Crossing the lobby to leave, his satchel swung over his shoulder, Chase looked impossibly young, which accounted for the security guard asking him, "Are you with them? I told you kids to leave."
"I work here," Chase answered, annoyed, and the guard looked sheepish as he recognized Chase as someone he saw regularly.
"Sorry," the guard said. "It's just I've had to remove those girls three times already, and I'm beginning to hate all young people. I finally had to tell them they just weren't welcome here. Not that I expect they'll listen to that once I'm out of sight." Chase looked where he nodded, and saw Renfield's three friends were just outside the glass doors of the main entrance, staring sullenly in. He felt a brief chill of apprehension at the sight of them, but in the sunlight they looked young and harmless. I must really have been overtired last night, if I imagined they were a threat, he thought, astonished at himself for the overreaction. They were practically children.
"Worried about your friend?" Chase asked the girls gently as he stepped outside. The redhead snorted with derision; all three looked bored, as if Chase had said something impossibly stupid.
"Why would we be?" the brunette asked. "He doesn't matter to us."
"He mattered to you a couple of days ago," Chase said, but they just shrugged. Shaking his head, Chase walked away. He didn't have the energy or interest required to make sense of the complicated ins and outs of teenage relationships.
* * * * * * *
The next day Chase swung by House's hospital room, hoping House would be awake and bored enough to want to help him diagnose Renfield. Weirdly, Renfield's friends seemed to have had the same urge. This time the teenage trio were sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall. "I know you're worried," he told them, torn between annoyance and amusement, "but there's no way Doctor House is going to discuss a patient 's case with you. Look, why don't you go downstairs? You can at least be outside the window, so he can see you if he's awake.
"I told you," the brunette said impatiently, "we don't care about Renfield anymore. He's not important now."
"Why not?" Chase asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Our Master has found a new servant," the redhead said, and Chase found himself shivering, disturbed by the note of fanaticism in her voice. "Someone more powerful, and more valuable. Renfield is of no further use to him."
"Did that...make Renfield sick?" Chase asked cautiously, trying to find some reasonable thread to this conversation.
The blonde tossed her hair. "It made him despair," she said. "He knows he has no purpose now."
With relief Chase noticed two security guards heading briskly down the hallway. He ducked into House's room as the guards began hustling the girls to their feet. House was sitting up in bed.
"Couldn't you try dating someone your own age?" House asked. "Oh wait, you did, but she preferred someone my age. Oops."
Chase refused to be drawn. "I need your help," he said.
House shook his head. "Can't. Cuddy's forbidden me to take any cases."
"I just need an opinion," Chase began, but House shook his head again.
"Not now," House said firmly. "Not when I can't trust myself." Chase opened his mouth to argue, wanting to point out that being incapacitated had never kept House off a case before, but something about House's expression informed him it would be futile. He left, feeling worried. It wasn't like House to mistrust his own judgement. Had the coma affected him, or was this something else—grief, maybe, or guilt? Chase knew only too well how hard those could shake your deepest faith; perhaps House's faith in his own intellect had been another casualty.