- A famous novelist finishes her last novel and gets ready to shoot herself, when she has a seizure. House gives her a 72 hour psych hold to find out what's wrong with her. House and Wilson go on a go-kart double-date.
- When Alice, the author of a popular children's book series, inexplicably suffers from a seizure moments before an attempt to take her own life, the Princeton Plansboro team faces the challenges of evaluating both her underlying medical conditions, as well as her unstable psychological state. Unable to diagnose Alice, House becomes particularly motivated, as he's a fan of her books, and is convinced that the key to unlocking the mysteries of Alice's condition lies in the pages of her most recent novel. Meanwhile, House takes Cuddy on a double date with Wilson and his girlfriend, Sam, and makes a discovery that proves that life imitates art as the couple continues to make compromises in order to make their relationship work.—Fox Publicity
- After having a conversation with an imaginary boy, a writer attempts to shoot herself after finishing a book. She begins shaking and only grazes her cheek.
House (Hugh Laurie) tells Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) he's worried about what will happen between him and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) once the honeymoon stage ends. He doesn't think they have much in common and wants to find something.
House checks in on the writer, Alice Tanner (Amy Irving), of whom he is a big fan. Her maid sent her in for a seizure but House guesses correctly she tried to shoot herself. When she tries to leave, House places her on a 72-hour psychiatric hold to legally prevent her from discharging herself.
House forces Taub (Peter Jacobson) and Foreman (Omar Epps) to do a full workup on Tanner, seemingly because he's a fan and wants her to live long enough to finish her series.
Under the pretense it is a friend's place, House takes Cuddy to Tanner's mansion using stolen keys.
Tanner is evasive with Taub and Foreman (asking for a female doctor), who are going to watch her to see if she has another seizure.
Tanner's maid tells House she thinks her boss is depressed and is having issues with her back and hands. House steals the ribbon from Tanner's typewriter (looking for information on her latest manuscript) and learns she eats 2-3 cans of tuna fish per day.
House shows up at the hospital and shows Taub and Foreman that Tanner "wet the bed" but he isn't sure how.
Tanner is initially diagnosed as having unilateral hyperhydrosis.
House talks to Cuddy about Tanner wanting a woman doctor. She directs him to hire a female doctor to replace Remy Hadley/Thirteen within a week.
Tanner quickly figures out House and Cuddy are together when she visits her. She also realizes based on perfume smell her maid talked to House. She changes her mind about needing a female doctor.
While House inspects Tanner's ribbon looking for sentences, Wilson tells him Cuddy and he are both trying to find things in common, a good sign.
Tanner has another conversation with her young male friend. Taub and Chase (Jesse Spencer) see her talking to herself, but she tells them it is not a hallucination. Tanner has an uncanny ability to figure people out based on minute clues. While correctly guessing Taub is a cheater, she starts talking about an ex-husband and grabs her head in pain and spikes her blood pressure.
House thinks the excess of adrenaline is what is causing Tanner's symptoms and orders an MRI.
Before being put in the MRI scanner Tanner begins screaming as something in her shin sparks and comes burning through her leg.
Tanner had three screws in her leg she didn't tell anybody about. House reminds the team that the woman wants to die and they need to be more careful. With 39 hours left in the psych hold, they must find something she wants.
House offers Tanner a syringe which will kill her in exchange for letting them figure out the location of her adrenaline-secreting tumor. He recognizes her pain and thinks when she is better she'll want to live. Tanner takes the deal but instead immediately jabs the needle into her leg.
House was lying about the syringe and Tanner is perfectly fine the next morning. She clearly has no interest in helping them keep her alive. Because she injected herself, House is able to add an additional 24 hours to the psych hold. She tells House the boy detective hero of her books dies and he looks miserable.
After he tells the team to look for the tumor using ultrasound, House thinks he can find out about Tanner via the detective's older female mentor character in her books.
House brings in Sam (Cynthia Watros) (who turns out to be a huge Tanner fan as well) to help him make sense of the typewriter ribbon using the MRI. She is able to figure out a way to tweak the software and print out the book.
Cuddy tells House to pick "something we both like" for their date that night.
On ultrasound, the team finds something which isn't a tumor encased around Tanner's heart.
Tanner has a pericardial effusion, meaning she could have a virus or a cancer. House has read the manuscript and tells the team it ends with a cliffhanger. The mentor character has contracted a mysterious condition consisting of pain, fatigue and depression and dies halfway through the book. The best guess now is Lupus.
House takes Cuddy to a go carts track after calling her mother. In fact, she liked them when she was 12. Cuddy ends up hurting her neck when Sam wrecks her. Cuddy is grouchy because of the pain and this gives House an idea.
House realizes that the car accident which broke her leg also she damaged her thyroid. What Tanner has is hypothyroidism, which is curable. House thinks she should finish her story and give her detective hero, Jack, what he deserves. She yells at House that he doesn't know anything about him and promptly suffers complete paralysis.
The paralysis contradicts House's thyroid diagnosis and Taub suggests a post traumatic condition which could be fixed if they find her records.
Tanner refuses any more treatment, including the surgery she needs to live.
Cuddy tells House she can't find a legal way to force Tanner to get treatment. House guesses Tanner wants to punish herself for something which happened before she was famous and thinks the answer must be in her records. Cuddy wonders if Alice Tanner could be a penname.
House finds out Tanner (whose real name is Helen) was in a car accident with her son and is writing the books to keep him alive. She thinks she killed her son by letting him drive with only a learner's permit. Tanner feels she deserves what is happening to her. House reviewed her son's autopsy results and found out her son had a brain aneurism which both killed him and caused the crash. There was nothing she could have done. She and the vision of the son agree the accident was neither of their faults.
Tanner gets her surgery. In the observation deck, we realize that House made up the story about the aneurism. Tanner's son simply wasn't very coordinated. Cuddy tells House having stuff in common isn't a big deal and she's never been happier.
Post-surgery, Tanner tells House she wants to move on to writing adult books and won't resolve the story of her detective. House is upset but doesn't admit to his lie.
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