'You're an ass!' Cuddy said, walking into House's office with a face like thunder. Foreman, Chase and Taub looked up from their piles of charts, test results and textbooks and tried to inconspicuously watch the drama which was unfolding next door without drawing attention to themselves. 'I specifically told you not to cut open that boy's skull and what did you do? The polar opposite! Since when is that an ok thing to do? Do you have any clue of the lawsuit this could have opened us up to?' She shouted, slamming her palm down on his desk.

'So this is what this is about, money?' House retorted, standing up to meet her eye line. 'I did what I thought was right for my patient!'

'You don't get to decide what's right for your patient! His parents do! But no, not only do you disobey me; you decide to bypass the fundamental asking for consent part of the treatment and have now left us exposed to God knows what! You could lose your licence!'

'I was trying to save him! Do you think I did this for some sort of fun?'

'But you didn't! You didn't even discover anything new by slicing through his skull and taking a portion of his brain, you just subjected him to unnecessary and painful surgery. And you know what? I think this partly was fun for you. You got to go against me like you used to, relive the good old days where you could upset me and ignore me and get away with it. If you loved me, hell I don't even know if you do, the effort it takes you to occasionally put the three words together, you wouldn't have put me through this.'

'So let me get this straight, this is about you now?'

'That's not what I'm saying.'

'Really? Because it sure as hell sounds like it!'

'Woah woah!' Wilson interjected, walking through the door. 'Do you two have any idea what you sound like?'

'Stay outta this,' House said, not breaking eye contact with Cuddy as the two stayed locked in a stare to the death.

'Unfortunately for you that isn't an option anymore, as you can be heard at the nurse's station down the hall and therefore, this has now been made my business as well as half the hospital's.' He sighed, knowing he wasn't going to get anywhere with this tactic. 'Look, why don't you both go home? It's late and you're not going to get anywhere with this case when you're in this frame of mind. Your team are exhausted as are both of you, come back in tomorrow with some fresh perspective and you'll have more success.'

Cuddy seemed to agree with this and turned on her heels, breaking the stare. House
watched her go, but leaped to attention and followed her as swiftly as he could when she saw she wasn't heading in the direction of the lift but instead the direction of the patient's room.

'House! Don't!' Wilson tried to advise but his words fell on deaf ears. All he could do was follow, and motioned for the fellows to do the same.

As House rounded the corner he saw Cuddy talking to his patient's parents, apologising profusely on his behalf. How dare she have the audacity? As she saw him coming she tried to hurriedly finish her sentence, but not quickly enough.

'Dr Cuddy, may I have a word?' He said in a commanding voice opposed to asking her. Mr and Mrs Shoreditch turned to look at him. She had tears in her eyes, he had thunder. Cuddy's face fell. Wilson and the team hung back, not wanting to get too involved but not daring to leave.

'You son of a bitch,' Mr Shoreditch mumbled under his breath, immediately before landing a right hook on House's temple. He fell like a ton of bricks, his eyes swimming as he tried to get his bearings back. He was looking at Mr Shoreditch's steel toe-capped boots while his ears tried to pick up what was going on around him, the wife was letting out a sob while Cuddy gasped at the shock. Despite their current ongoing argument, he was the man she planned on spending her life with. Someone was calling for security to come, as House realised Mr Shoreditch was still talking to him. 'You like to cause pain, do you? What kind of doctor does that? Well let me tell you, I can cause pain too, all kinds of pain,' and with that, House felt pain above anything he'd felt for about 12 years, since the infarction. Mr Shoreditch continued to kick and kick at his leg, aiming for the exact spot he guessed correctly that he could do the most damage. Cuddy was screaming now for help, begging him to stop, before finally the onslaught stopped as Chase and Foreman dragged him away and pinned him against a nearby wall. Within seconds the security team arrived and detained him, as House slipped in and out of consciousness.

Cuddy knelt down next to his head and took his hand. 'House, House I need you to look at me, open your eyes.' He could hear her, but the pain had taken hold and the small movement of opening his eyelids seemed too much. 'House! Open your eyes!' She said more forcefully, and this time he obliged. They flickered open, and struggled to focus on her face. Everything was a blur. She squeezed his hand tighter as he saw her muster what may have been a weak smile of reassurance, or what just as easily may have been a wince as she could foresee the damage which had been done. She stroked his forehead and he was aware of two strong pairs of hands lifting him up and onto a bed. He groaned. He felt like he was going to be sick. Before he could stop it he felt the bile rise in his throat and he retched, as Wilson and Foreman struggled to turn him on his side to stop him aspirating his gastric contents. Cuddy cleared his airway with her finger and wiped his mouth clean as he was wheeled into the nearest free room and hooked up to various IVs.

'I'm going to need 10mg of morphine and some lorazepam,' Chase instructed, as Cuddy stayed right by House's bedside and clutched his hand in hers, before a moment of realisation hit her.

'No! Not morphine, it's an opiate,' she instructed, fear in her eyes.

'Cuddy, he's in so much pain right now that it's the only thing that's even going to touch it, I strongly suggest we go for this and deal with the consequences afterwards,' Chase said forcefully, aware that while she was his boss now he needed to be the objective one.

'No! He won't want it, I know you've all seen him detox before and you know how hard it is, you know the pain he goes through to get clean and he won't want it again, just please, give him Ketamine or something,' Her voice was breaking under the strain, and Chase was close to cracking and giving in. He looked at Foreman, and he looked at Wilson, unsure how to proceed in the unique situation.

House let out a quiet groan as he slipped back into consciousness, beads of sweat forming on his clammy forehead. Cuddy snapped her head around to look at him, and although his eyes remained shut Cuddy could see their rapid movements beneath their lids as he struggled to focus on anything other than the immense pain, and now all she could do was let him know she was there. She squeezed his hand tighter, she stroked his forehead to try and soothe him.

'Sssh,' she cooed, 'It's ok, I'm here, I'm here,'

'I didn't mean to upset you,' he whimpered quietly, the first words he'd spoken since the assault. He barely opened his eyes, and spoke just loudly enough for Cuddy to hear him.

'What?' she asked, for as far as she was concerned their earlier argument was long forgotten.

'I didn't do the biopsy to upset you,' he clarified in an even smaller voice than before.

'I know you didn't and I shouldn't have said that you did, I was angry and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It doesn't matter now, ok? It doesn't matter,' she kissed his forehead and tried to stop her eyes from welling up, she had to remain strong for him and chances were he wouldn't come out of this easily.

'I love you,' he whispered, before screwing his eyes up tightly and trying to stop himself from screaming.

'Please, please give him the Ketamine,' she said more weekly now, tears forming in the bottom of her eyelids. Forman stepped forward, and looked at Wilson.

'Says here you're the one listed as his medical proxy. You have to make this call.'

Wilson had been stood quietly in the corner since bringing House into the room, his mind in turmoil. Why did he feel like this? Surely the obvious choice in this situation would be the Ketamine, it would reduce the pain and stop him having to painfully detox afterwards, stop his best friend from having to painfully detox afterwards, but part of him wanted House to feel pain. More pain. It was an unfortunate coincidence that today, 2nd February, was what would have been Amber's 35th birthday. While Wilson had always told House, Cuddy, everyone including himself that he didn't blame him, he couldn't help but think that if it weren't for him, she may still be alive. They may have had a child, she may have become the fourth and final Mrs Wilson, but now they would never know. And that was down to him.

House let out another sound, this one a strangled cry for help. Cuddy looked desperately back at him and brought his hand to her lips in another futile attempt for comfort. She then looked back at Wilson with a longing in her eyes.

'Wilson, we need a decision, his heart rate is rising,' Chase urged, somewhat disturbed by the vacant stare he gave across the room.

'Push the morphine,' he said, and turned and walked out of the room.

House finally felt the pain ebb away and his weary lids fell shut.

H

Hours passed as Cuddy sat by his bedside, his hand in hers. She couldn't help but think how peaceful he looked whilst he was lying there, like it was the calm before the storm that was sure to hit once the sedation wore off. He'd been given strong anti-inflammatory medication as well as the pain killers to try to reduce the swelling which had quickly come up in his thigh and was more than likely compressing nerves in doing so, causing the extreme pain. But that would pass within a couple of weeks, and while he would still be in pain, it would be manageable. The opiate withdrawal, however, would be a much longer and tougher road.

She cursed Wilson. Wilson had been the one who found House passed out in his own vomit after overdosing, Wilson was the one who drove him to Mayfield, and Wilson was the one who dealt with him once he came out. He knew full well what he was doing when he gave the order for morphine and he did it anyway.

Maybe it was because he knew that finally, he wouldn't be the one who would have to clean up the mess afterwards now that she and House were together. He felt that he was no longer his responsibility.

The door to House's ICU room slid open, and Chase entered the room. She couldn't help but think that this was his fault too. 'You aren't welcome,' she told him and averted her eyes back to House.

'I'm the treating doctor, I need to be here to check on him,' Chase explained, and went over to House's IV bag and fiddled with the label, then stood and stared at the monitor for a while.

'It's clear you aren't actually needed here, which means you came for absolution. You want me to forgive you for making the blatantly wrong decision.' Cuddy deduced.

'It wasn't my decision to make, it was Wilson's, and I'm truly sorry you disagree with the treatment plan but I had to go with what his medical proxy tells me to,'

'But you knew he wouldn't want it! And I should have been his proxy anyway, he just hadn't gotten around to changing the forms yet and obviously you don't plan for something like this,' her eyes filled with tears, why couldn't he have understood this?

'I know Cuddy, I know and I'm so sorry. If Wilson hadn't been here then I wouldn't have questioned what you said but the fact is that he was in the room, I couldn't ignore that. He made his decision very clear, although he did look slightly odd throughout the whole thing. The shock I suppose.' This made Cuddy think.

'What do you mean odd?'

'Just sorta blank, like he was thinking about something other than what was going on here.' Cuddy was at a loss, he hadn't mentioned anything out of the ordinary all day and she could think of no reason for the abrupt character change. Like she thought, maybe he just snapped. 'I think you should go and talk to him,' Chase suggested.

'No,' she immediately replied, 'I'm not leaving him. He might wake up and when he does I need to explain to him not only why he's in so much pain, but also why he's feeling high. And then on top of that, I'll need to tell him that it was his best friend who has put him in this position. If Wilson has something to say, he can come here and say it.'

Chase bowed his head. There was no denying that the conversation Cuddy will need to have with House when he wakes would be one of the hardest either of them have to have, especially after everything he went through to get clean. He left the room and went to the hallway to get a blanket, then passed it to Cuddy. She smiled weakly at him, and then without saying a word, he left. There was no more he could do here.

H

Wilson sat at the desk in his office with a picture of Amber and him in his hands. They were in the park and it was autumn, her favourite time of year. She had held the camera out in front of them and taken the picture herself. It usually stayed locked away in his office desk draw unless he felt he really needed to look at it, for example if he'd just lost a long term patient or received some other form of bad news. Today he needed it because he may have just made one of the worst decisions of his life, a decision which will have so many implications not only for the people he cared most about in this world, but also for himself, and he couldn't help but feel a small amount of self pity. He shouldn't have been the one making that decision in the first place, and House should have updated his records as soon as he and Cuddy got serious, which was pretty quickly. He spent more time in the hospital as a patient than the average person anyway and knew full well that a decision may need to be made, and it should no longer have been him making it. So maybe House got what he deserved for not being proactive. Then blame shifted to Chase, as he should have had the initiative to give the Ketamine no matter what he had said. It was clearly what Cuddy, basically his next of kin, wanted and certainly what house would have wanted too, but no; classic Chase was too scared to put a foot out of line and followed protocol to the letter. And what about Foreman? Foreman wasn't particularly hot on protocol and he too knew what House wanted, why didn't he just administer the Ketamine himself?

But ultimately, Wilson knew. Wilson knew the wrath he would face when House came around, and he knew the consequences of his actions.