"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

House 7.19: Rules

A medium seismic House 7.19 last night, with the fate of Masters in the balance.

Martha Masters is on the last day of her Internship with House.  He's been impressed with her intelligence and powers of analysis.  Not so much with her insistence of coloring within the box, as House puts it - her unwillingness to work outside of the rules.  But he's willing to give her a chance - until she again refuses to bend the rules, and allow House to stipulate that she completed all 10 of her LP procedures, when she only completed 9.  House withdraws his offer, and Masters has to work hard to return to his good graces.

A case at hand provides more opportunity than she might have wanted.  Her patient needs an immediate amputation of her arm to save her life.  She wants to wait until she completes a sailing competition, and convinces her parents.   Masters' dilemma:  let her patient have her way, and likely die, or bend the rules and use some kind of subterfuge to get the patient into surgery?

After much soul-searching, Masters breaks the rules par excellence, in a move House would have been and is indeed proud of.  She introduces a drug that causes a heart problem in the patient which requires surgery.  She lies to the parents that the problem was caused by the cancer which requires the amputation.  The parents agree to the amputation while the patient is under anesthesia in surgery.

In one sense, this is every patient's nightmare - the surgeon doing something you didn't want while you're under anesthesia and the knife.  But Masters has also very likely saved her patient's life.  House is now happy to have on his team-

But Masters decides she'd rather not go any further down the road of practicing this kind of ethically wrenching medicine.  She declines the offer, and leaves (presumably) the show.  A fine, satisfying, realistic conclusion to a good arc on House.

See also House and Cuddy on the Other Side in Season 7 Premiere ... House 7.2: House and Cuddy, Chapter 2 ... House 7.3: The Author and the White Lie ... House 7.9: The Vilda Chaya ... House 7.11: The Patient's Most Important Right ... House 7.14:  House, Death, and Cuddy ... House 7.16: Broken Hearts and their Repair ... House 7.17: Deadly Healthy Diet ... House 7.18: Thirteen Mysterious
And see also House Reborn in Season Six? ... 6.2: The Gang is Back and Fractured ... 6.3: The Saving Hitler Quandary ... 6.4: Diagnosis vs. Karma ... 6.5 Getting Better ... 6.6 House Around the Bases ... Four's a Crowd on House 6.7 ... House 6.8 and the Reverse of Flowers for Algernon ... House 6.9: Wilson ... House 6.10: Back in Business ... House 6.11: Making Amends, Mending Fences, and a Psychopath  ... House 6.12: The Progression to Mensch ... House 6.13: Cuddy's Perspective ... House Meets Blogger in 6.14 ... House 6.15: About Taub ... House 6.16: Revealing Couples ... House 6.17: Socrates on Steroids ... House 6.18: Open Marriage



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