The rain was pouring outside the apartment complex where Dr. Robert Chase lay, sound asleep. The dark curtains were drawn tightly shut, blocking out most of the lightning, but doing nothing to deafen the din of the thunderstorm.
            His eyes were open before he even realized he was conscious. It was not, however, the thunder that jolted the young doctor out of his sleep. It had been something about his dream. It had been about the case... the crazy woman. But the dream had already faded from his mind, leaving nothing but an unpleasant feeling in Chase's gut. He rolled over to his other side, tried to go back to sleep. Uneasily, he dozed off and slept fitfully until his alarm clock went off, three hours later.

*
            Dr. House was very busy with patients this morning. Well, as busy as it's possible to be when you hate people that much. But, as always, he managed to find a four minute time slot in which to consult his three young doctors.
            "Chase!"
            Chase stopped where he was, turned around to see House making his way down the hall.
            "Are you doing anything?"
            "I was going to check on Mrs. Palmeiro."
             "Wrong answer. You've got a meeting. My office, five minutes." With that, he vanished around a corner. Chase stood for a moment, absorbing what had just happened, then made his way to House's office. Cameron and Foreman were already there. He nodded at Foreman, returned Cameron's hello. Things were still a little awkward with her, after her what-happened-to-this-patient-physically-during-sex-that-also-happens-to-everyone speech the other day... She turned he attention back to her paperwork as she commented, "You look tired."
            Trying to determine whether or not she was as uncomfortable as he was, Chase told them, "I didn't sleep well. Is this fresh?" He didn't really wait for the answer; a mug was already in his hand.
            "Five minutes ago fresh," answered Foreman. "Why didn't you sleep well? Have a fight with a girlfriend?" Foreman knew perfectly well that Chase was single. Chase laughed, shook his head. "You've been working for House too long." As if summoned by his name, House appeared in the door. Skipping the traditional "Hello, how are you," he got right to the point.
            "Vitamin K."
            Cameron looked at him blankly. "What about the Anbecillin?"
            "According to our detectives," he nodded toward Foreman and Chase, "she never touched it. What she did touch...." He tossed a microwave burger on the table. "Not an ounce of vitamin K. So... who wins here?" House looked around the room with fake glee. Chase in particular glared at him. "Wow. Dr. House does it again. At least the treatment is simple. Vitamin pills, or if it's easier, vegetables like broccoli. Thank God we're not dealing with some five year old kid here." He walked out. End of meeting, a minute earlier than planned. Chase stuck his head out the door.
            "Shouldn't we still do the ultrasound?"
            House turned around, called back, "It won't tell you anything, since we already know what the problem is, but if you get such a thrill out of using the equipment, go right ahead." He pointed his cane in Chase's direction. "Wow, this is going to be really fun, isn't it? Like watching a black-and-white TV show of someone's insides..." Chase didn't bother to listen to the rest. He threw himself back down into an empty chair. Wondered where he had put his coffee.
            It doesn't have to be vitamin K. All of Lucy's symptoms fit with alcohol, didn't they? Staring out the window, his mind drifted to a time several years before...

 He slid the key into the lock, twisted it around to let himself in. The door didn't budge. Damn. He tried again, turning the key in the opposite direction.  Shaking the rain-soaked hair out of his eyes, Chase threw the door open to reveal his parents' living room. "Hello?" No answer. Quietly closing the door behind himself, Chase threw his keys onto the table and headed for his mother's bedroom. He had almost forgotten how huge and luxurious the house was; two years of seminary school, now three of med school... he hadn't been home more than once in that time. Not that he had wanted to be, with a wealthy bastard like that for a father.
            The door to the master bedroom was open. Victoria Chase lay on the bed, unconscious and, he discovered as he tried to gently wake her, unresponsive. The room smelled vaguely of gin. His father came out of the master bathroom, stopped dead in his tracks.
            "What are you doing here?" Yeah, don't bother saying hello to your own son, Michael. You never did care for him much, did you? Rob's thoughts raced on.
            "It's finals. Thought I'd pay you a visit." He glanced over at his mom. "What's wrong with her?" He already knew the answer. He'd known it since he was ten years old. What excuse would it be this time?
            "Rob, listen to me. She's got a bad bout of the flu, you shouldn't be in here... you'll catch it-"
            "The flu. That's the best you can come up with?"
            "What do you mean `the best I can come up with'? I can come up with the truth."
            Cold as ice, Chase replied, "I think you said the same thing to Eliza, just before she left. Ran off with her boyfriend to New York killed herself... Remember that?" His mind burned with anger. Chase looked at his unconscious mother. "She's been drinking again." He took a step toward his father. "She's supposed to be getting help; you're supposed to be helping her. Why didn't you stop her? You kept giving it to her, just letting her have...-" He glanced at his father's hand; he was holding a towel spotted with blood. "What happened?"
            "She ran away again last week, some policeman brought her back here. That was a few days ago. I guess she broke into the gin while I was at work."
            "Bullsh-!"
             "Chase!" Foreman was standing in front of him, waving a hand in front of Chase's eyes.
            "What...?"
            "Man, you were somewhere else. Come on; let's get that ultrasound out of the way, before House changes his mind." Chase slowly got up, left the office with Foreman. "I still don't buy the vitamin K deficiency."
            "House was right. That usually makes you happy; less work for us."
            "The kid feeds his mum a steady diet of booze, and the problem is too many burgers?"
            "The kid's in a tough situation, you do what you gotta do to survive."
            "Feeding alcohol to an alcoholic is not a survival technique."
            Arguing with Foreman. This was something new.
            "You seen someone stagger down that road?" Chase felt a strange pang of emotion as he answered, rather more coldly than he normally might have, "There's no way vitamin K's the whole story." He hurried to Lucy Palmeiro's room, noticing that Foreman had decided not to follow. He slid the door open a crack. "Mrs. Palmeiro?"
            Lucy turned her head slowly toward him. "What?" Chase took this to mean he could enter the room.
            "We need to do an ultrasound on your liver. It might help to explain the bleeding." He gently lifted her arm to access the IV tube. She jerked her arm out of his hand.
            "No! No, you're going to give me medicine, aren't you? Going to hurt me! No. No, no medicine!" She continued to fight him off, but he had already gotten the Haldol into her system. Through mutters about her soul, Lucy relaxed, closed her eyes, and was sound asleep within a minute. Chase proceeded with the ultrasound. This case was really hitting a nerve somewhere in him. It was barely three years ago... Somewhere between the liver and the pancreas, his mind drifted back to his mother's bedroom.

            The bloodstained towel was still in his father's hand. Chase repeated himself, voice shaking, "Where did that come from?" His dad's eyes looked around the room, at the window, anywhere but at his own son. Chase continued, "Did she-" his voice broke slightly. No answer. Chase couldn't help but think: his father was probably more upset about the cost of replacing the towel than his wife. Materialistic  asshole, couldn't think of anything but his money. Before Chase could take his hatred much further, the doorbell rang. He stepped out of the way as his father hurried to answer the door.
            Two paramedics rushed into the room, rolled Victoria Chase onto her back, and began checking her pulse, breathing, responsiveness. All were dangerously low, as opposed to her extreme blood-alcohol level. In a whirl of panic, Chase watched as his mother was placed on a stretcher, loaded into an ambulance, and rushed to the hospital. His father rode in the ambulance with her. Just as the door was shutting, Chase called out "'Least you had enough sense to call the paramedics. You could have tied calling your own daughter." The door shut, and the ambulance sped off, leaving Chase alone in the hauntingly empty house. He didn't know it at the time, but that would be the last time he saw his mother until her funeral. After taking a moment to steady himself, Chase got back in his car and followed his father to the hospital.

            Dr. Cameron appeared at his side. He started, blinked a few times, and tried to reorient himself with where in Lucy's abdomen he was looking. It took him a moment to concentrate on the screen. Feeling foolish for being so slow, he finally found the liver, saw the cirrhosis. It was barely there, but it was enough to convince Chase for a fleeting moment that he was right. It looked so similar to his mother's...
            "Wait..." Cameron squinted at the screen. Chase saw what she was looking at. It caught him slightly by surprise.
            "Tumor... cystic?"
            "Solid mass... cancer." They looked at each other for a moment. Chase couldn't take it any longer. He excused himself from the room. At least he had been right to do the ultrasound. House was in his office. 
            "So! How'd the ultrasound go? Was it as fun as you had hoped?" Chase looked him in the eye. House knew. Why was he acting like this? He knew what this case was doing to Chase, emotionally. But he kept it up anyway. Chase just gave him six choice words.
            "She has a tumor. You lose." And he was gone, headed for his car to go home to an empty apartment. Just him and his memories...

            An hour. Two hours. Two and a half hours in the waiting room, sitting as far away from his father as possible. The young med student glared at his dad when he wasn't looking, wondering why he hadn't kept his mother in rehab. She has always been an alcoholic, ever since Chase could remember. His father was supposed to be helping her kick the booze, not letting her have more. He'd heard the excuse, in the few moments he had been forced into his father's presence. "You don't know how hard it's been for her. I couldn't do anything to stop her running away..." All sorts of things. The same sort of lies he told his children before. Well, that went well, didn't it, Dad? Chase thought. Now Eliza's at rest in a New York cemetery, and her father hadn't even gone to her funeral.
            It occurred to Rob what was going on. As a result of all the alcohol, Victoria now had cirrhosis in her liver. That's where the blood had come from; she was coughing it up. Even rich, arrogant Michael Chase, Attorney-at-law and owner of one of the nation's largest car companies, knew enough about health to know that coughing up blood was a bad sign. What Chase didn't know was how much she had bled. If she had lost too much blood...
            A grey-haired doctor, leaning heavily on a cane, limped into the waiting room. "Mr. Chase?" Both Robert Chase and his father stood, went over to the doctor. He silently gestured to two chairs. "You are the husband and son of Victoria Chase?" They nodded. The doctor proceeded to tell them that she had lost an incredible amount of blood. Too much. And that the alcohol was still coursing through her body. The liver was damaged, badly damaged... maybe beyond repair. He didn't seem very friendly. Chase nodded, muttering "Cirrhosis..." The doctor looked at him in surprise. "Are you a doctor, Rob?"
            "Med school."
            The doctor nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but the pager beeped at his side. He unclipped it, read it. All Chase had to do was look at the doctor's face. He knew what the doctor was going to tell him, long before anything was said. 
            And to think this was the same man who would give him his job, just over two years later.
*
             Several days later, Chase was telling Lucas Palmeiro about Lucy's chemotherapy treatment. Luke was desperately scribbling in his notebook.
            "Luke... stop writing." Chase felt awful, telling Luke not to let everything fall apart. He had been exactly the same, monitoring his mother's every move. But then his father came home to take care of her. The one kind thing he ever did.
            "This is how you'd handle something like this? You'd just give up?"
            "No. I'd- I'd do it just like you." And then the Social Service Representatives came.