Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter
Written by: Sara Hess
A teaching chef (David Purdham) is talking about ingredients when his assistant, Dana Miller (Judith Scott), suddenly acts ill and starts blabbing medical terms. The puzzled chef asks her what's going on, she explains that she's a doctor and she needs a doctor before falling down.
Dr. Foreman and Dr. Hadley wake up in bed together. At the hospital, Dr. House is frustrated all elevators are out of order. After trudging up the stairs and hearing from Dr. Hadley that the elevators were working well earlier, House suspects the out of order signs may have been a prank.
House and his team are assigned to treat Dr. Miller. The patient says she quit medicine after being treated for an uterine myoma. She prefers cooking now, being in a book club, taking piano lessons, etc. Dr. Taub tells the patient about his time as a plastic surgeon. That job paid very well, but it didn't feel significant.
House asks Foreman if he slipped Hadley the real drug in the Huntington's drug trial, instead of the placebo.
Someone put a trip wire in House's office, Hadley and Taub tell him they were with the patient; but House doesn't seem to care about the trip wire, which Taub takes to mean that House has already figured out who put it there.
Dr. Wilson is impressed that Dr. Miller is the patient, and unloads on her all his frustration and despair dealing with cancer "in the trenches." Miller reassures him that breakthroughs will be made with or without her.
House notices Hadley's losing peripheral vision. Foreman tests her and she realizes what the vision loss means: she's taking the real drug for Huntington's, not the placebo. Foreman confesses that he had her on the placebo at first but switched her to the real drug a couple of weeks ago.
As the patient worsens, the doctors find that she has scratched her head so hard and so much that she broke through her own skull.
As Miller's treatment seems to be working, Hadley has gone completely blind. And then Miller starts bleeding from all over.
Cuddy returns House's cane, admitting she hid it in a coat closet. House determines that Cuddy's on her period... and so is Miller. House goes to Miller's room and retrieves an empty box of pads from the trash. Dr. Kutner explains that the nurses gave Miller pads rather than tampons, but he doesn't think it's medically relevant. And it's not, the important thing is that she needed either. Her menstruation in combination with her endometriosis caused all her bleeding.
Miller recovers and Hadley regains her sight. Foreman calls the principal investigator and confesses his breach of protocol.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes:
- "Eureka!" Moment: Talking about Dr. Cuddy's menstrual cycle, Dr. House realizes that the patient has ectopic endometriosis complicated by menstruation.
- Informed Self-Diagnosis: Dr. Miller's at the beginning of the episode.
- Onion Tears, averted: Neither Dr. Miller nor the chef cry when she chops onions, but the chef does get mild eye irritation, which is more realistic.
