Chasing Hearts (Robert Chase x Reader)

Chapter 27
Heart

END OF CHAPTER 4 SPOILERS AHEAD

Chapter song: Re:stacks by Bon Iver

The simulation room is a strange kind of purgatory. Too cold, too bright, too clean. It tries to mimic trauma, but trauma doesn't smell like antiseptic, it smells like smoke and blood and the inside of a throat closing in panic. It smells like memory.

The residents move like shadows, dragging chairs into crooked rows, mimicking the cramped aisle of a New Jersey Transit bus. They mutter to each other, nervous and uncertain, their voices low and tinny against the sterile walls. Someone connects a Bluetooth speaker in the corner and plays ambient traffic sounds. Horns, engines, tires rolling over gravel. It should add realism. It only makes the silence in the room louder.

House lies on the gurney, electrodes strapped across his scalp in tight, clinical symmetry. Wires sprout from his skull, branching into machines that blink with eerie precision. The red dots pulse in time with his heartbeat. He doesn't flinch. He stares at the ceiling, jaw clenched, like he's daring the universe to blink first.

You stand beside the monitor, hand resting on the cold metal frame, eyes locked to the vital signs dancing across the screen. His brainwaves flicker like candlelight in the wind, unsteady, unpredictable, a breath away from chaos.

"You know this is insane," Chase murmurs behind you. His voice is too calm to be casual. It quivers just beneath the surface, like a piano string pulled too tight. "He could stroke out in there."

You glance at him, but his eyes are already on the screen, jaw tight. "Insanity's relative," you reply quietly. "And House is..."

"Not invincible," he finishes. "He's desperate. And desperate people don't think straight."

You want to argue, but the words die. Because he's right. And you both know it. The air between you thickens—shared worry, shared helplessness. You've been here before. On different days, with different patients. But never like this. Never with one of your own strapped down like an offering.

"What's the alternative?" you ask. "We just... stop trying?"

He doesn't answer. But his shoulder grazes yours. A silent tether. He stays.

The intercom crackles.

"Beginning stimulation," Foreman's voice says, clinical, clipped. But you can hear the hesitation in it. He doesn't want to do this either.

A low hum fills the room. House's body tenses immediately, as if struck. His hands grip the gurney rails so hard his knuckles bleach. His eyelids flutter closed. A tremor runs down his spine.

You stare at the screen. The waveforms spike. Then settle. Then rise again.

"Talk to me, House," Wilson says softly, kneeling close to the gurney now. His face is pale. Sweating.

"I'm on the bus," House breathes. His voice is distant—stretched thin like it's traveling from somewhere far away. Underwater. "Crowded. People tired. Everyone just wants to get home."

The heart monitor beeps faster. You glance at Chase. His lips are pressed tight.

"I'm in the back," House continues, his brow furrowing. "There's... there's a woman."

Something in his voice shifts. Warps.

"Wait."

Your spine straightens. Your fingers curl into the panel.

"Can you see her face?" Wilson asks, leaning in.

"Necklace," House gasps. "It's... there's a necklace—"