Chapter V: Waking Hour Inclinations

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Swimming back and forth, in and out of view, a contorted peek of the clinic door could be seen. The little red, stencil-on letters glared harshly: CLINIC. The glass door upon which the word resided was a mess of twisted and blistering glass, being melted down in a raving sea of red-orange flames.

Amid the frantic screaming of various hospital personnel, and a rush of soot-slicked, once-white lab coats, a lone figure stood. Like a sorely misplaced beacon of hope, stood House. Cane at the ready, a manic grin spreading across his disheveled face, the glee burned in his eyes, by far brighter than even the flames. To finish the array, desperate clinic patients rushed around, and House stood ready—ready to make up for lost time. Beating them around the ankles, tripping them, stabbing, poking, prodding… A bark-like laugh escaped his lips, shrilling on the air chaotically amid the flames.

"Mwahahahaha—!"

Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep.

A tired hand reached out in the darkness, fumbling blindly for the alarm clock, sitting bereft, like a lone sentinel, on his nightstand. With a few swats in the general direction of the contraption, he managed to quiet it's skull-piercing beeping.

"Damn… knew it was to good to be true." The voice, heavy with sleep, rung through the room harshly, as a gruff yawn followed suit, accompanied by the thick rustling of sheets being cast aside.

After a few minutes of struggling against the begrudging bed sheets, House managed to disentangle himself from their grasp and hoist himself into a half-awake sitting position, legs cast over the edge of the bed, and his upper body curled in on itself as his head rested itself contently in his hands still demanding for the peace of sleep.

Looking up half-lidded, he consulted the alarm. The stark, neon green numbers blared five thirty a.m. and the harsh light made him clamp his eyes shut against their radiating glow. Sitting undisturbed for a few minutes more, he pried his sleep-deprived eyes open once more. It was in such a state that he drug himself around the room and dressed, only to collapse onto the bed thankfully after accomplishing the feat.

Only when a particularly nasty shred of pain lanced its way through his leg, eliciting a sharp intake of breath and a pained sigh, did his eyes cease to resist his conscious attempts to keep them open. A muffled groan slipped past his lips as his fingers flexed methodically over his ailing thigh, and he kept at it for a few minutes until the pain had tapered into a dull sort of ache.

"No use trying to get back to sleep now," he grumbled irritably, rising unsteadily to his feet, much to the protest of painfully creaking bedsprings. He winced, as though the sound had somehow injured him, but limped tiredly around the bed, being ever careful of his leg; it seemed to be acting up even more than usual since Chase's incident, he thought.

"Remind me to thank the little wombat personally," he voiced through gritted teeth as another wave of pain pulsed up his thigh, though the mad glint in his shockingly blue eyes was unmistakable.

Gripping his leg bracingly with one hand, and using the other to help guide himself around safely in the darkness of his bedroom, he drug himself a few steps until he managed to locate his cane.

Taking it up as an aid, other than a roaming hand, he made his way to the door with little difficulty. Leaning heavily on the cane, he pushed open the door and edged around its wide-swung arc slowly, poking his head into the deserted hallway.

Slowly, he hobbled across the hall, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes all the way into the bathroom, where he stood looking into the mirror above the medicine cabinet. A heavily on-set five o' clock shadow had lined his jaw, and bags had begun to lay themselves beneath his eyes. He let out a tired sigh and turned on the faucet. A cool gush of water bubbled forth and he ran his hands underneath the icy jet for a moment, before splashing himself in the face in a feeble attempt to wake himself.

Wiping dry his face, idle drops of water dripping down his chin, he shook his head and reached for the bottle of Vicodin sitting, conveniently placed, beside the washbasin. After dry swallowing a pill, and tossing the damp face towel aside in a careless fashion, he proceeded out of the bathroom and once more down the hallway, stopping just short of the living room.

From where he stood, at the end of the hall, looking into the living room, he could make out the rough silhouette of a still-sleeping Wilson tangled in a mess of blankets on his couch.

"With a morning ritual like his, he could probably sleep through anything…" He rubbed at his brow contemplatively for a moment. "But, I don't need him waking up, either. God knows he'd never let me live it down if he saw me going to work early." He sighed resignedly, and stepped forward slowly.

Although the term "step lightly" applied here, "lightly" could rarely be used to describe House's unique three-stride walk, as the added cane made "stepping lightly" a virtual impossibility. His first foot could be set forward quietly, but adding a cane to support the second made for a thump regardless of how he went about moving himself. Luckily, though, Wilson hadn't woken from his fitful slumbering, and he had crossed the room without confrontation.

Letting out a low, throaty grumble—something passable for a laugh—as he reached the apartment door, he grabbed for the keys hung on the rack and shrugged on his jacket. Then he stepped from the threshold and left, closing the door behind him carefully.

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"So…" House tapped his cane impatiently, listening as its hollow thud echoed across the room. "Why would you still be out, Chase?" There was a knowing tone in his voice, and the question oozed sarcasm as a wound would ooze blood.

He paced around the lab as restlessly as a sleep-deprived person could, as he waited for the results of the toxicology screening to finalize. A catalyst of sounds: whirring machines, beeping, buzzing, and the constant uneven beat of his cane against the floor shrouded the room in a jumble of noise.

"But what, would you be hiding? Let alone, something that didn't make your colleagues think to do a tox screen in the first place…?" There was something almost like a question in his voice as he murmured it in his pacing. "Are you actually smarter than I give you credit for?" He paused for a moment, as though to ponder the inquiry himself. "Nah," he shook his head. "Foreman and Cameron just screwed up."

The shrill beeping—reminiscent of the alarm that had woke him—of a machine at the far side of the lab refocused his attention, and he made a beeline for it. As fast as one could expect when using a cane, he power limped towards it and pressed a small gray, rectangular button on its side. After a quick moment of waiting, a paper spewed from the side of the machine and he took it up immediately.

As it finished running off, he scanned down the list, checking for all of the common toxins. There weren't any signs of Amphetamines or other illegal drugs. In fact, the prescription drugs he had tested for had all come back negative as well. He furrowed his brow, apparently deep in concentration, when, suddenly, he let out a hollow chuckle.

"Ha. I knew it!" He announced gleefully, patting the paper in his hand purposefully.

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"Tsk, tsk, young wombat. I had such high expectations of you."

House had returned to the ICU in short order having discovered the cause of Chase's prolonged hypersomnia despite the treatment he had been subjected to during his stay. And, finding out the cause, he had been slightly disappointed. It was simplistically childish, even for Chase, he thought. It had been so predictably by the book that he had to stop to wonder for a second just how it was that he had come to hire the young Intensivist. As an underling in the diagnostic field, and working under House, the cases they toyed with were nothing short of rare one-in-a-billion cases. And here—here it was just so simple that it seemed impossible for one of his own underlings to come by it.

"Diphenhydramine." He shook his head in disappointment as he cast an aggrieved look towards the still slightly-less-than-comatose Chase. "So simple." House whined in annoyance; he limped steadily around his bed and towards to IV line running along the bedside. "So juvenile… I should fire you just for that."

With his unoccupied hand poised, and a syringe in place, he uncapped it easily, and after fumbling with the IV port for a moment, he managed to connect the syringe to the drip line.

"Let's see… one milliliter saline for each kilogram to neutralize the crystals… and you weigh…?" He stopped briefly, running over the math in his head and extending and retracting his fingers in a counting motion. He changed the position of the needle cap held between his lips and went on. "Well… let's round it nicely to eighty, shall we? Shouldn't kill you."

Without another word, he proceeded to inject the saline mixture into the drip line. Once the syringe had been effectively emptied into the line, he removed it and tossed it lightly into the trash bin in the corner. Then, he turned for a pensive moment of thought, to glance at Chase.

Even with all of the lines and wires he had been attached to, there was something distinctly human about him. Not to say that the other patients in the Intensive Care Unit didn't appear human; they were of course. It's just that… he looked, more peaceful with all of the machines attached to him than most of the others did. But, that sort of peace wasn't normally a good sign in hospitals. In fact, it was rather unnerving.

House glanced away and turned to the clock on the wall. It was just slightly past seven, which meant he had been here almost an hour waiting for the lab results. It also meant that he had had to get up much earlier than he would on any other day just to take care of what his idiot attending physicians hadn't taken care of yesterday.

"Incompetent doctors in the teaching hospital… Cuddy'll be thrilled." House groused tiredly, running his fingers idly over the grip of his cane. "On the other hand… It's not my problem."

Even though he said it, the little voice in his head was screaming at him: It's not your problem now! It will be as soon as she's ripping your hide for it!

Despite the obvious truth to his thoughts, he shrugged it off in a very House-esque manner. "At least I'll be well-rested…"

And with that, he went on his way to his office to catch a few more hours of sleep that he had been afforded.

Author's Ramblings: Sorry it took so long to upload. But between working on this story, and school work, I've been swamped. Originally, this was going to include Chase finally waking up, and his talk with House, but I cut the chapter in two, to minimize stress. That's why this chapter's kind of short. So, if you're still sticking with me here, my faithful, nice reviewers, look forward to their confrontation in chapter 6: The Pros & Cons of Breathing.

So, with all adeiu, please leave your name at the door with honest opinions intact, ne? Critiques, flames, rants, questions. The longer the better, you know the drill. Thanks.