He rests his coffee cup on the counter as Brenda amasses a stack of pink and blue and red files, and checks his watch - he's on time for the ridiculously early morning shift, way too early by his usual schedule, but it's one of those days when the hum of her breathing as she sleeps next to him is oppressive, suffocating.

So he escapes, to the clinic, to nameless faces distracted by their own pain and badly in need of his help, and it has to be enough.

Besides, he thinks, as he accepts the stack of files and smiles at the stone-faced nurse who's just waiting to go off duty, he hopes to catch Cuddy on her way in, to wish her a happy birthday. He's not sure if anyone else knows that she turns thirty-five today, and whether they can even make the time to care as they deal with their lives, their jobs and the people bleeding and crying and hurting in the front room.

Well, he can try, at least. That's all he's ever done.

She breezes in through the doors then, a blast of energy like coffee shot straight into a vein, her armour ready, her warpaint on, her chin tilted with that edge of determination he knows must have made her a difficult child to care for.

"Good morning, Dr. Wilson," she smiles at him, and he marvels again that, in the years he's known her, he's only seen that confidence crack once, and even then he had only guessed at the tears hidden in the rigid way she held her shoulders and clenched her fists, the night that Stacy signed her name to a procedure that would change all their lives forever.

Her files are already stacked on the counter - the nurses have learnt her habits and preferences well - and she flips quickly through them. She scrawls her signature across some of the papers, murmurs quick instructions and then turns to him. "You're in early today."

"Clinic," he says, indicating his own batch of cases, people indexed, their illnesses ready to be diagnosed and filtered into statistics she'll have to analyse at the end of every financial quarter, "as and when I can squeeze in the extra hours."

She smiles, almost gratefully, the hospital is her baby after all. "Now if only you can get House to do the same." There is laughter in her words, but resignation and frustration too; and, for a moment, he sees stress and exhaustion and the sheer weight of House threaded through the lines of her face. He recognises them, in the creases in his own forehead and around his eyes, in the frown line next to his mouth he had mistakenly attributed to his first divorce. To these she adds guilt, he knows, and that's more than enough a burden for anyone to carry.

"Cuddy," he starts, and wonders if maybe he should have bought chocolates on the off chance she's not on a diet and it might put a smile on her face, "I wanted to..."

She cuts him off, not rudely, but because her cell phone is ringing, and she sighs. "It's six-thirty in the morning," she grumbles as good-naturedly as the situation allows, and to him, "I'll talk to you later?" An apologetic smile, and she turns towards her office, already talking, arranging an appointment or fielding a prank call from House.

It's a little past lunchtime when he finally comes up for air, a stack of files - people he's grown to know, people he'll watch die over the coming months - in his out tray. It must be House's day off, he realises, since it's almost one in the afternoon and there hasn't yet been an eruption into his room from the balcony of a lanky, battered body demanding crankily to be fed.

There is stress involved in being House's friend, he thinks, as he heads to the cafeteria and picks up two sandwiches. He grabs a salad too, for good measure, as he wonders how much more difficult it must be for Cuddy, to be House's friend and boss at once, to care and to hurt and to worry while she tries to justify his existence on her payroll, as she covers up the messes that inevitably explode around the lives he deigns to save.

He raps on her door, one sharp knock, then another, and lets himself in. She's typing up a storm as he walks to her desk, and she looks up, first apologetically, then gratefully, as she realises that he brings her sustenance.

"Excellent timing," she says, emphatically hitting her faded 'enter' key, then bestows on him a smile so dazzling he wonders briefly how she's stayed single so long. There should be queues round the block for a chance to kiss this woman to sleep at night and to watch her wake in the morning... objectively speaking, of course.

She accepts a sandwich, waving aside his explanations that one is tuna and the other roast beef, bites into it with gusto after informing him that she doesn't care since she's absolutely starving, and proceeds to distract him with talk of meetings with potential donors, a new oncology lab, and expanding the department that he has only recently taken charge of.

He watches her as she chats animatedly about maybe getting him an assistant, and he can't help thinking, as always, that she talks of her hospital, of her staff, of him, the way she sometimes talks of House, when it's just them, and they're just friends and not colleagues. There is the same light and sparkle in her eyes, the same fire in her voice, shades of devotion and love and obligation and commitment. He remembers the moment he knew she had chosen to believe that there was still something in House worth the effort and the lawsuits and the torture, when she had looked him in the eye, squared her jaw, and said she would offer House a job. He had almost tried to dissuade her, it was insanity to believe that House would do any better at his fifth hospital in as many years since Stacy had left, and she should not have to pick up the pieces of a man who far too frequently delighted in being broken. But she had stood firm, and he had come to understand that only a fool - or House - could say no to her when her eyes flashed in just that way, blue and steel and a lifetime of fighting the odds.

Just as he's about to interrupt her to wish her a happy birthday, the phone rings. She grimaces, swallows, and picks up, and he gets up to leave when she says, "Oh, hi, Mom." But she shakes her head, gestures for him to sit down, and proceeds to conduct a conversation as professionally and succinctly as only a grown child secure in her own life and choices can. He almost envies the way she dispenses quickly with what surely are her mother's well wishes for her birthday, and admires how she summarises her life in a few pithy sentences that clearly satisfy her mother but reveal to him nothing about her that he doesn't already know. And all this as she quickly checks her e-mail and still has the presence of mind to reassure him with a smile that he's not intruding on a family moment.

He quietly finishes his sandwich, and it's only at the very end of the brief conversation, when she flushes and mutters into the phone, no, Mom, no one new, that he realises she is in some ways still a disappointment, even with all her successes, that she carries with her also the weight of failure and unfulfilled expectations, despite the lives she has saved and the rules she has redefined and the battles she has won.

"I'm sorry," she says, as she finally puts the phone down, checks her watch, "It took longer to get through the Spanish Inquisition than I thought it would. I shouldn't have made you wait, and thank you for lunch, but I have to run. Board meeting, and then those donors I told you about, and the lawyers after that to discuss House's latest attempt to remove someone's pancreas through their eyes."

"No problem, just glad someone remembered to feed you," he replies, as she sweeps up a stack of files and gives his shoulder a quick squeeze before she leaves the room and all he's left with is the faint scent of lavender blossoms and an uneaten salad.

He doesn't see her for the rest of the day - he's too busy himself, as he occupies his mind and his time with patients, talks them through their grief the best way he knows how, and tries to avoid thinking of strained conversation over a dinner table, and a sorrow he cannot seem to heal no matter what he does.

It's almost nine by the time he shrugs into his coat and prepares to brave the November chill, but he glances into her office on his way out, and pauses. She's not there, though the lights are still on, and he weighs his options. He's already late for dinner, another reason to squabble or not talk or sleep on the couch, so another ten minutes can't really hurt.

He walks to the twenty-four-hour convenience store, and surveys its meagre wares. There's nothing here that really says what she deserves, that sums up a life in the trenches, fighting for people and causes and lives with her own blood and time and tears, but he figures - something is better than nothing. So he selects a rather squashed blueberry muffin from a tray of woeful-looking pastries and pays at the counter.

It's not much, he admits, as he heads back to her office. But he'll leave it on her table, so she'll see it before she goes home. He knows she doesn't need anyone's strength or determination or courage, she has more than enough of her own.

But surely, he thinks, surely it can't hurt for her to know that someone thought of her today.