Not Cancer - Recap

Four people die: a tennis player, a crane worker, a kickboxer, a tuba player. Thirteen arrives at a college math class and informs the teacher, Apple, that she received a corneal transplant and every other person who received an organ from the donor is dead or dying.

The team goes over the corpses, Apple, and the other surviving recipient, Frank, and determine that in each case, the donated organ gave out suddenly. House is more concerned wondering about what Wilson did for him. House finally concludes that cancer is responsible but the rest of the team disagrees. House tells the team to do more tests and check out the donor’s house. He then goes to the cafeteria and follows Dr. O’Shea, a monster truck fan. O’Shea wonders if House is checking him out. Foreman interrupts to indicate the tests prove negative and they’ll have to remove Apple’s transplanted eye. House notes that leaving her blind isn’t a good idea. He gives up on O’Shea… for now, and then runs an eye test on Apple. House concludes the disease has spread to the brain and it will do no good to remove the eye. Apple hallucinates House starting to decapitate her and screams in terror.

As they go over a video of the kickboxing match, Foreman doesn’t believe it’s a neurological problem. House can’t see the kickboxer’s face to determine if he had a similar twitch, while Thirteen notes that nothing causes heart and brain problems simultaneously. They’re interrupted when the repairman interjects and notes Taub is an idiot and laughs at Kutner. Kutner notices the repairman, Lucas, is wearing argyle socks with construction boots. House admits that Lucas is a private detective he hired and he wanted to determine what Lucas knew. Lucas reveals all the information he’s found out about the various victims. The evidence confirms House’s diagnosis and he orders a brain biopsy of Apple. When the team point out it’s a good idea, he suggests they get the wife of the last surviving donor recipient, Frank to offer. She refuses and Apple lies that she has a family to try and convince her. Frank’s wife realizes she’s lying and refuses to volunteer Frank, but he flatlines.

House orders an autopsy of Frank’s brain but they find nothing. House insists it’s cancer but Kutner says that it might be bacteria caused by a perforated intestine. They need to do a colonoscopy and House suggests they do it on the donor’s 4-year-old daughter since she has the same DNA. They proceed but find nothing. Meanwhile, House visits Lucas, who is running surveillance from an ice cream truck. House wants to hire him to watch Wilson, and Lucas points out he has trust issues. The detective figures House wants something to get Wilson to come back, but admits there isn’t anything.

House returns to the hospital where Kutner and Foreman report the colonoscopy shows negative. House returns to his cancer theory but Kutner comes up with someone else to test: Frank. They use a water jet to put pressure on the corpse’s intestines and Foreman sees something that might be a core lesion. Kutner applies a bit more pressure… and the body waste explodes out of the body and onto Foreman.

Apple starts deteriorating and the team can’t come up with anything new. House says chemo treatment is the answer and then goes to see Apple to get her permission. He refuses to tell her she has cancer so she won’t get her hopes up over the treatment. She signs for the treatment and notes she was blind before the transplant. She notes that her life didn’t change when she got her vision back and nothing improved. She wonders if House is the same but he notes he hasn’t given up.

House meets with Lucas for a report. As the two follow a girl Lucas’s attracted to, Lucas tells House about how Wilson is attending grief counseling and talking with Cuddy, Cameron, and Foreman. However, he’s never said anything about House. House is paged and returned to the hospital where Apple is vomiting from the chemo side effects but her vitals are stabilizing. House realizes that it’s not cancer.

Back in differential, House insists that what Apple had, he thought could be treated like cancer. Now they have to find something that is just like cancer but isn’t. House has concluded that the last victim, the tuba player, had arthritis and was using a non-label cancer medication to treat it: the medication didn’t save him so he couldn’t have had cancer.

House goes to see Wilson and pays him for a consultation so he can bounce eyes off of him. Wilson tells him to go away so he can move on. House wonders why he’s meeting with Cuddy, Cameron, and Foreman, and admits that he hired a private detective. Wilson isn’t interested and tells him to leave. Lucas is waiting outside and when they talk about friends being friends and other things being other things, House gets an idea. He goes to Cuddy and shows her Apple’s CRT. There’s something in her brain that shouldn’t be there. To find the anomaly he needs someone to cut open her skull. Cuddy refuses and insists on the chemo treatment continuing. House explains that cancer stem cells are responsible and can become any part of the body’s cell structure. The recipient had them, they attached to the organs in the donor, but gave up after a while. Chemo shrunk them but didn’t cure them, and when they give out Apple will die. Cuddy wonders if House will try to get Apple to crash to force the operation… and orders security guards at the door of Apple’s room. House goes with Plan B: he calls Lucas. Lucas sneaks into Apple’s room and substitutes saline for chemo in Apple’s IV.

Chase assists as they expose Apple’s brain and install a neural net to monitor neuron impulses. Chase realizes that House set the whole thing up but has no choice but to continue with the surgery. House is watching from the gallery and Lucas comes in. He realizes that House set him up and didn’t know the med-swapping would endanger her life: House admits he lied. The neural net detects the blockage cause by the cancer stem cell and they remove it.

House goes to visit Apple and explains that because her brain wasn’t working right because of the pseudo-brain cells, they were processing her vision poorly and she saw everything dull and gray. He removes the bandages and lets her see for real for the first time. The first thing she notices is that House looks sad.

Later, House calls Lucas… and hires him on retainer.

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