"Jennifer Williams?" "And you are?" "Cyrus." "Cyrus Harry?" "You used to call me Cy, if it's really you." "I'm trying to find the Jennifer Williams I knew 23 years ago." "We spent a long weekend at the Jersey Shore." "She was visiting a friend..." "That lasted longer than usual." "That's it for Lansdale." "Pack it up." "Let's move on to Philly." "Seriously, you're gonna complain?" "How many limo drivers are making six figures?" "Cy, you're my little cousin, and I love you and you've been more than generous." "I'm upset because you are wasting your time for some faded memory when there is a world of pleasure out there." "The kind of cash you got buys a lot of it." "Come on." "Don't be like that." "I've just been driving around all day." "I'm a little cranky." "Hey!" "My leg won't move." "Are you gonna stare or are you gonna call 911?" "Partial paralysis." "Head CT and LP showed nothing." "Spinal MRis and EMG were clean." "Brain symptom, and yet nothing seems to be wrong with his brain." "Refrigerator mechanic, no family, in and out of work." "He just won 42 million dollars in the state lottery." "I think I read about this lucky bastard in the paper." "You sure you don't mean the lucky bastard whose grandkids snorted his winnings till he drank himself to death with drain cleaner?" "Or the lucky bastard who was found naked and penniless in a strip club parking lot with his winning number tattooed on both testicles?" "Neuro-otological pathology could've caused loss of balance." "Calorics were normal." "Sure, some people will screw up anything but some won't." "That kind of cash, he has a chance to turn a miserable life around." "Miserable stays miserable, happy doesn't buy lottery tickets in the first place." "Our level of happiness is set." "It's in our DNA." "No cash payout's gonna change that." "It's like there's two of me." "The guy repairs appliances." "He's probably got toxic brain damage from years of working with toxic chemicals." "Or his sudden disease came from his sudden millions." "He's buying something, collecting something, ceramics, precious metals, which gave him atherosclerosis of his carotid arteries." "My mother's lawyer called." "She's threatening to sue the hospital over our mistreatment of her." "Says it slowed her recovery." "I was just thinking how much I want a relationship with no sex, but where I still have to deal with your mother." "Go to the patient's old workshop, look for causative toxic brain damage." "Go take a new history, and see if there's any lifestyle change that would explain the atherosclerosis." "Go." "Medicinal." "I'm expecting a shooting pain in my ass." "My mom and I got into a fight." "Because of our replacement hip replacement, she can barely get around her own house." "I told her she has to live with me while she recovers." "I'm starting to get the connection." "Yeah, she has a house, my name is House." "You're the doctor that treated her, that illegally switched her meds after she fired you, that went behind the back of her actual doctor..." "Those beads from Thailand." "If we're listing all the things that you pressured me into." "The point is, you're the one who's on the line here, whose name is on her hospital records." "Whose name is on her name?" "Fine." "We're both on the line, but she won't discuss this with me alone." "She and her lawyer wanna meet with both of us for settlement talks." "I need you in that meeting, acting nice and respectful while I diffuse this stunt." "Yeah, well, I'm not going to that meeting, so I'm guessing you're cool if I'm not nice and respectful, either." "Picked up any new hobbies?" "How's a hobby gonna paralyze my left leg?" "If you work on vintage cars, or you've taken up painting, fumes could..." "No cars, no paints." "You're a popular guy." "Popular wallet." "Three years ago, before I had a dime, I had my appendix out." "Phil was there." "No one else even called." "What about drugs?" "No drugs." "Look, I've seen all the documentaries," "I've read all the articles." "I'm not gonna be a tabloid cliché." "I'm know what I'm gonna do with my money." ""Find and build a life with the one woman I ever cared for."" "Point is, nothing's changed." "I live the same life, I eat the same food..." "The same crappy canned food." "How many of your meals do you eat from a can?" "Most of them." "I'm used to it." "I order them by the case, online." "Is that bad?" "You're worried about the trickle-down effect of Cuddy versus House versus Cuddy." "You're reading subtext into my silence?" "House gets to you more than anyone." "House thinks I'm a robot, you think I'm a wuss?" "No." "No, no, no." "I think you're repressed." "Well, it's out of your control." "Tough childhood, strained relations with your family." "Can't be easy trying to succeed in a white man's world." "First of all, white man, I've done at least as well as you have." "Second, I didn't think you'd take House's view that life sucks and we're stuck." "I think you're stuck." "Last month, I turned my life around." "I'm happier than ever." "Sleeping with 10 women instead of four?" "Mmm." "Try none." "He was cutting metal, inhaled the dust?" "Unless he was snorting lines of the stuff." "None?" "I was having tons of sex and I was bored, hating myself." "Was never gonna be ready when something real came along." "So, you're becoming some kind of super monk, and I can't change at all." "I challenge you to go one differential without House or anyone else getting under your skin." "Since I say nothing gets to me and you won't take me at my word, how am I supposed to prove you wrong?" "I guess you can't." "I hope that doesn't eat at you." "Off-brand solvent from China." "Made of God knows what." "Patient eats cheap canned goods by the case load." "Could be metal poisoning." "He also worked with cut-rate chemicals." "Could be inhalation of the toxic volatile substrate." "Treatment for both is chelation." "Great work." "Alkalinize his urine, and force diuresis for heavy metal poisoning." "If that doesn't work, put him on dialysis for toxic inhalation." "I just said treatment for both is chelation." "I said force diuresis and try dialysis." "You need a transcript?" "You wanna put him on dialysis, risk infection and hemodynamic swings, when we can just chelate?" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Settle down." "If we chelate, we're not gonna know what disease he had, which means we're not gonna know if the problem was in his lousy, old job or his still lousy new life, which, for the purposes of a metaphorical argument, is very important." "Pointless to argue." "He's the boss, he needs his puzzle solved." "Why bang our heads against a wall?" "When you're done with the patient, treat Foreman by banging his head against a wall." "Where's the dialysis machine?" "Who cares, since I ordered chelation?" "We'll flip a coin, tell House it was one disease or the other." "Worst case, he finds out, and he's impressed we defied him." "I'm sorry, I asked you to remove the dialysis equipment, not the chelation equipment." "And Dr. Cuddy asked me to remove all equipment." "She de-authorized all treatment." "She won't let us make a move until you agree to a sit-down with the Godmother and her consigliere." "Bitch to king four." "Checkmate." "Patient can't use his leg." "You have to concede." "Or I could just knock all the pieces onto the floor." "You're discharging me?" "We really don't have a good lie here." "You got caught in some politics between our boss and his boss, but you'll be out of here 20 minutes, tops." "I'm not better, but you're kicking me out?" "Which is why it'll only be 20 minutes." "See, the Dean of Medicine acts tough, but she's not, really." "She'll step in, readmit you..." "So, you're saying that she cares more about his treatment than the doctor who's actually treating him?" "Phil, shut up." "Cyrus." "Jennifer?" "It's good to see you." "I read about you in the paper, so I hopped the first train from Virginia." "So you read that he struck it rich?" "He's right." "It must look weird." "It kind of is weird." "But we're a long way from the 3rd Street Jetty." "I just wanted to see you again and say hi." "So, hi." "Hi." "I was starting to think I'd never find my..." "Baby Bear." "Oh, my God." "I'm so sorry." "I'm so sorry." "I don't even feel nauseous." "I don't know why..." "Your hand is shaking." "Okay." "You're having a focal seizure." "What does that mean?" "It means you're not getting discharged." "We were right that it's a brain issue but wrong about toxic inhalation and metal poisoning." "Everyone else is waiting." "That was totally courageous of Khloé to tweet about her weight gain." "House, we've got a patient with a seizure disorder who can't walk." "Another one?" "I thought we kicked out the last one." "Obviously, I'll let you treat your patient..." "What are you doing?" "We've got a patient with a walking disorder who can't seize." "No, wait." " I'm close, though, right?" " I wasn't finished." "Of course, I'll let you treat your patient if you meet me halfway." "I guess I'm not finished either." "No clinic hours for the next quarter." "And three parking spots next to each other, so I can park diagonally, and three pairs of your underwear." "I'm thinking of taking up sailing." "Forget it." "Treat your patient, don't treat your patient, come to the meeting, don't come to the meeting," "I'm done playing your game." "You realize the game is automatically over when the loser loses, right?" "Neurological Lyme disease explains the seizures and the paralysis." "But not the fact that Chase seems to be treating you." "He claims he can swear off sex indefinitely." "Also claims that I'm a boiling cauldron of repressed rage." "Your theory is idiotic." "Patient's antibody titers were negative for Lyme disease." "And I shared a motel room with your ex-girlfriend." "You make a good point about the antibody titers." "He's a rock." "How's your brother?" "Homeless guy." "Haven't heard from him in months." "I don't know." "Wish I did." "Postural hypotension, which could've reduced the blood supply to his brain." "Then he'd be a miserable wretch." "Actually, the prognosis is..." "Oh, I'm sorry." "I just meant his life is gonna unravel." "In fairness, that applies to any diagnosis." "Why do we do this?" "It's not postural hypotension." "He's not orthostatic." "His life may unravel, may not." "He's not chasing after material things." "Too bad." "He might actually get those." "He's looking for love." "Just tracked down an old girlfriend." "And she'll never live up to the memory, and the thrill of finding her will wear off, and he won't even be able to dream about being happy." "Interesting." "The patient may have found some long-ago nookie, but it doesn't mean he hasn't had some in the meantime." "Herpes encephalitis." "Explains the neurological symptoms." "EEG to confirm," "IV acyclovir to treat." "How's Foreman's BP holding?" " Same." " That's strange, since I unplugged the lead 30 seconds ago." "Admirable effort." "And I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm scared you might turn green and rip through your own clothes." "Down on the patient's romance because your own life span is shorter than dinner and a movie?" "You're the one who said miserable stays miserable." "But you keep saying it several times a day." "I love being back, having every theory you and I share used as proof of my own personal damage." "I'm afraid we'll need you to step out when the EEG begins." "The waiting area is just down the hall." "I gotta catch an early train in the morning, anyway." "No, don't." "I'll put you up in a nice hotel or rent you a furnished place." "I came for the night 'cause I wanted to see how you were, and maybe get back in your life a bit." "But if I take your money..." "What's wrong with a nice place to stay?" "Unless, of course, you don't wanna stay." "I guess I could keep my motel room another night or two." "Need a consult." "Did an EEG on my patient." "Turns out the reason that prior doctors thought it wasn't a neural problem is because it's not a neural problem." "The EEG did show signs of metabolic distress." "Scan his abdomen." "Yeah." "Let's assume we'd already figured that out on our own, and found a mass on the pancreas." "Mass looks solid." "I'd say it's cancer." "Paraneoplastic syndrome would explain the neurological symptoms." "You need to get a piece of it." "Schedule a CT-guided biopsy." "Yeah." "Let's assume we'd already figured that out on our own." "Then what's this consult?" "Why haven't you been yelling at me about the Cuddy twins?" "Because you're doing the right thing." "We talking about the same issue?" "Is there something I don't know about that I'm responding to appropriately?" "Cuddy wants you in the middle of this, so does Arlene, because they don't wanna face their own problem." "Somehow, in your knee-jerk, juvenile way, you tripped and fell into an actual adult response to this." "You're right." "That was Cuddy's strategy all along." "She wanted me to think that she desperately needed me to be there so that I wouldn't be there." "Where is Dr. House?" "I didn't want him here." "This isn't about her treatment at Princeton-Plainsboro, it's about the fight we had last week." "I'd like a moment with my mother to try and work this out on our own." "I'm afraid my client doesn't want..." "It's Mother's Day Sunday." "We can't have five minutes alone to fix this?" "Relax, you can still bill me for the time standing in the hallway." "I know you're mad at me, but you can barely make it up those stairs." "How many nights have you spent on your couch?" "This has nothing to do with our fight." "We're talking about my home, not a prison camp." "What did I just say?" "I think it was something about this not being personal." "You can spend time with Rachel, I can watch over you." "Win-win." "Maybe I've got a medical thing, maybe I just think I'm talking but no one can hear me, not just my uncaring daughter." "What do you want?" "20 grand." "I'll hire help and forget this nightmare you put me through." "Make it 30." "I'll put in a stair-lift." "If my board even hears about these threats, let alone a settlement, they'll investigate what happened while you were here as a patient." "House and I could both lose our licenses." "I've been assuming this is personal, because I don't wanna assume that that's what my mother wants." "House." "Ex-not-mom-in-law." "You said you weren't coming." "After you said," ""Pretty please, with sugar on top?"" "Problem is, we only give store credit." "So I say we put your old, cracked, poisonous hip back in, here and now." "I saved your life, happy to un-save it." "He's being an ass." "If I could join you in suing him..." "She's like this in bed, too." "Always scheming to get the lawyers out of the room." "If House isn't going to take this seriously," "I know a few judges who will." "Was I supposed to be the good cop?" "I had to rig the monitor." "I had a lot of salt with breakfast." "You think I'm repressed, too?" "I think you're in danger of being dissolved by your own stomach acids." "But what about Chase?" "Do you believe that nonsense about him being celibate?" "Don't know, but I'm rooting for him." "Read the studies." "The fewer partners you have, the happier you are with your ultimate partner." "Hmm." "Then you're gonna be miserable." "Those studies, it's important that they have a control group." "There's the tumor on his pancreas." "There's one in his kidney, and one in his colon." "One looks avascular, one looks vascular, the third looks calcified." "He has three completely different cancers at once." "On average, not so lucky after all." "You had to go all Wile E. Coyote on her." "You told me that Arlene wanted me in the middle of it." "I had to show her that no good would come of that." "Seriously, that's your rationalization?" "How about, you didn't like that Cuddy tricked you even though you wanted the same thing as her?" "You didn't like that she got the best of you." "You've got more anger toward her than you realize." "I'm happier without her." "So I'm not stupidly expecting her to make me happy." "I'm happier with my unhappiness." "Do you listen to what you're saying?" "Because I have to." "I'm holding a summit meeting to force you and Cuddy on to the same page before a lawsuit gets filed." "Three completely unrelated cancers at once." "A multicancer syndrome, von Hippel-Lindau?" "Wouldn't have touched his colon." "I hereby certify that Dr. Foreman has not tampered with this blood pressure mechanism in any way." "And after I prove I'm 100% stress-free, do I get to strap you into a chastity belt?" "What if the patient's missing a tumor suppressor gene?" "How would we even find it?" "We need to blast him with chemo now." "We can't give the patient chemo." "His platelet count's through the floor." "Even worse, it'll contain his cancers." "If we wanna know what they've in common, we've gotta see where they spread next." "You wanna wait six months while the cancer spreads and his seizures and paralysis get worse?" "Now, that's crazy talk." "But if we pump the patient full of vascular endothelial growth factor..." "Foreman doesn't like that idea." "You want to grow more and bigger cancers." "We can't figure out what three small ones have in common, maybe we can figure out what eight big ones have in common." "Is this idea real, or are you just threatening to kill the patient to screw with me?" "This whole thing is idiotic!" "What does it matter what's inside of me if I know how to control it?" "Makes no difference to us, but you may want to make out a will." "Go get lotto boy's consent, and turn his cancers up to 11." "You, what, found my old yearbook and got a picture of my high school boyfriend?" "Actually, that would've been a lot simpler." "I took this 10 minutes ago." "Your high school boyfriend who dumped you, leaving you unable to believe that anyone can rekindle an old flame." "He dumped me after I hooked up with his sister." "Would you mind letting him down gently?" "I might have made promises that you can't keep." "We're giving you more cancer." "The risks of that are kind of obvious." "We'll scan you, run your blood at frequent intervals." "We believe this is our best chance at finding the underlying genetic flaw." "Will you marry me?" "Don't be stupid." "If this cancer overwhelms me, at least I'll die happy here and now, instead of hoping for a future I may never have." "I love you." "No, you don't." "You don't know." "You can't know." "We both need more time." "And I believe we're gonna have it." "Did you notice she's wearing different clothes every day?" "As opposed to the same Starfleet-issued tunic?" "She said she came for one night." "Why'd she pack for more?" "So she stuffed an extra sweatshirt in her bag or she bought some." "Used?" "She's here because an old beau struck gold." "She turned down a proposal." "How long a game do you think she's playing?" "I think if she said yes after 14 hours, even he'd be suspicious." "You're lucky you're hot and smart because..." "Well, you're just lucky you're hot and smart." "I need a hooker." "Not if you can make that work." "How the hell is that supposed to relax you?" "It's not for me, it's for Chase." "I'm saving myself, too." "Maybe you should get a couple." "You're riding me, why not ride him?" "Because I can get a rise out of your BP, his pee-pee, on the other hand..." "Forget yoga." "Embrace Zen." "You're a repressed idiot, he's a horny idiot." "Neither one of you can do anything about it." "Pretty sure that's Zen." "Thought we were meeting in Cuddy's office." "And I put one of the radio frequency tagged sponges from the OR in your portable television." "However much it hurt, I did have a right to break up with you." "You just want everything to have a hidden personal agenda." "You need to get over it instead of torpedoing our jobs out of spite." "It couldn't just be that you're a pain professionally..." "Stop!" "You're both at fault here." "You, for trying to manipulate House when you used to know better, and you, for being you, which is an especially bad idea under the circumstances." "I had good reasons." "You had lame rationalizations." "If I hadn't played him, he'd have found out about the meeting and crashed it anyway." "Yeah, it would've been a lot more efficient." "Enough!" "Okay, here's what's gonna happen." "Tomorrow, I drive both of you to Arlene's." "You're gonna write her a personal check for $30,000, and tell her she can stay in her own home with your blessing." "You're gonna do this because you actually give a crap about your job and this hospital, and your mother, and possibly even House." "And you're gonna say, "I'm sorry,"" "and not utter one syllable more." "'Cause I'm an idiot?" "No, because if you don't," "I'm gonna tell the pharmacy to stop issuing" "Vicodin prescriptions in my name." "I'm not paying for gas." "Anything look different?" "Not yet." "Where's Jennifer?" "She's embezzling money from my Swiss bank account." "That's what you think, isn't it?" "I'm being taken for a ride?" "I think she wouldn't be here if you were still fixing refrigerators." "One random set of numbers doesn't change human nature." "Those sets of numbers are what kept me going." "Clutching those tickets, thinking about the life I could have, finding Jennifer again." "So you figure if one long-shot dream came true, the other one will as well?" "You think you're protecting me." "I think you're sad." "Can't stand to see somebody happy." "Mom, here's a check." "It's a settlement for all you've been through." "Of course, you can stay in your home." "It was wrong of me to suggest otherwise." "I'm sorry that we saved your life" "in the way that we did." "B plus." "I hope this resolves everything." "I can tell you that both your daughter and Dr. House are deeply..." "This is 30 grand." "Which is what you asked for." "This covers pain and suffering." "What about the probate lawyer?" "Did you two..." "I have to change my will." "Leave everything to Julia so this one doesn't try more funny business to get control of my home." "I'm sure we can toss in another $2,500." "Well, I guess I'll have to kill you tonight, then." "Mom, I'm not interested in..." "You already think you own my body, why not my home, too?" "Everybody, stay calm and..." "You have to lash out at everyone who tries to help you?" "Live in your own kitchen sink, for all I care." " Whoa!" "Whoa!" "Whoa!" " Harsh." "I didn't think you had a case before, but that is no way to talk to a patient." "You are right." "Chase has had his eyes on this one for months." "Meaning, he has eyes?" "I paid her $100." "Now, when he hits on her, might be tonight, might be next week, she's gonna slap him and storm off." "So, your plan is to prove you're both full of crap all in one move?" "First he'll compliment her hair." "That's how he breaks the ice." "Next comes some kind ofjoke or story." "He's sharpening his harpoon..." "Are my moves this predictable?" "She's grabbing his arm, he's going in for the kill..." "Don't let it get to you." "We poured a lot of gas on the fire." "Ultrasound will give us a good look at the damage." "A little more gel." "I never made a will." "I wanna provide for you if I don't..." "Stop it, will you?" "I'd like you to hold your breath for a sec." "Your money, there's charities, causes, your family." "You gotta ask yourself," ""What's mattered to you most year in and year out?"" "That can't be right." "Is it bad news?" "No." "We've been pumping you with growth factor, but you don't have any new cancers." "The tumors you had all shrank." "Three tumors disappearing means we were probably wrong about him missing a tumor suppressor gene." "How many mulligans are you gonna ask for?" "This test is what raised my blood pressure." "I'm used to it now." "Go." "If it's autoimmune, and he created antibodies that ended up fighting his own tumors..." "Growth factor would've made the underlying autoimmune condition better." "Maybe it was never cancer in the first place." "Of course, it was cancer." "We biopsied." "It could've been a false positive." "Amyloidosis?" "His EKG voltage has been on the low end of normal." "What if the tumors were actually protein deposits?" "GI biopsy to confirm, chemo to treat." "She's making that diagnosis based off a low-normal EKG." "Low-normal's still normal." "That thing cannot be right." "Low-normal is still low." "And that thing does not have money riding on you being wrong, like the rest of us do." "Chase fixed this." "Oh, I think you're confusing Chase and Foreman." "I used to do that all the time." "I know it's rigged!" "Because you're Mr. Cool, nothing could possibly phase..." "'Cause I took a beta blocker." "Both times, right?" "His platelet count's still low." "Chemo's still a death sentence, treating for amyloid with normal EKG is like doing heart surgery on a guy because he's 10 pounds overweight." "It's insane." "We'll do it your way." "Go shout at the patient till he gets better." "GI biopsy to confirm, chemo to treat." "Here's the dirty little secret." "I just think we are who we are." "And I think lotteries are stupid." "Janet Hemorrhoid!" "That's not my name." "It's why I'm here." "Oh, I see, it goes across." "We better make this fast 'cause I'm about to lose my medical license for malpractice." "It's nothing unusual." "Head of the hospital's about to lose hers, too." "I heard Cuddy quadrupled your clinic hours." "Yeah, but you know what?" "I'm flying through patients." "Arlene wants another meeting." "I know." "I told my seconds to tell her seconds that she gets no second chance." "Technically, it's a third chance, but I don't have thirds." "Cuddy told her the same thing, more or less." "So you got us on the same page, after all." "I've been thinking about your irrationality, and I've come up with a rational explanation for it." "That's quite a challenge." "You don't wanna let go of Cuddy." "So you're clinging to the negative interaction because some small part of you thinks the bad stuff beats nothing at all." "Almost making this work." "All you gotta do now is change reality." "Perhaps if I was the one suing me." "You didn't start it, but you had the chance to end it." "And you didn't." "You love her, House." "And it's human to hang on, but you're blowing up not just your job but any chance of any kind of relationship with her again." "Hi." "Hey." "What's that?" "It's a check for $10 million." "Uh." "I don't know what to say." "You've already been so generous." "By hiring you?" "For a whopping six figures?" "My own blood?" "Best friend I ever had?" "Year in, year out?" "You're wearing contacts under your glasses?" "I must've forgotten to take them off when I..." "They're tinted." "Do you change your eye color?" "Sometimes I like to mix it up." "I don't understand what you..." "Wait." "You don't have brown eyes?" "Where'd the name "Baby Bear" come from?" "It's so long ago, I don't..." "It's a birthmark on your left breast in the shape of a bear." "You forgot that?" "It's the one thing I never told you." "That's why she doesn't know." "It's not like that." "I swear." "Get out." "Get out, both of you." "Come on, man." "Get out." "I'm sorry." "Get out!" "Both of you!" "You were right." "I'm just another lottery fool." "My life sucks." "It'll always suck." " He's crashing." " Everything's shutting down." "Patient had a cardiac arrest, and his lungs and liver failed before we even started the chemo." "Brain symptoms that aren't brain symptoms, tumors that come and go." "It's not amyloidosis." "You're forgetting alopecia." "Oh, I'm sorry." "I thought you were just listing the things it's not, alphabetically." "His long-Iost love is a fraud." "Thirteen figured that out." "Good for her." "Decades of menial work." "If three cancers couldn't make him die miserable, she just did." "The truth made him miserable." "It's like there's two of me." "Keep the clinic shut down, but whatever it is, it's isolated to the administrative floor." "I'm not gonna evacuate the whole..." "Only way to get the two of you in the same place at the same time." "Reopen everything, readmit everyone, now." "I want you both to know I'm filing the suit today, delivering the paperwork to your counsel's office." "You have to be destructive." "You have to tear things apart." "God forbid you should say what's really on that twisted mind of yours." "And you're the great peacemaker?" "Single mom, can't keep a man long enough to cook a meal..." "You'd be dead if it weren't for our mistreatment." "And somehow, you'd still find something to whine about." "We'll let the court decide who's whining since you're so sure..." "We're not getting back together." "What are you talking about?" "It's the only explanation." "Why she keeps making threats without ever filing her stupid, yet completely valid lawsuit." "Why she ripped up her will, why she kicked half of the hospital out on the street." "She wants us united against her." "This is her drawing blood over the latest of a long line of imaginary slights." "She doesn't care if anyone else is happy for a single..." "Look at you idiots." "Who else is gonna put up with either of you?" "I asked you to move in." "That meant we weren't gonna reconcile." "I'm sorry, Mom." "Some things take more than a common enemy." "And you're an idiot with impossible standards." "Common enemy." "One way to trigger brain symptoms when there's nothing wrong with your brain." "Have something else turn your brain into a common enemy." "You have a teratoma, a usually harmless congenital growth which can be filled with almost any kind of tissue." "And unusually, not at all harmless." "If I'm right, yours is filled with primitive cells, some of which developed into brain cells." "These foreign cells leaked into your blood stream." "Now, the body is a little xenophobic, and it creates antibodies." "The problem is, there's not much difference between brain cells in your abdomen and brain cells in your brain." "To make matters worse, primitive cells can become almost anything." "Grow like weeds, which means they can turn into tumors, and destroy whole organ systems." "But the cancer?" "It was cancer." "It was just growing so fast, it collapsed under its own weight." "Am I gonna live?" "Cut out the teratoma and what's left of your cancer, you should be fine." "Think of it as your second luckiest day." "It's hard to feel lucky." "The woman I loved was a fraud." "No, actually, a fraud was a fraud." "You fell for her just the same." "You may stay miserable, but your long-Iost love is not gonna be the reason why." "It's the real Jennifer." "Or at least the only one to show up who actually has the birthmark." "He's renting her an apartment." "It'll end horribly." "Not for him." "She may take all his money, and he may be a na:ïve idiot, but he'll always be hopeful." "So he'll always be happy." "You lost your mother, you euthanized your brother, you got the life expectancy of a pretty good sitcom." "If you can convince yourself that you'll be miserable no matter what, even without all that stuff, then maybe you don't have to hate the universe for dumping a giant turd on you." "Fatalism is your survival mechanism." "And you?" "Dumped by everyone you've ever loved, rehab was a bust, your leg feels like somebody took a giant bite out of it." "We are who we are." "Lotteries are stupid."