Parents

Teenage clown Ben collapses at a children’s birthday party when one of the kids hits him in the groin. He’s brought into Princeton Plainsboro and House’s team soon discover he’s got a thickened pericardium, suggesting an auto-immune disease. He’s reacts violently to treatment, so the diagnosis changes to aplastic anemia – he’s going to need a bone marrow transplant.

Ben’s father supposedly died of skin cancer but his remarried mother confesses to House that the birth father is still alive and living in New Jersey under the name of Mitchell Gordon. He’s a violent drunk and she’d wanted to keep Ben safe from him. Taub and Park visit Gordon but he refuses a bone marrow test anyway.

Ben suffers further complications and the team start to think it’s cancer but his vitals suddenly crash and all his organs start to shut down. This is too fast for cancer.

Then Gordon suddenly turns up at the hospital but Ben’s mother orders him to leave. House notices Gordon’s limp, realises he has late-stage syphilis and correctly diagnoses that he’d given Ben the disease after molesting him as a child. That’s why Ben’s mother had cut off all ties with him. The hit at the party had reawakened the disease and he’d suffered a Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, causing his latest symptoms. Ben is treated and starts to recover.

Meanwhile, Wilson has tickets to the big fight in Atlantic City but House can’t go with him because of his ankle monitor. House tries various ways to get to the fight but eventually has to give up, so Wilson begs Foreman to give permission for House to go. Foreman, however, insists it’s his duty as a friend to stay with House and watch the fight on TV. Wilson reluctantly agrees and gives Foreman the tickets, but when he turns up at House’s apartment and turns on the TV, he sees Foreman and House in ring-side seats – he’s been duped!