dr_robchase | (no subject)

There were some moments when Chase felt like he existed as nothing more than an annotated mark in one of his father's books. The definitive book of rheumatology doesn't even mention that Rowan Chase had a family. There was no hint of the wife he abandoned, nor the son that he thought inconvenient or the too-late daughter who followed in her mother's footsteps. He was hired by House because of a phone call that his father made out of some delayed guilt and didn't even bother to call and congratulate him.

(Is congratulations merited when the job's been secured for you through bribery? He wasn't sure about that)

And then, and then Rowan Chase swooped back into his life for all of a measly few days under the excuse that Chase was suddenly worth seeing, but only for so long and never with the truth. At the time, he'd been grateful deep down beneath the loathing and the anger. Three months later, he forgot how to be anything but lost.

Cancer.

His father had been dying when he'd visited. He'd been dying and he hadn't told Chase. House had figured it out and he hadn't told Chase. He'd come to see him off and he hadn't told Chase and the only thing that he did manage to do was marry a woman who knew well-enough to call her stepson the moment that his estranged father passed away. Chase would never forget that phone call. He didn't think he had it in him to forget, but not just for the numbness that pervaded, but the moment after.

This moment.

"Dr. Chase?"

It was a ghost's voice. It was a ghost and instead of being in his nightmares, she was standing right behind him and there was a phone in his hand and he could swear that he'd gone to bed. Vision blurry with tears over a man who had died so long ago and who had given him nothing, he turned around and stared at Kayla, unable to manage any semblance of the English language.

"Hi," she said, without a single hint of awareness of what was coming -- of what she was about to lose.

And so, here Chase was, on the cusp of making the biggest mistake of his career because of his father.

Or maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe even this wouldn't have made it into one of his father's books. Maybe even this, this last ignorance wouldn't even rate.

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The Doctor tensed, not sure what he thought about Nate with regards to them being here. "I would hope so," he said, because he did, and he hoped Chase wasn't about to freak out. That would be the last thing they needed.

Chase took in a deep breath and turned around, ready to face himself and this situation dead in the eye. It'd been almost seven years since this happened, but it still followed him around like some horrifying spectre that he couldn't exactly shake. "Do you think I'll feel some kind of peace, fixing it?" he asked, because he was going to fix it, he was.

He just didn't know what to expect of what would come from it.

"Do I hope so? Yeah. Do I think? I have no idea, Rob," the Doctor said, but it wasn't unkind, his tone. He slid off the counter and straightened the white coat. "At least you'll know that at some point, somewhere, it's sorted."

Chase hadn't worn his labcoat in years. Even when he was in the clinic, he had shunned it because it felt like it was an old part of himself that didn't matter any more. Now, it felt heavy on his shoulders even though it was only fabric. "Okay," he breathed out, and he nodded, he nodded and knew that maybe the next chance to fix this was coming. "Okay."

He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, he was still in the changeroom. It wasn't until he took the steps back towards the hall that he found himself suddenly thrust back into a moment, phone in hand.

"...Robert?" called his stepmother from so very far away.

The Doctor had been behind Chase a little, still in the changeroom when he walked out of it, but suddenly they were both back in an entirely different corridor. Chase was standing at the nurses' station, looking stunned at the phone in his hand.

Back further in time, then. This was just getting strange, though not as bad as it might have been, the Doctor thought. At least they didn't have to run for their lives. Yet.

It wasn't as though he had an abundance of experience when it came to this situation, but Chase thought that the trick might be to breathe. In, then out, and then in again, as he listened to his stepmother haltingly explain what happened to Rowan Chase without an ounce of medical terminology within her words.

'Passed away' and 'long battle'; one that Chase hadn't known about until the obituary.

This time, he is ready for it, and so the news rattled him, but when he heard Kayla's voice calling for him, Chase gently hung up the phone, recited her chart again in his mind (he would never forget it, never forget her kids, never forget her) and turned, offering the bedside manner smile that Foreman had always hated. "Kayla," he breathed out, pain lurking in his eyes, but not in his tone. "Hi. Would you like to head into an examination room? We can talk more privately there."

The Doctor watched Chase take the call, but he could see from years of knowing his posture, his body language, that it didn't throw him as much as it might have done, even now. He had been about to step up to him, to say something, when the patient--Kayla--approached him, and he wasn't sure what to say, didn't want to ruin their privacy.

Chase felt like the load on his back was progressively getting lighter with every step he took. He closed the door behind them and discussed treatment options with her, got her to swear that she wouldn't take any aspirin, and booked her for exploratory surgery just in case the ulcers had reached the point where they couldn't be helped with meds.

When she left, she left with a smile on her face, prescriptions and appointments in hand. She left with the possibility that her life was going to be her own. Chase felt good about it at the same time as he felt the crushing fear that none of this was actually real. "If this is a dream," he murmured, aware the Doctor was nearby, close enough to hear, "I don't want to think about it being real. I'd rather delude myself into thinking this was it, that this was reality."

"Who knows what it is," the Doctor said, thoughtfully. He'd seen Chase come out, saw Kayla come out looking remarkably happy, and he could only hope. "Maybe it's neither. Pocket universe--real in some ways. Real to her, at the very least. And honestly, Rob, that's part of what matters."

He thought about giving Chase a hug, but settled for putting an arm around his shoulders. "Let's get some coffee."

"Is that what you usually do after you save the world?" Or, in this case, just a person. "Have coffee?" he drawled, as teasingly as he could given that he still felt exhausted by everything that had happened.

"Seeing as we're here, we might as well," said the Doctor brightly. "Rob, you have to learn to exploit the situation. I mean, maybe some of those nice soft cookies as well, I haven't had any of those in ages, dream or reality or pocket universe or whatever."

"I could make you some nice, soft cookies if you asked," Chase felt like pointing out. "I mean, they might not be like you get at the shop here, but I could try." And if he didn't succeed, he could beg Shari until she helped, which was always a good idea.

"Come onnnn, if we're here, we should get some cookies. Not like I'd mind if you made me some cookies," the Doctor added, feeling that it was a very important point to make. "We might as well get some pleasure out of this...whatever it is."

Chase couldn't help his scoff, dubious and fond and disbelieving all at once, but then, the Doctor had a tendency to prompt that kind of reaction from him. "Okay," he agreed. "But just remember that we're in New Jersey and don't blame me if the cookies aren't what you like."

"They'll be amazing," the Doctor said, having focused on something esoteric once again. "I mean, what are they going to be made out of? Toxic waste? Jimmy Hoffa's burial clothes?"

"Probably mostly lard and fat and all the other things Americans injest too much of," Chase opined, given that he wasn't entirely giddy about the menu options. "You know what I want? I want pizza. I want deliriously delicious pizza, that's what I want."

"Well, let's bloody go. I'm assuming you know a place," the Doctor said, with all the confidence of a man who got what he wanted and got it for others as well. "You've earned it."

He wrapped Chase into a hug. "I mean that," he said, not sure still about the hug because if this was reality somehow, people would totally be weirded out by it. But whatever.