"As the riders begin Lap Two, Jeff Forster is leading the pack." "They're jockeying for position, now..." "This is so cool." "Did we miss anything?" "They've got, like, 11 laps to go." "We gotta find a good place where he can see the sign when he goes by." "Wait up, kids!" "There is a strong chase pack forming Led by Vernonski..." "At this point in the race, things are still too close to call." "It's anybody's race, but Forster looks..." "Turn six." "Come on." "Mike Larson has made a nice break from the pack and has closed the gap on Forster and the lead group." "That's it." "Up there." "Can you see anything?" "Did you bring his inhaler?" "Crap!" "I think it's in the car." "I'll go get it." "Are you okay?" "Your dad's gonna be right back..." "I can see him." "He's right up front." "Honey, you're wheezing." "Here they come." "Go, Jeff!" "Yeah!" "You're number one!" "He doesn't look so good." "Ladies and gentlemen, Forster is down." "Yeah!" "We need to talk." "Oh, God." "Are you pregnant?" "'Cause I really wanna finish high school." "You have to renew your credential." "They're good for two more months." "Three weeks." "And the paperwork takes forever." "Your application, your malpractice insurance, criminal records check." "And you know that's gonna take some explaining." "You know, our relationship was way better when we were sleeping together." "Why did we stop doing that?" "Did you get married?" "Yeah." "Otherwise I'd be on you like red on rice." "Look, rice isn't..." "Oh, I get it." "You're also behind on your dictations." "I don't do dictations." "Cameron does them, or somebody." "And you can't have your sole female employee doing your clerical work, which you'd know if you'd attended the required sexual harassment seminars." "Now, I'm gonna pause so you can make a crack about harassment." "Joke killer." "House, got a patient." "Sorry." "Can't play anymore." "My mom's calling me." "We just admitted a world-class cyclist." "You gotta fire Stacy." "Yeah, I'll get right on that." "Jeff Forster, respiratory arrest at 30 miles per hour." "She's loading me up with pointless paperwork." "Well, you're way behind on your pointless paperwork." "O2 sats are in the..." "She's hostile." "You know me, hostility makes me shrink up like a..." "I can't think of a non-sexual metaphor." "She's gonna stand over my desk with a ruler, checking my spelling..." "ER checked for lung infiltrates." "Nothing there." "Professional athletes, Cuddy." "It's like watching an old movie at 2 a.m." "Reliving all the classic moments." "The part where he denies it's drugs." "The part where the good guys ride in, tests a-blazing, prove that it is drugs." "Oscar clip." "He can't imagine how they got into his body." "It's so familiar, so comforting." "She can't handle working with me." "Oh, right." "Yeah." "She's still got a thing for you, making it impossible for her to deal." "It makes perfect sense, except for the pronouns." "Anyway, thanks for getting me out of that meeting." "He's not denying the drugs." "I'm thinking he's actually sick." "Jeff Forster, this is..." "I'm a doctor." "You're a sick person." "And you are a loved one." "Actually, manager." "We've been together for 7 years." "So what's the drug du jour on the bike circuit these days?" "Still erythropoietin, or are you guys just chugging battery acid?" "There's no way I'd touch EPO." "Too many guys stroking out and dying." "Damn." "10 bucks for the ticket, six for the popcorn." "I do straight blood doping." "Plot twist." "That's a very daring confession." "We've got confidentiality, right?" "Assuming I'm more ethical than your client." "So, injecting yourself with donor red blood cells for fun and profit." "Any other tricks up your sleeve?" "Well, nothing much recently." "I'm in town for a charity ride, so it didn't matter if I won." "The kids just needed to see me." "If you go slower, they see you longer." "Let's say that our health could be affected by things we did before last Friday." "Well," "I usually sleep in a Hyperbaric Chamber." "I've been pumping up electrolytes with an IV drip." "Anabolic herbal supplements, amphetamines and diuretics." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." "But why would you be sick?" "I know that doping has risks." "I know that it's outside the rules." "But I do what I have to to kick ass at my job." "Don't you?" "Dr. House is a firm believer in good old-fashioned hard work." "This guy doesn't even get sick like a regular person." "Instead of a list of symptoms and no cause, we have a list of possible causes for one symptom." "Is the symptom death?" "Respiratory distress." "Insanity doesn't cause it." "I looked it up." "It's the doping." "Injecting extra red cells boosts your endurance level but it also thickens your blood." "Thick blood equals clots equals respiratory distress." "Not with a clean spiral chest CT." "The guy's sleeping in a Hyperbaric Chamber." "Over-oxygenation can cause cell damage, and if the cells in the lungs are damaged..." "That'd cause pulmonary edema, which he doesn't have." "The supplements he's been taking contain yohimbe which can cause nerve paralysis." "Tox-screen was normal." "All the tests were normal." "There's no clot, no edema, and yet he still can't breathe." "So there's something in here that we can't see." "Air." "Come to Papa." "This guy's been injecting himself how many times a day?" "All it'd take is one slip of the needle to cause an air embolus." "So, air is keeping him from breathing air." "Well, let's go with that for the irony." "Get a VQ scan and check his veins for bubbles." "Xenon 133." "It's just radioactive enough for us to track the air moving through your lungs." "Was my accident on the news?" "Yeah, you made Plays of the Week." "A few more of those, and cycling will be as popular as NASCAR." "We inject similar stuff into your blood so we can watch it circulate." "If you accidentally injected a bubble, we'll see good air flow but poor blood flow." "I'm careful, man." "With all due respect, man," "I doubt there's anything wrong with you that you didn't do to yourself." "There's this kid in oncology, she's got a picture of Jeff above her bed." "Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic." "At least he hit his own home runs." "He didn't physically alter himself." "We take drugs to help us fall asleep, to stay awake..." "Yeah, but we don't make careers out of who can stay awake the longest." "Really?" "Ever been to, oh, I don't know, med school?" "Guys, he plays a game for a living." "Who cares?" "You don't even like sports." "He's making millions of dollars ripping off fans." "Anyone who thinks they should pay a guy money because he can throw a ball really far or pedal really fast deserves to be ripped off." "Yeah, stupid, stupid kids." "I've got an uncle." "He can spit a cherry pit 50 yards." "He's working part-time at a lube shop." "Life isn't fair." "Maybe it is." "You were right." "Now, there were three wasted words." "There is a bubble in his lung." "We should do a Swan-Ganz catheterization." "I love when you do both sides of the conversation." "It's like white noise." "It's very peaceful." "Is there a light somewhere that goes on when I have food?" "Green for food, orange for beverages, red for impure thoughts." "That bulb burns out every two weeks." "How's your biker?" "Pumped an air bubble into a vein in his lung." "The things people do." "Doping, Vicodin..." "Hey, you're talking about me, aren't you?" "I'm just trying to function." "He's trying to win himself some little yellow jerseys." "Oh." "What?" "Trouble in paradise." "2 o'clock." "Your 2 o'clock or my 2 o'clock?" "There." "She seems perfectly happy." "Obviously they huddled in the hall and worked up this circus act on the off chance you'd be in here." "She was unbelievably pissy three hours ago." "Hmm." "Pissy with you, happy with her husband." "Yes, there can only be one possible explanation for that." "When she's angry she gets sarcastic." "When she's annoyed she's funny." "But when she's frustrated she gets pissy." "Yes, yes, I'm with you so far." "She's miserable with Mark because he's not me." "So she's gotta make me not me, so she makes my professional life miserable." "If I can't do my job..." "You really, really need to get some..." "Oh, I get some "some" all the time." "It's why I always need to borrow some money." "Hi, James." "Greg, you gotten to that paperwork?" "I've been pissy." "Pardon me?" "I've been busy." "When you save someone's life, they owe you forever." "You're right." "Take Stacy." "Oh, wait, she'd probably just leave you all over again." "How's your recovery going?" "Gotten around to the small muscles yet?" "It's not the size of the muscle, it's where you get to put it." "My goodness, it's like watching Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward in the third grade." "Excuse us." "How awkward was that?" "What's he doing here anyway?" "He's got physio Tuesdays and Fridays." "Mark is in group therapy for people coping with disability." "He was thinking about developing a drug addiction, but that would be stupid." "Hey, you're..." "You, again." "You're not gonna make some joke about Mark being in therapy?" "What's there to say?" "He's doing the responsible thing." "I'm sure he's got a lot to deal with." "You're making me nervous." "Every time an athlete goes down, you guys assume it's drugs." "Look, the doctors say it's probably acid reflux." "Yeah, look, call me tomorrow." "There's a good chance he'll be released." "Okay." "Bye-bye." "So, is this fixing him?" "If his acid reflux isn't worse than we thought, yeah." "I gotta be in Spain in four days." "Shouldn't be a problem." "Great." "If I could just find the little bugger, should be able to suck it out." "My legs feel weak." "You're under mild sedation for the test." "It'll wear off." "There it is." "Got it." "Fantastic, I'll pack his things." "Not yet." "I wanna monitor him for a couple of hours, make sure he's okay." "Give him time to sign a picture for me, maybe even a jersey." ""To Doctor Chase, I owe you everything."" "It doesn't have to be that personal." "Not too many eBay shoppers named Doctor Chase, huh?" "Still trying to unload the Barbara Walters spit cup." "Here you go." "Seriously, anything's fine." "Jeff!" "You all right?" "Jeff, can you swallow?" "What makes a guy start drooling?" "Chase, were you wearing your short shorts?" "Muscle fatigue in his neck and jaw." "He's obviously got something worse than an air embolus." "Why?" "Because you don't drool from your lungs?" "Maybe the problem is not the embolus itself." "Maybe it's the treatment." "Maybe you hit a nerve, literally." "The embolectomy was clean." "His legs were tired, too." "I thought it was from the sedation, but if not, it means he's got something systemic." "Which means it would have nothing to do with the stunts he's been pulling." "Lupus or polymyositis." "It explains the progressive muscle weakness." "It could be ALS." "He's too young for that." "Some type of muscular dystrophy?" "He's too old for that." "So what would be just right, Goldilocks?" "Full blood workup, including ANA for lupus." "And get a muscle biopsy." "Find out if we're talking myopathy or neuropathy." "I'm late for my session." "Session?" "It's all a part of the process." "You get angry and then you get..." "Yeah." "I'm right on schedule." "So, when am I gonna be done?" "No, I need to know, 'cause I got plans to make." "When can I safely book a game of squash?" "When am I gonna stop being angry?" "Not today." "I've come for the healing." "Dr. Harper, as you know, I have a bum leg." "What you don't know is I'm upset about it." "I need to talk." "You know House." "You know we have a history." "You've been telling me for years that I should come by." "Here I am." "Hi, guys." "I've got a Thursday group." "Poker night." "Monday morning?" "Book club." "Well, look, if it's a problem, I'll just go deal with my rage privately." "Wait." "If you two could resolve this tension, you could really help each other." "I'm tired of fighting." "So either I say yes or I'm the jerk?" "Oh, God, I know that feeling." "I took the muscle specimen from Jeff's thigh." "I figured that's where we'd have the best chance at finding something." "The most painful place to cut into." "I assume that's caffeine-free." "Wouldn't want to be artificially boosting your performance." "Don't start her up again." "Caffeine's legal." "All about the rules, eh?" "It's a bike race, a completely arbitrary set of rules that everyone complies with for no other reason than that some committee says that they should." "But that's the point." "That's what the game is." "So, if you break an arbitrary rule, Cameron damns you to hell." "But if you break a rule that actually has a reason that's designed to protect people," "Cameron develops a crazy crush on you." "House doesn't pretend to be some golden boy." "He does it to help people, not to glorify himself." "So why don't you report Jeff to the biking authorities?" "Ethics." "Well, you wouldn't be doing it to glorify yourself." "You'd just be trying to make a better world." "At least you can still get around on your own." "Yeah, I know." "But you're starting to walk." "You're gonna get better." "You have a job, a way to be productive." "And you have a wife." "Which gives greater meaning?" "A wife could make things harder, too, I suppose." "This isn't about Stacy." "When it happened to me, Stacy was great." "She kept telling me not to rush it." "I never believed her." "She means it." "I know, but..." "Stacy." "She shouldn't have to wait, right?" "And you know she feels it, too." "There's more time at work." "There's more satisfaction from work." "She didn't get married to be a nursemaid." "She wants a man." "How the hell could she have loved a manipulative son of a bitch like you?" "That's an interesting question." "Maybe she was attracted to different things in the two of us." "She left you." "But why was she with me to begin with?" "She made a mistake." "Maybe it's that simple." "Or maybe she saw something in me, something she doesn't get from you." "I'm not an ass." "Maybe she wanted an ass." "She obviously did once." "Either he goes or I go." "You think that's the kind of thing you can just turn off?" "Get him out of here!" "Dr. House, cancel your book group." "You're coming on Mondays." "Here's my new theory." "The drooling's another competitive edge." "Nobody can draft behind it." "The road gets slick." "He's the only one not racing in the rain." "He can barely move his arms and legs." "Paralysis?" "No, just general weakness." "Muscle biopsy is negative for polymyositis." "And ALS and muscular dystrophy." "ANA for lupus, also negative." "Maybe his bike shorts are just on too tight." "So, by your rationale, House shouldn't use a cane." "He should just drag his bum leg around as God intended?" "House has a handicap." "All he's aiming for is normality." "And who decides what's normal?" "What if we find a drug that makes people live 20 years longer?" "Should we ban that because it's not normal?" "Jeff doesn't want normal." "He wants superpowers." "So why is he normal?" "Oh, God, you too?" "He's shooting for extraordinary." "So why is everything so ordinary?" "I mean, this guy's breathing, drinking and injecting himself with everything he can find to amp up his body chemistry, and yet every test is normal." "He's artificially raising his red blood count, so why isn't it raised?" "Maybe his count is raised." "Maybe what's normal for us is out of whack for him." "Can't slip anything by you." "Well, if that's true, his white cells are up, too." "Which would point to some kind of infection." "Muscle weakness, exhaustion." "He could have encephalitis." "That's kind of a long shot." "Yeah." "But it's been over an hour since we've poked the patient with something sharp." "So, get a lumbar puncture and order broad-spectrum antibiotics." "No, it's not about judging." "It's just that on a dating service you should post a photo." "I have to go." "I am so sorry to bother you." "Nope, not a problem." "I was just accounting." "I'm Jeff Forster's manager." "He's been here a whole day, and it doesn't seem like we're any closer to a diagnosis." "Jeff Forster." "A whole day, huh?" "Mmm-hmm." "I was just wondering if I could help speed things up." "Your client's had a muscle biopsy, a full blood workup and he's scheduled for a lumbar puncture at 10 a.m. tomorrow." "Jeff is in the Lucas Wing." "If Mr. Lucas showed up needing a lumbar puncture, would he have to wait until tomorrow?" "Mr. Lucas is dead." "Good." "Then there's an opening." "Jeff is used to doing whatever he has to to be first, isn't he?" "It's been very lucrative for him." "He feels it's important that he give something back." "I hear you've been raising funds for your nuclear medicine department" "or whatever." "Thank you, guys, for working so late." "Glad to be here." "The lumbar puncture will tell us what kind of infection you've got." "In the meantime, we're administering antibiotics." "Do you like being a hero?" "It's a living." "You don't feel a sense of responsibility?" "There's kids out there that worship you." "When I was a rookie on the tour," "I got a letter from a guy in Wisconsin." "He wanted me to send a note to his son." "He said he worshipped me." "You know what worship means?" "I looked it up." "It means to love unquestioningly and uncritically." "So the kid doesn't even know me, but he loves me unquestioningly and uncritically." "So you decided to take advantage of that." "What should I have done?" ""Dear sir, I'm just a guy" ""who rides a bike pretty good." ""You and your kid are out of your minds."" "My arms feel funny." "The sats are dropping." "He's in respiratory arrest." "He can't be." "We fixed that." "Apparently not." "So glad we cured his respiratory arrest." "It freed him up to develop respiratory arrest." "LP was negative for encephalitis." "The white count's still the same, but the red count's fallen to 29%." "What was my theory yesterday?" "That I screwed up the embolectomy." "We'll get a chest X-ray to check." "I didn't screw up." "Why would you..." "How can you be so petty, Chase?" "He's down a quart." "Either he's losing blood because you nicked something or he's just not producing blood, in which case, we're talking acute anemia combined with a muscular disorder." "Paraneop astic syndrome?" "Either you screwed up or he's got cancer." "I think I should start smoking again." "You want a medical opinion supporting that decision?" "The symptoms started as soon as I quit." "Symptoms meaning diarrhea." "A lot of diarrhea." "10 or 12 times a day." "It's really embarrassing." "I'm a flight attendant and..." "Well, on the up side, my hiccups are gone." "You went to his group." "Well, you were the one who was all, "Greg, you need to confront your feelings."" "That was five years ago." "Well, I've been pissy." "Fine, you don't want help." "Does that mean nobody should get it?" "Mark's looking for help because, what, he's resentful, overwhelmed?" "I'm asking because I care." "Not about him." "You still wanna jump me, so you don't care whose marriage..." "Listen, I can get my rocks off any time I want." "What I don't seem to be able to do is my job without you hanging over my shoulder." "How many packs?" "A bit over one a day, but they were lights, and I quit." "You used to go out with her?" "Yeah." "What was I thinking?" "I'm talking about the gum you're chewing to replace smoking as an oral fixation." "How many packs?" "Six, maybe seven." "I'm trying to protect you." "Cuddy and I may be the only people stopping you from jumping off a cliff just to prove that you..." "You're pissy." "Oh, I am angry!" "Pissy." "You only get pissy when you're frustrated." "Shut up." "Okay, I'm wrong." "This is unbelievably difficult for Mark, which you should know." "Which you should be able to summon up some level of empathy for." "Right." "The crippled boys." "We should start a band." "I have a good thing with Mark." "We are handling this the best way we know how." "And none of this has anything to do with me?" "No, nothing, except that you can't or won't just let it go." "Let it go." "You're being poisoned." "By gum?" "Sugarless gum uses sorbitol as a sweetener." "We use sorbitol as a laxative." "This will tell you if he's got cancer in his blood?" "If he does, we'll see abnormal cells in the marrow." "How long will the tests take?" "I'll get them in as soon as I can." "And if he doesn't have cancer, what else could it be?" "It's possible some damage was done during one of the tests we gave him." "So either one of your doctors screwed up a simple procedure or he's got cancer." "We can't know anything for sure until the biopsy comes back." "It stings, I know." "No, he wants the tube out." "I can't do that, Jeff." "If you wanna say something, you've gotta write it down." "Okay?" "Here." "If it's cancer, it's possible." "There's no way to know for sure." "Phone not working?" "One of the morgue attendants asked me to bring this to you." "Wonder why they're calling me." "Yeah, me too, actually." "I was wondering why the Times was returning your call." "You a doctor or the bicycle police?" "He's cheating." "He shouldn't get away with it." "Have you actually told them anything yet?" "You worried about the precedent?" "I'm worried about you." "You gonna turn me in?" "No." "He's made a mistake." "Revealing the truth doesn't undo it." "Kids love him, and he's not who they think he is." "It's not right." "Who cares if he's what he says he is?" "Who the hell is?" "If love is based on lies, does that mean it's not a real feeling?" "It doesn't bring the same pleasure?" "Are we still talking about the patient?" "Have you ever cheated?" "Well, I have." "You wanna punish him?" "Good for you." "But you can't do it without punishing the people who love him." "Is that how you justified lying to your wives?" "I always told them." "Well, he's negative for bleeds." "Congratulations, Chase." "It's cancer." "Clean him up and let oncology have him." "It's their party now." "He doesn't have cancer." "Biopsy shows he's got pure red cell aplasia." "There's no way PRCA could manifest so suddenly." "Unless it's drug-induced." "He's lying about not being on EPO." "Why would he lie?" "What does it matter?" "People lie for thousands of reasons." "But there's always a reason." "Philosophically interesting, medically irrelevant." "Unless he's not lying." "You've got a leak." "The press is all over the Jeff Forster story." "On the off chance that one of you was stupid enough to call from your own office, I'm pulling your phone records, including your cell phones." "I assume if I point out the fact that you have no right to do that, you'll interpret that as a sign of guilt?" "Wilson's chatty, plus he's got two ex-wives to support." "You want me to tell him he's fired?" "Until we figure out who's behind this, I'm sitting in with you guys." "You have the ethics of a 4-year-old." "I'm gonna treat you like one." "How am I supposed to practice medicine with a lawyer sitting on my shoulder?" "Responsibly." "You know I can't do that." "Cameron." "I'm not the leak." "Somebody once told me that everybody lies, and since you're the only people who know he has cancer..." "He doesn't have cancer." "The point is, you're his medical team." "He's threatening to sue." "Why would Cameron leak cancer?" "How does cancer make the guy look bad?" "He's on EPO." "Your anemia is caused by pure red cell aplasia." "This is gonna hurt, but we gotta talk." "What the hell are you doing?" "He'll be fine, sort of." "I just don't have time to watch him write out answers." "PRCA comes in two varieties, chronic and acute." "Since it came on fast, you have the acute version." "He doesn't have cancer." "Is the good news." "The bad news is pants are on fire." "Acute PRCA is caused by drugs, most commonly, EPO." "Ready, and action!" "But I haven't used EPO." "Okay, but this time, with more anger." "Remember, this guy's accusing you of cheating." "I haven't used that stuff." "I believed it." "It was simple, it was pure." "Did you believe it?" "I guess it's silly to cast someone after the first audition." "Why don't you do a reading?" "Give me that." "He doesn't do EPO." "What did you think?" "It's a different way to go, but, I don't know, I just didn't buy it." "Does she handle any of your injections?" "You think I'm giving it to him?" "Test him." "Gee, that's a great idea." "I sure hope that EPO's not one of those drugs that's undetectable after six hours." "Hey, you know what we can test for?" "Phone calls." "Take her cell phone." "Push the redial button." "Even money says you'll be connected to the newspaper that leaked your cancer story." "Okay." "Okay, I should have told you." "It's not just about the races, Jeff." "It's about your image, okay?" "If you come back from cancer, those sponsors will be all over you." "Okay, so I messed up." "Okay?" "But I did not give you EPO." "That stuff could kill me." "Come on, give her a break." "She was only doing what she has to to advance her career." "Don't you have that tattooed on your tushie?" "I would never do anything to hurt you." "Who are you gonna believe, the manager you've trusted for years?" "I've been to college." "You're fired." "Okay." "You're basing this whole diagnosis, everything, on the idea that I was slipping him illegal drugs." "You're gonna kill him." "If Doctor House is so sure, why do you need to stay?" "He's a very cautious man." "Your breathing's better." "Let the prednisone do its job." "Get some sleep." "Jeff?" "His red blood cell count plummeted to 16%." "He passed out, had to be resuscitated, and he still can't move his legs." "That's not possible." "The drugs should be flushing out of his system." "Can't leave if they don't exist." "The EPO use explains every one of his symptoms." "He's been lying and cheating, and now it's coming back to bite him." "The only problem with that theory is it's based on the assumption that the universe is a just place." "If it were, then his poor manager wouldn't have been fired for no reason." "Lambert-Eaton." "His chest was clear." "So we run an electromyography test." "You're still not explaining the PRCA." "What's his red count now?" "I had to give him a blood transfusion." "He's back around 30." "He needed a transfusion?" "Well, he was losing blood, so, I thought maybe he needed blood." "Go forth and scan his neck." "His neck?" "Or repeat everything I say in question form." "She came into the clinic and yelled at me." "Then she left, she came back and yelled some more." "Hmm." "Yelling." "That might be a clue." "I know what the yelling means." "It's the coming and going I find interesting." "It's not rational." "Anger is not rational." "Some anger is." "She could have pulled me aside, screamed at me privately." "Her beef is simple and well founded." "But she was out of control." "You're having fun, aren't you?" "She's in my face." "I need to know why." "Professional reasons." "Why else?" "Do you really think this is going to end well for anyone?" "After this, let's scan some other totally random body parts." "50 bucks says we find something." "Find what?" "Don't have a clue." "We on?" "No way." "No." "We'll find something." "We found a thymoma." "How'd you know to look in his neck?" "Thymoma's usually present in the chest." "I knew it wasn't in his chest." "All we've done since he checked in is look at his chest." "All the more reason not to think..." "There are two types of PRCA." "Acute comes on suddenly, chronic takes its time." "We all thought Jeff's was acute because it happened right in front of us." "But what if it'd been there for months, maybe years?" "There's no way." "It would have kept him from racing." "With that kind of anemia, he would have needed constant..." "Blood transfusions." "Which he was getting in convenient blood doping form." "He was treating himself without even knowing it." "Up to half of patients with chronic PRCA have a thymoma." "And up to half of patients with a thymoma..." "I've always wanted to do this." "I'm not getting any better." "Does that mean I'm..." "You are healed." "Rise and walk." "Are you insane?" "In the Bible, people just say, "Yes, Lord,"" "and then start right in on the praising." "First you tell me I've got cancer." "And then you tell me that my manager..." "What did you do?" "No, "What did you do, Lord?"" "Thymoma is a tumor on the thymus gland." "He's a bit of a wimp, but he hangs with the tough guys." "PRCA and an autoimmune disease called myasthenia gravis." "MG causes muscle fatigue including respiratory problems and difficulty swallowing." "And it can hit you that fast?" "The treatment for PRCA is blood transfusions." "The treatment for MG is hyperbaria." "You were doing both as part of your regular freak show." "When you took a break, everything went to hell, which is not an uncommon reaction in Jersey." "So, the whole thing with my manager..." "Oops." "No, no EPO." "This has nothing to do with anything you did." "You can let her know she's in the clear." "I could." "Or 10% of a Nike contract is a hell of a lot of cash." "You don't need your thymus." "If we take it out, everything else is manageable." "Manageable?" "I thought you just cured me." "Uh-uh." "This is just diagnostic." "Tensilon erases the symptoms of MG for five or six minutes." "Sometimes less." "This is exactly why I created nurses." "Clean up on Aisle Three!" "If you've come to search my office, you should wait 10 minutes." "I'll be out of your hair." "Here, start with my purse." "Just save me some mints." "What do you wanna know?" "My sex life with Mark?" "My guilt over crippling your damn leg?" "Or are you just here to gloat because you weren't the leak?" "I want to apologize." "Maybe I've been punishing you for a little too long." "And maybe you've been punishing me." "If we're going to work together, I need to know." "Do you hate me or do you love me?" "Either way, I think we've got a problem." "I hate you and I love you." "And I love Mark." "And you don't hate him." "No." "So what do we do?" "We deal with each other." "Right." "That plan's been working great so far." "It'll get better." "It'll get easier." "Why?" "I don't know." "That's what my therapist tells me." "In the professional cycling world, we are subject to what seems like constant witch-hunts and finger-pointing." "But I want to thank Dr. House and the excellent medical team here at Princeton-Plainsboro." "My hope is that this diagnosis will put to rest any rumors that I would ever..." "He needs blood transfusions every two weeks, which means he can dope all he wants." "He's got a doctor's pass." "It's medicinal." "He got away with it." "Mmm-hmm." "He cheated and won a game." "Life's more complicated than who gets to the finish line first." "I fell in love with my husband's best friend." "Near the end, I was at the hospital every day, and Joe would come by after work." "We'd go for walks and try to talk each other through it." "We kind of clung on to each other." "My wife wasn't dying." "She wasn't even sick." "Everything was fine." "But I met someone who made me feel funny." "Good." "And I didn't want to let that feeling go." "What happened to you?" "How can anyone go through that alone?" "You can't control your emotions." "No." "Just your actions." "You didn't do it, did you?" "You didn't sleep with him." "I couldn't have lived with myself." "You'd be surprised what you can live with." "Hey." "I need you to open a door." "It's not allowed." "Yeah, I was having therapy in here today and I left my cane." "Sorry." "Dude," "I'm crippled."