Hey, I am again thankful for the reviews and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this chapter. I hope that you enjoy it, thanks a lot.

Chapter Twelve:

"Name?"

"Robert Rhys Ryan Chase."

"Occupation?"

"Doctor, specialty in intensive care,"

"Place of birth?"

"Melbourne, Australia,"

"Age?"

"Twenty-six years old,"

"Parents names and birthplaces?"

"Dr. Rowan Rject Frykin Chase from Prague, Czech Republic and Amelie Ann Joelle Jaress-Chase from Hamburg, Germany."

"So, Dr. Chase, would you mind telling me about your childhood?"

Chase glared at Dr. Calvin. She was a nice woman, but he fount it hard to open up to her, no matter how hard he tried, so he figured that he could just give her a very brief outline of his childhood.

"I tried to kill myself when I was thirteen and started taking anti-depressants when I was fourteen. My mother and father got a divorce when I was fifteen and my dad moved to Sydney, and I stayed in Melbourne to take care of my alcoholic mother. When I was sixteen my mum finally drunk herself to death and then I went to live in the seminary."

"I see," Dr. Calvin tried not to show that she was shocked at the obvious traumatic childhood. Someone like Dr. Chase Sr. she would have assumed to be a relatively good father. "When did you see your father again?"

"I saw him when I was in the hospital for slitting my wrists and then again when my mum died and my dad had me in the hospital to treat me for my anorexia."

"Anorexia, why don't you tell me when you first became anorexic," Dr. Calvin said.

Chase turned away; he suddenly didn't feel up to talking any more.

"Dr. Chase, you have to start opening up a little bit more. If you don't I won't be able to release you from the hospital." Dr. Calvin knew from speaking about it to Dr. House that Chase would have a very hard time opening up because it isn't something that Chase has ever done before. This scared her a little thinking of what he could be hiding, but if she could just get him to open up about his parents and his anorexia then she could release him and just have him go to a psychiatrist in Australia once a week, he would even still be able to work.

"I need to speak to someone else first," Chase whispered, looking up at Dr. Calvin who was looking at him as though trying to figure out what to do.

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"So, you wanted to speak to us?"

Drs. Cameron, House and Foreman were seated in three chairs around Chase's bed. They had been quite surprised when Dr. Calvin had called and told them that Chase wanted to speak to them, but at the same time very excited about getting to talk to him. They wondered only vaguely why Chase wanted to talk to them, especially as they'd been sitting here for five minutes already and he hadn't said a word.

"I don't like you messing with my personal life," Chase whispered, "I don't like you telling me that I'm worthless, and I hate it when you call me British. I don't like it when you drop books in my lap when I'm sleeping or push me off of chairs just so that you can have a good laugh when I fall."

Everyone was silent, they really weren't sure if Chase had paused to give them time to say something or not.

"You might think that because I never say anything about it that it doesn't hurt me, but it does. I bottle things up inside and I have ever since I was a young child, but if I keep doing it then I'm just going to explode and I understand that. That is what happened when I stopped taking my anti-depressants. I didn't want my life to be ruled by them, I've been on them so long I didn't know what I would be like without them, but I also didn't like what I was without them. When I first started medical school was when my prescription had to be upped from mild anti-depressants to severe anti-depressants, and one of my professors asked us all what medications if any we were on and I was so ashamed of them. I wouldn't tell him so he called my father who told him what I was on. I was so mad, so ashamed. Once he found out it was like he was tiptoeing around me so as not to break me or something."

"Once Father Michael asked why I had left seminary school and I told him the truth. I told him that my parents didn't love me, my dad left me, my mum beat me and God forgot about me. I told him that it seemed as though God just didn't care about me anymore and he told me a poem."

"Can we hear the poem?" House asked softly.

Chase looked at him, "It's to do with God; I don't think that you'd like it."

"I want to hear it," House said, and Cameron and Foreman both nodded their approval.

Chase sighed and looked at them, "Have you ever heard the poem entitled Footprints by Margaret Fishback Powers?"

"No," They all replied.

Chase thought for a moment before starting.

"One night a man had a dream

He dreamed that he was walking along the beach with the Lord

Across the dark sky flashed scenes from his life

For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand

One belonging to him

And one belonging to the Lord

When the last scene of his life flashed before him

He looked back at the footprints in the sand

There was only one set of footprints.

He realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of his life

This always bothered him

And he questioned the Lord about his dilemma.

"Lord, you told me when I decided to follow You,

You would walk and talk with me all the way.

But I'm aware that during the most troublesome

Times of my life there is only one set of footprints.

I just don't understand why, when I needed You most, You would leave me."

He whispered, "My precious, precious child.

I love you and will never leave you

Never, ever.

During your trials and testings,

When you saw only one set of footprints in the sand

It was then that I carried you."

The room was silent after he was finished. In true Cameron fashion, she had tears rolling down her face, not just at the story, but also at the fact that Chase had truly felt for such a long time that nobody cared about him. Foreman was thinking over the story and was thinking about what a great story it was, even if he didn't believe in God or anything.

"I had heard that poem once or twice in church before he told it to me, but I had never been able to actually put it to use in my head. When Father Michael told me the poem I knew that God hadn't abandoned me, I knew that he was there carrying me throughout my troubled times, but then I couldn't help but wonder, why he hadn't done anything to help my mother or to help me. Then, I simply felt betrayed, so I guess that that wasn't exactly what Father Michael was intending for me, but that's what it felt like. I believe that God created the universe, and I believe in Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve and I believe that God has love for every person in the world and I look out the window every day and I feel and I see the love that he has for the world by the way people love each other and by the trees and the blue skies, and even the rain. Rain washes away the impurities of what we've done to the earth and to ourselves. And I also believe that everything happens for a reason, like he's got this huge library up in Heaven and for each person there is a book and the book lays out his entire plan for you as a person and everything that happens to you or will happen to you is in that plan. I believe in fate, serendipity, and I know that you don't and that's fine. I know that God has a reason for my mum's drinking and my dad's absence and my wife's death, I just…wish that I knew what it was."

After his speech everyone had tears rolling down their faces, even Foreman and House.

"Why are you telling us this?" House asked.

"Because, my therapist said that I had to talk to someone but that it didn't have to be her. I wanted to talk to you, maybe explain some things."

"Why don't you explain why you went back to being anorexic," House suggested. "I know and understand why you were anorexic the first time, but I want to know why you were anorexic now."

"It just all got to be too much," Chase replied, not meeting anybody's eyes. "I mean, I have tried so hard to eat on a regular schedule since I was fifteen but it's been so hard lately to do it, I was working so many hours and it was hard to keep a schedule. To tell you the truth, having a schedule was the only thing that kept me eating before now and I can't eat if it's not on time with the schedule that I have and it just got to a point when I was really depressed and I felt like nothing was going right and I just…I guess I made the decision not to change my eating schedule and I know how stupid that was, but it's so hard for me, I hate food, although lately I've loved chocolate. I have locked things up inside of me and I was likely to explode did I not exert some control over my life, and that's what it was. Eating was something that I could control, be it controlling myself to eat on the schedule or controlling myself not to eat."

"So you have a new eating schedule now?" House asked.

Chase nodded and smiled lightly. "Yeah, I'll eat at 6am, noon, and 6pm everyday. I'll be able to keep to that schedule, I'll have to otherwise I'll fall back again."

"How did you first find out that you had that ulcer?" Cameron asked.

"Well, it was about three months ago or something like that, and I had been feeling like crap, my stomach pains were getting so bad that I could barely move. Anyways, I started looking at my symptoms and I thought that there was a chance that I had an ulcer so I went to talk to Wilson about it. He agreed with me and he was about to run a test to find out conclusively when I started throwing up blood. After that I had to wait a few days before he could do the test, but when he did it just confirmed our suspicions and he put me on the meds. I've been taking way more than I should have every day because I didn't want to in any way show that I was in pain, I sort of numbed the pain. It was sort of like my anti-depressants. They don't make it all better: they just numb the never-ending pain that will plague me forever."

"Chase, you never know, depression may cease eventually," Cameron said, with sadness in her voice.

Chase smiled lightly, "I appreciate it, Ally, but it's not going to happen, believe me."

"I can't get over the fact that you've been hiding all of this: the stuff about your parents, your anorexia, your ulcer, your wife, your daughters, your depression, all of this, from us and we never even noticed that something was wrong. What kind of friends are we?" Cameron sniffed and Foreman reached out and took her hand reassuringly.

"You were good friends," Chase reassured her, "Believe me, you were. If I had wanted you to know than you would have known, I can hide things better than you can even imagine and if I don't want someone to know something, then they aren't going to."

"Is this all?" House asked. He wanted to be absolutely sure that his, he shuddered at the thought ex-duckling, wasn't hiding any more pain from them. "This is everything."

And for the first time ever, they noticed that the walls that Chase always had up, were not up anymore. His usual guarded blue eyes were no longer guarded and suddenly they looked to have a lot more green in them then usual. He wasn't lying, he was being completely truthful with them for the first time and they knew how hard it had been for him. "Yeah, House, that is everything."

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Hey, there is chapter twelve I hope that you guys enjoyed it. This is by far my favourite chapter out of all the ones that I've written mostly because this chapter was almost purely written to resolve any issues that they had before as a team and as friends. That poem Footprints I was pretty eager to find a place for it in the story because it is my all-time favourite poem. I hope that you guys like it as much as I did and I would appreciate any reviews that you give me. The last chapter will be up very soon and I'll tell you now that it isn't going to be very long, but I hope you like it anyways. Thanks a lot, One Two