043. Pray
Stolen Prayer
Chase walked into the small non-denominational chapel in the hospital and made his slow, silent way up to the front. Once there he paused for a moment then eased his way down onto his knees. It was a long time since he'd done this but now seemed like just the right time to start again. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands together in front of his chest. He then bowed his head and began to stumble through the first hesitant words of a prayer.
A prayer for James Wilson who was even now lying on a table in an operating theatre upstairs, doctors and nurses working to repair him, to keep him alive. Chase could only pray that they would succeed. He'd seen Wilson's battered, bloody body brought into the ER. He'd been working down there in an effort to stave off the boredom brought on by not having a patient. But he'd never wanted that break in the boredom to include a wounded Wilson. It was a car accident, they said; a drunk driver slamming into the side of Wilson's car and then driving them both off the side of the road and into a tree. Wilson's car and Wilson himself had caught the brunt of the accident and the firefighters had been forced to cut him out of the wreckage before the paramedics could bring him into the hospital.
He then offered a prayer for the medical staff working on Wilson. A prayer that their hands would remain steady, their expertise would be more than sufficient and that all would be well. He had no idea if such a prayer would work but he'd offer it up anyway. He'd always been told that God worked through mankind. He just hoped that what he'd been told was true and that it would happen this time.
But he saved his most fervent prayers for House. For he'd seen the look on House's face, in his eyes, when he'd delivered the news. He'd still been dressed in the scrubs he usually donned when he worked in the ER and it was only when House stared at his chest, his face paling and horror growing in his eyes, he realised that the blood splattered across them was Wilson's. He'd seen something break in House at that moment, something he'd never wanted to see in his sarcastic, acerbic, bastard of a boss. He hadn't realised that he'd been shaking until House brushed past him, knocking him slightly off balance for a moment. He'd seen the shaking when he reached out with one hand to steady himself.
He wasn't a surgeon; he couldn't help Wilson right now. And he knew that no one could help House; the man simply wouldn't accept it if it was offered. Something he was sure Cameron was discovering right about now. All he could do was stay here and pray. And hope.