By Sara M
A crying baby wakes its tired father up at 6:20 in the morning. That's it -- I'm never having kids. He gets dressed and heads for the bathroom, where he almost barfs in the sick while washing his face. But when his wife, holding the baby, come in and ask him if he's feeling okay, he says that he's just fighting off a stomach bug, and also tries to trick us during this Pre-Credits Sequence of Doom. The rules dictate that someone who is obviously sick in the beginning of the PCSoD will not be the Patient of the Week. Mom, named Kara, runs some bathwater, and complains that baby Michael and his colic kept her up all night. Kara asks her husband, Brent, to take the day off from work to spend some time with his wife and son, but he says that he can't afford to miss work. He kisses his wife and son, and heads off to work.
But on his way down the stairs, Brent gets dizzy, stumbles, and then barfs. Pleasant. He returns to the apartment, where he finds Kara having some kind of seizure in the tub -- soap bubbles placed strategically over her private areas -- and, worse, that their son has turned into a doll and has sunk to the bottom of the bathtub. Brent grabs Michael out of the tub and tries to juggle his, his wife, and his son's health issues at the same time. When the episode starts with a drowned-looking baby, it can only get happier.
After the credits, Chase rushes to meet the paramedics. They come in with Michael, who has turned back into baby form and is crying, which is a great sign for his future as a living being. Kara, however, is disoriented. Brent reassures her that everything will be fine, and Chase asks him whether Kara has ever had a seizure like this before. He says no.
Meanwhile, House and Wilson are coming into work. House already has his evening planned out -- a marathon of The L Word, played without volume. If that's the only reason why he's watching the show, then I can't imagine he'd need more than three minutes, let alone an entire evening. Wilson has to pass on this because he already has plans for the night -- dinner with Cuddy. House doesn't know who to be jealous of. He thinks that Wilson is trying to suck up to Cuddy for some cancer funding, but Wilson says that Cuddy was actually the one who asked him out. "She run out of batteries?" House wonders. If he watched The L Word with the sound on, I'm sure he'd know that women always keep back-up batteries. I mean, I guess he'd learn that. I've never actually watched an episode of The L Word, despite the raves it gets from most of the girls on my soccer team, because I can't afford fancy-schmancy channels like Showtime. Anyway, House doesn't see Cuddy and Wilson as being compatible, and decides that Cuddy has a reason for asking Wilson out that has nothing to do with sex. "I'll poll my peeps!" House promises, as he heads into the meeting room.
But only Cameron is in the meeting room, and no one cares about her opinion. She explains that Chase is down in the ER for the two-week NICU rotation Cuddy put him on. He sent a case up to his boss, though: Kara and her unexplained seizure. As for Foreman, he shows up with some natty attire and a great big smile. He's looking great for someone whose brain couldn't figure out which side was right and which one was left the last time we saw him. He gives Cameron a big hug when she stands to greet him, much to everyone -- most of all Cameron's -- surprise. House welcomes Foreman back from a safe distance, and orders him to make some coffee, saying he likes his black, just like how he likes his "brain-damaged neurologists." Well, I guess now that Foreman has that brain damage, there will be something else for House to make fun of besides the color of his skin. "Happy to help!" Foreman smiles. As House and Cameron exposit how and why Foreman was brain damaged last week, Foreman struggles to open a bag full of coffee grounds. House snatches it from him and does it ably by ripping it open with his teeth. Foreman says that he still has a few remnants from his brush with death, but is happy to be alive and trying to cope with them with a smile and great attitude. Oh, yuck.
Cameron goes over Kara's file, and Foreman has a few ideas of what's wrong with her, but since he's also forgotten how a coffee filter works, House says that he won't be letting Foreman near any patients. Cameron tells House that the ER has already ruled out all the simple, boring explanations for Kara's seizure, leaving only the complex, interesting ones for House to investigate.
Chase checks on baby Michael. Suddenly, the entire House team is behind him demanding his help on Kara's case. Chase says that they don't need him, as he figures that Kara's seizure was simply caused by some inflamed arteries in her brain. "You're a moron," House says. Wow, I can't imagine why Chase would be trying to spend time away from that positive reinforcement. Cameron goes to test Kara for the delightfully-named Whipple's disease, and House orders Chase to do an angiogram. But Chase says he can't, because Cuddy ordered him to stay in the NICU.
Amazingly, we actually get to see Cuddy when someone refers to her as she rushes into work wearing her usual red and holding a small paper bag, the contents of which shall remain a mystery for now. After giving her some time to feel comfortable in her private space, House announces his presence. He snuck into her locked office and has been sitting in one of her chairs waiting for her to show up. Hilariously, Cuddy adds an "again" when she describes this situation. She must have to check behind her shower curtain when she uses her toilet, just to make sure House isn't hiding behind it, ready to jump out and protest her latest decision to take him off of a case that can't be solved without the benefit of his amazing mind.
Because he hasn't stripped her of her privacy enough, House asks Cuddy what's in her bag and whether it has anything to do with her date with Wilson tonight. Cuddy says that it isn't a date, but won't enlighten him as to the bag's contents. So House pesters her about it for a while and then says that he'll only drop it if she gets Chase out of NICU. "NICU is short-staffed," Cuddy says. But House keeps tabs on the entire staff of PPTH for who knows what reason, and therefore knows that NICU has had the same staff for the last two years. Which means that Chase must have asked Cuddy for the NICU rotation. "If Chase needs a break from you, he should take it," Cuddy says. House agrees with this; I'm sure he'd love to be able to take a break from himself, too.
While Cameron does some test that involves making an awesome-looking 3D picture of Kara's brain on the computer, Foreman enters with the negative results of Kara and Brent's strep tests -- the only test that he's allowed to do right now. Cameron assures Foreman that he'll be doing the sophisticated tests like she is soon, and he says that it's okay if he doesn't; he could always teach or work in research if he can't practice anymore. Foreman's just so happy to be alive and doesn't think that he has the right to complain about only making coffee after almost not being able to breath. And now, let's all take bets on how long Foreman's newfound positivity will last. As entertaining as it might be if this were a permanent personality change for Foreman, and we got to watch him love life (much to the annoyance of everyone around him during the seasons to come), I'm thinking that it won't last more than three scenes.
Chase finds Brent standing over his son, not sure what to do. Chase tells him that "physical contact helps the healing process," i.e. touch your son, you cold emotionless robot (although quite attractive) man. That baby is really cute when it's not a doll.
Kara gets her angiogram.
I spoke too soon about the baby not being a doll, as the monitors start beeping, and Chase says that the baby isn't getting enough oxygen. He turns back into a doll so the nurses can work on him.
Suddenly, Kara starts moaning and her back seizes up, lifting her off of the table. A stream of blood goes shooting into poor Cameron, who jumps back with a "where the fuck did that come from?" look on her face.
Michael is still losing oxygen.
Cameron doesn't know what's causing Kara's problems, but it isn't a seizure.
Chase re-inflates Michael's collapsing lungs, and his levels return to normal. Now Chase has to figure out what caused his lungs to collapse in the first place. I'm thinking that the juxtaposition of Michael and Kara's medical crises is trying to tell us that their illnesses are somehow related.
Meanwhile, Cameron and Foreman stand to their patient, who is almost levitating off of the table with her spasming back. They have no idea what's wrong with Kara, and they don't seem particularly eager to do anything to make it stop.
Back from commercial break, Kara's back has recovered, and she's lying in bed. House, Foreman, and Cameron go to NICU to ask Chase what he thinks could have caused Kara's seizures and whatever the hell happened to her back. Chase just says that he's too busy with Michael's case to help House out. After a look at Michael's chest X-ray, he diagnoses him with chemical pneumonitis from all that bathwater in his lungs and orders a nurse to give him prednisone. But now Chase doesn't have an excuse to avoid House, and says that Kara's problems are all explained by lithium. Cameron and Foreman protest, because Kara doesn't have a history of taking it and it didn't show up on her tox screen. Of course, as House points out to Foreman, lithium never shows up on standard tox screens. So Foreman comes back with another diagnosis that restores some of House's faith in his brain power: myelomas meningitis. House orders Cameron to test Kara for that, and orders Foreman to check Kara's home for lithium and possible bacterial causes of Michael's lung problems, as House tosses off to Chase that he's wrong about them being chemical and tells him to start the kid on ECMO. Foreman goes off to do this, his short term memory problems apparently having blocked out the fact that this is how he almost died last time. I would not be going back to sick people's houses after that.
Chase chases after House in the hallway, saying that he won't start Michael on ECMO since the chances of bacteria being in bathwater are very small. "Why don't you want to work for me?" House asks, getting in Chase's face. Chase lies that his time in NICU has nothing to do with House and quickly changes the subject back to Michael, whose X-rays, he insists, showed chemical pneumonitis. House disagrees with this, and asks Chase whether he's down in NICU "hoping to expand [his] make-out pool to include the premie to nine-year-old demographic." Why does Foreman always get picked on for being black, but this is one of the few times Chase has been made fun of for kissing that little girl? "I needed a break," Chase sighs. He's starting to hate their patients, because they lie to them all the time, which almost got Foreman killed. NICU babies can't talk, so they can't lie. It's refreshing. House calls this a "load of crap," and Chase says that he won't do ECMO because it's too dangerous. House thinks that letting bacteria build up in the baby's body until it kills him is more dangerous, though. On the upside, House says, there's "nothing more honest than a dead baby." Yeah, but their tendency to smell like decay kind of outweighs that benefit.
We cut to Chase explaining the ECMO process to Brent. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is a process where blood is removed from the baby's body and filtered through machines, which add oxygen and take out carbon dioxide, thereby doing the work for the lungs and giving them time to rest and heal. It's extremely risky, but antibiotics alone won't take care of the infection fast enough. Chase assures Brent that this is the best course of action for Michael, even though he didn't believe that himself just one scene ago. Fortunately, dolls don't need to breathe and can't get infections, so Michael should be fine for now.
House dumps the contents of Cuddy's garbage can on to Wilson's desk. He plucks the package that Cuddy had in her hands earlier from it, and Wilson checks it out. It's something called Red Clover, which is supposed to help fight cancer. This isn't a date, House says; it's a consult. Whoa! Is this an actual Cuddy storyline I'm seeing? Hooray!
With that grave revelation, Cameron bursts in to tell House that Kara doesn't have any myelomas. But she does have a subarachnoid bleed (which has nothing to do with spiders, despite its similar-sounding name). As House and Cameron head back to the meeting room, Cameron says Kara's blood tests showed that her blood isn't clotting as well as it should, which could have caused the bleed. But they don't know what's causing the blood not to clot.
Inside the meeting room, they find Foreman, back from Kara's place with no lithium. He did find a bottle of vodka stashed behind a drawer, though. Cameron picks up on this as being "classic alcoholic behavior," which could explain Kara's bleeding. House plays a nasty little trick on Foreman by saying that Kara bled all over him earlier in the day and that he just doesn't remember it, and then he calls Foreman an "idiot" -- and I'm sure the brain damaged action council is drafting a strongly-worded letter to this show as we speak. Foreman takes it all in stride, though. I think he's wearing a "Life: Be In It" T-shirt under his sweater. Foreman points out that Kara didn't have any alcohol in her system when she was admitted, and House says that just fits their alcoholic scenario even better, since that would mean that Kara was having DTs. Seizure-inducing DTs. Foreman suggests that Kara's stress over her family's serious financial problems could also explain her symptoms, but House likes Kara's alcoholic scenario better, and orders Foreman to put her in a coma before the DTs kill her.
Foreman heads right off to do just that, and House is angry: Foreman should be arguing with him now, not doing his bidding. "Why should I argue? You'll just overrule me," Foreman says, now wise to how precious his time on this earth is and not willing to waste it. "Enough! Get a pony or a watermelon farm!" House tells him. "House!" Cameron says, objecting. It's about time SOMEONE objected to this guy's blatant racism. Too bad it's Cameron, and too bad it's at the end of the second season. House says that he's trying to get Foreman to react and stop being boring and all happy and calm and stuff. Foreman says that he has changed forever. "Nearly dying changes everything forever. For about two months," House says. And since he had his own near-death experience, I'd say he probably knows this better than most. House needs the Foreman he hired back at this moment, though; not two months from now. Foreman says that he's not going to sink to House's level of misery, and suggests that he talk to Brent and Cameron talk to Kara to find out if she's an alcoholic or not. House would rather just put her in a coma. I guess you can do that without talking to people now.
Cuddy and Wilson have their dinner date. Small talk is made about Wilson's pending divorce, and then they both make fun of House for a while. Suddenly, Cuddy brings up children and asks Wilson whether he wants to have them someday. Wilson doesn't answer that, simply asking Cuddy whether there's a specific reason why she invited him out. Cuddy says that she just wanted to catch up with him, especially since neither of them has anyone to run home to. She laughs that comment off, as if it were funny and not incredibly sad.
Kara wakes up from what I'm guessing was her coma to find Cameron standing over her. Cameron steps aside to reveal Brent and Michael, and Kara takes Michael in her arms and coos over him. She apologizes to Brent, who says that she doesn't have anything to be sorry for; she was "sick." Yeah, sick because she chose to drink too much for too long. Everyone's taking this hardcore alcoholic thing pretty well, though. Cameron stands back and watches and smiles because she loves happy endings. Maybe a unicorn will swoop down and carry them all away towards the rainbow.
House and Foreman talk about the case. Foreman says that Brent and Kara actually met each other in AA, and Kara must have slipped somewhere along the way. I guess that's why you shouldn't meet people in AA. Good lesson. House was right, and he says that his theory was much better than Foreman's psych one. Foreman doesn't react to this, and House promises to "drop the N-bomb" if he absolutely has to. I love how House can't stand being around someone so happy and appreciative of everything life has to offer. Foreman just pats House on the shoulder and laughs that he is "addicted to conflict." House looks down at the Vicodin he's about to swallow and asks whether they changed the name. While Foreman keeps talking about how House was unsuccessful both at dragging Chase into the case and getting a reaction out of Foreman, House looks over at Kara's room and notices her bent over the side of her bed, facing away from them. He glances over at Michael's crib. It's empty. The Danger Music is also playing, so House throws his cane down and runs as best he can into Kara's room. Foreman follows him, and there they find Kara trying to freaking suffocate her child. House grabs the baby, while Foreman tries to restrain Kara. Michael isn't breathing, so House calls for a crash cart while he gives the Michael Doll CPR. I hope no one tells Cameron about this; she was so happy when she thought this family was normal and happy and not the least bit homicidal.
Back from commercial, Brent is devastated to hear that while Michael is stable, the lack of oxygen damaged his kidneys. Brent wants to believe that Kara rolled onto Michael by accident and just happened to be holding a pillow while she did it, but come on now, Brent. Foreman tells him that he was in the room and Kara was definitely trying to kill Michael. Where was Brent during that whole thing, anyway? Why wasn't he in the room with his wife and son?
Meanwhile, Cameron's tending to Kara, who says that she heard voices telling her that Michael would be better off dead.
Cameron comes back to the Meeting Room and says that Kara faked her seizure when Brent came home, and that he unknowingly caught her trying to drown the baby. Foreman doesn't think so, saying that post-partum psychosis can cause both child-drownings and seizures. As for House, he thinks that Kara has an illness they haven't diagnosed yet. Foreman jumps up to draw some of Kara's blood for new tests, and House gets really mad that he isn't being argued with. He tells Foreman to go have an original thought and try to stress Kara into another seizure in the meantime. Foreman says that he can't, because Kara's on anti-seizure medication, but House really wants him to argue on the ethics of stopping a seemingly necessary drug and inducing a dangerous seizure, not the logistics of it. For a guy who always think he's right and should never be questioned, House sure does love conflict. I don't get it. House tells Foreman to take Kara off the anti-seizure medicine and try to induce a seizure while hooking her up to an EEG so they can see if her seizures are real or fake.
Foreman goes to follow House's orders, and Cameron follows House into his office to yell at him for how he's been treating Foreman. Foreman may never get better, Cameron says, so House shouldn't keep operating under the assumption that he will and therefore can be made fun of for a temporary condition. House says that if Foreman doesn't get better, he'll need a new neurologist. The fact that Foreman got this way because he was doing something House ordered him to do doesn't matter to the guy who was lucky enough to be allowed to continue to practice medicine, even though he's always on pain pills. Furthermore, House thinks that this only matters to Cameron, because she feels guilty for doing the biopsy. I think it's also because Cameron likes having someone with a happy upbeat attitude on the team with her. Cameron says that isn't the case at all; she's annoyed at House for pushing Foreman and hurting his chances of recovery. For taking a stand and arguing with her boss who claims he loves it so, Cameron is rewarded with orders to baby-sit Foreman down in the seizure lab.
Kara is hooked up to some brain machines and ordered to stare into a flashing light. Cameron joins Foreman in the booth, and he immediately knows why she's there, even though she tries to lie that she's just waiting for some test results to come back. "It's fine," Foreman assures her. "Of course it is," Cameron says, rolling her eyes. I guess she's as sick of his rebirth as House is after all. I'm surprised at this, but not displeased. Foreman asks Cameron what her problem is; a few weeks ago, she was angry at him for not considering her to be a friend and now she's angry at him for being friendly. "Apparently, I'm a bitch," Cameron shrugs. Sweet. She tells Foreman that his attitude of considering every day a blessing "gets old," and makes everyone around him feel shallow for not feeling the same way. Enh, it seems to work for the Care Bears well enough. Then again, my favorite Care Bear was Grumpy, who had a storm cloud on his chest and kind of hated everyone, but stuck around because -- let's face it -- Care-A-Lot was a pretty sweet place to live. Foreman smiles through an apology to Cameron for his happiness. "Give it a rest," Cameron says.
House limps into whatever lab the Chief of Oncology has to perform his own tests in, and asks Wilson how his date with Cuddy went. Wilson says Cuddy didn't say a thing about cancer and it seemed like she just wanted a date with him, even though Wilson seemed to be terrible company from what little we saw of it. Meanwhile, House notices that Wilson's doing his own test in the middle of the night -- and Cuddy's spoon is his test subject. Wilson admits that he's testing Cuddy's saliva for cancer markers. Oh, for God's sake, you two! Leave Cuddy's garbage and bodily fluids alone! House thinks that Wilson is only doing this so that he'll know whether Cuddy really wanted to date him or not, and Wilson wonders why House cares so much about Cuddy. House claims he only cares because if Cuddy dies of cancer, he'll have a new boss to learn how to manipulate. "Whoa. I think I'm gonna cry," Wilson says with expert line delivery.
Chase tells Brent that Michael's kidney damage is causing his potassium levels to increase to dangerous levels. If they can't get the levels back down, Michael will have a heart attack.
Kara hasn't had a seizure yet, and the biopsy Cameron did for myeloma was negative. Suddenly, Kara's EEG patterns start getting funky. But Kara isn't having a seizure; she's just making sucking motions with her mouth.
Cameron tells House that Kara is having encephalopathic delirium, which means that her problems have a real physical illness at their source. Which, House is pleased to point out, means that he was right, and Foreman was wrong. Again. Foreman doesn't mind. Meanwhile, Kara's brain is going to shut down completely if they don't find out what's wrong with her.
Michael's heart is giving out. Chase rushes over to save him.
House wants Chase back with them to help figure out what's wrong with Kara, as Cameron and Foreman try to come up with theories, most of which are the same ones they had before that were ruled out for various reasons. "Recycling sucks," House says. Unless, of course, he's the one doing it. House suggests Pellagra, due to Kara's alcoholism causing her to have a niacin-free diet. If they give Kara niacin, she'll be just fine. Chase enters the room, looking pretty grim, and tells them that Michael has died, so there goes Kara being fine ever again.
A nurse shuts down Michael's machines while Brent cries. Aw, I hate the dead baby episodes.
Foreman sits down to Kara's bedside, who I'm assuming has been given a few doses of niacin and is looking much better. He asks her a few questions about who she is and when she was born. Kara only wants to see Michael, though, and Foreman explains to her that the voices she was hearing before were because of a vitamin deficiency. Kara starts to sob that she remembers "doing things" to her son and asks whether they really happened. Foreman says that they did. She tried to kill her son. Worse yet, she succeeded. Kara screams and cries and then throws up a ton of blood. That's some serious grief right there.
The bloody vomit is a new symptom, and not one that's consistent with Pellagra. Ugh, how many freaking illnesses does this woman have? Searching for all the correct spellings of them is tiring me out! Chase is too busy thinking about Michael and what he should have done to save him to pay attention to Kara's case, though, and House yells at him, telling him to get his head "out of the dead baby's butt." Thanks for that visual, House. It does give him an idea, though. House asks Chase how much polystyrene he gave Michael for the potassium, then runs out of the room.
House finds Brent hugging his dead son. House tells him that he needs Michael to do a test that could save Kara, becase he thinks that they both have the same illness, and he can't do the biopsy on Kara because she'll bleed out. Brent refuses to let them use Michael to save his murderer. So House has to take the tough love approach, minus the love. First, he accuses Brent of drinking again, saying his barfing wasn't caused by a stomach bug, but by a hangover. Brent admits to this. House then accuses him of neglecting his wife and her steadily increasing psychosis for drinks at the bar because he didn't want to deal with her complaining all the time. And when Kara's psychosis really took hold and she "shut down," House accuses Brent of being relieved when he should have been concerned. "What is wrong with you?" Brent asks. "What kind of a person says those things now?" Yeah, really. What did any of that accomplish besides making Brent want to drink himself to death? House realizes that he may have gone too far and turns the asshole down a notch. He asks Brent to let him do the test on Michael so Brent can have "one less thing to feel crappy about." And House should have many more things to feel crappy about, like what an asshole he just was to the grieving father for no reason. I'm sure that there were other ways to get him to agree to biopsy the baby than that.
Chase is also grieving over the dead baby, but when he hears House approaching, he grabs a magazine and tries to look nonchalant and totally fine with the baby death while he reads it. House orders Chase to biopsy the baby, since Chase loves NICU so much. That, and Foreman can't do it, and Cameron would no doubt flood the entire morgue with her tears if she had to. Chase maintains that he just wanted to get away from lying patients, but House whips out Chase's paycheck and accuses him of "double-dipping" -- using his vacation time to work in NICU and therefore getting double pay. House wants to know why a rich boy like Chase would need the extra cash. Chase says that he isn't rich, which House takes to mean that he was cut out of his dead rich father's will. Chase just repeats that he isn't rich, grabs the check, and storms off. I guess he won't be impressing any ladies with invitations to ski in the Alps in the near future.
Before he starts the biopsy, Chase, his voice almost breaking, takes a moment to pray over its doll body and apologize to it for not being able to keep it alive. You know, Chase gets very few scenes like this, and yet I don't think Jesse Spencer has ever let me down in them. Maybe season he'll get more than two episodes to shine. Chase does the test -- and immediately sees something odd.
Wilson comes to House's office with Cuddy's test results back -- she's negative for cancer markers, and therefore positive in love with Wilson. House stops his yo-yoing to think about this, as Chase comes in and says that Michael had a slight villus atrophy. With that, Chase, Wilson, and House go to the meeting room, where Cameron and Foreman are waiting for them. I can't imagine how awesomely awkward their conversation was before those three entered the room. House says that Michael had celiac disease, not colic like his parents thought, and therefore couldn't absorb the gluten NICU bonds with the polystyrene to treat elevated potassium levels. Michael inherited the condition from his mother, where it was dormant until the stress of childbirth and debt and alcoholism triggered it. Every time she ate something with gluten in it, she did more damage to her small intestine, making it unable to absorb vitamins, such as niacin and vitamin K, leading to the Pellagra and bleeding, respectively. So it was celiac and not Chase that caused Michael's death. Chase is immensely relieved. He shouldn't be; I remember from my days of working in a hospital lab that one of the diagnostic tests for celiac disease involves collecting seventy-two hours worth of a patient's stool. And since the Cottages have to run their own tests, they should be having a really fun time with that.
But there's still one question: why would Kara have high calcium levels if her body couldn't absorb vitamins? The answer is, of course, not good news. Celiac disease patients are at an increased risk of cancer of the stomach lining, symptoms of which include hypercalcemia and bloody vomit. Kara is in Wilson's less-than-capable hands now. Well, at least someone in this episode ended up with cancer. I'm glad that it isn't Cuddy.
His job done, House heads for Cuddy's office. "You don't have cancer," he greets her. "You don't have dwarfism," she shoots back. But we all have fun. House shows Cuddy the results of the test she didn't know was being performed on her, and she is duly annoyed and filled with a "sense of personal violation." Cuddy hasn't seen anything yet, as House adds that the test results showed her estrogen level to be too high. "No matter how many people you tell otherwise, I am, and always have been, a woman," Cuddy says. I do love that that's a running joke. Thus, Cuddy says, estrogen is normal for her to have. Yes, House says, but not this much. According to the Cuddy Menstruation Chart he has set up somewhere in his office, Cuddy isn't due to ovulate for another week. He claims he's figured this out by paying attention to the times that she leaves the kids' cancer ward with tears in her eyes and eats frozen yogurt, but I have to wonder if he routinely goes through her garbage and that's how he knows. Either way, he is being very creepy. Based on his stalker way, House knows that Cuddy has been taking estrogen-increasing fertility meds and red clover to boost their effectiveness. Cuddy doesn't have a witty response to this because she's so appalled and upset that House has found out her secret. She just stares at him, looking like someone just punched her in the face.
House figures that Cuddy went out with Wilson to see if he'd be a good father for her baby. Cuddy admits that this is true. House asks when he gets to have an audition dinner with Cuddy, but then Wilson enters the office and interrupts my fun. While I'm all for Cuddy getting a storyline and, even better, her and House having one together, I don't think them having a baby together would work out very well at all. Cuddy sighs that she's sure Wilson and House will have a lot of fun picking on her for this. Wilson tells House that Kara won't let him touch her. Maybe she heard about the hands-way-on approach Wilson took to treating his last young female patient.
House sits by Kara's bedside, looking unusually sympathetic. Until he opens his mouth and makes fun of her statement of the obvious that she killed her son. But he also says that Michael's death wasn't Kara's fault -- it was her disease. Actually, it was Michael's disease too, since he would have been okay if he had been able to absorb that polystyrene. But no one mentions this. Kara disagrees with House, saying that she shouldn't have listened to the voices in her head. House says that's easy to say when you're sane, but not so easy to do when you aren't. "This is not your fault. You're healthy now...except for the cancer," he says, sounding all sincere and nice and stuff. Why couldn't he have been like that to Kara's husband, too? "You do not deserve to die," he tells her. "I don't wanna live," she says. And, you know...yeah. I don't know how you'd be able to get over that, like, ever. I think most parents would feel the same way, even if they had nothing to do with their child's death. And on that cheery note, Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there! I hope you spent your special day being rewarded for all your hard work with love and kisses and breakfast in bed and didn't try to murder any of your children!
House leaves Kara's room, and tells Foreman that Kara, being of sound mind and body, refused treatment for her cancer. House knows that there's nothing he can say to change her mind, but he tells Foreman, lover of life, to go in there and remind Kara that every day is a wonderful blessing and it's great just to be alive. Foreman doesn't move, and House says he knows that Foreman was faking his whole newly enlightened happy thing because he wanted to believe that his brush with death meant something, which, House says, it didn't. "Why are you doing this to me? I was happy!" Foreman says. House doesn't think so; Foreman was trying to be content, which is different than happy. Foreman starts yelling and arguing with House just like he used to, and House smiles because he knows he won. "I need your self-worth to hang on this job," House says. And if Foreman is happy without it, then he wouldn't be inspired to push himself to excel. House doesn't need anyone on the team like that. I guess that's why he insists on hiring people like Cameron and Chase who have some obvious self-esteem problems that House has trained them to think can only be helped by his approval over their work. Twisted! "I can live with that," Foreman says. "No, you can't. Not anymore," House says.
Neither can Kara, it seems. Brent comes to see her. He doesn't touch her or even try to pretend that they can have a life together after this. He just asks her to tell Michael he's sorry when she dies and gets to see him again. Excuse me while I go kill myself.
House and Wilson are in the elevator. It stops on the first floor and the doors open to reveal Cuddy about to get on. She waits for House and Wilson to make fun of her for wanting a baby, but they don't say anything. So she gets on the elevator and they step off. I usually prefer to let people step off of the elevator before I get on it, but that's just me and my inability to create dramatic tension in life. The doors close behind them, and Wilson asks House whether he told Cuddy about the cancer test he did. House says he did indeed. "And?" Wilson asks. "Wasn't a date," House says; "turns out she has some skin lesions." Wow, after all that privacy-violating House did to poor Cuddy, he didn't do it this one time. Wilson gloomily agrees to go home with House to watch The L Word, his hopes of scoring with Cuddy destroyed.
Foreman studies some flashcards with medical terms on them. Judging by his reaction to it, he's not doing well. He slams the pile on the table and glowers, his sunny disposition gone. Then Cameron walks past, and he picks them up again. This time he does a little better.