Title: The Six Ways that Robert Chase Dies
Summery: Response to prompt 18. "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." - Isaac Asimov Death fic. Chase dies- when, how, why.
Rating-PG-13 (cussing)
Notes: Thanks to silentflux for ideas, support, betaing, and generally being a terrific person!
Downward Spiral
Dr. Robert Chase died 6 days before his 35th birthday in the back of a crack house. He didn't care that when the police raided the building, his body was found lying on a thread bare mattress that had been flipped recently with the still damp puke face down. He didn't care that the needle was still stuck in his arm or that the police stood over his body and kicked it once to find out if he was faking it and muttered, "stupid crack whore." But then, he hadn't cared about anything for a long time. He died with a smile on his face and the knowledge that he beat both his parents in the end, topping his mother's downward spiral into alcohol and ruining his father's good name. He certainly didn't care that House was one of the few that came to his funeral.
Fame
Dr. Robert Chase died 6 days before the end of his fellowship contract would have closed. House cursed him for never having any follow-through. Chase had been sick for two weeks with the 'flu' before House finally ordered him to go home. Six hours later Chase called 911 wheezing that he needed an ambulance. Chase spiraled down the tubes -- one system breaking down and when they got it back on line, another system would crash and burn. Eventually, there was nothing left to resurrect and the line stayed flat. The autopsy revealed lots of what was wrong but not why it went bad. Chase's apartment was torn apart and all he owned or ate went under inspection. A new white board was procured so that even months later, Chase's case with Chase's symptoms would be pulled out and looked over once again. Eventually, the board was erased and Chase's file buried in a drawer where Ester's once resided. Long after Foreman and Cameron had moved on and House had all but forgotten them, Chase's name would still fall from his lips. It was fame, of a sort.
Hollow Victory
Dr. Robert Chase died six days after House did. No one really saw the aneurysm coming for House. Frankly, despite House's drugs, diet and lack of exercise, one would have expected to think about House's mortality more often, but the truth was that everyone thought House would hang on longer than any of them if for no other reason than to spite them. Wilson sat in the first row at Chase's funeral, there wasn't any family for it, and it looked so sad and empty. Wilson missed House already -- he just knew that House would be sitting next to him commenting on just what a stupid way for a person to die. I mean, killed by a dyslexic arsonist? Guy couldn't even burn down the right building. Wilson couldn't stop the laughter any more than he could the tears that followed. When it finally subsided into hiccups, it was a hollow victory indeed.
Regrets
Dr. Robert Chase died on a Saturday. He died an old man at home in his bed, the way he wanted it. He gracefully slid from life to death between breaths. His wife had died the year before and he knew that he wouldn't last much longer, 85 years was long enough, he had lived a full life with few regrets. Sometimes in the quiet he would wonder briefly what life would have been like had he stayed at Diagnostics. He certainly wouldn't have met his beautiful wife, or had his two beautiful children. No, he thinks of life and what it could have been, but he had no regrets.
Unsung
Dr. Robert Chase died 6 minutes before midnight. At least that was the time of death listed on his death certificate. In reality, Chase dived into the water channel at 6 minutes after eleven. The team, at House's behest, took a walk to clear their heads on a case despite the fact that it was the middle of winter and 6 degrees above zero. What parent would have their child out at eleven o'clock at night was beyond House. Nevertheless, the seven year old girl managed to fall in the channel and they stumbled upon the scene that was brewing because of it. The woman had been screaming and crying hysterically pointing in the water and yelling "Chrissie!" over and over. Then Chase went and shucked his coat and shoes and dove into the water. Chrissie came floating up to the surface two minutes after Chase went in. Chase took ten. By the time they got him up on the road, the paramedics had arrived, and they tried to revive him a couple of times but said it was pointless. House shoved them away and struggled to climb into the ambulance. "Idiots! He's not dead until he's warm and dead." Chrissie survived, Chase didn't.
Everyone bemoaned losing Chase : Foreman, who didn't like him, called him a hero, and Cameron, who had tossed him aside, regretted it. Wilson and Cuddy bemoaned not getting to know him better. House -- House called it like he saw it. "Oh he died trying to save a child? How big a hero is that? If he had lived, he might have saved 50 children! Hmpf ,you should call me a hero! I've saved more people than the four of you combined. Hell, I was saving people when you were teething! Hero my ass, he's a dumb fuck who couldn't even save himself." But House toasts to Chase once, in a bar, and calls him a hero where no one House knows can hear.
Rebirth
Dr. Robert Chase died six days into the month of December. At least, that's what the death certificate said. He'd heard about the American witness protection program before but certainly never thought it would be applied to him. Of course, he had the bad luck to jog past the alley where an infamous gangster had flown in to kill some liability. Frankly, Chase hadn't understood half of slang used but he could identify the shooter and that was all that mattered to the police. He was ordered to tell no one, and he didn't. He found out later that they had faked a car crash that was so bad that his car had exploded and conveniently left his body unrecognizable. He spent three years rotting in a small town as a family practitioner. He never set foot in the Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital again. No Dr. Robert Chase died on December sixth and Dr. Benedict Neimus was born.