In our main medical mystery, we've got a story ripped from last year's headlines. There's this army private who leaked a video in which civilians got killed, see, and before he can be tried for treason, he's got to be cured of whatever he's got. And the whole time, he and his brother (a captain in the very same army) are arguing about honor and whether their father would have approved. Eventually the father turns out to have died in a garden-variety drunk driving accident and not in the blaze of honorable glory that our patient imagines. Oh, and he has typhus. There's also a brief detour through sarcoidosis, which I swear has shown up twice as often as lupus this season. When this series ends, someone should do an infographic.
Meanwhile, House might be sick! Everyone's convinced he's got hepatic encephelopathy, which is some kind of liver disease you get from gobbling Vicodin for eight seasons. There are a number of things they do to confirm their diagnosis, and they all turn out to be a trap House laid for reasons he never actually makes clear.
A young boy is waiting at the airport for his Uncle Brant. I know that because he's got a sign that says "Welcome Home Uncle Brant." His father, who is in uniform, tells him not to be sad that his daddy is going off to war. The kid, in case it matters, is named Evan. Uncle Brant comes down an escalator in the company of several soldiers who clearly have him in custody. Brant is a PFC and his brother is a captain. Oh, and Brant has been charged with treason. And if that's not enough, he also collapses and goes into seizures right there in the airport. Man, this just isn't Brant's day.
House and his team watch a blocky black-and-white video of civilians being shot. Foreman says there will be MPs at every entrance to the second floor. He starts to go through the usual introduction, but House dismisses him. It's time for the diagnoses! House rejects typhus. Park wants to talk about Brant being the anonymous whistleblower who leaked the video. And she thinks Brant's EEG is normal because he's faking it to get out of prison.
The team (minus House) walks through the hallway and Adams reveals that she thinks House is sick. Chase thinks they should ignore it: "If you believe House is sick, it's only because that's what he wants you to believe."
Adams gives Brant a pill for possible blood clots in his leg. Park interrogates him on why he leaked the video. He feels it was the right thing to do, but Park says that insurgents are using it to recruit. Brant's brother is there and they argue about their father, who apparently saved some lives in Tora Bora by breaking rules. He died in a one-car accident. Brant announces that he can't feel his legs. Normally, that would be more dramatic, but the pill Adams gave him was a placebo to see if he'd fake another symptom. Brant also claims to have a hurt stomach. It's covered in bruises or something. Adams concludes, "He's not faking."
House throws back some pills. The team argues about whether Brant is honorable. Chase tries out pancreatitis, but now House is off on a tangent about honor. Taub decides they'll ultrasound Brant to see if there's anything blocking his bile. I always like it when real medicine (or, well, real-sounding medicine in this case) has to reference bile. It's just one step from there to balancing the humors. Everyone but Adams and House leaves. Adams has a form she needs House to sign and he won't do it.
Wilson is doing clinic hours. This nice couple met at the 99-cent store. Adams barges in to insist that Wilson attend to her instead. He diagnosis the man with an infection related to compulsive nose-picking and now the couple is broken up. Adams wants Wilson to look at House's signature today compared to six months earlier. House is shaky, inattentive and forgetful. She claims that House's liver is in decline. Wilson tells her that when you work with House, you start imagining things like this. He assures her there's nothing wrong with him.
By Montykins
Wilson is doing clinic hours. This nice couple met at the 99-cent store. Adams barges in to insist that Wilson attend to her instead. He diagnosis the man with an infection related to compulsive nose-picking and now the couple is broken up. Adams wants Wilson to look at House's signature today compared to six months earlier. House is shaky, inattentive and forgetful. She claims that House's liver is in decline. Wilson tells her that when you work with House, you start imagining things like this. He assures her there's nothing wrong with him.
Then Wilson interrupts House in a darkened room, where he's taking a nap. There's a guy in there snoring because House drugged him. Wilson thinks House is sick and wants to run some tests for liver damage as a result of Vicodin abuse. House declines. Wilson leaves, turning off the lights.
Patient's Room. Captain Brant's Brother says there's been another attack. Everyone blames Brant, although he points out that the attack would have taken longer than three days to plan. So it couldn't be his fault. The reason he entered the army was to find out what happened to his father. There were two redacted pages and he figured he could raise his security level. But while he was there, he saw this stuff and released it because it was the right thing to do. Just then! Park sees that his spleen's enlarged. And there's blood in his urine. His spleen's been sequestering platelets. To the OR! The operation reveals that his spleen is lumpy. Apparently they're not supposed to be.
Taub and House play a first-person shooter game so we can see that they've named themselves "Taubinator" and "Occam's Chainsaw." House makes Taub guess what's wrong with Brant while also playing. Oh, and I guess there's some kind of parallelism going on with House and Taub pretending to be soldiers while there's a soldier in the hospital. Taub has to keep pitching and eventually comes up with sarcoidosis, which is treated with steroids.
Adams tells the rest of the team that House losing is more evidence that there's something wrong with him. Taub insists that he can win legitimately. Chase thinks House is faking it to screw with them.
Brant refuses his injection. He's not taking any more treatment until he gets a live television interview. He's not getting that! He says he wants to tell people about how that latest attack had nothing to do with him. Taub says he's not going to change anyone's mind. The brothers have another exchange about their father: "If dad were here, he'd be begging you not to do this." "If dad were here, he'd be proud of me."
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Brant looks at a folder, which Chase tells him (and us!) contains a promise to declassify his father's record, but not for a few days, so he has to accept treatment to live that long. His brother promises the army will follow through. Sold!
Taub sneaks back into the bathroom to steal House's poop.
In the lab (you know, that glass-walled room with bad lighting where people do vague research-y things?) Taub smugs at the rest of the team that he purposely tricked House into pooping where he wanted. There are irregular bile deposits in the poop. House's liver is failing. BEEP BEEP BEEP! It's their beepers. Brant's foot is full of blood or something. Adams decides that it's not sarcoidosis.
House wants to talk about Brant. His team wants to talk about his poop. Adams wants him to get off Vicodin, which House is not thrilled about. He suggests hemoglobinemia. He further proposes that something he ate must have interfered with his liver. Chase insists that he definitely has hepatic encephalopathy.
In the stairwell, Chase doesn't want Foreman to be told about House, because if House gets in trouble for not undergoing treatment his patients won't benefit.
House has a young man in clinic hours. The young man has been drinking. That's his whole thing. House makes him hop up and down and sing the iCarly theme song. Anyway, the kid has an allergy to the green dye that shows up in green beer. Wilson shows up to push the plot along.
Wilson badgers House about his liver. House uses the MPs outside Brant's room to get Wilson off his back. In the room, Brant wants to know who House is. House leafs through a magazine and ostentatiously does not check on Brant's condition. Brant tells him to get out of his room. House says that Brant will tell his life in either Leavenworth or the hospital. Brant says it was justice for all those civilian lives. House argues against that. Brant says his job was to log all the details of the tape. Hey, he was a recapper! And after ten times, he could no longer accept that the shovel could look like a gun. He couldn't eat or sleep. His hair turned gray in three days, which seems like a symptom.
In the cafe, Adams is annoyed that House is tossing out their diagnosis on the grounds of gray hair. She doesn't think it's a symptom of Graves' disease. House says to start Brant on anti-thyroids. He leaves and the team agrees to ignore House's diagnosis because he's not a genius anymore.
Brant is a little cold. Adams checks his temperature. He's at 104. In an ominous tone, Chase says, "It's not Bernard-Soulier."
House lectures his team about disobeying him. Adams says they've at least done some blood work to rule out Graves'. Foreman enters to announce that all treatment orders now have to be approved by him until House gets a clean bill of health. House wants to determine who told Foreman. Taub confesses to get things moving along. House rejects that so Adams and Chase also confess. Since Park is the only one who didn't confess, House pitches malaria. Adams says the army issues anti-malarial medication, but House says the mosquito might have evolved.
Brant refuses to take his medicine because he hasn't received his father's file. That drives his brother to decide to become Brant's conservator and declare him incompetent. Adams finds this weird, since nothing's changed since the last time the brother didn't want to do it. The army has sent the file over.
Taub tells the brother that he's read the file, but he's going to treat his patient now. The brother slowly brings the file into the room. Brant asks how their father died. "What did they cover up?" "They didn't cover up anything. I did. Dad died in that accident because he was drunk. Killed a pedestrian, too." Brant was too young to know how much his father drank. The only time Brant's brother ever broke the rules was to redact his father's file to protect Brant. Raub asks if he can begin treatment. Brant nods.
It is night. Brant's fever hasn't broken. And he's got The antimalarials aren't working. Chase suddenly realizes that House was faking. House explains that he took St. John's wort to mess with his liver function. Foreman thinks House tortured his team just to torture Foreman. Before House can decide who the rat was, he announces, "To be continued. I need to brilliantly cure a patient."
House tells Brant that he got lice from sitting on Afghani furniture. So he has typhus. And there are psychiatric issues that can derive from typhus, so he could plead not guilty. Brant won't do it because he still has his honor. House says he's doing it to please a father who never existed.
House bursts into Wilson's office and calls him a traitor. Wilson denies it. House threatens to punish his whole team. Wilson says it makes sense. House thinks he should have confessed at that, whether it was real or not. Then he looks thoughtful.
Brant is escorted out of the hospital in his wheelchair. His brother salutes him. Then he probably has to go off to war, right?
House tells Chase he's the rat. Chase says House wanted him to tell Foreman because he wanted to make sure that if he really did lose his edge, something would catch him. So there will be no punishment! Except that House released a bunch of rats in Chase's apartment!
Oh, and apparently there's going to be an epic finale. Joy.
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.
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