Author's Note: I heard this on Cold Case at the end of the season finale. So, because everyone's favorite doctor has gorgeous blue eyes, this is another piece that delves into the psyches of the characters. A good dose of angst, maybe romance, and my twisted philosophy is to be found herein. I don't own House or "Behind Blue Eyes."
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
Black and blue and faded colors marked the daily passage of time. They dwelled in the cramped apartment of life knowing only that death would come too soon and that they would work to prevent the inevitable. There were gray opinions of life and the single black and white fact—death comes and no one can prevent its appearance.
The team had just lost a patient that was not actually their patient in the first place. It was not unexpected—cancer was in stage four. The malignant cells had spread. Life had begun to pack its boxes of blood and breath and mail them to the mansion where Death resided. There had been many successes, but today had not been one.
Death was a preoccupation for only one night. Spending more time being miserable over a lost cause was not what doctors did. But this affected them all so deeply because each saw the patient differently. Chase saw the child of an alcoholic. Foreman saw someone who had screwed up and fixed their mistakes. Cameron saw longing and a kindred spirit. Cuddy saw how the oppressiveness of society had almost made the patient succumb under the weight of mindless expectations. Wilson noticed too many divorces and long-forgotten tête-à-têtes. And House saw brilliant blue eyes that were slowly dying.
If I see blue I know it's blue because I know what blue looks like. But you don't have to see blue. Why can't you see red when I see blue or green when I see red? Do you feel happy when I find that happiness is what I call sorrow? I like to live in the mind-set that everyone sees what they want. The patient was the obligatory, boring gray that is life, but each doctor chose to see a different color—
Only people so damaged could see the rainbow in the gray of oblivion.
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
The photo album was leather that supposedly became suppler with the constant contact of oil from human hands. Chase thought that and the philosophy blaring from his television was a load of bullshit. Who cared about whether or not green was green? And who actually believed leather kept the pictures safer than a crappy plastic album? He threw the picture-filled book to ground and got up to walk around his living room.
Cory Lind died at 5:50 and Chase was unable to prevent death from coming. Cory's eyes closed and the soul had evaporated out of the eyes of this patient. Oh, yes, Lind was quite the fighter, Chase admitted. Quite the fighter.
And quite the history. Cory Lind grew up with an alcoholic father who beat him regularly. He went to school with bruises up and down his body, he had told Chase, and never had sleepovers for fear that his father would come home one night and beat the shit out of not only Cory, but also the friend staying the night.
Chase, of course, had been shocked when as soon as Cory saw the blonde-haired Aussie he informed him that he knew about Chase's father's descent into the amber-black hole that was alcoholism. It was a quick comment. Lind didn't like mincing words. Apparently, dying has that affect on a person.
"My father was an alcoholic and so's yours."
He said it with such certainty that Chase knew better than to ask how he knew. His blue eyes sparkled benevolently. Cory reminded Chase of Santa Claus—the white hair, thick beard and round figure. Chase had been brought on the case because House had been asked by Wilson to meet this man. Chase hadn't known why Wilson simply requested House have a meeting with Lind and was sent first (as punishment for some unspoken rule broken).
Chase walked into the room equipped with Cory's medical chart and was going to ask him medical questions before Cory interrupted him with the previously unknown fact of their shared pain. Chase didn't bother to ask why, for Cory had another comment that left his lips even before Chase's jaw came back together.
"I hated it. Alcohol made him hit me and beat me and made me think he didn't love me. Funny how his funeral was the best and worst day of my life. Must have been harder for you, watching your powerful father disintegrate into distilled alcohol."
Chase remembered the twinkling in the eyes of Lind as he told secrets that Chase had never told anyone.
"Sit. Let's talk."
So Chase sat. And they talked. And Chase felt tears in his eyes for the first time in many, many years. It was a brief half an hour before Foreman came to check on Cory (and, at the same time, Chase). Chase had left in a hurry. He hadn't even said goodbye to the man who had so uncannily knew the depths of his secrets.
He left at 2:30. House informed them the man died at 5:50. Three hours and twenty minutes of life went by after Chase had left. And now, because of guilt and questions, Chase was staring at the photo album.
He opened it up and flipped through the pages. There was a picture of he and his father fishing off the shore of Sydney. His father at the hospital. The mansion in Sydney. The family portrait. His sister, brother…
And then there was the picture that Chase hated. It was his father, bottle firmly tucked in hand, smiling benignly. Chase was standing next to him. There was anger firmly embedded in his father's eyes and endless hurt found in his. Chase took a deep breath and looked at the phone. He crossed the room quickly.
The number was old and he was afraid to call. His father had always intimidated him and Chase had grown up seeking praise from adults around him. Even now, he sought out the admiration of people. He had groveled to Vogler because he wanted the attention and the acclamation that House refused to give him. And now he was calling the most brilliant surgeon he knew and the man who had made him into the Dr. Robert Chase—supposedly supreme traitor.
The phone weighed a thousand pounds in his hands and he closed his eyes and dialed the number. Cory Lind had told him today that the last time he had ever talked to his father was ten years before the funeral. As happy as he was during his father's funeral, Lind told Chase that he never got over his last words to his father on the phone a decade prior to the wind-swept burial day.
"I told him I hated him," Cory explained slowly.
"Oh, God," Chase replied.
"The phone wasn't invented so it could collect dust because of disuse," was Cory's only comment.
"Hello?"
The phone had connected, done its job, and reached Chase's father in Australia. There was only one word appropriate for the commencement of the conversation.
"Hi, Dad."
