Work Text:
I know that I've got issues
But you're pretty messed up too
Kelly Clarkson's latest, turned just slightly tinny by the cellphone, bursts into the room. (Irony. He swears.) A fumbling in the dark, a thump as elbow makes a direct hit with the bedside table, a muffled curse.
It is 2:46 AM.
"H'lo, not 'n call."
The voice on the other end doesn't bother with greetings. "I have a patient that says he's an alien."
A pause. "Ali'sn, told you. Mr. Char'sn thinks gov'ment trackin' him wi' his pacemaker. Wave th' AED paddle an' tell him it's de..." Yawn. "Deactivated."
Chase's intelligibility can usually be measured as inversely proportional to the amount of sleep he's had, and so Cameron needs a moment or two to decipher this before she responds. "It's not Mr. Charleson," she says. "Rob, was the Cham-Wow guy on again?"
There is a groan as Chase flops back down on the bed. "No." Which of course means yes. "Not him?"
"No," Cameron says again, beginning to lose her patience. "Like I said. It's a different guy, Caucasian male, thirty to thirty-five, English accent. The EMTs brought him in half-frozen and said he had arrhythmia. He won't say anything but that, and when I asked him to explain the arrhythmia, any chest pain..."
"They have crazy people in England," Chase responds, somewhere close to coherent. "Lots of them. Go to soccer matches. Pubs. Paint their faces..."
"Chase."
Without seeing it, Chase knows that Cameron has put her Bitch Face on, and if he is being honest with himself, that is pretty damn hot, but he also knows when to shut up.
"Yeah?"
"It's not arrhythmia. He has two hearts."
And now Chase is entirely conscious, infomercial sugar plums no longer dancing in his head as he sits straight up. "Two he...you didn't tell House, did you?"
There is silence on the other end of the line.
"Did you? Cameron..."
It is entirely fortunate that Chase gets there first, because by then the man's people have gotten there too, a young woman with UN ID who is very insistent that John Doe gets the proper treatment, and some guy who checks out the ass of anyone over the age of eighteen that passes.
Unfortunately, House is next.