"They're all having sex with each other."
House feigned a double take. "Who are 'they' and how much will it cost me to join in?"
"The parents. They had a 'trading spouses' scheme. Turns out somebody brought a host of STDs into the mix. The mothers of the dead infants were probably breastfeeding, House."
"Idiots," he muttered, grabbing his cane and starting for the door.
Cameron followed him. "Obviously, these month-old babies couldn't handle the infections as well as their parents could."
House nodded slowly as he headed towards the elevator. "Gonorrhea, syphilis … it all probably went right to their brains. Once the brain stops telling you to breathe, that's it."
"Right."
He stopped so that he could face her. "There was nothing that anybody could have done yesterday. You know that."
More than twenty families from the neighborhood were sitting in the pediatrics waiting room; after Kutner found out about the Colaccios, he'd sent every child down to pediatrics for complete examinations. "My colleague Dr. Cameron is calling child protective services on all of you," House told them.
One man opened his mouth to say something. "Shut up," House said. "No, they can't take your kids away because you're all screwing each other, even though you were all stupid enough not to use protection."
"Can we get Dr. Cuddy back in here?" one of the mothers asked.
"No-we-can't-get-Dr.-Cuddy-back-in-here."
Cameron took a breath. "Raise your hand if you're breastfeeding," she said, knowing they were more likely to respond to her than to House.
More than half of the mothers raised their hands. "And how many of you knew that you had one or more STDs?"
They were much slower to respond to this question, but eventually, three-fourths of the breastfeeders kept their hands raised.
House turned to a pediatrician observing the scene. "We have eight infants who need to be admitted now."
After the waiting room started to clear out, the mother who had asked for Cuddy approached Cameron. "Dr. Cameron," she said, "you've got to understand, we're all working people."
"Are you breastfeeding?"
"No, my son's five years old. I breastfed him as a baby, though, and we figured that no one would suspect that anything was wrong …"
"All of you knowingly risked transmitting infections to your kids."
"We didn't know … we didn't think they were deadly. I mean, like I said, we're all working people, and we wanted this lifestyle but we also had to protect ourselves from what people were going to say. I am sure that no one meant for what happened to those babies to happen, but …"
"Child protective services will take over from here," was all Cameron said.