Foreman's next patient is House, who I hope didn't wait in line this whole time just to achieve the cool effect and surprising Foreman and ordering Foreman to follow him. Chase sends another patient to the second floor just as House whistles out a summons for him. It's all very Ghostwriter, where the kids would be going about their daily activities and then the writing in a nearby menu or street sign would spell out "Rally J" and they'd all drop what they were doing to go to Jamal's house. Not that I ever watched that show. Chase excuses himself from his line of patients, who have got to be super-pissed, especially the woman who was up next. It's like waiting in line at the supermarket for ten minutes, only to have the aisle close when it's your turn. Except instead of your ice cream melting, it's your brain.

House and the Cottages have gotten about two feet away from the Clinic before Cuddy swoops in to bust them for shirking their doctorly duties to the meningitis-infected crowd at large to give acute care to one girl who has all three symptoms of it. Not so, says House, who points out that Mary's neck is only sore when she shakes it, not when she nods. If it were meningitis, it would be the other way around, due to something that I stopped listening to when the word "pus" was used. Cuddy ain't buying it, and accuses House of latching onto a random case to avoid having to deal with the rest of the riff-raff. House indignantly says that he wouldn't subject a young girl to a bunch of painful and invasive tests just to avoid "being bored." We immediately cut to Chase and Foreman, whose faces say "wouldn't he?" and "oh, he would," respectively. Cuddy just stares until House admits that, yeah, he totally would do that, but that isn't the case now. He then appeals to the side of Cuddy that cares about patient health and the hospital's image and says that if the girl dies because Cuddy didn't let House take care of her, Cuddy will be a wee bit embarrassed. Cuddy gives him one hour.

House gets to work, ordering Foreman to do a lumbar puncture (ouch), and Chase to go look up every single condition related to neck pain he can find (also ouch, but with the more philosophical pain of busy work boredom as opposed to the physical pain of having a needle stuck in your spine). Chase protests that looking up every condition with neck pain as a symptom is akin to looking for a hay-colored needle in a haystack. House's advice is to start with the A's. Chase storms off disgustedly as House tells Foreman to make sure to give the girl some of those anti-meningitis drugs on the very slim chance that his head-shaking neck pain theory is as correct as his blazer-borrowing mischievous daughter theory.