By Sara M
The first House of the new year fails to excite when House and Stacy are stranded at the Plot Contrivanceville International Airport with nothing to do except share a hotel room and talk about their complicated relationship for the umpteenth time. Since Stacy's had a fight with her husband, she seems to think it's okay to put the moves on House, as long as a strange Indian-food analogy is used. They kiss, but are interrupted by the Cottages, who are back at home trying to cure the Patient of the Week. Fletch is your typical edgy, danger-loving reporter -- complete with silly reporter name -- until he collapses and gets aphasia, followed by organ failure. Lost without their fearless leader, it takes the Cottages a good forty-five minutes to figure out that Fletch only tries to tell them something about his condition when his wife is out of the room. Via speakerphone, House figures out that Fletch is secretly bipolar and tried to cure himself to become the kind of man he thought his wife would want. He went to South America for an experimental brain surgery that didn't work and left him with a case of cerebral malaria. Case closed. House and Stacy's relationship issues will live to bore me another week, and the Cottages get some screen time of their own to spend bickering with each other in some of the more enjoyable scenes of this episode.
I was so close to writing ten pages of nonsense words and sending it off to Wing Chun with the excuse that this episode was so off of House's usual greatness that I came down with a case of aphasia myself, but just writing the blurbs in aphasia language was probably more exhausting that doing them in English, so I gave up. ["It's probably just as well, since I have no idea how I would edit that. 'She wrote "strawberry," but I'm sure she meant "stilts"'?" -- Wing Chun] Sorry, aphasiacs! You'll just have to run the recap through the English-Aphasic translator at www.babelfish.aphasia.stringcheese/modulator_racoons again.
A large banner wishes Greta a happy retirement, thereby putting the odds on her being our latest patient of the week at 3:2. A rugged-looking man, in a slow and flat tone that shows us all why he's not an on-air personality, tells the assembled office party a story from his danger reporter days about how Greta, his managing editor, was there for him when the police wanted him to give up a source, although not so much that she wouldn't stop him from going to jail. Kind of like that episode of Murphy Brown, except probably not as funny, although I'm sure Greta is much more entertaining than that annoying Miles. Now that Fletch is forty-five, he exposits that he's given up the life of a hard-boiled reporter from a '40s noir movie (seriously, his name is "Fletch"? Why not just call him "Scoop Whitley," throw a fedora with a press card in the hatband on his head, and get it over with?), and all the drinking and drugging that apparently went with it, for a new life with his new wife, and then toasts Greta. Great toast there, Mr. Self-Absorbed. The crowd applauds, and Greta smiles shyly. She seems nice. Too bad she's doomed to become the patient of the week. Or maybe not, as Fletch finishes his speech with a truly amazing fall to the ground, smacking his face on a nearby desk on his way down. Wife and Greta run to his side and revive him. Fletch wakes up and announces that he "flung the investment." Everyone laughs nervously. Fletch gets to his feet and repeats the nonsense words. No one is laughing anymore. Fletch seems confused at the reaction. "Why can sign?" he asks. Greta goes to call 911. "It's proficient," Fletch says, sounding annoyed. "Why disqualify the rush? I'm tabled." He's apparently unaware of the difference between what he thinks he's saying and what he's actually saying. Unless Greta comes down with some flesh-eating bacteria problem on her way to the phone, it looks like she won't be the patient of the week after all.
In an unwelcome show of continuity, Foreman's still in Asshole Supervisor mode, his labcoat nowhere to be seen and his feet kicked up on the desk. Cuddy walks in for a surprise visit, and Foreman immediately straightens up and tries to look like he wasn't just totally acting like House (except for the 'being able to put both legs up on the desk' part). Cuddy needs a referral to the best diagnostic department in the area that isn't PPTH, since House is off in Baltimore (the Baltimore in Siberia if those ads about House being "thousands of miles away" are to be believed), and Cuddy doesn't have any faith in his underlings. Foreman bristles at this -- as well he should, since Cuddy is being really insulting here -- but lists off some names for her before he goes blind from being subjected to the ugliness that is Cuddy's latest poor shirt decision: a fuchsia-colored mock turtleneck sweater with a flower growing out of it just above Cuddy's right boob. It's so ugly that even weeds won't touch it, allowing the flower to bloom in all its tacky glory. Why does Lisa Edelstein's wardrobe only come in either Prim 'N Proper Puritan or Plunging Neckline That's Probably Not Appropriate For An Office Environment? Isn't there a happy medium somewhere? And maybe we can stop with the bright fuchsia, too. When Foreman finds out that the patient has a neurological problem resulting from a fall, he's even more offended that Cuddy doesn't think he can handle the job, and tells her to call his referrals herself in case he says something "stupid," like any doctor in the county or even the state would be surprised and offended by anything someone in House's office said to him. Somehow, this convinces Cuddy just to give Foreman the case. He grins in self-satisfaction.
Chase gives Fletch an exam, uselessly asking him questions that Fletch can't answer unless "they displaced my function" is Thrill-Seeking Reporterese for "stop shining that light in my eye." Wifey tries to supply the answers for him, saying that her husband has been clean and sober for a year now, which we all know will prove to be untrue because no one on this show ever has a functional and open relationship with anyone else. Fletch is still confused as to why he's getting all this medical attention, since apparently no one has clued him in about anything yet, despite his being at PPTH for quite a while. Foreman explains to Wifey that her husband has aphasia, meaning that while he thinks he's speaking normally, his brain is giving him the wrong words to say. "Tans or glisten!" Fletch says, still not understanding that there's anything wrong with him. Or maybe he suddenly cured himself and is asking for a trip to the nearest tanning salon to fix his pasty complexion. Foreman gives Fletch a pad to write his name and draw a picture on. Fletch laughs at how easy the assignment is until he realizes that he can't do it. He also has agraphia, the written version of aphasia, meaning that he's pretty much screwed, communication-wise. How convenient for the episode title. Foreman figures out that Fletch can, with some effort, answer yes or no questions, which doesn't really make sense to me. If he can say yes or no, shouldn't he be able to say other things, too? Greta runs in to tell the Cottages what she believes is the "right story" -- Fletch didn't get the aphasia from tripping and knocking head on a desk; he collapsed "out of the blue."
It's snowing in Baltimore, thanks to the presence of Stacy the Ice Queen, who brings freezing temperatures and frozen faces wherever she goes. She's here to advise House for his trip to meet with some Medicaid billing review officer guy, even though she's supposed to be a constitutional lawyer and you wouldn't think this kind of thing would be her specialty. ["Which returns us to the question of why a constitutional lawyer would be a hospital's house counsel, and the fact that she wouldn't." -- Wing Chun] The billing guy enters the room, and Stacy manages to smile in order to ingratiate them to him, while House refuses to stand and shake the guy's hand in favor of playing with his cane like an angry little boy in time-out.
The Cottages attempt to do a differential diagnosis without their fearless leader. Foreman thinks they should concentrate on something that would make Fletch collapse and cause the aphasia, like a stroke, while Chase the Doubter wonders why they're taking Greta's word for it that Fletch collapsed when thirty other witnesses say he simply tripped. Surely Greta is LYING to them to try to cover her ass in case Fletch sues her for having brain-scrambling office equipment. Cameron makes tea and tries to be agreeable. Chase decides that they should test Fletch for drugs, and goes on his merry way to do that until Foreman calls him back, saying that they aren't done with the differential. "You're not my boss," Chase snots. Foreman says that he's House's boss, and that House is Chase's boss, so there you go. Chase protests that Foreman supposed to supervise House, not them, and Cameron gets her dig in with a line about how Foreman's there to make sure House doesn't do anything crazy that will save a patient's life. Foreman does a double take at her uncharacteristic sassiness, and seems dismayed to have lost someone he thought of as an ally in this argument. "Someone has to be in charge," he protests. Cameron, who has apparently never had to endure the frustration of working on a group project during her school days, thinks they should be able to have a "discussion among peers." Cameron also probably thinks that the problems in the Middle East can be resolved with hugs.
Over in distant Baltimore, Medicaid Guy has a problem with House's prescription of Viagra for someone with a heart condition, especially since said patient is a woman who I'm guessing is not having a problem with erectile dysfunction. House explains that Patient Dolores couldn't take nitroglycerin, so he prescribed the Viagra for its vasodilating properties, which he's sure Medicaid Guy is more than familiar with, since House thinks it's smart to insult the manhood of the guy who could do some bad things to House's ability to practice medicine. House says he'd be willing to pay for the pills himself if Medicaid won't cover off-label drug usage, and now he's in trouble for trying to bribe the guy. Stacy tries a different tack, appealing to Medicaid Guy's upcoming retirement and to his own personal feelings about the faults of the Medicaid system. House is both shocked and confused as to how and why someone would try to catch flies with honey rather than cane varnish, but goes along with it.
Outside the office, Stacy and House congratulate themselves on a successful and reasonably fast trip to the Medicaid office. House tries to invite Stacy out for dinner, but she somehow managed to find out when his flight was leaving, and knows that it's too soon for them to have dinner together. She also made sure to book a separate flight from him. House thinks that this is about their relationship, but maybe Stacy just prefers sitting in a bulkhead seat and knows that House, being handicapped and therefore unable to assist passengers in the event of an emergency, wouldn't be able to sit to her anyway and she didn't want him to feel bad.
The Cottages give Fletch various brain tests until he starts gagging and choking, because his lung has collapsed. Well, that didn't take long. Foreman says they'll need to intubate, and all three Cottages go for the cart at the same time, like when a bunch of people try to enter an elevator at once and get stuck in the doorway, except that this time, some poor guy is behind them dying and suffering due to their inability to function as a team when their boss is away.
The Cottages stare at Fletch's chest x-ray. He has fluid in his lungs, meaning that his problems did not stem from his hitting his head on that desk after all. Chase triumphantly thrusts the results of his tox screen in their faces. Fletch tested positive for amphetamines, meaning that Chase was the rightest right that ever did right, while Foreman and Cameron are wrong-ass losers. Smoking amphetamines, Chase explains, will give you a pulmonary edema. Cameron rolls her eyes and wonders what health consequences await her recent decision to have fun with meth. Foreman protests that Fletch wrote a book about quitting drugs and alcohol and about how great being clean and sober has been. "Everybody lies," Chase says, flashing the smug House smile he's been practicing in the mirror for since he got the job. ["Everybody especially lies about their path through drug use to sobriety, apparently." -- Wing Chun] That, or Fletch was just writing down his personal recollection of events as according to the memoir genre rules that he just made up on Larry King Live, in which case Fletch didn't really lie and Oprah can still love him. ["Great minds think alike!" -- Wing Chun]
Meanwhile, Wilson is without his usual cafeteria buddy and therefore forced to listen to a female co-worker's tearful story about how her boyfriend was a jerk to her. Wilson nods sympathetically as he mentally reconsiders his opinion that there's no worse lunch companion than his chip-stealing, bill-stiffing friend. His cell phone rings. It's House, calling from the Baltimore airport and wondering how his aphasic patient is doing. Apparently, Cuddy called House to tell him all about it as soon as she left Fletch's file with Foreman. Smart Cuddy. Wilson is happy for the excuse to leave Nurse Weepsalot, and brings House up to speed on Fletch's condition -- which he knows all about despite being an oncologist who isn't involved in this case -- adding that Fletch now has a temperature, which means that his problems were not actually caused by drug use. We are denied a chance to see Chase's smug smile turn into a disappointed frown while Cameron and Foreman laugh and dance circles around him. House has problems of his own, however -- a young boy has taken to bouncing his rubber ball against the back of House's chair while his mother reads a magazine and makes a lackluster effort to parent him. I'll bet that kid will be a real treat for the poor soul who gets stuck sitting to or in front of him on his flight.
The Cottages are back to differential-diagnosing now they have some more symptoms to work with. They think Fletch either has a neurological infection or an autoimmune disease, because Foreman and Cameron specialize in those fields respectively and are always ready, willing, and able to assume that their patients are suffering from them no matter what their symptoms actually are. Chase just sulks. The phone rings. It's House, wondering how high Fletch's fever is and why the Cottages haven't called him about it yet. He orders them to treat Fletch for a possible meningitis or encephalitis infection, and to do an MRI on Fletch that they should've lied, cheated, and stolen to get done earlier, as Chase is happy to report to House that Foreman had trouble getting the use of the machine the right way. You know -- the way that doesn't endanger the lives of whatever patients are waiting for the machine before Fletch, and who therefore presumably have a more urgent need for it. House is very disappointed in their honesty as he pulls the boy's rubber ball out of his coat pocket, where he's managed to conceal it after stealing it from him. The boy looks for his ball futilely. Stealing from children is wrong, but maybe not so wrong when the child is such a brat. And it's still not as wrong as kissing children, Chase. He tells them to get a proper medical history from Fletch, despite the obvious difficulties, and says that his flight should be in in a few hours. As soon as House is gone, Cameron snarks that Foreman doesn't seem like he's all that in charge of House after all. I guess she's given up on the diplomatic approach.
Chase tries to get Fletch's medical history by asking him yes or no questions. He narrows down Fletch's last visit out of the country to between two and three years ago.
Cameron sits down with Wifey, who tells her that Fletch hasn't been out of the country since he settled down with her, and that his last vacation was a golfing trip with some friends.
Greta tells Foreman that Fletch's golf trip was more like one last drinking binge through the Florida Keys before he got married to his totally unfun wife.
Chase asks Fletch about drinking and drug use, specifically amphetamines. "No," Fletch says. Chase informs him that he tested positive for them. The elevator closes before Fletch can try to claim that when he said "no" he actually meant to say yes, but, you know, the aphasia bedspread Lean Cuisine slacks.
Wifey tells Cameron that she and Fletch decided on to have a "different kind of life" when they became engaged. Apparently, she, too, has some aphasia, since I believe that she meant to say "when we got engaged, I took that as free license to start turning Fletch into the type of man I wanted him to be, rather than the man he actually was."
Of course, Greta's got a different take on the matter. Fletch has cleaned up his act, but the resulting lack of excitement in his life was apparently giving him trouble sleeping. He started taking sleeping pills to fall asleep, and then needed amphetamines to wake up. And then he ate fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches and died on his toilet.
As Chase is starting to wheel Fletch into the MRI tube, Fletch grabs Chase's arm and tells him to "keep the stain. Knife can't force." He seems worried, and Chase interprets his comments to mean that he doesn't want his wife to know about the drugs. Chase assures him that they won't tell her until Cameron lets something slip like she always does, and Fletch relaxes.
The MRI has shows some swelling and an old scar. Foreman's not sure what the scar's about, since it isn't in the right location to have anything to do with aphasia, and his questions about it to Fletch are met with an annoyed "what is the durable?"
Back at Plotimore Contrivance Airport, House finds Stacy and hands her some coffee from a paper bag. Who stores full cups of hot coffee in a freaking paper bag? I would think that even people with a cane could use one of those egg carton holders. Stacy lowers herself to accepting House's offer, and they both get a chance to do a crappy job of acting like those coffee cups have any liquid in them. House asks Stacy what they should talk about now, and the show cuts to a commercial break to give us all time to recover from the incredible disappointment and dread of what's to come.
In Jersey, Chase is pushing for a lumbar puncture, arguing that if Fletch has meningitis, they have to identify it as soon as possible, because meningitis plays for keeps. Cameron points out that doing an LP on someone with a pulmonary edema is very dangerous, so they shouldn't do it unless it's absolutely necessary. They ask Foreman for his opinion, and he says...oh wait, I'm sorry, they didn't ask for Foreman's opinion at all. They asked him for House's But House's cell phone is no longer working, so they'll just have to figure this out themselves. Step 1: break into Fletch's house and get more information. Cuddy starts walking over, and Cameron bids both guys adieu, managing to get out of both breaking and entering AND having to deal with a pissed-off-looking Cuddy. Nice move, Cammy. Every week, she gets cooler and cooler. Foreman and Chase breeze past Cuddy, who wants an update on Fletch's condition and to know why they're in such a hurry. Their crappy excuse is that they're going out to dinner, and that Cuddy can't join them because they reservation is for two only. I hope that's a reservation in the hospital cafeteria, or else Cuddy's going to be even more angry that Chase and Foreman took off for fine dining while their patient did some fine dying. They escape by ducking behind a huge indoor waterfall that has absolutely no business being in a hospital. Come on now.
After instadiagnosing the entire airport staff with various ailments, House is now moving on to the passengers. First up is Stacy, of course, who isn't wearing the ttrademark cross necklace that House knows her never to be without. Stacy claims that she forget it at home. Maybe she has Alzheimer's and will forget ever knowing House by week so that we never have to see her again.
Chase and Foreman search through Fletch's tastefully appointed home. They find Fletch's amphetamines and some Topomax, which pisses them off since he lied to them about not taking anything else. Unless when he said "I don't take Topomax" he actually meant to say "I would like pudding instead of Jell-O with my dinner tray tonight" and it was all a humorous misunderstanding. They don't find anything else of significance except for an abandoned home-improvement project that Chase uses to make a general statement about people who take on projects thinking they can do them and then realize they're more than they can handle. Foreman takes exception to this, and says that the abandoned project is "medically irrelevant." IS IT?!?! Chase makes some more comments about how Foreman was a lot more self-assured when he had House above him to take the heat for his wrong decisions. Now that Foreman's in charge, he's wearing newsboy caps at a jaunty angle and hesitating when it comes to making patient-care decisions.
Back at the airport, House is reading Lesbian Prison Stories, which is made even more hilarious by the fact that the book's cover calls it a "classic" book in refined calligraphic font. Brilliant! But even tales of hot naughty woman-on-woman action isn't as interesting to House as the Mystery of the Missing Necklace. Maybe he should be reading some Nancy Drew instead of whatever he could find at the airport's adult bookstore. He wonders aloud what could have happened to make Stacy leave the house in such a hurry that she forgot her most treasured possession. Stacy scowls. Or maybe she's trying to smile. Hard to tell.
It's also hard to tell what's bothering poor Fletch now, as all he can do is groan and talk about teal indigents. He attempts to tell them by shoving a fork in his mouth over and over again, and it's Cameron who figures out that there's a metallic taste in his mouth accompanying his stomach pains. Fletch is absolutely thrilled to finally be understood. If he gets better, he might want to take some Charades lessons, because that really was a poor performance. He's lucky that Cameron, who undoubtedly spent her college Friday nights playing the game instead of partying, was there to decipher it.
Stacy finally breaks under House's interrogation. She and Mark had a fight and she left the house without her cross or her makeup. She stopped by a drugstore to get some more makeup, although she may have also stopped by Cuddy's wardrobe trailer if that color of lipstick is any indication. I expect to see flowers blossoming out of her lips any moment now. I'm sure collagen injections make for great fertilizer. Stacy whines that she and Mark have been fighting over the silliest things lately, mostly because Mark won't drop it when Stacy orders him to. He accused her of being "condescending." Go, Mark! As House and Stacy's Theme of Broken Relationship Sadness blares, Stacy decides that Mark is trying to push her away, just like House did. House tries to be sympathetic by saying that, in ancient Greek, "Stacy" means "relationship killer." And in Assyrian, it means "face of stone." They stare at each other meaningfully for a while, and then Stacy gets a call on her cell phone. It's for House.
Wilson accurately predicted that he could reach House through Stacy's phone, since House's phone batteries died. House dryly comments that he didn't know cell-phone batteries could recharge, and that he just kept buying new phones. I can't tell if he's serious about that or not. It sounds like sarcasm, but it would explain why a doctor with a dying patient wouldn't charge his own damn cell phone. The Fletch Update is not good -- Fletch's kidneys are failing, and more organs are sure to follow. Sources say that Cuddy is not pleased.
In this vein, Cuddy's called a meeting with the Cottages, who don't have much to tell her and have not yet learned the delicate art of faking like they do to get her off their backs. Foreman says that they have to do the lumbar puncture, and then the phone rings. It's House, whose psychic powers have figured out what his Cottages are talking about. He's calling to give them the solution: they have to do the lumbar puncture "very carefully." House then detects the presence of Cuddy, which is confirmed when she starts screeching at him. He tells her to leave, and she walks all the way to the doorframe, and gestures to the Cottages not to reveal her presence to House. This would have been even better if Cuddy had loudly stomped out of the room and then let her footsteps get softer and softer to make it sound like she left, but Lisa Edelstein's facial expression here is quite suitable for my needs. House explains that what he means by "very carefully" is not, of course, doing the lumbar puncture well (LPs are not House's specialty, as we have seen), but by making sure that Fletch is aware of how dire his prognosis is in order to get him to 'fess up whatever he might still be hiding from them. Cameron is specifically told not to be a part of this. She opens her mouth to protest, then realizes that when it comes to giving her patients bad news, she sucks more than House does at the LPs, and closes it. House asks Cuddy, who he knew was standing there all along (because she didn't make those sound effects I suggested earlier, I'll bet), if she's okay with this. Cuddy isn't really surprised that her little ruse didn't work, since she is the Trix Rabbit of putting things over on House.
After spending a few seconds in the hallway warming up their acting chops and getting into character, Foreman and Chase tell Fletch and his wife that Fletch isn't doing very well. In fact, Chase says in the gravest of tones, he's going to die. Fletch is silent. Chase asks him if there's anything he hasn't told them. Fletch shakes his head no. Looks like they struck out. I blame this on Chase's melodramatic line delivery.
Cameron gets the needle ready for the LP and tries to be her usual comforting self to Fletch, only to have him turn over and grab her wrist. "I couldn't tackle the bear. They took my stain," he tells her. Well, obviously.
An airport announcer informs the passengers that all flights have been grounded due to the weather. They will be providing the passengers with cots, which is very nice of them. Passengers groan and exclaim in disgust, while House mentally analyzes the announcer's speech patterns to deduce that she has Type 2 diabetes. Stacy tells him to get his knapsack, because she managed to book the last room at the hotel airport, having anticipated that this would happen. House doesn't have his knapsack as he checked it to make walking around with his cane easier. Not like he's ever had a problem with that before, as we've seen him limping around with his knapsack plenty of times. He's good to go, and so is Stacy, who says that Mark knows that "when things are bad, [she] always like[s] to have an escape route planned." Although not an escape route that would involve, say, using ground transportation to get home. Sharing a bed with an ex-boyfriend is much more fun for Stacy.
The sexual tension is non-existent as House and Stacy check out their shared room. House asks Stacy what she has in mind for their night together, and she starts talking about Vindaloo curry, which I'm thinking is never an ideal dish when you have to share a confined space with someone else. Be considerate, Stacy. But Stacy's not talking about eating it; she's using it as a metaphor for her relationship with House -- at least from her end. Much like Vindaloo curry, House comes on "way too strong," and even if you love curry, too much of it will burn the roof of your mouth off. House just stares at her, as she has totally lost him and the viewing audience with this long and boring explanation of why Stacy thinks it's cool for her to cheat on her disabled husband. "You wake up one day and you think, 'God, I really miss curry.'" Especially if you've just had a fight with the Chicken Tikka Masala. House strokes Stacy's face, earning him a "you're a jerk" from his one true love. She really knows how to make a guy like her, that's for sure. And if House is a jerk for stroking the face of a married woman, what does that make the married woman who set this whole thing up? House triumphantly tosses his cane on the bed and leans in to kiss Stacy. He pulls back and starts saying something about Stacy having a fight with Mark, but Stacy interrupts to tell him to "shut up," even though she was the one who was just going on and on about Indian cuisine. She grabs his face and they kiss semi-passionately until the phone rings.
It's Foreman, who reports that the LP showed some kind of infection, but little else. Chase says that their patient has about a day or two to live. Stacy shows her concern by running her hands all over House's chest and kissing him while he tries to talk to his employees. As House is about to hang up, Cameron comes on the line and says that Fletch did try to tell her something. House pauses, torn between gettin' it on with the incredibly desperate Stacy and doing his job and saving a guy's life. He chooses Fletch. Hooray! He says he was figuring that Fletch would open up to kindly Cameron after getting drilled by Foreman and Chase, which is why he told her she couldn't be the one to tell Fletch the bad news. Stacy retreats to the bed and starts playing with House's cane, figuring that it will serve her purposes fine. House says they need to figure out what Fletch meant when he said he couldn't tackle the bear. Unfortunately, Foreman says, they don't have an English-Aphasic dictionary. But they do know that aphasics will usually use words that are related to what they really meant to say, either because the words rhyme or have similar meanings or just have some other random association in the aphasic's brain. So it could be anything. House turns to Stacy, who's lying on the bed looking all bored, and says he's going to take the call downstairs. He's taking his cane with him, so it looks like Stacy and her escape route will be spending another night alone. On his way out, House turns and addresses Stacy. She looks all hopeful that he's saying he has time for a quickie before going back to work, but he just asks to borrow her new makeup. Mood: killed.
As Wifey watches from across the room, the Cottages ask Fletch what he meant when he said "stain." Dirty? Pain? Fletch dismisses these guesses with annoyed "no"s and a look on his face like these people around him are crazy for even coming up with such bad guesses. Wifey is even more annoyed that her husband is dying and all his doctors are doing about it is playing word games. Cameron ignores her and asks Fletch if there's anything else he hasn't told them. She ignored Wifey a little too well, though, seeing as Fletch obviously has something to say to them that he doesn't want his wife to hear, and therefore won't be revealing anything when she's around. He even glances back and forth between Cameron and Wifey to try to give Cameron the hint, but when Cameron doesn't get it, he has to sadly shake his head no. Back to the word games for them.
House throws that little boy's rubber ball against a wall in a scene taken right out of The Great Escape, which is a great movie except for the Steve McQueen parts. I mean, I love the guy, but he didn't add much to that film except for that silly motorcycle chase and his infectious sense of bad-assity. We see that House is actually in an abandoned airport hallway, where, in his own bad-ass style, he's written a list of possible solutions to Fletch's garbled words on the wall in Stacy's makeup. Someone is going to really confused tomorrow when they see that graffiti. Or even tonight, since I doubt that airports, even ones with no outgoing flights for the night, just shut down and send all their employees and security guards home. Stacy walks up and takes a seat beside him, hoping for some hot airport hallway sex, but it ain't happening. She hands House his cell-phone charger, resigned to her sexless night.
House calls the Cottages on his newly-charged phone. They have come no closer to figuring out Fletch's stain and bear problems. Chase and Foreman are ready to give it up, but Cameron's still thinking, and finally, she figures out that Fletch only talks to them when his wife isn't around. Foreman and Chase are both disgusted with themselves for needing forty-nine minutes to come up with this crucial fact. Cameron figures that the more devoted you are to someone, the more reason you have to lie to protect them. House fights back tears of pride and says that their "little girl is growing up" and is as cynical as the rest of them. But how can they tear Wifey away from her husband's side?
Enter Cuddy, seriously pissed off that she's been taken away from the warmth and comfort of her bed to come to work and lie to Fletch's wife that there's some billing problem she needs her to sort out immediately. I'd be pissed too; since when does the Chief of Medicine get personally involved in billing errors, even if they are for famous patients? Cuddy asks what makes Foreman so much better than House, if they both need her to lie to patients and their families in order to perform their unorthodox yet life-saving procedures. "I brought you a coffee," Foreman says, rather sheepishly. Cuddy accepts it, but even she can't do a good job pretending that it has any actual liquid in it. Someone needs to found an acting school that only teaches its students how to pretend that their empty prop cups contain steaming hot liquid.
The airport is bustling. Stacy nags House that his flight is boarding in twenty minutes, but he's still standing in front of his aphasia Wal-Mart makeup wall, trying to decode the inner workings of a journalist's addled brain. And no one seems to mind that a man has written all over the wall in lipstick, so he's free to do it. House's phone rings. It's Foreman, who's set up a speakerphone in Fletch's Wifey-less room. "Start talking," House says. Fletch repeats the stuff about stains and bears, and they run through the list of possible words again. When they get to "brain," Fletch lets out a happy and relieved "yes!" House accuses Fletch of being a drug addict, and Fletch answers with an "I dissuade the tonal category." House keeps digging at him, though, saying that a guy who's taking sleeping pills and amphetamines, "bring me up, bring me down," is definitely an-- and then House realizes what the problem is, just as the airport announcer is telling him to get his ass to Gate Seven. He tells the Cottages to riddle him this: if you build a house with all walls facing south and a bear walks by, what color is the bear? "White!" Cameron immediately says, "it's a polar bear. You built your house on the North Pole." At first, she's just figuring that House is planning to do just that in his continuing effort to get away from all humankind, then gasps when Fletch grabs her wrist urgently. He's bi-polar. He's been taking Topomax and the rest of those drugs to self-medicate the disorder, which also explains his danger-loving reporter lifestyle and his inability to finish home-improvement projects. Just as House is trying to tell everyone how this has caused their patient's problems, an airport officer comes up and demands that House come with him. House threatens to kick and bite the officer, which is a great way to get shot fifty times. But the officer just tells House either to accompany his checked baggage onto his flight or get arrested, and walks away. Well, that was easy. And stupid.
House gets back on the line and says that Fletch didn't want to reveal the truth about his mental problems because it would bring the veracity of every single story he had ever reported into doubt. Being a known alcoholic and druggie, though, apparently would not, so he went with that. Until he met Wifey and fell in love so hard that he was willing to change everything about himself to keep her. And here Stacy and House exchange meaningful glances or whatever and who cares. So Fletch secretly traveled down to South America for an experimental surgery that's supposed to help mood disorders. The only trace of it is that scar they saw on the MRI. And that's when Cuddy and Wifey enter the room, just in time to hear all about how Fletch kept the surgery and his problems hidden from his wife. About five minutes later, Cameron tells House to "shut up," but the damage is done. Wifey is sad and angry that Fletch's doctors know Fletch better than she does. Fletch is very sad to have been found out. "You love me. You just don't trust me," Wifey tells him.
A visual examination of Fletch's blood shows that he has cerebral malaria. This was obvious all along, but since they ran all of Fletch's tests through a computer instead of looking at them manually, they didn't catch it. I guess that's why House makes them run their own tests. "Price of the electronic age," Cameron says. And of Foreman being in charge, I think. Foreman seems to think it, too.
Greta visits Fletch, who's very upset at the lack of wife. "Give her time to miss you," she tells him.
Back in Baltimore, House has been rightly placed on the "No-Fly" list, so he's stuck there until Stacy can work her lawyer magic and get him off of it. Even if she does, though, he's still on the "No-Airport" list, thanks to his hijinks with the lipstick, so it's not going to do him much good. Fortunately, this should effectively prevent another stupid episode about House and Stacy being stranded at an airport in the future. House says that his patient's chances of recovery are good, but that he's not sure about Fletch's marriage. Maybe, he says, they will work it out because they both "want it so much." Fletch loved Wifey so much that he thought he could change for her, but in the end, he couldn't. Neither can House or Stacy. "You know what Woody Allen said about relationships," Stacy says. "'Stick with one woman until your stepdaughter starts puberty, and then stick with her.'" Also, something about curry. Stacy gets on her flight. House is somehow allowed to be at the gate even though he's a security risk.