Chapter Text
The team were arguing about the case. Everyone kept thinking of something different; House just observed their discussion with an amused smirk. It sometimes felt like being a parent and watching kids fight for his approval.
"Fine, let's go with the tox screen. Foreman, you do it." He decided after a while. "Chase, since our patient is British, go talk to her about family history; she'll understand you way better since you two are the same kind."
Chase rolled his eyes. "I'm Australian," he mumbled, but it didn't seem like he held any hope that House would stop that any day.
And he was right. House just waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, right. You drive on the left side of the road, and you have the queen on your banknotes. You're British."
Chase just sighed and left with Foreman.
The second they entered, the old lady grinned happily.
"Oh, Good Lord! Father Robert!" she said.
Chase stood there dumbfounded, while Foreman smirked.
"Uh, sorry? Aren't you confusing me with someone else?" The Australian asked, and his accent made the lady grin even more.
"Oh, now I just know it's you! You were one of the seminary students in my parish!" she added.
Chase's eyes went wide while Foreman immediately paged House and Cameron excitedly; his face probably has never displayed that much emotion.
As the other doctors walked in, the old lady continued talking. "I almost didn't recognise you without the cassock. What are you doing here? Are you a chaplain here? And why are you dressed like a doctor?"
House grinned, observing a situation.
"Uh, I'm actually a doctor here…" he mumbled.
"What? You left the seminary? Awh, that's too bad," she said. "I've always assumed you just moved parishes," she added.
"Yeah, such a loss for the Catholic Church." House said dramatically, and Chase glared at him.
"House," he warned.
"What? I'm just saying. You'd be such a perfect God's little Lamb" he said teasingly, which just earned him an eye roll from Chase.
The young doctor turned to the patient. "I'm going to ask you family history questions now. Some of them are going to be private. That's why the rest of the doctors are leaving now." He said firmly, looking at House and then at the rest.
The office was filled with a rather cheerful chatter when Chase walked in.
"Wait, I have a better one. A priest, a doctor, and an Aussie walk into the bar. Oh wait, it's just Chase." House said, and Foreman smirked.
"Really? That's your amazing joke? Wow, it's hilarious." Chase muttered. "Family history is clean, by the way," he added.
"Oh, back to the professional part, I see. Do they teach you all how to be boring in seminary, or is it just your own personality quirk?"
"Maybe it's the other way around? You have to be boring to go into the seminary?" Foreman joked.
"Wow, if that were the truth, you'd be the one to be in a seminary, not me." Chase retorted, and House grinned.
"Awh, and here I thought priests —and almost priests— were supposed to be nice."
"Guess they don't teach it in the seminary until after the first year." Chase replied dully. Then he glanced at the whiteboard. "The tox screen results will take a while. How about we test for all the autoimmune that fit the symptoms too, in the meantime?" he suggested. "Uh, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, um, lupus?" he added.
House rolled his eyes. "Congratulations, you've just broken number one in House's Decalogue. 'You shall not take the name of the Lupus in vain'." he joked. "It's never lupus."
"The commandment you're paraphrasing would be the third one, not the first. And lupus fits."
"Might be third in God's Decalogue. My Decalogue, my rules." House said with a smirk. He didn't argue, though; lupus did fit, indeed. "Go on, test for the autoimmune." He added.
Chase nodded and got up.
"No, not you." House stopped him. "Foreman and Cameron, go take her blood. Maybe you'll get some stories about our priest boy." He added, and while the other two doctors smirked, Chase just rolled his eyes.
"So… Lost your faith? Or just decided that cassock made you look fat?"
Chase sighed. He should've just gone on that lunch break.
"Just changed my mind," he replied, not looking up from the paperwork.
But House kept pestering.
"Just changed your mind? It's not something you just change your mind about. It's a major lifelong decision. You don't just wake up and decide. There needs to be something deeply troubling you to even go to the seminary to begin with. So, logically, there must be something troubling you even more to make you leave."
"Okay, I'll bite. Where have you got that 'theory' from? Research on Gregory House's Institute of Atheism?" He replied sarcastically.
"People turn to religion when something bothers them. To sacrifice your whole life to God —something that going to seminary means— you need to be seriously troubled."
Chase looked up from the paperwork. "Let's suppose that theory was right. Then you're contradicting yourself. Wouldn’t leaving the seminary mean someone got better then? Why would it prove I was more troubled?" He asked, now less annoyed and more confused and curious.
"Because you don't leave something that had helped you. If it helped you, you stay, either for yourself, in case you need help again, or out of gratitude that it helped you. Ergo, it didn't help, which means you were even more troubled than you had anticipated when joining the seminary. So, joining means you were troubled, but leaving means you're even more troubled."
For a while there was a silence, then Chase just muttered something rather not nice under his breath and returned to his paperwork.
After a while of silence, House spoke. "Got any pictures of younger you in a cassock?"
"Shut up."
The next day, Chase walked into the locker room slightly late.
He opened his locker —which didn't seem to have had any signs of forced entry— and froze. It was almost as if he went through all stages of grief in a split second. Then he just sighed, grabbed the clothes hanger and walked to the office.
As he walked in, he threw it at House.
"A cassock in a locker room – how hilarious," he commented.
"You should put it on; I got it even in the right size. Also, on such short notice. You have to appreciate that. You know how hard it is to find a cassock?"
"Not so hard in a sex shop, I bet, where —judging by the quality— this one was bought."
"Well, no one's perfect; I only had one evening to find it." House said with a shrug.
"Buying a fake cassock in a sex shop to torment an employee. This fits you perfectly on so many levels." Foreman commented, glancing at House, slightly amused.
The older doctor just shrugged. "I take it as a compliment."
Chase sighed. "Right, you all had fun; now can I have my lab coat back?"
"Are you sure you don't want that instead?" House asked with a smirk but got up, limped to the nearest file drawer, opened it and got the lab coat out. "It would suit you." He added, before throwing the lab coat to the doctor.
Chase just rolled his eyes and put the lab coat on. "Absolutely not," he just said, and that was the end of that conversation.
At least for now.
After another differential diagnosis, the team left, and House turned a computer on and opened the Internet search.
england seminaries 🔎