Eric must think that being a boss meant not communicating, because he ignored the questions-- Taub's and Kutner's explicit ones and the look she'd shot him-- as if he hadn't noticed them. Amber expected to be batted around by House, but Eric, she knew he knew better. A simple 'don't know, don't care,' would've been enough, or, 'House gets picked up by mysterious men all the time.' She didn't understand why he didn't say at least that.

He asked for alternative theories, but Amber sat back, watching the others throw out leaps of the imagination like fish desperately mouthing the water's surface for food up above. Even before Brennan came in with this wanna-be mystery Amber had written it off as heatstroke, but could she say so? No, because Eric already had. If she supported his diagnosis, she'd look like a thoughtless suck-up-- both to the other contestants and to Eric himself. Hands primly over her knees, Amber hid her impatience as she waited the farce of a diagnostics session to end.

A whole lot of good Eric's idea of finding patients had done. He'd complained of being bored and now they were demeaning themselves with first-year medicine.

When House returned, so did the silence; even Cole stopped tapping his foot to listen in. House's answer was about as unhelpful as Eric's lack of one, though; the only thing it proved was that he wasn't being taken by brute force.

Oh, well. It didn't matter. He was out of sight and Eric was wearing the crown, now. How much would her performance matter, under him? The results were pretty much a given, so no chance there of coming up with a brilliant idea and tell House later how smart she'd been. As for doing tests, no brownie points in that. In other words, there was nothing for her to do. This was worse than this morning; at least then she could read.

"Should we go run the tests?" Brennan asked. Yeah, he'd be the one excited to work this case.