Chapter Eleven
"I've been offered a job in Czechoslovakia." Rowan Chase had spoken firmly, that solid tone his son had known so well.
Robert hadn't moved from where he was, leaning against the frame of the kitchen doorway, arms crossed protectively over his chest. "And you're going." He'd stolen his father's voice to say the words. Hoping they'd cut him as deeply as he was being cut right now.
But Rowan Chase wasn't a man who hurt easily.
"You know that I am." He'd responded to his son, almost as if Robert had asked a question. "You know that your mother and I-"
Yes, Robert had known, he hadn't needed the reminder. The fights, the yelling, the drinking, the smashing of expensive crystal on professionally painted walls, the wailing, the pleading, the crying, the desperation. No, he hadn't needed the reminder at all.
"Mum needs you." He'd cut across his father's seemingly simple words. He'd spoken as if none of it mattered.
"Your mother…" Rowan had lifted his hand, brushed away some invisible lint or dust residing on his perfectly tailored suit. "Cannot be helped."
Robert felt so much rage boiling inside of him. Even in his worst moments – before this – he'd never felt so utterly…appalled.
"I hate you." He'd seethed. And he'd meant it. Would mean it for so many years to come.
"And I…would like you to come with me." A perfectly planned out maneuver, Robert had thought. Not unlike tricking a worried family into agreeing to an experimental treatment.
God, how he had hated his father.
"Come with you?" He'd mimicked the words, as if they might change their meaning after coming out of his lips.
"To Chek." He'd nodded. "Get away from here. Start a new life."
"My mother is here." He'd felt tears building in his eyes, a lump forming in his throat.
His mother had been there – passed out on her luscious, king-sized bed upstairs, totally unaware of what her son was giving up for her.
"Your mother is an alcoholic." Rowan had shaken his head, as if fed up with his offspring. "There is no cure for that."
"You're a bastard." He'd seethed, physically restraining himself from lashing out by grabbing hold of the side of the door frame. "You're a pathetic, worthless coward."
Rowan had taken the heated insults in stride. "And you are my son. And you're throwing your life away by staying where you are."
"It's my fucking life." He'd never spoken so vulgarly to his father before this. In fact, this was the most meaningful, deep conversation he'd had with his father since he'd been four-years-old. "You've never been around." He'd pointed out, breathing shallow and barely controlled. "Leave for good. We don't need you."
Rowan had stood up a little straighter, always the picture of professionalism, he was. "I think, in time, you'll come to see that this is a mistake."
"You're the goddamn mistake." He'd tossed back, and had felt very justified in doing so.
"I see." Though what he saw would remain a mystery to his fifteen-year-old son. This child forced so unfairly into adulthood. "Well, if you're quite certain."
Robert had wanted to scream at him, force him to not be stoic and cold-hearted, if only for a moment. But he'd sensed that his reprieve would be arriving shortly, and he'd so desperately needed that.
"I've left contact information by the phone in the parlor. Your Aunt agreed to come by once a month and check up on you…and your mother." Rowan had said those words like they might offer some comfort.
And Robert had bit back a harsh laugh. His Aunt was more of a drunk than her sister –his mum - and Robert knew that the only thing she'd ever succeed in 'checking up on' was whether or not there was enough alcohol in the house to share.
"Fine." He'd spit aloud. "Leave. Leave us." Leave me.
Rowan had picked up his one last suitcase and spoke only once more before leaving his family and never looking back. "I am truly sorry, Robert."
The teen had waited only long enough to see the taxi pulling out of their driveway before giving into his rage, his anger, his guilt and his…sadness.
He'd walked jerkily over to the cupboard on the far left side of the kitchen; he'd flung open the doors and took in the sight of his mother's collection. Gin, Vodka, wine, Scotch, Bourbon, Whiskey, even a few beers.
Robert hadn't known what he was doing until half the bottles were shattered all over the white tiled floor. Varying colors of liquid had swum together before his blurry eyes, creating an ugly, murky puddle in the middle of the room.
He'd known the noise had to have been deafening, but he hadn't heard a thing over the buzzing alight in his own mind, and he hadn't been able to stop. All the bottles he could find, then some wine glasses and a few coffee mugs thrown in for good measure.
He'd smashed everything. Just like his father had smashed everything. Ruined it all. Ruined him.
He'd been crying by then. Not gentle, sullen tears - but heavy, head-pounding, gut wrenching sobs. He'd sunk down to the floor once his legs had become too unstable for him to rely on any longer.
His anger was still there and throbbing. Knowing no other release, he'd balled his hands into fists and brought them down hard.
Broken glass had torn into his skin. The sides of his hands, his wrists. Even his feet, which had been bare and undefended when all this had begun were now laced with scratches, deep cuts and sharp pain that Robert hadn't felt. He kept pounding the ground until there was nothing left.
Blood mixed with spilled alcohol on his previously white kitchen tiling, and all he'd been able to feel was anger. Hate. Rage. Betrayal.
Until eventually, he'd managed to make it to a place where he'd felt nothing at all.
He'd gone numb. And he was glad.
House limped slowly into Cameron's hospital room over three hours after they'd finished talking with the police – spinning their lies and deceptions. It was now almost noon, though the world outside showed no indication of such.
Chase knew – deep down in that cold place near his heart where he kept only his most horrid experiences - the moment that House stepped foot in that room and shut the door behind him.
He knew that Eric Foreman was dead.
House was in pain, physical pain, that much was obvious. He was barely putting any weight on his right leg at all, his right hand was considerably whiter than the rest of his appendages – he was gripping the cane too tight.
The heavy sling around his left shoulder had been tightened to the point where he could barely move the arm at all. And Chase knew that every step was a struggle. A silent battle between his boss and his pain.
"I should have been there." Chase spoke before House got the chance. Cameron was sleeping – he'd given her another, milder, sedative a while ago. She didn't need to be awake for any of this.
"What?" House's face crinkled up in confusion, he was still standing in front of the door. Chase wished he would sit down.
"Foreman." He said simply. And, much to his shock, he didn't feel anger welling up inside. He didn't feel the need to scream or punch a wall and break his fingers or smash fifty glass bottles and let himself get cut up – he didn't feel the need to hurt. Himself or anyone else.
He would say that he felt nothing at all, only that would be a lie. He felt, he could feel. He just didn't know how to describe it. Describe this. So he didn't try.
"Foreman's dead." He looked up, into House's crystal clear blue eyes. Those eyes were the first thing the younger man had ever noticed about his employer – even before the cane and the gait, though those were hard to miss and followed as a close second. But he had taken in first that House's eyes always held something. Emotion or purposeful ambiguity. They were never blank. Not like his father's. "Isn't he?"
"Yeah." House made short work of explaining what had gone wrong during the surgery.
"I should have been there." He repeated his earlier words, knowing they would carry more meaning now.
"You couldn't have saved him." House spoke almost softly.
Chase tried not to compare House's voice to Rowan's. He knew it would gain him nothing.
"But we're supposed to save people." He still couldn't identify his own emotions, but it was clear by his tone that he was pleading again. "It's what we do."
"We solve puzzles. We fix what's wrong when no one else can." Chase noted the plural pronouns, and something great leaped to life in his chest for a moment. "We don't facilitate miracles."
Chase could figure this one out for himself. There was no God.
"Has someone told his father yet?" He remembered the elder Foreman fondly. Thinking that, even if he hadn't been able to say it at the time, last year, he truly loved his son. Had truly loved his son.
Past tense only, from now on.
Pity slowly became identifiable.
"Cuddy." House nodded, and Chase felt no need to examine where this information had come from. He trusted his boss, and he could leave it at that. "He's in the chapel, I think."
"Someone should be with him." Chase pointed out. Grief was a lonely emotion, which could overwhelm you sometimes if you didn't have the right company.
House said nothing, just stared at him, an unreadable expression in his eyes.
"What?" Chase finally asked.
"Taking care of his father now won't bring him back." House pointed out, and the way he was speaking, the way he was now standing, it looked almost as if he was lost – in a sea of grown-up things he didn't yet want to understand.
That impression was gone as quickly as it had come, however, and Chase thought for sure he must have imagined it. House, he doubted, had ever been lost. In any sense of the word.
"I know." Chase leveled his gaze and met his eyes squarely. He didn't feel like just an employee any longer. "But someone should still be with him." He looked at Cameron, then back to the Diagnostician. "I'll go down there."
When he started to move, House snapped. "Don't."
Chase raised his eyebrows but sat back down in the chair that had by now, undoubtedly, reformed to perfectly fit his behind. "Why?"
"You need to stay here." He jerked his head toward Cameron. "You gave her another sedative?"
Chase mumbled the name of the milder medication he had injected less than an hour ago.
House nodded appreciatively. "She'll be awake soon. She'll…need you." The words seemed to hurt House coming out.
Chase wanted to know why that was, but, yet again, when he looked at the older man, what he thought he'd seen and heard was gone. And House was House. Strong and certain. Their protector.
"Okay." He mumbled, and hadn't known that he was going to agree until he already had. "What about you?"
"You were right."
The phantom words ghosted over them, and both men almost smiled. Because for a fleeting moment, this was only another passing memory. A case that had no ultimate meaning. Foreman wasn't dead; he was just in the Diagnostic Office, trying to convince one of them that the answer behind their latest patent's symptoms was indeed Lupus.
Then it was gone. And they were stuck, forever more, with reality.
"Someone should go talk to…Rodney." House said the last word uncertainly, and Chase could only guess that that was Foreman's father's first name.
"Yeah." The younger man sighed, "You should."
House waited a few minutes before actually leaving the room. His gaze drifting from Chase, to Cameron, to the walls and then the window with no identifiable pattern. He didn't want to leave, Chase realized.
He wanted to stay and…protect them. Perhaps, maybe even, protect him. From something that there could be no protecting against. Grief and loss had no counterattacks. The only way to get rid of them was to feel them. Fully and without restraint. Even then, they never really went away. They would haunt you forever. The pain of what happened tonight would stay with Chase, Cameron and House until the days they died.
And that, Chase realized with a start, was what House was trying to protect him from.
It was a hopeless mission, one that even House would never be able to complete. But the mere fact that he wanted to – even without saying – carried more meaning than it was possible for him to fully comprehend in that moment.
He did, however, finally put a finger on exactly what it was he was feeling - beneath the loss, the guilt and the emptiness.
For the first time since his father had walked out on him and his mother - left him with that ruined kitchen floor and a shattered heart - all those years ago…Robert Chase felt safe.
TBC…
A/N: Questions? Comments? Concerns?