Help Me
The clinic is busy for the hour, just after 5pm, and he tucks the personal historical artifact tightly under his arm like a football as he bobs and weaves through the people. He pushes through the outer office door that brandishes her name etched into the glass. Momentarily, he thinks about knocking but opts for entering into her space unannounced.
The pink material of her scrub top falls down over the slender curves of her body, covering the pale flesh he had caught a glimpse of only seconds before. The fact that he catches her mid-change seems to bother her little as she turns to face him.
“A crane collapsed in downtown Trenton,” she tells him and begins working on her jumpsuit.
He glances around her office as if he's never seen it before. The book begins to feel oddly heavy in his hand and eagerness fills his veins.
“Don't care,” he responds back and extends the heavy envelope out to her.
She reaches inside and withdraws the contents. He watches as her hands run over the cover, her mouth dropping open as she grazes the title and the author typed on the cover. Not so long ago, the book had been in other hands and he had tried, so hard, to get it back into his possession. All so it could be in hers at the end of everything.
The gesture seems to fall flat in her as she reads the inscription and then returns to putting on her jumpsuit.
“We have to get to Trenton,” she reminds, the book laying forgotten on the wood grain nearby. (So many memories around)
He watches as she breezes by him, leaving him to wonder what's going on.
--
Miles before he even gets close, he can see the flood lamps lighting the fast fading light of the day, the heavy roar of helicopter engines, and smell the dust lining the air.
His foot flicks the gear and the motor of his engine spikes in RPM, the speed gauge increasing with the more distance he travels.
At the apex of the crash site, he slows to a steady idle, half riding-half walking to the blocked off perimeter. News vans line the streets and anchors stand broadcasting live as rubble cracks and tumbles all around them. Spectators stand behind the police barrier, watching like hungry predators for any bit of excitement.
A burly policeman holds out a bear paw sized hand in front of his helmeted face then taps the visor.
“Hey, buddy. You need to turn that thing around. We've got a scene up there and the streets are closed,” he yells and hooks a finger back toward the crash site. The sound of metal bending and power tools humming fill the air around them.
He flips up the visor and rolls his eyes at the policeman.
“Gee, you don't say. I thought the streets had been shut down for a Cinco de Mayo festival. You know how crazy those Latinos can be,” he quips.
The man crosses his arms over his chest and gives House a steely look. Above, the choppers circle the sky like vultures congregating around carrion. Beyond the barriers holding the world out, (and him) he knows there is blood from the broken and wounded bodies, death floating all around.
“I'm a doctor. From Princeton Plainsboro,” he yells, trying to enunciate over the sounds of things all around him.
“You got some ID pal?”
“Does it look like I have any?” he says, becoming agitated with every wasted moment. Cuddy already expects him to be walking amidst the chaos and trying to heal what cannot be fixed.
The policeman, who wears a name tag imprinted with Rodgers on it, reaches up to the mic on his shoulder and grumbles in a low tone.
“Yeah. I got a guy here. Says he's a doctor. From Princeton,” the guy begins.
“House,” he leans over and yells through his helmet.
“Yeah, a Dr. House,” Rodgers adds.
The walkie crackles with static, auditory snow filling the air.
“Let him through,” a female voice comes from the frequency. Her. “He's mine.”
The policeman gives his a last glare before moving the barricade to let him pass. He arrives to destruction all around.
--
He finds her doing triage on a woman. Darkness has enveloped the world completely and the helicopters above cast eerie light on the ground.
She works carefully, softly, wrapping the bandage around the woman's bleeding limb. Her eyes look tired and sad and he thinks back to his gift she didn't act appreciative of.
“So I hope I didn't weird you out giving you that gift,” he offers.
“Can we talk about this later?” she says, busily.
He pauses. Aims again. Strikes gold. Her fingers curl around his bicep and he feels her tug him away, away from everything.
“When I opened it, I didn't think it was a housewarming gift. I thought it was an engagement present,” she sighs, throwing her latex gloves onto the ground.
The words hit him like a punch in the gut. (And maybe that's why it hurts in his chest too) Quickly, he runs through diagnoses in his mind, a reason for the symptoms he's exhibiting. Nothing comes to him or fits. Out of everything in the past year, nothing has hurt as bad as this. Nolan was right: He's really losing her.
She tells him she didn't know how to tell him and suddenly the leaves are falling off the trees, the weather is cool, and she's sitting beside him on a dock at a medical conference, stuffed full of secrets.
“...you're not wearing the ring,” he hears himself blurting out. “So you are hiding it. Which begs the question-”
The cogs are spinning and he's looking for a reason to not believe any of this after all, to file it as another hallucination and dream, another trick of his screwed up mind. Again, her hands are on him and her eyes look haunting under the man made light all around.
“House, it's in my office drawer because I knew I was coming here. There's no mystery. I'm just getting married,” she tells him. Holds him like a child.
His heart sinks like a stone.
-
His disappeared after her confession. Said absolutely nothing and turned away from her, hobbling off into the distance. With every word she heard herself speak, an overwhelming lump grew in her throat and inside, everything turned numb.
Escape became necessary. The dust and blood covered faces, his sad and hurt eyes, had all made her flee to a quiet, rubble filled nook where she now sat.
Her fingers massage her temples, rub to rid the noises and the visages, and the internal pain away. He probably thinks she's forgotten but she remembers sitting on a dock and telling him she was sorry for keeping things too tucked inside herself. For deliberately hurting him even though she knew, could see, that he was trying his best to show her he had changed. And that he was trying.
The guilt feels profound and displaces her from sitting amongst the ruins. The inside of her throat feels dry and she ducks into the relief worker tent to find something to calm the crackling feeling under her hands which wrap around her neck.
She stops mid stride when she him sitting toward the back at a table, head hung low and just massaging his leg. The work of his hands enthralls him and his eyes stay closed. The pain crawls across his face, slithering and deceptive to some, but she can see it. Boldly, she takes a seat across from him in one of the metal chairs. He looks up and she tries not to act startled by the agony she sees.
“How's Hannah?” Small talk, but a start.
“Alive. For now,” he responds, quietly.
“She will lose more than a limb if we don't get her out of there right now,” she tries to coax, leaning across the plastic table.
“You could have told me, you know,” he shoots out.
She leans away from him and says nothing at first. His fingers press down into his flesh even harder, turning the digits on his hand from pink to white.
“It just happened last night, House. I hardly had time to...” she begins.
“Might have been a good time to tell me when I was handing you the book you barely looked at,” he snorts in derision.
“The book is part of my past, not Lucas'. And like I said, I thought you knew already!” she yells, exasperated and not really knowing what to say to him, how to calm him as she feels her own blood pressure rising.
Usually by this point, he is fighting back but now he sits still and just rubs. The anxiety cedes and she lets them sit with silence between them. (And so much more) Her fingers tap on the table and she knows it's annoying. That it has to be grating on his nerves. Still, nothing from him vocally.
He throws quick glances her way but seems more focused on his leg than her. The tapping continues, her fingers drumming on the surface and he takes to watching her eventually.
People flow in and out of the tent and she forgets the real reason she came here and the fact that people are dying beyond the canvas walls.
Tap, tap, tap.
The succession is quick and loud and it’s all she can think of in her mind until he gently steadies the movement of her hand with the flesh of his own. It seems so off to have him stilling and quieting her when most of the time, he's creating chaos in her world.
“Cuddy, what are you doing?” he asks softly. Uncharacteristically.
“I needed a break,” she answers, then shifts gears. “Why did you bring up the book?”
“I was curious,” he shrugs.
“So then it doesn't bother you about Lucas and I?”
“Don't be juvenile, Cuddy,” he scoffs and leans back away from her. “Not everything is about you.”
The comment irritates her, to hear past words mimicked back in a venomous tone.
“Good to know then,” she bites off at him.
She watches him stand and make his way around to her. He leans over and their eyes meet. Nothing blocks what she can see in him and what he can see in her.
“Your fiancé is an idiot. You'll never be happy with him,” he says to her like he knows it a fact.
“Why,” she laughs, humorlessly. “Because he isn't you?”
He shrugs, watches a passing doctor with minimal interest, and turns back to her. “Because he never can be.”
He walks away leaving her feeling hollow to the core.
--
“I don’t care about your leg,” Hannah’s husband says.
When he looks over at Cuddy, he isn’t sure what he sees in her eyes. Or what she sees in his. He leaves her standing in the rubble without a word from him, looking like a broken angel awash in high beam light from above.
--
She's been on auto-pilot since she climbed out of the hole and left House under the rumble with Hannah.
Captain McCreaney has been watching her - watching them - and relieves her of her duties at the collapse site as soon as the ambulance doors close.
A burst of energy fills her from nowhere, and soon she's on the highway and can see the ambulance attempting to make its way through the heavy traffic ahead of her.
She is so focused on watching its flashing lights that she almost rear ends the car in front of her. She takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes briefly to calm her nerves from the near collision.
Her foot still on the brake, she opens her eyes and searches the road ahead of her. She looks frantically, searching all of the lanes and along the service road.
When she finally spots it her hand comes up to her mouth and her eyes fill with tears; the lights are off - there is no longer a need to rush.
Hannah is dead.
---
She can't stop the tears.
She lifts her hand and swipes at her eyes as she lets herself into the darkened clinic.
Her hand is on glass door to her outer office when she hears the yelling coming from the lobby.
She turns back around, intent on finding out what is going on, when the sound of House's broken voice stops her in her tracks.
"I did everything right! She died anyway. Why the hell do you think that would make me feel any better?" he expels the words with the weight of the torment and anguish of the evening full in his voice.
She watches as he stumbles and limps over to the reception desk, grabbing onto it for support.
"You shouldn't be alone right now. You're bleeding," Foreman replies, his voice reflecting a sincere worry for the broken man before him as he steps in front of him and blocks his path to the exit.
House recovers and stands up. "I'm gonna give you a task as an employee. Get out of my way," he hisses.
Foreman stares him down for a few seconds, but he knows he is not going to win this fight; he stands aside and watches House limp wearily out of the hospital.
She stands frozen, watching through the glass doors as he leaves. She swallows the lump in her throat, and blindly turns making her way to her office.
She doesn't bother turning on the light, stumbling her way towards her desk and grasping onto its edge to guide her around the side. She finds the handle to her drawer and opens it, shoving her hand inside and fumbling around for the ring she had left behind.
Her fingers brush against the cool metal and she grasps it, pulls it out, and slips it on her finger. Her hand continues towards her face and she swipes at the tears before she collapses into the chair at her desk and breaks down, both hands coming up to cover her face and muffling the sounds of her uncontrollable sobbing.
She doesn't know how long she sits there crying, but it’s over now.
She reaches for her desk lamp and turns it on, giving her the light she needs to make her way to the bathroom in her office.
After she washes her face and presses a towel wet with cold water to her eyes she feels more composed and ready to go home. Detouring to her desk to turn off the light, the diamond sparkles as her hand extends towards the chain, but what catches her eye is the book lying closed next to her laptop.
Her hand reaches towards it, her fingertips brushing lovingly against the binding.
She picks it up, flipping it open and looks at his scrawl - remembers how her heart had clenched when she read that inscription.
She remembers that he said he had been saving it for a special occasion and she wonders just how long he has had it.
She can hear his voice, weary and compassionate as he spoke to Hannah about his infarction, convinced her to cut off her leg; she can hear her own screaming at him as she vilified him in anger.
Her mind fills with the memories - good and bad - of how indelibly intertwined this man's life has been with her own and with it the realization that the moment has arrived where she must decide if she will keep running away from this thing - whatever it is - or if she will stop and see where it can go - where it has been wanting to go for so many years.
---
He enters his apartment and throws his keys down, limping down the hall and into his bathroom.
He tried to postpone this moment; traversing the city on his bike trying to forget about Hannah, his leg, Cuddy.
But he couldn't.
He can't be stronger than his desire to not feel this pain - the failure of his intellect; the failure of his body.
He turns on the light, and leans on the sink staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
He pulls down the neck of his t-shirt and glances briefly at the bloody bandage there, then puts both hands on the sides of the mirror and bows his head in pain, both physical and emotional.
As his fingers flex against the edge of the mirror, he thinks to himself that he can still walk away.
He looks into the mirror again and it's not his reflection that he sees, but a dying Hannah staring back at him.
Time seems to slow and white noise flashes through his eardrums as he jerks the mirror off the wall and throws it into the bathtub, where it breaks, revealing a hole in the drywall that he carved out and hid away two bottles of Vicodin.
He takes the bottles out, the hardness of the plastic and the clink of the pills so familiar and yet so feared.
He drops his body onto the floor, leaning against the tub, and breathing heavily. He is shaking with pain and guilt and terror.
He doesn't want to do this.
He stares at the bottles in his hands for a long time finally putting one bottle on the floor; he closes his eyes and clenches his fist around the other pill bottle, willing himself to resist.
He finally pops the lid off the bottle and spills two pills into his left hand.
He laughs, quick and brief, at himself.
Cuddy is right; he is clinging on to things that were never his to begin with and now it's time to let them go - or really to accept that they are already gone.
Despite all of his efforts, nothing has changed he thinks wearily; a year ago, he was sitting alone on this same bathroom floor, these same drugs in his hand.
His grip tightens around the pills and his head hangs as he fights with what little is left in him not to give in.
He doesn't hear the footsteps coming down the hallway.
He doesn't know he's not alone until her figure appears in the doorway.