Secrets || Lisa Cuddy x M!Reader

5

The team soon found House in the morgue but Albert was nowhere in sight.

"Uh, where's doctor Atkinson?" Cameron asked. "He went out for lunch with his girlfriend. After that he'll be doing rounds of his own patients." House muttered, not happy with their set up.

"Anyway, what did the angio tell us?" House asked. "What are you looking for?" Chase asked as House looked through the different tags of the corpses.

"I called my mom. She didn't pick up." House sarcastically told them as they rolled their eyes at him.

Albert wasn't, in fact, with his girlfriend. He was currently with Wilson having lunch while scanning his own patient's scans. He already had most of his patients get an MRI, getting ahead of House's insane idea.

"So House thinks you're with your girlfriend?"

"Yup."

"Well why aren't you?" Wilson asked.

Albert sighed. "It's our three year anniversary and I still haven't found a gift." He muttered.

"Then why not a ring?" Wilson asked as Albert scoffed. "No offense, but unlike you, I don't marry every woman I fall in love with." Albert snapped at him.

"Geez, I'm guessing that the whole marriage thing is a sore subject?" Wilson asked as Albert sighed.

"Yeah sorry, it's just..." Albert lowered her voice. "I don't want what happened with Jillian to happen again."

"Al, you know Cuddy wouldn't do that to you..." He reassured the man as Albert stayed quiet fiddled with the ring on his index finger. Wilson immediately came to a realization.

"There was something more, wasn't there?" Wilson asked.

"... I proposed to Jillian on our one year anniversary. That was a week before the incident." Albert quietly confessed as he tried to forget what the incident had looked and felt like.

"You know, some people would have put a ring on that finger." A woman's voice rang out on Cuddy's telephone.

"Let him take his time, Grace. I'm not going to marry him, if he isn't ready yet." Cuddy told her. She was currently talking with Grace Atkinson, Albert's older sister. She knew that Grace didn't know about what happened to Albert in Mayo so she tried her best to reason with the woman with as little information as possible.

"Yeah but if you don't do anything, he's never going to be ready. It's like that one time we went climbing up a tree once. He was so scared to climb down that the only way to get him to get down was to push him off. The day after that, we went climbing up again and he was able to get down on his own." Grace told him.

"Yeah, that example doesn't help. It just shows how much torture you put him through. And might I remind you, he also sprained his arm because of that." Cuddy told her as she arranged all the papers on her desk.

"Look I'm just saying, Albert's not the type to make the first move."

"He was the one who asked me to be his girlfriend." Cuddy defended.

"After you confessed first." Grace argued as she sighed. "I'm just saying, both of you are getting old, if this relationship doesn't pan out, it won't end greatly for both of you." Grace reminded.

Cuddy's door soon opened as House walked in with a dreaded expression.

"Yeah, I have to go do something. I'll call you back." Cuddy told her. "Think about what I said, Lisa." Grace reminded her once more before Cuddy hung up.

"What do you want House? Have you broken another MRI? Or is it the X-ray machine this time?" Cuddy sarcastically asked.

"Was that Grace?" House asked as he nodded towards her telephone.

"Yeah, why?" Cuddy confusedly asked.

"Better call her back now. Albert, along with Foreman and our patient is in quarantine." House informed her as her heart dropped at the information.

"We think that he and Foreman might have caught what the patient has while they were going through his apartment." House informed her.

"And what does he have?"

"... We have no idea." House admitted.

"We're not sick!" Foreman insisted, he was still a bit euphoric but Albert, on the other hand, was keeping to himself in one corner, trying to calm himself down as he listened to music from his iPod that House let him take inside.

"Eat your meals. Take temperature every half hour and any meds I command you to take. And watch over James for me, he's still younger than you." House reminded him.

"So we're just a regular patient now?" He asked.

"No. You get your own thermometer." House told him as Foreman rolled his eyes at him as House walked away and Foreman chuckled to himself.

As the team began to test for everything, Lisa went to check up on Albert. She made sure to come whenever both Foreman and the cop was asleep through the camera attached to the room to monitor them.

"Hey," Lisa greeted Albert softly as the man approached the window separating them.

"Hey," He greeted back. He looked a bit paler than he usually was. He also looked exhausted to even move. He grabbed a chair nearby and placed it near the window and sat on it.

"Any new symptoms so far?" Lisa asked him as Albert shook his head. "None that I know of." Albert told her as he looked at their original patient.

"Look, House is going to make sure that neither of you are going to die. You know that." Lisa reassured him.

"No, I don't." Albert said as he stared at the man lying on his bed, grasping for air in his sleep. "If he dies before House figures out what killed him, it's basically a guarantee that we'll die."

"Al-"

"Our symptoms aren't that far behind from his current state." Albert argued as Lisa sighed.

"Just go back to work, Lisa. I'm sure you have a lot to tell the CDC and WHO." Albert said as he stood up from his chair.

"You still owe me that dinner date celebration." Lisa told him. "You promised that you'll make it up to me. You have to keep your word." She pleaded him.

Albert didn't reply and only went back to his bed and laid there with his back facing her. Lisa sighed and walked away.

Albert couldn't promise her that he'll be able to make it up to her... Because even House didn't know if he'll make it out alive.