"So, were you intensely unpopular growing up?" House had appeared in her room with two minutes to spare and launched in on his peculiar line of questioning without any greeting or preamble.

"I beg your pardon?" Kelly asked, or tried to ask but was largely unintelligible. She spit the toothpaste out of her mouth and repeated herself.

He was standing in the open doorway of her bathroom with a file in his hand. "Were you overweight? A nerd, maybe? Did you have those unfortunate poofy bangs?"

"Greg, I was raised in the 80's. Everyone had poofy bangs." She returned her toothbrush to its holder and shooed him into the main room, following behind him and looking for her shoes. "Where are you going with this? What are you looking at?"

"What I'm looking at are your scan results, which I greased a radiologist to have rushed to me, I might add. What they're tell me is that you must have been the type to get beat up a whole lot as a kid."

Kelly laughed. "Skiing injuries. My parents are pretty well off, so my brother and I went on a LOT of ski trips and were shipped to ski camps and just generally obsessed."

"Well, you obviously weren't very good at it."

"Actually, I was. But when I first tried my hand at the ski jump, I got hooked. And no matter how good you get, you're guaranteed to get hurt on your way there. I was always twisting or spraining or dislocating SOMETHING. It was a miracle I only broke one bone in my whole skiing career."

"Only one?" He picked up her chart from the end of the bed to examine it.

"Right. My leg, when I was 11. I told Dr. Foreman about it."

"Yeah, I see that here, but what about your rib?"

Kelly was confused. "What about it?"

"I'm seeing evidence of a fracture that didn't heal properly and shifted, causing damage and scarring in the surrounding tissue."

She immediately knew what he was talking about. "Oh, wow. I didn't think I had broken anything, though it certainly hurt a lot. It happened a little less than a year before Mark died --- my parents had sent us on a two week vacation in Vermont, and only a few days after we'd arrived... Well, let's just say before that I'd never met a chair lift I didn't like."

"You fell off the chair lift?" He raised an eyebrow.

She shot him a venomous look. "I know, I know. I'm such a pro, right? And the truth is that I didn't quite make it ON the lift. After my ego recovered, it was still a nice vacation, but I haven't skied since that day."

"And it didn't occur to you to mentioned that you'd had this experience?"

"Other than it being embarrassing, I didn't think it would be relevant. So does this mean you think it's important?"

"Scar tissue could be compressing the nerves."

"And that could cause...this?"

"Your serotonin levels are fine, which means that the messages the serotonin is trying to send aren't making it from point A to point B. The scar tissue is really close to the spine."

"Wouldn't I know? I had pain there for quite some time after the...incident, but I just figured it was bruised. And it doesn't hurt any more."

"Pinched nerves usually lead to referred pain somewhere else in the body."

"I get lots of lower back pain, like I told your team, but nothing severe and certainly nothing I ever worried about. I assumed it was caused by having terrible posture."

Kutner arrived then, and was once again surprised to find House. He addressed Kelly. "Has Dr. House explained your results?"

"He's working on it." Kelly quickly summarized what she'd just told House. "Frankly I'm more interested in knowing what we do now."

"I'd like to do a quick exam, if that's okay," Kutner told her. "My specialty is sports medicine, so I've dealt with a lot of these kinds of injuries."

To keep up appearances, though they'd already been compromised, House excused himself wordlessly. However he had nothing to do, so he sat down behind the floor nurses' desk and leafed through the phone book. By the time Kutner appeared in front of him, he'd formed a plan. "Well?"

"If I was just treating the back, I'd say it could be dealt with non-surgically. But I don't think we have any choice. I called up to check the board on my way here, and they'd just cancelled an elective for tomorrow morning at 9:30; I had them hold the spot for me. I'll get her scheduled in. In the meantime, she's asking for a pass to get out for a few hours. You okay with that?"

House waved his hand dismissively as if he couldn't care less. "What are you doing with her tonight?"

"Well, I figured I'd just tell the nurses to do whatever they did last night. I didn't see anything on her chart, so obviously it worked."

"Right." He was careful to speak nonchalantly. "I'll tell the first person I see. You get things scheduled and then send everyone home."

Kutner shrugged. "You're the boss."

Just a moment after Kutner had left, Kelly was beside him. "Why did you ask Kutner about getting out tonight? Didn't you trust me to make it happen?"

"Of course. I just figured you were planning to sneak me out" - she knew by looking at him that she was right - "and every once in awhile I like to switch it up by doing things by the book." She glanced over his shoulder at the phone book still open in front of him. "So, what sort of adventures have you dreamt up for us?"

They were interrupted by a nurse who was annoyed by House's presence at her work station. They arranged for Kelly to have "the night off", and she was signing the necessary document when she pressed him again for details. "Well?"

"How do you feel about motorcycles?" he asked vaguely as they set off down the hall.

"I've never eaten one," she quipped with a smile. "But if you like them..."

"Smart ass," he muttered.

And their evening began.