As Carolyn predicted, the muscular discomfort associated with horseback riding hit House full bore Monday morning, adding bow-leggedness to his already choppy gait. A pill and a half only took the edge off; stairs were out of the question. Seeing him pitch and yaw toward the elevator bank, Wilson hooted out loud.

"That must've been some ride Saturday," he said, as they stepped into the car. "Where'd you go, Nebraska? I called your place twice that night, and no answer."

"To be truly open to new experiences, one must not allow oneself to be ruled by the clock," House said mysteriously.

"New experiences…" Wilson looked him over through narrowed eyes. "From the way you're walking, I'm almost afraid to guess. Were you shanghai'd onto a whaling ship or did you drop the soap in front of a gorilla?"

House chose not to dignify this with an answer. They exited the elevator and started down the hallway.

"Not talking, eh?" said Wilson. "No matter. My spies inform me that Carolyn Barton was seen at the Bangkok Palace last night ordering pa nang with extra chilies. There's only one joker in this town insensitive enough to eat that stuff, and I'm looking right at him."

House ducked into his office and tried to close the door, but Wilson slipped inside and settled himself into the chair by the desk. House sat down opposite him and tried to look innocent. Wilson was undeceived.

"Spill," he said. But his cellphone rang.

"Wilson. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, let me make a note here—" He gestured to House, who held out a pad of paper, then jerked it back again when Wilson reached for it; held it out again, and had it yanked from his hand; offered a pen, then switched it from hand to hand as Wilson lunged and grabbed for it. Wilson finally snatched the pen away and began to make notes while House tried to read them upside down. After a few moments, he frowned. Wilson finished the call and pocketed his phone.

"What's going on here?" House demanded, pointing at the notes.

"What do you mean? It's a new patient."

"I mean that's not your handwriting."

"Right," said Wilson. "A clever forgery, but nothing escapes your keen eye. If that's not my handwriting, whose is it?"

"I know your handwriting," House said stubbornly. "I'm still finding Post-It notes all over my apartment with your writing on them. When did it get so small?"

"It's a small piece of paper! I was trying to save space!"

House regarded him suspiciously.

"Anyway, we were talking about you. Come on, you might as well tell me; my people are everywhere, and if you're carrying on with the mother of one of my patients, they will report back to me.

"Isn't there any such thing as a right to privacy around here?"

"Two things get around fast in a hospital: staph infections and gossip," Wilson said unsympathetically. "Now, 'fess up; you didn't sleep twixt your own sheets Saturday night."

House glowered at his friend, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up. Wilson was filled with glee. "Oh, what a giveaway! Look at him!" He sang, "House has a girlfriend, House has a girlfriend…"

"Shut up," House suggested, throwing a grey and red ball at Wilson's head.

"Oh, look at that: the shit-eating grin of the freshly-laid man. Did she spend last night at your place?"

House gave up. "She had to go home afterward and feed the dog. But don't wave this around too much, okay? Think of Cameron."

It worked; Wilson sobered up immediately. "Are you going to tell her?"

"We're thinking of renting a billboard. That way everyone finds out at once." He picked up the pad of paper with Wilson's notes, tore off the top sheet, and pretended to read the crabbed notes. Then he offered it to Wilson, who took it. The paper rattled softly in his unsteady hand. The two men exchanged a shrewd look.

"Well," said Wilson. "I'd better let you get down to work, or whatever it is you do all day." He left.

Chase had entered the conference room while Wilson was in House's office and was sitting at the table, reading the comics. In his peripheral vision, House had seen him put something into the little refrigerator. He headed over to the kitchenette, grunting at Chase by way of hello; poured a cup of coffee, and peered into the frig. There was a bag of leftovers from the Bangkok Palace with Chase's name written on it sitting on the top shelf. He had uncloaked Wilson's spy.

"If you're looking for a job, the funny papers are a good place for you to start," he gibed.

"I have a job," said Chase, not looking up.

"That's true," House conceded. "But in two months, I'm gonna stop paying you."

"That's all right," the Aussie said, turning the page. "In two months, Lowenstein is going to start."

Lowenstein was head of the Princeton-Plainsboro ICU. House was flummoxed. "You're going to stay here?"

"Looks that way."

This was such staggering news that House violated his first principle of management: Don't get involved. "But you could go anywhere!"

"I like it here," Chase shrugged.

The idea that someone could claw his way to the top of one level in the career ziggurat and not immediately start clawing toward the next was so foreign to House that he was rendered speechless. Fortunately, it was only temporary.

"You know, that may sound like a sweet deal now, but you could regret it down the road," he advised Chase. "The time to go for broke is now, when you're not tied down by a family and a mortgage."

"I don't want to go for broke," Chase said patiently. "Perhaps you haven't noticed, but I'm not very ambitious. I like Princeton. I like what I do. I want to go on doing it."

House had no answer for this.

Cameron entered and poured herself coffee.

"Did you know he's signed on to another hitch here?" House asked her.

"Yes."

"Did you try to talk him out of it? Tell him what a waste of a good resume that is?"

"I'm still sitting right here," Chase reminded them testily.

"Some people find their professional niche and decide to stay there," Cameron said distantly. "And some people find a cute microbiology professor and decide to stay with her."

Chase blushed. House turned to him, delighted, and opened his mouth to speak.

"It's spring," Cameron added vaguely. "Everyone's hooking up."

House closed his mouth again. So she had heard. You spend months teaching young people to develop their powers of observation, and the first thing they use them on is you.

There was a fraught silence. Chase looked from House to Cameron, got the picture, and rose. "I think I'll get a blueberry muffin," he said loudly, and left.

"I'm trying not to feel like I was traded in," Cameron told the whiteboard, blinking hard, "but it's a losing battle."

"Cameron—don't. We were in trouble long before Carolyn showed up."

"I guess I didn't know that."

"You did know that. We talked about it. And when we broke up—I didn't even know what I wanted from Carolyn then."

"But you do now."

House shrugged. "I've got a better idea."

Still blinking, Cameron tried for a smile. "Wilson says you're good together. He says you seem… happy." House looked down, embarrassed. "I'm jealous," Cameron admitted. "I wanted to be the one who did that for you."

"You're like me; you like a challenge," House said gently. "But don't wait until you're almost 50 to learn which challenges aren't worth taking."

Foreman walked in, took the temperature of the room, and started to walk out again. House stopped him at the door: "Foreman!"

The neurologist turned around slowly.

"Go talk to Wilson," said House.

"Okay," said Foreman, nodding agreeably. He waited a beat. "About what?"

"He'll know."

Foreman left. Through the glass walls, they could see him muttering to himself.

"For the record," said Cameron, "I think this challenge was worth it. And I also think it's definitely time to leave."

House gave her a half-smile. "You'll like Silberstein," he said. "He's like you: hopelessly attracted to hopeless causes, endlessly optimistic about human nature. You can save the world together."

Cameron asked, really curious, "Is he married?"

"No," said House sadly, "he and Ben didn't make it to Massachusetts before they slammed the door on gay marriage. But he's got a brother."

"All right, then," she said, and walked away, swinging her hips a little. She had put on some needed weight, and House noticed that her backside was filling out nicely.

He went up to Pediatrics to see if Angie was watching anything good. She greeted him by making her eyes very big and lisping "Are you going to be my new daddy?"

"How did a nice lady like your mother wind up with such a fresh kid?" House wondered.

"I'm not fresh," Angie said smugly. "I'm precocious." She grew solemn. "I hope you kids are being careful," she intoned. "Condoms provide partial protection, but nothing is 100 percent guaranteed except abstinence. Think about it."

"Angie seems okay with this," House ventured cautiously, when he saw her mother at lunch.

"She's fine with it," Carolyn assured him. "If she wasn't, you'd know. Angie doesn't soft pedal to spare feelings."

"Wilson thinks she might be able to go home soon and finish her treatments as an out patient," he said carefully. "What then?"

Carolyn smiled slyly. "We'll just have to be quieter, I guess."

Bouyed by this answer, House got through the afternoon clinic hours with only one altercation, involving a return patient who complained that the suppositories he'd been prescribed weren't working.

"And they taste terrible," he added.

House was incredulous. "You've been eating them?"

"No," the patient said, with heavy sarcasm. "I've been shoving them up my ass."

House started to write out a prescription for an oral version of the same medicine. "There's a label on every prescription, and the writing on the label is called 'instructions,' and the instructions tell you how to administer the medicine," he explained. "I'm gonna put it in the instructions to put these in your mouth. Don't try to shove them anywhere else." The patient, offended, snatched the prescription and left without another word.

-0-

Foreman sat on a stool at one end of a quiet hallway and watched intently as Wilson walked away from him. Wilson turned around and came back, a question writ large across his face. Foreman stalled him with a few questions of his own.

"Does your right arm feel like it's trembling inside, even when you're not exerting it? How does that shoulder feel? Any numbness, tingling in your neck, arms, legs?" Wilson answered quietly, his eyes fixed on a spot beyond Foreman's left ear.

Foreman drew a deep breath, exhaled; looked away, then looked back.

"Wow," said Wilson. "That's the worst poker face I ever saw."

Foreman regarded him somberly. "We can go about this two ways," he said. "We can run a hundred tests and rule out everything else, which'll take weeks, or we can do an L-dopa probe and know in a couple of days."

Wilson didn't seem to hear him. "I've got to think this over," he said. Foreman nodded. "In the meantime, don't say anything to House, okay?"

Foreman looked doubtful. "He told me to talk to you. You think he won't follow up?"

Wilson sighed. "Well, do the best you can."

-0-

"I was thinking of stopping on the way home and picking up something to put on the grill," said Carolyn, when House called her at around five. "Would you care to join me?"

"Do I get to play with fire?"

"Only under adult supervision."

"Fair enough. Can I bring anything?"

"Beer, if you want it." A pause. "And a toothbrush, if you like."

House made a quick stop at the convenience store for beer, then at his apartment for clean clothes and his shaving kit. He was halfway to Carolyn's house when he realized he'd forgotten to check with Foreman about Wilson. He decided it could wait till the next day, and by the time he got to the farmhouse, he'd forgotten all about it.