Pairing: Cameron/Chase (established relationship)
Warnings: angst, bitch!Cameron, language, patient death, religious!Chase, self beta'ed
Notes: I've had this idea in my head that Chase would get more religious after he becomes a surgeon, because it's more nerve wracking work, and I'm sure you lose more patients. Especially since the man is an intensivist as well, so he gets more of the 'do or die' types.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Robert Chase finds himself praying more as a surgeon he ever did while in seminary, when he was trying to become a priest. He finds himself kneeling in the hospital chapel, clutching the blue beads of the rosary he brought with him from Australia to his chest, Latin words falling from his lips in easy rhythm as he prayed to Luke, and Jesus, and God that he wouldn't fuck the whole thing up and have another death on his hands.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
"Doctor Chase?" a young voice asks quietly. Robert's hand stills in the middle of crossing himself, and his eyes find the dark orbs of a young girl before him.
"Yes?" he asks, his fingers moving over the beads.
"They told me that you would be preforming the surgery on my mother today, and I wanted to give you this." Her words came out in a rush, and she pressed a small silver disk suspended from a fine chain into his free hand. She stared at the doctor while he saw it was a medal for Saint Luke, the patron saint of surgeons.
"Thank you." he said his words soft. "Peace be with you."
The girl smiled and chanted the response - "And also with you."
"Amen." He crossed himself once more, and went to change. As he walked, he clasped the medal around his neck.
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
He lost the mother.
In a flash, blood was everywhere, obscuring all vision. His entire team had their hands in the woman's open torso, trying to suction all the blood away so they could repair the organs that had sprung a leak.
"V-fib!" one of the nurses called, as the shrill siren of the heart monitor went off.
"Push Amiodarone - we can't use the paddles!" Chase barked back, his hands working faster then they ever had in his life, trying in vain to find the bloody rupture.
In the end, the nurses overruled him, pushing him away to shock his patient's heart back into life as she bleed out. The heart started once, twice, but the lack of oxygen to the patient's brain, and the lack of a closed system where too much of a stress for her body to overcome.
Numbly, Chase pulled the mask down from his face. "Time of death - Thirteen-oh-six."
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
"How could you let her die!" the girl screamed at him when she saw Chase's face, tears running down her cheeks. Yelling, she launched herself at the man, her fists beating him. The doctor wrapped his arms tightly around the girl, letting the weight of her pull him down to the cold tile of the hallway. His arms muffled her yells of pain, and from his lips fell the all too familiar Latin of the Ava Maria. The girl's blows turned to grasping hands, as she hung on to Chase as if he was a lifeline, her lips moving in time to his words as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Dimly, he was aware of Cuddy rushing to his side, helping him to his feet, hissing in his ear to get the girl the hell out of the hall way as she pushed the two of them into an office. His office, he noted belatedly, as she guided the girl to the old plaid couch to sit.
"Is there anyone you would like me to call? Family member? Priest?" he asked gently, as he handed her a fist full of tissues.
"Father Pulgarin, from St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church."
Chase nodded and turned to call the Father.
ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc,
Cameron saw the medal around his neck when he came to pick her up to catch a bite to eat between her shifts. Chase saw her lips purse into a thin line, just like it had when he moved in and put a crucifix over the bed, and a blessing for the house in the threshold of the front door. She said nothing to him through the whole time they ordered and ate. He drove her back to the hospital, parking in his spot.
"Is my religion going to be an issue for you, Alison?" he asks quietly, half not wanting the answer.
"You never used to wear saint medals, or carry around rosaries, Chase." her voice was brittle and sharp, and it cut into him like a knife. "I can't be a nice, Catholic girl who goes to Mass and cooks Sunday dinner."
"I've never wanted that from you."
"But how long until you do want that?" The car door slammed behind her, and the doctor rested his head on the steering wheel.
Opening the door, he stood and screamed at her retreating back. "Damn it all to hell, Cameron - why today? Why did you have to pick today of all days?"
She stopped and turned, her voice filled with cruelty. "We have all lost patients, Robert."
et in hora mortis nostrae.
He surprises himself when he parks in front of House's apartment, staring at the man's building. It's not that he hasn't ended up in odd places before when he was hurting, filled with anger, and not thinking. He's parked in front of his old flat, or a ex's too many times to be surprised by that. He muses that it could be worse, he could've ended up in front of a church, that would have been par for the course today. He's made up his mind to leave and sleep on the couch in Cameron's place when House limps out of the building and ambles over to Chase's car. He raps on the glass with his cane, and the sound is deafening next to the blond's ear.
"Where you ever going to come in, or are you just going to mope there all night?" he asks gruffly, and it's so different from Cameron's sharp and shrill preaching that Chase stumbles out of the car and walks behind House into the warmth of his flat.
He sits on the couch, and House hands him a Coke. Chase is numb as his hand closes around the drink. If there's any night he wanted a beer more it would've been this one. For once, he's glad that House is a creepy freak and knows better then to let him have alcohol when his nerves are fired.
"The first patient's always the worst."
"She was far from my first patient who I've lost."
"But the first you've lost as a surgeon. It makes the difference." He watches House drink his beer, and hates the man for knowing everything. For always being right.
Chase pulls a pillow from one side of the couch, and buries his face in it, and he screams like his heart is breaking. The elder doctor doesn't say a word, he just waits for the blond to stop screaming into his pillow or to suffocate. He makes a bet with himself that suffocation will be the winner. Exhaustion wins, with Robert lowering the pillow and slumping back against the couch, his eyes glazed, and House is almost disappointed. It would've been mildly amusing to see his face blue. For half a second, anyway.
House stands, his old bones popping, his bum leg complaining quietly through the muffle of Vicodan that House laid thick and heavy on it, "Sleep here tonight, wombat."
Chase isn't one to argue, nor is he to wondering why the hell House is being so close to a human being. His last thought before he drifts off is if his priests at seminary had been more like the cold-hearted bastard, maybe he would've been the priest the girl ran to, not the surgeon who killed her mother. It isn't a happy thought, but it's the closest he'll get tonight.
Amen.