"House M.D." - "Wilson's Heart" Quiz

Answer: Freeze her heart

This episode was the second half of the "House M.D." season finale, continued from the first part "House's Head". In the previous episode, House is involved in a bus crash that leaves multiple people injured. He struggles to remember a person in who he saw symptoms before the accident until he remembers that person was Dr. Amber Volakis, a former candidate for a fellowship in his team and the girlfriend of Dr. Wilson.

The doctor at Princeton General says that Amber had no ID on her, so they didn't know who to call. The enormous damage that Amber suffered was not only because of the crash but a possible condition that was exacerbated in the accident. House asks if the hospital has done a coronary angiography but the doctor replies that there are other critical patients before her. With this information, House suggests moving her to Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital with the consent of her "husband", Wilson. As they ride in the ambulance, Wilson questions House as to why he was with her the night of the crash. Amber goes into V-Fib, an abnormal heart rhythm that endangers her life. Dr. House goes for the paddles to shock her heart into restarting, but Wilson stops him because this could damage her heart beyond repair.

Wilson suggests protective hypothermia, where a patient's body is cooled down so the heart stops beating. Wilson asks to put her on bypass to give House more time to diagnose her and potentially save her.

Answer: Kissing

House, visibly upset and tired, orders his team to search Amber's home for heavy metals, toxins, medications, or any other material that could indicate heart disease. Dr. Taub asks House if there's anything "medically relevant" that needs to be said about Amber and House being at a bar that night, insinuating that they may have been having an affair. Taub also says he will run a tox screen to rule out drugs they may have taken.

At Amber's apartment, Kutner and Thirteen find a laptop and go through its contents. Thirteen is visibly uncomfortable, but Kutner reads her emails and looks into her media files hoping to find something relevant. They find a video of Amber and Wilson kissing on their couch, which Kutner watches attentively. Thirteen closes the laptop and says they shouldn't be treating Amber because their judgment may be compromised.

Answer: Sherry

After the head injury Dr. House suffered in the previous episode, he started to have hallucinations and visions of Amber and the accident. In this episode, the first vision comes in his office, in a more seductive way than before. Amber, acting as a part of House's subconscious trying to clear up the details of the night, asks House if perhaps he liked her and that's why he invited her for a drink.

She then pours House a glass of sherry, a Spanish fortified wine, and then approaches the doctor and kisses him.

This scene serves as House's subconscious displaying a sense of guilt, since Amber says things like "a man thinks a woman is beautiful" and "but someone gets between them", referring to Wilson.

Answer: Diet pills

House tells Cuddy and Wilson about his idea to have deep brain stimulation with electricity, but they dismiss him and say he needs to rest. Then, the team explains that both the coronary angiogram and tox screen were negative, ruling out possible explanations for Amber's condition. However, they did find prescription diet pills in her apartment, to Wilson's surprise. These pills, hidden in a jar of vitamins, are amphetamines that could've caused structural damage in Amber's heart.

House asks the team to surgically open Amber's heart to see if there's any damage from the pills, rather than warming her body up and doing a CT scan. Wilson and House both refuse, something Foreman thinks House wouldn't do if this were any other patient.

Answer: Shot in a robbery attempt

Before the surgical procedure started, Dr. Chase noticed Amber had yellow eyes, indicating jaundice and liver failure, something diet pills wouldn't cause. House orders an ice slurry treatment to freeze her lungs and prevent whatever is killing Amber from spreading to the rest of her body.

Wilson says Amber doesn't drink sherry, which leads House to believe the hallucination meant something else. Kutner points out that there's a bar called "Sharrie's" nearby, and the bartender there does recognize House. He claims that he was with Amber and they even drank together, bewildering Wilson. The bartender, after returning House's keys, explains that Amber sneezed but he didn't notice anything else that was unusual.

Back in intensive care, Kutner and Thirteen are treating Amber. However, Thirteen seems distressed and unable to focus, even confusing medical equipment. Kutner says this is not different because "everyone dies", but Dr. Hadley replies that she's not dead yet. Kutner insists that she may be acting like this because Amber may be dead soon. Kutner explains that when he was six, his parents were shot when someone came into their store and robbed it. This forced him to accept that life isn't fair.

Answer: Hepatitis B

House thinks that Amber sneezing on a napkin could be significant, which is confirmed by a liver biopsy showing infiltrates. House orders an interferon treatment to relieve the hepatitis. Then, he has yet another hallucination where Amber tells him "Hepatitis B is a lame diagnosis".

In the imaginary interaction, Amber points to her back, which leads Dr. House to examine the real Amber's body. The team finds a rash and bruising so the team goes back and forth with new possible diagnoses. Wilson can't understand how House saw the rash before the crash, further increasing his suspicions. Foreman wants to treat for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever but that would involve restarting her heart, which Wilson still opposes. House decides to support Wilson and chooses to run blood cultures to confirm the diagnosis, rather than treating her as he would with any other patient.

Answer: Teardrop

House correctly infers that the reason Thirteen is so upset is not particularly because of Amber (who she didn't even like), but rather, because she is also a young doctor at risk of dying due to her possibly having Huntington's chorea (a genetic disease that her mother died of). Next, a cover of "Teardrop" by Jose Gonzalez plays while we see Dr. Cameron consoling Dr. Wilson, House trying to sleep, Thirteen testing her blood for Huntington's, and Foreman looking at Amber's vital signs. He then goes to Cuddy's office to say "House is gonna kill the patient", so they warm her body up looking to restart her heart. Before they can do so, Wilson prevents them from doing anything, clinging to hope that there may still be time for other alternatives.

"Teardrop" is a song by the English group Massive Attack. The tune, released in 1998, was used as the theme song for "House M.D." in season one, as well as a modified version of it for the rest of the show. A cover by Swedish singer Jose Gonzalez plays in this episode, giving a poignant few minutes for the audience to absorb.

Answer: Yes

As House proposed earlier in the episode, deep brain stimulation could help him remember crucial details of the accident. In this procedure, electrical impulses are sent to the brain through surgical intervention. Electrodes go to specific parts of the brain, which is why this method can be used for purposes as varied as Parkinson's treatment or aiding in memory retrieval.

Wilson yells at Cuddy and House out of desperation and then asks House to undergo deep brain stimulation. This may be their last chance at saving Amber's life, and when House asks Wilson if he wants him to risk his life to save Amber's, Wilson responds affirmatively. Since electrical impulses can cause severe complications, the procedure is life-threatening if enough conditions are met, including sensory loss and in some cases strokes.

Answer: Amantadine

Chase delivers three volts to House's brain to stimulate memories but he can't hear anything. They increase the voltage causing House to remember why Amber was at the bar and how the chain of events that unfolded provoked Amber's imminent death. House was so drunk that the bartender took his keys away, so he tried to call Wilson to be picked up. Amber answered the call and went to the bar, then put House on a bus to take them home. Twice in this scene, House remembers Amber sneezing, indicating that she was suffering from a cold or the flu. Lastly, House remembers that he saw Amber taking amantadine pills, drugs used to treat Influenza A.

Wilson initially takes this as good news, given that dialysis could help filter the drugs out of her system and save her. However, House points out that amantadine binds to the proteins in the blood, a problem dialysis wouldn't fix. He explains that the crash must have damaged her organs and deemed the body unable to process the drugs, which in turn caused the abnormal heartbeat. In a devastating scene, House tells Wilson that there's nothing they can do, and Amber will inevitably die.

Answer: You Can't Always Get What You Want

After the deep brain stimulation session where House finally discovers what caused Amber's death, he has a seizure and falls into a coma. Wilson, supported by Cuddy, decides to wake up Amber to at least have the chance to say goodbye before she dies. House's team walks by Amber one by one, and finally, Wilson lies down with her. They talk briefly about the accident and Amber realizes that the combination of the amantadine pills and the crash sealed her fate. Wilson asks why she isn't angry, to which she replies that she doesn't want that to be her last feeling. They kiss and Wilson turns off the machine, stopping Amber's heartbeat permanently.

House wakes up from his coma after having a vision of him and Amber sitting in a white bus. House talks about how miserable he is and how he would prefer to die, and Amber responds: "you can't always get what you want". This is a reference to the first season of the show, where both the phrase and the song by the Rolling Stones are featured on multiple occasions.

The song, released in 1969 and written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, was first included as a B-side track but was later re-released as a single, gaining much more popularity.

The season finale ends with images of the team, including Thirteen looking at a positive Huntington's test, and a sleeping Cuddy holding House's hand. Wilson briefly enters the room and stares at house, then leaves.