[OTA] A life in her hands

[chasemd]

[Open to anyone who might be in Rob or Peter's room, who might be passing and just want to chat to Chase, but TAG FOX]Chase had, inevitably, ordered strict and constant monitoring of Rob for any changes in condition. It meant their whole team were taking turns sitting in the room watching his vitals every fifteen minutes and making sure none of the

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[texas33forever]

Tim had been on his way back to Tyra's room with a can of Coke in hand when he caught sight of one of the doctors sitting beside one of the patients. The dude seemed to be everywhere and Tim wondered if he was the guy in charge. But that wasn't what caught his attention. It was the patient in the bed and he found himself stopping in the doorway and staring stupidly.

He soon cleared his throat. "Um, Doc? Is this, uh... ya' gonna make Tyra better, right?" he finally asked uncertainly. "She ain't gonna..." He waved his hand a little in the direction of the bed.

[chasemd]

Chase turned around and caught sight of the lad who had been mostly a part of the furniture in Tyra Collette's room, one of the Dengue patients. He smiled faintly at him and gestured to the seat beside him. "Come sit down, mate," he offered, realising the guy probably needed to talk to someone, otherwise he never would have stopped. He shook his head. "No, Tyra's not going to be like this. We're treating her, and she should even be starting to feel better by now. She'll be able to get out of here real soon."

[texas33forever]

Tim actually didn't want to be anywhere near the dude with all the machines. What if he sneezed and fucked something up? He hesitated and it took a few moments for him to force his feet forward and sit stiffly on the seat beside the doctor. "Yeah she is, but... why isn't this dude? He still looks real sick, Doc. Actually, he kinda looks dead." Tact wasn't ever Tim's specialty.

[chasemd]

Chase nodded. "He's in a coma, mate. But I promise, you have nothing to worry about. This is Rob. He's a US soldier, and did get sick the time time as everyone else, but he doesn't have the same thing. We thought he did, but we were wrong. He caught something when he was in Iraq before he came to the island and started to get sick once he got here. But we're trying to treat him now with the right medication. Hopefully he'll get better just like Tyra," he told him.

[shoothetarget]

Fox entered Rob's room, her gaze flicking from the soldier, to Peter, to Chase as she moved to stand beside the soldier's bed. She touched the bandage on his chest briefly just to satisfy herself that his tattoo was okay before she looked at Chase again.

"Complication?"

[chasemd]

Chase shook his head slowly, but in came with a sigh. "No, none at all. We found what we were looking for, finally, and started him a very high dose of various medications. I just hoped to see more improvement by now than we have," he admitted, looking up at her. "He has officially taken the medal for being the hardest case I've ever worked on, and I've worked on a lot."

[shoothetarget]

Fox tilted her head. "You don't think he'll wake up..." Her fingers brushed against Rob's before she curled them around his and held his hand. "What was it in the end?"

[chasemd]

"I don't know," Chase had to admitted honestly, but quietly. "I was hoping if I sat here long enough, he might feed me some answers. I'm not saying there has been no improvement. There has been hints of rekindling brain activity, but not much. His blood pressure is also nearing normal now. It was something Nocardiosis. It's caused by a bacteria called Nocardiae. It's very rare, but lives in soil. We think Rob inhaled it at some point in service. Being in the frontline, he would have inhaled all sorts of horrible things over the time. It's a disease that can lie dormant for a long time while the bacteria grows in a body's system, but once it matures, it can hit like a tonnes of bricks and take down the bodily systems in rapid succession, just like it did with Rob. His death... I think having this illness maybe impaired his judgment in battle, and he maybe made a wrong move of some sort. Also, if he was ill over there, he could have written the symptoms off to any number of things, and probably didn't seek treatment

[cutthroatbitch]

"I hear a watched pot never boils," Amber murmured as she stepped into Rob and Peter's room. Her hands were tucked into her lab coat and her face held an unreadable expression. "I wasn't sure if you wanted me to take the next obs shift. And I figured you wanted to tear me a new one anyway, so have at it."

[chasemd]

Chase drew a breath and let it out slowly as he sat back in the seat. "I don't want to tear you a new one, Amber, I just want to know what the hell is going on. You froze with that biopsy. When push came to shove with Rob's case, you froze, and I just wanted to know why. Did you have any sort of intimate relationship with him before he met Fox?" he asked. "You can tell me to fuck off, because it isn't any of my business at the end of the day, but if it's not that, then it's someone else and if you have any interest in Diagnostics in the long run, you need to overcome it. Trust me. In the early days I nearly lost my job for fucking up on a case. I killed a patient. I just want to know what's going on."

[cutthroatbitch]

Amber pursed her lips but came to sit beside Chase, watching Rob asleep on the bed. She looked over at Peter, who was sleeping too, but she knew it was a very different state to what Rob was in, thankfully. "He's just my friend, okay? What is it with this place? You make friends with a member of the opposite sex and automatically everyone thinks you're fucking them? We just talked a lot over the course of him falling ill. Then he got better, and we still chatted. He's a friend. He was with Fox when I met him, and no, I'm not jealous. I don't want to fuck him either, even if he's a really nice guy. I don't piss on other people's property. I just... I should have done more when he presented to the clinic. He might never be in this position if I did."

[chasemd]

"Amber," Chase began quietly, "you can't do this. Deep down, you know you can't. This isn't your fault. You advised him to come back for tests, but he thought he was getting better. Which he was. His early symptoms responded to that course of antibiotics you put him on. But once that stopped, he deteriorated. They never touched the cough, though, because the illness was contracted in his lungs. He was always going to be in this position, Amber. He caught this before he even got here. He was already ill when he got here. The only reason we got the diagnosis now was because he detoriated. The deterioration narrowed the symptoms, and narrowed the diagnosis. The blood clot, the plueral effusion, the brain abscess... they were clues. This is Diagnostics, Volakis. Sometimes it just sucks. None of the rest of us can be House and be indifferent to what's going on. Someone has to care. But you don't blame yourself for doing so."