➹APPLICATION
[series]: House, MD
[character]: Robert Chase
[character history / background]: It would have been a simple story of a boy born in Australia to immigrant parents, had the father in this equation not been one Rowan Chase, native son of Chzekoslovakia and world-leading expert in his chosen medical field. When it came to rheumatology, Robert's father wrote the book (literally; It was an uncreative title, but what could you do), and with royalties and renown came long hours at work and few with his family. Robert had grown used to forgotten birthdays and unsupported football games long before his dad officially abandoned them, leaving him the man of the house aged just fifteen.
His mother, former beauty turned housekeeper of a building far too large for two people and one flitting ghost, gave up hiding the bottles at around the same time. Robert cared for her alone through drunken psychoses, late night police calls, and a gradual decline as her liver picketed in protest. It was an exhausting process, but care turned out to be something he could do.
So he tried the pastoral variety. A strict Catholic upbringing ringing rosaries in his ears, he took a place in the seminary aged seventeen. His faith held out for two full years before his mother was confirmed terminal. To this day he's not sure who let who down first, himself or the Lord.
He knew he'd let his father down, however. In the three months of hospice care he received more calls asking about his own future than his mother's, which was - to be fair - preordained. A funeral, more phone calls from one influential figure to others, and Robert was entering medical school on his father's coat tails and visa bills. Desperate to prove himself worthy of praise and glory in the name of at least one father, he excelled there, taking two specialisms in cardiology and intensive care, and competing with the top percentage of his peers.
When he was done with his residency at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, aged 28, it wasn't only another phone call from his dad that secured him a much contested fellowship with Princeton-Plainsboro's infamous diagnostic department. No, his grades, his daddy issues and a certain kicked-puppy willingness to take abuse and pretend to be grateful for it all may well have played their part.
Robert saw out the terms of Doctor Greg House's old team of fellows, and became the longest serving with the arrival of the new: Allison Cameron and, six months later, Eric Foreman. Neither of whom he liked, although Foreman took the heat off him by standing up to House when Chase would have bowed down, and Cameron redirected that same heat into other, slightly different areas.
Two years later they'd become like the siblings he'd never had, consumed with bickering resentment but the only people to turn to when bitching about the parents. He'd lied to them, betrayed them, slept with one of them (at around the point where the sibling analogy ended), and seen his boss shot point blank a few feet away.
His dad died, last year. Chase killed a patient, a young mother of two, during the distracting process of trying to cover up his loss. It wasn't the first he'd killed, but he didn't make mistakes like that often. Now he's out of his Father's will, and theoretically out of his shadow, too. It's time for some re-evaluation.
Also, there's an episode guide.
[character abilities]:
Adorable hair + 10
Intubation + 10
Diagnostic skills + 7
Surgical skill + 8
Asskissing + 11
Lying + 7
Sneakiness + 8
Sweatervests + 10
Oral fixation + 15
Resisting temptation - 9
Strawberry allergy - 17
Control of facial expressions - 20
[character personality]:
I have a theory about what makes good boys good. It's not because of some moral imperative. Good boys have the fear of god put into them - Catholic church specialises in that kind of training: to make good boys afraid of divine retribution so they'll do what their daddies tell them. Like, for example, going into medical school when it's the last thing they want to do.
Robert has given over a ridiculous proportion of his life to chasing approval. It should, by rights, have been a short run; he was always a bright boy, and a hard worker when intellect would only take him so far. He never had a problem with being loyal.
His problems came from who he chose loyalty to.
The first wasn't much of a decision. His father, the most convenient and innate form of aspiration model. Hell, everybody worshipped Rowan Chase, it would have been curious if the fair haired boy who trailed in his wake had chosen to swim against the tide. Sadly for the boy in question, this devotion wasn't mutual. By the time Rowan Chase walked out and left him in the sole care of a woman slowly imploding, Robert had learned that pretending not to care was the best way out of admitting that it hurt. The experience left him bitter.
He moved on to God, the ultimate in absent fathers, only to watch as daily prayers lead his mother not into salvation but to her deathbed. He had leaned that faith went unrewarded. The experience left him alone, and afraid.
Now there's House, not the kind of father figure anyone would want at their school sports day, but a man whose approval might take longer to arrive than Godot. Chase respects and admires and fears and ridicules him. He's learned to be duplicitous and unsympathetic, sarcastic and clinically analytical.
He just hasn't quite learned any of these things well as well as he should. Chase will always cover a mass of need and insecurity with a well honed facade of assholism and arrogance. He'll never completely lose his faith that one day House, God (his father?) will speak up and tell him he's done right. He'll keep asskissing, and coming back after the next person kicks him while he's down, in the hope that next time, some time, he might just be good enough.
Of course, it's not all hand-wringing. Chase has a natural affinity with children (all comments on his own maturity set aside) and to date has been one cancer riddled nine year old's first kiss. Though he tries to keep his sentimental side under wraps, it sneaks out when dealing with the truly vulnerable, and occasionally when failing to keep casual sex just casual. He's a skeptic who'd still desperately like to believe in the power of prayer, and who can almost be sold on the notion of alien abduction.
He's fairly gullible.
He tells terrible 'yo mama' jokes, and laughs at things he doesn't find funny when he thinks it will make the right impression. He doesn't pretend to like anybody, but will deny the grudging affection he feels for all those he works with even in the face of evidence to the contrary. He's ridiculously competitive, and owns his own bowling ball and glove.
Chase has an eye for the ladies, terrible shark related pick-up lines, and a romantic streak. He harbours a vast, untapped capacity for love, and a jealous bent born of never feeling that he's going to be (deserves to be) loved back. He's dabbled in BDSM and finds assertive women particularly hard to say no to.
In general, he's terrible at saying no.
He lacks respect for politically correct ethics, but has a healthy appreciation for what's likely to get him sued. Since he killed that one patient, his insurance premiums have been sky high. He'll get over the extra outgoing long before he completely gets over his mistake.
He'll wonder what's wrong with him if you don't like him, and what's wrong with you if you like him too much. Flattery will get you everywhere, but not for long, while rejecting him might well have him following at your heels for life. He doesn't believe in God. He doesn't. Sometimes he finds himself praying for a reason to. He is, above all things, hopeful.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Early Season Three, around 'Lines in the Sand'.
[journal post]:
[Accidental Voice;]
I don't know what the problem is with the carpet, it's got a blood stain trapped in it not a fragment of his soul. Cuddy should tell him she incinerated it, see what he does then. In fact, why wasn't it incinerated?
Foreman? Foreman.
Great. I shouldn't have switched my damn service. Can you hear me now? No, obviously not, because I can't get a signal even out in the middle of-
Where the hell is this?
[third person / log sample]:
Robert wondered why he even kept a gym membership as he paced the halls in hot pursuit of a runaway cripple for at least the thousandth time that day. With the usual office out of commission - who'd have known redecorating was a sin in the eyes of their lord and master - venues in which to run the ongoing ddx were multitudinous and widespread. So far they'd disrupted the clinic, one of Cuddy's meetings, and become a fire hazard in a handy stairwell.
Now he'd been paged to the chapel. Rather, paged to visit his mother there which, unless it really was a spiritual emergency, left him doubting the source.
At least this walk offered a different view. Robert didn't stop by this area of the hospital often, not if he could help it. Too full of people seeking answers or wish fulfilment, grieving a loved one or begging not to lose them. Making yet one more valid reason why he'd never been cut out for the priesthood: he'd turned out to be far better at breaking the bad news than he was at consoling anyone over it. Life was a bitch, and everyone died. Working in a hospital meant bearing witness to a constant parade of mortality, and never once had he seen the hand of God reach out to pluck someone from their fate.
Not unless God was currently working through a gimp legged, crotchety old bastard, but Robert was fairly sure that was only a God complex at play. Said crotchety bastard was conducting his own service at the pulpit, arms outstretched in eulogy for a long lost symptom, while Robert waited at the door and whispered apologies to those abandoning interrupted prayers.
And alright, the place made him uncomfortable. Multi-faith, multi-denominational as it had to be to solve the spiritual needs of all comers to the hospital, the chapel tried to be everything and wound up a meaningless amalgam of religiously correct nothingness. It was very American.
Even without God to console him during his time with the church, there had always been comfort in the ritual to which Catholicism subscribed. The orders of service, mass, saying the rosary. Looking back on it now Robert could see that counting off prayers as he counted beads had been a form of self hypnosis, brainwashing in the name of the Lord. Even so, he missed the thing in his hands sometimes. Most often on those rare occasions when they threatened to shake, and he had to hunt for a pen, a file, anything to occupy them.
Despite that, House giving his particular brand of sermon anywhere sanctified was worse than irreverent. Robert stood awkwardly at the back and snapped out terse responses to the clinical questions, quieting as Foreman stepped in with a theory that could well end with their young patient's parents beginning to say their prayers. Cancer. It was a primary argument in the case of science versus God, and one that, if nothing else, proved any God there was had to have one shitty sense of humour.
Chase internalised a laugh, and glanced back up as House began dismantling his whiteboard, ready to move them like a bunch of gypsies to the next new-carpet free location. Well, there had been stranger prophets.