Intense

—passionate in emotion, thought, or activity; occurring or existing in a high degree; very strong, violent, extreme, sharp, vivid, etc.—

Disclaimer: I don't own House, M.D. and no copyright infringement intended.

Chapter 6: Mystery

Perhaps men just aren't equipped to handle these situations, Chase thought the next morning, when he had woken up and realized that he could see the sleeping form of Allison Cameron from across the meager space between them.

His brain then immediately and quite logically pointed out that that meant that he was sharing a bed with her. At which point, as if overwhelmed with the ramifications of that fact, it promptly did the impossible: it both shut down and raced with inane thoughts.

After all, this was pretty much the trite scene from some C-grade movie, right? Except that they hadn't gotten drunk, hadn't been married in Las Vegas, and, regrettably, were not currently wrapped around each other…

Chase let his gaze rest on the curve of Cameron's hip, outlined nicely by the extra large T-shirt that served as her pajamas, and decided that he'd ventured into a dangerous area for his overactive imagination. The rumpled sheets covered little and instead looked almost artfully arranged, drawing his attention to the graceful line of her bare arm, currently thrown around a pillow in a loose hug.

Of course, her other arm was broken and immobilized in a cast, which was reminded Chase that he was here for a reason, and not just to enjoy Cameron's company. She probably wouldn't appreciate waking up and finding him next to her, either. He scrambled out of bed, slamming his elbow against the dresser next to it in his hurry, and reflected ruefully as pain shot up his arm that pretty much everything in his life was somehow connected to his job.

Take this morning, for example. Instead of waking up next to the girl of his dreams after a night of hot, wild sex… Well, the point was, he had spent the last night repeatedly waking up a grumpy Cameron to make sure the concussion wasn't causing anything more serious, and ended up invited into her bed because he'd been playing doctor for her. It was about as far from romantic as it could get, and hardly restful for either of them.

He wandered out to the kitchen and resisted the urge to plop down on the small sofa that had been the bane of his existence last night. They'd gotten back to Cameron's apartment around two in the morning, and all in all, he'd gotten about five hours of very interrupted sleep. Knowing House, the bastard probably wanted Chase to return to the hospital as early as possible – especially since House had paged Chase an hour ago, a sure sign that some case had caught his interest.

Chase was rather of the opinion that he deserved a break after the physical and emotional tolls of yesterday, however. His eyes felt gritty; he was most definitely not a morning person and usually needed a shower to wake him up. Of course, he could only imagine Cameron's reaction if she woke up and stumbled in on him while he was using her shower.

His thoughts veered in a decidedly wayward direction, and Chase distracted himself by familiarizing himself with the kitchen and locating the coffee. Generally he preferred tea, but coffee had become rather like an acquired taste, and it was Cameron's drink of choice. House being unreasonable or otherwise, Chase wasn't planning on showing up at PPTH anytime soon, and he thought that he'd drop by his own place to change and shower if he could, first. The only question was, would it be better to leave Cameron a note for her to find when she woke up, or stay here until she did?

It was potentially embarrassing to stay, he knew that much. Remembering snatches of his midnight arguments with Cameron while trying to get her awake brought a reluctant smile to his face, but the truth was, last night had changed things. Their friendship, or whatever was between them, had shifted again—and Chase wasn't entirely sure that it was for the better.

He'd known that it was dangerous to try to be closer to her, even as a friend. After a couple months of trying various ways to end his attraction with her, Chase had realized that it wasn't something that would easily fade away as an infatuation. After all, he had tried to distance himself from her, had genuinely tried to date other people, and had even watched Cameron get together with House, all to no avail. He couldn't identify what it was, but he knew what it was not, and it wasn't love. If anything, it was a certain fascination. A certain weakness when it came to her, like she was one of his vulnerable spots, and as such, provoked a sense of self-preservation.

Despite that awareness, Chase hadn't resisted when Cameron had begun to accept him as a friend. He hadn't drawn away when Cameron had begun to give him confidences, instead listening to her memories of House through a haze of mingled guilt and vicarious pleasure. True, he offered little about himself to her in return, but he had plenty of reasons for that.

Chase had had plenty of time to ruminate on every aspect of this Cameron thing. Maybe even too much time, because after his mother's death, he had realized that one of the most dangerous things he could do was analyze too much. He'd thought about his father a lot, about what he could have done to close the gap, about whether he wanted to close the gap, or whether it was simply better to let go.

This habit of thinking too much applied to Cameron, too. Everything from imagining what it would be like if they actually got together, to the opposite extreme: returning to somewhat friendly, but purely professional co-workers. Sometimes he felt like it was as if he could see a hole in front of him, but was drawn to it anyway, even knowing that he was destined to trip and fall. All in all, whatever delicate equilibrium he'd achieved with Cameron as they'd become friends no longer applied. So what were they now?

He had nursed his way through a cup of coffee and almost fifteen minutes. Absently, Chase rose to wash the cup, seeing signs of Cameron everywhere in the apartment. He had hoped that there would be a picture of Cameron's husband, someone he had heard about frequently but who had remained a faceless but good-looking entity in his mind. She had probably put them all away after she had started dating House. There were no pictures of House, either. In fact, there were no pictures of any male friends, but many pictures of Cameron within a group of friends, and Cameron with someone whom he assumed to be her mother.

"Good morning," came Cameron's clear voice, greeting him casually enough. Chase turned around to find that she had finally emerged from the bedroom. Not knowing exactly what to say, Chase mumbled a passable reply and handed her a cup, belatedly realizing that she would have to do everything one handed because of her injury. He watched her pour, add sugar and cream, and then stir, all without mishap.

"Did House page you too?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

She looked surprised. "No, did a case come in?"

"Yeah." He had rarely seen her when she was this relaxed, still half-asleep and adorable. She had changed into a black top, and watching her run her fingers through not-quite-messy curls now made him want to do the same.

"You all right?" he asked, hearing her wince when she touched part of her head and seeing all over again how her head had hit the ground so sharply. She caught his eye and gave him a slightly quizzical glance, inspired no doubt because of his stare, so he looked down at his watch to give himself something to do. Late, very late—even if he didn't care on House's account, he had a duty to the patient to get there soon.

"Yeah…perfectly fine," she said. "It's just tender. We should probably get going. PPTH isn't far from here, but the traffic gets bad on some mornings."

"We?" he asked mildly, but Chase was already bracing himself. Her stance had transformed from languid to nearly militant, and the predatory smile she aimed at him told him all that he needed to know.

"So, what's the case about?" she asked.

"I turned off my cell phone ages ago." Chase played along, pretty sure where this was going. "Anyway, now that you're up, I'm going back to my place to change and shower before I submit myself to House's beck and call. If you need anything, let me know."

"I'm not going to stay in bed all day, you know," Cameron said, completely ignoring him.

"Right. Of course you won't, just because you almost lost your life yesterday in a car accident, and did suffer a major concussion, severe bruising, and a broken arm. You're not coming to work today, Allison."

"I didn't say anything about work," she interjected before he could continue giving his lecture.

"Well…don't even think about it," he said, only half-joking. At her odd look, he shrugged, feeling uncomfortably as if he'd overstepped his bounds, and then slightly annoyed that she'd given him that impression with just a glance. Friends looked out for each other, didn't they?

The thing with Cameron was that even as they grew closer, she gave him the feeling that she'd rather that he keep far, far away—as if she were only tolerating this relationship that he kept on trying to label as friendship. He couldn't shrug off the fear that if he simply stopped trying, she wouldn't even care.

The annoyance quickly faded to something harder for him to admit. He should have been irritated by the fact that he couldn't quite call her friend, but instead Chase just felt wistful. They had passed that level but hadn't reached another one that could be labeled with conventional terms. Stranger, acquaintance, friend, and then what?

xxxxx

House was not happy. Not that he was usually happy, but House was not happy in a way that made Chase realize that this had the potential to be one of the worst days of his life. He fully expected some dire things to happen, like receiving patients who would later be revealed to have contracted the first cases of a widespread and quickly mutating strain of the avian flu epidemic. Of course, if that did happen, he could always at least say that it was all Cameron's fault.

It didn't take a genius to realize that while House obviously wasn't happy with Chase, he was even more obviously and even more 'not happy'that Chase had spent the night with Cameron. Foreman seemed to think that Chase was naturally blind, because he took great pains onto himself to call Chase's attention to House's antics, succeeding only in irritating House even more.

Fortunately, there was ample distraction for House in the form of a very sick eight-year-old boy who had been admitted to the ER at approximately 03:00. As Foreman gave Chase the boy's files, Chase couldn't help but feel slightly avenged when he realized that House had probably come in around six in the morning because of the new case. He couldn't have gotten much sleep either, not with the accident last night.

Chase looked down at the charts while Foreman continued briefing him and had to laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. His saving grace was aptly named Jesús Arrieta Barandiarán. He winced at the long name, feeling some empathy for the kid who had been loaded with it at birth – his own full name was even worse, thanks to the fact that both his father and mother had come from old money, with accompanying old-fashioned naming conventions.

"He complained to his father of acute chest pains concentrated around the lower ribs, sometimes lasting up to a minute. The pain is paroxysmal and the patient reported that he had difficulty breathing. The father also mentioned that his son had said he had a constant, dull chest pain for at least a few days now, but that he didn't think it was anything serious." Foreman paused while Chase flipped through the kid's history. For someone only eight years old, he had a rather thick file, and it was easy to see a pattern after a few moments.

"Have you ruled out abuse yet?" Chase asked. His left hand had unconsciously formed into a fist, and he deliberately uncurled his fingers. If there was anything that especially got to him, it was child abuse, but he'd never shared that bit of knowledge with anyone else.

"First thing that I thought of too, but if you go through the reports more carefully, you'll see that there's never any evidence. The boy seemed to be comfortable with his father—at least, as much as you can be when you're in his condition—and there's more I haven't told you."

Chase relaxed and let himself privately chuckle at Foreman's absorption. Sometimes he thought that of the three of them, Foreman was best suited to the job, simply because he enjoyed the intellectual challenge of diagnosis so much. "Well, don't keep me waiting breathlessly."

"The father brought Jesús in two times already this year because of chest pain. Neither resulted in any sort of diagnosis." As he talked, Foreman gestured for Chase to follow him out of the conference room, no doubt to see the patient in person.

"The boy who cried wolf?" Chase muttered, reading various accounts of hospital visits ending with no findings of illness. Foreman had to stop him from crashing into a nurse; they were walking at a fairly brisk pace, but Chase was focused on the papers he held. "That wouldn't have caught House's interest though, unless he's suddenly decided to pick on kids who have the unfortunate tendency to lie about their health."

"It could be simply something that's been going through phases of remission and exacerbation," Foreman pointed out. "Granted, I think the kid has lied about some of this stuff—supposed pneumonia, phantom abdominal pain, and all. The father said a lot of it started after his mother died about a year and a half ago. Must have been hard to deal with, especially since he would've had to cope with being a single parent and all."

"But Jesús isn't lying this time," Chase finished for Foreman. "Or at least, House doesn't think so, and you don't either."

Foreman shrugged. "The boy's tricks, or whatever they were, stopped except for the doctor's appointments on the chest pain. Talk to the kid yourself. He's been quiet for a couple of hours, but when he ended up in the ER, he was still having attacks, so I guess his father was convinced that something really was wrong. You have to remember that the boy who cried wolf eventually ended up with a real wolf."

Chase entered the room, expecting Foreman to follow, but the other doctor left them alone, probably to find House. He had anticipated Jesús to be sleeping since the child probably had been up all night and could get some rest now while the pain was gone. Instead, Chase walked into an argument, which fortunately stopped almost the minute he opened the door. He had caught enough to surmise that it was about the Jesús's truthfulness regarding his most recent pains.

Jesús would have been well taken care of, but it couldn't hurt to do extra routine checks, so Chase worked as he introduced himself to his young patient and spoke with the father. With Cameron gone, he was most likely to be tapped for House for an in-depth history and account of current family life, so it was best to establish himself as friendly and caring early on to offset whatever tensions might arise from the questioning later.

"Your son has a fever," he told Carlos as he gave two pills to Jesús to alleviate that immediate problem. It would go onto the board of symptoms, however, and it couldn't hurt to start the ball rolling again. Appropriate heart rate response to the fever, Chase also noted: tachycardia.

Jesús had been in House's domain for three hours, so Chase knew a lot had already been extracted from him and his father. House must have fumed when he realized that both Chase and Cameron were gone—Foreman was generally not the one to be talking to the patient, given that his bedside manner was generally the least pleasant of the three. Of course, Foreman was still popular compared to House.

"Are you any closer to finding out what is wrong with him?" Carlos was asking. His son interrupted to ask for some more water.

"Does anything besides your chest hurt right now?" Chase asked as he handed the cup over.

"My throat hurts," was the accented reply. A common enough complaint, and Chase reminded himself that with this particular patient, they would have to double-check all of the symptoms before doing a differential diagnosis. Pharyngitis was already was already noted in the chart, however, in Foreman's crabbed writing.

Before Chase could continue with the questioning, Jesús suddenly cried out, body arching from the bed and arms encircling his own chest. Carlos rushed to the bedside from his nearby chair as Chase grabbed at Jesús before the boy could roll off the bed. Almost before it began, it was over and Jesús went limp in his grip, tears of pain squeezed from his dark Spanish eyes.

Chase was positive that what he had just seen was no act.

xxxxx

Whatever else his attraction to Cameron did, Chase thought as his eyes met Foreman's over the conference table, at least it didn't interfere with his job—one that regularly involved the dangerous stakes of other people's lives, as they all well knew. It was more than House could say, as his bad mood over Chase and Cameron seemed to have tripled in a surprisingly short amount of time, probably due with some drama with Stacy and Stacy's ever-present (if only mentally), irritating husband. Chase wasn't a big fan of House lately but something about Mark made even House preferable, at least in Chase's eyes.

"Some of the usual tests are still running," Foreman said in response to House's unspoken question. The older doctor continued to list out symptoms on the whiteboard, and Chase looked over at them. Severe chest pain, fever, pharyngitis/sore throat, and abdominal pain. The last had a question mark next to it. It was a very short list to work with.

"Nothing of much interest to note, otherwise. We really can't do a diagnosis until more information comes back," Chase pointed out. He read over the notes again, unsurprised to find that House had delved into the cause of death for the mother, which had been cancer. "Especially given Jesús's penchant for ending up in the hospital with no more than a cold."

"So after you were observed him during an attack, you still think he's lying?" House asked. The expression on his face strongly suggested that he was amused by Chase, at which point Chase realized that it was because he had fallen into his habit of playing with a retractable pen. Oral fixation, Chase? The back of his neck still burned from the mere thought of that comment and the string of other comments it had inspired—allusions to Shakira's Fijación Oral, and the like—and House had first made it two months ago.

"No, actually…" Chase trailed off, forgetting what he was about to say when he spotted Cameron through the clear glass doors a minute before she joined them. House looked unsurprised, but Foreman at least looked concerned.

"What are you doing here?" Foreman blurted out.

"Hey, I didn't come empty-handed," she said calmly while Chase and Foreman, at least, gaped at her. "I picked up the test results."

A small part of Chase had been expecting this all along, but he hadn't truly thought that she would follow through with it. Surely she had enough common sense to take it easy for at least a day after an accident like that. With all the bruising, and that was only because she was lucky she hadn't had any fractures, she had to be stiff and sore today.

Correctly reading Chase's thoughts, she took a seat and sighed, pain flickering over her delicate features. "If this is what being a battered woman feels like, I'm doubling my donation to the foundation from now on."

"What do you suppose you're going to do here, Cameron?" Chase said, a protective anger washing over him even as he tried to ignore it. It wasn't his place, he reminded himself. Cameron was an adult, fully independent and capable, and he would only infuriate her if he did the outraged male act right now. Not that he wasn't feeling it, but he had enough sense to clamp down on his instincts.

"My arm might be broken, but my mind isn't," she retorted. "Yeah, I'm bruised and sore, and my arm is in a cast, but physically there isn't anything wrong with me that warrants staying away from work. If we were in between cases, I might take a day off to humor you guys, but we're not, and I'm not about to be sent home, either."

"No need to get defensive, Cameron," House interjected before she could go on. "Regardless of what Chase and Foreman think, I'm glad to have you here." The two glares that he received were ignored.

"Anyway, there's nothing from the tests that pop out," Cameron went on before her presence could become an issue. "Mild leukopenia for the white cell count. The findings on the chest radiography are normal except for a small amount of adjacent atelectasis from splinting. Chase, can I have the files?"

He handed them over wordlessly after she'd given the test results to House, puzzled by the glance she'd given him until he saw how avidly House was watching them. Foreman didn't even bother to hide his interest, which sharpened when Cameron's hand brushed casually against Chase's. What threw him most was that Cameron seemed to be encouraging it. She was even giving him a 'thank you' smile that veered on the edge of being flirtatious, one that hadn't escaped House's attention.

"The clinical presentation might suggestion serositis caused by systemic lupus erythematosus," Foreman said blithely into the silence. "I've reviewed the facts of the case and it would be rare, all right. But improbable does not mean impossible."

"Then we should do an antinuclear antibody test," Chase answered, his mind supplying the procedure even has he kept part of it focused on this strange new Cameron.

"It isn't lupus," House growled at Foreman. They debated over it for a few minutes until Foreman conceded his mistake, which left Chase with nothing but his thoughts.

Could House really be right—that the reason why he was so unsure around Cameron had less to do with his motives and desires and more to do with Cameron wanting to use him to make House jealous? The entire thought was so convoluted and Machiavellian he nearly gave it up immediately. But House had said it, hadn't he? Chase had nothing to do with it; he was just caught up in the game that the two of them were playing.

"The only thing that stands out is the chest pain," Cameron said meditatively once Foreman had surrendered, and Chase forced himself to concentrate at the task on hand. Their tangled private lives could be sorted out later. While Jesús's condition was at least stable, he was definitely not getting any better and would not until they found out what was wrong with him.

"So what causes chest pain?" House pressed them. "Mother died of cancer. It could have been at such a late stage that no one would have noticed if she'd been infected with something extra, say, a virus. But it all comes back to the chest pain."

"Pulmonary embolism," Chase offered. "His symptoms are nothing extraordinary that would suggest the presence of a virus, necessarily. Not every disease has to be rare to be difficult to diagnose."

"We should check for myocardial infarction, too," Cameron said. "Again, it fits all the symptoms. The problem is that we don't have anything too special that we can work off. Most of the tests are showing very regular results, and his complaints could cover something as regular as pneumonia. It could be viral, bacterial, or some kind of complication."

"We don't have enough to work with," Foreman agreed. "Too many possibilities to check for, but at least we have some time on our side. He's not getting any worse, as far as we can tell."

"Whine, whine, whine," House said, rolling his eyes. He tapped his marker on the whiteboard, looking over the symptoms. "Not enough information—well, there's a big, fancy word for that, and I'm sure you've run across it before. The symptoms are ordinary, but we already know it isn't the common cold. So start looking at the extraordinary. If the kid hasn't been lying, he could have had this as far back as a year ago, and it's only been coming up on and off the radar."

"It says here that they live in an one-room apartment," Cameron pointed out. Foreman had gotten some of that information already, and none of them were surprised to find such seemingly off-topic details in the report. House had taught them that nothing was too irrelevant to note. "Enteroviruses and nonpolio enteroviruses all cover the symptoms, and intrafamilial spread is common, especially due to poor sanitation or overcrowding. Chances are, if all the apartments in the complex are that tiny, and others have bigger families, well, it could easily bring us back to the virus."

"I'll go do a throat viral culture," Chase said, after Foreman volunteered to follow up on some of the possibilities.

"So Chase, was Cameron's apartment neat or messy?" House asked, an almost devilish light in his eyes. Clearly, he was hope to get some kind of reaction out of Chase, but Cameron stepped in before Chase could reply, and what she said took them all off guard.

"Oh, my bedroom's always messy, even if the rest of the apartment is neat. But I don't think Chase had any complaints about the bed," Cameron offered.

Chase felt his smile freeze in place as House raised a haughty eyebrow and Foreman couldn't quite hide a sound of surprise. "Chastely," he felt obliged to mumble, the word sounding even more ridiculous when he said it. "We slept together, ah—"

Cameron gave a secret, noncommittal smile that only made Chase feel cold. Did she truly want to use this as bait for House, to get some kind of rise out of him? This was a bit like waving a red flag at a bull. He waited until House had turned to the board before raising his eyes to Cameron's again.

Why?

She shook her head, tilting it slightly in the direction of House.

Not now. I'll explain later.

It was the wrong place to pursue it, so Chase rose to his feet lightly, careful to give no indication of that brief, wordless interaction.

She had brought it up because House was there, and yet she didn't want Chase to know what was going on. If this was some scheme to incite jealousy, Cameron had better be careful, because weakness for her or not, Chase was not going to let himself be used as some kind of weapon against House. It didn't seem like Cameron at all. She had a good heart, she wasn't…well, she was different from all the other women he had gone out with before, and not just because he couldn't seem to get over her.

For once, he was happy that Cameron didn't follow him outside as he went to take the viral culture.

xxxxx

"Dr. Enterovirus, I presume?"

The allusion was not lost on Chase, but he had to admit it was a nice touch since House loved to needle him about his whiteness, if that was an adjective. As usual, however, House was correct. Jesús had remained hospitalized and had continued to have lancinating chest pain attacks, to put it in archaic medical vocabulary. The fever had remained, as had the abdominal pain, which had caused House to finally remove the question mark next to the symptom on the whiteboard. All things considered, it had been a fairly straightforward case, which was a good thing since Cameron was somewhat disabled.

"Given the age of the patient, I'd guess that it would be coxsackievirus B. It's too late to tell if Jesús's mother had indeed contracted it before she died, since she was in such a late stage of cancer and the RNA enterovirus almost always causes an asymptomatic upper respiratory tract infection," Chase reported.

"Not a good sign, since the younger they come, the more severe the disease is," Foreman sighed.

"If it is coxsackievirus B, we want to know exactly what we're dealing with. Chase, I want you to do another viral culture for isolation. We do have some specific antibodies available for use in fluorescent staining and neutralization assays, so we'll want to further confirm and delineate the type of enteroviruses isolated from culture."

It was always a relief when they were getting closer to a certain diagnosis. Although Chase had already researched on coxsackievirus B and knew that there were no specific treatments, Jesús probably did not have a life-threatening case, or they would have had more problems to deal with. Once it was correctly diagnosed, the prognosis was very good.

"Meanwhile, Cameron, you can go tell Carlos the news," House continued. "Foreman, go with her and check if anyone else has been infected. Most people would shrug off any minor discomforts, but since this particular type may be largely asymptomatic, we have to make sure."

"Mention to Carlos that Jesús should not be given aspirin," Chase reminded Foreman. "Kids have the potential to develop Reye syndrome."

"What about you?" Cameron asked House. Chase and Foreman had long since given up, but Cameron always persisted in her efforts, at least in regards to that particular doctor.

House was already halfway out the door, but he turned around. "Lunch with Wilson and then a meeting with Stacy," he offered offhandedly, to Chase and Foreman's surprise.

The door was barely closed before Foreman laughed. House glared at them through the glass doors as they prepared to follow him—but to their assigned tasks, not to a secret rendezvous with a former lover. Chase, watching Cameron, sensed nothing unusual. So if Cameron didn't really care if House was having some kind of affair with Stacy, then what was going on?

She sensed his gaze on her and looked directly at him, probably reading the confusion he felt. They were heading different directions, so she didn't say anything but did give him yet another private, mysterious smile, meant to reassure.

Something clenched inside his chest for a moment, almost amusing him with the irony as he diligently took himself back to the task of making his patient well again. Chest pains, indeed.

xxxxx

A/N: I'm sorry for the wait, but this story is a little difficult for me to write, and I'm not exactly sure why. I think it might be because the pacing is slow and I wrote it to be more realistic than the usual drama and romance. I'm not sure if that's appealing or not to you guys, but it's a new sort of style for me. Not everything in life can be compacted to one hour episodes!

Someone asked me to explain House's comment ('Dr. Enterovirus') in an email. Anyway, it's an allusion to a bit of history. Back in 1871, Henry Stanley, a reporter for the New York Herald, was sent to Africa in search of Dr. David Livingston, a British missionary/explorer who had been missing for some years. Anyway, Stanley later wrote about his exchange with Dr. Livingston upon first seeing him – the famous phrase, 'Dr. Livingston, I presume?' The idea is that there were very few white people in Africa at the time so Stanley knew immediately whom he had found.

Please review - your comments are incredibly encouraging. Thank you!