Autopsy

The "play" button is pressed on a pink CD player, and Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" comes on. A bald girl sings along to it as she puts on her wig; this scene would have been really annoying and over-the-top schmaltzy if the girl doing the singing along hadn't done it so perfectly imperfect. She sounds just like I do when I sing along to stuff in my car. Except that I'm not singing along to Christina Aguilera. Ever. Except for the occasional "Dirrty" when I'm on my way to a party or something. And maybe "Genie in a Bottle" if it comes on at the right time in the right place. In case you didn't figure out that the girl is bald from cancer, she then goes to the medicine cabinet of what appears to be her own private bathroom (lucky! Oh, well, I guess not really) and takes out a bunch of pills. Mom pops her head in to nag the girl to take all her meds, even though the girl is doing it as she speaks, so chill out, Mom. Girl injects her knee with a syringe filled with what I'm guessing is cancer medicine. And then stuff starts going wrong. The walls cave in, pills fall all over the place, tiles fly off the wall and shatter on the floor, Christina Aguilera becomes the poster girl for clean, moral living, pipes burst, and the mirror shatters at the girl's touch. Of course, this is all actually happening in her mind, as we cut to the normal bathroom, where everything is fine, except the mirror and the girl's hand, which are still cracked and bleeding, respectively. Christina Aguilera strikes again!

We hear House sneeze before we see him get off the elevator. He's on his way home sick, but Wilson needs his help. Just thirty minutes of his time. Although we all know it's going to be an hour, which is actually forty-two minutes with commercials. But anyway, House makes the most unattractive about-to-sneeze face I've ever seen, and that includes the unfortunate girl in my eleventh-grade class whose school picture was taken just before she sneezed, and the height of her about-to-sneeze face was committed to film and immortalized in hundreds of yearbooks. The urge to sneeze passes, and Wilson recommends Benadryl. House says that he's already taken a thousand milligrams of it, which is probably ten times to recommended dose, knowing House. Wilson's suggestion is a steam room, and it's nice of them to get the homoerotic scene of the episode out of the way quickly so that we can focus on other things. Wilson says he's got a nine-year-old with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, and that it's terminal, which Wilson thinks should "trump" House's stuffy nose. House disagrees. Wilson adds that the girl is hallucinating, but that no cancer has been detected in her brain. If House can help her, he'll give her another year to live, which is a lot for a nine-year-old girl, even if it is just a drop in the bucket to a cranky middle-aged guy on a cane. House is on the case, but not because he cares about the girl.

Chase prepares Andie for her MRI. She tells us all about the benefits of having a central line for chemo instead of an IV, and this episode was totally brought to you by Central Line, Inc. Chase has great fun putting up various backgrounds behind the MRI tube for Cancer Girl's enjoyment, although the real credit for that goes to the woman controlling the screens and not to Chase, who just snaps his fingers to create the illusion that he is a god, which is comforting to him since he is so powerless in real life. He probably wishes he could snap his fingers and turn his boss into a butterfly sometimes. Andie rejects the fake park and butterfly backdrops because there's no point in pretending that you're not in an MRI tube to find the source of your terrifying hallucinations when you actually are.

House limps through the Clinic and tries to check out. Evil Nurse Brenda ain't havin' that, and gives House another file. House says he's taking a sick day. "Take some Claritin," Cuddy non-sympathies, suddenly appearing from the other side of the desk. Evil Nurse Brenda says that the patient wanted a male doctor. "Balls are in your court, Doctor," Cuddy smirks. House says that this sexist doctor-choosing sets a dangerous precedent. But even appealing to Cuddy's sense of fairness and justice won't get House out of Clinic duty.

The patient has a big bloody spot on the crotch of his khakis that you'd think he might have tried to change out of before leaving the house, and House makes fun of him for not being able to operate a zipper. The patient nervously stammers that his new girlfriend had never been with an uncircumcised guy before, and House spits out some Yiddish as he turns to close the blinds. When he turns back, the guy's pants are down, exposing some kind of horrifying mess that makes House gasp in shock, horror, and universal male sympathy. The guy says he used box cutters, and continues to talk about the ins and outs of his amateur surgery technique until House asks him to stop talking because it's just too horrible for him even to think of. He leaves to find a plastic surgeon who can "get the Twinkie back in the wrapper." Offensive comment comparing a patient of Asian descent's wang to a yellow Twinkie, or clever metaphor to get around the network censors? You decide.

House's attempt to escape the hospital and go home sick are once again in vain, as the Cottages catch up to him outside the Clinic to report that the MRI and tox screen were clean. House tosses his backpack and cane to Cameron-come-coatrack and looks at the tests for himself. He notes that the oxygen saturation is one percentage point lower than usual, although it's still in the normal range. He thinks they should check that out, but the Cottages protest that even if House is right, the problem would be in Andie's lungs, not in her brain. Chase says that the lungs could lead to the brain, which was what House was thinking all along. The Cottages offer up explanations for something that could cause compromised lung function and brain problems. Chase laughs assholishly at Foreman's suggestion of some kind of scoliosis. House orders arterial blood gasses to confirm the hypoxia, a bunch of tests that he already knows will come back negative, and some kind of procedure that involves snaking a catheter through Andie's lungs. House is going home early to sleep off his allergies, but promises to bring them bagels tomorrow morning.

Chase prepares Andie for the catheter thing. Basically, they're looking for a blockage. If they find one, they'll pull it out, and we'll all watch the file footage of a clot being removed that we saw at least twice last season. After Chase explains the whole process to Andie, she reveals that she's had this done before, but lied about it because she likes hearing Chase talk. Darlin', you are going to live another year at the most. You don't have time to waste hearing repeated instructions, even if they do come from a cute Australian. Chase laughs nervously. Andie says that she's never kissed a boy, and Chase gets a little more nervous. "There's time yet for that," he says. Except that there kind of isn't. Andie says she almost kissed a boy at Cancer Camp last summer, but that it didn't work out. And she knows that there's a good chance she won't live to walk out of PPTH, and that even if she does, all the boys in her school still think girls have cooties. Wow, she still has to go to school? That sucks. Chase promises Andie that she will walk out of PPTH and she will kiss a boy. He's really good with kids, unless those kids are fat. Sometimes, though, he's a little too good, as we are about to see. "Will you kiss me?" Andie asks. Chase says he will not. He's thirty (he is? This show's timeline is wonkier than Alias's). Andie is nine. There are laws against this, even in New Jersey. "I just wanna know what it feels like," Andie says. "Please kiss me?" And the part of Chase that's into the submissive side of S&M can't resist a direct order, so he bends down and kisses her. For seven seconds. I mean, it's not like he gave her tongue or anything, but seven seconds is a long time. Even a quick peck on the lips would have been weird just because of the sexual situation it's supposed to imply, and this lasts a lot longer than that. When it's done, Andie is quite pleased with herself. Chase isn't, so much. Nor should he be. That was weird.

House brings in the bagels the morning as promised, complaining that he couldn't sleep at all last night, nor could he breathe. He's "dying." Of hay fever. Meanwhile, the girl who's dying of cancer had a bunch of normal test results. House directs Cameron to write Andie's symptoms on the whiteboard, and she feigns shock that she's actually allowed to touch the markers this week. House says that it's all written out in his advanced health-care directive. If House is incapacitated, Cameron runs the board, then Foreman. But not Chase, who's "just not ready yet." Chase rolls his eyes. Don't let him get to you, Chase. We've all seen how bad House is when it comes to picking out who will make decisions for him if he's incapacitated, so this really doesn't matter.

Foreman's got an idea that would explain Andie's symptoms and hasn't been tested for yet: neurosyphilis. "There's no way," Chase says immediately. Andie's only nine. Foreman says she's been around a lot of adults in her young life, like doctors and cancer-camp counselors. Maybe she was raped. By a guy with syphilis. And then the syphilis managed to get into her spinal fluid and enter her brain. "Break out the rape kit!" House says. Chase insists that Andie has never had sex, and House asks him what makes him so sure. Chase has to admit that Andie asked him to kiss her because she'd never kissed a boy before. Cameron shoots Chase a look that is either jealousy or pity; I can't tell. House says that just proves that there's something wrong: nine year-olds don't think about sex when they're being threaded with catheters. Chase says that Andie isn't a normal nine-year-old: she's dying of cancer, and that tends to mature you somewhat. "Cancer doesn't make you special," House says. But molestation does. Chase says that if Andie's never kissed a boy, then she's probably never had sex, either. House points out that hookers are always refusing to kiss him on the mouth, which is probably more of a comment on House than it is on the hookers, and Cameron shoots him a look that is either disgusted disbelief or disgusted belief. It's definitely disgusted, anyway. House says that victims of molestation have been known to get really good at manipulating people, and then stares at Chase. "You did it, didn't you?" House asks. Cameron's looks of disgust spins right over to Chase, who stammers that "it wasn't sick"; it was "one kiss for a dying girl," just "one small kiss before she dies." And at that point, Foreman and Cameron have both walked as far away from Chase as they can get, which is really funny. "Thank you. Thanks," Chase says of their lack of support. House says that this is why Chase doesn't get to touch his markers, and sends Cameron off to do a rape kit. Cameron obliges House while trying to cover her mouth to stifle her laughter. This almost makes coming into work worth it for House.

So now long-suffering Andie gets a rape kit, as performed by Cameron, the immunologist. You'd think they'd want to send a specially-trained person to do a rape kit on a nine-year-old, and, really, that they wouldn't do a rape kit on a nine-year-old AT ALL unless it was absolutely necessary. Proving House's implausible theory does not exactly qualify. Fortunately, Andie doesn't mind at all. As Cameron works on the business end of Andie's reproductive system, Andie says that she likes her hair. Cameron looks up at Andie, expecting to hear her say that she's afraid she'll die without ever getting the chance to kiss a girl. But no -- Andie just likes Cameron's Season 2 curls. The rape kit shows that Andie is still as pure as the driven snow.

House paces around his office, and then exits onto a heretofore unseen balcony he shares with Wilson's office. I don't know why the Chief of Oncology's office would be to the Diagnostic Medicine department, or why Wilson always enters House's office via the front door when he's got this much easier route to available to him, although I suspect it's because this balcony didn't exist until today, and it probably won't be around in the episode. Anyway, Wilson's in his office talking to a patient, meaning that whatever news he's giving her is probably bad, but House doesn't really care about that, and he tosses a few pebbles at Wilson's glass door to get his attention. It works, and Wilson excuses himself from the patient to go outside, where House asks him if his patient is dying. "No," Wilson says, sounding annoyed. House says that she can wait, then. If I were Wilson's patient and I was hearing all about the cancer I had, I'd be really pissed if he suddenly stopped our meeting to go outside and talk to some weird guy on the balcony that suddenly appeared.

House has difficulty opening a pill bottle, which is pretty incredible considering that pill-bottle-opening has got to be an automated movement for him at this point. He tells Wilson how disappointed he is that Andie wasn't molested (unless, of course, you count what Chase did, which is bit of a molestation gray area, I think), because now they have nothing to go on. Wilson says that it was only one hallucination. Maybe Andie just had some "bad pork" and she's fine now. House says that Andie's oxygen saturation dropped another point, so something is definitely wrong. He thinks there's a tumor in Andie's heart. Wilson says no way, and grabs the bottle from House to open it for him. House gets all defensive after Wilson immediately opens the bottle, because that's emasculating, and then we see that it's not pills after all, but some kind of salve that you rub under your nose to clear it out. House says that the heart tumor is the only explanation for Andie's symptoms, and Wilson says that the chances of a kid's getting two unrelated cancers at the same time are pretty slim. House does a little mental math to see exactly how unlikely it is, but Wilson has no patience for numbers, so House just says that Andie "won the lottery. Twice!" He wants to do exploratory surgery. Wilson doesn't think it's a good idea to poke around an immunocompromised nine-year-old's heart. He tells House to come back when he has a more exact location.

It looks like House has taken Wilson's advice and gone to the steam room after all. Oh, wait -- it's a bathroom, and House has called the Cottages in there because of the good acoustics. And it is a well-known fact that bathrooms have good acoustics. Didn't Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac record half of "Tusk" in one? Then again, he also did a lot of coke. House tells the Cottages to listen to his iPod (which we see is an older model with the four buttons above the click wheel), which plays a recording of Andie's heart from her echocardiogram. They'll do podcasts of anything these days. Foreman asks what they're listening for, and House says they're listening for a tumor. Chase says that tumors are hard to hear, since they don't have mouths. True, although some have been known to have teeth and hair, and I heard of one that grew an entire lower jaw. I could prove it with a link, but I couldn't find any that didn't have some seriously disturbing pictures on them. So just take my word for it. House says that they're listening for abnormalities that might indicate the presence of a tumor, and plays audio from each of Andie's valves. No one hears anything, and House says that they all make him sad and goes to start the concert again. Chase asks why they're going to do life-risking surgery on someone who's only had one hallucination. House says that Wilson "thinks it'd be nice to give the girl a year to say goodbye to her mommy. I guess maybe she stutters or something." That's really funny, but you feel like an asshole laughing at it. House plays the heart's song again, and still, no one hears a thing. He goes to re-replay it, but Cameron tells him to wait. She's bent over the speakers, her eyes shut in concentration, and she hears it: an extra flap in the mitral valve. House is as pleased with her as he gets and says that he's telling the surgeon to check out the mitral valve first, since that's the most likely location of the tumor they don't even know is there. He orders Chase to watch the surgery, since he doesn't like reading the surgeon's reports after the fact and he loves to make Chase uncomfortable, and Chase says he doesn't think it's a good idea for him to be around Andie anymore. House says that Andie's state of unconsciousness should reduce the risk of sexual harm to Chase's person. The Cottages file out of the bathroom, leaving House to enjoy some opera while the rest of the bathroom's occupants wonder what the hell is going on out there.

Andie is wheeled into surgery. Mom is worried, but Andie reassures her that it'll go fine. They walk by House and Wilson, and Wilson comments that Andie is a brave kid. House's jaded response is that everyone always says kids with cancer are brave, and that it's statistically impossible. There has to be one kid who's a "whiny little fraidy-cat." When the Jimmy Fund collection jar comes around at the movie theater, I have a feeling House doesn't put anything in it. Wilson calls House "unbelievable," and says that Andie has handled an "impossible situation" with grace, and should be admired. House says that Wilson sees grace because he wants to see grace, and that "idolizing is pathological with you people." I hope that by "you people" he meant oncologists and not Jews, because that would be kind of offensive. Oh, what am I even saying -- of COURSE he meant Jews. House turns it around on Wilson, saying that Wilson's been some idolizing of "Debbie in Accounting," lately, and then studies Wilson's face for a reaction that will tell him more information he shouldn't be so interested in. Wilson changes the subject back to Andie, and asks why he shouldn't like a dying girl. House says that when you're dying, all of a sudden, everyone loves you. "You have a cane; nobody even likes you!" Wilson snaps. "I'm not terminal; merely pathetic," says House. "You wouldn't believe the crap people let me get away with." He limps off. Wilson wonders if maybe he should stop letting House get away with talking trash about dying children.

The surgery goes as planned. Wilson watches from the window above the operating theater. Outside in the hallway/waiting room, Mom waits anxiously, something she's got to be almost used to doing by now. Chase, down on the floor, looks up at Wilson and slowly shakes his head. I thought that meant that there was no tumor and that House subjected a dying girl to open heart surgery for nothing, but then Wilson goes out and tells Mom that they did indeed find a tumor in Andie's lung, extending to her heart. It was growing along the heart wall, which made it somehow impossible to see on the MRI. To remove the tumor, they have to take the heart out entirely, remove the tumor behind it, and replace damaged heart tissue with patches of cow's heart walls. If the tumor is too big, there won't be enough heart left for Andie to survive once they remove the tumor. And if the tumor's metastasized, Andie is double terminal.

Since we're only at minute twenty-seven of an hour-long show, Chase puts drops in unconscious Andie's eyes, whereupon he finds a bleed in the right one. Because the whole cow-heart-double-terminal-cancer thing wasn't bad enough.

House still has his hay fever the day as he and Wilson exposit that they removed the tumor from Andie's lungs and heart, only to find a bleed in her eye that couldn't have been caused by a tumor, nor could the hallucinations, since the tumor was benign. House says that they must be looking at a third coincidence now, and they head into the meeting room, where the Cottages, like Wilson, find it hard to believe that they're now looking for a third problem in poor Andie's body. Chase says that a clot could have caused the retinal bleed, and Foreman adds that a clot might also cause a mini-seizure, which sometimes leads to post-seizure psychosis, when the brain tries to correct itself by hallucinating. Wait -- when did Andie have the seizure? Was that why her version of "Beautiful" was so bad? Wilson admits that the clot can explain the eye and the hallucination, but he still doesn't understand how a tumor "the size of an octopus" wrapped around a girl's heart fits into all this. I don't understand how a tumor the size of an octopus wasn't seen on any of the tests they did. Unless it was one of those tiny octopi you get in calamari. Wilson just can't believe that Andie has three things wrong with her that are all unrelated. Humans can't be "lemons," he says. House says something nonsensical about the tumor being Afghanistan and the clot being Buffalo. He clarifies that the tumor is like Al-Qaeda and the clot is one of its splinter cells in Buffalo, still existing even after the main base has been wiped out. So that's what happened to Mary after her parents shipped her off to Buffalo! What House is actually saying, as it relates to Andie, is that the tumor threw the clot before it was removed, and that's what caused the retinal bleed and the hallucination that put Andie in their care in the first place. He orders them to do an angiogram of Andie's brain to find the clot.

And so it was. Someone put Cameron in charge of this procedure, so no conclusive results are found.

So now they know there's a clot in Andie's brain, but they don't know where it is and you can't do exploratory surgery on a brain like you can on a heart. House makes a sarcastic comment, causing Wilson to stop and squeeze his eyes shut, possibly to stop himself from getting violent with his asshole friend. Now calm, Wilson, looking really tired and old in this shot, sighs that Andie is going to die. They have no idea when, but when the clot "blows," that's it for Andie. Wilson will have to tell Andie and her mom about this. "Can I come with?" House asks. Wilson says that's very unlike House, but then House flippantly says that he wants to see how brave this brave little girl is when Wilson tells her she's going to die. It takes Wilson a second to believe that House just said that, and then he coldly tells him to go to hell. House got off easy there, I think.

Before he reaches his final destination of hell, House makes a pit stop outside Andie's room to watch Wilson tell mother and daughter that Andie is going to die pretty soon, probably. Mom sobs and collapses on her daughter, who strokes her hair and seems otherwise unmoved. Wilson sees House watching outside and gives him a look that suggests that he'd love to shove his cane someplace where the sun don't shine. And not in a good way this time, either.

House asks the Cottages what they would do if someone told them they were dying. Foreman bites and says he'd be pretty upset. House says that's right: when people find out they're going to die, they cry like babies. Everyone but Andie, who's "like a rock." "She's brave," Cameron Hallmark Cards. House wants to know why: what if Andie's bravery is actually a symptom of the clot? Maybe it's lodged in the emotion center of the brain. If House is right, it gives them a hint as to where to look, and excuses his earlier insensitive remarks, if not the tone in which they were delivered. Neurologist Foreman says that the emotion center of the brain is too big and complicated just to blindly cut into: "The only time you're gonna see this clot is at autopsy." The Music of House Has an Idea plays, and House says that they can do an autopsy, then. Unfortunately, this episode's director decided to put the camera way too close to House's face, so anytime he moves just an inch, his face going flying off-frame, making the scene hard to watch and ruining the effect for me.

House and Cuddy then have the following exchange:

House: Is it still illegal to perform an autopsy on a living person?
Cuddy: Are you high?
House: It's Tuesday; I'm wasted!
Cuddy: It's Wednesday.

I love it! This episode had too few of those exchanges and too much of the malicious sniping that isn't quite so much fun. I hope House's hay fever is gone by week so that we can all lighten up a little. Anyway, House's plan is to induce hypothermic cardiac arrest (i.e. freeze Andie to death). Then they'll take out half of her blood and pour it right back in, which will somehow "re-fuse the brain" while Andie's having an MRI done on her head. She'll only be dead for a little while, House promises. And if they don't do it, Andie will be dead pretty soon anyway. Not Jesus-dead, either. Permanent-dead. Cuddy says that they need FDA approval for invasive diagnostic surgery, and House starts to point out that this surgery isn't invasive, but he gets stuck in about-to-sneeze mode. He recovers, and then says that, while he is killing Andie, he's not cutting into her. So technically, it's not invasive: "If it works, she lives!" That's enough for Cuddy. But only if Andie's mom understands that it's very, very unlikely that this will work. House says he'll make sure Wilson keeps her informed, since House sure as hell won't be talking to anyone.

We get to see Wilson's much-lauded bad-news-delivering skills in action as he tells Mom that they're going to "reboot" Andie, like a computer. I've got to say, I'm not really impressed here. Maybe the strain of dealing with an especially cranky House is affecting Wilson. "We shut her down, then restart her," Wilson says. "How do you 'restart' a nine-year-old girl?" Mom asks. Duh, Mom -- you press the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys at the same time. Unless Andie is a Mac, in which case you have to hit the apple key and then something else and really, you get much faster results by just pulling the plug and then putting it back in. That's what I do these days. Anyway, to restart a human, you freeze her until her heart stops, as cooling minimizes the damage done when they remove half her blood and then put it back. "It's called re-fusing the circuit," Wilson says. With the MRI going, this should give them a very brief window to see the clot. Maybe. IF they see it, and IF it's operable, they'll take it out, and Andie will live another year. That's a lot of "if"s right there.

Wilson gives House the signed parental consent forms. House is busy playing Philip Marlowe with his jaded look and mood-setting flipping of a single playing card and the ridiculously un-subtle shadow around his entire face except for a bar of light across his eyes. Either this episode's director is a recent film-school graduate, eager to try out all the toys at his disposal and recreate his favorite movies, or...I don't know what the other reason could be, actually. Maybe the guy thought he was working on an HBO show. House is feeling a little better after taking a cold-medicine cocktail. He asks Wilson what Andie said about the surgery. Wilson says that Andie doesn't need to know the specifics about the surgery. House says that if Andie is as brave as everyone thinks she is, then she's mature enough to understand and make an informed choice about her surgery. She "deserves" to know what they're going to do to her. Surely this has nothing to do with House's thinking he deserved to know that, as soon as he went into a coma, they were going to cut up his leg. I mean, that wouldn't be very fair, considering that House was well into adulthood when that happened to him, whereas Andie is nine. Mature or not, there's no way she can comprehend the kind of stuff you'd need to in order to be able to make this decision. House then looks up at Wilson and his eyes fall off frame because the camera is way too close again.

Apparently, after the scene ended, Wilson told House that if he thought it was so important that Andie know about the surgery, House could tell her himself, or so we can surmise as House makes his way towards Andie's room. He introduces himself, and Andie says that she's seen him around, like the time he was standing outside her hospital room smiling while she found out that a blood clot would explode in her brain sometime in the near future. House takes a seat beside Andie's bed and says that her surgery could take ten hours, and that she may well die (for reals) during it. Andie says that her mom did plenty of research at www.re-fuseyourbrain.com. House says that he has a backwards way of assigning people maturity points: he goes by how much time they have left as opposed to how much time they've already had. Going by that, he thinks this should be Andie's call. Andie says that she wants to get better. House says that she has cancer, so even if he does fix the clot, she's still going to die. Andie knows that, but she also knows that she'll get another year to live. House says it's a year of being sick and in pain, which a lot of people (ahemHOUSEahem) would rather not deal with if they had a choice. House says that this decision depends on how much Andie wants to suffer and for how long. If she doesn't want the surgery, House will give her mother ten excellent medical reasons why they shouldn't do it. I don't understand why House didn't go to Andie with this before he talked to Cuddy about it and got Wilson to get the mom to sign the consent forms. Also, encouraging a nine-year-old kid, no matter how mature you think she is, to lie to her mom and choose her death is just wrong. It makes for a touching television moment, but it's wrong. Andie says that it would be wrong to leave her mother like that. House says that it would be wrong for Andie to stay for her mother, too. Wow, I'll bet that if Andie's mom ever found out about this conversation, she'd kill House with his own cane. "She needs me here," Andie sobs. "This is your life," House says. "You can't do this just for her." "But I love her," Andie cries. And now that House has made Andie cry and exposed her weaknesses, he's satisfied.

Andie's surgery gets its own dress rehearsal, with some guy who donated his body to science playing the part of Andie. House leads the large group of workers through the process. The biggest problem is that if Andie's head is moved at all during the procedure, the MRI will be screwed up and the whole exercise will have been pointless and they'll be closed down on Broadway and have to take the show on the road to Des Moines. House assigns various people to their positions, and then tells any "girls in the chorus" who are "over 5'10" to stick with him, because we must be a sexist asshole even during serious situations. Sixty seconds are put on the clock, and House leads them off with a "5-6-7-8!," Broadway dance-number style. Or, if you've seen the Elizabeth Berkley masterpiece, Showgirls "dance" "number"-"style." As the doctors work, House makes sound effects of Andie's blood draining out of her body that entertain absolutely no one in the room. Then someone moves "Andie's" head and the alarm goes off. It goes off over and over again, House getting more and more frustrated at the incompetence of people who are trying to help him out until Foreman, who I suspect has been reading way too much Mary Shelley lately, suggests bolting Andie to the table. It's gruesome and low-tech, so House loves it.

The real surgery begins. There's a crowd of people on the floor and another crowd watching from above. Andie tells House he's kind of freaking her out. "He gets that sometimes," Chase says, wishing he had the guts to say it, too. Also, Andie's head is sandwiched between two big metal things that must be some kind of special MRI. Andie is knocked out and the cooling process begins. The head-bolting is performed by Foreman with some assistance from Black and Decker. Yikes. Cuddy's watching, too, because what else is there for her to do in this episode? Andie's body temperature drops to the cardiac-arrest point, and the timer starts. Blood goes out. Blood goes in. The MRI maps out Andie's brain as the brain does its re-fuse thing. The minute goes by, and the doctors warn House that they have to warm Andie back up or risk permanent damage. House tells them to keep working. Suddenly, Foreman sees the clot. House didn't. The doctors warn House that if they keep Andie dead much longer, she'll be brain-dead. Foreman says he's sure he saw the clot. "That's good enough for me," says House. I think this is the first time a Cottage noticed something House didn't. Go Foreman!

Wilson talks to Andie's mom. He says they revived Andie and that they think they found the clot. They're going to try to remove it. They don't know whether there was any brain damage.

House plays with his giant red and gray tennis ball as music starts to play, because this wouldn't be a show on Fox without a musical montage every three scenes.

The brain surgeon isn't finding the clot where Foreman said it was. Foreman tells him to keep looking. The surgeon still isn't finding anything, and I was really scared for a second that Foreman was wrong and that this whole thing was a big waste of time to prove to us that House is Always Right, but then the surgeon finds the clot. Whew! Foreman gives the signal to Chase, who's watching from outside.

I was really confused for a second as to why Cuddy was crying over Andie's body, but it turns out that Andie's mom just looks a lot like Cuddy. Andie wakes up. "Hi Mom," she says.

House uses a razor blade to chop up some pills. Wilson enters and asks House if he's now using coke to treat his stuffy nose. House says it's Benadryl, and that he's using a "new delivery system" to get it into his system faster. Wilson comments that House seems to like speed (as in, doing things quickly and not the drug. Although, that too, probably). He also comments that House is pretty good at making lines with a razor blade. "I know my way around a razor blade," House says. And since it's a pretty safe bet that he's not talking about shaving, you can let your imagine wander to what else he's talking about. Wilson says that Andie's going home now, so everyone's waiting in the lobby to see her off. Wow, Andie recovered from open-heart surgery, cardiac arrest, brain surgery, and having her body BOLTED TO A TABLE in just one day! She must have the kind of cancer that makes you heal ridiculously fast. The camera is way too close to House's face here, and so he goes flying off the screen while he's talking a few times. The camera has to move to catch up with him and it really ruins the scene because it's so distracting. House says he's not into watching a "parade of small, bald circus freaks." Wilson says that he read the surgeon's report, and that the clot wasn't anywhere near the emotion center of Andie's brain, meaning that she really was as brave as everyone except House thought she was. "I was wrong," House says. And just in case you thought he had actually learned humility, he then adds, "She genuinely is a self-sacrificing saint whose life will bring her nothing but pain which she will stoically withstand just so that her mom doesn't have to cry quite so soon. I am beside myself with joy." And then he snorts a line of Benadryl. Wilson says that Andie enjoys her life a lot more than House does his. She managed to get a kiss from a hot doctor. What has House done lately? House says he has the luxury of time, so he's pacing himself. Then he washes down some Vicodin with milk. Why milk? I don't know. ["Yeah, that'll just make more phlegm. Nice work, doctor." -- Wing Chun] "She could outlive you," Wilson says, and leaves because he happens to like parades of small, bald circus midgets.

The elevator door opens out into the lobby. A bunch of doctors, including Cuddy, Wilson, and the Cottages, applaud as Andie and her mom exit. Andie then gives hugs to all the opening-credits people, and there's a nice touch where she touches Cameron's hair that she liked so much. Chase gives Andie some tickets to the American Museum of Natural History so that Andie can see "real butterflies," as opposed to fake ones on the MRI room wall. Aw. They hug, and Andie gives Chase a small, chaste peck on the cheek, which is really the kiss that should have happened before. And just when you thought House was cold-hearted bastard, there he is slumped against a counter at the end of the line. "I'm not gonna kiss you, no matter what you say," he says. Andie hugs him, and then tells him to go for a walk in the sunny outdoors. House taps his cane and says he's not a fan of long walks in the park. Jeez, Andie, way to RUB IT IN. House only let her get away with that because she's dying of cancer.

Over at the fakest-looking city backlot in the history of fake-looking city backlots, the Elvis Costello version of "Beautiful" starts to play as House checks out some shiny new motorcycles for sale. A salesman starts to talk to House, who takes his iPod earphones out of his ears to hear him, revealing that the music we're hearing is actually coming from House's iPod, which was a neat touch. The salesman tells House that he can still ride a motorcycle even with a bad right leg. And there are some really good financing options available right now. "No thanks," House says. He starts to walk away, but then turns back around and asks if he can take one out for a test ride. Either the saintly terminal cancer girl has shown House that life is too short not to seize every moment of it, or House is just continuing down the self-destructive path he seems to be on. I think it's a little of both; he's seizing the moment, but he's so self-destructive that the only way he can do it is by risking his life.

We end on House riding the motorcycle through the cow-laden fields of New Jersey as Elvis Costello tells us all that we are beautiful, no matter what they say. Unless, of course, you tried to circumcise yourself with a box cutter.