House: Adverse Events
October 7th 2008 04:47
Artist Brandon Haggerty finishes his painting of a woman and shows it to her and her husband. They’re both appalled and storm out. Their check better be returned…Brandon’s girlfriend, Heather, comes downstairs to see what’s going on. Why were they so upset? Brandon has no idea. He tells her they just saw the painting and freaked out. Heather picks up the painting and sees why. The woman looks like a warmed circus funhouse mirror picture.
~*~*~
Cuddy approaches House and his PI, Lucas, “Is this him?” Yes. I mean no. She tells House that the hospital will no longer be paying for his Private Investigator with fake invoices. If House wants a PI, he’s going to have to pay for it himself.
Lucas tells Cuddy he likes her shoes. She stares at him funny, but “thanks…” and House corrects that he doesn’t like her shoes, he likes her legs.
Lucas: Sounds less creepy that way.
House: Less creepy, more gay.
Lucas: That’s my firm’s motto.
~*~*~
The team stares at Bandon’s paintings and try to come up with a diagnosis that would explain them. His other paintings look normal. Foreman: The acute onset visual agnosia could mean a stroke or brain tumor. Taub: the MRI revealed neither. Thirteen: Brandon’s illness could be environmental. They should check his studio for toxins, mold and fungus.
House comes in, informing them all that he’s running background checks on everyone. He wonders why Thirteen would pay 12% interest on a car lone, produces proof that Kutner crawled 20 miles (his name’s in the Guinness Book of World Records, and no, he didn’t do it to get the babes), and couldn’t find anything on Taub. Taub’s wife, however…Foreman cuts in to get them back to the case.
~*~*~
Brandon is reluctant to do the tests, but finally signs the paper. Taub and Kutner go through his studio and can’t seem to find any traces of mold or fungus. Kutner asks if House found out anything about Taub’s wife, and he says no there’s nothing for him to find. Kutner thinks he’d want to know if his wife was cheating. He tells Taub about the “inverse square rule”. “The girls who you think are straight arrows, those you think are inhibited? Those are the ones you hook up with.”
~*~*~
House stares at Bandon’s MRI images, intrigued by the fact that there is a neurological symptom with no apparent neurological cause. Which means it must be drugs or toxins. Taub points out that House called Thirteen a moron when she suggested drugs. Yeah, he “really just wanted a segue way into her stupid loan.” Plus when she said it she had other options.
Forman wonders if a cavernous angioma in the brain could leak. “Once the blood gets reabsorbed, the pressure goes down and the symptoms go away.” Thirteen points out that Brandon definitely won’t consent to a petrosal vein sampling since he didn’t even want to do the injection of contrast.
House asks if his girlfriend is hot. Yes. “Well that explains why all his paintings suck.” He starts to leave and tells Thirteen to tell Brandon he has a brain tumor.
Thirteen: But he doesn’t.
House: I know that I’m not a moron.
~*~*~
House walks into Brandon’s room. “You seem to have a massive brain tumor.”
Brandon asks who he is and Thirteen runs in to tell him “he’s Dr. House. He’s pleased to meet you.” House tells him that they’re going to need to slice his head open. It’s risky, but necessary. Brandon just looks at him. “No.”
House: Wrong answer.
He points out that there are only two reasons someone wouldn’t be terrified in a hospital: You’re delusional, or you know you’re fine. Since they haven’t told him he’s fine, that must means he’s hiding something. House asks him what drugs he’s on and Thirteen cuts in that his tests were fine.
Brandon finally admits to undergoing clinical studies for three untested drugs. His girlfriend doesn’t know. House thinks he’ll be fine once whatever he took gets out of his system.
~*~*~
Taub finally demands to know what House has discovered about his wife. House finally tells him that his wife has been making weekly cash deposits to a separate bank account. One that’s in her name only. She’s been doing it for about a year. No withdrawals yet.
Taub: That’s it? A bank account?
House: A secret bank account.
Taub: What makes you think that it’s a secret?
House: Because if it wasn’t you’d call it “The Bank Account”.
No, they’re just refurnishing and he didn’t have time to make it to the bank. They set up a separate bank account. House can’t believe someone would spend almost $100,000 on furniture.
Suddenly, both their pagers go off. Brandon is seizing and his girlfriend demands to know what’s wrong with him.
House: She is hot.
~*~*~
Kutner tells them that none of the three test drugs Brandon was talking would cause him to seize. “Alone,” House points out. Who knows what they could do to him when combined. The drugs were each designed for something separately: an anticoagulant, an autoimmune treatment drug, and an anti-conversant. Kutner thinks it’s so wrong for pharmaceutical companies to test their potentially dangerous drugs for money.
“Just to short circuit that discussion,” House says, still walking down the hall. People should not be testing drugs because their desperate, BUT, people won’t test drugs less their desperate. And we need drugs to save children and puppies, ergo we need desperate people, ergo welfare kills sick children.”
Taub tells Kutner that his wife has another bank account that “House doesn’t think I know about.”
House orders a dialysis to clear out Brandon’s system.
~*~*~
Brandon tells Taub and Thirteen that he doesn’t want to lose his girlfriend, so he doesn’t want to tell her about the dialysis. Thirteen doesn’t understand, but Taub explains that he just wants her to be happy. Outside in the hallway, Thirteen realizes that Taub didn’t know about his wife’s secret bank account. So what’s he going to do? Nothing. It’s not like she’s sleeping around and she hasn’t even spent any of the money, so he’s going to leave it alone. Nobody has a that perfect storybook-ending relationship. “She makes me happy, I make her happy and it works. Because we don’t do storybook.”
~*~*~
Taub tells House he was right about the dialysis. House points out that he’ll be right later in his office in front of everyone else, so there must be another reason Taub is there. Yes, there is. "You can screw with me all you want at work, but stay out of my personal life,” Taub tells him.
House: What did she say?
Taub: Did you not hear what I just said?
House asks if he wants his advice. No. Good, because he has no idea what he should do. But he thinks Taub will forgive her for opening the account and then confess everything he’s done, then beg her to forgive him. Taub doesn’t see how that could possibly do any good, and House just reminds him that he’s not saying that he should do it, just that he knows Taub is going to.
House steps into the elevator alone. Lucas starts talking to him in his ear mic. He’s six miles away? Wow, these things are cool. Lucas, on the other hand, feels like an idiot.
Lucas: I’m not giving you any more of my stuff.
House: Do you have any of those night vision goggles?
Lucas: No.
House: You’re lying.
Lucas thinks he likes making people miserable. Lucas is actually sitting outside Cuddy’s office. She walks out, spots him apparently talking to his newspaper, and awkwardly backs back into her office. Lucas doesn’t see her. He’s too busy asking House why he’s determined to make Taub miserable. "Miserable people save more lives," House answers. "If your life has meaning your job doesn't have to have meaning." Lucas points out that Taub left his other job to save his marriage. Oh yeah…House never thought about that one.
~*~*~
Meanwhile, Brandon’s head and neck have ballooned. Foreman and Kutner struggle to hook up an ambu bag, but he can’t find any landmarks in his neck to find his trachea. Kutner tells him to just start cutting. Foreman slices through Brandon’s neck. “Got it.” He reaches his finger in, causing clear fluid to leak forth. Foreman inserts the trach tube so Brandon can breathe. Unfortunately he is still very swollen.
~*~*~
The team meets up.
Brandon’s face is so swollen it’s squeezed his tear ducts shut. They’re treating him with steroids, IV, and cream to reduce the swelling but they don’t know what else to do. His blood pressure crashed and his heart rate is intermittently tachycardic. He’s tested negative for angioneurotic edema, thrombosis, and Chagas. Forman suggests his immune system is just on hyperdrive in a “cytokine storm.” House wonders why anyone would pay for a three year gym membership and only go twice.
They all stare at him. “Sorry. You guys still diagnosis? I thought we finished that hours ago,” he tells them. He thinks it’s just the “unproven, unapproved cocktail of dangerous drugs he's been taking like, well a cocktail.” They don’t really think it's just a coincidence that three new symptoms cropped up as soon as they took him off the drugs, do they? House tells them that either the drugs are the answer or are a coincidence. They need to find a better way to detox him. How? Put him back on the drugs and then wean him off of them.
Everyone looks to Foreman.
House: Why are you looking at him?
Foreman: Try it out.
House: You heard the boss, go!
They get up to leave.
House: Taub—
Taub: I didn’t talk to her.
~*~*~
Cuddy spots a strange man in a baseball cap reading a newspaper and goes over and pushes the paper down. “Why are you—”
“Excuse me?” The stranger asks, giving her an annoyed look.
Cuddy apologizes and goes back into her office, where she finds Lucas going through her desk.
Lucas: He does look like me doesn’t he?
Cuddy: You gave him your hat.
Lucas: I needed you out of here so I could go through your desk.
Of course. He tells her he really likes that color on her. When Cuddy starts to complain about House and his spying, Lucas tells her that it’s not House, it’s him. He thought he’d ask her out, but he didn’t know what she liked, so he thought he’d—“Spy on me?” Cuddy interrupts. No, he thinks of it more like research. He thinks it’s better to get to know more about a woman before he asks her out, shows her he cares.
“As romantic as you make that sound,” Cuddy tells him. “I’m pretty sure that what you’re doing? Not so much caring as creepy.”
He tells her that he didn’t find anything she wouldn’t tell a coworker in the elevator. He’s not a creep, he just found her interesting. Okay, he’ll go now.
Lucas gets up from her desk and holds up some roses. “It’s uh…” he just sets them down and walks out. Cuddy is confused. Lucas stops at the door. “I’ll give you embarrassing info about House!”
“In exchange for…?”
No need for a date. In that case he’d be working for her then, and could find out all about her that way.
Cuddy: And I’d be paying you.
No, Lucas thinks it’s “all cool”, she’ll get lots of information to use as leverage against House. He thinks she needs help managing House? Uh, no. He’ll be going now.
Cuddy calls out after him that the hospital can’t afford it, and Lucas is quick to tell her whatever she can afford is fine. She can’t help but ask how he knew she liked roses.
“I was in your house last night.” At her look, he quickly tells her, “I’m kidding!” Most women like roses, right?
~*~*~
At dinner that night, Taub finally asks his wife about the bank account. She tells him she was using it to buy the car he wanted.
~*~*~
Thirteen tells him he’s drug free now. As she finishes sewing up Brandon’s trach tube hole, he licks her neck and yanks her down into the bed to get on top of her. Thirteen hits him in the nose with her elbow. “What are you doing?!” His knows starts to bleed as nurses come running.
Forman shows up. “What happened to his face?”
“Question is what happened to his hormones?” Thirteen calls for an icepack.
~*~*~
The team is bouncing ideas of each other, and Taub finally tells House that his wife was buying him a car. Taub tells House he owes him an apology. House just tells him that nothing he said actually applies. Nobody had to forgive anyone, did they?
Foreman diagnoses Kluver-Bucy Syndrome with bilateral lesions in the temporal lobes based on the visual agnosia and hypersexuality. Kluver-Bucy might not explain the seizure or cytokine storm, Foreman still thinks that the damage can be s circulatory issue rather than a structural one.
~*~*~
House goes home to find Lucas going through his things in his closet. Lucas wonders why a man who can’t run has so many pairs of sneakers. He tells House that he needs to find something embarrassing about him. House points out that once he finds something Cuddy won’t need him anymore. Lucas tells him that he likes her. "I spend half my life negotiating with that woman," House tells him. "Anything I can use to scare her into saying yes."
Lucas: You’re doing this for the same reason I’m doing this. We’ll see who gets there first.
~*~*~
Turns out the experimental drugs caused an arrhythmia in Brando, which triggered the low blood pressure. As Taub continues to try and connect head and heart, House just points out that although they do both start with the same three letters, it’s the end that’s the important part. Taub just points out that when combined with the narrow vessels, Brandon’s brain wasn't getting enough blood. That caused all his symptoms. If the doctors can trigger the arrhythmia and identify it, they may be able to stop it from killing him.
House: Been home?
Taub: No.
House: Good. Find me the arrhythmia.
~*~*~
As they’re wheeling Brandon down the hall, Taub tries to convince Brandon to tell Heather the truth about the drug trials.
The team does the EP study to find the arrhythmia. Taub wonders why House is suddenly so interested in his marriage. Even though Brandon’s fully conscious, his heart starts beating erratically, and Kutner grabs the paddles. “Clear!”
Brandon: OW!
House leans down and asks him if he died his hair. Brandon gives him a crazy look as his heart continues to beat wildly. No, he didn’t dye his hair.
“Clear!”
“Ow!”
Brandon’s heart returns to normal, and House declares, “Either he’s lying about dyeing, or just dying.”
~*~*~
Red hair means it’s not Kluver-Bucy. What else could cause it? Hormones? Aging? Taub tries.
House: So he’s turning prematurely crimson?
Foreman comes up with Waardenburg Syndrome. It can cause arrhythmias and can change hair color. House puts that one down too. Kutner brings the EKG tape and points out that it could be Romano-Ward Syndrome. House tells him that it would also give their patient the symptom of “sudden and unexpected death.” They need to think of something else.
When Kutner says that beta-blockers don’t work, something finally clicks with House. “Pete Best.” They all just stare at him. “Has none of you ever read a history book? The original Beatles drummer.” He goes on to explain his analogy, “A bunch of nerves control the temple of the heart except for one dude who can’t keep the beat, wrecks the whole thing. So, we hire Ringo.”
Kutner: Pete Best was actually a great drummer, but I assume you mean that the patient needs a cardiac sympathectomy.
Does House think the patient is stable enough for surgery? “If he was, he wouldn’t need it.”
~*~*~
Cuddy stares down at a picture of a young house…as a cheerleader. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Lucas says, not even hearing her. “So do you have any brothers and sisters? “
They’re sitting at a pizza place, Cuddy eating, Lucas simply staring at her. She tells him that she has one sister and that House told her he was on the Lacrosse team. Yeah he was, in high school. “In college he just cheered the Lacrosse team onto victory,” he tells her.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
She tells him he has three more questions, and for his last he asks, “You know, don’t you?” Yes, she knows that the photo of House is a fake and that they’re playing a game. Well sad. Lucas gets up to leave, then turns around. Why did she bother going out with him then?
“I wanted to screw with House,” she answers.
“By wasting my time? That doesn’t make sense.”
Cuddy smiles and decides there must be another reason, so he’s going to sit back down.
~*~*~
Brandon asks Taub and Thirteen where his regular doctors are, and they tell him that they are their regular doctors.
“What are you talking about? I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
They report this new symptom to House and go back to visual agnosia. Taub thinks they missed toxins. Where? Maybe they were stored in his fat cells from a year ago and are now being released into his bloodstream? House asks him where he’s getting this old paint. From his old paintings. House tells him if he’s wrong, the patient could drop dead while he’s out looking. He gives Taub a minute.
Taub goes to the patient’s room. Heather is waiting, and when Taub asks to talk about Brandon’s paintings, Brandon finally tells her the truth. He’s only sold three paintings since they met. He’s been making his money on clinical drug trial tests. She wants to know why he lied to her. He tells her he wanted “to be what you see when you look at me.” Does he really think she’s that shallow? “When I look at you, I see you.”
Taub: So. Where are the paintings you didn’t sell?
~*~*~
Brandon directs Taub to a cheap storage facility where he’s been keeping all of his old paintings. Taub chips off some of the and tests it with the kit he’s brought with him.
Taub calls House from the warehouse to tell him that paintings that Brandon created in certain months are distorted. They figure out that Brandon was having visual agnosia every other month because he was taking all three drugs simultaneously every other month. Brandon’s last drug he took was an antacid.
~*~*~
Chase and his cardiac team prep Brandon for surgery. He gets a call from House and tells his team to wake the patient up, but the nurse tells him that House says he needs the surgery. “But not this one.”
Chase: Did he give any specifics?
To remove a bezoar?
~*~*~
Taub explains to Heather that a bezoar is “like a hairball but it’s made up of undigested food.” He explains that you can get it if your stomach acid is low, which Brandon’s was since he was taking the experimental drug. The antacid Brandon was taking sucked up some of the pills he consumed last week, and is now giving him massive doses of all three at once.
Chase pulls the bezoar from Brandon’s stomach. “And that is why I won’t let Cameron buy a cat”
Heather is glad that Brandon told him the truth. Taub asks her if she was happier before she knew, and before she can answer, Taub’s wife shows up holding out a new car key.
~*~*~
She takes him to the parking garage blindfolded. “Ta-da! Do you like it?” Taub just stares at it. “Baby are you okay?” she asks . His smile disappears. “We need to talk.”
~*~*~
House comes home to find Lucas sitting and playing at his piano. He tells her that Cuddy didn’t buy the cheerleading picture. Lucas argues that House isn’t the cheerleading type, they should have thought of something else. He argues that Cuddy probably didn’t think of him as an obscure-cheerleading-picture- photoshopping person either.
House picks up his guitar and sits down next to Lucas, who tells him did took a trip to his alma mater by phone and online. “That’s a real photo isn’t it?” House doesn’t answer. “Wow, that is humiliating.”
“There was a girl,” House explains.
“Even more so.” Lucas tells him that “not only did she see it, but she didn’t believe it.”
“You know,” House tells him. “People hate people who have theories about people.”
They start to play.
Lucas: You want me to back off?
House: Would you?
Lucas: I barely know you.
They smirk and continue to play their music.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX
Awww, I'm actually liking this whole PI plot line.
| 61 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Ben Whitcomb
Extreme Critic
Comment by Meggie
TV Chit Chat