House's team treat a bomb scientist who, by virtue of being the only attractive female in her department, has no trouble finding boyfriends among her co-workers. When she gets sick, her current boyfriend suspects that her bitter ex is poisoning her, but the Cottages prefer to stick with less nefarious diagnoses. In the end, though, it turns out that the boyfriend had poisoning accusations on the brain because he was the one poisoning her after finding out that she was cheating on him with yet another co-worker. Not like House cares about any of this, as he's too busy trying to figure out why a boxer he bet on against Wilson lost a match after just one light punch to the face. Once he realizes the guy didn't take a dive, he decides there must be something medically wrong with him. It takes him a few tries to figure out what it is, but eventually he diagnoses the boxer with a tumor at the back of his neck that caused him to pass out when he tensed up in anticipation of his opponent's hit.
But that's not all! For House also seems to be suffering from more leg pain than usual, which he treats by exercising the half-muscle and then shooting up with something that looks a lot like heroin -- except it isn't. It turns out that he's stealing an experimental muscle-regenerating drug from a lab with worse security measures than PPTH. It's only in the lab rat-testing stage, but it's doing well enough there for House to decide to try it on himself. Right after he gives up on it, it shows results and he's able to put his entire weight on his bad leg in the middle of a bar fight he started. He resumes his treatment, not knowing that the lab rats who are also taking the drug are dead. Oops!
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Two men stand around a giant cement thing in the middle of nowhere. One has a picture of a woman in the bikini and some duct tape, and the other just wants to get out of there and stop wasting time. But the first man, Tony, says this isn't a waste of time for him as he "needs" to do this before duct taping the photo to the top of the cement thing. The two men speed away in their SUV, and Tony gets on the radio with "control" and blames the other man, Glen, for delaying their mission with a pee break. Glen rolls his eyes but doesn't argue. Glen is such a pushover. Tony says the "target area" is clear. In the control room, Wendy, also known as the woman from the bikini photo, is now dressed in more appropriate work attire. She gets the go-ahead to launch a new bomb/missile she helped create for her job as a weapons engineer/scientist/something or other. She and a few military men watch a demonstration on video as the cement thing is obliterated by her new bomb. This makes everyone happy: the military men, Tony, and the other random people in the control room. The only person who isn't celebrating is Wendy, as she is too busy having a seizure.
At home with House, we get a nice shot of his leg scar as he does some painful leg-strengthening exercises. His underlings are already at work checking out Wendy's file, and Hadley has diagnosed her with a nasty case of karma due to Wendy's job being creating new ways to kill people. As opposed to Hadley's job, which, when you think about it, isn't all that different. How many unnecessary, painful, and dangerous things has Hadley done under House's orders? Not to mention that in her personal life, Hadley actually has killed someone. So maybe she shouldn't be throwing the judgments around. The attention soon shifts to House, who is downing a bottle of water like he just got out of the desert. He doesn't have much to say about Wendy, suggesting that they do the usual breaking and entering in her home and office, although he's not sure how successful breaking into her office will be, what with keeping out intruders being a matter of national security and all. Foreman says they can always ask for permission to go to her workplace while they give her an MRI (OF DOOOM!!). "Sure. Go ahead," House shrugs. He says he's finding it difficult to be interested in Wendy's case when he has another "interesting puzzle" in front of him to solve.
That's when Wilson roars in and Robert Sean Leonard packs an entire season of doing stuff into three minutes of screen time. "FIFTY BUCKS! Pay up!" he screams. He then proceeds to dance, sort of. Cleary, his recent stint on Broadway has shown him a few things. But not that many. House refuses to pay Wilson, saying that their bet is off due to the fight they placed money on obviously being fixed. Foreman, who seems to know something about the New Jersey boxing world, knows exactly which fight Wilson and House bet on and can't believe that House bet on Foley in the first place. "Speed beats power," House says. Not, apparently, when Power gets a good enough first punch on Speed to knock his ass out just thirty seconds into the fight. Or, as House believes, Speed has been paid off to lose on purpose. Wilson doesn't care if the fight was fixed or not: as far as he's concerned, his guy won and House's guy lost and House owes him $50. And he's going to torture us all with some more "dancing" until House pays up. House refuses to pay him, so Wilson gives him one day to prove the fight wasn't legitimate, or else he'll send his "boys" after House for the cash. Wilson then points at all the Cottages in what I believe is supposed to be a threatening manner and leaves. Only Foreman and Hadley find this entertaining. Taub and Chase, apparently, are totally lame today. House says he's going to figure out the puzzle that could cost him $50, as the money makes it more interesting to him. The Cottages can deal with the puzzle that actually earns House money, due to it being his job and all.
Hadley and Chase are on MRI (OF DOOOM!!) duty, and Hadley makes it very obvious to Wendy that she doesn't like her or what she does for a living. Wendy doesn't mind too much, saying she gets the same reaction from her own family. She justifies her career choice by saying she was fascinated by explosions all her life and wanted to do something she was passionate about. "Bombs are tools just like anything else. You can use it to make things better or you can use it to make things worse," Wendy says. A.k.a. bombs don't kill people; people kill people. Apparently, that shuts Hadley up, and the MRI (OF DOOOM!!) can begin. Remember: bombs don't kill people; MRIs (OF DOOOM!!) kill people.
House goes out for pizza. He decides to sit down in a booth that is already occupied -- by Foley, who doesn't understand what this random guy is doing in his booth. House ignores his polite requests to leave him alone and says he needs Foley to call his friend and explain to him that he took a dive last night. Foley insists that he lost fair and square and that no one would have paid him to take a dive anyway, since he was a 12-1 underdog going into that fight who only an idiot like House would bet on to win. House says the punch that took Foley out "barely touched" him. Foley says being barely touched by a 230 pound boxer is kind of a big deal, which is a good point. But then he gets all emo and says, "I just suck." Boxing is bad for Foley's self-esteem.
House runs into Wilson's office with definitive proof, he says, that Foley (and therefore House's) loss was not legitimate. He shows Wilson a picture on his phone that he took of Foley and tells Wilson to pay special attention to Foley's pupils, where House sees a case of anisocoria (one pupil is larger than the other) and somehow uses that to diagnose Foley as being tachycardic during the fight due to suffering from a heart condition. That was what caused him to pass out, not the punch. Therefore, House says, all bets should be off. Wilson just tells House to prove that Foley was too sick to fight with something more than a cell phone picture.
House tries to escape work without anyone else bothering him, but Caesar, Wendy's co-worker and boyfriend, stops him in the hall. House insists that he doesn't care about Caesar or Wendy or anything, but Caesar won't let him go until he tells House that he believes Wendy is being poisoned by her crazy ex-boyfriend, Tony. House takes Caesar's words seriously enough to tell the Cottages about it, calling Wendy a slut for dating two of her co-workers. Hadley doesn't appreciate the fact that a woman can't date two people who happen to work with her without being called a slut, as she is apparently totally cool with Wendy now. House apologizes to her, saying he only called Wendy a slut because he thought they were still judging Wendy's life choices. Foreman stands up for women and crazy ex-boyfriends everywhere, saying Wendy is not a slut and also not being poisoned, since they tested Wendy's blood and spinal fluid for every toxin they could think of and every test came back negative. Taub says that doesn't rule out the toxins that they didn't think of, noting that she does work in a bomb laboratory where she could potentially be exposed to all kinds of weird deadly stuff. Foreman says if that were the case, her co-workers would be sick, too. House decides that Wendy's case is starting to "get interesting," and will be even moreso if he adds "a little danger."
I figured that meant sticking Wendy in some kind of torture device that could kill her but may also tell them what she doesn't have, but this time it just means sending Chase and Hadley to Tony's house to snoop around. They discover that he's an avid hunter, and his home is full of hunting weapons and taxidermied trophies. They don't have to stay long, though, as Foreman calls from Wendy's apartment, where he and Taub just found a box full of empty liquor bottles and new diagnosis: alcohol withdrawals.
Wendy denies being an alcoholic to her doctors, who have a hard time believing her since she claimed on her medical history that she doesn't drink and her home was full of evidence to the contrary. Wendy's excuse is that she collects bottles for a friend who uses them in art projects and apparently can't get her own damn bottles. This all sounds ridiculous to me and her doctors, but Hadley points out in the hallway that while she understands why Wendy would lie about being an alcoholic to keep her security clearance at her job, she finds it odd that the only bottles they found in her home were empty. Foreman agrees that Wendy may well be telling them the truth, but orders them to start her on Valium to treat alcohol withdrawals anyway. "It's the best we've got right now," he says.
Meanwhile, House managed to convince Foley to come to PPTH for an EKG to test his theory. Foley's EKG came back normal, so Foley rushes out, angry that his time was wasted. House has trouble keeping up with him and finally has to shout after him to stop and admit that his leg hurts and he has to sit down. Foley takes enough pity on House to stop and listen to him. House says he is convinced that there's something medically wrong with Foley that's affecting his boxing ability. House can figure out what it is, treat it, and Foley "won't have to suck" anymore, which seems like something that Foley would be interested in. Instead, Foley tells House to fix his own problems and leave Foley out of it.
Meanwhile, Wendy is suffering from agonizing abdominal pain. Foreman says it could be consistent with their stretch of an alcoholism diagnosis, since alcoholics get pancreatitis fairly easily. Hadley suddenly decides that the pain is due to stress, both work and personal life-related, and she has gone back to disapproving of what Wendy does for a living again. "Her guilt is killing her," Hadley believes, even though Wendy clearly doesn't feel guilty about her job or her boyfriends. Chase, Foreman, and Hadley fight over diagnoses until Taub interrupts them to say he paged House for help because they clearly can't figure this out without him. Unfortunately, they'll have to, since House isn't answering his pages. Foreman gets up and leaves.
He goes directly to Wilson's office and gives him $50, saying he can now collect on his bet and tell House he's right about Foley so he'll come back to work before Wendy dies. Right, because I'm sure Wilson only cares about the money. Foreman actually admits that he has no idea where to go with this case, so you know he must be panicking. Wilson, on the other hand, thinks that House's quest to figure out what's wrong with Foley, albeit at the expense of his actual patient, is "good for him." He says House will do whatever House wants to do anyway, and this is the first time since his break-up with Cuddy that he hasn't wanted to do something totally insane. "This he's doing just because he's interested," Wilson says; "I think House getting back to doing stupid House stuff for stupid House reasons is the best thing that can happen to him." Foreman says he's sure Wendy will understand. At least Wilson gives him back his $50.
House is back home doing his leg strengthening exercises. Then he stops to cook some white powder in a spoon over his stove and then inject it into his arm, where we see a whole bunch of old needle marks, indicating that this has been going on for some time. Great. He's doing heroin now. Just when I thought this show couldn't get much worse or more ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Wendy's condition continues to deteriorate. At least her boyfriend Caesar is hanging out at her side, unlike her entire family. It's not like they live that far away or anything; she said before that "half" of her family works on Wall Street. That's only few hours away from PPTH. Sometimes less when the writers need it to be. Anyway, the Cottages bicker about increasingly unlikely diagnoses until House finally arrives. But he only wants to diagnose Foley. Taub thinks that's pretty shitty of House, considering how much pain Wendy is in while her doctor ignores her, to which House points out that he's just one doctor who doesn't care about a patient. His Cottages are four doctors who aren't good enough at their jobs to help her. He's not sure who's worse. I'm pretty sure the answer is House, but the Cottages aren't looking too good here, either. Taub pretends that House and Foley don't exist and goes back to Wendy, diagnosing her with a neurological condition exacerbated by a UTI contracted during her "sexual escapades." Hadley again protests that Wendy is not a slut just because she dated two men. Taub amends his diagnosis to be a UTI contracted by a "healthy enjoyment of her womenhood." Ha! Taub is the only reason why I still enjoy this show right now. And that goes away when he has anything to do with his ex-wife. The Cottages decide that his theory is the best (and only) one they have, and go off to treat Wendy for it. Foreman stays behind to talk to House, saying that, no matter what ridiculousness House has been involved with in the past, he's never refused to answer their pages before. Is that true? I'm sure I could find an episode or two where he didn't answer the Cottages' calls or pages. "Is there anything I can do to help?" Foreman offers. For sticking his neck out like that to a man who very much doesn't deserve any kind of friendly gesture, Foreman is ignored. House just mutters "although ... " and leaves the room.
He also leaves all of PPTH, in favor of the boxing gym Foley trains/works at. Apparently, losing a match puts you on janitorial duty, as Foley is mopping the floor when House arrives. House says he has "good news" for Foley -- he now believes Foley has a neurological condition called "sympathetic overdrive." Foley ignores him in favor of cleaning the floor, but House persists, saying that Foley can go back to winning bouts instead of losing them. Apparently, Foley won his first 20 bouts but lost his last 5. And Foley doesn't think he has a problem? He asks House why the $50 he lost on Foley is such a big deal. House says it's about more than the money -- it's about "dignity." For both Foley and House. I think for House it's more about "not being wrong, especially not to Wilson" than dignity, although that's probably the same thing to House. Foley seems to be listening, so House grabs his arm and injects him with some epinephrine to test his theory. Foley is not happy about this, especially when it turns out that House was using the epinephrine to induce a tachycardic heart rhythm in Foley. Once he's accomplished that, House starts punching lightly at Foley, believing he'll pass out like he did in the match. But he doesn't. House keeps punching at him until Foley loses his patience and tosses him to the floor. He still hasn't passed out after that, so he calls House a lunatic and tells him to leave him alone. House doesn't seem to mind being tossed to the floor as much as he does being wrong about Foley again.
Wendy, meanwhile, is having a heart attack. The Cottages work to save her under the watchful and demanding eye of Caesar, who doesn't understand why Wendy's doctors are so bad at their jobs.
Foreman is not in Wendy's room, as he, finding Wilson to be no help at all, has gone to Cuddy about House. He says House is avoiding his job because he's avoiding Cuddy. Cuddy says House is always avoiding her, so she doesn't see why it's an issue this time. Foreman says House usually gets over his problems with Cuddy enough to actually show up and work when his patient truly needs him, but this time Wendy is half-dead and House still won't answer his pages. Cuddy says House probably knows that Wendy is going to be okay, then, so it's totally cool that she's in incredible pain and having heart attacks in the meantime. Foreman says they could go around assuming that, or they could assume that something is truly wrong with House and do something about it before their patient dies. Foreman favors the latter option, since it puts Wendy in that much less danger. Cuddy favors the former choice, though, because she, like almost everyone else on this show, is being a stubborn baby and doesn't want to deal with House, even if it means one of her precious patients dies due to his neglect. She figures the conversation is over and walks towards the elevator, but Foreman grabs her arm and holds her back, earning him a seriously indignant look from his boss's boss. Foreman says if Cuddy and House keep trying to avoid each other, Wendy will die. Cuddy spits back that Foreman should go do the job he's paid to do and save her himself.
House finishes shooting up and unties the tourniquet just as Hadley appears in his kitchen for a surprise visit. It turns out that House's insistence that his Cottages are able to break into any patient's home has backfired on him now that Hadley can break into his place silently. Hadley promptly calls House an "idiot," and he says that his leg pain was getting worse and he didn't want to up the Vicodin after what happened last time (plus I guess Anne Dudek is not available to reprise her role as House's guilt trip hallucination), so he turned to this, "the smarter choice." Hadley says she stopped by to tell House that Wendy is not doing well and the Cottages have no idea what's wrong with her, and also because Cuddy and Wilson asked her to independent of each other. So I guess they do care enough about House and what Foreman told them to do something about it, but not enough to send anyone better than Hadley to check on him.
Hadley somehow realizes that House is not shooting up with heroin after all. I guess she has more faith in the writers than I do. She thinks House expected her or someone to sneak into his apartment and see him and this is all just another one of his games. For whatever reason, House decides to tell Hadley the truth: he is not injecting himself with heroin, but he is injecting himself with something. It's an experimental new drug that can regrow muscle. In rats. It hasn't been tested on humans yet, nor is it ready to be. But apparently, House decided that what was good for the rats would be good for him. So he got his hands on the experimental drug and has been shooting up with it and doing those leg-strengthening exercises in the hopes that he could grow his leg muscle back. And he decided to cook the drug in a spoon over his stove like that so that we, the audience, would all assume that he was using heroin. Right? I mean, it's not like the guys at the lab he got the drug from are cooking it up in spoons over a stove before injecting it into the rats. Why couldn't he just administer the drug to himself the way the rats are getting it? "You're an idiot," Hadley repeats. She leaves.
Ha! They didn't put Hugh Laurie in the anti-bulling House cast PSA, either because he was just too busy to do it or because it would have been kind of silly to have the guy who plays such a bully on the show to be telling us at home, during that same show, not to be a bully.
Chase operates on Wendy, implanting a small defibrillator in her chest to help with her heart problems. There's a lot of blood, but it's not just coming from the surgery site -- Chase also finds blood coming out of Wendy's vagina and her ass. How embarrassing! In the meeting room, the Cottages try to figure out if the bleeding is a new symptom or if someone made a terrible mistake during the surgery. I mean, you would really have to aim wrong to cause damage to someone's private area during heart surgery. Taub says there's no chance of that, and that they should assume it's another symptom. He wants to treat Wendy for a clotting disorder, but Foreman says that would simply be treating a symptom, not diagnosing what is causing it. Taub says that's true, but they should probably treat Wendy for the bleeding before she bleeds out and dies. Chase would rather talk about House and why he's been so absent for this case. He says it can't be Cuddy, since they broke up weeks ago and House has been in PPTH and treated patients since then. Yeah. Sort of. Hadley keeps quiet about House, leading the Cottages to pick up on the fact that she knows something they don't. She admits that she does, but won't tell them what it is, saying she respects House's privacy for some strange reason. I guess she feels obligated after he didn't tell everyone about how she killed her brother. He did tell them that she was in rehab, though, so I don't know why she can't just tell them that she caught House shooting up and let him deal with that fall out. Instead, she says they shouldn't count on House's help on this case. Foreman shrugs and starts listing off a bunch of diagnoses, only for Taub to get impatient and leave to treat Wendy for her silly bleeding problems. Taub is really not being a team player this week.
House is still doing his leg-strengthening exercises. I'm not sure why this is taking him away from his work and making him so unresponsive now that we know he isn't strung out on heroin all the time. After another agonizing session, he prepares to shoot up again, only to find that he's out of his experimental drug. So he heads to what appears to be the "Clinical Research Lab" at PPTH and bothers the scientist there, asking about the drug's progress. The scientist says things are going really well for the lab rats, even better than the last time House stopped by for a random visit and a bunch of drug packets turned up missing right after he left with bulging pockets. House asks if they've done any studies on the maximum dose someone can take. The scientist says they haven't, but they aren't too worried about it because this drug is "excreted through the urine," meaning that as long as the rats drink enough water, they'll never overdose. The scientist is so excited about this that he leaves the locked safe full of drug packets open, and House takes advantage of the opportunity and asks the scientist to go get him some coffee while he rests his hurting leg. After he calls him an "underpaid dork," of course. As soon as the underpaid dork is out of the room, House grabs a bunch of experimental drug packets. I guess no one will miss them, since they clearly don't take any kind of inventory of their supply or take any measures to keep people from stealing it beyond putting it in that safe. And then opening the door to the safe and walking away.
Taub and Foreman check on Wendy, who is now bleeding out of her mouth despite the clotting drugs Taub gave her. Her nurse also notes that Wendy's gums look "burned." Taub and Foreman take a look, and I guess that's what burned gums look like.
House is in more pain than ever during his leg exercises. Apparently, he's had enough. He throws the drugs away and returns to his precious Vicodin. It won't help re-grow his leg muscle, but neither, apparently, will the experimental drug. He drinks some water from his kitchen sink to help the Vicodin go down (wimp! He's never needed to drink water with pills before!), which gives him an idea. Unfortunately, before he can leave his apartment, Wilson is knocking at his door, furious to learn (presumably from Hadley the tattletale) that House is taking experimental drugs. House tries to avoid Wilson and his questions, but soon realizes that it's futile and lets him in the apartment. Before Wilson starts his lecture, he tells him that he has already decided to stop taking the drug because it didn't work. Wilson doesn't care. He has his psychoanalysis speech prepared and he's been practicing it all night in front of a mirror, so he's going to say it. He says that House thinks that by fixing his leg, he'll somehow fix all of his other problems, too. House says he thinks that his life would improve if his leg was better, yes. Wilson says that House can't blame all of his problems on his leg and that not everything can be a simply-fixed physical problem. Yes, because injecting yourself with a stolen experimental drug is simple. This is boring, so House leaves.
Back in the meeting room, the Cottages have been up all night trying to think of a diagnosis for Wendy. Judging by the fact that they're still at it and Taub's face is firmly planted on the table in frustration and exhaustion, I'm guessing they haven't had any luck. Acute Myeloid Leukemia ultimately seems like their best option, but they can't figure out how she would have gotten it -- until Hadley remembers that radiation exposure can cause it. The Cottages grab Wendy's bed and drag her off to isolation while they prepare her for a bone marrow transplant. Caesar runs after them, insisting that they must be wrong because Wendy doesn't work with radiation. "I know Wendy and she wouldn't," he says. "Maybe you don't know Wendy as well as you thought you did," Hadley shrugs, and takes Wendy away.
House, meanwhile, pulls his car up alongside Foley, who is out jogging. He demands that Foley drink some water. Thrilling!
Foreman tells a very weak Wendy that they found a bone marrow match and will be beginning the transplant as soon as possible. Wendy asks for Caesar, but Foreman says they don't want anyone who isn't absolutely essential around Wendy because her immune system is so compromised. Meanwhile, yet another observant nurse notices something unusual on Wendy's body, since Wendy's doctors are apparently too busy to examine their own patient: her genitals are engorged. They must be pretty huge for a nurse to take notice like that.
Foley finishes his eighth bottle of water. He doesn't want to drink anymore, but House says this is necessary to test his theory that Foley's kidneys aren't working properly and thus drinking a large amount of water would throw his electrolytes out of balance and cause him to have a seizure. This would also somehow mean that a weak punch could cause Foley's blood pressure to plummet and him to pass out. But Foley has had plenty of water and he's fine so far, if fighting off the urge to pee all over the place, so he chalks this up to another wrong theory from a man who is determined to make Foley's life miserable for whatever reason. House channels Hadley and calls Foley an "idiot," saying that he might claim that he's just humoring House with his theories, but obviously he wants House to be right and there to be another explanation for why he sucks at boxing all of the sudden. Foley drinks one last bottle. When nothing happens, he calls House an ass for getting his hopes up and runs away to pee for like an hour.
House finally gives up on Foley. He marches into Wilson's office and hands him a fifty dollar bill. Wilson accepts it and tries to make House feel better by saying that it's not the end of the world that he was wrong one time. House responds to this by smacking everything off of Wilson's desk. He asks if Wilson has anything else to say to him. Wilson thinks for a minute, then can't help but psychoanalyze House some more, saying he has a real problem. So does Wilson now, because House just caned his Vertigo poster. Even then, Wilson tries to say something else, only to stop when House makes a move towards his beloved Ordinary People poster. Why is Wilson friends with this guy? Even at the best of times, it's difficult to understand, but after House just trashed Wilson's office for no good reason, it's impossible. I don't need my TV characters to act like real people all the time, but I do need them to be realistic enough to relate to on some level. And House isn't that anymore. Neither is Wilson. Actually, I don't think any of the characters on this show are anymore.
Wendy's huge private parts rule out their current diagnosis, so it's a good thing that nurse noticed them before they unnecessarily gave her a bone marrow transplant. Foreman still thinks they should go through with the transplant, noting that Wendy's condition has improved dramatically since they put her in isolation. An argument ensues amongst them, only interrupted when Taub says he tried to page House and everyone tells him to shut up.
House can't and won't respond to Taub's page because he is currently wasted at some bar. The bartender refuses to serve him anymore, and House isn't too drunk not to be his usual obnoxious self to the bartender and then the bar patrons. They try to ignore him, but then he starts making speeches and helping himself to random patrons' beers. One of them begs the bartender to give House a drink so he'll shut up, but even that isn't good enough for House, who says the bartender doesn't have enough pride in his work not to compromise his values just because a drunk guy is annoying. House actually has a point there. Another patron mutters that House should shut up, which is enough for House to decide to fight him. He put his fists up like an old timey pugilist and offers to let the other guy hit him first. The guy isn't going for it, so House takes a swing. The guy moves out of the way and House misses badly, all his weight coming down on his bad leg, which supports him for the first time since those few episodes in the beginning of Season 3 where getting shot and put in a ketamine coma somehow gave him the ability to use his leg again. House pauses in amazement, giving the guy he just swung at plenty of time to wind up and throw a punch back. The other guy doesn't miss. It's been a while since House got punched in the face.
At PPTH, Caesar has to stand outside the isolation room and watch Wendy from afar. Chase and Hadley walk up and say that she's improving, but because Caesar was exposed to her and she was exposed to radiation, he will also need a bone marrow transplant. Hadley says it is a dangerous procedure, full of risks and possible side effects, but it's Caesar's only hope. By the time he actually starts feeling sick, it could be too late. Caesar still insists that Wendy doesn't have radiation poisoning, but Chase says that she must, since she's been getting better since they started treating her for it. Still, Caesar refuses to consent to the transplant. Chase and Hadley expected this, though, and say that either Caesar wants to die or he knows that he doesn't need a bone marrow transplant because he knows that Wendy wasn't suffering from radiation exposure. And the only way he could know that is if he knows what actually was killing her. Yes, they finally figured out that Caesar was poisoning Wendy. It was only when they stuck Wendy in isolation and Caesar didn't have access to her that she got better, simply because she wasn't being poisoned anymore. Hadley and Chase tell Caesar he might as well admit to it and tell them what he gave Wendy now, because he's better off going to jail for attempted murder than he is going to jail for murder. Yeah, or he could push them both out of the way and take off, never to be seen again. It's not like PPTH security is going to stop him or anything.
House is back to doing his leg strengthening exercises, this time in apparently less pain than before. He's very pleased with this, despite his black eye, and twirls his cane around, managing to smack himself in the back of the neck with it. Even the post-punch swelling can't keep his Epiphany Face away.
House returns to the boxing gym and makes himself at home hitting a bag while waiting for Foley to arrive. Foley is not pleased to see him, and makes fun of House's black eye as he walks past. House responds by using his cane to tap a dark spot on the back of Foley's neck. Foley does not appreciate this, and gets ready to give House his second face-punch of the episode. Fortunately for House, Foley collapses before he can connect.
Wendy has been moved back to a regular room now that Caesar isn't around to poison her. Hadley explains to her that Caesar found out that Wendy was cheating on him with Glen (remember him from the pre-credits sequence?) and couldn't handle it, even though he and Wendy only got together when she cheated on Tony with Caesar. He was slowly and repeatedly poisoning her with Spanish Fly, which is apparently not so much of an aphrodisiac as it is a very symbolic way of killing a lover who did you wrong. Wendy can't believe Caesar tried to kill her like that, but I guess that'll show her for being on this show and having sex with men, especially during a season where the writers are clearly all going through some horrible personal relationship issues and can't help but infuse their work with so much anti-love bitterness.
House does his own version of the bet victory dance in Wilson's office, extending a hand for Wilson to return his fifty dollars in. He says Foley has a glomus tumor on the back of his neck, so when he braced himself in preparation for his opponent's punch, all the nerves in the tumor were squeezed and freaked out, causing him to pass out. House threatens to destroy the rest of Wilson's posters if he doesn't pay up, so Wilson does. He even congratulates House for possibly saving Foley's life, or at the very least, his boxing career. Not so much, House says. Foley will need surgery to remove that tumor, so he will never fight again. Oh, I wouldn't be so sure. Maybe he'll find out about some experimental drug test going on, steal the drugs, and then they'll make him better and he'll be able to fight again. You never know!
A cheerful House returns home and takes his drugs and drug paraphernalia out of the trash, eager to shoot up again. Ew. Don't use a trash needles, House! Surely you can find some clean ones. Little does he know that over in the research lab, one underpaid dork is getting ready to leave for the day when he notices that his lab rat is totally dead. Looks like House is about to learn a valuable lesson on why we shouldn't take experimental drugs before they're ready to test on humans.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, follow her on Twitter, or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.