Angie began to lose her beautiful dark brown hair after the second chemo treatment. There was a pile of it on the pillow when she woke up the next morning, and the rest seemed to pour off her head, getting into her mouth and eyes and covering the bed. She wasn't very brave about it; when Carolyn arrived in response to her panicky early-morning phonecall, Angie wailed and sobbed so hard that House made Wilson order Valium for her.

The next day, when she was able to think calmly, Angie agreed that she might as well shave off what was left and get it over with. She was stoic as her mother ran the clippers over her head, feeling the smooth skin with nervous fingertips, and spent the morning trying on a basketful of exotic hats and scarves. Nate came by that afternoon and demanded that Carolyn shave his head, too. They split a pair of hoop earrings and called themselves Mr. and Ms. Clean, and made plans to get matching tattoos on their scalps. By the next day, Angie had righted herself and sailed on.

Like most chemo patients, however, she had come to dread her treatments. She was also heartily sick of the hospital and longing for her horses. Carolyn wished there were some way to bring Cherokee to see her. House thought this over for a day and got an idea. That night, Cherokee had a thorough bath. The next day he climbed into the horse trailer and Carolyn and House drove him to PPTH.

They unloaded him in the parking lot near the loading docks. Carolyn kept looking around nervously.

"Relax," House advised her. "It's a Saturday; hardly anyone's around, and Cuddy's probably at temple flashing the cantor. We'll go in, surprise Angie, and leave. No one will be the wiser."

"Maybe," she said grimly. "But bring these just in case." She handed him a bucket and a plastic pitchfork.

"For Cherokee, or for you?" he asked, and got a flick of the lead rope across his flank in response.

They lured the horse up the steps with a combination of carrots and cajolery. To Carolyn's astonishment and House's secret relief, Cherokee walked right onto the freight elevator and stood quietly for the trip to the fifth floor.

House left Carolyn holding Cherokee in the cement-floored service area and went to reconnoiter. He beat a hasty retreat a few minutes later, quickly closing the door behind him. "The place is crawling with nurses and parents," he hissed.

Carolyn said a bad word.

"No, wait, I think I can sneak her in." He left again, this time returning with Angie, who squealed loudly and inopportunely when she saw her horse.

"Cherry, oh, Cherry, oh, baby!" she caroled, and flung her arms around the gelding's neck. "Ooo, you smell good! Did you have a bath? Didja? Were you a good boy? Mom, gimme a carrot!"

Angie's cries carried into the ward. Moments later they heard children's voices, and before House could move to block the door, a small army of youngsters in various stages of recuperation had flooded the service area and converged on Cherokee. Angie was in heaven, answering questions, putting Cherokee through a series of tricks, even setting some of the children on the horse's broad back. But the party had scarcely begun when the authorities moved to break it up: House looked up from the happy scene to see a phalanx of nurses standing in the doorway, looking grim.

He put on his warmest smile and moved toward them.

"Hello!" he sang, extending a welcoming hand. "I'm Dr. House. I heard someone up here was a little horse."

-0-

"Unspeakable carelessness…utter lack of responsibility," Cuddy sputtered, when she met with House and Carolyn Monday morning. "Some of those children could have been allergic to horses—did you think of that?"

"Yes," said House, "which is why I checked to make sure none of them were, and Carolyn washed the horse with hypoallergenic shampoo."

"Forget the shampoo! What about the danger? You brought a full-grown horse into a hospital ward full of noisy children! What were you thinking?"

"That we would sneak in, show him to Angie, and sneak out again," said House. "We weren't expecting a midget rally."

"And you!" Cuddy turned on Carolyn. "I thought you would be a good influence on him! You're as bad as he is!"

"She's nowhere near as bad as I am," House said indignantly.

"It was my stupid idea," Carolyn reminded him.

"It was my stupid plan!"

"You're both at fault here, and you'd both be liable if anything had happened!"

"But it didn't," House pointed out. "So now what: Are you going to give us detention? Ground us? Take away the keys to the car?"

Carolyn leaned forward and placed an apologetic hand on Cuddy's desk. "I am sorry," she said. "It was a silly thing to do. I just wanted to see Angie smile again. She's going home in a few days anyway, it'll never happen again."

"Unless you want us to fix you up with Cherokee," House added generously. "I've seen his junk, you might—" An elbow to his solar plexus cut off his wind before he could complete the thought.

Carolyn smiled into Cuddy's eyes, waiting for her response.

"Obviously, there's nothing for me to do but put another written warning into Dr. House's file and ask you to refrain from bringing any more pets to the hospital," said Cuddy. "And please try not to encourage him to pull stunts like this—the last thing he needs is a partner in crime."

"Nag, nag, nag," said House.

-0-

The first thing Angie wanted to do when she got home the next week was to watch House demonstrate his horsemanship. She was impressed with his progress and petitioned her mother to let him graduate to trail rides. Then he took her for a ride on his bike, the tails of her scarf flying like pennants from under the helmet he'd acquired for Carolyn.

They had Wilson over for a celebratory dinner, and since Foreman was at loose ends when Wilson was leaving the hospital, he brought him along. Seeing them together, House recalled with a pang of guilt that he still hadn't checked up on Wilson's hand tremors. He put it out of his mind—this was Angie's party.

House took Wilson to see the horses.

"You really ride that thing?" Wilson asked, pointing to Cherokee.

"I really ride him."

"What if you fall off?"

"It'll hurt," said House. This had been Carolyn's matter-of-fact reply when he'd asked her the same question, only she'd added, "And anyway, you're much more likely to break a wrist or a collarbone than to hurt your leg."

Wilson leaned against the fence and regarded him with amusement. "So this is what you look like when you've been domesticated," he said.

House was irked. "I'm not completely housebroken. I put the seat down, but I never replace the empty toiletpaper rolls."

For some reason the dinner conversation turned to guns, and Carolyn revealed that she possessed a .22 rifle, a gift from her father. This led the party to the backyard, where Carolyn had put up a wooden target stand. The men shunned her paper targets as effete and unnecessary when beer cans were readily available. They took turns riddling the cans until it was too dark to see. And Foreman, who insisted he had never shot a gun before, was declared the champion.

"He was a break-and-enter specialist," House explained to Angie, who looked uncomfortable. "Typical passive-aggressive; he avoids confrontations. Wouldn't want to run into someone who might have a bigger barrel." Foreman smiled thinly.

He wasn't smiling at all the next day when he pulled House aside in his office. "You never asked about Dr. Wilson," he accused.

House feigned unconcern. "I figured if there was something I should know, you'd tell me."

"I would have, but he asked me not to."

"You're mad me because I didn't ask you for information you can't give me?"

"I'm irritated because you don't seem to give a rat's ass! You've been so busy being the family guy, you let the whole thing drop for three weeks!"

House said nothing for a moment, but bounced his cane vigorously.

"What do you think is wrong with him?" he asked finally.

Foreman snorted. "What do you think?"

"It's hard to get a definitive diagnosis for Parkinson. A lot of things could cause the trembling."

"And the resting tremor? And the incipient bradykinesia, and the lack of motion in his left arm when he walks?"

"Get Cameron and Chase in here. We'll run through some other possibilities."

"They've gone home already."

"Call them back!"

"House. We did an L-dopa probe. His symptoms got better."

"Can't have been on it that long. A lot of things get better temporarily with L-dopa."

"Look. If you want to do a differential diagnosis, fine. But it can wait until morning."

House moved to pull rank, and ran smack into the brick wall of Foreman's obstinance. "Fine," he muttered, and Foreman left.

Left alone, House popped a pill and sat waiting for it to take the edge off the nervous energy he had suddenly acquired. Half an hour later, he was still too keyed up to think clearly.

It's widely assumed that illness is less terrifying to healthcare professionals because they understand its nature and know what to expect. For most, however, knowing what to expect is a mixed blessing at best. When House considered today's diagnosis of Parkinson Disease, the words "chronic" and "progressive" were ineluctably attached, causing his mind to effortlessly fast-forward ten years into the future. He saw Wilson's agile brain locked inside an increasingly unresponsive body; he saw him struggling to speak, unable to write, his bright brown eyes growing duller by the year as his gifts slipped away.

His agitation increased when he looked across their balconies and saw Wilson alone in his office, lying back in his chair with his eyes closed. House awkwardly vaulted over the wall and entered without knocking. Wilson didn't even open his eyes.

"I talked to Foreman," House said accusingly. Wilson nodded. "You're just going to take his opinion lying down?"

"He had me take levodopa. It helped. He found that pretty definitive."

"Foreman's a quack!"

"He's the best fellow you've ever had."

"Oh, now, there's a ringing endorsement! You need to see a specialist."

"I saw Parker."

"When were you in Philadelphia?"

"Last week."

A stab of guilt—House hadn't even noticed he was gone. What else had slipped past him lately?

"You spend years talking to patients on the worst day of their lives," Wilson remarked, gazing at the top of his bookshelf, "and you think you empathize, but you don't really believe a word you're saying will ever apply to you. And then one day you're the one in the patient's chair, and someone is giving you the same load of psychologically correct crap you've been handing out for years, and you realize you didn't know a damned thing."

He turned, his eyes wide and bewildered. "I'm the caretaker," he said. "How can it be that I might wake up someday and not be able to take care of myself?"

"You're giving up too quickly," House said forcefully. "You can't go by anyone's half-assed diagnosis this early in the game. There are plenty of things we can look at, starting tomorrow. Will you let us try?"

Wilson smiled faintly. "Do I have a choice?"

"No. Be here by nine."

"You're going to be here at nine," Wilson commented. "Maybe miracles do happen, after all."

-0-

House timed his arrival at the farmhouse for after dinner, and ate by himself in the kitchen; Carolyn, after a quick glance at his face, went into the den to work on her computer. Finished, he prowled through the living room looking for a place to be alone. Angie and Nate had taken up his usual spot on the couch and were critiquing an ad for a new horror movie.

"We're trying to think of all the sub-genres to horror movies," Angie told House. "There's the inanimate-object-comes-to-life genre, the scary-little-kid genre, the disfigured-maniac genre, and the ghost-on-a-rampage genre. What else?"

House gave a nervous shrug and passed on to the front porch. A moment later Carolyn walked through the living room and he heard Angie demand, in a loud whisper, "What's wrong with him?"

"I guess he had a bad day," Carolyn said mildly. "Just leave him alone, and when he's ready to play again, he will."

But later that night, when Carolyn worried once again about Angie's lack of appetite after chemo and House said irritably, "Angie could stand to lose a few pounds," she was less understanding.

"I'm sorry. That was out of line," he muttered, really meaning it.

"That wasn't just out of line; that was mean," Carolyn said angrily. "Are you going to tell me what's really wrong, or am I supposed to guess?"

House shook his head miserably. "Patient confidentiality."

"But the patient is in bad shape?"

"Not yet. Will be."

Her expression softened. "Everyone has a bad day once in awhile," she said, stroking his cheek. "But try not to inflict it on others, okay?"

He nodded, but lay awake long after Carolyn had gone to sleep.