Intense
—passionate in emotion, thought, or activity; occurring or existing in a high degree; very strong, violent, extreme, sharp, vivid, etc.—
Disclaimer: If I owned House, M.D. then logically you guys would be watching this, not reading this. Since you're obviously not, then logically… You get the point.
Chapter 5: Sanctuary
He did everything automatically, and all too soon was left with nothing to do at all. It was clear from the start that Cameron's injuries were not life threatening, but it was still a badly shaken Chase who finally stood back and helplessly watched as they settled her into the ER. He found himself desperately hoping that her injuries were minor, not simply for the obvious reasons, but also because he couldn't imagine being called on to treat her as an intensivist.
There was some blood; looking at it made him feel ill despite the fact that he'd never been squeamish at the sight of blood in all the years of his life, and despite the fact that he regularly saw large amounts of it. It was Allison Cameron's blood, and that made all the difference. He'd always laughed at the stories of how others in the medical profession had turned pale, or even fainted, when it came to treating their own family members. Suddenly, now, he could sympathize. It wasn't embarrassing at all. It was simply terrifying.
"Broken arm, probably just badly bruised ribs and hip, although the x-rays will have to come back before we can be sure of anything. What worries me is the possible effect of the concussion."
Chase turned around with a start, having forgotten the presence of House right up until he spoke. Looking at House, Chase almost hated him for his ability to remain completely calm. He could remember a few tense moments, when he'd glimpsed House's face as the first EMTs had moved Cameron onto the stretcher, but now the older doctor looked as he always did. In contrast, Chase was a poorly disguised emotional mess.
As if sensing his thoughts, House added unkindly, "Don't bother praying that she won't die on you, Chase. That is, if you happen to believe in God today."
It might have been due to some unknown reason, or perhaps House saw the anxiety and frustration in Chase's expression, but he was prompted to add, in somewhat a gentler tone, "She'll be perfectly fine, divine intervention notwithstanding."
To tell the truth, Chase almost welcomed the distraction of House's acerbic comments; it made the whole situation seem more real, and at the same time less dire. He would have played right along, if he hadn't suddenly remembered exactly why Cameron was currently lying unconscious before them. The memory came with a surge of anger towards House, and Chase chose not to reply, instead crossing the room so that he ended up on the other side of Cameron.
He realized his mistake too late: the new arrangement meant that he had to stand facing House if he wanted to keep watch over Cameron. The undercurrents in the room might have changed from concerned to hostile, then, if not for the return of Dr. Lin.
She recognized Chase and gave him a compassionate smile when she saw how upset he looked. They'd worked together before; Chase regularly had ICU rounds at PPTH, though he was officially in House's department of diagnostics. Intensivists were hard to come by, after all.
"A lucky accident, or lucky as far as these things go," she said, passing the x-rays to Chase's eager hands. She spared House a curious glance, obviously having heard some of the constant rumors in the hospital. "No fractures on hip or ribs showed up, although her arm was obviously broken, not by the direct impact of the car, but when she fell. A clean break, though. She should regain consciousness soon, but she's suffered a pretty serious concussion."
Chase nodded, feeling his stomach lurch alarmingly when Dr. Lin's words triggered the memory of how he had heard the sound of Cameron's head striking the floor, a sound that was not quite lost beneath the squeal of car tires. Maybe he had only imagined it from what he'd visually seen, but either way, it was fresh and vivid in his thoughts.
"She'll need a CT scan, of course, but I thought I'd leave that to you guys. Of course, strictly speaking, I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm sure you'll be pleased," Dr. Lin concluded, looking from House to Chase, as if unsure whom to really address.
"Dr. Foreman's coming in," House replied, effectively securing her attention. "I paged him. As a neurologist, I'm pretty confident he can handle any trauma she might have suffered."
Dr. Lin's lips flattened into a thin line, clearly indicating that she didn't appreciate his flippant tone, but then, unexpectedly, she broke out into a smile. Humor was rare in her department, after all – even though House might be something more like an acquired taste.
"Well, she's officially yours," she said, nodding her head to Chase before she swept out of the room, leaving the two doctors alone again, with nothing to quite dispel the tension that had unexpectedly risen between them.
It could have been the cause of a very genuine regret between them, simply because deep down, they rather liked each other. Chase had his own reasons, of course, and he knew that they were about as logical as mixing Freud with vodka. He knew it was unhealthy to place too much in House, knew that he shouldn't let every older superior fall into the gap that his father had left in him, in vain hope of finding the right replacement. None of that really altered his actions, in the end. Maybe one day something would force a drastic change, but for now, and no amount of knowing why and how changed what simply was.
In comparison, House's affection toward Chase seemed pretty straightforward. Foreman offered some interest, but beneath that exterior he was strictly by the book. He had ideals and beliefs that he sometimes would bend the rules for, but overall, Foreman was predictable in his reactions. Cameron was about the same, if the exact opposite in terms of empathy. Of course, Cameron had other qualities that appealed to House, but on the whole, she was easy to understand, if sometimes a little inconsistent.
Then there was Chase, the most troubled of the three, and, oddly, the most interesting. House had expected otherwise, but then again, being the son of Rowan Chase called for the development of something different. His initial stereotyped profile – rich, white, daddy's son trying to live up to the name, was entirely correct. But it did leave out a lot of other fascinating things, which naturally made House want to torture Chase, just a little of course, with the same morbid curiosity that made people trap things and then poke them. Chase was full of contradictions, missing information. House made it his hobby to find that information, and the more Chase resisted, the more House was intrigued.
Despite knowing that Cameron had already been subject to a very professional and thorough physical examination, Chase couldn't resist checking again, even under House's impenetrable gaze. They would have to wait until she regained consciousness, of course, but there were certain types of fractures to the base of the skull he could look for. Chase leaned over Cameron to look for bruising around the eyes or behind the ears, an almost totally unnecessary action, but one that gave him something to do.
It wasn't until he straightened again that Chase suddenly realized that House had probably thought that he was going to kiss Cameron. He briefly contemplated trying to explain himself, and then thought, bloody hell. He hadn't done a single thing wrong, so there was no reason to act like a guilty schoolboy caught kissing the teacher's daughter. He was rather sick of being misinterpreted.
Generally he didn't care too much about what others thought of him, all too aware that most people viewed the world through eyes trained by society to stereotype, to generalize, and to force life into convenient black and white. House took a perverse pleasure in doing all of the above, but only on a basic level so that others underestimated him; he was too intelligent to confine himself to such limited views.
"Did you really page Foreman?" Chase ventured after a few uncomfortable moments spent staring at nothing. The question was more to break the silence than out of any real doubt.
"Why should he get his beauty sleep?" House griped, but for an instant Chase was almost sure that the other doctor was just as relieved as he was that they were talking. "I called Wilson, too."
"For what? He's an oncologist. There's no point in making him worry about Cameron until he comes in the next morning."
"He's coming now," House said with an almost evil smile. "You know, you might say that I'm his savior."
"Savior from…?"
"A night of mushy romance at an overly-expensive restaurant with poor wines," House said all in one breathless whisper, leaning closer to Chase as if entrusting a state secret. He straightened a moment later and spoke in a more normal voice. "Actually, savior from his wife."
Chase rolled his eyes but couldn't keep his mouth from dropping open from surprised when Wilson walked into the room at that moment, accompanied by a rumpled looking Foreman. They looked appropriately worried and when they moved to look at Cameron, Chase abruptly found out that he didn't want to share her with anyone.
"Ironically, it's the guy you diagnosed with rabies today," Wilson said. "Guess you should have been a little nicer to him."
"What guy?" House said. "Where is he, anyway?"
"They called in the police. The bastard even tried to make a run for it, once he realized that he'd hit someone."
Chase hadn't even begun to think about the man who had caused the accident in the first place. He remembered how the car had come tearing down from the second level, with absolutely no regard for the speed limit in the parking structure, and saw his sentiments mirrored on House and Foreman's faces. With some effort, he refocused his thoughts on the immediate tasks.
Please, let there be no serious head trauma, he found himself thinking as Cameron underwent the CT scan. Cuddy dropped by and seemed to bring an aura of authority and order simply with her presence; she helped sooth everyone's frayed nerves. Halfway through, Chase was struck by how unreal it all seemed, and almost expected Cameron to wake and say that this was all a joke. He supposed it would really sink in later. They all scrutinized the cross-sectional x-rays, looking for evidence of bleeding, but found nothing serious.
"Luckiest accident I ever saw," Foreman said after the CT scans. "Bruised her ribs, and what looks like a miniscule skull fracture." He was stating what everyone already knew, but they could afford some indulgence now. Saying it seemed to help downplay Cameron's narrow miss from the multitude of injuries they knew she could have had, so they all quietly listened to Foreman's official report.
When Chase thought of everything else that could have happened, his blood ran cold. Paralysis, spinal chord damage – there were at least a good dozen more things that ran through his mind like they did when he was going over a patient's case.
"Scratched up her arms pretty badly, of course," Foreman finished, and then paused. "All she has to worry about is the concussion. Cuddy's already informed the people listed as her contacts, but since it's probably minor, we didn't want to alarm them. They live out of state, apparently. Chase, do you know if she has a friend to call?"
"What? Why are you asking me?"
"You get along famously with Cameron, don't you?"
That statement might have provoked some kind of reaction from either House or Chase, except at that moment Chase remembered something. "She was supposed to be waiting for a friend to pick her up. That's why she was sitting in the parking lot."
"What exactly happened, anyway?" Foreman asked. "I didn't get any of the details."
"Like I said, she was waiting for a friend, so I was waiting with her." Aware that House was listening intently, Chase tried to be as stoic as possible, but his tone was slightly defensive when he added, "She was alone, I couldn't just leave her."
"I was walking, the guy was driving, and Cameron decided to be the heroine," House said when Foreman turned curious eyes to him. "She tackled me."
"He dropped his cane, so he was stuck in the middle of the road," Chase added unhelpfully, but decided that they'd provided enough about the drama. "Why isn't she awake yet?"
Foreman gave him a searching look, but didn't point out the fact that Chase didn't need to be asking questions like that. "She should wake up pretty soon, but if she's out any longer then we'll have to worry. Getting back to my point when I was asking whether she had a friend to call – what we need is some 24 hour supervision over the next two days, in case anything develops. If not, she's probably safe. We should find out what happened to the friend she was waiting for. Otherwise, I'll call the nursing department and see if they can arrange anything for now."
"It's okay," Chase interrupted. "I can take her back to her apartment and stay over with her. She doesn't live that far from me."
"And how are you going to get in?" Wilson asked curiously, having heard Chase's last words when he came in. He looked back and forth between Chase and House, as if expecting to need to break up some kind of brawl. Chase gave him a disdainful glance.
"I have a key and even if I didn't, I can use hers. Don't be an idiot." Okay, so the circumstances leading Chase to having a key to Cameron's apartment were a little more complicated than that, but no one needed to know the whole story. Chase actually enjoyed the look on Foreman and Wilson's faces until he made the mistake of looking at House.
"My, my, I didn't know you were that kind of friend," House drawled. "I'm hurt. Don't Foreman and I deserve an invite to your little orgies in the backyard?"
Amusement evaporating, Chase looked at House coolly, and decided he wasn't about to spend the next five hours explain this to his coworkers' satisfaction. Instead, he tried using the condensed version. "She gave it to me so I'd have a place to crash if I ever needed one. Her place is closer to here than mine."
"But you just said you live close together."
Chase gave the hapless Foreman a cold stare. House was impressed in spite of himself. He hadn't known that Chase had had it in him. "Look, I'm not going to stand here all day spending my time arguing how and why Cameron gave me her key. If everything's checked out, I'll be taking her home now." He started out of the room.
"Well, isn't House more qualified?" Open mouth, insert foot, House thought with amusement that soon dissipated when he saw the look on Chase's face. The boy was in over his head and he didn't even realize it.
"Why, because he dumped her and broke her heart?"
That was admittedly a low blow and House's face showed it for a brief moment. Only a moment, so perhaps Chase had imagined it, simply because it would have been so expected on anyone else. The emotion that had flickered in those blue eyes hadn't been hurt, anyway, it had been more like…Chase struggled to put a word to what he had seen, and finally came up with irritation. Not exactly the usual response, to say the least, but it didn't matter, because House had recovered quite well.
"Ohh, Chase. That stung." He dramatically took a step back as if hurt.
Foreman looked between the two, hardly able to believe that House was even capable of showing jealousy. It seemed like he had just realized that he'd lost something he hadn't though he valued so much. It was hard to tell who was winning.
There might have really been a fight if Cameron hadn't woken up right then, but she did. "Chase?" she asked, obviously seeing him first. She tried to turn her head to look at the others but made a small pained cry.
"What is it?" Chase, Foreman, and House asked all more or less simultaneously. It brought a slight smile to her lips.
"I feel like—" When she stopped abruptly, they exchanged worried glances with Foreman, but Cameron caught the look. "No, no. I was just going to say I felt like I was hit by a truck, but that would be redundant, wouldn't it?"
"Well, our girl hasn't lost her sense of humor, " House said dryly. "You also have a broken arm, and a mild concussion."
She turned to look at him, though she winced. "Did anything happen to you? Are you all right?"
Listening, Chase thought her voice betrayed too much. The anxiety, the fear, didn't quite hide the feelings she still clearly had for House. Tonight only proved it in a more dramatic way.
Foreman, as the neurologist, moved to exam her. Cameron submitted meekly as he checked the dilation of her pupils under light and continued with the regular routine.
In response to Cameron's continued questioning, House made a little, mocking bow. "In perfect condition, thanks to the local heroine. I always knew you were crazy, but I never realized to what extent until you deliberately ran in front of a truck."
"Anyway," Foreman said, pointedly clearing his throat, "we were just discussing the arrangements for your care. I suppose you could really just stay here, but I'm sure you would rather be home while you're recuperating."
"I'm fine," Cameron said immediately.
"Regardless, you'll need supervision for a couple of days," Foreman insisted, although looking resigned to argument.
Sometime during Chase and House's not-so-friendly repartee, Wilson had left without anyone really noticing his absence. He rejoined them now, taking in the scene with a quick glance. He greeted Cameron, and then turned to Foreman, though ordinarily he would have probably spoken to House.
"The friend that Cameron was waiting for apparently didn't show up, or at least Cuddy checked and she isn't anywhere around," he said.
"My offer stands," Chase said, appealing to Foreman as the default doctor in charge. House was about to make some remark to that, but Foreman interrupted with a gesture towards both of them. "Let's be good doctors and discuss her condition next door."
"Wait a minute, you can do that right here," Cameron protested.
"Sorry, not yet. We'll be back in a minute." Foreman swept out, completely ignoring the glare he was receiving from Cameron, and House and Chase followed blithely. But not before House gave Cameron the sort of irritating smile that explained why so many patients tried to hit him. Wilson observed everything, but decided to keep Cameron company.
Once in the hallway, Foreman stopped and looked seriously at both House and Chase. "Okay, I think this should be Cameron's choice," he said. "So I would really appreciate it if both of you just backed off."
He held up his hands to cut off protests from both of them. "I really don't care. Cameron deserves some peace here, so we're going into that room in a minute, I'm going to ask her what she wants, and you two will be considerate enough to keep your mouths shut through the whole thing."
True to his word, he turned before either could say anything, and Chase and House followed him obediently into the room after a moment. Foreman was already talking to Cameron.
"Bear with me while I give you the spiel, even though I know you know this. Anyway, postconcussive syndrome is seen in about ten percent of people who have a concussion. Yours was pretty mild, so it's highly doubtful you'll have any symptoms, but the main effect is a headache for a couple of weeks or longer. If you have headaches, just take some ibuprofen or acetaminophen."
"Why can't you just say Tylenol?" Cameron grumbled.
"Because he's a neurologist. That's the common name for people wacky in the head," House quipped. Foreman let it slide; Chase was surprised House was still able to function with so much wit. Of course, he wasn't nearly as sleep-deprived as his ducklings.
"Do you have anyone you want with you for the next couple of days? They'll need to wake you up regularly." Foreman saw Cameron's exasperated look and added firmly, "Just don't argue with me, all right? We're all dead tired. I suggest that you stay here; it'd be easier."
"Chase is fine," Cameron said, voice rather faint and not looking at either Chase or House. "He has a key."
"We know," Foreman said wryly.
"I'm not going to say here for another minute if my life depended on it," she mumbled tiredly. "I'm so sick of this place." She got up with some help from Chase, who was now officially granted permission to take care of her.
"I can walk," she said almost grouchily, and turned to glare at Foreman and House, who were looking too interested in their interaction. Chase tried not to feel too triumphant, reminding himself that it would be better if Cameron hadn't been in this situation in the first place. The cast on her arm sobered him; regardless of how minor her concussion, she didn't escape unharmed.
"Even if you couldn't, I could carry you," he said back to Cameron with a boyish smile, falling back into the comfortable rapport they'd developed over the past couple of weeks. It was just ridiculous enough to top off the stressful day, and he enjoyed the rare sound of her laugh.
It didn't matter what anyone else thought. Foreman, House, Wilson, heck, even Cuddy could stare as much as they wanted. The rumor mill could work overtime. He didn't care, and it looked as if neither did she.
xxxxx
Some time later, proper paperwork signed, they made it out of PPTH and into Chase's car. He had never felt so glad to leave the place and was wondering if they would absolutely need to show up for work tomorrow. Cameron obviously didn't, but he doubted House was feeling lenient in any sort of way towards him right now.
"You should've just let me take you home instead of waiting for your nonexistent friend," he half-scolded her, recalling the whirlwind of feelings he'd experienced in the past few hours.
"I don't know what happened with Jessica. Probably spending a late night out with her boyfriend," Cameron sighed. "I don't know her that well, actually."
"Exactly my point." Despite everything, Chase still had the energy to summon up a smile, and when she returned it, he thought he might forgive her for taking him on the day's emotional roller coaster after all.
Opening the door of her apartment, something shifted irrevocably, something simply changed. Perhaps it was the sudden awareness that they were alone and that Chase was going to spend the night over, something he had never done before. The truth was, there was a sort of tacit agreement between them and Cameron had only given him her key less than a week ago.
He stood awkwardly besides the door while she disappeared into her bedroom, obviously not having thought this through. Well, there was the couch. Chase eyed the plushy two seats and wondered if he could fit.
"Chase?"
"Yeah. I'll be on your couch. Wake you every hour."
Cameron briefly reappeared with extra blankets, and he got up hastily to take them from her. "Sorry I don't have a better place for you to sleep."
"It's fine." He set the alarm on his cell phone for every hour – this was going to be hell for both of them – and replied to Cameron's drowsy goodnight.
She sounded as if she were already half asleep, and Chase found that, comfortable or not, his level of exhaustion more than made up for the fact that the cramped space made him feel overgrown.
He slipped off in a deep, dreamless sleep that had never felt more welcome.
xxxxx
As promised, he managed to wake up, and to force Cameron awake every hour, which involved a great deal of protesting, many words that he was surprised were in her vocabulary, and the discovery that Cameron was almost violently opposed to being woken. She ignored shouting, she ignored shaking, and the first time around, Chase had actually gotten worried, thinking that there was something seriously wrong with her. That just turned out to be naturally Cameron, though.
Halfway through the night, he woke to a piercing scream that seemed to reverberate in his head endlessly. Completely forgetting where he was, Chase rolled right off the narrow couch and then tried to scramble to his feet, muscles stiff from their long-held unnatural position.
Bursting into Cameron's room, Chase expected to see some sort of dark assailant standing over her or something equally fantastical. It was too dark to make out anything, but having been in here a few times before, he knew where everything approximately was. He charged to the bedside, heart pounding, and nearly fell onto her as light suddenly flooded the room with the sharp click of a lamp.
There was no one there, of course. She was already awake and sitting up, looking quite chagrined at Chase's expression. "Sorry, nightmare. It was probably brought on by the concussion," she said apologetically, putting a hand on his arm. "They're known to cause night terrors."
He managed to find his voice and managed to keep a relatively neutral-sounding tone. "Yeah. You can imagine what I thought it was, though."
Color tinged her cheekbones and he felt slightly bad for making her embarrassed. All in all, it wasn't fair. He was the one who had been scared out of his wits, but she was the one that seemed wronged.
"Well, back to the couch, then." The damn uncomfortable couch that he probably would never recover from. He'd have back problems later on that could be traced back to this exact couch in Cameron's apartment. Come to think of it, Chase decided he would try the floor this time around.
"Chase?" Her voice was extremely hesitant, more so than he had ever heard her. He turned around and looked at her in inquiry.
"The bed's enormous. I mean, it wouldn't bother me if you slept on the other side. We could probably get lost in here."
He tried hard not to gape, unsure whether to be elated that she felt safe enough to offer, or pissed because she felt safe enough to offer. He had officially been written off on her 'friend only' list, apparently. Sure, it was a king sized bed, but really. He wouldn't have expected something like this from Cameron in a thousand years.
Her smile was fading, and Chase suddenly realized that she was waiting for an answer. "Um, well, sure." Not the most intelligent response ever, but he considered it a victory to get anything coherent out. If she had asked him his name at that point, it would have come out somewhere between a "Duh" and "What?"
Chase cautiously slipped into the bed, balanced precariously near the edge. The sheets were cold; she wasn't kidding when she said that it was a big bed. Cameron used up about a fourth of it, he estimated. They'd never even touch.
"Thanks for everything, Robert," she whispered when she'd turned the lamp off again, the delicate sound sending chills up his spine. It echoed the first night that started the friendship between them, with just one significant change.
He'd never appreciated his name more.
Chase lay awake long enough to hear her breathing smooth out into the even rhythm of someone asleep, thoughts busy in his head. He was still tired, but he couldn't stop going over the implications of Cameron's unusual behavior today. First of all, accepting him into her apartment was a whoa factor right there, but then she'd completely floored him. Granted, Cameron was probably half asleep and so on, but…
She'd invited him into her home. Her sanctuary. She returned here to be herself, not Cameron-the-doctor, not Cameron in PPTH, but just…Allison. And he was Robert.
Agonizing over it would be useless. It was exactly the kind of thing he had told himself he wouldn't do. He was glad to be Cameron's friend, glad they had been getting closer, glad that he could name her current favorite band and favorite type of ice cream. So why couldn't he just leave it at that?
Because she means more to you than that, was his last troubled thought before he drifted off to another hour's worth of much-needed sleep.
xxxxx
A/N: First of all, sorry for the late update! I have so much good stuff planned out for the future – in fact, almost five chapters' worth of rough sketching. I really want to get to them since I'm pretty sure you'll like them. Anyway, I just wanted to say that the rest of this story will be better that what's been posted already and the chapters will be longer, too. I originally started off this story as kind of an experiment to toss some C/C into the sea of H/C and slash, but inspiration struck. So, I'll be editing a lot, and hopefully updates will be more regular. While you're waiting, check out my other C&C oneshots if you haven't already. And, please, please review!