Chase was so absorbed in the task of writing up the case notes that he didn't hear Cameron and Foreman enter. It looked to them as if he were trying to create a novel. Then Cameron glanced into House's office and saw House in the same position that Chase discovered him in earlier.

"What's he still doing here?" asked Cameron with bewilderment.

"Don't ask," said a still aggravated Chase.

Foreman then got a huge smile on his face. "I get it now." He started laughing and shouted into the other room, "Good one House!"

"Enough about him," said a disgruntled Chase. "I have some more info to discuss."

They all sat down at the table to discuss the case. "What did you find out?" asked Cameron.

"I don't know where to begin," answered Chase. "It will take me hours to write up the history the son gave me. She has had every problem under the sun, seems to have visited every doctor in town and others elsewhere too, and she takes pills like candy anytime she has a slight pain which is often."

"Hmm, the pill popping sounds familiar," Cameron said loudly toward House's office. "Did the son know what doctors she was seeing?" Cameron asked.

"He had no clue, and wasn't very interested in finding out. He seems to think his mother is a hypochondriac. He did however give me this." Chase held up the apartment key he received.

"A key will make the break-in easier," said Foreman.

"This time there is no break-in. The son gave me his full consent. For once, our search will be legal."

"You idiot!" rang from a voice in the adjacent room. Everyone wisely chose to ignore it.

"I'm really going to need some help here," said Chase. "She apparently is a Hoarder. Searching through piles of trash in a tiny apartment could provide an interesting treasure hunt. This will be a chance for all of us to search a residence together."

Cameron and Foreman looked at each other, both working on excuses in their minds as to how to get out of this one.

"Sorry, clinic duty," said Cameron as she got up to leave.

"I thought your clinic hours were this morning," said Chase.

"Uh, I have to cover for House. See ya." She quickly slid out the door.

Chase looked at Foreman. He opened his mouth but before a word got out Chase interrupted him. "I know, consult."

"Glad you understand," said Foreman with a smile and patted Chase on the back as he made his quick exit.

Chase sat at the table alone. He should have expected this. He and Cameron weren't any more cooperative when Foreman was in charge. He was just going to have to suffer through this. Cameron's turn can't come soon enough, he told himself.

As Chase grabbed his coat and bag for his visit to Estelle's apartment, he shouted to House, "I heard a hurricane is headed toward Cancun. This is an excellent time for you to become a missing person."

House got a huge smile of pride. When it comes to put downs, I trained them right, he thought.

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

Chase had never been to this part of town before. As he drove through the neighborhood, he perceived it to be a community that had been long forgotten but they were trying to make the best of it anyway. The homes were very small and modest, but the new brick sidewalks, black wrought-iron old fashioned street lamps and updated landscaping showed that they were trying to emit some pride amidst the humble circumstances.

Any sense of pride and community abruptly ended as soon as he turned into the complex where Estelle lived. The place was a squalid dump. Trash littered the parking lot and significant vegetation grew through the cracks of the long neglected pavement. The dwellings were old brick buildings that from the exterior showed the years of water erosion and damage from the elements. The windows had so much dirt caked on them that he doubted that much sunlight actually worked their way through them. That is the windows that weren't boarded up.

He parked his car next to the back entrance. Estelle lived on the bottom floor near that entrance. He approached the doorway and noticed a security keypad, but the door lock had been bashed in so many times its purpose was lost. He then looked to the left to see a dumpster and a homeless man enjoying an afternoon rest.

Chase opened the battered door and as he stepped inside the foul stench of urine hit him in the face. He could tell that the foyer had become a makeshift bathroom for some, or at least the guy outside. He went down about five steps still choking on the smell to the hallway where the apartments were. The carpeting that covered the area was grossly stained and almost worn to nothing in places. He could tell a few of those stains were water related.

Estelle's apartment was easy to find as it was the first door on the right. The door contained a flimsy lock in the doorknob and no deadbolt which made using the key almost unnecessary. Chase entered the tiny apartment to find it indeed looked like an atom bomb went off. The place was packed so hard with clutter he could barely move. Yet again, he was hit in the face with more awful smells, although the ones he experienced this time were different and seemed to be from more than one source.

The kitchen sat to the left and the main living room was straight ahead. Chase first checked the kitchen where counters were packed tight with clutter. There were bags and bags of junk food, canned goods, packages of ramen noodles and so many bottles of spices that he couldn't imagine a restaurant going through them all let alone one person. The sink was stacked full of dishes that hadn't seen water in weeks. There was one identifiable source of the bad smell.

Next he entered the living area. The piles of boxes on both sides of him offered a small little walkway. The carpet, in which only a very small part was visible, was piled with dirt and dust and obviously hadn't been cleaned in years. He also noticed that absolutely everything was covered with a significant layer of dust. The dust along with the smell made the air quality unbearable. The couch, the dining table, end tables, and bookshelves all were packed with stuff as well as the floor. He noticed stacks of loose papers and tons of shopping bags everywhere. He looked at one of the piles to find one dollar or drug store item after another stuffed in a bag and thrown on top of one another. That seemed to be representative of most of the piles in the apartment. The only piece of furniture that did not contain any litter was the recliner.

To the left of the main living room was a bathroom and a bedroom. The bathroom offered the next powerful odor, and it was the worst yet. Chase walked in and pulled back the shower curtain that lined the bathtub. The tub was packed full of rotting garbage that had been there a long time. He thought he was going to get sick. He could handle anything disgusting with the human body, but rotting trash was a different story. It was time to get out the hospital mask.

He turned to the medicine cabinet sitting on the wall next to the tub, opened it, and found it packed full with a wide array of prescription drugs. He pulled the bottles out one by one and put each in his bag, noticing a different doctor's name on all of them. Some were old and expired, but most were very recent. He put about 20 bottles into his bag.

Chase knew that this couldn't be all she was taking. He wandered over a linen closet tucked away next to the bathroom. When he opened that door, overpowering stench number three appeared. The smell was very musty. Another huge offering of pills lined the front part of the shelves and blankets, sheets, towels and other items were packed tightly right behind them. He grabbed the bottles and put them into his bag with the others. These drugs were mostly over the counter medicines, but there were some more prescriptions as well.

Curious about the source of the stench, Chase pulled out the contents of one of the shelves. "Oh my god," he said in reaction to his discovery. Covering the entire back and right side of the closet were black spores indicative of dangerous mold. There was likely a leak in the wall at some point that Estelle never noticed behind all the junk.

Chase walked into the bedroom where the other side of the moldy closet was. Surely mold had to be there as well. He found another pile of junk stacked to the ceiling against that wall and that sat next to a large dresser. He pushed over the pile, accepting that he couldn't be making any bigger a mess. As the items toppled over, he noticed black spotting all over them. The wall the pile previously leaned on was completely black, as well as the back of the dresser. He scraped a sample from the wall, bagged it, and then made a phone call on his cell.

"Yes, my name is Dr. Robert Chase. I'm in apartment 103. I need a building manager here now. We have a serious health problem here."

How in the world can anyone live like this? Especially in this country? Chase asked himself. He had seen some very impoverished parts of the world upon his travels but had never seen living conditions like this.

While waiting for the manager he tried to look around some more. He looked at all the junk that covered the bed. Obviously Estelle never slept in the bed. The only used piece of furniture was the recliner, so that must have been the bed as well. There he found the boxes and boxes of health supplements her son mentioned. He opened them up. Shark Cartilage, B Vitamins, Ginkgo Biloba, Bee Pollen, St. John's Wort, Multivitamin, Glucosamine Chondroitin, Calcium Carbonate, Magnesium Oxide, Ephedra, Ma-hong, Echinacea, Lycopene, Progesterone, Melatonin, Selenium… and he just couldn't take looking anymore. He would just load these boxes into his car and analyze the products in the lab.

Next to the cluttered bed was an even greater cluttered desk. Stacked on the desk were piles of mail. Many were doctor bills and unopened insurance statements as the son predicted. There were also several letters marked as a third or final notice. Chase grabbed all the medical related letters and forced them into his already overstuffed bag.

About twenty minutes later, after Chase had taken time to load items into his car and do a little more searching for medical records, the building manager entered. "Can I help you?" he asked Chase.

"Yes, follow me," said a very unimpressed Chase with this man's building management skills. He took him to the closet. "You have a very serious mold problem here. Judging by the source, this can't be just happening here."

"Not again," said the man as he looked at the damage. "I thought we had this all cleared up. Several months ago an apartment on the top floor had a pipe burst. We cleaned up that one and the one above this unit."

"Those were the only ones you checked?" asked Chase. "Standard procedure has you checking every residence in the building."

"Look, people don't complain for a reason here. The rent is very cheap and they want it to stay that way." replied the manager.

"That's why you let Mrs. Anderson live like this? This place should be condemned!" Chase told the man angrily.

"It was her business. She pays the rent, so we are fine with it."

"Let's see how fine you are with it when I call the Board of Health." Chase grabbed the final box to be loaded and left. This was easily the most disturbing home search he had performed yet.

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

Mycotoxosis. That was the very first item Chase wrote on the white board when he got back from his search. Now it was time to sort out the rest.

He started going through the mail pile. Between that and the pills he found, he should be able to piece together a good chunk of the history. The mail revealed that Estelle was under the care of 28 specialists and one general practitioner. She was thousands of dollars in medical debt and many were refusing to service her any longer until her payments were made. That explained why she kept moving from doctor to doctor. Her general practitioner wouldn't see her anymore because she owed so much on missed appointment fees. There went the only hope of one doctor regulating all her meds.

After he got through the mail, he systematically pulled the prescriptions from his bag. He wrote down the name of the drug and each doctor, then each condition that had a medication for it on the white board.

Hypothyroidism, Rhinitis, Vestibular Balance, Back Pain, High Blood Pressure, Arthritis, Insomnia, Depression, Severe Headaches, Overactive Bladder, Indigestion, Anxiety, Eye Irritation, Osteoporosis, ADD, Poor Circulation, Diverticulitis.

Next Chase went through all the over the counter medicines she accumulated. The most common were boxes and boxes of decongestants and antihistamines of many varieties and plenty of bottles of all types of cough medicine. There was also plenty of ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin, calcium tablets, ear drops, eye drops, and creams for joint pain. Everything was in mass quantity.

Strange, all this and no vicodin, thought Chase.

Cameron's jaw dropped at the list of problems when she entered the conference room. "These are just the problems there were prescriptions for," Chase told her. "We don't know what else could have been wrong at some point or is wrong now."

Cameron looked at the boxes of the prescriptions, over the counter medicines and supplements. "She has to be experiencing drug induced liver failure," said Cameron.

"One sign of that is loss of appetite," replied Chase. "Judging by her size and what her son said that is likely not the case. We should check for it anyway, just because it makes sense. It darn well should be happening. None of this can explain the loss of consciousness though."

Foreman walked in and proceeded to look at the board as well. "Mycotoxoisis? She was diagnosed with that?" he asked.

"That's my diagnosis," said Chase. "I found toxic mold in significant amounts in her apartment. It was all covered up by junk so she couldn't see it, and if she was congested a lot she likely couldn't smell it. That would explain why her lungs are struggling."

"It only explains the lungs though," replied Foreman.

"Here is a fact that might interest you. Her son said she had a bad head injury as a teenager," Chase added.

"I'll schedule an MRI," replied Foreman. "An old head injury could explain the later development of some of her problems."

"Yeah, some of them," replied Chase.

"She certainly is taking a lot of allergy medication. Any known allergies? Rhinitis is a big clue. She could be having a severe allergic reaction to one of these drugs." said Cameron.

"I'm going to be requesting medical records all afternoon," replied Chase. "I have a list to work with now including an allergist. Of course I also have to make a call to the Board of Health."

Cameron and Foreman looked at him with complete amazement.

"What?" asked Chase, confused by the reaction.

"You, call a state agency?" said Foreman with a goofy smile. "Has that ever happened before?"

"Be careful Chase, people who work in those agencies don't like foreigners. They hate it when you don't speak English." said a joking Cameron.

Chase wasn't in the mood for their harassment and ignored the remarks. "We can meet up again later once I have more info. Cameron, you run the liver test, and Foreman, you get the MRI."

Both paused reluctantly at the instructions. They were used to getting a rapid fire list of things to do with House along with more crazy theories.

Chase looked at them still standing there and said, "Please?" They both nodded and went off.