Chapter Two

Approximately thirty-six minutes before Dr. Chase's incredibly angry outburst, Lisa Cuddy was woken by the shrill ringing of her cell phone. As a doctor in charge of an entire hospital, she was constantly on call. Be it for medical emergencies or late night consent issues - and no, not only House had those problems – thus, she was more than used to waking up at two-thirty in the morning.

So when she rolled over and yanked her cell phone off her nightstand, she answered automatically, already getting responses prepared for the most typical emergency scenarios - and a few sarcastic quips in case it was House.

What she hadn't expected was the response to her sleepily muttered, "This is Dr. Cuddy." To be,

"This is Officer Hernandez from the Princeton Police Department. There's been an incident at your hospital tonight, and we need you to get down here right away."

Wide awake now, but still managing professional detachment, she sits up straighter in bed and asks in a controlled tone, "What's going on?"

"Three of your doctors were hurt; one of them is in critical care. I can't discuss details right-" there's a scuffling on the other end of the phone, the low murmur of voices that Cuddy tires desperately make out but can't. "-we need you down here. Now."

Then the phone clicks off and she's listening to static on the other end. It takes her less than five minutes to jump out of bed, pull on the closest clothes she can find, get all the necessary things together and bolt out the door.

Her mind is racing as she speeds towards Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital as fast as she deems safe this late at night, and only one thought keeps recurring - unless it was an issue in the Psych Ward - there's only one doctor whose likely to get into or cause this much trouble.

She fumbles around for her cell phone as she signals and gets on the highway. House's home number is fourth on her speed dial, so she tries that first, without really thinking. She realizes after a moment that the chances of him answering his phone this late at night if he is home are next to nothing, but she's too distracted to hang up and redial his cell.

On the fifth ring, though, just when she's expecting the answering machine, she hears a click and a mumbled, "'ello?"

For a brief moment she is inexplicably elated, overjoyed at knowing that House is not at the hospital, where all the madness of whatever's going on is obviously centered. Her high spirit crashes in an instant, however, when she hears another, slightly more coherent, "Hello?"

"Wilson?" She asks, feeling as if her heart just skipped a beat - even if she knows that's medically impossible.

"Cuddy?" The man sounded groggy, which was a fair way to sound after having just been pulled from sleep. The Administrator quickly assumed that her Head of Oncology was staying with House again because of another separation she hadn't been informed of.

"Yes," she answers shortly. "Is House there?"

Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say-

"No." He interrupted her internal mantra, sounding confused. "He's still at the hospital. Why?"

Damn. "No, it's probably nothing." She tries to convince herself as much as Wilson. "I just... I got a call. Something's wrong, at the hospital."

"Wrong?" He echoes. "Wrong how?"

"Cops calling me at two-thirty wrong." She admits, knowing she could trust him. "Three doctors seriously injured, wrong."

"House?" And the word is nothing less than a plea.

"I don't know." Still, she tries to sound calm, steady. "I'm about ten minutes out, I'm sure it has nothing to do with him. He's probably just making things worse."

"I'm coming in." Wilson says, somewhat unexpectedly. Then, as if sensing her confusion over the phone line, "I tried to call his cell a few hours ago. No answer. I didn't give it much thought then, but now I'm not sure."

"Right." She nods despite herself and speeds up. "I'll see you there."

o0oo0o

They'd been calm and rational at first. Wilson and Cuddy had arrived at almost the exact same moment, and made their way into the hospital together. Wilson didn't look much better than Cuddy; messed hair, rumbled McGill sweatshirt and faded jeans that were long enough to maybe be House's. But they'd managed to stay calm.

Then a few minutes passed and Cuddy could not find a single member of her own staff to talk to. The lobby of the hospital was teeming with police officers and other official people with lanyards draped around their necks, and none of them seemed keen on letting them go any further than the nurse's desk.

"The incident has been controlled," one of the officers informed her. "And your doctors have all been instructed to handle separate tasks."

"Could you be vaguer?" She snapped. "And instructed by whom? I'm the Dean of Medicine."

"I know." The same infuriatingly calm man had acknowledged. "And you'll be able to regain control of your hospital as soon as you answer a few questions for us."

"Okay." Cuddy finally agreed, understanding logically that if whatever had happened tonight had warranted police involvement, then it had been bad, and she was willing to corporate with these men and women long enough to understand what exactly had taken place.

But then the officer speaking to them had walked away for a moment and Cuddy and Wilson were left to look out amongst the groups of people collaborating in the hallway. It was funny, she noted in a detached sort of way, how different groups clumped together.

Uniforms stayed with uniforms, suits stayed with suits, semi-casual stayed with semi-casual, clipboards stayed with clipboards and Cuddy could only take educated guesses on which groups represented which facets of the government.

"Chase." Wilson's quiet word cut off her dazed stare and she whipped her head around to the sight of a familiar white lab coat.

Only as Chase got closer, she realized with no small amount of horror, that his doctor's coat wasn't the pristine white it should be. It was streaked instead with blood. No minute amount either, as it had also taken up residence on his shirt and pants. His tie, if he'd been wearing one today, was nowhere to be seen and his shirt was no longer tucked in.

"Dr. Chase!" Wilson found his voice in time, catching the Australian man's attention before he disappeared amongst the crowd. He stopped, but didn't move, so the two senior doctors made their way to him.

"What's going on?" Cuddy's emotional reaction was all too often to translate worry and fear into anger. And as she got closer and noticed that Chase had even more blood on him than had been visible from across the hall, and had yet to make a real facial expression, that was all she could feel. Fear.

"I have to go." The Intensivist said, ducking his head.

Cuddy would be having none of that. "No." She stated firmly. "Tell me what's going on."

"The police can inform you." He still wasn't making eye contact, and if there was something vaguely off-putting about his demeanor, she didn't sense it. Wilson obviously did, however, as he moved his right hand to her left arm and tugged gently.

"C'mon," he said quietly, trying to ease her worry, "Let's go talk to the cops."

But Cuddy wouldn't budge. "Chase, tell me what happened. Was it House? You're here, so it had to have been House, right?" Her eyes were searching, but the younger man refused to meet them.

"I have somewhere I need to be." And this time Cuddy could hear the strain in his tone. Wilson's grip on her arm tightened to a near-frantic level.

Still, she was resolved to know the truth. So, temporarily losing the hold she had on her temper she shouted, "What in the hell is going on!?"

Chase responded calmly a few more times when she shouted at him again and again. Cuddy was getting fed up with his seeming indifference, and she thought it was damn important that she portray that in her words.

What she hadn't considered, what Wilson could obviously see that she couldn't, was that Chase was dangerously close to tumbling off an edge as well. When the blonde-haired young man finally did start screaming, she reeled back.

It wasn't that she hadn't expected a response. She'd been hoping for a response, and she was praying that an answer or two might be audible in his anger. But as Chase shouted at her about being a bad administrator, about not being his boss, about how clueless they both were compared to House; all she could really process were the circumstances that most have laid themselves out for them to get here.

The context, in which House's mellow, young Intensivist could turn into the starkly infuriated train wreck of emotions, could have been nothing short of dire. Cuddy felt a lump in her throat thicken as Chase's accent grew stronger and stronger.

She saw the truth in his words, the disappointment lurking around the fury in his eyes, the distrust with which he was carrying himself, and when he walked away, responded to his pager, Cuddy was glad he was gone. She felt like she'd been pulled out of the line of fire.

The worst part, of course, was that she knew she'd deserved it.

TBC…

A/N: Feel free to reveiw.