House stared up at the ceiling and wondered what he did to deserve this.

The patient in the room was not enjoying himself much either. His stomach was twisted in knots and if he made that horrendous grimace one more time, House was going to congratulate him for being the ugliest person he'd ever seen in the Clinic. And that was quite an accomplishment.

"Doctor… What should I do?"

"You eat toilet paper," House retorted, waving the patient's medical file in the air. "I don't know. Maybe stop eating it?"

"You don't understand—"

"I should hope not."

"My psychiatrist said it was just a stage…"

"And I bet he suggested those $100 an hour meetings are going to work wonders as long as you keep going."

The man shrugged, face red. "Is it just a stage?"

"Just stay out of our lavatories. We put our toilet paper to another use here."

"Doctor."

"You know…" House paused, digging out his most empathetic look. "Let me call an colleague. She's an expert in this kind of thing."

"She eats toilet paper?"

"No. But I'm convinced she also has some kind of mental disorder."

House plucked the phone from its hook and waited the typical two rings before someone promptly picked up.

"Lisa Cuddy."

"Dr. Cuddy. Medical question for you."

"House? I thought you were in the Clinic."

"That's where I've been shackled. Now, as for that question: What did I do to deserve this?"

Cuddy scoffed on the other end of the phone. "Do you want the short list or the long list?"

"The short one. There are patients dying." House glanced back at the toilet-paper-eating patient, offering a glib smile. The man seemed poised to bolt to the door. Perfect, House thought.

"Fine. Short one, then: You've been yourself. Isn't that reason enough to deserve punishment?"

"Don't you have a new password to install, PartyPants?"

Cuddy contemplated hanging up the phone, then figured that was something juvenile that House would do, not her. "Look. House. You are years behind on your clinic duty. I'm doing you a favor. I'm giving you a full day of work to dedicate to make up some lost time."

"Why don't you confine me to slave labor?"

"You have no diagnostic case to work on. In fact, you haven't had a case for the past two weeks."

"They've been running marathons of General Hospital. I can't miss that."

Cuddy sighed. She could practically hear House suppressing a smile over the phone. "House. I don't even care if you're not nice. Just try to be professional."

"Aren't I always?" There was a clinking of pills as he unearthed the Vicodin from his black jacket pocket. "Now, Chase and Foreman on the other hand…"

"What?"

"Chase apparently can only diagnose female patients. And Foreman is giving tips on how to steal cars."

"He is not."

"You wouldn't know, though, would you? You're having too much fun lounging in your office and looking busy shuffling papers. Ah, I remember the days when I used to lounge in my office. Fun, fun times."

"House, when I called you down to the clinic, you were building a house for Steve McQueen out of Viagra and tic-tac containers."

"Hey. Don't judge the rat."

"How could I?" Cuddy sighed. House could picture her massaging her temples, the pinched expression on her face giving her that subtle why-has-male-maturity-stalled-on-the-evolutionary-scale look.

"It's eight o'clock," Cuddy continued. "You have another nine hours in the Clinic, so make the most of it."

House listened to the click as she hung up, then added, talking to the dial tone, "That is completely unnecessary. But if you insist, I suppose we could get the patient into the ER by noon. If we cut him open, I'm sure we'll find something—"

"Doctor, I'm going to go." The man had already risen quickly from his seat on the table and was scuttling to the door. "I think I'm fine."

"Yeah. Just stay out of the bathrooms!" House shouted after him. He paused. The dial tone was furiously battering itself against his eardrum. "Why, thank you, Cuddy. Yes, I do have a fantastic way with patients, don't I?"

-----------------------------------------------------

"Why should we be punished for House?" complained Chase as he slung the stethoscope back around his neck. He had just met Foreman as they both emerged from their respective Clinic rooms. The Australian had been tending a woman with a cough and Foreman had exerted uncountable amounts of energy prescribing Tylenol for a headache.

"Eight years of medical school," muttered Foreman, shaking his head. "And we're back to household remedies.

Chase hadn't looked this disgusted since the drugstore had run out of his face cream. He opened his orange tic-tacs and took two, before complaining, "We're not the ones who torment Cuddy. We could be running tests in the lab, or doing scans, or differentiating something—"

"But how nice of you to join me instead."

Foreman rolled his eyes and Chase tried to look innocent as House approached them, a smirk on his face. He paused, looking them over.

"Did you learn to count in medical school?"

Foreman raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Because I see…" He pointed a finger at both of them. "One, two… I thought we had three little ducklings quacking around the hospital."

"Cameron hasn't been down here yet," Chase said.

Foreman was skimming his clipboard, trying to discern who his next clinic patient was. "I last saw her with Dr. Wilson."

House sighed, tapping his cane in mock-irritably. "How many times do I have to tell you? We don't leave Wilson alone with girls. Jeez."

"Well, here she comes now," Chase murmured, nodding off behind House.

The older man glared at her as she joined the group. "You're late."

"And you always are, too."

"A bit defensive this morning, are we?" House examined her expression. "I'd even say smug. What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"What did Wilson do?"

"Nothing."

"Everyone lies!" Chase jumped in.

House stared at him as if he just proposed they'd go deep-sea fishing for giant squid during lunch.

"What?" Chase asked. "That was your next line, wasn't it?"

"Yes. The key word being the possessive pronoun. It's my phrase. Go get your own. Don't you have a bunch of cute Aussie slang to use, anyway?"

Cameron shook her head, emphatic. "It's nothing. So, how has the Clinic been?"

"Change the subject. Nice little trick." House shoved his clipboard with patients' scheduled appointments into her hands. "Here. Since you weren't doing your job this morning, you can do mine now."

"House—where are you going?" Foreman called as the diagnostician limped down the hall.

They didn't get an answer. It was amazing how fleet House could be with that cane when he wanted to. The interns stood in the center of the hallway, looking at one another, puzzled.

"Cuddy's going to flip if she finds out he left the Clinic," Chase said.

Foreman glared, annoyed by Chase's annoyance. "What do you care?"

"I care because I'm stuck here, too. If he leaves, why can't I?"

Cameron watched as a disgruntled Chase retrieved his tic-tacs again. "Hey, Chase? Can I have one of those?"

The Australian indiscriminately tossed her the pack, diving right back into his complaining debate with Foreman. Clandestinely, she slipped a few Happy Pills into the container. The yellow barely stood out against the orange breath mints. He'd eat them without noticing a thing.

Cameron figured she might as well put her medicine to good use. If they were all going to be stuck in the Clinic for the entire day, they might as well be happy.

-----------------------------------------------------

Across the hallway, House was tapping the desk impatiently. The middle-aged woman taking calls and sending faxes looked up.

"Regis, I'd like to phone a friend."

She pursed her lips. "My name's not Regis."

"Please tell me you're not really that stupid." House twirled his cane, looking around as if it pained him to deal with subordinates. "I need you to page Dr. Wilson. Exam room 106. It's very, very important."

A flash of a pink V-neck caught his eye, and he turned to see Cuddy strolling down the hall. Quickly, he leaned in to the woman at the desk.

"I was never here," he hissed.

"Never saw a thing," she muttered back impartially. She picked up the phone as House shuffled away, slipping around the corner two seconds before Cuddy could have noticed him.

------------------------------------------

Wilson, at the time, was in an elevator heading for the Oncology floor. He watched the numbers light up as he reached each level. He wondered absently when the pills would start kicking in.

Or, more to the point, when the first side effect would hit him. The rats had exhibited fear, Cameron had said. If that held true in humans, what could he expect? What was he afraid of?

Well… There was a fear of looking unkempt coming into work, which—while it apparently did not improve his taste in ties—would explain why he got up a half-hour earlier each morning to blow dry his hair. Then there had been that sporadic fear that House might hide his hair dryer. But those were both irrelevant now, considering he'd gotten his own place again.

He wasn't afraid of bugs; heights didn't make him queasy; public speaking was no big deal. When he thought about it, there weren't really any profound phobias that could cause problems. Maybe, he thought hopefully, the fear side effect wouldn't even apply to him.

PAGING DR. WILSON. PLEASE REPORT TO CLINIC. ROOM 106. IMMEDIATELY.

Wilson had just stepped out of the elevator when he heard the PA system order him downstairs again. He checked his watch. He had a half-hour exactly until his first patient meeting of the day, which would eventually give way to the dozen he had scheduled up until five in the evening. He sighed. House's consult better be brief.

Usually, though, they were. House typically just needed to vent, ask for an opinion on a diagnosis he already knew, and then mock Wilson's ties or shoes or hair or his pathological niceness. Something or other.

Wilson opened the door to exam room 106. His jaw practically hit the floor.

"You moved the coma patient? To the Clinic?"

House barely acknowledged Wilson's incredulity. He had his feet propped up on an open spot of the bed. He leaned back in his chair, fiddling with the remote and growing more annoyed as he realized the TV in the room wasn't hooked up.

"I wanted some company."

"And a person unconscious in a vegetative state is your idea of company?"

"The best kind. He shuts up when my show's on."

"He always shuts up."

"Convenient, isn't it?"

Wilson thought back to those Happy Pills, one of which was dissolving in his stomach right about now, floating in tiny little particles through his cells and eventually pouring extra dopamine into his brain. Even with side effects, that would be nice right about now. Maybe his fear was of House forcing him to spend hours on end entertaining the coma patient. The scary thing was, he could actually see that happening. But House would probably make him get potato chips first. And a Reuben. And a TV that actually worked. Just the usual.

"House. Why did you page me?"

"I needed a consult."

"On the coma patient?"

"Uh, hate to break it to you, but it's my medical opinion that he's in a coma." House tossed the useless remote onto the bed at the patient's motionless feet. "If you have another idea, we could do a quick differential…"

Wilson searched the air for some patience, then leaned against the doorway. "What do you want, House?"

"Cameron was late this morning. She's never late. She was smug. She's never smug. And she was with you." He narrowed his eyes, a small smile spreading across his face. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything."

"As Chase says, 'Everyone lies.'"

"I thought you said that."

"Apparently my copyright has been violated. I'll be expecting him to pay a fine within the next week." He rummaged through his pocket before locating the Vicodin again. "And I also thought you would be honest with your best friend."

Wilson eyed him carefully. He couldn't exactly see harm in disclosing some information—otherwise, House would revel in tormenting him until he relinquished the news anyway. Arms folded, slightly guarded, he took a seat on the other side of the coma patient's bed, across from House.

"Cameron asked me to read a paper she wrote."

"Was it a good story? I bet you twenty bucks everyone lived happily-ever-after."

"It was a medical paper," Wilson said, humoring him. "She developed some new medication of some sort."

House raised his brows. "Well, that's interesting. What's it for?"

"It's still in the process, I think."

"What's it for?"

"She's spent a lot of time on—"

"Gee, I hope it's more interesting than this conversation is."

Wilson uncrossed his arms, smiling. "Fine. If you must know, it's called Dopathalamine."

House repeated the word lightly to himself. "Dopamine?" he surmised, sarcasm floating into his voice. "What, is this some kind of pill you can take to make the world a happy-go-lucky place?"

"Actually…"

"You know, never mind. I'll hear it from her first." House swung his left leg off the bed, his right one lagging a bit as he gingerly rose to his feet. "Don't want to spoil the big surprise."

The door shut with an airless thump. Wilson looked apologetically at the coma patient, who offered no commentary in return. House equally dragged them both around by House on an impulse. Oh, well.

Wilson was about to leave and return to his own office when he froze.

A faint, wispy figure was transcending through the doorway. She was just slightly shorter than he was, her ankle-snapping heels almost bringing them eye-level. Her flowing gown evoked Greek or Roman influence with an almost angelic flair; her gold hair shimmered translucently; her face nearly stunned him with its familiarity.

She looked an awful lot like Wilson's first wife, but that was impossible. Jillian lived across the country, never called anymore, and certainly did not have the physical makeup of a ghostly, see-through apparition.

"Hello, James."

But she certainly did sound like her.

"Uh—what's going on?" Wilson rose unsteadily from his seat. Even the coma patient seemed absurdly silent, given their bizarre new guest. "Who—who are you?"

"I am the Ghost of Hanukah Past."

Wilson felt the extra Happy Pills rattling around in his pocket. Great. Cameron hadn't given herself enough credit. The fear side effects took all of fifteen minutes to kick in.