Hugh Laurie stars as acerbic but brilliant New
Jersey medic Dr Gregory House in the fourth

series of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning
medical drama. In this episode, House’s team
rallies to treat a young woman who believes she
can see the dead. Meanwhile, Foreman struggles
to get his career back on track.
House borrows a trick from ‘Charlie’s Angels’ this
week as he addresses the seven remaining
applicants for his team over the phone. “Good
morning angels,” he says. “We have quite the
interesting case. It’s not often you get a patient
who sees dead people.” The patient in question is
a Ukrainian funeral parlour assistant named Irene,
who went into a seizure after hallucinating that
two cadavers were attacking her.
House dispatches some of his team to Irene’s
funeral parlour to search for clues about her
condition. When they discover that one of the
deceased in the morgue died from symptoms
resembling BSE – or mad-cow disease – they
speculate that Irene could have contracted the
disorder while she was working on his body. The
only way to be sure is to biopsy the dead man’s
brain by disinterring him. “Don’t think of it as
digging up a body,” House tells his stunned
entourage, “think of it as keeping another one
from being buried.”
The candidates grudgingly carry out their
gruesome task – all the while seething with
resentments about each other. Taub the plastic
surgeon is incensed that House has allowed Henry
to stay in the running even though he is not a
licensed doctor, while Amber resents 13’s refusal to
reveal anything about herself – including her name.
“Why are you hiding everything?” she snaps.
Unfortunately for the applicants, the test for BSE
proves negative, and they are flummoxed to learn
that Irene is now imagining that she can see her
dead mother. The fact that Irene refuses to believe
her mother is dead adds a further complication –
not only is she hallucinating, she is also delusional.
“Her neurological symptoms are getting worse,”
House growls to his team. “It would be nice if one
of you angels/morons had a clue why.” Irene’s
visions take another alarming turn when she
claims to see a man in a wheelchair with a dog,
who complains that the doctors did not save his
life. “She’s seeing Stark, our last patient,” Amber
says (see last week’s episode, ‘97 Seconds’).
House now theorises that Irene may have some
kind of inherited disease, and tries to narrow
down the possibilities by asking her to recall what
she can about the illness that killed her mother.
From what she describes, House deduces that
her mother suffered from Parkinson’s disease,
and starts treating Irene for the same condition.
However, the doctors are forced to return to the
whiteboard when Irene’s arm begins to bleed – a
new symptom that cannot be explained by
Parkinson’s. As pain spreads to her stomach,
Irene is rushed to surgery, where Chase finds she
has an enlarged spleen and liver failure. “She’s
dying from the inside out,” he says. Can House’s
applicants put aside their squabbles and
diagnose Irene’s illness before she becomes the
second patient to die in their care?
Also this week, Foreman endures a series of
interviews after losing his last job for behaving in a
House-like manner. He is surprised when Cuddy
offers him a position back at the hospital – with a
very specific responsibility. “I need someone that
can control House,” she says. Foreman is reluctant
to return, but with his job prospects diminishing at
each turn, can he really afford to refuse the offer?