Journalist Fletcher Stone collapses at his editor's retirement party and hits his head on a desk. His sentences are garbled and incoherent when he regains consciousness, so he is rushed to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House and Stacy are out of town defending House's Medicaid billings and later stranded at an airport due to bad weather. So, the team struggles to solve the case on its own. 

House and his team have a difficult challenge when a teenage boy enters the hospital severely burned with unusual blood-test results. How can you diagnose a burn victim when you cannot use standard testing methods? House makes himself the guinea pig in his own unofficial tests of a new drug designed to treat migraines to prove a former medical school colleague is wrong about the drug.