Épisode La vérité est ailleurs S03E02 - House Saison 3

[Opens on a mother opening the bedroom door on a young boy.]

Clancy: Mom! I'm thirsty.

Mom: I just gave you water.

Clancy: I want juice.

Mom: It's bedtime. Close your eyes and go to sleep. [She leaves.]

Clancy: Mom! [His dad opens the door.]

Dad: What do you want, Clance?

Clancy: Oh. Hi, Dad.

Dad: Go to bed.

Clancy: Can I turn the TV on?

Dad: TV is only for the day.

Clancy: I'll keep the volume down; I just like the light.

Dad: Go to bed.

Clancy: Dad, what if... [Whispers.] what if they come to get me again?

Dad: Nobody is coming to get you, okay? Go to bed, now. [Clancy puts on his glasses - making him look like a little Harry Potter - and turns on the TV, with the sound off. It starts to change channels without him doing anything. Then, things start to fall off the shelves, and a bright light and strong wind flies through his shutters. He screams.]

[The next morning.]

Dad: Come on Clancy, it's time to get up. [Clancy is no where to be found.] I guess he's already up.

Mom: Well, that's a first.

Dad: I'll, uh, I'll see if he needs breakfast. Hey, Clance, you hungry? [Mom goes and turns off the TV.] Hon, he's not down here!

Mom: You sure? Clancy? Clancy? Clancy! Where are you? Sweetie, are you hiding? [The parents start to search throughout the house.]

Dad: Clancy!

Mom: Where is he?

Dad: Clancy!

Mom: Clancy!

Dad: You're going to be in big trouble when I find you!

Mom: Honey, come out right now! Wherever you are, this is not funny!

Dad: Clance!

Mom: Clancy! [The shot widens to Clancy, lying on the grass outside, with a large bloodstain on the back of his pants.]

[Cut to House, in his flat, tying up his sneakers in preparation for a run. He grabs his iPod shuffle, goes out the door, and comes back 10 seconds later with his hand on his right leg. He goes to his coat pocket and grabs some Vicodin, toes off his shoes, and limps off.]

[Cut to House entering the hospital lobby.]

Wilson: Ah. Where's the sweat and the B.O? You've taken such pride bathing us in your personal musk.

House: Showered at home.

Cuddy: And yet you're earlier than usual.

House: Is this an intervention? It's a little late, since I'm not using drugs anymore. I am, however, still hooked on phonics.

Cuddy: If you still did your morning run and showered at home you'd be later than usual.

House: Thought of you in the shower.

Cuddy: How's your leg? You seem to be favoring your left side.

House: I was hanging down my right pant leg yesterday. Makes all the difference in the world. [Gets into the elevator.]

Wilson: You've taken the stairs every day.

House: Do I need a restraining order?

Cuddy: You slack on your rehab, the muscle will weaken, and your leg will hurt again. [House closes the elevator door.]

Wilson: Looks like the ketamine treatment might not stick.

Cuddy: Or maybe we've made him depressed because we're lying to him. Telling him he got that case wrong.

Wilson: We didn't hurt him. The pain isn't -

Cuddy: He gets depressed, he stops exercising. He stops exercising, the muscle atrophies. The muscle atrophies, the pain returns.

Wilson: Maybe he stops exercising because the giant hole in his leg actually hurts.

Cuddy: The ketamine could work perfectly and he would still be back on his cane, popping Vicodin again.

Wilson: You can't tell him. He got lucky; there was no medical -

Cuddy: He was right!

Wilson: We tell him he was right, and we're feeding his addiction. Without Vicodin, he's only got one to focus on.

Cuddy: Well, he's not going to OD on puzzles.

Wilson: No, it's not going to hurt HIM. But he could just as easily have killed that patient. We have a tiny window of time here where House may be healthy enough to change and, based on that limp, the window's closing fast.

[Diagnostics.]

Chase: Kid is a product of an in vitro fertilization pregnancy. Had all his vaccinations, fractured his right ulna at age three, chicken pox at age five -

House: He ever get his feelings hurt? I'll need to know that, too.

Foreman: You are 0 for 1 since you came back. You just want to make sure -

Cameron: Rectal bleeding plus alien abduction fantasy is most likely sexual abuse. Penetration causes the bleed, trauma causes the fantasy.

Foreman: ER ran a rape kit, found no evidence of tearing, semen, or pubic hairs.

Chase: Maybe we should talk to the kid.

House: Why, in case he's telling the truth? You're a believer, aren't you?

Chase: Well, I'm just not arrogant enough to think that of the 50 billion galaxies, 100 billion stars per galaxy, and 10 million billion planets in the universe that we're the only ones with life.

House: No. But I'm guessing we're the only ones who like shoving things through our back doors.

Foreman: There is new research indicating a link between neurological problems and bleeding disorders.

House: Perfect. Especially if there were neurological problems.

Foreman: What part of "hallucinating an alien abduction" isn't neurological?

House: Well, why is that a hallucination?

Chase: What? You think the kid -

House: He's having nightmares. Nightmares aren't a symptom of anything, other than wanting to sleep with Mommy. Which just leaves us with one symptom: the bloody tuchas, which can easily be explained by a GI problem or a bleeding disorder. Check his coags with PT, PTT, and bleeding time. And prep him for endoscopies from above and below.

[Cut to Chase taking samples from Clancy.]

Chase: We're going to make a tiny nick in your forearm, okay? And we're going to time how long it takes for you to stop bleeding. Now, this is going to sting a little, so you might want to look the other way. [Chase nicks him and put the scalpel down.]

Clancy: Are those windows locked?

Chase: Those windows don't even open, they're just here to let sunshine in.

Clancy: Good, 'cause they know I'm here.

Mom: Clancy, don't bother the doctor with this stuff.

Chase: No, it's okay. How do they know you're here?

Clancy: They put a chip in my neck so they can keep track of me. I can feel it back there.

Mom: Clancy, you know there is nothing back there.

Clancy: There is!

Chase: Let me see. Lean forward.

Clancy: And they have this other thing, and they put it in between these two ribs, always on this side, and then they move it around my insides. It hurts.

Chase: You know what, Clancy? I think I might have found the chip back there. And I think I might be able to get it out.

Clancy: Really?

Chase: Mm hmm. [Quick wink to the parents.] Okay, lean forwards. Now hold very still, okay? [He picks at Clancy's neck with some tweezers.] Got it!

Clancy: I'm seven, not three. All you did was pinch my neck.

Chase: Sorry.

[Cut to the team in the hallway.]

Chase: His alien abduction story... the level of detail is... I don't know where he gets it from. The parents say he doesn't watch sci-fi, he doesn't read comic books -

House: Great! You do any of that medical stuff we talked about?

Foreman: Upper and lower endoscopies were clean.

House: So it's a simple bleeding disorder.

Chase: No, blood tests were all normal. And he clotted in six minutes.

House: So it's a simple bleeding disorder and you screwed up the test.

Chase: I didn't screw up the test!

House: So it's a UFO, unidentified flowing orifice. Either you screwed up the test, or I screwed up my analysis of this case. If you screwed up, I don't have to cry myself to sleep. It's a simple bleeding disorder. Foreman, redo the test.

Chase: How could I screw up a simple bleeding time test?

Foreman: Maybe you were abducted; lost time.

[Cut to Foreman leaving Clancy's room.]

Foreman: Kid's got a bleeding disorder.

House: You sure?

Foreman: Had to stop the bleeding myself after 25 minutes.

[Cut to them entering Diagnostics; Chase is working at the table.]

House: So you're saying Chase did screw up.

Chase: Or Foreman screwed up.

Foreman: Big hand points to minutes. Maybe you got them mixed up?

House: Oh, snap! Foreman's playing the dozens; you're at a cultural disadvantage here. Take a few minutes to think up a witty retort.

Cameron: So we have contradicting bleeding time tests. If we run labs to check his clotting factors we can confirm which one's right.

House: Yeah, testing, nice idea. Way better than trying to guess which doctor's incompetent. Much better than the paperwork, too.

Chase: [Who really has been thinking up a retort.] Hey, Foreman. Your momma's so fat, when her beeper goes off, people think she's backing up. [And... no. Denied.]

[Cut to Chase, later, entering Clancy's room, but Clancy's not in his bed. Chase wakes up his mother.]

Chase: Where's Clancy?

Mom: He's asleep, he's -

[Cut to House, about to leave the hospital.]

Chase: House! Clancy's gone missing.

House: Oh, no! Well, you take Alpha Centauri, Foreman can look on Tatooine, and Cameron can set up an intergalactic checkpoint. Let's pray he hasn't gone into hyperdrive! We'll never catch him.

[Cut to Clancy, in a bathroom somewhere in the hospital. He's digging into his neck with some sharp implement. Chase barges in.]

Chase: Clancy?

Clancy: I had to go where there was no windows, so I could get the chip out, like you said!

Chase: Oh, God.

Clancy: I can feel it, I just can't grab it -

Chase: Clancy, stop! There is no chip! We're going to clean you up, and we're going to go back to your room. You can't do things like this. Your parents... [Chase stops, because he sees something shiny through the blood.]

[Diagnostics.]

House: Results came back. The lab cannot identify the metal. They said it might not even be terrestrial.

Chase: Really?

House: No, you idiot! It's titanium. Like from a surgical pin, like the kind the kid had inserted into his broken arm four years ago, nice medical history.

Chase: That pin was removed six months after -

House: So what, a little piece broke off during removal.

Chase: Titanium is used to build nuclear subs, pieces don't just break off.

House: Tell that to the guys on the Kursk.

Chase: And how exactly did it get from his arm to the back of his neck?

Foreman: Body attacks any foreign object. Inflammatory reaction could have eroded into a vein, fragment gets a free ride.

Chase: To his lungs, maybe. Not his neck.

House: Yeah. An alien chip makes more sense. The real mystery is you didn't actually screw up. [He stumbles.]

Cameron: You okay?

House: Fine. I tripped. Kid carved a hole in the back of his neck, apparently didn't bleed to death. Now that's weird.

Foreman: He clotted on his own?

House: Sure did. So first there was no bleeding disorder, then there was, now there's not again.

Cameron: Which is impossible.

Chase: Or Foreman screwed up. Two out of three tests agree with my findings.

House: Lucky for us, the fourth test will be the charm.

[Cut to the team and Clancy's parents in the hallway.]

Mom: So you're just going to keep cutting him, until what?

Foreman: This test is different. We'll draw some blood and see if any clotting factors are low or missing.

Dad: But why haven't the other tests -

Chase: We've had three results that haven't been consistent. One of them must be wrong.

Foreman: Or two of them. [They look at each other.]

Mom: Is it possible the problem isn't his blood? It's just psychological? I mean, he almost killed himself.

Chase: He wasn't trying to hurt himself.

Mom: No, he was just looking for an alien tracking device.

[Clinic.]

Cameron: I have time for one more.

Brenda: I don't blame you for spending extra time down here. Heard the Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Gimp is back upstairs. [Cameron tries to take it a chart off the counter.] Oh, Dr. Cuddy wants that one.

Cameron: She's busy, I'll take it. [Cameron enters the exam room and sees Richard, the patient from last week.] Oh, my God! You're, uh, you're okay!

Richard: Have we met?

Cameron: I was one of your doctors. You were in a vegetative state when you left here last week.

Richard: Addison's disease. All I needed was cortisol, and my brain turned on like a switch.

Cameron: This is amazing!

Richard: Surprised you didn't know.

Cameron: How would I know?

Richard: Not quite my old self yet. Baby steps, the doctors tell me.

Cameron: With rehab you'll do great. What hospital did you go to? How would I -

Richard: I want to have sex with my wife.

Cameron: Oh.

Richard: And I was hoping that maybe you could -

Cameron: Viagra. You're here for Viagra?

Richard: A bucketful would be nice. [He grins. Cuddy enters; Richard stands with aid of walker.] Dr. Cuddy! Hi!

[Cuddy's office.]

Cameron: It's completely unethical!

Cuddy: He was reckless with a patient.

Cameron: He was right!

Cuddy: But he didn't know that. He needs at least some glimmer of humility.

Cameron: Why does he need that? Because other people have that? Why does he need to be like other people?

Cuddy: He needs to be less reckless.

Cameron: Well, you did it. He's dismissing symptoms, looking for easy solutions, he's in pain...

Cuddy: How much pain?

Cameron: Why? You know this is affecting him, don't you?

Cuddy: Telling him that he got his last case right won't do anything to help him.

Cameron: It'll make him less depressed.

Cuddy: Which might not help his leg.

Cameron: But you don't know!

Cuddy: Just let me run a PET scan on his parietal thalamic area to see if it's sensing pain. If it is, the ketamine isn't working anymore and he's headed for a huge crash. If it's not, the leg pain is my fault and I will tell him the truth.

[Cut to Chase doing yet another test on poor Clancy.]

Chase: Too tight?

Clancy: My parents think I'm crazy.

Chase: No, they don't. They're just worried about you, that's all.

Clancy: I'm not weird! It's just that weird things keep happening to me.

Chase: Slight pinch.

Clancy: If you make me better, do you think the aliens will leave me alone?

Chase: I don't think they're going to be bothering you for much longer.

Clancy: You lying again?

Chase: No. We figure this out, and everything's going to be okay. [As Chase draws blood, Clancy sees his arm turn white and his veins green. He begins to have trouble breathing.] Still with us? [Now Chase's hands look like they belong to an alien. The monitors beep.] Pulmonary edema, stage two hypertensive crisis!

Mom: What is happening?

Chase: Wait outside! Get him oxygen and start him on an IV drip of sodium nitroprusside. Get them outside!

[Cut to House and Chase in a hallway.]

Chase: He's in ICU, systolic is hovering around 170, I left instructions to lower it slowly so we don't risk hypoperfusing his organs.

House: Tradeoff being that leaving his blood pressure that high risks stroke, MI, and blindness.

Chase: I'm open to suggestions.

House: Solve the case. Kidneys could -

Chase: Kidneys are clean. [They enter the lab.]

House: [Fingers crossed.] Tell me he's a mutant human hybrid.

Foreman: It is a bleeding disorder. Clancy tested positive for von Willenbrand's.

Chase: I didn't screw up. How could he clot on his own two out of three times?

Cameron: Maybe he cheated.

Chase: Right. Kids always cheat on their bleeding time tests.

House: She was being metaphorical. Trying to sound like me. I have no idea what you meant, but I could smell what the Rock was cooking.

Cameron: I meant, he's clotting right now and he's in hypertensive crisis. Maybe the two are related. What if he was hypertensive the other two times that he clotted?

House: Hypertensive crisis can activate clotting factors. Even someone low on von Willenbrand's could theoretically clot.

Chase: And the first time Clancy clotted he was all worked up recounting his alien abduction; he could have easily have been hypertensive.

House: I know I get worked up when I cut microchip tracking implants out of my neck.

Cameron: Sounds like a cheat to me.

House: Yeah, we get it. Okay, what's the differential for a seven-year-old boy suffering multiple hypertensive crises?

[Cut to Chase talking to Clancy's parents outside the ICU.]

Chase: We think the problem is in your son's heart. We need to do a procedure called a transesophageal echo.

Dad: Okay, and that will fix his heart?

Chase: That will tell us where the problem is. Hopefully. Then we can fix him. Listen, this isn't really part of my job, but... he's worried that you think he's crazy.

Mom: Well, isn't he?

Chase: There are still plenty of other explanations for what's going on. It's important he knows you believe in him, even if you don't.

[Cut to the team looking at the echo.]

Foreman: It's clean, his heart isn't the problem.

House: Why don't I have hi-def in my office? I'm a department head!

Chase: There are no structural defects.

Cameron: Valves are intact.

House: Tissue characterization is impossible when the pixels are the size of Legos.

[Cut to some room with a plasma screen.]

House: See, this is what I'm talking about. Foreman, you've got to steal this thing for me.

Foreman: Let me ring up one of the homies.

Chase: The clearer the image, the clearer it is that there are no masses, no clots, no tears. The problem's got to be somewhere else.

House: We're gonna need a bigger boat.

[Cut to the team watching in a movie theatre.]

Foreman: You're wrong, House.

Chase: Think he'll make us break into the IMAX before he admits it?

House: There.

Foreman: Where?

House: Right there. Left side, no movement. [Cameron freezes the shot.] Well, don't freeze it! Something's not moving, how do you see something not move if nothing's moving? [She restarts it.] I need the laser pointer.

Cameron: We don't have a laser pointer.

House: Well, why not? Who's going to take us seriously if we don't have a laser pointer? Right here! [He jumps to point at the spot on the screen; as he lands he grimaces and clutches at his leg.] A few thousand myocytes not beating with the rest.

Chase: So you found an arrhythmia.

House: That's not an arrhythmia, that's a no-rhythmia. Myocytes contract, these aren't moving at all. Go get me those myocytes; I want to talk to them in my office.

[Cut to Cuddy entering House's office.]

Cuddy: How's the kid doing?

House: Heart nearly exploded. Still beating, though. Most of it, anyway. Why do they bother putting age restrictions on these things when all you have to do is click, "Yes, I am 18"? Even a 17-year-old can figure that out.

Cuddy: What's going on with the leg?

House: First, tell me what's going on with the boobs.

Cuddy: If you're feeling pain -

House: They're firmer.

Cuddy: It's called an underwire. I want to get a PET scan of your brain.

House: I think it's hormones.

Cuddy: As long as there's no increased activity in the thalamus -

House: Looks to me like those puppies are going into the dairy business.

Cuddy: -- Then the pain can be good. It could be muscle regenerating. After you work out, you get sore. Pain doesn't mean the ketamine failed.

House: Guess I should be saying 'mazel tov.' Who gets to pass out the cigars?

Cuddy: I'm not pregnant. I need to get a PET scan of your brain.

House: Boy or girl? You got a name picked out?

Cuddy: I'm not pregnant!

House: My leg doesn't hurt.

Cuddy: You're in denial!

House: No, I'm not! Oh, you got me. If I thought my leg was deteriorating, don't you think I'd want to take steps to prevent that?

Cuddy: [Sighs.] Okay. [House's beeper beeps.]

House: Gotta go. [As he leaves, he fake stumbles. Cuddy helps him up; He gives her a look with a "ha".]

[Lab.]

Chase: Here's Clancy's DNA, and here's the DNA from the piece of that heart we just biopsied. [They don't match.]

House: That is impossible. Run it again.

Foreman: We already did. And once more after that.

Cameron: The genes from Clancy's myocytes don't match the genes from the rest of his body.

Chase: Alien DNA.

[Diagnostics.]

House: Anybody watch any X-Files that inspired an explanation?

Foreman: There are ways DNA could become mutated. Extreme UV radiation.

House: That much sun, he'd be dying with a healthy bronze glow.

Cameron: Nitrous acid or ethidium bromide exposure.

House: So first Daddy was a rapist, now he's a chemist.

Chase: Various species of fungus have been proven mutagenic.

House: Not unless the kid's been eating barrels of celery or living in Indonesia, or both. [While this is going on, House has limped from the whiteboard to lean over the table.]

Cameron: Is your leg hurting?

House: Is that question helping?

Cameron: You're leaning.

House: You're sitting.

Cameron: You're evading.

House: My head's hurting. Please, someone give me a plausible, terrestrial explanation for this kid's alien DNA.

Foreman: We could search his home for toxins, fungals, and radiation.

Chase: Who cares what caused it? A kid comes in with strep, we don't conduct a search to see which classmate he got it from; we cure it. We know he's got this stuff inside of him; let's get a scalpel and cut it out.

Cameron: Where do we cut? Chances are it's not just in his heart.

Foreman: Well, we got lucky with the heart. Myocytes contract, we can see that these weren't working. I don't know how the hell we're going to find it anywhere else.

Cameron: What if we find the heart cells with the bad DNA and we tag them?

House: Can you phrase that in the form of a metaphor?

Cameron: It's the same way we search for cancer. The bad DNA creates a unique protein on the surface of the affected cells. We create an antibody that recognizes only that protein and we flush it throughout his system, and the similar cells light up like light bulbs.

House: Okay, let's do that.

[Cut to Cameron walking up to Wilson and Cuddy on the second floor balcony.]

Cameron: You have to tell him.

Cuddy: He said he wasn't in any pain.

Cameron: He's lying.

Wilson: Of course he's lying.

Cuddy: We need another plan.

Wilson: Don't talk about it that way.

Cuddy: What way?

Wilson: Plan. Sounds like we're conspiring against him.

Cameron: I'm going to tell him.

Wilson: No, you're not.

Cameron: Then come up with a cunning plan, and fast. [She stalks off.]

Cuddy: She's not nearly as delightful as she thinks she is.

[Cut to Chase administering a scan to Clancy. Cameron and Foreman are in the side room.]

Clancy: What's this machine do?

Chase: Makes a lot of noise and it's going to help us figure out what's wrong with you.

Foreman: You think House has lost his step?

Cameron: He's fine. There - clump of affected cells in the bone marrow of the femur. Explains the intermittent bleeding disorder.

Foreman: 'Cause I don't need to subject myself to House's torture if there's no upside.

Cameron: I'm telling you, he's fine. We missed some affected areas in his heart, explains the continuing hypertensive issues.

Foreman: You said the last case really threw him, and now suddenly-

Cameron: I was wrong.

Foreman: So you changed your mind? Why? His brilliant ideas in this case have all been yours.

Cameron: There's the reason for him needing glasses, apparently it's a symptom. Means the condition predates -

Foreman: You don't change your mind without a reason. What do you know?

Cameron: House didn't blow the last case. Cuddy cured the guy using House's idea. Cuddy and Wilson are trying to teach him some humility. Scan is complete. 3 hot spots but nothing in his brain. House's original theory was right - it is not neurological.

[Cut to surgery on Clancy. The conversation is from the post-op.]

Dad: Is he going to be able to walk?

Chase: His leg should be functional after some rehab.

Mom: Functional? What does that mean, he'll be able to walk, but not run? He'll have a limp?

Chase: If everything goes well he'll walk, he'll run; he'll probably be even stronger than he is now. When we close him up, we'll move over to his other leg, snake a catheter up through the femoral artery, and into his heart. [CG shot of this being done.] Once the affected areas are removed, his normal tissue will step back in and do its job. He should have no more problems with his blood pressure. After confirming those areas are clear, we'll start our final procedure. We're going to insert a needle through the pupil and get rid of the abnormal cells in the retina.

[Cut to Chase looking into Clancy's eyes.]

Chase: Close your right eye. Can you see my face?

Clancy: Yeah! It's clear!

Chase: You can throw away your glasses. We got it all. Get some sleep, you're going home tomorrow.

Clancy: Thank you. [Polite kid.]

[Cut to Wilson entering House's office.]

Wilson: You want to go for a run?

House: What do you want?

Wilson: I want you to run. [He throws House a bottle of Vicodin.]

House: When did you become an enabler?

Wilson: I'm enabling you to exercise. Vicodin blocks the pain, you get through your rehab, muscle strength increases, and pain decreases.

House: I'd rather not become dependant on pain pills to get through my day. [He throws them back.]

Wilson: You're just like any other patient - running away from knowledge that won't make you happy.

House: I'm as happy as a pig in poop.

Wilson: You're scared the ketamine treatment's wearing off. That it was just a tortuous window of the good life.

House: What part of poop didn't you understand?

Wilson: How can you be so sure it isn't just a sore muscle?

House: It's my leg. We've known each other a long time.

Wilson: You're not always right, House. You've proven that lately.

[Cut to House running on the treadmill, stopping because of the pain, and then taking Vicodin. He limps back onto the treadmill and runs again.]

[Cut to Clancy, who we see being lifted up off of his bed and levitated through a light in the window.]

[Cut to the real world, where Clancy is seizing in bed.]

Mom: What's happening to him?

Chase: He's seizing. I need clonazepam!

Dad: I thought you got it all!

Chase: [Under his breath.] Yeah, yell at me, that'll fix the kid.

[Cut to the team in House's office.]

Cameron: Obviously we missed some foreign tissue. There's something still in him.

Foreman: The hallucinations and seizures indicate problems in the temporal lobe. Sorry, House, it is neurological. Looks like you're wrong, again.

Chase: We didn't miss anything. Brain scan was completely clean.

House: Our tag must not have penetrated the blood-brain barrier. Don't use an IV this time; get it right into the brain.

[Cut to Clancy, back in the scan.]

Cameron: No cells are lighting up. His brain is clean. It is not neurological.

[Cut to the team walking in the hallway. House is limping.]

Foreman: His symptoms are neurological; his condition has to be neurological!

Cameron: His scan was clean, twice! It's not there! [House sits making them pause.]

House: What if it is there but didn't show up on the scan? What if the tag just doesn't work in his brain? Brain cells are structurally different, express a different protein.

Chase: So how are we going to find it? [House walks away.]

Cameron: Where are we going?

House: I am going to think.

[Cut to House in his office, bouncing his ball around, staring at the whiteboard, pacing, and...]

House: Send the kid home.

Cameron: What do you mean?

House: Make sure his blood pressure's stabilized and send him home.

Chase: Like nothing ever happened?

House: We cured his bleeding disorder, removed all the damaged cells we could find.

Chase: We don't know that we fixed anything, it's only been a day. Maybe these symptoms come and go like the blood disorder.

House: It's more probable that his remaining symptoms are just a nightmare.

Foreman: He had a convulsion.

House: May be epilepsy, may be psychological, may be nothing. If the kid gets sick again it'll give us another clue, we can start searching again. If he doesn't, it doesn't matter. Send him home.

[Cut to the parking garage, where House is about to drive off on his motorbike.]

Cuddy: House! You're just giving up on this kid?

House: You've got to know when to stop.

Cuddy: You don't stop, you never stop, you just keep on going until you come up with something so insane that it's usually right.

House: Except on my last case.

Cuddy: Don't be pathetic. Just forget the last case. This kid obviously has something wrong with him.

House: When did you develop such strong opinions about my patients? Last week you were convinced that my patient wasn't sick, now you're convinced this one is.

Cuddy: This one is a young boy. His parents are desperate. Just get together with your team, spend a few extra hours -

House: Well, I guess we could amputate his left leg. That's where we found most of it. Maybe we could just remove his affected eye completely.

Cuddy: If you have reason to believe that that might help -

House: I'm not going to start lopping off body parts, but it's interesting that you'd give me the green light.

Cuddy: I just want you to do something.

House: You've been overly supportive this entire week. Either you're hormonal or you're guilt-ridden. And it's too early in the pregnancy for this to be hormonal.

Cuddy: I'm not pregnant.

House: Then what did you do wrong?

Cuddy: He had Addison's, your last patient. You were right. I gave him one shot of cortisol and he woke up like Rip van Winkle.

House: [To Cuddy's belly.] Oh, your mommy's in such trouble. She's such a liar! That's why you don't have a daddy. That's why she had to - [And... epiphany.]

[Cut to House entering Diagnostics.]

House: How does one person end up with two different sets of DNA?

Foreman: We've been through this.

House: Our assumptions are faulty.

Chase: We've confirmed two different sets of DNA, we re-ran the sequence.

House: I didn't say the lab work was faulty, I said our assumptions were faulty. We assumed he's a person.

Foreman: Of course, the aliens didn't just visit him, they replaced him.

House: Well, you're being silly. What if he's not a person, what if he's two persons?

Cameron: I'm not getting the metaphor.

House: No metaphor. Chase, you said the mom used in vitro fertilization, right?

Chase: Yeah, they had trouble conceiving.

House: The kid was right all along, he was implanted with something. Back when he was really young, I mean really young, I mean twelve cells young. In vitro increases the likelihood of twinning.

Cameron: But he doesn't have a twin.

House: Not walking around. But in vitro fertilization costs about 25 grand a pop. [CGI of... well, cells merging.] So doctors implant about two to six embryos to make sure you get your money's worth. Problem is, there's not always enough bedrooms for all of the kiddies. Two brothers get stuck sharing, there's no bunk beds, so they cuddle up to keep warm. They never untangle. He's two people in one. It's called chimerism.

[Scene morphs to House telling the parents.]

House: Unfortunately, his brother's like a bad doubles partner. The guy just takes up space, gets in the way. Clancy's body thinks that he's going to put away the easy winners, but his brother just keeps swatting the balls into the net. We've got to get him off the court.

Mom: So does that mean you can find the bad cells in his brain, or not?

House: Sure, abandon the metaphor. Fine. Clancy thinks differently than his brother because he thinks. If we induce an alien abduction -

Dad: Wait, what the hell are you talking about?

House: The foreign DNA has got to be in a portion of your son's brain that makes him believe that he's being abducted. We stimulate those neurons with an electric probe; we can trick your son's brain into hallucinating. And your son's neurons will light up, and his brother's cells will remain dark. Those are the ones we cut out.

Mom: You're talking about brain surgery.

House: I'm talking about really cool brain surgery. One of your sons will die, but the taller one won't be so annoying any more.

[Cut to Clancy being prepped for surgery.]

Clancy: So I have a twin?

Chase: Not really. What's on the card?

Clancy: Light bulb.

House: Start us out at ten. [House is doing the brain surgery. Wait, what? Clancy's arm twitches.]

Clancy: I'm not doing that.

House: That was all me, kid. Sorry.

Foreman: You're in motor function. Try two centimeters back.

Clancy: He lives inside me?

Chase: Sort of. [House hits another part of Clancy's brain.]

Clancy: Hee, that tickles! Stop tickling my feet!

Foreman: You're in sensory, getting closer.

Chase: What do you see on this one?

Clancy: Moon and stars. So I am kind of weird?

Chase: We're all kind of weird. [House touches his brain again.]

Clancy: NO!

Chase: Clancy?

Foreman: We've got something.

Chase: What do you see?

Clancy: The light. Here they come, I think.

Foreman: Brain waves indicate mild hallucination. Neurons lighting up.

House: Any dark spots?

Foreman: Area's too fuzzy. Hallucination isn't strong enough.

House: Well, turn up the juice.

Chase: His blood pressure's already 160/110. Any higher and -

House: Riding the short bus is better than not breathing. Take us to 100.

Foreman: Area's still too fuzzy to make any kind of distinction.

House: Crank it up higher!

Chase: You've already exceeded the preset maximum. Next step's brain damage.

House: [In front of Clancy's face.] They're going to get you! They're coming through the walls. They're going to take you, torture you! You'll never see your parents again. [And all the CGI guys on House weep for joy, because all they really want to do is work in sci-fi, and here it is, an alien abduction scene, complete with bizarre probes.]

Alien (Chase): Clancy, can you hear me? [The alien fades back into Chase.] Clancy?

Clancy: You got them.

Chase: Yep, we got them all.

House: Close him up.

Chase: Everything's going to be normal again.

[Cut to House entering Wilson's office.]

House: You believe what Cuddy tried to pull?

Wilson: What now?

House: She lied to me. She cured my patient with my diagnosis, then lied to me about it.

Wilson: That doesn't sound like her.

House: You're right. It does sound like you, though.

Wilson: What exactly did Cuddy tell you?

House: Nothing that your body language isn't telling me right now. So, what was the plan? That I'd feel so humble by missing a case that I'd reevaluate my entire life, question nature, truth, and goodness and become Cameron?

Wilson: Something like that. More that if we told you the truth; that you'd solved the case based on absolutely no medical proof, that you'd think you were God. And I was worried your wings would melt.

House: God doesn't limp. [House leaves and Wilson looks very, very tired.]

[Cut to House entering his flat. He limps to his closet and pulls his cane out of his golf clubs, and gimps off to the song 'Gravity' by John Mayer.]