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THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING AND ALL YOUR WONDERFUL POSTS!! I RESPONDED TO ALL OF THEM INDIVIDUALLY.
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HERE'S THE NEXT CHAPTER.
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CHAPTER 32: Please read and comment.
That night, Chase limped with his rosewood cane as softly as he could down the dimly lit hallway of Radiology towards the MRI room.
Usually at around this time of night, Radiology was empty.
But Chase didn't want to take any chances by making too much noise and arousing the suspicions of anyone who might be working late or hanging around.
When he opened the door to the MRI room, he saw House lying flat on his back on the table of the MRI machine in the darkness, his cane lying on the table next to him.
Underneath House's head was a hospital gown that was acting as a pillow.
And he was snoring very loudly.
Chase rolled his eyes in exasperation, limped closer to him and nudged House awake by poking him with his own cane in House's ribs.
House awoke with a jerk and immediately sat up straight, an unintelligible noise escaping his lips.
House's head missed the top of the machine by inches. Chase winced at his near miss.
"Your lucky your head wasn't in the machine," Chase told him, jutting his chin towards the top of the machine.
House blinked his eyes in an effort to focus on the person standing in front of him. Once he realized it was Chase, he rubbed his face with his hand in an effort to wake up.
"You're late," House grumbled, reaching behind him for the light blue hospital gown he had been using as a pillow.
"How would you know? You were asleep," Chase told him with a grimace.
"I'm assuming you're late," House replied, tossing the hospital gown at him.
Chase glanced at the analog clock on the wall, indicating that it was ten minutes after midnight, and that he was indeed late.
"Let's just get this over with," Chase said with a sigh, giving House his cane.
House hopped off the table and turned his back on Chase.
Chase quickly took off his sweatpants, t- shirt and boxers, and tossed them on the floor.
He then put on the hospital gown, tying the top tie in the back.
"Make sure you take off that pinky ring you wear," House said once he turned around to face Chase.
"I haven't worn that ring in four years," Chase told him with a grimace as he tied the bottom tie of his gown.
"Then take out your belly button ring or any other metal you have on," House said.
"I don't have—" Chase began.
"Yeah, yeah. Just get on the table already," House said impatiently.
Chase snorted in disgust and climbed up onto the table, his feet facing the direction of the tunnel of the machine.
"Please keep your hands and arms inside the cabin. Por favor, mantener las manos y los brazos en el interior del vehículo," House said in a low voice, doing his best imitation of a bilingual recording on an attraction at a theme park.
"You're in a good mood," Chase commented with a slight smirk.
"That's because I just had INCREDIBLY HOT SEX with your boss," House told him.
"No wonder why you were out cold when I came in," Chase said.
"You should see the coma I put HER in," House boasted.
"I've seen it," Chase retorted, his smirk broadening.
House shot him a dirty look as he hit the button to control the table, sliding the lower half of Chase's body into the machine.
As Chase basked in the glow of his snark, House limped into the ante- room of the MRI and sat down on a chair in front of one of the computers to watch the monitor.
"Nice one, Chase," House admitted aloud to himself in the ante- room.
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After forty- five minutes, Chase was still in the MRI.
House hadn't given him a set of headphones, and the rhythmic banging of the machine was beginning to give him a headache.
"House?" Chase called out, closing his eyes. "Are we done yet?"
Chase expected House to tell him to shut the he11 up and that he wasn't supposed to talk during an MRI.
But House didn't answer him.
"House, what's going on?" Chase called out a little louder.
Again, there was no answer.
Chase then opened his eyes and turned his head to try to peek into the ante- room.
But from his vantage point, lying on his back on the table, he couldn't see anything.
Chase exhaled in disgust.
"Screw this," he said aloud.
Chase then somehow managed to crawl out of the MRI, swung his legs back onto the floor and limped as gingerly as he could towards the ante- room. The Vicodin he had taken hours ago was beginning to wear off, and he had given his cane to House.
Every step was bordering on agony.
When he finally made it to the ante- room, he found House asleep on the chair, his head lolled back and his mouth wide open, snoring once again.
"And Cuddy complained about MY snoring?" Chase mumbled to himself as he watched him sleep.
"HOUSE!" Chase yelled
"What?!" House exclaimed, jerking awake once again, almost falling off the chair.
"You fell asleep again," Chase said with irritation.
"You try the position on page 68 of the Kama Sutra at my age and see how long YOU stay awake," House muttered as he faced the computer monitor.
"So what's wrong with my ankle?" Chase demanded, not even bothering to acknowledge House's remark.
House blinked his eyes and focused on the images of Chase's ankle on the screen for a few moments.
"Nothing," House declared simply.
"House, it's too late to be funny," Chase complained, trying to block out the throbbing of his ankle.
"Take a look," House said, rolling the chair back slightly away from the computer.
Chase moved closer to the computer and scrolled through all the images that House took of his left ankle.
His mouth opened slightly in shock when he saw that there was nothing on the image explaining his pain.
"That's… impossible. I'm in constant pain. There HAS to be something wrong," Chase argued, shaking his head in complete disbelief.
"Not according to the MRI," House stated.
Chase turned his head towards House, noting that his expression was completely calm.
Chase shook his head again, pressing his tongue against the inside of his mouth, laughing curtly in disgust.
"You think it's all in my head, don't you?" Chase accused.
"No, I don't," House said, his eyes still on the monitor in front of him.
Chase tilted his head slightly, arching his eyebrow, waiting for House's explanation.
"I'm saying that whatever IS wrong with your ankle isn't showing up on the scan," House said.
"So... what then? An invisible tumor? Too bad Cameron and Foreman aren't here. It'd be just like old times," Chase said sarcastically.
House didn't respond to Chase's remark.
He just continued to stare at the digital image of Chase's ankle on the monitor, as if the answer would suddenly appear.
"So what do we do now?" Chase asked him.
House then got up out of his chair.
"I'm going to try to sneak back into bed with Cuddy without waking her up. YOU can do whatever you want, except for that," House told him as he turned to leave the room.
"I mean about my ankle," Chase clarified.
House stopped at the door and slowly turned back to Chase.
"How many pills do you have left?" House asked him.
"Twelve," Chase replied.
"…Try to make those last as long as possible until I can figure this out," House said after a contemplative pause before heading for the door again.
"House," Chase said.
"Are you really doing all this just to solve the puzzle of my pain?" Chase asked him in a soft voice.
"…Go home," House told him before leaving Chase in the room by himself.
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THURSDAY MORNING…
The next day, at around ten AM, Wilson opened the door to House's private office, his head in a patient's file.
"Got a case," Wilson said, looking up from the file. "Forty- two year old female—"
But he stopped in mid sentence when he realized that House wasn't in the room.
He looked through the glass partition into House's conference room, which was empty as well.
Wilson then shrugged his shoulders and walked over to House's desk. He picked up House's red and grey ball and began to bobble it in his hands.
And then he noticed the name on the large envelope from Radiology on House's desk:
'LUKE N. LAURA.'
Wilson placed the ball back on House's desk and opened up the envelope, taking out the films from Radiology that were inside it.
As he put them in the light box that was mounted on the wall of House's office and flicked the switch, he saw the images of a left ankle.
Just then, House came back into his office.
He stopped dead when he saw Wilson looking at Chase's films in the light box.
"What the hell are you doing in my office?!" House demanded.
"I'm surprised you'd be this careless," Wilson said, calmly.
House glanced down at the floor and then strode up to Wilson at the light box. He promptly removed the films and shoved them back into the envelope on his desk, avoiding Wilson's accusing stare.
"You do realize that there's a time and date stamp on those films, right?" Wilson asked him pedantically.
House didn't answer him.
"Which means if Cuddy finds them, she's gonna know that someone was using the MRI at around midnight last night to examine 'Luke N. Laura's' left ankle," Wilson continued.
"Don't you have cancer patients to comfort?" House muttered.
"And 'Luke N. Laura' was the same exact name you used when you faked brain cancer two years ago," Wilson reminded him.
"So I'm a sucker for true love. Sue me," House said.
"And as far as I can see, there's nothing on the scan that would indicate why 'Luke' was having pain," Wilson said, emphasizing the name 'Luke' sarcastically.
"Just because it's not on the scan doesn't mean there's not an explanation for Chase's pain—" House began.
"THE PAIN'S IN HIS HEAD, HOUSE!!" Wilson yelled at him.
House inhaled slightly, his eyes meeting Wilson's angry stare.
But House said nothing.
Because he had nothing to say.
There was nothing on the scan, so he had no medical reason for Chase's pain.
And Wilson knew it.
"And if you keep writing him scripts, you're not helping him. You're only making it WORSE," Wilson told him forcefully.
Silently, House turned away from him and looked out the window, twirling his cane absentmindedly.
Seeing that House wasn't going to engage him in an argument, Wilson turned around and left House office.
Wilson turned around once more and watched House through the glass door for a brief moment, and then walked away.
A few moments later, once he was back in his office, he picked up the phone and dialed a number by memory.
"Hi, Sophie. It's Jimmy," Wilson said to his sister on the other end.
"Hey big bro," Sophie said. "What's up?"
Wilson took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
"…I need to talk to you..." Wilson began carefully.
TBC...