(no subject)
TITLE: Numerary Logic
AUTHOR:
enigma731
PAIRING: primarily gen; mentions of Chase/Cameron
RATING: PG13
SUMMARY: This isn’t an episode of General Hospital; things like this aren’t supposed to happen. Chase finds his life changed by chronic illness.
NOTES: I want people to have the opportunity to actually learn from this fic, since I know House is a show which reaches people with medical knowledge as well as stories. Since I don’t want to write a textbook, I’ll be posting separate entries with additional information on my personal LJ. (First entry of that up tomorrow.) I’ll also answer anything you ask me. Please feel free to friend me.
Chapter Two: Too Little, Too Late
“Patient presented to the ER with generalized flu-like symptoms.” House caps his marker and taps the top against his chin, eyes glinting with the prospect of a new case. He’s written something down, but from the motion of his hand it doesn’t seem to match any of the words he’s just said.
“Explain to me again why we’re taking this case?” asks Foreman, not looking up from the journal he’s been reading. Chase seethes inwardly at the smugness in Foreman’s voice. His temper’s gotten shorter lately, he thinks, or Foreman’s gotten that much more intolerable.
“General flu?” asks Cameron, peering at the whiteboard. Chase can’t see it past House from his angle. “Can we be more specific about the symptoms than that?”
“Fever, vomiting, dehydration, nasal congestion, rapid weight loss.” House twirls the marker around his hand, catching it easily between two fingers.
Foreman looks up from his reading for just a moment, a look of utter boredom on his face. “How about…flu?”
House shakes his head and grins enigmatically. “Nope. This case is much more interesting than that.”
“Is it someone you know?” asks Cameron curiously. She gets to her feet and walks over to the whiteboard, tapping her fingernails on it.
“Gastroenteritis would explain the vomiting,” Chase interrupts. “Do we know the patient’s age?”
“Does it matter if it’s someone I know?” House asks Cameron, completely ignoring Chase. “Will you treat them differently, try harder in the differential if I say yes?”
“Fine,” says Cameron. “Medical history? And what tests has the ER done so far?”
“It is someone you know,” says Foreman, closing the journal and looking interested for the first time.
“Can we please just stick to the medicine?” asks Chase, suddenly annoyed at the three of them. They’re playing games while a patient needs help. It’s so typical of them, and he isn’t sure how he’s never noticed it before.
House mugs dramatically at Cameron, voice practically dripping sarcasm. “Fine. I’ll admit it. It’s my long-lost son.”
Cameron makes a face. “That was juvenile and unhelpful.”
“It’s what I do best.” House pitches the marker aimlessly over the table. Chase reaches up and catches it, tossing it back, but it sails past House seemingly unnoticed.
“Sinusitis,” says Chase loudly, just to see if they’ll engage with him. They don’t even turn. He raises his voice further, yelling painful and unfamiliar. “Nasal drainage could cause the vomiting. Infection’s responsible for the fever!”
“Seriously,” says Cameron. “Why are we taking this case?” She turns the whiteboard on its wheels, and the words come into focus for the first time. No symptoms, no tests, just two words: Robert Chase.
Chase gets to his feet in a rage, but finds his knees suddenly giving out. The fall seems to happen in slow motion, with the others staring apathetically at him from across the room. The glass conference table grows closer inch by agonizing inch, shattering as his full weight hits it, a thousand shards of glass biting into his skin.
Cameron is crying. It’s a gradual revelation in the sound of hitching breath and the tangy lemon scent of her shampoo. Chase feels a surge of relief that someone’s finally noticed he isn’t all right, but it dies just as quickly with the realization that he’s lying in a hospital bed, though he’s can’t quite feel his body. He remembers the conference room and screaming, the glass table shattering under the sudden weight of his body. Or was that a dream?
Bitterness replaces relief, heavy and aching in his limbs. They’ve let him fall this far, and now it’s too little too late.
The first thing Chase feels as sensation returns is that everything has become unnaturally heavy, his eyelids like lead, his lungs seeming to have lost some of their elasticity, every breath more difficult than usual. There’s a taste in the back of his throat that strikes him first as strange, and then as awful, and he realizes that he’s vaguely nauseous as well. He coughs experimentally and forces himself to open one eyelid, grimacing at the light.
“Hey,” says Cameron very gently. He has to blink a few times before the world comes into focus; when it does he finds her looking at him with the kind of tenderness he’s only wished for previously. “You’re in the ICU.”
Chase nods at her and tries to get enough leverage out of his own body to sit up. Shame wars with anger as he looks down at his hands, wincing at the sight of an IV line in the back of his left. And it isn’t like he hasn’t inserted hundreds of these by now, but the moment he glimpses it in his own vein, it starts to itch unbearably. Feeling Cameron’s eyes on him, he looks back up to see her regarding him with so much intensity it sends an odd tug of longing through him. Silent decision made, she propels herself out of her chair and lands on the edge of the bed, hugging him shockingly hard. Chase tenses, certain he must be nothing short of disgusting to her, but she’s crying again and pulling away seems too cruel.
“You’ve been in a coma for two days,” Cameron murmurs against his shoulder before finally pulling away. The words seem to shoot through him like an electric shock; he knows suddenly and unquestionably that the differential was a dream, memories of reality flooding back like stones in the pit of his stomach.
“How did you find me?” He thinks he can remember most of it now, and god, was she the one who found him lying in a pool of his own urine and vomit? Chase feels his face warm, and he looks away, fingers toying with a loose string at the corner of his hospital-bed-blanket.
Cameron’s eyes are very big, and filled with the compassion he’s used to seeing her address dying patients with. His stomach twists again, and this time it has nothing to do with his health.
“House sent Foreman to your apartment. You hadn’t called in in two days, and…” She trails off and shrugs apologetically. Chase thinks this might be the worst possibility of all, and he finds himself immaturely wishing he’d stayed in the coma.
“Of course,” Chase mutters bitterly. Too little, too late. It shouldn’t have come to this. “House would want to know.”
Cameron looks shocked. “He saved your life!”
“Oh?” He’s trying to sound confident, but the more the memories come back, the faster the room seems to be spinning. He remembers collapsing in the bathroom, can name every one of his symptoms, but after four years working for House, he can’t come up with a single plausible diagnosis for himself.
“What happened?” Chase asks again after a long moment, still unable to look Cameron in the eye.
She exhales slowly, then takes a long, shaking breath like she might cry again. Seconds pass, in which he can hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, suddenly obnoxiously loud. Cameron looks breathless, frozen in the abject terror he’s seen her regard terminal diagnoses with.
“She couldn’t tell you? Why am I not surprised.” As if on cue, the door slides open and House sticks his head in. He looks at Cameron and grimaces theatrically. “You have type 1 diabetes. Which proves my theory all along.” House waits a beat for dramatic tension. “Apparently you actually are still a child.”