For the last year or so, a man featured on Bravo’s Real Housewives of Orange County tried very hard to convince the show’s cast and viewers that he was suffering from cancer. But a key element of his story just bottomed out, in a very public way.

Over the last few weeks, Brooks Ayers, the boyfriend of cast member Vicki Gunvalson, has been on a minor media tour as the final episodes of the reality show aired on Bravo. The season was not kind to him and his claims that he’d been diagnosed with Non Hodgkins Lymphoma. Discrepancies regarding the diagnosis, treatment plans and lifestyle choices were documented throughout the show, and so far his explanations have been, at best, inconclusive.

Medical information is private and none of your business, you might argue, which both Ayers and Gunvalson did on the show. But in discussing his diagnosis and subsequent treatment—which he did practically every time he was on screen—Ayers got specific: he named an imaging lab where he’d received a PET scan and he named a hospital where he’d been getting chemotherapy treatments.

To bolster that claim, he reportedly showed E! News what he claimed were City of Hope hospital bills for the chemotherapy. (The usually celebrity-friendly network points out some obvious “red flags” in the paperwork.)

And now the hospital, California’s City of Hope, is reportedly going so far as to make a public statement distancing itself from Ayers.

“A representative for the City of Hope reveals to E! News exclusively that the Real Housewives of Orange County star was never treated for cancer at their facility,” E! News reports. “Ayers’ representative has denied to comment.”

Too real.

Image via E! News. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.