By Sara M
Hadley's post-Huntington's diagnosis behavior of sex, drugs, and stealing the Clinic's IV fluids comes to light when her latest conquest has a seizure and becomes House's newest patient. House is thrilled to bits for the chance to dig into one of his Cottage's scandalous personal lives, and one that features girl-on-girl action to boot. Cuddy, on the other hand, catches Hadley trying to get over yet another night of partying with some IV fluids and demands she be drug tested. House totally undermines her authority and whisks Hadley away, only to fire her as soon as they leave Cuddy's office. Ha! And hooray! And will it last? Hadley tries to get her job back by coming up with the right diagnosis for her one night stand, and is able to correctly figure out she has cysts in her lung and save her from yet another treadmill test gone wrong. It doesn't get her hired back, but when the diagnosis ends up being a terminal illness, it does get her a new girlfriend or at the very least a partner in suffering. That is, until House realizes that the diagnosis is wrong and the patient will live after all, and Hadley goes back to her life of lonely sex and drugs. She also gets her job back. Booooo! In other news, Wilson is back at work but late for his first day after a secret morning meeting. House puts Lucas on the case, and he finds out that Wilson is dating a prostitute and has an IV drug habit of his own, which is so over-the-top that House knows Wilson is planting evidence to cover for something else. Wilson realizes that House will stalk him until he finds out, so he brings him to a baby store, where Wilson is helping Cuddy pick out a crib for the baby she's just been approved to adopt, thanks to Wilson's character reference that made him late for work. House isn't happy for Cuddy. In fact, he looks incredibly sad, most likely for himself. Babies are change, and House hates change.
Come back on Monday for our full recap. Until then see what ails the staff at PPTH.
Sexy music plays as we watch a couple make out in the blurry background of a shot. And then we realize the couple consists of two women, and that one of them is Hadley. And then they're in bed. Well, that was fast. Sorry, people who tuned in for the girl-on-girl action, but House is on at 8 o'clock this season and that's the best they could do for you. Hadley rolls out of bed and into her bathroom, being sure to put on a huge shirt to cover up. Her lady friend asks her to come back to bed. What a nag! Hadley asks for a minute, but the woman -- named Spencer -- will only give her twenty seconds. I don't think that's enough time to look at yourself in the mirror and feel dead inside, but it doesn't really matter in the end since Spencer loses track of the time when she seizures off the bed. She takes a lamp out on her way down, and after a second of being pissed off that the girl she brought home just trashed her apartment, Hadley springs into doctor action and calls 911. Of course, Cameron is waiting for them at the door to the ambulance bay, since she's the only person who works in the PPTH ER and thus works there at all hours. Cameron asks Hadley if Spencer has epilepsy. "She never said," Hadley says. Cameron asks what her name is. "I don't know," Hadley says. I do feel a bit sorry for Hadley. It sucks when your Walk of Shame leads right into your workplace.
Cameron is at her very Cammiest as she immediately reports to House's office to give him the case, thereby totally fucking Hadley over. She might have gotten away with this without House finding out, but now there's no chance. There will be many a differential diagnosis session peppered with jokes about this, I assure you. House has yet to realize the gift Cameron's giving him, as he's staring out his window and into Wilson's office. He limps away to escape Cameron, but she insists on following him, saying they've got a twenty-six-year-old woman who had a "tonic-clonic" seizure, which sounds like either a cool new alcoholic drink or a strange new purifying ritual from the people who brought you coffee enemas. Spencer also claims to be suffering from fatigue and had a retinal vein occlusion two years ago. House insta-diagnoses this as diabetes, but Cameron is ahead of him there and says the tests were negative for that. He's definitely interested in the case, but a loud thumping coming from Wilson's office is more pressing at the moment.
House enters the office to find Wilson lying prone on his floor, faking death from injuries sustained when his desk chair toppled over because a certain someone removed one of its wheels. House tosses Wilson the missing wheel and yells at him for being an hour late to work, therefore making House spend an hour staring out his window in the hopes of seeing the payoff to his practical joke. Thanks to Cameron, he missed it. Ha! Girl gets two seconds of screen time a week and she still manages to ruin everyone's good time. That is impressive. Wilson says he was at a breakfast meeting at some diner to tell his other employers that he won't be working for them after all. He sure did wait until the last minute to break that news, didn't he? Wilson then sees a present waiting for him on the floor: a doughnut and milk. He calls it a "nice touch" and takes a bite. House looks very pleased with himself and leaves with a "welcome back." Aww ... when he goes out of his way to give Wilson breakfast you can easily forget all those lunches he's forced Wilson to buy for him.
Cameron's waiting right outside the door for House, and she shoves Spencer's file into his hands. He immediately notices that Spencer had Ecstasy in her system, but Cameron doesn't think it caused the seizure since she took it five hours before, according to Hadley. House stops in his tracks as Cameron says Hadley was with the patient last night, trying to fake like that's not a huge bombshell. House suddenly becomes much more interested in this case.
In the meeting room, House takes his time savoring every minute of this differential. He accuses Hadley of reacting to her Huntington's diagnosis by engaging in self-destructive behavior and one night stands while Taub grins. Very professional, boys. Hadley ignores House and diagnoses the patient with dehydration from alcohol and Ecstasy, which gets Kumar's attention, since he didn't bother to read about all the fun party drugs in the file. Foreman asks Hadley if she was doing drugs, too. "Not diagnostically relevant," Hadley says. Foreman is concerned. Taub mentions Spencer's eye hemorrhage thing two years ago, which Hadley is quick to dismiss as irrelevant to the current case. Foreman says if the eye problem was caused by something wrong with Spencer's blood, it would explain her fatigue. "She parties 'til 3 a.m. That's why she's always tired," Hadley says dismissively. "Yet you seem fine," House points out. Seriously, though. How does she do that? And isn't she supposed to be at work, like, all the time? And shouldn't she be feeling crappy after a night of drug use? Doesn't Ecstasy last eight hours and then make you all dehydrated and lock jawed the day? I know it made the people I knew who took it really, really annoying at the very least. Hadley gets to do drugs and stay out all night and she seems totally fine, while if I get less than six hours of sleep, I cannot function. It's really not fair.
Hadley says Spencer has been to four doctors, all of whom found nothing wrong with her. That happens to all of House's patients, and they always end up having something really wrong with them, so it's not a good argument. Hadley thinks Spencer is just a hypochondriac who drinks too much. Kumar totally ignores her and says blood clots could explain the symptoms. Taub agrees, and shoots Hadley a sarcastic "sorry!" Shut up, Taub. Don't you get all holier-than-thou about this. At least when Hadley has sex she isn't violating any sacred vows. House orders Hadley to take some of Spencer's bone marrow for testing, even though I'm pretty sure there are all kinds of rules saying that you aren't allowed to treat someone you have a personal relationship with. Especially one like this. Hadley gets up to leave, only to see that House has taken an unusual interest in watching this particular procedure. It's about time he observed the crap work his new Cottages are doing, though.
Down in the bone marrow biopsy room of awkward morning afters, Hadley tells House she can "handle" this without his supervision as she prepares Spencer's hip for some pain (again). House says he needs to be here to chaperone, although if they want to get busy, he won't stop them. Hadley tells Spencer to excuse House, who mistakes "immaturity for edginess." Don't we all? That is, when we aren't mistaking immaturity for boyfriend material. But there I go again, talking about myself. Spencer's reaction is surprising: she recognizes House's name. House is hoping that's because his name came up during the sex last night, and then proceeds to ask Spencer some "valid medical questions" about the activities she and Hadley were engaged in before she had her seizure. Hadley all but begs Spencer not to answer them, but she does, freely and without hesitation, including how good Hadley was in bed on a scale of one to ten. Hadley stabs Spencer's hip and asks her not to answer, but Spencer gives Hadley a seven, much to Hadley's horror and House's happiness, since that was his prediction. Meanwhile, why is he being filmed from behind a shelf with stuff on it? It's distracting to see all these blurry things in the forefront of the frame and then a small House standing just in between them.
House has had enough of Hadley's personal life and is moving onto Wilson's. He meets with Lucas in the hospital cafeteria to request that he find out what Wilson's up to. He knows Wilson's breakfast meeting excuse was a lie, since Wilson would have eaten tons of food at that particular diner and thus would have been too full for that doughnut. That's awfully flimsy evidence, and operates on the erroneous assumption that you can be too full for a doughnut. Lucas thinks House is worried that after four months, his friendship with Wilson has changed, pointing out that Wilson hasn't even tried to get back at House for the practical joke. It's only been a few hours. Give the man some time. "Things always change," House says. That's a position he seems to go back and forth on. I've seen episodes where he's said that no one and nothing ever changes. Lucas agrees with House that change "sucks." "Yeah," House says sadly.
Hadley's done some investigative work of her own, digging through House's letters to find several of them from Spencer, begging for an appointment with the great doctor. She had her suspicions when Spencer knew who House was and seemed to "enjoy" his prying questions. Spencer doesn't deny anything. She says she's sick and hasn't been able to get House's attention or even a letter in response (I guess Cameron finally gave up on that). "You used me," Hadley says. "You used me!" Spencer says. Hadley thinks she's got one up on Spencer, though, since her motives where "clear." I doubt that, but it's probably what Hadley believes. Spencer says she would've told Hadley the truth if Hadley had ever given her a chance to speak, pointing out that Hadley didn't even ask for her name. Hadley asks if she faked the seizure, but Spencer says she'd never fake a symptom as it would only make her illness harder to diagnose. The seizure was just great timing. Hadley doesn't care if it was real or fake anyway; the bone marrow biopsy was negative, so Hadley is discharging Spencer without bothering to perform any follow-up tests. Um ... I'm pretty sure that just because you've ruled one thing out doesn't necessarily mean that the patient is fine. Spencer claims that she's tired all the time -- she can fall asleep at ten and wake up at noon and she still feels exhausted. Okay, see a sleep doctor. There are many of them around, and most you don't even have to have sex with to get an appointment. Hadley just rolls her eyes, so confident that Spencer is just fine. Spencer starts gasping for air, and Hadley thinks she's just playing until her monitors start beeping. "Damn," Hadley says. Somehow, I don't think that "damn" was Hadley being angry at herself for rushing to judgment and nearly discharging a patient who is very clearly ill. It should be, though.
After the break, Hadley reveals that they had to shock Spencer's heart back into a normal rhythm. And she actually admits that she was wrong about Spencer, so good for her. House continues to enjoy this moment, saying that Hadley's just jealous because "the whole time [Spencer] was with you, she was thinking of my huge ... throbbing ... diagnostic skills." Hugh Laurie's delivery is perfect as always, but the director has once again chosen to film this scene from behind a shelf, so there's all this blurry stuff in the way that really distracts from the scene. What the hell? I think I've found a few director nemesis. House says that he's thinking Spencer's drug use is the root of her problems. He denied that diagnosis earlier just to stretch the case out and make Hadley's life miserable and Spencer's insurance company angry, but now that things are serious he'll have to be as well. Or maybe he's just saying it's drugs because it means he gets to break into Hadley's apartment and look around. She refuses to let them do it without her present, but House has no desire to have her around to ruin his good time and not let him look through her underwear drawer. He orders her to do an ultrasound on Spencer instead. Taub and Kumar both start to volunteer to join House at Hadley's, but they're overruled by Foreman, who assures Hadley that he'll keep House in check. If I were Hadley, I'd just call the police and report a break in. There are ways to stop people from entering your house without your permission, you know. If I worked for House, I'd make damn sure to make my house as break-in proof as possible and I'd buy a guard dog trained to attack men who limp.
Foreman struggles to pick Hadley's lock until House steps up with her house key. He had copies of each of his Cottage's house keys made by Lucas, although he denies having Foreman's, saying he never told Lucas to do any digging into Foreman's past. As Foreman searches Spencer's purse and House heads for the bedroom, Foreman says there's no way House didn't bother looking into his past because he already knows everything there is to know about Foreman. Foreman very much doubts this, correctly pointing out that House can never get enough embarrassing secrets from other people. Foreman checks out Hadley's gorgeous stainless steel fridge (her apartment looks great but it's shockingly devoid of any real personality. Much like Hadley herself) while House checks out the bed area for sex toys and finds none, which somehow indicates to him that Hadley frequently engages in these one-night-stands. He also finds an inhaler, and sprays a CGI puff of asthma medicine into the air. Foreman futilely points out that you can get to know people without committing felonies and searching their apartment. "People interest me. Conversations don't," House replies. "Cause conversations go both ways," Foreman says. Pause. "Like Thirteen!" both men say in unison. Hee hee hee. I demand more scenes of House sort of bonding with his Cottages! Unless it's Hadley and then I've had more than enough, thank you.
House comes back to PPTH with a brown recluse spider he caught in Hadley's apartment. She wants to know where he found it, showing remarkable calm for someone who's just been told there's a horrible poisonous spider in her house. I would have screamed and jumped up on the table and called seven exterminators by now, but that Hadley is one cool cucumber. Obviously she's never been bitten by a spider or she'd know better. I hate spiders! Shut up about how they're so good for the earth because they eat bugs. I don't care! Bugs > spiders. House says he found another interesting item and slowly reaches into his pocket to take it out as Hadley is supposed to look nervous. When he produces an inhaler, she's relieved. "Yeah. My inhaler is fascinating. It's got its own extensive online following," she says. It probably does now. At the very least, it has its own livejournal community. Hadley's sarcasm falls on deaf ears once again, as no one in the room appreciates her special brand of wit. Instead, Taub asks if she has asthma. Duh, Taub. Shut up. Hadley says she had asthma as a kid, and it started acting up again when she moved into her new place. That ... doesn't strike her as suspicious? I had asthma as a kid too, and I'd be very concerned if it suddenly came back. Maybe it's a symptom of Huntington's. Kumar's just surprised that Hadley moved and no one told him. He should be happy that he wasn't asked to help her carry boxes, or that heavy-looking metal bed frame. House thinks he should go back to Hadley's apartment to look around for whatever it was that he noticed she was worried he had in his pocket. Kumar is focused on the spider bite theory, and volunteers to check Spencer for bite marks. House immediately tells him to sit down and let a woman perform the search. He didn't seem all that concerned about the appearance of impropriety when he was looking in an underage girl's vagina for a tick a few years ago. I wonder why?
And so, we've got Hadley doing the exam of the woman she slept with last night, which is ridiculously unethical not to mention probably not the best choice for Spencer's health, either. Do you really think Hadley will be as conscientious and thorough as someone who didn't want this to be over as soon as possible and hated the patient for using her? Spencer doesn't seem to mind, although she does take issue with Hadley's insistence on wearing safety gloves, saying she didn't need them last night, so why now? "The other night I wasn't your doctor," Hadley says. She's still not Spencer's doctor as far as I'm concerned. Hell, she isn't a doctor at all. I do like how Hadley closed the blinds to give Spencer privacy but didn't even close them all the way, so now not only can anyone look in and see what's going on, but also the room is dim, making it harder to find spider bites. As Hadley feels Spencer up, she says she really didn't want to ever see her again after their fling. She never wants to see any of her one night stands again. Spencer says she figured Hadley had done the cruising thing before, since she was "awfully good at it." That's good, since she sucks at being a doctor. Hadley just says she would have thought "awfully good" would qualify for a better score than seven, then. Spencer seems to think that truly great sex comes when you know the person you're with and not when it's a random one night stand. And also when you're not both drunk and on Ecstasy. Spencer thinks that with more practice, Hadley could be a nine. She turns to face Hadley and moves in for a kiss. But then her hip goes numb so it doesn't happen. Hadley says that rules out the spider bite theory.
And then she's telling House that the tests are back and Spencer has low potassium, which caused the numbness in her hip. I think that means Spencer needs to eat more bananas, but House says that indicates a kidney problem, which he thinks is what caused her heart problem as well. Hadley suggests something with a really long name that's going to be wrong anyway, and House tells her to do a CT scan on Spencer's kidneys to look for calcifications that would confirm the diagnosis.
House has better things to do than spend time with the CT Scanner. He's hanging out in Lucas's beat up Volvo station wagon as they spy on Wilson. House stupidly forgot to bring his binoculars, so only Lucas is able to look into Wilson's apartment via an open window. Wilson is currently playing a "car-jacking videogame," he says. I'm guessing that means Grand Theft Auto. Unfortunately, Wilson isn't doing very well at it because he insists on stopping at every red light, which struck me as hilarious. And then a tall, leggy blonde wearing a very short skirt walks up to the building. House immediately knows she's a prostitute and says she must be there for one of the building's other inhabitants. He's wrong -- Wilson gets up from his videogame and lets her in. Just because she's attractive and scantily clad doesn't mean she's a prostitute. Unless House recognizes her from past services rendered, I don't know how he can jump to that conclusion.
The CT scan came up with calcifications, so Chase has been called in to surgically remove them. Foreman and Hadley observe from the OR balcony, which gives them a chance to talk and get to know each other. It turns out that Foreman found the thing that Hadley was afraid House would find in her apartment, and he took the liberty of invading her privacy himself. He hands her a slip of paper, telling us it's some test results (I believe he called it a CAG test, which tests the presence of the C, A, and G bases in DNA. People with Huntington's have more of them than people without. I know this because I've searched the Huntington's websites high and low looking for a way it can kill Hadley immediately and without symptoms) that indicate that Hadley's Huntington's is progressing more quickly than she first thought. Hooray! Foreman tells her it's okay to be upset at this news, but she doesn't have to self-destruct by having sex with (gasp!) women. Because no one has a homosexual encounter unless she's in self-destruct mode. Shut up, Foreman. Hadley says she doesn't need Foreman to protect her from House if he's just going to turn around and judge her himself. I kind of agree with her. What does Foreman know about living with a terminal illness like Huntington's? It's not like he's spent much time observing the effect a grim diagnosis like that has had on his Alzheimer's-ridden mother who he refuses to see. Foreman just says that Hadley should be doing things like working out and improving her balance and coordination. "Sounds like a blast," Hadley says blankly. She says she's having much more fun doing drugs and having sex. And then she leaves to do just that. To be fair, the sex probably burns a lot of calories and does wonders for Hadley's coordination.
Meanwhile, down in surgery, Spencer's oxygen stats suddenly drop and she needs to be intubated.
Back in the meeting room, there's a fresh chest X-ray of Spencer and the need for a new diagnosis, since Spencer's breathing problems began after those kidney calcifications were removed, so they can't be the problem. House just wants to know where Hadley is. Foreman tries to cover for her, saying traffic is bad. House doesn't believe it at all and I want to know why Foreman's suddenly appointed himself the Hadley Whisperer. I wish he'd stop. Kumar gets down to business, saying that since Spencer's lungs look fine on the X-ray but aren't working, there must be something wrong with her airway. To prove it, they have to make the airway close again by sticking Spencer on a treadmill, which I'm sure her fresh post-surgery incisions will love.
Hey, did you guys know that the Clinic still existed? I thought for sure that they'd torn down the Clinic set, but there's still at least one exam room left, and Hadley's using it to pump herself full of IV fluids, presumably to recover from a night out. So THAT'S how she does it! Well, fuck this. I'm going to stop sleeping and just pump myself full of magic fluids to get through the day. I'll get so much more done! Oh, but it looks like Hadley's free ride is over, as Cuddy lets herself into the locked room (thanks to Cuddy's Trouble Alert, she always knows when someone's up to no good in her hospital. Of course, that doesn't mean she then knows how to deal with the offender) and Hadley makes a blank "oh shit I'm busted" face.
Meanwhile, Foreman thinks he's busted House since he talked to his brother and found out that he got a phone call from a private investigator the other week. Looks like House did try to dig up some dirt on Foreman after all. Now Foreman wants to know why House taunted everyone else with the stuff he found out about them (like Kumar and his super-scandalous crawling record. Give me a break) but stayed silent on Foreman. House says there was nothing on Foreman to find out. "You haven't done anything stupid, spontaneous, or even vaguely interesting since you were seventeen," House says; "and that's just sad." This bothers Foreman way more than it really should.
House reports to Cuddy's office, where he finds a shamed Hadley sitting in front of Cuddy's desk. House claims that Hadley looks "terrible" after her night of partying and insufficient fluid-receiving. Whatever! She looks the same as she usually does except that she's wearing the standard self-destruction-live-it-up-druggie black outfit. Since she was out doing -- I'm guessing -- Ecstasy and not meth, however, she will not be wearing the all-black beatnik ensemble that Cameron wore when she went on her own personal brush-with-terminal-illness-means-drugs-and-sex bender. Which is a shame, since that beret was hilarious. Cuddy says that Hadley has a "fresh night club stamp" on her wrist, so she wants her to take a drug test. I'm not sure if she meant fresh as in "that night club is fresh and funky" or as in "that night club stamp is recent." I do find it hilarious that Cuddy thinks night clubs = drug use. She must be channeling her Goodwife Cuddy Puritan personality today. House can't be bothered to deal with any of this, so he says he's not going to let his fellow be punished for something she did in her free time, and he doesn't appreciate Cuddy dictating how his fellows should behave. He leaves the office with Hadley behind him. Cuddy just stands there and watches her authority be undermined once again.
House and Hadley leave the Clinic, and House tells a grateful Hadley that the surgery she skipped out on to go clubbing didn't go well and she missed a differential. "You're fired," House says. OH!!! WHAT!!! YES!!! Hadley can't believe it. "What?" she gasps. What indeed. You mean leaving work without your boss's permission when your patient is dying, missing a crucial work meeting, and coming back to steal the hospital's IV fluids is bad? "You just defended me," she says. House says he only stopped her from taking a drug test that would have cost her her career. He doesn't think PPTH has room for two doctors with drug problems. Especially when they only have, like six doctors to begin with. With that, he dry-swallows some Vicodin just to rub it in. Hadley denies having a drug habit, but House just goes with this metaphor: "a slutty party girl is fun 'til she pukes on your shoes. Then she's just a pain in the ass." Ha! Eat it, Hadley. Go away and never come back!
House heads over to the slutty party girl and enters Wilson's office. He helps himself to a seat on Wilson's couch and takes a second to be happy that it (and, presumably, its owner) is at PPTH once again. And then he's needling Wilson for information, trying to find out what he already knows. Wilson takes the bait and admits that he's dating someone new. How dare he! And after all CTB did for him! Cameron cared more about her PoorDeadHusband than Wilson did for CTB, and her love was fake and childish. I am ashamed of him. House asks what Wilson's new lady friend does for a living, and Wilson reluctantly admits that she's a prostitute. An ex-prostitute. Who is now trying to go to law school. And is a single mother. Apparently Wilson is dating the plotline of every single Julia Roberts movie. Wilson says he's helping her with tuition. House asks how long Wilson has known her. Wilson gets all huffy that House is being judgmental about him dating a prostitute when House himself is a drug addict who pays for sex. Then he admits that he called the prostitute because he was hurt and wanted to feel better, and they fell in love. "Amber said that she wanted me to move on," Wilson says. Uh, yeah, but I don't think she meant only four months after her death and with a prostitute. "She wanted me to be happy. And Debbie makes me happy." Debbie? What kind of a prostitute name is that? Pathetic. "If you're happy, I'm ... " says House, trailing off and leaving the room as fast as his bad leg will carry him.
Foreman finds Hadley in the Radiology department pouring over Spencer's X-rays. She says she's looking for her ticket back into employment. Should a non-employee of PPTH be allowed access to confidential patient information and restricted areas of the hospital? Isn't security supposed to escort the fired ex-employee off the grounds? Or do they just stand there with their mouths open like Cuddy? Ridiculous. Foreman apologizes if what he said to Hadley in the OR balcony upset her enough to force her go on that clubbing spree. Since when did Foreman apologize? Oh well. At least he has lines. He tells Hadley she's acting like an idiot after getting her up to speed on Spencer's case. He just shared confidential information with a non-employee, so who's the idiot now? Hadley just says "I know" and points out that the X-ray of Spencer's lung looks dark. Foreman thinks it's just overexposed, even though that's never, ever the case. Remember last week, when they thought the ultrasound was grainy and it was actually iron particles? These people never learn. Hadley thinks they could be looking at lung cysts, which wouldn't show up on an X-ray, oh-so-conveniently. If Spencer does have cysts in her lung, the treadmill test she's doing right now will cause her lungs to "explode," as Hadley puts it. That sounds like it could be exciting.
What the hell? We missed it. We join Kumar and Taub bent over Spencer, who's lying on the ground not breathing. I don't see any evidence of explosions, however. Kumar says Spencer isn't breathing, but it's not because her airway collapsed like they intended. With that, Hadley comes running into the room, all energized thanks to the latent effects of her club drugs and those IV fluids. She says Spencer has cysts in her lungs, which have now collapsed. Um, what? Collapsed is much different than exploded. Way to build up expectations, Hadley. This is why your sex partners give you sevens. Though Taub protests that he's getting breath sounds, Hadley orders them to move out of the way so she can stab Spencer's chest and reinflate her lungs. By the way, since Hadley doesn't work at PPTH anymore, I believe what she just did is technically attempted murder. It does get Spencer breathing again, and she coughs without even covering her mouth. That's rude.
After the break, Kumar tells House that a CT scan of Spencer's lungs revealed multiple lung cysts. One of them burst (not exactly exploded, is it?), causing her lung to collapse. Foreman makes sure to give Hadley credit for figuring out what was wrong with Spencer in time to save her life. Hm. Well, she didn't figure out what was wrong in time to save that other guy's life, so I guess this at least makes her even. Good. She can leave PPTH on a high note. Hadley starts diagnosing away, but House cuts her off to say his real employees can take things from here. Hadley can't believe that getting one right answer doesn't automatically give her her job back, and protests that she just showed House that she can indeed pull her weight even while staying out all night partying. Annoyingly, Foreman sticks up for her, telling House to give her another shot. Would he care this much if Hadley didn't have Huntington's? Or boobs? Even Taub steps up to urge House to re-employ Hadley, but that's probably only because he knows that all her extra baggage will distract House from making fun of his. Kumar doesn't say anything, as usual. House won't be moved. He sends his employees off to do a lung biopsy. Hadley stays behind. "How much clearer do I need to make this?" House asks. She finally gets the hint. Hooray! We'll never see her again! Don't let the glass door hit ya where the good lord split ya, Hadley! And stop being so shocked that missing work to do drugs got you fired.
Surgeon Chase gets a second of screen time to remove Spencer's cysts. Back in her room, Hadley is at her bedside, saying the cyst removal should help her breathe better (and apparently stop all those other symptoms seemingly unrelated to a lung problem -- how does LAM give you kidney calcifications?), but they don't know when the cysts will return. Okay, but if they could cut them all out this time, why not cut them all out the ? Spencer says she doesn't know how she feels right now, so Hadley tells her. She'll be numb for a few days, then she'll cry a lot, and then she'll be really angry and stop caring about life and go to bars to pick up chicks. Right ... because that's when the bisexuals turn to women: when they don't care about life anymore. Interesting message, show. Spencer realizes that Hadley, too, has a terminal illness. Hadley says she has about the same amount of time left as Spencer does. "I'll race you," she says. That's going to be an interesting finish line: one woman who can't breathe and the other who can't move or think or really do anything. Then Hadley notices that Spencer is bleeding from her lung surgery incisions.
Hadley heads for the meeting room and starts diagnosing. Apparently, Spencer now has aplastic anemia. House is forced to call Hadley out yet again for trying to work for him when she's been fired. Excellent. I love it! I'd love it more if Hadley walked out the door and never came back, though. Hadley asks if she can just finish out this case without pay. House accuses Hadley of only liking Spencer now that she's dying. Foreman says she'll be dying sooner than ever if they don't figure out what's wrong with her now. The aplastic anemia means Spencer doesn't have LAM after all. Well, it can't be too hard to figure out what she does have. How many diseases have smooth muscle cell cysts in the lungs? Three, apparently: PNH, Langerhans, or mastocytosis. Hadley contributes to the differential by listing off Spencer's life expectancy if she were to have those diseases (years, months, and days, respectively), which makes me think that House isn't wrong about her only liking Spencer for her terminal disease. House sends his real employees off to test for them. Hadley moves to join them, but House reminds her that she is FIRED!
Foreman is in the lab when Chase enters, asking about the patient. Foreman says they've ruled out Langerhans, although that's not exactly good news since the other choices are just as deadly. Chase yawns and falls asleep, so Foreman asks if Chase thinks he's boring. "Yes," Chase answers immediately. Meanwhile, what is he even doing in the lab? Since when do surgeons do lab work? PPTH is so DIY. "Thank so much," Foreman says, although he asked Chase because, as he says, Chase is the only person he can trust to be honest with him, so why get all bent out of shape when he gives you the honesty you say you wanted? Chase says that Foreman never lets anything bother him, not even his own mistakes. And, Chase says, it's our screw ups that make us interesting. Yeah, well, I guess someone whose mistake killed a patient would say something like that, wouldn't he? Actually ... didn't Foreman kill a patient too? And didn't that have a huge effect on him? Or how about when that rabies bat homeless lady came into the ER and Foreman totally hated her? Just because the writers don't know what to do with Foreman now doesn't mean that he's always been a boring, uncaring, and unflappable character.
Hadley hangs out at Spencer's bedside. They hold hands, lie to each other, kiss, and have a great time dying.
After the break, House watches from the hallway as Hadley tends to Spencer. They seem happy, so he knocks on the glass with his cane to interrupt. Hadley comes outside and House tells her that Spencer will need a bone marrow transplant. They still don't know what's wrong with her, but they've got a donor match, so why not? House figures that whatever's wrong with Spencer, it will inevitably require a bone marrow transplant anyway. Hadley says that's a moot point since the irradiation of Spencer's existing marrow will kill her. House has a solution to that problem: they won't do the irradiation. Most of Spencer's bone marrow is wiped out anyway, he says. Hadley points out that there's still enough in there to fight with the marrow transplant, which will also kill Spencer. Yeah, I have to agree with Hadley here. This sounds like a terrible plan, and possibly unnecessary to boot since they really don't know if whatever Spencer has will require a marrow transplant. But Hadley doesn't have any better ideas, so she gets the job of getting Spencer's consent to basically die in horrible pain.
Lucas is pulling a House and tossing the giant tennis ball against the wall while sitting in House's office chair. He's going too far with that. Don't start annoying me, Lucas. House walks in, and Lucas dumps a garbage bag on his desk for House's perusal. Inside he finds syringes. "He's using," Lucas the Great Detective reports. Oddly, House smiles. Perhaps he's happy to have some druggie company.
He heads for Wilson's office with the trash bag and congratulates him on a prank well pulled. "Genius!" he pronounces. Wilson, on the other hand, is frustrated to be found out, saying he knew faking a drug addiction by planting needles in his trash was too much. That's right -- he's not doing drugs and he's not dating a prostitute. He does, however, know House well enough to know that once he gets suspicious of something, he will not stop until his curiosity has been satisfied, so he arranged to have a prostitute stop by when he knew House would be spying on him. She made an easy thirty dollars and probably left Wilson's apartment with more questions than answers. I wonder if they played video games together or just stood there in living room staring at each other awkwardly for a half hour. Wilson says he's actually a bit insulted that House bought the hooker girlfriend over the drug addiction. House says he can't believe Wilson used his dead girlfriend's name to throw House off the track, and says Wilson is his hero for this. Yes, well, I don't like it but I'm happy that Wilson isn't completely dishonoring CTB's memory by dating a lawyer hooker. As for House, his only question now is if Wilson still has the hooker's phone number, since she was hot and quite the bargain at only thirty dollars. Wilson is sorry to report that he killed her and buried her in his basement. They decide to go out for a bite to eat instead. Then House asks Wilson where he really was the other morning, now that he knows he wasn't with a hooker or doing drugs. An exasperated Wilson doesn't want to say, other than to promise House that it has nothing to do with him and their friendship changing in any way, and that House should trust that. Yeah, right. Wilson realizes that if he hasn't changed and his and House's relationship hasn't changed, then House hasn't changed either, and realizes he'll just keep following him until he gets the answer. He tells House to be outside his apartment at eight tonight.
Foreman walks in on Hadley, slowly putting everything back in her locker. She's running her hand through her hair despondently, so Foreman asks what's up. "I feel alone," she says; "and she hasn't gone anywhere." Yes, just as House predicted, it was the terminal diagnosis that attracted Hadley to Spencer and not Spencer herself. And now that we know that, I don't see the problem at all. Instead of hitting the clubs, Hadley should head on over to the hospice and meet her girlfriends there. It's probably cheaper. I also find it really annoying that with this non-revelation, Hadley has completed her transformation into Cameron Part 2. She does drugs and has sex when confronted with her mortality, just like Cameron. She was fired for half an episode, while Cameron quit PPTH in the first season. And she's only attracted to dying people, just like Cameron, who essentially married terminal cancer. If they wanted to have a Cameron on House's team so badly, why didn't they just keep the one they had?
Wilson is finally on his mystery appointment. He's at a baby store, where Cuddy is waiting for him to a crib. "What do you think?" she asks. He'd better like it, since it appears to be the only crib this place sells. Also, what kind of baby store is open after eight o'clock? Weird. And in walks House, wearing sunglasses to look inconspicuous. At night. In a baby store. That struck me as hilarious. Cuddy is not pleased to see House, and Wilson tries to lie that House must have followed him without his knowledge. Cuddy isn't buying it. House doesn't understand why Cuddy is buying a crib since she isn't pregnant. He asks if she's going for a Field of Dreams type of thing, where if you build it, they will come. Don't be ridiculous, House. Then Cuddy would have a whole bunch of ghost babies, and no one wants those. "I'm adopting a baby!" she says. Wilson explains that he was late the other morning to provide a character reference for her. Wow, I can't imagine why she didn't ask House to do that. Cuddy says she kept it a secret in case she didn't get approved. Today, though, she did! Hmm ... I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I don't think I want Cuddy to have a baby. On the other, I do want her to have a storyline. And the hilarious possibilities of House having to baby-sit are endless, although if Cuddy actually trusts House to baby-sit then she should have her adoption approval rescinded immediately. As for House, he looks shocked and absolutely broken-hearted by the news. He doesn't even make a quip about how forward-thinking the adoption committee was to allow a transsexual to adopt. Cuddy has to ask him to congratulate her. He doesn't. "If you're happy, I'm ... " he says for the second time this episode, and then he's gone. My guess is he was so happy to have everything back to normal with Wilson, only for everything to change again with Cuddy adopting a baby. House hates change. And babies.
What hasn't changed is Hadley. She's hooking up with another woman and looking all blank about it.
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, especially if you own an iMac and an Eee PC or similar PC netbook. Do they work well together, or should Sara sell the Eee PC and buy a new Macbook?
The prognosis ain't pretty in our House:Diagnosing the Doctors gallery.