By Sara M
Morgan, a nurse from a nursing home where a cat named Debby is seemingly able to predict residents' deaths, decides that she's the to go when Debby takes a catnap beside her. She tries to fake her way into PPTH with a seizure and green pee, but House (well, Taub, really) figures her out and she's discharged. When she comes back with bronchospasms and Debby manages to predict the death of a PPTH coma patient, House is determined to figure out how the cat is a better doctor than him and why Morgan is so superstitious. It turns out that the cat is only sleeping near patients who are warmer than usual, be it from a death-causing fever or an electric blanket put on them because they were already wasting away. In Morgan's case, it was because of a heat-producing tumor hidden in her appendix. Her superstitions come from the fact that she has to believe that there's a greater plan for her out there after her stepson tragically died and her husband divorced her. And she'll continue to believe it even after House tries his hardest to convince her otherwise. So there. Taub also wants to believe there's a greater plan for him when he runs into an old high school friend who is now a successful CEO for a medical device company. Just as Taub has quit his job with House and is about to invest what's left of his dwindling, economic-crisis-hit life savings in the friend's newest device, it turns out that the man is actually a scam artist and Taub is not the first doctor he's targeted. He keeps his money, but has to swallow his pride and go back to his job. Which now seems to include an office cat and litterbox cleaning duties.
We open on House playing with various medical items to construct a race track, complete with loop-de-loops and a shark to be jumped over at finish. None of us want that to happen (although many of us are wondering if it hasn't already), so we're all relieved when Cuddy appears out of nowhere to grab the car out of mid-air before it can jump the shark. Not even pausing to bask in the glow of her amazing interception skills, she informs House that he has a Clinic patient waiting. House tries to claim that he's waiting for a follow-up appointment, but Cuddy is wise to his plan and already did some checking to realize that the patient House claims to be waiting for is dead, as are all the other Clinic patients he scheduled for today. She gives him a file for a real, live person and destroys his race track. The patient is lead into the room looking like she's about to face a firing squad, which is understandable considering what her first impression of her new doctor must be. Cuddy really should have waited until after House cleaned up evidence of his incredible immaturity. The patient's complaint is that she's had colds all winter and fears that something "big" is going to happen to her. House asks for symptoms, but she just says she's a nurse and asks for some blood tests by name. If she's a nurse, why does she have to go to a free clinic? Don't they have health insurance and stuff? And then she falls on the ground with a seizure, much to House's annoyance. He rolls his eyes and calls Cuddy in for a consult. While she tends to the seizing lady, House tries to escape. Cuddy calls him back in to point out that his patient's peeing bright green. And we get to see it, too. Fun.
To celebrate new patient Morgan's symptoms and possibly St. Patrick's Day, House writes them on the Whiteboard in bright green ink. For the green urine, he simply writes a big letter P and lets the Cottages figure out what that means. Kumar does, and is way too amused by it. He laughs stupidly, and I remember why I have the hardest time buying him as a doctor. Taub arrives late, which means he gets today's B-plot. While other Cottages suggest diseases, Taub takes one look at the file and asks why they're bothering with it. He doesn't think green pee merits this much work or attention. I'll bet if he was the one with the green pee, he'd feel a lot different. He diagnoses Morgan with epilepsy and drinking too many pre-St. Patrick's Day green beers. House pauses, then tells the group to go break into the woman's home and look for toxins. Taub protests again that this case is boring and "not important." "Neither are you," House says. Mean, but Taub was asking for it.
Taub and Kumar search Morgan's office at the retirement home she works at. Kumar wants to know what Taub's problem was this morning, but Taub denies that there's anything wrong. "Come on, man. We're friends," Kumar says. Yeah, you thought you were friends with that Mormon guy last season, and look what he did to you. No one on this show gets to have real friends, Kumar. Sorry. Taub says Kumar is better friends with the nerds he plays Halo against, and suggests that his avatar asks their avatars how they're doing. "I consider you a good friend even if we don't hang that much outside work," Kumar says, still totally oblivious. Poor Kumar. He's going to get smacked down so hard. But wait -- Taub apparently doesn't have the heart to spit in Kumar's earnest face, so he just says he wasn't arguing with House. Kumar says he was. Taub says he was, then. This is a stupid conversation, so I'm glad that it ends with Taub finding a bottle of pills and saying he was right after all.
Taub triumphantly hands House the pills, which are methylthionium chloride, known to cause green urine. Taub figures that Morgan used her mad nursing skillz to fake a seizure with green pee to get attention because she has Munchausen's. Oooo, sorry Taub -- we've already done Munchausen's. House points out that methylthionium chloride is an anti-Alzheimer's drug, so it's not exactly unexpected to find it in a nursing home. Also, House thinks Morgan's incontinence was genuine because it's not easy to pee on one's self in public. Tell that to the guy I sat to on the bus the other day. I won't be telling him myself, since I'm never, ever, ever taking the bus again. Ever. House says he is a fake seizure expert, and Morgan's was the real deal. And he has a new diagnosis: Morgan is suffering from an overdose of phenol, an ingredient found in throat sprays that she used all winter during her many colds. Taub protests that Morgan would have to chug five bottles of the stuff a day for that to happen. Instead of admitting that that's pretty ridiculous, House says it should be easy enough for Taub to find the evidence of Morgan's throat spray addiction, and sends him off to look. Kumar, on the other hand, is assigned to start Morgan on charcoal to filter out the phenol poisoning. Kumar shrugs and goes off to do that, and House calls him back with "seriously?" Kumar realizes that House was lying about the phenol poisoning because he does think Taub's fake seizure theory has merit, but doesn't want Taub to know.
Taub's on his way out when he runs into some guy who recognizes him. It's Neil Zane, and he says they went to high school together, although Neil was two years younger. Apparently, Taub left a bigger impression than Neil did, because it looks like Taub decides to take his word for it so as not to be insulting. Neil says he was speaking at Princeton when he tripped and hurt his leg, sending him to PPTH. Taub offers to treat him so he doesn't wind up with a doctor who leaves a thermometer in his ass for three hours.
House enters Morgan's room. He says the blood tests have come back negative thus far, and she suggests a whole bunch more for him to do. He has a better idea: he's going to flash a bunch of lights in her face to prompt another seizure, saying if they can't "confirm" that she has a problem, they'll have to give up the room. He flashes the lights, and, sure enough, she has a seizure. He lifts up her arm, and somehow that's enough for her to figure out that she's busted. She apologizes, and House says he's very upset because now Taub has one over on him. Morgan says she isn't Munchausen's like she's sure House is thinking -- she knows there's something very wrong with her and that she's going to die if House doesn't help her. And how can she be so certain? "A cat predicted my death," she says. It's enough to get House to turn around, but not enough for him to take her case. "Cats make terrible doctors," he says; "oh no, wait -- that's women." Cats make terrible women? Oh, I see. Women make terrible doctors. I should be angry at House for such disgusting sexism, but considering that all he has to base his assessment of female doctors on is Cuddy, Cameron, and Hadley, I can't fault his logic.
Taub fixes up Neil's knee in an exam room and asks him how he fell. Neil says he lost his balance during one of his frequent dizzy spells that doctors have yet to be able to diagnose. Taub has him lie back on the table while he gives him some kind of neck massage. Instead of finding this odd, Neil chatters away, saying he's teaching entrepreneurship at Princeton, as he's a CEO of a company that makes medical devices. If he's a CEO, shouldn't he be too busy to teach? With that, Taub lets him sit up again. Neil is amazed that his dizziness is gone. Taub says he had a calcium deposit in his ear, and he just "shifted it around a little," which doesn't seem all that medically sound. But Neil is thrilled -- three doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him, and Taub did it immediately. He offers to buy Taub dinner, but Taub declines since he's married and therefore boring.
House de-elevators to find Morgan, dressed and discharged, waiting for him. With the cat. The cat's name is Debby. That is a stupid name for a cat. I'll bet one of the more senile nursing home residents named her, thinking that Debby was her daughter or something. Apparently, Debby is famous for predicting the deaths of nursing home patients. House doesn't read those kinds of newspapers, though, so he claims he knows nothing about this. As he closes his office door in her face and no doubt wishes his walls weren't all made of transparent glass, she says Debby predicted ten deaths last year and yesterday, she predicted Morgan's. She begs House to take this seriously, saying everyone who works at the nursing home does, too. Even the doctors there, who apparently don't take it seriously enough to treat her or anything like that. She whips out a videotape for House to watch as proof. Yeah, but -- it's a videotape. Who has a VCR these days? Clearly Debby's not so hot when it comes to predicting the death of technology. Foreman, meanwhile, is watching from the meeting room and semi-interested. Morgan starts breathing heavily and collapses. Foreman rushes out to save her, but House assumes she's faking it again. Foreman calls him out to the hall, asking him to listen to her chest on the stethoscope. She's having bronchospasms. And that's unfakeable. Score one for Debby! And for Taub, from before. House is wrong twice over and the episode has barely begun.
After the break, House and Cuddy are watching Morgan's tape in Cuddy's office. Even though she got the whole place renovated, she kept the VCR. Weird. The big proof is a news report about Debby. Morgan is being interviewed, and she says that when Debby sleeps on a patient's bed, they immediately call the doctors about the death they're sure is about to ensue. Cuddy does not think this is proof at all, and pronounces Morgan a nutjob. House says she's just a person with a few quirks, like all of us. On the tape, Morgan says that Debby was sent down by God to bring the dead to the other side, forcing House to admit that she is a nutjob, but that doesn't mean she isn't sick. Cuddy thinks it does, and tells House to "confirm she's faking or I'm gonna have to kick her out." But ... if he confirms she's faking, then doesn't that get her kicked out anyway?
The Cottages come back to the meeting room, only to find House there with a cat in his lap and an unlit cigar in his mouth. Finally, Kumar asks him what he's doing, and House gets to say what he's been waiting for: "no, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die." That answer doesn't even make sense with the question, but I won't begrudge House a chance to perform for us. House asks for diagnoses. Foreman comes up with bronchitis, which is freaking stupid since, as Hadley points out, Morgan doesn't even have a cough. Also, the Bond villain House is currently impersonating apparently didn't smoke cigars. Apparently, Hadley is the one who watches those stupid Bond marathons Spike plays every other weekend. House tries to defend his position, saying that the villain had a lair and was therefore rich, and rich people smoke cigars and even send them as gifts. Apparently, this has something to do with Taub. Hadley doesn't get it, and so throws out "emphysema" as a diagnosis. While Foreman starts talking about how some animals have been proven to be able to predict certain medical conditions, Taub gets up and walks over to the mail table. House says the cat predicting deaths in a nursing home is easily explained by coincidence, to which Hadley points out that Debby knew there was something wrong with Morgan before House did. Foreman wonders if she caught something from the cat, like cat scratch fever. Meanwhile, Taub finds a cigar box in the trash. The cigar in House's hand was meant for him, a present from Neil. Apparently, House took all the cigars (Cuban) and threw the box in the trash for Taub to find. House just wants to know if Taub getting presents from CEOs has anything to do with the money problems he knows Taub is having. Yes, House has figured out that Taub lost almost all of his money in the stock market recently based solely on the fact that Taub isn't eating his usual morning muffin. Taub says he's on a diet. House says he actually based his assumption on two facts, the other one being Taub's online portfolio, which he left on the computer and forgot to log out of the other day. Well, that's what you get for doing personal stuff on a work computer and forgetting to erase all traces. With that, House orders the Cottages to look for cat worms in Morgan's lungs.
While Foreman and Hadley do that, Kumar and Taub observe from outside, all the better to discuss Taub's financial problems with. Taub says it's not the money he cares about, but the fact that he's now a different person than who "Rachel" married. Wait, what? I hope he's talking about the unnamed Mrs. Taub and not Cuddy's foster child. There are so many names out there -- couldn't the writers think of one besides Rachel? Kumar tries to make Taub feel better by saying that he didn't mean to say that Rachel is bummed because she only married Taub for his money, but because she married a "master of the universe" surgeon and now he's just a poor flunky. Taub raises his eyebrows, and Kumar attempts to recover by saying that Taub is a flunky for a man who saves lives, "so that's good." This is why Kumar has a hard time keeping friends. With that, Hadley comes out to announce that they didn't find any worms in Morgan's lungs.
thing we know, House is rolling a crash cart down the hall while the Cottages follow him and wonder what he's up to. He leads them into a room full of coma patients, and I'm sure they appreciate all being lumped together in one room like they're in an army barracks. Coma patients have absolutely no dignity on this show. House opens a drawer of the crash cart to reveal Debby. He's going to see if she can really predict death. He tries to claim that this is just to disprove it, but Kumar thinks House took the case just to have access to the cat because he really does believe in her. As for Kumar, he doesn't want to go anywhere near Debby, saying that cats' brains are always in alpha mode and the few tests on psychic ability that have any scientific merit have said that's where it takes place. House considers firing Kumar for believing any of this. I just want to know what they doped the cat up with to get it to stay reasonably still for all of these scenes. While Foreman encourages the Cottages to keep thinking of diagnoses for their human patient, House leads the cat around the room to all the coma patients' beds. Taub's diagnosis is that Morgan was having panic attack-induced laryngospasms that House just thought were bronchospasms. Foreman gets pissy at this, because he also heard the bronchospasms, so Taub is implying that he was wrong as well. That's what you get for ordering the Cottages around to think up more diagnoses, Foreman.
House puts Debby on another bed, and it flicks its tail in his face as he does so. But Hugh Laurie keeps right on going with the scene, because he is great. Meanwhile, Taub sees welts on the arm of coma patient who just hung out with Debby. Hadley checks the chart and notes that the patient has a severe cat allergy. House tries not to look too embarrassed as he shoots the guy up with anti-allergy stuff. In all the fuss, Debby has found a patient to lie to. House reads this patient's chart, and congratulates Mr. Limpert for proving that Debby isn't the Grim Reaper by not dying tonight. He says Mr. Limpert has finally done some good for humanity in his pitiful and selfish life. Then he reads that Mr. Limpert was a fireman. House is wrong all the time today! With that, he sends the Cottages to test Morgan for allergies with something called a methacholine challenge. That sounds exciting.
Cuddy enters the meeting room to find a litter box on the floor. "I told you to get rid of death cat," she sighs. House says that a used litter box does not necessarily indicate the presence of a cat. Sometimes his leg hurts too much to make it to the bathroom, so he pees in the privacy of his glass-walled meeting room. Except that he's got a cage full of mice in the room as well, presumably to feed Debby with. Because it's not like cat food isn't readily available or anything like that. Geez. And not only are they mice, but they're also some kind of super genetically altered mice House stole from the oncology lab, which apparently has its own crazy mad scientist research team. House says the genetically-alteredness makes mice taste even better. Cuddy takes the mice back and tells House to get Debby and Morgan out of her hospital, as she knows that the methacholine challenge came back negative so House has failed to prove there's something wrong with her. House demands to know who told on him to her. He guesses Taub. "I'll never say. But yes," Cuddy says. That was stupid of Cuddy. If she wants the Cottages to keep tattling on House when he's doing things that could possibly get her hospital sued out of business, she should probably keep them anonymous. House says he heard Morgan's bronchospasms with his very own ears, and if they kick her out and it happens again, Cuddy will wish she had a "lawsuit cat" to warn her about this. Cuddy is unfazed.
House wheels a fully-dressed Morgan outside for a "good-bye smoke." She says she doesn't smoke as House produces a Cuban cigar. He lights it and proceeds to blow as much smoke as possible in her face. He says he went through her purse and found a bunch of good luck charms and other evidence of a superstitious mind. He asks her how she went from a graduate of a good nursing school with a good head on her shoulders to this, and has already done some research to find out, discovering that she changed insurance plans from a family plan to a single plan four years ago. She says she got divorced. Two years before that, House says, she got a chickenpox vaccine, which adults usually only get when they have children. But Morgan doesn't appear to have a child now. "Something bad happened," House says cavalierly. If you're that certain that someone's kid died, the least you could do is try to act sympathetic about it, House. Geez. Morgan breaks down and says, in between ominous coughs, that her stepson choked on his morning snack at school and died, even though the teachers did everything they could to save him. "He shouldn't have died," she says. House says she's using her superstitions to make it make sense, and Judy Greer is really good here when she sobs "what's wrong with that?" I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but House says it's meaningless and it won't bring the stepson back to life or her ex-husband back to her. How does he know that? The ex-husband isn't dead, so he very well could come back to her. Morgan doesn't have the chance to argue that point, as she starts coughing more and gets a rash on her neck. House waits until she can't breathe to call a nearby doctor over to listen to her lungs. Once he's got an independent diagnosis of a bronchospasm, he congratulates the still-coughing Morgan on her re-admittance to PPTH. The other doctor, meanwhile, just pats Morgan on the back and walks away like bronchospasms are no big deal.
House adds "rash" to the Whiteboard (now in regular, non-green ink) and diagnoses Morgan with Churg-Strauss syndrome. He then assigns Taub to the important job of changing Debby's litterbox. Needless to say, Taub is not happy about this at all. House says this is his punishment for tattling to Cuddy. Frankly, Taub's getting off easy with just the litter box. time, don't tattle to a woman who can't keep her mouth shut. Foreman senses that Taub isn't in the mood for this today and softly urges him to clean the box, volunteering to clean it himself time. It's not enough. "I'm outta here," Taub says. He does not clean the litterbox on his way out. Kumar is annoyed with House on behalf of his friend, and goes off to test Morgan. He grabs his bag, only for a series of meowing sound effects to come bursting forth from it. Debby jumps out, and House asks if Kumar's bag will be the to die. Kumar realizes that House put the cat in his bag to punish him for being superstitious. House assigns Hadley to treat Morgan for Churg-Strauss with steroids unless she needs to be punished for something, too. She wisely says nothing and leaves the room.
Taub has gone straight to Neil's office, where he's given a glass of "good stuff" to drink. Neil says it's "made from the distilled sweat of recently laid-off hedge fund managers." That doesn't sound good at all. Too salty, at the very least. Taub admires Neil's office and says his used to look like this when he was a plastic surgeon. He's about to lie that he quit that job to do work that had more substance, but then gives up and tells Neil the truth about how he was fired and signed a contract guaranteeing never to do plastic surgery again after sleeping with a partner's daughter. Is that new information? I always thought it was just a co-worker. So now he's stuck in a job he hates and his wife found out about the affair anyway. Yes, things sure do suck for Taub. He asks Neil if he likes his job, and Neil tries to make him feel better by saying it has its ups and downs. When pressed, however, he admits that he loves being in charge. He shows off a prototype of some new medical device his company is developing, and Taub recommends making it just a bit smaller to fit the hands of Neil's "fastest growing market" -- female surgeons. That's bad news for anyone who needs surgery, since I recently heard that women make terrible doctors. Their hands, incidentally, are the same size as Taub's. Ha ha ha! Taub has lady hands. Neil's mind is blown. He rewards Taub with a glass of "the really good stuff." While Taub waits, he looks out the window and admires Neil's view and life.
Hadley goes to check on Morgan, who says her urine is turning colors again. Hadley smirks, expecting this to be another magic green pee trick. Her smile fades when she sees that this time, the pee is brown. Yuck.
House arrives at work the morning. Hadley immediately suggests that Morgan is faking the brown pee like she faked the green pee, but that would suggest a serious lack of creativity on Morgan's part. House points out that Morgan isn't faking the bronchospasms, so why would she fake additional symptoms now that she's gotten the admission she wanted? Well, Hadley would rather think she's faking the brown pee because it doesn't fit as a symptom. As she says this, she hands Foreman a cup of coffee she prepared for him. Not like they're trying to pretend they aren't dating or anything. House doesn't notice because he's too busy opening an umbrella inside and watching Kumar for a reaction. Kumar just says "what?" and sits down. House suggests fecal matter is in Morgan's urine stream by means of a fistula, while Foreman asks how they know Morgan's urine is "still brown," which gives House the opportunity to look at Hadley while saying "once you go brown ... " She ignores him, and Foreman charges on with his theory, saying perhaps the urine isn't brown at all. Maybe it's another color that's mixing with some leftover green pee dye. And that color, House says, is purple. Wow, you can have purple pee? That's kind of awesome, although I'm sure it's not something I'd personally ever want to experience. Purple urine is a sign of a Strep bovis infection, most likely from colon cancer. Paraneoplastic syndrome explains the rest of the symptoms, because paraneoplastic syndrome explains every symptom ever. Except, apparently, brown pee. While House lets the news sink in, he whips out a salt shaker and knocks it over, spilling salt in front of Kumar. Kumar finally figures out that House is trying to scare him with bad luck omens and says it won't work. He doesn't think there's anything wrong with being open to the possibility that he doesn't know everything and it's best not to flirt with superstitions if he can avoid it. House calls him stupid and cracks an egg on his forehead, which is apparently another superstition. House may think he's getting to Kumar, but the joke is really on him, since he went through way too much effort to set all this up, including, as Taub is the only person to apparently notice as he wanders in late, a ladder leaning against the wall.
House positions the ladder in front of the door to the meeting room. He's still wearing his coat, so I guess that's another bad luck superstition. I'm annoyed, because I just read that breaking a bird's egg is supposed to be bad luck. Who thought of that one? Bird-lovers, I'd wager. Or vegetarians. Screw them -- I like eggs. House orders the Cottages to send a pill camera down Morgan's intestines to find the tumor while he and Taub have a chat. On his way out, Kumar discretely tosses some salt over his shoulder and walks around, rather than under, the ladder.
Taub apologizes for being late without sounding all that sorry. House says he's been waiting for Taub to miss the money and the power of his old job since he hired him. Taub assures House he won't quit, and House says he's not worried about that, since Taub doesn't have the guts to quit this job. He didn't even have the guts to tell his wife he cheated on her until the guilt got to him. "Cowards make lousy employees," House says. Either Taub is a coward or he'll quit. "Either way, I'm screwed," House says. Then why hire Taub in the first place? House packs Debby into his bag and leaves.
Debby's lying on the coma patient's bed when House wheels Morgan in to see the proof that she can't predict patient deaths after all. I still can't believe PPTH has an entire room full of coma guys just waiting for House to take advantage of them. It's so wrong. Morgan checks the scene out and thanks House for trying to alleviate her concerns (that was kind of what he did, huh? It's almost ... nice. Weird), but she still believes in Debby, and chalks her miss this time up to confusion over her new environment. House isn't done yet, though. He tells Morgan about a man back in 1844 who convinced his followers to give up their possessions because Jesus was on his way at a certain date and time. The date and time came and the followers waited, but Jesus did not arrive. Undaunted, the guy figured that his math must have been wrong, and the followers and some of their friends stood around waiting the month. Still no Jesus. They kept on and on like this, and every time the guy was proven wrong by the Jesus no-show, his followers continued to believe him and add to their ranks. Morgan says she knows House is trying to say she's just like them, but she still thinks he's wrong, Debby is psychic, and she is going to die.
House and his cat bag emerge from the room. Wilson is waiting for them, and asks House if he's trying to convince Morgan to stop believing in Debby so that she won't think she's dying, or because he likes tearing down people's belief systems. Obviously, it's the latter. Wilson says that's a great idea, since House is a "clear thinker" and he's obviously beyond happy. Why wouldn't Morgan want to be like that?
House leads Wilson to the pediatric wing, where he's hoping to use Debby to prove whatever point the coma guy did not. Wilson asks House why he's so obsessed with proving a cat wrong. House doesn't answer, because he's trying to make nice with the sick kids by brightly announcing the arrival of a "therapy cat." Some kid with a huge attitude immediately accuses House of lying, saying there's no such thing as a "therapy cat." That's because cats hate you. Always. They don't want you to get better unless your being sick means they don't get food. House picks the loudmouth to be the first kid for his experiment to see if the cat will predict a child's death. Wilson decides he has to step in at this point, both for the sake of the children and poor Morgan with her grief over the dead stepson. He sends the kids out of the playroom, and they all follow his orders unlike any child I've ever met. Once they're gone, House attempts to stuff the cat back in the bag, much to its obvious annoyance. How many takes did they have to do on that scene, I wonder? Wilson says House either doubts himself or cares about helping his patient, both of which are good things. House doesn't bother to respond, since he just got the call that the pill cam has been pooped out and the footage is ready to watch.
House thinks he finds a polypoid on the amazing journey through Morgan's intestines, but it's just the entrance to her appendix, as Hadley points out. Poor form, House, not knowing something that Hadley does. This is your wrongest episode yet. Kumar thinks they should give up on their tumor diagnosis, since there clearly aren't any to be found, at which point House gets all passive-aggressive and aims his laser pointer at the ground around Kumar's feet so Debby will run around him. Kumar tries to look like it doesn't bother him, but he's also dancing around nervously. Hadley decides that this is a waste of time, noting that Morgan is looking pretty healthy still. So ... they should stop looking? What is she talking about? Morgan is peeing purple and her lungs don't always work. That's not healthy at all. Kumar suggests skin cancer that metastasized into the intestines. He gets up to go looking for melanomas. House and Hadley leave with Kumar close behind. But not close enough, as he suddenly finds himself trapped in the office with Debby blocking the door. He tries to let her out of House's balcony door, but she doesn't move. So he leaves through there instead. Hope Wilson was in his office to let him back in.
House gets a phone call while he's trying to sleep. Amazingly enough, he answers it. It's Kumar, calling to report that while they didn't find any skin cancer, they did find spider veins on Morgan's back -- a new, very cool-looking symptom. House instadiagnoses Morgan with Cushing's, which fits all the symptoms except for the brochospasms. House finds an "uncommon" (a.k.a. "probably not medically sound, but who cares?") complication of Cushing's that can explain that, then wonders why Kumar's calling him with seemingly non-emergency news. Kumar's real reason for calling? Mr. Limpert is dead. This has no effect on House, as he's forgotten who that is. Once Kumar reminds him, he looks sufficiently rattled.
After the break, it's morning at PPTH, and House and the Cottages are outside searching for Debby, who somehow escaped through the balcony door Kumar left open. House chooses to search by calling out "here, puss puss puss!" probably because it almost sounds like "pussy." Foreman would rather judge everyone else than search for the cat, while Kumar and Hadley are looking around while making fun of House for possibly now believing that the cat can predict death. Foreman thinks their time would be better spent treating Morgan. Kumar suggests that Debby's powerful cat nose smelled liver or kidney problems, but House says that the nursing home patients' liver and kidneys were fine. Foreman mutters something about an MRI being completely ineffective once again, so they don't know which organ is being affected by Cushing's and therefore they don't know what to treat. Time is of the essence, so House takes this moment to suddenly have breathing problems. He takes a sip of his coffee and sits down. Kumar rushes to his aid, only to have blood barfed all over his shirt. Just when you think we're looking at House medical crisis #49,582,033 this season, it turns out that the "blood" is just cranberry juice and this is Kumar's punishment for letting the cat escape. Fortunately for Kumar, he doesn't wear anything nice to work ever so he won't have to worry about paying for dry cleaning. House orders the Cottages to get Chase, who just last week said he wasn't a neurosurgeon, to dig into Morgan's brain and see if the blood there is positive for the stuff Cushing's secretes. If it is, they'll treat her pituitary gland. If not, they'll figure it must be in the adrenal glands and treat them. Hooray for process of elimination medicine!
And where is Taub during all of this? Having brunch with Neil and talking about how much his life currently sucks. He thinks it would be better if he worked for Neil. Neil says Taub seems to have gotten the wrong idea -- while he said he needs men like Taub on his team, he's not hiring right now. Taub is undaunted, as he has another idea: he'll invest in that laser scalpel thing Neil showed him. Neil says the minimum investment is two million dollars ... but for Taub, he'll take less. Taub says he's ready to start changing his life. By investing your now-limited savings in something that won't pay off immediately and possibly not at all? I don't think that's a change for the better.
House has taken over the morgue again, although this week it's to do actual morgue business -- he's going to autopsy Mr. Limpert to see if he can get some answers as to how Debby predicted his death. Did Mr. Limpert's family agree to this? Did the morgue? Or did House just walk down there with his mad scientist apron on and get started? Chase and Foreman enter to exposit that Morgan almost died during the surgery because her heart's about to go. The sample they took is only "slightly elevated" for ACTH, which isn't exactly definitive for Cushing's. Chase points out that Morgan isn't fat like that girl he hated who also had Cushing's a few seasons back, so it might be something else. House says this is obviously not a typical case of Cushing's, since there is a cat involved. Perhaps if you add a cat, you take away the fat. Foreman wants to know if they should take the rogue pituitary gland out, to which House snaps at him to ask the patient what she wants to do, since he's clearly busy with his autopsy. Chase and Foreman leave so that Wilson may lecture House for not paying enough attention to his patient because he's too busy trying to figure out what's up with the cat. And while Wilson is willing to humor House (if by "humoring" he means "disapprove of and lecture constantly") when his obsessions are about saving lives, this time he's not sure what House is getting out of it and doesn't want to be involved. Which is fine since he didn't really have much of a purpose in today's episode anyway.
Chase tells Morgan that she can either treat her Cushing's with drugs and risk it coming back, or have dangerous brain surgery to remove her pituitary gland. Morgan goes for the surgery, basing her decision on the fact that the cat predicted she'd die. She wants to kill the Cushing's before it kills her. Instead of telling her she's an idiot like everyone else at PPTH, Chase says that he believes there are things that science can't explain and there's a place for faith. But that place is not in the OR. Morgan says she has to believe that there's a reason for all the bad things that have happened to her, or else there's no point in being alive. I guess she hasn't experienced many good things to balance things out. Chase agrees to do the surgery. Hope you enjoyed the screen time, Chase, because you probably won't be in the five episodes.
While Chase prepares for surgery, House walks into the meeting room. Taub is there to meet him. "I'm quitting," he says. House assumes he has another job, but Taub says he doesn't. House says he'll see him tomorrow, then, as he expects that Taub will think things through tonight, panic, and come back tomorrow, hopefully with donuts, begging for his job back. House will punish him for a while, but ultimately take him back. And now that he's said that, do I have to recap it when it inevitably happens? "Bye," Taub says. And he's gone. Think he'll come back? I want him to, because I like the character. But I'd also love to see House be wrong yet again this week.
Later, House is reading in his office. He looks up to see a freeze-frame of the news program about Debby on his TV. And then he sees Debby herself! She can't resist watching herself on TV, plus she realized that it's cold as hell outside. So she's come back to House, even if it means being stuffed in a bag several times a day. Like all cats, she immediately jumps on his laptop and hits all the keys. I got a new roommate recently, and she came with two cats. For the first time in my life, I often find long sections of "sdjfslkjgflsahkfg" in my documents if I forget to close my laptop. House finds the action more interesting than annoying, and actually pets the cat as she settles down on his computer. He might think that it won't die like those patients did since it's an Apple, but I'm here to tell you that I've owned three Apple laptops, and two of them died. The third was stolen, so I can only hope that it also died and made life slightly less convenient for the person who took it from me. House strokes his laptop and somehow comes up with his epiphany as he stares at the TV screen. He fast-forwards it and pauses on a close-up of Debby. Whatever it's telling him, it's his answer.
Taub is sitting in Neil's office building, looking anxious as he probably reconsiders his decision to quit. A woman walks out and tells him that Neil doesn't work there anymore. "He's the CEO," Taub says. CEOs get fired, too, Taub. Except when they get "fired," it's usually accompanied by a huge severance check. The woman says she can't tell Taub anything. He persists, saying he's about to invest with Neil's company. "He doesn't have a company. He worked here, but he was a receptionist. A temp," the woman says, totally going back on her word not to tell Taub anything. Also, UH OH. And where is Neil now? In custody. "I went to high school with him," Taub says, as if people from his high school can't get arrested. And here's the kicker: "that's what everyone else thought, too," the woman says. It turns out that Neil was using his access to the real CEO's office to scam various doctors into thinking he was an old high school classmate. Then they'd magically cure his fake inner ear problem and somehow be convinced to invest with his company. In cash, presumably. That's a really complicated scam Neil had going there. How did he figure out which doctors to target like that? How was a lowly temp able to access the CEO's office? How could he have known that Taub and the others would be so ready to invest their money when he didn't even say anything about it in the first place, but waited for them to bring it up? How did he know so much about the doctors and where they went to high school in the first place? On the plus side, Taub might feel like sucker, but Neil was caught before he lost the rest of his life savings to a scam artist. So he's still got that. Until he walks outside with his envelope full of cash and gets mugged.
House enters Wilson's office to boast that he was right all along -- Debby cannot predict death. She was just trying to keep warm. Wilson finds it hard to believe that she's pick dead bodies for that, since they're usually kind of cold and stuff. House explains that they aren't before they're dead, when they have a fever from whatever will end up killing them, as was the case for three of the nursing home patients. The other eight had heating blankets because they were wasting away. Wilson congratulates House on solving "a completely trivial mystery." Or is it? Because House saved the best for last: now he knows that Morgan was hot, too, which gives him a new diagnosis. Apparently, cancer causes flushing and every other Cushing's symptom except the obesity that Chase pointed out Morgan was lacking. But that cancer would mean there's a tumor in Morgan's intestines, and they're already gone through them with a pill camera and found nothing. That's because it was hiding in her appendix. Seriously? That can happen? I can get a stupid tumor that no one can see in my appendix? Fuck that! I want it out. And my tonsils, too. Just in case. Wilson says at least House saved Morgan from the unnecessary and possibly fatal brain surgery. House's eyes bug slightly before he reaches for the phone, only to be forced to ask Wilson what the number to the OR is. Um ... I think it might be a little late for that. Wasn't she being prepped for surgery like hours and hours ago? Probably about the same time Neil was being lead away in handcuffs.
Hopefully still possessing a pituitary gland but not an evil, cancer-hiding appendix, Morgan packs up and gets ready to go home. House walks in, and she thanks him, which makes him visibly uncomfortable. He says he's only here to gloat that she believed in a cat so much that she almost lost part of her brain. House does not see fit to mention that was mostly because her doctors came up with the wrong diagnosis. Morgan points out that she didn't have the brain surgery after all, because House was able to stop it in time ... because Debby chose that exact moment to sit on his laptop and give him his epiphany. It's enough of a coincidence to allow Morgan to continue to believe whatever she wants. "You're an idiot," House says. She's not bothered, since she looked up his little waiting-for-Jesus story and found that it was actually the beginning of the Seventh Day Adventists. So he had a purpose after all, even if Jesus never came. Well, a purpose to the Seventh Day Adventists, anyway. I'm not sure what that does for the rest of us. House says they're idiots, too. Morgan says maybe they were just happy to have something to live for. House gives up and leaves.
He returns to his office and takes a seat in his chair. He takes some little toy cars out of his bag, but before he can even think about giving them a shark to jump over, he jumps up from his chair as fast as his bad leg can carry him. He feels the chair and calls Kumar into the office. He blames him for the cat pee that he just sat in. "Blood on my face," Kumar responds. House says that blood was fake. Kumar doesn't say anything. His punishment is to pay for the dry-cleaning. Kumar nods and clearly thinks that was worth it. House leaves, and Hadley is in awe that Kumar just sort of got away with it. She figures it's because House admires a guy who stands up to him and who can get a cat to pee on a chair. "Yeah. A cat," Kumar says, looking especially bladder-empty. When did he get become so awesome?
On his way out, House sees Taub on his way back in, arms laden with pastries. What's the point of brining them in tonight? By tomorrow morning when everyone comes in to eat them, they'll be all stale and gross. House turns and watches a very defeated Taub sit down at the meeting room table, head bowed. He might feel bad for him for just a second before leaving. Debby, still in PPTH's possession, stares down at Taub, who looks like he doesn't know how things could get any worse. He doesn't know how lucky he is that he sat in a dry chair.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, which she occasionally updates when she has something to complain about. Or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.
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