SO YOU HAD A BAD DAY...part 2
When House came breezing into the conference room, he was surprised to find it empty. At the very least he had expected to find Chase there, with the coffee made. Grumbling to himself, he went to the counter and made his own coffee, then he went in search of Wilson. Not surprisingly, Wilson was in his office, eating a bagel. House grinned and stole half of it, enjoying the thick slathering of cream cheese.
"You're scaring me," Wilson commented.
"You've seen me eat before," House pointed out, licking a dollop of cream cheese off his thumb. "You should be past the scared phase and now somewhat fascinated.
Rolling his eyes, Wilson clarified. "You keep showing up early. It just feels wrong somehow." Grabbing his remaining half of bagel, he bit into it with far more finesse than House showed. But that didn't stop him from getting cream cheese smeared on his chin. He reached for his napkin only to have it snatched away by House, who smirked at him. Sighing, Wilson retrieved another napkin from his desk drawer.
House watched him with amusement. "Always such a boyscout, Jimmy," he taunted. "Extra napkins on hand. Bet you have condoms in your wallet too. And a neatly folded hanky in your pocket."
"Your point being?" Wilson shot back, as he meticulously wiped his chin.
"I don't have a point." House dropped down into the chair across from Wilson's desk and polished off the rest of the bagel half. "Chase isn't here yet." He watched for Wilson's reaction to his comment.
Frowning, Wilson replied, "So?" He glanced at his watch. "He's not late."
It wasn't much fun mocking his friend when he wouldn't play along, so House gave up trying to torment him for his own entertainment and said quietly, "He's always the first one in. Has been since he started working for me. Of course, back then it was because he was trying to impress the teacher."
"And now?" Wilson prompted, looking only marginally interested in where this was going.
"Now it's habit." House leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankle. He took a moment to enjoy the fact that he could do so with only a twinge of pain. A twinge he was careful to keep hidden. "Chase is a creature of habit. I'm sure it offers him great comfort. Personally, I'd go with a hooker...but that's just me."
Turning away from House, Wilson set his bagel on the bookcase. He turned back and House grinned at him, knowing that he was doing it to keep it out of House's grubby paws. Wilson ignored the grin. "Why do you care that Chase is late?"
Rising from his chair, House headed for the door. But he threw an answer over his shoulder. "I don't care, I'm just curious." With that he headed back to his office for a cup of coffee and the chance to glance through the morning paper he'd stolen from the nurse's station on the way in.
OoO
Chase didn't show up for the differential, which pissed House off enough to page him repeatedly. When the pages were ignored, House was ready to send Cameron and Foreman off to find the Aussie, only to have Wilson stride into the conference room looking grim.
"Chase is in the emergency room," he announced.
"What happened?" Cameron was the first to respond, her face going pale as she rose to her feet. "Is he all right?"
Wilson nodded at her, waving his hands. "He's fine. He's not injured. I don't know the details but apparently he came across a bus accident on the way in and he brought in one of the kids. Cuddy is there and she said she'll keep you updated."
House looked at Wilson for a moment then he tapped his marker on the white board. "Okay, boy and girl, pay attention to the symptoms and give me something to work with!"
Cameron sat back down and tried to focus.
Foreman followed suit.
House gave them only half his attention, watching Wilson walk out the door.
OoO
He didn't want her to die.
That was the thought running through Chase's head as his fingers massaged the little girl's heart. She was bleeding out, white as a ghost, barely breathing but damn if he was going to stop trying. He prayed between squeezes, willing her to keep breathing, to keep on living. A detached part of his focus wondered if her parents knew. If they were on their way. If they would be in time.
"We're losing her!"
Chase recognized Dr. Reeve's voice. She was head of Emergency day shift and he knew she was good at her job. But he was the one with his hand on the girl's heart. He was the one failing to do his job. He was supposed to keep her alive. Resisting the urge to close his eyes, Chase kept counting and squeezing as a team of doctors and nurses bustled around him, trying to keep the girl alive. He didn't even know her name. All he knew was that she had brown eyes and dark hair and that she was about eight years old. Too young to die.
The sound of the flatline from the heart monitor made Chase jump. He flinched for a moment, fingers tightening too hard and he felt sick at the thought that he might have hurt the little girl, hand flexing open for a moment. The irritating beep of the monitor reminded him of his job at hand and he went back to squeezing her heart, keeping count under his breath, hearing Dr. Reeve's calling the time of death but he didn't stop squeezing.
She was too young to die.
"Chase."
A hand on his arm made him flinch. He kept squeezing until fingers clamped over his wrist, then he looked up to see Cuddy standing before him. She looked sad, her eyes overly bright as she squeezed his arm.
"She's gone," Cuddy said softly. "It's over, Chase."
"Right." He knew what she was saying, knew it was true. The heart in his hand wasn't beating and someone turned off the monitor. The sudden quiet hurt his ears, the silent echo throbbing in his temples. He was still squeezing, his fingers acting on reflex until Cuddy reached over and uncurled his fingers. He realized she was wearing latex gloves. It was a stupid thing to notice. By the time she had pulled his hand away, taking him by the arm with her clean hand, he had come back to full awareness of himself. He shook Cuddy's hand off his arm. "Sorry," Chase whispered.
Cuddy nodded, offering a brittle smile. "You did all you could do."
He thought she meant to be reassuring but it sounded almost condescending to his ears. Chase silently chided himself. Cuddy was doing her job and he was supposed to be doing his. House would be wating for him. "I have to change." Looking down he realized he was covered in blood.
"I'll tell House you'll be up soon," Cuddy replied.
"Thanks." It was probably one of the longest conversations they had ever had, and Chase was pretty sure it was the most awkward, so he turned and walked away from her, tugging off his gloves and depositing them in the nearest receptacle. He felt a little bit like he was unravelling at the seams and he was annoyed at himself. He was used to losing patients, it was part of the package deal with being an Intesivist. But losing that little girl hurt in a way Chase didn't want to think about. It made him feel sick and angry and he fumbled for his usual detachment, not finding it readily accessible to him this time.
By the time he reached the locker room, Chase had a hand clamped over his mouth. He made it into the toilet stall barely in time to heave the coffee he'd drank into the bowl. It didn't taste so good coming back up. By the time he was done gagging he felt shaky, but after rinsing out his mouth he was able to grab some scrubs, strip off his bloody clothes and step into the shower. He had learned to keep extra sets of underwear and tee shirts on hand, so he pulled them on then, the scrubs, once he'd washed up and dried off.
His hair caused him some minor difficulties, since he couldn't find a comb, but he did what he could then stared at his reflection in the mirror. He had to put on his work face. The facade he presented to the rest of the world. Chase wasn't about to let House see anything he didn't want him to see. The man would take anything he could get and run with it, using whatever it might be against Chase to torment him. He wasn't in the mood for that today. It would be hard enough to deal with the usual smart ass remarks and taunts.
After a moment of reflection he felt ready. Chase left the locker room and headed for Diagnostics. But the moment he entered the office he knew something was wrong. Something felt off. It was the way everyone looked at him as he entered the room.
"Chase, are you okay?" Cameron asked, crossing the room and confronting him before he'd barely taken a step inside.
"I'm fine." He frowned at her, confused by the question.
Foreman walked by, coffee cup in hand, and clapped him on the shoulder before moving to sit at the table.
Chase blinked at him then looked back at Cameron. "What's going on?"
"We heard about the little girl," Cameron replied. "Cuddy told us what happened."
"And?" Chase stepped around Cameron, moving to the counter to pour himself a cup of coffee that he had no intention of drinking. He wasn't all that surprised when she followed him. Chase turned to face her, wondering at the sympathy he saw in her eyes. "What?" he demanded, feeling a bit freaked out by it.
Before Cameron could respond, House was there, plucking the coffee cup out of Chase's hand and taking a sip. "Can we get back to work now?" he mock-whined. "It's time to try and save those who are still among the living."
Chase was relieved by House's intervention, even though he had to stop himself from flinching at the reminder that one little girl was dead. He poured himself another cup of coffee that he wasn't going to drink, then he sat down and grabbed the file Foreman shoved in his direction. As he read the history he felt himself relaxing back into focus, drawing his detachment around him like a cloak. He even managed to offer up some suggestions that House didn't shoot down, and if he felt House's eyes staring into his back as he headed out of the room to run some tests, Chase let it slide.
House was back to work and things were finally back to normal. He didn't want to think about anything past that. And so went the course of his day.
But as he ran tests and did procedures and differentials, he couldn't keep away a nagging wonder. What if he hadn't come to work early? What if he had gone his normal route instead. Would the accident still have happened, or would someone had made a different choice too, changing the course of events just enough so that one little eight year old girl would still be alive?
It took his patient coding to drag Chase out of those musings and back into the present. But a part of him couldn't help wishing he could go back home and start this day over again.
OoO
Chase was more than a little surprised when Foreman invited him to go for drinks after work. Not that they hadn't done that a time or two before, but there was something different in Foreman's eyes this time. Something that looked eerily like pity. Which pissed Chase off. He hated pity. He had gone out of his way, his entire life, to make sure no one pitied him. The best way to do that, he learned, was to not tell them anything about himself or his past. Letting everyone make up their own minds about him, while giving off the impression of being little more than the obvious label of playboy slacker, made it easy for Chase to slide through life without people feeling sorry for him. Poor Little Rich Kid was the worst label ever. Especially since it was so incredibly wrong.
"We can go to Charlie's for a few," Foreman was saying. "I can drive."
"A drink sounds good," Chase replied, even as he reached for his messenger bag. "But I'm beat tonight. Maybe tomorrow?" Making it sound like he was interested was the quickest way to get someone to back off. And it worked.
Foreman nodded. "Sure. Have a good night, man."
Chase managed a smile then he was out the door. He made a detour on the drive home for the pizza place, which reminded him that he really needed to hit the grocery store soon to restock. He didn't even have milk for cereal, not that he ate a lot of cereal anyway. Which meant the two boxes in the cupboard were probably stale by now.
Once home, Chase ended up putting the untouched pizza in the fridge. He wasn't hungry. All the way home he was focused on one thing. The little girl and the way her heart had felt in his hand. Which rather effectively killed his appetite. But he did grab a diet coke out of the fridge, and a glass. Then he opened the corner cabinet and stared at his rather impressive array of alcohol. He had vodka and whiskey and brandy, along with wine and scotch and the bottle of spiced rum he was looking for. Diet coke and spiced rum made an interesting combination and Chase was in the mood for pretending he really wasn't in the mood to drink. To pretend that he just wanted to relax a moment before a shower and bed.
The one thing he didn't' have in his cupboard was gin. That was his mother's vice and Chase couldn't even tolerate the smell of it anymore. But that wasn't the only reason why he didn't have it in the house, or why he never drank it. Chase wasn't a fool. He knew his mother had been a full blown alcoholic, and that two members of her family had been alcoholics as well. Her brother, who was also dead now, and an aunt. Chase didn't want to become like his mum, so he figured if he didn't drink gin he wouldn't become addicted like she had. It fit with his line of reasoning in that if he ever hurt himself and needed medication, he would never ever take Vicodin. Dumb logic, but Chase clung to it like a lifeline.
Sitting at his kitchen table, Chase poured half a glass of diet coke then added a measure of rum. He swirled them in the glass, watching them combine, then he took a sip. Strong and smooth, just the way he liked it. He stayed at the table, trying not to remember the little girl as he drank. Trying to be stronger than the memories that haunted him. But the glass soon emptied itself and Chase found himself making another drink. But before he could take a sip he bolted up from the table and dumped the glass in the sink.
Hands gripping the edge of the sink, Chase watched the fizzling liquid go down the drain. He swallowed hard against sudden nausea then turned the water on to try and wash away the smell of the spiced rum. He then splashed his face with cold water, reaching for a paper towel to dry it. He didn't feel better and he told himself it was too much rum on an empty stomach, but no way was he going to try and eat anything right now. Turning away from the sink, Chase headed for the bathroom. He stripped and stepped into the stall and ran the water as hot as he could stand it.
Ten minutes later he was clean from head to toe, but he still felt sick to his stomach. He dried off, dressed in loose sweats and a long sleeved t-shirt and remembered to comb out his hair. He brushed his teeth, hoping to rid his mouth of the taste of rum then he crawled into bed. He was tired but he knew his mind wasn't going to click off tonight so he turned on the TV and tried to numb himself with mindless viewing but it was three AM before he fell asleep, only to dream about his mother dying, and himself standing over her coffin with her beating heart in his hand.
THE END...of part 2