Our Patient of the Week is an immunocompromised teenage girl whose supposedly overprotective mother won't let her outside, which makes a lot of sense once we find out that, the last time she did, the girl ate a cookie and had an allergic-reaction comedy of errors that ended with her getting a heart transplant. Thus, the immunocompromisedness. It doesn't stop the girl's boyfriend from paying her a visit, though, which leads to a mysterious allergic reaction no one can figure out the cause of. Then her heart starts to fail, and no one can figure that out, either. And then her body slowly becomes paralyzed and she's twenty minutes away from dying and still, no one can figure out what's wrong with her. The parents decide to cut their losses, run away from crazy useless Dr. House, and put their daughter under the care of the even more useless Cuddy and Wilson. Of course, House figures out that his patient is suffering from a now-standard case of Sex Punishmentitis as soon as he doesn't have the power to do anything about it and his credibility with the parents and Cuddy has been shot. That's why he has to trap her dying body in an elevator to be able to freely rifle around in her vagina, looking for the tick he's sure was introduced to it when her boyfriend shoved his pants up there while they were losing their virginity to each other in what must have also been a comedy of errors. Lo and behold, House finds it just in time to save her life. Meanwhile, Cameron sasses everyone, Foreman vainly tries to find someone who will listen to his story about a childhood illness, and Wilson pisses on House's couch.
We open on a teenager desperate to see his girlfriend after a week-long absence from her. Her mother lets him in to see her daughter, but he has to wash his hands for forty-five seconds first. Either Mom's got some OCD-by-proxy going on, or the daughter has immunity-system problems. The guy, named Dan (which I only know because I looked it up afterward, as I do for every other name on this show that never gets mentioned nearly enough for me to take note of it during the show), totally screws up his sterilization efforts when he sneezes at the conclusion of his handwashing, but Mom lets him into her daughter's room anyway, although he has to wear one of those sterile masks that SARS made so popular. The girl, played by Michelle "Dawn" Trachtenberg, here named Melinda, complains to him about how evil her mother won't let her out of the house unless it's to go to the hospital, and Dan quickly grows tired of the whining and starts staring at her boobs. This makes her self-conscious, since she has an impossibly small scar there from a recent heart transplant surgery, but she orders him to take his mask off so that they can make out anyway. That's when he notices that she's got some funky-looking hives on her arm. He asks her about them, but she doesn't answer. This is because she's rude, although it may also have something to do with her throat closing up, leaving her unable to breathe. Melinda handles the situation a lot better than I would, immediately going for a syringe in her dresser drawer, but panic soon sets in and she flails around, leaving Dan to have to try to inject her. Unfortunately for Melinda's chances of breathing anytime soon, he doesn't know how to and doesn't have time to learn. Melinda starts looking really unattractive with the eyes rolling back in her head, and I think Michelle Trachtenberg would have a promising future in zombie movies if she so desired. Suddenly, Mother runs into the room and saves her daughter's life, taking the time to accuse Dan of causing her attack.
After the credits, we get to spend a morning in House's apartment. He limps over to his oven and takes out the bunch of dirty dishes he hid in there in order to get out of doing them, which is never really a good plan when the dishes are in YOUR apartment and they're YOUR dishes. Just use all your doctor bucks to buy a dishwasher, House. Wilson enters and informs House that Cuddy called about a girl in anaphylactic shock -- a call House would have preferred that no one had answered. He gets his revenge, though, when Wilson sees that the sink is full of dirty dishes just in time for it to be his turn to do them. If I were Wilson, I'd just stick them right back into the oven for House to do tomorrow. Or wait for that maid to do them. Anyway, House takes a nice big swig out of bottle that is clearly and anally-retentive labeled "property of James Wilson" on it as Wilson says he knows that House doesn't want Wilson living with him, but that the apartment he was going to move into mysteriously fell through and all the rest of New Jersey's apartment building apparently don't have any vacancies. I mean, you'd think that a Chief of Oncology wouldn't have much trouble getting a place, but then, it's not like Wilson really wants to leave House or that House really wants Wilson to leave him. And now we go back to the real purpose of the show (sorry, Wilson/House lovers! But it's not actually their mysterious homoerotic relationship after all), as House asks Wilson what's so special about the little girl with allergies, and Wilson says that the girl is immunocompromised and was in an allergen-free room when she had her attack.
The case is so important that Cuddy joins the team for the differential diagnosis. Melinda's immunocompromise is only temporarily, the result of that heart transplant she had six months ago. Well, I am shocked that the Evil Transplant Committee Overlords would deign to let the girl have a heart after all those other people they've rejected. It makes more sense that Cuddy's there, though: she wants to make sure that the heart they gave out actually lasts. Plus, if Melinda dies, they can put "teenagers with allergies" on their long Recipient Reject list. House throws it over to her with the obligatory comment about her panties that Cuddy shrugs off like the cool lady she is. I really missed those two and their witty, if completely inappropriate for the workplace, repartee. She fills the group in that the patient has been at PPTH four days, undergoing every test under the sun, but that they've found nothing to trigger her allergic reaction. Chase suggests that Melinda might have an exercise allergy, which I refuse to believe actually exists. Being allergic to exercise is like being allergic to working for a living or allergic to homework. Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll be seeing it in a future episode. House likes this idea, simply because it allows him to describe their minor-child patient as a "nubile teenage nymphet," but Cuddy nixes it, saying that the Mother was in the room seconds after the attack occurred (although not so quickly that the girl wasn't about to pass out from lack of oxygen) and there was no funny business going on or anyone hastily pulling their pants up when she came in. House and the Cottages come up with the theory that either Dan brought in the allergen or the girl snuck out her room, or that the parents just didn't do a good enough job keeping the room sterile. Every option means that someone lied, since Dan, Melinda, and the parents have all denied these allegations so far. "These are your big ideas?" Cuddy sneers. "Somebody's lying?" Someone needs to check her out, since she's obviously having an amnesic attack wherein she's forgotten the last two seasons. House orders the Cottages to re-check all the people and the bedroom for allergens.
Parents, daughter, and boyfriend are assembled in the hospital room. Foreman asks them if they brought any new soap into the house, or if Melinda might have snuck out of it, which I'm sure she'll be happy to admit in front of her parents. Both charges are denied, Melinda adding her own commentary about how her parents keep her trapped in the house like a prisoner and she demands that Foreman tell her parents that she's better and can be let wild and free again, a request that might have a little more weight behind it if the requestor wasn't sitting in a hospital bed after almost dying a few days ago. Stupid. Foreman says that if they can find out what she's allergic to, then her chances of being freed from the confines of her bedroom are good, at which point Melinda snots an "I told you so" to her mother, who snots a "can I speak to your outside, please" to Foreman.
Out in the hall, Mom asks Foreman to lie to her daughter instead of giving her hope that she'll go outside soon. Foreman scoffs and tries to launch into a story of how his mother used to be overprotective, but Mom stops him and says that she knows that she's overprotective and she's seen Finding Nemo, although I don't know what that has to do with this situation, since it's not like Nemo had a heart transplant or allergies. Also, he was a fish. Michelle Trachtenberg does kind of have fish lips, but other than that I fail to see the comparison. ["He was also defective, with the one wee fin?" -- Wing Chun] Anyway, Foreman calls Mom "one of the most overprotective parents [he's] ever seen," which is impressive considering the fact that he's only seen her for about three seconds so far. Mom doesn't care what Foreman has to say, and she's got some pretty astounding facts to back her behavior up with: her daughter is severely allergic to a lot of things, for which she was hospitalized three times when she was younger. Six months ago, her parents left her home alone for a weekend for the first time, and Melinda took advantage of the opportunity to go out and immediately eat some peanut-infected chocolate cookies, forget her Epipen at home, try to drive herself to the hospital, pass out on the way there, and get in a car accident in the course of which the steering wheel crushed her chest and destroyed her original heart. My guess is that Melinda wasn't wearing her seat belt at the time because she's a freaking moron. Doesn't the Evil Transplant Committee have rules against giving hearts to stupid people? So Mom may be the most overprotective parent Foreman has ever seen, but she also has one of the dumbest children. I think they balance each other nicely.
Cameron and Chase search Melinda's bedroom. Cameron doesn't think they'll find much there, but Chase notices a window that doesn't have an alarm on it, and a nearby tree with some bark scraped off. Cameron tries to make a funny about how their recent heart transplant-getting patient must have used the tree to escape her room to hang out with Tarzan, like he would be caught dead in a tree in New Jersey unless it was for a WB show. And even then, he wouldn't take his shirt off. Chase suggests that they're looking at evidence that Melinda has had a few arboreal visitors.
It turns out that Chase knows the teenage male mind well, as Dan admits to recently spending the night with Melinda, although he insists that he did everything he could to keep her SAFE (titular line!). Chase mentions that Melinda may have a latex allergy, at which point Dan informs them that no latex was involved in their sex. Way to keep your girlfriend safe by having unsafe sex there, moron. Have fun with the allergy-ridden baby she'll bear you. This doesn't take Dan off the hook yet, though, since it turns out that you can be allergic to semen. Because sex is evil and it will kill you no matter what you do on this show. I'll never understand how House can get away with sleeping with a hooker (maybe), and Cameron and Chase can have weird drug sex, but everyone else on this show is stricken with semen allergies and sleeping sickness and heart gonorrhea when they try to do it. Surely there's some other way for disease to spread than sex, right? Let's see some of that in future shows, please. So Dan will have to provide the doctors with a sample of his goods to test (I'm not sure how this works -- will they rub some of it on Melinda's skin and see if she starts itching or something?). Chase hands him a container, and Cameron instructs him to "aim and shoot." Chase unnecessarily adds that Dan isn't allowed to think about Cameron when he's jacking off.
Dan heads off to do his thing in what I'm hoping is a private restroom, and Cameron immediately starts talking about how they need to tell Melinda's parents about their daughter's sinful activities. Chase, however, would rather let them find out when they get a bill for some guy's semen analysis and not have to tell them himself. For you see, unlike Dan, Chase can't produce semen, since he has no balls. That doesn't stop Cameron from quipping that if Chase were giving it instead of the kid, they would have been done by now. I guess she'd know.
Cameron informs House that Melinda is not allergic to semen after all. She also adds that Dan loves his girlfriend and did everything to keep her from getting sick (except for, you know, using a condom). House asks for clarification, and Cameron relishes the opportunity to deliberately misinterpret his question and explain what love is, comparing it to happiness before saying that she should have chosen a most relatable example. Damn, Cameron's sassing everyone today! "Oh, SNAP!" House That's So Ravens before telling Cameron that they need to to find out what, exactly, Dan meant when he said he took measures to keep Melinda from getting sick.
House enters Melinda's sterile room without being at all sterile and probably covered in allergens and demands to talk to Dan outside. He brings him to a private spot to talk, which is, of course, the room of our long-abused coma patient, who I hope will end the series by waking up and murdering the titular character. Not that I want House to die (usually), but that must be what this has been building up to. I'd also like to say that while I enjoy Coma Patient, it's upsetting that he's a more frequent guest on this show than Evil Nurse Brenda is. House asks Dan if he took any antibiotics before swapping fluids with Melinda, and Dan replies that he got some penicillin off his friend's dad and took it to kill off any germs he might spread to Melinda. Those two are made for each other. They should get stupid married and have stupid babies and live in happiness forever somewhere far away from where I live. For you see, Melinda has a penicillin allergy, and Dan didn't realize that penicillin "can go through your stuff." House says he knows this to be true, since whenever Cuddy gets sick, she takes her penicillin in House suppository form. Yet another line from House that gets the Ew and Hee Reaction award. Dan begs House not to tell Melinda that it was his fault she got sick. House agrees to this, which is probably not the smartest move (spoiler!).
Now that everyone is sure Melinda got sick from her boyfriend's penicillin sperm even though they haven't so much as checked what medicine Dan actually took or checked in with Melinda about it, they can feel free to release her, telling her parents only that the "set of circumstances" that got Melinda sick won't happen again. Mom understandably wants to know what those circumstances were, and it falls to Cameron to try to figure out a way to deflect those questions, which is never a good place for anyone to be. But fortunately for Cameron and unfortunately for Melinda, Melinda suddenly goes into respiratory distress, sparing Cameron from having to stutter out what was sure to be the worst excuse ever. Foreman and Cameron are about to stick Melinda with the epipen they're sure will cure her until she starts coughing up white sputum and her neck turns blue. Melinda isn't having an allergic reaction this time -- she's having heart failure!
Congestive Heart Failure, to be specific. Now the team, back at the Whiteboard, has to figure out what's causing the heart problems as well as if and/or how they're related to her recent allergic reaction. Foreman wants to assume that Melinda had the allergic reaction to the penicillin sperm and investigate the CHF as a separate incident. He tries to write on the Whiteboard O'Symptoms to clarify his point, but House stops him, telling him that he may not have come up with the name "whiteboard," but that he's all about following its rules. Oh, shut up, House. I mean, why don't they just have him put on a white sheet and a pointy hat and burn a cross on some minority person's lawn already? And then he can make a witty comment about it and we can love him some more and talk about how hot he looked in that tight white sheet. At least this time Foreman gets to get his own back by asking if he can use the BLACK marker, since no one, including House, has any idea what could cause both heart failure and an allergic reaction, which automatically means Foreman was right to focus on just the heart failure. Chase and Cameron find their tongues and provide heart-failure causes while House sits back and ponders.
While Melinda gets an MRI of DOOOM!, Foreman makes fun of Cameron for being a prude about teen sex. At least she isn't writing TV shows that punish sex with horrible painful near-fatal illnesses, though. They do pay attention to their patient long enough to pronounce her heart free of coronary-artery disease.
Foreman tells Melinda this (apparently, her super-overprotective 'round-the-clock monitoring mother went off to get a coffee), and also that they think she either has an infection, or organ-rejection issues that she can look forward to a barrage of tests for. Melinda's brain, apparently compensating for her loss of a working heart and making her intelligent for the first time, figures out that Melinda is probably going to lose her new heart. Foreman assures her that she'll keep her heart for decades of healthy, happy life, which I wouldn't say without knowing for sure that she wasn't in the middle of rejecting it. Melinda informs him that her mother's protectiveness does not extend to the internet, so she's done her research on heart transplants. They only last an average of five to ten years. Oh ho ho! Looks like Foreman was so busy hating on Melinda's mom for "infantilizing" her daughter that he didn't realize that he was doing the same exact thing to her with his overly optimistic outlook! Melinda whines that since she doesn't have much life left in her, she'd like to be doing something better with it than sitting in her sterile bedroom. I agree with this until she says she wants to go to high school, which is probably more of a waste of one's precious life minutes than anything else. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the bedroom window, though.
Cuddy and Foreman speed-walk down the hall after seeing that Melinda didn't take any of her street clothes with her when she escaped, meaning that she's still in the hospital somewhere. Or she's following her usual pattern of incredible stupidity and has gone out into the cold April air wearing only a thin hospital robe so that she can get pneumonia and have to get both lungs transplanted. Foreman uses his psychic link with Melinda to figure out that she's on the roof, and takes to the staircase to retrieve her. There he finds Melinda, perched on the top stairs, afraid to actually go on the roof. "I hate her," Melinda says. Did she run into Stacy on the roof? Or Season 1 Cameron? Foreman takes a seat to her instead of immediately taking her sick ass back to her hospital bed, and starts to tell the same story about his childhood that he tried to tell Melinda's mother. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree of not caring about other people's life stories, though, as Melinda interrupts him to say that her mother was this overprotective before her transplant and that, if anything, the heart transplant just gave her mother the ammo she needed to keep Melinda indoors. Foreman gently suggests that there's a time and a place to be a typical whiny rebellious teenage girl who resents her mother, and that recovering from heart failure isn't exactly it. Melinda says she was too scared to go out on the roof when she had the chance, meaning that she's internalized everything her mother has said to her about the dangers of the outdoors. Foreman takes her hands and leads her back down the stairs to her room as he wonders if Chase will be willing to listen to his childhood-illness story. Cameron isn't an option, of course, since she surely has a sob story about a childhood illness that either she or her Poor Dead Husband suffered from that will trump Foreman's. Melinda walks down the stairs ahead of Foreman, allowing him to notice that she's dragging her left foot behind her.
We cut to Melinda on an examining table, the parents she hates at her side. Foreman says that Melinda has "stoppage gait," which is "not necessarily" serious. So obviously, she's doomed. Indeed, the muscles above Melinda's knee start spasming, which Foreman says means that Melinda's stoppage gait is actually ascending paralysis of unknown origin.
After the commercial, Melinda's paralysis is spreading quickly up her leg. House studies the Whiteboard and mutters that if they couldn't link the heart failure and the anaphylaxis to each other, then they certainly won't be able to link heart failure, anaphylaxis, and paralysis. Cameron offers up a diagnosis of tick paralysis that everyone laughs at, since they didn't find a tick anywhere on Melinda's body and they've already explained the anaphylaxis away with the penicillin sperm. Foreman wants to pretend that the heart failure and anaphylaxis didn't happen and concentrate solely on the paralysis, since that will kill her first -- a tactic that worked so well when he tried to do it for her heart failure before. Everyone offers up a few suggestions, including old favorite Guillain-Barré, and House orders up a bunch of tests to check for all of them. He even admits that Foreman is right that they need to figure out what's causing the paralysis, which shocks the Cottages into speechless amazed stares, for which House promptly makes fun of them all.
The tests are performed, and they don't look like fun. Foreman tells Melinda's mother that the only thing they found out is that Melinda's paralysis is getting worse, and that they've ruled out everything except Guillain-Barré, which Foreman is happy to report can be cured with plasma electrophoresis, a process that I'd take the time to explain if we didn't all know it won't work, since there are still twenty-five minutes left in the show.
House returns home to find Wilson waiting for him, his arms crossed angrily, his weight shifting impatiently. He demands to know why all the voicemail messages his would-be landlord claims to have left last week were mysteriously erased. I'd say it's because Wilson gave the landlord the house number of the guy he was staying with instead of his personal cell-phone number. House says he has decided that he wants Wilson to stay with him and not move out to his own place -- delivering this speech as he touches his own penis. No, not that way -- he's taking a piss. And, in true man fashion, he's doing it with the door open while having a conversation with another guy. The realism is compromised, though, by the fact that House's pee is completely silent, just like it was during last week's public peeing display. These seem to be becoming a weekly feature, even more frequent than those Clinic patients I miss so much. More frequent that Cuddy's appearances, for that matter. Anyway, House is most displeased that Wilson did not put plastic wrap all over the toilet seat, since he apparently enjoys mopping piss up off his floor. Wilson shouts that he's not about to start acting like an eighteen-year-old in a college dorm by doing pranks most eight-year-olds are too mature for. And haven't we all already seen The Parent Trap? Do we really need to see another English person faking an American accent and setting prank booby traps? Wilson doesn't; he says he'll be looking for an apartment tomorrow. House doesn't think Wilson will be looking for a place at all, since getting his own apartment will mean that his marriage really is over, and House doesn't think Wilson wants to accept that yet. Except for the fact that Wilson already had his own place until House sabotaged it. "Everything sucks. Might as well find something to smile about," House concludes. Wise words indeed from a guy who covers his guests in honey and feathers while they sleep.
Over at PPTH, Melinda isn't getting any better after her first electrophoresis session. "Why do these things keep happening to me?" she wonders. I can't vouch for the latest medical crisis, but I would have to say that maybe if you hadn't eaten that cookie and forgotten to bring your medicine for your deadly allergies along with you, you would have at least avoided the heart transplant, hmm? Dan watches from the other side of the glass, but Melinda doesn't want to see him. She just wants the Mommy that she claimed to hate so much.
Later, Foreman and Mom share a moment during which she makes it clear that she never wanted her daughter to be sick like this after all her efforts to keep her safe, a line that didn't make much sense except that it throws in a little Munchausen's-by-proxy red herring. Melinda loses control of her throat muscles and can no longer breathe. Chase and Foreman have to intubate.
Foreman and Chase call House at home and tell him that Melinda's condition has worsened too quickly for her to have Guillian-Barré. When House finds out that Cuddy is now in charge of Melinda's case after Melinda's parents "lost confidence" in House and his team, he says he'll be right in. But first, he must take the time to place sleeping Wilson's hand in a pot of water. Gee, I can't imagine why the Melindarents wouldn't have faith in a guy who'd rather make his friend pee in his sleep than rush to their dying daughter's aid.
Early in the morning, the Cottages wonder if Melinda has been poisoned somehow, due to the rapid onset of her paralysis. The Munchausen's red herring rears its head again! But then everyone remembers that the poisoning storyline was last week, and they forget about it. House thinks they should look at the patient herself. She's so stubborn that she found a way to have sex with her boyfriend right under her overprotective mother's nose, which House tastefully refers to as Dan "bringing the hot beef." I really want to know how lines like that get past the censors, but we aren't allowed to hear a guy pee into a toilet. Maybe, House reasons, Melinda's stubbornness extended to eating food filled with botulism, even though this was already dismissed as an option since botulism paralysis is descending, and Melinda's is ascending. They can find out for sure by injecting a rat with Melinda's blood and watching it die, although House will not allow them to use Steve McQueen for this. While they do that, House will go interrogate Melinda on her eating habits until she cracks and admits to something.
House finds Cuddy and Wilson already hovering over his former patient to check for spinal lesions, which House scoffs at, since he's already brilliantly deduced what's wrong with Melinda and there's no need for anyone to do anything else now. He takes the breathing tube out of Melinda's mouth while Cuddy stands there staring in horror but not actually doing anything to stop him. As usual. House asks Melinda if she's eaten anything she wasn't supposed to lately, specifically something that came from a can that was previously featured in the clearance aisle of the Five Cent Store. Of course, we all know that the botulism is also a red herring here, since Stacy has obviously injected all botulism in the state of New Jersey into her forehead to achieve that perfect wrinkle- and emotion-free face. But House continues to ask Melinda about her diet, wondering if her boyfriend brought some treats over when he visited her that night to have sex. "Surprise!" House sing-songs to the shocked parents standing nearby. Melinda denies it, but he keeps asking, listing off a variety of sexy edible products that could have gotten her sick. But when she hears that they explained away her anaphylaxis with the penicillin sperm, she informs them that Dan didn't have any penicillin in his sperm after all; Dan had taken a non-penicillin antibiotic, which Melinda somehow knows because I guess she's super-tight with Dan's friend's dad. This means that they have three symptoms after all -- heart failure, paralysis, and the anaphylactic shock. They must be connected...and Cameron's throwaway suggestion of tick paralysis is the only thing that fits. Well, well, well!
Melinda confirms that Dan would have walked through tall grass when he came to her window, and House, after being so sure three seconds ago that his patient had botulism, announces that they're looking for a tick now. He goes over all the likely tick areas looking for the tick that must have been transferred from Dan's pant leg onto Michelle's body, but he finds nothing except some dandruff. Great; call out the poor girl's dry scalp problems, too. It's not like she doesn't have anything else to worry about. Then Melinda's heart rate starts falling, and Cuddy pronounces the "magical tick hunt" over. House optimistically says that Melinda will be dead within the hour no matter what Cuddy does to save her heart, unless House can find and remove that tick. The parents consider that House could be right, but they still won't assent to letting him take over for Cuddy, who asks Wilson to chip in and help her out before her patient dies. He simply says that the dopamine they're giving Melinda for her falling BP won't be enough, and that they'll need to bring her up to the ICU for some other drug with a long-ass name. House and Wilson exchange looks.
A team of medical people wheel Melinda into the elevator, only to find House there blocking their entry. He refuses to leave and Cuddy doesn't have time to call Security, so when Foreman assures her that he can handle House just fine, she lets him take care of it. The elevator doors close, leaving us in an elevator with only three people in it, one of whom is dying and unresponsive, another of whom is an asshole on a mission to find a tick, and the last of which is black. Hey, if House gets to call out Foreman's blackness all the time, then I can, too. Predictably, House immediately shuts off the elevator so that he can look for the tick. Foreman isn't going for it, but his attempt to turn the elevator back on is thwarted when House expertly fends his approach off with his cane. Meanwhile, Melinda's dying even worse than before. Foreman says that they need to take care of Melinda's heart before they can worry about an invisible tick, an approach that worked so well when Foreman tried to do that with Melinda's paralysis and managed not to cure her at all. House says that they have to take care of the underlying cause first, and Foreman finally agrees, injecting Melinda with some atropine that will temporarily keep her heart rhythm up. This gives House three minutes to find the tick.
Melinda's parents, followed by Cuddy and other medical personnel, reach the ICU floor to find that their patient hasn't arrived yet. Cuddy knows exactly what's going on and orders a nurse to call maintenance. If I were Melinda's parents, I think I would have pried the elevator doors open and jumped down the shaft and into the elevator with my daughter in it, so pissed off would I be.
Meanwhile, House and Foreman desperately search Melinda for ticks.
Maintenance has arrived in record time and inform everyone that the elevator stopped because someone inside it made it stop. Which means that PPTH's elevators are working just fine, even if its staff is not.
Melinda's heart rate has dropped into the danger zone. Foreman doesn't want to wait to get her to ICU any longer, and reactivates the elevator. Now that we're at the most suspenseful point, House gets an idea as to where a tick could be hiding on Melinda's body where no one thought to look. "All the other stuff going on down there, she might not've realized," he says, whisking away the sheet over Melinda's lower half and setting up to do a pelvic exam.
And so, when the elevator door finally opens, Cuddy, Wilson, and Melinda's parents see House, the guy who had all those questions for their daughter about edible underwear and massage oils, buried face-deep in her vagina. Dad pauses just long enough before charging House to give him time to find and remove the tick from poor Melinda's vagina. We get to see a nice close-up of the tick, too, in its blood-filled, paralysis-causing glory. I just want to know how, exactly, it got in there. Don't ticks attach themselves to the first piece of skin they encounter? And yet, this guy decided to be all picky and crawled all the way up Melinda's leg and into her vagina before settling down! It's either that or Dan was really confused about how to have sex and had his tick-covered pant leg stuffed up there at one point. He is dumb enough for this to be possible, from what we've seen of him.
Now that the tick has been removed, Melinda should make a full recovery. She's whisked away to ICU as House and Wilson walk away, triumphant. For you see, Wilson's suggestion of giving Melinda that stuff in the ICU was just a ploy to get House and Melinda into the elevator together to give House extra time to find the tick. Wilson is extra-triumphant, since the filing halfway through House's cane he did sometime last night finally worked and House's cane snaps in two, causing him to fall spectacularly. I'd ordinarily feel sorry for the guy for having such an embarrassing public display of his disability, but he did just put that tick in what was probably a cup of juice some poor patient will swallow, so I'm okay with laughing at his misfortune. The rest of the hallway population seem to agree with me, as they just stare at House and don't even try to help him.
Sometime later, Melinda has made an amazingly quick recovery. Foreman pronounces her ready to be discharged, much to her delight. Her mother has learned a lesson too, as she tells Melinda that she'll be going back to school in a few days. Melinda suddenly remembers how much school sucks and says she isn't ready. "You're ready," says Mom.
House comes home and takes a seat on the couch to Wilson. They put their legs up on the coffee table in unison, and Wilson says he finally called a divorce lawyer. He adds that House "might not want to sit exactly there" on the couch, since that's presumably the spot where Wilson peed on it after House put his hand in the water in a prank that totally backfired on him.