Chapter One
Chase isn't entirely sure why he's here. It's not like it'll be any different – like praying in church is any better than lying awake on the couch. The pew is hard, and his body aches, having been here since he was trashed, now falling between that empty feeling of nothingness – where you stop feeling good and begin to feel just a little numb – and the beginning stages of a particularly nasty hangover. The darkness is beginning to break, gleams of light filtering in through the cracked sanctuary door, and he knows Cameron's missing him again. Maybe calling the police, again. It doesn't really matter though – he ruined his marriage just as he'd ruined the rest of his life. There didn't seem much point left.
Not that there is much point to this, either. Right now, he's pretty sure that God doesn't exist. If He did, how could He let this happen? How could He let a leader ravage his own nation as Dibala had. How could He let two fathers die without saying goodbye to their sons? How could He let Cameron suffer like this – waiting up every night for a man she hardly knows anymore?
How could He let Chase's own life be ruined by this? It didn't matter what he did at this point – he could either spend the rest of his life in prison, lonely and miserable, or suffer forever from guilt. He couldn't win.
The door creaks open and he looks over. The pastor of this little church is standing there, bleary-eyed and confused, squinting at him through large, round glasses. "Young man, you're still here?" he says, and swipes his hand over his balding head, catching a few wisps of white hair.
"Oh, sorry, sir," Chase replies quickly, and winces when his own voice echoes a little too loudly in his head. "I'll get out of your hair," he tries again, more softly, and casts around for his coat.
"No, no, no," the older man says. "I'm just a little surprised. When you showed up last night, I could have sworn you just needed a place to sober up before going home." He approaches Chase slowly, and the floorboards creak under the weight of the plump little man.
"'s what I thought," Chase murmurs, and hides his face in his hands.
The pastor slips into the pew beside him, gazing ahead at the altar with a thoughtful expression. "You look like you need someone to talk to."
Chase shrugs, a bit petulantly. "Wouldn't help. Hasn't so far."
"Oh?"
The pastor's intrigue irks him a little, reminding him of House sifting through files in the ER. He can't even remember how many times he watched the older doctor do just that while he visited Cameron during his breaks. "It's nothing."
"Well, that nothing's got to be mighty big for you to have spent all night thinking about it," and the old man nods towards Chase's wedding band. "Someone was missing you last night."
"She's used to it," Chase mumbles. "I'm a doctor."
"What kind of doctor?"
"Surgeon," Chase gives the easy answer. "My wife's a doctor too," he adds quickly, as if somehow this changes anything.
The pastor waits expectantly until Chase elaborates. "She runs the emergency department over at Princeton Plainsboro."
"Princeton Plainsboro? That's awfully far out of the way. Must be something big you're running from."
Chase shrugs, and twists his wedding ring round his finger. Part of him feels the sudden urge to confess everything right now – to this man who has seen his face, and knows where he works and what he does. Someone who would have to turn him in. But he's just a child – as much as he's accomplished, he's still just that little boy doing anything in his power to make his father proud; his father who is long since buried. He's a child that just wants to be held and told everything's all right. That he did the right thing.
And yet he still cannot bring himself to tell Cameron.
"Have you ever done anything bad?" Chase asks suddenly. "I mean, really, really bad. The kind of thing you can't just fix."
The old man stops to think for a moment, gazing at the random messages scribbled over the covers of the song books in the pew ahead. 'You are forgiven!' reads one in a child's handwriting, followed by 'Jesus loves you!'
Chase sees, and can't help but think how wrong they are.
"We've all sinned," the pastor says finally. "That's why-"
"Yeah, yeah," Chase interrupts. "That's why God sent his Son to suffer on the cross. I've got it. That's not what I asked."
"Are you an atheist?"
"Catholic."
"Ah," he says, fingertips touching the bald spot again with an amused smirk. "Even better."
Chase wants to smile, but can't.
"I've never broken the law," he says. "Not that the law is too much of a moral compass – it's a set of fairly arbitrary rules to enforce our social contract."
Chase thinks of Cameron.
"But I did cheat on my wife."
Chase looks up suddenly, just sort of staring at the man. "You . . . what?"
"It was a very long time ago," he explains, smiling sadly. I was a few years younger than you. Had the most beautiful wife in the world. She was everything to me. And then one day I met . . . someone who was more than everything, more than beautiful. Long story short, I decided it was best to stay away from both of them; filed for divorce and went back to school the next day. Studied theology."
"So you ran away," Chase muses, and grows quiet again, staring at his hands. This is how Lady Macbeth felt, he thinks. Unable to see anything but blood on her hands; unable to sleep or think or function without a reminder of the king's blood.
The king's blood.
"Pastor," Chase says, voice hoarse, "What if someone does something really bad? Something that's against the law, and . . . and morally questionable. And what if they get away with it? What then?"
"Confess?" the pastor supplies lamely.
"I tried that."
The pastor's voice softens. "Have you confessed to your wife?"
Chase looks up at him instantly, more and more sure that this man is some pious, kind version of House.
"I'll take that as a no," he says. "Maybe that's what you need. You don't give a damn about God's forgiveness – you do give a damn about hers."
"You don't know my wife," Chase explains, trying to find something – anything – to fix this that won't involve Cameron knowing. She can't know, she just can't. "Everything is ethics to her. And half the time she's on the fence about whatever we're fighting over. That's how she was with this patient-" he stops, trying to convince himself he hadn't said that out loud.
"A patient?" the old man asks softly, face grim with understanding, and not horror as he'd been expecting.
Chase takes a deep breath, trying to find some order to his thoughts. "You know the Hippocratic Oath?" The man nods. "Do no harm. As doctors, that's God to us. At least to my wife. It's like the ten commandments. Do no harm. But," he lowers his voice to a bare whisper, "but what if treating a patient will do more harm than not? What then?" It's not the whole truth, Chase knows, but it's good enough. Please, let it be good enough.
The pastor sighs. "Forgiveness . . . is always granted. If you confess your sins to God – not even to a priest, just to God Himself – He will forgive you."
"But it wasn't a sin," Chase insists. "It was the right thing to do."
"Then maybe that's your problem," says the man, standing. "Maybe you need to recognize it as a sin. Or maybe the problem's deeper even than that. Maybe you should try forgiving yourself." His plump frame maneuvers out of the pew with surprising ease, and disappears through the old wooden doors, and it's dark again. There's just enough light to cast long dim shadows across the floor, stretching out into eternity.
It's then that Chase can do nothing more than sink to his knees and cry.