Frequent trips to the chemist were not an unusual thing for Chase. He had to keep up on his aspirin if he wanted to live, so he'd been told. Especially after they'd opted out of installing a ballon pump in his aorta. He really wasn't ready for that kind of hospital time. His doctors had suggested that the summer would be the best time for him to recuperated but he'd had his field studies to do. Well, other people had his field studies. He'd sat at home or in his office grading summer papers and consolidating research findings. Either way, he wasn't ready to be in a hospital for too long. And he really was unable to be anyway. At least not for a full month. Or he'd destroy an entire wing. That'd be hard to explain.
Seeing as it was raining, Chase asked his valet Somchai to stay home while he went to get some more aspirin. His lizard, however, could not be deterred and was already sitting on his motorcycle when Chase got there. Shrugging, Chase threw a waterproof poncho over his clothes and sped off. Walking under the little awning over the store, he slung his wet poncho over one arm and fished for his prescription on the other. While aspirin was easy enough to get over-the-counter, they made him a special precription for the harder-hitting (also more expensive) stuff. Couldn't put a price tag on health, he supposed. He had just started to take another step into the store when something tapped against his chest. And then there was grabbing involved. Chase dropped his poncho in favor of making sure the woman clinging to him stayed upright.
"Dr. Wake?" Chase supposed doctors could get sick, too, but it was always a surprise when you did see one. "You all right there?" she clearly wasn't, but it was always polite to ask first. That way, they could tell you if they needed help or you needed to just go away. "Anything I can do?" He'd met the woman some time after he'd first come to Scarlet Oak. She was a surgeon and his primary physician had consulted her about getting an aortic pump or something like that into his chest to...well, he supposed to keep his heart beating. It sounded a lot more horrible in his head than he remembered his doctor telling him. It'd been a while since he'd seen her, but he had a head for faces and names. Besides, she was a bit of a knockout. It was hard to forget such a pretty face.