The Confession - Recap

In the town of Cedarville, Mayor Collins interrupts the town’s celebration to present the annual community service award to their outstanding citizen of the year, car garage owner Bob Harris. Collins calls Bob, his wife Denise, and children Sally and David up onstage to receive the award. Later, however, Bob goes to a motel room to be with Cindy, the town’s Miss Cedarville. In the middle of sex he collapses on the carpet, apparently suffering from a heart attack. When Cindy offers to call an ambulance, Bob asks her to drive him to the hospital.



Foreman welcomes Chase and Taub back and immediately wonders why the heck they want to come back. He warns them that House hasn’t changed, and Chase realizes that Foreman wants them back so that they can spy on House for them. They figure that he’s let the power as Dean of Medicine go to his head, but Foreman insists that they don’t have to let it become awkward, and that they can still be friends. He does want them to keep an eye on House, but only to keep him out of prison. When Foreman insists they should be friends, Taub asks for a week off, explaining that House wouldn’t give him the time to find day care for his two daughters. Foreman refuses to give him the time or a babysitter.

House is back in his old conference room, currently bare of furniture, and Adams and Park go over Bob’s case. They report that he went into v-fib but has no other symptoms, and that Bob claims he was at work behind a desk when the attack happened. As Chase and Taub come in, House points out that the scratches on Bob’s knees are the result of sex, not flag football as he claimed. He then switches topics to ask about Taub’s two daughters, and explains to Park that Taub apparently impregnated his wife and mistress at the same time, and he’s not sure of the paternity of either one. House tells them to put Bob through a treadmill stress test to see if they can recreate the v-fib under controlled conditions and then leave for lunch.



Chase and Adams prepare Bob for the test and ask him where he was when he had the attack. Bob sticks to his story until Chase points out the rug burns and threatens to tell his wife if Bob doesn’t tell them the truth. The patient finally admits that he was having sex at a motel when he had the attack. When Denise comes in, Bob sticks to his story and the doctors cover for him.

House stops in to visit Wilson and notices that the door is closed. He keeps pounding on it until Wilson finally answers, and goes into the room. House figures that his friend is watching Taub’s baby daughters and quickly finds them out on the balcony where Wilson hid them.

Bob undergoes the stress test but nothing happens. Park and Taub the test from the next room and Park is uncomfortable putting their patient at risk. Taub warns her that it’s standard operating procedure for House, just as House arrives with his daughters. House wants a DNA sample from Taub to prove the paternity and Taub refuses. Meanwhile, Bob fails to have an attack so Chase and Adams provoke him by hinting at his affair to Denise, who is watching the test. Bob quickly feels dizzy and has another attack, and they confirm that he’s not having a heart attack.

The team goes back into differential, while House has Adams and Park bring in a couch. Park suggests pheochromocytoma but House dismisses it and tells them to test for photic epilepsy. Meanwhile, Wilson is walking the twins in the lobby in an attempt to keep them quiet. Foreman approaches him and asks why House is so well behaved. Wilson explains that House has what he wants and is content, but Foreman doesn’t believe it. When he asks Wilson for help dealing with House, Wilson tells him that he did enough of that for Cuddy, and Foreman will have to handle House on his own.

As they run the EKG to test for epilepsy, Adams and Chase apologize to Bob for provoking him, and Adams insists that if her spouse was cheating on her, she’d want to know the truth no matter what. When Bob begins to realize that he can’t live with the guilt, Chase favors him keeping it a secret rather than tell his wife and put her through the anguish.

Construction workers are busy in the conference room when the team finds House there and reports that Bob doesn’t have epilepsy. House now goes with Park’s earlier theory of pheochromocytoma, pointing out that she shouldn’t have proposed it until they had eliminated epilepsy. When House tells them that they’ll be staying all night to test for a tumor, Taub refuses. House agrees... and tells him to go to the motel with Park and check for environmental factors. Taub has no choice but to take his daughters with him.



As Chase and Adams check for the tumor, Chase figures that Adams wants honesty because someone cheated on her. She doesn’t want to discuss her baggage, but points out that Chase has some of his own. When she notes that he quit medicine until House came back, Chase insists that it was just a vacation and that he had faith that House would return. When a sensor comes loose on Bob’s neck, Adams goes in to reattach it and discovers that he has a huge internal mass inside his neck.

The next morning, the team tells House about the mass and the fact that their patient’s temperature has climbed three degrees. The construction crew is gone, and House tells his team that they only work at night. Taub comes in late, apologizing for having to drop off his kids at a sitter. House continues to bait him about how the babies aren’t his and says they need a DNA sample from Taub to be sure. While Taub refuses, Park reports that they found five different pathogenic bacteria in the hotel room. House figures that one of them was fusobacterium necrophorum, causing a thrombus in the neck artery. He tells them to remove it via surgery and sends them away, and then goes for Taub’s discarded coffee cup. Taub comes back and recovers it before House can take it.



As Taub and Park prepare Bob for surgery, Bob decides that he is going to tell Denise everything. When they advise against it, Bob refuses to undergo surgery unless he can talk to his wife. When Denise arrives with their two children, Bob asks for a moment alone. Taub and Park watch from outside and take sides: Taub believes Bob should lie while Park favors the truth. Denise comes out and tells the children that they’re moving in with her mother. However, she tells Park and Taub that she still cares for Bob despite the mistake he made, and that what matters is that he get better.

Taub goes to see Wilson in the cafeteria and asks why about House’s current obsession. He believes that House has to have empirical proof, but Wilson tells him that his friend has started a betting pool. Disgusted, Taub walks away and Wilson goes for his coffee cup... and Taub comes back to grab it. Wilson warns him that he can’t avoid leaving a DNA sample forever, and says that he’s not the bad guy because he’s betting that both daughters are Taub’s.



As Chase and Adams operate on Bob, they discover that the mass isn’t a clot, but rather a lymphoma inflammation. They take a biopsy only to discover that Bob’s liver is failing. The team goes back into differential in House’s new conference room, and House figures that it’s an infection, just not the one he predicted. He orders broad-spectrum antibiotics but Adams warns that the treatment will likely destroy the liver. It’s Chase, anticipating House’s plan, who explains that House plans to get a liver transplant for Bob before beginning the treatment. Chase and Adams inform the couple, explaining that they can do a partial liver transplant but it is a risky procedure that will hospitalize the donor for three months. Denise volunteers immediately, and Chase suggests that they test as many people as possible to assure compatibility. Guilty, Bob insists that he doesn’t want to ask anyone because they don’t know the real him, and he insists that he’ll tell everyone the complete truth.

When the Cedarville residents come in to be tested, Bob comes out and tells them that he cheated on Denise. She says that she’s forgiven him and that’s the end of it. However, Bob continues, explaining that he ripped off almost everyone in town with phony auto repairs, and stole from the $10,000 scholarship fund and used the money to gamble. The people walk away as Bob says that he’s not the man they thought he was.



The team reports back to House that only two people stayed after Bob’s confessions, and neither of them are a match. Adams insists that she did the right thing telling Bob to tell the truth: she just didn’t expect him to confess to everything he ever did, to anybody and everybody. House points out that she’s lying, and Chase is lying by pretending not to stare at her breasts, and Adams is lying because she knows he’s doing it but won’t say anything. He then tells his team that they’re going to do something risky and orders them to run a CT on Bob’s liver, cut out the damaged part, and hope that’s what left can handle the antibiotic treatment.

That night, Taub goes home and apologizes to his two daughters. He says that he has to know, and then takes DNA samples from both of them.

As Adams and Chase prepare Bob for the new operation, Foreman comes in and reveals that he knows what they’re up to on House’s orders. He’s worried that if Bob dies, it will be their fault and that they should let him die of his unknown disease. Chase insists that House is right, and accuses Foreman of selling out. He tells his friend that he’s going to do the surgery, which is what Foreman would have done a year ago. However, Adams interrupts to tell them that Bob’s liver is regenerating.



The team goes over the scans of the liver and House figures that Bob had an allergic reaction, and that since he’s been isolated in the hospital, the allergen has gone away. He has Chase and Adams examine Cindy and find out what she knows. She admits that she gave Bob a condom from the health fair that she supervises, but she doesn’t know what kind it was. When Adams sarcastically points out that she was having an affair with a 39-year-old man, Cindy worries that it was a one-time thing, but if the townspeople find out then her reputation will be ruined.

As Taub and Park administer epinephrine scratch tests to Bob, he tells them that Denise is planning to leave him, but that he’s glad he confessed because he was living a lie. Taub advises against total honesty, and Park agrees, noting that Bob has burned all of his bridges behind him and he has nothing to turn to if he lives. Bob reacts to a wheat-based test, gaining a rash, but tells them that he isn’t allergic to wheat. They check the blood samples and confirm that he’s not allergic to wheat, but none of the other tests prove positive either. Chase proscribes steroids for the moment and leaves with Adams, and Taub examines his DNA and those that House provided of his two daughters. Foreman comes in to ask for his opinion on whether he’s sold out like Chase claimed, and then points out that House substituted monkey DNA for the daughters’ samples. Before Taub can track down House, he gets a page. Bob is displaying a new symptom: his skin is peeling off.



Back in differential, Park finally says that they all know what they’re dealing with: Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, which is incurable and untreatable. House says that the case is closed and tells them to go home and get some rest, much to Chase’s surprise. He goes to see Bob, who is now missing most of his skin. Unable to take medication for the pain, Bob finally decides to confess one last thing: that he murdered his business partner and made it look like suicide. Shocked, Chase looks on as Bob tells him that he’s killed even more people, at least three or four.

Chase runs a new MRI of Bob’s brain and shows it to the team. The patient has an aneurysm that is affecting the area of the brain in charge of moderation and impulse control. It has been growing steadily larger and so have Bob’s confessions. However, an aneurysm wouldn’t make skin peel and House realizes that it’s yet another symptom, not the disease itself. He explains that Bob has Kawasaki’s Disease, which attacks the autoimmune system. It typically only presents in Asian children, but House points out that certain carpet-cleaning chemicals also cause it. The chemicals entered Bob’s bloodstream when he had sex on the motel floor and got rug burns. As House goes, Taub follows him and demands to know what he was doing. House asks if he really wants to know, and offers to shred the files and call off the bet. Taub asks for the files, but once he makes sure the DNA results are all there, he shreds them himself to prove that it doesn’t matter as long as he loves both daughters.



Bob receives intravenous immunoglobulin which reverses his condition. Denise comes back and tells him that she checked and had the mayor confirmed that nothing that Bob confessed to actually happened. Denise asks him if he lied about the affair and Bob lies and says that he did, and that he would never cheat on her.

Later, Foreman finds Chase in the locker room and compliments him on solving the case, and admits that that he was wrong for second-guessing Chase. When Chase wonders why he’s in the staff locker room, Foreman explains that he hasn’t showered in four days because he’s been hanging around waiting to see what House will do next. Chase tells him that House isn’t doing anything, and that he’s doing it deliberately to make Foreman nervous and mystified. Relieved, Foreman says that he’s glad to have Chase back, and Chase says that he’s glad to be back as well.

House finally has the conference room ready for the big unveiling. He serves martinis to his team and pulls aside the dividing curtain to reveal... the same rom as always. However, he uses a remote control to open a panel in the wall, allowing them to look in to Wilson’s next-door office. He looks up, says, “No," and House closes the panel.



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