walkabout / Walkabout (noun): traditionally, a ritual excursion in the Outback by Aborigines that lasts for an indefinite amount of time. Often a rite of passage. Walkabout (adj): Australian slang for something that is lost, or just can't be found. / * She catches him printing out boarding passes in the conference room. He's wearing the leather jacket and a stuffed-full messenger bag is looped over one shoulder. "Chase --" "I'm flying to Melbourne tomorrow. For the funeral." Tomorrow she will remember his voice, color and consistency the same as his eyes, wavering somewhere between ice and water. She doesn't like the phase transition, back and forth, how he is vaguely slipping through everything. Chase isn't a patient, which makes it easier for her to ask, cursing herself for the halting words. "Your dad -- I mean -- how are you holding up?" In the back of her mind House is half-scolding and half-mocking her for being so damn hesitant and asking the stupidest questions. I kind of sort of know what you're going through rushes like bile through her clenched throat and onto her trembling tongue, but she can't quite spit it out. She can't cry if he won't. "Fine." He turns his head, looks at his reflection in the glass walls. She does the same, thinking that maybe Chase wants only ghosts for company for a little while. If he can see his, maybe she can see hers too. "No," Cameron finally says, confused by empathizing pain. He should feel as she did back then, and fine wasn't it. "Bye," Chase says, only speaking to the empty room. As he leaves she stands, watching his backside as if to prove -- to him? -- that she cares. - He sees Chase reading over what he assumes is a letter of resignation: letter-sized white paper folded shut and open so many times that the paper is coming apart, separating into feathery white edges, laser-affixed ink flaking like rust. "I'm moving to LA next week." Presumably where the weather and beaches are more like Australia's. Chase turns and walks into House's office. Foreman looks away. & "I need to take a week off." House says, not feeling generous at all, "Take all the time you need." Not as much time as you want. Chase folds away his lab coat on a high shelf with his name tag still clipped. He stows his pager in House's drawer, rinses coffee stains out of a mug. "House." House remembers Wilson fiddling with a patient folder, predictably sad brown eyes trying not to look at Chase, glancing pleadingly at House instead. It would have been so much easier for everyone involved if House had broken ethics and readied Chase. He'd also kept on hoping that Chase would take the same clues, deduce it for himself. He remembers Chase looking resigned at the pieces of his life all around him, like he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop and the other parent to die. House gives no handshake because Chase doesn't offer one, but he says, "Bye." * The day after the grass grows green above Rowan Chase, Cameron emails friends and professors and doctors she knows in immunology and rheumatology. She pecks at the letters on her keyboard bird-like and carefully, the way she picks at her food. If you were in Melbourne for the funeral of the late Dr. Rowan Chase, were you able to speak with my colleague, Dr. Robert Chase? Her acquaintances respond in apologetic phrasing: he wasn't there, not that they bothered to look, because they did not know that he was missing, they were not looking for a child lost somewhere over the ocean. There was a broken and splintered family tree at the site, a few branches clad in black, but there was no only son mourning among them. Sunday night Cameron bites her lips as she sets her alarm a half hour early. Monday morning she lies in bed, sheets clinging like guilt to her sensitive skin. She imagines the things she can say: what kind of son are you? and, I'm so sorry, Chase, was it so bad?. She can't choose because she has no idea how she expects Chase to feel, and sharp pangs of uncertainty plunge like pins and needles into her hands. She had wanted to see Chase cry back then, wanted to watch his hurt leaking through cracks --give her a substrate to work upon. "Good morning," she says twice that morning, because Chase never arrives. The realization is a long, subtle and cold burn like frostbite in her fingers and toes. She is a doctor and not supposed to give up hope, even if her husband taught her differently. Hope is a fragile thread wrapped around her wrists and affixed to things she can only feel drifting slowly and surely away from her; its thin strands cut into her skin. - House says, "Good morning. Chase's dad died two days ago. Any questions?" A pause. "Twenty-year-old female with acute pancytopenic anemia and unexplained fever. Differential diagnosis?" When the interviews don't start, he presses House for information, an unwise thing to do because his reward is a stack of folders: Chase's unfinished cases. Typical: Chase's childish irresponsibility, propensity to be laid-back and careless, lingers even after he's gone away. He assumes House already knows where Chase has gone. He doesn't know why he keeps it a secret from Cameron, she who probably cares more about Chase anyway. Maybe it's spite, or maybe it's how he is doctor-like, hoarding knowledge like power, like the time he didn't tell Chase that Voegler had talked to him. Foreman finds at least ten alcohol abuse-related cases in the inheritance, a disproportionate number that is either self-punishment on Chase's part or sheer cruelty on House's. He remembers Chase, eyes hardened by clear calluses, coldly reducing Luke's mother to alcoholism and condemning Luke to Chase's own hopelessness, but then House's miracle had interceded. Foreman remembers Chase walking out of the room, covetous and silent and aching. House, all that he is and has, is too little too late for Chase. "Was he angry with you? For something other than the usual?" is what Foreman asks House. When there is no answer, he pushes folders of the cases he's worked, sliding them across the table like enveloped bribes. House takes them and flips open the first, licking a finger to turn the pages. He says as he reads, "I knew his dad was sick. I didn't think he wanted to know, so I didn't tell him." Foreman tries to listen for regret and is vaguely glad that there isn't any to be easily found. He likes that House keeps himself at thrice-arm's-length, because he's not Cameron. House never asks for sympathy. Neither did Chase. Foreman can respect that. & Cameron says, "About, um, Dr. Rowan Chase's -- funeral," evading death in a delicate macabre dance and tripping in her failure. And there's a brief, crazy moment in which House imagines Chase walking through glass doors, urn of ashes in latex-gloved hands, setting it on the conference table as a reminder of everything. He calls Chase's cell, while driving to his residence, during the second week. "The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again." House pushes open the door to find white walls, furniture gathering dust slowly in the bright rooms, medical textbooks lying on bookshelves, bedsheets resting precisely undisturbed, the air cold and stale from disuse, the sunlight entirely unobstructed. The apartment is missing subtle flickers and pulses in the same way that a corpse lacks the haunting, mesmerizing, unmistakable details of being alive. "Chase," House says, and his cane punctuates the pause. "Chase." This is waking up in a hospital room alone. * They don't look at the newly-erased blank on the whiteboard schedule by the ICU. They do talk about him, sometimes, with a coffee cup in one hand and the pager curled inside the fingers of the other. They debate what happened between him and his dad, why he went into medicine, why he hates nuns, what his favorite color is. Cameron had found him childishly jealous, possessive of those things, and sometimes she guesses that secrets are all his father ever let him have to himself. It's not much at all, but if it's all he has, she can almost understand. They also talk when there's alcohol involved. House had said that Chase's mom drowned in a gin & tonic. Chase drank wine and champagne with them. "He used to date a woman who liked to be burned. And he knew that dominatrix." Foreman sips his Long Island iced tea. "You think maybe he's with her? Can you imagine?" Cameron's giggles are easy, frightening herself, as she peers into the flattened cone of her half-finished cosmopolitan. She no longer has any idea why he flirted with her. She doesn't think she has the ability to hurt, and she knows that Chase doesn't have the ability to trust. "I don't think he likes pain that much." "He works for House." The shared peril clearly deserves another round, which Foreman gets up to order. "Yeah, well," Cameron calls after him, "not anymore." Foreman turns from the bar and mouths, "Quitter, you and him both." But Cameron's drunk enough now not to think about Chase. She thinks instead about House, how he refuses to forget, and how he is unforgettable. She thinks about House smirking between Vicodins and toying with the Doctors Chase, how Chase changed slowly for the worse under House's persistence, how the last memory of Rowan Chase will be entangled with House, an inoperable tumor clinging like a spider. When Foreman comes back he asks, "Any idea why Chase left?" She imagines Chase telling her to stay away. She'd listened. House wouldn't. She doesn't think about Chase protecting himself, so she lies. "No, not really." - "But why is Dr. Chase gone?" "Hell if I know. Please roll over for the lumbar puncture. It's gonna hurt, so take a nice deep breath." For the patient's sake, he stabs gently, not pretending it's Chase under the needle. There's a rush of pained exhalation into the bedsheets, then, "Is he coming back? -- Oww!" "Like I just said," Foreman mutters as he pulls the plunger, fighting air pressure. There are many hospitals in Los Angeles: Huntington, Children's Hospital, City of Hope Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai, and Foreman doesn't think about any of them. He does think about Dr. Hamilton and whether or not it'd be amusing if Chase were working for him; Hamilton might actually make Chase feel good about himself. It's not that Foreman doesn't care what House's approval, as it were, but he's not starved for attention. When he gets back to the office, he places a call. "I'm wondering if you've heard anything about Dr. Chase recently?" "I'm afraid Dr. Chase died in Melbourne two weeks ago." "I meant the son." As if they should need to distinguish. But perhaps Marty respects the dead more than House gave him credit for. "My former colleague. He's working in LA." "Hmm, well, he's not here." Hamilton doesn't sound mad at all that Foreman didn't stray from House, even though technically, House refused the offer in Foreman's stead in a surprisingly thoughtful gesture. But if Hamilton wasn't mad with Foreman for messing up with his patient, then probably nothing short of bloody malpractice can get him angry. "Can you ask around?" "Sure." But Hamilton's not an idiot. "By the way, did Dr. House put you up to this?" He asks it with a slight laugh, probably the one he thinks will be the last. "Yeah." "Were you reconsidering the offer? I'm so sorry, Eric, but the spot's been filled." "That's not what I meant." He hangs up to see that House is looking at him through a glass wall, watching with eerie knowing in his eyes. & House waits for Chase to come back so he can point out: you walked out like your father before you. Sometimes he wonders if Chase went to Voegler like an ignored child misbehaving out of desperation, Chase who should be but doesn't act too old to fling spaghetti against walls, pretending it's shit. You should have just stolen a car and broken into a house, House wants to say, pointing at Foreman and staring at Chase, you should have gotten over your adolescence when everyone else did. You shouldn't put off fucking up. Chase was never polished, always awkward, a child wandering through his father's mansion. Ugly patterned shirts, ties he couldn't or wouldn't keep properly knotted. He might not even wear a lab coat if he thought he could get away with it. Running away is the ultimate childish act, declaring independence before the proper time. He goes to find Stacy, who looks up from her desk and says, "Wow, it's been a while. What'd you get yourself into this time?" "Nothing," he says, whisking the cane against her comfortably carpeted floor, sketching patterns of thought. "One of my fellows is AWOL. A pretty big estate should have gone to him a month ago, can you find out whether or not he --" "House," Stacy chides. Maybe Cuddy has forbidden her to call him Greg. "I can't do that. Not won't, can't." "He works for me," House says, mindful of the irrationality. "Cuddy says he's off the payroll. Maybe she knows something." As it turns out, Cuddy shrugs and says, "He quit. And told me not to tell you until you asked." She throws her hands up in the air, and House expects papers and charts to crash down around them. "Where is he?" "Assuming I know, which I don't, why do you care?" "I want to," a pause, "reprimand him for breaching the terms of his contract. He had another six months. He signed it." She pulls and pushes papers, never looking at House. "Because you obey those to the letter." "This isn't about me." "It's always about you," Cuddy says, clutching a folder to her plunging-necklined chest. She says it in a way that makes House nod and turn away. "House," Cuddy says as he walks away. "Interviews. Tomorrow." He turns back, and a stack of folders lands in his unoccupied hand. He hates maneuvering with both hands full. She doesn't even say that she's sorry. Chase doesn't deserve it exactly, and it's not as if he thinks for a moment that Chase will come back if House is sorry, that he'll appear if Wilson can bring Rowan back from the dead. Chase might prefer his father six feet under. It's that House will never know the whys and wherefores. He never uses ignorance as an excuse. Not for himself -- not for Chase. Not for Rowan either, but Rowan is beyond petty forgiveness. New office supplies come that day, coated in a sour smell of plastic and stored air and corrugated cardboard. Cameron goes through drawers, throwing out old writing utensils and paper scraps, restocking the department of diagnostics. "Don't throw those out," House says, when her hand hovers like an unskilled scalpel, waiting above chewed-up pencils and pens in a dusty coffee cup. "For all I know, they can be used as dental records. To identify a dead body or something." The joke falls dead on arrival. Chase has money -- a family name -- a medical degree. No need to tell Wilson to watch the streets for Chase along with his mysterious brother. Cameron slants her eyes at him, and Foreman raises his eyebrows. House looks at both of them, and in the spirit of proving that he actually was joking, he says, "Go ahead, throw them out. Don't need them." House imagines what he could say, what Chase might do, if they ever meet each other again. He might say something like "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but it was the best thing for you", parroting her words, hoping for understanding. But he had said to her face, he'll never forgive you, and House hates, hates being wrong. He hates that more than anything else. Chase doesn't forget betrayal, and neither does House. House hates hypocrisy, and the cane, and the pain, they measure how far he has walked away. There should be nothing to ask. It will only be the two of them standing in a glass house, the same distance between them. Cameron flicks her wrist and the shower of tiny clatters sounds like bones rattling in his wastebasket. House feels an ache in his own leg. He reaches for the Vicodin. & The next week House hires a new underling: 28-year-old male, BSc from the University of Chicago, M.D. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, residency in hematology at Sloan-Kettering in New York. He's bright and a little brusque and occasionally funny, he has freckles all over his face, he drinks black coffee, he likes sports metaphors, and his parents are both dead. One morning he reaches for a copy of Rheumatology and atop the textbook is a lab coat, faintly smelling of old cologne and dried-up cold sweat. When he takes the book, the garment unfurls itself and falls like a white bird stretching its wings, but drops into his hands. Over morning coffee, he asks, "Who was Dr. Chase?" "He used to be my fellow," House says. Foreman begins, "He went to Los Angeles to work" just as Cameron blurts, "He's in Australia somewhere". House watches them exchange looks and raised eyebrows and silent promises of later conversation. House looks at his morning Vicodin and morning coffee. He holds out a hand for the lab coat. When it's in his lap, House presses two fingers against the metal clip, removes the name tag, stares at the teeth-marks on the pocket. "He doesn't work here anymore." He looks for reactions. Cameron has that soulful meditative look, absorbed in something inside. Foreman leans back in his chair, coffee untouched, hands in his pockets. House looks beyond the glass doors and he sees Stacy's slim skirt moving out of his visual field. Cameron's husband died. Foreman grew up with drive-by shootings. House's inventory is short several leg muscles and one long, long-ago girlfriend. They lost three ICU patients last week, one in the ER this morning. They're losing another one right now. House justifies it by Chase's own declaration: it hurts a lot less to just not care. He promises himself that he'll use those words if Chase ever asks. "Okay," the new fellow says, snapping the stretched-out silence. House feels the recoil in the air. The name tag goes into his pocket and he feels like he's stealing. He begins to hand over the lab coat just as the new doctor asks, "Why did Dr. Chase leave?" "We all," House says as he stares at the whiteboard, gaze lingering there like a fever, "have our reasons." end