The Right Stuff (House)

A pilot, Captain Greta Cooper (played by Essence Atkins), begins hallucinating while in a United States Air Force jet simulator.

Meanwhile, House is being pressured by Cuddy to whittle down his applicant pool. He makes a show of firing many of them arbitrarily, before being paged by Cooper, who seeks to bribe him into diagnosing her off the record, as she fears NASA will drop her from the astronaut program. House is initially uninterested, but becomes intrigued when she mentions her sudden synesthesia. House presents her to his recruits, then splits them up to run various tests. While talking to his applicants in his office, House thinks he sees Chase walking past the doorway.

House orders Cooper into a hyperbaric chamber where Applicants 6, 18, and 24 attempt to flush out excess oxygen, but she collapses with a heart attack. They try to defibrillate, but it starts a fire in the oxygen chamber, setting off the sprinklers. Later, they determine the heart attack was not caused by the treatment.

House then sends them to run tests and look for infectious substances in the cafeteria. House confides to Wilson that he saw Chase, but Wilson says Chase is in Scottsdale, Arizona, and suggests House is feeling repressed guilt. House is not amused.

The applicants check in with House who orders thyroid tests. Cooper's temperature begins to rise. The applicants inadvertently reveal they broke into her house, and she becomes paranoid and begins to hear color again. They sedate her, but Cuddy notices and wants to know who Cooper is. House thinks he sees Cameron walk through the lobby.

Cuddy goes to the applicants for answers and they have to admit they do not know much — until one of the applicants squeals. Cuddy insists that House document everything. After identifying the informant, House tells his applicants to figure out how to test Cooper without having to document it. He then goes Wilson to find out why Cameron is there. Wilson says she is also in Arizona, where she and Chase are engaged, and predicts that House is going to choose the recruits he dislikes the most.

House picks up on the idea of stress and decides to stress Cooper's liver. Just after being fired, one of the applicants (Kal Penn) suggests they get her drunk. House likes his idea, and takes him back. He decides to use some of the other applicants as a control group (including a teetotaling Mormon) to gauge how quickly Cooper gets drunk. House takes a couple of drinks, after which he believes he sees Foreman outside. Meanwhile, Cooper has breathing problems, but refuses treatment. Cuddy interrupts House's pursuit of Foreman and asks why he has ordered irrelevant tests, pointing out Foreman is working in New York City. House returns to find Cooper has been taken to the physical training room so they have an excuse for giving her oxygen. House determines she has either lung cancer or tuberous sclerosis, but a biopsy will leave a scar. One of the applicants, a plastic surgeon named Taub, proposes she undergo breast augmentation, thus providing a plausible reason for the scarring NASA doctors will spot.

During the surgery, they find cysts in a lung. Chase appears and suggests Cooper has Von Hippel-Lindau disease, which House confirms. After removing the cysts, House confronts Wilson, who admits that Chase and Cameron are still working in the hospital (although Foreman is, indeed, in New York). House informs Cooper that he told NASA about her condition.

House dismisses some of the applicants and tells the rest to come back the next day. He confronts an older applicant named Henry and states he has never been to medical school. Henry admits he worked at the Columbia medical school admissions office for decades and audited all the classes, but never received a diploma. House suggests that Henry could still work as his assistant.

House goes to see Cameron in the E.R., and she reveals she was the one who gave House's pager number to Cooper. House in turn confesses he did not actually tell NASA about Cooper's condition; he lied to prevent anyone else from telling NASA, reasoning that Cooper's knowledge of her risk will make her a more careful pilot. Cameron is skeptical of his reason, suggesting instead that he was not willing to crush her dream.

The opening sequence of the episode contains footage from the famous "Star Gate" sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• "The Right Stuff" at IMDb