House: Act Your Age

Tonight’s episode of Fox’s medical drama ‘House’ deals with the fallout from Cameron and Chase’s breakup, and House treating a kid with the symptoms of a senior citizen. Good times!

Things begin in a daycare center, where a boy is having a major nosebleed; seriously, it’s gushing like water. Ick. His dad is pissed, mostly just because his son’s nosebleed has ruined his day. The daycare teacher calls for an ambulance, but thankfully, the bleeding stops. Unfortunately, the ambulance will be needed for his sister, Lucy, who’s having some trouble breathing.

Lucy is of course under the care of Dr. House, who gets Cameron, Chase and Foreman to test for everything that could cause her normally healthy heart to screw up on her. While they do this, Cameron and Chase begin arguing with each other, and Chase decides to go home so he’ll be a “well-rested idiot.” Of course, when he comes in the next morning, he manages to come up with a better idea than both Cameron and Foreman. Cameron and Chase go to check up on her and while, for no sane reason, Cameron playfully flirts with Lucy’s brother, they figure out that Lucy’s vision is also screwing up on her.

House comes to the conclusion that Lucy has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. After House has another clinic patient to deal with, Foreman witnesses Lucy have a stroke, of all things. Though she’s unconscious, the disease has lead to blood clots and overall thick blood. Chase suggests that they check Lucy’s house to see if there’s any reason why she’d have thick blood. As Chase and Cameron head off, Lucy’s brother gets Cameron flowers. Because they’re still flirting, though Cameron’s flirting (and kissing him on the cheek) to get Chase angry.

Foreman starts draining some of Lucy’s blood, and her brother arrives again. Lucy’s father is annoyed, but for whatever reason, gives him money to keep running around the hospital. At Lucy’s house, Chase and Cameron search around, and Chase asks why she took the stolen flowers. He knows she’s trying to make him jealous, and she just reminds him how he ruined their relationship. They continue their fighting with each other, though it’s more polite than before. As Cameron finds a vent under her bed, Chase tells her that she shouldn’t be mad because she ended things. She says that he lead her to end it, but she’ll get over it. Chase opens the vent up and finds a very bloody T-shirt.

Cameron and Chase both believe the father is abusing Lucy, but Foreman doubts it. House is annoyed that they have to search it, because it may lead to nothing. He orders a vaginal exam, but Chase doesn’t think the father will allow it. Foreman confronts Lucy’s dad, but he says he doesn’t abuse her. After a mild head-to-head, the father agrees to the vaginal exam. Cameron performs the vaginal exam, and it’s both extremely uncomfortable and just a little odd to hear her explain what she’s doing to Lucy. What she finds is worse: cuts on her vaginal area.

Cameron, Chase and Foreman debate whether or not there was abuse, sexual or physical. Foreman poses this: what if it’s not Lucy’s blood on the shirt? House, meanwhile, is back with his clinic patient, who may have given House incorrect urine. House decides that the most likely option is that the patient has lied for a friend, mostly because the urine proves that the patient, a man, is pregnant. So, maybe he lied!

Cuddy confronts House about not calling Social Services about Lucy’s possible abuse, and orders him to do so once he gets back to his office. House is interested in the play she went to the night before with Wilson. House harangues Wilson, who then reveals that he slept with Cuddy. Or not. Or he did. Or he didn’t. He didn’t, but says that House has problems, obsessing over her. Meanwhile, Foreman reveals what happened with the blood test: it is Lucy’s blood, but she has started her period, at six years old.

Though Lucy’s going through puberty, she has begun to speak again. As Chase and Foreman look for the reason for the tumors present in Lucy’s body, Chase explains that it was he who broke things off, but Foreman couldn’t care less. Instead, they find a solid tumor. Wilson, meanwhile, comes over to House and says that she’s sent him flowers, so she must want him. He doesn’t really, though, so he freaks out, but when House goes into the clinic with Cuddy, he tells her that he sent Wilson the flowers.

Cameron is almost attacked by Lucy’s brother, who wants to know if Chase is her boyfriend. He can’t get his eyes or hands off her ass, though, which puts the flirtation to a stop. Chase and Foreman run into problems when Lucy goes unconscious again during surgery to get out the tumor. Foreman then finds out that the tumor is actually a benign cyst, and so there must only be an environmental source to blame for her symptoms. Foreman takes the night off so Chase and Cameron can search for the answer.

That night, Cameron tells Chase about Lucy’s brother grabbing her ass. She then apologizes for leading him on, but Chase isn’t buying it. He says that she must have feelings for him, and touches her arm. Not the smartest move, because Lucy’s brother runs up and attacks him. In fact, he bites him. House gets a call about it, but he could care less. However, as he’s left to his wrestling match on TV, House gets an idea and calls back. He says that the kid’s not a sociopath, but has the same thing that Lucy has.

Lucy’s brother, in fact, has 100 times more testosterone than normal 8-year olds. What’s more, Cameron and Chase found nothing in the environment. Chase wonders if it’s genetic, that it may be caused by brain tumors like the one that killed their mother. After Foreman tests Jasper, her brother, Lucy complains of major stomach pain, from a cyst in her pancreas. In fact, the cysts are appearing everywhere, and if she gets one in her brain or heart, she’s dead.

However, the genetics are out, since the mother didn’t have any of the same symptoms. Cameron thinks it may be a pituitary gland, but House thinks it has to be genetic or environmental. Cameron decides to go ahead with the pituitary gland idea and perform brain surgery. House, while Cameron is briefing the father, decides to figure out if brain surgery’s not needed. He pushes, but Cameron wins it out by empathizing with him because of her dead husband. House asks the father how he doesn’t know the other kids at the daycare aren’t sick, and the dad says he would’ve heard. House doesn’t buy it.

So, off to the daycare center for House. Of course, the other kids aren’t sick, but the daycare center counselor is hooking up with the dad, and House realizes that she may be the one getting the kids sick. The kids have hormonal imbalances, and it actually leads back to the father, who’s also given it to the counselor. Actually, it’s a male hormone cream he puts on himself that has affected the kids, just by his skin secretions. The father can and will save them by stopping the cream.

Wilson stops off at House’s office to say that he’s going to go for it with Cuddy, and try to kiss her to show her how he feels. House isn’t able to do what he really wants, which is stop Wilson, who goes off to either get fired or get a girlfriend. Or…well, Wilson runs back in, realizes House sent the flowers so he’d figure out his feelings, which aren’t to kiss Cuddy. Finally, in the locker room, Cameron finds some flowers that Chase has left her, which, as he notes, weren’t stolen. Cameron has thought about what Chase said, but still doesn’t want a relationship. Chase says he’s fine, but we all know he’s not.

The next day, House and Cuddy watch Lucy, Jasper and her dad, and the daycare counselor walk out of the hospital, talking about the age difference in that relationship. She says things shouldn’t be so hard and then, well, it looks like House asks her out to another play. Oh, let’s have them kiss already. Maybe next week, on an all-new ‘House.’