It was a very-much-longer-feeling four hours later when the tour guide finally showed up again acting like a much of a hassle as he had been earlier except this time he was kind enough to be claiming that the broken van was, in fact, perfectly all right and that they would be using it to get to Mole. There was a huge outcry amongst the travelers but they soon realised that they really had absolutely no choice in the matter. Defeated, they all piled back into the van, Sarah doing that same nervous little laugh once more for a good five minutes after they got underway. It apparently didn't bother Alice this time or perhaps she only liquored Sarah up after a good House outburst, so there was no silent offering of awkward packets of jail toilet-grade alcohol. Bothered but exhausted, House reached into his pocket and grabbed a Vicodin, leaning over the seat to grab Sarah's hand and place it squarely into her palm. After she dry swallowed it then drank a Crystal Light chaser, he turned back with his arms crossed over his chest.

When Cuddy offered a quiet compliment for the gesture, House replied that it was either that or kill her.

The weather had managed to clear off so they were able to see that the sky was really starting to get dim when they got out of Buipe. After the long wait in the restaurant, time seemed relative, leading them to believe that basically right after they left Buipe, they'd been magically transported to Serkyekura where the once pristine highway began becoming bumpy. There was much to look forward to according to Phyllis -- she'd been up in the region before and promised them that once they reached a place called Fufuitso, their lives would quickly become a living hell. When the little sign announcing their arrival in said village appeared, Cuddy felt her stomach drop, and House's soon joined hers when they made a sharp left. When the first van-sized pothole was hit, shooting dust up to some obscene height, they all realised that soon they would indeed want to die.

After about a half-hour on the unsurfaced, red dust road during which they traveled maybe ten miles, they finally came upon a quite stereotypical African village which consisted of a handful of circular mud huts covered with thatch roofs arranged around a central, communal fire ring. As they drove by, children in various states of undress ran toward the road, all of them shouting excitedly as the girls wave out at them. Maggie attempted to take photographs of them, but the van was moving so awkwardly and the light was so poor that the photographs ended up just being spectacular blurs of flash-bleached faces. By the time they made it to their first marked village, Janukra, the sun had already completely set and the villages where children once screamed happily at the obruni became nothing but sleepy little settlements with mosquito-repelling communal fires and individual citronella candles set into window holes, their light brightening the cotton curtains that sat behind them.

'It smells deceptively like marijuana,' House said after awhile, his first real vocalised thought since starting down this road from hell.

Cuddy sniffed the air then nodded.

'There's nothing deceptive about it,' Judith said, turning around to look at him. 'Marijuana may be illegal here, but they still manage to have some of the finest ganja around and many people partake.'

'You sound enamored,' House replied. 'Are you sure you don't go to Bennington?'

Judith laughed the moment before they hit a huge pothole. They slowed down in an attempt to calm the shock absorbers, and once they stopped shuddering, they were off again. Motorbikes and Land Rovers passed them at breakneck speeds, all seemingly unfazed by the extremely questionable road. By Kojope, Judith and Sarah were hanging out of the windows and looking up at the pitch-black sky and the unbelievable amount of stars swept across it. Sarah slipped her head back in to announce this natural wonder to her contemporaries.

'It's even darker here that in Hohoe,' Sarah said in quiet, amazed tone before leaning back out of the window.

Phyllis glanced out of her window as Gemma and Maggie leaned out of their windows. Judith continued leaning out the farthest, her mid-back hitting the window frame as she hung out to look at the sky. After looking at the girls, Cuddy pulled the window a bit so that she and Maggie could hang out together, both absorbing the beauty of the stunningly clear sky. House didn't even bother looking, instead keeping his eyes out for the red-and-blue elephant signs that had replaced those black-and-white ones that he'd grown accustomed to on the highway. As the next one was illuminated by the headlights, House reached over Judith to poke Phyllis. She turned around.

'Sumpini,' said House, pointing at the sign put up by the National Patriotic Party that welcomed them to an area that was, at its very best, a hamlet.

'What?' asked Judith, pulling back into the van.

'Sumpini, the place where Cuddy and I have to get out,' House replied, perhaps a bit sharply as though the location where they were headed should have, at this point, been imbedded in the girls' minds.

'Hey, turn there,' Phyllis said to the tour guide, pointing to an empty area in front of a concrete building.

The tour guide said the same thing in Ewe to the driver and the man turned off of the road, stopping in front of the unlit building. Once they'd stopped completely, he turned on the cabin lights so that House and Cuddy could see their things. Posse got out and turned around before rolling the door open for them and watching as they stepped down onto the dust. Outside, it was black as pitch, the only lights coming from the van and the centres of little homesteads where the now-familiar mosquito-deflecting fires and candles burnt. Nothing moved -- no human, no monkey, no nothing. After a few seconds, Maggie pulled out her torch and shined it in the direction of the one concrete building. There was a sudden sound akin to twigs being stepped on, but other than that, nothing happened.

'Do you really think this is the place?' asked House from beside Cuddy as they stood looking between the houses and the concrete building with the girls squirming in the van behind them, obviously wanting to get on so they could go to sleep -- Cuddy couldn't blame them.

Cuddy was about to say something when to short, lanky forms appeared out of the darkness accompanied by a series of light tapping noises. Without any warning, they began running down the stairs of the building as fast as possible. The girls noticed them too, suddenly murmuring to Cuddy and House to get back into the van, but they ignored them, House squinting into the darkness. The forms bounded into the light, one of them jumping directly up at House, who grunted as he was pushed against the van.

'Ah!' exclaimed Gemma, moving forward from the back seat to grab the ear of the dog that had propped herself against House. 'English Setters!'

The other dog, his surprise attack foiled by his contemporary, walked up to Cuddy and sat, looking up at her expectantly. Cuddy squatted down and scratched his head and he leaned against her.

'Considering every other dog in the entire country is a Basenji,' began House, rubbing the dog's head. 'I'm going to assume that we're in the right place unless the people in the huts over there have been importing purebreds.'

'Baring! Martin!' came a female voice from the concrete building, and they looked up in time to see the light in the foyer of the building turn on. The woman appeared, an unlit flashlight in her hand, and paused, putting a hand over her mouth as she began down the stairs. 'Oh no, did they get in your way?'

'We'd already stopped,' said Cuddy, standing up.

'Oh, thank God. Sometimes they run out and chase cars,' the woman said in an exasperated voice. 'You know, you two, just because your lady's away doesn't automatically give you permission to be bad.'

She made it all the way down the stairs before the dogs both ran to her, whining and jumping at her. She shushed them and scolded them quietly before telling them to sit and stay, at which point she got into the halo of light around the van.

'Is something wrong? Do you need help?' she asked, standing next to Cuddy as she looked into the van.

'No, they were just letting us out,' said House as he stood up, brushing the dirt from the dog off of him.

The woman looked down and gasped. 'Dr Gregory House!'

She did an odd little dance as House stared at her.

'When I asked Kwame to call Princeton-Plainsboro, I just thought that he might be able to tell you about Natalie and you'd call with advice or something, not that you'd actually come!' she said very quickly, then held her hand out. 'Anna Cader.'

He raised his eyebrows and awkwardly held his hand out to shake hers before pointing behind her with his other hand. 'Dr Cuddy's the one who brought me along on this one.'

Anna turned around and House took this moment to roll his eyes at Cuddy. Cuddy's eyes flashed danger to him before she smiled at Anna and shook her hand.

'Thank you for making him come, Dr Cuddy.'

'No...' she began, and Anna turned away, moving to the passenger side window of the van. '... problem?'

'Me ma wo adwo. Wufri hε?' Anna asked the hitchhiker.

Once the hitchhiker responded with the word 'Kumasi', they started up a conversation and were soon joined by the guide, the driver and finally Posse. It turned into an uproarious discussion, all of them laughing as they spoke. House moved to Cuddy and stood beside her watching the five of them. After a couple of minutes of this, Posse patted Anna on the back and reached out to shake her hand, snapping his fingers against hers as their hands parted. He got back into the car, sitting down in his seat and closing the door. The driver turned the lights off as Anna stood on her tip-toes and leaned in to shake all of their hands; when she'd stepped back from the van, he turned on the engine and threw the car into reverse. In response, the girls and Phyllis leaned out the windows waving and yelling their goodbyes as they drove off.

Anna waved after them until they were out of sight then turned to House and Cuddy with a wide smile. 'What nice guys. It must have been great traveling with them!'

Once she turned, House and Cuddy looked at each other then Cuddy shrugged, rolling her eyes, before both followed Anna. She walked up the stairs and under the light. When they got up to her, Cuddy confirmed what she thought to be true: Anna was the woman in all of the screensaver pictures that Dr Agbo had. She was shorter than Cuddy and a bit on the heavier side -- since the photographs had been taken, her hair had bleached out a little and had gotten longer.

'How was the trip?' Anna asked, turning to them and looking them up and down. 'Besides dusty.'

'Eventful,' House said simply, and when Cuddy didn't provide an immediate addition to that word, Anna turned away from them and walked through the foyer.

She gestured to them. 'Come on, you can stay here tonight and I'll take you into Damongo tomorrow.'

'Is that where Dr Chase is?' asked Cuddy as she caught up to Anna.

'No, but it's where our house is,' she replied as she shut off the front lights.

For a long moment, House and Cuddy were afraid to move in the darkness, but then their eyes adjusted to the half-light created by the fire in the middle of the building. Having not seen it first in the daytime, Cuddy was confused by the layout, but once they stepped out far enough, she realised that what appeared to be a solid building from the road was in fact a huge square of porches looking down onto an open courtyard. In the very middle, a small Ghanaian woman in an old-fashioned nurse's uniform sat fanning at the fire which had a large pot suspended over it. It just happened that when Anna entered her sight, a small timer at her feet started beeping so she punched it with her toe, dropped the fan and stood, grabbing a set of tongs from a bucket of alcohol. She opened the top of the pot and began pulling out surgical instruments, syringes and needles, piling all of them into a clean, deep stainless steel tray.

'We're thinking about getting an autoclave,' Anna said, beginning to move from where the light switch was. 'But there's some question about whether or not it's worth it the way the power's been lately. Apparently the government thought it would be a good idea to sell our excess power to Togo.'

'Our excess power?' asked House and they turned the first corner to walk down one of the sides of the square.

'I may not be a Ghanaian, but I live here and a lack of power has a profound effect on my work,' Anna replied, turning to smile at him.

House either didn't have a response, was being tactful or was too tired to formulate a response, so they just continued walking, the sound of metal on metal clanking and the clipping of dog toenails on concrete accompanying their steps. Shortly after their second right turn, Anna stopped and opened a door, turning on the light before letting them walk past her.

'This is the room for whoever is on duty at night,' Anna said as she stepped in and closed the door behind them and the dogs. 'We prefer that the dogs sleep inside, so if it's okay, they'll stay in here with you.'

House looked poised to respond negatively, but Cuddy managed to give him a dangerous look before he said anything.

'We've been good on water lately, so there should be enough water in the tank for you to both take showers,' Anna said, walking to them and taking their bags. 'There's no water heater, but you'll at least be able to get the dust off.'

Anna brought their bags over to a low dresser and set them down, looking at them critically.

'Didn't you bring anything else?'

'We were held by guards at a customs checkpoint about an hour from Kumasi and the tro-tro we were riding left without us but with our luggage,' Cuddy said, looking down at the batik dress that Phyllis had picked up for her. 'The older woman with us today bought a set of backup clothes for us, but other than that, we don't have anything.'

'Well, there are toiletries in the bathroom and I'd be more than happy to lend you some pyjamas,' Anna said with a sort of naïve smile.

Something about the combination of Anna and the delightfully Western-style room from its normal bed to the small oriental rugs on each side of it made Cuddy feel very at ease. She walked over to the dresser and slipped her shoes.

'Where is Dr Chase?' asked House.

'Down in Mole,' Anna replied as she opened a drawer near Cuddy's feet and retrieved two towels, standing to hand them up to the taller woman. 'She's been gone for four days now, so she'll probably be back either tomorrow or the day after.'

House crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. 'Tell me about your education.'

'What does her curriculum vitae have to do with anything right now?' asked Cuddy as Anna began getting two shirts and a pair of pyjama pants from the higher drawers.

'It's all right, Dr Cuddy,' Anna said in an accommodating voice. 'I earned a BSN at Johns Hopkins and my MPH in both family-community health and global health at Harvard.'

'Impressive,' House replied, nodding his head. 'How did someone with your level of education make a stupid decision like coming to a place like this?'

Anna raised her eyebrows calmly. 'I think some things can wait until after you've both had a good night's sleep.' She focused back on Cuddy. 'Is there anything else I can get for you, Dr Cuddy?'

'No, you've already done enough,' Cuddy said gratefully, holding the towels to her chest.

'Well, if you need anything at all, I'll be sleeping in the office -- if you walk across the courtyard, it's the first door on the left near the entrance,' Anna said. 'And in the morning, sleep as long as you need. We tend to be pretty quiet around here, so there shouldn't be any noise waking you up.'

'Thank you, Anna.'

She nodded. 'I'll see you in the morning then, and thank you both for coming. It's still so surprising to see Dr House here!'

She let out a little happy puff of air then went to the door followed by Cuddy. Cuddy watched her walk to the nurse sitting in the courtyard and listened for a moment as they started up a quiet conversation in whatever language happened to be prominent in the area. When Anna started moving again, Cuddy closed the door and turned around to glare at House.

'How did someone with your level of education make a stupid decision like coming to a place like this?' Cuddy said in a harsh whisper. 'Way to start off on the right foot, Greg.'

'Hey, she appears to worship me already, so I figured I had some leeway with her.'

Cuddy rolled her eyes and then walked past him to the bathroom, setting their folded towels in the sink before peeking into the shower to see what toiletries were available. As she set up her cleansing area in a rather OCD way, House propped his cane against the wall then went to sit on the bed. As he pulled off his shoes and socks, one of the dogs nuzzled into his back as the other stared at him from the end of the bed. He looked up as Cuddy's dress flew out of the bathroom followed by her undergarments before the door was closed most of the way. When the rings of the shower curtain scattered across the metal pole, House followed her lead and took off his shirt and pants, throwing them at her clothes. The water came on and immediately Cuddy whimpered and began a steady chant of 'cold, cold,cold!'. Limping over to the door, he leaned against the frame.

'Anna seems nice,' House said then shrugged.

'Right,' Cuddy said in a shuddering voice. 'I'm sure she feels just the same about you.'

'Hurry up,' he replied.

'Why don't you just join me?' she said sarcastically, making a little scandalous noise as House's shadow came closer to the shower curtain. 'I was kidding!'

She turned the water off and reached blindly for her towel before House opened the door and grabbed one of the towels, shoving it into her hand. Behind the curtain, she wrapped up tightly before stepping out, brushing past him and walking back into the bedroom, pulling the door closed after her. The latch didn't catch, leaving the door to swing ajar as he stepped into the shower.

'If there's no water, I'm going to be forced to have my way with you as repayment,' House said at a socially unacceptable volume; Cuddy grimaced, hoping that Anna hadn't randomly decided to walk back and stand in front of the door at that moment in time.

After drying her hair off, Cuddy pulled on the t-shirt just in time to avoid standing stark naked in front of House which, by the dammit he muttered upon exiting, was contrary to his reason for taking an amazingly fast shower. She turned her back to him as she pulled on the pyjama pants Anna had given her then walked over and fell back into the bed. Taking that as some sort of cue, both of the dogs, who had been sniffing their clothes, jumped onto the bed. They were obviously used to one person sleeping with them, so when House finished changing into pyjamas, he had to shove the dogs over and down so that they were mostly on Cuddy. Once he was settled, the dogs seemed to consider their positions and decided it made more sense to sleep in the obviously rarely used dog bed by the dresser. House pulled the covers up and looked at the ceiling.

'Aren't you going to turn the lights off?'

'No, I have a theory,' House replied, then looked over at her. 'You know, this is our third night sharing the same bed and I've come to the determination that we're like a married couple: pre-bed fights and a huge lack of sex.'

Cuddy groaned. 'Grow up, House.'

He chuckled once then looked at the ceiling once more. A few moments later, the light flickered and the power turned off for the night.

'Theory proven,' he murmured. 'Goodnight, Cuddy.'

She turned and smiled into her pillow. 'Goodnight, House.'