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Part 9
"You paged me?" Chase asked, eyeing his boss warily. House had been studiously ignoring him since their conversation in the clinic, and he wondered if the other man had managed to keep his promise. Being paged out of the blue was undoubtedly a cause for concern.
"We've got film. Break out the popcorn and tell me what you see," House ordered, gesturing from his seat to an MRI scan set up on his office's light board.
"We have a patient?" Chase thought that unlikely given the absence of his two colleagues.
"Do you see a patient? The third-floor guys love delusions," House told him as he took out his Vicodin bottle. "Why don't we stick with what's actually here. Come on, I promise this will be fun."
Chase answered him only with a dirty look, then examined the item in question. "Brain scan," Chase ventured slowly, taking his time. Oddly, he discovered the patient's name and the record date had been blacked out. "Adolescent."
"Even that moron Bornstein in neurology could tell me I was looking at a teenager," House admonished. "Don't settle for the moon, reach for the stars."
Chase ran a hand through his hair in frustration, wondering if this was yet one more test he was being set up to fail. Determined not to give House the satisfaction, he renewed his study of the film.
"There's a small…something—looks like scar tissue—on the parietal lobe, near the occipital," he said after a few minutes, pointing to a small speck on the MRI.
"That's what it looks like," House said rather agreeably, but did not elaborate further.
"Some sort of head trauma?" Chase inquired. He still couldn't figure out why he was in the office and Foreman wasn't.
"Taken post-concussion," House replied. "Sports injury. Patient had no symptoms, but mommy and daddy were feeling a little overanxious and decided to get proof that junior wasn't damaged for life. If they only knew." House was in apparent good humor as he moved to place two new scans on the light board. Chase frowned. A happy House was often a dangerous House.
"Moving right along, what do you make of these two?" House asked.
The ID info on both scans had also been expunged, reinforcing Chase's belief that House was playing some sort of game. The first film was of the conventional MRI type that Chase usually dealt with and showed an adult brain with what looked to be a minor concussion. But the second…
"An fMRI?" Chase asked, interested. Unlike a conventional MRI scan that showed pathological changes, a Functional MRI scan was used to measure neural activity—most often in research studies. Chase had only seen such films in medical journals, though Foreman had told him that the hospital's neurology department had been running a study that used the technique.
"I'm no neurologist, but half the brain looks like it's in overdrive." Chase looked up at House. "Come to think of it, why isn't a neurologist here right now?"
"Patient in question doesn't seem to have a lot of trust in Foreman."
Chase frowned, wondering if Foreman had managed to piss off yet another person in the clinic. But he set that thought aside when something about House's words struck him.
"Patient, as in one person?"
"Three for the price of one," House quipped as he arranged the films in order on the light box."
"That's not possible," Chase protested as he looked at the films again and wondered if House had finally cracked. "The teen one shows scarring, the adult scans don't. That sort of thing doesn't go away with age."
"Well, now you're only saying that because it never has. But if the right circumstances came along, well, now who can tell?"
"The right circumstances?" Chase's disbelief was evident.
"Like, say, a weird brain-searing pulse thing right out of Star Trek? Doctors use pulses to blow things out of the body all the time. Maybe one hits just the right axon, which fries just the right scar tissue and poof!"
"You actually believe that? You didn't bring Foreman and Cameron in here because, what, you thought I'd buy this crazy theory?"
"Proof's in the picture." House said matter-of-factly. "And I didn't page Wynken and Blynken because there's one other little fact I left out."
Used to his boss's penchant for theatrics, Chase remained silent while gesturing for him to continue. House pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against and came to stand in front of the light box.
"This is your brain." House pointed majestically to the first film, then moved on to the second set of images. "This is your brain after 5/22. Any questions?"
For a moment Chase couldn't breathe, let alone get any words out. He just stood there staring at the MRIs without making a sound, letting the obvious meaning of House's demonstration wash over him. He hadn't wanted to admit it to himself, but if he were being truthful, he'd have been surprised if the results had been different. Just one more thing he had to thank his parents for, one more blow from an Almighty who seemed to relish kicking him around. For a second he wanted it to all go away, willing the light box to extinguish the damning proof, only to add fuel to the fire when the switch turned off by itself and the machine went dark.
"The test was positive." It was a statement, not a question. And he didn't bother to clarify any further because he knew House would understand.
The diagnostics chief merely nodded when Chase's eyes flicked in his direction for a moment before returning to the now darkened light box.
"They never told me they took an fMRI." Another statement.
"They didn't know," House informed him. "MRI that day was restricted to critical patients and only the chief neurologist could authorize one. Someone tipped Bornstein about your EEG results. He thinks that brainwave study of his is going to net him a trip to Stockholm. Your gray cells were just too hard to pass up; he stuck you in the machine himself while the rest of us practiced real medicine on all the sick people up here. Too bad for him that some overeager clerk called up here to find out whether the order to send the film to neuro was an error—and that someone sent an anonymous memo about his blatant trampling of patient rights and misuse of hospital property to Cuddy."
That last observation might have earned a faint smile from Chase at any other time, but at that moment his mind was too preoccupied with the ramifications of what he'd learned.
"I was 13." He'd been thirteen, with parents who were barely speaking to each other and a mother who'd already begun to slowly but steadily drink herself to death. "When I woke up in the hospital they told me I'd collided with a friend at a rugby match—didn't recall a thing. I remember my father telling me the scans showed I was fine, but then he put me through the ringer anyway."
And four months later his dad had walked out. Chase wondered if his father had spotted the abnormality—if the bastard had kept yet one more thing from him in the hopes he might not consider it a big deal. It was just one more reminder that his dad hadn't known him at all.
"Only thing the scarring seems to have downsized was your coolness quotient for the past 16 years," House quipped as he settled into his chair. "But getting back to the fun stuff, your X-gene probably did pop on, but whatever it is that controls your mutation was disrupted, so no mind tricks until something on 5/22 caused the scar tissue to do a disappearing act. All of a sudden, your brain sensed new hardware that hadn't been installed and decided to reboot, causing the EEG results that are going to land Bornstein in purgatory for the immediate future. An fMRI—way more expensive than a DNA scan."
"Glad to be of service." But Chase sounded anything but happy.
"Your sincerity is overwhelming. Go home."
That brought Chase out his emotional funk and he whipped around his head to look at his boss, unable to keep the hurt surprise off his face.
"You get a 24-hour pass to meditate on the unfairness of the universe, your lowly place in it, how mom and dad made your life miserable, and my utter benevolence."
"I can do my job," Chase replied defensively.
"Uh, uh, uh," House warned, wagging his finger as if he were scolding a two-year-old. "You and depressed go together with patients as well as…ulcers and perforations." Chase flinched inwardly as he remembered the Kayla debacle, when the news of his father's death had led to a patient's demise. "And I have no intention of re-igniting Foreman's drive for world domination. There is but one lord of this manor and I am he. And I say, get lost." House tossed an envelope at a startled Chase, who stopped it mid-air before reaching for it with the caution an explosive expert might treat a bomb.
"Show-off," House said as Chase opened the envelope and found an address, telephone number, driving directions, and a few clips from medical journals and newspapers.
He looked up, perplexed.
"After you're done sobbing about the unfairness of defying the laws of physics, you are going to consult this weekend with one of the country's top genetics experts, who requested my esteemed assistance after he saw that moronic Time article," House informed him. "Or that's what Cuddy will be waxing enthusiastic about should she nose around. In actuality, he can't wait to see an adult-onset mutant and give you the short-course on how not to break my things without touching them."
Chase raised an eyebrow, but remained silent. He'd never really known what sort of help he'd expected to come from House. Asking his boss for assistance after admitting an exploitable flaw wasn't often the prudent course of action.
"Dr. Henry McCoy, unlike yours truly, gets to spend his summer avoiding the masses with the ridiculous rich in some Westchester mansion—I know you'll fit right in," House continued. "Though you'll have to tell your latest dominatrix you're busy this weekend."
Chase refused to dignify that last comment with a response, asking only, "That's it?"
"In proper gratitude, your lord demands as tribute that you fulfill his clinic hours next week," House proclaimed gleefully. "Now get out and start wallowing. Clock is ticking and some of us have residents to torture."
Feeling emotionally upended, Chase wasn't entirely sure how to take his cantankerous boss's sudden indulgence in kindness. His mother had often done the same thing the few times she'd managed to sober up, and those lulls in the storm had always ended with him as a wreck.
Still, he murmured a "Thanks" as he moved to leave the room.
"Oh, and the next broken window comes out of your paycheck," House shouted to him as he headed into the hallway. Numb as he was, Chase smiled. At least some things hadn't changed.
To be continued