Chapter Text
They'd had a patient with it once. Hanahaki is hardly the sort of disease that needed the likes of House to diagnose — the giveaway, he'd pointed out, was the flowers — but the presentation and circumstances were unusual. A woman who had had the removal operation years ago, only to suffer a reoccurrence with a second unrequited love. House had made fun of her. Chase had made fun of her. Imagine getting the same rare disease twice. Imagine almost dying from unrequited love in your twenties, and doing it all over again ten years later.
-
One day Chase wakes up with a sore throat. It is almost March; a cold has been going around the hospital. It barely registers. He coughs; he clears his throat. Gets out of bed and pads to the bathroom for a drink of water and coughs again. Cameron follows, wearing one of his button-ups. "Having trouble there?" she teases.
He's much more interested in the fact she'd only done two of the buttons of his shirt. "You know how it is with water," he jokes.
-
Two weeks later, two things happen: House fakes cancer, and later that evening after a coughing fit, Chase spits up a foreign object, slick with spit that doesn’t disguise what it is: a flower petal. It is teardrop shaped, pink: Chase finds himself distracted with trying to identify it, narrow down the type of flower. Not a rose, he thinks. Not a daisy. Those are the only two flowers he can identify on sight, and his lack of understanding bothers him: Cameron tries to catch his eye as they leave work but he avoids her, shrugs her off. He feels dazed, his head spinning. His throat hurts. It is somehow crucially important he knows —
He goes to a florist's downtown. Picks through bouquets, potted plants, individual flowers wrapped in crinkly plastic and tissue paper. Not a tulip, not baby's breath, not a marigold or a lily. He coughs into his elbow; the florist looks concerned. He wonders how many people do what he’s doing, go to flower shops for research and not bouquets. "Cold," he says, and then: "I'm a doctor." His head aches. Somehow he is half-convinced that if he can figure out the type of flower it will change something; solve something. Like there's multiple explanations for what’s happening.
He buys a bouquet at random. Pink and red flowers in plastic; Chase does not fill out the card. He drives to Cameron's and when she opens the door her eyes go wide; her mouth falls open and she has to force a smile. "Oh," she says, her voice heavy. Oh, Chase thinks. "Thank you," she adds, trying to sound pleased.
"No — a, uh, neighbor offered them to me. A clinic patient." He scrambles for a lie. "I don't want — it doesn't mean anything, they're not, you know, flowers."
He is not convincing, but this is what Cameron wants to hear. She takes the bouquet. "They're beautiful," she concedes.
-
He coughs up two petals that night, in Cameron's bathroom, spitting into Cameron's sink. Pink. Teardrop-shaped. Speckled with blood.
-
Hanahaki disease has been studied extensively. It is an auto-immune disorder, some obvious crossovers with endocrinology. The body undergoes hormonal changes as a person falls in love: when that feeling is not reciprocated or is rejected, when that hormonal and dopamine output is left unmatched, most people experience heartbreak. Cry in the shower, eat ice cream, move on with their lives.
Less than one percent of the population, however…
-
It's a hell of a way to realize he's in love with Cameron, all else aside. That he likes her, certainly: Chase has no problem admitting that. He likes her. She's hot, and she's funny, and she's brilliant and sharp enough to be scary. The sex really is incredible. But he's always liked her. The way she'll fight for what she believes in, what she feels, will stand up for herself even when she's wrong, even when no one else agrees. The way she devotes herself to people, cares so unashamedly, in all the ways Chase fears trying: that she is willing to risk rejection and humiliation when he is not willing to risk anything of himself. He admires it: that faith, that strength. Even the fact that she'd been married once, widowed once. Foreman has made pointed remarks about her martyrdom, her self-righteousness. Chase only thinks of his mother. Imagines the strength it would take to not just take care of someone like that but love them. Still love them. Be so devoted a decade later.
Be so unafraid.
He admires her strength, but he likes the gaps, too. Finds them endearing. How he's caught Cameron crying in the locker room before and she had not apologized. How she'd liked House — for some reason — and been shameless about pursuing him. She's brave, that's the thing. Ridiculous and devoted and sometimes annoying, but even when she’s annoying there’s something cute about it; endearing. The way she puffs up, ready to fight, cares that much. The way her cheeks flush and her eyes flare and her face scrunches up like she thinks she’s tough, intimidating, when really it’s cute, when really —
Oh, God, he thinks. He is in love with her.
Shit.
-
The thing about Hanahaki, Chase knows, is that it only affects unrequited love. It is a feedback loop caused by lack of reciprocation. Trials with hormone replacement have not been particularly successful — a stopgap that has an almost 100% recidivism rate if treatment is ever stopped. Surgery to remove the nodules that cause the illness is effective, but comes with nearly guaranteed neurological damage, hormonal changes. Permanently. You lose the ability to feel love, that’s what people say: according to the literature, it’s more accurately that the brain stops producing certain neurochemicals.
It had been why House had taken that one case. Their patient had already had the surgery, but was producing enough dopamine and vasopressin to trigger Hanahaki anyway. There had been nothing they could do. They couldn’t scrape her brain a second time. She was already on hormone replacements; a higher dose would do nothing. She was already coughing up roses. House had her regrown lung nodules removed, set her on a regimen of steroids and anti-depressants to try and boost her hormone levels in a different way. She’d died a few weeks later.
Chase’s situation isn’t so dire. He has options. He and Cameron are actively sleeping together. She likes him, he knows — and maybe it isn't love, but it's something. He can get her to fall for him, he thinks. (He pictures: a house, a yard, children and family vacations. He shudders: he is terrified, he wants —) (He pictures: Cameron, two nights ago, in his bed. They had fully intended on having sex but she had blurted out a silly question — what was with House and pee yesterday? — and he had teased her about timing and weirdness. And they had talked, instead. Just talked. Laughing and joking around like it was normal, no big deal, like the point wasn't a hook-up but being together, and — he shudders. He wants this, he thinks.)
If she falls for him — (the possibility feels like drowning, his lungs and throat tight) — then everything will be fine.
-
"I want more," Chase says. Hopeful. Sure.
Cameron's smile fades.
-
That night, he coughs up half a flower. He coughs up the remaining petals over the next hour, tasting blood and mucus and choking: Chase wants to reach for his Epi. He is certain he is suffocating. Eventually it passes and he has a bloody mess in his sink, phlegm and blood and a soggy flower that looks more like a clot or tumor than anything you'd offer as a gift: biohazardous. Disgusting. He's spent the past few weeks doing research on and off: a peony, he thinks. A peony.
Numb, aching, and exhausted, Chase realizes he's probably dying.
In all the time Cameron has known Chase, he has called out from work twice. The first had been a few months after she'd started in Diagnostics: Chase had been so obviously suffering from the flu that House ordered him to go home, irritated with Chase's glassy eyes and lack of ideas in the differential.
The second had been a year ago: January or February, the deep end of winter. Chase simply had not been at work one Wednesday; had returned a day later without comment. She'd asked and he'd shrugged; Foreman — unkindly, but probably accurately — had diagnosed bad hangover.
Chase hadn't missed work when his father died. Hadn't skipped a day to avoid fallout over Vogler, had shown up to work with a bruised jaw and everyone in the hospital spreading rumors about the punch. He’s never asked for a week off to visit family, or to fly home. It isn’t like he never misses work. He seems to have an uncanny ability to predict when House is about to have a slow week and avoid cases for a few days: Chase takes his vacations in those moments, coming back to Diagnostics bragging about ski trips to Switzerland, about surfing in Mexico. He uses his vacation time.
But he doesn't call out sick.
The day after Cameron ends their — the day after she breaks up with him — he does.
-
She hasn't slept well. Slept at all, really; didn't even try after her alarm clock hit four and she'd thought: good enough. She'd taken care showering and getting dressed, wanting neither to appear too casual — which would imply she was too upset to dress nicely — or too formal — meaning that she was trying to prove a point. Had lain on the sofa with frozen peas over her eyes, wary of swelling, before doing her makeup. Subtle. Professional. Not trying.
Foreman's already in the office when she arrives; Chase is often running five minutes late. "Good morning," says Cameron, sitting in her usual seat.
"Hey. Chase as the flu or something, he's not coming in," Foreman grouses. "Watch us catch a case, too."
"He's sick?" Cameron repeats dumbly. Foreman has already given the reason, but she immediately imagines Chase collapsed and frail in an ICU bed, the flu being stomach cancer, a system collapse. An old fear, an old reaction. Irrational. Anger comes almost as quickly, and she leans into the feeling: "What a coward," she snaps.
Foreman gives her a look. "Did you break up?" he asks, his voice heavy with dread.
She spends the day revising an article, staring helplessly at her CV. She has the urge to call Chase; she wants to ask him what he's thinking. It occurs to her that this is some scheme: he is trying to guilt her into caring. If she feels anything, it is frustration, she tells herself. That he ruined everything. That he should be so selfish.
House comes in at five with a case passed on from Cuddy and seems to notice Chase's absence for the first time. "Left early?" he asks, nodding at the empty place at the table.
"Never showed," Foreman grumbles.
House looks pointedly at Cameron; smirks at whatever he sees. "Guess you'll get to pull an all-nighter alone. Tell Chase if he's not in at six he's fired," he adds before leaving.
-
Cameron calls him at nine. She offers, lest Foreman suspect she has a problem with Chase: Nine, she thinks, is late enough that he probably will not answer his phone, but not so late she is obviously hoping he won't.
Chase picks up, of course. "Hello?"
Her first thought is that he has been crying: his voice sounds thick and strange. "It's Cameron." Brisk, professional. "We caught a case. Can you come in tonight?"
Chase is silent for a long moment; she hears him clear his throat. He has been fighting with seasonal allergies for a few weeks, claims it's a bad cold: only a few nights ago they had argued playfully, Cameron pulling the immunology card and Chase joking about private examinations. "Yeah," he says. "Sure, alright."
"Good." She cuts off an impulse to offer him coffee, to joke about Foreman: things she would usually say and somehow now cannot. Chase hangs up the phone.
-
He arrives in the lab a little past eleven, hair damp as though he's showered. Chase lives half an hour away: there is no reason it should have taken two to drive in. Cameron says nothing: she does not want to remind anyone she knows where Chase's apartment is. That she knows how long he usually showers.
The three of them are the only ones in the lab, practically the only ones in the hospital. Chase allows Foreman to loop him in and silently joins the testing: he does not try and speak to Cameron, and she eyes him sidelong and reminds herself this is the ideal outcome. A bit past midnight, Chase abruptly pushes away from his table, rushes out into the hall: he has a coughing fit into his hands, wet and painful and loud even through the glass. Cameron and Foreman exchange looks: she feels a flutter of — well, no. She can let herself worry; he is still her colleague.
When he's done coughing, Chase looks at his hands in disgust: the angle is wrong, but Cameron can imagine the mucus and spittle. He leaves to wash up and sanitize.
"I guess the guy's sick after all," says Foreman unpityingly.
"He's allergic to birch pollen." Cameron's ready to defend this knowledge, but Foreman doesn't ask.
"Kinda early in the year," he says, which is true.
Chase returns fifteen minutes later, red eyed and exhausted. "You alright, man?" Foreman asks, almost kindly.
Chase doesn't look at Cameron. "Fine," he says.
-
The next morning, House seems disappointed that Chase and Cameron are ignoring one another instead of fighting. A night of work has given them no insights as to what is wrong with their patient, and the little girl is clearly not doing well.
Her father is devoted; her little brother is sweet: he offers Cameron flowers she only later realizes had been stolen from the maternity ward. "Really?" Foreman asks when she finds the card: they are leaving to search the patient's house together, and he tags along as she returns them to the correct room.
"It's sweet," she says: Foreman says nothing further.
"I'm gonna regret asking this," Foreman says when they're searching Lucy's bedroom.
"So don't ask it." Cameron tries to wedge herself under the bed to reach a vent; she watches Foreman's shoes. She doesn't exactly want him to join her, but somehow him standing and watching is worse.
"What's going on with you and Chase today?" He'd been predictably assigned to the NICU with their patient this morning: it has been something of a relief not to have to see him, to remember she is angry or worry about the way he keeps clearing his throat; the redness around his eyes.
"Nothing."
"Bullshit. You're glued together for months, suddenly you won't be caught in the same room."
"I didn't think you cared," Cameron says snappishly, struggling to pull open the vent: it is wedged in place but the screws as missing, and she thinks she sees something...
"I don't. Doesn't mean I want to have to deal with breakup drama."
Cameron drops her forehead to the floor, frustrated. It wasn't a breakup: a breakup implies they were together. A couple. It implies fault. Chase's fault: yes, absolutely. But —
"Chase," Foreman says from above her, "is a player. 'Least he thinks he is. He's never given a crap about anything that isn't himself."
"That's not —" Cameron yanks open the vent, cuts herself off and gladly: what she remembers is the look on Chase's face when she told him no. "There's something in here," she says.
-
It isn't that Cameron does not notice Chase's absence in the hours that follow. But it isn't unusual for Chase to be stuck in the ICU — NICU, this time — while she and Foreman do busywork. And she doesn't want to talk to him. Not when he ruined everything. Not when she —
Lucy's sexual assault examination genuinely distracts Cameron; as does the revelation she is undergoing precocious puberty. It isn't until House announces the team will be pulling a second all-nighter that Cameron realizes she hasn't seen Chase in hours, that he does not seem to be included in House's announcement. Foreman swears under his breath; Cameron looks around the conference room.
"Where's Chase?" she demands.
"Worried about your bashert?" House asks: she does not know the Yiddish but perceives the insult. Cameron bristles, but something in House's look makes her falter: he is not smirking, and the expression on House's face is one she recognizes: she usually sees it when he's entranced by a particularly complex mystery.
"He really sick?" Foreman asks, not hiding his annoyance.
"No," House says sardonically. "He's backpacking in Peru. Kid batted his eyes and you know me. Can't resist a PTO request from a pretty face. Those dreamy eyes, those pouty lips... Cameron gets it." House's wink is a leer; Cameron grinds her teeth.
"So where is he?" she asks.
"Not here," House says, turning to look at the whiteboard with sudden disinterest. "Sucks to be the two of you. But don't worry. I'll buy coffee tomorrow morning. And if you find anything useful: doughnuts."
-
Foreman spends a couple hours complaining about Chase's absence as they test items from Lucy's home: he clearly seems to believe this is Cameron's fault.
A part of her worries the same. She tries calling Chase twice, at eight and again past midnight, and both times gets his voicemail: the first time she hangs up and the second she leaves a rambling message: We're worried about you, she says, and then: As colleagues. Friends. And then winces and feels guilty, hearing the playback: Cameron re-records the message in the 3rd floor women's toilets, where Foreman won't hear. I didn't want to hurt you, she says. I'm sorry.
-
House drifts in at nine the next morning with cafeteria coffee and half a dozen bagels: there is still no sign of Chase. Cameron is alone in the conference room — Foreman is taking his turn napping in the on-call — and takes one of the coffees. Two cups, she notices: not three.
House asks about Lucy first, Foreman with a snide joke after. "Did Chase call out again?" Cameron asks.
House is making coffee in the kitchenette: he never drinks it from the cafeteria. "No."
"So did you fire him?" Cameron's tired, worried, and exasperated; House is being unusually obtuse, she thinks, although she isn't sure why it feels so.
"Ethical question for you,” House says instead as the pot begins to fill. He unhooks his cane from the counter and stands by the whiteboard: for a heartbeat she thinks this is about Lucy. "Patient A is sick. Let's call him..." he has to think for a moment. "Shase. He is adamant that no one know of his condition, which was given to him by a frequent sexual partner. Let's call her Shameron."
"I didn't give Chase an STD!" Cameron snaps, for a moment too outraged to focus on the rest of House's story.
"Does Shameron," House continues, "have a right to know?"
"Yes," Cameron seethes. "And morally — ethically — if you're saying Chase has a communicable disease —"
"No, not at all," says House calmly. His gaze is transfixed on Cameron, intense and yet somehow neutral, as if she is a petri dish or some other object of interest but no immediate use. "He has Hanahaki disease.”
The day before, Chase had gone to the conference room. Cameron usually keeps the kitchenette stocked with tea and honey and his throat hurts so badly, his lungs pinching with each breath. He aches all over, feels weak and distracted: Nurse Wendy had needed to repeat Lucy's vitals three times before he'd understood. A hot drink. Tea for his throat. Maybe a quick nap, fifteen minutes in a chair. That’s the plan. Simple. Doable. And then, he thinks, he'll be fine.
Instead he finds himself bent over the sink, coughing and coughing, blood and petals and woody stems. Dizzy, his vision black around the corners, hyperventilating — he cannot seem to inhale. The smell of blood does not bother him, but mixed with the sweet scent of flowers — He gags. Chokes. Hacks and gasps, his eyes wet and vision obscured with tears.
Minutes, hours later, when he can breathe again, his head pounding and aching, Chase shakily turns on the taps to rinse the mess: he will sit down for a moment and then clean properly before anyone notices, he tells himself.
"How long's this been going on?" House asks, leaning against the conference table when Chase shakily turns around.
-
He is too exhausted, too disoriented to lie, to even wonder at House's unusual seriousness or be touched by his concern. House stomps them to the clinic for a quick exam and then to oncology, where Chase is admitted: flowers in the lungs are some kind of tumor, House justifies dismissively to Wilson in Chase's hearing.
It is an unusual kindness — Chase knows far fewer of the oncology staff but every single ICU nurse and doctor, and is in no hurry for them to see him this way; between House and Dr. Wilson, he should have at least a few hours of privacy before the entire hospital knows and is tromping upstairs to admire his charts.
He's given steroids and agents to numb his throat, water to sip, and a nasal cannula to help his oxygen levels. Once he is able to breathe, Chase's head begins to clear: he only starts to feel dread when House tromps back into his room after an absence.
"Amphetamines?" House asks, shaking a paper cup.
"House," Wilson says exasperatedly, two steps behind and bearing x-rays. "How you feeling?" he adds, kindly, smiling at Chase.
He has a hell of a headache, feels weak all over, and his throat — even numbed — feels raw and bloody. "What's the dose?" he asks House, his voice rough and hoarse in his ears.
"60 mil." Chase nods, and House shakes a pill into his outstretched hand, keeping two more for himself. Wilson looks performatively horrified and says nothing. "He needs to be awake for decision making,” House says as Chase struggles to swallow the pill with a sip of water. "Such as —"
"I want the surgery," Chase interrupts: Wilson's eyes widen and House's narrow.
"This is about Dr. Cameron, isn't it?" Wilson asks sympathetically: Chase closes his eyes, frustrated. "Have you spoken to her?"
"It's nothing to do with her," he says, taking another sip of his water: it tastes bloody. He thinks of the look she'd had when she'd dumped him. Devastated. That was the worst part: that she had been upset. It meant she was sincere. Wilson is going on about love and heartbreak and not taking drastic action — take it back, Cameron had pleaded. He would have if he could —
It's worse, Chase thinks, that she does care. As a colleague. As a friend. That she cares, but doesn’t — doesn’t love him.
"Great speech," House says when Wilson is done. "The importance of true love from a man with three alimonies and counting."
"The importance of not having unnecessary surgery," Wilson argues.
"If it's life-saving, it isn't unnecessary," says House blandly. He's watching Chase with a strange expression on his face. Despite saying almost exactly what Chase is also thinking, Chase has the sense House is being kind more than advocating for this course of treatment, which is flattering on the one hand and worrying on the other: he is dying faster than he had hoped.
"Chase," Wilson says, making eye contact. "We're talking permanent neurological damage."
The nodules in his lungs can be removed fairly safely, although they will grow back: as the disease progresses, they will regrow too quickly to be removed and Chase will suffocate. Brain surgery, the removal of certain hormonal glands, will stop the growths from returning. Never feel love again, that's what people say. Even if the treatment successful, he'll need hormone replacement therapy. Anti-depressants. In several states — though not New Jersey — sterilization is also required: Hanahaki survivors are legally considered unfit parents, unable to care for or love their children, one step removed from sociopathy. It’s controversial, and the medical evidence is shaky, but it is how, Chase knows, he will be perceived.
He looks away from Wilson.
"Need you to clear out," House says with a glance at Wilson: more cause to worry, more unusual kindness. Chase feels a spike of anxiety, and wonders if that, too, will be lost with the surgery, if he no longer will care what people think. It is almost something to look forward to. Wilson looks exasperated; Chase tunes out their bickering, focusing on the pain in his throat and chest, the way his head is spinning. Wilson leaves, and for a few minutes House says nothing. Chase doesn't break the silence.
"You've never been in love before, have you?" House says finally: it's a question but from his tone not a real one; he is smirking, unkind. In love, Chase thinks — thinks of Cameron, sees her, nose scrunched and eyes bright with delight as she laughs — her face falling when he'd asked — he clears his throat. Winces, not from pain but the tell.
The truth is: no. He's had girlfriends, sure. The longest about a year in university; girlfriend, he'd called her, but they only ever met up for sex, and he had not been devastated when she had dumped him. "And you have?" Chase asks with as much defiance as he can muster.
"Yes," House says calmly, which is worse than a lie or denial. "Of course, when she left me, I didn't need brain surgery to get over it."
"Really? It'd explain a lot," Chase mutters, coughing — just the once, just a clearing of his throat, running his tongue over his molars searching for blood.
"I come by my misanthropy honestly," House says.
Chase coughs. And again, and again. When the fit passes, he's dizzy, sucks in deep breaths from his cannula: he closes his eyes and tastes blood.
"You know," House drawls, "you could tell her. She finds out you're dying and she'll be all over you." It could almost be kindly meant, if not for his sneer.
He's not wrong. Cameron is a good person; a caring one. Chase is sure she wouldn't want him to die, even if — well. Even if he were nobody, even if he was a stranger. She'd probably agree to date him, tell him — whatever he needed to hear. Wanted to hear. Sleep with him, smile at him again, and all the while feel nothing but pity —
"Doesn't help in over half of cases," Chase says, because he's been doing research. Sometimes it's enough to end the feedback loop. Not always. He imagines — what, a week? Two? Pretending to be happy, pretending its real. Waking up beside her and knowing —
"So you thought about it," House says with a dark gleam of triumph.
Of course Chase has. He's not that selfless. Not that good a person. Two weeks with Cameron, pretending — knowing she doesn't want it, knowing she can't wait to leave, that behind every smile is nothing, is pity, is hatred. He's seen that enough in his life already. And she'd think it was her fault when it failed, when it went wrong. Try her best to love him, and in return he can fuck her up for another decade. He's not that selfless, but he doesn't want to do that to her.
And say it did work. Cure him. Then what? She's stuck with him, resentful and hating him and knowing that leaving might kill him. He gets to wake up every day knowing she pities him, that he's a burden to her, that she does not want him and never could. "I'm screwed either way," Chase says flatly. "I'd rather just have the surgery."
“Right,” says House, and Chase hardly notices when he leaves.
-
Even with the cannula, Chase's oxygen levels keep dropping until he is given a mask. He spends the day wrenching it aside to cough and talking with his neurosurgeon, who has seen more advanced cases but is alarmed by the rapid progression of Chase's and recommends quick action. In between tests, Chase avoids making eye contact with the oncology nurses, once again glad he is not in the ICU.
Dr. Wilson stops by again in the afternoon. “I ran into Dr. Cameron in the cafeteria,” he smiles, unsubtly; Chase has no energy to reply. “Didn’t say anything, don’t worry. I can see what you see in her. You two make a great couple."
"We're not a couple," Chase corrects irritably, and Wilson — having gotten what he wanted, a response — pulls up a chair.
"Considering the diagnosis, I'm not sure I agree," Wilson says gently.
Considering the diagnosis, Chase is pathetic. When he'd imagined taking their relationship public, making it official — well. It hadn't involved a hospital bed, people clucking at the poor hapless idiot, in love with a girl who will never —
"I know you don't want to hear this," continues Wilson. "But, well, you're stuck in a bed in my department..." he shrugs and smiles; aww, shucks, what can you do? It's rich, Chase thinks. He's not sure he's had a conversation with Wilson in the past year; he doesn't find the friendly act all that compelling. "I know you want the surgery," he says.
"Yeah,” Chase agrees.
"And you know the side effects."
"And you're here to tell me I don't know the risks? I can't make my own decisions?" Chase interrupts, his voice catching on the hard c of can't — he coughs, and once he has finished speaking he lifts the mask to couch and gasp and cough some more, sitting up weakly to spit blood and peony petals into a vomit bin. He's light-headed and out of breath when he's finished, his oximeter beeping wildly as his pulse races, his heart struggling to keep up — he imagines roots and stems enclosing his organs, choking him...
Wilson gets him some water, fusses over his oxygen, asks if Chase needs pain killers, more throat spray: a nurse, summoned by the beeping, replaces his bin with a clean one and picks up his oximeter from the floor to reattach it to his finger. It's a few minutes before Wilson clears his throat and says: "There's another way to look at this, you know."
Chase is too worn to ask, but Wilson continues anyway. "Loving someone so deeply that it triggers this sort of response is rare. It's beautiful. It means that you're capable of some pretty incredible feeling. Don't you think that's worth fighting for?"
It's a hormonal reaction, Chase thinks. But also: Cameron, bent over Emma Sloane, that line between her eyebrows she gets when she's concentrating, pouring everything she has into the current problem, furrowed and unselfconscious and —
Cameron, calling him last night. Cool and calm, like she hadn't just broken up with him, like it would never have crossed her mind to care, like the only reason she would ever have to think about him was —
"Have you ever had Hanahaki?" Chase asks around the mask.
"Well," Wilson hesitates: saying thankfully no would undermine the true love talk, Chase figures. "No."
"Too bad for your wives. Guess you didn't love 'em all that much."
Wilson's smile turns pinched, and Chase wonders what he's doing. Here. Now. Why Wilson, of all people, should care about any of this: they are not friends, and Chase isn't buying that Wilson's some dewy-eyed defender of true love. Or maybe he is, and he's living vicariously. Either way, it has nothing to do with him: he concentrates on breathing, the pinched feeling of each breath. He's fatigued, exhausted from even this much talking.
"Take it from someone who has failed to find love... many, many times," Wilson says quietly. "I wouldn't be so quick to throw it away." His voice is odd to Chase's ears, and he is too tired to puzzle out why: he is not smiling, Chase realizes eventually. He is not trying to sound friendly.
"You'd die from this?" he manages, curious even if frustrated.
Wilson sighs. "Maybe not," he admits. "But." He doesn't finish his sentence.
Chase doesn't say anything else, just closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing, the cold trickle of pumped oxygen entering his mouth and lungs. But it'd be worth it to know that it's like, he thinks. But he doesn't. Love, Chase is pretty sure, is something returned. Requited. A relationship, not a burden to choke you with.
-
House drops by again the next morning with coffee and bagels, from which Chase presumes Cameron and Foreman pulled a second all-nighter. He's glad not to have been part of it, although he has not gotten much sleep either: by now, it hurts too much to speak, to think, and if his oxygen levels drop any further, he's getting intubated.
House also has a medical journal — something something auto-immune — that he tosses onto Chase's lap. "Here I thought you were too young to grow a beard," he remarks, eying Chase's jaw. Chase closes his eyes, hoping to convey exasperation.
"I did some reading last night," House continues, almost cheerfully. He helps himself to Chase's side table, putting down his bagels and coffee and dropping his cane onto Chase's bed and knees to spread cream cheese on one. "Interesting article on page 24. 2006 study on twenty Hanahaki survivors — not exactly a killer sample size, but hey. Check it out when you get a minute."
Chase reaches for the journal, scanning the index until he finds the study in question: Childhood neglect and attachment disorder as precursor to acute pulmonary floritis. Great. Fantastic. He's too breathless and dizzy for anger, but it flurries around him: he keeps his eyes closed to avoid House's smirk.
House reads over his chart, no doubt seeing Chase has a procedure scheduled for ten to scrape and drain his lungs. It'll buy him a few more days.
"What… do you want?" Chase manages at last. Slow and hoarse.
House has been waiting for the question. "Still planning on brain surgery? Gasp twice for yes," he adds when Chase struggles to speak.
"Wilson," he says weakly.
"Love triumphs, you and Cameron should run off into the sunset together, who cares if it's pity?" House guesses. Chase nods. House examines his bagel, takes a messy bite and talks with his mouth full. "I've decided I agree with him," he says. This feels like a betrayal: Chase is stung by the hypocrisy. House shrugs, gathering up his things before adding cruelly: "You're not all that smart: throw in brain damage and there won’t be any reason to keep you around.”
-
Chase skims the journal article once he's finished stewing and after a short nap to recover the energy just that short conversation had sapped from him: House had placed a sticky note on the appropriate page and even used a black marker to circle a section towards the end. Even in his foggy state, it is immediately obvious what House has intended by sharing the article.
Sufferers of Hanahaki disease with pre-existing attachment disorders, CPTSD, and similar psychological problems, are 14% more likely to suffer the acute form of the disease, an correlation also found to a lesser extent in those who have a history with foster care, unstable childhoods, or even single parent households: while the sample size is small, it suggests a connection between childhood neglect and the intensity of the disease. Over half of these sufferers reported never having fallen in love before; of this group, two thirds chose surgery. Of the six whose (unwilling, Chase editorializes) partners chose to reciprocate to save their lives, five went through complete remission.
Chase throws the journal aside in disgust. In terror. It slides pathetically to the floor.
It would work. It would work, it'd save his life. Cameron would agree, he knows —
The way she looked at him when he'd asked —
He doesn't think he could stand it. Being with her and knowing, knowing she doesn't — that it's pity, that it's disgust, that it isn't real; feeling as he does and knowing every minute —
What, House whispers in his head. Since when do you have pride to uphold? Screw dignity. Screw everyone. Do what he needs to to survive, to get ahead. Take his father's money, go to his father's school, get a Diagnostics fellowship in the United States. Talk to Vogler, don't talk to Tritter. Save your job, save your life. Chase has always done this, has never felt too badly about it: he isn't hurting anyone, he isn't hurting himself.
Cameron. Stiff and miserable and hating him. Smiling, kind, selfless. Ready to give herself to anyone. Smiling and wishing she were anywhere else, with anyone else — He feels sick; he is sick. Pulls off his mask and coughs and chokes, a nurse rushing in to help as he spits up soggy flower after flower, sodden and sticky with clotted blood.
-
His lungs are scraped and drained. He is intubated, drugged, unconscious. When Chase comes to from the anesthesia, he is in one of the ICU rooms reserved for Diagnostics patients. Large and modern, the sun setting through the windows. Cameron is sitting at his bedside. She is wearing medical gloves, has a tray in her lap full of waste bags. Petals. Flowers. She turns one over in her hands. A peony, wrapped in plastic.
When she looks up, sees that he is awake and watching her, unable to speak, to breathe, to think, her eyes are red and swollen. “House told me," she says.