[OTA] A life in her hands

[chasemd]

[Open to anyone who might be in Rob or Peter's room, who might be passing and just want to chat to Chase, but TAG FOX]Chase had, inevitably, ordered strict and constant monitoring of Rob for any changes in condition. It meant their whole team were taking turns sitting in the room watching his vitals every fifteen minutes and making sure none of the

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[cutthroatbitch]

"I hear a watched pot never boils," Amber murmured as she stepped into Rob and Peter's room. Her hands were tucked into her lab coat and her face held an unreadable expression. "I wasn't sure if you wanted me to take the next obs shift. And I figured you wanted to tear me a new one anyway, so have at it."

[chasemd]

Chase drew a breath and let it out slowly as he sat back in the seat. "I don't want to tear you a new one, Amber, I just want to know what the hell is going on. You froze with that biopsy. When push came to shove with Rob's case, you froze, and I just wanted to know why. Did you have any sort of intimate relationship with him before he met Fox?" he asked. "You can tell me to fuck off, because it isn't any of my business at the end of the day, but if it's not that, then it's someone else and if you have any interest in Diagnostics in the long run, you need to overcome it. Trust me. In the early days I nearly lost my job for fucking up on a case. I killed a patient. I just want to know what's going on."

[cutthroatbitch]

Amber pursed her lips but came to sit beside Chase, watching Rob asleep on the bed. She looked over at Peter, who was sleeping too, but she knew it was a very different state to what Rob was in, thankfully. "He's just my friend, okay? What is it with this place? You make friends with a member of the opposite sex and automatically everyone thinks you're fucking them? We just talked a lot over the course of him falling ill. Then he got better, and we still chatted. He's a friend. He was with Fox when I met him, and no, I'm not jealous. I don't want to fuck him either, even if he's a really nice guy. I don't piss on other people's property. I just... I should have done more when he presented to the clinic. He might never be in this position if I did."

[chasemd]

"Amber," Chase began quietly, "you can't do this. Deep down, you know you can't. This isn't your fault. You advised him to come back for tests, but he thought he was getting better. Which he was. His early symptoms responded to that course of antibiotics you put him on. But once that stopped, he deteriorated. They never touched the cough, though, because the illness was contracted in his lungs. He was always going to be in this position, Amber. He caught this before he even got here. He was already ill when he got here. The only reason we got the diagnosis now was because he detoriated. The deterioration narrowed the symptoms, and narrowed the diagnosis. The blood clot, the plueral effusion, the brain abscess... they were clues. This is Diagnostics, Volakis. Sometimes it just sucks. None of the rest of us can be House and be indifferent to what's going on. Someone has to care. But you don't blame yourself for doing so."

[cutthroatbitch]

A concerned frown etched Amber's forehead. She absorbed his words but didn't say anything for a long few moments. The sound of the heart monitor beeping and the ventilator compressions filled the room with rhythmic yet morbid monotony. "What good is caring going to do if he dies anyway? Is Fox going to turn the life support off? It's what he wanted," she mumbled.

[chasemd]

"What good is dying a hero if no one is around to remember you?" Chase returned, watching her closely. "That's what the good in caring is. That what he went through, all the pain, the suffering, the sacrifice, it wasn't for nothing to just die with a machine artificially breathing for him. House is acting like Rob requesting we give him a deadly needle in the middle of him being perfectly healthy. Yeah, if that happened, then he would be an idiot. But this is different. He's seriously ill, life-threateningly ill and has been for a week. Some people just want life to take a natural cause. It doesn't make them idiots. It makes them in control of their own decisions, something we are all entitled to take hold of if we want it. I don't know what Fox is going to do. She might respect his wishes in that form, or she might choose to hold onto him. Even then, she might change her mind and want to turn it off two days down the track. We're here to be his doctors, not play God with his life, no matter how much House thinks he's entitled to do

[cutthroatbitch]

"Does it even matter that those who care about him don't want him to die? Does he even realise how many people here have come to care about him and want him to live?" Amber asked in frustration, catching a handful of her hair on top of her head as she stretched back in the seat. "Or would he have even signed that form if he knew he was headed for death back home?"

[chasemd]

Chase rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, it matters, Amber. If it didn't, he would never have waived it for Fox to make the decision. Knowing him for the brief time I did before he went into the coma, I'm thinking that no, he doesn't realise because he's unassuming. He was focused on everyone else getting better more than himself." He analysed Rob in thought for a moment. "I don't know what he would have done if he knew. How could we? He probably wouldn't even be able to know. It's speculation. Just deal with what we know, and that's that he didn't know he died back home. But he knew he was sick and he didn't want to exist on machines. The change being that Fox came to be important enough to him to change his mind."

[cutthroatbitch]

"A lot of it has just made me wonder about my death. Which I know is stupid on account of the fact I didn't know about mine until after I came here and was told. It's not a bad thing being stuck here. But I just wonder what went down back there with the bus crash and in the wake of it. Wilson can hardly look at me. I don't blame him. I just wonder how Fox is going to be if Rob dies; if we turn off that machine and his heart just doesn't keep beating on it's own," Amber said quietly, watching Rob more than trying to keep Chase's eye contact.

[chasemd]

Chase looked at her intently. "How did you feel when you found out you had died back home after getting here?" he asked, something he had never touched on with her before.

[cutthroatbitch]

Amber barely hesitated. "Cheated. Angry. Stuck." She glanced at Chase with a small frown. "Lonely. Hesitant to get close to anyone in case they went home and I'm still stuck. Mostly I just wondered why me. I wasn't done back there. When I got here, I was just under the delusion it was my escape like everyone elses. It was a rude shock to hear that I wasn't going back, and from a bus crash of all things. I was happy back there, you know? I still don't get it, but at least I got a second chance here." She pressed her lips together momentarily. "Seeing Rob with Fox, even knowing she was stuck, it gave me hope that maybe I didn't have to be as isolated here as I thought I was. I guess that's why I've gotten so personally invested in things. It's not fair that he accepted her like that only to be taken away from her again."