Birthmarks - Recap

Nicole and her translator are in China and go to a Buddhist temple to confront a couple who she believes are her birth parents. The mother draws back in fear and the father angrily insists that they have no daughter. They go and the translator explains to Nicole that one can lift a statue of the Buddha, put it down, and then make a wish. If the wish-maker can't lift the statue the second time, then the wish will come true. Nicole gives it a try and is unable to lift the Buddha the second time. She then convulses in pain and falls to the ground, vomiting blood.

Nicole is flown to the hospital and the team begin their differential House is more interested in going over the files that Lucas has compiled on Cameron and the others. The team tell him that his mother has called, twice, and House says he already knows she's calling to inform him his father John House has died. Unconcerned, he returns to the case. Taub insists that House should call his mother back but House notes that Taub hasn't slept well and deduces that he told his wife about his affairs.

House goes to see Nicole, who is coughing heavily. Her adopted parents come in with her belongings and say that they found cigarettes and alcohol in her apartment, but thought she had given them up. House, pretending to be a nurse, goes through Nicole's medications then goes to Foreman to reveal that among them are licorice root: a treatment for SARS, which explains Nicole's symptoms.

Cuddy visits House and gives him shots since he may have been exposed to Nicole's SARS. She also tells him to go to his father's funeral: his mother wants him to give the eulogy. House assumes that she's been in contact with his mother, but refuses.

Kutner is treating Nicole for SARS, while her adopted family look on in concern. She wonders if House may have caught SARS from her, and Kutner assures her that House is fine. Nicole crashes and Kutner realizes that her liver is failing, which has nothing to do with SARS.

House collapses in his office... and wakes up in a car with Wilson. House realizes that his mother called Wilson, not Cuddy, and Wilson had Cuddy drug him with the earlier injection. He figures that means Wilson cares about their friendship but Wilson denies it. He keeps House on a limited supply of Vicodin so he'll be in too much pain to get away. The team calls House, who guilts Wilson into letting him take it. They reveal that Nicole had a clot in her liver vein and they removed it, and figure that her alcohol or smoking habit combined with a genetic defect brought on the clotting. Kutner goes to test Nicole for genetic problems and discovers that she's gone.

House insists he needs to relieve himself and threatens to go on the floor. Wilson pulls over to a rest stop but takes his cane. House talks about how during one summer his father refused to say anything to him and slipped typewritten notes under his door. He hated his father and vice versa, and he refuses to lie by participating in the funeral no matter what his mother wants. Finally he agrees to go if Wilson will give him his cane. Wilson agrees, and House promptly smacks the car keys from his hand into a nearby sewer grate.

Kutner finds Nicole outside grabbing a smoke. She wants to be alone for a few minutes but he starts taking blood for testing and talks about how she feels isolated with her Caucasian/American family. Kutner sympathizes, noting he was adopted too, but he likes being an outsider. When he draws blood, it starts pouring from the vein and he gets her back inside.

While Wilson fishes for the keys with a coat hanger, House tries to talk more about his father but Wilson isn't interested in enabling him. He finally gets them out of the sewer.

At the hospital, Foreman tells Cameron and Chase about House's father, and Cameron picks out a bouquet to send with House's name on it. Foreman wonders if Nicole has a tumor, and Chase remembers how he was when his father died, and doesn't believe House is as uncaring as he claims.

As they're driving to the funeral, House explains that he believed that his father was adopted, and that genetically he's a closer match for their family friend, who was around when John House was overseas on assignment at the time House was conceived. They pull up to a police car and House jams down the gas pedal with his cane, and they get pulled over. Wilson lies about House's involvement to speed things up, and the tam calls House to reveal they've found a mass on her pancreas while she was in the MRI. House starts to talk about steamrollers but the police arrest both of them because there's a Louisiana arrest warrant out on Wilson.

While the team tries to figure out what House meant with his metaphor, Taub tries to get them on the phone. Wilson and House are at the police station and Sheriff Costello refuses to let them take the call. It turns out that Wilson is wanted for vandalism charges during a medical convention in New Orleans a number of years ago: charges House was supposed to make sure were taken care of. Costello isn't interested in their stories until he hears that House is trying to avoid his father's funeral.

Foreman, Cameron, and Chase conclude that House was saying that Nicole had gallstones. Thirteen, Taub, and Kutner figure out the same thing independently. Meanwhile, Wilson explains to Costello how he started a fight when someone kept playing the same song on the jukebox, and Wilson threw a bottle and broke the bar's antique window. House, bored, thought Wilson was the only interesting person at the medical convention and bailed him out of jail. Costello shakes his head in amusement... and lets them go, ordering House to go to the funeral.

As Chase prepares to operate on Nicole to remove the gallstones, he sees that her catheter bag is filled with brown urine: her kidneys are failing, meaning it’s not gallstones.

House finally calls the team back and says that his steamroller metaphor meant multiple cysts, connected to all the failing organs. Thirteen suggests injecting bubbles to see where they go from the cyst. As they prepare the injection, Nicole gets the DTs from alcohol withdrawal.

Wilson finally finds the funeral home and they go inside. Blythe greets them and all but begs her son to do the eulogy.

Kutner explains to Nicole's adopted parents that they'll have to induce a coma in Nicole to do the cyst injections, and that should also cure her DTs. Nicole says that she's tried but there's nothing she can do to get over her addictions.

House insists that he doesn't have any issues with his father, but Wilson notes has issues just from trying not to have the same issues his father had. The man who House believes is his biological father arrives, and House explains that he did tell his father about the man: that was the summer John refused to talk to him. The funeral comes to order and Blythe waits for House to speak. He finally gets up, talks about is father's failings and how House himself was perhaps not the son he should have been, bends over his father's body... and takes a skin sample for DNA testing.

Wilson realizes what House is doing and drags him into the next room. House points out that Wilson actually likes bailing House out of trouble: it makes his life interesting. He also accuses Wilson of being unable to brace for tragedy, which is why Amber's death hit him so hard. Now Wilson is leaving House so he doesn't have to deal with his eventual death. Furious, Wilson picks up another bottle and breaks an antique window. House points out that Wilson is still "not boring."

The duo go to a diner afterward and House explains that he saw Wilson at the medical convention with a package. He snooped and found out it contained Wilson's divorce papers from his first marriage, so he figured Wilson would be more interesting and stayed with him. He then calls the team who reveal they've found a mass in her the left atrium of her heart. The MRI scan is too grainy to tell for sure what the mass is. House figures it's iron overload and the iron is causing the MRI image to distort. He orders them to do a MRI to confirm and then gets the number of Nicole's translator and calls the man to find out the reaction of Nicole's birth parents. The translator suspects that they weren't Nicole's birth parents: they were too frightened. House bounces theories off of Wilson and together they realize that Nicole was born in 1983... but China had a one-child policy since 1979. The father tried to kill their unwanted female child by sticking needles in her head and breaking them off: an almost-undetectable form of murder. He then took Nicole to an orphanage in the hopes she would die there.

The pair get back to the hospital and House stops the MRI scan. Going over the case, House explains that the metal pins are still in Nicole's brain and magnets set them off. The monks in the Buddhist temple had rigged the statue with a magnet to convince people their wishes came true. When Nicole lifted the statue the second time, the magnet shifted the pins. Each MRI scan set off new symptoms for the same reason, as the pins touched a different neural center in the brain.

They confirm the diagnosis with an x-ray and prepare to remove the pins. Nicole's adopted parents ask him not to tell Nicole that her birth parents wanted her dead. He notes that the pins have been pressing against Nicole's addiction centers, accounting for her inability to give up smoking and drinking. He tells them that they've never really known their daughter.

Wilson finds House in his office drinking. House is "celebrating": the DNA test shows that John House wasn't his father, and even Blythe couldn't stand her husband and had an affair. House admits that he's depressed that the revelation doesn't mean anything to him. Wilson says that maybe people don't get to choose their parents... or their friends. He informs House that he's taking his old job at the hospital back. Further, he admits he likes being House's friend: the trip was the most fun he'd had since Amber died. They leave for dinner... and House finally admits his father is dead.


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