primary care provider

Three ways, spatially motivated, in which he could appear on her chart:

First, as her doctor. He couldn't care less what attending physicians thought, let alone to ever actually be one and attend. But he did like (not always even like, sometimes just take necessary and operative advantage) to pull it out as a trap card when patients or their parents, partners, perjurers stared with watery eyes and demanded to know who - say, what - he was: I'm your doctor or I'm the doctor in charge of your case and I'm the guy that's gonna save your life.

(As if he wouldn't be far more willing to give Rachel an S-H-O-T than he would be to treat any other child her age and size. He'd given shots to her mother. Not her other mother, though. That is to say, Lisa Cuddy had been the attending for Natalie Soellner, more or less. And he'd let her. He'd gladly do it again.)

Second, as her father. And when did he ever give a rat's ass what fathers thought? Usually their vested interest ended up being not just close to the vest but beneath it, beneath the chest, below the zipper, below the law. Fathers screwed up their children far more often than they ever actually brought them off right. He saw it every day. Those fathers that were doing a good job probably weren't doing it anywhere near hospitals, or marine bases, or other such lofty institutions.

(Rachel's biological father is Simon Tillits, and what lingers vaguely within the realm of facts worth denying is that he will have had a greater effect on Rachel and the various underlying health conditions she carries forward than any needle any addicted doctor administers in response, preemptive or otherwise. What won't be denied is that as much as Lisa wanted and wants Rachel, she wouldn't have wanted her at all if she had wanted someone else to be her sperm donor. Someone she knows and trusts.)

Third, as her emergency contact. The subversive thrill of being deemed more capable and agile than Rachel's mother in a crisis, or else just alternatively available, aside, it is always tantalizingly telling how people can put a numeric order to their levels of trust when forced. While misery loves company, desperation loves honesty. And also dishonesty, but there isn't always time for that. The honest truth is that Cuddy's hand has been forced, and she just trusts him that much.

(She could have trusted Wilson just as much. Or her sister. Even her mother, if it had to come to that.)

Rachel knew that House was squirrelly, that he was calculating, that even though he didn't always tell the truth, he never got caught lying by accident. Accidents were for idiots. And House was not an idiot. He had trained her to be able to detect the telltale signs, the flailing and blindness to logic.

She also knew that it would be much harder to tell such a thing - purposeful obfuscation or unintentional denseness - in House than it ever was in her classmates, her peers. Armed with just about the same shares of social information as she had, they might march into any of the standard roster of situations via absolutely asinine plans of attack, and it would be obvious. Nothing about improbability throwing caution to the wind; middle schoolers were stupid, and they worried about stupid things.

Like boyfriends, lunch tables, bathroom passes, and the generational differences between those on either side of the birthday cutoff.

Sure, middle school was complicated, because middle school was only the point at which things were starting to get complicated. Pre-calculus, leering perilously back at her from her soon future, had something smart to say about the derivative at such-and-such a point, and how it demonstrated the relative shockingness (jolting, juddering jerk) of change.

The matter of paternity had been eating at Rachel for a balance of months, in earnest. House had had time to think about it for years - about three weeks to the day from when she was born.

This kind of lie, he didn't believe in. This kind of lie, he'd staunchly refuse ever to inure himself to. Her mother's pursed lips, squaring out her jaw in resignation, would impress upon the part of her brain that best felt guilt that loving Rachel in this reality was more important than any other, and so she would determine to herself that all other possibilities must be left behind. Because otherwise she would have done something wrong.

Hate the grift of compromise though she might, when its purpose was the facile resolution of conflict, Lisa Cuddy very much did like to implant herself into the here and now, and not ever be seen obsessing. Worse yet, be caught not feeling; be forced into the blank-eyed admission that she appeared to be bullheadedly goading herself.

Gregory House had no such qualms. Obsessing meant that you understood your fate, accepted it, owned up to your actions or at the very least beat yourself into pursuit of such. No deflection. No pretension. He wished to be perceived as fully-formed and drawn to the extent of all conclusions, never unsure or undecided, reluctant. Supposing he wasn't, though, at least he could be credited as deep in thought.

I love you more this way, he said. Self-consciously. Shakily. With stutters and stops and starts and a half-cleared throat.

He trusted his patient to resolve this enigma in her own way, by her own peripubescent processes. If she had questions about the course of treatment, she would ask. If she was dissatisfied with the diagnosis, she would say so. If she fell into distress, she would present to the proper authorities.

It was well within her rights to deny the wishes of any guardian appointees. At thirteen, she had begun to create her own reality. Thus: House as her father was more a convincing idea than it was a fact. And yet, she would never fault him for not knowing, for offering his conjecture as a means of prognosis versus diagnosis.

He said it because she'd asked, if indelicately, and he'd answered so bluntly that she could feel his cheek turn.

He said it because her parents had trained her cautious memory and he knew that she still wanted to hear.

He said it for her, in all these ways, and he said it for himself, in the way that his daughter shaped all his most personal ideas in idealistic extension.

Of course, by choice. Of course, by fate's accidental purpose. Of course, by a piecewise parental function.

He said it because these were the fragile, emergent confidentialities of Rachel, and because she had chosen him, she was entitled to all the benefits he had to give.

and let me record here that far beyond my own fandom baggage i was astounded at the astronomical polish in a teenager's work. crazy stuff