By Sara M
A family of insane people decide to spend their summer vacation SCUBA diving around sunken Dutch slave ships and take a few souvenirs with them -- including a mystery disease daughter Julie catches when the sealed glass jar full of scabs she brings to the surface breaks and cuts her hand. Idiot. House is sure it's smallpox until the CDC shows up, shuts PPTH down, and quarantines Julie and the rest of her possibly exposed family. This makes it impossible for House to run tests on Julie to prove that it isn't smallpox, especially after Julie's stepfather comes down with smallpox symptoms of his own. House thinks it's just the man's compromised immune system due to a recurrence of kidney cancer that's causing him to react to the smallpox vaccine the family was given earlier, and he's so sure that he breaks into stepdad's room to inject him with interferon and prove it. Except the stepdad doesn't get better. In fact, he totally dies. And now House is stuck in the quarantine room and possibly exposed to what the CDC is more sure than ever is smallpox. Fortunately, Martha M. Masters hasn't been fired again yet and so is able to combine her knowledge of medicine and history (along with the help of a Dutch webcam performer-turned-translator) to come up with the correct diagnosis of the smallpox-like rickettsialpox in time to save Julie, whose stepbrother has got to be just a little bit angry at her for killing his dad. House is also saved, but his near-near-death experience isn't enough to earn Cuddy's forgiveness for lying to her last week. Also, Wilson and his ex-wife/girlfriend's inability to handle a kid with cancer makes them want to be parents for some reason.
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House goes back in time and on the CGI high seas this week, as we open on a Dutch ship with a cargo of sick slaves. A doctor from land checks them out at the captain's request, as he is anxious to just dump the sick "cargo" overboard so he and his crew won't be quarantined and basically stuck on a ship full of contagious disease. The doctor orders the captain to keep his ship anchored at sea and takes the captain's logbook back to shore. As soon as he's gone, the captain tells one of his men to dump the sick cargo and "make a run" for shore because he's pretty sure they won't be allowed on otherwise. The crewmen start grabbing sick slaves and bringing them on deck, and the slaves soon figure out what's going on and what their fates will soon be. A sick father tells his seemingly healthy son that some other guy is his father now, as he knows he's about to be too dead to do much fathering soon. As the crew drags the father away from his son, someone back on land realizes that the ship is going to try to bring its quarantined cargo and crew to land and deal with the transgression by blowing a hole through the ship.
Well, that was tragic, but lo! In the present, white people are enjoying their Bermuda vacation. An apparently newly-married couple hang out on their boat and wait for their children, new stepsiblings, to come to the surface from their dive down to explore the sunken Dutch slave ship we saw back in its above-water days. The parents are happy to see their children bonding, and the kids, Julie and Roger, come to the surface bearing gifts -- a glass jar Julie found in the wreck and decided to steal even though she was expressly told not to take anything. The jar is full of something gross-looking, and when Julie's mother asks to see it, Julie accidentally slams it into the boat and it shatters in her hands, the contents of the jar spilling out onto her cut and bleeding palm. "What was in that jar?" her stepdad wonders. Well, seeing as you're on House, my guess is it's something horrible that can survive in an airtight jar for over 200 years. Unlucky.
House surprises the Cottages (still including Martha, but not Chase as he apparently doesn't show up for work until mid-morning these days) by coming to PPTH early with an exciting new case: a 16-year-old girl with smallpox. Martha the Genius informs us that smallpox was "eradicated" over 30 years ago, with Foreman adding that it only exists in tightly-controlled labs and theoretical terrorist cells. House says Julie just got back from Bermuda, where she was diving around a Dutch slave ship full of smallpox and brought up an airtight jar containing scabs from infected people that apparently they used to use back in the day as a sort of vaccination against the disease. While trying to figure all of this out, I came across a cool article that I think might have been the impetus for this episode. The article is about how someone found an envelope full of smallpox scabs in a library book from 1888 that apparently hadn't been checked out in a really long time. I once killed a spider by squishing it between two pages of a library book and thought that was a pretty gross thing to leave in there for the person to find, but I guess it wasn't so bad, all things considered.
Taub doubts that a virus could survive in a jar for two hundred years, to which House responds by calling the CDC and claiming to be a screenwriter wondering if it's "theoretically possible" for a smallpox virus to survive underwater in the sealed glass jar for over two hundred years. "Well, theoretically yes, but-- " the CDC guy starts. House hangs up on him. I have a feeling that this is pretty much how the writers check their facts, too. House orders the Cottages to stick the daughter and her family in isolation, test Julie for smallpox, and vaccinate her mother, stepfather, and stepbrother. Foreman asks if they can't throw a few tests for more modern possible diagnoses in there, too. House says Foreman is free to do that, because he is not a slave, unlike that ship of skeletons sitting on the bottom of an ocean off Bermuda.
Martha is suited up, decontaminated, and finally allowed into the quarantine/isolation wing of PPTH, where Julie and her family are. The mother asks why they're quarantined like this, as she apparently didn't ask anyone this question while she was being lead into the quarantine chamber in the first place. Taub says it's just a precautionary measure, and Dad asks what they're pre-cautious of. Taub tries to play it down so poor Julie won't get upset, saying one of their fears is tetanus. Julie's mom sucks, so she pipes up that all this cannot possibly be about tetanus. Julie begs Taub and Martha to tell her what's really going on, and Martha cannot tell a lie, so she says it's smallpox. Cue the freaking out from all involved, despite Martha's assertions that it's a "billion to one" shot that Julie has the horrible deadly smallpox.
House emerges from a Clinic exam room to find that Cuddy doesn't want him down there since he's not scheduled to work there and has a real patient to worry about. Oh, and she's being all passive-aggressively angry about it too just to make sure that House knows she's mad at him. Even though these days she's always mad at him, so I don't know if he can really tell the difference anymore.
Meanwhile, Wilson has to deal with some whiny kid who thinks her mother should run home and get her favorite stuffed animal just because she has cancer. How selfish of her! But House is even worse because he texts Wilson to say "what I need is more important than what you're doing," which is the text you send to your girlfriend because you want a quickie, not your friend who is in the middle of being a cancer doctor. Wilson says he'll make sure someone sits with the kid while her mother runs home to get Lamby (ugh, I guess the kid has creativity cancer because that name blows. Even my favorite baby blanket had a better name than that, and I was just a baby when I named it. A really awesome baby). "I'll get a nurse," he says, because apparently that's what RNs go to school and train so hard for: babysitting.
Wilson finds House sulking in his office. "She knows," he says. Yes, he somehow figured out that Cuddy's annoyed with him for lying to her and faking that lab test last week. Wilson thinks House is just being paranoid and if he tries to push things with Cuddy it'll make it worse. His advice is for House to just sit back and wait for Cuddy to come to him about it. "Say nothing to no one about anything," Wilson says. And this is why Wilson has been divorced like three times and House probably shouldn't have gone to him for advice in the first place.
With that, House has no choice but to do his actual job, so he heads down to the lab. Taub says the tests have come up negative for smallpox but hint at some other kind of infection. House only wants the important information, though, so he asks Martha if she has a boyfriend. "That's ... none of your business," Martha says. House takes that as a no and keeps right on going, asking Martha if she could see a situation where she reacted to being mad at her boyfriend by being "extra nice." How was Cuddy being nice? Because she didn't want House to do Clinic duty? She wasn't smiling or anything when she said that. In fact, it seemed pretty obvious that she was only excusing him from the Clinic because she didn't want him anywhere near her. Martha says she would be extra nice if she was so angry at her boyfriend that she wanted him to go away so she wouldn't have to deal with him. Who are these people who think that being "extra nice" is a way to make someone leave you alone? For this, House calls Martha a passive-aggressive bitch and hears that all of Foreman's recommended tests came back negative just like the smallpox. House is stuck on the smallpox theory though, and says they'll just have to tap Julie's joints and look for the smallpox antibodies there, as apparently they can hide in your joints when you go SCUBA diving. You know, between that and the underwater diseases and whatever happened to < a href=" http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/house/airborne.php?page=17">that guy on the plane, I'm starting to think that either SCUBA diving is really dangerous or the writers of this show have some kind of problem with it. House orders them to tap any and all of poor Julie's joints.
House limps into Cuddy's office, takes one look at her face and her body language, and decides not to take Wilson's advice. "You know," he says. Cuddy says she does. "Oh, thank god," House says, which is probably not the response Cuddy was hoping for but he just can't help but love it when his suspicions are proven to be correct. Cuddy says she's waiting for an apology, but House doesn't think he did anything wrong. He was just doing his job and lying to Cuddy saved his patient's life. And he lied to her at work and not in their personal life, so it's different. Not to Cuddy, it isn't. "You don't get to lie to me about anything," she says, which is a lot different from before when she was saying she didn't want House to change and stuff. "I can't compartmentalize my life like that," she says. Great, then DON'T DATE AN EMPLOYEE. Idiot. Anyway, House isn't going to apologize and Cuddy's just going to have a sulk until he does.
The Cottages (now including Chase, who showed up for work just before they locked everyone in, apparently) hang out in the meeting room. Martha wants to keep working on their case, but Taub says Julie is no longer their patient so who cares? Martha says that as long as they're stuck in PPTH for the 18 hours, they might as well keep working, since it's not like there's no foosball table or big screen HDTV or anything at PPTH to keep them occupied. Chase is game, seeing as how he wasn't around to do his actual work, but Taub points out that they can't really test any theories without access to the patient. House finally speaks up from behind a laptop on his desk to say they can still study the people who died from the disease back in 1793 by reading the captain's log he was able to track down and get a copy of. Unfortunately, it's written in 18th century Dutch and while House is fluent in like every language ever, he doesn't know that. Nor does anyone else. But House is not concerned, as he's sure he'll be able to find someone who can translate for him even though it's the middle of the night in the Netherlands right now.
Awesomely, House is able to find a translator at Cyberlovers.net, a pay webcam chat site. Among the categories to choose from according to the webpage's sidebar are "amateurs," "lesbians," "Asians," "festish," and "kink." There is also, it seems, a link for Dutch camera performers, and House meets a supple young woman credited as "Greete," although the Dutch pronunciation is much different than you'd expect. Greete is wearing pretty much the same clothes that Cuddy wears to work everyday and wants to know if House is a "handsome sexiest American man." House is going to agree with that one, even though Chase is standing right behind him. Although I guess Chase isn't naturally American, so he doesn't count. House tries to get down to business, asking Greete to translate something for him, but Greete says she can do many other things that House might enjoy more, like take her bra off or play with some toys. "Just do the translation!" Martha speaks up. Greete doesn't seem to notice or care about the fact that there are a bunch of people wearing scrubs standing behind her latest client, though. House says Greete should do the translation however she feels most comfortable. Greete feels most comfortable with House's credit card info, which he readily provides using what I can only guess is one of Wilson's cards he swiped for this very purpose. Taub starts to speak up to mention that PPTH has translators on call. "Shut up!" House says. He orders Martha to send Greete the scans of the captain's log. "Sure thing, sexiest American man!" Martha says. She then takes a second to giggle in a most endearing manner.
It turns out that Greete feels most comfortable translating while wearing a no-nonsense black blazer (looking more and more like Cuddy all the time ... ) and reading glasses, which cracks me up for some reason. Greete feels free to editorialize on what she's reading, noting that the captain mentioned that his pet cat was with him on the voyage. Greete likes cats. She reads further on to where people on board the ship start to get sick, their symptoms described as "fever, shaking, and red eyes." Also, it seems that one of the slaves shit himself, which Greete does not like one bit. So we now know that Greete's turn-ons include cats and credit cards and her turn-offs are pooping in one's pants. Foreman asks if any of the crewmembers were sick, but Greete says so far, only the slaves are mentioned. House says that just rules out smallpox all the more, since it's an airborne illness and thus would have spread to everyone on the ship, white or black. "We're looking for a disease that discriminates," House says. "Sickle cell!" Taub says, not quite getting that House wasn't talking about a disease that primarily affects black people, especially since Julie is not black. No, they're looking for a disease that the slave "cargo" would have been exposed to but not the crew of the same ship.
Chase suggests some diseases caused by a lack of sunlight/Vitamin D deficiency, but none of them fit. Martha says maybe it was in the dirty drinking water the slaves got, since the crew, of course, got all the "clean" drinking water (let's face it -- that drinking water was not Brita quality. Better than what they gave the slaves though, I'm sure). "Scrofula," Martha suddenly says. The other Cottages look confused, either because they don't think that's a good diagnosis or they just don't know what scrofula is, as it is called cervical tuberculosis lymphadenitis today. I learned about scrofula once, although this was in a Medieval Europe history class. Supposedly, if a king touched your neck, you would be cured. I don't think that actually ever worked though, and there aren't any monarchs floating around New Jersey to try it anyway. But House likes this diagnosis, if not the annoying way Martha presented it to him. He calls Foreman out into the hallway and away from Martha the snitch to tell him they'll have to lie to the CDC to get access to Julie and test her for TB. Foreman heads down to the isolation wing and tells Broda that they have to test Julie for meningococcus right now or else she'll die before they get the smallpox results back. Broda's not buying it, and before Foreman can think of another lie, Julie's stepfather collapses. He says he just has a headache, but his eyes are all bloodshot and his nose is bleeding.
After the break, House pronounces the latest development to be "cool." Chase says it isn't that cool for the stepdad, since his symptoms are consistent with smallpox. But House refuses to believe that the stepdad had a headache, even though he said "ow," collapsed holding his head, and then said he had a headache. House says "head pain" is different than a "headache." If it's "head pain," for instance, it could be the result of bleeding in the brain, which actually somehow confirms their TB diagnosis. Foreman says they'll have to do a CT scan to know for sure, which will be difficult with the CDC not letting them go anywhere near their patients. House mulls this over, then asks Chase to go out into the hallway with him so he can talk about lying to people without Martha finding out. House proposes that Chase suggest running some kind of horrible test from like the '40s on the stepdad that actually killed patients but can be done in the isolation room and in the hopes Broda will "compromise" and let them take the stepdad out for a much safer CT scan. Chase scoffs that Broda will not be as easily fooled as Cuddy. Also not easily fooled is Martha, who finally figured out why House keeps calling people out into the hallway away from her. "You don't trust me!" she says. Well, yeah, Martha. That's kinda what happens when you tell on your boss. She hilariously suggests that they be "honest and reasonable" with Broda and just tell him the truth. House sends her off to do that, then tells Chase to be ready to pull the bait-and-switch on Broda after Martha is inevitable denied.
So the cancer kid's mother is stuck outside the hospital and not allowed in during the quarantine, which means the girl has to go through chemotherapy with no Lamby and no mother. Also, there's some random blonde woman hanging out in the doorway who is not an employee of PPTH and is probably breaking all kinds of confidentiality rules just by being there. But, whatever. Wilson offers to take Lamby's place and hold her hand while she's getting her chemo, but the kid says that won't work. Sam gives it a try and says sometimes you have to do things you don't want to that are for your own good, like go to school, eat your vegetables, and take your medicine. I guess that argument would work better if the kid wasn't currently too sick to go to school and probably to eat anything, let alone vegetables. Wilson pulls Sam aside and suggests that she go find Lamby's "cousin" in the hospital gift shop. Aren't PPTH's gift shop stuffed animals ridden with baby-killing diseases? This seems like a bad idea.
Martha returns to House's office with some unexpected news: Broda agreed to let them CT the stepdad's brain after all! She cleverly appealed to Broda's ego in her argument, and House has no choice but to give her a gruff "good work." As the CDC people wrap stepdad up in a special isolation gurney, Martha says it looks like honesty was the best policy after all. She may have spoken too soon, tough, as the CDC guys suddenly stop the gurney and take a closer look at the stepdad. Contamination controls be damned, House walks in to ask what's wrong. Broda points out a bunch of smallpox pustules on stepdad's neck, which means stepdad is "too dangerous" to transport to the CT scan for something that Broda seems pretty damn sure isn't going to show up anyway, since this just proves all the more to him that it's smallpox and not some stupid tuberculosis.
After the break, stepdad is quickly dying from "full-blown smallpox" in his isolation room while Julie isn't doing much better in hers. House says it looks like they have smallpox after all, so their work here is done. But since they have to stay there for another ten hours or so anyway, Martha thinks they should just keep working. House and Foreman don't share her enthusiasm, so she goes to Broda on her own and begs him to let her look at the rash under Julie's arm and see how it's progressed. She says simply looking at it through the glass isn't enough. Broda doesn't care. So Martha just has to stand outside the isolation wing and stare in at Julie, who gets a little creeped out and asks what her deal is. Martha asks if Julie is feeling well enough to get out of bed and show her the rash. Julie doesn't even make it out of bed before Martha stops her and notices that the soles of Julie's bare feet have no lesions on them. "Who cares? They're everywhere else. This is torture," poor Julie says. Martha just turns and walks away. Rude!
Does anyone care about the cancer kid and her lamb stuffed animal saga? I didn't think so. And yet, we still have to watch as Wilson holds up a stuffed lamb for the kid and claims it's Lamby. The kid totally falls for it and smiles and hugs her stuffed friend imposter as she agrees to let Wilson begin her treatment. Oh, but then it turns out that kids aren't as stupid as Wilson thought, as she asks him why Lamby is here and not her mother before she notices that this Lamby is different than her Lamby. "This isn't Lamby!" she cries, and launches a stuffed lamb missile at Wilson's chest. Wow, she's got a strong arm for a little girl with cancer.
Martha returns to House's office and tells him that she doesn't think Julie has smallpox, as there are no pustules on her palms or feet. Her stepdad, however, does have pustules there. House doesn't see how Julie could have something that looks like smallpox but isn't while her stepfather has actual smallpox, but then the Minor Epiphany face appears and House takes off. Martha just stands there with her mouth open so House has to come back and tell her to follow him. They find Taub and Foreman, if not Chase, hanging out in the locker room. House says the stepdad has smallpox because they gave it to him, not Julie. If his immune system was compromised when they gave him the smallpox vaccine, it would explain his extreme reaction to it now. And House actually read the guy's file so he knows that he had kidney cancer six years ago and apparently didn't have Lamby to comfort him during the treatment, so the kidney cancer came back with no one knowing, ruined his immune system, and thus gave him the vaccine version of smallpox. House says all they have to do to test this is give stepdad some of that magical interferon and see if he gets better. If he does, House is right and they're back to figuring out what's wrong with Julie.
Of course, Broda isn't about to let House near the stepdad to give him the interferon, and explains his reasoning by telling us all a story of Janet Parker, who, in 1978, was accidentally exposed to the smallpox virus thanks to some carelessness in a nearby research lab and a very efficient vent system that carried the virus to Janet's office. She was the last known person to die from smallpox. The man in charge of the lab where this happened felt so bad about it that he killed himself. Broda doesn't mention this, but Wikipedia tells me that poor Janet was actually immunized against smallpox 12 years before her death and the strain of smallpox she was infected with was one of the most lethal. Also, her mother was the only person who had contact with Janet that contracted smallpox, and she actually survived. So I guess it's not that contagious, really. Anyway, House could not look more bored by Broda's story and decides to focus on the stepdad instead, noticing that he is now peeing blood which House decides must prove that he had kidney cancer. Broda still refuses to open the door for House or apparently let anyone else inject the stepdad with interferon, so House takes matters into his own hands and walks on in with no safety gear on. Broda presses a red alarm button but can do little else but watch as House administers the interferon. House says he knows he's right about this. Broda says he'd better be, because now he's stuck in that room for the foreseeable future.
While they're waiting to see if the stepdad's condition improves, Cuddy stops by the isolation wing with a protective suit for House to wear and a lecture about how his lack of respect for authority may have killed him. Cuddy claims she's not referencing House's earlier lie to her, but she obviously is. She tells House to put the suit on, but he says it's unnecessary and he doesn't want to deal with people worrying about him, which is why he left specific instructions that Wilson not be informed. Well, that's convenient for Robert Sean Leonard and his increasingly-light workload, isn't it? Meanwhile, stepdad isn't doing any better. In fact, he's worse. House tells him the interferon just takes time to start working, but you can tell that House is starting to worry because he then kindly reassures stepdad's wife and tells her not to worry, and he's only nice to people when things are looking very, very grim. House takes the protective suit from Cuddy and asks her to bring him his Cottages.
They have got to stop coddling this cancer kid. They're letting her use her coloring book and drink a smoothie now! Just tell her that if she doesn't get the chemotherapy, she'll die. That would have been enough for me when I was a kid. If she's smart enough to tell the difference between the real and fake Lambys then she's probably able to grasp the concept of her own mortality. Or they could just hold her down and shoot her up anyway. But instead, Sam just enters the room and apologizes to the kid for lying to her before, saying she's not very good with kids but she was doing the wrong thing for the right reason, which is for the kid to take her medicine so she can get better for Lamby and her mother. Apparently the kid's father and any other stuffed animal friends don't give a shit. As Wilson watches, the cancer kid agrees to the treatment. Um ... hooray, I guess?
The Cottages and Cuddy stand outside the isolation tank and talk about how stepdad isn't getting better after the interferon, which means House was wrong after all and it is, in fact, smallpox. Cuddy and Martha point out that Julie still doesn't have those pustules on her feet, but Foreman points out that the stepdad does and they are obviously suffering from the same disease, so he doesn't see any reason to continue believing it's something else. "You screwed up going in there," he tells House, like he doesn't know that already.
Later that night, stepdad is still dying and House and Cuddy have some time alone together. House says he doesn't have any symptoms yet, but he's hoping that when they do show up, Cuddy will finally realize how stupid she was to be mad at him for lying to her. Stepdad groans, so House goes to his side. Stepdad asks if he's going to die. House says now might be a good time to say his good-byes, and wheels stepdad over to his family's isolation tank so he can. His wife begs him to hold on and keep fighting, but stepdad just asks her to take care of his son, much like that slave from the beginning told his son that the other slave was his father now. And then they all died anyway. The husband and wife say they love each other, and then stepdad asks her to bring his son closer. They say their good-byes too, and it's all very sad but the stepdad is able to get his last words out just in time to die. House desperately tries to bring him back, but there's nothing he can do. Everyone else just gets to stand around and watch the action and look sad about it. Except for Broda, who I think might be just a little bit excited at the prospect of studying the first known smallpox death in 32 years. Also not sad? Possibly Julie, who I can't help but think might have done this on purpose in an elaborate plot to kill her new stepfather. I mean, why else would you steal a jar of gross scabs from a shipwreck?
After the break, stepdad is still dead and lying there with no one even bothering to put a sheet over his face so his loved ones don't have to watch him decompose. House yells at Broda to let him out of the room, but Broda says he can't do that and House will just have to hope he wasn't exposed before he put the suit on. Oh, and that the suit's air supply doesn't run out soon, because even though they can give House another canister of air, he'll be exposed to the virus again when he swaps them out. Why can't they just put House in another isolation room? He's wearing the suit, so if they decontaminate the outside of it like they do to the CDC people who come and go, he can just walk out to another isolation room, right? Oh, but it turns out that PPTH's nearest isolation room is on the fifth floor and no one wants to deal with that, so he'll just have to stay in the dead guy's room.
The Cottages are in the meeting room. Of course, Martha wants to keep assuming it's not smallpox so they can keep working on the case, but everyone else doesn't see the point. Martha needs a friend right now, or at least some companionship and a sympathetic ear. So she pays for Greete to keep her company. And also translate some more logs in the hopes that there will be another clue in there. Greete reads that the captain's cat seems "distant" and "preoccupied," which Chase and Taub don't think is important since it's a cat and cats can't get smallpox anyway. Greete reads about that night's dinner, and is happy to report that the crew broke out a new barrel of wine. Martha suddenly asks Greete for more details on the cat, saying that the captain would only have brought him on board for a purpose, most likely to catch and kill disease-spreading mice and keep the crew safe. Greete is very sad to report that the cat died. Martha has a hunch and asks if the cat lost its fur before it died. Greete says it did. Martha says that cats can't catch smallpox but they can get rickettsial pox from the carrier mites on the mice they hunt. So both the cat and the slaves had rickettsial pox, which the crew didn't get because the cat did its job and kept the mice away except in the cargo hold, where the cat apparently wasn't allowed. The good news about all of this is that rickettsial pox is treatable. The bad news is that the stepdad died from a treatable disease.
Of course, Broda won't let anyone in to Julie's room to give her the necessary antibiotics that could save her because if they're wrong, it'll just make her that much worse. Martha says they can prove she's right if they examine the stepdad's body for tell-tale little black marks called eschars, which you don't get with smallpox. Broda insists that he would have seen them before, but Taub points out that Broda hasn't exactly gotten that close to the stepdad. As for the random CDC extras in the background, they're about to suit up and bleach the stepdad's body so they can remove it from the isolation room and reduce House's chances of being infected. But if they do that, Martha says, any evidence of rickettsial pox will be erased. Broda doesn't care.
Martha runs over to the isolation tank and tells House to examine stepdad's body. House says no way, as he's given up and decided it's smallpox after all and hopes that if he just stays as far away from the body as possible, he won't get it. But when Martha tells him her theory and about the captain's dead bald cat, he's suddenly hopeful again. Broda yells at him to step away from the body. He does not, but says it's a little tough to look for eschars while wearing big stiff protective suit gloves. And with the audience of the stepdad's family like right there, I'll bet. Martha tells House to take the gloves off. If he truly believes it's rickettsial pox, he won't need them anyway. Sure, but let's not forget that House is stuck in this room in the first place because he truly believed the stepdad had kidney cancer. House rips off the gloves and searches the stepdad's body desperately just as the CDC guys come in. Before they can ruin everything, House finds the eschar. It turns out that all Broda needed was some real actual evidence, and now that he has it, he has no problem admitting he was wrong and ordering that Julie be started on antibiotics.
Smallpox crisis over, the useless PPTH security guards unlock the lobby doors. Cancer kid's mother is the first person to run inside, and she finds Wilson and Sam with her daughter, who is apparently done with the treatment. She jumps out of the wheelchair to embrace her mother and the real Lamby. Wilson says Sam did a good job with her, but Sam says she kind of sucked for a while there. "It takes practice," Wilson says, suggesting that they both practice on a kid of their own. Yeah, because it's a really good idea to have a kid with the woman you've been with for a couple months and who your first marriage to ended in divorce.
Julie's feeling better and her mother and stepbrother are allowed in the same room with her. Mom is thrilled, of course, but stepbrother is kind of upset since his stepsister kind of killed his dad and stuff. You understand.
And House is out of his protective suit and in Cuddy's office offering to buy her breakfast. When she declines, he graciously offers to let her pay for their breakfast. But she's still pissed off, saying that she was only nice to House before because she thought was going to die. Now that he isn't, she's still nursing that grudge. Oh, good. Now we can look forward to them extending this little squabble into a third episode.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at
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