By Sara M
After House gets in a motorcycle accident while cruising around New York, he winds up in the ER to a man and he out-doctors the ER doctors (who were about to donate the guy's organs) by diagnosing him as having locked-in syndrome following a bike accident. That means the only movement Lee can control is blinking. House decides that Lee's brain damage was what caused his accident rather than was caused by it, and that's enough to persuade Lee to transfer to PPTH, where Wilson will stop at nothing to find out what House was doing in New York in the first place. While Taub struggles to come up with the correct diagnosis in order to secure his job, it's Kumar who comes up with everything, both incorrect (heavy metal poisoning) and correct (liver failure caused by a rat pee borne illness). Once the rat pee illness is treated with antibiotics, Lee is mobile again even though his liver already failed and we don't hear about him getting a new one. Though Taub doesn't get the diagnosis after all, his willingness to lie to House that he did is enough to show House that he wants to be there. Wilson finally gets to the bottom of House's mystery trip and discovers he was seeing a psychiatrist. House assures him that was a one-shot-only deal, to which Wilson assures him that he'll die alone. Fun!
So this episode is shot partially from the perspective of a guy who can't move, which means it should be pretty cool to watch and make productive and good use of my arch nemesis Deran Serafian's directorial talents. Except that, skipping ahead here, he isn't directing this week. I can't believe I'm saying this, but that's a shame. We get various glimpses of hospital things and personnel that you might see if you were lying on your back looking up, mostly blurry as I'm assuming the eyes this POV belongs to try to focus and he drops in and out of consciousness. He wonders what's wrong with his legs and groggily asks someone to talk to him, but all he gets is a doctor standing over him sighing that he has a "great heart for transplant." That's one of the worst things you can hear in a hospital, followed of course by "oops!" or possibly "ohmigod WHAT IS THAT????" But there's hope on the horizon, as a familiar voice with a familiar slight lisp calls out that removing the organs from live patients is kind of unethical. "Get back in your bed please, Mr. House," the unethical doctor responds. "It's actually Dr. House," House says, and we see his arm come into focus as he moves to the patient's bedside. His shirt sleeve is ripped and there's a bloody bandage on his arm. House medical crisis #14,503,442,345! The unethical doctor exposits that House is in this hospital because he was in a motorcycle accident so he can get back in bed and stop trying to consult. House exposits that he suffered a mere flesh wound to his elbow. As for the patient, the unethical doctor says, "he's brain dead. So drop it." "No I'm not!" patient says. But he obviously isn't saying any of this out loud, so House will have to prove his case. He points out some brain waves on the patient's monitors. The unethical doctor doesn't think they mean anything. Really? If a guy is truly brain dead, I'd think that would mean it was too dead to produce any waves at all. Meanwhile, he isn't responding to pain or stimuli, so he must be brain dead, case closed for Dr. Unethical. This is why people don't like to be organ donors. They're always afraid of getting the one doctor who's in a hurry and knows a nice little girl their heart is a perfect match for. House points out that the patient's eye is following his movements. Dr. Unethical smugly calls that an "involuntary reflex," pointing out that as a doctor, House should really know that. Now that he's sufficiently baited House to do any and everything to prove him wrong, House leans over and comes into view. He looks directly into our patient (and therefore, our) eyes and says "I also know about locked-in syndrome." I know about it too, and it sucks. I think I'd rather be dead. House asks the patient to blink if he can hear him. He does. "This is gonna be fun," House says. Not for the guy who's locked-in, I'd wager.
After the theme song, House has managed to convince Dr. Unethical to give the patient, named Lee, a second look, and all he has to do is shine a flashlight in Lee's eyes to determine that his eye movement is actually intentional. If I was Dr. Unethical, I think a mistake like that would be enough for me to give up my medical license. But Dr. Unethical doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that he would have cut a live man open and removed his vital organs were it not for the lucky fact that the most brilliant doctor in the world was in the bed to him. Lee is also good at math, blinking three times to tell House that the square root of nine is three. Good thing Lee didn't just have to blink while answering, or else he'd say four instead and everyone would think he was stupid. Dr. Unethical explains -- and we see in a non-first-person flashback -- that Lee was riding his bike without a helmet one day when a car door opened in front of him. He told himself to hit the brakes, but either his hands were slow on the uptake or the brakes weren't working because now he's in the hospital with a traumatic brain stem injury. His brain can no longer communicate with the rest of his body. He has eye movement, and that's it ... forever. Or is it? House wonders if Lee's brain damage is the cause or effect of the bike crash, noticing that his hands have no scrapes or evidence that he tried to protect himself from the crash. Lee agrees, saying he couldn't stop for the car door. So I guess his hands weren't doing what his brain told them to after all. Dr. Unethical gets all threatened again and tells House that he isn't a doctor here -- he's just a patient. Lee doesn't need a fully functioning brain stem to know which doctor he'd rather have. Dr. Unethical accuses House of giving Lee false hope that he'll ever get better. As opposed to Dr. Unethical, who gave Lee false dread by loudly threatening to cut his organs out.
When Lee wakes up again, his wife Molly is standing over him looking tearful. She says God will get them through this somehow. Unfortunately, House was within earshot of this. Instead of reaming her out for her religious beliefs, however, he just says his ears are burning. Heh. Meanwhile, he's checking out Lee's brain scans in the background, much to Dr. Unethical's annoyance. He grabs them away. Molly asks if their children can come visit, and of course, Lee blinks a resounding no. Molly stupidly thinks Lee doesn't want to see his kids before realizing it's more that he doesn't want them to see him.
Foreman, Kumar, and Hadley arrive with a burger and fries for House and some diagnosing for Lee. Foreman insincerely asks House if he's okay. Hadley, of course, has brought nothing to the table except questions for House, like what he's doing in Middletown (the Middletown in New Jersey or one of the two Middletowns in New York? They said it was New York in the info blurb on my DVR, but the Middletown in New Jersey makes more sense). "Who cares?" Lee asks. House says he was buying one of Dwayne Allman's old guitars. Foreman and Kumar's attempts to diagnose are quickly pronounced incorrect, and I wonder if they get reimbursed from PPTH for their mileage driving to Middletown? Or will they have to claim it as a deduction on their taxes for year? These are things you think about when you've been stuck in tax hell for the past week. Hadley comes up with a tumor, but Lee's too busy thinking about the fact that he may never be able to eat again to pay much attention. In which case, the last thing he ever ate that wasn't delivered via a feeding tube was a melted Powerbar. That's unfortunate. House tells Lee that if he has a brain tumor and they can find and treat it, he'll be fine again. Lee finds himself in the interesting position of praying for a brain tumor. His eyes must have started flashing praying signals, though, because House tells him to stop praying right now. Now the only problem is getting Lee's real doctor to order the necessary MRI. That proves to not be a problem at all, as House managed to steal the proper forms necessary and presumably forge Dr. Unethical's signature on them.
Somehow, Kumar and Hadley are allowed in to perform the MRI even though Kumar's making every effort to look like a moron by trying on the cool video goggles they give to MRI patients to try to ease their claustrophobia. Hadley grabs them from Kumar and gets up in Lee's grill and tells him that they're giving him MRI goggles. She holds him up to show them to him, but doesn't get them close enough to his field of vision for him to actually see what they look like. Nice job, Hadley. She puts them on, and now Lee is at the beach.
Those video goggles are freaking amazing. Like, Star Trek Holodeck amazing. Now we're in third-person vision as Lee, decked out in beach clothes, sits on a beach chair to House, also wearing beach clothes. House's chair comes with a cup holder. In the cup holder is an open bottle of beer. Lee is confused as to how House ended up in his relaxing scenario, and House shrugs that Lee must like him. They talk about God, and whether or not Lee believes in him. He goes to church a lot, but that's only to make his wife happy. He's starting to believe, though, after being saved from evisceration by just happening to be put in the bed to House. House points out that by that logic, God also put Lee in the hospital in the first place. Lee totally ignores this, though, and decides that House has been sent to him by God. Which means, by that logic, that God also gave House a motorcycle accident. He probably deserved it. With that, Lee turns and sees his two kids building a sandcastle on the beach. They're not in beach clothes, though. It must have been cold outside when they shot this and they didn't want to torture the kids with shorts and Hawaiian shirts. Mos Def and Hugh Laurie, though, had to endure the cold.
Lee is back in bed when House wakes him up with a late-night visit. Apparently, House has been admitted to the hospital for overnight observation even though he's obviously fine. He's got Lee's MRI results back, and there's a lesion in Lee's central pons. House goes to the effort to show the MRI to Lee and point the lesion out, but Lee can't see anything since he's not a trained doctor. Neither is Dr. Unethical, though, really, so he couldn't see one either. House is sure that cancer and paraneoplastic syndrome are causing Lee's inability to move, but Dr. Unethical thinks it's an infection and has put Lee on antivirals. House is hoping they'll almost kill Lee just enough so that Dr. Unethical will realize that he sucks and House knows all and let House treat Lee as he sees fit. So now Lee has to hope that he has cancer and that he'll almost die from getting the wrong medicine. House tells Lee that he's fascinating only because he presents House with so many questions and can't talk to answer any of them himself. If he could, he wouldn't be interesting anymore. Meanwhile, House's face scrapes from the accident kind of look like herpes when they're near his mouth. Just as we're wondering why House is so intent on staying at Lee's bedside and talking to him, Lee starts almost dying courtesy of those antivirals and probably whatever House did to them to cause this to happen.
When Lee comes back, Molly is in the room and wants to know why her husband just had a seizure. House answers it's because Lee has cancer. Dr. Unethical says Lee's immune system is compromised. Lee doesn't understand why Dr. Unethical thinks he has any right to argue with House at this point. House treats Lee like he's still human and looks him in the eye and welcomes him back to non-seizure land. He says he knew this was going to happen to Lee, and Molly is impressed. House asks Dr. Unethical if it can be his turn now. Molly seems okay with that. Lee is definitely okay with that. House wants to give Lee plasmapheresis. Dr. Unethical totally disagrees, of course. Molly finally goes to Lee to ask what he wants to do. Lee blinks once for yes. Fortunately, he does not get something in his eye and blink a second time meaning no, or he'd be dead by now. With that, Lee gets a free trip to PPTH.
Upon arrival at PPTH, Cuddy's only concern is House and his motorcycle injuries. Do you think this is the show's way of telling Hugh Laurie to stop riding motorcycles because they are dangerous and if he crashes they'll be out several days of shooting or an entire series if it's bad enough? She checks out House's face scrape like a worried mother and Lee is disgusted that the Dean of Medicine isn't paying this kind of attention to the guy who can't freaking move. Well, no one ever guaranteed Lee that PPTH would be a bastion of professionalism. House explains that he was in Middletown buying her a late Victorian corset that he'd be happy to let her try on later. "Is he hitting on her?" Lee wonders. Poor Lee. He thought he was going to PPTH for a cure from a brilliant doctor and he's about to realize that his brilliant doctor is a drug addicted asshole, his fellows are morons, and he's only going to get worse before he possibly gets better. As they wheel Lee away from Cuddy, Lee decides that if Cuddy looks up from her paperwork to watch House leave, she's just as into him as he is into her. Which she does. Not like it matters anymore.
Taub slides into view and apologizes for not going to Middletown with everyone else since he didn't get House's message. House tells him that wasn't an accident -- as far as he's concerned, Taub resigned. Taub thought this was all over and done with last week when he brought in donuts. No, House says, Taub only came back because he had to. So he knows that Taub isn't really motivated to be here and that means he's useless to House unless he can prove that he's still capable of good ideas. Basically, if he can figure out what's wrong with Lee and fix him, he's back on the team. No pressure! Meanwhile, Lee doesn't understand why Taub has to think up a diagnosis when he was told back in Middletown that it was cancer.
While he's wondering about that, House gets a phone call and walks away to answer it. As he's picking up, Wilson walks up and House quickly hangs up the phone and shoves it back in his pocket. He wants to know why House was in Middletown. House avoids the question by asking why he cares. Lee would also like to know that. Poor Lee. Slowly but surely, he's realizing that PPTH is full of weirdos. Wilson won't accept that old guitar explanation since he's apparently a huge Allman Brothers fan and knows that Dwayne died in a motorcycle accident. House's need to be so clever has given him away. Wilson notes that House's crash was ten miles away from the "Orange County Progressive Pain Clinic." One of the New York Middletowns is indeed located in Orange County, so I guess that's where he was after all. House says Wilson lives ten miles away from a dress shop. His attempt to show that one thing has nothing to do with the other falls flat, though, when he can't help but say that he thinks Wilson is a transvestite. To this, Wilson asks House upfront (and in front of Poor Lee) if he is going to another state for drugs. Lee now knows that his doctor is a drug addict. House just says he was visiting one of Wilson's ex-wives who happens to live in the area to tell him that Wilson's making hidden cash on the lecture circuit so she should adjust her alimony accordingly. Wilson is left to wonder if his friend is enough of an asshole to do that. Lee tries to figure out why they're even friends.
Taub's hanging out with Lee. Kumar walks in and asks Taub what he's doing to "entertain" Lee, as House requested they do in order to exercise his brain and prevent atrophy. Taub says he performed Euripides with sock puppets, just as the great tragedian always intended for it to be performed. Kumar encourages House to talk to Lee and keep his mind active. At the very least, it'll show House that Taub still cares. Problem with that, Taub says, is that he doesn't know if he does care or not. Poor Lee. He should have found a way to blink out "take me to St. Sebastian's." Kumar tells him to figure it out before House does it for him. Lee's opinion doesn't matter since he can't express it, but he says Taub should save the midlife crisis for another patient. With that, Taub sees something and calls Kumar over to see it, too. Kumar doesn't like what he sees, and they both run out of the room without telling Lee what's going on.
House enters with Taub, who asks Lee if he drinks. House doubts it, saying Lee is a roofer. The rest of the Cottages are on the other side of Lee's bed suddenly, also offering diagnoses. Lee doesn't know what's going on. Hadley grabs his wrist and starts flexing it, which hurts Lee. Be gentle with the guy who can't tell you if you're hurting him, Hadley. Geez. His hands show no tremors, which seems to rule out a diagnosis. Also, Lee sees a diamond bracelet around her wrist. THIS WILL BE UNIMPORTANT BUT GET WAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION LATER. Suddenly, the Cottages are throwing out allegations that Lee is either a drug addict or an alcoholic, despite his inner protestations that he doesn't do drugs and rarely drinks. House would rather just biopsy Lee's brainstem and look for proof than spend time asking Lee what he's addicted to. Lee doesn't understand why these people are planning to cut into his brain, and no one feels the need to tell him. This makes him a wee bit angry.
Hadley's standing in front of Lee with a tube. Lee wonders where it's going. He wishes he didn't know, as Hadley explains that he had blood in his urine, clogging his old catheter. This is a new one. So the thing that got everyone shooting around drug and alcohol diagnoses was bloody pee. As Hadley inserts the catheter, she chooses this time to tell Lee what's going on. He isn't paying attention because he's in serious penis pain. When she's finished, she announces that he has visitors. Yes, Molly and the kids are standing just outside his room. Which has glass walls. So they pretty much just got a great view of their dad getting a catheter shoved up his wang. That's a fun childhood memory. Lee is not happy to see the kids there. What's up with Molly totally disrespecting her husband's wishes? "They wanted to see their father," she explains, not looking all that sorry. She thinks they can handle seeing him like this. Lee thinks she's starting to doubt that he'll ever get better. And that the doctors told Molly that the brain biopsy they're giving him could kill him, so this could be their last chance to see their dad (sort of) alive. Just when Lee is starting to enjoy seeing his kids, Hadley tells Molly that they should go now. Lee begs them to stay. But no one can hear him. Wife and kids go, and Hadley bends over to tell Lee that he was crying. So it's okay to see dad lying in bed unable to move except to blink his eyes, but god forbid he should cry in front of the kids.
Lee is in the OR. Chase, of course, is his surgeon. He tells Lee they're going to knock him out to drill the hole, then wake him up so he can blink answers to simple questions while they do the procedure to make sure they haven't cut through anything necessary. With that, Lee is running on the beach with his kids in third person POV. He's having trouble keeping up with them, and as they run off, House runs over to Lee's side. Lee asks him why he's not better now and why God seems to doing some trial and error on him. House says God makes plenty of mistakes, but Lee chalks those up to human errors that he was punishing us for. House points out that he is human. Thus, there will be errors. Lee just wants to know if he'll be okay soon. House doesn't know. Lee's version of House doesn't have a limp or a cane.
Lee's awake in the OR. He answers some easy questions by blinking, but can't answer the third question. Well, he can answer it in his head, but he can't blink out a response one way or the other. Chase tells them to put Lee back out. Uh oh.
When we return from Lee's unconscious OR dream, which this time took the form of a commercial break, we're in regular old third-person POV. The Cottages stand over Lee, who lies in bed with his eyes open, squirting eye drops in to lubricate them since he can no longer blink. Molly asks what happened, and Foreman basically admits that he might have cut a little too close to the nerves that control both eye movement and blinking during the biopsy. Which means Lee can't move anything anymore and has no way to communicate with anyone. They don't even know if Lee's in there anymore; the surgery could have caused brain stem swelling and brain death. Well, that's an incredible fuck-up.
In the hall, House is pissed at Foreman for taking away their only way to communicate with their patient. Foreman concentrates on the positive; the biopsy showed damage to the myelin sheath, so now they've got a new symptom. The Cottages put out some diagnoses, and all of them could be easily proven one way or the other if they could talk to Lee and ask him about other symptoms. But they can't, so that sucks. But wait! Taub has an idea.
Lee gets a bunch of electrodes put around his head as Taub explains that they're going to try to pick up his brain waves to move a cursor on a computer screen. All he has to do is keep thinking "up," and eventually the computer should pick up the pattern and move up when Lee thinks it. We go to a montage of Taub waiting for progress and hopefully putting drops in Lee's eyes. But nothing happens on the cursor front.
Wilson stops by House's office, and this is the first scene we're seeing where Lee isn't in the room. Why did they switch like that? I was hoping the entire episode would be through Lee's eyes. Seems odd that only the first half was. Wilson says that he called his ex-wife and knows that House didn't visit her. She also now knows that House had a reason to say he was, so if she's anything like everyone else on this show, she'll have figured everything out and be asking for increased alimony payments any day now. House says Wilson hates it when he meddles in his life, the implication being that Wilson should therefore not meddle in House's life. I think it's all the more reason why he should. For revenge. Wilson thinks House is trying to hide something. House says he was, and it has nothing to do with any of Wilson's business -- he was visiting Foreman's brother in jail. He doesn't tell us why.
Taub has decided to give Lee an extra reason to get that cursor moving -- he's going to bore him to death. He starts talking about himself and his job situation. He says he's not sick of working for House. He's sick of being terrified at work every day. If he thinks he has it bad, he should have seen this woman I saw on Maury a while back. She had a phobia of mustard and worked in a Burger King. Her life was torture, but Maury made it better by confronting her with plates with mustard piled high and a bunch of TV screens showing mustard being squirted all over the place. Actually, that didn't make her life better at all. She ran screaming from the stage after attempting to fend the mustard off with a chair and threatening to kick its ass. But it was really funny for me. Anyway, just as Taub has given up on Lee, he hears a beeping sound. He looks at the screen, and sure enough, Lee can make the cursor move. Computers that can read minds are cool. And terrifying. But not as terrifying as mustard.
Taub brings Molly in to show her that Foreman's crappy job with the brain biopsy hasn't killed her husband after all. She's as relieved as she can be knowing that her husband still can't move any part of his body. We go back to Lee's POV again, and he says he's scared and loves Molly.
Lee can now move the cursor both up and down, and they've got it so that he moves up for yes and down for no. Now House can ask him about symptoms and rule out some diagnoses. No, Lee hasn't had any bloody diarrhea. Or joint pain. Or been anywhere in or out of the country. Molly disagrees, saying that Lee went to St. Louis. This time, Lee says yes. House diagnoses Lee with "Missouri Malaria" and says they can start treatment right away. Lee totally falls for it and says no. He only told Molly he went to St. Louis. This is why we should have the wife in the room when we're asking questions. Because even people who can't move and can only communicate through a mind-reading game of Pong can still lie. Molly asks her husband if he went to St. Louis. In his POV, he says he should have told her the truth to begin with. The cursor says no.
After the break, we're back in Lee's head. House is in his face, and says he's assuming that Lee was having an affair while his wife thought he was in St. Louis. Lee's cursor says no, and he says that his wife thinks he was having an affair, too. And he can't tell her that he wasn't. And House won't think to. Also, he still thinks that Lee is lying, and might have caught neurosyphilis from The Other Woman. That's good news for Lee, since it can be treated and he'll be able to move again soon. "No," Lee cursors. He says if he's willing to tell the truth about not going to St. Louis, then it doesn't make any sense that he'd lie now. Taub repeats that for Lee, and he decides that he likes Taub now and hopes he doesn't get fired. If Lee starts rallying for Hadley to get fired instead, then I'll know that the writers have somehow gotten into my head with this episode. House seems to think Taub is right, so he asks Lee questions until he's able to figure out that Lee never even left the state -- in fact, he was within two miles of his house the entire time. And just to give us something fun to watch, we're transported to a field. House and Lee are standing there, and House asks if Lee was at a hotel. The background changes to a hotel. Lee says no. House asks if Lee slept in his car and we go to a parking lot. Lee says no. House asks if it was a friend's house, and Lee finally says yes as the background changes to a row of Craftsmen homes. With that, Molly is called back in to tell them which friend this could be. She gets to enter the neighborhood background area, where she keeps her righteous anger at her husband's supposed betrayal as if he didn't have enough problems right now. I mean, yes, cheating is really bad and you have every right to be hurt and angry if your husband cheats on you. But maybe when the guy is lying in bed unable to move you put those feelings aside for a while. Molly names off their friends who live in the area. When she gets to Dave, it's a yes.
Taub and Kumar head to Dave's house to look for environmental causes. Apparently, he made Lee stay in his gross basement, which has a desk that Kumar finds a bunch of resumes and cover letters on. They're not all from the time that Dave went on his fake business trip, though -- as Kumar notes, he's been coming here for a while. Molly and Lee appear behind them and Lee tells her that the roofing business wasn't going well. He didn't tell her because he didn't want her to worry. Well, at least she isn't worrying about business right now. Also, Poor Lee really is poor. He's Poor Poor Lee. Kumar finds a timecard from a factory Lee was doing some temp work at as a janitor, and we all get to go there. While Lee sweeps, Taub and Kumar exposit that the factory makes rechargeable batteries. Kumar finds cadmium filings on the ground, and Taub says that Lee could have breathed them in while sweeping and given himself heavy metal poisoning. That factory is going to have a lot to answer for to OSHA if that's the case.
Taub tells Lee that they're treating him for heavy metal poisoning and if they're right, he'll be moving again within a few days. Except not really, since we all know he's wrong. Taub informs Lee that someone will be wetting down his eyes and keeping him company while he waits, and while Lee complains that his eyes feel dry (warning warning), Taub sincerely thanks him for thinking up, as if Lee only did that to save Taub's job.
It's Foreman's turn to keep Lee company. But since Foreman is super-boring, he just drones on and on about himself. He bought his first girlfriend a silver necklace that he saved for for six months, only for her to hate it. Lee is not amused, and wishes more than ever for the ability to either die or walk away. When Foreman admits that the only girl he's bought jewelry for since is Hadley, though, his story gets a little bit more interesting. To Lee, that is. Not to me. Unless the jewelry he gave her is a poison ring that will kill her by week. Then I'll love Foreman forever. Foreman sighs that Hadley obviously didn't like the bracelet he got her since she hasn't been wearing it. Ha ha! Foreman's taste in jewelry sucks. Or maybe he just sucks at observation, since Lee noticed Hadley wearing a diamond bracelet the other day. So he got her a tennis bracelet? What, did he walk into Kay's and pick the first thing he saw? How thoughtful. Foreman goes off on Hadley for not liking his bracelet but not being able to tell him so to his face. I think it's more a matter of being polite than being a coward. He says he wishes people would just tell him the truth about his shitty taste. Okay, I will: stop wearing so much pink.
Molly's up . Lee's eyes are barely clear of the eyedrop fluid before she's crying about how he lied to her about their financial situation. She can't give him a break, can she? First, she's all bent out of shape because she thinks he cheated on her, then she finds out he wasn't cheating on her at all and is still mad. Meanwhile, Lee's been punished enough for all of this seeing as how HE CAN'T MOVE and all. Lee defends himself by saying the last time he told her business was slow, she got migraines every day. Molly doesn't seem to remember that, though, so she says "how could you do that to me?" and cries and leaves the room because she probably has a migraine. Lee begs her not to go, but if I were him I'd be relieved she was gone. Unless it means that there's now no one around to put the eye drops in.
Taub walks into House's office and informs him that he wants to keep his job, and thinks his computer idea should be enough for that. House disagrees, only giving credit for that to whoever invented the computer that could read minds in the first place. House wants to know why Taub is fighting for his job now and not before, when he first found out it wasn't secure. Taub says the work they do terrifies him, but "overcoming that is the only way I can matter." I guess he realized that never in all his time as a plastic surgeon did he feel like he did when he saw the cursor move. But it's still not enough for House, who says that Kumar was the one who found the factory and thought of the cadmium diagnosis. "Maybe you don't matter," he says. He lets Taub know that this conversation is finished by turning to his computer.
It's Hadley's turn with the patient. She completely skirts responsibility by closing his eyes so he can sleep. Lee mentions his sore eye again, and Hadley sees something that warrants the introduction of a stain into Lee's eye that she warns is going to sting. I'm just impressed that they have specific eye stains in every hospital room like that. Lee gets a dose of the stain dropped into his right eye and yes, it stings. After she gets the dye nice and in there, she checks his eye out under a black light and finds ulcerative keratitis. That rules out cadmium poisoning, much to everyone's chagrin. With the possible exception of Taub, cause he gets another chance to matter. And Lee's, because he can't actually chagrin right now.
Why look! It's Cameron. Cameron and Chase both in one episode? I didn't think such things were even possible. She's stopping by House's office to tend to House's elbow wound, which she lets us all know smells foul because he forgot to change the dressing. Gross. Also, doesn't it make more sense for Cuddy to be doing this? House extends his arm so she can do her work and goes over Lee's symptoms including his newest one, pus eye. Cameron makes a crazy leap in deduction to figure out that the Cottages have yet to figure out what's wrong with Lee, then takes a little bit of pleasure ripping the bandage off of House's arm. While House wonders if they're looking at an autoimmune disorder, Cameron hands him some Vicodins to dull the pain of having his wound scrubbed free of debris. She stupidly hands him four pills and tells him to take two now and two later. Duh. He takes them all now. She gives them all of two seconds to take effect before scrubbing away. It hurts, House cries out in pain, and Cameron is very much enjoying this. I bet she's just great in the ER. Because House behaved himself, he gets some old Cottage advice: do a lumbar puncture. He thinks she wants to look for white blood cells, which will tell them nothing, but she says if he finds polymophonuclear cells, it's varicella. Lymphocytes mean Behçet's. It's good enough for House to wonder why he fired her. She reminds him that she quit. Because there's all kinds of Behçet's cases hanging out down in the ER to keep her busy.
Wilson finds House in the cafeteria and says he knows that House wasn't visiting Foreman's brother after all. And he knows this because he went to the prison and checked all the records, which means he has officially spent way too much time on this. House tries to deflect from the question of what he was really doing in New York by asking Wilson why he cares so much. As if House wouldn't have done the same thing to Wilson if Wilson were hiding something from him. And has. House gets a phone call and turns the ringer off before saying he was going to find out Wilson's "dirty little secret." Apparently, Wilson has gotten over CTB enough to find a new woman to sleep with. Wilson is gobsmacked as to how House could have figured this out. Apparently, he's dating a woman he met at his brother's care facility (or as House calls it, "cuckoo facility"), because Wilson loves dating caregivers. Um, except for CTB. She was a doctor, but I don't know that I'd call her a caregiver. Or that cancer patient, who was too sick to do much care-giving. House asks Wilson who his brother's last caregiver was before he ran away, and Wilson thinks House is saying that he's sort of sleeping with his own mother. But House actually meant Wilson himself. For this, Wilson can gouge his own eyes out. Instead he just covers them with his hands. As well he should, for totally cheating on CTB. I don't care how long she's been dead, her memory must not be disgraced.
Foreman starts to explain the LP procedure to Lee, but he's more concerned with the pressure he's feeling in his chest than the pressure he's about to feel in his back. Since we're in Lee POV and he's curled in a fetal position for the LP, we get to watch as his monitors suddenly flatline. Lee gets to watch it, too. That must have been fun.
Now he's back on the beach with House, and he's decided that God doesn't exist after all because House doesn't know what's wrong with him. House seems to agree with Lee, who asks if he's dead. "Not yet!" House says; "but you're about to be." Oh, fun. Lee just says "okay" as he closes his eyes. Way to give up, Lee.
After the break, Kumar is able to defibrillate Lee back to life. Lee is not especially thrilled about this, since it's been three days and he's no closer to being better than he was before. So he's about to give up. He sees Molly standing outside and says she needs to move on with her life and their kids need to as well. The kids need to not be eating popsicles so often that they're both enjoying them in the photo at Lee's bedside. Childhood obesity is a serious problem in this country these days.
As Lee complains that something itches, we go back to third-person POV. Kumar, Foreman, and House stop arguing with each other about the course of action when House hears computer beeping as Lee moves the cursor up and down in a desperate plea for attention. Unfortunately, all he can say is "yes" and "no." So when they ask him what's still bothering him, they can only ask yes or no questions. As someone who hates 20 questions, this would not be fun for me at all. When Kumar asks if it's Lee's eye and he says no three times, Kumar figures out that his problem is somewhere lower. Kumar gets a "yes" when he asks about Lee's foot. House asks if it's the left foot. It's not, so that leaves the right. But there are no marks on Lee's right foot, so House wonders if it's not pain that Lee is complaining about, but itching. Lee cursors yes.
House walks with the Cottages and informs them that an itchy foot means liver failure. It does? My feet itch sometimes. This is terrible news! Taub notes that Lee's liver tests didn't show any problems, and House says that's because the liver's already dead. Um ... doesn't that mean that Lee is already dead? And shouldn't he be kind of jaundiced? Or had some kind of symptoms of liver failure prior to the accident? I don't think livers just die immediately and without warning. But whatever, Hadley explains that as the liver started to die, it released toxins into Lee's bloodstream that caused his locked-in syndrome. Now all they need to do is figure out what caused the liver to fail. Foreman comes up with a diagnosis, and House says it's too bad Taub didn't come up with that or he could have gotten his job back. Way to not even give poor Taub a chance to come up with the diagnosis first, Foreman, you jerk.
While Taub explains the liver biopsy procedure to Lee, who has to be pretty nervous about this considering how well his last biopsy went, Kumar asks Hadley where her new bracelet is. Apparently, he knows all about Foreman's gift because he noticed her wearing it when Foreman did not. He's a jerk and an idiot. She says she's not wearing the bracelet now because she likes it so much that she doesn't want anything nasty to happen to it at their gross workplace. Apparently, she got some pee on it when she was putting the catheter in Lee, and Kumar notices that there's now a rash on her arm where the pee touched her. Way to not cover up correctly, Hadley. I mean, Jesus freaking Christ. You're in a hospital treating patients with unknown diseases that could be ridiculously contagious and you're exposing your flesh to their bodily fluids? You're even dumber than Foreman! Foreman assumes Kumar's saying that the rash is because the bracelet isn't real because he is way too defensive over this stupid bracelet, but Kumar is actually thinking that Lee has a peeborne infection that he spread to Hadley when her arm came in contact with his pee. Kumar's most likely suspect? Leptospirosis, which Lee contracted by coming into contact with infected rats in Dave's gross basement when they peed all over his cover letters, which we get to see them do as Kumar explains things. When Lee got a paper cut from the letter, the infection entered his bloodstream. Because Hadley doesn't have any cuts on her arm, it only gave her a gross pee rash. That she didn't even notice. Moron.
Kumar explains the latest diagnosis to Lee, who's not all that confident that it's right. Later on, Kumar's at Lee's bedside telling him that they found rats in Dave's basement, and they tested positive for leptospirosis. Kumar thinks Lee's been on the treatment long enough for it to start working and encourages Lees to try moving a finger. Nothing happens. Kumar tells Lee to find his lost hope and believe that they're right. This time, the finger moves. Kumar holds it up for Lee to see himself moving his finger and says "welcome back." It would have been awesome if he had moved the middle finger instead of the boring old index. By the way, what about Lee's blinking and eye movements? Didn't he lose that in the brain biopsy? So no amount of leptospirosis treatment is going to bring them back, right?
House enters the locker room to find Kumar and Taub getting ready to leave for the day. He congratulates them on the rat pee diagnosis before asking whose idea it was. Taub immediately steps forward and says it was his. Kumar looks surprised, but then nods that it's okay. He's just way too nice. Taub takes off before House can ask any more questions, and he has to know that House knows he didn't think of the diagnosis. Sure enough, as soon as he's gone, House asks Kumar if he's okay with Taub stealing his thunder. Kumar still claims that it was Taub's idea. House still knows it wasn't, and Kumar figures that the jig is up and tells him to stop toying with Taub. House decides that the fact that Taub cared enough about his job to lie is enough for him to get his job back. And he even gives Kumar some praise for a "very nice idea." One that House didn't come up with himself.
Wilson finds House in the hall and gives him his cell phone, which he claims House left in his office. Actually, Wilson stole it from House's pocket because he didn't believe that House would try to lie about finding his new girlfriend and he also noticed all those phone calls (two) that House wasn't taking. So he stole the phone and called the mystery person back. It's a psychiatrist. House doesn't confirm or deny this, which is probably confirmation enough.
Instead, he goes to check on Lee, who has regained the ability to move his eyes and blink after all. Whatever. He ignores Lee and continues his talk with Wilson, saying he had no right to invade his privacy like that. With that, he takes a small recorder out from underneath Lee's pillow that he used to spy on his own team when they had private time with him. Remember how he encouraged them to talk to Lee and keep him entertained? Yeah, brain atrophy my ass. House turns to go, clearly not interested in talking to someone who's better, but Lee stops him to say that he was sent by God after all. House's response is that Lee is no longer interesting. Funny how Lee didn't believe in God when things were going poorly for him, isn't it? I wonder what he's going to think of God when he finds out he'll need a liver transplant?
Outside, Wilson is annoyed that House spied on his team, and House tells him to choose what he wants to lecture House about: spying, or seeing a psychiatrist. Wilson chooses the latter, but says he isn't going to lecture him at all about therapy. He thinks this is a really good thing. Clearly House thought so, too, which is why he went to another state to get it. Wilson says that if House's attitude about therapy's ineffectiveness hasn't changed, then something else has. Maybe he now thinks he can change. Maybe not. House says he won't be going back. Wilson begs House not to do this because of him, which he should have thought of before he started teasing him. House says he's not going back because it doesn't work. And with that, he erases the number from his phone entirely. It's not like the psychiatrist is going to stop calling him. He or she is the most persistent one ever. As he enters the elevator, we get to see House's first person POV, which is just as blurry as Lee's was. Are they tears? Bad camera work? Glaucoma? Or is the show trying to tell us that House is just as locked-in mentally as Lee was physically? You be the judge. "You'll end up alone," Wilson says. Say, he is a good friend.
The preview for week tells me that this episode is "beyond words." So I guess I won't be able to recap it. See you in two!
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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