Airborne (House)
"Airborne" is the eighteenth episode of the third season of House, the sixty-fourth episode overall.
| "Airborne" | |
|---|---|
| House episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 3 Episode 18 |
| Directed by | Elodie Keene |
| Written by | David Hoselton |
| Original air date | April 10, 2007 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
| |
Plot
House is returning from a pandemics symposium in Singapore with Cuddy. During the flight, a Korean man, Peng, sitting next to House begins vomiting. He also presents with fever, headache, abdominal pain and petechial rashes on his lower back. Cuddy notes that these are classic symptoms of meningococcal disease and that an outbreak might be imminent. House is not convinced there is a problem, and persuades the flight crew not to turn the plane around.
Soon another passenger becomes ill with the same symptoms and House assembles a makeshift diagnostic team - a boy who is to agree with him, a non-English speaker to disagree with him, and an indifferent woman who is to consider everything he says a "moral outrage". After discussion with the team which he uses as a sounding board for his own theories, House is convinced that both passengers are sick with ciguatera poisoning because they both ate seafood.
This theory is contradicted by Cuddy, who is showing similar symptoms despite having not eaten the sea bass. Cuddy persuades House to do a lumbar puncture to confirm meningitis, but the test comes back negative. When Cuddy becomes aggressive and shouts at House to cure the sickness quickly, he realizes that she and the rest of the plane are suffering from mass hysteria.
Peng, however, is still dying; House believes he is a drug mule and has cocaine in his system. Searching through Peng's wallet, House finds a scuba license and a receipt for scuba gear rental. Peng is diagnosed with decompression sickness, which was further worsened by boarding an airplane. Cuddy tells the flight crew to drop the plane below 5,000 feet (1,500 m) and get Peng oxygen.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, a 58-year-old woman, Fran, has been admitted with unexplained seizures and vision loss. During a medical examination she admits that she has just returned from a trip to Caracas, where she drank excessively, had casual sex, and used cocaine. She does not reveal that Robin, the woman who called the emergency services and accompanies her, is a sympathetic escort she had booked. Chase and Cameron visit Fran's house to search for clues, and return without a diagnosis, leaving Foreman to believe that Fran is bleeding into her brain. Chase realizes neither Fran nor her cat have eaten in the last few days, and discovers that when the neighbors had their home fumigated, some of the poison entered Fran's house through a shared electrical conduit. Fran is diagnosed with methyl bromide toxicity.
At the end of the episode, Chase suggests that he and Cameron take their relationship to the next level. Cameron responds that all she was looking for was sex, and now it's over.
