A/N: Ok, here is part two. I know Cameron came out kind of bad in part one but that is for three reasons. 1. I'm not good at writing Cameron because she is so inconsistent on the show. 2. I don't like her and think she is a waste and an insult to professional women everywhere. 3. I wanted to redeem her in later chapters. So enjoy.
Storms 2
Foreman used his time to examine Diana. The symptoms could be from a concussion at best or bleeding in the brain at worst. He needed a CAT Scan to know for sure, which meant going head to head against nurse Brenda Previn. Generally speaking, Foreman preferred to stay at least three hundred yards away from the second floor head nurse. She was mean, snappy, and just plain spiteful at times but she handled all the scheduling. Foreman was sure that Brenda purposely waited for him to show up just so she could say no to him. What made the whole thing worse was that she was always nice to Cameron and Chase. But not having any other choice, he steeled his courage and walked up to her. In many ways, she was more frightening than House.
"I need a CAT Scan." He told her, after waiting in the queue for nearly 10 minutes.
"No, next." She told him without looking up.
"Why?" He snapped, spoiling for a fight.
"Emergency scans take precedence."
"This is an emergency."
"I can only schedule scan from emergency room doctors, trauma surgeons, or intensivists. NEXT" She yelled. Foreman stalked off.
Of all rotten things that had happened today, this had to be the icing on the cake. He would have to get Chase to order the scan for him. What a freaking crock. He had been Chase's boss and now he had to go ask him to order a test. God hated him. That was all there was to it. He pondered as he again headed downstairs. He figured it would be faster to just walk down there than wait for Chase to answer a page.
It was easier this time, he knew what to expect and he knew where Chase was, but what wasn't easier was seeing the state of Chase's current patient. The man was so badly burned that his clothes were melted on to him and had the decided smell of cooking pork. Chase was trying to calm the man down enough to find out what other injuries he had. In the end, the Aussie just gave him morphine and sent him to the Burn Unit to deal with, rude but practical.
"Chase." Foreman called as he pulled on gloves and helped Chase insert another IV onto the next patient, an older woman with a badly broken pelvis. Her pulse was thready and fast and her skin was waxy with a sweaty sheen. "Shock?" He asked.
"Yup." Chase answered looking at the chart quickly. "Ms. Madison?" he questioned, trying to get her to respond. She looked over at him. "Look at me. I'm Dr. Chase. You're at Prince Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. You've been in an accident. Can you speak?" She tried but nothing more than a gurgle came out. "That's ok. I want you to tug on my sleeve if I hurt you." He placed her hand on his sleeve and started palpating her abdomen.
"Where am I" She finally managed to gasp.
"You are at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital." He answered as he moved towards her chest. She gasped in pain when he got her sternum.
"What happened?" She asked.
"There was an accident." He told her as he wrote down his findings on a chart.
"Where am I?" She asked again. Foreman rolled his eyes.
"You should probably add possible head trauma to that." He commented.
"Already there. You are at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. There was an accident. I need you to relax for me. We'll take good care of you." He told her as he gave her some pain killers. "Send her up to radiology." He told Carol. He looked over as Foreman stood beside another patient, a young boy in a New York Nix jersey. "What are you doing down here. I thought all the smart doctors were staying upstairs so us grunts could do the dirty work?" He asked snidely, not in a giving mood. He felt like he was going to scream if he had to repeat the name of the hospital one more time.
"I was looking for you. I need you to order the x-ray and CAT Scan for that kid." He told him sheepishly.
"Did you piss off Brenda again?" Chase asked as he looked through one chart then moved to another. The first person was too far gone for help but he set to work on the second.
"No. She said that only ER docs, trauma surgeons, and intensivists had radiology privileges right now. Seeing as I am none of them, that leaves you to sign for it." Foreman explained as he took the chart from Chase and looked over it. This one had massive internal bleeding and a possible collapsed lung.
Chase stared at him for a moment. "I just want to take his moment to revel in the fact you need my help." He smiled evilly.
"I've asked for your help before." Foreman pointed out indignantly.
"No, you have told me to do things or pawned off tasks you haven't wanted to do on me. There is a huge difference."
"I needed your help with Mary the swimmer."
"Doesn't count because I got chewed out by House about helping you afterwards. Plus, that was something I should have been doing anyway. This is something that you can't do and need me to do. Something the big wig neurologist needs the lowly intensivist to do. Wow, something that a doctor who studies the brain needs to have done by a doctor that, what was it you said about my specialty?" Foreman couldn't help but blush a bit, luckily it was hard to tell. "Oh yes, that intensivists were nothing more than a mutant cross between and ER doctor and an anesthesiologist that had gone retarded. And that all we ever did was crisis management until a smarter doctor came along to actually cure the patient?" He teased. Foreman had said some rather scathing things about Chase and his specialty in the past and Chase was not above rubbing his fellow duckling's nose in it.
"Are you going to sign the order or not?" Foreman groused. He had said those things right after he had arrived. Before Chase, he had rarely ever worked with an intensivist and was a little fuzzy on what they did. He now realized that it was a fairly complicated specialty that required knowledge of all major systems and how they interact with each other in addition to all the practical knowledge of how to do minor surgeries on the fly or sit in on major surgeries as back up.
"Of course I'll sign, why wouldn't I?" Chase commented as he started in on the next patient, for some reason Foreman stayed to help.
Upstairs, Cameron tried to find the girls parents. She had checked in with all the nurses' stations and talked to anyone and everyone she could think of but nothing had shaken loose. She was just about to sit down and start phoning other hospitals when she decided that she would talk to Diana again and see if she could find anything out from her. She approached the room and stopped herself before she walked straight in. She was still royally annoyed that Chase had gotten the girl to open up but she hadn't. She was a much nicer and more caring person than Chase and it plan annoyed her that people saw her as weak because of it but hailed Chase as the saviour for making a kid laugh. Stupid double standards!
She opened the door and walked in. Diana glared at her, hugging the chicken protectively. "Hello, Diana, I'm Alison. I need to ask you a few questions." She closed the door behind her.
"Go away." Diana mumbled at the lady doctor, her speech sounding strange.
"It will just take a minute." She smiled sweetly and tried to make eye contact. Chase was right her eye lids did look droopy.
'GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!" She screamed at Cameron, going so far as to kick her small feet out in the direction of the tall doctor. Cameron decided on the better part of valour and retreated through the door, even more irate than before. She stalked off to find Foreman to see if maybe he had found out anything new.
She found Foreman and Chase standing in the queue for ordering tests. They were discussing some other case that Cameron didn't know about. She didn't hesitate to push her way over to them. She knew all the male doctors would move out of the way for her and the female ones would be quiet, when they realized where she was going. Foreman smiled at her. "Any luck finding the kid's parents?"
"Not yet. But her speech is mumbled and slurred now. I think we need and MRI too." She commented.
"Are you sure it isn't just the accent throwing you off? I thought goldilocks here was drunk the first few times I talked to him." He waved his thumb towards Chase. Foreman and Chase both had a habit of falling back on dark humour to get through tough times. The only difference was that Chase tended to not have the best track record when it came to whom it was and wasn't appropriate to crack a joke in front of.
"No, I'm sure it is slurring. It could mean her brain is swelling beyond a mere concussion. We need an MRI." She stated.
"CAT Scan is faster. Have you seen these lines? It can give us the preliminaries of what we need." Foreman defended. The two continued to bicker about which test to run and Chase stayed out of it even after he ordered both tests.
Just as luck would have it, Chase happened to look up long enough to notice one of the waiting patient's shirts. It was a white, long-sleeved shirt with three lions under a crown. The letters "ECB" were in bold face under it. Chase narrowed his eyes and walked over towards the man, Cameron and Foreman followed still arguing about the best tests to tell Chase to run. The blonde stood beside the man, who was pale with dark hair and a nasty gash along his forehead, and mumbled to no one in particular. "It isn't bad enough that we lost The Ashes but now this bloody bloke has to come in here and bugger me with it?" The man looked up at him immediately as did the woman by his side. Cameron and Foreman stopped their bickering and stared slacked jawed at him.
"Did you just have a stroke?" Foreman asked him, recognizing the words that Chase had spoken but not the order in which they were used.
"No I didn't have stroke. His shirt, it's for the English National Cricket Team. During The Tests, we lost The Ashes to them this year for the first time 16 years. It was bullocks." He pouted and Foreman continued to eye him as if he had gone crazy. "Think of it like The Stanley Cup you yanks give out for baseball only it's a 10 cm red urn and it, unfairly I might add, always stays in England."
"The Stanley Cup is hockey not baseball." Foreman corrected, still thinking Chase had lost his mind. The seated man seemed to understand though.
"It's about time you Aussies let someone else have a go at it and if we let you take it, you'd probably just drink beer out it." The seated man intoned smartly. The woman beside him looked about ready to snap his neck for talking about sports at a time like that.
"You're probably right, mate." Chase smiled and held his had out, "I'm Dr. Chase." He offered. He recognized his accent as being from the borderlands of England as well. "You wouldn't happen to be missing an ankle biter about this tall" he held his hand out to around waist level, "with brown hair, blue eyes, and apparently a mean right cross?"
"You've seen Diana?" The woman jumped up.
"We were just discussing the little princess herself." He smiled at them as they hugged each other.
"Is she alright? Where is she? Can we see her?" The two asked together.
"She is on her way up to radiology for some x-rays and a CAT Scan." Foreman answered for them. He naturally assumed that they would prefer to talk to him rather than Cameron or a nonsense talking, scatterbrained intensivist.
"Why does she need x-rays? What happened to her?" Her mother asked, frantic. "Take me to her, now. I want to see my baby!" Foreman was starting to see a marked family resemblance.
"Mrs. Mansfield, Mr. Mansfield?" Chase questioned. They nodded that was indeed their correct names. "Radiology is on the third floor but is very crowded right now. Our radiologists are working nonstop to accommodate all the tests they are having to run. Even in the best of circumstances all you would be allowed to do is stay outside in the hall while she was having the tests performed but now we can't even allow you on the floor. The best thing you can do for her right now is to use this time to get yourselves together and relaxed. When she is finished, she will be taken up to the pediatric unit on the 6th floor. There is a waiting room almost directly above us, go up there and tell the volunteer your names and her name. That way we will know how and where to find you."
"But my husband is hurt." She pointed to the large gash on Mr. Mansfield's head.
"Stop coddling me, I'll be fine."
Chase looked around and bit the corner of his lip. Foreman and Cameron could tell he was going to do something they would probably regret. "Come here." He motioned for them to follow him as he ducked into the stairwell. "Where does it hurt and what happened?" He asked once they were out of the way.
"I hit my head. Never passed out. I've had worse from rugby." The man shrugged meaty his shoulders. Chase had no doubt that Mr. Mansfield probably had.
Chase pressed his fingers around the wound gauging the man's pain. "Any dizziness or double vision?"
"Naw, mate." He followed Chase's fingers and stared into his penlight. "It's just a gash."
"I'm inclined to agree." The blonde answered. Foreman shook his head as well, concurring that the wound was superficial at best. Cameron would have preferred a more detailed test and maybe a CAT Scan or MRI but she figured that if Foreman the neurologist couldn't get one then there was no way an immunologist could. "I'm going to use a type of skin glue on here." Chase pulled out a wrapped tube from his pocket. "This will leave a nastier scar but doesn't require the time or anesthetic that stitches do, plus it heals faster." He cleaned the wound and applied the glue. Mr. Mansfield didn't flinch. Foreman had to wonder why Chase had all this stuff in his pockets.
"You still haven't told us what is wrong with Diana?" Her mother questioned again.
"She has a broken arm, probably a double fracture of her forearm but she still had feeling in all her fingers and good circulation. More troubling is that she has a head wound. She seemed disoriented and lethargic. It could be as simple as a concussion but we need to make sure." He tried to set her mind at ease.
"Oh dear God." She said. "I have to see her."
"Dr. Chase already told you, the radiology department is off limits right now. We will let you know as soon as she is finished." Cameron answered for Chase because he had a pair of scissors in his mouth.
"I don't care about your damn limits. I am going to see my daughter." The woman glared at Cameron. She was shorter and much homelier than the willowy doctor but just has tough with the typical bad teeth and broad arse of Northern England.
"Mrs. Mansfield, we understand your desire to see your daughter but you will have to wait like everyone else." Foreman tried to placate the situation. Chase just picked up his phone and dialed a number. There was a short pause and the sound of someone answering.
"Hey, mate. Can you do me a favour? I need you to check the ETA on my patient, Diana Mansfield." There was a pause. "Yeah, a little girl," another pause. "That long, huh? Ok, ok, can you have one of the nurses move her over to the door by the northeast stairwell?" "You're right you don't want to know why." He smiled and chuckled.
Both Cameron and Foreman had a fairly good idea what Chase was doing. Their fellow duckling was well liked throughout the hospital and had as many ardent admirers around the hospital as Cameron did. One of those was a radiology resident named Jenny. He was clearly calling in a favour from her.
"Come on," he motioned for them to follow him up the stairs. "I'll sneak you onto the floor so you can see her but just for a moment." Chase explained as he started up the stairs.
"Chase, they really shouldn't be on the floor." Foreman began to protest. He had had his fill of breaking the rules, when he had been in charge.
"You saw how upset she was, seeing her parents will calm her down and make the tests go more smoothly." Chase countered as he held his badge up to open the door. "Wait here for a moment. I'll be right back." He smiled at the parents and headed through the door.
"Chase." Cameron called as she followed him. "You can't move her, she needs those tests."
"I'm not moving her far, just to the door by the stairwell. Besides, I thought you of all people would applaud my bleeding heart for wanting to reunite a family." He teased her and she glared at him.
Soon, they found the little girl, lying on a gurney looking miserable. She ignored Foreman, glared at Cameron, and perked up when she saw Chase. Cameron was slightly put out by her treatment but Foreman realized that it had more to do with the girl's comfort zones then any of them in particular. Chase looked like a handsome prince from a Disney movie and sounded a lot more like what she was used to than a guy from LA and a girl from Chicago.
"Hello, your majesty." Chase joked, sketching a mock bow to the little girl named after a princess. "We have some subjects that would like an audience with the princess." She looked confused. "There are some people who wanted to see you." He winked as he began to role her bed towards the stairwell.
"Who?" She asked, still admiring the crudely drawn unicorn Chase had used to mark which arm to x-ray. He had used the purple surgical marker rather than the black x-ray marker. It was a common mistake, especially for Chase. His reoccurring problems with the pens was one of several clues that had finally led Foreman to realize that Chase was borderline Deuteranopious or borderline colour blind. Chase wasn't the classic red/green type but the more subtle type that couldn't tell different shades of colours apart. He often mixed up greens and greys or purples and blues. It had made perfect sense when House had teased the Aussie about it. It explained his lousy fashion sense, why he usually used the black and white few on the MRIs, and why his entire apartment was decorated in grey. Because of this, Chase usually left surgical tape on the end of his purple surgical marker to tell it apart from the black marker. At least once a weak, House would switch them around just to be mean. It appeared House had struck recently. Foreman decided not to say anything, there was no reason to embarrass Chase for something that was a physiological short coming.
Chase didn't answer her until he opened the door to the stairwell. "Do you know these people?" He asked innocently.
"Mummy! Daddy!" She shrieked and the family embraced each other. All thoughts that Chase shouldn't have broken the rules now lost in the glow of bringing joy to a patient.
"So you wanted me to help you sneak people onto my floor?" Jenny asked from behind them. "You are so naughty, Dr. Chase." She joked, trying to seem suave and cool. She had a crush rivaling Cameron's for House on Chase.
"You know you like it, when I'm naughty, mate." He smiled at her. He had no clue she was interested in him. "Can you page Foreman when you are ready for her?" He asked, wanting to let the family stay together as long as possible.
"Sure. Two people before her I'll page Foreman and she can get back in line."
"Thanks, you're my mate." He told her and headed back into the stairwell to return to the ER.
"No, but I would really like to be." He mumbled after him. Cameron smiled, feeling smug and superior because she had gotten into his pants. There had been three main reasons she had chosen Chase when she went for her drug induced fling. 1. She knew he would come, if she called. 2. There was a small piece of her that, on a merely physical level, had wanted to bone him, since the moment she met him. 3. The bragging rights of having gotten into his knickers, when every other doctor and nurse around her had failed.
"Trust me, you really don't. He grinds his teeth, when he sleeps." Cameron threw in and followed Chase out of the door. Jenny shot Cameron a nasty look and Foreman gave her a sympathetic one. He was firmly convinced that there were few things meaner, nastier, and more evil than two women who wanted the same guy. Not that Cameron really wanted Chase, she just didn't want anyone else to have him and not that Chase even noticed. He still lived off in his blonde little world where Jenny did him favours because he was nice to her and beautiful sheilas bought him drinks because they were friendly. Or that House really didn't mean all of his sexual innuendos but that might just be a defense mechanism on Chase's part and Foreman didn't blame him in the least.
The three left the family together and went back to the grind of the working through the wounded. The new arrivals were petering out, so now Chase was turning towards prepping donors for surgery or setting critical patients who had just arrived in recovery.
10:37 pm December 1, 2005
Foreman got the call that radiology was ready for Diana. He trudged back up the stairs and found her where he had left her. Her parents beside her, looking pleased that she had calmed down. He gave them a small smile and walked towards them, trying to remember their names. He didn't have Cameron's head for names. He remembered it was something typically British sounding but he had looked at so many charts he was drawing a blank.
"Hello, they are ready for her now." He tried to fudge his way through using no names. He put his hand on the railing of the gurney and she lashed out at him screaming. Her mother grabbed her arm, forcing it back down.
"Diana, that is no way to act." She scolded. "I'm sorry Dr. I don't know what has gotten into her. She isn't acting like herself and she keeps screaming." Her mother made excuses as she as she stroked her daughter's hair. Foreman felt a sinking feeling in his gut as he examined the little girl's eyes and noticed her pupils didn't react and the way her hands had started to curl under towards her arms. The screaming was just the last straw.
"We'll do what we can." He wheeled her towards the CAT Scanner, afraid it was useless because they had been forced to wait too long.
He sat in the booth with the techs as they performed the test and then bullied his way into an MRI, even though he didn't need to. It was clear; she had a large piece of her skull embedded in her brain. There were bleeds all around it. Even with surgery, she was dead. He wheeled her out and had her set up in a room in pediatrics. He then called Chase and Cameron to confirm. He would need Chase to alert the organ donation board and he thought Cameron would like to be there to see it.
They all convened in their conference room and Foreman put the films up on the light-board. "She's a goner. She dropped two more points on the Glasgow Coma scale in the last hour." Foreman commented sadly. "Chase, you'll have to intubate soon."
"I'll get her set up and call the Organ guys." He said, sweeping her file up to give to the organ donation board. It would be one of their people, rather than a doctor who would talk to the family about organ donation. It just seemed ghoulish to have one of the doctors do it.
"Who's going to tell them?" Foreman asked.
"I guess I will." Chase commented. He would be the best at answering questions about what was going to happen to her anyway since he had the most experience dealing with patients in this situation, plus he already had a rapport with them. He made to leave the room.
"Wait." Cameron said. Still processing what had happened. The girl had just been yelling at her a little over four hours ago. "We should wait a little while longer."
"Why?" Chase asked.
"Because, her condition may change. It may improve. We should call House and see if he has any ideas."
"Mate, the only change that is likely in her condition is from brain dead to completely dead. I'm sorry that you have a hard time dealing with this, but no one has time to coddle you through it." He snapped. Why hadn't he asked Jenny to put Diana through earlier rather than letting her sit in the hallway with her parents?
"I don't expect nor need to be coddled, Chase." She snapped right back. "I just mean that we should wait for a few hours. Give them the peace of having her here until after the holidays are over." She stated. It was clear to her that it was the best course of action. The organ people were at capacity and couldn't do anything for several hours. There was no reason to ruin the family's last holiday together with bad news.
"Absolutely not." Chase said and left to tell them. Cameron hurried after him. Foreman went along to watch if nothing else.
"Chase!" She caught up with him in the stairwell. "Don't be hasty. You are just causing these people grief for no reason. Just give them until Monday. Then you can notify whoever you want." She implored. She had lost her husband just before a holiday and could think of few things worse.
"So you want me to keep them in the dark till Monday? Let them think that everything is right with the world then drop the bomb on them that she's dead?"
"It's the kindest thing we can do for them in this tough situation." She commented. They both turned to Foreman, expecting him to be the tie breaker but he put his hands up, letting them fight it out themselves. He wasn't sure who he agreed with.
"No, I think that is one of the cruelest things we could do to them. We owe them honesty and complete knowledge of what is happening with their daughter."
"You have the nerve to preach honesty. The guy who lies about having his tonsils out." She snapped.
"There is a huge difference between telling a white lie to get a patient to trust you and withholding pertinent medical information from a patient's family."
"A lie is a lie, Chase." She corrected him.
"Maybe in cuddly Cameron land but not in the real world. In the real world we don't keep from terminal cancer patients that they may have terminal cancer because we don't want to tell them nor do we sugar coat the severity of a child's condition, when talking to a parent because we have a problem dealing with it." He barked, reaching for the door. He had a new found hatred for lies of omission to family members. The pain of being kept in the dark about Rowan's condition still fresh for him.
She reached past him and pushed herself between him and the door. His hand was still on the knob but it was behind her back, her hand on top of it. She was inches from his face, close enough to smell his expensive shampoo and see the pale stubble just starting at his jaw. For some reason she was torn between wanting to smack him in the mouth and wanting to run her tongue along his lips. Instead she kept up the verbal parrying. "Is this the same real world where one doctor humiliates his boss and his whole department because he is too lazy and scatterbrained to ask a simple question and ends up killing a patient?" She questioned. His eyes narrowed and she realized that he could easily slam her back and hurt her. Part of her wished he would slam her back and do something else.
Before he could answer, his pager went off with a 911 telling him to get up to the operating theatres on the fifth floor. She moved allowing him to walk away but followed behind him, talking. "Chase, just because you hate your family doesn't mean everyone else does. These people will appreciate these days more than you will understand."
"My job is not to help people appreciate their loved ones. My obligation is to be honest with them and let them know their daughter is dead. The longer we wait the more her organs will deteriorate."
"Is that all you care about, getting her organs? Are you hoping to move to a transplant team, when House finally fires your negligent ass?" She yelled after him.
He stopped and spun around, glaring straight into her eyes. "Oh, but Cam, he wouldn't fire my ass because he prefers it to yours." He quipped and headed off. She finally stopped and turned to Foreman.
"Why didn't you say anything?" She snapped and headed off to prevent Chase from talking to family.
She pestered Chase about her point of view for nearly half an hour, while he worked on readying two patients for transplant surgeries. Without realizing it, she started helping him and their argument was in stark contrast to the smooth an efficient way they worked together. He had then been called into surgery and she unabashedly took the file from his locker so he couldn't give it to the organ board.
Now, Cameron and Foreman relaxed with an everything pizza in their conference room. It had been the first time either of them had taken an extended break in over 12 hours. It was cold now and Chase had been in busy when they had ordered it so they hadn't bothered worrying that he wouldn't have liked their choice in pizzas. Now they felt sort of guilty but oh well. Cameron slipped her shoes off under the table and untied her hair. Foreman always though it made her look much younger to have it unbound.
"So when are you two going to go for a tumble again?" Foreman asked his companion.
Without missing a beat, Cameron answered him around a mouthful. "What makes you think I want to give him another tumble?"
"Please, I thought you were going to start humping his leg in the stairwell, when you two were fighting."
"I was about to strangle him more like it. I am so pissed him right now."
Foreman looked at her from across the table and gave her a shit eating grin. "Being pissed at him has nothing to do with it. I'm not saying that you are in love with him, hell, I'm not saying that you even like him. What I am saying is that you want to screw him again."
"I do not. You know I have feelings for House." Cameron tried to defend herself at the same time as she tried to push all impure thoughts about her co worker out of her head. Only, it was really, really hard sometimes because regardless of his lousy fashion sense and stupid shoes, Chase was one of the most adorably sexy dorks she had ever met.
"I never said you had feeling for him other than lust. I'm not blind or dumb. I've seen the way you look at him."
"How do I look at him?" She tried to scoff.
"Like you are PMSing and he is a giant white chocolate cheesecake."
"No I don't. When have I ever?"
"Two weeks before Christmas when we went out to lunch and the only way you could get Chase to come with us was to go to that awful sushi restaurant." Cameron remembered. It had been the anniversary of when she had joined House's department and she wanted to celebrate. She had asked Foreman out to lunch but Chase had declined, saying he had to work. She had to bribe him by letting him pick the restaurant. He had picked a local Sushi bar, which had greatly annoyed Foreman. Foreman was a standard fare kind of guy and Chase's more refined sense of taste tended to get on his nerves. But the one thing she remembered clearly, was that for some reason, watching Chase delicately wrap his lips around raw, pink fish made her want to fly across the table and jump him. Maybe she had been ovulating. At one rather embarrassing point, she had actually started drooling. She had blamed it on wasabi.
"Ok, so maybe I do. Do you think he has noticed?"
"I doubt it. He's seems pretty dense about that kind of thing. But my point is that you don't have to care about someone to use them as a booty call."
"You don't think that is a little disrespectful towards Dr. Chase?" She asked, again ignoring the fact that was exactly what she had done to him.
"It would be if I had any respect for him."
"Which you don't?" She raised an eyebrow, knowing that Foreman was lying. He may not like Chase but it was clear that Foreman at least respected the Aussie's clever little brain.
"Which I don't. But look at it this way, what dude is going to complain because a gorgeous woman wants to have a no strings attached sexual relationship with him? And, it might even make House jealous enough to make a move on you."
"He wasn't jealous before."
"That was a one night stand and obviously so, but a long term relationship might kick start him into action."
"Yeah, but what will it do to my self esteem when we find out he is more jealous of me getting to sleep with Chase than Chase getting to sleep with me?" She joked, tickled pink by the idea of using Chase to make House jealous.
"That is a valid concern, but better to know now than later." He joked as he handed her a can of Coke. She felt naughty having a full sugar drink.
"Do you really think Chase is interested? He told me that he thought it was better to leave it as a one night thing." An idea was forming in the back of her mind and she needed Foreman's confirmation before she followed through.
"What guy wouldn't be? He probably only said that because he was afraid you were going to shoot him down if he tried again." Foreman tried to bolster her confidence. He liked the idea of Chase and Cameron together. It would help stop Cameron from fixating on House and the awkwardness of it tended to keep Chase out of the office, which was always a plus. But he knew he wasn't being totally honest with her. The dynamic between the two had changed since they had slept together. Before it had always seemed to be Chase sniffing around Cameron and doing nice things to get her attention, now it was reversed. Cameron seemed more interested and was always drooling over him, while he seemed to pretend like nothing had happened. It was clear that Chase was now in control because she wanted him more than he wanted her, and that annoyed Foreman. It made him angry since it showed that Chase was a bit of dick because getting Cameron had been about the hunt, not about her and because now he had the upper hand and Cameron couldn't manipulate him as easily.
"I'm very happy to hear that." She said and she finished her drink and stood up, not tying her hair back into its usual style. "Chase was going back into another transplant surgery right?"
"Yeah, he was working with Ayersman." Foreman supplied.
"Good, come with me." She headed out of the door and Foreman followed out of curiosity. The two walked from their office on the fourth floor to the surgery scrub rooms on the fifth. Just as she had hoped, Chase was alone in the scrub room, sitting down and reading over the Dr. Ayersman's notes on what was to be done. He looked annoyed, which was no surprise. He didn't like Dr. Ayersman and Ayersman didn't like him. The only reason they worked together was because Cuddy had threatened them both with sanctions if they didn't learn to co operate. Dr. Standish often forced them together because Ayersman was the weakest transplant surgeon, while Chase was the best transplant intensivist with the most experience. But maybe with House gone, things would go smoother.
Cameron motioned for Foreman to stand lookout by the door.
"Chase." She called as she walked up to him. He looked up at her through his bangs and the bright overhead lights made his eyes look grey in the way that television lights always made green eyes look blue. She took a deep breath and tried to convince herself that this was all for the patient's family and not for her. She stood over him, trying to affect a relaxed air. "I wanted to talk to you."
"I was afraid of that from the moment you walked in here." He quipped as he also rose and headed towards the lockers.
She followed him, admiring the view from behind. When he reached his locker she pressed in close behind him, letting her breath tickle his neck. "Just give them till the morning of the second. That's all I ask?" She could smell the antiseptic soap on him and enjoyed his involuntary shiver. But he said nothing, only turned around to face her. "Please, Chase, I can make it worth your while." She leaned forward, attempting to run kisses up his neck but he ducked out of the way.
"So keeping this child on life support for some stupid holiday is worth you whoring yourself?" He asked coldly. He was royally annoyed with Cameron right now. He sympathized with her not wanting to tell the Mansfields the bad news, but he didn't think it was fair to keep leading them on that their daughter might get better just so that Cameron didn't feel guilty. There was no medical basis for it and to him letting them live in ignorance of what was coming was just plain cruel.
Cameron was slightly taken aback for a moment, from House that comment wouldn't have even registered. She had a mental e-mail filter that ignored all sexually charged or vaguely hurtful comments from the elder doctor. However, hearing Chase say something like that was upsetting. Chase rarely said means things to people, but when he did, he made them stick. She pressed on though, her goal more important than her feelings. "I'm not whoring myself, Chase." She ran a hand under his scrubs, trying to loosen the long sleeved shirt he had under them. "I just thought you looked stressed out and could stand a stress reliever." This time she managed to at least make contact with her mouth. His skin was smooth and soft, bringing back memories of the best sex she had ever had.
"Cameron, why are you doing this?" Part of him wanted to crawl out of his skin from her touch and part of him wanted to crawl inside of her.
"I just think we both need to relax, so we can think more clearly. Then, you'll see that I'm right." She captured his mouth in a deep kiss that ended in a slight nip on his bottom lip. At that point, he lost about a pint of blood from his brain, not a good thing for a doctor about to go into a delicate surgery. But more than anything he was annoyed. He was so tired of Cameron and her emotional terrorism. He was tired of the fact that she treated you like a cold blooded murderer if you didn't fit into her narrow, black and white view of the world. And most of all he was tired of fighting with people that should respect him but didn't no matter how much he tried to make them. So he gave up.
"No matter what you do, I'm still going to tell them that she is brain dead, when I am done in surgery." Chase told her.
She had to fight not to snarl at him. For some reason, on the few attempts he had made to ever say 'no' to someone, she thought he always came across like a petulant child. Maybe it was the pouty lips, who knew. "But I can think of far more interesting things for you to do with that wonderful mouth of yours." She cooed at him, trying one last time, working her tongue around the pulse point just under his ear.
"I have to be in surgery in about 10 minutes. So if I go down on you for 8 of them will you shut up and leave me alone?" He snapped, trying to think about anything other than throwing her up against the lockers and making her cum until she screamed.
Her first inclination was to slap him silly, her second was to say that 'yes', it would get her to leave him alone about it for roughly 8 minutes. But she went with her final thought, which was to glare at him and storm out.
"So, how did it go? Is he going to give you the weekend or not?" Foreman asked from the doorway.
"We haven't decided yet." She answered, refusing to believe that Chase was going to go through with letting that little princess die on New Years. He would do what she thought was right, she just had to find a way to convince him.
1:51 am January 1st 2006
Three hours later, Chase stumbled into the Diagnostics lounge, looking for some tea. He was tired, sore, and in a rotten mood. However, that was par for the course when he had to deal with Dr. Ayersman. The man was an idiot and a prig. He had never liked working with Chase, even before the whole blackmail thing because he thought Chase was too uppity for a 'mere intensivist.' To which Chase pointed out that a large portion of his residency had involved working under one of the best transplant surgeons in the world, Dr. Bernard, as the intensivist on his team. Dr. Bernard had been pompous, self righteous, infallible, condescending, inappropriate, and had a god complex the size of Sydney Harbour but Chase had learned many things from him; chief of which was how to take a joke.
It had been very rewarding work, knowing that you were saving lives, but there was also the really shitty part of the job that Chase's Catholic upbringing couldn't let him forget. In order to do a transplant there must be a donor and usually, that donor is going to die. It was never easy for him to sit there and basically watch a person die right in front of him and do nothing. The first few times he had done it, he had walked out at the end of surgery and vomited until he dry heaved. Then he had gone home and cried his eyes out into his pillow. It wasn't that he hadn't known that these people were already dead or close to it before he even got there, it was just the mere act of turning of the machines and watching a person breathe their last as their heartbeat slowed and then became nonexistent was hard. He had tried to rationalize to himself, that what made them who they were was already gone ect, but watching the cessation of the autonomic acts of life never really got any easier than it had been when he had watched it happen to his mother.
He had been surprised the first time he had seen it, when he had watched his mother die. It hadn't been like it was in the movies. There was no dramatic final breath, head lolling to one side, and eyes staring fixedly up in a loving manner at her only son so that he could dramatically close them as he said his farewell. It had been much slower actually and harder to tell. She hadn't stopped breathing the moment they shut off the machines like he had thought she would. Instead she had continued to breathe for several hours. At first it had seemed normal and he had sat there holding her hand and praying for her. Then she had started to choke but not gasp as saliva ran down a throat with no ability left to swallow. Soon her breathing had become more shallow with a distinct clicking in the back of her throat as her tongue slid into the back of her throat. Finally her breathing became almost nonexistent and he had crawled in bed with her, gathering her to his chest and cradling her head on his shoulder. Each time he thought she was gone; she would take another small, thin breath, her muscles too weak to fight against the weight of her ribcage. Finally, there was just a gentle deflation of her lungs and a sinking of her chest. There was no dramatic last breath, nothing at all, just and almost imperceptible sigh.
Maybe the lack of drama had been why it was so hard for him to finally realize when she was truly gone. He had waited for and dreaded the moment of her death for so long. Even before she had gone into hospital he had lived in a constant state of dread that he would come home and find her dead. Sometimes that dread had been so bad that he was afraid to go into his own home and would sit across the street for hours waiting for some sign that she hadn't drowned in her own vomit, fallen in the pool, or drunken herself to death. But with that tiny sigh he realized it was over. It had been one of the worst, yet one of the most liberating moments of his life. There was such a sense of freedom in knowing that the worst had happened and no matter what else may come, it could never hurt you as badly. Now, as he watched his patients expel that last bit of air in a final sigh, he wondered if the patient's family will find it awful, freeing, or both.
In some ways, he wanted to thank his father for sparing him that terrible, dreading death watch that he had gone through with his mother. Rowan had known how hard it had been for Robert to sit there, day after day, watching his mother wither and fail in front of him. And how that feeling of relief when it was finally over and done with had, with time, twisted him up inside with guilt because it wasn't right for a son to feel relief at the death of his mother. Part of Chase recognized that his father's act of keeping him in the dark had been a backwards act of love. He had wanted to spare his son that guilt. But their was a larger part of him, that wanted to dig up his father and find some way to hurt him for denying him the change to be there. Rowan had had no right to turn his only son away to live in a false sense of security and a never give him chance to prepare or say good bye. Rowan had had no right to deny his son the change to be there and hear that sigh and know that is was truly over.
Though it used to tear him up inside, now he was more philosophical about transplant surgeries. It still bothered him but he found ways to ignore it or deflect it so he didn't end up hanging over the toilet every time he had to shut off life support. But it was still hard, to sit down with a family and tell them that, though their loved one was still breathing and just looked like they were sleeping, they were actually dead. It was such a helpless feeling, to only take on a patient when all hope was gone. That was part of the reason he had come to work for House. When his residency was complete, Dr. Bernard had offered him a permanent position on his team with a huge salary and all the perks and privileges. Chase had declined; instead he had accepted a position at Monash with his father. That had lasted three weeks before Chase was about ready to slit his own throat and had sent his CV out to every available fellowship in the English, Dutch, or German speaking world. House had been the first to offer him a job and he had snapped it up.
At first, he couldn't have cared less about where he was. Even still, he wasn't particularly enamored with New Jersey but there was something about House's approach avoidance behaviour and derisive comments where lack of insults felt like fondness that reminded Chase way too much of what he considered parental affection. Slowly House had morphed into a bizarre father replacement for Chase. He was a strange amalgamation of Chase's distant and demanding father that made him bow, scrape, and work past the point of endurance for a mere crumb of attention so that even if it was an insult Chase would say, 'thank you, sir, may I have another?' And a depressed and addicted mother, who plied her misery with drugs and alcohol and found it easier to yell, scream and show her son the back of her hand than to hug, kiss and say she loved him. But he wasn't like the "uncles" from when he had been younger. "Uncle so and so" had always been a code word in his post divorce life for "hey, I'm the bloke plowing your mum so don't be surprised if you walk into the kitchen and see me doing her from behind on the kitchen table." He was just this unattainable figure that seemed to loom over Chase, like God maybe, at least sometimes. Then he would grow up and remember that House was just his boss not his father.
But other times he would fall back into the same stupid patterns he had been living his entire life. And it would crush him to realize that House didn't really care about him and thought he was a moron. But there was always that sneaking feeling that maybe House did care. He remembered, sitting in this exact spot, months ago, when Kayla had been recovering from surgery. It had been the middle of the night and Cameron and Foreman had gone home. She was still in the ICU so Chase had stayed. Plus, he hadn't wanted to go home because if he did he knew he would have to think about things he didn't want to. He had been sitting at the table, his uneaten dinner spread before him, feeling numb and nauseous. In the span of the last 12 hours, he had been chewed out by House, Wilson, Cuddy, Cameron, and Foreman and found out his father had died from an illness he should have known about.
After some time, he had pushed his food away, giving up all pretense of eating because the idea made him want to vomit. He had rested his head on his folded arms and tried to swallow past the dull, hollow ache that had taken up residency in his chest. That was how House had found him. He realized now, that that must have been when House had figured out about Rowan, because the elder doctor hadn't made a snide quip or scathing remark. He had just sat down beside Chase and asked if he was ok. Chase had looked over at him and House's face had seemed full of genuine concern, which had scared the crap out of Chase. All the yelling and derision hadn't phased him but House's kindness had undone him and he had jumped up and run away to hide. He had found an empty room and hidden in the washroom of it and cried. It was the only time had cried over his father's death.
What he hadn't known, was that House had found him. The elder doctor had stood outside of the door, hesitantly listening to his duckling cry. He had been torn between his desire to comfort the lonely, grieving young man and his desire to keep a safe distance between himself and the rest of the world. But he had waited, in case Chase had needed him. He had almost opened the door at one point, when he heard his fellow start to vomit but he didn't. He allowed fear and indecision to prevent him from making a real human connection. He had thought through every conceivable way that the situation could play out if he opened the door and if he didn't but none had been close to what had really happened. But in the end he realized that the mess Chase's parents had made of him wasn't his responsibility but the mess it had made of his case was. He had left Chase to his guilt and his miserable, hidden grief. So House had limped away and an hour later when he had seen Chase again, he had pretended as if he knew nothing.
But Chase didn't like thinking about that. It made him royally depressed and right now he didn't need to be any more depressed than he already was. Instead, he picked at the limp tuna sandwich in front of him, trying to work up the energy to eat. He was torn between the desire for food and sleep but before he could decide, he was interrupted by Foreman. He wasn't in the mood to deal with the other doctor but at least it was better than Cameron.
"Chase." The eldest duckling hailed, "I wanted to talk to you."
"Those have got to be five of the most loathsome words in the English language." Chase groused, pulling the crust off of his bread to nibble on.
"Someone is grumpy." Foreman tried to joke. He was not happy at all. The situation around the hospital was stressful at best and the situation between Chase and Cameron was even worse. Logically he agreed with Chase. There was no reason to keep Diana on life support when that bed and those resources could be spent on someone else. But emotionally he agreed with Cameron. Her parents should not be forced to remember the holiday as the day their daughter died. And it was so little work to give them that one mercy. The worst part was he realized that his two fellow doctors had dug their heels in because of things that had happened to them in the past. Because Cameron had lost her husband too soon, she always thought it was better to hang on and because Chase had watched his mother linger and die slowly, he always thought it was better to let go. Medically, Foreman usually sided with Chase, for all his laziness, he was a brilliant doctor but friendship wise, he sided with Cameron, which was why he was here talking to Chase in the first place.
"What do you want, Foreman? You aren't going to kiss me then try to get me squiffy to take advantage of me like House did last year are you?" Chase asked, with a sideways look, wrapping his food back up and resting his head on the table. He was referring to the previous New Year's Eve when House, Wilson, Cuddy, Foreman, Cameron, and himself had all been sitting in the conference room when the years had changed. Cameron had made a comment about everyone needed a New Years kiss. Cuddy at looked resigned, Cameron hopeful, and House devious. Chase had been ignoring them thinking about Cass, when House had grabbed him by the hair and kissed him full on the lips with tongue. Chase had been way too stunned to actually do anything at the time. Then House had pulled out much Champagne and other assorted liquors and tried to get him drunk so he would put on a French maid's uniform. Even though it had all been a joke, it had all been really humiliating.
"Don't worry, you aren't my type. You don't have enough meat on dem bones." He dropped into an exaggerated southern accent and smiled before he grew serious again. "I want you to reconsider Cameron's request. It doesn't cost us much and it will mean a great deal to them and her if you just give them till Monday." Foreman started in. He had intended to try more jokes, but they were both too tired for them.
"No. They deserve to know the truth about their daughter's condition. There is no reason to drag this out, letting them think there is still hope, only to blind side them with, 'oh by the way your daughter is brain dead and we've known since Saturday night but we just didn't want to mess up the party atmosphere'."
"It doesn't have to be that way. We can come up with some reason, some excuse." He tried to reason.
"There is no excuse for keeping them in dark about their daughter's eminent death." Chase snapped, getting up and turning to look out of the window.
Foreman leaned back and smiled. "I feel like I walked into the Twilight Zone. Cameron is being sneaky, mean, and underhanded. You are being emotional and have a backbone, and I'm having to be the peace maker. This shit just ain't right!" That got Chase to turn around and look at him. "Look man, I agree with you but Cameron can't handle the idea of these people loosing their daughter on a holiday. If you go through with this you will prove that you were right but she won't sleep for weeks. Do you really want to do that to her?" Foreman was all seriousness now.
Chase wanted to ask Foreman if he cared what it would do to the Aussie to have to lie to these people. If he thought for one minute that there might be a reason Chase was so insistent to keep the family informed so they wouldn't feel like they were hit by a truck while going to the market. But he didn't because Foreman didn't know about Rowan and Chase had no desire for him to find out. "So we now pattern our procedures around Cameron's nocturnal habits?" He snipped.
"No, but it really means a lot to her and you owe her after what went down between you two." Foreman hated to pull that card. He had tried to find out from Chase what had happened between the two but in typical tight-lipped style, Chase had said nothing. He had neither confirmed nor denied that they had had sex. Cameron had been more forthcoming about it and had told him in far too great of detail what had gone down between them. That poor woman needed more female friends. So, even though he knew that if anyone had actually been taken advantage of that night, it was probably Chase, he also knew that his blonde co worker suffered from debilitating Catholic guilt over everything even remotely improper that he had ever done. So why shouldn't Foreman utilize the fact that Chase was probably being slowly eaten alive by the guilt that he had slept with someone under the influence of drugs after he had spent so much time watching other people do the same thing do his mother.
"I don't owe her anything." He said more quietly, the familiar twang of guilt resonating through him. "It isn't right or fair that the rest of us should kowtow to her because she can't deal with death. Nor is it right to give the Mansfield's a false sense of security just to assuage Cameron's guilt."
"But Chase." Foreman started but was cutoff by the Aussie.
"When the organ donor people are ready, I'm telling the family." He then turned and stalked into House's office, effectively ending the conversation.
Foreman sighed at left, not wanted to deal with either them for a while. Maybe there was something Cuddy needed him to do.
In the ICU, Cameron had taken it upon her self to talk to the Mansfields. She stood over them, as they sat beside their daughter. It made her feel better to stand, stronger some how. As if the position and the white coat made her infallible. "We are optimistic that there will be some change." She smiled.
"But the other doctor said that it didn't look good." Mrs. Mansfield asked.
"Brain injuries are tricky. Some people come out of them with no adverse affects at all but others don't. We just have to wait and see." Her smile grew more fragile.
"So there is a chance she will get better?" This time it was the father.
"There is a chance." She answered because it wasn't a lie, there was an extremely small chance.
"So what are you going to do for her?"
"Right now all we can do is wait. You should sit with her and talk to her. That can really help bring someone around. We will re evaluate in a few hours." She turned to leave, sparing one last look at the little girl and her loving parents.
"I don't understand. Dr. Chase made it sound like things were grim, now you say that she will get better?" Her father questioned. Chase had spoken to them briefly when he had intubated her and moved her to the ICU. He had explained that she had a brain injury but that was all he had had time for before he was called into surgery. Mr. Mansfield didn't like the way this lady doctor wouldn't look him in the eyes and talked so fast that he felt like he was interrupting her if he wanted to say something. He had felt more comfortable with the Australian doctor.
"Dr. Chase is in surgery right now, so he hasn't been kept up to date on her condition. I'm telling you that you should just relax and wait for a while and we'll check again soon." She turned and walked out quickly. She felt terrible lying to them, but realized it was all for the best. And after all, wasn't that what House had taught them, do anything, say anything to help people. Chase couldn't argue with that.
She walked down the hall and headed for their office. She just couldn't understand why Chase was so insistent to cause this family pain. Didn't he understand that when someone was sick or hurt, family holidays were precious? She sometimes thought that Chase had no feelings at all. When her husband, had been sick, all she could think about was finding some way to keep him around. She remembered how their last Christmas together had been more special than any other because the doctors said he wouldn't make it that long. Their New Year's kiss had been the most meaningful of her life.
But he hadn't lived to Valentine 's Day. He had died two days before and she remembered the stark realization that he would be around for that holiday. And now she hated it with a passion. All she could think of, when she saw the candies and puffy hearts was the pain of loosing her husband. She didn't want to damn someone else to that fate. She didn't want the Mansfield's to have to dread New Years every year because it was the anniversary of their daughter's death. And it was so easy for them to prevent that. All they had to do was keep her on life support for a few more hours and it would make such a huge difference to the family. She would make Chase understand one way or another.
She found Foreman in the lab, looking over several result, handed to him by a haggard looking tech. "I talked to Chase." He said.
"And?"
"He won't budge." Foreman shrugged.
Cameron shoved a loose strand of hair behind her ear in irritation. "I can't believe that for once in that pussy's miserable, passive aggressive life he manages to say 'no' to something, and it has to be this."
"Ironic isn't it." He was quite amused that Cameron had called Chase a pussy. "Cam, maybe he is right. We should just let the kid go. It is his call, she's his patient."
"No, he isn't right. He is just being lazy and isn't willing to fight. It's wrong of us to destroy the last memories they will have of their daughter because Chase doesn't want another patient to work on. It is about damn time that he learns that being a doctor requires heart, caring, and sensitivity, goddamn it. Three things that he usually lacks." She stalked towards the diagnostics office, Foreman following.
"How exactly are you going to teach him?"
"Every woman is born with two weapons in her arsenal. Used well, they can take down the strongest men. Weapon number one failed but I goddamn guarantee Chase will go down to weapon number two." She bit out, spoiling for a fight.
They arrived in the office to find Chase fast asleep in House's chair. Cameron set about making coffee to kill time till he woke up.
Back in House's office, Chase leaned back in their master's big chair, pulling his lab coat over himself like a blanket. He was planning to take a nap before he had to go back into surgery. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, quickly drifting off to sleep. He dreamed of home, like he often did, the sound and sight of the ocean bringing him a sense of peace and safety. But his dreams were not calm ones.
He looked up from where he was building a sandcastle. He loved to play in the sand, even now. American's had their fond memories of snowballs and snowmen; he had them of building castles in the sand with his father. The Christmas he had been five, he had spent most of his time outside playing on the beach. Every day he would build a new castle for his father and wait beside it for the elder man to come. As the tide rolled back in, he would stand in front of it, his reedy legs doing nothing to protect his masterwork from being taken back out to sea. Everyday he would wait and every day his father would come too late to see it. Everyday his father would promise to see the one the next day and every next day he wouldn't be there.
He walked along the familiar beach. He knew if he looked to his left the house he grew up in would be sitting up on the embankment with its steep staircase to the back door. He looked ahead of himself and saw his father standing some distance away, looking out to sea. He headed towards the elder man, wanted to hug him and tell him that he had had a horrible dream that Rowan had died of cancer. However, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to catch up to Rowan, his father was always just too far away.
He tried to yell, to scream at his father to make him stop, but no sound came out. Every time he opened his mouth to yell, sand blew into it choking him and obscuring his sight. He couldn't even speak because of the choking weight of the sand. Tears streamed from his eyes as he tried desperately to make some sound to let Rowan know that he was behind him. In the end Rowan never turned around and Robert never managed to make a sound.
He woke with a start, coughing. He stretched his jaw out to try and offset the headache that would surely ensue from grinding his teeth in his sleep. The dream was quickly fading from his memory but he recognized a common theme in it. He, like many present and former asthmatics often had dreams about choking to death or not being able to breath as a form of anxiety dream. He hated those dreams. He steadfastly refused to acknowledge the symbolism of not being able to speak though. He could only handle so much self realization in one day.
He looked out to see Foreman and Cameron in the conference room, sharing some coffee. He wondered if he could play off like he was still asleep, but Cameron made eye contact with him. No such luck. With no way out, he stood up, shrugged back on his coat, and walked in to the room. Foreman gave him a sympathetic look and handed him some coffee. He accepted it but would have much preferred tea.
"You get some rest?" The black man asked.
"Yeah, a little." He answered, still trying to avoid Cameron's roving eyes.
"Chase," Cameron started, "you have to wait."
"No I don't." He snapped, having been dreading this conversation for hours.
"Yes you do. There is no reason to destroy their happy memories. There is no reason to hurt them even more than Diana's death already will." She stood up and walked towards, where he stood by the window.
"Do you really think one day is going to make that much of a difference? She is already dead, letting them think otherwise is cruel." He turned to glare at her. But he knew one day could make all the difference. If only he had had one more day with his father, one day to talk to him and tell him that he was loved and hated, respected and feared, to tell him that he would be missed and grieved.
"No, Chase, not letting them think otherwise is cruel. Don't you have any feelings? Don't you understand that they love her and you are taking that away from them?"
"No, I'm not. A brain aneurism took her away from them. I'm just giving them the news."
"You may be able to sleep at night thinking that, but I can't."
"You can not really be selfish enough to think that you are the only doctor that hates giving bad news?"
"And you can't really be lazy enough to want to get rid of her so you don't actually have to work, like that woman Foreman and I saw you overdose with morphine." Foreman almost winced in sympathy. Cameron could be evil when she wanted to be.
"If you think I did that because I'm lazy, than nothing I say to you is going to matter." He said quietly and turned away to stare of the window.
Cameron turned to Foreman and gave him a subtle wink. "Chase," she touched his arm, forcing him to face her, "It was Valentine's Day when my husband died. It's supposed to be a day for lover, but instead it is the day that I hide in bed and cry because I miss him." She paused and looked down, allowing tears to flood her eyes. When she looked up again, one lone tear had slipped from her left eye. "I don't want the Mansfields to remember the holidays as the day Diana died. I want them to have good memories like I don't have." He voice broke.
Chase looked away from her again, but this time not in anger. She knew she had won. Chase stared and glared when he was pissed, he looked away when he was defeated.
"Cameron, I don't want to drag this out. It hurts worse to not." Then he stopped. The words freezing in his mouth, unable to get past the icy lump that formed in his throat whenever he thought about his father.
"Trust me, Chase, I know pain and I know grief. But mostly I know that this is the right thing to do." She let another tear fall.
'I know too. And I know how it feels to be kept out in the dark while someone you love is dying because other people have decided that you don't have a right to know.' Was what he wanted to say, but instead he said. "You win, Cameron. I'll wait till Monday." He turned and walked out, not being able to face either of them now.
"I know you hate sports metaphors, dear, but that is what you call a home freakin' run." Foreman looked at her in awe.
"I told you. He may have been able to turn down sex but I knew he wouldn't be able to stand strong against tears." She smiled and wiped her eyes.
"And they call House manipulative?" Foreman joked as he headed out to find Chase and make sure that he wasn't about to throw himself off the top of the hospital.
TBC