Watching House

Originally Aired: May 09, 2006 , Re-aired Tuesday February, 20th, 2007

Brent wakes up in the morning to hear the baby crying. He manages to wake himself up despite a stomach bug as his wife Kara comes in with their baby, who has colic. He leaves for work but vomits halfway up the stairs. He comes back up to the bathroom to find his wife giving the baby a bath but she’s passed out and the baby is under the water.

Kara and her baby Mikey are taken by EMTs to the clinic where Chase attends. House and Wilson come in and discuss how Wilson will be going to dinner with Cuddy to discuss funding. Cameron is waiting for House to announce Chase is working the NICU on Cuddy’s orders and Foreman is recovering but shows up and looks great, although House is skeptical. House is not impressed with Kara’s seizure symptoms until Cameron reveals they’ve already eliminated all the obvious causes.

House sneaks into Cuddy’s office to meet her when she comes in and they spar over her “date�? with Wilson. House realizes Chase asked for the assignment to NICU and concludes he wants to get away from House. Cameron and Foreman discuss how he might have to teach, but Foreman is comfortable with it after having been given a second chance. The baby’s lung collapses while Kara has another seizure in the MRI.

Mother and child have recovered for now and the staff eliminate most symptoms, but House picks up on Foreman’s suggestion–myelomas meningitis. Chase is skeptical of House’s diagnosis and says he needed a break from dishonest patients, like the drug-dealing cop that almost got Foreman killed. House doesn’t believe that and tells Chase to give the baby ECMO treatment to remove and recycle his blood.

House is going through Cuddy’s garbage and shows Wilson his findings – Red Clover - which leads House to suspect cancer and she wants Wilson for a consult, but is interrupted when Cameron determines Kara’s blood isn’t clotting and she is also an alcoholic. When Foreman goes along with him and prepares to put her in a coma before she gets the DTs, House is furious and tells Foreman to get over it and be his old argumentative self.

Wilson and Cuddy go on their dinner date and they have an awkward chat over Wilson’s divorce until they end up discussing…nothing else. Kara wakes up while Foreman determines Brent and Kara met in AA. House and Foreman are discussing the case when House notices the baby is missing and Kara is trying to smother him.

The lack of oxygen damaged Mikey’s lungs, and Brent won’t accept that Kara tried to kill their son. Cameron concludes Kara is psychotic when she talks about “voices�? and she faked a seizure when her husband caught her trying to kill Mikey, but House believes it’s a physical ailment. While Cameron expresses her own frustration with Foreman over his niceness, Wilson administers a cancer test to Cuddy’s spoon from the dinner and House suggests Wilson wants it to be a date.

Mikey’s heart rate is increasing while Kara has another seizure according to the readings, but she doesn’t react and they conclude she’s in encephalopathic delirium as a result of vitamin deficiency – Pellagra. The baby goes into defib and then dies.

Foreman asks Kara some questions when she wakes up and she remembers attacking her son. He finally tells her that Mikey died and she starts crying then vomits blood. They try to diagnose her new symptoms while Chase tries to overcome his guilt over prescribing the wrong treatment for Mikey. House latches on to something and asks Brent for Mikey, who is holding his dead son. House needs the baby for the biopsy to diagnose the mother, and confronts Brent over the fact he was drunk rather than had the stomach flu, and avoided facing the facts about Kara’s psychosis.

Brent agrees, and House then confronts Chase and reveals Chase has been working for extra cash and he was cut out of his father’s will. Chase says a prayer over Mikey’s body before doing the autopsy. Wilson reveals Cuddy is negative for cancer and Chase discovers the baby’s intestines showed flattened vili. House realizes the baby and mother had celiac disease, which is triggered by stress. The disease damaged their small intestines, which couldn’t absorb the proper vitamins. Chase’s treatment didn’t work because the same damage to the baby’s vili prevented it from absorbing the medicine. And it led to Kara having stomach cancer.

House then meets with Cuddy and reveals that her estrogen levels are too high – she’s taking fertility meds with Red Clover as an herbal booster. Cuddy’s trying to get pregnant and is looking for a donor, and she figures House will tell Wilson so they can laugh it up. Kara refuses to let anyone touch her and House talks to her. She doesn’t want to live and House accepts that, telling Foreman that it’s the same as what he went through and he can’t go back to calmly accepting things.

Brent goes in to see Kara and asks her to ask Mikey for forgiveness for him when she meets him. House doesn’t reveal to Wilson what Cuddy was up to. And Foreman works to master his knowledge of medical terminology again.