Control (House) - Plot

Plot

A young CEO named Carly (Sarah Clarke) is admitted to the hospital after experiencing severe leg pain during a conference. Chase takes an X-ray of her leg, which doesn't reveal any blood clotting, the suspected cause of her pain. When the X-ray turns out negative and Carly experiences severe pain, House asks Wilson to perform a colonoscopy on her, suspecting cancer. Carly refuses the procedure, but consents to a CT scan, which is non-invasive but expensive. The test results also come back negative.

Meanwhile, billionaire Edward Vogler (Chi McBride) announces his plan to give the hospital $100 million in exchange for being the new chairman of the board. As Cuddy is showing Vogler around the hospital, he notices House, who is without a lab coat and playing with a yo-yo in his office. Vogler pressures Cuddy into getting House to conform with hospital protocol, and argues that House's division is losing $3 million a year, but Cuddy stands up for House.

House checks Carly's X-rays and discovers that Chase made a mistake, X-raying the wrong leg twice because he was flirting with the radiologist. While being prepped for another X-ray by Foreman, Carly goes into respiratory arrest as her lungs fill with fluid. They drain her lungs, but Carly resists further tests; House senses that she is ashamed of something. He checks her body while she's sleeping and finds scars.

House talks to Carly, realizing that along with cutting herself, she's been swallowing Ipecac to induce vomiting to keep thin. However, the Ipecac she has been taking three times a week has resulted in severe damage to her heart, and she needs a transplant. Because of her cutting and bulimia, she's a high risk for a heart transplant, which means House must lie to Wilson, Cuddy, and the rest of the board about her mental state. Cuddy is suspicious, as House had Carly put on the waiting list for a heart transplant an hour before the rest of the doctors came to the same conclusion. However, House sticks to his story and Carly gets a new heart.

The rest of the staff are confused as to why House put her on the waiting list so quickly. Chase is afraid of losing his job after messing up the X-ray and decides to search Carly's room. He discovers the bottle of Ipecac in her purse. Carly's surgery goes well, and House confronts Carly about the changes she needs to make in her life. In the end, Vogler confronts House in his office, having found out that Carly had Ipecac in her possession. House pretends he didn't know, and informs Vogler that to get rid of him, he'd need to have all members of the board vote him off, which will be difficult with Cuddy and Wilson on his side. Vogler counters that while that may be true, it'd be much easier to get rid of Cuddy or Wilson, and that the remaining members of the board would be likely to vote House off.

During the episode, House also meets a father and son in the clinic. The father can't speak ever since he had knee surgery a year before, and is getting a $1 million settlement from the hospital. House meets the father a second time and injects him in the throat with botox. In their third meeting, House tells the father that the botox should have cured the man, as his vocal cords were paralyzed from the intubation done on him (a rare condition). However, House agrees to keep the man's cure a secret, so he won't lose out on the settlement.