The things she loved were enormous:
skyscrapers, freeways, the Golden Gate bridge.
The things I loved were tiny:
sewing pins, buttons, the knots at the ends
of colorful threads
When his father dies, Chase hops a flight to LAX. He's still wearing his lab coat, passport jammed in the pocket with a scrip for Phernergan and a printout from The Age, and the woman next to him asks if he thinks she might be at risk for a heart attack. She weighs at least 250, 275; of course she is. He grunts. Suggests diet and exercise. Closes his eyes and tries to sleep. When he wakes up, they are still an hour out of LA. His mouth tastes like piss. His neck is sore. He hates his father.
His wrist itches and he scratches it. The skin turns pink. He hadn't even known his father was ill.
*
It was summer when his mother died, and he'd volunteered to give the first reading. "There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens." His father's funeral will be a winter one, for all that it was disgustingly hot and humid when he left Princeton. He won't be giving any readings, and no one bothered to invite him at all. No one even bothered to tell him the bastard was dead. It was House, strangely enough, who gave him the news.
And he thinks he shouldn't be as relieved as he is that House simply slipped him a copy of the death notice with a muttered, "Sorry to hear the old man croaked. Take a few days, fly to London, say your goodbyes." Probably shouldn't be so bloody grateful that he moved right on to the board and pretended not to notice as Chase emptied his bag in a frantic hunt for his passport.
He's doing the crossword in the back of the in-flight magazine when it hits him. House checked the death notices in The Age; ergo, House knew that his father'd been sick. That his father'd been dying. House fucking knew, and he didn't say anything, and Chase isn't sure this is something he can forgive. He'd have made a horrible priest; he knows that now.
*
Months later, he will think, "Well, obviously it was a mess. My father and I always were." But, for now, the plane is circling the airport, and he is stuck next to Sheila or Shelley or whatever the hell Ms. Lard Arse calls herself. She is snoring. Her entire body shakes. He looks at his watch; his flight to Melbourne was scheduled to leave fifteen minutes ago, and he never had a chance in hell of making it.
So he spends seven hours at LAX. He spends four of those hours in a sports bar, flirting with a chesty blonde and watching baseball. And drinking. Of course he's drinking. The Dodgers are playing the Giants, and it's not like he really cares who wins.
"My mother," and he can't really be saying this, he couldn't have had more than five or six beers at most, "was a bitch. A drunken, passive-aggressive, bitch. And my father bloody left me with her when I was fifteen bloody years old."
"Ooooh, poor baby," the blonde says. Her fingers tickle as she drags them across his knee. "You poor sweet thing."
She's drinking gin and tonics, and his mother always made that face, too, just before swallowing. Her hand on his thigh is suddenly too heavy, and he tries to swat it away. His arm is floppy and cumbersome. He smiles. Is sick all over her pretty blue skirt.
"You, you bastard," she says. "This skirt is silk." She pushes him away, and he falls to the floor. It is cool. He never wants to get up. It's not as if he really wants to attend the funeral, anyway.
For now, he passes out and pretends this isn't real.
*
They call his flight barely three hours later, and he opens his eyes to a world that is spinning and too loud. Standing up is like wiping out: the water pulsing and furious, his mouth suddenly filling with brine. He is dizzy. He is drowning. The woman behind the counter looks over at him and asks, "Are you okay, Sir?" He can barely hear her over the roar of the surf.
"Yes, fine." It's House's Cardinal Rule, everyone lies, but Chase actually agrees with him for once. "Just a bit tired," he adds.
She blinks. "All right, then, if you're sure." Smiles and moves on to a passenger with a screaming child. Chase wonders how she could've missed the tell-tale stench of sick and beer. Then again, he doesn't really care, and there is a line of people between them.
He still can't breathe. Still can't swallow. He stands, gathers his belongings. There's a text message on his mobile: "Patient dead. House." Another, this one from Cameron: "So sorry to," it begins, but he deletes it before he can finish reading.
He shoulders his bag and walks toward the gate. It's almost like going home.<
*fin.
[once more into the fray]