I've never been so indulgent. I take that back. I've indulged in my obsessions. I've nearly overdosed on other peoples' lives but I've never laid in bed all day. I've never eaten ice cream right out of the carton, I've never sat in front of the television smoking a joint and watching Peoples' Court. Chase should be dragging himself through the door soon and I forgot to make him anything for dinner. I should order some pizza or something. I know I'll be hungry later. When we (Foreman, Chase, and myself) left House, and I call it leaving House because he was the only reason we were there in the first place, I always thought Foreman would get the massive success and the accolades. I always saw something in Chase that was special, a particular kind of intelligence that spoke to possible future greatness. Maybe I didn't have all the confidence in the world but I always hoped I could get a job helping people, connecting with people. I always wanted to be a force for good in the world.

Sometimes finding success is like looking for truffles: there is no set area to search, no rhythm or reason to why things happen, and it really doesn't matter how hard you work or how long you look. In my darker hours, I sometimes feel as though I totally don't deserve what I have. I once stayed at the office for a month straight, when we were desperately trying to meet a specific FDA deadline but steel workers do a hard, difficult day of work as well and they don't get multi-million dollar stock option packages. They don't get millions more when their company is bought out by a Chinese Drug Conglomerate. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming sense of failure.

I was obsessed. I think I might have fallen in love with the project. I was giddy, riding the highs and the lows of the job and I might have lost Chase somewhere in all of that. We still don't communicate as well as I think we should. I lose more of my recollection of Daniel every year. I worry that I'm placing unrealistic expectations on my relationship with Chase. Danny and I fought, Danny and I had rough times. It just seemed like connecting with people was easier back then. I don't know what has changed. I should call House and we could run a differential on my love life. I don't have a white board to write symptoms on and they get all jumbled in my head.

When I was at PPTH, I wanted respect so badly that I was almost paranoid about it. I got angry at Cuddy for no reason, I wanted House to do…something. It took me a couple of years to realize that the whole exercise was pointless. House was never going to respect me and my non-diagnostics fellow colleagues looked at me like someone would look at one of those Fear Factor (thank you again daytime TV) contestants. I could almost hear the question. Why would you subject yourself to that?

From a career standpoint, it was a good move for me. I was a good top tier candidate but certainly not even close to the best. I did my undergrad at Wisconsin, I was competing with people who went to non-State schools. Even with my Mayo Clinic internship, Chase and Foreman were both more impressive than me from a CV standpoint. I like to think that I'm a bit more self aware these days. I can admit it. I wonder though, if I could still admit it even if I wasn't worth more than both of them put together, ten times over.

I love the weather in Arizona. It never snows. It rarely gets below sixty-five degrees. I would always laugh when Chase whined about how cold it got in New Jersey. It was actually kind of cute. Now he whines about the heat and I still think it's kind of cute. Chase thinks I should come work at Phoenix General with him but I don't feel up to it. After three years of endless research and endless trials, I honestly don't feel like I can physically practice medicine again just yet. My head isn't where it should be for something like that. I feel like I've aged ten years in three. I was truly obsessed, I remember House talking about his white whale on that horrible casino night when I had to wear high heels for like twelve hours. I almost wanted to call him and tell him that I knew how it felt. I remember his moment of elation, his moment of triumph. I don't remember having one of those. I just took to my bed and slept, rested, and slept more for almost thirty six hours. It reminded me of meth, of cocaine back in college. All the inspiration happened in the first year and then I spent two years slogging it out in trials, testing, and working through Christmas, through New Years. I remember driving home, weaving all over the road at one point because I almost physically couldn't keep my eyes open. I pulled over and called Chase.

One of these days I hope he'll realize how much I love and respect him. Maybe he'll really open up to me then, and I won't feel like I only have the cliff notes version of his life. I asked him once, if we should take a trip to Australia. I thought maybe he had some cousins, aunts, or grandparents that we could spend some time with. He said he would think about it and got really quiet for a couple days. I'm probably over thinking this. Maybe there really isn't anyone left back home he wants to see. I realize that he has legitimate grounds to worry about whether I am as committed to him as he is to me. I think I see that now but it took me some time to put everything in perspective and I think I may have done some damage in the interim. I don't know if all of that damage is reversible. I know I can dwell on things and pull my cape out of the closet and try to save the world when it really doesn't need saving. I'll always wonder what really happened to the people who left us at PPTH. I know that it isn't my place to try to fix their lives but I also know that House could have managed things without causing so much damage. I wish he could have at least, getting shot couldn't even really change his philosophy in that regard and I'm at a loss as to what could have. I only realized I was completely powerless around the time I started sleeping with Chase. I need to know things, I need to fix things and the hardest part of my relationship with Chase is learning to let things go, to just support him in his life and not interfere.

If I take out my photo albums. I can still map out my entire relationship with Danny through pictures, keepsakes, restaurant menus. I can remember almost everything, every good moment, every bad moment but they just don't seem as alive to me anymore. I think about the details I should have noticed before he told me he was sick. I think about the fact that he seemed to be contracting his life and I didn't notice, because for the first time I really believed that someone loved me. I didn't want to pay attention to all those prescient signs that things were going to go from bad to worse at light speed.

I here a buzzing sound from under the bed and I figure Chase is calling. I probably accidentally kicked the phone under the bed when I got up to get an ashtray. When I notice the New Jersey area code I freeze up a little bit, I'm back in my first year of residency and someone has asked me a question I don't know the answer to. I'm on my hands and knees beside the bed, staring down at my phone and the caller id is showing that the call is coming from the Diagnostics Department at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. It just says House, in all capital letters. He never really called. He would just page us back to the hospital. It really pissed Foreman off. I silence the ringer and stretch back out on the bed, trying to organize and collect my thoughts, hoping he just won't call again.

Of course he immediately calls back. I silence the ringer again. This isn't going to work. House is the one person in the world I really have no desire to talk to. That might be a lie. If I had to list the lowest points in my life (personally, professionally,) my interactions with him would be heavily featured on the list. Not at the top but I can think of at least five cringe worthy events just off the top of my head. I don't want to be that person anymore, even though I realize that person wasn't all bad. I like to think that I finally just took the good from my fellowship and left all the bad behind. One of the reasons I can believe this is because I'm not around House anymore and he isn't constantly pulling the rug out from under me, the minute I struggle back to my feet. I feel guilty because I really do owe him a great deal and he wouldn't (well he might but…) call me after a three year clean break for no reason. Of course, he always viewed my awe of him as weakness and I finally realized that he wasn't the kind of person who needed support, he knew he was right and he didn't need anyone to stand behind him. He certainly didn't need me. I worry that somewhere in my subconscious I want him to tell me he's proud of me again. Logically I know that isn't going to happen this time, because in his view I probably look like another Vogler and House always hated the business side of medicine. I haven't seen a real patient or diagnosed an illness in over two years. I can catalogue, almost to the day, all of my time spent with him. Every patient, every mistake I made, every unethical act, every time he forced me to change my worldview, every time he made me feel like a naïve little school girl who had no business in such a demanding, high level fellowship. For him, it was probably just an annoyance but for me it was extremely painful in many ways. I've tried to escape the obsession, because I've learned it doesn't make me happy.

Chase picked out the house. I wasn't willing to pay up for anything in this particular market. He said it reminded him of his grandparents' house outside of Sydney and I had to use every ounce of strength I had not to beg him to elaborate. Did he sit outside on their deck in the summer? Did he and his grandfather hunt foxes? I worry that I'm fabricating a fictional childhood for Chase sometimes, imagining what was really bad and what was really good. It makes me sad to think that maybe it was mostly bad, I guess I'm still kind of pathetic in that way. I want him to be happy, I want everything to be perfect between us and I realize how crazy that is, how faulty my thinking is but I can't help it. I know he deserves whatever it is that he's looking for, but I just hope he doesn't wake up one day and realize that I'm not really it. We love each other. I just don't want to feel like he's teaching me how to be human. I'm not really wild about the house, it looks like someone dropped an English country home into the middle of the desert. I'm sure the now bankrupt land developer thought it was extremely classy. I never wanted to be one of those poor rich people but it seems like I can't escape it. Chase floats along, chatting easily with our 'friends' at the country club, at the squash court and I just feel like I don't belong there, like they're going to take one look at me and know that my father was a truck driver and my mother was a teacher's aid. I get inexplicably angry and I'm transported back to the first year of my fellowship. I feel like they can see how many times I've eaten at Shoney's every time I don't know who painted that painting, or how much you're supposed to tip the coat check guy. I honestly thought that no one really used those overly elaborate place setting anymore, the ones with four knives and a spoon for every course, and now I know they do. I also know that Chase knows exactly what every piece of cutlery is for. I mentioned that after the dinner party and he just smiled and laughed, I couldn't tell if he was being condescending.

I like us the best when we're hanging out at a bar and Chase just looks utterly content, grinning at me when he walks up to the counter to buy us another round. I'll sit through a soccer game just so I can watch him. I think he could have been happy all of the time and anywhere if it wasn't for his family. When he talks about his work, I see his genius shine just as bright as it did when we worked together at PPTH but without the violence, the distrust, he doesn't wince like he's waiting for someone to take him to task. He's a better doctor than I am.

I think I like him the best when he comes home after it seems like he's been at the hospital for days. I wait for him to get out of the shower and I massage his neck and back. His face falls slack with an equal measure of weariness and pleasure. Sometimes we fuck. Sometimes I just curl up next to him and run my fingers through his hair until he falls asleep. I actually like it long and messy, the way he has it now. I sometimes worry that sex and the physical part of out relationship is too much at the forefront of who we are together.

When I was living in the lab, sometimes he would get angry. I would respond with confusion and anger because I always thought work came first. It was a way to compartmentalize your life. Your work was always the most important thing. I started getting more and more contentment from Chase and our life together, and work was like an obsession, an addiction that was taking me away from him. I could lecture anywhere, pretty much any drug company would hire me at the moment but I feel like I need this time with Chase, I need to make sure we're ok.

I know I'm high because my internal monologue is rapid and disjointed. Various fragments pop into my head with no real organization, no filter. I think what I remember most about House were the quiet moments, when he sat alone in his office and listened to music. I'd sit in the conference room, reading obscure German Medical Journals, translated on Babelfish, and sneak glances at him through the glass. Sometimes he looked defiant, sometimes grimly content, and once or twice he almost looked defeated. I still don't know if my desire to really get deep into his head was evidence of some kind of pathetic devotion or just a symptom of my being around a truly rare and great genius for so many years. I felt a need, almost an addiction to him. Addiction, obsession, it can make you feel pathetic. I once memorized the lines on his forehead, I once noticed that his mouth would hang a bit slack if he'd taken too much pain medication. I could almost guess, by his expression, by the way he moved, by how pronounced the veins on the hand he held his can were, what his mood was going to be like that day. Even then, I would be wrong as often as I was right. All of this was slowly seeping away, out of my mind, and one call brought everything back.

I get a text message next, another New Jersey area code. I'm in our guest bedroom with the small Panasonic TV and the double bed because I don't want to smoke pot in the master suite. One of the things I now know about Chase is that his mother was an alcoholic, I don't want him to worry. I don't want him to get sullen and not talk. I don't want to have no idea what's wrong.

You win! I'm resorting to teenage methods of communication. Pick up.

He doesn't bother identifying himself because he knows I'll know who it is. I always found that scary about him, the way he would just look at me and I could tell that he knew exactly what I was thinking. Interacting with that level of genius on a daily basis seemed utterly terrifying at first and I'm out of practice. I'll call him back because with House, I'll always lose in one way or another so I might as well speed up the process. It can still wait a few hours though.

I pick the roach up out of the ashtray and relight it. If I had discovered pot at eighteen, I'd probably be working at a car dealership right now. I'd be a great deal happier and more content. I'd go hiking with whatever boyfriend I had at the time, we'd go to drink and drown karaoke nights, and work would be the thing that took me away from all of the fun. Actually, I don't know if things would be different. House once said I was the type of person that needed everything to be perfect and I think he was right. I think I'm better off now. I'm happy sometimes, I'm content sometimes, I'm lonely sometimes, but I think I know who I am now and I realize that it was all me. I wasn't a bad person, I wasn't a good person, I was just like everyone else. Normal people feel everything, we have highs and lows. I wish I realized that when I worked for House, I wouldn't have felt miserable for feeling miserable.

Now that my head is sufficiently swimming and I feel wrapped in a warm ball of confusion, not calling back at all seems like the best option. Sometimes, when I smoke, things go bad. A million different possible illnesses that result from smoking marijuana seem to run through my head in a never ending loop, I picture myself on the hospital bed, dying of Cadmium poisoning. I chastise myself for how selfish and stupid I'm being. I know better.

House is not a patient man. He calls back. I'm going to have to deal with this eventually.