“Then it’s a stroke,” Foreman said. “Or a TIA.”

“That was the first thing the ER checked. The EEG, blood flow test, and MRI didn’t show any clots or bleeds. There were no signs of vascular problems in the occipital lobe or the eye itself.”

“Head trauma, then. He got hit on the back of the head last night before he went to bed, or even any time over the last couple of days.”

“No trauma in the history, no signs of concussion on the MRI.”

“What about a conversion disorder?” Devi asked.

“Ophthalmology ruled that out too.”

Foreman reached for the file. It looked like he was finally interested. “What about glaucoma? That isn’t usually sudden, but if he ignored early symptoms and didn’t get regular eye exams….”

“Intraocular pressure is normal.”

“If his eyes are fine, and his brain is fine, the optic nerve is the only thing left,” Devi observed. “Neuritis?”

“In both optic nerves at once?” Chase asked skeptically.

“It’s unlikely, but not impossible. Should I check into it?”

“Yeah.” Foreman nodded. “And I’ll review the MRI. Ophthalmology probably missed something.”

Chase was glad the others were leaving--he could stay behind to call House and give him the good news, without arousing suspicion. “And I’ll stay here and…think.”

#

Life with House wasn’t any different now that he was a multi-millionaire. He didn’t buy a diamond-encrusted wheelchair or start laying around the apartment in Armani. He didn’t even bring in a stripper for a celebratory lap dance. Wilson wondered what he was planning to do with the money, but when House didn’t bring up the subject, he decided not to pry.

He was working at the dining room table while House listened to something in his room, when the phone rang.

“House-Wilson residence,” he answered.

“Oh! Hi, Wilson. It’s Chase,” he added unnecessarily.

“What’s up?”

“Is House…um, could I talk to House?”

“Uh…wha--” Wilson thought better of asking what Chase wanted before the first word was even out of his mouth. “Let me ask him,” he answered instead.

As far as he knew, House had talked on the phone exactly once since coming home, the time Wilson had called from work. But Chase seemed to have expected someone else to answer--maybe House was chatting up a storm during the week when Wilson was at work.

He knocked on House’s door. “House? You awake?”

He heard the heavy thunk of the National Library for the Blind tape player turning off. “Did you say something?”

“Yes.”

A pause, then, “What the hell was it?”

“Uh--you have a phone call.”

“Who is it?” House demanded suspiciously.

“Chase.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I’ll talk to him.”

Wilson went in, and found House laying on the air mattress near the bulky tape player. “I’ve got the phone here.”

“Okay, put it on my ear.”

Wilson sat down next to him and held the phone up to his head, prepared to stay there for the duration of the call.

But House slapped his hand clumsily over the receiver, holding it against his head with an awkward grip. “You can go now.”

“Huh?” Wilson said stupidly. “You sure?”

“Do I eavesdrop on your private conversations?”

“No,” Wilson admitted. “Okay, I’ll just be…away.”

#

When he heard the door close behind Wilson, House said, “What’s up?”

“Are you talking to me now?” Chase asked.

“Yes. I hope you have a case, and we didn’t just go through all that for nothing.”

“I do, and it’s a good one. Guy woke up this morning stone blind.”

He went on to list all of the obvious causes and what Ophthalmology and the ER had done to rule them out. No stroke, no head trauma, no visible damage to the eye, internal or external. As House listened, the phone started sliding down his face. “What about hysterical blindness?” he managed to ask when the talking end was still in range of his mouth.

By the time Chase answered, the receiver was too far from his ear for him to make out the answer. He tried to reposition the phone, but it squirted through his fingers and landed on the pillow above his head. “God damn it! Wilson!” he shouted.

The door opened hard. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I dropped the fucking phone.”

“Okay, hold on. Where did it go?” Wilson moved pillows and things around until he found it.

A moment later the phone was pressed to his ear again. “You might as well stay,” he said sourly. The way things were going, he’d just drop the god damn thing again before Wilson got out of the room.

“Okay.” Wilson settled in next to him.

“Chase, you were saying?”

“Ophthalmology ruled out hysterical blindness.”

“And it’s not vascular.” Repeating that probably made him sound like his memory was going, but he was trying to think of a vascular problem the other doctors might have missed. “What about methyl alcohol poisoning?”

“Ahh….The ER did a tox screen, and it was negative for alcohol and all the other usual things.”

“Have you looked at the MRI yourself yet?” He wasn’t sure he trusted the ER or Ophthalmology when it came to brains.

“Foreman’s re-checking it right now.”

“So it’s not his eyes and it’s not his occipital lobe.”

“Devi’s checking his optic nerves,” Chase added.

“Neuritis in both at the same time? Hell of a coincidence.” Not completely impossible, though. “If it’s not the brain, the eyes, or anything in between, then it’s something systemic and he’ll have other symptoms,” House decided. “Take a detailed history--chances are waking up blind made him forget whatever other problems he had, so ask him about everything. When you know what else is wrong with him, come over and tell me.” The phone wasn’t working very well for him--he had to hold his head at a weird angle that hurt his neck, and he could still barely hear what Chase was saying.

“Okay,” Chase said. “Foreman and Devi still don’t know….?”

“Keep it that way. And make sure somebody looks at his whole brain. The other guys probably just looked at the back.”

“Okay,” Chase repeated. “I’ll come over when I have something new for you. Bye.”

House let his head drop back onto the pillows. “Done,” he told Wilson.

“Okay.” The phone went away, and Wilson’s hand settled on his back. “We should get you a headset, if you’re going to be on the phone a lot.” There was the slightest hint of a question in his voice.

That would probably work, and certainly wouldn‘t hurt to try. “Good idea.”

“I have one once in a while,” Wilson agreed. “So Chase is coming over?”

“Uh-huh.” He’d have to get up soon. He wasn’t quite prepared to have one of his employees come visit him in bed.

“Sounds like maybe they have a tough case.”

“Yep.” Sudden onset blindness, and the guy hadn’t even been drinking moonshine. Ophthalmology would have examined his actual eyeballs thoroughly--he trusted them when it came to eyes--so they didn’t have to run down possibilities like undiagnosed glaucoma.

Maybe he was on the right track with methyl alcohol, though. What other toxins could cause blindness? There was something about atropine and eyes…no, that was just blurred vision, unless he was actually putting the stuff in his eyes like an 18^th century Italian courtesan, which seemed unlikely. Quinine, if he’d been in the tropics, and possibly long-term exposure to cyanide or arsenic, but he’d probably have had other symptoms too severe to ignore before the blindness. “Wilson?”

“Yeah?” Wilson’s hand, which had been slowly rubbing his back, stilled.

“I need my magnetic letters, and my ball.”

#

Chase was about to go track down the patient for the detailed history House wanted, when Frank Evans came back to the office. He’d spent the morning showing a prospective donor around the hospital, followed by a 2-hour lunch at the Princeton Faculty Club.

Evans did that kind of thing a lot. He was good at it; people liked him. Chase had liked him, at first, and had tried his best to go on doing so even after it became apparent that Evans’s medical skills were nothing to write home about. But ever since he’d found out that House was coming back, Chase had been losing patience with the now-temporary head of Diagnostics.

So when Evans asked affably, “Where’d Eric and Devi run off to?”

Chase answered sharply, “They’re working on our new case.” He stood up, reaching for his lab coat. “And so am I.”

“Hold on there, tiger. I don’t know anything about a new case.” Evans’s eyes flicked briefly toward the clock.

“It’s an in-house patient,” Chase answered. Evans, as head, was supposed to approve all cases referred in to the department from outside the hospital, but he wasn’t really supposed to turn away patients from other departments within their own hospital. House had never minded doing so, but Evans wasn’t House. “Patient woke up blind this morning. The ER and Ophthalmology were both stumped.” The phrasing implied that they had asked Diagnostics to step in, but Chase was careful not to actually say that, since it hadn’t happened.

Evans frowned. “What about Neurology? Seems like they should get a crack at it before us.”

“Fortunately, we have a neurologist on our staff.” He snapped his lab coat collar pointedly. “And he likes to work occasionally.”

Evans shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Robert.”

“I’m going to take a history. Goodnight,” he added. Evans would doubtless have gone home before he finished, and they both knew it.