"House": Office Politics

A campaign manager finds himself as House's patient after a skin infection progresses to liver failure and then temporary paralysis.

Cuddy assigns House a new member to his team, since he's been stalling on replacing 13. She's a young Martha M. Meadows. House begins his usual testing and provoking to see what he can get away with.

The patient's illness progresses, and it becomes obvious that Martha and House will clash. Unlike House, she has to okay everything with the patient and make sure they know their options. This gets in the way of House's usual 'just save their life' routine. He fires her several times, but she finally insists she's not leaving.

House thinks that the patient has Hepatitis C, but that his liver is concealing it. After interferon treatment doesn't work, Martha and House discuss the other treatment: Hepatitis A infection. The only problem is only 15% of patients who are infected with Hep A recover from Hep C.

Cuddy won't let Martha and House endanger a patient, even after Martha tries to convince her otherwise.

So, what does House do? House has his team run test after test to generate a false false-positive blood result for Hep C so he can go ahead and infect his patient with Hep A.

Martha helps convince the patient to undergo the Hep A infection despite the risks, without lying to him - which drives House crazy.

As the episode wraps up, Cuddy puts two and two together after speaking to a nurse in clinic, and realizes House lied to her about the test results.

Cuddy was happy to note that House had changed when he ran the test, so finding out he lied revealed he is still the old House. Her hopes of him changing are slim - which is exactly what he told her when they got together. Her desire to get back to the way it was - House saving lives, even if he does take risks - is what she got. But will their relationship survive House just being House?

Watch the next episode of House, Monday, November 15 at 8 pm ET.

FOX Broadcasting Company: House TV Show