"House." It was Chase. "Do you remember a patient of yours called Diana Sanchez?"

House paused to finish chewing on his baked potato. "Vaguely."

"She came in with abdominal pain. We did a scan. She has a grade two solid teratoma in her left ovary. She won't let us do surgery. Wants to talk to you."

House closed his eyes and wondered what the world had against him. "I'll be in in fifteen minutes." He closed the phone and glared across the table at his lunch partner. "You set that up."

Horatio shook his head. "No excuses. You owe me."

House dug through his wallet and laid a twenty on the table. "That's the last time I let you talk me into something like this." Horatio had bet him ten dollars that House would get a phone call asking him to come down to the hospital before the end of lunch. House, apparently still high on endorphins, had raised him to twenty. And lost.

"What do you have to go in for?" Horatio asked.

House decided to explain, even though teratomas still made his skin crawl. "Do you know what a teratoma is? A teratoma is a tumour with tissue or organ components. The tissues of the tumour can be drastically different from the surrounding tissues...meaning that this thing, which is in the patient's ovary, can contain hair, teeth, bone...maybe even an eyeball or a finger."

Horatio's face twisted momentarily in revulsion. "Teeth," he repeated. "The tumour can have teeth."

"And hair. And its own blood supply. Some of them even move and respond to pain." House cleaned his plate of potato with a sweep of his fork. "And on that note, I'm out of here. Got people to save."

Horatio pushed his plate away with one hand. "Suddenly I'm not hungry."

House wasn't surprised. "When do you need to leave?"

"Two hours."

"Shit." House bit his lip. "I know how it goes at the hospital...I'm not going to be back by then. Listen, um..." He rubbed the lower half of his face thoughtfully. "Take the car. I'll work something out with Wilson to pick it up."

"I could call a cab -"

"No. Take the car. It's okay."

"All right." Horatio pushed back his chair and stood. "I should start packing anyway."

"It was..." House stopped. There was no way he could say it without sounding trite. "I love you," he said simply. "And I'll miss you. Like hell."

It was the right thing to say. Horatio smiled and leaned into him. House put his arms around the redhead and could remember nobody who had ever felt more right there. "I'll call you from the airport," Horatio said softly. "What's her name?"

"Who?"

"The patient with the tumour dentata."

House let himself smile. "Diana Sanchez."

Horatio drew back, and kissed House lightly on the lips. "Well, go save Diana Sanchez's life."

House did.


"You have a teratoma," House said for the third time. "It needs to come out. Why is that so hard for you to understand?"

Diana Sanchez was like Katie Baker's mother, but worse. At five foot eleven, she wasn't at all a diminutive woman, but she had an unholy fear of all things even remotely medical, which was why she would only deal with House - he didn't look like a doctor, and that made it okay. She had come in for appendicitis and downright refused surgery until the last possible moment; that was how he had met her.

"But that'll mean surgery," she said, also for the third time. "And surgery means sharp things. And blood. And pain."

"Aren't you in pain now?" House shook his head. "Listen to me, Diana. You have a grade two teratoma. Grade two means bad. Bad means that if I leave it in there, you're going to be in more pain. Much more pain than you're in already. Surgery like this is nothing. You're in, you're out, a couple days in bed and some pills. No biggie." House shook a Vicodin into his palm and dry-swallowed it. "See? It's easy to take painkillers."

"But the surgery -"

"Will hurt. But no worse than the teratoma will hurt if you leave it in." House lowered his head and looked at her, hard. "Would I lie to you?"

Diana clearly had no idea how to answer that. "No?"

"Of course I wouldn't. Meaning you're going into surgery..." House checked his watch. "Right now."

As she was beginning to gasp in horror, the ducklings came in. Foreman was doing his best to look quietly comforting, while Cameron had sympathy slathered all over her face. Chase was his usual puppy-eyed self, which House frankly found quite amusing.

"Now, Miss Sanchez," Chase said, milking the Australian accent for all it was worth, "we're here to prep you for your operation. You won't feel a thing. Trust me."

House made his escape.


Foreman brought him the tumour later. "Thought you might want to see what they pulled out of her," he said, setting the jar on the table.

House stared at the thing inside the jar. A shapeless mass stared back at him. With an eye. One flawless brown eye. Wrapped around it was a lock of brown hair, and across a small expanse of lumpy tissue, four perfectly formed molars on part of a mandible. And if House squinted, he thought he could see a fingernail -

"Get it out of here," he said, pushing it back towards Foreman. "Go test it, see how malignant it is. Start her on chemo as soon as it makes sense. Just - for God's sake - get that thing away from me."

Foreman looked startled, but picked up the jar. He held it up. "It is pretty ugly."

House turned in his chair and looked out of the window. There was nothing much to see except grass, but he would look at anything to erase the sight of the tumour. It was profanity. Sacrilege, the way the body could turn on itself. He shuddered. Shoving a camera through five feet of colon didn't seem at all unpleasant anymore.

"Whatever you do," he said, "don't let her see that."

"Okay." Foreman nodded. "House...you all right?"

House glanced up at Foreman, who had the sense to be holding the jar with the teratoma behind his back. "Ugly is fine," he said at last. "I can do ugly. But that...that's wrong. Medically and otherwise. Cancer is bad enough, but this..."

Foreman seemed to understand. "It's scary. And I mean, teratomata are congenital. She had this thing inside of her since before she was born."

House fought back another shiver. He had seen some things in his twenty years of practicing medicine that would no doubt make your average layman sob like a baby, but none of it had ever bothered him the way a teratoma had. He couldn't explain how vile the juxtaposition of hair and teeth and cancerous tissue were. Germ cells gone wrong. Of all the unlovely things House had seen - and boy had he seen some unlovely things - he maintained that teratomata were the ugliest things to come out of the human body.

Foreman had gone. But now Wilson was walking into his office. "House. Heard you talked an iatrophobe into having surgery. How'd you manage that one?"

House shrugged, thankful for the distraction. Wilson's good humour was more than welcome. "What, my good looks and charm aren't enough?" he asked wryly.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "How'd it go?"

House followed the change of subject easily. "Good. Really good, actually. Unfortunately, he's probably already almost at the airport by now."

"You mean he's leaving?"

House raised an eyebrow. "Yes, he's leaving. He has work tomorrow. And you have to take me to the airport later to pick up my car."

Wilson's jaw dropped. "You lent him the Corvette?"

House was amused. "I was thinking about letting him go on the bike, you know, but I thought his bag would've gotten in the way."

The oncologist pulled out a chair and took a seat, unconsciously adjusting his tie. "So how good is good?" he asked a little too casually.

House squinted. "Is that a nice way of asking if we're banging?" At the expression on Wilson's face, he smirked, and added, "Well, in answer to the question you asked me yesterday - yes, the sex is that good."

Wilson's face twisted into a comical mix of teenage-boy-gross-out and a grin of epic proportions. "I suppose I can't tell you that's too much information considering I literally asked for it. Well...I guess I'm happy for you. I can't wait to see how this one turns out."

"Have a little faith, Wilson." House reached for three of the balls he kept on his desk and started juggling. "Besides, shouldn't you be more concerned about who you're seeing?"

Wilson did a double-take. "What makes you think I'm seeing someone?"

"New shoes." House nodded to Wilson's feet. "Leather. Probably expensive."

"You're basing whether I'm seeing someone on my shoes?"

"And your tie. It's new. Doesn't go with your shirt, by the way. So who is she?"

Wilson went for an innocent look and unfortunately landed somewhere between shifty and confused. "Um..."

"Nurse? Patient? Cuddy?"

"No to all three."

House squinted. "Cameron? No, wait - Chase!"

"Yes. I mean, no. Not Chase."

"Cameron?"

Wilson quirked an eyebrow and seated himself comfortably in a chair. "Is there something fundamentally wrong with me and Cameron or is there some other explanation for the hilarious look on your face?"

"Good God." House covered his face with both hands and let out a rather loud snort of laughter. "Cameron. You're seeing Cameron."

Wilson tried for finely tuned outrage and missed by a mile. "What's wrong with Cameron?"

"Where do I begin?" House had long since racked up Cameron's defects in his mind, and now he listed them one by one. "She has this unhealthy attraction to damaged people - which I guess accounts for why she's attracted to us. She's annoyingly ethical. I can't treat a patient without her pelting off to Cuddy and blabbing on me. She's hypersensitive."

"Right, and where do we get to her faults?" Wilson was clearly amused. "You say you can't treat a patient without her telling Cuddy; I say she's orthodox. You say she's hypersensitive; I say she's compassionate. You say she's attracted to damaged people; I say she's...attracted to damaged people. It's not against the law."

"You say that because you're the same way. You get into relationships with your patients knowing they're going to die anyway -" House stopped abruptly. "Wait. So she's not still seeing Chase?"

Wilson's eyes widened. "She was seeing Chase?"

"Oh God." House started to laugh. "You didn't know?"

Wilson leaned forward. "She was seeing Chase? House, seriously. You're not kidding? Cameron and Chase? How long ago?"

"Currently, to the best of my knowledge." House leaned back in the chair and fought the urge to giggle uncontrollably. This really wasn't funny. Really. "Okay, you know what? You go to your office and do something constructive. I'll talk to Cameron."

Wilson was instantly suspicious. "Why?"

"Because I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do. And when you think you don't owe me, you remember that poker game I helped you win." House steepled his fingers under his chin and nodded to the door. "Go on. I'll call you when I know what's what."


"Cameron," he said as soon as she'd walked in. "Have a seat."

She paused, looking confused. "Am I in trouble?"

"Have you done something you should be in trouble for?" House asked, and then sighed. "Whatever it is, save it. I have a couple personal questions to ask you."

She sat down slowly. "What?"

"You're still seeing Chase?"

"What does that have to -"

"Humour me. Are you still seeing Chase?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of meaning..."

"Meaning sort of." He gave her a look, and she elucidated unwillingly, "On a casual basis."

"Meaning you're still screwing him."

Cameron winced. "Yes, but I still don't see what -"

House held up a hand. "Cameron. Please. Be quiet when I'm trying to interrupt you." At her bemused silence, he continued, "And you're also seeing Wilson." It wasn't a question.

She stiffened. "Who told you that?"

"Wilson's shoes," House said.

Cameron folded her arms tightly. Her face looked pinched. "This is none of your business."

"He's my friend."

"I didn't know you had friends," she said bitingly.

House couldn't help but be surprised by the harshness of the statement. "Whether you knew it or not, Wilson is my friend. And furthermore - newsflash, Cameron: you're not the only person in the universe entitled to be concerned for someone else's welfare."

She stared down into her lap. "I don't know how this got so messed up," she said quietly. "Things with Chase were just...nothing. It was just sex, you know? But somewhere along the line it got a little more complicated. And then Jimmy came on the scene, and -"

"Jimmy?"

Cameron nodded, oblivious to House's amusement. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore," she whispered. "I know I can't have them both - or I shouldn't, anyway - but I don't know which one I want."

"If you want either."

She looked up at him, her eyes welling with tears. "I've done something really stupid, haven't I?"

"We're all allowed to have stupid moments. But you know you're going to have to make a decision." She nodded. House pursed his lips. "You can have one, or the other. Or neither. But not both." He looked at her steadily, and realized that she was going to cry. "Cameron," he said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "Take ten minutes. Wash your face. You'll figure something out."

She stood up, drying one eye with the heel of her hand. "Thank you," she said.

House just nodded.


"House."

Horatio sank into the chair. "Greg."

The phone crackled. "Horatio."

He turned, looking out of the vast plate-glass windows to where the planes taxied across the runway. "Diana Sanchez. Did she agree to the surgery?"

"It took about forty-five minutes, but yes, she did." House gave a sigh of frustration. Horatio could almost see him raking one hand back through his hair. "Where are you?"

"Departure lounge," Horatio reported. "It's fifteen minutes until boarding."

"Cameron and Wilson."

"What?"

"Cameron and Wilson. They're seeing each other."

"Didn't you tell me she was with Chase?"

"She is."

Horatio laughed softly. "Well, this is interesting. What are you going to do?"

"I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I have to do nothing. Wilson, presumably, is going to do something, and I will be bracing for the fallout from whatever he does. Like it or not, it'll affect me in one way or another, seeing as two of the involved are on my team, and one is my best friend." House heaved another sigh.

"Are you sure you want to get yourself into this?" Horatio asked.

House snorted. "I'm not sure I know how to get myself out of this."

"I got a call," Horatio said. "A couple bodies turned up. There's a big furor...everyone wants to know where I am and why I wasn't there. So I'm not going to be able to leave Miami again for a while."

"Long while?"

"Long while."

"Dammit." House swore. "I might be able to take some time in September."

"September's almost three months away."

"Thank you for the calendar check, Captain Obvious."

Horatio smiled. "My pleasure."

"Oh," said House now, with a trace of guilt in his voice. "I meant to tell you. Um, Wilson knows."

Fear spiked irrationally in Horatio's blood. "He does."

"He does. And he doesn't give a shit. Doesn't even give half a shit." House chuckled in amusement as Horatio breathed an audible sigh of relief. "You worry too much."

A voice crackled over the PA system and a happy, disembodied voice announced that boarding would now begin for his flight. Around him, his fellow passengers started to gather their belongings and their children.

"Greg," he said, rising. "I have to board now."

"Okay. Give me a call when you're settled. No rush. I know you have a lot of work to do...swabs and analyses and fun forensic stuff."

Horatio hoisted his bag and joined the boarding queue. "Listen, thank you for everything. I had fun." He considered the absurdity of his words and laughed. "I love you."

"I love you," House returned. "Bye."


"He. Has. Kawasaki. Syndrome."

"You don't know that!"

Cuddy didn't want to hear it. She seemed, inexplicably, to agree with Cameron. "House, you have played with this boy enough."

"No," House snapped, "you listen to me. I have seen this thing before. He has all the symptoms - high-grade fever, conjunctivitis, erythema of the lips, swollen hands and feet, rash, joint pain, swollen lymph nodes, tachycardia. He has thrombocytosis. His ESR and CRP are elevated. His liver function tests showed hepatic inflammation. His LP showed aseptic meningitis. There's no definitive test for Kawasaki syndrome! Does he have to die before you'll let me treat him?"

"Kawasaki syndrome is extremely rare," Cuddy replied in that voice she reserved for explaining very difficult things to very young children. "There have only been ten reported cases in the last twenty years."

House flexed his hands against the urge to throw something at her. "I know you don't like me," he said with surprising calm. "And I don't care. But you know and I know and hell, even Cameron knows, that I am a damn good doctor. So would you just give me the go-ahead to start the treatment and stop listening to her? High doses of IVIG. He should show marked improvement in twenty-four hours. If I'm wrong, it won't kill him. If I'm wrong, you can take him, run all the tests you want on him." He paused, breathing heavily, and added, "But I know I'm right."

Cuddy seemed to consider it. "Dr. Foreman?"

"The patient shows all the symptoms," Foreman said. "Kawasaki syndrome is always diagnosed clinically because there is no specific lab test that can tell if someone has it. This kid has met all the diagnostic criteria ten times over. I think House is right."

"What about scarlet fever?" Cameron expostulated. "Toxic shock syndrome? It could be juvenile idiopathic arthritis!"

Cuddy - somewhat reluctantly - held up a hand. "Dr. Chase?"

Chase responded predictably. "I think he's right too."

Cuddy sighed, and turned to Cameron. "The thing about Kawasaki syndrome is that treatment has to be started as soon as possible to prevent damage to the coronary arteries. If this boy does have Kawasaki's, I'll be killing him if I don't let House treat him." She paused, obviously weighing her options, and then sighed again, more dramatically. "Do it."


Outside, House nodded to Chase. "Again, siding with me to save your skin. Very smooth."

"I disagree with you, I'm wrong. I agree with you, I'm being a suck-up." Chase grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop walking. "What do you want from me? Look, I've had some good ideas as well, all right? There's merit in my suggestions!"

Foreman looked amused. "You want some salsa for that chip on your shoulder?"

Chase clearly did not think that was at all funny. "Why did I expect you to side with me? Look at you, eating lunch alone every day. Your personal relationships are crumbling. Your colleagues don't like you. You're turning into him! Is that what you want?" Chase shrugged and took a couple of steps backwards. "You know what, whatever. Whatever."

Foreman looked after Chase's retreating back with a mild consternation that House sensed masked a deeper disturbance. "I should..."

"Leave him be," House said. "I'll talk to him."


He found Chase in the lab, calibrating a centrifuge. "I know I'm hard on you," House said without preamble. "I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm just going to tell you that I do it because you need it. Okay? You need to build your confidence."

"So you try to build my confidence by crushing my ego?" Chase turned, folded his arms. He was angry. House couldn't blame him. "You insult me. Belittle me. Just because you had a crappy childhood doesn't mean you've got to force it on everyone else."

House closed his eyes. "Are you going to listen or speak? Because you can't do both." Chase was silent. "Yes, there is merit in your suggestions. You're right a fair percent of the time. But you and Cameron have the same problem. You're not confident, you don't stick to your ideas. Foreman shoves them down my throat. Even when he's wrong, he makes me pay attention."

"So I'm supposed to push my diagnoses in your face?" Chase looked uncertain. "You never listen to them."

"I don't listen because you're never sure. If you were vocal and forceful, I'd consider them, because I'd be convinced that you were convinced. And if you were convinced, I'd think there was a reasonable likelihood of the diagnosis being right." House raised his eyebrows. "See?"

Chase pondered that for a moment. "It does make a crazy sort of sense," he said grudgingly, then paused, studying House as though seeing him for the first time. "You know, I'm beginning to get you. I think I understand you more."

"Do you?" House arched an eyebrow.

"Well," Chase amended, "sort of."


"Cancer."

"No." House shook his head. "Wilson is wrong."

"All the signs point to cancer," Chase said.

"The cancer's a symptom. It's masking the real problem." House turned to the whiteboard and drew a thick black line through the word cancer. "Okay. What diseases do we know that have cancer as a symptom?"

"HPV," Chase supplied immediately. "Hepatitis B."

"Why are you making this a competition?" Foreman wanted to know.

House laid the marker on the desk with a loud crack. "Because it is! This is what medicine is about - who can make the right diagnosis first. And whoever said winning isn't everything obviously never held a scalpel. Focus, people! Diseases that have cancer as a symptom!"

"Herpes," Cameron said tentatively. "Well, Epstein-Barr. It can lead to Burkitt's lymphoma."

"Yes, good." House wrote it down under hepatitis B. "Foreman?"

"HTLV."

"Thank you." House scribbled that down as well and stood back from the board. "Okay, you three get yourselves some coffee, take a five minute break, buy me a sandwich. When you come back, I'll tell you the plan."


Foreman and Chase elected to go to the cafeteria while Cameron got the coffee. On the way down in the elevator, Foreman couldn't help but mutter, "Just when I thought I had him all figured out...now House has a messiah complex."

"It has nothing to do with him wanting to be better than Wilson," Chase said. "It's about how soon the patient gets treatment. That's what he means when he says winning is everything. They're fighting the disease. We all are. It doesn't matter who wins, what matters is how soon the patient gets treatment."

Foreman was surprised. "You know an awful lot about House."

Chase grinned wryly. "And you wouldn't believe how much that scares me."


House sat down on the edge of his bed, easing his shoes off. He was glad to be home, to be away from the fluorescent lights and rubbing alcohol scent of the hospital. He lay back. His sheets smelled like Horatio. He closed his eyes, just for a moment.


His phone rang. "House," Wilson said. "House, it's ten in the morning. You're late. Your team has even diagnosed your patient for you."

House growled quietly in response and buried his face deeper into the pillow, inhaling the scent of Perry Ellis 360 and wishing the bed wasn't so empty.

"House." Wilson was still talking. Why was that? "Get up."

"No," he mumbled. "Not today."

"Not today? Are you kidding?" Wilson laughed. He didn't seem angry. "You have twelve clinic patients waiting on you and one very grateful woman who plans to start chemotherapy for the cancer caused by her HPV as soon as possible."

"S'nice." House pulled the sheet over his head. "Wilson, go away."

"House, you have to come in," the oncologist pressed. "You're a doctor. Saving lives is not optional. Come on, you signed on for this when you graduated from medical school."

House winced. "Oh yeah."

"Oh yeah what? You forgot? I expect you in here in no less than half an hour."

"Mm."

"And House?"

"Hmm?"

"We still have to pick up your car."

Barely half a second later House was off the bed and heading for the bathroom.


"We took clinic this morning for you," Cameron said. She looked harassed and exhausted. "A man with a cockroach in his ear, a couple ear infections, a bad cold, three cases of gastroenteritis - you get the picture."

"And we have a patient," House said unnecessarily, taking the file she was waving around. "Fatigue, myalgia, tachycardia, arrhythmia, nausea, myoclonic jerk, double vision, ataxia, brain fog." He pushed open the door and found Chase and Foreman in the middle of an argument in front of the whiteboard. "Children! Differential diagnosis."

Cameron said neurosyphilis, Foreman put forward MS and Chase declared fibromyalgia equally decisively simultaneously, and House put a hand to his head and wondered what he'd ever done to the world.

"One at a time," House said. "Did anyone do a tick search?"

Foreman did a double-take. "Lyme disease? She doesn't have an EM rash."

"How would you know? You obviously didn't do a full-body examination or you'd have found the tick." House looked around. "Three qualified doctors here and nobody did a tick search." He shook his head and checked the file. "Cameron, you're on tick duty. Chase, you draw blood. Do an ELISA. If it's positive or inconclusive, do a Western blot."

Foreman folded his arms. "And I suppose you want me to break into her house and see if I find a tick?"

House opened the file and checked the address. "Nah, she lives near a forested area, it's reasonable to assume she could have come into contact with a tick at some point in time."

"She likes hunting," Cameron supplied belatedly.

House set down the file and counted to ten silently. "Cameron," he said. "Tick. Chase, blood. Foreman, use your judgement."


"You're wrong." Chase slid the test results across the table. "Well," he modified, "the test came back negative anyway."

House scanned the sheet. "False negative," he said. "Check her for cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex type two. They can interfere with the results. And do a PCR."

"Polymerase chain reaction?" Chase looked appropriately skeptical. "What does that have to do with Lyme disease?"

"The PCR is an attempt to detect the DNA of the Lyme disease spirochete. The Western blot and the ELISA only look for the antibodies." House paused, gnawing on a thumbnail. "Get Foreman to set her up for a SPECT scan. Look for cerebral hypoperfusion of frontal cortical and subcortical structures. Anything from Cameron?"

"I stopped by on my way down here. No tick." Chase looked at House. "There doesn't have to be a tick. It could've detached before she got here. There's no definitive test to determine whether she has Lyme disease."

House pointed at him. "If hypoperfusion is present, I'll take that as a solid diagnosis. Get Foreman and get on it."