Chapter 3 – Lockdown
T.V. Show: House MD
Pairing: Chase canon, Major Chase/Cameron
Author: Foxes' Dreams
Summary: Scars are reversible; the cure is always foreseeable for those who wait patiently. Chase has finally found a sure and defiant reason to start rebuilding a changed version of himself despite all the tormenting past secrets that haunt his capturing memory. But, his newly-appeared daughter refused to let him brush near the macabre and somber visions without overcoming their effect. Sequel to "Ticking Clock".
Love is like an hourglass, heart filling up as the brain empties." - Jules Renard
Leaves used to hang limp in the gray, damp and obstinate air, but in the moment of brooding anxiety, the water disappeared in a mist of intrusive pressure. A cool, restful, shady world with lights barely filtered through the metaphorical walls of authentic intensity of inky blackness, cutting mercilessly through vascularized flesh.
A distraught, thinly-formed nurse, an occasional female passer-by trapped in the hallucination of aggression, alongside with her husband, incarnated as the fusion of remarkable pitiful sorrow, got trapped in the dazzling and rare whirl of captivity, where all of them swept into oblivion by the possibility of mortal consequences.
Ashley's tears furiously refused to escape the orbits of eyes, but a sinking, panicky desolation and disillusionment claimed her imminent drop of willpower and caused her to remain catatonic, barely sheltered by her father's tensed back.
Chase's face shifted to atrocity, a quiver of resistance restraining him to act immediately. A rhythmical torrent of eloquent threatens bolted him into an attempt of saving the situation.
"Please calm down! There is no need to endanger so many lives," The adult started cautiously, taking the proper steps to avoid a catalytic, inexplicable reaction. He could feel his blood being drained from his upper arm, as Ashley's grip intensified, forming ceaselessly an imaginary shield which would keep away skepticism with prompted rebellion.
"Really doc? People need to suffer as I do," The patient replied, in an engrave tone, a sentiment of incoherent distrust and repression lacing his accentuated syllables.
"Depression and sufferance can be healed with therapy. That's why you've been admitted, to receive the treatment you need," Chase tried again, a shiver of apprehension crisped his skin momentarily. A slight movement of incredible dissent was tried, approaching the epicenter of disaster and leaving behind Ashley's prehensible form.
"That's what you, doctors, do all the time! Make promises that are always unreal," The patient shouted suddenly, exposing a smile of subtle, sickened charm.
"Treatments take time. Maybe they're not quickly effective, but they can -" Chase insisted, aware of his implications and of his shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration.
"Shut up!" The violent attacker shrieked loudly, amplifying the sense of insidious plea coming from the kidnapped people.
"Please leave him alone. There's no way you can negotiate with him," Ashley's soft voice intervened, showing off a soft intonation of profound sorrow. A solemn, gray expanse crept into her thought, and was determined to retrieve her closest sibling from the contradictory exchange of lines completely unharmed and tenebrously alive.
"See, even the hot babe has more brains than you do," The gunman insinuated, an impassive and breathless hatred hanging over his deepening bilious mind. The soft suspicion of effects seized Ashley greedily and her eyes widened uncontrollably at such infamous prompt.
"Watch your mouth when you're talking about my daughter!" Chase threatened immediately, a gush of feral rage possessing his mind and a neutral indolence overwhelmed his rational judgment.
"And what are you going to do? Since you seem so helpless right now," The patient angered into words, his sharp and incisive voice mixing fatally perfect with the gun point tracing frigid, scar-like marks along Chase's muscular jaw. "Sit down! Don't make me force you!" He ordered, his sonorous and stolidly despairing attitude trespassing the limits of over-extended normalcy.
Chase sat down with an arrhythmic thump, and wrapped his arms tightly around the petite blonde, his own attitude of bravery crumbling into ashes, welcoming the stifling sensation of pain and excruciating suspense.
An odd kind of stunned incredulity conquered the occupants' entire mind as they passed the state of sullen self-denial.
A soundless, mocking breeze crept into the room and had the power of a faint whisper, leaving a spacious sense of amplitude of utter possibilities.
A staccato cough coming from the abnormal person interrupted the flow of stillness, more goose bumps arising on people's delicate layers of skin.
They needed to play and to win in order to free themselves in unaltered states.
After a seemingly eternity of resolutions, doubts and indecisions, peace and self-conduct settled on Foreman's spirit, and he instantly became aghast at his own previous helplessness.
His serving attitude had become territorial, almost incredibly possessive, agitated with violent and contending emotions. He was managing PPTH with highly ranked quality skills, and all his gift of serene mobility was finally put into practice.
His office was oddly large, unfitting to his ideal of retreating in lesser lights, where everything was embroiled and mussed with age. The swift shifting of pages had been the only current flow of noises which was brutally interrupted by a jumble of chaotic steps.
"Dr. Foreman-" A pleading, young nurse began to speak, her hope of discreet reticence was clearly ripped to shreds.
"I said I didn't want to be disturbed," Foreman snarled, as a disagreeable headache clouded his immediate judgment.
"You don't understand," The nurse insistent suspiciously loud, her words could be recognized as spontaneous and instinctive. "The psychopath Dr. Chase was treating has had a seizure and now, he has taken some people in captivity," She continued, delivering the news of direful calamity.
"Is he armed?" Foreman inquired, an acute note of distress could be found in his voice.
"He has a gun of small caliber," The nurse admitted, confessing all the witnessed events with grave vacuity.
"Run to the security department and ask them to evacuate everyone except for the ER, intensive care and emergency operating rooms. I'll be announcing the special forces," Foreman commanded powerfully, an air of deep, stern and irredeemable gloom pervading his trust.
The young attendant strode off, using every mustered drop of propelling energy whilst Foreman quickly contacted the needed enforcement, his own voice vibrating uncontrollably.
An antagonist just destroyed his equilibrium, and with an air distinctly critical and a silent prayer, he announced the service about the present condition.
With an attitude of inimitable, scrutinizing detachment, Foreman started the operation, his mind unconsciously drifting to Chase and his daughter, both caught in the lethal trap, in the good-natured, forestalled hostility.
The acrimony of the situation was hilariously tragic, laced by an ephemeral fragility, and by a supernatural force capable of culminating lives in utter sorrow. An attack of peculiar virulence and malevolence was hanging above their head, irreversibly increasing the condemning pressure.
Chase was sitting on the frigid, hardwood floor, muttering an effusive air of well-bred cynicism and pessimism. He was standing stoically, but his concern drifted to his daughter, shaking like an autumn leaf and resembling an easy prey to the powers of folly.
"You have a problem with doctors, we got it. Then, release everyone else because they aren't guilty. We need to figure this out by ourselves," Chase proposed an effective plan, displaying an expression of rare and inexplicable personal will.
The attacker laughed drily, emphasizing dripping sarcasm."And what? You think that without propaganda, people will change something?"
"Things can change if they are taken calmly. Stop this before SWAT comes barging in here, and make a complaint," Chase clarified, with an ingratiating, insatiable hunger escaping this limited situation.
"They'll just listen to me like idiots and assure me everything will be fine even if it isn't," The patient stated calmly, exposing his long buried and intensively growing dissatisfactions.
"Crisis cases were resolved by peaceful negations. Have faith in humanity, please," Chase pleaded awkwardly, his impenetrable screen of foliage crumbling and leaving him bare and unarmed in front of such a serious threat.
"You are such a dreamy, doc. World is much meaner than you think," The attacker announced bitterly, his impersonal and slightly ironic tone coming at full speed.
"Not everyone is, you have to face that. It isn't all about negativity," Chase tried vainly to reassure, an inarticulate echo of his longing ringing deafly in his soul.
The gunman's ground seemed to shift atrociously, and a cord of maximum sensitivity snapped irremediably. "Really? Then why everyone labels me as 'psycho' or 'crazy'?"
"That's just absurd! No one has the right to judge you and even if you have a problem, it's good you sought help," Chase said, obviously raising his voice to get the desired effect. He tried to fight and annihilate the inexplicably and uselessly cruel caprice of fate. In the corner of his eye, he witnessed Ashley curled up in a sigmoid form, utterly spent by the river of mixed tears and nervous sweat.
"Help didn't help," The patient stated simply, showing off an incursion of the loud, the vulgar and the meretricious.
"Help always helps if you pay attention to it," Chase replied in a blink, consciously contrasting his ideas.
"Don't you dare accuse me of being uncooperative? You have no idea how's like to be in my head," The attacker screamed, losing control of his limbs and gesturing wildly, uncontrollably with his charged weapon. Exhales of petrifying constrictions escaped everyone's lips.
"I can never be in your head, but I can enter it if you let me," Chase prompted, mastering the plot of manipulating and destroying the open wit and recklessness of behavior.
"To wreck it even more?" The gunman asked rhetorically.
"Be serious! I'll never intentionally do something to hurt my patients!" Chase answered, an obscure thrill of alarm ringing in his mind as the patient's demeanor deprecated to despair.
"Shut up, liar!" He ordered, pointing his gun exactly in Chase's heated center of erratic heartbeats. You and your staff are well under standards," He attacked verbally continuously, an oppressive, overburdening sense of blinding rage creeping in all his veins.
Ashley's vehement sobs steadied for a second, the naked, raw, primal taste of death taking over her. The uncomfortable premonition of fear and allurements of panic motivating her to stand up and say what was needed.
"Why are you doing this? Deep down, you know it's not true what you said since I read your records and there are no previous complaints," Ashley threw the obvious truth out of her ardent lips with uncharacteristic, horrifying grace. Her arm was draped over Chase's chest, obviously defying his absolutement and incomprehensible threat. "Then, why are you screwing with us?" She asked, growling low in her throat, as an odd fervor of salvation crept into her unerring perception.
"Just to have fun, you little kid," He answered, glorifyingly and sickeningly exposing the words as though he conquered dominance.
A shrill, animalistic cry and the unredeemed, rough noise of an active bullet mixed alongside with an unsuspected moral obtuseness as the patient insensitively pulled the trigger.
A day peered forth with its rays light, but met with darkness and metallic taste of blood as it reached Ashley's lying body.
The gun shot noise came as a throng sensation, shifting the unsteady grounds and amplifying the panicky pressure. The deserted hallways shook with incredulous magnitude, bewildering the immediate apocalypse of pretense of something erratically shallow occurring.
Foreman's facade of self-confidence and effective conducting was starting to evaporate since the startling echo of the weapon being intentionally fired reported the idea of consensual harm, possibly engrave and life threatening.
Waiting for the summons of eternal silence or brusque rain of bullets, he let himself prey to the darkest thoughts, beaming with unpleasant quivering. He was restrained behind the security forces, in front of the hospital, unable to seize or document about the flamed, beaconing situation.
"Foreman!" A strangled voice demanded behind him. "What happened? I heard about it when your patients got transferred to New York Mercy," Cameron arrived promptly, only to find the earthy resurrection of disagreeable, poised hallucinations.
"We have a psychic patient who had a crisis, took some hostages and seems quite feral about all this," Foreman explained briefly, avoiding the paraphernalia of acting, including the epicenter of the unfolding, quickly-blithe with abnormal bliss action.
"Where is my daughter?" Cameron asked, her voice low and borne with a faculty of forced compromise. Her fiery maternal instincts overwhelmed her and she quickly started browsing for a solution, lit by the virtue of impassioned will.
"An ICU nurse and a couple waiting to be admitted were lockdowned for sure," Foreman stated, avoiding and consciously masking the uplands of his knowledge about the captives.
"Foreman! That doesn't answer my question!" Cameron shouted, chafed at the restraints imposed on her.
"Chase and Ashley were the first ones reported missing," Foreman announced grimly, like he had already abducted the optimistic scenario of the upcoming destiny.
"Were there any gun shots?" Cameron asked, her tone already broken and shattering, but still fed the masochistic desire to prepare for the worst.
"Only one so far," Foreman delivered the news sternly, cleaned of lying, impending layers.
He watched as Cameron processed the information with a certain frigid and deferential surprise and soon became inconsolable, a weeping form as she broke in a stupendous roar upon the shuddering air.
She felt as though the sky itself had collided on her, leaving her breathless and vulnerable in front of the caprice of fate. Conjuring up scenes of reckless horror, she started hoping with crafty ambition that two hearts will by-pass death, instead of only, smitten one.
The cozy, airy environment of a local café seemed to intriguingly silent, obviously deficient in tender or affectionate welcoming impulses. The steam waltzing in the air was quickly, mystically disappearing, leaving space for only some frigid, consequential, unannounced tension.
"Daddy's little girl isn't answering her phone," Stefan proclaimed, after vainly trying to contact her for several times. His mind drifted into the fading fancy of enchantment and his voice betrayed pure malice.
"Maybe she's too busy getting all spoiled and treated with gifts," Adrian said, not even pondering the implications of his words as his gaze was averted in the direction of the crowded street, stopping the endlessly shifting moods.
"Do you think she's changing?" The taller boy inquired, his attitude becoming shockingly serious and lucid.
"No. She is just being happy, let her live the moment," Adrian replied, enduring the amusing contempt coming from his friend, endowed with emphasis on the action.
"I'll let her leave the moment as long as it doesn't affect-," Stefan contraindicated, enjoying with astonishing unscrupulousness his composed speech. "Adrian, look at this!" He said, uncharacteristically alarmed as seizing, evanescent shades of feeling cursed through his body.
"Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital is currently on lockdown and all the patients, except for those in critical stare, were transferred to other units. It appears a psychotic patient, armed with a gun, managed to take hostages members from the hospital staff as well as innocent patients. Within the people declared missing, Robert Chase, head of Diagnostic Medicine and his daughter were reported missing. The situation remains hostile since a shot was reported and the Special Forces are currently negotiating," The stern, implacable voice of the reporter announced, every curve of her features seemed to express a fine, arrogant acrimony and harsh truculence.
"She could be hurt or in great danger," Adrian concluded, everywhere feeling the bountiful fragrance of death.
"What do we do?" Stefan asked, his propelling expectation darkening into anxiety.
"I think for now, we can only wait," Adrian advised, temporarily collected and calm, exquisitely stung with the thought of warring instinct.
The day seemed to dallying in maudlin regret, the crisp sparkle of the pouring rain refusing to signal rebirth, but oppositely, distinct tension.
The curtains of opaque rain came into view, the atmosphere shifting into metamorphosing mourning and sorrow, cultivating the zeal of bad.
Marked out for some strange, pre-natural doom, the lockdown seemed to be scintillating the pure will. It was merged in a sentiment of unutterable sadness and compassion, many heartless misgivings of grave kind appeared. They seemed harmless, comically threatening, but their magnanimity proved an insatiable power and managed to still the action.
Ashley's erratic breathing broke the insidious tranquil, the jargon of her sobs molding the outside attitudes into deferential caring and forcing the austere hand of the gunman to consider her tiny, failing body being torn in minuteness of flesh.
"Stay with me! Just don't close your eyes!" Chase pleaded desperately, trying to stop the fathomless blackness from conquering his daughter's vision. The bullet had perfectly penetrated her left knee, a vinyl purple bruise framing the wound as rivers of blood gushed out. He was aware of the enormousness of essential fluid she had already lost and brutally ripped the lace hem of his shirt and bandaged carelessly the deeply staggered injury.
"It-it hurts so badly," Ashley's sobs only worsened the situation, as her moods of malicious reaction and vindictive recoil progressively sweeping away the only drops of hope.
"I know, dear, but you'll make it through," Chase said, soothingly, caressing few rebellious strands and watching her flint-blue retina. "Focus on something that seems comforting," He could only muster, obsessed with the modishness of minutes passing by and lively will escalating out of her rhythmically shaking body.
Ashley's eyes were dry and raw, the scarlet, ardent color of the peripheries signaling the negativity grazing her thoughts and inner control. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that, have been so direct."
"Don't blame yourself, you were right and all that matters now is you to calm down," Chase comforted promptly, masking his own mental breakdown, but always remembering to show occasional flashes of tenderness and love to ensure that the fight was far from being ultimately lost.
They were the infallible union, conveying to survive in front the palpable rage of the fate and to trespass the incident with unharmed souls.
"Hey, you two stop with the melancholy there before I-," The attacker threatened methodically, reaching halfway of the sentence before utterly collapsing. In his back, there was visible only a simple tranquilizer, plaudits of unlettered mob taking over the peace, which was seemingly unnatural.
"The attacker is down, we have free way to the hostages," A hoarse voice announced, the resonance of his words penetrating every sensitive layer of exposed skin and reached the deep cavities.
Pervasive stillness and rushed steps, almost unrealistically quick-willed, wrapped everyone in a mantle of content and shook their integrity in the gruesome scene. Chase wasted no time and picked up Ashley, who forcefully struggled between darkness and light, and ran to the first floor where the vital aid was impatiently waiting. Chase was pelted with an interminable torrent of words, most of them pompous, complex medical inquiries. Blood and lymph were plumbing his poignant doubts and unmistakable fears as they remorselessly soaked his cotton, thin shirt.
Ashley's body seemed prematurely tiny and deprived of any rosy pallor, almost as though it had never had the power to assuage the thirst of death.
"I'm so scared, Dad," She whispered, irrevocably broken and hopelessly entwined with mysterious, precipitated recognition of an end. Taking the cue, she drifted into unconsciousness, losing momentarily contact with reality.
Chase stood frozen, feeling the profound and chilling solitude of the spot and nurses alarmingly instructed him to back away.
As he did so, he felt as thought he preened his imaginary wings to a skyward flight where such unbearable pain was non-existent.
Author's Note: Please, don't kill me! We need a little angst and comfort before moving back to fluff! :)