A blonde and a brunette are playing tennis. No, this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke. The brunette grabs her chest and collapses to the court from an apparent heart attack. Told you, no punchline.
Everybody, watch out for the guy operating the crane and hoisting the very big, very heavy trailer over the construction site, because he’s about to die too.
A mixed martial artist, fighting vigorously to keep or take a championship title, suddenly gets KO’ed by a silent assassin inside his own body.
The tuba typically kills only when listened to, but in this case it’s the musician who’s coughing up blood before keeling over.
What do these four people have in common? They all received organ transplants from the same donor. Thirteen catches a Math teacher with a corneal transplant before she can join the list and immediately brings her to Princeton-Plainsboro for observation and treatment. Old New Eye’s roommate in ICU is an elderly gentleman dying some five years after his intestinal graft.
In the morgue, Foreman relates the transplant histories and causes of death for the aforementioned deceased: the tennis player received a new kidney but she dies from an exploding heart; the construction worker received the donor’s heart and a lung but his own liver kills him; and the tuba player got a liver from the donor but dies from funky lungs. We don’t what the fighter received, but he dies from a herniated brain stem. Ouch!
Kutner suggests arrhythmia or a massive pulmonary embolism or a cerebral bleed or an autoimmune disease – he’s keeping his options open. Taub thinks it might be an infection that slipped through the donor screening process. Thirteen breaks out the big guns and mentions the “C” word. Foreman quickly rejects cancer since different organ systems have been affected. House, who’s been not so quietly pining for his lost buddy in a corner, jumps on the cancer train – could it be because he’s looking for any excuse to talk to oncologist Wilson? Why were they ever friends, he ponders. Kutner succinctly sums up their relationship: (a) Wilson paid for House’s lunch every day; (b) Wilson shared House’s love of monster trucks; and (c) Wilson served as House’s conscience.
To soothe his heartache, House goes shopping for a Wilson replacement in the hospital cafeteria. He chases down a fellow doctor, gently suggesting the guy pay for his lunch and inviting him back to his place to watch soaps and stuff. The doctor points out to House that he’s not gay. Foreman interrupts the flirting with news that Old New Eye’s right eye is failing, an anomaly considering the transplanted organs of all the other recipients were fine.
After an exam reveals that Old New Eye’s vision is impaired, Foreman insists that they remove the eye to save her life. However, House doesn’t believe there’s a problem with the organ itself because the patient didn’t squint while reading the wrong letters; he surmises that the problem is in her brain which thinks the eye can see although it can’t. And her violent hallucination of House waving a cleaver at her head seems to satisfy that diagnosis.
While watching a tape of the ultimate fighter’s last bout in order to detect any symptoms of a non-concussive brain disorder, the team is infiltrated by an obnoxious coffee machine repairman wearing argyle socks in construction boots. Turns out the strange stranger is a private eye House hired to discover info about the organ donor that the team may not be able to find. Clearly he’s a better investigator than undercover agent because he reveals that the donor had recently traveled to Madrid and the Bahamas on his secret girlfriend’s dime. Donor’s lover is his high school sweetheart who’s currently married to his best friend, Donor may be the father of her young daughter, said illegitimate child is suffering from a tummy ache, and Donor has been exposed to mercury and mold. And the private eye has footage of the ultimate fight from four different angles spliced together for a hefty price. This private dick really is one. A dick, that is. Right up House’s alley – possible new partner-in-crime #2.
From Private Dick’s new fight footage, House is able to see that the fighter’s pupils were dilated at the time of his collapse. This news makes him want to biopsy Old New Eye’s temporal lobe. Taub reminds him that she won’t be much good to them or anyone else if she’s a vegetable, so House turns to her roommate because he’s fairly old and obviously dying. He sends Taub to seek permission from the old man’s wife who promptly refuses the risky procedure. Old New Eye begs her to change her mind by pretending to have a husband and 2-year old daughter waiting for her at home. But the old girl’s too astute for that and calls attention to the fact that Old New Eye hasn’t received any phone calls or visits since being admitted. Wow, lying to save her life at the expense of another’s – there are quite a few potential House-mates this episode.
During the argument between Old New Eye and the wife, the old man goes into respiratory distress. Taub performs an emergency tracheotomy, but the patient codes. Since they don’t need permission for an autopsy, the team biopsies his brain but finds nothing. House continues to insist that it’s cancer, but Foreman finally calls him on his Wilson infatuation. Where to go from here? How about performing a colonoscopy on a completely alert 4-year old? They bring in Donor’s daughter but she’s clean as well.
Kutner thinks the cause of illness might be a bacterial infection spread through a vascular anomaly in the intestinal wall. In order to prove his theory, he devises a method to check for leaks in the old man’s dead bowel: he pumps highly pressurized water jets through his intestines and uses an endoscope to visually examine the intestinal wall. No perforation detected, until he turns up the water jets and explodes guts all over Foreman. Gross, they got in his mouth!
House joins Private Dick on a stakeout in an ice cream van where he learns a surprising revelation: apparently, he didn’t really hire Dick to investigate Donor; what he really wants is for Dick to investigate Wilson. At least this is according to Dick who certainly wants to get paid for a new assignment.
Back at Princeton-Plainsboro, Old New Eye is getting worse so House visits her with a chemotherapy consent form. She reveals to House that she wasn’t always a half-blind, dying Math teacher; she used to be a totally blind architect with a tainted view of the world after receiving the “gift” of sight. House takes note.
Chemotherapy appears to cure her, but once the team is finally convinced she has cancer House does a 180 and tells them it’s not a toomah (sorry, bad Ahnuld impression). So, what waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and feels like cancer? House visits Wilson to get his sage advice and just one glimpse. But Wilson isn’t remotely interested in humoring his ex-friend. Their creepy exchange is caught by the bugs Private Dick planted in Wilson’s apartment. Dick meets House on the street after his aborted attempt at rekindling his relationship with Wilson, and he provides House with a little inspiration to solve the case.
House goes to Cuddy with an MRI of Old New Eye’s brain and asks her if she can grant permission for him to cut her head open. She refuses and tells him the patient will stay on cancer treatment. To ensure her directive is met, she posts two security guards outside Old New Eye’s room. This doesn’t stop House from sending Private Dick in under the guise of a male nurse (with argyle socks) to switch her IV bags for saline. When her health declines, she is sent into surgery.
The problem with Old New Eye and all the other organ recipients turns out to be tainted cells from Donor’s tissue. Cancer stem cells adapt to their new environments by differentiating into various surrounding organ cells. However, the bad cells prevent the organs from performing their jobs properly. Old New Eye received a bad eye that sent stem cells to her brain and made her see the world in a distorted fashion. After surgery, House unwraps her bandages and Old New Eye finally sees the truth: that the world is not as ugly as she thinks and that House is a sad and lonely man.
Next Week: Wilson gets jealous when he catches House and Private Dick at the monster truck rally… Just kidding, I went to the bathroom and missed next week’s preview. Guess I’ll have to wait and see.
