House TV Show - Moral Morales - House Photos & Videos, House Reviews & House Recaps | TWoP

Aired 05-02-2005

My, how time flies! It seems like only a few weeks ago that those junior swimming and diving national champions were showing off their stuff for an enthralled nation, but it's actually been a whole year! The audience cheers wildly as kids swim and dive their way into the judges' hearts. up to dive is a young girl whose coach comments that she looks "pale" as he gives her a rather intimate shoulder massage. Suspicious. He asks the girl if her neck "still hurts," wondering if she shouldn't go for some tricky dive, but the girl insists on attempting it. The coach finishes his massage without giving her a happy ending and sends his twelve-year-old competitor off. She climbs the ladder as the audience waits for her vision to blur or for her to go into a seizure or whatever the worst possible thing that could happen at the worst possible time is, as is what usually tends to befall House's future patients. The girl, announced as "Mary Somelastname," manages to reach the diving board before her vision starts to go all wonky and the music starts to go all eerie. The camera starts to zoom into her eye for the inevitable Magic School Bus Cam shot of her brain short-circuiting, but then she blinks and shakes her head to clear it before it can happen. Huh. Mary sets up for her dive and mutters some encouraging words to herself that, shockingly, don't start to slur or anything. This show has me at the edge of my seat with the suspenseful pre-credits catastrophe expectation! Mary executes a perfect-looking dive (she could have done a belly flop and I wouldn't have known the difference), and we all wait for her to forget how to swim or for the pool to fill up with her blood, but no. She makes it to the surface, appearing quite healthy and happy that she made her dive, but the tumultuous applause of the crowd is not forthcoming. Instead, there are horrified and scared as they look in what appears to be her direction. I was waiting for the reveal that her arm fell off or something, but the source of concern is actually one of the diving judges, sprawled out on the floor with blood coming out of his ear and his eyes rolled back in his head. The coach yells for someone to call an ambulance. Mary hopes the judge had time to give her an awesome score before he kicked it. I can't believe the pre-credits sequence faked me out like that. That judge didn't even look sick, and Mary was pale!

Since Cameron remains in the opening credits, I'm not surprised to see her. I'm sad, but not surprised. She's spending her unemployment time running on a treadmill, and the camera is sure to linger on her sweaty, bouncing bosoms until she stops to answer a knock at the door. It's House. As Cameron mentally chastises herself for not looking her very sexiest at all times in preparation for this inevitable moment, House dramatically states that Vogler is dead. "What? What happened?" Cameron asks, as she wonders if it's a faux pas to go on a funeral date in the same clothes you wore to the funeral of your tragically dead husband. Perhaps a letter to Miss Manners will clear it up. Then House tells her to stop being so literal; Vogler is still among the living, although he and his money are no longer among the hospital, which House does not assign any of the credit for to Cuddy. Now Cameron can come back to work and everything can be like it was before. Cameron says that things were "a little weird," and whose fault is that? House says that's fine; he wants Cameron back. "Why?" Cameron demands, but House's pager goes off. The page is from me, actually, with a message that says: "Don't you dare tell her you have feelings for her and ruin this show with some stupid boring generic romance subplot. You are not George Clooney. This is not ER!" Actually, it's something about an epidemic back at the hospital, which House isn't concerned with, since it doesn't involve a way for him to scam his way into the ob/gyn lounge. Cameron again asks why House wants her to come back. He says that she's a good doctor. "That's it?" Cameron asks. "That's...not enough?" House asks, baffled, since getting a compliment from him is like getting Miss Manners to tell you to go fuck yourself. "Not for me," Cameron says, and shuts the door in his face. Grrr.

House enters the hospital to find it teeming with coughing people and medical personnel. House immediately turns around to leave, but Cuddy has already spotted him. She explains that the pre-credits judge had a "virulent" form of bacterial meningitis, thereby exposing the twenty-five hundred people in attendance to it as well. What I want to know is, is there a form of meningitis that isn't "virulent"? All area hospitals are packed with the exposed, who are all being a bunch of hypochondriacs with the coughing since I don't think there's any way that meningitis could have spread that widely and that quickly, and this one is no exception. They need everyone they can get to see and clear all the exposed people. House says that since they already have the diagnosis, he won't be needed and will just get in everyone's way, but Joe the Security Guard was apparently briefed on what to expect and stops him from leaving. Cuddy says that no one leaves the quarantine area without a blue slip, meaning that House is trapped in his own Personal Hell of endless hypochondriac patients for the foreseeable future. Exposing twenty-five hundred people to a fatal disease just to get back at House may seem a little extravagant, but Vogler said himself that he likes to do things big.

Patient #1 has a fever of one hundred and two, earning him a trip to the second floor, because if you're going to catch a virulent form of an already fatal disease, you might as well get a little bit of view as a consolation prize. The patient strolls away, not seeming at all upset about his possible future as a bloody-eared corpse.

Wilson's patient fares better, getting a clean bill of health that entitles her to two red pills and one blue "I'm healthy, let me out of here before I actually do catch meningitis!" slip.

House's patient is meningitis-free, so she gets a special bonus insta-diagnosis that her mischievous teenage daughter has been borrowing her clothes to look older and sneak into bars. House figures all this out because of an old stain on the woman's otherwise freshly dry-cleaned clothes, and he's totally wrong. The annoyed woman says she doesn't have a daughter. This just leaves her with Option #2, which was House's little joke about her husband being a secret cross-dresser. Whoops, but I think we all could have seen this coming. Ain't no way a rebellious teenage girl is going to borrow her mother's clothes, no matter how many bars it will get her into.

Chase's patient has also been assigned to the second floor, and he takes the news a bit more realistically, with a slight freak-out that he's going to die. Chase sends him off on his way.

Amazin' divin' Mary is House's patient, and she has all three tell-tale symptoms of meningitis: a fever, a rash, and a sore neck. Mary thinks the latter two symptoms are due to a new bathing suit and a pulled muscle, but House gets ready to send her off to the second floor anyway. He writes in his pad, and Mary cranes her neck to see if he's talking any shit about her. Mary's strict diving training regimen apparently leaves her no time to hear any of the five million jokes out there about doctors and their illegible handwriting. But something gets House's attention, and he asks her to shake her head from side-to-side and then nod it up and down. Side-to-side hurts; up and down doesn't. As we'll learn later, young Mary's "no" head-shaking neck muscles don't get used a whole lot, which could explain their stiffness.

Foreman's patient is House, who I hope didn't wait in line this whole time just to achieve the cool effect and surprising Foreman and ordering Foreman to follow him. Chase sends another patient to the second floor just as House whistles out a summons for him. It's all very Ghostwriter, where the kids would be going about their daily activities and then the writing in a nearby menu or street sign would spell out "Rally J" and they'd all drop what they were doing to go to Jamal's house. Not that I ever watched that show. Chase excuses himself from his line of patients, who have got to be super-pissed, especially the woman who was up . It's like waiting in line at the supermarket for ten minutes, only to have the aisle close when it's your turn. Except instead of your ice cream melting, it's your brain.

House and the Cottages have gotten about two feet away from the Clinic before Cuddy swoops in to bust them for shirking their doctorly duties to the meningitis-infected crowd at large to give acute care to one girl who has all three symptoms of it. Not so, says House, who points out that Mary's neck is only sore when she shakes it, not when she nods. If it were meningitis, it would be the other way around, due to something that I stopped listening to when the word "pus" was used. Cuddy ain't buying it, and accuses House of latching onto a random case to avoid having to deal with the rest of the riff-raff. House indignantly says that he wouldn't subject a young girl to a bunch of painful and invasive tests just to avoid "being bored." We immediately cut to Chase and Foreman, whose faces say "wouldn't he?" and "oh, he would," respectively. Cuddy just stares until House admits that, yeah, he totally would do that, but that isn't the case now. He then appeals to the side of Cuddy that cares about patient health and the hospital's image and says that if the girl dies because Cuddy didn't let House take care of her, Cuddy will be a wee bit embarrassed. Cuddy gives him one hour.

By Sara M

House gets to work, ordering Foreman to do a lumbar puncture (ouch), and Chase to go look up every single condition related to neck pain he can find (also ouch, but with the more philosophical pain of busy work boredom as opposed to the physical pain of having a needle stuck in your spine). Chase protests that looking up every condition with neck pain as a symptom is akin to looking for a hay-colored needle in a haystack. House's advice is to start with the A's. Chase storms off disgustedly as House tells Foreman to make sure to give the girl some of those anti-meningitis drugs on the very slim chance that his head-shaking neck pain theory is as correct as his blazer-borrowing mischievous daughter theory.

By Sara M

Foreman cuts through a line of doctors to ask Nurse Brenda for an immediate bed and nurse for a lumbar puncture. The line of doctors protest loudly at Foreman's rudeness, which he ignores until one of them pushes him, and then he's just menacingly threatening enough to scare them all into silence. Foreman truly is House's best student. Brenda says she can't oblige Foreman for at least four hours. Foreman says he only has one. "Back of the line," orders Brenda. The doctors wait for Foreman to get far enough away, and then laugh at him.

Mary doesn't exactly share their merriment, since she now has to get a lumbar puncture in the middle of the crowded hospital hallway while lying on a gurney they were fortunate to find. Foreman apologizes to Mary for having to make her horrible, horrible pain such a public display, but Mary says she usually wears nothing more than a bathing suit in front of thousands of people, so this isn't a big deal. That comparison only works if she's diving into razor blades, though. "These kids are very mature," Coach says as he strokes Mary's hair. He's either really nice or really disgusting. Foreman is about to insert the Needle of Pain when a random doctor, his arms akimbo, careens into the gurney. Foreman asks Coach to guard their gurney so that he doesn't "poke the wrong thing." This doesn't concern Mary, who I'm betting has heard that line a few times before. Gurney protected, Foreman does the puncture. Mary's reaction is a fairly realistic series of increasingly upset "ow"s, because the more pain people are in, the sillier they tend to sound.

Over in the meeting room, House checks up on Chase's progress. He is still on the A's. House says that it must be torture to have to comb through all of that stuff. "It's no problem," Chase says airily. It's probably better than epidemic duty, especially with Nurse Brenda in charge of everything. House says that most people would resent having to do this, so he's glad Chase finds it so fulfilling. Meanwhile, a bunch of people in the lobby die from meningitis while waiting in line for a doctor. If only there were another doctor available because his boss wasn't determined to fulfill his revenge fantasies, those lives could have been saved.

Foreman has lost his patient. Before Cameron can sob at the unfairness of the death of someone Too Young, I'd like to add that I mean "lost" in the sense of "can't find." One of Brenda's co-workers says they needed Mary's gurney, and Foreman snaps that his patient just had a lumbar puncture and should have not have been moved. "Sorry, we needed the gurney," the nurse says, not caring at all. Sometimes, this show's depiction of hospitals and their staff is completely and totally unrealistic. That was not one of them.

House and the team check out the pictures of Mary's digestive tract. House munches on some candy and comments that he heard this movie has a "dark" ending, and everyone looks really glad he brought up that part of the process. House offers Foreman some candy. He declines, and House holds the bag out to Chase, only to pull it away as soon as Chase reaches for it to ask Chase why he did the endoscopy when he was supposed to be writing "I will not rat on House" on the whiteboard three hundred times. Chase says that Foreman asked him for help. House says that Foreman isn't Chase's boss. Then he sees something on the film, and their conversation must end.

Foreman doesn't see the "ginormous thing" on the right side of Mary's intestine that House is pointing at. It's really just a simple, small, swollen blood vessel which, while it explains the gastrointestinal bleeding, doesn't account for any of her other symptoms. House says that's true, but that it does tell them something. He's just not sure what that is yet.

Cuddy marches in and orders House and Co. into the lobby for epidemic duty. "I hurt my leg," House whines, which is not even the least little bit effective. Cuddy says that she gave them over two hours more than their previously promised time, and House blames Chase for not telling them when their hour was up. Chase rolls his eyes. Cuddy tells House that Mary and her intestinal bleeding can wait, because two more buses full of meningitis people just drove up, and Cuddy needs everyone to treat them. Jesus Christ, how many people went to this swim meet? I know it was the National Championships, but damn! I guess the only reason why Mary's parents weren't there to watch her was because they couldn't get a ticket. House says that if Cuddy hadn't cut back the nursing staff, she wouldn't need her doctors to do the nurses' jobs. Cuddy retorts that if House hadn't cost the hospital $100 million, she wouldn't have had to lay off those nurses, now, would she? Foreman and Chase are just like, "...awkward." I just hope those laid-off nurses took a few plasma TVs out with them.

House, the Cottages, and now Wilson are all lined up to each other, making it easy for them to do a differential diagnosis when they aren't pretending to check out their current patients. Wilson immediately rules out stomach cancer as a possible cause for Mary's problems, thereby eliminating himself from having anything to do with the rest of the episode. House's patient doesn't have any symptoms of meningitis, but since her hair doesn't smell like chlorine, he sends her to the psych ward, figuring that anyone who just walks into a quarantined area off the street like that must be insane. Not so insane, apparently, that she needs an escort to the psychiatric ward, as House simply sends her on her way and trusts that she'll get there. Meanwhile, aside from looking a little flaky, the girl looks fairly fashionably-attired, well-groomed and, basically, not all that insane. And would her hair smell like chlorine if she were just sitting in the audience? It'd be really funny if they cut back to her later, all pissed off now that she accidentally committed herself and every staff member she tries to explain things to just does the crazy-person-pacifying nod they learned to do in orientation.

By Sara M

Nurse Brenda is back, and she's meaner than ever! She refuses to give Foreman any staff members or even a sterile environment for Mary's bone marrow aspiration, which, unlike that lumbar puncture or the endoscopy, can't be done in a germy crowded hallway. Foreman tells Brenda that the stakes are high: if Mary doesn't have that bone marrow test, she could die. "At least she'll have a bed, then," Brenda replies unsympathetically. I swear, whoever writes this show must have had experiences with nurses as bad as some of mine. I really hope that before this episode ends, one of Brenda's loved ones is admitted with a mysterious illness that Foreman is only too happy to say he doesn't have the resources or the time to cure. At least when they do the autopsy, though, they'll figure out what was wrong with her.

Speaking of autopsies, Foreman has an idea. We cut to Mary lying on the sterile environment of the morgue's autopsy table. Mary nervously asks if the surrounding cabinets are actually filled with dead people, and Foreman says he "hopes" so, which I'm guessing was not the answer Mary was looking for. I wouldn't be surprised to find a few of the hospital's more demanding doctors locked away in there, though, courtesy of one Nurse Brenda. Foreman tells Mary to try to relax as he jabs a needle through her bone. She grips the side of the autopsy table, because she already had that lumbar puncture, so she has an idea of what to expect.

House's interviewee is Ben Jelen, a long-haired hipster who went to Hopkins for both undergrad and graduate work. He's also in a band and is a musician in real life, making him half Dr. Ray, half Tyler Hilton and 100% crap. Ben is also a huge fan of House and his say-and-do-what-he-wants rock-star attitude, until House points out that Ben's Chinese symbol tattoo isn't so much a statement of non-conformity as it is trying too hard to look cool. If Dr. Hipster really wants to be a rebel, he should wear a pocket protector like Wilson and study for twenty hours a day like all the Asian students do. And make wild generalizations about an entire continent of people, apparently. Dr. Hipster, you are not hired.

Some of Mary's teammates have gathered around her makeshift hospital room in the middle of a hallway, because it's always fun to visit our friends with dangerous mystery diseases that could be highly contagious. They comment on how all the medical machines Mary is hooked up to look over a hundred years old, at which point Foreman walks up and says that while it is last generation's equipment from storage, it still works. Right. Cuddy might want to spend a little less time in meetings with rich people and more time coming up with a suitable emergency epidemic plan in the future so that this doesn't happen again. Foreman also has some good news: they're "pretty sure" Mary doesn't have cancer. Good news is a relative term here, I guess. The teammates cheer, and Coach says he'll call Mary's parents, which could prove difficult, since they're supposed to be on a plane right now. Mary just lies there, face frozen, and her monitors start beeping. I was sort of hoping that the antique hospital machines would have steam whistles or an equivalent turn-of-the-century sound to indicate an emergency, but it's the same beeping the new machines use. Foreman shines his flashlight in Mary's eyes and says she's having an absence seizure. He orders a nurse to get him some medicine for it, and she obliges him without even making one smart remarks about how patients can get all the medicine they need when they're IN THE GROUND.

Post-commercial, House and the Cottages have gathered in the men's room to discuss Mary's case without risking getting caught slacking off by Cuddy, who I would not put it past to walk right on in there looking for them. The drawback to this plan is that they, and therefore we, are forced to endure the occasional strained grunts from a nearby stall. If I wanted to see bathroom humor like this, I'd watch a sitcom. ON UPN. Come on now! Foreman reports that Mary's seizures are happening more and more frequently, meaning that whatever Mary has, it's definitely in her brain and getting worse. Chase says that rat poison could cause the brain and neck symptoms, but Foreman, in the role of Cameron the Innocent, doesn't think anyone would want to poison a twelve-year-old girl. House has seen his share of Lifetime TV movies, though, including the one where the cheerleader's mom killed her daughter's competition. He's also apparently seen Swimfan, an advantage he shares with about four other people in the world. ["Me, my sister, and two others, sigh." -- Wing Chun] The loud pooper finally emerges from his stall, and it's a kid about Mary's age. House orders him to google "hemorrhoids," eat more Raisin Bran, and wash his hands. Foreman's task is slightly more complicated; Mary needs a CT scan to find out if she's bleeding into her brain, but there's no way the Evil Nurse Brenda will let him cut in line, and the morgue doesn't have its own CT scanner. Chase says that this one time, in med school, he had an old professor who did transcranial ultrasounds, which were used before the CT scan was invented. House has to admit that it could work, and assigns Foreman to go off and do it, being sure to throw in a remark about how the neurologist really should have been the one to come up with this. Chase protests that he should do the ultrasound since it was his idea. House mimic-whines like a five-year-old, and tells Chase to go back to his neck pain research.

House returns to his office to find Wilson and his interviewee waiting. He apologizes, saying he had to "take a dump." The interviewee is a sassy young thing who immediately replies that she's sure it's better to interview right after a dump than before it. House is thrown off a bit by the witty retort, and downs a few pills to steady himself as he asks Dr. Sass if she actually speaks four languages, or just wrote it on her résumé to look good. Dr. Sass sasses that she can swear in six. Wilson raises his eyebrows. House asks Dr. Sass why she's leaving her current job; did she fall in love with her boss, or did he fall in love with her? Wilson's eyebrows continue their ascent, and he mutters something about that being a reasonable question, since almost all fellowships end that way. Dr. Sass just says it was "nothing like that," and House immediately asks her if she's Jewish. Dr. Sass says she is indeed, and House's question is whether or not what they say about Jewish foreplay is true. "Uh-uh-uh -- " says Wilson, who knows House better than anyone and still wasn't expecting him to ask a question as wildly inappropriate as that. But Dr. Sass will not be thrown! She says it's "two hours of begging." House says he heard it was four. "I'm only half Jewish," Dr. Sassenstein admits. Wilson just looks back and forth between the two, searching for the family resemblance that must be there as Dr. Sassenstein is obviously House's secret daughter. Dr. Sassenstein says she knows all about how House likes to say inappropriate things for reactions, but that she grew up with four brothers, so she can take whatever he throws at her as long as he keeps his hands to himself. House says nothing, and Wilson calls an end to the interview. House even shakes the hand Dr. Sassenstein offers, something he wouldn't do for Cameron (HA!), and watches her feet as she walks out.

By Sara M

Cuddy prescribes orange juice to her latest epidemic patient, who is the same guy Foreman saw earlier, as the Florida Orange Growers Association makes its check out to Fox. House comes up and requests an operating table and a neurosurgeon for Mary. Cuddy relishes the opportunity to say that the current meningitis epidemic crisis and House's crappy attitude mean that she won't be doing him any favors at all, but House steps on her flow and says that Mary is bleeding into her temporal lobe, which immediately changes Cuddy's facial expression from smugly triumphant to shocked and concerned. House says he can get Mary prepped for surgery in twenty minutes. "You'll have a surgeon and the room in ten," Cuddy says, and rushes off to make it so. She is so awesome. House stands around watching her leave, because he's cool like that, and hopefully Chase and Foreman are already taking care of the surgery-prepping.

Mary's skull gets drilled.

Foreman comes out to meet with Mary's parents, who have finally arrived. Unfortunately, the change from Central Time Zone of their Chicago hometown to East Coast time has given them a strange case of jet lag that renders them unable to act very well. They might even be worse than Brandy. I only point this out because this show has a pretty high caliber when it comes to casting, so it's unusual when they use the same casting pool as, say, 7th Heaven, a pool that was too shallow for diving, but everyone did it anyway and now look. Foreman tells the parents and Coach that they stopped the bleeding in Mary's head, but that they still don't know what caused it. He doesn't add that they might want to take a few anti-meningitis pills while they're hanging out in the quarantined epidemic area, but I guess that's implied.

House studies the Whiteboard of Symptoms and fills about half a minute of time.

After the commercial, Foreman and Chase have joined House in the meeting room, where everyone is frustrated at the lack of a diagnosis for Mary's case. House says that they must be missing something, and prods them to focus on what they already know. They say that Mary is twelve, spends a lot of time in the pool and traveling around the country, and...that's it. "Come on!" House barks, but they have nothing.

The meeting resumes outside Mary's room, which is finally a real one and not a space in the hallway surrounded by curtains or down in the morgue. I hope Cuddy kicked Nurse Brenda's ass to get that. House says they're missing something. "What?" Chase asks stupidly. ["Someone has to fill the void Cameron left." -- Wing Chun] House says that if he knew what it was, it obviously wouldn't be missing, and Chase takes a minute to inhale a deep breath or two and calm down before he does something he regrets even more than telling Vogler about the ipecac. House notes that there are a lot of balloons in Mary's room, and asks Foreman who gave them to her. He says that some of Mary's female teammates brought them when they visited. House asks why the male swimmers haven't been around. Mary's "cute" and "nice" and a "kick-ass diver," so shouldn't she have a line of admirers out the door? Foreman says that the youngest guy is sixteen, so, no. House says that could be why, or maybe..."they're avoiding her," Chase finishes. Yes, that just could be it! Surely the only reason people would have for staying away from a quarantined den of meningitis germs is that they have a personal issue with one of the patients trapped therein. House orders Foreman and Chase to re-test Mary's blood cells for fragments.

By Sara M

The second Dr. Sassenstein's gone, Wilson triumphantly shouts that they've found their "Hitler," and I'm not sure who would be more insulted by the Hitler-Jew comparison; Hitler, or the Jew. "No way," says House. Wilson can't believe it; Dr. Sassenstein is perfect in every way! House managed to find something wrong with her, though: her shoes. Wilson says that Dr. Sassenstein's Pradas mean she has good taste, and House snaps that Wilson wouldn't know a Prada "if one stepped on [his] scrotum." Thanks for the visual, there, House. By the way, being able to identify a woman's Prada shoes from a distance of thirty feet is so gay that it's heterosexual again, so there is no hoyay in this scene. House's point, so to speak, about the shoes is that they're stylishly pointy high heels that are "very painful" to wear, meaning Dr. Sassenstein is one of those "incredibly shallow, insecure" women who would rather be in pain all day and look good than wear tennis shoes. "And that's exactly the type I don't need around here," House says. Yeah, because Cameron had so much self-esteem that she quit her job because her boss wouldn't date her and those bustier-vests she wears really demonstrate comfortable at the sake of fashion. And let's not get started on Cuddy's choice of attire. ["And furthermore, just because she'd wear those shoes to her interview doesn't mean she'd wear them on the job." -- Wing Chun] Wilson snaps that, if anything, House needs someone who can handle a lot of pain.

Speaking of a lot of pain, Chase is stuck reading tiny print by the dim single light of the laboratory. Foreman gets the necessary equipment together for the transcranial ultrasound. Chase does some lab tests. Foreman does the ultrasound.

House and Wilson are back on epidemic duty, trading quips about Cameron's job candidates as they check various patients for neck pain. Wilson lectures House to stop finding tiny little flaws in people to give him an excuse to push them away. Every time House is lucky enough to stumble upon a woman who cares about him, like Cameron, he finds a reason to let her go. Wilson tells House to stop being an ass and realize that no one is perfect. House says that Angelina Jolie is, and Wilson's only exception to that is that she doesn't have a medical degree. I could think of at least seventeen thousand more reasons why Angelina Jolie isn't perfect, starting with, of course, "Billy Bob Thorton." Wilson warns House that he'll end up alone at this rate, which I don't think House would mind too much, and I also don't understand why Wilson is encouraging House to have a relationship with Cameron when he could be telling him to hire Dr. Sassenstein! The conversation is interrupted by Foreman, who says he found bleeding in Mary's temporal lobe. Chase runs up and says he ran tests on all kinds of poisons and found nothing.

House limps out of the room and informs the parents that Mary has TTP, and that it's treatable. She'll need "minor surgery to remove the underlying cause," and then the treatment for TTP, and she'll be fine. Of course, the parents ask about the surgery, and House will only says that it's an "abnormal growth" in her abdomen that will require a "simple surgery" the hospital does "all the time." And he's sorry, but he can't be any more specific than that. That kind of sounded like a less-than-subtle dig at parental consent laws and abortions in general. I hope not.

Mary has her abortion. A nurse soothingly rubs her shoulder and says nice things to her during the process. I can't tell because she's wearing a surgical mask, but I'm betting it's not Nurse Brenda.

Foreman and Chase tell Mary that she's responding well to treatment. Her neck feels better and her platelet count is up. Mary asks them to send her parents in.

House watches from outside while Mary sobs and tells her parents that she got pregnant and then God smote the hell out of her for it. Fortunately, because they aren't very good actors, they don't seem all that upset about it. Chase tells House that the plasmapharesis is working, and Mary will be fine. "I know," House says, looking very serious. I wonder if he's thinking about that nice Jewish girl he impregnated in his rowdy high school days. Last he heard, his secret daughter had four brothers and was attending med school...wait a minute.

The epidemic is over, and the clean-up process begins. House's interview process continues. The newest candidate is just as bright and eager as the other two, until House informs her that the position has been filled. Candidate #3 -- who I recognize as Mimi, one of the few black characters on All My Children -- says that she confirmed the interview just this morning. House says there's no point in arguing with him: she isn't getting the job. He leaves his office, and Wilson asks Mimi if she needs her parking validated. She says no, anticipating that the huge-ass settlement she gets when she sues the hospital for racial discrimination will cover the parking fee nicely.

Cameron's reading session is interrupted by an insistent knocking on the door. It's House, and he doesn't want to interview anyone else for Cameron's position. Cameron says she figured House's interview process consisted solely of checking out candidates' headshots. "Ha. That's good," House humors her. He claims that he needs Cameron around to "keep [him] in [his] place," which is actually what Cuddy and to a lesser extent Wilson are for, so whatever. Cameron says no, adding that she already accepted a position somewhere else. House tells her to "unaccept" it, because he wants her to come back. "Not good enough," Cameron says. House offers her more money and a parking space, but Cameron just wants one thing: dinner. A dinner date. "It's a deal," House says, as Cameron smirks as if she had done something cool to be proud of, when it's really just pathetic and sad. He extends a hand, and they shake on it. "See you tomorrow morning," Cameron says. She closes the door, and House makes an "oh, why did I do that?" expression as he walks away. Booo!

By Sara M

House studies the Whiteboard of Symptoms and fills about half a minute of time.

Although an earlier test showed no fragments, Chase reports that Mary's blood now looks like it was put through a blender. House enters, and they tell him that Mary's rash isn't a rash at all, but bleeding into Mary's skin. She's got a case of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, to be exact. Foreman wonders what could have set it off, as associated estrogen-related causes like menopause are obviously not a reason. "There is one other possible cause," House says gravely. Actually, the same internet search that helped me correctly spell TTP also said that it is often idiopathic, meaning that there is no known cause, and that it can be detected quite easily in routine bloodwork, so it probably should have been caught much earlier, although I guess the state of epidemic chaos can excuse that. Plus, this way gives us more drama, so we'll go with it. Realizing what House is talking about, Chase says "oh, God," and Foreman shakes his head.

By Sara M

Cut to House giving Mary yet another ultrasound, although this time it's slightly lower. And instead of intracranial bleeding, we see a fetus. Whoops! Looks like Mary forgot to tell her partner to put his swimming cap on before entry. House explains that pregnancy causes a lot of changes in one's body, and sometimes it just goes "haywire" and the blood clots all over the place. When red blood cells try to squeeze past the clots, they get all shredded up. Mary remains coldly unaffected by the whole thing, giving the picture of her baby only a cursory glance before returning to her "you don't know me!" glare. House says that he knows how these national swimming competitions work; you're with a bunch of older kids in hotel rooms with no parents around and someone sneaks in some beer, and then you lose your virginity before you start high school. "It wasn't like that," Mary says, and I was totally expecting her to reveal that she and her coach are in love. But no, she just says she "wanted it," although the guy "turned out to be a jerk." House says that he's also a felon. Mary says that he might be a statutory rapist, but he's not a plain old regular rapist. She knew what she was doing. House says that they have to abort the baby and give Mary plasmapharesis. Mary's only problem with that is that she doesn't want her parents to know. House says he's sure that someone old enough to bleed out of her vagina is also well able to handle an abortion. It's not his call anyway; New Jersey law does not require parental consent for abortions.

Mary has her abortion. A nurse soothingly rubs her shoulder and says nice things to her during the process. I can't tell because she's wearing a surgical mask, but I'm betting it's not Nurse Brenda.

By Sara M

Foreman and Chase tell Mary that she's responding well to treatment. Her neck feels better and her platelet count is up. Mary asks them to send her parents in.

House TV Show - Moral Morales - House Photos &amp; Videos, House Reviews &amp; House Recaps | TWoP

House TV Show - Moral Morales - House Photos & Videos, House Reviews & House Recaps | TWoP