Chapter Text
She could tell he the look in his icy blue stare that something wasn’t right in his head, like his brain was functioning on a lower gear. His breathing was normal, and nothing that had happened that day would lead to him having ill feelings. In fact, it had been a great day.
Allison and Robert were engaged and 8 months pregnant with their first child, a baby girl. That afternoon they had their 8 month sonogram and got to see their baby which excited the both of them. In one short month, they’d be welcoming their first child with open arms and everything seemed so surreal. Allison honestly couldn’t remember a time in her life where she’d been this happy.
Sure, the first few months of her pregnancy were a little rocky and she wasn’t prepared for the length of morning sickness she’d suffered from, but Robert took such amazing care of her that she knew everything would be fine. He was the most amazing, kind, compassionate man she’d ever met. The pregnancy had taken them both by surprise as they weren’t planning on having a baby so soon, but nonetheless they were exited to be parents.
But that look in his eyes, it was concerning.
Enough so that when they got home and he went off to hide in the bedroom, she followed him to see what he was doing. In the short time that they’d been living together she learned that Robert needed to have space every once in a while. She also noticed that he slept a lot more than she imagined he would. The first month she figured he was coming down with some kind of cold or flu, but the longer it went on the more she came to the realization that he just seemed to sleep more than the average person.
Of course, everyone appeared to sleep more than her. Being pregnant she found herself restless, and being in a new house meant she moved into the “nesting” part of her life. She’d spend hours a night planning out the nursery, reading parenting books, and figuring out what she wanted to do about work after she gave birth. It was a surreal time in her life, Robert proposing to her, purchasing a house while also getting pregnant. Everything was coming together in the best way.
Robert slept so much yet always seemed tired. Again, she just figured it was something she’d never noticed about him since she’d never actually lived with him. She learned that he valued his space and so when she saw him slink away most times she let him be. Some people are more introverted than others.
This time, however, felt different. It was strange that after seeing the sonogram of their daughter, only one month away from entering the world, his reaction was to sulk away into the bedroom rather than help her plan baby names. She also noticed that he hadn’t eaten much that day, and though he showed great amounts of excitement at the OBGYN office, on the car ride home he was pretty quiet.
She silently crept to the doorway of the bedroom and noticed the lights were off and the room was totally dark. Through the shadows she could make out her fiancées figure sitting on the bed with his head in his hands.
“Is everything okay?” She lightly questioned, a nurturing tone to her voice. He seemed to groan before speaking the word “yeah”. She knew she should have dropped the conversation there and given him his desired space, but something in her gut didn’t feel right. Although she was not officially a mother yet and certainly not his mother, she felt this mother’s intuition kick in and it told her something was gravely wrong with him.
“Do you have a head ache or something? You were really quiet on the way home,” she kept digging, looking to see what the root cause of his strange behavior was.
“Yeah, yeah,” he slowly spoke, his words dripping with a kind of sluggishness she didn’t understand. To be honest, in all the time that she’d known him, he’d never sounded like that before. “I’m going to take a shower and then go to bed.” His words sounded strained as he cautiously stood from the bed and wandered over to Allison. In one smooth motion, he swiftly kissed her on the lips with a fiery passion behind it and placed one of his large manly hands on her growing baby bump.
“I love you,” he spoke with a weird hint of desperation, “both of you.”
“I love you too,” she replied, confused as she gazed into his stormy eyes.
With that he retreated to the light of the bathroom, and her to the kitchen to grab something easy for dinner and plop down on the couch with a pen and legal pad to write down potential baby names.
She and Robert had been going through potential names for practically the whole pregnancy but had yet to come up with something they both liked. Sure there were the standard names like Mary, Sara, Rebecca, Jessica, and Jennifer, but they were looking for something more interesting. Not weird and interesting like Bucket or Paisley or McKinnley, but something less ordinary.
1. Amelia Georgia Chase
2. Penelope Margret Chase
3. Ava Marina Chase
She continued to list out names and chewed on the end of her pen. Whatever name they picked would be the one their child lived with forever, the first gift a parent gives their newborn child. Picking the wrong name could result in endless teasing by classmates and embarrassment. Allison herself wasn’t a huge fan of her own name.
It was so common, so bland. There were roughly four other Allison’s in her high school class, and about thirty in her college graduation.
She wondered if anyone ever liked their own name.
She wondered if Robert liked his name.
Robert Nathaniel Chase.
It sounded very proper and pompous, like a general or some other stately man. He told her that his parents picked the name Robert because it was the English version of his father’s Czech name Rowan and the name Nathaniel was after his mother’s father who he adored very much. A simple tailor who taught his only grandson how to sew. It was a cute story, actually, and Allison always attributed it to why Robert was so good at stitches during surgery.
Allison’s head perked up for a moment when something inside of her alerted her that something was wrong. She rubbed her small baby bump (she was a small pregnant woman, only adding about fifteen pounds to her tiny frame) but felt nothing wrong with the baby. Quietly, she stood from the couch and crept her way to the stairs. Before climbing them, she realized something was off.
It was too quiet.
She paced up the stairs in a half panic, thinking maybe she was just being crazy but something in her head told her otherwise. Her heartbeat intensified as she made her way to the hallway bathroom and heard no water running. Robert said he was going to take a shower, right? She was hesitant to knock at first, not wanting to disturb him if he was doing something private but she decided to hell with it.
Knock, knock.
There was no answer.
Knock, knock.
“Robert?” She questioned, “is everything okay?”
Still silence persisted.
Bang, bang, she pounded louder on the door, her hand open and making a harsh sound as it whacked against the painted wood.
“Robert! I thought you said you were taking a shower? Come on you’re scaring me! Robert?”
Behind the door she could hear the faintest sound of a little whimper, and her heart realized what her brain already knew.
Frazzled and frayed, Allison darted to their bedroom, ripped open her vanity and pulled a Bobby pin from its container before racing back to the bathroom door. With shaky hands, she jiggled the pin in the door until she was able to unlock it and harshly swung the door open to see her fiancé on the bathroom tile in a pool of his own blood.
His head was tipped back, his sweet handsome face red and puffy with silent tears he must have hid from her, and his wrists slit vertically halfway up to his elbows.
“Robert!!!” She screamed desperately, throwing herself on the floor beside him and grabbing at his arms to see the damage. He was covered in so much crimson, warm blood that she could barley make out the long cuts he’d made to his arms. In his right hand she found a small, deadly razor blade which she quickly snatched away and threw into the sink.
“Robert! Robert!” She shook him violently until his eyes opened just a peep, revealing the sky blue of his eyes. He was still alive; there was hope.
Before she could string together a thought, her body instinctually flew down the stairs, grabbed her cell phone from the coffee table and some sheets from the dryer and raced back up the stairs to her beloved. Again she kneeled before him, her jeans soaking in his blood from the tile.
With one hand she tore the sheets into strips and the other she dialed her phone.
Without any thought, she called Foreman.
He could have been at home, he could have been on a date, hell, he could have been getting down and dirty with some hot new nurse, but something in her told her to call him.
Ring, ring.
Silence. Covered in blood, her hands worked hard to tie the strips of sheets just above the cuts to stop the blood flow. She used her shoulder to press the phone against her ear.
Ring, ring.
“Hello,” she heard the thirty year old doctor pick up, and her heart raced even faster. She couldn’t comprehend words yet her mouth started to speak.
“Foreman!! You need to help me! Please god get here right now!!!”
Instantly, Foreman put the woman on speaker phone as it just so happened he was in Cuddy’s office with House, Wilson, and Cuddy.
“What’s wrong?” He spoke urgently, “are you in labor?” The tears kept draining down from her eyes as she saw her fiancé quickly losing life.
“Robert...oh my gosh wake up! Wake up honey! Wake up!”
Everyone in the room with Foreman looked so panic-stricken when they heard the desperation in the young woman’s voice.
“What’s going on!?” House demanded, stepping closer to his employee’s phone.
“Chase...he...please come to my house now! I think Robert tried to kill him self!!!” She screamed in the worst anguish, “come on honey, come on stay awake. Please don’t fall asleep! Please god stay awake!”
Still on speaker phone, the four ran from Cuddy’s office out to the parking lot where they jumped into Wilson’s nearby car.
“What happened, what did he do?” Foreman tried to be clear with his words, but he could hear Cameron breaking down badly on the other end. Her sobbing was getting so loud, her breathing so erratic and intense.
“He cut himself...the cuts are deep and vertical and...there’s so much blood.”
“What the hell?” House spoke as Wilson drove as fast as humanly possible, even illegally passing people on the left to get to the house quicker.
“What did he say? Did you fight with him?” House demanded, totally insensitive and in a blaming tone.
“House!” Cuddy was appalled by her boyfriend’s line of questioning, but Cameron didn’t seem to care. On the other end of the line they could hear the pain the young pregnant doctor was in.
“That’s it!” Cameron called out to her fiancé, “that’s it! Open your eyes! Come on honey, just open your eyes some more and breath. I’m here. Please stay awake!”
In a matter of minutes, the team was at the house and bursting through the front door. House sprinted as fast as he could to the entrance, and when he pushed open the front door he loudly screamed “Cameron!”
“Up here!!” She hollered through a cracking voice and a river of tears. All four chugged up the stairs to the second floor bathroom and were horrified when they found Chase half slumped over on the floor, his eyes drifting in and out of conscienceness, and his fiancé covered in what seemed to be gallons of blood. Wilson grabbed Allison and threw her out of the bathroom in a “tough love” manner to Cuddy who handled the young woman and pulled her down the stairs and into the kitchen where she sat her down on a chair.
“Are you hurt?” Cuddy questioned, trying to stay calm but visibly shaken by the scene upstairs.
“I don’t know what happened,” Allison choked out in between loud sobs. “We went for the sonogram...he was fine...he said he was going to take a shower.”
The pair heard a loud thud and Cameron’s head perked up and she tried to stand from her chair when Cuddy pushed her back onto her butt.
“I know you’re upset, but I promise you that you do not want that image in your head.” She was, of course, implying the image of Wilson, Foreman, and House carrying Chase’s half-dead body down the stairs and to Wilson’s car where they were about to drive him to the hospital.
“He’s...he’s my fiancé and I should be there...” Allison spoke in a small voice. Cuddy looked like she wanted to cry because of the pathetic ness and sadness in Cameron’s voice, but in that moment she had to be the doctor, not the concerned friend.
“I know that, believe me I know. But right now I need to know if you’re hurt.”
After a few more choking tears, Allison is able to shake her head ‘no’.
“Okay, that’s good. Now why don’t we clean you up, get you in some fresh clothes and we’ll go to the hospital.”