Foreman got to work early Friday morning only to find both Taub and Kutner there already, Taub reading the newspaper and pointedly ignoring Kutner, who was talking to him anyway. "Good morning," Kutner said as Foreman entered.

Foreman settled for nodding and started for the coffee pot, only to stop in his tracks as the overpowering smell settled onto him like a cloud. "What is that?"

"Carpet glue," Kutner replied, stating the obvious. He picked up a note from the conference table and handed it over. "Janitorial had an accident last night, but they'll be back to fix it."

Foreman studied the note. "Sorry about the smell; the cart tipped and knocked over a container of carpet glue, and the lid must have been loose. Spilled some. Be careful not to step in it. We're getting something to clean it up with and will be back later. Sorry again." He humphed under his breath - couldn't even the janitors be efficient and professional in this hospital? Foreman sometimes felt like he was the only person at PPTH except maybe Wilson who appreciated the dignity of the job and the fact that patients and families would judge them on their appearances. At least it wasn't a public area; that would have been worse. He looked around, spotting the sticky puddle in the corner. It did indeed look exactly like a bucket had been knocked over and the lid had been loose.

"It is kind of strong," Kutner admitted, which was an understatement. "After House gets in and we run through the morning differential, we can probably just avoid this room until they get it cleaned up later."

Foreman sat down at the table with his coffee. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. Carpet glue. What did that remind him up? He realized that Kutner was speaking. "What?"

Kutner's dark eyes were concerned. "I asked how you were doing."

"I'm fine. Just trying to move on and get back to normal, which will happen sooner if everybody stops asking me how I'm doing." There was an edge under his voice that surprised him more than Kutner, and he tried to even out his tone. Perfectly normal, just another day at PPTH. "Did either of you guys happen to see House at the cemetery Wednesday?"

"No," Taub answered succinctly, not looking up from his paper.

"I did," Kutner stated. Foreman looked up from his coffee, surprised. He hadn't really believed House on that point yesterday.

Taub did put the paper down then. "Really? Where was he? He sure wasn't under the tent."

"He was hiding behind a tree. He probably thought you wouldn't be thrilled to see him," Kutner guessed, indicating Foreman with a tilt of his head. "He was there, though. I spotted him, but then I got . . . distracted looking at the coffin and thinking about something else. Next time I looked, he was gone."

"So he actually did go." Foreman took a sip of his coffee, slotting this into his picture of the situation. House hadn't gone to mock him or rub his loss in his face or blame him or make a scene. To go but hang back hiding behind a tree really did sound like he had wanted to pay his respects to Remy but hadn't been quite sure how. Foreman shook his head again, fighting off the sympathy. He didn't want to feel sympathy. Anger was easier. He could handle anger, could keep working through it, smooth and professional.

"I was thinking last night," Kutner started, "about his father's funeral. In the light of what we know now, that takes on a whole different perspective." Kutner was trying to protect both House and Foreman by not mentioning Friday night's attack in public, but he couldn't help wanting to talk through other things that were common knowledge, working out the differential on his boss.

Taub nodded. "I wonder what Cuddy said to him when she found out? She drugged him after all, and she and Wilson kidnapped him. That would take a serious apology."

"Well, they're married, so he obviously forgave her," Foreman pointed out. His nostrils flared slightly. The smell of the glue really was strong; he would be glad when House got in so they could finish the morning's differential and move to other parts of the hospital.

Kutner couldn't let it drop, though. "Can you imagine having to go to a funeral for the man who made your childhood hell and having to give a eulogy?"

"Oh, I'm sure House as a kid made his dad's life pretty tough, too," Foreman countered.

Kutner looked at him steadily, and for the first time in memory, Foreman saw genuine anger smoldering in the dark eyes and heard it in the young doctor's voice. "Tell me, what exactly does a kid do to deserve being nailed to the floor as punishment? Or ice baths?"

Their eyes locked, and it was Foreman who looked down first. "I'm not saying his dad wasn't over the top. Just that he probably wasn't a saint himself. You're right; nobody deserves being nailed down. That's taking discipline too far."

"That's abuse, not discipline," Kutner insisted. "I don't care what House was like as a child; he didn't deserve that."

"Nobody ever said life was fair," Taub reminded them. "Lots of things happen we don't deserve."

Foreman tuned out the discussion as it continued. Kutner could make anybody tired with his absolute refusal to let a subject drop. He was like House that way. Cameron could be annoyingly persistent, too, but she had been selective in her persistence. House and Kutner both were incapable of leaving anything alone.

Odd that Cameron had come to mind when he hadn't worked with her for years. Her and her juvenile crush on House.

In that instant, Foreman remembered what carpet glue reminded him of and also why he had done his best to forget the whole episode since. That case years ago with the autistic kid. Cuddy had changed the carpet in House's office, removing the old blood-stained one, and House had thrown the biggest fit Foreman had ever seen from him in the course of a case. Normally, House would do crazy things here and there, but they were all related to focus on the case and needing to solve it. His over-the-top reaction that day hadn't been related to the case at all, nor had it been passing. For the whole day, he had utterly refused to go back in the office. Cameron, of course, just had to work this out, and she had been trying for days after that to engage Foreman and Chase in her own differential. Foreman hadn't cared; Chase had accepted it with a "just House, and he's eccentric" shrug; but Cameron had gnawed that bone for a full month afterward. Her final conclusion remained the one she had come up with that day, that it wasn't a power play, and that House didn't like change. Not liking change wasn't adequate to explain his actions on that case, though, and she knew it. Foreman had been grateful the day she finally did not bring it up, and he'd tried hard to banish all thought of the carpet after that, lest he trip her off again.

Now, though, Foreman himself couldn't help wondering if House's aversion to new carpet was related to a bad memory from childhood. Or perhaps it was carpet glue itself that had set him off; Foreman could remember House's nose twitching like Samantha on Bewitched when he had first walked in the conference room that morning. How on earth could his father have tormented him with carpet glue, though?

Abruptly, with a slight chill, Foreman realized that today's carpet glue probably wasn't a janitorial accident. Somebody was after House, trying to destroy his reputation; obvious enough from the mass sending of the legal papers. That same person, who clearly had found inside information on House's past somewhere, was deliberately setting House up today with a trigger. If House had reacted as strongly and over-the-top as he had all those years ago on an otherwise routine day, several weeks removed from his shooting and any trauma, how would he react at the moment when he had to be strung out to the limit already with the whole hospital gossiping about his past, and with the smell far stronger with an open spill on top of the carpet?

Anger. Curiosity. Sympathy. The three emotions whirled through Foreman's mind in a cat fight. This was the perfect opportunity to get even with House for dragging Remy in as an innocent casualty into a case based on his own past. Perfect revenge, and more perfect in that Foreman hadn't even been the one to set it up and could not possibly be blamed for it. Foreman did hold the power right now, though, and part of him relished that knowledge. He was the only person in the room who had been there on that autistic kid's case. He alone knew this was a new move in this round of psychological warfare that someone, probably Patrick Chandler, the mother was far too weak for all this, was playing with House. He had power over the villain, too; he alone could intervene and derail it, if he chose. But he had only to sit here and watch the situation unfold. What would House's reaction be?

On the other hand, House really had gone to the cemetery Wednesday, apparently really was sorry for Remy's loss, in spite of the words Foreman had overhead. And as Kutner had said, did anybody deserve House's apparent past? Much as he wanted to argue that yes, damn it, House was an arrogant jackass from birth who had deserved every single thing that had happened to him, Foreman couldn't. But how he wanted to. Yes, anger was much easier to deal with than sympathy.

What would happen?

Did he really need to know? House's sincere apology to him yesterday rang again in his memory. Damn.

Foreman saw House approaching down the hall, limping slowly from the elevator. It wasn't a conscious decision, but the neurologist's legs took over, propelling him to his feet so quickly that the chair tipped and crashed to the ground. Abandoning his coffee, he quickly exited the conference room, trailed a moment later by a baffled Kutner and Taub. "House!" he said urgently, physically blocking his boss's progress down the hall. "You might want to know that the janitor spilled carpet glue on the floor in the conference room."

House came to a dead halt, his face going a few shades paler, and all three saw the naked fear in his eyes. He blinked, visibly wrenching his thoughts from whatever hell they had descended to. "The janitor?" he asked.

Kutner helpfully returned to the conference room and retrieved the note, emerging to give it to House. "Tipped the cart over, he said. They'll be back later with something to clean it up." It was a busy time of day at the hospital, and traffic was flowing around them like a river around a rock, but nobody gave them more than a passing glance. House having a conference with his team in the middle of the hall happened all the time.

House read the note. There was an obvious struggle in his eyes; they could hear the sounds of battle, though they couldn't see details of the fight. Kutner reached forward tentatively to touch his arm. "Are you all right?"

House looked down at the hand, the warm touch of the present against him. Abruptly, he nodded, then spun so quickly his leg protested and marched back toward the elevator. The team followed. "Where are we going?" Kutner asked once the elevator doors closed.

"Down," House snapped, stabbing the button. The team stood in awkward silence until the doors opened, and House stalked across the lobby toward Cuddy's office. He burst in without knocking. She was on the phone and looked up, startled. House limped to her desk and slapped the note down in front of her. "I want the carpet changed!" he demanded, full volume. The team fanned out behind him, avid spectators.

"House, I . . . I'll have to call you back. Thank you." She hung up, her worried eyes fixed on him, not the note. "What are you talking about? Are you . . ."

House tapped the note firmly. "I want the carpet changed. Bad enough that somebody bled all over it several years ago, but now, there's carpet glue dumped on it."

Cuddy's eyes widened in horror and absolute understanding. "Carpet glue . . ."

"Read the note. Your incompetent janitor tipped the cart over and dumped glue on the carpet last night. That finishes ruining it; nothing's ever going to totally get that out. The floor will be sticky to walk across even after they try. It's a safety hazard, and I demand that it be totally changed today."

Cuddy finally took her eyes off him long enough to read the note. When she looked back up, the expression on her face was enough to make all three team members back half a step. She looked absolutely murderous. Her voice, in marked contrast, was purely crisp and professional. "I agree, Dr. House; this situation cannot just be cleaned up. I will get new carpet in your suite immediately, and I will look into the carelessness of housekeeping. Meanwhile, your team may use conference room two. You obviously cannot effectively be doing differentials in your rooms while the work is going on."

House nodded. "Thank you." He turned, much more slowly now, to the team. "Foreman, get the whiteboard and take it to conference room 2. Kutner, bring my ball and the coffee pot. Taub, go get new labs on the patient." The team was still rooted there, their eyes firmly on Cuddy now, not House. "NOW!" House bellowed, and they all jolted back to life, turned, and left.

As soon as they were gone, House limped over to the couch and sat down. Cuddy immediately left her desk and went over to join him. "Are you okay?" she asked. He leaned into her hands, relishing the contact, the firm reminder of the present just like Kutner had grounded him earlier.

"That absolute bastard . . . he wanted to knock me into a flashback in front of everybody."

"Did . . ."

"I didn't go in. Foreman warned me; guess he remembered how much it bothered me before."

"I'll have to remember to thank him, although I'm not backing down on counseling."

House's head jerked up. "No. Don't thank him, Lisa. That will just make . . . a bigger deal out of it. I'll thank him, but if you did, that's too much. They already know something's going on." House buried his face in his hands. "Will I ever just be able to do a routine differential again without them looking at me and wondering what's going on?"

Cuddy pulled him firmly over against her. "Yes. We're winning, Greg. And remember Lucas and your mother's psychiatrist; we're getting dirt on Chandler. This is almost over. It can't be much longer now, and then he'll be in jail."

House's voice was muffled against her. "The note. Save the note. I'll bet it's Andrews' handwriting."

"I will. Pretty stupid of him to leave that."

"If he hadn't, Kutner would have called Housekeeping himself first thing when he got in." Cuddy could still feel him quivering slightly, but he was a bit steadier now in her embrace. "This kept them from reporting it as an accident, because they thought the janitor already knew."

"Do you really want new carpet, Greg? I promise, if there's anything on earth that would just clean that up, I'll find it."

He pushed back and gave her a wavering grin. "I think it's probably time for new carpet anyway. That old one had blood on it, you know. High time we threw it away."

She kissed him thoroughly, then released him and stood up. Keeping an eye on him still, she walked back around her desk, locked the note in the top drawer, then took out the phone book, scouted for a minute, and dialed. "This is Dr. Lisa Cuddy-House at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I want the carpet completely replaced in a double suite, and there's an extra $1000 in it for you if you can complete the work today and have the smell of carpet glue cleared out somehow by Monday morning. . . Yes, $1000 . . . Thank you. I'll see you in half an hour. Come to my office, and I'll take you up and show you the room." She hung up and quickly returned to the couch. "Greg are you . . ."

He wasn't crying, she realized, although his shoulders were shaking. He was laughing, laughing not hysterically but with a real thread of humor underneath. "An extra $1000," he quoted.

"It's well worth it. Nothing like money to increase the motivation on service providers. But why is that funny?"

He looked up at her. "We've got to land Patrick in jail soon, Lisa. We're going to run ourselves bankrupt if this case goes on much longer."

She was getting annoyed, feeling left on the outside of a joke. "What is funny?"

"I paid Hawkins Windows an extra $1000 to get them to schedule for Wednesday at 2:00. Hadn't told you about that yet. The funny thing is, that was my undoing. I over motivated them. They got there so early and with extra people they were done by 1:50." He shook his head. "I'd been putting off mentioning that to you, because I was afraid you'd be mad over the money. And then you go offering people $1000 bonuses for faster service yourself."

Cuddy was hung between guilt remembering his funeral fears and the humor of the situation. Humor won. Laughing was better than crying, after all. She put her arm around his shoulders, pulling him against her. "We definitely need to get Patrick arrested. I won't object to bribing the window company if you don't object to the carpet place, agreed?"

"Agreed. Although you could pass the carpet bonus off as a hospital expense."

Cuddy shook her head firmly. "Nope. I am never going to risk having to explain this to the board. I'll pay the additional bit myself, out of our account." She gave him an extra squeeze. "Are you okay, Greg?"

He still seemed a bit rattled, but only her super observant eyes would have spotted it by now. He nodded and stood up. "Better get back to work. I've got a case to solve."

"Don't forget, lunch with Sandra and Wilson." His shoulders slumped, and she realized that he didn't want to put himself under Sandra's observations right now. It was barely 9:00, and he was already emotionally on empty for the day. "We can reschedule it to Monday. I'll tell Sandra something came up. What about a Reuben instead with just me for company and no serious conversation allowed?" He gave her a nod, and she saw the relieved gratitude in his eyes. "Come down to my office at noon." She stood up herself and kissed him again, trying to impart some of her love, reassurance, and strength to carry him on through today. "We're winning, Greg," she promised him again. "This will all be over soon."

"Right. See you later." He turned and limped out. Cuddy went back to her desk, withdrew the note, and then hunted through her paperwork until she found something written by Andrews. Side by side, the similarity was unmistakable. Fury glittered in her eyes, and she forced it down. They couldn't move on Andrews until Patrick was safely in custody. We're winning, she reminded herself. Even so, it was a long time before she could focus her thoughts on work.

House entered conference room 2 to find Foreman setting up the whiteboard. "Kutner will be here in a minute. He got this weird idea about coffee absorbing smells; he's finding a completely different coffee pot so we won't be drinking something that tastes like carpet glue. Not that it did before, but you know how he is on an idea."

"I know," House agreed. "Foreman?" He waited until the other man reluctantly looked up to meet his eyes. "Thanks."

Foreman gave him a curt nod, then looked away. "I'm still not apologizing to you," he insisted.