Disclaimer: I don't own House MD it was created by David Shore and owned by FOX and NBC/Universal, and produced by Heel and Toe Films and Bad Hat Harry Productions. I also don't own and film, book, television show, monster truck, bread, or anything else that references a real world contraption (since usually I avoid it for this purpose). Most things mentioned under this clause I suggest that you as the reader check out. And special thanks to the lj group Clinc Duty, for putting in their hours and providing me with the word for word (not to mention proper spelling) of the House episodes I modify. So Welcome to the Wonderful World of Fanfiction.
Warning: This is Slash (/): which means relations of the male-kind. With some Friendship (+): they are friends they hang out and are supportive. More specifically House/Chase and Taub+Kutner
Author's Note: Ta Da! Here is my NaNoWriMo House/Chase fic (well the prologue) I apologise to dracotelitha and all the others who were anticipating this post. I like to build my romantic relationships slowly... so I hope you enjoy. All clarifying author notes are at the end of the chapter.
Happy Reading!
Lifestyle
Prologue
The locker room was dark, as he stood there by his locker half dressed in his street clothes. He had planned a quiet evening by himself; well there was his cat, but Allison was not coming over, nor was he going to her place. In a single moment, a single tone his whole perspective on the evening turned up-side down. With one arm in his shirt sleeve and the other half-way there, Chase's pager went off. Green eyes quickly glanced at the device as the blond's brain began to think.
He wanted to go home, he wanted to relax all by himself, turn the television on and become mindless before falling asleep. With a long sigh the blond reached out with his naked arm and picked up his text pager, it was from House, "Consult, just stop by when you have a free moment," Chase read out loud after he read it a few times in his head. The Australian read the message once more put the pager down and finished putting his shirt on.
The page was so unlike House he couldn't describe it. When it came to consults House wanted the answer immediately. Sighing again Robert Chase tried to figure out what sort of prank House was playing now, or what dangerous surgery the other doctor wanted him to perform.
Chase began to slowly button his shirt, House had not put a time frame on the consult, or he could even come in the next morning—afternoon and help House then. Another part of his brain protested though, he was already at the hospital with free time, who knew what kind of emergencies would occur the next afternoon, and Diagnostics was not exactly out of the way.
Looking through his locker one last time, Robert threw a stray puzzle book in his messenger bag, put on his jacket, retrieved his pager and walked out of the locker room. Chase had always found that the later shift in the upper floors of the hospital to be calming. He himself clacked out later than the rest of his colleagues on his shift, he had stayed longer to make sure a patient in the ICU was stabilised for the next shift. But now walking through the halls he could see the nurses begin to lower their voices and the lights for the night, so patients may rest.
The Australian's footfalls slowed and softened as he approached the glass walls of Diagnostics. The conference room was dark and as he approached Chase could see that the small desk lamp in House's office was the only illumination. As the blond got closer he could see that House sat behind his desk, doing nothing except staring at his large tennis ball.
Slowing to a stop in front of the door to Gregory House's office, the Intensivist paused for half a second thinking that House would notice him, before raising his right hand and knocking on the glass. House looked up at Chase and motioned him in.
"Sit down," said House once the door was closed. Chase took off his messenger bag and dropped it on the floor next to the chair in front of House's desk, he debated taking off his jacket and decided to wait until he knew how long he was going to be staying first, and then he sat down in the chair and looked at House.
As the green eyes were studying, their former boss, House seemed to have an internal struggle. Suddenly House stood up and began drawing the curtains and locking the door. At first Chase was trying to figure out the significance of this move but then he noticed that House's limp was less pronounced, and then it dawned on him that House wasn't even using his cane.
Chase made a startled noise somewhere between a gasp and a cough, "You're not in pain?"
A glimmer of a smile spread itself on House's face before he moved to sit down, "This is what I need the consult on."
"Your pain? But why the show with the curtains and the door?" asked Chase leaning forward as he removed his jacket.
"I'm taking methadone," House said watching the Australian's face for a reaction. The blond opened his mouth about to say something, but House continued talking, "It's not to detox... well at first it wasn't. It eradicates my pain Chase."
There was a pause and then Chase smiled, "Well, that's great House really."
"Do you know the risks of taking methadone?" asked House he picked up a small blue leaflet and read in a half-mocking tone, "May cause: headache, stomach pain, dry mouth, flushing, itching, skin rash, low blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, swelling of the extremities, hypoventilation, constipation, increased sweating, heat intolerance, chronic fatigue, sleepiness, exhaustion, insomnia, euphoria, mood changes, anorexia, weight gain, difficulty urinating, blurred vision, hallucinations, cardiac arrhythmia, gynecomastia, impotence, and seizures."
Chase briefly reflected on the irony of causing both sleepiness and insomnia. But they were only possibilities, "Have you been having any problems?"
"Well I'm not euphoric, or hallucinating if that is what you are asking," replied the elder doctor with a smirk.
"And, what about the not-so-fun side effects?" Chase deadpanned.
House glanced down at the list again, "dry mouth, constipation, nausea, it burns when I urinate, I think it is moving towards becoming difficult, exhaustion as well. I want you to check my vitals."
Chase nodded he reached down into his bag and pulled out a notebook and a pen, flipping to the end where he could write without scattering his 'House notes' he began to jot down the side effect that House was having. By the time he was done House was sitting there with a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope on his desk. The blond picked up the stethoscope checking both the elder's pulse, blood pressure and listened to his heart and lungs.
"Your blood pressure is a little bit low, and your lungs sound a bit laboured but nothing terrible," replied Chase as he wrote down all his findings in the notebook. And then looked up at House, he was very surprised that House was giving him so much—"Why did you choose me? Why not Wilson?"
"Wilson is still uptight about how I broke my fingers when I was detoxing once," replied House.
"How about Cuddy then, she wouldn't fire you," replied Chase, tapping his pen on the notebook.
"I am pretty sure that Cameron told her that I cut myself while I was detoxing."
"Why are you telling me this?" Chase's voice rose a bit as he glared at his ex-boss, green eyes widened, "What aren't you telling me?"
House scuffed, the Australian never was very intimidating, "I don't need an enabler."
"Since when?" the blond said in a hysteric sort of bark, "You covet Wilson, you hate it when he gets new friends."
"Since I almost died," House bit back.
Chase paused, put the end of the pen in his mouth, and rethought what he was going to say, "You've done that before and Wilson stood by you."
"I made a decision, the methadone allowed for an easy detox from the vicodin and since I won't have to deal with that pain I figured I would give a new pain management regiment a chance," answered House with a glare.
Green eyes widened a fraction, the blond let out a long breath and leaned back in the chair, he studied House for a moment, "So what exactly do you want me to do?"
House looked at Chase, studied his posture and facial expression, gauging the chances that Chase would leave. It wasn't a common occurrence but Chase has been known to disagree so much that he would just leave the room, "I want you to take over my pain management. I don't care what you decide to do, take me off vicodin, put me on proper doses whatever. You will have to lie to me though, I can willingly and knowingly come to you for the script, but the rest will be work... for you."
Chase was shocked, he had never known House to be like this, part of it scared him, the other part was happy. He had always been okay with House and vicodin; House had pain, the vicodin managed it, House came to work more or less sober, and saved lives. That was more than a few steps up from his mother. So comparatively House was better, "All right. But you have to tell me everything, starting with the almost dying."
House sighed watching the blond he leaned back in his chair for a moment before leaning forward and picking up his tennis ball, rolling it between his hands he looked up into green eyes, "Deal," House threw the ball in the air leaning back to catch it, Chase took the pen from his mouth, uncapped the pen and poised it on the notebook, looking up at House, "I've been taking methadone for a week, I got the prescription from St. Sebastian's. I went out Saturday night to a bar, I had a table in a far dark corner enjoying the show, I wasn't drinking...and all the good tables were taken so I was waiting for a better spot to open up. And I... I don't know fell asleep, passed out. I came to when my coke and another patron landed on me. This guy was getting to friendly with the strippers and resisted being thrown out and landed on me. It was a horrible jolt, after everything was settled I realised that my breathing was laboured and heavy. I think that I had stopped breathing."
Chase nodded, wrote down a couple of things and looked up to meet House's eyes, "You shouldn't sleep unmonitored and you need to stop taking the Methadone soon or risk another addiction or death."
Gregory House looked at the blond and sneered, "You don't think I know that? That's why I hired an up-and-coming RN to watch me sleep each night on Sunday and paged you today."
The blond just nodded his head, "Are you taking the prescribed dose of methadone?"
"Yes," answered the more irate doctor¸ Chase gave him a look that clearly said elaborate, "80 to 120 mg a day."
"So you are taking the detox dosage, not the recommended dose for pain management, but you sought out the methadone for pain?"
It was mostly a rhetorical question, they both new how House's brain worked. The elder growled, "Yes."
"Before you switched medications how many vicodin were you taking?" House sighed and relaxed a little, the wombat was at least trying to be professional.
Opening the bottom drawer of his desk, House pulled out an old cigar box and slid it along the desk towards the younger doctor. Chase lifted the lid on the box and saw that it was filled with what must have been a hundred small orange bottles, each filled with varying amounts of the small oval white pill. Chase's mouth fell open slightly staring at the contents of the box, "on average I was taking ten Vicodin hp a day. I was prescribed the usual amount, 30 pills a bottle."
The Australian picked up one of the bottles and read the directions: take one pill as needed; do not exceed five a day, "Is this your whole stash?"
"Yes," blue eyes met green, trying to discern the truth, "I suppose you could say I was a bit euphoric when I woke without pain and collected all the bottles around the house. I didn't throw them away like I did with the ketamine, but I put all the bottles in this box."
The Intensivist nodded and shifted around the bottles looking at them for a moment, "I might not write you a script, just shift the pills around while I can."
House chuckled, "I'm not sure that is exactly legal."
"When has that ever stopped you?" Chase said raising one eyebrow, "besides you're doing it yourself, I'm 'not your doctor', am I right?" the blond continued to shift through the bottles, "You were never prescribed vicodin extra strength?"
"Nope," replied House with a grin, he then added, "Wilson thought if I switched directly up from 5 mg pills to 10 mg then I would be popping fewer pills and causing less discord with patients... that I see."
Chase looked amused; he leaned back in the chair and stretched. It sounded just like Wilson and Cuddy to not curb House's vicodin use but to make it appear so. That was the way that the different types of vicodin worked. Vicodin was 500 mg paracetamol also know as acetaminophen and 5 mg hydrocodone, the next type of vicodin called vicodin extra strength (ES) was a fifty percent increase in both paracetamol and hydrocodone, the last type took a different approach compared to the relative dosage amount vicodin high power (HP) contained 660 mg paracetamol and 10 mg hydrocodone. Chase could understand that Wilson and Cuddy would think that doubling the hydrocodone and not the paracetamol, would curb House's physical pill intake, he looked at his ex-boss curiously, "I'm figuring it didn't work."
"Who knew the paracetamol actually helped at all, the increase just wasn't enough after awhile."
"Awhile?"
"Wilson leaving right after the switch probably had something to do with it," House gave a non-committal shrug.
Chase wrote down a few more things and then asked House, "So if I quickly switch you from vicodin hp back to vicodin would you rebel?"
"Rebel?" the elder chuckled, picked up his tennis ball again and threw it in the air, "no, but I will take pills when there is pain."
"If I gave you a bottle of vicodin and vicodin hp and told you to take one of each every time you go for two pills to help you wean off the vicodin would you do it?"Asked Robert Chase his blond hair fell slightly into his face, as he looked up through his eyelashes at his ex-boss while writing down more 'House notes'.
House smiled, "Probably, unless the pain was horrible. Your hair isn't as shiny as it was, missing all that British sun bleach it?"
"Australian sun, most likely," Chase answered without batting an eye.
"You still look, oh so adorable," mocked House, "it is the longer hair and the attempt at growing a beard."
The blond shook his head as he capped his pen and placing it in his mouth, while he packed his remaining things. Looking up at House he said, "I think that is all I need to know right now, have your RN write down your stats when she takes them, and in a couple days we'll switch you back to vicodin."
Robert stood up and put his jacket on, quickly glancing at his watch it wasn't that late. Slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder he looked over House and the office before closing the cigar box and putting it in his bag with the pen. Looking at his old boss once more, Chase didn't expect a thank you or anything like that, with an acknowledging nod, the blond left the glass office.
Walking out of the hospital, Chase made his way down to the front desk checking out with the nurse there before heading out to his car. The day had been tiring, his original plan had been to go home and relax, probably turn in early. Now, now he was energised his brain was buzzing with House.
It was still a shock to have House ask him to do this and he had even been for the majority of the time pretty civil. Robert Chase kept thinking that there had to be some sort of hidden agenda or trick, this was House he was thinking about.
The blond replayed the whole conversation in his head, took extra time to think on the situation in which House had found himself in. Without really paying any attention to his surroundings Chase made his way to his car and drove home. When Chase had finally decided the most likely and surprisingly the non-conspiracy theory behind House's motivations; Chase was surprised to find that he was sitting on his sofa.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts and be happy that he made it home alive. Chase re-examined his conclusion. House was in control of this situation—to an extent. In the past when House had detoxed it had been for or because of Cuddy and/or Wilson. There was the bet, or as House considers it the time he broke his fingers, and then there was Tritter or when Cameron caught House cutting. House had little choice is these manners and a lot of pressure. When you combine these times with the fact that the infarction was to an extent Stacy's fault, at the very least not House's medical decision on the paper work. Then there was the ketamine it was House's choice but it did not last. Chase was also pretty sure that Cuddy and probably Wilson too have given him a hard time during that time period. His last piece of supporting evidence is House said, 'I don't need an enabler,'—plain, simple and to the point. No one needs an enabler; a lot of people however want an enabler. Wilson was just too soft when it came to House in Chase's opinion. There would be a large chance that this whole deal would border on illegal. This was probably the reason why House had been nice-ish about commanding Chase to do this for him.
Deciding that the help was generally wanted, the green-eyed man pulled out the cigar box. First he took out the pills and organised them into vicodin verse high power vicodin, then he checked the dates on all the bottles and threw out the pills that were expired, which was of course only one bottle with two pills in it. Chase began consolidating the bottles so he had an easier time in seeing the quantity of the narcotic. There was five complete bottles of vicodin and a sixth bottle with nineteen pills in it, while there three bottles of vicodin hp and a forth with four pills in it. Taking out his notebook he jotted down how many pills House had given him. Placing the empty bottles back in the box and the full bottles on top of the empty ones, the blond leaned back into the cushions to think.
There was about two weeks of constant methadone use, before one got addicted, give or take a few days. House would then have to be moved back to the vicodin hp ten pills a day regime. Besides the fact that that was a dangerous dose of vicodin, it was also addictive. Three days maximum on the methadone, five days maximum on the ten vicodin hp, another five days for the combination of the regular and high powered. Chase was half afraid that he was staying on too high of a level of narcotics and risking addiction again.
Yawning and stretching the blond threw the pad and paper onto the coffee table before standing up and walking into his kitchen. Opening the refrigerator the Australian looked at its contents before taking out a can of coke. Standing up straight he held out his spoils, popped the tab, and took a long drink. Chase's attention was drawn to the small creature who was weaving in and out of his leg, meowing pitifully.
Chase smiled and bent down to scratch behind the ear of his grey tabby cat, "Hey, Terrence, do I need to fill your bowl?" Terrence meowed and walked away from Chase in favour of sitting by the empty food bowl that sat out of the way half under the island. Robert smiled and shook his head as he opened the cupboard under the sink, pulled out the bag of dry cat food, reaching in he grabbed the scoop and spooned out a cup of cat food for Terrence. Giving his companion one last ear scratch, Chase returned to the living room coke in hand.
Putting the coke on the coffee table the blond Intensivist sat back down on the sofa and picked up his House Notes and his pen. "The methadone removes his vicodin addiction... so he has a clean slate? Possibly," said Chase out loud. He stood up from the sofa and went over to his bookshelf, pulling down the large tome; a medical guide to prescriptions. The book had little every day practical use based on the set up, but it had been a gift from his undergraduate freshmen roommates, none of which were planning on becoming doctors.
Robert flipped through and found methadone. The dose that House was taking was for detoxing. This made sense to the blond, because every doctor in the immediate tri-state area knew House and his affinity to vicodin. Methadone was a legal, marginally safer version of Heroine without the high. It was suggested to help heroin addicts, but it helped with other opioids such as hydrocodone. It stopped the body's craving for the addictive substance—since in effect it was the drug—and created a cross-tolerance, which meant that there was a chance to break the original addiction. Of course the book went on to describe annoyingly—in Chase's opinion—that everyone was different and some heroin addicts could never be taken off the methadone. So the answer to the question he posed to himself was: possibly.
Putting the large book back on his shelf, Chase sat back down on the sofa. He stared off into space chewing his pen and trying to gauge how addicted House was to vicodin. It was a silly notion, since it was all relative; one could be addicted after one hit or a hundred, depending on your parents you could be addicted at birth. House was in pain though; Chase felt like the addiction was partially due to how emotional stress seemed to worsen the pain. That in itself had some medical backing but increasing the vicodin during those times could lead to addiction. Picking up his notebook once more, Chase sighed there was really no use speculating, no one could ever pinpoint the exact 'why?'.
Looking down at his time line he nodded and wrote alternative above it. He then wrote down: Three days maximum on the methadone, five to ten days maximum on vicodin. If the addiction reset itself then regular vicodin should be fine if it wasn't he would switch to his alternative plan. Next in the time line would have to be disguising placebos to look like vicodin. But House was in real pain so maybe, it would be better to switch vicodin which was 500 mg paracetamol and 5 mg hydrocodone, with 500 to 600 mg of acetaminophen the pills would be the same shape, colour, and size. All he would have to worry about would be getting acetaminophen to be stamped as vicodin, that was lying, illegal, and had to be done. Next he would have to slowly replace the vicodin with the fakes, probably in ten percent increments. He needed a calendar.
Putting down the notebook and pen, the Australian took a sip of his coke and stood up. Walking over to his junk drawer of his desk he pulled it open and riffled through the drawer until he found the calendar that had been slid under his door back at the beginning of the year, the calendar was small and showed scenic pictures from around New Jersey, accompanied by short bible passages it also proudly announced the name of some church group he had never heard of. But none of that really mattered at the moment, he had a calendar.
Looking around the top of his desk he picked up the red and blue sharpies, before he took the calendar and sharpies to the sofa. Robert Chase flipped through the calendar until he got to the right month, uncapping the blue marker he circled the date. Counting over three days he outlined the box in red. Six days after that he outlined the box in a doted red line another six days way a solid red outline. Deciding to only give each ten percent increment five days as well he continued to outline the correct dates in red. Starting at the beginning he wrote in Stop M, Stop V, 27/3, 24/6, 21/9, 18/12, 15/15, 12/18, 9/21, 6/24, 3/27, and finally acetaminophen. So that every seventh day he would change the ratio in the bottle of vicodin. The fractions being the amount of vicodin verse acetaminophen in a bottle. At the top of each relevant calendar page he also wrote V/A to help him remember which number was for which drug. Capping the red pen he looked at the blue sharpie, that colour he decided would be for any changes in the dates or meds that needed to be on the calendar.
Leaning back into the cushions of the sofa Chase stretched, leaning forward he grabbed his soda and sipped it slowly while he thought, getting the acetaminophen in the right shape and size wouldn't be hard, as long as he said it was a prank on House and he wanted to see how long it would take for him to figure it out and who did it. Imprinting 'vicodin' on the new pills was going to be hard. Tablet imprinting machines were large and only sold to those who were certified. Metal etching or engraving would be similar he thought, he would have to look into it.
Terrence jumped up onto the sofa sauntered over and demanded attention from the blond. Chase smiled and automatically his left hand reached out to scratch the head of his persistent cat. The more Chase thought about this whole situation the more he didn't want to be involved. No matter what plan he came up with that helps House with his pain; a plan that would make the other doctor compliant, and stick to it, there was some illegal activity.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was about ten o'clock, Melbourne was plus ten Greenwich Mean Time and New Jersey was minus five. So that meant that it was about one in the afternoon back home. Getting off the sofa after dislodging Terrence from his lap, Chase walked into the kitchen taking out his cell phone and flipping through his contacts. Picking up the phone Chase dialled the long number and waited as the phone rang.
"Hello Marc, its Robert Chase do you have a free moment?" the blond said into the phone. Marc had been one of his roommates freshman year of undergraduate, he ended up becoming a lawyer. They kept in tandem contact, mostly in Christmas card and a promise if the other ever needed a doctor/lawyer the other would attempt to help.
After some small talk and catching up Robert told his friend the reason for his call, "Marc I need some legal advice, I have a patient who has an addiction to their prescription medication. Rehab is not working and they have made me their primary doctor for their pain management. They requested that they do not want to be informed about what medication I put them on, in fact they want me to lie to them about what I give them. What could I do to make sure that my back is covered if there is any legal altercation surrounding this patient?"
Marc was quiet for a moment, "That is a bit complicated," he replied at first, "the best thing would be to have some legal papers specific to this case drawn up, notarised and signed by you and the patient."
Chase nodded to himself and then said, "Is there any way you could do this for me?"
"Geez Robert, I wouldn't mind, and as you know I am free at the moment, but this would be complicated, I could do it from here, but I cannot do this for free, the overnight mail, the notary, not to mention my lunch break," said Marc.
The Intensivist sighed, "I understand, could we do payment plans or something?"
Marc chuckled, "We could work something out," there was a long pause, when Marc began to talk again his voice had taken on a professional tone, "Now I need all the details, starting with names of the involved parties."
"Well I'm the attending doctor, Dr. Robert Chase and my patient is Dr. Gregory House," answered Chase waiting for the next question. It took them a couple hours to hash out a good consent form. It was decided that Marc would overnight mail the document to Chase, who would get House to sign and then mail it back for Marc to look over sign and notarise and for some extra security Marc would seal the forms in an envelope and mail it back to the doctors in America to only be opened in the case of any legal altercations. Feeling much better about the whole situation Chase said goodbye and got ready for bed.
Walking back into the living room the Australian picked up his can of soda to finish it off before going to bed, when he noticed the cigar box, House notes, and calendar. Sighing he glanced around his apartment looking for someplace that he could keep the 'House stuff' without Allison finding it. Then he remembered that in the back of his closet he kept a large waterproof, fireproof lock box; currently it had his passport, immigration papers, birth certificate, and other important things like that. He always locked it with a key that he kept on his key ring, so it was safe enough for his purposes. Putting the notebook back in his bag, he figured that it would be safe enough because his 'House notes' were written in the back of the notebook, grabbing the calendar, and cigar box Chase trudged into his bedroom for the night.
Author's Note: Methadone is prescribed in 5 or 10 mg pills for the control of chronic pain. In the Softer Side Cuddy gave House a cup of green liquid. Liquid methadone is used by patient in Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) for addicts. The average dose is 80-120 mg a day so I am saying that House has a morning and evening dose of 40 mg (with the possibility of a third needed dose of 40 mg).