Warning: The author still finds "your mom"/"your face" jokes funny.
Worlds Away From Who I Was
Chapter 10
The night passed in a blur. Thankfully, his headache was not to the point where he couldn't concentrate (though it was a close thing) because it was twenty minutes into his on-call shift when they were suddenly flooded with overflow from Princeton General, victims of a bus crash into a crowded shopping center. Chase spent a few mindless hours suturing wounds before Peters caught sight of him and pushed him into a surgery for a man who had ended up with more organs outside of his body than inside. Normally, he would have been grateful for the opportunity. Tonight, he was just grateful that he hadn't accidentally killed someone.
Drifting, unpleasant memories of Kayla floated through his mind, giving him enough will to focus on what he was doing. He only lost himself in his head a few times.
By the time his shift ended at eight that morning, he collapsed onto the bottom bunk in an on call room and stared up. He was surprised that he wasn't more exhausted—but then again, the way his head was swimming (and pounding, although the headache had lessened, which probably meant that House had arrived at the hospital), he supposed it wouldn't have mattered how tired he was. How could he sleep, knowing that he was tied to his ex-boss?
Chase didn't even bother with the how. How this was even possible wasn't relevant right now. What mattered was what he was going to do about it.
What he knew was that every time he was in contact with House, it would get worse. Therefore, the obvious solution was to just not come in contact with House.
Easier said than done.
The problem that was really haunting him, though, was that this might never go away. In his dreams, he had just kissed House and then it had all went away—but there was no way he could do that here. Things had finally gotten back on track with Cameron, House had fired him, and Chase had made it very clear to everyone that he was done with that chapter of his life. He couldn't go back to it. And there was no way House was ever going to find out about this.
But if it never went away... He couldn't function like this. He wouldn't be able to avoid House for long, and then the headaches would get worse. He'd never be able to leave Princeton. It might come to him never being able to leave the hospital.
It was a nightmare.
Frankly, Chase didn't know how he was ever going to fall asleep. Ever. Part of him desperately wanted to, though, because at least then he'd be in his little fairy tale dream land where everything was perfect and nothing mattered.
"So pathetic," he muttered, staring up at the bunk above him.
Chase wondered just how many times he called himself pathetic every day. Probably not enough.
Resigning himself to the fact that he wasn't going to fall asleep, Chase sat up and slid his feet back into his sneakers. It would be better to keep busy, anyway, to keep his mind off of things.
oOo
In the spirit of keeping busy, Chase talked his way into the brain surgery that he'd heard about yesterday. This also gave him an excuse to back out of lunch with Cameron. It wasn't that he didn't want to have lunch with her—it was just that right now, he wanted something that would keep his mind busy, and while a conversation with Cameron would probably do that, he was also afraid of what he might accidentally let spill if he did get talking. So the plan for today was to keep his mouth shut and his brain busy.
He did go down to the ER to tell Cameron personally instead of just through a page, though.
Her lips thinned as she stared at him, taking in his news.
"We've got all tomorrow," he offered. "I really am sorry. They needed an extra pair of hands."
"Fine," she said tightly.
Chase winced. "See you tomorrow?"
Cameron nodded. "Yeah." She paused. "There's another rumor going around about you, just so you know."
"What is it this time?" Chase asked. He glanced around, but no one seemed to be whispering and pointing at him from any corners.
What could they possibly have left to gossip over him about? Really. This was getting ridiculous.
"You don't have time to stay and talk, you have to get into your brain surgery," Cameron reminded him, her voice cool. "Ask someone during the surgery. I'm sure they've heard by now."
Chase's eyes narrowed, but he decided not to argue. From Cameron's tone, he was half-tempted to think she had started this new rumor herself as a way of passively aggressively getting back at him for sleeping with House. Not that he really thought she would do that.
He decided that he would wait until he heard what this new rumor was before he chose who to blame.
The surgery was not one of those surgeries in which everyone talked about the price of gas and which college their kid had just gotten into—it was quiet and tense. Chase happily lost himself in the silence. He was second on this surgery, and because the tumor was wrapped around the pituitary gland, it took two sets of hands to get into the brain, which meant that he needed to be absolutely focused on what he was cutting, what he was flagging, what he was clamping. He was more than happy to oblige.
Time flew by. His head had calmed somewhat over the course of the surgery, which was a relief, but also bad because it meant that House was closer. And if House was closer, then Chase might run into him, and that would suck all around. He couldn't see House right now. He couldn't.
Chase left the OR, the patient's tumor mostly removed save for a small portion that had wrapped itself around the brain stem, and was surprised to find Ricky waiting outside.
"Hey Dr. Chase!" Ricky said brightly.
"Hey, Ricky," Chase replied.
"Any cool surgeries you can get me in on?" Ricky asked hopefully.
Chase glanced at his watch. "Ricky, I've got an hour left on this shift and then I'm off until Thursday. My first day off in over two weeks. If you want a surgery, start charting for Nurse Brenda and she might be able to get you on something tomorrow."
"Nurse Brenda doesn't really like me very much, actually."
Chase rolled his eyes. "That's the way she is with everyone, trust me."
Ricky shook his head. "No, believe me. The second day I was here, she sent me off to get more suturing kits and I accidentally locked myself in the supply closet for four hours. She wouldn't believe me when I finally got out, and she's hated me ever since. She's the one who put me on the Daily House Report thing."
Chase snickered.
Ricky smacked him on the shoulder. "I'm serious! She hates me!"
"I'm sure."
"Are you sure there isn't anything you could put me on?" Ricky asked.
Chase raised an eyebrow. "Why? Are you avoiding something else?"
There was a moment's pause, in which Ricky looked very, very guilty.
"Someone else," he muttered at last.
"Sorry," Chase said again. "There's really nothing I can do for you."
Ricky let out a long-suffering sigh. "That's okay. I'll just have to suck up to one of my other residents."
"Good to know that I'm number one on your list of Residents Who Easily Cave," Chase said wryly.
"Nah. You're just the one I like best." Ricky shrugged. "Besides, no one else is gonna pester you for surgeries at the moment, so I figure there's less competition."
"Why is no one else going to ask me?" Chase asked curiously.
Ricky waved a hand. "You know, rumors going around."
Chase remembered Cameron's words from this morning.
"Is it true that there's a new rumor going around about me?" he asked.
Ricky nodded. "You didn't hear? You now have a secret love child that you've been visiting every night in the nursery for the last few weeks."
Chase was about to ask him what the rumor actually was, taking Ricky's answer as a sarcastic exaggeration, when he remembered his conversation with House last night.
"Tell me you're joking," he said slowly.
He was going to kill House. Slowly. With a goddamn spoon.
Ricky grinned. "I know, right? It's like something out of the National Enquirer. People here are crazy."
"Yeah," Chase said through gritted teeth. "Crazy."
And then, the most unfortunate thing of all the unfortunate things that could have possibly happened in that moment: House walked around the corner.
Chase stormed over to him, fuming, his plan to avoid House beyond recall.
"What the bloody hell are you playing at?"
House looked down at him, expression amused. "Feeling British today, are we? Jolly good, sir."
It only served to further infuriate him that House seemed to have no concern for the fact that Chase was about to lose control. He clenched his fists, knowing that of all the things he could do, that might be the worst.
His nails dug into his palms, and he attempted to control his breathing.
"Look, I get it," he said in a low voice. "You got bored, you needed to fuck up someone's life, and hey, I was already halfway there so why not just finish it off?"
House raised his eyebrows. "I'm afraid I rather don't know what you're talking about, good sir."
"Don't give me that bullshit. I know—"
"Really." House said came out of his mock British accent. "I'll take credit for whatever it is, but you've got to tell me what it is first so I can properly gloat."
"The rumors," Chase ground out, "that I have a love child I've been making daily visits to for the last few weeks. You're really going to tell me that you didn't start them?"
"Nope." House shook his head. "Wasn't me."
"Right. Because you didn't imply that about Natalie just last night or anything," Chase said sarcastically.
"Natalie?"
"The baby I was with last night."
"How would I know that you've been spending your nights with some screaming little parasite?" House asked. An amused look came over his face. "Actually, that's kind of pathetic. Seriously, Chase?"
"Fuck off," Chase spat, and he made to push House out of the way. House was quicker and grabbed his wrists, hauling Chase forward and making him stumble. Chase wrenched himself free, falling back and almost running into the wall.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ricky watching him with wide eyes.
He let out a nonsensical, snarl-like noise and stormed off.
Fuck.
oOo
Touching House had been, decidedly, a bad idea.
Chase swallowed four more ibuprofen, unplugged his alarm clock, and curled into a ball.
oOo
Three in the morning and Chase found himself parked outside of House's apartment. He put the car in park and killed the engine. His head had stopped pounding and the nausea skirting around the edges of his stomach had disappeared. He unbuckled his seatbelt and slouched down in the front seat, pushing the seat as far back as it would go and grabbing his coat out of the back seat, which he draped over his face to block out the light of the street lamp above.
He'd learned the first time around. House wasn't going to discover him in a pathetic mess on his front stoop, this time.
And he sank into sleep at last, part of him wondering if he'd remembered to set the alarm on his cell phone to wake him up before House left for work and saw him here. He really hoped so.
oOo
"A week and a half?" Chase repeated incredulously.
House pointed to the calendar. "That's what it says, blondie."
Chase shook his head. "But it doesn't make any sense. The last time was two days, and the time before that was five days."
"Obviously, time's passing faster between each dream." House stared at the calender, his eyes narrowed slightly. "But why?"
"Maybe it's speeding up because we're supposed to get to some date?" Chase suggested.
"It's a dream—if we're supposed to be at some specific date, why aren't we just there? It's a goddamn dream, time doesn't have to pass linearly," House argued. He sat down in his chair, exhaling in frustration.
"So when we were supposed to be here this morning, why didn't we just appear in the hospital instead of back in your apartment? Why waste time having me get the sudden urge to go to the hospital, convincing you, driving here?" Chase asked, although it was more that he was musing aloud. "It's almost like there's... rules that have to be followed. The dream—whatever—it couldn't just stick us together. It had to make it so that I was sick as a dog whenever I wasn't near you, so that I'd have to be near you, so we'd get together. It had to convince us to go to the hospital."
House raised an eyebrow at him. "Uh-huh. And what else have you figured out, Sherlock?"
"Don't mock me, you rumor-starting bastard," Chase said, although there was none of the anger in his tone that would have been there in real life. "Speaking of which, I owe you this." He thumped House solidly on the chest with his palm. "You ass."
"I didn't start the damn rumor!" House said irritably, giving him a dark look. "Jesus. First you, then Wilson, then Cuddy, and now you again? That's just unfair."
Chase's subconscious apparently thought that he would like to hear that he hadn't been alone in thinking that House had starting the rumor, and that he'd been thoroughly yelled at for it. It did make him feel better. Maybe his subconscious, despite the fact that it was making no sense, wasn't all that bad.
"So who started it, if it wasn't you?" Chase asked. He was suddenly curious as to what his subconscious would say.
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" House snapped.
All right, so apparently his subconscious was done being nice to him.
Chase put a hand on House's head and rubbed, a grin spreading across his face as House jerked away, annoyed.
"Paws to yourself, wombat."
And then it struck him.
"It's because we have free will!" he blurted out.
House eyed him warily, hand ready to defend his head again. "What?"
"This dream," Chase said excitedly. He sat down on the desk, leaning forward and looking straight into House's eyes. "What makes this dream different. Most dreams just happen around you and you can't control it, but we have control over this. They can't just plunk us down in the hospital, they have to convince us to go."
"You haven't forgotten that this is just a dream, right?" House asked dubiously.
Chase glared at him, irritated that House wasn't as excited as he was. "You're the one who wanted patterns."
"That's not a pattern, it's a Stephen King synopsis."
Chase sighed, sitting back. "All right. Fine. What's your idea?"
"Don't have one," House said, also sitting back in his chair. He spun so that he was staring at the calendar again.
"Why are you so determined to find a pattern?"
"Everything has a pattern." House closed his eyes, exhaling and tilting his head back. "Your neurons fire in patterns. Neurotransmitters are released in patterns. Hillocks generate action potentials in patterns. Are we sensing a pattern to the patterns, here?"
"Weren't you on about meaning, last year?" Chase asked, frowning. "Does meaning now derive from patterns, or have you dropped that idea completely now?"
"I'd rather not think about the meaning behind this dream, thanks," House answered dryly, not opening his eyes.
Chase considered for a moment.
"Yeah. That might be for the best."
"And if I figure out what the pattern is, then I can put an end to it," House added.
What?
"End it?" Chase said blankly.
The thought of these dreams ending made something in his chest tighten.
House opened his eyes and spun to face him, bouncing his cane back and forth between his hands absently. "It has to end. You know that."
"I—" Chase swallowed, bits and pieces of the brittleness in his chest crumbling away. "Yeah. I know."
Judging by the way House's blue eyes were fixed on him, he wasn't fooling his subconscious.
Surprise, surprise.
"It's not healthy, Chase," House said, in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. "You've got a girlfriend. I've got to move on. These dreams have to end."
"Yeah," Chase agreed, but the word was empty.
"You said it yourself, earlier," House pointed out. "You're about a fuck-up away from disaster. It doesn't need to be me."
Chase shook his head, the words spilling out of his mouth before he could stop them. "You're not fucking anything up, I swear. You're making it easier."
"Exactly."
"And what am I supposed to do in real life?" Chase asked, the sudden rush of desperation overwhelming him. "I can't stay away from you!"
"It has to end," House said firmly, as though he hadn't even heard Chase.
Despair washed over him, sucking him under, and for a moment he couldn't breathe.
He brought his hands up to his head, pressing his fingers against his temples, and forced himself to take in a deep breath.
Okay. Okay, it wasn't the end of the world. The dreams would only end, supposedly, if House found the pattern in them. The way things were going, that wasn't likely to happen any time soon. Why waste time worrying about something that was weeks, possibly months away? He couldn't think about that. He would just focus on what was now and what was here.
He opened his eyes and let his hands fall to his lap. He felt oddly still and empty.
"So you want to spend tonight just staring at this calendar, hoping you'll come up with this pattern?" he asked, forcing his tone to be dry.
"Got any better ideas?" House asked. His grin was lecherous, and he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Right on cue, Cuddy stuck her head in.
"Don't think I didn't notice that your clinic duty wasn't done yesterday, House," she said sharply, giving him a stern look.
House grinned brightly, waving. "Hey Cuddles! Want to see just how fast I can bend Chase over this desk?"
"Leave Dr. Chase alone," Cuddy snapped. "Do your job."
"Are you sure? We've been practicing..." House offered in a sing-song voice.
"Touch me and die," Chase said under his breath.
"Clinic. Duty."
"But's a dreeeeeaaaam," House whined, drawing out the last word for at least three seconds.
"So do it now, and I won't make you do it in real life."
Chase snorted.
House raised an eyebrow. "Somehow, I'm not inclined to believe a figment of a dream. Somehow. I can't quite explain it..."
"I'll make this dream end," Cuddy threatened.
"Right. That's even scarier," House said, rolling his eyes.
Chase, though, was interested.
"You can do that?" he asked, turning around.
"I run this hospital—if there's a dream taking place here, I can certainly end it," Cuddy snapped, clearly annoyed that he would even ask such a question.
"How?"
House whacked him on the leg with cane. "Don't feed into her power trip."
Cuddy folded her arms over her chest. "Why do you want to know?"
Chase shrugged. "Curious."
"I'm not doing my clinic duty," House put in loudly.
"You have until the count of five."
House spun around in his chair. "La tee daaaa!"
"One."
House continued to spin around, using his cane to push himself in circles.
"Two."
Chase bit his lip. "You're not going to end it permanently, are you?"
"She can't actually end it, you moron," House put in carelessly.
"Three."
"What if she can?" Chase asked him, feeling the first stirrings of fear. "What if she really does end it, right here?"
House stuck out his cane and stopped himself with a thwack as his cane hit the side of his desk. He looked up at Chase. "Then it's for the best. We just talked about this."
Chase swallowed. "But—"
"Four."
"I don't want to—"
And then the desk gave way and he was falling, the world dissolving around him, and there was no bottom in the darkness.
oOo
Chase woke with a start.
He looked around wildly, heart racing, his mind swimming, and something—something vibrating in his pocket.
It took him a moment to realize that his cell phone, and he had it out and open before he could even begin to figure out what the hell had just happened in his dream.
"Hello?"
He was out of breath. His heart raced.
"Chase?"
His mind quickly caught up—Cameron. Lovely.
"Hey," he said, taking in a deep breath. "What's up?"
"Where are you?" Cameron asked. "I'm at your apartment, and you're... not."
Chase blinked, and then abruptly remembered their shopping trip for the day. In a moment of panic, he drew the phone away from his ear and looked at the time, but it was only seven in the morning. House wouldn't be up yet. And Cameron should definitely not be at his apartment at this hour.
"I'm at the hospital," he lied. He reached down and pulled the lever under his chair, sitting up. "I thought we weren't going shopping until this afternoon?"
"Oh, you didn't take on an extra shift this morning, did you?" Cameron asked, and he could see her wincing.
"No, I just had to finish something up," Chase told her quickly. "Why? What's going on?"
"I'm covering for someone tonight, so I was thinking we could go shopping this morning and do lunch, and maybe take a rain check on the movie?"
"You took on an extra shift?" Chase repeated disbelievingly. "You just asked me—after everything you told me on Monday about putting in more effort, and now you're taking on an extra shift today? We had this planned for a week!"
"Sandy Liven's son got into a car crash last night, I was the only one who could take over for her," Cameron explained, her voice impatient. "I'm sorry."
"Am I supposed to know who Sandy Liven is?"
"I work with her!" Cameron said incredulously. "Do you ever listen to a word I say?"
"Cameron—"
"Look," she interrupted, her voice heavy. "Just—come back to your apartment, we'll go shopping, we'll go out to lunch... It'll be fine. Okay?"
Chase stopped, and for the very first time since waking up he was hit with the full impact of what was going on. Cuddy had ended his dream—or it could have been a coincidence, but either way, that had been a horrible way to end a dream, and there was the distinct possibility that he might never have another dream with House again. And now Cameron had changed their plans. And despite the fact that she was being hypocritical about this, she was at least trying. He should try, too.
"Okay," he sighed, letting his head fall back. "Okay. Where do you want to go shopping?"
There was a pause.
"Well, you know furniture shopping in Princeton is an absolute joke, so I was thinking of trying a few places in Trenton," she said at last.
"Trenton?" Chase repeated faintly.
It was suddenly occurring to him that the list of places that he could go was very, very limited. Now that he'd spent the night in close proximity to House, it was unlikely that he was going to be able to get more than a few blocks away from him and still be able to function.
Which pretty much meant that his day with Cameron was off.
He probably would have felt more guilty about this before, but now he was still feeling too pissed about the shift she'd taken tonight to bother with it.
"Listen," he said, "why don't we just call the whole thing off? I think I have Saturday free, we can go then."
"Wait—Chase, no, c'mon," Cameron said, her voice suddenly pleading. "I'm sorry about taking the shift, I am, please don't—"
"I just don't think it's a good idea right now," Chase said, cutting her off. "I'm not feeling well. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
He hung up before she could reply.
And then out of the corner of his eye, there was movement. House's door was opening.
Chase had the car out of the parking spot and halfway down the street in ten seconds flat.
oOo
Chase supposed that it might be rather creepy, the way that he was following House. Tracking him, really. He'd idled on the street behind House's apartment, waiting until he felt the dull pressure in his head start to gather, pinpointing behind his eyes in a pounding, blinding move, and then he began driving to the hospital. If only he were a bounty hunter and House were his prey—then maybe he'd have a use for this House-compass that he was developing. Instead, he was left to follow House to the hospital.
Unsurprisingly, the first place House went was his office. It was entirely too early for any of his fellows to be in—House himself wasn't usually in for another three hours. Chase had no idea what would get him up this early in the morning, especially when there was apparently no pressing reason for him to be up. Could his leg be hurting more than usual? He'd definitely been known to come into the hospital at all hours of the day, even on his days off, just to pace and snarl at people.
However, Chase didn't concern himself with it. He was still tired after only getting four hours of sleep, and more than that, he was desperate to see if he could go back to his dream. The way it had ended left him with a cold, sick feeling in the back of his stomach, and the thought of that being the end of it all...
He found the on call room nearest to House's office, which left him with a manageable pressure in his head and not a full-blown headache, and pushed open the door, only to find—
"Dr. Chase!" Ricky waved.
Ricky was laying on the bottom bunk, a straw in hand, and his friend Jake was on the top bunk with a yo-yo. It looked like they were in the middle of some sort of game, but Chase couldn't imagine what it was.
"Hey, man," Jake greeted with a wave of his own.
"What are you guys doing up here?" Chase asked. Surgery was on the second floor. This was the fourth floor.
"Just got off of rounds," Jake said with a smirk. He let the yo-yo go over the side of the bunk, and Ricky immediately brought the straw up to his mouth and blew, apparently trying to blow at the yo-yo when it descended to his level, but he wasn't quick enough and the yo-yo went back up into Jake's palm.
Chase refrained from asking. "And all the on call rooms on the second floor are full?"
Ricky nodded. "Yep. It's Safer Sex Week in the clinic, they're giving out condoms like lollipops."
"Flavored ones, too," Jake added.
Chase held back a groan. Great.
"All right," he sighed. "I'll see you around."
"No, no!" Jake protested. "Trust me, you're never going to find an on call room right now without going down to the maternity ward, and believe me man, that is a scary place. You can crash on the top bunk—here." He started climbing down.
Chase almost refused, but then he considered the fact that any other on call room in the hospital was likely to be too far away from House to get any sleep. "Thanks," he said, nodding at Jake as he landed on the ground.
"No problem."
"You can play BJs with us, if you want," Ricky offered.
Chase assumed the BJs was whatever game they had been playing before with the straw and yo-yo. With a feeling that he was going to regret asking, he opened his mouth. "What's BJs?"
"Move over, fat ass," Jake muttered, pushing Ricky as he moved over to make room for Jake.
"BJs is a game we made up back in med school," Ricky explained as Jake clamored in next to him. "It's short for blow jobs. The object is to blow hard enough and aim well enough to make the yo-yo swing off-course, to the point where it won't bounce back up."
Chase climbed up to the top bunk. "I see."
Yeah, he regretted asking.
"You can play, if you want."
"I think I'll sleep for a bit, thanks," Chase said, politely declining. He didn't bother with the sheets or anything, just flopped down on the bed, head on the pillow, and closed his eyes.
"All right."
"Night, man."
"Mm," Chase said.
It was silent for a moment.
"Hey, gimmie more pillow," one of them whispered.
Rustling, and then silence descended again.
"Your straw is poking me in uncomfortable places, man."
"Sorry."
Another period of silence.
"Some nurse got sick in the ER this morning. All over. She'd had that new chili from the cafeteria for dinner, too."
"That's disgusting."
"Your face is disgusting."
"Your mom's disgusting."
"Your mom's mom is disgusting."
"Your mom's Facebook is disgusting."
"You're mom's saggy old vagi—"
"Hey guys?" Chase cut in, raising his head slightly so that his voice wouldn't be muffled by the pillow. "Could you hold off for, like, five minutes, until I'm asleep?"
"Oh, shit. Sorry about that," Ricky apologized quickly. "We'll be quiet."
"Silent."
"As mice."
"As the grave."
"As your mom's grave."
Chase put his head down, closing his eyes and willing sleep to come. He needed to see House again. Just once more.
oOo
He woke to a pounding headache and groaned, curling in on himself slightly. Where was House? The last thing he'd known had been falling through the desk as the dream had dissolved around him into nothing, and...
And with a start, Chase's eye snapped open and he knew that he wasn't dreaming. He was in the on call room. And his head was throbbing again, which meant that House was on the move, which meant that he had to move. As things were getting worse with every moment that it was taking him to come to consciousness, it was worsening, and that meant that House was walking somewhere and he had to follow fast before he ended up throwing up everywhere.
Forcing himself up, Chase crawled down the bunk bed and was surprised to note that Ricky and Jake had left. They said that they'd had an hour before they had to be anywhere, and Chase couldn't have dozed off for more than five minutes. Right?
He glanced down at his watch, and his brain froze.
More than three hours had passed since he'd laid down. And that meant that he hadn't had any dreams.
It was a sucker punch to the stomach, and he stood stock still in front of the door as the world reeled around him. It couldn't be over. It couldn't be. Three hours of sleep didn't necessarily mean that he would enter REM sleep, he probably hadn't gotten that far with Ricky and Jake chattering away beneath him. It was a fluke. It couldn't be over yet, not like that, not before he had the chance to say goodbye.
And then his stomach began to churn and the pain in his head increased sharply, reminding him that he had somewhere to be.
Chase pushed the falling, bottomless despair into the back of his mind. He had to find House now, he'd worry about it later.
He burst out into the hallway, taking a right toward diagnostics, but got three steps before he turned around and went in the opposite direction. His pace was quick, making sure that he was moving faster than House, and he wasn't halfway down the hallway before he felt his headache start to recede. He was on this side of the hospital. Where would he be?
The clinic, and the auditorium where he'd been having his new fellows meet were both on this side of the hospital. Of the two, Chase would put him in the auditorium first, and that was where he headed. He refused to think about the fact that the dreams might have ended permanently. He would worry about now, now, and later, later.
House was not in the auditorium. Foreman and the new fellows were, though.
His headache was increasing by the moment, faster than it should have been if House was only walking somewhere, and the nausea was starting to return. What if House was driving somewhere? Where would he be going? What was he going to do if House was going home, if he couldn't get to his car fast enough and he ended up collapsing in the hallway...
Chase thought about going off in search of House by himself for a moment. And then he realized that his ability to think was being seriously compromised by his headache, and decided to ask instead.
"Brennan and I will do the neurological..." Foreman trailed off in the middle of what he was saying as Chase entered. "Can I help you, Dr. Chase?"
"I'm looking for House," Chase said, hoping that his voice sounded normal. He attempted to lean casually against the wall, but his head was positively throbbing and his stomach was starting to churn unpleasantly. He skin felt too hot. "You know where he went?"
"We'd all like to know," one of the fellows whose name Chase didn't know said.
Chase felt a flicker of panic. "What do you mean?"
"Guy in a suit came in, they talked, House left with him," Foreman said, sounding irritated. "What did you want him for?"
"I need to talk to him," Chase forced out, and he hoped that his voice was louder than the whisper than he thought it was. Dizziness slammed into him and fell against the wall as the world rocked violently. His stomach roiled and his throat felt like it was closing up. "I need House."
"Is he okay?" Kutner asked.
"Chase?" Foreman's voice came, and Chase swore it was the first time he'd ever heard real concern in Foreman's voice.
"M'fine," he choked out, but bile came rushing up his throat and he doubled over, spitting it out. The world spun and he stumbled, feeling the hardness of the wall or the floor or something, his knees tangling together, his body knocking into something. His stomach turned and he twisted his head, vomiting and gasping for air at the same time. His skin was too hot, he couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't control his limbs.
Hands were grabbing at him and he was being twisted in space, heavy and sick. Pulled apart. He felt the edges of his consciousness slipping away and fought for a moment, but then House flashed before his eyes and he gave in, sinking down into the darkness. Let it come. He was tired of fighting. Why was he fighting in the first place?
Voice shouted.
He let go.