Stacy Warner brings her husband Mark to House under the pretense of a dinner, and House drugs him into a hospital admission. With every test returning clean, House pushes for exploratory surgery, catches abdominal epilepsy in the surgical footage, then watches Mark's condition deteriorate through nerve death, paralysis, and delusions before a false memory about a Paris honeymoon points to acute intermittent porphyria. Confirming the diagnosis requires triggering a potentially fatal attack — Mark refuses, Stacy begs House to override him, and House ultimately injects the cocktail anyway.

The case runs parallel to a reckoning between House and Stacy over the leg surgery she authorized without his consent years ago. Their confrontations clarify why House struggles to respect patient refusal in some cases and insists on it here, what it costs h ...