeling. I had absolutely no idea how to interact with Cuddy. She'd been a distant authority figure to me since I ended up in House's universe, more of a theoretical entity than a physical one, almost. But here I was, signing up to spend hours on end with her, work directly with her. I knew Cuddy as she related to House. But I did not know this Cuddy; me, the subordinate, and her, my superior. I felt compelled to talk to her like I would the rest of the main cast, but I couldn't, because that wasn't our dynamic. I didn't know what our dynamic was, or what it would become, and that was...daunting, to say the least.

"If that's your very nice way of acknowledging that you kind of terrify me, then...yes," I said, deciding once again to take the relatively honest route.

"I terrify you? You're willingly attached at the hip to House, but I terrify you?"

"House used to terrify me." Terrify was maybe too dramatic of a word. "Okay, intimidate me, rather. But, you spend enough time around someone, that wears off. And House and I have had no shortage of time together. I know him well enough to anticipate what he's going to say, what he's going to do—at least for the most part."

"So, it's fear of the unknown?" Cuddy guessed. "You don't know me beyond what House has told you."

"That's pretty much exactly it."

"You're like your father," Cuddy said, tossing her now empty coffee cup in the trash. "You don't like not knowing things."

Cuddy seemed thrilled to draw these comparisons between House and myself. At least this one was accurate. "I'm not big on being on the back-foot, no."

"Well, if it's any consolation, you and I are going to get to know each other very fast, whether we like it or not," Cuddy said, rising from her chair. I peered over my shoulder at the guy from IT. He gave us the thumbs up. Cuddy looked back at me and smiled. "Let's get started, shall we?"

At five o'clock, Cuddy freed me from secretarial duties. We'd actually spent most of the day out of the office, once all of my stuff was set up on the now porn-free computer. She'd had me tail her around the hospital, meeting the different department heads (minus House and Wilson, for obvious reasons) and acquainting myself with more inner workings of the hospital. All of them recognized me, much to my dismay, and none seemed happy to see me. I had a scarlet H pinned to my chest, and 'executive assistant to the Dean of Medicine' or not, nobody was going to be buddy-buddy with me if they could avoid it.

It was just something I was going to have to deal with. I had a lot more pressing problems on my plate—the stigma of being the spawn of Gregory House didn't even rank.

I needed to head upstairs and deal with a very big problem right now, actually.

I called Cameron as I stepped into the elevator. She picked up after two rings. "Hey Anya, what's up?"

"Just wondering if you were doing anything of crucial importance."

A heavy sigh from Cameron. "Crucial as in we have a case? No. Crucial as in I'm trying to put together our budget report for this year and hope we all still have jobs—"

"That's what I was hoping you'd say. I'll come help. We've only got a few weeks left before we hit the deadline of doom. How's it looking so far?"

The elevator doors binged open, and I struck out down the hallway. "With the work we've all been putting in, better. We've gotten more grants and donations this year than all of the other years Diagnostics has existed."

I snapped my phone shut as I strolled into the differential room, where Cameron was pouring over stacks of paperwork at the desk in the corner. "I sense a but coming," I said, stuffing my phone in my pocket.

"But..." Cameron looked up at me, glasses sliding down her nose, and the look on her face didn't give me a great deal of hope. "We're a very expensive department."

"Vogler just said it has to look better than it did last year," I reminded her. "So maybe we're in the clear?"

Cameron didn't seem nearly as optimistic. "I know you're not around as much anymore, but Vogler and your father are still at each other's throats on a semi-frequent basis. If we don't show some serious improvement, I'm afraid..." She grimaced. "I think I'm just afraid in general."

I frowned, dragging over a chair from the differential table to sit beside Cameron. "I guess we better get to work then, huh?"

It was pushing midnight. I had lost track of how much coffee I'd drank, but I was putting a second pot on when the door to the differential room swung open and Chase wandered in, wearing his mint green surgical scrubs. "What are you two doing here?"

"Suffering," I said groggily. "I could ask the same of you. Did you get pulled for a surgery?"

Chase nodded, pulling his scrub cap off and running a hand through his hair. "Emergency hemicolectomy. Woman had crystalized scar tissue from a recent hysterectomy, ripped open her large intestine. She was septic by the time we got her on the table. Patel in GI wanted someone decent—she's only thirty-five. Too young to be stuck on a colostomy bag. Wanted her to get out of there with enough of a digestive system left to get by."

"And?" Cameron asked, curious.

A wide grin broke out on his face, and God, he looked so young. "No bag. Hell of a scar, but she should make almost a full recovery."

In spite of the fact that I was running on absolutely nothing but caffeine and anxiety, I reflexively returned his grin. "Good job, Chase."

Chase leaned against the desk. "So what are you two doing up this late?"

"Budget report," Camera explained. "House refuses to do it. Anya and I did it last year. Seems to be becoming a tradition."

"Oh, right, the thing that decides all of our fates," Chase said dramatically. "Vogler's got pull, but do you really think he'd shut us down?"

"Yes," I said emphatically. "The only reason he's left us alone is because we agreed to this budget deadline thing."

Chase smirked. "Us? We?"

"You know what I mean." I gave him a withering look. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm overly-invested in House's well-being. He may bitch and moan and do everything he can to avoid it, but he loves this job. It keeps him even. I don't want to picture him without it."

"It's certainly the only thing he seems to need in life," said Cameron, a distinct note of bitterness in her voice. If Chase picked up on the subtext of the comment, he didn't say anything. "Which...he might want to reevaluate." She sat up straight, clicking her pen with perhaps unneccesary force. "Because it looks like we're still at a 1.2 million deficit."

"It's...significantly better than last year's," I said, trying to be positive. "What were we last year? Almost quintuple that."

"What does Vogler expect?" Chase said, brow furrowed. "That cooling procedure we did on Andie was a million dollars by itself. We're not just running CBCs over here."

"Well, that's what happens when the guy in charge isn't a doctor. He sees the numbers, he doesn't know what any of it means," I said, resting my chin on my hand.

What the hell were we going to do if this wasn't good enough for Vogler? How could I possibly hope to maintain a grip on the timeline if diagnostics was shut down and House had to go to a different hospital and the team split up? Maybe I'd been in the wrong, screwing with the Vogler arc like I had. But I'd seen evidence everywhere of all the good his money had done the hospital. Tangible changes in the everyday lives of the patients who walked through the doors.

I wasn't sure that I'd ever know if I'd done the right thing or not.

"Oncology is a money pit. They're allowed to keep running," Chase said.

"That's because oncology departments are necessary. Departments of diagnostic medicine don't exist," Cameron replied, clearly stressed. "If Vogler decides the accolades and the press coverage isn't worth it, he'll axe all of us."

"Then we move on. We've done everything we can," Chase reasoned.

"Oh good, I was afraid you wouldn't take this seriously," Cameron deadpanned.

"I am taking it seriously! But I'm also not going to lay awake at night worrying about it. We've all earned our stripes here. Cuddy will float us to other departments, ones that pay better, probably, and maybe even give us consistent days off. I don't want to be shut down anymore than you do, but if it happens, we'll...keep moving forward." Chase shrugged. "Not like we really have a choice, right?"

"What you guys do here is important," I said, all of the energy seeming to seep out of me in one great heave. "It's special. You guys save people no one else can. This department doesn't just deserve to exist, it needs to."

"And you're worried about House," Chase tacked on.

I nodded. "And I'm worried about House."

A glum silence fell on the three of us. Cameron, like myself, just looked like she desperately needed eight uninterrupted hours of sleep, but Chase seemed more preoccupied, staring out the windows like the light spring rain slapping against the panes held all the answers in life.

I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but somehow I knew he wouldn't tell me.

I got home at 1am, stumbling through the door like I'd been on a binge. God, I was so tired. The interesting thing was that I wasn't the only one getting home late, as I crashed headlong into Wilson when I rounded the corner into the living room. He still had his coat on, damp from the rain, hair ruffled. And none of the lights in the house were on.

After a string of swearing and reorienting ourselves, Wilson said, "Where have you been all night?"

"I could ask you the same thing," I said, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the darkness better. "You weren't with House. He stopped texting me back hours ago, so he's clearly already out."

Wilson seemed to hesitate. "I...wouldn't you...I mean..."

"Spit it out, Uncle Jimmy," I said in a sing-song voice.

"Don't you already know?"

I racked my brain. We weren't even in the middle of an episode at present, just the gap between Sex Kills and Clueless. What was going on with Wilson at this part of the season? Remembering my furious jotting down of the remainder of season two last night, the realization hit me with a swoop in the pit of my stomach. "Grace," was all I said.

A muscle twitched in Wilson's cheek, barely discernible, but compared with that Very Particular Look in his puppy-dog eyes, I could tell it was a relief to him that I knew. Why it was a relief, I had no earthly idea.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I—I did this the first time around, huh?"

"You did," I replied, keeping my voice as soft as his. "I was hoping you wouldn't this time, but...I can change things that happen, I can't change you."

A shaky little laugh. "Are you gonna read me the same riot act that House would? About my need for neediness?" It sounded like he was preparing himself for it, like he truly expected me to dump on him for this.

"Something a lot of people aren't seeming to get nowadays is that I'm not House," I told Wilson seriously. "I'm here if you need to talk, but I'm not here to browbeat you for decisions you make about your own life. Within reason."

A cloud parted outside, shedding enough moonlight for me to see the emotion even more plain on Wilson's face. "You...usually don't answer questions about the future."

I shook my head. "And I'm not going to start now."

A little desperately, he asked, "Could you just tell me how long she has? So I know? So...so I could..."

"Tell her whether she has time to go to Florence or not?" That was about the only thing I remembered about Grace, outside of her diagnosis and the fact that she was sleeping with Wilson. Then again, I wasn't sure the show gave much more detail than that about her anyway. "Will you believe me if I say that if I did have a solid answer, I'd tell you?"

We locked eyes, and I could tell Wilson didn't know for sure himself. "Anya..."

"I don't know, Wilson. I wish I did. It'll..." What to say to him that would be comforting, and not ominous? "It'll all work itself out."

"It'll all work itself out," he repeated, stepping away from me and rubbing both hands over his face. "It was easy to psychoanalyze Cameron for marrying a dying man. But now here I am..." That same, shaky laugh. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"You're doing what you always do," I said, finally kicking off my shoes. I bypassed him to go to Steve McQueen's cage in the dining room. If House passed out early, he might have forgotten to feed him. "House would tell you it's your pathological need to be needed. I don't think it's that cut and dried."

Wilson followed me into the dining room. "And...what do you think?"

Steve was running low. I gave him a few pats with my finger and then retrieved his food dish. "I think that you care about people. A lot. More than most."

"Waiting for the 'at a detriment to myself' part..."

I shook out a sizable amount of food into the waiting dish and replaced it in the cage. I closed the door, locking it as Steve began to dine on his veritable feast. "The only person that can determine that is you," I said honestly. "But we've been over this before. You think you can't let yourself be selfish. You don't know how to put yourself first. I just...hate to see you hurt."

Wilson stood next to me, watching Steve bury his head halfway into his food dish.

"I worry about the same thing with you, you know," Wilson said. "House told me about your...'philosophical discussion' last night. I know that House has to couch everything in the most demeaning, condescending, rude way possible, but this? It's coming from that tiny miserable excuse for a heart he has. He doesn't want you carrying the cross for every patient who walks through the hospital doors. He wants you to be able to worry about yourself."

"And here I was, thinking we were talking about you." I gave him the barest trace of a smirk. "See? I'm not like House."

Wilson seemed deeply troubled by that. "You're like me...and I don't know if that's better, or worse."