Season 2 X 24 : No Reason

Original Airdate: 5/23/2006
Written by: Lawrence Kaplow & David Shore
Directed by: David Shore
Transcript by: Mari

BEGINNING

[Camera pulls out of clinic patient's (Vince) mouth. His tongue is swollen and face is red.]

[Cut to House, Cameron, Chase and Foreman in the office.]

House: He's got a temperature of 103.

Foreman (annoyed): And why do we care?

House: Because we're human beings. It's what we do. He said he was at a lunch-in meeting.

Cameron: You took his history?

House: Guy looks like Harpo. You should see him.

Chase: You asked him what book he's currently reading.

House: It's hilarious to watch him try to talk. I asked him anything I could think of. Favorite colour: [impersonating patient] bwew.

[Cut to House with patient in clinic]

House: Favorite... desert topping? [Vince looks at him with annoyed face] Trust me. You never know what fact may prove the key to saving your life.

Vince: Whip creme.

[Cut back to office with House, Cameron, Chase and Foreman.]

House: I asked him if he was sure. [Looks at Foreman, who is packing up his bag.] Where are you going?

Foreman: You're an ass.

House: I know. Where are you going?

Foreman: This is either a toxin, an infection or an allergic reaction. I assume you gave him Epi so that rules out allergies. So put him on antibiotics incase it's an infection and if it's a toxin we'll keep him here overnight, let the swelling go down, send him home. I'm goin' to the movies.

[Man enters office.]

Man: Which one of you is House?

House: Skinny brunette.

Man: No that's Dr. Cameron.

House: I'm skinny. How do you know her name?

Man: I was a patient of yours.

House: Well, if you wanna leave the chocolates downstairs -

[Man pulls out a gun and shoots House in the right side of his abdomen. Cameron gasps and puts her hands to her chest. House struggles to stand, but falls beside the White Board.]

Man: [Chase and Foreman begin to rush over to House.] Stay! Stay away from him. [House makes eye contact with the man.] Shocking, isn't it? Who would want to hurt you? [Man aims gun at House again and fires at the camera (which would be House's view). Credits.]

[Cut to House sleeping in hospital bed. His finger twitches and he slowly moves his hand up to feel his stubble.]

House: [Looks over to see Cameron reading a book.] You're pathetic. Judging by the growth I'd say I've been unconscious for two days. You've been sitting there the whole time.

Cameron (quickly): No.

House: Judging by the oily build-up in your hair I'd say you're lying.

Cameron: I was scared, pardon me for caring.

[House motions for water.]

House: Did I lose any organs?

Cameron: The bullet to your abdomen pierced your stomach, nicked the bowel, lodged in the posterior rib.

House: Well I always say, if you're gonna get shot do it in a hospital.

Cameron: The one in your neck -

House: I don't remember that one.

Cameron: - went right through, severed your jugular. The shooter turns out to be a guy who -

House: Don't care.

Cameron: You don't care why a guy walked into a hospital and shot a doctor - shot you?

House: I assume his reasoning was faulty. [Cameron looks displeased.] So what was it? Infection?

Cameron: The surgery went fine. You've had no post-op -

House: Not me. The patient - Harpo.

Cameron: You just got shot House. You should rest.

House: I got shot - diagnostically boring. Big fat tongue, on the other hand - endlessly entertaining. Cameron: We biopsied his tongue.

[Cut to, painful looking, tongue biopsy.]

[Cut back to Intensive Care Unit.]

House: And it was negative. And the bloody tests were negative.

Cameron: I didn't say we did blood tests.

House: You don't biopsy a tongue unless you have to biopsy a tongue and you don't have to biopsy a tongue unless you've already come up with nothing on a routine battery of tests, which don't involve torturing the patient. Any other symptoms other than the increased intracranial pressure? [Cameron looks surprised.] Any guesses on how I figured that one out?

Cameron: You knew the next step would be a lumbar puncture. A lumbar puncture would almost certainly give us a definitive answer. Since we don't have a definitive answer, we must not have done an LP and the most common reason to not do an LP is increased intracranial pressure. [House sees his shooter wheeled in, handcuffed to his bed.] He was shot by security try to... [House takes off heart and breathing rate wires.] House, what are you... House.

House: I'm talking to Cuddy. [Gets out of gurney.]

Cameron: Lie down. You've got to be in pain.

House: Not today. Today I'm on Morphine.

[Cut to House walking through doors into hallway. Cameron catches up to him.]

Cameron: You're gonna rip your stitches out.

House: Check Harpo's trash.

Cameron: Forget about the patient.

House: Come on... you're curious. Trash? You don't know what I'm talking about, but you know it's good.

Cameron: You can't just be walking around.

House: Well then stop me.

Cameron: You've lost blood -

House: Physically, stop me.

Cameron: You could damage your -

House: You can't, 'cause that would involve physically touching me and then things would get so sexually charged - [Cameron grabs his IV and arm. They stare for a moment and Cameron begins to look uncomfortable.] I'm twice your size - get your hands off me.

Cameron: Everything that lives eats. Everything that eats poops. That's why every organ has a sanitation department - the lyphm system. What's doing the damage is dumping it's waste in there. That's what you meant by trash.

House: [smiles] Biopsy the lymph node under the jaw.

[Cut to House walking bare-footed into Cuddy's office.]

Cuddy: I'm sorry, I know it's crazy, but there's no other place. It's the ICU - it stands for intensive care. He needs intensive care, so do you.

House: He needs to be shot again.

Cuddy: He is handcuffed to his bed, he is sedated, he's not gonna to hurt you.

House: If you're security was any good I wouldn't have been shot in the first place.

Cuddy: He is where he's supposed to be - where you're supposed to be.

House: Who did my surgery?

Cuddy: Gillec. Why are you gonna send him a fruit basket?

House: He screwed up.

Cuddy: It's annoying enough dealing with your Vicodin habit, quit upping your Morphine.

House: I'm not. I'm reducing it.

Cuddy: And you're not in pain?

House: I'm feeling better.

Cuddy: Gillec is very good. Your recovery time should be -

House: My stomach kills me, my neck is throbbing, my leg feels better.

Cuddy (astonished): That's amazing.

House: It's unbelievable, since getting shot is not an FDA approved treatment for anything it means something must have gone wrong in the surgery.

Cuddy: Yes... terribly, tragically wrong. Enjoy the mistake.

House: He must have nicked something in my peripheral nervous system. If it's alleviating pain, who knows what else it's doing.

Cuddy: Get back to the ICU before you rip out your stitches and I have to chain you to your bed.

[Cut to House standing over the shooter's (Jack) bed. House decreases Jack's Morphine supply to wake him up with pain.]

House: Why did you try to kill me?

Jack: I didn't.

House: Then the gun thing might have been a mistake.

Jack: If I had to kill you, it would have been over. I need you to live. Cause I wanna see you suffer.

[House pulls out Jack's Morphine drip and lies back down in his bed.]

[Cut to Chase and Foreman doing lymph node biopsy. Vince's tongue beings to rapidly swell up.]

Foreman: Woah woah woah, get the needle out of there.

Chase: He can't breathe.

[Chase intubates him through his neck.]

[Cut to ICU with Cameron, Foreman and Chase (CFC) standing by House's bed.]

Cameron (quietly): House. The test was negative.

Chase: You sure you wanna be doing this?

House: I'm fine, I think. Cameron, you got my records?

Cameron: They don't like to release patients operative notes.

House: And yet you're holding them. And whispering.

Cameron: [motions to Jack] He's sleeping. [Chase rolls his eyes.]

House: Yeah... Killer needs his rest. Otherwise he's grumpy all day. [whacks Jack's bed with his cane] Hey! Wake up! Watch me save a life.

Foreman: Almost for sure it's some sort of infection. We've got him on broad spectrum antibiotics, but it's not even slowing the thing down. Unless we figure out what type of infection, we can't treat. We can't figure out what type because we can't do an LP.

House: Do an LP. [looks in Jack's direction] See what I did there? Couldn't have done that if you killed me.

Foreman: We would have done an LP two days ago if we could, but that much pressure something's bound to go -

Chase: We would have done an LP two days ago if the risks hadn't so obviously outweighed the benefits. We just cut a hole in his throat. The equation has changed.

House: Couldn't have put it better myself. [CFC walk out while House looks over his surgery notes.]

[Cut to Vince's room where Chase and Foreman are doing the LP.]

Foreman: Pressure is 120 millimeters. H2O is small visible excursion's related to respiration and pulse.

Chase: They're within normal. That's good.

Foreman: That's weird.

[Cut to House lying in ICU with Jack, both are awake.]

Jack: Do you wanna hear a story?

House: I have a rule. People who shoot me forfeit the right -

Jack: My wife was sick. None of the doctors could figure out why.

House: Oh I know this story. She died so you selected one of her doctors to kill 'cause that would make everything right again.

Jack: No, she lived. You cured her.

House: I'm truly sorry I did that.

Jack: In the course of investigating her illness you convinced me that everything was relevant. You needed the truth. I confessed to you that I had an affair. But it turns out that had nothing to do with why she was sick. Genetic predisposition to brain aneurysms. You told her that. You also told her about my affair.

House: You caught crap. She left you. Now I've gotta pay because you couldn't keep your little killer in your pants.

Jack: She killed herself. [a disturbed look appears on House's face]

[Cut to Vince's LP, where a woman is looking from the hall at the procedure. House walks up.]

House: What sort of hospital has glass walls?

Woman: That's my husband.

House: [looks her over] Really?

Woman: You thought I just like watching people get needles poked in their back?

House: Nope. Figured a co-worked or sister. Not wife.

Woman: Why?

House: Don't worry, it's not insulting. At least not to you. [waits for a response] You're satisfied by that answer?

Woman: You're Doctor House, aren't you?

House: You're not gonna shoot me, are you?

Woman: You treated a friend of mine. She told me you only talk to people if you have to and then you insult them while showing off how insightful you are.

House: Sevens marry sevens. Nines marry nines. Fours marry fours. Maybe there's some wiggle room if there's enough money or if somebody got pregnant, but you've got at least three points on your husband and your frock says you didn't do it for the money and you breasts say that you haven't had any kids.

Woman: So you figure my marriage is a mathematical error.

House: Numbers don't lie. We're having trouble finding out what infection your husband has. The most likely culprit is an STD.

Woman: You want to know if I've had an affair with someone closer to my entateur and I have to tell you the truth or my husband will die.

House: Is your friend single?

Woman: No. And I've always been faithful.

[Cut to Foreman and Chase inside the room, who have just finished the LP.]

Foreman: I would have bet money something would go wrong. Let's rotate him back. [Vince's eye is red] He's bleeding into his ocular orbit.

Chase: LP wouldn't do this. [eye continues it's slow escape] Lot's of pressure behind. Gotta relieve it.

[Eye pops out of it's socket and both flinch at the sight. Nurse wheels in the crash cart.]

Woman: What's going on? W-what are they doing?

House: I should go. I seem to have... torn my stitches.

[House falls over and blood rushes onto the floor around him.]

[Opens to ICU where House takes the lid off his pancakes. He tries to eat with his right hand, but it's handcuffed to the bed.]

Jack: You collapsed in the hall. Tore your stitches.

House: I remember. I was there.

Jack: How's your gut. Is it hurting?

House: You shoot the guy who sold her the gun?

Jack: She locked herself in the garage and she started the car.

House: You shoot the guy who sold her the garage door opener? [both look at each other] You're an ass.

Jack: Now that is a bold position to take given that I shot you.

House: The shooting just makes you an idiot. You're an ass because you're trying to wrap it in the flag, like you did a good thing.

Jack: You're an ass and a hypocrite. You don't believe in rules, you do whatever you think is right. That's all I did. You were my role model.

House: Watch out. You're getting crumbs on the flag. I didn't commit to honor her. I didn't commit to never lie to her.

Jack: Well if you had kept your mouth shut she would be alive and you wouldn't be shot.

House: If you had kept your pistols in your pants -

Jack: It's my fault she's dead - I know it. But why can't you admit that it's maybe just a little bit yours too? And maybe its not just medical mistakes that screw things up.

House: Here's how life works. You either get to ask for an apology or you get to shoot people. Not both.

[Cut to Cactus Mexican Food restaurant somewhere in the city. House, in his hospital gown, is sitting on an Oldsmobile/Cadillac looking car with CFC standing around him.]

House: Infections don't make your eyes pop out.

Chase: We should be back. You're supposed to be chained to your bed.

House: Not done eating. Gotta be some sort of bleeding disorder.

Cameron: This is really stupid.

House (with a mouth full of food): Well, if my stitches pop out again I got three doctors to save me. Could be some sort of weakness in the lining of the ocular veins. [nobody else talks] Okay, I'll be you guys. [Looks towards Chase and uses accentuated Aussie accent] No way, mate. Too much blood to just be a vein. [Looks at Foreman] No way, hizzy. If it was an artery he'd still be bleedin.' [Look at Cameron and uses high pitched voice] Actually, he'd be dead.

Cameron: He could have had a granuloma in his sinuses that bled, which could have been caused by Wegener’s.

Chase: I think the surgeon would have recognized a giant grown while he was sticking the eyeball back in.

House: Tongue and eyes are sick. What about the nose - it's right in between, why isn't it sick?

Foreman: So it's not spreading. It's got a common source.

House: Which can only be what?

Foreman: The brain except the CT was clean.

House: Check the brain's trash. See what it's hiding.

Chase (confused): The brain doesn't have a lymph system.

House: I know. All it's garbage just blows off, gets caught in the snow fence by the side of the road.

Foreman: You're referring to the blood-brain-barrier?

House: What else? Biopsy the barrier.

Cameron: Wouldn't it be safer to make a few educated guesses first? Try some relatively safe treatments?

House: Biopsy the barrier, first start him on Albendazol incase it's a worm.

Foreman: And Levoflockcisin incase it's an infection that slipped by the first antibiotic.

Chase: And Azithromycin for STDs.

House: I really don't think the wife is the kind to be messing around. [CFC looks astonished] If I was married to her, I certainly -

Cameron: House, the patient isn't married. He's a widower. [House looks worried]

[Cut to Wilson walking on a treadmill.]

Wilson: Really it's more helpful if you do the prescribed rehab yourself.

House: [looking over his surgery notes] My body is fine. My mind on the other hand.

Wilson: Maybe she was a girlfriend. Maybe she was just trying to jerk you around.

House: Spoke to every one of those nurses on that floor. Patient only had six visitors - two females, no babes. His mother and his aunt.

Wilson: So they missed someone, they're not security.

House: My posse never saw her or me talking on the other side of the glass.

Wilson: They were a little busy trying to save the guy's life.

House: There's only one possible conclusion. It was a hallucination. [walking over to Wilson] What does that look like to you? Point six?

Wilson: [reading over notes] Anesthesia? No, it's gotta be six, uh, smudged. Let's say you're right, it wouldn't be that uncommon after trauma, after that much blood loss.

House: If my perceptions are compromised then my judgement is compromised. What if his wife told me the patient just got bit by a rabid Vietnamese leper?

Wilson: So pull yourself off the case.

House: And the next case?

Wilson: You take two weeks, you recover.

House: What if I don't? What if it wasn't the shooting?

Wilson: The guy who sees connections between everything sees no connection between being shot and minor brain disruptions?

House: What if it was the surgery?

Wilson: What if it was the fact that you tore out your stitches and lost two pints of blood?

House: Why did Gillec give me Ketamine during my surgery?

[Cut to House barging in on Cuddy while she is working in the clinic.]

Cuddy: Working.

House: We need to talk.

Cuddy: Get back to the ICU. Who uncuffed you?

House: Why would a surgeon administer Ketamine?

Cuddy: Who showed you your surgical file?

House: How do you know it's mine?

Cuddy: Because your patient hasn't had surgery and you don't care about anybody else.

House: My anesthesia was almost non existent and yet I wasn't awake. For some reason somebody decided to put me in a dissociative coma instead of just putting me out.

Cuddy: There are plenty of reasons to use -

House: Fine, I'll go beat the truth out of my surgeon. Gillec, right?

[Camera shows House walking away without using his cane.]

Cuddy: It worked! [hesitates to speak] There's a clinic in Germany. They've been treating chronic pain by inducing comas and letting the mind basically reboot itself. There's about a 50% chance your pain will come back, which of course means there's a 50% chance that it won't.

House (angry): You had no right -

Cuddy: To heal you?

House (angry): You messed with my brain.

Cuddy (concerned): Why are you so upset? Are you experiencing any neurological symptoms? Dizziness, tremors, hallucinations?

House: No. It's a point of principle.

[Cut to Vince's surgery.]

[Cut to ICU.]

Foreman: Test was negative.

Cameron: No trash against the fence. Is your leg really better?

House: Don't worry, I'm sure something else is wrong.

Chase: We did find blood.

House: On which side?

Chase: The wrong side.

House: First thing that makes sense.

Chase: Wrong side is the wrong side, it can't make sense.

Cameron: Could mess with his brain, wouldn't cause fever. [looks at Jack] He's been sleeping a lot lately.

House: You worried? I marked a change of meds on his chart. Foreign object. The body wants to get rid of it - that causes the fever.

Cameron: Blood's a foreign object?

Foreman: In the brain lining is it. Blood dyscrasia means cancer.

House: Find it.

Cameron: All the tests -

House: Have been negative. What do you do if your trash cans are full? You use your neighbors trash cans, except it's still light outside - your neighbor will see you, so you go out the back way, into an alley, and drop off your trash by their garage.

Chase: We'll check the lymphatic system in the chest.

House (surprised): You got that from 'trash cans in the alley'?

Chase: The saliva glands in the tongue are connected to the lymphatic system in the lungs. It's the next lymphatic system over.

House (aghast): Yeah. Go get lung lymph.

[CFC walks away.]

Jack: How did he know that?

House: I wouldn't have hiring him if he wasn't smart.

Jack: Right, cause you have nothing but respect for him. Maybe he knew the answer because the question wasn't nearly as tricky as you thought. Maybe he's not getting smarter. You're getting dumber.

[Cut to Vince's surgery.]

[Cut to ICU.]

Jack: [talking to a sleeping House] You pretend to bug the system. Pretend to be a rebel. Claim to hate rules, but all you do is substitute your own rules for society's. And it's a nice simple rule - tell the blunt, honest truth in it's darkest, darkest way and what will be will be. What will be should be. And everyone else is a coward. But you're wrong. It's not cowardly to not call someone an idiot. People aren't tactful and polite just because it's nice. They do it because they got an ounce of humility. Cause they know that they will make mistakes and they know that their actions have consequences. And they know that those consequences are their fault. Why do you want so bad not to be human, House? [Cameron and Foreman walk in and look at the sleeping House.] No, he's awake.

Cameron: House, we need to talk to you.

House (eyes closed): How the hell did you know I was awake?

Jack: Your nostrils flare when you sleep.

House (eyes closed): No they do not.

Jack: Fine, I'm lying.

House: Test was negative.

Cameron: You knew?

House: Force of habit.

Foreman: Showed no cancer. No reason why he's got a fever of 103 and no reason why his tongue won't fit in his mouth.

Cameron: He's post-op. Chase it getting him up and around.

[Cut to patient's room.]

Chase: It's important that you're up ASAP after surgery. Think you can urinate?

Vince: [Nods while shuffling into washroom. After opening robe he makes an "ow" moan.] It's getting bigger.

Chase: [looking into washroom] What you're...getting aroused?

Vince: No, my satchel. [screaming] It's not stopping. (**Or something like that.**) [Chase walks into room and crouches in front of Vince before taking a spray of blood to the face. I think we all know where it came from.]

[Opens to House and CFC in the Exercise Room with Chase on a stationary bike.]

Chase: Surgeons found no evidence of a burst artery.

House: The blood had to come from somewhere, you took a shower in it.

Chase: Trauma?

House: You think someone snuck in here just to kick him in the jewels and poke out his eye and swell up his tongue? [motions to the bike] Keep riding. I got a bet with my Physio that I can do 100 clicks by Friday. What about blood from the kidneys? [CFC looks at House confused. House looks at them with wide eyes.]

Cameron (shocked): Kidneys drain into the bladder which drains into the ureter. There's no way it would mess with the scrotum.

House: Yeah... basic human anatomy. Therefore I think it's safe to assume that the problem lies elsewhere, but given that this case doesn't make any kind of sense whatsoever, maybe we should even question the basics.

Chase: Maybe he's not human. [Foreman scoffs and shows his disapproval.]

House: An anatomical defect would seem more likely, but let's not rule that one out.

Foreman: Even more likely, he is human, his anatomy is where it's supposed to be but he has testicular cancer.

[House thinks to himself about why he didn't think of that.]

Cameron: We tested for cancer.

Foreman: We tested the lymph system in his chest.

Chase: Surgeons found no growth.

Foreman: Surgeon was trying to put everything back where it was, they weren't running inventory.

[Cut to Wilson and House doing their business in the washroom.]

Wilson: You may have been lucky. If you don't catch testicular cancer early it kills. Probably eroded some vessel.

House: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Question is why I didn't think of it.

Wilson: Well eyes popping out is a rather odd presentation.

House: Sack blowing up, on the other hand.

Wilson: If you could think of everything yourself you wouldn't need a team to annoy.

House: I screwed up some basic anatomy and I misconnecting a testicular explosion with a testicular problem. Think there's any way I would've done that before Cuddy messed with my brain?

Wilson: She was trying to help you and it worked.

House: Yeah, I can run like the wind, but I can't think. Seeing as how I'm too old to become a professional athlete it looks to me like she screwed me over big time. [Wilson looks annoyed as House walks out of bathroom.]

Wilson: You don't want a healthy leg.

House: Oh here we go.

Wilson: If you've got a good life, if you're healthy you've got no reason to bitch, no reason to hate life.

House: Well here's the flaw in your argument - if I enjoy hating life, I don't hate life, I enjoy it.

Wilson: I didn't say it was rational. HIV testing is 99% accurate which means there are some people who test positive, who live with their own impending doom for months or years before finding out everything's okay. [House looks bored.] Weirdly most of them don't react with happiness or even anger. They get depressed. Not because they wanted to die, but because they've defined themselves by their disease. Suddenly what made them them isn't real.

House: I don't define myself by my leg.

Wilson: No, [chuckling] you have taken it one step further. The only way you could come to terms with your disability was to somehow make it mean nothing. So you had to redefine everything. You have dismissed anything physical, anything not coldly, calculatingly intellectual.

House: Why are you protecting her?

Wilson: Because... she's done nothing wrong.

House: You're completely comfortable with what she did to me?

Wilson: Yeah, I am. Yeah.

House (with his House face on): You agonize over moral choices. You're not completely comfortable with anything until you've taken days to get your head around every possible side. [Wilson has an "oopsie" face on] I've known what she did for six hours. How come you're acting like you've known for days?

[Cut to House barging into Cuddy's office.]

House (angry): What do I have?

Cuddy: You're not sick.

House (angrier): What do I have?

Cuddy: You need to calm down.

House (angry): I have my brain, that's it.

Wilson (also angry): We were trying to help you.

House (angry): Yeah, nobody tries to screw up, they just do.

Cuddy (angry): You were out of control. You were shooting Morphine -

House (super angry): I can make people better. And you two decide to trade that for jogging shoes.

Wilson (angry): If you're suffering from side effects then we can look at that -

House (angry): You value the physical so much. Let me put this in terms you can understand. [House punches Wilson]

Wilson: [feeling checking if he is bleeding] You're unbelievable. Even when you're out of your mind with anger and fear you still caltchout in logical terms. [Cuddy holds House from another punch] Are you hallucinating?

House (angry: Yeah, I'm hallucinating -

Wilson: No, I mean right now. (In Jack's voice) Are you hallucinating?

[Cut to House panting, staring at Jack in the ICU.]

House (scared): How did you know I was...

Jack: You were yelling at me. You were calling me Wilson

House: No.

Jack: You're losing it House.

House: I never call Wilson by his name.

Jack: Oh, yeah right. The hallucinater is going to tell the hallucinatee what happened.

House: You're not the hallucinatee. Wilson was the hallucinatee.

Jack: You think maybe you're focusing on the wrong thing here?

House: Cuddy's office was the hallucinatee. The bathroom was the hallucinatee.

Jack: Ooh... bathroom, that figures.

House: What figures?

Jack: You wet your bed.

House (quietly): Dammit. [looks at bed as Foreman and Cameron enter and tries to cover up the stain]

Cameron: Test was negative.

House: No?

Foreman: AFP and Beta-HCG say no testicular cancer.

House: So let's recap. We've just ruled out everything which doesn't make sense, so the answer has to be something that doesn't make sense. Do a cystoscopy. Make sure he's human.

[Cut to House and CFC walking down stairs leading to the main floor.]

Chase: Test was negative.

House: For him being human?

Chase: Everything was right where it was supposed to be. All the tubes go where they're supposed to go.

Foreman: Most likely scenario is some kind of bacterial prosititis.

[House looks back at the stairs and walks up them again. He stomps on the floor a few times.]

House: Hm. Find out if his father hunched? [walks down two stairs] His father have trouble peeing? [walks up two stairs backwards] His father have sex with his own mother? [walks down stairs] The answers to any of these questions, if yes - assume you're right. If no, assume you're right, but biopsy some prostate lymph just to be sure.

Cameron: But -

[House quickly runs up the stairs.]

Cameron: Then we'd have to cut through his stomach and since he's clearly got a bleeding problem this kind of surgery might -

Foreman: He doesn't "clearly" have anything.

House: [standing in the middle of the stairs] How did I get here? [CFC looks confused]

Chase: What are you talking about?

House: I was in the ICU then I was coming down the stairs with you guys. What happened in between? I don't remember how I got here.

[Cut to Cuddy's office. House enters and Cuddy quickly gets up from her chair.]

Cuddy: [clears throat]

House: I'm taking myself off my case.

Cuddy: Your patient's in critical care. He's had a fever unabated for two -

House: I think I'm losing my mind. I'm having blackouts.

Cuddy: You said you weren't having any -

House: I lied.

Cuddy: If you are doing this to scare me, you made your point. Next time you get shot I promise to only treat the bullet wounds.

House: I'm off the case. [proceeds to exit, but stops] Why did you jump up when I came in?

Cuddy: I thought you were gonna attack me again.

House: Again?

Cuddy: Yeah, you were in my face. You were -

House: No I wasn't.

Cuddy: You came in here with Wilson and -

House: That was a hallucination.

Cuddy: No, you -

House: Which means this is a hallucination.

[Cut to House opening his eyes in the ICU. He looks over at Jack, who is smiling back at him.]

[Open to Cactus Mexican Food restaurant from earlier where House sits on the car with Jack.]

House: How can I tell what's real and what's not? Everything looks the same, sounds the same, tastes the same.

Jack: Seems like I'd be the last person you would want to ask.

House: Why not? You're obviously not here. I'm obviously not here, which means this is a creation in my mind, which means I'm really just asking myself.

Jack: If you're talking to yourself that's a lot of unnecessary explanation.

House: Hey, I'm trying to work this out, that requires give and take, even in my own mind.

Jack: What was the question?

House: How can I tell what's real?

Jack: Does it matter?

House: That doesn't sound like something I'd ask.

Jack: Alright, you're concern is that if you act in the real world based on information that's not real, the results are impossible to foresee.

House: With you so far.

Jack: But information is incapable of harm in another’s self. Ideas are neither good nor bad, but only as useful as what we do with them. Only actions can cause harm.

House: That sounds like me.

Jack: So, you do nothing you refrain from taking any actions. You continue to throw out ideas as you always would, but if they're based on faulty assumptions you're team will point that out. They won't do anything that could hurt them.

House: So I trust my team.

[Cut to Exercise Room.]

Chase: Test was negative.

Cameron: No blood in the prostate.

Foreman: No structural abnormalities.

House: Something doesn't make sense. What does that mean? [looks at CFC] It's not rhetorical. I need your input on everything I as, not matter how obvious it may seem.

Foreman: It... means your wrong.

House: It means one of your assumptions is wrong. Because if something doesn't make sense then it can't be real, so what are our assumptions?

Foreman: We don't have any. We're just guessing and testing.

Cameron: We assume the tests are right.

Chase: We've already redone them, twice.

House: Let's go more basic.

Foreman: What's more basic than test results?

House: The tests themselves. What does a biopsy consist of?

Chase: You take a sample.

House: Define sample.

Chase: It's a small representative piece of whatever you think is the problem.

House: You go down the shore, you fill a cup of water. It's got no fish in it. Does that mean there's no fish in the ocean?

Cameron: We can do another biopsy.

House: You could fill another cup of water. We gotta dive in. We gotta see what's actually in there.

Chase: We can't operate, he's got a bleeding problem.

Foreman: We assume he's got a bleeding problem.

Chase: Yeah, because he bled from where he wasn't supposed to causing parts of his body to blow up. Assuming that crazy assumption is correct if we operate on him we'll kill him.

House: What if we could find a way to do the surgery without giving him more than a paper cut?

[Cut to patient's room.]

Vince: You want to let a robot operate on me?

Cameron: The technology is amazing. It magnifies everything ten times. It's ten times the accuracy.

Vince: No way, I want a person.

Cameron: A person would be controlling it -

House: People suck. People have turned you into a guy with a swollen tongue into a guy with one eye, one ball and a stapled on face. If you want someone to hold you while you cry yourself to sleep at night, choose warm and soft. You want someone to write you a poem, pick the sensitive loner. If all you care about is that something's done right, pick the guy with the metal head.

Vince: No way.

House: No way no way. You gotta see this thing in action before you say no way. Come on. [begins to help Vince from his bed]

Cameron: House, what are you doing?

House: [stops moving Vince] Nothing. I'm not *doing* anything. I'm just throwing out ideas. I think you should put him in a wheel chair and take him to the OR, but I may be out of my mind.

[Cut to operating room with House controlling the robot and Cameron demonstrating as a patient.]

House: Relax Cameron. I'm not gonna cut you. I just wanna show what this puppy can do. It can make one millimeter incisions. You know how small that is? It's small even in metric. If I do something that doesn't make sense, even to you, stop me. [House uses machine to stroke Cameron's cheek.] Delicate, no. [House moves down to Cameron's navel and uses a tool to blow air into it. He brings a knife down and cuts a button off her blouse and it begins to open.]

Cameron (pleasure-filled): House...

House: Does that hurt?

Cameron (quietly): No...

[Vince looks extremely interested.]

House: Seen enough?

Vince: No.

House: That wasn't a question. You either do this or you die.

[Cut to ICU. House is looking through files.]

Jack: You've wasted your life.

House: Yeah... if only I'd spent more times dedicating myself to finding someone worthy to shoot.

Jack: If I had killed you, would it have mattered?

House: Not to me. Have you got a pen?

Jack: You don't care if you live or die?

House: I care because I live. I can't care if I'm dead.

Jack: I don't wanna hear semantics.

House: You anti-semantic bastard.

Jack: Would anybody care that the world lost that wit?

House: [Walking over to the glass door, pulling his bed behind him.] Working here.

Jack: It's alright, you don't have to say anything. Just let me soak into your sub conscience. You think that the only truth that matters is the truth that can be measured. Good intentions don't count and what's in your heart doesn't count. Caring doesn't count. When a man's life can be measured by how many tears are shed when he dies, it's because you can't measure them. Just because you don't wanna measure them, doesn't mean it's not real.

House: [looking over what he wrote] That does not make sense.

Jack: And even if I'm wrong. You're still miserable. Did you really think that your life's purpose was to sacrifice yourself and get nothing in return? [fade to House in a car in a garage with a representation of Jack's wife while she is killing herself] No. You believe there is no purpose to anything, even the lives you save, you dismiss. You turn the one decent thing in your life and you taint it - strip it of all meaning. You're miserable for nothing. I don't know why you would wanna live. [fade back to ICU]

House: [turns to Jack] I'm sorry. [Jack has a little smile on his face.] I know what's wrong.

[Cut to Vince's operation.]

Cameron: House, get outta here, you're not sterile.

House: He'll be fine.

Chase: Great. What's he got?

House: How come you guys have never tried to yank me off this case? I'm having hallucinations, blackouts.

Foreman: You're always insane and you're always right.

House: I'm almost always eventually right. You have no way of knowing when eventually is. Every time I've had an epiphany on this one you guys were right onboard. No challenges. No need to explain. No offence but either you guys are getting smart or I'm getting dumber.

Chase: We've worked with you long enough to know -

House: I know the test results even before you enter the room. We have identical knowledge. How is that possible?

Cameron: You're wrong.

House: Something doesn't make sense. One of your assumptions must be wrong, because if something doesn't make sense it can't be real. Well what if the faulty assumption is that it's real?

Foreman: House, you're losing it.

House: I've lost it. [Instantly moves his hand to the robot controls, but Chase grabs his arm.] Why did you stop me?

Chase: Because I think you're gonna kill him.

House: You don't think that. You know it. Because you're in my head. As long as the delusion makes sense, my mind let's it go on. I have to make it not make sense. I have to push it past the point where it can trick my mind. [put all his weight into the controls]

Foreman: Hey, hey, hey, if this is a nightmare, you're gonna wake up. If it's real, you're killing a man.

House: It's also possible that I may already be dead. I don't believe in the afterlife.

Cameron: House, go back to your room. If this is a hallucination it's a good one. You're pain free, you can walk.

House: It's not real. Therefore it's meaningless. And I want meaning

[House manages to plunge the arm into Vince and make a foot long slice from his navel and up. Blood and organs spurt free of his chest and the team flies back off the controls when House lets go. Vince flat lines. Everybody, including House, has the obvious "that-guy's-dead" look on their face. House walks over to the table.]

House (scared): Oh God...

[Vince's hand falls away from the table and drops a bullet onto the floor. House bends down, picks it up and grasps it.]

House: Goodbye.

[Cut to House being rush into the ER, CFC by his side.]

Foreman: He was shot.

Cameron: Twice.

Chase: Once in the abdomen, once in the neck.

[House opens his eyes.]

House: Hello.

Cameron: It's gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay.

House: You don't know that. [House get's wheeled next to operating table.] Tell Cuddy... I want Ketamine. [House closes his eyes]

[END]