A/N: There you are. I thought this chapter was way too long for my likings, and I don't want to make this chapter 7. No, that'd screw up my perfectly perfect plans! So, Chapter 6: Movement, Part 2.
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"This is crazy. I've probably been eating my girlfriend's terribly cooked macaroni chicken, and now it's coming back to haunt me in hallucination style…" Chase babbled as Wilson applied the cold gel to his taught stomach…
"HS, Hippocampus Syndrome…I think our resident wombat may be pregnant." House had told him.
"You're kidding."
"No way, Jose. Do this ultrasound for me. Fifty bucks he is."
"Fine…I'll say it's an abnormal tumour if anybody walks in."
…What House had asked him to look for was unbelievable, at first. Pregnancy would explain why Chase had snapped at him the other day. His first wife, Katie, had overreacted like that too when he'd bumped into her in the hallway seven years ago. So as not to have his blood pressure going through the roof again, Wilson wisely decided to turn the screen away from him.
Oh, God forbid. House, once again begging to differ with differential diagnoses, was right. The tiny thing was squirming around, minding its own business inside of its father, as if it was listening to a dance song. A familiar annoying tune came into his head, something House was listening to on his iPod the other day at full blast as he imagined it in his mind.
"Now's a good time to show him the monitor, James!" a wafery little voice of reason came from inside Wilson's mind. Those voices, as House would put it, sucked. Mentally gathering himself, Wilson turned to Chase, who seemed to be mouthing an unfamiliar prayer, his eyes closed to the world.
"Ch-Robert, do you want to see the screen now?"
Breaking out of the prayer, Chase suddenly remembered where he was. Feeling scared at what was going to be on the screen, he nodded.
What followed was a large attempt not to gape from the wombat, and an even larger one from Wilson to not blurt out the bet he'd made with House. However, this also marked the first time the Intensivist had looked down at his stomach, or even dared to will his hand into placing it near the place where offspring was forming. Yes, there was lip-biting and obvious embarrassment to do so, but it was a start.
"Can you feel that?" Wilson questioned curiously.
"Not really. Cripes, he…er, she is moving a lot, eh?" Chase answered, focusing on the monitor.
"Perfectly normal. You look to be about, fourteen weeks along." Wilson explained, noticing an eyebrow being raised at how far along he was without realising it. "He or she will be due around mid November."
"Wait a minute…maybe, just a flutter, I guess." Chase mentioned, hoping he didn't look that shocked.
Not worry, his boss had just walked in on them. Again, he looked like he had something to say.
"'Morn, Wilson. Got any shots of Wombat Junior yet?" House asked in a sarcastic, chirpy sort of way. He then proceeded to answer his own question by walking over and glancing at the monitor, before giving a three second look, a tiny wave of mockery before turning around to his eldest duckling again.
"I'm still upset about you getting knocked up. Well, I guess it's my fault, never went through with you about that time of the month. Relax, I'll support you. Only, are you sure Pip's the mother?"
Chase scrunched up his face in annoyance. "I'm not cheating on her."
"I never said you were, but I'm not gonna say you aren't. However, Cameron cry on you shoulder lately? Get stomped on by Cuddy, spanked by Annette…
"If you're asking me who I've made bodily contact with, I've hugged Cameron when she was having a bad day. Bumped into Cuddy in the hall around that time, and I swear there's these two nurses that are trying to have it off with me. Oh, and one chick down at a bar, but it wasn't a one night stand. I haven't had one since-"
He trailed off there. House knew he was going to say "Cameron". Slight irritated by Chase's honesty, he went on.
"Idnax pointed out that it's not necessarily Pip's baby. I just wanted to know who I can poke needles in. Cuddy's butt will be fun; could it be your S&M friend by any chance?"
"Haven't seen Annette since Harvey. I'm not into tor-"
"Whatever you say, Wombat! Give me your paw, need a basis, just like any third grade science project." He retaliated with. Quickly poking the wrist with the needle, and a slight wince from the prickee, the pricker quickly pulled it out again.
"It's not likely Cuddy, you've only run into her once-"
"Who gives! I wanna poke Cuddy's butt!"
"-and it's very unlikely to be Idnax or Racknell, they've only been here a week.The nurses, well, that's their own fault. The girl at the bar, do you still have contact with her by any chance? Cameron I think's the one we should be worried about." Wilson pointed out reassuringly, beginning to shut the ultrasound down. He hoped, for Chase's sake that it was his girlfriend's baby. Pregnancy was never a good time to be stressed for anybody, and if Pip wasn't the mother, it'd be putting the baby, and Chase, at a high risk alert.
"Perfectly healthy, no signs of foetal distress. You're okay too, despite having slightly abnormal blood pressure. Just relax and take care of both of yourselves." Wilson said, smiling and passing Chase a print-out.
With a shy smile and still slightly blushing, he left clinic room in a hurry, before taking a glimpse of his child, before stuffing the evidence in his lab coat pocket and heading back to diagnostics.
House then looked at the syringe again, then to Wilson, who was picking up his notebook and pen.
"He's not 'perfectly healthy", wise guy. Did you notice how much you were contradicting yourself back there? He's stressed and now he knows Joey's mother is questionable!"
"Is it illegal to comfort your expectant duckling?" Wilson asked hotly. He could see this would result in a typical slagging match a mile away.
"Yeah! Why couldn't you tell him more than the partial truth? For someone that far along, they could have been feeling a lot more movement than what was described. Either the cub's unusually small, or that foetus isn't growing correctly-"
"Chase, as we know is a very secretive person. He could have been feeling little bits of movement for weeks and not told anyone."
"That's not an excuse. The fact, for fourteen weeks, Chase has been an alternate incubator, and not one little wombatey instinct has told him that he could have HS!"
"House, nobody's even heard of HS. As far as I know, you could have just made it up to make it some sort of code to stop Cuddy's evil flying monkeys from getting in."
"Wilson, we ARE Cuddy's evil flying monkeys. Just rebellious ones."
"And you're calling the baby Joey?"
"Sure, why not? Give an Australian foetus an Australian animal's baby name, especially if it's our own live wombat cub who's expecting it."
"My point is, you're sounding like you care." Wilson retorted with finally. House couldn't win now, not without sounding like the mother Chase never really had.
With a snort and mumbling something similar to "I'm going to get some blood of Cameron," he stalked out of the room.
A/N: Hoorah, I'm done with both parts of chapter 6! And now I'm up to "Safe" in Australia. All In, here we come!