House: Histories (Season 1, Episode 10)

The team’s treatment of a delusional homeless woman is made more difficult by the fact that no one knows who she is, not even her.

The plot: (spoilers)

A broke middle-aged woman (Leslie Hope) talks her way into a rave party at an abandoned house, saying she knows someone inside named James, who is blond, friendly and a big talker. While searching the party for James, the police bust in and she is knocked down and loses consciousness.

She is taken to Princeton-Plainsboro and admitted with a suspected drug overdose, but her toxicology screen came back clean, though she is delusional and doesn’t even seem to know her name. Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) was consulted because of some lesions on her arm, which turned out to be non-cancerous, but Wilson noticed a twitch so he brought in Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps), a neurologist. While Foreman has her do some simple tests, she goes into a seizure. Wilson checks her blood sugar and finds it to be low. Foreman thinks that she is a diabetic who overdosed on her own insulin to get a place to sleep and some food, and dismisses the twitch that Wilson thinks could be a tumor. Foreman says to monitor her and let her spend the night, then discharge her. Wilson takes the case to Dr. House (Hugh Laurie), who agrees to take it when he decides Wilson must have a more personal reason for being interested than just wanting a stranger to get medical care.

House gets the team together. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) suggests that the twitch could be a mini-seizure unrelated to diabetes. Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) suggests a brain tumor, and Cameron agrees that its possible. Foreman still insists she’s faking, but suggests that they could do an MRI to make sure. House rummages through her bag (which Foreman notices also contains insulin) and finds moist vomit, which he tastes(!) and finds it is salty, suggesting an electrolyte imbalance. He holds off on the MRI and has her started on a banana bag to correct the imbalance.

While Foreman and Chase start the treatment, the patient is drawing comics, when she suddenly has a panic attack, and bites Foreman on the arm. Now really annoyed, Foreman is now determined to get her an MRI so he can throw her out. There is a 2-day wait for non-emergency MRIs, so Foreman secretly switches the patient with a woman getting her scheduled 6-month checkup on her chin implants. Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) interrupts with the report that the preliminary CT-Scan revealed a surgical pin in her arm that the MRI’s magnet would have ripped out of her body. House insists that they surgically remove the pin so they can do the MRI, which he says is necessary because Foreman thinks she has a brain tumor. Cuddy reluctantly agrees, but says they can’t do anything else until they find out who she is so they can get a medical history. House sends Foreman to investigate, using her drawings as a guide to find where she usually sleeps, which is occupied with bats, and he finds a file of her drawings. Meanwhile, she has the surgery to remove the pin and gets the MRI, which finds nothing, but House uses the serial number on the pin to track down her identity: her name is Victoria Matsen and she broke her arm in a car accident two years ago. A hospital faxes over her medical records, which Foreman looks over, then takes off in a panic; when her electrolyte balance came back normal he put her on iron dextran for anemia, but it turns out she’s allergic to it. They get to her just as she goes into respiratory arrest and stabilize and sedate her.

More hospitals fax over records, but none have a legitimate address. Chase notices two ultrasound appointments 10 months apart, the second of which she didn’t keep. Wilson recognizes the doctor’s name as an oncologist, and surmises that they were looking for ovarian cancer, and House points out that neoplastic syndrome caused by the cancer could cause the twitch. House has them ultrasound her ovaries. In the clinic, Cuddy assigns him to a mother with a number of children; House fakes a sneeze and says he’s sick, leaving Cuddy to deal with the family while he reads Victoria’s handmade comic books, which involve a heroine who fights a villain named Mr. Fury. He questions Foreman about why he doesn’t like homeless people, annoying him by asking about his parents, who it turns out are not homeless, then House questions Wilson about why he cares. Cuddy assigns House to teach two medical students about patient histories, and House fakes a page in the clinic to hide from them while he continues to investigate Foreman and Wilson. Meanwhile, the ultrasound has found a large mass on Victoria’s left ovary, and Wilson realizes that it’s too late to do anything. House suggests that maybe it’s not really cancer but is actually a tuberculoma, which is very unlikely but since there isn’t anything they can do for advance ovarian cancer House orders the tuberculoma treatment.

Foreman starts the treatment, but Victoria can tell that he’s not hopeful. Foreman apologizes for not believing her, and she admits to having taken too much insulin to get a place to sleep. Foreman offers to help her find James, but she suddenly spikes a fever of 105 degrees and starts panicking about Mr. Fury coming after her, displaying extreme sensitivity to light and believing water to be poison. Foreman sedates her and tells her that the bad guys can’t get here there; as she loses consciousness she says Mr. Fury’s not the bad guy: she is.

Foreman reports to House that the fever means she can’t have a tuberculoma, but Chase arrives with lab work saying that it is a tuberculoma after all. In addition to the tuberculoma, she has something else that is causing the fever. Chase suggests a bacterial infection, and Foreman says she could’ve picked up something on the streets, but she didn’t have a fever on admission. Cameron suggests that the Prozac they put her on could have caused serotonin syndrome. House orders blood and urine tests and a chest X-ray, and switches her off Prozac, and she is put in an ice bath to lower her body temperature.

The two med students report to House (who is again reading Victoria’s comics) on the patient they were assigned to interview: a 17 year old female with abrasions and trauma to her wrist. One says that patient fall off her horse at the county fair, while the other says she fell off the steps of her beach house. Both went to the same room. House says the patient is either under 90 pounds or has a red nose, and leaves them with a medical dictionary, saying the patient’s condition starts with C.

The team reports that the tests point towards an infection. Not all the tests are back, but they think Victoria has meningitis. House tells them to start treatment, but when they get to her room, Victoria is gone, despite having been sedated, leaving behind comics drawn on the wall indicating she has gone looking for James. Foreman wants to go looking for her, saying that in her comics Mr. Fury lives in Sloan Harbor and the rave party she was picked up at was a 1408 Sloan Street, but Cuddy tells him to just call the police.

House, wearing a bird-shaped pin and carrying a binder with a picture of a Ferris wheel on it, is being pursued by the med students, who are desperately guessing conditions starting with the letter C. House goes into their patient’s room and asks her what happened. She says she was riding on a Ferris wheel when a seagull flew at her and she swung her arm at it and hit the Ferris wheel. House says she has Korsakoff’s Syndrome, which has left her without the ability to process ideas, so she uses visual clues to fill in the gaps; one of the med students has a small horse embroidered on her shirt and the other has a clipboard with a beach scene on it, which is where her previous stories came from. One of the med students points out the Korsakoff’s doesn’t start with C, and House says the lesson is to treat everyone as if they have Korsakoff’s because they all lie anyway.

Paramedics bring Victoria back to the hospital unconscious with her heart rate over 150 beats per minute, and Foreman stabilizes her. A police officer says he found her passed out on the grass at Battlefield State Park. House bribes the cop for the real story, and it turns out he tazered her twice. The first time he hit her in the thigh and she didn’t stop. House pokes her in the same spot and gets no response, but when he pokes her in the toe she reacts. Foreman tries to think of what it could be, and while he’s looking away, House pokes him with a needle where Victoria bit him, and he doesn’t notice until he looks back.

In the lab, House lists Victoria’s symptoms: localized numbness, sensitivity to light, disorientation, paranoia, ineffectiveness of sedatives and hydrophobia, which leads them to rabies from the bats in the alley where she slept, which the tests confirm. Wilson gives Foreman a rabies shot, but its too late for Victoria. Wilson and Foreman go out to try to find James so Victoria won’t die alone. They go to the house where the rave party was held and use Victoria’s drawings to find a hidden metal box with clues to her life.

She was married to a man named Paul Furia and James was their young son. The house was their home. They were killed in the car accident when Victoria broke her arm, and she was driving. Foreman sits at Victoria’s bedside out of sight, pretending to be Paul and saying he forgives her.

House follows Wilson to a rundown part of town. Wilson reveals that he has a second brother he has never told House about, because he hasn’t seen him in nine years and he doesn’t even know if he’s alive. They are at the last place Wilson saw him.

My review:

Histories is a great episode of House, and is an episode that almost demands multiple viewings, as there are a lot of subtle clues and details that are easy to miss the first time through, most notably that the abandoned house that the rave party takes place in used to be Victoria’s home. There are other things that Victoria says that stand out when you know how the story ends. There are actually several mysteries going on at once here, and not all of them get resolved. Two of them involve the patient. The first is the medical mystery, which actually has two separate components to it. The second is the mystery of her past, which continues even after the team has her name and her medical history, and even though we find out who James is, the mystery isn’t fully resolved. It had been 2 years since the car accident, and she had to have gotten the rabies fairly recently that led to some of her mental symptoms, so what happened in the meantime? How did she end up on the street, and why did she leave that box with important documents behind in the house? (And if she was driving when the accident occurred, how could the hospital not have her address? Didn’t she have a driver’s license?) Then there’re the mysteries about Foreman and Wilson. We never really do find out what Foreman has against the homeless in this episode. Though it seems like he at least starts to resolve it by the end, we don’t know what’s behind it, if anything. At least we find out about why Wilson cared about this homeless stranger: he has a brother on the streets somewhere himself. Then there’s the poor girl with Korsakoff’s; we never do find out her real story either, although it’s a minor point that’s not related to the main plot, so it’s not really important. Leslie Hope gives a good performance as Victoria, a challenging role requiring not only the portrayal of the neurological symptoms of rabies, but also a dip in an ice bath. Foreman and Wilson have some great bickering throughout the episode, before coming together in the end, and in this episode even House and his antics seem to take a back seat to them. Several episodes have seemed to focus on Foreman, but this is the first episode that focuses on Wilson and allows Robert Sean Leonard to show his acting talent. With all that is going on and all the detail, this is one of the standout first season episodes that stands up well to repeat viewing.

House: DNR (Season1, Episode 9)

When a wheelchair-bound trumpet player develops trouble breathing, he decides he is ready to die, but House thinks he can not only save him, but also make him walk again.

The Plot: (Spoilers)

At a recording session with Brandy (herself), wheelchair-bound jazz legend John Henry Giles (Harry Lennix) stops breathing.

John Henry is taken to Princeton-Plainsboro, and Dr. House (Hugh Laurie), fascinated by his paralysis, asks Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) for the case. Cuddy tells him that John Henry’s primary doctor, Marty Hamilton, with whom Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) did his residency, has already asked for House’s team, which doesn’t include House, to diagnose and treat John Henry’s pneumonia only. Foreman is put in charge of the case, and has John Henry kept on broad spectrum antibiotics. House wants to investigate the paralysis, which Dr. Hamilton has already diagnosed as ALS aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease but House doesn’t believe it, and wants to do an MRI to check Dr. Chase’s (Jesse Spencer) suggestion of multifocal motor neuropathy. Foreman says that the ALS fits and even predicts the pneumonia, which suggests the paralysis is ascending, and overrules him.

Foreman's in charge!

Foreman gives John Henry the prognosis that the symptoms will likely keep getting worse. When John Henry asks how long he has, Foreman mentions the MRI and House, and John Henry asks which doctor Foreman agrees with. Foreman says he agrees with Dr. Hamilton about the ALS and John Henry says no to the MRI and requests to sign a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) form. When Foreman tells House about the DNR, House suggests that Foreman start John Henry on IVIG, the treatment for multifocal motor neuropathy, and Foreman does it.

While in the clinic seeing a patient who wants Viagra (House determines the patient has diabetes from subtle clues, which he suspects has led to heart disease that would make Viagra dangerous for him, but prescribes them anyway, leaving the choice up to him) House gets an emergency page about John Henry, who has gone into respiratory failure from the IVIG. House arrives to find the team standing around, unable to act because of the DNR. House himself intubates John Henry, violating the DNR to save his life, just as John Henry’s wife/girlfriend arrives.

John Henry is put on a ventilator. His reaction to the IVIG proves House’s theory wrong, and as he questions Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Chase for a new theory (Foreman had stormed off over House’s lack of concern for the patient’s wishes) House is served with a 50-foot restraining order against the patient and notice of battery charges. House has them test for Cameron’s idea of Wegener’s granulomatosis and has John Henry moved to a room directly above the clinic, using the restraining order as an excuse to get out of clinic duties. Cuddy offers House a lawyer (when she hired him she also set aside $50,000 a year for legal fees for him, and somehow he’s under budget) and tells him that Dr. Hamilton is flying in to pull the plug.

In court, House’s lawyer uses the argument that John Henry’s DNR might not be valid because of a low thyroid level, and that allowing him to die would violate House’s Sixth Amendment right to face his accuser at a trial. Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) asks what House hopes to gain, as the restraining order and charges would still stand, and House replies “time.” Wilson points out that while other doctors have a messiah complex and need to save the world, House has a “Rubik’s Complex,” and needs to solve the puzzle. House interrupts the proceedings to point out that he notices clubbing on the judge’s fingers, a sign of heart disease, and advises the judge to see a doctor. This sway’s the judge in House’s favor. After the trial, House admits that he didn’t actually notice any clubbing; he bluffed, knowing that every family has some history of heart disease. Back at the hospital, Cameron and Chase report that their tests were inconclusive. House orders treatment with Cytoxan anyway, but they refuse to do it, as it would threaten their medical licenses. House sneaks into John Henry’s room and gives him the treatment himself. As he leaves, he runs into Dr. Hamilton (David Conrad), who has just arrived.

Hamilton says that he already ruled out Wegener’s, and is going to take John Henry off the ventilator. When House points out his court order to keep John Henry alive, Hamilton says that all the charges have been dropped, so the court order no longer stands. House and Wilson watch as John Henry is taken off the ventilator, knowing that is House is right about Wegener’s, John Henry won’t be able to breathe without it, but John Henry starts breathing on his own, proving House wrong. John Henry’s breathing is stable, but now one of his arms is paralyzed. The team thinks this is a progression of the ALS, but House wants to consider other possibilities for the arm’s paralysis. Cameron suggests a blood clot from a stroke and House decides to do an MR angiogram. He sneaks back into John Henry’s room and, after a talk where John Henry compares his own obsession with his music to House’s obsession with medicine, House takes him to do the test. Meanwhile, Hamilton takes Foreman out to lunch and offers him a partnership in his practice in Los Angeles.

The team discovers a blood clot in John Henry’s brain. Foreman recommends treatment with Heparin, a blood thinner, to John Henry, but he rejects it because of the possibility of bleeding into his lungs that would keep him from ever being able to play the trumpet again. Foreman then suggests an embolectomy, a surgery to remove the clot. It is more dangerous, but wouldn’t harm the lungs. John Henry chooses the surgery, as it will either help him or kill him. Cameron and Chase do the surgery to remove the clot without incident, while House and Foreman discuss the differences between House and Hamilton.

House gets a page about John Henry, and they report to his room to find that he now has use of his arm back, as expected, and Hamilton wanted to congratulate House. House points out that a phone call would have sufficed, and sarcastically gives John Henry a reassuring pat on the leg as he turns to leave. John Henry says that he felt House touch his leg.

House realizes one of the treatments they tried has helped John Henry’s paralysis, but they don’t know which one, and the others could kill him. House has all his treatments stopped so they can add them back one at a time and see which one helps. Hamilton thinks that his treatments are finally working, but House thinks that if it were Hamilton’s treatments they would have been working before. After stopping the treatments, Hamilton comes to House to ask what treatments he stopped, and House realizes that John Henry’s legs are completely paralyzed again. The first treatment they gave John Henry was steroids for the pneumonia, and House has them restarted and orders an MRI to see what changed. As the MRI is done, House and Foreman discuss Foreman’s job offer. House tells Foreman that he should work with whoever he thinks is the better doctor, and says that the difference between them is that Hamilton does his job and accepts the results, while House thinks their decisions matter. Cameron and Chase interrupt with the MRI results. An intradural arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is compressing John Henry’s spine, causing the paralysis. It had always been there, but was hidden on previous MRIs by the inflammation it caused. The steroids relieved the inflammation, which slightly relieved the pressure on the spine and also allowed the AVM to be seen on the MRI. John Henry has surgery to remove the MRI and after physical therapy is able to walk again. As he leaves the hospital, John Henry gives House his trumpet as a gift to thank him, and Foreman keeps his 2-year fellowship with House.

My Review:

I think this is the point where House turns from good to great. The focus of this story is on House and his approach to medicine, and this is probably the first episode to really look at House’s personality, by comparing him to a patient with a similar obsession about music. Harry Lennix also did a great job as patient John Henry Giles and I absolutely believed he was an old jazz musician. This is also the first episode with a celebrity guest star, with Brandy playing herself in the opening sequence. The other guest stars are ok, though none of them stand out like Lennix does. There is a little bit of Foreman’s background revealed here as well, but the episode is really about House. The medical mystery follows the show’s predictable format, and its no surprise that House makes the patient walk in the end; the fun of this episode is in between with the DNR and the legal twists it leads to, and House’s great speeches to Foreman. That is what makes this episode stand out and makes it one of my favorites.

House: Poison (Season 1, Episode 8)

To save a boy suffering from pesticide poisoning, House and his team have to find out how he was poisoned.

The Plot: (Spoilers):

High school student Matt Davis (John Patrick Amedori) is taking his AP Calculus exam when he starts feeling nauseas and disoriented and collapses on the floor. At Princeton-Plainsboro, Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) reports to Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) that Matt’s heart rate is falling and he’s not responding to atropine. House asks why he cares. Foreman says that Matt’s toxicology screen was negative, his CAT scan was clean, there’s no infection and no diabetes. House realizes that Foreman doesn’t care and just finds Matt’s illness interesting, which House thinks is a good thing. House sends Dr. Foreman and Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) to search his house for drugs that the toxicology screen wouldn’t detect, like copier toner. While they are gone, Matt has a seizure. All Cameron and Foreman find (aside from Cameron’s observation that Foreman now wears the same type of shoes as House) is some potentially contaminated tomato sauce, but the seizure rules it out. Cameron says that pesticide poisoning fits Matt’s symptoms, and Foreman realizes he DOES wear the same shoes as House.

That's how calculus presents

House goes to the clinic and sees an 82 year old woman (Shirley Knight) who has suffered a personality change and has become flirtatious, including with House, much to the annoyance of her middle-aged son (Kurt Fuller). He admits her for tests.

Matt’s blood tests confirm he is suffering from an organophosphate and he is given medications, but his heart stops. The treatment isn’t working. Foreman mentions that his old professor at Columbia developed a series of targeted treatments for the Army, but they have to know exactly what Matt was poisoned with to know which one to use. Foreman goes to call his professor, Cameron goes to check the home for pesticides and Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) implants a pacing wire into Matt’s heart. Cameron finds an empty can of disulfoton at the home and House has Chase give Matt the treatment, but Matt’s mother (Roxanne Hart) protests that Matt didn’t use pesticides on their garden because it was part of a school project and pesticides were prohibited and she won’t let Chase give him the treatment. House goes to Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), wanting a court order to force Matt to get the treatment, but she doesn’t offer any help, so House talks to Matt’s mother and convinces her to let them give Matt the treatment, but by then another high school student has been admitted to the hospital with the same symptoms. They go to the same school, but don’t seem to have anything else in common. The other boy’s family lives in an apartment and they have no pesticides at home. The team realizes that they both had to be poisoned from the same source, but they have to find it. They discover that both kids ride the same bus, and Chase and Cameron check out the bus. The driver reports a truck spraying near the bus route.

After receiving her test results (and a love poem, entertainingly read aloud by Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard)) House goes to see the old woman from the clinic, whose tests reveal that she has syphilis. She admits she got it in high school, before she met her future husband, but she was treated. House says the treatment only suppressed it, and now it’s back and has attacked her brain. He gives her a prescription for penicillin.

The team has discovered the County sprayed ethyl parathion along the bus route to combat West Nile Virus. The parents of the second kid approved the treatment, but Matt’s mom refused, waiting for a second opinion from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). House sends Cameron to convince her to allow the treatment, which she does, but both boys go into seizures. The team was wrong and the boys were poisoned some other way.

Cameron "hustles" the single mom

House says that the progression of their symptoms suggests that the poison was absorbed through their skin, and from their admission times they must have been poisoned before they got on their bus. House thinks they must have been poisoned through a contaminated consumer product that came in contact with their skin as part of their morning routine, and sends Cameron and Foreman to each of their homes to find a product they have in common.

House’s elderly patient returns and tries to give back the prescription, because she doesn’t want to stop the feelings she’s having, but House tells her that the damage to her brain is permanent, so she agrees to take the penicillin.

Cameron and Foreman find the same laundry detergent at both homes. House thinks the detergent could have been contaminated and the boys were poisoned through their freshly-washed clothes, but the parents of the second boy say that his clothes were new and were never washed, and he doesn’t even know how to use the washing machine. House checks Matt’s clothes and finds his jeans were also new. House orders the clothes tested for contamination. They determine the chemical is phosdrin. One again, Matt’s mom refuses treatment, waiting for the CDC, and this time she refuses to be convinced. House goes into Matt’s room with the medicine and his portable TV, telling Matt’s mom he’s going to wait there in case she changes her mind. She gets a call, and is told the CDC can’t make a determination, leaving it up to her. She agrees to the treatment. House gives Matt the treatment and leaves the room, and Chase reveals it was he who made the call, pretending to be the CDC (with a bad southern accent).

House waits while Matt's mom gets a call

It turns out both boys had bought stolen jeans out of the back of a truck near the school, from a man who also worked as a day laborer in a field, and had apparently spilled pesticide in the back of the truck that contaminated the jeans. House and Foreman run into Matt and his mom in the hall, and she reveals that the real CDC called, implying she knows what they did, but she lets it slide. Matt asks who they are, and his mom says “they’re the arrogant jerks who saved your life.” House and Foreman get into the elevator to leave and notice their matching shoes.

House and Foreman wear matching shoes

My Review:

This episode has an interesting mystery, as the team figures out the big picture right away, and then has to spend the rest of the episode hunting down which pesticide is the culprit, making it a lot more like a police investigation than some other cases. All their ideas are plausible, though the theory of being exposed on the bus to spraying along the road doesn’t entire work, as if that were the case shouldn’t most of the students on the bus have gotten sick? They also end up finding the pesticide by testing the boys’ clothes, but it seems like that would’ve been an easy way to test most of the other theories along the way (Matt accidentally spaying himself with pesticide while gardening or exposure on the bus to spraying along the road), saving a lot of time and trouble (but giving us a less interesting episode). I like the mystery overall though. Matt’s mom was well played by the actress, but I find it hard to believe that a mother would actually act that way, and the drama was a little overdone. The side plot with the 82 year old woman is fun and entertaining and is probably the best part of the episode. The episode is also a little bit of a Foreman episode, showing that he is starting to accept House’s way of practicing medicine and is become more like him. Knowing what will eventually happen to Foreman in later seasons, it’s interesting to see this development so early in the series. We don’t see much of Cuddy or Wilson in this episode, though Wilson’s reading of the love poem was great. Poison is an entertaining episode of House.

House: Fidelity (Season 1, Episode 7)

House and his team try to cure a woman who sleeps 18 hours a day.

The Plot (Spoilers):

Ed (Dominic Purcell) comes home from jogging with his friend to find his wife Elise (Myndy Crist) is still in bed at almost 4 in the afternoon. She tells him to call her boss and say she’s not feeling well, and he reminds her that it’s Saturday; she hasn’t been to work or even out of bed since Wednesday. He tries to get her out of bed and she suddenly and violently slaps him, and she realizes there might be something wrong with her. Elise is admitted to Princeton-Plainsboro, where she averages 18 hours of sleep a day, which gets Dr. Cameron’s (Jennifer Morrison) attention. She brings the case to Dr. House (Hugh Laurie), who initially assumes clinical depression, but Cameron says Elise isn’t depressed. House notices that the file says Elise is “unusually irritable” according to her husband and takes the case claiming Cameron’s interest is interesting.

Ed and Elise are worried

House gets the team together. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) also assumes depression, but House points out that depression couldn’t cause Elise’s fever. Cameron says Elise’s elevated sedimentation rate suggests inflammation and Foreman says her other symptoms point to the brain. Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) suggests parasites, but Cameron says Elise has never left the country. House suggests a tumor on the brain and orders an MRI to find the tumor.

In the clinic, House treats a woman for shortness of breath, which she says is more of a tightness. House thinks she might be a little anemic and is about to perform an EEG on her chest, when he discovers she has breast implants: a gift for her husband’s 40th birthday. After “consulting” Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), House orders an EKG and blood tests. House also notices that Wilson has a new green tie, and suspects him of cheating on his wife, because his wife hates green.

House finally enjoys seeing a clinic patient

The team doesn’t find a tumor, and Elise goes into a seizure. Chase suggests Lyme Disease, but her “clingy” husband never noticed a rash. Wilson suggests paraneoplastic syndrome caused by breast cancer. Cameron searches for breast cancer, but doesn’t find any. Wilson says that in 12% of paraneoplastic cases, no tumor is ever found and the patient dies. Wilson says they should do a PET scan. House says to treat the symptoms with IV immunoglobulin and if there is a tumor, it will get bigger and easier to find. He sends Foreman to check out where Elise works, because if its not paraneoplasitic and there is some kind of toxin responsible, it couldn’t have come from her home because her husband is healthy.

Elise works in a fancy French restaurant. The owner keeps the kitchen very clean and none of his other employees are sick. Foreman notices that the restaurant serves rabbit. Elise says her arm itches, and hallucinates spiders crawling out of an imaginary wound. They have to sedate her to calm her down.

Spiders under the skin: never a good sign

Wilson says that the hallucination is consistent with paraneoplastic syndrome, but Cameron says the fact that they already had Elise on IV immunoglobulin rules it out. House suggests an infection. Foreman says her tests, timeline and symptoms rule out almost all bacteria, viruses and parasites. House suggests African Trypanosomiasis, also known as African Sleeping Sickness, because in late stages all the parasites that cause it are in the brain and undetectable by tests, but she has never been to Africa and never had a transfusion. Foreman suggests tularemia, or rabbit fever, which she could have inhaled while chopping rabbit meat at the restaurant. Cameron says in that case she should have had respiratory symptoms but Foreman says she could’ve thought it was just a cold. House says that they rejected Lyme Disease because her husband never saw a rash and the respiratory systems would be even more noticeable. The treatment for tularemia can cause aplastic anemia and the treatment for African trypanosomiasis kills one in 10 patients.

As the team tests Elise for tularemia, House again confronts Wilson about his suspected girlfriend, and Wilson admits he had lunch with a new nurse, just to be nice. Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) delivers the test results for the woman from the clinic. She says the tests look normal, but House notices something on the EKG and goes to talk to her. Her EKG showed a slightly decreased heart rate, and he asks if her husband has high blood pressure. She reveals that he was diagnosed six months ago and makes their oatmeal for breakfast. House tells her that her husband has been adding his blood pressure medication to their oatmeal, as the beta blockers cause a decreased sex drive and he thought as long as his were reduced, hers might as well be too. House suggests she start making her own breakfast, and have an affair. This train of thought gives House an epiphany, and he realizes that Elise could have gotten sleeping system from sex if she had an affair. Since the test for tularemia was inconclusive, House has Foreman and Chase ask Ed and Elise separately if they noticed Elise’s respiratory symptoms or if they had an affair. They both deny both the respiratory symptoms and an affair. Meanwhile, House reveals to Cameron that after he noticed how she was affected by the sick babies in “Maternity,” he checked her medical records and learned that she had never been pregnant. Naturally, the invasion of privacy upsets her, and she storms off.

With both Elise and Ed denying an affair, the team treats her for tularemia. As Cameron gives her the second dose of the treatment, Elise slips into a coma. The team realizes she doesn’t have tularemia and must have sleeping sickness.

Elise falls into a coma

House talks to Ed, and tells him the diagnosis. He again denies an affair, and House says that means Elise must have had one, which he doesn’t believe. House asks him if he thinks there’s a chance that she had an affair just one, and when Ed says he doesn’t know if he trust her that much, House has Foreman and Chase starts the treatment of melarsoprol, which comes in glass syringes and with special IV tubing because it melts plastic.

A biohazard label on your medicine: also not a good sign

Ed reveals to Cameron that if Elise recovers, it means she betrayed him and part of him hopes she doesn’t get better. He asks if that makes him a terrible person, and Cameron says yes.

Cameron tells Ed he's a terrible person

House finds Cameron in the lab, crying over a centrifuge. She tells House what she said to Ed, and House asks why. Cameron reveals that when she was 21, she got married to a man who died six months later of thyroid cancer that metastasized to his brain. House realizes that thyroid cancer would have diagnosed a over a year before he died, so she knew he was dying when she married him, maybe even when she first met him. He tells her that she can’t be that good of a person and be well adjusted.

Cameron tells House her sad story

Elise’s fever spikes and her blood pressure falls. The treatment is destroying her heart. House tells Ed, and he begs Elise not to die, and she comes out of her coma. Later, Cameron watches from outside the room as Elise tearfully admits the affair to Ed. Ed walks out on her, and Cameron goes after him, telling him how lucky his is that Elise is alive and lover him, but he says that she couldn’t have done what she did if she loved him. House asks Elise who she had the affair with and sends Cameron to notify him that he needs to be treated. It turns out to be Ed’s friend that he was jogging with at the beginning of the episode (who himself has a wife and son).

Ed begs Elise not to die

My Review:

This episode has an interesting mystery, with the diagnosis being hindered by being a very rare condition and the patient’s lies, but the highlight of this episode is the revelation about Cameron’s late husband. The episode also reveals a little more about Wilson’s past, mainly that he’s been married multiple times. This episode nicely includes some continuity with past episodes, including “Maternity” in the Cameron subplot and “Damned If You Do” in the Wilson subplot in adding support to the idea that Wilson’s marriage isn’t going too well. As usual, the clinic adds some levity to an otherwise serious episode, and this time the lone clinic patient leads House to his epiphany, as one of the clinic patients in the pilot episode did. While the mystery makes this a good episode on its own, the important information about Cameron’s past makes this a significant episode, and perhaps the most important episode up to this point in the series.

House: The Socratic Method (Season 1, Episode 6)

Dr. House and his team treat the schizophrenic single mother of a teenage boy.

The Plot (spoilers):

38-year-old schizophrenic Lucy (Stacy Edwards) and her teenage son Lucas (Aaron Himelstein) are at the unemployment department, when Lucy experiences pain in her leg. She is also hearing voices. When they have a moment alone, Lucas slips her a shot of vodka to calm her down, which she desperately sucks down. The then goes into respiratory arrest and collapses.

Lucy's leg starts to hurt

Lucy is taken by ambulance to the Princeton-Plainsboro Emergency Room. As Lucas paces nervously in the waiting room, Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) is also there, hiding from Dr. Cuddy. Lucy is diagnosed by the ER doctor with a small pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that got stuck in her lungs, originating from a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in her calf. The ER doctor, having noticed her blood-alcohol content, attributes the DVT to alcoholism, but House overhears and ends up taking on the case. The team, especially Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps), doesn’t understand what House finds so interesting, and Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) suspects that House is more interested in the schizophrenia than the DVT.

House takes on the case

House talks to Lucy and discovers she stopped shaving her legs two months ago because of her tremors, but Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) points out that the tremors aren’t new, so House surmises that the amount of blood must have changed and orders tests and has her meds stopped. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) wishes House a happy birthday, having seen the date on a form in his mail. Foreman tries to draw blood for the tests, but Lucy panics, so Foreman gives her 5mg of Haldol to sedate her.

House talks to Lucy

In the clinic, House reports to a mother and daughter that the lab found that the girl does not have strep, plus that she has none of the symptoms for strep, but House thought running the tests was easier than arguing. The mother wants House to convince the daughter to accept a sugarless cake for her birthday. House refuses and tells the mother to get an ice cream cake. Outside, Lucas is upset with House for Foreman giving his mom Haldol, saying it changes her.

House talks to the mother and daughter in the clinic

Lucy starts vomiting blood. House yells at Foreman for giving Lucy Haldol, as it could hinder their diagnosis. Foreman says it couldn’t have caused the bleed. The only thing the blood tests showed was a prolonged PT time, which could mean Foreman made a mistake drawing the blood, but House doubts that and says it could also indicate a Vitamin K deficiency, which Cameron says would account for the bleed but not the clot, but House says that without Vitamin K, Protein C doesn’t work, which would lead to clots. Cameron suggests that it could be the result of another drug interacting with the heparin the ER doctor gave her to thin her blood, and says that she was prescribed ampicillin for a sore throat, but House says Lucas’s notes say she never took it. Chase says it’s more likely than malnourishment, and attributes the rest of her symptoms to alcohol causing the DVT and cirrhosis and says they should ultrasound her liver.

Lucy starts vomiting blood

House sends Chase and Foreman to check out her home for drugs and diet and after that they’ll do the ultrasound. Chase and Foreman find that she never took the ampicillin and lives off of frozen microwavable hamburgers. Lucas says they are the only thing she’ll eat, but they don’t contain any Vitamin K.

Foreman and Chase find Lucy's favorite food

House deduces that Lucas isn’t 18 like he’s claimed, but is only 15. Lucas worries that House will turn him in to social services. Meanwhile, Chase doesn’t think the Vitamin K deficiency is Lucy’s only problem and ultrasounds her liver himself. He finds signs of cirrhosis, as well as a 5.8-centimeter cancerous tumor, which Wilson diagnoses as the real cause of the bleed. Chase says if they do nothing, she’ll die of liver failure within 60 days. She needs a liver transplant, but as an alcoholic schizophrenic her chances of getting one aren’t good. They could operate to remove the tumor, but it’s too big and outside the surgical guidelines. House has Wilson inject the tumor with 95% ethanol, which dehydrates the tumor cells and temporarily shrinks it so they can trick the surgeon into operating.

Wilson and Cameron plan to trick a surgeon

House runs into Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) in the clinic and inadvertently hints to Cuddy that he’s done something he doesn’t want her to know about. He tries to use his birthday as an excuse, but Cuddy doesn’t buy it and pulls the charts on House’s patient. While House is treating a clinic patient with hiccups, she confronts him about shrinking the tumor but doesn’t stop the surgery. The surgeon figures out what House did during the surgery. He warns Cameron that if House ever tries it again, he’ll stop the surgery. The entire tumor was removed, but Lucy will need some chemotherapy. While Chase tried to comfort Lucas, a social worker arrives to take him in to protective custody due to his being in a difficult living situation. House sees Lucas being taken away, and he accuses House of reporting him. House suspects that Lucy might not really be schizophrenic.

The surgeon warns Cameron

House checks the phone records and finds that Lucy called social services herself, because Lucas would be better off. He says that self-sacrifice, plus the late presentation and the fact that none of her medications ever helped proves she’s not schizophrenic. He makes some late-night calls to her previous doctors, none of which are particularly responsive considering the time. House gets his team together instead in to determine the real cause of Lucy’s psychological symptoms. Cameron suggests Wilson’s Disease, the accumulation of copper in the body. House likes the idea, and points out that Lucy missed an appointment with an ophthalmologist (Wilson’s Disease causes cataracts) and causes cirrhosis. They check her eyes and find the copper-colored Kayser-Fleischer rings that indicate Wilson’s Disease.

Kayser-Fleischer rings

They treat Lucy for Wilson’s Disease and her psychological symptoms go away. Lucas is returned to her and they go home. On their way out, they run into House and Wilson in the elevator. Lucy thanks House but Lucas still blames him for turning him in. Rather than tell him the truth, House keeps up the lie to protect Lucy, saying he had Cuddy call social services. They leave and House tells Wilson he was right: it WAS the schizophrenia that interested him, and she’s not nearly as interesting anymore.

Lucy thanks House

My Review:

The Socratic Method features an interesting mystery and the team doesn’t follow their typical formula of making several bad diagnoses, instead they are pretty much always right, until it turns out there’s another layer. Lucy sure is lucky, though, that Chase didn’t accept the Vitamin K deficiency as her only problem, or her cancer would never have been discovered. Guest star Stacy Edwards gives a good performance as schizophrenic Lucy. Aaron Himelstein does a decent job as Lucas. There’s not a lot of development for the main characters, but it is implied that Chase had to deal with an alcoholic in his past. If this episode took place close to its original air date, House’s birthday would be in December. Overall, this isn’t a standout episode, but it’s an enjoyable one.

House: Damned If You Do (Season 1, Episode 5)

In this Christmas-themed episode, House tries to treat a nun whose problems might have been complicated by his own error.

The Plot (spoilers):

Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) and Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) are in the lobby working on charts, which House considers a waste of time. Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) tells House he has a patient who’s been waiting for nearly an hour.

House takes charting seriously

House goes to see the patient, a nun named Sister Augustine (Elizabeth Mitchell) who has red, swollen hands. One of her fellow nuns says it looks like stigmata. House diagnosis her with contact dermatitis, an allergic reaction which he attributes to dish soap from washing pots and pans. House gives her a pill of diphenhydramine to counteract the allergic reaction, which she washes down with tea she brought with her. House goes back out to the lobby, but Sister Augustine soon has trouble breathing. House gives her an injection of Epinephrine to help her breathing, which it does. House deduces that she is allergic to diphenhydramine, and decides to prescribe her steroids instead, bet before he can do anything, she goes into a cardiac arrest.

Stigmata?

Sister Augustine is admitted to the hospital. House claims that he only gave her 0.1cc of epinephrine, but Cuddy says that small amount couldn’t have induced a cardiac arrest and he must have accidentally given her 1.0cc instead, since they are in the same drawer. House insists he didn’t screw up, and she must have a pre-existing condition. Cuddy gives him 24 hours to find it, or she’ll have to report him to the disciplinary board.

House suspects Churg-Strauss Vasculitis, a condition with a short life expectancy, even with treatment. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) thinks it’s possible House just screwed up and gave her too much epinephrine, but House again insists he didn’t screw up. He orders a chest CT scan and puts the patient on prednisone.

In the clinic, House treats a store Santa (Dakin Matthews) suffering from inflammatory bowel. He has already tried a number of treatments, none of which have worked. House prescribes him cigarettes: one twice a day. The patient is shocked, but House says that cigarette smoking is one of the most effective ways to control inflammatory bowel. When the patient expresses concern that cigarettes are addictive and dangerous, House replies that pretty much all the drugs he prescribes are addictive and dangerous, but cigarettes are perfectly legal.

Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) and Sister Augustine chat as he takes her for the CT scan. She says her parents died when she was six and she was raised in a foster home run by the church and took her vows when she was 18 and has known no other life. The team runs the test, which shows no signs of Churg-Strauss Vasculitis. As they get her out of the machine, she hallucinates smells and a vision of Jesus, which Foreman interprets as temporal lobe swelling, then goes into a seizure.

Is that you, Jesus?

Sister Augustine tests positive for herpetic encephalitis, indicating her immune system is compromised, which Cuddy points out could be caused by the prednisone, but Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrsion) says that her immune system is too severely compromised to be the result of only two doses of prednisone. House gets Cuddy to leave, and Chase suggests Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, which fits all the symptoms, but the tests were negative and the treatment is prednisone, which they can’t go back to because of the herpetic encephalitis. House says to redo the tests and put the patient in a hypobaric (high-pressure) oxygen chamber. Foreman doesn’t think House is right and the side effects of the hypobaric chamber are too great a risk, so he goes to Cuddy.

The hypobaric chamber

House is watching his portable TV in the hospital’s chapel when one of the nuns comes in to talk to him, telling him that Augustine is a hypochondriac. He offers her candy and they have a little chat.

It's not House's fault the reception is so good

Cuddy confronts House and takes him off the case. Taking over House’s team, she decides there is no underlying condition, and treats the symptoms directly. Wilson finds House in the clinic counting the epinephrine syringes in the exam room. He points out that House will have to go through the records of every patient in the clinic in the last two days to prove he’s right. While Chase is checking on Sister Augustine, he gets a page reading “Call Mom.” He goes to House, saying his mom’s been dead for 10 years. House asks Chase what he knows about the nun and what she’s hiding. Chase says that if she does have a secret, her boss would know. House goes to the monastery and has a cup of tea with the Mother Superior (Ann Dowd), who tells him that Augustine left foster care when she was 12 and lived on the streets, dabbled in drugs, got pregnant when she was 15, tried to self abort and lost the child. She eventually came back to the church. House says its not relevant and takes a sip of tea, which he then asks about.

House has tea with the Mother Superior

Cuddy and the team haven’t made any progress. Cameron thinks House was right about an underlying condition, but doesn’t have a specific idea. House returns with a sample of the monastery’s figwort tea, which Sister Augustine has been drinking a lot of and which when combined with even 0.1cc of epinephrine can cause a cardiac arrest. The rest of the symptoms could be explained by a severe, long-term allergic reaction, which Cameron originally suggested but didn’t stick with after House immediately rejected it because it wouldn’t cause the cardiac arrest.

In order to figure out what Sister Augustine is allergic to, the team puts her in a clean room, so they can introduce possible allergens one at a time. In the clean room, she can’t have visitors, but Chase offers to pray with her. She says she doesn’t want to die and asks why God has left her. Chase reveals he was in seminary school and tells her his favorite passage was 1 Peter 1:7, “These trials only test your faith to see whether or not it is strong and pure. Your faith is being tested, as fire tests gold and purifies it, and your faith is far more precious to the Lord than mere gold, so if your faith remains strong after being tested, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of his return.” He tells her that she has a choice of faith or fear. She asks him why he left seminary school, and he says it was that test: she passed, he didn’t.

Sister Augustine has her faith tested

Soon after that, Sister Augustine goes into anaphylactic shock, an allergic reaction despite being in a clean room. They give her 0.1cc of epinephrine and intubate her, stabilizing her. House has ruled out everything he can think of that could have caused the anaphylactic shock. Cameron gives House a Christmas present, and Chase reports that Sister Augustine has been extubated and is now requesting to check out against medical advice and return to the monastery. Chase thinks he might have talked her into the decision in their discussion earlier. House tries to talk to her, to no avail. She says that when she was on the streets she was on every kind of birth control and still got pregnant and was angry with God until she realized she can’t be angry with God without believing in him, and she says that God is inside of her whether she lives or dies. When House tells Wilson “she has God inside her,” Wilson replies “Maybe she’s allergic to God.” House realizes the only place they haven’t looked for an allergen in inside her body and orders a full-body scan.

Intubating Sister Augustine

The full-body scan reveals a “copper cross” Intra-Uterine Device (IUD), that was apparently left in when she tried to have an abortion. She is allergic to copper, with minimal symptoms until she started washing the monastery’s new copper cookware, contact which caused the allergy to become serious. They remove the IUD, and she recovers.

The Copper Cross

Wilson tells House that he did screw up, just not in the way he thought, because if Cuddy hadn’t taken him off the case he would’ve killed the patient going down the wrong track. Wilson invites House to Christmas/Chanukah dinner, which he declines, and Wilson says maybe he’ll go over to House’s. House asks if Wilson’s wife wouldn’t mind being alone, and says she’s used to it with him being a doctor, and then says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Wilson and House have Chinese food in House’s apartment, and House is seen playing the piano.

House plays the piano

My Review:

After an episode focusing more on Foreman and an episode focusing more on Cameron it is only fitting that we get an episode focusing more on Chase, and of the three, Chase gets the closest look. In this episode, we learn that chase went to seminary school, but quit before finishing, we learn that Chase’s mom has been dead for 10 years, and it is implied that Chase went to medical school to please his father, even though he didn’t really want to. This is a lot more than we know about the other fellows so far. We also learn a little about Wilson, namely that his friendship with House extends beyond being colleagues and outside the hospital, and that Wilson is married, but maybe not so happily. And we learn that Cameron is an atheist, which struck me as a surprise the first time I saw this episode, as of the three fellows she was the one I most expected to be at least a little bit religious. Since this is a Christmas-themed episode with a nun for a patient, religious debate was bound to come up, and while it shouldn’t surprise anyone to discover that House doesn’t think much of religious belief, the episode does a pretty even-handed job of portraying both sides. As for the medical mystery, this one laid out the clues nicely, and a layman with knowledge of old birth control methods could perhaps solve this one before the characters do, with little to no medical knowledge. This is a nice change from previous episodes that required specific medical knowledge, often about a rare condition, to solve. I am usually not a fan of Christmas-themed episodes, but in this case, a solid mystery and the revealing of information about the characters make Damned If You Do an enjoyable and important episode of House.

House: Maternity (Season 1, Episode 4)

Dr. House discovers an epidemic that strikes several newborn babies in the hospital’s maternity ward.

The Plot (Spoilers):

Karen & Ethan Hartig (Ever Carradine & Sam Trammell) name their newborn daughter Maxine. The baby spits up despite not having eaten anything and they call the OB/GYN (Kenneth Choi), who notices that she is lethargic and feverish. She then goes into a seizure.

The Hartig Family

Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) is watching his soap opera in the OB/GYN lounge when the Hartig’s OB/GYN and another come in, discussing the Hartig’s baby. The OB/GYN has diagnosed the problem as a bowel obstruction and thinks the baby will be fine.

House chillin' in the OB/GYN Lounge

House takes off to investigate himself and finds another newborn baby with a fever, diagnosed a few hours earlier. He decides there is an infection spreading through the maternity ward. He tells both Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) and Dr. Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) but neither believes him, so he takes his team through the maternity ward hunting for more sick babies. They find a third baby with a fever, and a fourth showing early symptoms, which convinces Cuddy to shut down the maternity ward.

Rounding up the sick babies

Symptoms include the spiking fever and plummeting blood pressure. Dr. Foreman (Omar Epps) says they could be dead within a day, and the four babies don’t seem to have had anything in common. Cuddy sets off to put together a team to start swabbing, while House and his fellows try to diagnose. They suspect a bacterial infection and have several possibilities. They don’t have time for tests so House starts them on vancomycin for MRSA and aztreonam for the others and orders MRIs, before heading to the clinic. The MRIs don’t show anything. Dr. Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) has trouble talking to a family to tell them how sick their baby is and Foreman has to step in. Cameron tells him giving bad news isn’t a hard as receiving it and that its easier to die than to watch someone die. Cuddy gathers up med students and has them search for the infection.

In the clinic, House sees a woman (Hedy Burress) who says she’s been feeling sick a lot and has been training for a marathon but can’t lose any weight. House determines that she’s pregnant (initially referring to the baby as a parasite) and shows her the baby on a sonogram. The woman has a birth control implant and says she was told she might not have any periods if it was working, and House points out the same thing could happen if it’s not working. She admits that she cheated on her husband with an old boyfriend at about the same time as the baby was conceived, so House offers a paternity test as well, but she doesn’t want her husband to find out. House asks is the old boyfriend resembles her husband and when she says yes he recommends that she just have the baby and her husband will never know.

House and the pregnant woman

Two of the babies are experiencing kidney failure caused by the antibiotics. If they leave them on both antibiotics they’ll die of kidney failure but if they stop both they’ll die of the infection. The team has no idea what the illness is or which antibiotic is causing the kidney failure, as it’s a possible side effect for either one. House order one baby be taken off the vancomycin and the other off the aztreonam, giving them different treatments for the same illness. House’s team and the hospital lawyer (Cress Williams) all express their concerns about the fact that one baby will almost surely die based on the flip of a coin, but Cuddy lets House go ahead in the belief that they will learn how to save the other six babies, of which there are now a total of six. Foreman tells the Hartigs that they think the disease is MRSA and they are keeping their baby on vancomycin and tells them how serious the situation is, preparing them for the worst, while Cameron gives the other family, whose baby is being kept on aztreonam, a more reassuring report that makes them feel relief. Wilson criticizes her for not preparing them for the worst, but Cameron says that if the worst happens they aren’t going to care what she said the day before and she’d rather give them some hope.

The pregnant woman from the clinic shows up at House’s office with her husband, saying he needs a blood test for “Mono,” which House eventually realizes means she wants the paternity test done, without him knowing. House agrees to schedule them for a test. Meanwhile, Cuddy is still on an obsessive search for the cause of the infection, while Wilson tries, with little success, to keep her calm.

Cuddy is handling the stress well

Dr. Chase (Jesse Spencer) is talking to a concerned Mrs. Hartig when the baby that was kept on aztreonam crashes and dies. House has Chase double-up all the babies on vancomycin and tells Cameron to tell the family. She tries to get out of it, first suggesting Chase do it and then saying House is the attending physician. House tells Wilson to make sure she does her job, but when she tries she freezes up and Wilson has to step forward and tell them himself.

Cameron has some bad news to deliver

Chase reports that the Hartig baby is also getting sicker: the vancomycin isn’t working either. House sends the team home for the night, and conducts an autopsy on the dead baby. The next morning House announces that they were on the wrong track all along: the autopsy showed a virus infected the heart.

House does an autopsy

The babies only have enough blood to do five or six tests, so House leads the team, along with Wilson and Cuddy, in a brainstorming session to determine which tests to run. They get to a list of eight, which Chase says is pushing it, but they go ahead with the tests. House asks if there are any babies left in the hospital who didn’t get sick, and Cuddy says there is one. House has his blood tested as well to serve as a control. The sick babies test positive for three of the viruses, and the healthy baby for two of them, and House realizes that as infants they still have their mothers antibodies, so to get the whole picture they have to test the mothers of the sick babies and whatever the babies test positive for but the mothers don’t is what they have. Testing the mothers reveals the answer is Echovirus 11, and the hospital gets a promising experimental antiviral to treat the babies.

Cameron feels sorry for the Hartigs being unable to hold their daughter, so she asks them to hold her while the nurse changes the sheets. In the morning, House asks Foreman how Cameron is handling things and he says she’s fine. House goes to the clinic to tell the pregnant woman that her husband is definitely the cause of her “mono.” She is thankful and wants to get House a gift; he replies that “sometimes the best gift is the gift of never seeing you again.” She asks him if he could handle her prenatal or deliver the baby, and he declines, but pauses as he leaved the exam room.

All the remaining babies recover and are released. House talks to Cameron, saying that anyone who is that awkward either has no experience with death or too much experience with it. He asks where she got the idea to have the Hartig parents hold their baby, and then asks if she lost someone. She leaves angrily.

House is hanging out in the lobby outside the maternity ward, looking for the source of the virus, which is only spread by humans. Cuddy has tested the staff, but the babies didn’t have any common personnel. He spots an elderly hospital volunteer (Donna Stearns) with a hacking cough handing out stuffed animals.

The spreader of the virus

House is again watching his soap opera in the OB/GYN lounge. The OB/GYNs from the beginning come in and tell him he isn’t supposed to be there, and House says he’s performing a delivery for a patient he just took on and will need one of them to supervise. He gives them the due date and when they say that its 5 months away, House replies “Thank God these chairs are comfortable.”

At least now he has an excuse

My Review:

Episode 4 is the best yet with an interesting mystery that doesn’t quite fit into the typical “patient of the week” formula, some drama with Cameron and some humor with House and his clinic patient. The dialogue in this episode is especially good. In addition to House, Wilson and even Cuddy get some fun lines. Cuddy cutting off the med student’s tie is a high point. As far as House’s team goes, Cameron gets the focus in this episode, like Foreman did in the last one, and it’s hinted that Cameron has some tragedy in her past, but we don’t get any details yet. They were already doing a good job, but now the actors seem to be getting comfortable with their roles and their interactions seem to be a little more natural. I think the interaction between Wilson and Cameron is the first significant interaction Wilson has had with any of House’s fellows, and I think it is also the first time Cameron’s first name, Allison, is mentioned on screen. Also, during the autopsy, House gives the date, Thursday, December 2, 2004, which was within a week of this episode’s original airdate, for what that’s worth. I don’t really like how the babies are saved with an experimental drug; it seems like if this were real life, the story wouldn’t have had a happy ending. Despite that one point, Maternity is still a great episode of House.