Clancy, a seven-year-old boy, comes to the ER suffering from alien abductions and a bloody ass. House and the Cottages eventually discover that some of his cells have DNA that isn't Clancy's, causing his bloody ass and vision problems, and Cameron cleverly figures out a way to isolate them so they can be removed. But Clancy's still hallucinating about aliens, leading everyone to believe he's got some more of that alien DNA in his brain cells they can't find. Everyone except House, that is. He's having a confidence crisis after being wrong about last week's patient and doesn't think they should try anything else on Clancy since they've fixed the bleeding problem that brought him to PPTH in the first place. Fortunately, Cameron (thanks to the triumphant return of Evil Nurse Brenda!) finds out that last week's patient actually was cured by House and threatens to tell House about it if his lack of confidence interferes with his diagnostic abilities. So Cuddy is forced to tell him the truth, and he gets his brilliance back and figures out that Clancy is a chimera and also a way to find out which brain cells are his and which are his absorbed twin brother's. It involves brain surgery, electric probes, and House yelling at small children, so you know it's cool. Clancy goes home totally cured, and House confronts Wilson about lying to him after figuring out that Cuddy didn't do it alone. Wilson continues to be an asshole, and House goes home to his only real friend, his cane. He'll need it now that the ketamine treatment seems to have worn off, the leg pain is back, and the Vicodin is being ingested.
The Pre-Credits Sequence of Doom features a boy, Clancy, who doesn't want to go to bed and his parents who don't want to deal with him, especially when he tells them that he's afraid to sleep because "they" might come and take him again. The parents unsympathetically tell him to go to bed and get over it, so Clancy turns to the comforts of his televsion and is alarmed to see the channels seemingly changing of their own accord. I'd be alarmed too -- those are some crappy shows Clancy's TV is tuning into. Jerry Springer, Blind Date, and "The Weather Station," fly by before the alien forces finally give up on finding something good to watch at this hour (guess they didn't come across that ubiquitous Magic Bullet infomercial that is absolutely captivating) and turn the television off. The house starts to rattle and shake, and then, in a scene you've seen many times before if you've ever watched The X-Files, Clancy's shutters fly open and a bright white light flashes into his room. And this is normally where the eerie X-Files theme music would start up, but since this is a medical mystery show and not a paranormal mystery/weird government conspiracies that I found tiresome and ultimately made me stop watching show, we cut to the morning. Clancy's dad goes to wake him up for school, but Clancy isn't in his room. Instead, he's lying on the front lawn bleeding out of his ass where the alien probe was. Or maybe he's just another kid with an ass bleeding problem on this show. The real question here is why didn't anyone notice the small bleeding child lying on the front lawn for at least a few hours? Those are like the un-nosiest neighbors ever! Cue the eerie House theme music.
House begins the day in his usual post-ketamine coma way: a morning jog. He laces up his sneakers, grabs his iPod shuffle (not one of the fancy new kind, either; House is sorely out of date with iPod technology) and heads out. A few seconds go by, and House comes back inside. We can only see his crotch in this shot, but even Hugh Laurie's crotch has acting talent and you can see the disappointment and dread as his hand grabs his bad thigh. House goes to his closet and searches his coat pockets until he finds one with a bottle of pills in it. He dry swallows a few and stares at his old friend/nemesis, his cane, which is sitting in his closet, patiently waiting to be taken out and used again.
House arrives early to work, and his lack of running gear and post-run sweat is immediately noticed by those two doctors with nothing better to do, Cuddy and Wilson. House deflects their many questions by saying that they're a little late for an intervention, since he is no longer using drugs -- "I am, however, still hooked on phonics." Work for me. Cuddy wants to know why House seems to be favoring his left side, and House responds that this is because he dressed to right yesterday and is dressing to the left today, which "makes all the difference in the world." TMI, but very awesome. I'd use that as a witty retort except that I don't actually have a penis, so it would just be weird. Oh, well. Wilson wants to know why House is taking an elevator this morning when he usually takes the stairs, and those two really need to find hobbies. Do they stand around the lobby and comment on every single person who comes to work like this? Actually, that would be an amazing episode. "Didn't you wear that shirt two days ago, Mary? It's not like you to repeat shirts in the week. What's going on?" "Hey, John, you look like you didn't get much sleep last night. Are you a crack addict?" "Nurse Brenda, I noticed your hair -- " and that would be all they'd get out before Evil Nurse Brenda slit both of their throats. Anyway, Cuddy warns House not to stop his rehab or his leg will start to hurt again.
Once House is out of the scene, Wilson and Cuddy wonder if House's new leg pain is from the ketamine treatment failing (Wilson's theory, which conveniently absolves him of all blame) or because House is depressed after they lied to him last week about Richard the brain damaged vegetable who was instantly cured with a shot of cortisol (Cuddy's theory, which assumes that House has absolutely no failure-coping skills and therefore must be coddled). Cuddy wants to tell House the truth to make her guilt go away, but Wilson insists that she keep quiet or else House, who is now off the Vicodin, will channel his addictive energies into medical puzzles that will somehow lead to him making crazy decisions with no medical proof and killing patients. Better that than making insane leaps in logic that lead you to deceiving your best friend because you've decided you know what's best for him better than he does.
In the Meeting Room, the Cottages run down the medical history of their latest patient. Clancy was conceived via an in vitro fertilization, which had to be done since Clancy's mother's ovaries where stolen when she was abducted by the alien spaceship in Season 2. Oh, sorry -- that's the X-Files again. Foreman makes sure to point out that House is "0 for 1" since returning to work, and Cameron interrupts Foreman to guess that Clancy's bleeding was caused by sexually abuse. The resulting trauma made him believe that aliens did it instead of his father or whoever. Foreman says that the ER ran a rape kit and found no evidence of that. Way to read the file there, Cameron. Chase wants to talk to Clancy directly because he thinks there might be a chance that he really was abducted by aliens. Oh, dear. House doesn't doubt that aliens are out there somewhere, but he does doubt that they'd shove things up our butts, so this theory is thrown out. Lame, House -- what if aliens have mouths where we have buttholes and they're just trying to feed us? You never know with aliens. Foreman thinks that they're looking at a linked bleeding disorder and neurological problem, but House shoots this down too, saying that they have no proof Clancy has a neurological disorder. He writes Clancy's alien hallucinations off as simple nightmares. Only House gets to have incredibly detailed hallucinations, I guess. House orders the Cottages to check Clancy out for a bleeding disorder and leave it at that.
Chase gets to do a bleeding time test on Clancy. While he's waiting to see how long it takes for a cut on Clancy's arm to stop bleeding , Clancy asks him whether the windows of his hospital room are locked to protect him from more alien abductions. Because aliens can't get through the glass or anything. They've mastered high-speed space travel, but when it comes to windows, they're totally stumped. They just fly into them and bounce off, like birds. Nice logic, seven-year-old. Mom immediately tells Clancy not to "bother" Chase with "this stuff," but Chase tells Clancy to keep going. Yeah, kid, and if your story is really good, Chase might even kiss you! Clancy tells him that the aliens put a chip in his neck to track him. They also like to stick something in between his ribs and move around his insides with it. "It hurts," Clancy reports. Well, yeah. Chase checks out the back of Clancy's neck and says, while not-too-subtlely winking at the parents, that he can get the chip out. Clancy is thrilled. Chase pretends to remove a chip and Clancy's smile fades: "I'm seven, not three; all you did was pinch my neck." I'll bet that kid still believes in Santa, though. Chase doesn't have much to say to this except "sorry." Don't lie to kids, Chase.
Foreman and Chase report their findings to House: all tests show that Clancy has no bleeding disorder. House does not like this answer, and decides that Chase just screwed up the bleeding time test and sends Foreman off to do another one that will yield the results he is expecting. Poor Chase: screw up one test and no one ever believes in you again.
In the end, Foreman's bleeding time test turns out much differently than Chase's: Clancy's blood wouldn't clot. So it's a bleeding disorder after all, and Chase sucks at tests. House does not hesitate to point this out to Chase, who retorts that Foreman could have screwed up the test, not him. Foreman says that Chase may have confused the big hand and the little hand on his watch. "Oh, snap!" House That's So Ravens; "Foreman's playing the dozens." Wikipedia tells me that "the dozens" is "an African American oral tradition in which two acquaintances go head-to-head in a contest of often good-natured, ribald 'trash-talk.'" Because on this show, black people can't make friendly jabs without it being labeled as some facet of their culture. As Chase is neither African nor American, there's no way he can win this battle, and House advises him to give up. Cameron decides to actually do some work and says they can just do a bunch of lab tests to find out if Chase or Foreman is correct. Why didn't they do these lab tests in the first place instead of cutting up the kid's arm with a scalpel and seeing how long it took to stop bleeding? At this, Chase jumps up to take his turn at Foreman with a classic yo momma joke: "Yo momma's so fat, when her beeper goes off people think she's backing up." This is accompanied by hand gestures and a facial expression that must be seen to be believed. Foreman reacts with embarrassment for Chase. House, with shock followed by disgust. And Cameron just frowns and thinks about how mean Chase is to make fun of Foreman's sick mother. And all viewers under the age of twenty wonder what a "beeper" is.
I guess Chase got sent out of the room, because we see him going to Clancy's room. Except that Clancy isn't in his bed. His mother, sleeping in a chair to the bed, has no idea where he went, because she kind of hates her son. They rush off to search. Chase tells House about Clancy's disappearance from the new second floor balcony. House devises a clever search plan: "you take Alpha Centauri, Foreman can look on Tatooine, and Cameron can set up an intergalactic checkpoint!" Man, do I wish House wasn't joking. I would love to see Foreman hanging out at that ridiculous bar with all those muppets and the human with the fashionable '70s sideburns even though the movie was supposed to take place a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. At least Star Trek tried to make their sideburns all future-y by making them pointy.
Chase finally finds Clancy in a dark bathroom digging around in his neck to remove that alien chip. As Chase cleans up the blood and insists that there is no chip in Clancy's neck, he finds a piece of metal buried in Clancy's neck, which we get to see a nice close-up of thanks to the less and less frequently used Magic School Bus Cam.
Later, House returns to the Meeting Room with a small vial containing our alien chip. He gravely informs the crew that the results came back, and the lab cannot identify the metal. "It might not even be terrestrial," he says. "Really?" Chase asks, his fingers itching to type this information into the "Aliens Are Real" internet forum he frequents. "No, you idiot! It's titanium," House snaps. Chase is both embarrassed and disappointed. House says that it's probably a piece of the surgical pin Clancy had inserted when he broke his arm a few years ago. The pin was supposedly removed, but apparently a piece of it broke off (even though titanium is supposed to be really strong and not break) and somehow floated from his arm to the back of his neck. Chase highly doubts this, but House likes the improbably broken titanium piece floating around Clancy's body idea better than the alien chip one, so that's the end of it. We shall hear no more about this mysterious titanium chip. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.
House also takes this moment to stumble and clutch his bad leg, which Cameron notices. She asks House whether he's okay, somehow expecting that this time, House will actually give her a genuine answer unlike every single other time. House brushes her off and says that since Clancy was able to cut a hole into his neck and not bleed to death, he must not have a bleeding disorder after all. "Foreman screwed up!" Chase happily reports.
So while a nurse draws Clancy's blood inside his room, his parents stand outside and demand to know why the doctors keep cutting Clancy up. Chase explains that they've gotten inconsistent test results so far, so "one of them must be wrong." "Or two of them," Foreman unnecessarily adds. Because your ego is so important that it must be protected at the expense of making a patient's parents think the hospital staff is completely retarded. Drop it, Foreman. Fortunately, Clancy's parents are totally oblivious and think that Clancy's problem is purely psychological, because psychological problems can apparently make your ass bleed these days.
And where's Cameron during all of this? Why, she's hanging out in the Clinic -- with Evil Nurse Brenda! Hooray! Welcome back, Evil Nurse Brenda. I'm glad you got fired from that other hospital. Cameron says that she has time for one last case, and Evil Nurse Brenda sneers that Cameron must be spending extra time in the Clinic to get away from her boss, "the Artist Formerly Known As Gimp." Oh, now Evil Nurse Brenda's playing the dozens! You know, I wouldn't mind seeing House and Evil Nurse Brenda hook up. I think they could be everything to each other that House and Stacy were supposed to be. Cameron goes to take a file, but Evil Nurse Brenda puts her hand on it and says it's Cuddy case. Cameron insists on taking it anyway, and Evil Nurse Brenda doesn't protest. I think this is because she wanted Cameron to get that case all along, which is also why she put it on the counter right in front of Cameron where she'd be sure to take it.
Cameron's shocked when she sees who her Clinic patient is: it's Richard, the Artist Formerly Known as Lump from last episode, who is now remarkably looking (semi-)upright and speaking and everything! Well, not everything, as you'll soon see. Cameron just goes, "Oh my god! You're...how...you're okay!" That's something you want to hear from your doctor. That's like when I got into my first choice college and my guidance counselor was so shocked that she almost fell over. Thanks for the confidence, Mrs. N. Fortunately, Richard doesn't remember Cameron at all from when he was a patient just last week. He tells her that he had Addison's disease and once he got some cortisol, his "brain turned on like a switch." He says that he's surprised Cameron didn't know, and she says that she doesn't see how she could have, since this must have been done at a different hospital. She asks him which one, but he interrupts her (I guess he hasn't recovered the politeness part of his brain) to say that he wants to have sex with his wife. "Oh!" Cameron responds, and Jennifer Morrison delivered this line perfectly. I really like her now, although I still don't like how Cameron gets so much screen time and Foreman and Chase stand around in the background and occasionally do a lab test or make a smart remark. Cameron asks Richard if he wants Viagra. "A bucketful would be nice," Richard leers. Ew, he's weird. I liked him better when he couldn't talk. At this point, Cuddy enters the room, sees Cameron with Richard, and makes the perfect "I am so busted" face. I'm happy because I totally called Cameron finding out about this last week.
The women take it to Cuddy's office, where Cuddy tries to excuse her inexcusable actions by saying that keeping the truth about Richard from House was to give him a necessary "glimmer of humility." "Why does he need that? Because other people have that?" Cameron asks. Hey, if other people can have intact thigh muscles and not House, then I don't see why he has to have the glimmer of humility everyone else has, too. "He needs to be less reckless," Cuddy explains. Cameron says that Cuddy accomplished her mission, then, as House is now dismissing symptoms and thinking of easy explanations for his patients instead of his usual method of diagnosing the patient with something ridiculous and trying to cure it without confirmation and then realizing he's wrong when the patient starts dying. Also, Cameron says, House's leg hurts. Cuddy asks how much, which clues Cameron into the fact that Cuddy thinks her actions are making House's leg hurt, which I still don't really understand by the way. Then again, I didn't understand how ketamine could make House's thigh muscle regenerate, which is the only way I could see him being able to run and skateboard. So, whatever. Cameron makes a pouty face and starts for the door. Cuddy asks her not to tell House the truth until she does a PET scan on House's leg to see whether his pain is from the ketamine wearing off or because he's sad about being wrong. If it's the latter, Cuddy will tell him the truth about Richard herself.
Chase spends more time with Clancy, who's upset that his parents think he's crazy. Chase assures him that once they figure out what's wrong with Clancy and fix it, the aliens won't bother him again. Unless the aliens are real, in which case Chase has lied to Clancy again! At this point, Clancy's arm starts to change color, and Chase's hands turn into alien hands. Clancy gasps and his monitors go wild.
Chase tells House that they've got Clancy in the ICU recovering from his hypertensive crisis. They enter the lab, where Foreman and Cameron finish the tests and say Clancy tested positive for the bleeding disorder Von Willebrand's disease. Chase says no way -- he saw Clancy's blood clot on two separate occasions. Foreman just shakes his head and looks all smug and superior that he was right after all. "Maybe [Clancy] cheated!" Cameron says. Uh oh! Watch out, Clancy! Cameron HATES cheaters. She'll kill you while you sleep for that. Chase snorts that kids are always cheating on their bleeding time tests. House says that he believes Cameron is trying to make a metaphor, just like he used to do when he was a good doctor. Cameron explains that Clancy's blood might only clot normally during hypertensive crises, like when he was telling Chase about being abducted and cutting his neck open. "Sounds like a cheat to me!" Cameron says, all proud of herself. "Yeah yeah yeah, we get it," House retorts, all pissy because he didn't think of the answer first. Now they just need to figure out why a seven-year-old is having hypertensive crises.
Chase asks Clancy's parents to sign a consent form for a transesophogeal echocardiogram so they can look in his heart and find out what's wrong with it. They sign it, and Chase decides to step up for Clancy. He tells them that their son is worried that his parents think he's crazy. Mom scoffs, "Well, isn't he?" How supportive. At the very least, the parents should at least recognize that Clancy was right about the thing being in his neck, even if it wasn't an alien chip. His stories are totally baseless. How sad for Clancy that he doesn't get to have parents with a sense of humor, imagination, or even a basic like of children. Chase tells the mom that there are a lot of non-crazy explanations for what's wrong with Clancy, and that he needs to think they believe in him, even if they don't. I don't know why Clancy's parents tried to so hard to have their son with the in vitro stuff when they don't seem to like him at all. This whole episode, they've acted like the kid is just a burden and an annoyance.
House and the Cottages check out the TEE results on his computer monitor. Clancy's heart looks clean, but House doesn't think you can see anything clearly enough without hi-def and demands to see the TEE on HD where the pixels won't be the size of Legos. This scene has been brought to you by HD companies and dealers everywhere, who remind you that when you're looking at a heart valve, nothing beats the crisp, clear quality of an HD monitor.
House and the crew sneak into an office with an HD monitor, and House is thrilled with its picture. He asks Foreman to steal it for him. This scene has definitely not been brought to you by the NAACP, who reminds you that white people steal stuff, too. The Cottages don't see anything on the perfect HD monitor, so House says that they'll need a bigger screen, because he's determined to find something wrong with Clancy's heart no matter what.
Cut to the crew sitting in the HD theater that PPTH has marked for demolition in order to make room for more balconies. The Cottages fail to see the point of this, insisting that Clancy's heart looks perfectly fine. Chase thinks they'll be watching the TEE in an IMAX theater before House will admit that he's wrong. Financial consideration provided by IMAX, who remind you that if you want to see breathtaking views of Antartica, your local IMAX theater is the place to go. But if you want to see a defect in some kid's heart valve, IMAX probably isn't necessary. Anyway, I'm sure the ob/gyn lounge has its own IMAX theater, so they may very well be going there .
Finally, House spots something: the left side of Clancy's heart valve isn't moving. Cameron pauses the image to check it out, and House yells at her, since he obviously needs the image to be moving to spot which part of it isn't. Hey, at least Cameron was awake. Chase and Foreman are in the back napping and cracking jokes and having bad attitudes. Cameron unpauses the image, and House demands a laser pointer. Cameron reminds him that he doesn't have one. "Well, why not? Who's gonna take us seriously if we don't have a laser pointer?" House asks. And this scene has been brought to you by laser pointer manufacturers of America, who remind you that when you want to be taken seriously in the business world, a laser pointer is mandatory. So House has to physically walk to the screen and point out the frozen left side, wincing in pain as he does so. He finds a collection of myocytes -- heart cells -- that aren't moving like they're supposed to. He orders the Cottages to get those myocytes out of Clancy.
While House is waiting for the Cottages, Cuddy stops by his office. He tries to deflect her questions about his leg with comments about the pornography he claims to be looking at on his computer. That doesn't work, so he starts commenting on her boobs. "They're firmer," House over-observes. "It's called an underwire," Cuddy replies humorlessly. This scene has been brought to you by underwire bras, who remind you that when you want your boobs to look bigger and tighter, an underwire bra can work miracles. House points out that pregnancy could also make one's boobs firmer: "Looks like those puppies are going into the dairy business." Oh, ew, House. But also, hee. Mostly ew, though. At least he didn't call them "love apples" this time. Finally, Cuddy is forced to definitively tell House that she isn't pregnant. Oh, please let this be true. Please please please. Also, Cuddy wants to do a PET scan on House's brain to see if his leg pain is coming back for reals. He insists that his leg is fine. "You're in denial," Cuddy says. "No, I'm not!" House mock-cries. Cuddy sits on his desk and makes her sympathy face, so House has to get serious. He assures her that he would do something if he thought his leg was getting worse. Conveniently, his pager goes off and he has to leave. I think he has a special button he presses on that thing to make it go off when he wants to get out of uncomfortable situations. On his way out of the office, he stumbles on his bad leg and cries out in pain. Cuddy Guiltface rushes over to catch him, and he laugh in her face that she fell for his little trick. Or was it?!
Chase shows House Clancy's DNA and the DNA of the heart they just biopsied. "That is impossible," House says. But after two more tests, the results have been confirmed. "The genes from Clancy's myocytes don't match the genes from the rest of his body," Cameron helpfully explains to those of us who can't read DNA. "Alien DNA!" Chase helpfully explains to those of us who still think we're watching The X-Files.
So what's the differential diagnosis for all this? Foreman suggests UV radiation mutated Clacy's genes, although House points out that Clancy would have to be exposed to so much UV radiation that he'd look like George Hamilton. Does this mean that we can look forward to George Hamilton growing an extra arm or developing some other mutant power? I hope so. Cameron suggests exposure to some chemical then tires of this exercise and starts asking House whether his leg hurts since he's leaning on the table and looking generally pained. House tells her to stay on topic. Chase suggests going in and cutting the weirdo myocytes out of Clancy's heart and then calling it a day, but Foreman and Cameron point out that they can't be sure that those are the only cells in Clancy's body with alien DNA. But how do they find the other alien DNA cells? Well, Cameron suggests "tagging" them by creating an antibody to the alien DNA's unique protein signature and then flushing the antibody throughout Clancy's body, causing the affected cells to "light up like lightbulbs," Cameron finishes, ably creating the metaphor House requested.
Wilson and Cuddy are hangin' out at the new hotspot, the second floor balcony. Cameron comes running up, shouting that they have to tell House the truth, and I'm guessing that the acoustics of the open-air lobby have now informed the rest of the hospital about this as well. Cuddy wants to figure out "another plan," and Wilson admonishes her for using the word "plan" as it implies that they're plotting against House. Which they totally are. Cameron's had enough of this and says that she's going to tell House the truth. "No, you're not," Wilson snots. Shut up, Wilson. Cameron Baldricks that they'd better come up with a "cunning plan" and storms off, leaving Wilson and Cuddy to make ashamed faces at each other. And with guilt comes anger: "she's not nearly as delightful as she thinks she is," Cuddy grumbles.
Chase wheels Clancy into the MRI of DOOOM. Foreman and Cameron talk about their boss in the booth while checking out Clancy's insides on the computer screen and finding various alien DNA deposits, thanks to that instantly-created antibody. Foreman needles Cameron about House's condition; before, she was saying that House being wrong about his last case threw him and made his leg pain come back, but now she's denying it. And Foreman knows Cameron well enough to know that she wouldn't change her mind unless she knew something. He wants to know what it was. Cameron tells him about Wilson and Cuddy's little humility lesson. Foreman will do absolutely nothing with this information.
While the surgeons work on Clancy, Chase tells his parents that Clancy should bejust fine after all those alien DNA cells have been removed. In fact, he'll be even better, as some of them were in Clancy's retinas and causing him to need glasses. Now he won't.
Wilson invites House out for a run. He even gives him some Vicodin as a motivator, which House rejects. Wilson would rather dope House up on Vicodin than have to admit that he was wrong to lie to House. Ugh. Wilson accuses him of being in denial that his ketamine treatment is wearing off and says the sore leg could just be a regular old sore muscle. House says that it's his leg and he knows what's going on with it better than anyone. "You're not always right, House. You've proven that lately," Wilson says. Oh, Wilson, you dick. You nasty little troll. Unforgivable!
Wilson's insults do have the desired effect, as House is seen running on a treadmill in the rehab room. He stops with a cry of pain and then searches through his gym bag for some precious, precious Vicodin. Uh oh.
Meanwhile, over in Clancy's bedroom, aliens are sucking the boy out through the window.
Over in reality, Clancy is having a seizure. Chase tends to him, while Clancy's dad yells at him in panic and desperation: "I thought you got it all!" "Yeah, yell at me. That'll fix your kid," Chase mutters. Maybe save those comments for your inner monologue, okay, Chase? Mouthing off at your patient's loved ones isn't going to help him either.
After the commercial, Chase has apparently gotten Clancy's seizure under control and the Cottages meet in House's office to figure out what's still wrong with their patient. Foreman thinks that Clancy has a neurological problem after all and House was wrong when he said there wasn't one, but Chase defends House, saying that the brain scan was totally clean. House tells them to shoot the kid up with those antibodies again, this time using an IV and being sure to penetrate the blood-brain barrier.
Back into the MRI of DOOOM Clancy goes. But his brain is still clean of alien DNA.
House and the Cottages purposefully walk down the hall and argue about the results. Foreman insists that the problem is neurological, since all the symptoms point to that, but Cameron believes in her test results that say the brain is fine. House believes in taking a seat to get off his sore leg for a while. He thinks that the antibody isn't working on the brain cells, since brain cells are structurally different and have different proteins. Chase asks how they can find the alien cells, then. House limps off to think about this and bounce his giant tennis ball around, pace, and read the Whiteboard in a House Thinking Montage.
House emerges from his room and tells the Cottages to send Clancy home. They cured his blood disorder, stabilized his blood pressure, and removed all the cells they could find. There's nothing left to do. The seizures could be epilepsy or something unrelated and the alien abduction is probably a nightmare. "Send him home," House orders, and leaves the room. The Cottages stare at each other, and then Cameron marches off.
Cuddy finds House in what appears to be the Fox Lot's Galaxy Parking Garage, revving up his motorcycle. I guess Cameron threatened to tell on Cuddy if she didn't tell House the truth herself. Which is better than Cameron tattling to House, so good on her. Cuddy and her string of pearls ask House why he's giving up on Clancy when he usually keeps trying until he figures out what's wrong with his patients. House points out that he was wrong on his last case and he's sulking about it. Cuddy tells him to forget about the last case, and House is a little suspicious as to why Cuddy's suddenly so into this particular case, going so far as to give him permission to remove Clancy's legs and cut his eyes out if it'll make House feel better. That's right, Clancy: it's worth losing your limbs and eyes if it makes Cuddy feel better about lying to House! Cuddy's willingness to let House do whatever he wants this week after refusing to let him do a simple cortisol injection last week does not escape House's notice. "Either you're hormonal or you're guilt-ridden," he says. And since she's not pregnant (please please please), she must have done something wrong. Cuddy looks tortured, then finally tells House the truth about Richard and his Addison's. "You were right," she finishes. House starts telling her unborn and hopefully non-existent child that its mother is a liar, which is why she couldn't get a husband to father it. Cruel, but not entirely undeserved. And then House makes his trademark Breakthrough Case-Solving Realization.
House walks back to the Meeting Room, where the Cottages are waiting for him, as they apparently never get to go home even when their patient is supposed to be fine and about to be discharged. House says that they assumed incorrectly when they thought Clancy was "a person." "What if he's two persons?" House asks. Cameron doesn't get it. House explains with the help of the Magic School Bus Cam: Clancy was conceived via in-vitro fertilization, which increases the risk of twins. "But he doesn't have a twin!" Cameron says. Ah, but wait -- sometimes, very, very early in the pregnancy, one twin will absorb the other and make a chimera -- one person with both his and his sibling's DNA. But even unborn siblings fight with each other, and Clancy and his unborn twin aren't getting along. They have to figure out a way to find and remove the evil brother cells in Clancy's brain. House wants to do this by stimulating Clancy's brain into thinking he's being abducted, causing the good cells to light up and the bad ones to stay dark. They'll cut out the bad cells in a process House calls "really cool brain surgery."
Chase informs poor Clancy of this in the middle of his brain surgery. While House stimulates various parts of Clancy's brain with an electric probe, causing poor Clancy to flail his arm uncontrollably, Foreman watches a monitor to see where House is in Clancy's brain. Chase keeps showing him flash cards and making him identify them. Cameron is somewhere else, apparently. She never gets to be involved in surgeries. She does get to be involved in everything else, though, so I think it evens out. House finally zaps the alien abduction hallucination center of Clancy's brain. Clancy tells them he sees the light and the aliens are coming for him. But the hallucination isn't showing up on the brain scan. House orders them to give him more electricity, which Chase warns against, saying Clancy's blood pressure is high enough as it is. "Riding the short bus is better than not breathing," House says, although I think he would've disagreed with that last week when he was all about giving his patients the best quality of life possible. When House wants to increase the voltage a second time, Chase tells him that is sure to cause brain damage. House relents and tries to stimulate Clancy's brain by being his usual horrible self and yelling at the kid that the aliens are coming to take him away from his parents and torture him. It works. Clancy sees aliens, and Foreman sees the bad cells. They get rid of them, and Chase tells Clancy that he'll be normal again. Well, except for the fact that his twin brother is a now a bunch of random cells in a specimen jar.
stop is Wilson's office. House tells Wilson all about the horrible thing Cuddy did to him with Richard. "That doesn't sound like her," Wilson says, totally not getting that he's busted and he might as well give it up already. Props to Cuddy for never letting on that this was all Wilson's idea, though. She's a much better and more loyal friend than Wilson is. House asks Wilson directly if he put Cuddy up to this, and Wilson leans back in his chair and asks him what Cuddy told him. House says that he can tell everything he needs to through Wilson's body language, and asks Wilson whether he was trying to make House re-evaluate everything and turn into Cameron by making him think he got the last case wrong. "Something like that," Wilson says breezily, still not looking the least bit apologetic. He says he didn't want House to know that he managed to solve a case with absolutely not medical proof because then House would think he was God and be in for an even bigger fall when he eventually screwed up in a most un-godlike fashion.. "God doesn't have a limp," House sneers, and leaves. Wilson has the decency to look contrite when there's no one around to see him.
House limps home. He takes his cane out of the closet and walks with it, either because he's given up on the rehab or because he knows there's no use continuing it. Or maybe he's going to use it to give Wilson a few well-deserved cracks on the head. Either way, I'm glad to see it again. Hello, old friend.