Work Text:
America seems far enough.
Robbie has it all figured. New York City, glamor and skyscrapers and snow. He applies to positions at Mercy, Bellevue, Mt. Sinai. His teachers and bosses write glowing letters of recommendation; he gets a packet of peer reviews from his mates.
He does not list his father as reference.
His interviews go well; his work visa takes longer. Princeton-Plainsboro is a last minute addition, but a teaching hospital appeals. He'd like to get certified for surgery. Robbie packs up, settles things with his roommates. Sells and gives away what he doesn't plan on taking, scouts apartments, makes hotel reservations. Says goodbye to his sister last of all.
He does it during the day, so their father isn't around. Drives up to Brighton after school lets out, parks on the street. When Danielle catches sight of him, she looks like she already knows what he's going to say.
"You'll be fine," Robbie says. When their mum finally died, their dad had taken her in, given her a bedroom done up in pinks and frills. Not Robbie. She'd only been four; he'd been seventeen and eyeing flights out of the country, across the world. Crawled back two years later with parables from Luke shameful in his head, finding not welcome but that he'd been enrolled at the University of Sydney without his knowledge. Pre med.
"Sure," Danielle says, bored.
They sit in the back garden. Manicured and tidy and very green.
"You can come over and visit during holidays," Robbie adds.
He doesn't want her to visit.
He sees Danielle as she is now, gangly and sullen and unable to forgive. Sees Danielle, two and crying and rashy because mum had locked her in the nursery rather than change a diaper. Coming home from school and hearing her screaming, mum passed out before the television.
He smiles, knocks her shoulder with his. “We'll go to Times Square. All those New York things you see in films. It’ll be fun.”
He doesn't tell their father he's leaving, but he knows.
One day when he was thirteen, his father had unexpectedly met Robbie after school, waiting and idling in his Mercedes by the gate. He'd been suddenly conscious of the untidiness of his uniform, the jacket he'd shoved into the bottom of his backpack, and been certain he was in trouble. They'd instead driven to his father's bank, and Robbie had been bestowed an account, an ATM card, and a book of cheques. Signing his name as Robert, in uncertain cursive that would only decline in quality over the coming years. Dad had placed an unfathomable five thousand dollars in the account as a starting balance: Robbie had been overcome with fantasies of front row tickets to all the matches he wanted, of endless comic books and sweets. A racing bike, bright red and glossy. His own private arcade machine for his room.
Every Monday for the next decade, his father transfers another thousand into the account. By the time Robbie is fourteen, most goes to Mum. By fifteen, the money goes not to sweets and trips to the movies but to the electricity bill, the phone line, diapers, cigarettes, alcohol, and groceries. You do such a good job, love, says Mum, smoking in the car as he goes into the shop. Oh, I'm just useless with figures, says Mum when he begs her to try. Whenever Robbie overdraws his account, his father transfers more money in. Mum gives Robbie all her banking info. Her accounts remain empty.
When Mum is gone, the transfers continue on: through year twelve, through England, through med school and his residency. Robbie buys plane tickets with his father's money, withdraws the rest, and closes all his accounts. For the second time in his life, he leaves fully intending to never come back.
But once he's settled, he calls his father.
"Is this a tantrum, Robert?" he asks mildly.
Robbie doesn't know what to say.
(Of course it is.)
His father sighs, static over the long distance line. "The director of the New York Mercy Hospital is an old friend. I will talk to him."
"I've actually interviewed there already. I don't want—“
"You can afford to be choosy?"
He'd graduated in the top twenty of his class. Not the top five. Or ten. Even his mates half-sniggering: he'd neither been a bad enough student to be accused of outright nepotism, or a good enough one to prove anyone wrong. Robbie'd done much better at his residency, once he'd been thrown headfirst into endless shifts and work and doing, not sitting for exams. But that wasn't the sort of thing he could sum up as a single number on his transcript, no matter how many references he'd collected.
"I've interviewed at Columbia too," he says finally.
"Well. You will provide for me your banking information. No doubt you will continue searching for some time," says his father.
The next week, five thousand dollars American is wired into Robbie's account.
He spends a couple hundred of it sending a box to Danielle. American sweets and ranch dressing chips and frosted pop-tarts. One of those I ❤️ New York shirts and a mug and a New York Yankees banner. A teddy bear wearing an American flag tee-shirt. Random postcards from a kiosk and the spare change in his pocket. The shipping costs more than the presents and he feels pathetic seeing it all taped up at the post office. When he tries to write out a card he has no idea what to say.
The Dean of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro seems kind enough, and when he introduces himself there isn't the slightest blink of recognition at his name.
But she has no good news. "I'm sorry, but I don't think you'd be a good fit for us right now, Dr. Chase."
He expected this. "But you are hiring for a surgeon."
"And you're still in your residency." Her smile is sympathetic; warm.
"I'm more than half through. And I'm more than willing to work for reduced wages to compensate. You accept residency transfers?"
"Of course we do," says Dr. Cuddy. "But I can't ask Dr. Thomas to commit to supervising a resident when what he needs is a fully qualified doctor. Our residency program is accepting applicants for next year?"
"Isn't someone with three years left in their program better than someone with six to go?" Robbie smiles, sheepish and as endearing as he can. The Dean smiles back, chuckles ruefully. She isn’t won, he can sense. Charmed, but not won.
She turns back to his CV. "May I ask why aren't you applying for a position in the ICU? Dr. Caracso would be over the moon if I could give him an intensivist."
He can’t have the job he wants, but she wants him badly enough to offer him an entirely different position. “It was in the ICU I realized how much I liked surgery,” Robbie says, relaxing. He’s practiced this answer. “The human body is incredibly complex and incredibly fragile. But a surgeon can actually see it in a way others can’t. Can use their hands to fix things, not just give out pills. If someone has — let’s say fibromyalgia, arthritis, gout — we know what it is, what it does. We can give medication to manage it. But you can’t look at it. You can’t pick it up; fix it really.”
Dr. Cuddy is smiling indulgently. He leans back in his chair, aware he’s gotten too excited. “You like to fix things.”
“Most doctors do.” He’s slightly embarrassed. Smiles, leans into it. Hoping for bashful, charming maybe.
“And have something against rheumatic diseases?” She’s teasing.
He tries to keep smiling.
“I see you’re passionate, and I think you’d make a wonderful resident. Next year.” Dr. Cuddy closes the folder containing his CV with a gentle decisiveness. “I hope to see you again then.”
“Thank you,” he says.
He has a ninety day visa, and he’s coming up at the end of it. He manages a single phone call to Danielle, who is sullen and doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t know what to say. I didn’t abandon you?
But he did.
“Did you get my package yet?” he asks. “I got you lots of nice things.”
“No.”
“It probably takes a few weeks. You’re a long way away.” He winces. He’s stating the obvious, and on the other end of the phone, Danielle is silent.
The decent thing would be to offer to take her in if he's not coming back. Robbie’s not her legal guardian, but it isn’t as though their dad would care. Maybe when he’s more settled, maybe when he has somewhere to live and a job.
For years, Danielle would try to sneak into his bed at night, climbing out of her toddler bed or cot and into his room. He’d wake up to her wet breath and soggy diaper and the animal smell of her, knowing he should find it sweet and hating her instead. Hating her, his mum, his dad. He was fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, losing his friends one by one because he never had time to hang around. Mum’s redoing the bathroom, he’d say as an excuse to not invite them around. Or the kitchen. Or the lounge. Mum would lie about and dad was never around and he’d been the one to toilet train his sister.
Five thousand in his new bank account. Dad must have known years ahead he was going to walk out on them.
“It’s great here,” he says to Danielle. “Everyone sounds just like in the movies.” He puts on his best approximation of an American accent: to his ear, it sounds quite good. “And they actually have those yellow school buses too.”
“Are you going to stay in America?” she interrupts.
Another moment where Robbie ought to offer to take her in. “I think so.”
Danielle is silent.
“I’ll try to come visit for the holidays,” he adds.
“Sure, Rob,” she sighs, loud and put-upon.
I’m not walking out on you, he thinks about saying. The static of half a world’s length of phone lines between them. It’s already too late.
He sees Dr. Cuddy hurrying towards the elevator just as it starts to close, and sticks his arm out to keep it in place.
“Thanks,” she says, and then gives him a second look. “Dr. Chase.”
“Nice to see you again,” he says: she remembered his name, and her look is amused instead of angry.
“Strange to see you again, unless you changed your mind about the ICU.”
“I had an interview at Princeton General yesterday,” he says.
“That’s a good hospital. You’d do well there.”
“They didn’t have any surgical openings.” He grimaces playfully, and she chuckles.
At the next floor, Dr. Cuddy exits the elevator. Robbie follows. “I’m sorry, but I can’t really help you,” she says.
He disagrees. “I’m not trying to be a bother, I swear. Only I really like this hospital and I couldn’t live with myself if I went back home without taking one more shot at it.”
“Is that right?”
“You said Dr. Thomas didn’t want to supervise a new resident. What if he did want to?”
Dr. Cuddy’s laugh is warm and amused. “I’m sure you can be very convincing.”
“I’d just like to meet him.”
“It’s because you haven’t met him you think you have a shot,” she retorts. She turns on him, briefly halting. He does as well. “I’m sorry, but I’m not setting up that interview. Apply next year, Dr. Chase.”
Dr. Cuddy turns to go. Robbie watches, thinking.
“Oi! Rob! You got a call from your mum!” his roommate shouts.
It’s ten in the morning, but it’s a day off so Robbie had very much still been in bed. He staggers out of his room half dressed. Snatches up the phone from Will, presses it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Robert?” Cynthia asks. His step-mother, although he’s only ever thought of her as dad’s wife. They’d met for the first time when he’d come back from England. She’d offered her hand to shake without even a pretense of we’ll get along wonderfully.
“This is he.” The formality creeps into his voice without him even thinking on it. He leans his elbows on the kitchen counter. The cord won’t reach to the coffee machine but he eyes it hungrily.
“I just wanted you to know, Ellie is away.” Robbie is the only one who has ever called Danielle by her full name.
“What?” He frowns, half asleep. Distracted. “She’s fifteen, where’s she going off to?”
Cynthia speaks as though the word is poison. “Rehab.”
He finally manages to catch Dr. Thomas in the elevators. An accident, but good luck. He’s a somewhat portly man, younger than Robbie had thought from the low-quality staff photo online. The staff photo had also had a staff biography. It had listed hiking as one of Thomas’s hobbies. Aspirational, Robbie assumes.
He offers his hand. "I'm interviewing for the surgical residency. Dr. Cuddy spoke highly of you. Rob Chase.” Dr. Thomas doesn’t seem to recognize his name, putting the lie to Robbie’s assertion. But when you act like you know someone, they usually go along.
“Dr. Chase. Of course.” They shake hands.
“Nice to meet you,” he says eagerly. Flattering. Like it’s a huge honor. It is: Dr. Thomas is going to be his boss soon, Robbie will get his work visa, everything will sort out. He’s being perfectly sincere.
“Of course,” Thomas repeats. The elevator’s doors open. “We’ll talk later.”
No what surgical residency. If Thomas asks for him, Dr. Cuddy will allow the hiring. He’s certain of it. Grins to himself, pleased.
“Nice trick, Doogie,” says the other man in the elevator.
“Rehab,” Robbie echoes, suddenly wide awake. It’s a prank. Must be. “For what?”
What drugs do fifteen year olds take? He’d done a bit of pot. Cigarettes, but you don’t do rehab for smoking. Tried a few harder drugs but only once or twice. Just because it’s a private Catholic school doesn’t mean there’s no access. Pills? Coke?
“Her alcoholism, of course,” Cynthia says as though he’s being thick.
“No.” He swallows. “She’s not a fucking alcoholic, she knows better —“
Obviously it was the first thing he’d thought of. Before drugs, before pills, before anything else.
“There’s no need for that language, Robert.”
“Where’s dad?” he demands.
“Your father is at work. Ellie is at —“
“Don’t call her Ellie,” he snaps. “That's for our mum, not you." The kitchenette is blurry, twisted. Danielle in rehab. Drinking. She’s fifteen, she can’t even buy it for herself yet! That's not enough to stop anyone, hadn't stopped him, but she should know better, she — Had dad provided? At least he sent her to rehab, not like mum —
Cynthia goes on. Length of program. The facility Danielle is in. Robbie finds himself trying to remember the exact balance in his bank account. Planning out his next steps. How did he miss this? How didn’t she know better? Robbie had a beer or two now and then, who didn’t, but —
Rehab.
Eventually he becomes aware that the phone is buzzing loudly in his ear: the call has ended and he has yet to hang up.
Robbie watches Dr. House read his CV.
He’d seen House on the hospital website as well. Diagnostics. A low-resolution photo of an uncomfortable looking man in a blazer. He hadn’t paid it much mind, except to boggle at the biography. There was a personal details section beneath accreditations and schooling. House’s hobbies were listed as decoupage and canasta, and Robbie'd only remembered because he'd thought that must be fake.
He doesn’t know what diagnostics is, or what this interview is really for. But he doesn’t walk out, because for some reason Dr. House is interested in him. Gotten his CV, somehow. Put it right next to a copy of Introduction to Rheumatology just to let Robbie know he was at a disadvantage.
“You must love saving lives,” Dr. House says insincerely.
“I do.”
He feels off-kilter. Excited.
“How sweet.” Cloying.
But he has Robbie’s CV.
He’d told Dr. Cuddy he liked surgery because of the knowledge and understanding it gave him, because she’s in charge of a teaching hospital. For House, Robbie changes his answer: "I like them when they're dying.”
"And that's why you're a perfect candidate for my fellowship?" House asks sarcastically.
A fellowship is above residency. It’s not surgery. But House picked him. Robbie hadn’t really even known who he was.
"You tell me. You're courting me, aren't you?" Direct. To the point. Robbie thinks he sees a flash of amusement in Dr. House’s eyes, a bit of a smirk. He goes back to reading Robbie’s CV, and he’s suddenly conscious of how off-balance it is: alright grades and far too many references, too obviously trying to cover his lack.
After a long minute, Dr. House looks up. "Have your dad give me a call."
He goes cold all over. “What?”
House oozes amusement at his own cruelty. “You want the job, I'd like a character reference."
His father will give one, Robbie knows. If he’d been stupid enough to mention Princeton even once, he’d already have made the call. How else would he ever get hired, after all? His eyes fall on the textbook behind House. "I have references." Weakly.
"Yeah,” drawls House, “but I'm such a fan of daddy. Shouldn't be a problem. Not like you fled England rather than live in his shadow or anything."
"Australia."
There’s still surgery. Dr. Thomas and Dr. Cuddy. But, Robbie realizes, he wants this job. It makes no sense. He isn’t even sure what a department of diagnostics is.
But House already read his CV.
The rehab facility is an hour outside Melbourne, built to look like some old British manor, all white and sedate. Private and gated, of course. It even has a pool.
Robbie expects Danielle to look thin and bedraggled and sickly, but she seems downright cheerful. They walk around the gardens together and she tells him about her roommate, a book she’s reading, a day trip into town.
“This isn’t a fucking holiday,” he snaps, and it’s only then he realizes how furious he is.
Danielle’s eyes go wide and she swallows. “I know that. I — I just meant I’m doing well, I’m getting better, aren’t I? I’ve been totally clean for a month —”
“You shouldn’t have had anything at all! You're fifteen!”
“Like you’ve never had a beer? I’ve seen you!”
“I’m not the one in a facility! And it’s not just beer, is it?” He sucks in a breath and has to turn away. Looking at the beautifully manicured garden, rose bushes and all.
It wasn’t just alcohol. She’d been partying. Skipping school. Hypocritical for him to judge on those counts, but their father had done a blood test and she’d come back positive for half a dozen party drugs besides.
“Suppose if it was just drinking, dad wouldn’t have bothered,” he mutters.
“Oh, yeah, it’s all dad’s fault, isn’t it?” Danielle huffs. “If only he hadn’t gotten a divorce, I’d have never gotten carried away! If only dad had stuck around mum, you’d never have turned into such a cunt —“
“I’m the one with a problem?” He laughs, furious and incredulous.
“Get over yourself, Rob! I fucked up, I did it on my own, you don’t have to make everything about dad and Cynthia —“
It shouldn't sting, but Danielle calling him Rob does.
“And what about when you get out of here?” he snaps. “You’re just cured because you’ve been a whole month sober?”
“You don’t think I can do it, do you?” Danielle’s eyes fill with tears. “You think I’m going to be like mum, like I’m doomed unless big brother saves me from myself?”
“You don’t get it,” he says. “You think Mum never got sober? She didn’t get better sometimes? It’s not that easy!”
“You think I’m that weak? That pathetic?”
He remembers her bawling and red and covered in rashes and sores. Crawling in his bed unless he locked the door. Picking her up and taking her to their mother, hoping desperately mum would be awake and sober and be a mum for once, be a parent, take the baby away, go away, leave him be.
“You think dad will stick around if you slip up?” His eyes feel hot and wet, and how embarrassing for them both to be crying over this. Dad won’t. Pay for rehab, give Danielle all the money she needs, but it’ll be on Robbie again, won’t it? He’ll —
Danielle’s face contorts. “Fuck you.”
“I’m not saying you can’t do it, but it’s not that easy! And you can’t count on dad for help —“
“No,” she interrupts. “I’m saying fuck you. Get over yourself. Fuck off. You think I’m going to fail and you’re just my brother, not my dad. Dad’s gotten me help, I’m doing well, and you’re just mad he and I get on!”
“Fine,” Robbie snaps. He raises his hands and backs away. “You’re right. It’s not my problem. Do what you want.” His ears are ringing, he feels dizzy. He takes a step away, and another, and Danielle is shaking, trembling with anger.
And all at once he knows he has to leave. She’ll fail and it’ll be like mum and it’ll be on him, it’ll always be on him, and he can’t —
He has to go.
America seems far enough.
He doesn’t know how House takes his coffee, so he splits the difference and orders one black and one with cream and sugar.
House grins when he sees him waiting. Cold and sardonic. He’s covered his bases, Dr. Thomas wants him now too, but he offers the cups to House and musters the courage to ask. “Did my father…?”
House doesn’t answer directly, snatching up the black coffee and taking a sip. "God, I'm never going to have to talk to a patient again with an ass-kisser like you around." House grins, and a weight falls off his shoulders. "See you Monday."
“See you Monday,” Chase echoes. He watches House as he goes. He smiles.