| "Fools for Love" | |
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| House episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 5 |
| Directed by | David Platt |
| Written by | Peter Blake |
| Original air date | October 31, 2006 |
| Guest stars | |
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Jurnee Smollett as Tracy |
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| Season 3 episodes | |
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| List of episodes | |
"Fools for Love" is the fifth episode of the third season of House and the fifty-first episode overall.
Contents |
A young interracial couple is hospitalized after the husband, Jeremy, attacks robbers who threaten his wife, Tracy. Her airways close and she collapses, apparently experiencing anaphylaxis. House, however, is distracted by the sight of Dr. Wilson chatting to an attractive new nurse, Wendy, in the hallway; House is convinced that Wilson is dating her.
Chase suggests that Tracy and Jeremy have smoked marijuana tainted with salmonella, so House orders treatment with fluoroquinolone. Tracy develops a rash in response to this antibiotic, so House extrapolates that the anxiety of being attacked caused Tracy to secrete too much adrenaline and go into an exercise-triggered anaphylaxis. While Foreman tests this hypothesis by having her run on a treadmill, Jeremy becomes angry and begins experiencing chest and stomach pain. The team wonders whether to attribute their common stomach pain to a shared infection or a shared environment. Upon inspecting their small apartment, Chase and Foreman find only a package of condoms.
Meanwhile, House sees a patient named Michael Tritter during his clinic hours. When House refuses to run tests on Tritter's rash, attributing it to dehydration, a confrontation ensues. Tritter trips House, House swabs the rash, and House leaves Tritter with a thermometer inserted in his rectum while House leaves for the day.
While discussing Tracy and Jeremy's case, House breaks into Wendy's locker and guesses that a jazz festival flier in a locker full of novels means that she is indulging Wilson's interest in jazz. He bets Foreman $200 that the nurse and Wilson are in a relationship.
House stops the steroids Tracy is on, reasoning that if she develops a fever the problem is an infection, and if not it must have an environmental cause. Tracy experiences a hallucination of Jeremy's father, who was violently opposed to their relationship; she screams. Foreman arrives to find her lapsing into a dissociative coma. After comparing Tracy's MRI to Jeremy's earlier chest x-ray, House suspects sarcoidosis and tells the team to perform a brain-stem biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. Concerned about the procedure's risks to Tracy and the potential conflict of interest in asking Jeremy to consent on her behalf, Cameron asks Cuddy to have a guardian ad litem represent Tracy. Tracy's condition worsens too quickly, so instead Wilson is asked to present Jeremy with the options. Jeremy requests that they withdraw his treatment so that they can biopsy him instead.
Cuddy calls House to her office, where clinic patient Michael Tritter is waiting. Tritter demands an apology from House, but House flatly refuses and leaves the office.
Meanwhile, Jeremy's condition has worsened, but instead of brain swelling, his lactic acid levels are rising: his intestines have begun to rot. House speculates that he and Tracy do not share the same disease after all. He orders that Tracy be treated for porphyria, and that Jeremy's bowel be biopsied. Foreman discovers that Jeremy's bowels are not rotting at all. House learns that Jeremy and Tracy grew up as neighbors and ran off at sixteen to escape Jeremy's father and his opposition to the relationship. House muses that Tracy and Jeremy both have the same green eyes and realizes that they share angioedema, a rare hereditary condition which prevents their bodies from producing a vital protein, and are probably half-siblings. House orders Foreman to tell them. Reluctantly, Foreman does so. Tracy reacts badly.
Later, Chase asks Foreman to cover some of his weekend on-call hours, but Foreman refuses, evasively saying that he is going out of town. When he admits that he is going to a jazz festival with the new nurse, House reluctantly pays Foreman the $200 he bet. As Foreman leaves, he sees that Tracy has moved out of the hospital room she shared with Jeremy, so Foreman stays with the devastated young man for a while. Meanwhile, Cuddy is observed with a pregnancy test, which, to her dismay, reads negative.
House speeds home on his motorcycle. He is pulled over by a police officer who turns out to be Michael Tritter. Tritter arrests him for possession of narcotics.
Foreman notices the sacrifices one makes for love, including Jeremy asking to be biopsied to protect Tracy's intellect and Wendy going to the jazz festival to spend more time with Foreman. In addition, plotlines relating to Foreman and Wendy, Tracy and Jeremy, and Cuddy suggest that love and family are a separate category from genetics and race.
Cameron continues to confront the question of consent and the ethics of saving lives vs. respecting patients' wishes.
House finds that his assumptions about people get him into trouble. Also, House and Wilson continue to argue about whether House is protecting Wilson from his poor relationships with women or whether House is protecting himself from "losing" his best friend to a new relationship; this theme is their debate about happiness and meaning but in a nutshell version.
The episode title alludes to a 1980's play and film in which the lovers, like the husband and wife in this episode, are actually half-siblings.
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