In the series finale, House wakes in a burning building beside a corpse, having been shooting heroin and making no move toward the exits. Through hallucinations of Kutner, Amber, Cuddy, and Cameron, he works through whether his life is worth continuing — Cameron's argument, that he is not choosing death but waiting for the fire to decide for him, gets him moving. Flashbacks reveal he had taken on a heroin addict as a patient, solved a case that mimicked ALS, and agreed to a scheme that would have let the patient take his legal fall — before his diagnostic instincts overrode his self-interest and he saved the man anyway. The body pulled from the rubble is identified as House through dental records he had swapped in advance; he had walked out the back. At the memorial, Wilson delivers a public indictment rather than a eulogy, then quietly slips awa ...