theorized | mundane entanglements.

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emma swan

mundane entanglements.

If there's one way in which Chase knows he differs from House, it's the enjoyment he gets from spending time in the clinic. No sound diagnostician would pick a day in exam rooms over an interesting case, but the mere preference doesn't preclude the calm Chase feels whenever he's down here, offering people with treatment that's tried and true, with next to no potential for grievous error. Darrow's been calm in the days since House's arrival, so he doesn't mind the escape that the case files offer him as he picks up the next in the stack, walking to the waiting room.

He could wait for a nursing assistant to send the patient to the room, but the hospital feels a tad understaffed today, and Chase doesn't mind the extra few minutes.

"Is there a Ms. Emma Swan here?" he asks, peering down at the file, then up again to the line of seated patients.

One face catches his eye. He feels his face drain slightly of color.

But she wouldn't be there in a waiting room. She wouldn't give up the opportunity to work. She wouldn't... Chase doesn't have the right to speak for her, but he just knows that she wouldn't.

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Emma's not graceful on her best days, but tonight really takes the cake. She'd been in the middle of making dinner for herself, slicing up some vegetables with a knife - and then, lost in thought, the knife had slipped to cut across her palm. One look at the blood welling up in her hand and she knew it was too deep to merit a simple Band-Aid - so here she is, a dish towel pressed against her palm as she sits in the waiting room with a few other people. Her case doesn't seem so serious in comparison to some of the others, but the longer she waits, the more the throbbing in her hand starts to build and the more she wishes she could just get in there and get stitched up. She's already picturing the glass of wine she'll treat herself to when she gets back to her apartment.

She glances up at the sound of her own name on the voice of someone with an accent - subtle, but still easy to recognize - and rises, still holding her injured hand with the other, her thumb lightly pressing in on the towel to keep it tight against her palm.

"Right here," she says, making her way down the row of chairs to approach the doctor waiting. She stops in front of him, tilting her head up to regard him with a curious expression. He looks a little - stunned at the sight of her.

The last thing that he wants to do is make a stranger feel odd about the doctor assigned to her. People need to be able to have faith in the hospital, need to be able to turn to it in times of need, and there's a quick need for a decision on his end — whether or not he's able to take her as a patient without causing too much swirl, or if he needs to pass her off to someone else. But he thinks he can handle it. It's just a face. A familiar face, fall of hair, but the expression she wears is different than Allison's. It's the subtleties that will keep the both of them separate in his mind.

Chase thinks he can manage.

It'd be harder if his heart was still stuck wondering, aching. It doesn't much, these days.

So he clears his throat, offering a smile. All things considered, it's a quick recovery.

He knows faces repeat themselves around here.

"Nice to meet you," he greets with a nod, waving them in the direction of the nearest exam room and holding the door open for her. "I'm Doctor Chase, and it looks like I'm the one who'll be seeing to the cut on your palm, if I'm reading this correctly." He glances down at her file, then at her hand, lips pressing thin at the way she cups one with the other.

Making sure that the exam bed has enough paper stretched over, he tugs out the bottom step with the toe of his shoe, then sets about collecting the necessary materials for what he expects will be a stitching job. "Was it an accident in the kitchen?" he asks, trying to make pleasant conversation.

If she notices any perceptible shift in his features upon her approach, she doesn't let it show in her own reaction beyond the subtle narrowing of blue eyes, the small furrow of a frown that appears above the bridge of her nose. It's more of a curious glance than anything else, one that quickly shifts into a smile that she returns for the one offered to her to begin with.

"Same," she answers, grateful that he's not wasting any time in seeing her. She hasn't had to wait very long, judging by some ER horror stories she's heard, but her injury isn't so serious that she couldn't have waited longer. All the same, she's happy it's a doctor she's actually getting to see instead of being passed down an assembly line of practitioners.

She eyes the bottom step on the exam table with a tiny grimace - she doesn't like to be reminded of what she lacks in the height department, hence her penchant for wearing boots more often than not - but she uses it to get up in the end, swiveling around to sit on the edge and only sighing for a beat when her feet dangle without touching the floor. "Gee, you're good at that," she replies, in response to his guess. "If you'd figured out what I was in the middle of making I'd be even more impressed."

"Ah, well, you spend enough hours in the clinic, you start to gain a sense for these things," says Chase as he settles down with alcohol to clean her wound with, as well as a basin with which to catch any excess liquid. Quickly putting on his gloves, Chase sits himself down on a stool by the bed and glances up to meet her gaze. "So, let's take a look at the wound, shall we? If you could show me your hand — don't strain it, though, if you feel any sharp pain."

Before she quite manages to lay her palm flat, Chase grins slightly to himself.

"Guessing the source of the injury... it usually isn't cutting meat that lands people in here. Thankfully, being around any trace of blood or raw food tends to make people more cautious," he murmurs. "So I'd guess chopping vegetables. Maybe for a stir-fry, if you're as strapped for time as most of the people I know."

Her lips part in silent surprise before she clams up, pressing them together in a thin line. Either her detector is way off or she's even more of an open book than she realizes. Her poker face is getting rusty, she decides, and only offers a small smile in return before following it up with a nod.

"Two for two," she murmurs, impressed, and turns her wrist slightly to rest it against the table, gently easing the bloody dish towel away from her palm. It's not bleeding as freely anymore, but it hasn't completely stopped, a clean slice against her hand instead of something jagged and ugly. Still, she winces at the sight of it, glancing up at him in lieu of staring at the cut any longer.

"It's not that I'm going to faint at the sight of blood, I'd just rather - anyway, I won't faint," she assures him.

The illusion of seeing his ex-wife is diminished slightly by the sight of Emma cringing at the sight of her wound and turning away. While Allison also shied away from injuries on occasion, it was never over something as small as this, never over something that she herself visibly had. Allison's pain came in the form of sympathy before all else, and even then, she knew when to bite back an emotion when it'd better serve the patient to have her calm and collected.

Everyone messed up now and again, but as far as Chase is concerned, Allison was one of the best at keeping it together.

"There won't be any judgment here," he smiles reassuringly, then examines the wound more closely. "Well, it looks like you'll need stitches, at the very least. But the wound itself is nice and clean, so there probably won't be much in the way of scarring if we're careful. I'd prefer to get to this sooner rather than later to reduce the risk of infection, so I can grab some anesthetic and inject it in your hand to make sure you don't feel a thing while I stitch. Are you allergic to any medication?"

"I was afraid of that," she murmurs, catching his gaze to offer a crooked half-grin. But at least he's planning on giving her something to numb the area. She's no stranger to pain - least of all the pain she'd felt giving birth to Henry - but she'd rather try to avoid it at this juncture. The last thing she needs to do is break down in tears in front of a young doctor - young and relatively cute doctor, notably.

Emma shakes her head in response to the question about allergies. It's kind of the thing she's had to find out through trial and error - when you've literally been found on the side of a highway with no medical records to speak of, it's a little difficult to figure out if there are any allergies or history of health risks. Given who her parents are - who she's still trying to believe her parents are, anyway - she gets the feeling she isn't going to be prone to heart problems.

"Nope. I mean, there's probably no way for you to check that here, which must be a pain," she adds, thoughtfully. "No easily accessible medical records, no history filed away for you to go off on. Good thing you're a lucky guesser." She smiles again, idly shifting her hand against the table.

"Definitely a pain," agrees Chase as he carefully sets Emma's hand on the exam table, careful to hold her palm just so to prevent her from opening her hand too much, the potential of further bleeding too great. "The funny thing is, no one here seems to care too much about our former background. It all gets swept under the rug, no lawsuits have broken out yet... truth be told, I'm banking on the idea that any major medical concerns would probably be listed on some additional document in that packet some of us get upon arrival. Let's hope my luck runs so far."

It's comforting to know for a fact that Emma is from a different world, same as Chase himself. Her face gave him that suspicion from the start; he's never recognized a native before meeting them properly. But hypotheses can only be relied on so much.

Fishing out a large syringe and rummaging through the cart for anesthetic, Chase offers an apologetic wince. "I know how it looks big, but I've been told that I'm good at giving shots."

"You know, I didn't even think about that. I just walked right in here and let you work on my hand," Emma replies, and even though she doesn't pull her hand away she feigns as if she's about to, pretending to be startled by the revelation. "You could be some kind of fraud."

She relaxes right up until the moment she sees the syringe, and then she tries not to balk, managing a small shrug instead. "You've got to do what you've got to do, right?" It doesn't mean she has to like it, though, and if it means she won't have to feel herself being stitched up too much, she'll take it.

"I bet you say that to all the patients," she mutters, glancing away in preparation.

"At least you'd be able to sue me if so," Chase points out helpfully, his voice carrying enough confidence in the fact that nothing could happen here over something as small as stitches — though internally, the statement carries a bit of irony. It isn't like he hasn't made hiccups in the past, and however much the death of a close family member is supposed to exonerate him, Chase doesn't feel like it comes close to being enough.

It's made him more careful, slipping up like that.

"I do try to comfort all patients about my relative skill, yes," chuckles Chase, tying elastic around her arm to help the vein stand out a little, then cleaning the spot with cotton and alcohol. "Since my skill doesn't really change from patient to patient." Waiting until she looks away, Chase focuses intently on sliding the needle in easily.

While not the most important part of stitching or wound care, Chase always tries to build up trust in his patients early. Even over something as small as a shot.

"I don't have the money for a long, drawn-out lawsuit, so I think you're safe," Emma answers wryly, fixing him with a small look and an even subtler smile. She has her hand in her periphery, but she's decidedly not looking directly at it so she can at least attempt to save face in front of the doctor. It's not going to be enough pain to bring her to tears, but the anticipation is killer.

"And here I thought I was getting special treatment," she mutters, through slightly gritted teeth as he catches her in the middle of a sentence with that needle, making her wince somewhat. It's not as bad as she's built it up to be in her mind, though, and she glances back almost immediately as he puts the empty syringe aside, waiting for the numbness to sink in.

"I wouldn't be much of a doctor if I gave special treatment, no matter how pretty the girl," Chase says once the shot is administered, carefully pressing a small bandage over the spot and gently setting her hand back on the table. "And you know, I haven't actually seen how well the courts run here in Darrow, though any medical lawsuit has lingering effects on a doctor's reputation." He smiles, warm and easy, mostly teasing. A suit for stitches probably wouldn't go far, and if he does his usual best, she won't have any reason for complaint.

It's fun to tease anyway.

"Anyway, that shot should take a few minutes to settle in," he says, pulling off his gloves and tossing them into the waste bin before rolling his stool back to the equipment cart and pulling out the materials for stitching. "And that's just enough time that I probably wouldn't be able to complete another patient's check-up, so you're stuck with me for a little while longer. Unless you'd rather I get out."

"Not even if that girl tried to bribe you with a drink afterward?" she replies, her sensibility immediately leaping to the forefront in her consciousness to inform her what a horrible idea that is. She's flirting. She has an open wound on her hand and she's flirting with the doctor who's about to be wielding a needle and thread into her skin in only a couple minutes, and she's flirting.

Beyond all that, she now has to sit here and try to quell the flush in her face as they wait for the numbness to kick in, half-praying that it will somehow spread to the rest of her body so she doesn't have to experience any more of this utter mortification. She keeps her hand steady, clearing her throat softly, and then shakes her head. "No, you can stay." Waiting alone in one of these exam rooms has always creeped her out a little.

Chase laughs with a slight wince, less at Emma's expense and more at his own. He's prone to giving compliments when he can; it puts the patient in a good mood and tends to make it easier for them to trust him, but after years on his own and without so much as a steady date, it's taking some time to adjust accordingly with Natalia in his life. Straying is something Chase would never be driven to, against his very nature — but there's a thin line between compliments and flirting.

He wonders, sometimes, if he crosses it too much.

"As flattered as I am that you're already pleased with my anesthetizing skills," says Chase with a slight tilt of his head, bringing over the supplies and pulling on another pair of gloves before resting his wrists carefully on his knees to allow for further conversation, "I don't think that's wise, firstly because I should be the one to check up on your stitches in a few days, and secondly because I'm seeing someone." He smiles, the expression slightly self-deprecating.

"Shucks, and here I thought I'd at least earn myself a good discount," Emma replies, almost a little relieved when he gently declines. It's not that she's established a timetable for her dating life, but she's not exactly looking to jump into anything too quickly for a whole variety of reasons, and it's a good thing that her poor impulse control hasn't been immediately rewarded.

"Women always go for the doctors, though, right? I should've known," she adds, deciding to flip it into a joke instead, and her smile comes slightly easier this time, more relaxed as the numbing starts to have an effect on her hand, eyes brightening.

"Healthcare here is fully subsidized by the government. I'm not sure what good a discount will do you," grins Chase, glad that she doesn't seem bothered by his decline. Perhaps it was just a sudden thought thrown out there. (Perhaps, another part of his brain says, this is just the city's way of trying to unnerve him. Things are rarely as simple as they seem.) "But if I wasn't exercising all of my care before, I know I am now."

Checking up on the movement of Emma's hand, Chase better examines the wound, unpacking some of the thread for her stitches. "As for women, ah... well, our jobs look good on paper. But our hours aren't great. Plus, we use up all of our bedside manner with our patients," jokes Chase with a tilt of his head. Carefully pressing near the wound, Chase glances up at Emma. "Do you feel any pain when I press here?"

"Good, 'cause this being my good arm-wrestling hand and everything, I'd really hate for you to screw this one up," Emma dryly answers, keeping her corresponding smile mostly to herself as she looks down at her hand when he brings a gloved one of his over to press into her palm. It's odd, because she can feel the sensation, but the pain is light, almost completely faded away - or maybe it's phantom pain, her brain tricking herself into thinking she can still feel it. Either way, it's not going to be enough to make her wince when he finally gets cracking on those stitches.

"Nope. I think you've got the go-ahead, Doc," she replies, shifting her weight in the chair as her legs idly dangle off the edges, toes of her boots skimming a few inches from the floor.

"Ooh, we wouldn't want that. I won't be one to get in the way of knocking overly pompous men down a peg or two with a good arm wrestle," jokes Chase, though the comment is well-meant. For reasons both selfish and not, Chase has always preferred situations in which women took up domineering positions, cases in which they took control easily. Somehow, it seems fitting that a woman who shares a face with Allison would be that way.

"Let me know if you feel any sharp discomfort," Chase says first, meeting her gaze briefly before crouching down to work on her hand, threading the first stitch easily. "So, an offer of a drink and a mention of arm wrestling. Do you work at a bar? Or are you looking for a good place in the city? There's this one place I'm pretty fond of, Semele's."

"Exactly. Who knows? This could be the way I earn my living, and it's all in your hands now," she replies, struggling to keep a straight face before she eventually lets the expression fall naturally into something more resting, occasionally glancing toward the stitching happening. It's not something she plans to focus on specifically, and she's grateful when he keeps the conversation going, propelling it forward.

"Really? Hadn't heard of it. And I don't exactly have much in the way of employment right now, but I guess a bar's as good as any to attempt finding that. Besides, if my arm-wrestling career is shot before it ever takes off, I'm going to start re-evaluating my life choices."

"My hands are very capable, thank you very much. They used to pay me quite a bit for my hands' work, back when I was head of surgery at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital," muses Chase, working deftly at her stitches, keeping his pace fast and sure to keep from tugging too much at her wound. "And if I can't even manage some palm stitches, then the way I earn my living would be severely undercut. Though maybe my ego needs a bit of a blow."

He smiles briefly up at her before continuing his work, already three stitches in. There can't be more than a couple more to go. "Anyway, Semele's has fantastic food, although I guess the location isn't for the faint of heart. How much have you gotten to explore the city?"

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mundane entanglements.

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