"Ugh! Of all the bloody doctors in this entire hospital, she had to choose me!" Chase muttered irritably, angrily flicking a defenseless sugar packet and dumping it into his coffee cup.
"What's wrong?" Cameron asked from across the room, her attention divided between a patient's file and a game of sudoku. She filled in a few numbers and looked up as Chase crossed the room and sat down across form her.
"Cuddy!" The blond sighed dramatically, his fingers rapping against the table.
"Umm…you're going to need to be a tiny bit more specific." Cameron pointed out, filling in another set of numbers across the tiny squares. "Simply saying the name does nothing to help me understand your plight."
Chase rubbed his eyes tiredly and scowled at nothing. "Cuddy wants me to go on a road trip with House."
Her curiosity piqued, Cameron's eyebrow rose slightly and she set down her sudoku book and patient file, leaning across the table. "Go on." She encouraged, a small smile playing across her lips.
The younger man traced the rim of his coffee cup absently. "Okay, you remember that conference in Woodbury this weekend? The one everyone's been making such a big deal about for the past two weeks?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Well, at least two doctors from each hospital have to attend. Wilson was supposed to go but he backed out at the last minute and for some psychotic reason Cuddy decided to throw me in in his place."
"When do you leave?"
"Tonight at 6 after I get off." He took a slow, deep breath, the words sticking a little in his throat. "I'm going to be stuck at a conference for three days with Gregory House. Not to mention the 3 ½ hour trip there…"
"Well," Cameron began, tapping her pen lightly against her ear. "Maybe this will be good for you two."
"What?!" Chase nearly fell out of his chair, choking on the coffee he'd just inhaled. "How can this "be good" for us?! Are we even talking about the same person?!"
"Well, you guys did get into a pretty big argument the other day…"
"He started it!"
"Oh, come on Chase!" Cameron laughed softly. "Stop acting like such a little kid! It's not going to be that bad."
"No, being stuck in a car with rapid wolverines would not be that bad. Being stuck in a car with House…?" He didn't finish as the thought, let alone the sentence was almost too much to bear.
Cameron started to say something else but was cut off as a cane smacked Chase across the back of the head sharply. "Wombat!" A gruff voice demanded from behind the two, neither one of them having to look to see who it was.
Gritting his teeth against the radiating throb in his skull, Chase glanced over his shoulder to the older doctor. "What do you want, House?"
"Palacio needs a new catheter. Go do it." The older man answered, snatching the patient file from underneath Cameron's sudoku book and glancing over it.
Chase frowned. "But isn't Palacio your patient?"
"Yeah, so?"
"So why am I doing your work for you?"
"Because A: I told you to, B: I don't feel like doing it, and C, lets not forget,: You compared me to a wolverine. Therefore, seeing as how you hurt my feelings, you are going to change hematuria patient's catheter because I'm tired of seeing piss and blood in the same bag. So enjoy." House grinned brightly at his younger duckling and tucked the file under his arm. "Oh, and if your late this afternoon I'm going to turn you into a stick puppet." He added, motioning with his cane and limping out of the room before Chase had a chance to reply.
Once he disappeared from sight, Chase shot Cameron a look that screamed "see?!" and pointed at the door for example.
Cameron tried for several seconds to come up with something encouraging to say but fell short each time. Finally, she reached across the table and squeezed Chase's hand lightly. "Well, at least it will be an interesting weekend…"