By Sara M
A successful celebrity photographer strokes out in the middle of a session and is brought to PPTH, where Cuddy insists on waiting on her hand and foot. Part of the reason for that is because the patient is all famous and important, but most of it, House figures out, is because she's also pregnant with a late-in-life baby. (Or "fetus," as House insists on calling it. Unfortunately for this fetus, House totally HATES fetuses, as we'll soon see.) Everyone reassures her that the baby (fetus) is fine, which we all know means it really, really isn't. Sure enough, the mother's health problems are just her body's reaction to her baby's (fetus's) health problems. Unfortunately, the baby (fetus) is too small for them to tell what's wrong with it, so House decides that the only way to save her life is to kill the baby (fetus). Of course, Mom refuses to allow him to do this, and Cuddy involves herself in the case with that single-minded determination she only shows when she has some sort of personal connection to the patient. She boots House off the case, leaving him free to go on one of the exotic vacations he keeps talking about because he doesn't think he'll actually have to go on one, leaving Cuddy to awesomely become House herself, getting unsolicited advice from Wilson and having her crazy ideas crapped on by the Cottages while she makes the mom sicker in order to make her better. Ultimately, though, Cuddy isn't fit to hold House's giant tennis ball, and she brings House back, whereupon they figure out a way to save both the mother and the baby (fetus): an extremely risky exploratory surgery on the baby (fetus) while it's still inside (well, halfway, at least) the womb. And lo and behold, it works, although not without a few attempted murders (abortions). And it's all thanks to Cuddy! Hooray! She had to almost kill two people and threaten to kill a third one to do it, but she did it! Mother and baby survive and live happily ever after. It doesn't look like things will work out quite so well for Chase, who's one smitten kitten over Cameron.
"Fetal Position" could not be a more appropriate name for this episode, which I am recapping while in the fetal position myself, due to fun holiday weekend bout with food poisoning. It turns out that no matter how hungry you are, the burritos in the 7-11 refrigerator case SHOULD NEVER be consumed. Then again, this could have nothing to do with those burritos and might just be God punishing me for being Jewish on this Easter weekend. Either way, I had better be well enough to eat the post-Easter discounted Cadbury Creme Eggs.
After I am forced to spend another minte of my life watching the end of American Idol, we finally get to the show, where a pregnant woman is all business as she heads into a photo shoot with The Guy from All-American Rejects. We know he's the Guy from All-American Rejects because it says so on the canvas backdrop behind him. And though he's not the best enunciator, he's a pretty decent actor, so he gets a bunch of lines -- even more than Brandy did that one time. The photographer apologizes for being late, claiming morning sickness, and insists that the Guy from All-American Rejects feel her stomach. I thought pregnant women hated it when strangers felt their stomachs all the time. At least, that's what years of reading "Dear Ann" taught me. The Guy from All-American Rejects further works his way into my heart by telling the photographer, named Emma Notleibowitz, that he doesn't get what she's doing with the Norman Rockwell-esque classroom backdrop, but she invades his personal space and strokes his hair and placates him before starting the session. Guy from All-American Rejects mugs with his guitar while the rest of his band, wherever they are, lament the fact that their lead singer gets all the photo shoots and bit parts on hot TV shows. Emma takes all of three pictures before complaining that the words on the backdrop are "all jumbled." But even an illiterate musician knows that the words are totally legible. Emma starts to fret that something wrong with her, and remembers a mnemonic device for stroke symptoms: FACT. F is for face, half of which is all droopy. A is for Arms, which she holds out in front of her like she's doing the zombie walk. C is for See ya real soon! At this point, the Guy from All-American Rejects starts calling out for assistance, but no one really cares, even though their boss is now slurring her words and spinning around in circles. It isn't until she slurs out a request that they call 911 because she's having a stroke and collapses on the ground that anyone bothers to move. And then they just kind of huddle over her and look worried instead of calling 911.
Somehow, Emma survives and is in fine form when House comes calling after the credits. She is surrounded by flowers and tinkering with her camera when he starts by dissing her job ("I don't get what's so hard about making Scarlett Johansson look pretty") and saying that he's only there because Cuddy told him to go treat the very important patient. I'm sure all the not-important PPTH patients really appreciate this. Our sassy patient fires back that if being a photographer is so easy, House should try it and make tons of money, as if being a doctor paid nothing when we all know it's the best job to get in the board game of Life (along with lawyer). House takes a seat on the Emma's bed and says that even though another doctor said that she and the fetus are fine now that the stroke-causing clot is clear, that doctor is an "idiot," and there are still fifty-two minutes of show to go, so, sorry, lady, but it's going to get worse before it gets better. While House checks out the insides of Emma's eyeballs, she says that being a good photographer means getting pictures of what's really inside her subjects, even if her subjects are incredibly shallow famous people with nothing inside them. As long as she isn't pulling a David LaChapelle and throwing a bunch of horrid colors together in a mishmash of tacky garbage that's supposed to be "surreal," that's fine. House says that Emma's eyes are gorgeous (in a nice close-up of his eyes, which are truly gorgeous), and then adds that she has microaneurysms in her blood vessels, which will mean more strokes unless House can figure out what's causing them. He also notes some residual weakness in her cheeks and asks her how she was able to diagnose her own stroke. She says that her baby's sperm donor is a neurologist friend of hers who House no doubt thinks is an idiot. He says that he'll be sending his Cottages in to take some blood for tests as Emma picks up her camera and starts taking candid pictures of House, which is super-annoying. He responds with a glare, and holds up her catheter bag, which is full of blood. He asks her if she really wants to celebrate this moment of her life. Which is kind of cruel, but then again, it's her own fault for taking his picture without asking.
We cut to the Cottages intensely studying a picture. It's not a picture of Emma's insides, but one of the pictures she took of House right when he noticed that she was peeing blood. They're amazed at the expression on House's face. "He's caring," Cameron says in her most Pollyanna of voices. House enters the lab and rips the picture away from them (Wilson called dibs on it already, I'm sure. Sorry, Cameron!) and asks for info on their patient. The info is that her kidneys are shutting down. Of course, there is no follow-up info as to why this is happening. House asks them if they've ever gone to the Galapagos Islands. Foreman responds with a short list of diseases one could catch there, but House isn't asking for his patient -- he's planning a vacation there. Chase hopefully asks if they'll be getting vacations as well, but House's answer is not encouraging. Cameron asks House why he's going to such a remote location, to which he replies his uncle is a giant turtle, i.e. shut up, Cameron.
And then Cameron actually starts talking about their patient and not badgering House with questions and theories as to why he wants to go somewhere so far away for his vacation and what he's escaping from. Cameron thinks that the kidneys are the real problem, and that they threw the clot that caused Emma's stroke. And since the symptoms of kidney failure could be mistaken for morning sickness, it's a good guess. But House has already decided that Emma's heart is the clot-throwing, kidney-failing culprit. He notes that Emma's had six cases of strep throat recently, all of which he assumes she didn't adequately treat with antibiotics: "No one takes them all. They stop when they start feeling better." Maybe you do, House, but I always take all of my antibiotics. Of course, I only learned this lesson after I stopped taking them when I started feeling better and then got sick again and my doctor yelled at me, so now I take everything. Because you know what sucks more than getting sick? Getting sick, then getting better, and then getting sick AGAIN. Emma sucks for letting that happen to her five times without learning her lesson. Anyway, untreated strep leads to rheumatic fever (in like, the 19th century. I thought we were past that nowadays), which leads to mitral valve stenosis, a.k.a. a clot-throwing heart.
Chase and Cameron are assigned to monitor Emma's MRI of DOOOM. Aside from yelling at Emma to stop moving around, Cameron pays little attention to her patient, instead preferring to chat with Chase about House's reaction after finding them in the closet. Or rather, House's lack of reaction. Because Cameron is most disappointed that House was acting perfectly normal as if nothing happened. She wonders if House is going on vacation because of them. "Yes. The pain of losing you is obviously forcing him away," Chase says sarcastically, directing her attention toward the scans of their patient's heart. But Cameron won't be distracted by something as insignificant as a patient, and wonders if House caught them together on purpose, seeing as the only time he's ever thrown anything away was the time it allowed him to catch them in the janitor's closet together. Chase suggests that Cameron wanted House to know, and now that he does, she's upset that he doesn't seem to care. And then Chase finds the mitral valve stenosis they were looking for, although Cameron doesn't think it looks serious enough to have done so much damage. She wonders if perhaps Emma found out that she and Chase hooked up and that was what caused her stroke instead.
Cameron and Chase prepare to fix Emma's mitral valve. Do you think they can do it without having sex with each other on top of their patient? I don't. Emma asks if she can skip the sedative, but Chase assures her that it's very mild and will not harm the baby. Cuddy wanders into the room, dons a protective blue vest, and tells Emma that they'll be monitoring her baby's heart separately to make sure it's fine. "You're both gonna be fine," says Cuddy, which tells us all that they're both gonna be close to death within the ten minutes. Then she orders Cameron to knock Emma out, and for a "very mild" sedative, it sure does take her out with a quickness. Once she's gone, Cuddy orders them to start the procedure. They shoot each other "why is the boss watching us? How can we be expected to do well with the boss watching us?" looks, and start. The Magic Schoolbus Cam makes a brief, yet meaningless, appearance.
When the Cottages report back to House, he's on the phone with some airline trying to score nonstop tickets to Cambodia. When he gets put on hold, Cameron starts in with demands that House tell Cuddy to "stop interfering." House ignores this, and Chase says that while they fixed Emma's heart, that wasn't the problem after all, since her kidneys are still failing. I'm sure she and her insurance company appreciated the unnecessary procedure, though. Foreman's contribution is to ask House why he's vacationing in Cambodia: "Going to unwind in the killing fields?" Surprisingly, no one makes reference to adopting a random child, which Cambodia is better known for these days than that whole unfortunate Pol Pot genocide deal. House says he's hoping to catch a Mekong Giant Catfish, the biggest freshwater fish alive. Foreman's all pissed off about this, since the Mekong Giant Catfish is on the critically endangered species list he apparently keeps in his pocket at all times. House says that Chase and Cameron must have screwed up the procedure, to which Cameron immediately responds that House could have screwed up the diagnosis. Sure, Emma's mitral valve was a little wonky, but not enough to have caused all those problems. Foreman just says that they might want to consider putting Emma on dialysis before she, like, dies. They may also want to consider protecting the rainforest, which houses several endangered species and is disappearing at a rapid rate. And once it's gone, it's gone forever. They shoot around a bunch of possible diagnoses and go off to test for them. Then the travel agent comes back on the line, and House rushes to pick up the phone, only to hear a recording about the unexpectedly high call volume they're experiencing. Ha! That happens to me all the time, although it's usually accompanied by the most staticky, unpleasant Muzak ever.
Later on, all the tests have come back negative. The Cottages are at a loss to explain what's wrong with Emma, but House has an idea. He heads into Emma's room and tells her that they've tested her for everything and found that her body is functioning perfectly. So why are her kidneys failing? "The other body isn't," House answers. "There's something wrong with the fetus." Commence tragedy.
After the commercial gives us all time to let this grave news sink in, House writes his diagnosis on the board: Maternal Mirror Syndrome, the "mirror" part written in a most clever backward fashion that I'm sure Emma will appreciate once she gets over her baby dying and everything. House metaphors that Emma's body is like a German metro system, which is sure to be the most efficient of all metro systems. Then a new station full of rookies who don't know what they're doing opens up, and that throws off the entire rail system, resulting in "a bunch of angry Germans with nowhere to go. And we all know that ain't good for the Jews." Chase asks who the Jews are in this analogy, but is ignored. The answer to Chase's question, as we'll soon see, is Cuddy. Or Wilson, since he gets almost no screen time in this episode. House goes on to say that this can, rarely, result in a "timebomb" of a fetus that kills the mother as it's dying. The only way to cure Emma is to figure out what's wrong with the fetus and fix it. Cameron the pessimist says she heard a rumor that the outcome of maternal mirror syndrome is almost always "unfavorable." "Is that doctor speak for 'dead baby'?" asks House, although he does not launch into a series of dead baby jokes. Chase wonders how they're supposed to diagnose a person who weighs less than one pound, and that they can't touch or see. House sarcastically reminds him that they have machines that look through human skin for cases like this. He says that they're only looking at a set amount of things that could be affecting the baby. While Cameron lists off the ones that are curable, Foreman chimes in with all the ones that aren't. Oh, go save a panda, Foreman. Geez. House tells them to start with the fetus's heart. The only problem with that is that the heart moves too fast to get a clear picture of it. Solution: paralyze the heart.
House is on his way to do just that when Cuddy catches up with him, furious and outraged that he would try to paralyze the great Emma Notleibowitz's baby. I guess when it's Jane Plain's baby, it's fine. Cuddy says that this is so preposterous that both Cameron and Chase came to her to tattle on House about it. House takes this golden opportunity to say that Chase only tattled because Cameron made him, which she can do now that they're screwing. In the janitor's closet. "HERE?" Cuddy asks, outraged and maybe just a little bit jealous. She says she will "deal" with that later, but first she must yell at House for his wacky plan before seeing that it's the only way to save the baby. So, is House upset that Cameron has moved on to Chase, and is that why he ratted them out to Cuddy? Maybe, but I think he was just being your typical confrontation-avoiding guy who found a way to avoid having to get involved with icky interpersonal stuff by foisting it off on Cuddy.
"This sounds insane," Emma states as House puts the ultrasound gel on her tummy. Cuddy promises her that the baby won't feel a thing. Well, of course it won't -- it'll be paralyzed! That's, like, the only good thing about paralysis -- you don't feel pain. House ticks off Cuddy for calling Emma's baby a "baby," instead pointedly using the word "fetus," which I doubt will do much to make Emma think of it as a fetus rather than her child, but it's probably good to do anyway. Much better than crazy Cuddy, who ignores House's suggestion and starts telling Emma how hard it must be for her to hear that her baby could die, and that she'd much rather it be her instead. Yes, I'm sure it is hard, Cuddy. Does Emma really need to be reminded of that? And, you know, I'm sure this is my childlessness talking, and that I'll feel much different once I've actually experienced having a baby, like, grow inside me and all, but I think I'd be happier if the baby were dying than me. I'd be all relieved that my heart and kidneys were actually fine and telling everyone to get this evil deadly killer baby thing out of me ASAP. And I'd be just a little bit hurt that after five months of giving it the most comfortable of accommodations, it had turned against me in so foul a manner. It's called being a good guest in someone's home, baby-fetus. Learn some manners. Anyway, Cuddy solemnly tells Emma that if there were anyone she trusted to save the baby that she's NEVER EVER going to be pregnant with, it would be House. At this, House spins his head in Cuddy's direction and just barely avoids mouthing "don't say that! I will kill this fetus in a microsecond if I have to!" Or maybe he does mouth that, but we only see him say the "fetus" part. And with that, he injects the paralytic into the umbilical cord.
Afterward, Cuddy is spending her time in the nursery, staring at all the babies that aren't hers. Uh...PPTH might want to consider posting a guard there just in case Cuddy finally snaps and steals a baby for herself. Because I sense the time when this could happen is rapidly approaching. Cameron walks up with the ultrasound results: the fetus's bladder is four times as big as it should be, and squeezing all the other organs into each other, kind of like what happened to House just last week when he couldn't pee for days and days. This show needs to get over its pee obsession. Pee is gross. No more pee for the rest of the season, please. Cuddy happily declares that they can fix the urinary tract obstruction with a shunt, and can't wait to tell Emma the good news. But first, she must deal with Cameron, who asks if Cuddy's taking over the case or something. No, Cuddy says, she just wants to be the one to deliver the good news, because she's lost all objectivity. And while they're having an awkward conversation, Cuddy informs Cameron that dating Chase can either end really well or really, really badly, when Cuddy will have to fire one of them because they can't work together. If Cameron is the one who gets fired, I don't think that will be so bad. "I would hate to see my personal life become such a burden to you," Cameron retorts, apparently unaware that her personal life is a burden to all of us already, and also that when you have sex with your co-worker on hospital grounds, then your boss is not out of line to have a few words with you about it. Cameron also says something about how Cuddy had better talk to Chase about this as well, to which Cuddy replies that Chase isn't the one who will get hurt. I have to say, I do enjoy watching Cuddy and Cameron interact. You'd sort of expect them to be friendly, since they're two lone women in a man's world, but really, they kind of hate each other. Which is also fairly typical for women.
Anyway, we aren't through with Cameron yet. She finds House chilling in the hyperbaric chamber PPTH just happens to have handy, and angrily raps on the window. They then communicate via a ridiculously old-fashioned phone. I didn't know those things had phones! The only episode of Baywach I've ever seen was the one were Mitch sucked at diving and got the bends and then everyone gathered around him in the hyperbaric chamber and talked about stuff. Even that bald guy with the moustache who had no business being on a show about hot lifeguards was there. And none of them used a phone! None of them yelled at Mitch like Cameron is yelling at House, either. She says that her private life is her private life and not to be shared with Cuddy. House points out that if she wanted it to be so private, she shouldn't do it at work. Duh. "She told me to end it, is that what you want?" Cameron asks, so hopefully. House doesn't care, and says he's spending time in the hyperbaric chamber to prepare for his latest trip to some really high mountain in Argentina. He says that a tribe of Indians have a tradition of carrying their elders up the mountain, so his leg won't be a problem. Or House can do what my grandpa did when he did some hiking in South America, which was drink a special tea laced with the stuff they make cocaine out of, and then practically sprint up Maccu Pichu and the surrounding hills. House says that he's planning to set the chamber to low pressure and build up more red blood cells so that he'll be able to stand the high altitudes just fine. But will he be able to stand the high horse Cameron's always on?
Cuddy takes time out of her apparently not very busy schedule to tell Emma what's going on with her baby-fetus. Emma asks if they can fix the bladder, and Cuddy goes all out of focus for a second before saying that they can. What the hell, House directors? Is it really that hard to focus a camera? I mean, I guess it's cool if you're trying to make this, like, your show's special trademark style, but I wish I could get through one episode without thinking that something has gone wrong with my eyes and looking up the phone number for my optometrist. Cuddy cheerfully reports that they'll stick a tube in the baby-fetus that will make the urine come out of its belly for the rest of her pregnancy, which will allow its internal organs to grow again. After giving Emma all that hope, Cuddy says that they just need to make sure the baby-fetus's kidneys haven't been too damaged, or else there's nothing they can do for it, and adds, "If this doesn't work out, you can always try again." Wow, so that's probably the worst thing you can say to a pregnant woman. I mean, I've had pet fish die and been pissed off when someone suggested that they would be easy to replace. I can't believe Emma doesn't physically assault Cuddy for a comment like that; she just says that she miscarried twice and tried in-vitro, unsuccessfully, four times. And at forty-two years old, if this baby doesn't work out, then there won't be any more attempts for Emma. So fucking can it already, Cuddy. Christ.
Cuddy finds House in her office, typing away. He explains that while she's going around pretending to be him, he figured he'd pretend to be her. Which explains why he had all that extra time to lie around in a hyperbaric chamber. House's first order of business as Dean of Medicine is to create Naked Thursdays. His second is to inform Cuddy that collecting the baby-fetus's pee for testing won't do any good, since that will be old pee, and it's only the new pee that will tell them anything about the kidney function. Which means that they'll have to tap the baby-fetus's bladder three times before they find out if it's a goner or not. And it's good that House told Cuddy this, since she apparently didn't know. He asks Cuddy whether her interest in this particular patient is because Emma is a celebrity photographer, or because Emma is a single pregnant middle-aged woman just like Cuddy wishes she were. He reminds Cuddy that if she isn't objective, she can't be a good doctor. But when she hands House the file to take the case back, he won't do it until Cuddy threatens to withhold his vacation until Emma is "cured."
Chase informs Emma that the test results show that the baby-fetus's kidneys are fine. Now they just need to stick a shunt in it and everything will be cool. Except that we're just at the halfway mark, so, no, it won't be. But Emma doesn't know this, so she's overjoyed, if worried about the fact that her baby-fetus will need surgery after he's born to remove the urinary tract obstruction. Emma asks Chase to hand her her camera; she's taking pictures of this whole process for her "visual memory book" (a.k.a. photo album. Come on, Emma). When Chase picks the camera up from the nearby table, he sees a pile of pictures. A picture of Cameron is on the top of the pile; Emma managed to get a picture of her with her mouth closed during a rare few seconds when Cameron wasn't asking her what she thought about how her boss caught her making out with her co-worker in the closet and then told his boss about that and does that mean he has feelings for her? Emma tells Chase that he can keep the photo of Cameron, since it probably only gives her bad visual memories, and because she can tell by the way he looks at the picture that Chase has feelings for Cameron. Emma takes a picture of Chase looking at the photo and grinning. He takes the photo with him.
Some random doctors insert the shunt, and then Chase and Cameron are doing a follow-up ultrasound while Emma sleeps. Chase asks Cameron if House said anything else about them being together, saying that he only cares because his job could be at stake. Then Emma starts to wake up. She asks about her baby-fetus, and Cameron says that both mother and baby-fetus are fine. Except that they aren't: Emma reports that her stomach is "killing" her, and Cameron looks at Emma's eyes, which are bright-ass yellow with liver problems! Emma gets the feeling that something's wrong when Chase and Cameron both stare at her in horror. Might want to work on your bedside manner, there, guys.
The Cottages rush into House's office to report that Emma is still dying. He sighs that he just booked some krazy kayaking trip that Emma's condition has now ruined. Can't he just go to the beach like normal people? What's wrong with the beach? The beach is nice. Cameron indulges House, asking what happened to his Argentina mountain climb, and he says that he found out he'd have to live with those Indians for twenty years before they considered him an elder, and the prospect of living with people for more than twenty minutes is enough to scare House away. But back to Emma, who's dying. House proclaims that Emma's fetus lied: the urinary tract obstruction wasn't its only problem. Unfortunately, it's too small and its organs too underdeveloped for them to tell what the real problem is. House says that the only thing they can do is "deliver the fetus." "You'll kill the baby!" says Chase. Cameron agrees, saying that House is only calling it a "fetus" so that he won't feel like he killed a person. House says that the fetus can't play catch, so it's not much of a person after all, which doesn't bode well for any of his future patients who happen to lack arms.
House tells a very yellow Emma that they have to get the fetus out of her right away, even though it's at least two weeks away from being "viable." Emma says that she'll suffer for two more weeks and deliver the baby-fetus then, not understanding anything about liver failure. Even if she could survive two more weeks, is her body really the best place for a baby-fetus to be in right now? I guess it's better than, like, nowhere, but probably not by much. House tells her that she doesn't have two more days, let alone weeks. Of course, Emma refuses to have an abortion. House tries to convince her by saying that her fetus "is not a baby, it's a tumor." At this, she gives him the "talk to the hand" gesture. He says that it's not like she's dying so her baby can live, here; either "it" dies, or they both do. Emma suggests a third option: House fixes the baby and everyone lives happily ever after with unicorns and bunnies. House admits that he can't fix the baby. Even so, Emma refuses to consent to the abortion.
House goes to Cuddy to tattle on Emma for not consenting to the abortion. Unfortunately, Cuddy is no longer functioning as a doctor, so instead of supporting House, she asks if they tried to speed the baby-fetus's lung development along with some steroids, like, between the steroids and the bladder shunt and the mom's multiple organ failure, this baby-fetus is going to be in sad shape if it survives. House says that he dropped an anvil on the baby-fetus to stop the lung development, since they are trying to kill the fetus here. That won't be the first anvil to drop in this episode. Cuddy wants to give the baby-fetus's lungs more time to develop before they give up on it, since there's no way to get Emma to consent to the abortion. Cuddy's emotional involvement says that Emma's already formed a bond with the baby-fetus, naming it and reading it books and all that. And so Cuddy thinks that someone needs to act as the baby's doctor, exhausting all options before killing it. House says that doctor would be an idiot. Cuddy says that idiot is House's boss. Uh oh.
While House stubbornly scowls in the corner and makes paper airplanes, Cuddy makes the Cottages go through any and all options that will save the baby-fetus's life. They don't have any, and don't look thrilled to be asked for them. Except for Cameron, who eventually who goes with Cuddy's idea that the liver stuff is unrelated to the mirror syndrome, which they fixed with the bladder, and suggests Acute Fatty Liver of Pregnancy. Chase follows this with a few more suggestions, and House accuses him of sticking up for his girlfriend. Chase and Cameron roll their eyes, and Foreman senses that House isn't joking. He looks a little disgusted with Cameron. House tells him to "be patient": "She's going through all of us. She'll get that jungle fever eventually." I'd be slightly annoyed at House's racism if he wasn't so right about Cameron, even though she denies this, saying she isn't "going through anyone," although...the evidence does suggest otherwise, Cameron. You made your bed, now lie in it with one-third of the opening-credits cast members. House asks Cameron if she loves Chase, which wakes Chase right up. At this point, Cuddy reminds the room that Emma has a day to live that shouldn't be wasted with petty office gossip. She demands a liver biopsy, but Foreman says that they can't do it with Emma's platelet count so low. But Cuddy won't be stopped! She says that they can get the biopsy by going through the veins in Emma's neck down to the hepatic vein. That way, if there's any bleeding, it'll be right back into Emma's veins, like backwash. That sounds totally healthy! The Cottages go off to do this, and House throws his paper airplane at Cuddy. She sends him on his vacation. House is gone? Hope you had a good life, Emma, 'cause it's OVER!
Instead of waiting until after the biopsy to gossip, Foreman gossips about Cameron with Chase during the biopsy. He figures out that Cameron was actually telling the truth about them having sex in the sleep lab. Chase shrugs it off, saying that Cameron is only with him to make House jealous. Foreman asks why Chase is doing it, then. Chase just says, "You kidding?" and Foreman warns him not to hurt Cameron. Chase says that Cameron already has a big brother, which Foreman didn't even know about, since he doesn't care about Cameron; he cares about himself and his job and how it will be if they have to deal with a "heartbroken lovesick Cameron," who would be even "more unbearable" than Original Recipe Cameron. I love you, Foreman. At this point, the monitors go off and Emma goes into preterm labor.
The Cottages report back to Cuddy that they were able to stop the preterm labor and also get that biopsy, which was negative. So it's definitely mirror syndrome, and time to kill the baby-fetus. But wait! Cuddy says that preterm labor could be a new symptom. No, Foreman says; Emma's body is trying to get rid of the thing that's killing it, making Emma's body smarter than the brain it houses and all of Cuddy right now. Emma doesn't have time for any more tests, Foreman says: either they get rid of the fetus or she dies. At this point, I wonder if Emma's too far gone even to survive the abortion process. I mean, that's got to be a little traumatic for the body, right? Cuddy's solution is to "work faster." "Medicine doesn't work faster just because you hope real hard!" says Cameron. Well, she would know. She spent all of Season 1 trying it. Cuddy orders them to steroid the shit out of those fetus lungs and hope that they develop enough in the , like, three minutes for them to be able look at them. Chase says that this will do long-lasting damage on the baby-fetus's organs, and Cameron says that it'll put Emma at risk for a pulmonary edema. Cuddy doesn't care, and when the Cottages don't support her, she goes off to do it herself. Well, at least she put her hair back for the procedure. I guess that's one less thing Emma has to worry about. Cuddy leaves the Cottages in her office to wonder what they're supposed to do now. "Somebody's gotta be Cuddy's Cuddy," says Foreman.
Sure enough, Cuddy pumps Emma full of steroids and she has a pulmonary edema. While Cuddy struggles to save her life, Wilson strolls in and lectures her that she shouldn't have pumped Emma full of steroids. Meanwhile, I do not see Wilson doing anything to help Emma right now as she dies on the bed. I guess he hates photographers. He tells Cuddy that she turned Emma into an "incubator for a dead baby." I hope Emma can't hear him. Also, I believe the correct term is "fetus," Wilson. Cuddy tells him either to get her a laryngoscope or leave. He chooses to leave. Fortunately, some nurses come in and actually do some work without the high-handed lecturing. I hope that wasn't supposed to be "Cuddy's Cuddy," because Cuddy would never just let a patient die in front of her like Wilson did. At the very least, Cuddy would help the process along by pumping her full of steroids.
And so we head into the typical House-sits-in-his-office-and-thinks montage, except this time it's Cuddy in House's office. She picks up his giant tennis ball and tries to bounce it on the ground. But the giant tennis ball is so ashamed of her crappy doctor skills that it bounces away. Ha ha! House's office is rejecting Cuddy! It won't be long now before the record player sprouts legs and takes off.
The morning, Cuddy goes to Wilson and says that everyone was right and she was wrong. Emma is dying. Although somehow, she isn't dead yet, even though her lungs are now on their way out, along with her liver and kidneys. Wilson asks Cuddy whether she's spoken to Emma's family. Of course, Emma doesn't have any family, or else we would have seen them fighting like hell to kill the baby-fetus and save Emma, like, fifteen minutes ago. Where's that neurologist friend of hers? What an asshole! Cuddy asks Wilson to advise her as if she were House. He says he can't, because House would be objective about this patient and Cuddy is not. Cuddy somehow takes this to mean that now that Emma's lungs are on a respirator, Cuddy can "do whatever [she wants] to her lungs." Cuddy also tries to come up with her very own House metaphor, saying that she's already played catch in the living room and broken her mom's vase, so she might as well keep playing catch. Okay, Cuddy, but what about the Jews? She rushes off to keep giving Emma the steroids so that the baby-fetus's lungs can develop.
And they do, as Cuddy rushes to House's apartment to report to him. Now that he's the Cuddy, he gets to try to close the door in her face, but now that Cuddy is House, she sticks her hand in the door and keeps it open. She says that she has a "whole new appreciation" for what House does in the face of a bunch of people who are saying he's wrong. House says that Cuddy is not objective: "But you're not an idiot." That's a startling admission. House takes the film of the baby-fetus's lungs and has two diagnoses for them that I am not even going to try to spell. He hands the film back to Cuddy and suddenly slams the door in her face. She's horrified for a minute, but then the door opens again with House in his jacket, hooray!
House returns to work and says that he's skipping his vacation to "save [their] boss's rotundous ass." Is that even a word? It should be. He shows the films to the Cottages and asks for suggestions of how they can get a diagnosis without being able to see inside the baby-fetus's lungs. It's Chase who suggests doing an exploratory surgery, saying that's what they'd do if the baby-fetus were a person and they had no other options. "I'll put it back when I'm done," House reassures Cuddy.
House and Cuddy report to Emma's room and tell her about the open-fetal surgery they want to try. Cuddy tells Emma that the umbilical cord won't be cut, allowing Emma's body to serve as the baby-fetus's "heart-lung machine" while they try to find what's wrong with it, fix it, and put it back -- "if we can," Cuddy adds, actually being realistic with Emma for the first time. Cuddy says that the procedure is extremely dangerous and risks both the baby-fetus's and Emma's lives. But it's the only thing they can do besides kill the baby-fetus. House shows Emma a 3D ultrasound of her evil killer baby-fetus and she consents to the surgery.
The OR is packed to the gills with people participating in or just observing the exciting open-fetal surgery. Wilson, Foreman, and Chase watch from the OR balcony along with some other random guys. Cameron...erm...I don't know where she is. House opens Emma up, and then some other guy takes over. House goes to suction out to amniotic fluid. While he's doing that, the EVIL KILLER FETUS BABY STICKS ITS HAND OUT OF THE WOMB AND GRABS HOUSE'S FINGER! It is totally trying to kill House. I know it! That baby-fetus is the touch of death! And that's the story I'm sticking to instead of trying to get my head around this sappy un-House-like moment. House is momentarily distracted by the horrible thing attaching itself to his finger, but Cuddy snaps him back to reality, and he comments that it just reminded him that he forgot to Tivo Alien.
Sometime later, the surgeon spots some "well-defined" lesions on the baby-fetus's steroid freak lungs and is ready to fix them. At this point, Emma goes into V-fib, and her monitors display question marks, because even they don't know how to feel about the baby-fetus-House-finger moment. Cuddy zaps Emma a few times, but House decides that the only way to save her is to kill the fetus. Ha! So much for him being all touched by the baby hand and realizing it isn't just a fetus after all. He's just as ready to kill the fetus as ever! He's got the scissors to the umbilical cord and is about to cut when Cuddy tells him to step away from Emma or he'll be electrocuted. And she is not kidding. House jumps away just as Cuddy zaps the life back into Emma.
Later, Emma is totally healed! Her organs have recovered just fine. Even Emma can't believe her amazing luck. "What's amazing," says House, "is how blond your baby's hair is." Awww. Emma notes that this is the first time House has called the baby a baby and not a fetus. Well, sure he can, now that he isn't trying to convince Emma to kill it so that she can live. See, that's being professional and dealing with the situation in an objective manner when appropriate. He tells her that she's on maximum bedrest until the baby is born (again) and is not to have sex, so there's no use in her flirting with House. Emma thanks him anyway. He tells her not to thank him, since he was ready to kill the baby several times over. Emma just kind of smiles at that, even though it's not really funny.
Chase finds Cameron packing up Emma's camera stuff to bring to her. I guess that's what she was doing during Emma's surgery. Cameron is a slow packer. She finds the picture of Chase that Emma took when he was looking at the picture of Cameron. "I've never seen you like this," says Cameron. "She got you to glow. What were you doing? What'd she say to you?" Chase can't tell the truth, so he just says that he always glows, and then chivalrously takes the camera bag from Cameron. Oooh, Chase, you can't make Cameron fall in love with you even if you hope real hard.
Cuddy catches House on his way out of work. She gives him an envelope. He opens it and finds a first-class ticket to Vancouver Island. Cuddy jokes that she gave him the wrong envelope, and gets all flirty and cute. She tells him that she thinks it's great that he's trying to get out and go on vacation and be involved in life. House thinks she's trying to apologize for "screwing up." "I saved a life. I saved two lives," Cuddy brags. No, House says, she let her maternal instincts take over her objectivity and almost killed two people. Well, at least he's admitting that she has maternal instincts this time. House says that 9.9 times out of 10, what Cuddy did would've killed Emma and the baby. Cuddy says that in this case, 0.1 was bigger than 9.9. At least, it was for Emma and her baby. Cuddy orders House to go on vacation and "be happy."
Instead, House goes to his apartment, tears up the Vancouver Island tickets, and watches the Travel Channel. I guess all that big talk of an exotic vacation was just big talk. Oh, but he does take a second to look at his baby-fetus-touched finger and wonder if he should bump Alien up on his Netflix queue.
And then, a few months later, Emma puts pictures on the wall of her wonderful time at PPTH. There's Foreman doing an ultrasound. There's Cameron out of focus in Emma's face while Chase watches her longingly. And there's Cuddy joyously wheeling Emma into the delivery room for real this time. There are no pictures of House on the wall. Ha ha ha! Baby killer. Emma goes over to a bassinet and takes her baby out, who we see is totally deformed with all kinds of development problems thanks to the surgery and steroids and being in the womb of someone with multiple organ failure. Just kidding! The baby looks totally healthy and happy. Which might not be the most realistic of endings, but it is a happy one, so I'll take it.