House limps into Alfie's room, where Alfredo and Manny are having a heated discussion en español. Having taken five years of Spanish -- albeit at a high school where if you learned anything, let alone an entire second language, it was a miracle -- I actually understood what they were saying but I won't be telling you here, because it's IMPORTANT LATER and because the last time I tried to translate Spanish in a recap, I was totally wrong and got like seven thousand emails telling me so and it was embarrassing. House orders Alfie to open his mouth for the thermometer, because this hospital apparently doesn't have those cool expensive thermometers that you stick in someone's ear and then immediately get a temperature (the good ol' mercury sticks are probably more reliable anyway), and then pays special attention to the end of Alfie and Manny's Spanish, yet SIGNIFICANT, conversation. Manny leaves. House watches him go, and then turns back to Alfie and tells him to put the thermometer under his tongue. Alfie does, and it's not even one of the old-fashioned mercury ones, but a crappy digital thermometer. I'll overlook that because I suspect that House's entire reason for this exercise was to see which hand Alfie used to take the thermometer. It's his left one. House asks him about it, and Alfie claims that his right hand doesn't hurt. House sniffs around and says that Alfie doesn't smell too good. House will insult anything. You're not in Cuddy's underwear drawer anymore, House. Cool it with the overly curious sniffing. House places a gloveless hand on Alfie's right hand with its seeping necrosis fingers, and Alfie screams in pain. "Your hand is starting to rot," House tells him. And House touched it. Disgusting. Also, how the hell didn't any of the nurses notice a dead appendage before? Maybe they're supposed to do suspiciously-black-hand checks at the same time as their patient-urination-schedule checks.

House and Cuddy are suddenly in Stacy's office. That's right -- Stacy has a freaking office. I'd rather see Cameron have her own office before Stacy the Temporarily-Employed Lawyer of Suck got one. They're fighting over whether Alfie's hand should be chopped off. House wants it gone; Cuddy doesn't. House doesn't see how this is even a legal issue. Cuddy explains that, since Sela Ward is an important addition to the cast, all efforts must be made to include her in medical storylines even though her character is a lawyer and they never needed to spend more than a few minutes with lawyers in the first season, and those lawyers went to Cuddy's office, not vice versa. "Are you being intentionally dense?" Cuddy barks at House, who answers with an awesome "Huh?" Cuddy tells Stacy she thinks the hand removal is premature. Stacy says she's heard enough, and now House is outraged that Stacy is taking Cuddy's side after hearing from her for only three seconds. "Shut up," Stacy says, surprised at herself for being so bold. Oh, wait -- her eyebrows tricked me again! And now I'm surprised, because Stacy says she isn't siding with anyone. She points out that having two doctors in disagreement like this doesn't look good for Stacy's client -- the hospital. She orders them to come back to her once they've reached a mutual decision. But...wasn't the whole reason they came to her office in the first place that they couldn't agree on it and wanted to see what the legal course of action was? Stacy's job sure is easy.