[Transcriber note: This episode was not big on giving names of secondary characters. All names used were found on the official Fox.com summary.]

[The show opens on a close-up of a man's swollen and diseased tongue.]

[Cut to Diagnostics.]

House: He's got a temperature of 103.

Foreman: And why do we care?

House: Because we're human beings. It's what we do. Said he was at a luncheon 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 and talk. I asked him anything I could think of. Favorite color? "Bwuu."

[Cut to clinic.]

House: Favorite dessert topic? [The man, who will now be known as Vince, hesitates.] Trust me, you'll never know what fact may be the key to saving your life

Vince: Whip cweam.

[Cut to Diagnostics.]

House: I asked him if he was sure. [Foreman packs up.] Where're you going?

Foreman: You're an ass.

House: I know. Where're you going?

Foreman: This is either a toxin, infection, or an allergic reaction. I assume you gave him Epi, so that rules out allergies. Put him on antibiotics in case 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 going to the movies. [He starts to leave, but before he can a man [now called Jack] enters.]

Jack: Which one of you is House?

House: Skinny brunette.

Jack: No, that's Dr. Cameron.

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

Jack: I was a patient of yours.

House: Oh, well, if you want to leave the chocolates downstairs - [Jack pulls out a g*n and sh**t House in the side. Cameron gasps, and as House collapses against the whiteboard, the three teammates start to run toward him.]

Jack: Stay! Stay away from him. Shocking, isn't it? Who'd want to hurt you? [Another sh*t is heard as the opening scene ends.]

[Cut to House, lying on a hospital bed. There's a bandage on his neck, a hospital bracelet on his wrist, and a cane propped up near his head. He moves his hand to feel the stubble on his cheek - we see that Cameron is reading next to the bed.]

House: You're pathetic. [Cameron puts down her book.] Judging by the growth, I'd say I've been unconscious for two days. You've been sitting there the whole time.

Cameron: No.

House: Judging by the oily buildup in your hair, I'd say you're lying.

Cameron: I was scared. Pardon me for caring.

House: Did I lose any organs?

Cameron: The b*llet to your abdomen pierced your stomach, nicked the bowel, and lodged in the posterior rib. [She pours him some water.]

House: Well, I always say, if you're going to get sh*t, 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 sh**t turns out to be a guy who -

House: Don't care.

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

House: I assume his reasoning was faulty. So what was it? Infection?

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

House: Not me. Patient. Harpo.

Cameron: You just got sh*t, House. You should rest.

House: I got sh*t. Diagnostically boring. Big fat tongue, on the other hand, endlessly entertaining.

Cameron: We biopsied his tongue. [sh*t of said biopsy.]

House: And it was negative. And the blood 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 beside the increased intracranial pressure? 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 not to do an LP is increased intracranial pressure. [While Cameron is speaking, someone is wheeled into the spot next to House's bed (because in a hospital where every patient gets their own room, House certainly can't!). The patient is Jack.] He was sh*t by Security trying to - House. [House takes off the wires attaching him to the monitor.] Will you - House!

House: I'm talking to Cuddy.

Cameron: Lie down, you've got to be in pain!

House: [as he's walking out with his IV] Not today, today I'm on morphine.

Cameron: [following him out] 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 -

House: You can't, because that would involve touching me and then things would get so sexually charged - [Cameron physically stops him. Oh, how things are... sexually charged?] 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, a lymph system. Whatever's doing the damage is dumping its waste in there. That's what you meant by trash.

House: Biopsy the lymph node under the jaw.

[Cut to House entering Cuddy's office.]

Cuddy: Sorry, I know it's crazy, but there's no other place. The ICU stands for intensive care, he needs intensive care, so do you.

House: He needs to be sh*t again.

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

House: If your security was any good I wouldn't have been sh*t in the first place. [He fiddles with the morphine drip.]

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

House: Who did my surgery?

Cuddy: Gillick. Why, you're going to 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: Gillick is very good. Your recovery time -

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

Cuddy: That's amazing.

House: It's unbelievable. Since getting sh*t is not a 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 in the ICU, staring at Jack. He unlocks Jack's morphine drip and sets it down a few notches. Jack wakes up.]

House: Why did you try to k*ll me?

Jack: I didn't.

House: Then the g*n thing might have been a mistake.

Jack: If I'd've k*lled you it would have been over. I need you to live because I want to see you suffer. [House, in response, unplugs Jack's drip.]

[Cut to Chase and Foreman biopsying Vince's lymph node. As they are doing so he starts to choke.]

Foreman: Whoa, get the needle out of there. [The monitors beep.]

Chase: He can't breathe. [They start to prep him for a tracheostomy.]

[Cut to House in ICU.]

Cameron: House. The test was negative.

Chase: Are you sure you want to 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: He's sleeping.

House: Yeah. k*ller needs his rest. Otherwise he's grumpy all day. [House bangs on 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 find out what type of infection, we can't treat, and we can't figure out what type because we can't do an LP.

House: Do an LP. [to Jack] See what I did there? Couldn't have don that if you k*lled me.

Foreman: We would have done an LP two days ago if we could have 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. [They leave, and House is left to his notes.]

[Cut to Foreman and Chase doing the LP.]

Foreman: Pressure is 120 mL H20 with small visible excursions related to respiration and pulse.

Chase: Well, within normal. That's good.

Foreman: No, that's weird.

[Cut to House sitting in bed, bored.]

Jack: You wanna hear a story?

House: I have a rule. People who sh**t me forfeit the right to -

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 k*ll because that would make everything 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 had an affair. But it turns out it 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 k*ller in you pants.

Jack: She k*lled herself. [A long pause.]

[Cut to House and Chase, still performing the procedure. A woman watches from behind the wall. House walks up.]

House: What sort of hospital has glass walls?

Woman: It's my husband.

House: Really?

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

House: No, I just figured a co-worker or sister, not wife.

Woman: Why?

House: Don't worry, it's not insulting. At least, not to you. You're satisfied with that answer?

Woman: You're Dr. House, aren't you?

House: You're not going to sh**t 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 he didn't do it for the money and your breasts say 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 integer and I have to tell you the truth or my husband will die.

House: Is your friend single?

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

[Cut to inside the room.]

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

Chase: LP wouldn't do this. Lots of pressure behind, got to relieve it. [The eye starts to bug out, and pop out of its socket. Ew.]

Woman: What's going on? What are they doing?

House: I should go. [His hand is bloody, and there is blood on his robe.] I seem to have torn my stitches. [He collapses on the floor.]

[Cut to ICU the next morning, where House is treated to the wonders of hospital pancakes. He is handcuffed to the bed.]

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

House: I remember. I was there.

Jack: How's your gut? It's hurting?

House: You sh**t the guy who sold her the g*n?

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

House: You sh**t the guy who sold her the garage door opener? [Jack smirks.] You're an ass.

Jack: Now that is a bold position to take given that I sh*t you.

House: The sh**ting just makes you an idiot. You're an ass because you're trying to wrap it in a 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... it'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 kept your mouth shut, she'd be alive and you wouldn't be sh*t.

House: If you kept your p*stol in your pants -

Jack: It's my fault she's d*ad! I know it. But why can't you admit it's maybe just a little bit yours, too? That maybe it's 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 sh**t people. Not both.

[Cut to Cactus Mexican Food. The parking lot. House is sitting on the hood of a car.]

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

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

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

Cameron: This is really stupid.

House: Look, 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. [The team is silent.] Okay, I'll be you guys. [in an Australian accent] "No way, mate! Too much blood to just be a vein! No way is he! If it was an artery, he'd still be bleeding!" [I think that second line was still Chase. It may have been Foreman. Oi. And now on to Cameron] "Actually, he'd be d*ad."

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

Chase: You think the surgeon would have noticed a giant growth while 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 its hiding.

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

House: I know, all its garbage just 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 mebendazole in case it's a worm.

Foreman: And levoloxacin in case it's an infection 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. If I was married to her I certainly wouldn't -

Cameron: House. The patient isn't married, he's a widower.

[Cut to Wilson and House in the PT room. Wilson is on the treadmill.]

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

House: My body is fine. [He's looking over the operation notes again.] 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 nurse on that floor, the 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. What does that look like to you, a .6? [He holds the chart up to Wilson.]

Wilson: Anesthesia? No, it's gotta be 6 smudge. Let's say you're right. It wouldn't be that uncommon after trauma, after that much blood loss.

House: My perceptions are compromised and my judgment is compromised. What if his wife told me that the patient just got bit by a rabid Vietnamese leopard?

Wilson: So pull yourself off the case.

House: And the next case?

Wilson: You take two weeks. You recover.

House: And what if I don't? What if it wasn't the sh**ting?

Wilson: The guy who sees connections between everything sees no connection between being sh*t and minor brain disruption?

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 Gillick give me ketamine during my surgery?

[Cut to House entering Exam Room One.]

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 anyone else.

House: My anesthesia was almost non-existent, and yet I wasn't awake. For some reason, someone 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 b*at the truth out of my surgeon. Gillick, right? [He stalks off. Cuddy notices that, while he is carrying his cane, he isn't using it to walk, and isn't even limping much.]

Cuddy: It worked! [House turns.] 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 fifty percent chance your pain will come back, which, of course, means there's a fifty percent chance that it won't.

House: You had no right!

Cuddy: To heal you?!

House: You messed with my brain!

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

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

[Cut to a very nasty procedure being done on poor Vince, which involves cutting above his upper teeth and lifting off his face - I told you it was nasty.]

[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: The first thing that makes sense.

Chase: The wrong side's the wrong side, it can't make sense.

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

House: You worried? I marked a change of meds on his chart. [and back to Vince] Foreign object, body wants to get rid of it, causes the fever.

Cameron: Blood is a foreign object?

Foreman: In the brain lining, it is. 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 neighbor's 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: 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: Yeah. Go get lung lymph. [The team leaves.]

Jack: How did he know that?

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

Jack: Right. 'Cause you've got 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 a quick sh*t of the medical procedure on Vince.]

[Back to the ICU.]

Jack: You pretend to buck the system, pretend to be a rebel, claim to hate rules. [We see that House is pretending to sleep throughout this.] But all you do is substitute your own rules for society's. That's a nice, simple rule - tell the blunt, honest truth in the starkest, darkest way. And what will be, will be. What will be, should be. And everyone else is a coward. But you're wrong. Someone cowardly should not call someone an idiot. People aren't tactful or polite just because it's nice. They do it because they've got an ounce of humility. Because 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 badly not to be human, House? [Cameron and Foreman enter and see House looking asleep.] Oh, he's awake.

Cameron: House, we need to talk to you.

House: How the hell did you know I was awake?

Jack: Your nostrils flare when you sleep.

House: 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 is getting him up and around.

[Cut to Chase walking Vince around his room.]

Chase: It's important that you're up ASAP after surgery. Think you can urinate? [He leads Vince to the bathroom and waits outside the door. Vince grunts in pain, and looks down.]

Vince: [jumbled, of course] It's getting bigger!

Chase: What, you're getting aroused?

Vince: No, not that way! [He yells, and talks indecipherably. Chase bends down to look at the problem, and something explodes. Vince collapses.]

[Cut to the PT room. Chase is on the 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? Keep riding, I've got a bet with my physio that I can do 100 clicks by Friday. What about blood from the kidneys? [They all stare at him.]

Cameron: 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.

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.

Cameron: We tested for cancer.

Foreman: We tested the lymph system in his chest.

Chase: Surgeon found no growths.

Foreman: Surgeon was trying to put everything back where it was, he wasn't look... [the sounds tunes out]

[Cut to the men's bathroom.]

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

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

Wilson: Eyes popping out is a rater odd presentation.

House: Sac bl*wing up, on the other hand...

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

House: I screwed some basic anatomy and I'm misconnecting a testicular expl*si*n with a testicular problem. Think there's any way I would have 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, she screwed me over, big time. [They move to the hallway.]

Wilson: You don't want a healthy leg.

House: Oh, here we go.

Wilson: If you've got a good life, 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. [They stop walking.] HIV testing is ninety-nine percent 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. 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, you have taken it one step further. The only way you could come to terms with your disability was to some way 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: You agonize over moral choices. You aren't completely comfortable with anything until you've taken days to get your head around every possible side. I've know what she did for six hours. How come you're acting like you've know for days?

[Cut to Cuddy's office. I didn't put all of the screaming in caps, because that would have been a lot of caps to have to read.]

House: What do I have?!

Cuddy: You're not sick -

House: What do I have?!?

Cuddy: You need to calm down -

House: I have my brain. That's it!

Wilson: We were trying to help you!

House: Yeah, nobody tries to screw up, they just do!

Cuddy: You were out of control, you were sh**ting morphine -

House: I can make people better! And you decide to trade that for jogging shoes!

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

House: You value the physical so much, let me put this in terms you understand! [He punches Wilson in the jaw.]

Wilson: You're unbelievable. Even when you're out of your mind with anger and fear, you still couch it in logical terms. Are you hallucinating?

House: Yeah, I'm hallucinating!

Wilson: No, I mean right now. [His voice starts to morph into Jack's.] Are you hallucinating?

[Cut to ICU.]

House: 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 called Wilson by his name.

Jack: Oh, yeah, right. The hallucinator 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: Ah. Bathroom. It figures.

House: What figures?

Jack: You wet your bed.

House: Damn it. [He tries to hide it as the team enters. They don't notice it at all.]

Cameron: Test was negative.

House: No.

Foreman: Efp and beta HGG say no testicular cancer.

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

[Cut to House and the team walking down the stairs.]

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 prostatitis. [House looks up the stairs, walks up them.]

House: Hmm. Find out if his father hunched? [And down the stairs.] His father have trouble peeing? [And up, and down and up.] His father have sex with his own mother? The answer to any of these questions, if yes, assume you're right. If the answer's no, assume you're right, but biopsy some prostate lymphs just to make sure.

Cameron: But 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: How did I get here?

Chase: What are you talking about?

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

[Cut to Cuddy's office.]

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 sh*t, I promise to only treat the b*llet wounds.

House: I'm off the case. [as he turns to leave] Why did you jump up when I came in?

Cuddy: I thought you were going to att*ck 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 ICU. Jack is staring at House.]

[Cut to the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant.]

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'd want to ask.

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

Jack: You're talking to yourself, there'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: All right, 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: All right, your 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 and of itself. Ideas are neither good nor bad, but merely as useful as what we do with it. Only actions can cause harm.

House: That sounds like me.

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

House: So I trust my team.

[Cut to the PT 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? It's not rhetorical. I need your input on everything I ask, no matter how obvious it might seem.

Foreman: It means you're wrong.

House: It means one of your assumptions is wrong, because if something doesn't make sense 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 the test results?

House: 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 with water. It's got no fish in it. Does that mean no fish in the ocean?

Cameron: We can do another biopsy?

House: We can fill another cup of water, but we've gotta dive in. We've 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 bleed, causing parts of his body to blow up! Assuming that crazy assumption is correct, we operate on him, we'll k*ll him.

House: What if we could find a way of doing the surgery without giving him more than a papercut?

[Cut to Vince's room. All of Vince's dialog is jumbled, but again, I wasn't going to try to spell it all out phonetically!]

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 will be controlling the -

House: People suck. People have turned you from a guy with a swollen tongue into a guy with one guy, 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. If 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've gotta see this thing in action before you say "no way." Come on. [He helps Vince to sit up.]

Cameron: House, what are you doing?

House: Nothing. I'm not doing anything. Just throwing out ideas. I think you should put him in a wheelchair and take him down to the OR, but I may be out of my mind.

[Cut to the OR. Cameron is lying down on the table. House is controlling the robot; Vince is sitting next to him.]

House: Relax, Cameron. I'm not going to cut you. I just want to show what this puppy can do. I can make one millimeter incisions. You know how small that is? Small even in metric. [to Vince] If I do something that doesn't make sense, even to you, stop me. [He moves the tweezer hand down to stroke Cameron's cheek.] Delicate, no? [He then lifts up the hem of her shirt and uses the air hand to blow air into her belly button. And then he cuts off a button on her blouse, peeling part of the shirt away to reveal her bra.]

Cameron: House.

House: Does that hurt. [Cameron shakes her head.] Seen enough?

Vince: No.

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

[Cut to ICU.]

Jack: You've wasted your life.

House: Yeah. If only I'd dedicated my life to finding someone worthy to sh**t.

Jack: If I'd've k*lled you, would it have mattered?

House: Not to me. [House is searching for a pen to write on the board with.]

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

House: I care because I live. I can't care if I'm d*ad. [He moves to the wall, dragging the bed with him because he's still chained to it.]

Jack: I don't want to hear semantics.

House: You anti-semantic bastard.

Jack: Would anybody care that the world lost that wit? [As Jack speaks, House writes on the glass board with a white marker.]

House: Working, here.

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

House: [looking at his makeshift whiteboard] That does not makes 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? No. [As Jack speaks, we see House in a car with the woman he was speaking to earlier. The car is in a smoke-filled garage.] 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'd want to live.

House: I'm sorry. I know what's wrong.

[Cut to House entering the OR as the team is performing the surgery on Vince.]

Cameron: House, get out of 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: But 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 on board. No challenges, nothing to explain. No offense, but either you guys are getting smarter 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 has to be wrong, because if something doesn't make sense then it can't be real. But what if the faulty assumption is that it's real?

Foreman: House, you're losing it.

House: I've lost it. [He starts to move his hand toward the robot controls; Chase grabs it.] Why did you stop me?

Chase: Because I think you're going to k*ll 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 lets it go on. To make it not make sense I have to push it past the point where it can trick my mind. [He grabs the controls.]

Foreman: Hey, hey! This is a nightmare, you're gonna wake up. It's real, you're k*lling a man!

House: It's also possible I may already be d*ad, but 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: This is not real, therefore it's meaningless. I want meaning. [He s*ab Vince in the bellybutton, and makes a deep incision up to about his stomach. Organs force their way out of his chest. He flatlines quickly. As the team looks on horrified, House walks toward Vince.] Oh, God. [Vince's hand falls down, and out drops a b*llet. House picks it up and clutches it.] Goodbye.

[Cut to House being rushed on a gurney through the halls.]

Foreman: He was sh*t!

Cameron: Twice!

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

House: Hello.

Cameron: It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay.

House: You don't know that. Tell Cuddy I want ketamine.
{"type": "series", "show": "House", "episode": "02x24 - No Reason"}