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sleptwithinthesun · 2 years ago

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quick disclaimer before i get into the fic, if you'll bear with me. i have tourette's syndrome, and was diagnosed about a year and a half ago. i've had TS since before i was fifteen, and now have over six years of experience with it. it is a normal and daily aspect of my life. this fic and possible subsequent ones, depending on the reception it gets, are not meant to be representative of every person's experience with TS. it is based on mine because that is what i can attest to. if you have any questions at all, i'm very open to talking about it, and you can absolutely send an ask :)

now that that's over...

3.3K of r/obert c/hase with tourette's syndrome from h/ouse m/d (yes, people with TS can be surgeons). set in season one before vogler arrives because chase is also less of a dick then. no snz yet, just because i want to introduce the condition first. i really hope that you enjoy because i'm super excited to post this :D

It hurts not to tic.

Chase hates to admit it, but it really does. He's tried explaining the premonitory urge to people in the past, likening the feeling to a building sense of pressure, and usually sudden enough for him that it's almost like a shock. Not awful, but enough to make you flinch at the sensation. If he doesn't tic, the feeling just builds and builds until it hurts, and he has no option but to let them out.

On some days, though, it's not quite that mild.

Today, for instance, he feels like someone's put a live wire underneath his skin, like electricity is beginning to spark through his body, like he's out of his damn mind because for some reason, the feeling of wrongness in his neck and shoulders won't go away until his neck jerks to the side and his shoulders tense upwards and lock in place, hard enough that he's shaking, for a good ten seconds. His breath forces itself out in choppy exhales through his nose, getting progressively shallower as more time passes without an inhale. Chase is more than aware, even with his eyes squeezed shut, that House is side-eyeing him while scrawling out the list of their patient's symptoms, and that Cameron, seated behind him, is going to pull him aside for a few moments once they're done here. He's done this song and dance so many times, and it's exhausting.

House finally puts the marker down just as Chase's shoulders drop and he does his best to inhale quietly, his head jerking over to the right a few times as House gives him a look that Chase knows means keep it together. Then, he limps a step back to stare at the list of symptoms along with the rest of them. Fever, swollen lymph nodes, migraines, sore throat, seizure.

"It's way too general," Foreman says, breaking the silence.

"How do you explain the seizure?" Cameron challenges.

Chase juts his chin forward twice in another tic. Foreman shrugs. "Her fever got too high. Febrile seizure."

"It's something else," House says, without detracting his gaze from the board in front of them. He's tapping the marker against his arm. "Try again."

Cameron sighs. "I mean, it could just be a case of encephalitis. Explains the flu-like symptoms and the seizure."

House shakes his head again, finally turning to look back at them. "She'd be more disoriented, first off, and her friends haven't reported any personality changes." His gaze slides to Chase, and he frowns. "You've been awfully quiet. Any ideas?"

"She's immunocompromised," Chase states, and his head jerks again when House nods exaggeratedly, obviously unimpressed. He blinks, hard. “And, uh, she's what? Twenty? Twenty-one?"

"Twenty-three," Cameron provides.

He gives her a short nod of gratitude. "It could be mononucleosis. Foreman's probably right about the seizure, given her condition, but that only takes one symptom off the list. The rest points to anything similar to the flu, and, well, there's a hundred diseases that could be. Do we know if she's dating?"

"Boyfriend. He's out of town, though; her friend who brought her in said so," says Foreman.

Chase nods again. "We can put her through a CT scan, see if either her liver or spleen are swollen."

"It's a start," House murmurs, then nods, standing. "Alright. I'll put in the order; you three start treating her. I've got clinic duty." With that, he swings his cane around in front of him and limps off through the hospital hallways.

The second he's finally out of earshot, Chase lets out a loud hum, two-tone, high to low. The tic repeats a few times, all the worse for trying to suppress it, before it calms down and his shoulders tense for only a brief moment. When he looks back up at Cameron and Foreman, they're both wearing identical looks of veiled concern.

"I'm fine," he reassures, and it's immediately offset by yet another jerk of his head and a firm set of blinks. "Really. I'm okay."

"Are you sure about that?" Foreman asks, raising an eyebrow with heavy skepticism. "This is the most I've seen you tic in the four weeks I've been here."

Chase rolls his eyes, jutting his chin forward. "Yeah, and?"

"Is this going to affect your ability to do your job?"

"Foreman, hey—" Cameron starts to warn.

Chase's head whips in his direction, half a tic and half out of anger. "Excuse me?"

Foreman meets him with a cool gaze, unflinching. "Your job, Chase. Are you still capable of—"

"I heard you perfectly fine the first time," Chase growls, low and irate. His shoulders tic sharply up to his ears, and he willfully ignores the pointed look Foreman gives. "I've been here longer than you have. Believe me, if I was incapable, I wouldn't even be a passing thought in your mind."

"Then why are you so afraid to tic in front of House?" he demands.

"I'm sorry, would you be eager to twitch around like an imbecile?" Chase snaps. His elbow jerks backward; the rising tension's making his tics worse, triggering the bigger, more complex ones. "I'm sure you're just so damn excited to watch me have a tic attack."

"Everything I know about Tourette's says that you're not supposed to suppress your tics."

"Oh, yeah, just lecture me about my own disorder, why don't you."

"I'm the neurologist here!"

"And I'm the one who's had Tourette's for the past twelve years." Chase glares at Foreman, valiantly ignoring the way his neck jerks sharply to the side once again. At least, until it doesn't stop.

Cameron's hands press down on his shoulders, guiding him into a chair as his head snaps to the right over and over and over again. "Chase," she says quietly. She's done this a few times before; Chase prefers to ride it out alone, but sometimes, a grounding presence becomes necessary and Cameron's never had any qualms about it.

"I-I-I'm f-fine," he manages, eyes squeezed shut, voice stuttering with every sharp twist of his neck. "Gi-ive it a minute."

Both Foreman and Cameron are quiet aside from the shuffling and gathering of papers while he rides out the loop, jerking his head violently enough at one point that his neck cracks. It's immediately followed by the heel of his palm coming up to press against the bottom of his chin, forcing him to look up at the ceiling for a long handful of seconds until his hand drops back to his side.

"I tic in front of House," Chase murmurs, once the irrepressible urge to tic finally dissipates. "But I'm not going to interrupt him with a vocal tic if I can hold it back until he's done talking. Our jobs are the one thing standing between our patients and death. What we do every day, that matters. My Tourette's cannot get in the way of that."

Before Foreman can say anything else, a nurse throws the door open. "Your patient's just had a seizure," he says, face grim. "Grand mal."

Cameron sighs, gathering her supplies together, changing topics easily. "Let's rule out mono, then."

He makes it to just past two in the afternoon before the exhaustion actually slams into him. Foreman's statement earlier was true; while he's not having a bad tic day, per se, he can still admit it when they're worse than usual. He can't even make it through a full minute without ticcing in some regard, whether they're motor or vocal, and frankly, it's tiring to jerk his limbs around for the entire day. His neck is sore, his shoulders ache, and his eyes hurt from the amount of pressure his blinking tics puts on them, not to mention the constant buzz in his throat that threatens to interrupt him if he talks.

More than anything, Chase just wants to go home and sleep.

He glances up from the centrifuge when Cameron walks in with yet another blood sample in hand, aiming for the microscope. The door shuts quietly behind her, and she waits until she's pressed a drop of blood in between two slides to say, "Hey."

"Hello," Chase replies, and carefully opens the centrifuge after the light turns green. He pulls the first of the vials with their patient's blood sample out of the chamber, then examines it with a critical eye.

"You find anything?"

He sighs, head jerking before he places it back down in the rack on the table. "Both her plasma and her blood cell level seem normal. What're you checking for, antibodies?"

"Yep," Cameron says, unconsciously popping the 'p'. Chase mimics it as a phonic tic, shoulders hunching forward just as Cameron looks back to him, sympathy on her face. "It hasn't calmed down at all?" she asks, brows furrowed.

"No, it has, just, you know," he says, shrugging, "echopraxia. I think." He makes a face; phonic tics aren't technically motor or vocal, and Chase's mimicry doesn't exactly categorize into either being echopraxia or echolalila.

"Have you been able to talk with Foreman about it?"

"I don't plan on it."

Cameron stares at him. "What do you mean?"

"I don't want to talk to him about it. It's simple," he says, taking out another vial. Same result; both the plasma and blood cell levels appear completely normal.

"You kind of have to talk to him about it, though," she says, ever the pragmatist, "if he's going to continue to bother you about your ability to do your job. You've spoken to him about it once before, right? Surely, it's not that hard to do it again?"

Chase glances up at her. "House was the one to tell him I have Tourette's. I didn't have that discussion with him."

The heavy sigh Cameron gives is audible, even from Chase's position all the way across the room. "Chase," she says, disappointment lacing her tone.

"What?"

"You have to talk to him, or else he's going to keep questioning you."

Then, it's Chase's turn to sigh. "Cameron, do you want to know just how many times I've dealt with people who've doubted my ability to perform as a doctor?"

"...Not really."

"Exactly. What I'm saying is, people like Foreman? He's not going to believe me if I just tell him I can do my job. Today, and every day onward, I have to actually do my job and do it just as well as he does, if not even better," Chase says. "That's just how it is."

Cameron frowns. "That's not fair to you."

"Well, most things rarely are." The first shrug he gives is on purpose, and the second, more violent, is a tic. "I'm used to it. People like to focus on the one reason they consider me incompetent rather than the many reasons that I'm not. It’s just a fact of life. Nearly everyone I've ever learned, trained, or worked alongside has doubted me in some capacity. I've learned not to take it personally."

The expression on Cameron's face is indecipherable. Chase doesn't bother trying, though, just disposes of the samples and walks out of the lab. They have bigger and more important things to deal with than Foreman's issues with him.

"Chase, wait!" Cameron's shout makes him tic, an elbow jerking back and narrowly missing a passing nurse, who glares at him. He tries to give an apologetic smile, but the nurse just scoffs and keeps walking, clipboard tucked under their arm. His opposite shoulder jerks inward twice as they walk away, and he sighs before turning back to Cameron, who's just now caught up to him.

"You didn't leave that blood sample in the rack uncovered, did you?" he asks. "If so, that's a violation of the sanitary codes."

She ignores him. "Have you ever thought of the fact that people might stop doubting you if you actually talked to them?"

"Did you listen to a single word I just said? Evidently not; you're j-ust like the rest of them."

"Chase."

"Cameron."

"Just talk to Foreman," she says. "It doesn’t have to be a lot, but just talk to him. At the very least, give him a chance."

"Why should I?"

"You said it yourself, House was the one to tell him about your Tourette's," Cameron points out. At Chase's raised eyebrow, she rolls her eyes. "What? I listen. The point is, Foreman hasn't heard anything directly from you, and knowing House, the only thing he said to him was 'one of your new coworkers has Tourette's Syndrome' and nothing else."

"How do you know that?"

"What do you think he told me?"

Cameron's wry smile gives him pause. "Was that all he said to you?"

"Yep." She doesn't pop the 'p' this time.

"Did you press him for more details?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It seemed like an invasion of privacy."

"Nobody doesn't want to ask questions."

"Of course not," Cameron agrees. "I had questions. I just waited to ask them until the situation was appropriate. I really didn't want your first impression of me to be the asshole who asked if you curse all the time."

"Yeah. I appreciated that."

"You're welcome. Still, Chase, I've asked you plenty of questions since I started working here, and I'd like to think that you're the most open with your tics around me. Or... Wilson, maybe, but from our team? You do trust me more than House, right?"

He thinks for a moment. It's true; Cameron is the one who knows how to properly deal with his tics if they're overwhelming him, despite the fact that he's worked with House longer. The elder doctor doesn't acknowledge them much, just makes jabs occasionally or takes offense on Chase's behalf. Which, on one hand, doesn't make them worse, but on the other, always makes Chase feel just a bit more awkward when interacting with him. Cameron doesn't ever go far enough as to respond to his vocal tics the way Wilson does, but she'll ask if he's okay after a particularly violent motor tic or give him a few extra moments to gather himself in conversation.

Chase has to admit it. "Yes."

"Trust me on this, then. You can clear a lot of things up if you just talk to him," she says, then starts to walk away. Halfway to the lab, she pauses, and turns back toward him. "Chase?"

"Yes?"

"In the five minutes we've been taking, how many times did you tic?"

"I don't know," he says, dubious. "Five, six, maybe?"

She smiles. "They've calmed down a bit, at least."

It's the little moments like that one that really get him to appreciate Cameron. Of course, he immediately ruins it by ticcing and smacking the bottom of his chin with the heel of his palm, but he'll take the small victories. Five minutes of minimal ticcing is better than none.

"Toxoplasmosis?"

"It fits. And better than anything else we've come up with."

"But toxoplasmosis?" Foreman repeats, incredulous. "Are you sure?"

"He's right," House says, limping over to the board. "Toxoplasmosis covers every symptom displayed." He erases their previous diagnosis, then scrawls out TOXOPLASMOSIS at the top before nodding at Chase to continue.

"She's immunocompromised," Chase explains as his left elbow jerks idly backward. "It's very possible that she's one of the few cases that actually presents with symptoms. Especially considering how perfectly said symptoms fit her illness."

Foreman nods. "Alright."

"Give her a combination of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine, along with leucovorin," House instructs. "If that doesn't work, and it should, switch her over to sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim but keep the leucovorin. Cameron, go tell her friend that she's going to be fine."

"On it," Cameron says, heading out of the room. As she does, she locks eyes with Chase and cants her head toward Foreman, then pushes the door open and leaves.

Foreman looks over to him, brows furrowed. "What was that about?"

Chase sighs. "I'll explain after we treat the patient."

"Alright," Foreman says, obvious in his suspicion.

Nevertheless, he leads the way over to the pharmacy, gives half of the medication to Chase, and then follows the younger up to their patient's room. "Kayla, how're you doing?"

The woman smiles tiredly up at him. Her red hair is splayed out wide across the pillow, her hands resting on top of the blanket on her lap. "I'm okay," she says, propping herself up on her right elbow. "My head still hurts, though. Could you maybe give me something for that?"

"Even better," Chase says, holding up his vial of leucovorin for Kayla to see. "We've got your treatment." His opposite shoulder tenses up only slightly, not enough for Foreman to notice. Kayla, however, does, judging by the sudden crease in her brow. She doesn't press, thankfully, and Chase's face screws up in a momentary grimace before he moves over to the drawer to pull out a drip.

It's not like their patients haven't known about it before. Hell, Chase nearly had a tic attack in a patient's room after they kept purposefully triggering his tics, despite the instructions not to and House's increasingly angry glares whenever they did so. Needless to say, Cuddy hadn't protested when House requested to transfer them to another doctor when the guy just wouldn't stop.

They set her up on the drips and give her a shot of morphine for the residual pain, and leave with the promise to check up on her in a couple of hours, as well as a probably release tomorrow, once they get the medication in pill form.

And then, Foreman drags him out of the room and into the hallway, asking, "So, that exchange with Cameron?" as they walk back toward their room.

Chase sighs, nodding. He opens his mouth to speak, and—

—nothing.

Awkward, uncomfortable silence lies stagnant between them, and Foreman only stares at Chase as he tries to gather his thoughts enough to actually say what he needs to say, doing his best not to tic and ruin the seriousness of the moment.

"We need to talk," he eventually blurts. "About my Tourette's."

Foreman sighs. "Look, Chase, I'm sorry if anything that I said earlier upset you—"

"I should have phrased that differently," he interrupts. "I need to talk. You need to listen to me, even if only for a moment." Chase, determined, sets his jaw and meets Foreman's surprised gaze.

"Okay," he concedes, shockingly easily.

Chase nods, once, sharp and curt. "You don't get to lecture me about my disorder," he starts. "You just don't. I honestly don't give a damn that you're a neurologist; my Tourette's is not something you're entitled to comment on just because it's come up in your studies. You have to earn that privilege.

"I get that you're new. I get that sometimes, it's hard to believe me what I say that I am more than capable of doing by job, but you need to believe me when I say I know my limits. I am not going to do something just to prove a point, just to say that a person with Tourette's can do it. If it is unsafe for me to do something, I will ask someone else to do it. Cameron and House can both attest to that.

"If you trust me, then I will trust you back, and I will go to you in case I need a moment or someone to fill in for me. If not, then we might waste valuable time while I find someone else who I am comfortable enough with to speak to. Alright?"

Foreman stares at him, eyes wide, incredulous. Maybe it's because Chase has never been so candid on the matter, or maybe because this was not the conversation he was expecting to have. Regardless, he nods, almost dumbfounded.

"Good. I'm glad that's clear," Chase says, then walks off, white coat swishing behind him. He hums, the same tic as earlier in the day, and smiles faintly to himself.

#h/ouse m/d whumpfic #whumpfic #h/ouse m/d #r/obert c/hase #a/llison c/ameron #e/ric f/oreman #g/regory h/ouse #t/ourette's au #swts fic

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