(no subject)

Ann Arbor in late August might have been the epicenter of a global warming crisis in 1985, even before the words "global" and "warming" had come to be smushed together in the common vernacular. It was oppressively hot and there was little that the administration could do to counter it, save to install several box fans in the larger lecture halls and hope that their students were wise enough to keep sufficiently hydrated (several of them had canteens strapped to the bulging backpacks, along with small handheld fans) and keep their complaining to a minimum.

Lisa Cuddy, entering her second year of undergraduate work, had classes stacked back-to-back from eight o'clock in the morning until eleven, a break for a lab colloquium at noon, and a straight drive to the finish line from two o'clock to four o'clock. In the hustle of academia, she would find little time for lunch or other more pressing social activities, but she was pushing hard for A's across the board, and her academic adviser seemed content to fill her days with Gross Anatomy, Ethics, and a host of other sanctioned classes.

She had done well her first year. Her classes had called for analytical thinking and she had pursued, with dogged determination, a perfect grade point average. She had very nearly achieved it, save for a snafu regarding the distribution of a perfect "A" in her Institutional Administrations course -- she had taken the "A-", but grudgingly.

Her roommate was a pert blonde whose interest was occupational therapy. They had little in common but a few shared traits -- a fondness for David Bowie and his Ziggy Stardust period; a general distaste for the Reagan administration -- and were sociable and pleasant to one another without the need to foster a deeper sorority bond. There had, of course, been an interesting incident during the comparison of schedules a few days prior. Cuddy had slapped the print-off onto the desk and demanded to know why she had been put in Lynch's Practical Anatomy seminar instead of Matthias Reed, M.D., her first choice. Her roommate had screwed up her nose at the misdeed, drawn a long red fingernail across the paper and then let out a low whistle --

"Greg House is the T.A."

"Who?"

"Lisa, don't tell me you haven't -- oh, hon. He's just about the only guy in the graduate program worth knowing. Guy's got an ego out to here," and she had demonstrated with her hands spread two feet apart, "and, from what I hear from some of the other girls in Lynch's seminar?" She had pushed her tongue to the inside of her cheek and made her eyebrows two blond mountain peaks. Her hands went to a span of three feet.

"Oh, please."

"Seriously, Lisa. Watch yourself around this guy. And watch this guy. If I ever do anything for you -- ever -- it'll be to see you spout some of that three-point-nine-nine GPA stuff at him. Seriously. You won't remember you complained about not getting in Reed's good graces after you meet Greg House. Buh-leeve me."

So on this particular morning, hot off the hot pavement from a dash between buildings, Cuddy had no more enthusiasm for the T.A. than she did the professor, and thumbed the bag across her shoulder with a hard gesture. The lecture hall was like the inside of a sauna and her feet were heavily placed coming down the aisle.

Front row. She had never sat anywhere else. She took pen, notebook and textbook out of her bag. Adjusted in the sticky plastic seat. She was five minutes early, but the class was already beginning to fill. Rabble conversations were occuring all around her, dizzying with a multitude of topics and pitches. She wrote the date, time and class title at the top of a lined page.

8/28/85
10:00 am
Practical Anatomy

(no subject)

Christmas Eve. The High Mass would have started twenty minutes ago, Chicago time, by Cuddy's watch. Her father had called late in the day, wished her a "merry Christmas" and had asked her if she was going to local services. I haven't been to mass in twenty years, dad. You know that. By now, the priest would have greeted the congregation and begun to cite the Pauline epistles, then moved on and asked everyone -- conveniently on their knees -- to pray for God's mercy and to give thanks for the miracle of a holy birth two-thousand years young. Her mother would not have attended the service. In a strange twist of heretical faiths, her mother -- born in a Jewish suburb in Upstate New York -- had fallen in love with a well-spoken Irish Catholic and had managed to keep her religious independence in the face of her red-nosed, red-elbowed in-laws. Cuddy had always felt more akin to her mother's faith -- the Amidah and the Shir ha-Shirim with their rich, rooted words -- and she kept a small silver menorah on the table behind her desk during this season. It was the only time during the year that she showed any deference to a power higher than medicine.

Seven-thirty. It had not yet snowed. There were holiday parties going on all over campus -- she had been invited to several but had pleaded off for necessity of business -- and there was little staff support in the hospital save for those whose hearts weren't in the holiday (or those whose hearts weren't functioning very well at all.)

Stacy had returned a week-and-a-half prior and had brought with her the smell of sharp cloves and legal affidavits. She had worn black (but then again, when had Stacy not?) and Cuddy had given the answers that she asked for, but had tempered her responses where at all possible. The high, plucked black brows (matched perfectly to the curl of bobbed hair) had risen a few times during the course of the conversation, but Stacy liked to keep her arguments to herself until she had sufficient evidence to voice them -- it was what made her undeniably good at what she did.

Cuddy had not spoken to House outside of routine hospital palava since she had sent him home. He had appeared the next day, peaked but bearing some likeness to his former self, and had not seemed surprised when Stacy had presented herself. They seemed to make a conscious effort to avoid one another.

A milder soundtrack on her computer. Every once in a while she would tap the volume button up a few clicks, decide that it was too high, and then lower it again. This happened several times. She was on her eighth budget surplus report when, dragging her fingers around the rim of her cup, she had touched nothing but a cold, glassy shell. It had gone cold. She tipped it out into the wastebin beside her desk.