TITLE: Daughter, ch. 4
AUTHOR: lazy_corvus
PAIRING: House/Stacy, House/Wilson friendship and subtext
RATING: NC-17 (R in some chapters)
WARNINGS: Spoilers through season 4.
SUMMARY: Parallel Universe. House raises his daughter, committed to doing a better job than his father did with him. This story covers events in House's life from the daughter's perspective. Not sappy, I promise. House is hopefully in character.
DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Heel and Toe Films, Shore Z Productions and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with Universal Media Studios.
NOTES: This idea took hold of me, and I couldn't shake it. Feedback is appreciated. Please be gentle; this is my first real attempt at fan fiction.

CHAPTER 4: STACY

When I’m 7 years old, Dad introduces me to Stacy. She is a lawyer at the hospital, and she is “like a girlfriend. We really like each other. The same way I liked Mommy.” I find out later that they’ve been having “lunch dates” at work and that a lot of the nights that Wilson and his wife Bonnie have come over to stay with me while Dad was “at work,” well... Dad wasn’t at work.

There haven’t been any women in Dad’s life (that I know of), and Stacy is really nice to me. The three of us go to restaurants together, play miniature golf, go bowling, go to the zoo and museums. We do lots of fun things. She is a little awkward with me at first, but she very quickly gets comfortable with me. I like her. She is kind of girlie for my taste, but she is also a strong Katharine Hepburn type. And anyway, there’s nothing inherently wrong with girliness.

The next year, Dad asks how I’d feel if Stacy lived with us.

I take after him, and I answer his question with a question of my own. “Will we still do Movie Night?”

“Of course,” he says. “We’ll always do Movie Night.”

“Will she change the rules? Will she change my bedtime?”

He tells me, “I make all the rules for you, and I set bedtime. She’ll just be like... a special friend to you.”

“So she won’t be like a step-mom?” I ask, assuming that I have masked the disappointment in my voice. Because I do sort of want a mom figure, since I can’t have my own mom—as long as she’s nice and doesn’t make big changes to my life and lets Dad and me have time together without her.

He smiles. “She can do some step-mom-like things with you, if you want. You can talk to her about girl stuff if you want. She can do things to your hair, take you shopping. Maybe pick you up at daycare when I work late.”

“It’s not daycare, Dad!” I exclaim for the hundredth time.

I’m 8 now; it’s after-school care. But it’s located in the hospital, in the same childcare center I attended as a pre-schooler. And he infuriates me every time he uses the word “daycare.”

He smiles, and I smile back at him.

Stacy moves in with us a few weeks later. She brings a few pieces of furniture, and she hangs curtains on our incredibly tall windows. I have to admit, she makes the place look and feel homier. She brings along some kitchen stuff. After a couple weeks, she asks if I’d like to “do a makeover” on my room. I smile and say yes, because she suggests a change but asks me first. Plus it’s a pretty exciting change.

Now she is in her element. She takes me shopping and helps me choose a new pink and green quilt. She also buys matching curtains, a few coordinating sets of sheets, a new lamp, a white bookcase, and a few white shelves. She brings the new quilt into Lowe’s and asks them to mix sage green paint to match the green in the quilt. We paint the walls in my room, and as a finishing touch, she lays down a pretty area rug.

Furthermore, she doesn’t suggest we get rid of my glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and my anatomical posters on the wall. One displays all the muscles. One displays all the bones. One displays the circulatory system. Clearly she realizes how important these things are. Dad really did his homework on this woman and found a keeper!

While I’m not the girliest kind of girl, I do like pretty things she added more than I imagined I would. I feel like I have a “mature” bedroom. Like a teenager bedroom! Stacy has solidified her place in my heart.

Stacy is affectionate to me and gives Dad and me a lot of space to be together. She doesn’t join us for sledding. When we head out, he tells her, “You can’t come with us. It’s a secret place, open only to our Secret Friendship Club.” She smiles and tells us to have fun.

It’s nice to have a feminine figure around the house. She indeed helps me do pretty things with my hair. She takes me shopping for clothes, and it’s way more fun than when Dad or Grandma take me. Grandma always wants to buy me frilly things; Dad doesn’t much care what my clothes look like as long as they’re age-appropriate. Stacy has a good eye for fashion.

She likes to cook more than Dad does, so we eat less take-out. She makes fancy meals that Dad would never make but would eat if Wilson—or a chef or anyone—made them. They mostly taste good, and sometimes she lets me help with the cooking. Between her, Wilson, and FoodNetwork, I’ll eventually learn enough to cook on my own.

I ask her once if she’ll someday have a baby with Dad. She says, “I don’t think so, sweetie.”

“Why not?” I ask her, feeling enormous relief. I like being the center of attention.

“It’s complicated,” she says simply.

I understand she doesn’t want to explain further, so I refrain from asking more questions about babies.

We don’t have a yard, so Dad and I often go to the park to shoot baskets on the basketball court.  Sometimes Wilson meets us there. Sometimes we bring a soccer ball and kick it around.

School proves to be easy for me all-around. I try not to be a big show-off, but I am not afraid to raise my hand when I know the answer. I don’t care if other kids think I’m a nerd; people will think what they want to think anyway. Sports act an equalizer. I’m not the best player, but I’m certainly in the top third. Doesn’t stop me from working hard and trying to become the best though.  

Life during the Stacy years is mostly pleasant. I play soccer every fall and basketball every winter. I do well in school. Carissa and I have sleepovers at least once a month. Dad’s career booms—he publishes a lot of his cases, and as a result he becomes well-known in medical circles. He is in a position to take a couple hours off work here and there to attend most of my games. Stacy puts me to bed some nights so Dad can work late or go out with Wilson to do “boys stuff.” I ask her what that means, but she doesn’t tell me it means to get drunk and sometimes high.

******

I fell hard for Stacy.

She came to work as in-house counsel at Princeton-Plainsboro when Katie was 6. I had many professional dealings with her, because of the risky kind of medicine I practiced even back then. We butted heads a lot, but after a year I started looking forward to our meetings. From day one I thought she was smart and beautiful, but her lawyer-style caution drove me nuts.

And eventually, so did her witty repartee. Nuts in the good way, in this case.

I started imposing myself on her in the cafeteria. I’d sit at her table and talk, even if she was reading or going over paperwork. Her words indicated annoyance, but she liked my attention (and me). The eyes and the body language—they don’t lie. Soon, she was seeking me for conversation and lunch. I finally asked if she’d like to get dinner, and she said yes.

(She told me later that she first realized she liked me the evening she saw me exit the hospital daycare, holding Katie’s hand. “That’s when I knew you were capable of being sweet,” she said.)

We started dating outside the hospital more and more. Sometimes the baby sitter was Wilson; sometimes it was Katie’s favorite caregiver from daycare—excuse me, afterschool care. I usually waited until after Katie’s bedtime to pick Stacy up, and Stacy was very understanding about my refusal to spend the night at her place. I wanted so badly to wake up with her gorgeous brown hair in my face—but it was important that I be home for Katie during the night and in the morning.

The fact that she accepted this about me went a long way in moving our relationship forward.

I was madly in love with Stacy. I’d have moved her into my apartment after a week of dating if I didn’t have a kid. As a parent, I had to be extra-careful about this kind of thing. I didn’t want to parade women in and out of Katie’s life. And even though I felt Stacy was the real thing and could make room for a child in her life, I needed to make sure we were both in this for the long-haul. To protect Katie.

It was months before I brought the two of them together. Katie was open to the idea of spending time with a woman. Stacy was open to doing kid-friendly activities with us. She was kind and gentle to Katie, and as a result, there was absolutely no posturing between the two of them. This was a great match, and I felt confident everything would work famously.

The transition to Stacy living in our home was smooth. She didn’t try to “take over” anything and didn’t try to be a disciplinarian with Katie. She left all that to me, which was the right move. Katie would have resented a new adult coming into our home and doling out rules and consequences. Stacy was the right mix of friend and caretaker to her, and there never seemed to be any tension. Even during the first couple years, when Katie sometimes made her way to our bed in the middle of the night.

Ever since I’d moved Katie to her own bed at 3 years old, she occasionally made her way to mine in the middle of the night. Sometimes she’d had a nightmare; sometimes she just woke up and didn’t want to be alone. That’s what kids do, and it’s perfectly normal. Forcing a small kid back to her own bed alone doesn’t fulfill her need for comfort—it only intensifies the need for comfort. The responsibility of parenting doesn’t stop just because it’s night-time.

Some nights I tried to take her back to her bed and lie with her until she fell back asleep. But I always fell asleep there myself in the process, so this wasn’t doing much good. It was more of an inconvenience for me.

So before Stacy moved in I warned her about all this, as I wasn’t sure how she’d react to Katie climbing into the bed at 2 am. She said it would be fine, but people want to be accommodating, so they say something will be fine while not fully realizing what a pain in the ass it can be.

The first time it happened, Katie crawled over Stacy’s legs and lay between us. I sleepily started to get up and said, “Come on Katie. Back to your room. I’ll stay with you a while.”

I was sincerely trying to meet both their needs—Stacy’s need for sleep without a sleeping kid’s limbs flailing at her and Katie’s need to be with me when she was scared at night.

But Stacy stopped me. “No Greg, it’s ok. She’s fine here.”

I glared curiously at her with a furrowed brow. “Really?”

She nodded with closed eyes and lay her head back on the pillow. Katie was already back to sleep by now, so I just lay down and returned to sleep myself.

Stacy adjusted to these interruptions, and she was overall a very understanding person. She rarely questioned my parenting style or the decisions I made for Katie, and when she did so it was respectfully and in private.

The only time she made a fuss in front of Katie was during a visit to Six Flags. I was raising Katie with healthy eating habits and all, but I think junk food is perfectly acceptable in moderation. And when you spend the day at an amusement park, the food choices are mostly all junky. So you have to make some concessions on this.

“Can I have cotton candy now?” Katie asked late that afternoon.

“Yea, ok. Only if I can share,” I said. I like cotton candy! And this way she’d consume only half the sugar and junk.

“Greg!” Stacy exclaimed. “She had nachos and cheese when we first got here, lemonade, a hot dog and fries for lunch, ice cream for dessert. Now you’re gonna let her have cotton candy?”

“You find me the fruit stand, and I’ll buy her an apple!” I said.

“She’ll be sick on the next roller coaster ride. Or when we get home. Or even worse, in the car on the way home.”

“Did you go to medical school or something?” I asked sarcastically.

“What’s next?” she asked. “Soda?” She knew of my very strong stance against soda for kids.

“She’s not allowed to drink soda,” I argued. “Ever. You know that.”

“Cotton candy is just as bad and sugary as soda is.”

“But not as addictive. And not readily available everywhere. Cotton candy is a rare treat. It’s ok at special places like this. Really.” Stacy smiled in concession, and I added, “When she pukes later, I’ll clean it up. I promise.”

I never asked Stacy to take time off work to stay home when Katie was sick. She volunteered a few times when her workload wasn’t overwhelming, but most of the time I stayed with the sick kid and consulted on my patients over the phone.
 
Around 10 years old, Katie became interested in religion. I had raised her as an atheist, but I had educated her on all the major religions. I didn’t want her to be ignorant on these matters, but I also never directly exposed her to religions. So while she intellectually agreed with my atheist position (as much as a 10-year-old can intellectually agree with a position), she grew curious about what it’s like to be involved in a religious community. Especially after she started spending time at her best friend’s house.

She asked me if she could go to church with Carissa’s family some time, to see what it’s like. I struggled with this. Really struggled. I talked to Stacy and Wilson, both confirmed atheists. They both seemed to think that if I said no, she might turn more toward religion as an act of rebellion. I agreed with this perspective, but I also feared that just a little exposure would lead to her embracing faith and heading to a nunnery.

Eventually, I allowed it. She went to a service at the Baptist church with Carissa’s family, who were very respectful of our atheist views and understanding of Katie’s curiosity. Stacy brought Katie to a Catholic mass. Stacy hadn’t been in a church since her mother’s funeral, and I appreciated how much it cost her emotionally to step foot in there again. In an attempt to be fair and balanced, Wilson and Bonnie brought Katie to their synagogue. Wilson never told Bonnie he didn’t believe in God, so he had to tag along every Saturday. But he was happy to expose Katie to Jewish rituals, and they often invited the three of us for Shabbat. We loved the food, and I loved listening to Wilson speak Hebrew. His pronunciation was far superior to mine.

I wasn’t close to anyone else, so there were no other religious ceremonies for Katie to attend. But, direct exposure to three religions plus atheism is more than most kids get. In the end, she decided that religious services are boring. She got a sense that people liked being part of a community, but she didn’t understand why it had to center around faith. She said she couldn’t buy any of the ideas anyway, and that faith in something without evidence is silly. “Now I know what you mean when you say that evidence and knowledge are more meaningful than faith,” she told me.

I taught her to be respectful of people and their religious faiths, because even though I am not always respectful, well... parents have to toe a careful line with their children on these matters. I didn’t want the school to call me with a report that Katie had been insulting the other kids and their religions.

I almost made a stink when a boy tried to evangelize her on the playground. She told him to shut up and go away, and she calmly told the teacher about it. When she told me this story at dinner that evening, I was proud of her for handling the situation on her own. She was strong and direct, and she told the proper authority figure in case it happened again. The kid stayed away, but if he had done it again, I would have called the school. I wasn’t the kind of parent who made a fuss with the school over every incident, but the fact is, religious discussions were against the rules at school. And this was a rule I strongly admired, because young kids aren’t equipped to properly and respectfully discuss these issues.

Plus, religion is a real sore point with me. Faith annoys me more than anything else does.

—G.H.

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Chapter 1  •  Chapter 2  •  Chapter 3