Author's Notes: Hello all! Welcome to my new story - it's all written up, and it a grand total of six chapter long. Going to focus on everyone except Foreman, and it takes place before the Season 3 Finale (though at an undetermined time other than that). A big, enormous thank you to my beta reader East-Wing-Witch, who has helped me endlessly with my grammar and poked holes in the weak parts of my plot. Thank you! And... I guess that's about it, so enjoy!
Get Out Alive
Chapter 1
(Of Disappearances)
Wilson drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He'd already honked twice, so he knew that House was either purposely taking forever to grate upon his nerves, or he was laying in his apartment dead. The former was much more likely, so in his irritation, Wilson let himself be sucked into House's little game and honked the horn again. House was on his last nerve, which was rapidly fraying. Watching the door of 221B, there was no turning of the knob to signal House's final departure and so Wilson sat back in his seat and cast his eyes up to ceiling, praying to God for patience so that he would not just leave his friend stranded for the day.
"C'mon, House," he muttered, giving the door another exasperated glance. He had half a mind to march up there and start banging on the door.
Wilson resisted the urge to honk again. It was obviously having no effect on House's pace and served only to prove that House was getting under his skin—a favorite pastime.
His cell phone rang.
Wilson scrambled to answer it, grateful for the distraction from his frustrations. He pulled the phone out and flipped it open, when horror struck him as he realized that it was probably going to be Cuddy, demanded to know where the hell he was. He swallowed and greeted the caller with a polite hello.
"Dr. Wilson?" came a hesitant, Australian-accented voice.
"Good morning, Chase," Wilson said pleasantly, relaxing as he realized that he was not going to have his ear chewed off. "I'm sorry that House isn't there yet, he's being a—"
"I'm not calling because of House," Chase interrupted, and he sounded almost apologetic. "I kind of need a ride to work. Someone slashed my tires last night, and the next bus doesn't come until ten. I've already called Cameron and Foreman, but they've left already…"
Wilson hesitated for a minute, thinking of how long it would take him to get Chase, factoring in the remaining amount of time that it was going to take House to move his sorry ass out of the house. "Sure," he said finally, taking a small amount of vindictive glee at how irate House was going to be when Wilson told him that they were going to have to make a side trip. "Where do you live?"
Chase gave him his address and thanked him profusely, and Wilson was just beginning to assure him that it would be no trouble at all on his part and that he should feel free to call anytime, when House made his jubilant exit from his apartment. At long last. Wilson told Chase that he would be there in ten minutes, said his goodbyes, and was turning off the phone just as House was climbing into the car.
"Who were you talking to?" House asked, shutting the door and setting his cane down in between the seats. Wilson noticed that his eyes and nose were slightly red, and his voice was scratchy, as if he were sick. "Ex-wife?"
"Taxi service—they'll be picking you up in the mornings, so you can make them wait a half hour while you take your dear sweet time getting ready," Wilson said pointedly, backing out of his spot.
"Hardy, har, har." House rolled his eyes and sniffed, exhibiting a severely stuffed nose. "Seriously. And why are you going this way? Did you forget? The hospital's the other way."
"I know that," Wilson said patiently. "That was Chase on the phone. His tires got slashed last night and he needs a ride to work."
"And you said yes?" House asked, as if this act of stupidity merited a Darwin Award.
"Yes, I did," Wilson said calmly. "I like Chase and I don't have a problem with lending him a hand when he asks for it." He paused at a traffic light and went over Chase's address in his head once more.
"Well, we're going to be late now," House grumbled, staring out the window. He sneezed twice in a rather obnoxious fashion, and then opened Wilson's glove box and began pawing through its contents. "Don't you have any tissues?"
"We were going to be late anyways," Wilson told him. The light finally turned green and he pulled into a sharp left turn. "And I don't think I have any tissues... Sorry. Is it your allergies, or it just a cold? I could write you a scrip for Clarinex when we get to the hospital, if that's it." Wilson offered this hesitantly, knowing that House would probably laugh at him.
As he predicted, House snorted. "I don't need Clarinex," he scoffed. "It's just a cold."
"I'm only offering," Wilson said, slowing the car and craning his neck to look around for Chase's apartment building. "It is springtime, after all. Perfectly plausible that you—"
"There's the wombat," House interrupted, pointing to Chase, who was shutting the door to his apartment with his back to the street. "And I don't have allergies. I can't believe you don't keep tissues in your car. What do you do when you've gotta hock a lugie?"
"House, that's disgusting!" Wilson said, revolted.
He pulled over to the side of the road, near Chase's apartment, and honked to let Chase know where he was. House continued to tear up the car in search of tissues, and Wilson didn't even try to dissuade him from his pursuits when House snatched Wilson's bag and began shifting through it. He sat back and waved at Chase as he approached the car.
"Morning," Chase said as he got in the backseat. "Didn't know that you had House with you." Clearly, he was wondering if this was a customary ritual but didn't feel comfortable enough to voice the question. Wilson answered it for him.
"He requested a chauffeur this morning," Wilson said as he shifted gears and pulled out onto the road. He didn't mention that House had called him this morning, his voice somewhat desolate as he tried to beg for a ride without explaining that his leg was killing him and he couldn't ride his bike. Wilson had beat it out of him, though, and agreed to drive him to work.
"Hey, Chase," House spoke up as shut Wilson's bag and put it back after ascertaining that it did not harbor any tissues. "You got a tissue?"
Wilson rolled his eyes. "House, use your damn sleeve! It's not like you give a crap whether your shirt gets stained with snot."
"I like this shirt," House said. "So how about it, Chase?"
Chase shook his head. "Sorry."
House turned around and stuck his tongue out at him, but his eyes quickly darted to the van that was driving behind them. Chase, puzzled, also turned around to see what House was looking at while Wilson glanced at it in the rearview mirror.
"Wasn't that van behind us on the way here?" House said, studying it intently.
Wilson snorted. "C'mon House. I'm going to have to cut you off from 24 if you start getting paranoid on me."
Chase hid a smile by ducking down, and House turned around and sat back in his seat with a slight huff. "It was," he whined, not appreciating the smothered laughter that was coming up at his suggestion. "Look, it's following us now!"
"Chase, is there something you want to tell us?" Wilson asked, snickering as he saw House's frustration. It was rare that he got the upper hand in these situations. "A hidden past, maybe?"
"Yeah," Chase said with a grin. "That's why I left Australia—I got involved with this gang and now they're here to track me down. Guess I forgot to mention that—sorry guys."
"Maybe we should write down the license plate number," Wilson added.
"But what if the plates are stolen?" Chase said, pretending to be worried over this.
"You're all hilarious," House snapped, scowling and refusing to even consider the idea that he sounded ridiculous.
Wilson landed a few more jibes, but put them to rest as he realized that the van did appear to be following them. It had yet to make a different turn or be more than two or three cars away from them, but he brushed it off as nothing. The van looked like a worker's van, the kind that held carpet cleaning supplies or folded up ladders and toolboxes, so he supposed that it could have been maintenance men coming to the hospital to repair an air conditioner or something.
This checked out when he pulled into the hospital parking lot, and the dark van came in behind him.
"Told you it was following us," House said smugly as Wilson found a parking spot. "You gotta have faith, Wilson."
"Sure," Wilson said, rolling his eyes for what was probably the fifth time that morning. He shut off the car and pushed open his door. "They're probably just here to do some work."
"Funny place to park," House remarked as he came out of the car.
Both Chase and Wilson looked back to see the van stopped in the aisle about fifty feet away from where they'd parked. Chase had a wry smile on his face as he turned around to face House, who was looking at them as if they were about to agree that the van had most certainly been following them. But Wilson said nothing and let Chase say it.
"You're getting paranoid, House," he said, passing House to get up onto the sidewalk and start walking towards the hospital.
"Hey, just you're paranoid doesn't mean that they've not been planning your demise," House called, hurrying to catch up with him and defend his reasoning. Wilson followed, shaking his head at his friend's antics. "Just ask Caesar."
"Only you're not trying to become king of the United States," Wilson reminded him.
"Well, duh," House said without turning around. He'd fallen in step with Chase. "Then how would I control all those other countries?"
"Ah. The next Hitler, right?" Wilson said with a knowing nod.
"Please. The man had no military tactics whatsoever. I mean, really, you don't invade Russia in the summer so that you end up stuck there in the winter. Honestly. I'd rather be Napoleon," House said confidently. They were passing by the dark van now, and Wilson could see the driver leaning over something.
"But Napoleon tried to invade Russia, too," Chase said, his tone unsure, as if he didn't want to call House out on something only to have it shoved up his ass if he were to be wrong.
"Fine. Alexander the Great," House conceded impatiently. "He kept his sorry Macedonian butt away from Russia."
Wilson opened his mouth to retort that Alexander the Great hadn't even been able to get to India in his world-conquest, when suddenly the driver of the van threw his door open, and a bang like a firework made him jump and cringe, putting his hands over his head.
He knew that sound. A gun.
Wilson's ears rang with the echo of the shot, and he looked up with the sort of dim, reflexive realization that guns shooting meant dead people, that his eyes were going to see a stunned Chase laying on the ground, or a gasping House on the sidewalk. But when brought his head up there were no bloody bodies laying on the ground. House and Chase were standing there, as stunned as he was, and it was only after he was able to discern that both were unharmed did he turn to stare at the driver of the van.
He was a tall man with a baseball cap shading his face, and a gun held in his right hand.
"Get in the van," he said in a loud, calm voice that barely registered in Wilson's ears. "Now. Or the next shot will hit something important."
Wilson stared at him stupidly for a minute.
"What the—" House started to say, but then the sound of the hammer being pulled back made him shut his mouth.
Dimly, Wilson thought, I ought to try that sometime... Paralyzed with the fear, the knowledge that this was really happening, he could only stand there and stare at Chase, whose eyes were wide with sheer and unadulterated terror. Then a second BANG! startled him into motion.
"We're going! We're going!" he said frantically, grabbing Chase's and House's hands and pulling them with him, for Chase was utterly frozen and House was looking like he was ready to say something more.
The man did not waver as his gun followed the trio. "Get in the back of the van."
Wilson let go of House's hand and fumbled with the latch on the back of the vehicle, managing to pull is open after a second or so, and he swung the two doors open. Wilson clamored into the back of the van and watched as Chase and House followed in suit, his heart pounding and his mind swimming with a lack of thoughts but for I'm being kidnapped. The doors were slammed shut.
I'm being kidnapped...
It was not even noon, and Cuddy was already looking forward to her lunch break. Her shoes, which had been purchased last night, were proving to be more painful to break in than she'd thought they would be, and she was planning on using her break to run home to get another pair of shoes before her feet fell off. But strangely enough, save for her shoe catastrophe, the first two hours of her day had been unsettlingly quiet. There was no House running amuck in the halls, ready to do brain surgery on an infant without parental consent... and this had her worried. Cuddy told herself that House was just having a peaceful day, but after nearly five years of his antics, she was more than wary of her sudden vacation.
She was on the third page of seven of a malpractice form when her door was opened and Dr. Allison Cameron walked in. Surprised, Cuddy quickly realized that her little break was over, and House had definitely done something now.
"Hello, Dr. Cameron," she said as Cameron approached her desk. "What can I do for you?"
Cameron paused, two feet short of the desk, and stared at Cuddy's nameplate for a minute, and then she met Cuddy's eyes. "Do you know where House is?" she asked.
Cuddy frowned. This was not good.
"No," she said carefully, studying Cameron. "Why?"
"Because he's not here," Cameron said frankly. "And neither are Chase or Wilson."
"That's strange," Cuddy said. She was stating the obvious, yes, but this was perplexing. She could see House mysteriously disappearing, but Wilson and Chase were both dependable employees and would have had the decency to at least phone in to say that they were sick, or otherwise occupied. And besides this, why hadn't anyone bother to tell her that the Head of Oncology hadn't shown up for work? There must have been at least ten missed appointments, and Wilson was well-like enough to have had someone notice that he wasn't around. "Have you tried calling them?" she finally suggested.
Cameron nodded. "We tried House's cell phone and his pager, and I tried to reach Chase but neither Foreman nor I had Wilson's number... We tried paging him, though," she added, a little brightly. "But..." The moment of brightness left. "Nothing. I was hoping that you could try Wilson."
Cuddy nodded, her hand reaching for the phone. She knew Wilson's number without having to look it up and punched it in, bringing the phone to her ear and listening to the ring. It rang five... six... seven... eight times, and then an answering machine came on and asked her if she wanted to leave a voice mail or a text message, at which point she hung up.
Frustrated, she took a moment to stare down at her desk and wonder at the likely scenarios. "Nothing," she said after a minute, and Cameron's shoulders slumped. "I don't know why I still keep that idiot around—I swear House costs me more money than any other doctor in this hospital."
Cameron frowned. "You think that this is House's fault?" she asked, the possibility apparently mystifying.
"Yes. It's the only thing that makes sense. I mean, if it were anything else, I'm sure that one of the other two would have called in to say something…" Cuddy said, now talking to herself. "House probably has them gallivanting off to Vegas for the week or something. It wouldn't be atypical of him... Yes. That's it. If they don't come to work tomorrow, then we'll worry about it."
Cameron took this as her cue to leave, and did so. Cuddy sat back in her chair, planning on giving House an earful when he showed up tomorrow with whatever feeble explanation he'd came up with on the ride to work. She really hated him some days.