Mind Over Matter (6/11)
Mind Over Matter
By: Npkedit
Disclaimer and intro information (read them), can be found at http://npkedit.livejournal.com/74775.html.
Part 6
Chase flawlessly played through Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice along with his stereo system. If he'd hated the violin lessons his father had insisted he take as a child, he'd come to appreciate the skill as an adult-it kept his manual dexterity in tune for the surgical procedures he was often called on to perform. And he had no complaints about the violin he was playing-a $10,000 Georges Cunault apology from his dad for missing the one stupid recital he'd ever played. He'd been tempted at the time to smash it into his bedroom wall, but couldn't bring himself to destroy a masterpiece that probably made him sound better than he actually was. Though he never played it in public, unwilling to give his father the satisfaction, playing it had ironically become one of the few sources of peace of mind that Chase could count on when he needed to escape the universe. He'd been playing quite a lot since he'd started working for House.
But House wasn't actually to blame for his current downbeat mood; a shorthanded ICU was. With no Diagnostic patients on the horizon, Cuddy hadn't hesitated to send him into the trenches, and it had been one hellish day-including two terminals, one patient with advanced COPD, one with ARDS, and two post-surgicals with lousy vitals.
As if that weren't enough, he'd arrived home to a rather unhappy message from his maternal grandmother, inasmuch as a blue-blooded grande dame could sound snippy, about his "unfortunate lack of communication skills"-loosely translated as "I deserve a phone call or a visit." This deficiency, she'd asserted, could undoubtedly be chalked up to his "late"-he could almost hear the unspoken "unlamented"-"father, who'd never been properly social or able to admit his shortcomings."
He'd smiled bitterly at that assessment. His father had recognized his mother's problems and walked out on them both; his mother's family had simply swept the issue under some Persian rug. He loved his grandparents, but often believed his mother's family's crest should have been an ostrich.
After making a mental note to call her-a trip back home was out of the question for the foreseeable future-he'd headed straight for his violin.
He was halfway through the third movement of Vivaldi's Concerto in F minor when his stomach loudly informed him that music might soothe a lot of things, but not hunger pangs. A good deal more relaxed, he set aside the violin to pad into the kitchen of his small apartment, intent upon eating. He wasn't in the mood to cook, an activity he'd never been fond of, and like too many other skills he'd picked up as a teen, one he'd learned out of sheer necessity. Thankfully, he had relatively simple tastes and always kept some emergency meals in the freezer for days when he came home late and couldn't face a stove.
At least, he thought as he selected chicken and pasta, he'd managed to avoid House for most of the day. Considering how peeved House had been after he'd been punished with extra clinic duty for his file snooping, Chase considered the time away from a very testy boss a heavenly gift.
Dumping his dinner on a plate, he shoved it into the microwave to warm, then got a mug out of a cabinet and set a kettle to boil for some herbal tea. After the day he'd had, his bloodstream was likely half caffeine and he didn't need to add fuel to the fire.
He was halfway through his dinner by the time his tea had steeped properly, and he reached for the honey he always kept on the counter-he drank his tea obscenely sweet-only to remember he'd finished it the day before. Setting the steaming mug on the kitchen counter, he began rummaging through his cabinets for a new jar, but as he opened the cabinet nearest him, he accidentally elbowed the cup he'd placed too close to the edge of the counter, sending it and its contents flying.
"Bugger!" Like so many others who'd committed a similar error, he mentally urged the mug to stop and return to the counter as he watched it sail towards the floor, seemingly in slow motion. It didn't. But, much to its owner's surprise, it also failed to crash. Instead, it halted mid-drop, hovering just above the kitchen's now-stained tiled floor. Chase froze in almost sympathetic shock, his eyes locked on the floating object.
I'm asleep and I'm dreaming.
But dreams didn't smell vividly of green tea and mint-not his, anyway. No, the ones he remembered usually stank of gin and tonic, carrying the bitter scent of failure.
He closed his eyes, then immediately reopened them to find that the floating mug hadn't moved.
Okay. Not dreaming..
After a moment's hesitation, he reached out to take the cup, but jerked back when it headed towards him seemingly of its own volition. The mug stopped moving almost immediately, but remained suspended mid-air.
" Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum; Benedicta tu in mulieribus…." The words-spoken in earnest as he crossed himself reflexively-were as familiar to him as any medical procedure, though he hadn't uttered them in ages. Not that he'd admit to anyway.
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't logical. It wasn't…normal. But his life had never been normal, had it? And deep down, some corner of his mind-one he'd been ignoring for weeks-kept telling him his eyes weren't deceiving him. Chase could feel the solid shape of the cup with his brain, even without laying a hand on it.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, he extended his arm in the direction of floating object and mentally urged it to his hand. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry when it moved immediately to him like a dog returning to its master.
Forty-minutes and two exploding light bulbs (only one of them intentional) later, half the contents of his kitchen cabinets surrounded him on the tea-splattered floor, though he'd never laid a finger on any of them. And there was little doubt in his mind that many of the events of the past couple of months that he'd been so willing to chalk up to a lucky streak, had zero to do with good fortune.
What am I going to do?
An hour spent contemplating the question-and cleaning up his kitchen in a far more conventional manner than it had been disordered-brought no particular enlightenment. The obvious answer was impossible-simply couldn't be true. He was just short of 30, not 13. And, he readily admitted to himself, he didn't want it to be true. But the evidence in front of him couldn't lie.
Everybody lies, said a little voice inside his head, sounding way too much like his boss. And thoughts of House gave Chase a possible solution that both satisfied and horrified him.
He didn't get much sleep that night.
By: Npkedit
Disclaimer and intro information (read them), can be found at http://npkedit.livejournal.com/74775.html.
Part 6
Chase flawlessly played through Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice along with his stereo system. If he'd hated the violin lessons his father had insisted he take as a child, he'd come to appreciate the skill as an adult-it kept his manual dexterity in tune for the surgical procedures he was often called on to perform. And he had no complaints about the violin he was playing-a $10,000 Georges Cunault apology from his dad for missing the one stupid recital he'd ever played. He'd been tempted at the time to smash it into his bedroom wall, but couldn't bring himself to destroy a masterpiece that probably made him sound better than he actually was. Though he never played it in public, unwilling to give his father the satisfaction, playing it had ironically become one of the few sources of peace of mind that Chase could count on when he needed to escape the universe. He'd been playing quite a lot since he'd started working for House.
But House wasn't actually to blame for his current downbeat mood; a shorthanded ICU was. With no Diagnostic patients on the horizon, Cuddy hadn't hesitated to send him into the trenches, and it had been one hellish day-including two terminals, one patient with advanced COPD, one with ARDS, and two post-surgicals with lousy vitals.
As if that weren't enough, he'd arrived home to a rather unhappy message from his maternal grandmother, inasmuch as a blue-blooded grande dame could sound snippy, about his "unfortunate lack of communication skills"-loosely translated as "I deserve a phone call or a visit." This deficiency, she'd asserted, could undoubtedly be chalked up to his "late"-he could almost hear the unspoken "unlamented"-"father, who'd never been properly social or able to admit his shortcomings."
He'd smiled bitterly at that assessment. His father had recognized his mother's problems and walked out on them both; his mother's family had simply swept the issue under some Persian rug. He loved his grandparents, but often believed his mother's family's crest should have been an ostrich.
After making a mental note to call her-a trip back home was out of the question for the foreseeable future-he'd headed straight for his violin.
He was halfway through the third movement of Vivaldi's Concerto in F minor when his stomach loudly informed him that music might soothe a lot of things, but not hunger pangs. A good deal more relaxed, he set aside the violin to pad into the kitchen of his small apartment, intent upon eating. He wasn't in the mood to cook, an activity he'd never been fond of, and like too many other skills he'd picked up as a teen, one he'd learned out of sheer necessity. Thankfully, he had relatively simple tastes and always kept some emergency meals in the freezer for days when he came home late and couldn't face a stove.
At least, he thought as he selected chicken and pasta, he'd managed to avoid House for most of the day. Considering how peeved House had been after he'd been punished with extra clinic duty for his file snooping, Chase considered the time away from a very testy boss a heavenly gift.
Dumping his dinner on a plate, he shoved it into the microwave to warm, then got a mug out of a cabinet and set a kettle to boil for some herbal tea. After the day he'd had, his bloodstream was likely half caffeine and he didn't need to add fuel to the fire.
He was halfway through his dinner by the time his tea had steeped properly, and he reached for the honey he always kept on the counter-he drank his tea obscenely sweet-only to remember he'd finished it the day before. Setting the steaming mug on the kitchen counter, he began rummaging through his cabinets for a new jar, but as he opened the cabinet nearest him, he accidentally elbowed the cup he'd placed too close to the edge of the counter, sending it and its contents flying.
"Bugger!" Like so many others who'd committed a similar error, he mentally urged the mug to stop and return to the counter as he watched it sail towards the floor, seemingly in slow motion. It didn't. But, much to its owner's surprise, it also failed to crash. Instead, it halted mid-drop, hovering just above the kitchen's now-stained tiled floor. Chase froze in almost sympathetic shock, his eyes locked on the floating object.
I'm asleep and I'm dreaming.
But dreams didn't smell vividly of green tea and mint-not his, anyway. No, the ones he remembered usually stank of gin and tonic, carrying the bitter scent of failure.
He closed his eyes, then immediately reopened them to find that the floating mug hadn't moved.
Okay. Not dreaming..
After a moment's hesitation, he reached out to take the cup, but jerked back when it headed towards him seemingly of its own volition. The mug stopped moving almost immediately, but remained suspended mid-air.
" Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum; Benedicta tu in mulieribus…." The words-spoken in earnest as he crossed himself reflexively-were as familiar to him as any medical procedure, though he hadn't uttered them in ages. Not that he'd admit to anyway.
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't logical. It wasn't…normal. But his life had never been normal, had it? And deep down, some corner of his mind-one he'd been ignoring for weeks-kept telling him his eyes weren't deceiving him. Chase could feel the solid shape of the cup with his brain, even without laying a hand on it.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, he extended his arm in the direction of floating object and mentally urged it to his hand. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry when it moved immediately to him like a dog returning to its master.
Forty-minutes and two exploding light bulbs (only one of them intentional) later, half the contents of his kitchen cabinets surrounded him on the tea-splattered floor, though he'd never laid a finger on any of them. And there was little doubt in his mind that many of the events of the past couple of months that he'd been so willing to chalk up to a lucky streak, had zero to do with good fortune.
What am I going to do?
An hour spent contemplating the question-and cleaning up his kitchen in a far more conventional manner than it had been disordered-brought no particular enlightenment. The obvious answer was impossible-simply couldn't be true. He was just short of 30, not 13. And, he readily admitted to himself, he didn't want it to be true. But the evidence in front of him couldn't lie.
Everybody lies, said a little voice inside his head, sounding way too much like his boss. And thoughts of House gave Chase a possible solution that both satisfied and horrified him.
He didn't get much sleep that night.