“Oh.” House thought for a moment. “So what do you want?”

“Do you have any ideas on where we should look? Devi’s doing breast and pelvic exams, and asking about risk factors and family history while she’s at it, but we have no symptoms that aren’t accounted for, and the original history didn’t turn up any major risk factors.”

Checking for breast, cervical, and ovarian cancers was making good use of the odds, since they were fairly common in women of the patient’s age. Lung cancer was demographically likely, but they’d done a chest x-ray to find the granulomas, so it was already ruled out. “Nothing’s springing to mind,” he said. “I’ll think about it, but it seems like needle in a haystack time. After the pelvic, try an abdominal ultrasound; that’ll let you check a lot of organs at once, and if you see anything suspicious, you can MRI it. Maybe MRI her head, too. Brain tumors are sometimes asymptomatic for a long time.” He wasn’t happy with either of those suggestions, but he didn’t have anything better.

“Okay. We’ll just have to look everywhere we can think of.” Chase sounded disappointed. Wishing House could pull another rabbit out of his hat?

Or maybe he was thinking that if House were back at work already, Evans wouldn’t be able to stand in the way of the treatment. What if he broke the news of his Super-Secret Plan now, instead of waiting until he had a few successful cases under his belt? Would she agree to start the treatment without waiting for proof?

Maybe, but probably not. Putting a person with active infections on immunosuppressant drugs was exactly the kind of risky procedure she’d often forbidden him to try, even before. And now, when she’d have to at least consider the possibility that he wasn’t entirely compos mentis--well. “Telling her it’s my diagnosis won’t help.”

“Okay,” Chase said again, his tone giving no clues as to whether that was what he’d been wondering about.

“Keep looking. Ask Wilson if he has any ideas.”

#

“What?” Laura asked. “You’re saying I have cancer, but you don’t know where it is?” She appeared very groggy from the pain medication, and spoke slowly.

“That’s right,” Devi answered. “The type of pemphigus you have is what’s called a paraneoplastic syndrome--it’s occurring as part of your body’s attempt to respond to the cancer.”

“But how can you know that I have cancer if you don’t know what kind or where it is?”

“Because you have a paraneoplastic syndrome, which you can’t have without cancer. I know, it’s kind of strange. But we need to locate the tumor so that we can start treatment.” She moved on quickly. “We’ll start with a gynecological exam--your records show that it’s been more than two years since you’ve had one, so you’re due for one anyway.”

“I hate getting those,” Laura said slowly, but after a moment, she nodded. “Go ahead.”

#

With the case solved, House turned his mind back to the important matter of getting back at Wilson. Even though he’d officially forgiven him for making him go through with the dental procedure the day before, if Wilson had any sense, he’d know it wouldn’t end there. “Did you mean it about not going into Wilson’s room?” he asked Clarence.

“Yes.”

“Not even for a hilarious prank?”

“Not even then.”

“Wilson will think it’s funny.”

“Sorry, Doc.” Clarence sounded genuinely apologetic, for all the good that did him.

“I guess you’ll have some unreasonable objection to replacing his shampoo with hair remover, too.”

“You guessed right. Do you still want to go for coffee?”

House recognized Clarence’s attempt to distract him for what it was, but agreed anyway. “Okay, if you want to.”

Clarence put shoes on his feet and loaded him into the wheelchair. “Do you want your blanket?”

House hadn’t had to become Dr. Amoeba at the coffee shop for a couple of weeks now, but he thought they’d better take it, just in case. “Yes. What about bright pink hair dye?”

Clarence paused. “You want to dye your hair?”

“No, in Wilson’s shampoo,” he explained.

“Sorry, I think that’s going too far. What about Saran wrap over the toilet seat? That one’s pretty funny.”

“Sure, if you like great big honking clichés,” House scoffed. “And it’s temporary hair dye,“ he added as Clarence steered the chair outside. “Washes out in eight shampoos.”

“We could put a funny picture on his bathroom mirror,” Clarence offered. “A woman, or a guy in clown makeup.”

House thought some more. “This one would be a lot of work, but totally worth it. We go on the internet and buy copies of all of his shoes in different sizes. One day we replace his shoes with ones a size smaller, and the day after that, with ones two sizes smaller. Then on the third day, we go up to two sizes bigger. He won’t have any idea what’s going on.”

Clarence was silent for a moment, then said, “I think he’d notice all the packages coming.”

“We could have them sent to your house,” House said hopefully.

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how about we sew all of his underwear together?” Clarence didn’t say no right away, so he added, “So when he goes to take out a pair, he gets a long string of them.”

“I said I wasn’t going through his private things,” Clarence reminded him.

House digested that. “Okay, then, what about we sew the necks of all of his shirts closed? Just the pullover ones, I guess.”

“What’s all this we? I don’t think you’re going to be doing much sewing,” Clarence pointed out, parking the wheelchair and setting the brakes.

“I’ll be participating in a supervisory capacity,” House said archly. “I want a cappuccino and one of those almond cookies.” Since Clarence wasn’t impressed with the clothing pranks, House kept thinking while he was waiting for his snack. After munching half his cookie and drinking some cappuccino, he said, “Okay, I think I’ve got a winner. We fill his bedroom with popcorn. Or Styrofoam packing peanuts.”

“Balloons,” said Clarence.

“What?”

“Popcorn would take about a year to clean up, but I guess we could do balloons.”

House considered. “Helium balloons. And the room has to be really full, floor to ceiling. Hundreds of balloons.”

“If we can get the helium delivered, okay,” Clarence agreed,

“Deal.”

#

Cuddy found herself being painfully reminded of House when Dr. Chase charged into her office and announced gleefully, “We found the tumor!”

She had to look down at her desk for a moment and swallow hard before she could say, “Congratulations. Where was it?”

“Left ovary.”

She nodded. “Fine. Start the treatment. Is Dr. Evans….?”

“I think he’s taking a long lunch.”

That was probably for the best. “Good. Send him to me if he has any objections.”

Chase left. The Diagnostics department was a lot less trouble now than it had been in the old days, but was it possible that she’d missed the old excitement? Maybe if his old team were finally growing ready to step into his shoes….

No. It wouldn’t be the same. House had been one of a kind.

She had been planning on eating lunch at her desk, but decided that if Frank Evans, of all people, was going to be out all afternoon, she deserved a half-hour. Picking up the phone, she dialed Dr. Wilson’s extension.

#

“Hi, James, do you want to get together for lunch?” Cuddy asked.

“Uh…” When the phone rang, Wilson had half-expected it to be House again, so it took him a moment to catch up. “Okay, yeah. You mean now?”

“If you’re free.”

House would have said, No, you moron, how about next Tuesday? “Sure. I’m free until one.”

“I’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”

Lisa got to the cafeteria a few minutes after he did, but she refrained from cutting in line, so he went off to secure a table while she was still making her selections. He wondered why she’d invited him today. If it was hospital business she would have said so, but her casual lunch invitations always occurred when she had a personal problem she wanted to discuss. Not that he minded, of course--Lisa was an old friend.

He’d just tasted his soup when Cuddy took her seat. “Is that soup new? It looks good.”

“I think they first had it last week,” he answered. “It is good.”

“I’ll have to try it next time they have it.” They ate in silence for a few minutes. “How’s House doing?”

Wilson dropped his spoon. “House?” What had she heard? Surely House would give him a little warning before he told Cuddy that he wanted to come back to work, right? Maybe Chase had let something slip. That couldn’t be good. House would be furious, and the mistake might even put the plan itself in jeopardy.

“Yes, House,” she repeated. “Anything new?”

Wilson examined her tone carefully for signs that she knew damn well there was something new, but found none. “He’s okay,” he answered cautiously. “He went to the dentist yesterday. It didn’t go too badly.”

She frowned. “Really? How….”

“They anesthetized him,” Wilson explained.

“Oh. I guess that helps.”

“I don’t see how he could have had his mouth worked on otherwise.” Wilson remembered belatedly that House was anxious that Cuddy not see him as an invalid. “But he handled the anesthesia really well. He was up and about by early afternoon.” He decided he didn’t have to mention the part where House fell asleep while working on a diagnosis--particularly since Cuddy wasn’t supposed to know he was doing any diagnosing.

“I’m glad he’s okay. I was just thinking about him today, because Dr. Chase has a patient with infected skin sores, and he wants to knock out her immune system.” She shrugged. “It reminded me of him.”

Fortunately, Wilson had just taken a bite of soup. He chewed it far more than was reasonable for soup to give himself time to devise a plausible reaction. He couldn’t tell her it reminded him of House because it was House. When he finally swallowed he said weakly, “Yeah.”