By Sara M
It's all about Cuddy this week, as her handyman falls off her roof and his fingers start to change color. She feels really bad about it, which clouds her judgment and earns her some fairly cruel House smackdowns. In true House style, Alfredo the Handyman is diagnosed and treated for a variety of ailments he doesn't have, making him worse until his right hand has to be cut off, his kidneys are shutting down, his lungs don't work, and he has bleeding in his brain. Fortunately, House secretly knows how to speak Spanish, and is able to find out about Alfredo the (Not So) Handyman's secret second job as a cockfight-cleaner-upper, and diagnose that he has some bird disease related to that. The B-patient is Mac from Night Court, who sets off yet another race debate between House and Foreman. But the more interesting debate is, of course, whether or not House and Cuddy ever had sex. Everyone thinks they did, but no one's saying for sure.
A woman jogs. Actually, it looks like she's sprinting, probably to finish her run strong. Closer examination reveals the woman to be Cuddy, who waves good morning to a neighbor as she jogs up the walkway to her beautiful house that they can try to make look like it's in a temperate climate all they want, but I totally saw some tropical plants hanging out on the lawn. That, and I happened to drive by the house used for the exteriors and saw them shooting it. Anyway, good to see that Cuddy's been spending all that time off-camera meeting the neighbors and getting some basic repairs done on her home, as we see Alfredo the Hunky Handyman just climbing down a ladder to her roof as she approaches. Man, everyone has a Hot Young Spanish guy working on their homes these days! Alfredo asks Cuddy if he can finish up the work tomorrow, since he's not feeling well today. "Mexico playing Argentina on TV?" Cuddy asks, going for the racist assumption for the first and certainly not the last time this episode. Of course the Latino wants to skip work to watch soccer. He'll watch it on Telemundo, where the announcer guy says, "GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL!!!!!" Alfredo pants and wheezes that his asthma is pretty bad today, and Cuddy says that after six years working for her (apparently, her beautiful house is quite the money pit), Alfredo can't lie to her. She's having a dinner party tonight, and if it rains, the roof will leak all over it. Alfredo agrees to finish the job today, and Cuddy heads inside.
Cuddy throws her iPod armband down on the table rather roughly (but I guess when you're raking in those Chief of Medicine dollars, you can afford to break a few gadgets), and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. She starts choking after taking a sip, her eyes rolling back into her head. Just before I can be disappointed that my guess that a Mystery Illness would take down a member of the opening-credits cast wouldn't happen until Season 5, Alfredo screams and goes flying past the kitchen window. That's probably not supposed to be hilarious, but it really was. Cuddy immediately recovers from her over-exaggerated swallowing effort and pokes her head out the window to see Alfredo moaning on the ground.
An overhead shot of an ambulance crossing what I'm guessing is a river in New Jersey (I didn't see any palm trees this time, so it probably is the real thing) cuts to Cuddy inside the ambulance going all EMT on Alfredo's ass. He has some pain in his ribs, but Cuddy's more concerned about the fact that the two smallest fingers on his right hand are a shade darker than the rest. "They feel funny," Alfredo says. He asks if this is a bad thing. Cuddy looks concerned, but I'm not, because this is going to be a Cuddy-riffic episode and I am thrilled!
Post-credits, Cuddy has brought Alfredo's case to Wilson and the lollipop-sucking House, who wonder how falling off a roof can make a man's fingers turn black. House knows he has an entire episode ahead to make sarcastic remarks at Cuddy's expense, so he refrains from doing it here and simply says that Alfredo's fall might have done something to his spine that restricted blood flow. But he can't resist making a crack about Cuddy's jogging clothes, which she is still wearing, noting that her tank top "really absorbs moisture." I'm not sure if he's talking about the weird red stain on her stomach or the patch of sweat around her cleavage area, neither of which makes much sense, since the red stain doesn't look like blood (nor would I expect to see any, since I didn't see Alfredo bleed in the ambulance), and I was not aware that the air between one's boobs had the sweat glands you'd need to make a sweat patch like that. ["Uh...if you really sweat a lot, the separate boob sweat patches can spread toward one another. This happened to a friend of mine." -- Wing Chun] Cuddy responds by throwing a shirt over herself, and House continues by saying that Alfredo could have DIC -- disseminated intravascular coagulophathy. Wilson doesn't seeing how a clotting problem could be caused by a fall off a roof. House says that trauma sometimes activates the body's clotting enzymes. House takes the file from Cuddy, who starts to thank him for doing her a solid until he makes it quite clear that he couldn't care less. Cuddy seems surprised by this, for some reason.
Cuddy joins House in the meeting room for the differential diagnosis, and then volunteers to go do Alfredo's bloodwork. House nixes that, saying that Cuddy hasn't been a "real doctor" in ten years, as if hospitals in real life don't relegate phlebotomy work to the lowest rungs of the hierarchy, who are probably a lot better at venipuncture than doctors are anyway. House orders the Cottages to get the blood, saying that they're more qualified to do it since they showered today.
The time we see Cuddy, she's showered too, and is back to wearing her standard tight clothes with revealing bust line, which really aren't all that different from her jogging clothes when you see them described on paper. She watches from outside Alfredo's room, concerned, as Chase talks to Alfredo. And then the horrible Stacy creeps up behind Cuddy and rather invasively sticks her head to Cuddy's ear and tells her not to see or talk to Alfredo. You see, Stacy is a Lawyer, and her Lawyer advice is for Cuddy not to let her guilt over what happened to her handyman on her property make her say something stupid -- like "I'm sorry" -- that would indicate culpability at the inevitable lawsuit. "Don't go in there," Stacy concludes. It's scenes like this where you see what an integral and necessary addition to this show the Stacy character really is.
Inside Alfredo's room, Chase administers some anti-clotting medicine for the DIC, and notices some small scars on Alfredo's good hand. Alfredo claims he got them from construction work, groans, and asks when he can leave the hospital and go back to his other job, as a janitor at a fast-food place. He explains that his mother, who's standing nearby, doesn't earn enough alone to support the family of him, herself, and Alfredo's younger brother, also standing nearby. Where's Dad? Well, you see, on this show, Hispanic people are either baby-making morons who won't have tumors removed because they like to look fat, or poverty-stricken, menial labor, non-English speaking members of broken homes. Therefore, Dad no está aqui. Younger bro volunteers to work for Alfredo, even though he's, like, ten years old. Alfredo says that his younger brother will work when he's done with college, and then orders him to shut up. Alfredo tries to get up to leave, and Chase pushes him back down to the bed, telling him that if he does have DIC, it's very serious. Then he notices that Alfredo's fingers are getting darker. He picks Alfredo's hand up for a closer examination, where he sees that the middle finger is starting to darken as well. "Where's Dr. Cuddy?" Alfredo asks.
Cuddy's in House's office, hearing the bad news, from Chase and Cameron, that Alfredo is getting worse, and that the medications they've been giving him aren't working. "Looks like a mild case of DIC," Cameron says brightly, and House immediately points out that it's not that mild if Alfredo's hand is about to fall off, followed by his arm and then whatever is connected to that. Plus, a mild case of DIC would respond to the medicine, wouldn't it? Cuddy wants to give Alfredo something stronger: human activated protein C. Chase and Cameron stare. House says that protein C is for "severe" cases of sepsis only, due to its being "crazy dangerous." It talks to itself as it causes internal bleeding and strokes. Cuddy says that it could also make Alfredo better. House points out that when he tries to pull stuff like this, Cuddy's face goes all scrunchy and she screams like a hyena, which is really sexy. Chase and Cameron continue to stare, their faces doing a perfect "...awkward." Cuddy orders them to give Alfredo the protein C(razy).
House and Wilson spend some more time together, and House complains that Cuddy's protein C(razy) decision is almost irresponsible in the risks it poses to the patient. "It's exactly the type of thing you would do," Wilson says.
Stacy says the same thing to Cuddy as they walk into Cuddy's office, because Stacy isn't just a lawyer: she's Cuddy's Wilson. Except that she totally lacks the warmth and kindness of the real Wilson and therefore ends up seeming more like Cuddy's Sympathetic Robot Friend. Cuddy says that she doesn't feel right about overruling the best diagnostician in the whole wide world. "You care about this kid," Stacy says, "Your judgment --" and here I thought she was going to say something reasonable about how Cuddy's personal relationship with the patient is clouding her judgment so that maybe she should take herself off the case, but then she finished with "-- should be worth more than [House's]," which is pretty much the exact opposite of good advice. Cuddy says that House also mentioned that Cuddy hasn't been a real doctor in ten years. "Now that sounds like him," Stacy says, without adding the reassuring things Cuddy probably would have rather heard than another reminder of the fact that Stacy and House have a History Together. Man, Stacy's as bad at being a sympathetic ear as she is at giving advice.
House grabs another lollipop from a nearby jar full of them as he and Wilson discuss how House totally would have gone for the protein C thing if Cuddy hadn't mentioned it first, and they're both surprised that her concern over the patient is ruining her sense of humor. Wilson sarcastically says he can't imagine why that would be.
Foreman's on Clinic duty, and his patient is Mac from Night Court, hooray! Mac is responsible for what might be my brother's single favorite moment in television history that does not involve Bob Newhart, which was the episode when a news crew was doing a story on the night court gang, and the reporter said that the court clerk has the very latest in high-tech gadgets at his disposal to make the justice system run smoothly, and the camera turns to Mac concentrating hard in front of his computer. Then you hear the theme song from Super Mario Brothers play and Mac notices the camera on him while he's playing videogames and realizes he's busted. So funny. Mac tells Foreman he's been having breathing problems when he walks up the stairs, and Foreman says it's because his blood pressure is high. There's a new blood-pressure medicine out now that Foreman recommends, adding that it's "targeted to African-Americans," because it also treats the nitric oxide deficiencies that, according to studies, African-Americans are more likely to have. Mac doesn't like the sound of this special drug for black people at all: "I've had white people lying to me for sixty years." Foreman laughs and asks if Mac thinks Foreman just has a good tan. Mac says he thinks white people are lying to Foreman, too, citing the "cheap meningitis drug" that's been sold in Africa as evidence of medical racism. Foreman says that's greed, not racism. I don't see why it can't be both. ["Yeah! I saw The Constant Gardener! I know what time it is!" -- Wing Chun] Foreman tells Mac that the best way to stick it to Whitey is to live long enough to collect Social Security. He gives Mac the prescription.
Alfredo wakes up and notices that he can't move his right arm. He screams for a nurse, but this hospital doesn't employ nurses, so Chase rushes in. He takes a look at Alfredo's vitals and makes a really obvious "oh, shit" face that you'd think medical school would've taught him to curb.
Chase tells Cuddy that the protein C has caused a bleed in Alfredo's brain. He's called a neurosurgeon.
Alfredo's head gets drilled. Cuddy watches from the operating theater balcony thing that's been getting a lot of use this season.
The morning, Alfredo can move his arm again and wants to know when he can go home. Cameron explains that the surgery only "fixed the problem created by the medicine [they] gave [him]." It's too bad that Stacy the Lawyer is too busy pretending she's Cuddy's bestest friend and personal confidante to do her job and tell the staff not to say things like "that stroke you had that required brain surgery was totally our fault, whoops!" Alfredo's mom españols that Cameron looks too young to be a doctor, because even she realizes that Cameron's an airhead for saying that stuff about the deadly medicine, and she can't even speak English. Cameron says that she's the youngest of the five doctors working on Alfredo's case, so Mamacita can stick her preocupado up her nalga. Alfredo asks why Cuddy hasn't been in to visit him yet, and then starts coughing and hacking before Cameron can answer, fortunately for everyone. "That doesn't sound too good," Cameron says about the cough, oddly not adding, "It's probably because the air in this hospital is filled with pneumonia sometimes, whoops!" The Magic School Bus Cam zooms into Alfredo's lungs and then back out to Cameron, who could also stand to enroll in the "How to Disguise Your Concern In Front of Your Patient" class Chase needs to take.
Back in the differential-diagnosis room, Cuddy takes a look at Alfredo's chest x-ray as Cameron explains that Alfredo's hand is getting worse, and now he has a high fever and "lung infiltrates." Cuddy suggests that the fall caused acute respiratory distress, and House pops a few pills and says that he'd prefer it if their diagnoses didn't depend on Cuddy's personal guilt. Cuddy responds by rolling her eyes and actually clutching her pearls, which makes me sad. House proposes that Alfredo was sick before he fell off Cuddy's roof, and Foreman says that pneumonia is consistent with Alfredo's symptoms. Chase and House rule that out, saying that Alfredo would surely have noticed the breathing problems that accompany pneumonia that severe before he ever got on Cuddy's roof, and then Cuddy sighs and tells them how Alfredo complained of breathing problems but she thought he was lying and sent him up to the roof anyway. "Well, why didn't you just take out a gun and shoot him?" House cruelly asks before even more cruelly yelling at her for leaving that little detail out because she was so certain that Alfredo's problems were her fault that she couldn't see any other reason, and now they've lost a day and made Alfredo's brain bleed. Cuddy looks sad, so Cameron, the self-appointed People-Picker-Upper, says, "If it's just garden-variety bacterial pneumonia, he's gonna be fine." Yeah, except that I really don't think garden-variety pneumonia is accompanied by black fingers. House orders some antibiotics for the pneumonia, and then says that they'll have to go break into Alfredo's house to look for environmental causes, calling him "Julio" and "Rico," because the only thing House even noticed about his patient was that he was Hispanic, and all Hispanic people have interchangeable Hispanic names. Cuddy says she'll go get a key to Alfredo's, and House yells after her that she is no longer capable of deciding what's best for his patient, just to get that last little dig in there. She leaves, and House nods at Cameron to accompany her.
When the ladies are gone, Foreman remarks that House should really write a book about office politics. The title shall be Alternative Medicine: How Vicodin Makes Your Boss Less of a Pain in the Ass. House says that things could have been worse; for instance, he could have told Cuddy that Foreman and Chase will be breaking into her house while she's off with Cameron. Foreman and Chase jump forward and refuse, Chase saying that Cuddy is much scarier than House is. House chalks that up to the fact that she's female, and tells them not to worry, since he'll be coming with them. This probably just makes them worry more.
House and his boys de-elevator. House smugly sucks on yet another lollipop while Foreman and Chase both look miserable. They pass Wilson and Stacy, who are conveniently spending their busy schedules hanging out in the hospital lobby. Stacy is surprised that House is taking his Cottages out to lunch. Or maybe her eyebrows just make her look surprised. They're really high up on her forehead. Wilson says that there's no way House is taking anyone to lunch, especially not his underlings. Stacy notes that, since House looked especially pleased with himself, he must have felt compelled to confide in someone as to what he's doing, and that someone is most likely Wilson. She's right: Wilson says that House is going to break into Cuddy's house. "What? Why?" asks the woman who left cookies out when they all broke into her house. She wonders why House is so curious about Cuddy. Wilson is curious as to why Stacy is so curious about House's curiosity. Stacy is curious -- okay, we could do this all day, so I'll cut to the chase, which is that Wilson says Stacy is the one who dumped House (interesting), and that she's married, "and they are neither of those things." I don't even know what's going on anymore, but I'm not all that curious to find out either.
House limps up to Cuddy's front door. He wonders if Cuddy has red thongs (gross, House), and then bets the Cottages twenty dollars that he can get into Cuddy's house in twenty seconds, implying that he'll be using a credit card to break in. They both take that bet, and House puts his credit card back in his wallet and lifts up a flower pot to Cuddy's door, revealing a spare key underneath. I guess you don't have to worry about home security when you live in a weird dimension where palm trees grow in New Jersey. Foreman and Chase sigh, but I don't feel sorry for them. That's what you get if you still haven't learned not to bet against the Man Who Knows Everything. ["It's why no one ever takes any wager proposed by Robert Goren, either." -- Wing Chun] House grins smugly as he lets them in. Chase and Foreman give him the money as they enter.
Over on the other side of town (the dirty, poor side), Cameron and Cuddy are not impressed with the cockroach-infested, ironic leaky-roofedness of the Alfredo family house. First of all, that's a big house for a family that claims to be so poor the kids have to drop out of school to keep them fed. Second of all, just because people are poor doesn't mean they're content to let cockroaches take over their house or that they can't throw a few shingles on the roof to stop the leaks, or afford a bucket to catch the leaking water in. How insulting. Cameron isn't here to discuss socioeconomics and their stereotypical role in the media, though: she wants to know why Cuddy hasn't fired House when they seem to hate each other so much. "I don't hate him," Cuddy says immediately, and Cameron the Spy asks why not. Cuddy gives her a "don't continue this line of questioning" look that Cameron ignores as she says that House is a great doctor, but he's also an asshole. Cuddy reveals that House was actually fired from no less than four hospitals before coming to PPTH (wow), but that "the question is, why did [she] hire him?" I'm thinking it has something to do with that guilt complex we've been hearing so much about, and Cuddy and PPTH's role in House losing his leg.
Over at Casa Cuddy, Foreman asks House how he knew where her spare key was. House -- who's doing a remarkable job of kneeling on floor considering his bad leg -- says he just figured that someone as obsessive as Cuddy would have spare keys hidden all over the place. Apparently, her obsessiveness does not extend to home security. I mean, she could have at least bought one of those really fake-looking rocks with the hidden compartment they sell in the Miles Kimball catalogue. Having Finished examining the kitchen, House calls dibs on searching the bedroom. "This is where it all happens," he says, standing over Cuddy's bed. Then he jumps onto it. I don't thinking testing mattress strength is really part of the information they're trying to collect there.
Back in the Casa Cucaracha, Cameron asks Cuddy whether she knew House when they were both students at University of Michigan (interesting factoid!). Cuddy says that she was an undergrad when he was a med student, but that she knew him. Everyone did. House was a legend. A medical-school legend. Cameron asks whether Cuddy knew him any better than that, and Cuddy snaps, "My god, you're subtle." Seriously, Cameron. If you're going to ask your boss's boss if she and your boss ever did it, you've got to approach it very delicately. Really, you shouldn't approach it at all. But I guess Cameron is very curious. I'm curious about her curiosity about Cuddy's curiosity about House being a curious legend curiouscuriouscurious. Cameron decides to let it go because she obviously won't be getting an answer, and checks under Alfredo's bed, where she finds a dead rat in a trap, because poor people like to keep caught pestilence around for food. That's just Alfredo's midnight snack. Cameron says that the rat is "worse" than cockroaches, but I disagree, especially if Alfredo, like Cuddy, lives in the Southern California section of New Jersey, which, if it's anything like the real Southern California, has cockroaches as big as rats.
It's Chase's turn to be curiously curious as House examines Cuddy's curios to find a cure for Alfredo. Chase says there's no way House just guessed about the key. He knew it was there. House takes a thong out of Cuddy's dresser and asks if pink counts as red, and then tosses it to Chase to make him all flustered and distracted so that he won't ask any more questions about House and Cuddy's possible sex life. This is also where the break-in goes from humorous and fun to invasive and pervy and wrong. Tossing Cuddy's panties around and making comments about them is obviously not part of their medical inquiry, so it's a serious violation of Cuddy's privacy that indicates that House either has no respect for her or that his insane need to know every single intimate detail about everyone around him outweighs his sense of moral propriety. Either way, it doesn't make him look all that good. I really hope an episode comes up soon where the Cottages have to break into House's house and then they can pick through his stuff like he does to everyone else. House reports that he's found a shrine to Chase at the bottom of Cuddy's underwear drawer, full of pictures of a certain blond Australian. Chase walks up, very interested. "You're kidding!" he says. "Yeah!" House answers. Sorry, Chase.
House and Chase move to the Cuddy's Perfectly Purple bathroom, where House picks up a box of feminine hygiene products and announces to all that Cuddy uses Super Tampons. House, quit it with the fascination with Cuddy's vaginal paraphernalia. You may want to know everything about the area, but I really don't. I now see why Cameron wasn't invited on this trip, because as a fellow woman, she probably would have had a huge problem with this and reported House to Cuddy immediately. Since it's just the guys, though, Chase only says that House and Cuddy are too nasty to each other not to have been nasty in the past. "I can be a jerk to people I haven't slept with," says House. "I am that good." He does sound a tad defensive, but that might just be me hearing what I want to hear even though I now want someone better for Cuddy than a guy who makes tampon jokes. Like Alfredo. Go for it, Cuddy. House checks out Cuddy's sink as Foreman walks in, saying he thinks they're ready to go unless there's anything else House would like to sniff (ewewew). That's when House spots some mold growing around Cuddy's pipes. Her sink pipes, that is. He's not that invasive. Yet.
Back at PPTH, Cuddy and Cameron run up to meet House, Foreman, and Chase. Cuddy's pleased to report that Alfredo is only getting worse, and that the antibiotics aren't working. House is happy to see that Cuddy has finally learned to take things in stride, and Cuddy says her good mood is due to the fact that she and Cameron found rats in Alfredo's home, which means that Alfredo has rat bite fever and also that Cuddy is only upset when people are dying slowly and painfully in her hospital if it's her fault. This episode won't be happy until it's made everyone look like an asshole, I think. House seems to find the rat bite fever theory a plausible one, remembering the scars on Alfredo's hands that could have been rat bites. Rat bite fever fits Alfredo's symptoms perfectly, just like the other five thousand things they were sure he had. House says that they have another possibility: there was aspergillus fungus under the sink. Cuddy's all, "What sink?" House is all, "Your sink. You need to clean your bathroom more. Among...other things." Foreman and Chase make those "I wish I weren't here right now" faces they've come to perfect this episode as Cuddy gets really pissed that House broke into her house. Cameron just stands there with her mouth hanging open. Cuddy shouts that House had no right to break into her house, and that there were no medical or moral reasons for him to, like either of those things really matters to House when he has an opportunity to look at thongs. Her argument is cut short, however, when she looks at Alfredo's latest chest x-ray and notes that the "focal consolidation" on it is much more consistent with fungal pneumonia than it is with rat bite fever. And, House is pleased to add, it keeps Cuddy totally responsible for Alfredo's problems. Cameron says that the treatment for fungal pneumonia is "hugely dangerous." "Yeah, your point being?" Cuddy snaps at her. I don't think there will be any more girl-girl home invasions in their future, which is too bad because I kind of liked them together and was hoping that some of Cuddy would rub off on Cameron instead of the other way around, which is what seems to have happened. House says it's not like they've shied away from killer medicines so far in Alfredo's case, so they'll pump him full of more helpful poison.
Cameron has been chosen to hook Alfredo up with the deadly poison. Alfredo's mother and brother watch.
Cuddy no-nonsense-walks into her office, but she's being followed, since her one-time assistant is apparently on a coffee break. Alfredo's brother, Manny, introduces himself and then volunteers to work for Cuddy in Alfredo's absence. Cuddy turns him down, saying that Alfredo wants Manny to finish school before he mows lawns. Wow, she and Alfredo have had some deep conversations there. Much more so than her "you're trying to get out of work to watch soccer" attitude at the beginning of the episode suggested. "Like you care," Manny says, which throws Cuddy off-guard. Manny is pretty disgusted that Cuddy hasn't been in to see Alfredo at all since he fell off her roof. Cuddy doesn't have an answer to that. "Bitch," Manny mutters as he leaves. That just proves that he's too young to work. Anyone can call someone a bitch under his breath as he's walking away from the bitch-in-question. It takes a real man to do it to her face. A real asshole man, but a real man all the same.
Aw, crap, Stacy's here to talk to House like she hates him and wishes he would die and then we're all supposed to think that she still loves him. Can't someone just throw Sela Ward in a microwave and give her three minutes on the "defrost" setting? She finds House hiding out in a Clinic exam room, watching GH. There's a commercial break right now (buy PHILIPS BRAND MRIs for the very best in deadly medical equipment!), so Stacy has a chance to ask how Cuddy's doing. House says that she's been very un-Cuddy-like lately, so he's been having a blast. "You know her," Stacy says. Why did they put Sela Ward on this show and make that big media push about it if her only role was going to be telling various cast members that they know other cast members? That's like the fifth time she's said that in this episode alone! Stacy adds that Cuddy has "trouble" with situations where she feels "personally responsible," which I think is referring to Cuddy's guilt about House's leg as the reason she lets him get away with stuff like breaking into her house and feeling her panties. House protests that Cuddy's real problem is narcissism: if you think everything is your fault, then you must also believe that you're pretty powerful. Stacy implies that House has a touch of narcissism himself, and House says that he doesn't believe he can fix everything, and that the knowledge that he can't doesn't keep him up at night. "No, you lie awake tormented by how --" Stacy gets out before House interrupts to remind her that they're supposed to be talking about Cuddy, not him. House's personal torment is left up to you to figure out. "Lisa cares," Stacy says, because she gets to use first names now. She says that's what drives House nuts about Cuddy -- that she thinks of patients as humans who have feelings. Because if you're a woman on this show, you are automatically all about emotions. Great. Stacy knows that her order not to talk to Alfredo is making Cuddy feel even worse, and House says that now he's got two overly guilty women on his hands. Stacy says that House "owes" Cuddy a break, and tells him to take it easy on her. House says that the commercial is over, and Stacy is very surprised about that because she apparently thought GH had more ad time. Oh no wait, I'm sorry -- I have again confused Sela Ward's facelift consequences of surprisebrows with actual emotion. Seriously, Sela -- it's okay to let your face sag a little bit. That way, your eyebrows don't come to little points at the top like you're some kind of cartoon villain. A surprised cartoon villain.
Mac's back, and he's got a new doctor. He tells House that he didn't fill "that Oreo's" prescription, and House takes a minute to figure out whether Mac's actually saying that he doesn't trust black doctors. He says he'll be giving Mac the same prescription Foreman did, and that maybe Mac will fill it now that a white person is recommending it. Mac says that he's not going to take a "racist drug." House is baffled as to how a drug that helps black people more than it does white people is racist. Obviously, it's racist against white people. Good for Mac for sticking up for us. He makes a reasonable argument to the effect that black and white people are the same inside, so they shouldn't be getting different drugs. Instead of patiently explaining to Mac what the differences are or giving him a pamphlet with more information, House just says that, based on the last ninety seconds of his life, he's come to the conclusion that all black people are morons. Mac gets up to leave, and House tosses the prescription out and writes a new one. It's "the same medicine we give Republicans," he says. Mac takes it happily.
Back in Alfredo's room, Alfredo thinks he's getting better. Cameron does not agree. Nor does Manny, who says -- against Alfredo's wishes -- that Alfie hasn't peed in a day. Cameron is alarmed, probably because it's pretty scary to work in a hospital where even simple bodily functions like urination aren't monitored. It's probably scarier to be a patient there. Also, it's pretty ridiculous to make us think a hospital could be so lax, when I know for a fact that hospitals send at least one urine sample per ICU patient down to the lab for testing every day because I was the person who had to take it out of the pneumatic tube delivery system and marvel at how nurses were unable to master the art of securing a lid to a container so that the biohazard bag and quite possibly the pneumatic tubes themselves weren't coated with sick-people piss that I would have to touch and smell. Cameron, looking terrified, says she's going to give Alfie a "rest" from his deadly medicine. Mom, whose knowledge of English is very selective, españols that she finds it odd that they're taking Alfie off the medicine that's supposed to cure him. Cameron nervously says she's just making a little adjustment, and practically runs out of the room.
Waiting outside is House, and Cameron screams to him that Alfie isn't peeing, which probably means that the fungal-pneumonia medicine destroyed his kidneys. "I THINK HE'S DYING!!!!" she screams, and wouldn't you know it? Mother is listening to the conversation, although, based on how loudly Cameron said that, there are probably people in the real Southern California who are going "Who's dying?" right now. Mama bursts into tears and runs back into the room. "Guess she understands a little English," House obviouses, and Cameron looks kind of sick. I think we should all be really proud of her for managing to work through her inability to give a patient bad news to such an extent that it's inappropriate and harmful to the patient, and has made a complete one-eighty to giving her patient, his family, the entire ICU, and half the Western Hemisphere the bad news prematurely to the point that it's inappropriate and harmful to the patient. I'm sure she'll find a happy medium somewhere around Season 7.
Back in the meeting room, Cameron repeats that the fungal-pneumonia treatment is responsible for killing Alfie's kidneys without making him even the slightest bit better. On the bright side, House says, at least now they know that Cuddy doesn't have deadly mold growing in her bathroom. Foreman says that the lab tests on rat bite fever came back negative, and I'm not sure why they couldn't have done tests for fungal pneumonia before giving poor Alfie that deadly medicine. Foreman lists off a bunch of other things Alfie tested negative for, and Chase notes that the chlamydia test results were positive for antibodies. Alfie might have chlamydial pneumonia. Jesus Christ, how many kinds of pneumonia ARE there? And how do you get chlamydia in your lungs, unless you're into some kind of kinky lung sex? Cameron says that Alfie had chlamydia in its STD form last year, which explains Chase's results. Cuddy says that maybe they should go back to their original theory -- the one that involves her house turning against her handyman in a fit of jealousy and tossing him off the roof, causing DIC. Chase says that Alfie's fever is too high for that. It was one hundred and three two hours ago, even with fever-lowering Tylenol. House gets all angry and says he wants to know what Alfie's temperature is RIGHT NOW, not two hours ago. Frankly, I'm shocked that they've even been monitoring Alfie's body temperature with any kind of regularity, considering how they dropped the ball on his peeing.
House limps into Alfie's room, where Alfredo and Manny are having a heated discussion en español. Having taken five years of Spanish -- albeit at a high school where if you learned anything, let alone an entire second language, it was a miracle -- I actually understood what they were saying but I won't be telling you here, because it's IMPORTANT LATER and because the last time I tried to translate Spanish in a recap, I was totally wrong and got like seven thousand emails telling me so and it was embarrassing. House orders Alfie to open his mouth for the thermometer, because this hospital apparently doesn't have those cool expensive thermometers that you stick in someone's ear and then immediately get a temperature (the good ol' mercury sticks are probably more reliable anyway), and then pays special attention to the end of Alfie and Manny's Spanish, yet SIGNIFICANT, conversation. Manny leaves. House watches him go, and then turns back to Alfie and tells him to put the thermometer under his tongue. Alfie does, and it's not even one of the old-fashioned mercury ones, but a crappy digital thermometer. I'll overlook that because I suspect that House's entire reason for this exercise was to see which hand Alfie used to take the thermometer. It's his left one. House asks him about it, and Alfie claims that his right hand doesn't hurt. House sniffs around and says that Alfie doesn't smell too good. House will insult anything. You're not in Cuddy's underwear drawer anymore, House. Cool it with the overly curious sniffing. House places a gloveless hand on Alfie's right hand with its seeping necrosis fingers, and Alfie screams in pain. "Your hand is starting to rot," House tells him. And House touched it. Disgusting. Also, how the hell didn't any of the nurses notice a dead appendage before? Maybe they're supposed to do suspiciously-black-hand checks at the same time as their patient-urination-schedule checks.
House and Cuddy are suddenly in Stacy's office. That's right -- Stacy has a freaking office. I'd rather see Cameron have her own office before Stacy the Temporarily-Employed Lawyer of Suck got one. They're fighting over whether Alfie's hand should be chopped off. House wants it gone; Cuddy doesn't. House doesn't see how this is even a legal issue. Cuddy explains that, since Sela Ward is an important addition to the cast, all efforts must be made to include her in medical storylines even though her character is a lawyer and they never needed to spend more than a few minutes with lawyers in the first season, and those lawyers went to Cuddy's office, not vice versa. "Are you being intentionally dense?" Cuddy barks at House, who answers with an awesome "Huh?" Cuddy tells Stacy she thinks the hand removal is premature. Stacy says she's heard enough, and now House is outraged that Stacy is taking Cuddy's side after hearing from her for only three seconds. "Shut up," Stacy says, surprised at herself for being so bold. Oh, wait -- her eyebrows tricked me again! And now I'm surprised, because Stacy says she isn't siding with anyone. She points out that having two doctors in disagreement like this doesn't look good for Stacy's client -- the hospital. She orders them to come back to her once they've reached a mutual decision. But...wasn't the whole reason they came to her office in the first place that they couldn't agree on it and wanted to see what the legal course of action was? Stacy's job sure is easy.
Out in the hall, Cuddy takes a lesson from Cameron and screams that all of Alfie's problems have been caused by their giving him the wrong medicine. It really might have been a better idea if they had stayed in Stacy's office, where the interested public didn't have to hear about patients dying from doctor's mistakes. Cuddy says that Alfie's hand still has a pulse, so it's not dead yet. House says that the hand, pulse or no, is a cesspool that will only spread to the rest of Alfie's body if it isn't removed as soon as possible. Cuddy splutters that House is being "aggressive" about "destroying a man's livelihood." House says he's being aggressive about saving a man's life. Cuddy says that if Alfie loses his hand, he will also lose his jobs -- all of fifty thousand of them! "He's not like us!" she says. House wheels around and asks if Cuddy's saying that cripples can't work. Whoops! Cuddy chooses not to take on that Elephant in the Room and just says that Alfie and his family will lose their home and Manny will have to work and sadness and despair! Although, honestly, underage employment wouldn't even be an option if people like Cuddy weren't hiring fourteen-year-olds, which was Alfredo's age when he started working for her. Shame on you, Cuddy. House says that there's nothing medical about Cuddy's argument, and that she's lost perspective as a doctor: "You want to make things right? Too bad, nothing's ever right!" I think perspective can best be achieved by just looking at Alfie's hand. That is unsalvageable, right there.
Cuddy and House return to Stacy's office, where House reports that he and Cuddy are both so "in sync" that they're "wearing each other's underwear." Pink thongs for everyone! The consensus is "chop-chop time." Cuddy, who has taken the resigned sitting position for cowed and chastised emotional women, just stares at the floor. Stacy thinks they should "convene a meeting of the Ethics Committee," and House and I both scream "NO!" Can you imagine how boring that would have been? And who's on the Ethics Committee, anyway? Hopefully not any women who can't think clearly when emotions are involved. House accuses Stacy of making a decision based on her desire for House to be wrong, and says he did everything she asked, so he should get his gosh-darned surgery. Stacy looks at Cuddy, who's still looking at the floor. "Lisa," she says, because we can refer to our male colleagues by their last names, but when it comes to women, it's all about the personal emotional appeal that comes with using a first name. Cuddy just says she wants to be the one to tell Alfie and his family that his right hand will soon be no más.
Looking not unlike she did when she gave House similar news, Cuddy explains to Alfie that bacteria are eating his hand, and that they will spread to the rest of his body unless they're removed. With a power saw. Alfie asks if he'll be cured once they cut off his hand, and Cuddy, whose sympathy voice sounds kind of drunk, says no, not even a little bit. They still don't know what's making him sick in the first place. But he won't die of gangrene! Mama, who must have read a medical textbook when she was trying to learn English as a second language, cries. Alfie says he quit school to work so that his family could have enough money. Even though he knew he'd never get a good job that paid enough to buy his own house like Cuddy's does (and if anything, haven't we all learned that it's not all it's cracked up to be, with its leaky roof and the moldy sink?), he did it so that Manny could stay in school and make something of himself. Cuddy says that Manny doesn't necessarily have to quit school, forgetting to add that it would also be totally illegal if he did anyway since he's still only twelve. No one believes Cuddy anyway. Alfie says that if Cuddy's sure that his hand needs to go, then he will trust her.
Mama sings Alfie a Spanish lullaby as he drifts off. Then he's in surgery having his hand cut off in a special hand-removal-Spanish-lullaby-Cuddy-watching-House-thinking montage.
The montage ends with Foreman entering House's office, looking perturbed. Apparently, he gave Mac a follow-up call and found out that House went behind Foreman's back and gave him the "white folks stuff." Foreman says that this is exactly why black people have shorter life spans, and I don't know if he's blaming black people like Mac for being overly suspicious to the point of choosing a less effective medicine, or white people like House for prescribing it because it's what the patient wants, despite not being the best medicine for the case. Foreman says he's calling Mac in to get him on the black-people drug, and House tells him that's not necessary. You see, House told Mac he was giving him the white stuff when he was actually giving him the black stuff, and Mac wasn't suspicious enough to check even though three seconds before that he was about not trusting white people. House thinks that will make Foreman happy, but it just makes him angrier. "He was right," Foreman says. House did exactly what Mac thought white people did: he figured Mac didn't need to know and couldn't understand the truth, so he just lied to make it easier for everyone. House says it was just a "white lie." "Good one, massah," Foreman says. Ouch. House says that he's fine with being a racist who helps black people live longer. Foreman says that "every slave master thought that they were doing the black man a favor," which I don't think is exactly true. I'm sure there were a couple of them who realized that this was about making them happy and rich by not having to pay for labor, and simply didn't care what the black people thought about it. In fact, that's probably the majority mentality. "Stop doing us favors," Foreman says. He'd rather that black people all ended up "back in the jungle with lousy blood-pressure medicine" than being lied to by white people. This argument would have worked a lot better if it hadn't smacked me over the head with a sign that said "IMPORTANT RACE DISCUSSION" on it so many times and also if we didn't already know that House's lying to patients about their treatment is more of an "I know better than you" thing than it is an "I know better than black people" thing. He does that kind of stuff to all races and creeds. There's nothing special about it here, and I really wish there were more to Foreman's character than his blackness. ["He's also an ex-criminal, but...well, that's probably not what you meant." -- Wing Chun]
We then spend way too much time watching Alfie's hand get removed. Ew. Chase is in the OR -- not wearing any gloves at all because PPTH doesn't give a flying fig about sterile environments -- and notices something on Alfie's other hand.
Up in the operating theater balcony, Stacy stops by to ask Cuddy if she's "okay." Stacy, you might want to go check out all the malpractice going on just below you instead of talking about feelings, eh? But no, Cuddy says she has wanted to be a doctor since she was twelve years old. Stacy says she wanted to be a lawyer since she was six, and this isn't about you, Stacy, so zip it. Cuddy gives us a rundown of her fabulous career, graduating medical school at age twenty-five second in her class and angry that she wasn't first, second-youngest and first female chief of medicine at thirty-two. "If I had been Alfredo's doctor," she starts, and Stacy angrily snaps that Cuddy is Alfredo's doctor, and Cuddy hilariously turns away from her, looking scared at the ourburst. She says that so far, she prescribed two medicines that only made Alfredo worse and didn't even see the pneumonia possibility or look at her own home as an environmental cause (which actually would have meant that one of those dangerous medicines would not have been prescribed and Alfredo would therefore be healthier right now, but anyway). She would have let him die to save his hand. House was right: Cuddy isn't a "real doctor." Chase walks in and says that Alfie's little finger is "dusky." Cuddy's all, duh, that's why we're cutting it off, but no: Chase is talking about the little finger on his left hand: "The one we haven't chopped off yet." Uh oh. Cuddy reacts to this news with the obligatory dramatic music flourishes for about five minutes before we finally cut to commercial.
Alfie's recovering from his amputation, and I have to say, I really didn't think they were actually going to cut off his hand. Damn. Cuddy checks out his other hand, and his two little fingers are both turning black. Pretty soon, he's going to be a no-handyman.
The latest differential-diagnosis session takes place in Cuddy's office, perhaps in the hopes that a new location would yield some new results. Alfredo now needs a ventilator to breathe; Cameron -- sounding just a little pleased with herself that her theory about the fungal medicine being dangerous was correct -- adds that he also requires dialysis for those failing kidneys. House says that they're getting distracted by Alfie's "multi-system organ failure," and should focus on his hands and their tendency to change color. He wonders if the DIC theory is wrong, even though the blood tests indicate it. As the Magic School Bus Cam shows us, House voice-overs that, in endocarditis, the infected heart pumps out bacteria that inevitably works its way through the bloodstream, affecting other parts of the body like Alfie's right hand, kidneys, and left hand. It also explains the fever. And it has the added bonus of being the reason Alfie's kidneys failed, as opposed to those drugs, which makes Cameron wrong again. Cuddy says that totally works, except for the fact that Alfie already tested negative for endocarditis. But wait -- there is such a thing as culture-negative endocarditis that also causes pneumonia. No one knows what House is talking about, so he makes chicken sound effects as a hint. Chase figures out that he's talking about psittacosis, and discounts that immediately, since Alfie doesn't have a pet parrot. House orders doxycycline, the antibiotic used to treat psittacosis. Cuddy jumps up and says no way, since it will make Alfredo's clotting problem even worse. House says it will also save his left hand if administered right now. Cameron says that if House is wrong, Alfie will lose his remaining hand and his feet. House says that Alfie will also die, so no prob. But he does see that some more substantial evidence is needed here. He's off to find out what job lets a twelve-year-old sub for his sick brother.
House, followed by a resigned-looking Cuddy, enters Alfie's room and asks him where he works on Saturday nights. Alfie doesn't answer, because he's sleeping off his recent surgery. House goes to inject him with a stimulant, and Cuddy objects. So House asks Mama where her son works on Saturday nights...in fluent Spanish. Cuddy asks House why he didn't tell them that he spoke Spanish. House says it would have resulted in people talking to him. Mama says that Alfie doesn't work on Saturday nights. It's the only night off he has all week. House asks Cuddy to let him shoot Alfie up with the "talking juice," and she says she won't because Mama isn't necessarily lying just because she's not giving House the answer he wants. House explains that he overheard Manny and Alfie's IMPORTANT CONVERSATION about Manny's covering for Alfredo at work tonight. Dude, they're all at work on a Saturday? That's dedication. House asks Mama again what Alfie does on Saturday nights, and she says he hangs out with friends and goes dancing. House thinks he's "dancing with birds," and Kevin Costner springs from his couch and goes to call his agent until he realizes that he forgot his agent's phone number and his phone is dusty from disuse. Mama won't give up any more information, and House asks if he can shoot Mama up with the talking juice instead of Alfie. He can't, so he orders Cuddy to take the "Scooby gang" and look for Alfie's secret hideout, which is probably near his house. Because House mysteriously knows all about the ways of illegal cockfights, he tells Cuddy to "find somebody who looks like crap" and try to place a bet. Is he saying that Latinos look like crap, or is my racism-sensitivity radar all thrown out of whack by this episode? "Sayonara!" House screams at Mama as they leave.
Over at your typical Abandoned Warehouse on the Wrong Side of the Tracks, there's Latin music playing (not Ricky Martin, although I wouldn't have put it past them) and people drinking, gathered around a small ring in the center of the room. Cuddy and Foreman enter and manage not to stick out like two white and black sore thumbs, despite being the only representatives of their respective races in the warehouse and totally not dressed for seeing an illegal cockfight. Roosters fight each other and people wave money around and cheer. Manny's down there, too, grabbing the losers' carcasses off the floor.
Back at home base, Wilson answers the phone in House's office as House tries to juggle two beanbag balls with one hand. Wilson tells him that Cuddy is on the line, and hands the phone off to House, who tells her that he put Alfredo on the psittacosis meds as soon as she left. "You're welcome," he says, and hangs up. I hope Cuddy didn't tell Foreman about that, or else we're going to have to endure another speech about lying to people to make them better being racist.
Alfie the One-Handyman asks Cuddy how he got sick from the birds, even though he always washed his hands. Cuddy says that you can get psittacosis by breathing in the dust off a sick chicken. (Or, really, its poop. It's gross to think that we regularly breathe in poop dust, but it's true.) Alfie asks why he was the only person to get sick. Cuddy says that his asthma made him especially vulnerable, and I find it hard to believe that no one else in that warehouse has asthma, but whatever. Alfie is pretty sad about the loss of his hand, but he thanks Cuddy for saving his life and offers his left hand for her to shake.
Cuddy and Stacy spend some more time together. Cuddy is still feeling guilty about cutting off Alfie's hand and being thanked for it. Stacy Wilsonette says that Cuddy saved Alfie's life. Cuddy says that if they had figured out the psittacosis thing earlier, they could have saved Alfie's hand, too. Stacy says that if Cuddy had figured it out later, Alfie would be dead. Cuddy says that, actually, she never figured it out at all -- it was House, who is heading into her office at this very minute, unimpeded by the personal assistant who is still on his long-ass coffee break. House has good news for Cuddy: the hospital is getting sued! Now, I see how he could have found that out before Stacy the Lawyer who never does her job, but how did he find out before Cuddy? Maybe he has access to the hospital's legal mainframe (password: tartypants). Stacy the Incredibly Naïve Lawyer is outraged that Alfie would sue the hospital after they saved his life. Cuddy immediately says they'll settle, and Alfie can get a nice big payout from their insurance company that will keep Manny off the streets. A happy ending for everyone except Alfie's right hand and possibly Mac and his racist medicine. Oh, and Manny, if he doesn't like school.
House goes to leave, but then he and Stacy share a look and he turns back to address Cuddy. He tells her that her perverse guilt makes her a "crappy doctor," but it also makes her "okay" at what she does. Uh...thanks? House says that a world without guilt would be a better one, although he will admit that guilt makes for great sex. Specifically, sex with Stacy, who was quite a screamer in the last months of her relationship with House. He'll tell us every sordid detail of his relationship with Stacy, but we still don't get a yes or no about whether or not he did it with Cuddy. Lame! "You see the world as it is and you see the world as it could be," House says. But everyone else also sees the "giant gaping chasm in between." Is this about his sex life with Stacy again? Cuddy says she's not an innocent little girl, and she does know how the world works. "If you did, you never would've hired me," House says. He tells Cuddy that she's not happy unless things are right, which makes her a good boss and doomed to be unhappy for the rest of her life, because, according to House, things will never be right. Anyway, House wonders why everyone seems to think he and Cuddy had sex. "Think there could be something to it?" he asks, then walks out. I had no idea your eyes could be half-closed while your eyebrows arch in villainous surprise, but Stacy does it. Cuddy smiles, and then immediately goes back to her guilt-wallowing expression when she sees Stacy looking at her.
House and Wilson hang in House's office. House has given up one-handed juggling in favor of the more cripple-friendly yo-yo. Wilson says there's no way Cuddy could have diagnosed the psittacosis earlier than she did. House agrees, at least, that Cuddy couldn't have diagnosed it earlier, possibly implying that he could have, and screwed up. House looks out the window and notes that it's raining. He really is a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.
And now, the episode-ending music montage, courtesy of Damien Rice's "Delicate." If you read the lyrics to that song, it really, really implies that Cuddy and House have a secret relationship. House sadly looks out the window. Alfredo sadly looks at his badly CGIed arm stump. Cuddy's roof sadly leaks. Cuddy sadly puts a pot down to catch the water, then takes a sip of tea from a red mug that bears a striking resemblance to the one House uses. I'm just saying. Anyway, Cuddy may be wearing a pink thong underneath, but her nightgown totally came from the same store that sold her that Puritanware blouse. Guilt makes you button up to below the chin.
And now, I shall have a month off while baseball happens. I love this show, but I'm really looking forward to the longest amount of time away from it since I started recapping it. I hope that, when we return, Cuddy will be on as much as she was here but won't be such a sap; Stacy won't be on at all; Foreman's blackness won't be such a freaking issue; and Cameron and Chase will have personalities. Wilson, too, honestly. See you then!