Alone (House)

When an office building collapses, House has to diagnose a young woman, Megan, who survived the disaster. Due to her injuries, Megan's only form of communication is blinking with one eye.

House's first instinct is to break into Megan's home to look for clues, where he discovers her diary and deduces that she must be on antidepressants. However, the diagnosis fails as new symptoms continue to appear.

To prove to House that he needs a team, Cuddy sends a memo out banning anyone in the hospital from assisting him in his diagnosis. When Cuddy finds a doctor working on a diagnosis House has made regarding Megan's possible alcoholism, she discovers House has sent out a second memo from her e-mail telling staff to ignore the first memo.

House makes several startling revelations about the patient that surprise her boyfriend and mother. House states that she has had an abortion and apparently lied to her boyfriend about it. The patient is also a heavy drinker, something which shocks her family. House continues to give treatment based on the woman's condition and medical records, none of which work and her condition deteriorates.

House realizes that the patient he has been treating has been getting the wrong medication because it is the wrong patient and wakes from her comatose state to ask her name. The woman struggles, but finally says "Liz". Liz is Megan's co-worker who worked in the same area of the office building that collapsed. Both have the same hair color and build and their faces were badly injured when the building collapsed, allowing them to be mistakenly identified by their families. The real Megan died elsewhere in the hospital with Liz's boyfriend by her side.

Cuddy tells House that while he did solve the case, he would have solved it much earlier if his team was there. Cameron would not have accepted that a boyfriend knew so little about the love of his life, and when House diagnosed multiple conditions, Foreman would have worked hard to prove House wrong, while Chase would have worked harder to prove House right. House realizes the validity of Cuddy's point and decides to hire a new team. The episode ends with a close up of House strumming a small tune on his guitar, prepping his new recruits, who turn out to be a room of 40.

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• "Alone" at Fox.com
• "Alone" at IMDb
• "Alone" at TV.com