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The day Foreman consciously regretted agreeing to let Chase sleep on his couch was the day he learned House and Wilson were taking bets from the nurses on how long it would be until the two of them killed each other (outside odds), had a public argument about hair care products (somewhat better odds) or turned gay (apparent no brainer).
It was also less than three days after Chase’s first night on Foreman’s couch; clearly House was tapped into whatever gossip circles had informed Chase of House and Wilson’s ‘cohabitation arrangement’ that had started up a few weeks previously. As far as Foreman was concerned, it was just another reason to ignore the nurses in the lunch queue, and another item to add onto the list of ‘why my boss is batshit insane’ that he most definitely did not keep a mental running tab on.
o o o o o
Wednesday evening, and Foreman had just finished talking with the latest patient’s family about treatment options now they’d got their diagnosis. He’d picked up his coat and briefcase from the Diagnostics lounge when the page came through to get down to the ER.
Overflow from Princeton General. There were maybe a dozen people brought in for smoke inhalation from an apartment building that had caught fire. Most of the cases weren’t severe, but bad enough to warrant at least a check-up. So, Foreman went down to the ER and did his thing, calming down a worried mom of three in the process. Two beds down he found Chase – hadn’t he gone home at five when Cameron had left? – writing a prescription for a mild concussion who –
“-lives on the top floor,” Chase explained quietly. “And the elevator’s almost always broken.”
Foreman blinked. “How would you know that?”
“Robert’s on the second floor,” the patient interjected, smiling weakly at first Chase, then Foreman.
“Yeah...” Chase tore the sheet off the pad and gave it to the patient. “Far as I can tell, the entire building’s been totalled,” he told Foreman. “The firemen who brought the overflow patients here have been kind of sketchy with the details.”
“It’s a mess,” the patient replied. “Is there a payphone around here? I gotta call my sister, need somewhere to stay...”
“Yeah, it’s that way,” Chase pointed, and the patient left the curtained area, taking the prescription sheet with her. Chase hung his stethoscope around his shoulders and turned to Foreman. “Look, I – is there any way I could stay with you for a couple of nights? Just until this is all sorted out, I mean – I... don’t have a sister.”
Or anyone, if rumours were to be believed. Foreman hesitated. “Sure,” he replied.
o o o o o
“Of course, I think it’s sweet.”
Foreman picked a striped mug from the cupboard.
“After all, if two of my employees are to find everlasting love in one another’s pants, what kind of boss would I be to interfere?”
Foreman put the striped mug back and took the red one instead.
“Of course, that it’s the wombat and the ex-con gettin’ it on, well, that’s nothing short of a segment on Springer. But it’s still just so adorable, I think I might cry!”
Foreman contemplated putting laxatives into the coffeepot and drinking soda for the rest of the day. There was no point retaliating to any of the... allegations House had been spreading around the hospital with all the glee of an ADD two year old; he didn’t want to start a war with someone whose ultimate trump cards consisted of “extra clinic duty” and “proofread the department’s legal paperwork”. That there were no cases coming their way wasn’t helping, either. House’s boredom complex was clearly getting its fill elsewhere, and a couple of times since letting Chase move in, Foreman had considered starting rumours that Cameron was gay, just to shift his boss’ attention somewhere else.
He also knew the potential ramifications of pointing out that far from the ‘entitlement whore’ public school boy image and all it entailed, Chase actually wasn’t that bad to live with. He fed himself, did his own laundry, and was toilet-trained. If Foreman were ever to raise any of these points, then he would never hear the end of it. Ever.
o o o o o
Friday night, and after another case had passed into Diagnostics and straight through to Oncology with only a cursory glance, Foreman had gone home with every intention of working some more on the cancer kid article, the one House had killed, scanned and revived in less than three minutes.
When he’d got back to the apartment though, he’d found most of the lounge area covered with an assortment of packing boxes, some open, others held together with brown tape, and books and loose papers everywhere.
“Sorry about the mess,” Chase offered from the sofa. When he finally made it over there, Foreman saw him scribbling something onto a clipboard. “The fire crews and building management cleared out the apartments that didn’t actually get burned.”
Foreman took another look around his apartment. “And this is everything of yours?”
“Everything that could be salvaged,” Chase corrected him. “The fire started in the apartment directly below mine, which set off most of the sprinklers in the building. The entire building’s now riddled with damp, and everything’s water damaged. All of which I now have to prove to the insurance people.”
Probably best not to say anything to that, Foreman decided. Even if it meant it looked like Chase would be sleeping on his couch for a lot longer than ‘a couple of nights’.
Instead he looked down at the coffee table, partially covered in more loose sheets. “Move up,” he said, poking Chase in the leg with his briefcase, who obligingly moved. Which left Foreman with half the couch and maybe a quarter of the coffee table to work on his article with.
It felt a little weird, but it would do.
o o o o o
In total, Chase spent three and a half weeks sleeping on Foreman’s couch before the insurance people gave in, and he was able to put down a deposit for a new rental “somewhere with more fireproof construction, hopefully”.
Also adding to Foreman’s sense of relief was that House’s initial fascination with his personal life had quickly faded once something else had come along to distract him; what it was Foreman didn’t know or particularly care about, but whatever it was had ended up with Wilson apparently making House’s cane snap in the middle of an ICU corridor.
Foreman wondered – for all of two seconds – how Wilson took his coffee.