House Forever

09-06-2006 08:55

The team treat a mother and infant, while also having concerns about Foreman and Cuddy. Concerned father Brent Mason rushes his wife Kara and 4-week old baby Michael into hospital after Kara has a seizure in the bathtub with the baby. But House dismisses the case as too boring – he is more interested in Foreman, who has just returned to work. Sceptical that he has completely recovered from his debilitating deep brain biopsy, House asks him to make coffee, and notices that he is having difficulty.

Cameron recruits House back to the Masons’ case by pointing out that the ER has ruled out the obvious explanations for Kara’s seizure, and Chase reports that Brent has a stomach bug which could be relevant to the diagnosis. However, he can’t contribute further as he is stuck on neo-natal intensive care duty, where his patients include the partially drowned baby Michael. Despite Cuddy’s protests to the contrary, House deduces that Chase requested his new assignment. Has he decided to leave House’s team for good?

Foreman and Cameron test the couple but find no link between them. They discuss Foreman’s recovery, and he reveals that he is just happy to be alive and with a future in medicine. Even if he never makes a complete recovery, he will still be able to teach. Elsewhere, mother and baby get worse – one of Michael’s lungs collapses, and Kara becomes completely rigid as all her muscles tense up. Foreman suggests that Kara has meningitis.

House orders the relevant tests and then baldly asks Chase why he doesn’t want to work for him. Chase replies that he needs a break, but House doesn’t believe him. What is going on? Although Kara doesn’t have meningitis, Cameron finds that she is bleeding into her brain and recommends they should put her into a coma. As the Masons met at Alcoholics Anonymous, she suspects Kara has regressed since having Michael. Foreman instead suggests Kara has post-natal stress which has manifested as a physical disorder, but he soon abandons this theory when House supports Cameron – much to House’s wrath. He orders Foreman to stand up for his opinions, but Foreman replies that he is a changed man.

The doctors reunite mother and baby before Kara is put into the coma, but when House looks into her room, he finds her smothering Michael. Foreman pulls her away as House revives the child, but the lack of oxygen has caused kidney damage. In her room, Kara tells Cameron that voices told her that Michael would be better off dead. Cameron wonders if Kara faked her seizure when Brent caught her trying to drown the baby. They induce another seizure so they can establish whether this is the case, and Cameron notices that Kara’s brain activity is slowing down, indicating it can’t be long before it shuts down entirely. While they put Kara into the coma to buy extra time, baby Michael suffers a heart attack. Although Chase tries to shock him back, he fails.

Foreman pulls Kara out of her coma to break the news that Michael is dead. She wails in agony and then vomits blood. Whatever Kara has is getting worse. House talks Brent into letting him autopsy Michael to see if there is a link between their conditions. Cameron realises that neither of them are able to process gluten. Each time gluten was introduced to Kara’s body, her intestines were damaged until they couldn’t receive vitamins and minerals, which then caused all her other symptoms. However, Kara feels so guilty about killing her own son that she refuses treatment. Can House browbeat her into saving her own life?

Also this week, Cuddy asks Wilson to dinner, prompting House to suspect that she’s up to something. He searches her rubbish bin and finds she is taking a drug that is used to treat cancer. The doctors suspect that Cuddy does not want a date but a consultation – but her true objective surprises both of them...