Sleeping Dogs Lie (House)

House (TV series) episode
episode_name = Sleeping Dogs Lie
episode_no = HOU-218
airdate = April 18, 2006
writer = Sara Hess
director = Greg Yaitanes
guest_star = Jayma Mays as Hannah
Dahlia Salem as Max


season = 2
diagnosis = Bubonic plague

Sleeping Dogs Lie is the eighteenth episode of the second season of "House", which premièred on the FOX network on April 18, 2006.

Plot

The episode opens with Hannah lying in bed at 3 A.M., wide awake, with her lesbian partner Max. Max asks Hannah if she can't sleep again. Hannah says she's fine and goes downstairs for a glass of wine. Max falls asleep again and wakes up in the morning. She finds Hannah in the bathroom banging her head against the wall with an empty bottle of sleeping pills, bleeding. It is revealed that she hasn't slept for about ten days.

Hannah is discovered to be sleeping for very short bursts of only ten seconds or so, so short that her brain doesn't remember that she has slept at all. Her symptoms develop rapidly: she starts bleeding through her rectum and later her nose. House at first thinks it's Wegener's granulomatosis, she then develops massive internal bleeding in her abdomen, and tests show she has acute liver failure and would need a transplant, but since there is no diagnosis of the underlying condition, this would not be granted. Max - apparently unaware that Hannah was planning to end their relationship - offers to donate half of her liver to buy more time. Dr Cameron wants to warn Max about this, but House refuses to let her, and asks Dr Cuddy to advise Max before the surgery. At the end of the episode Hannah is diagnosed with the bubonic plague, probably contracted through fleas from her dog. Finally it is revealed that Max knew that Hannah was planning to leave her, and the transplant was a tactic to ensure she wouldn't because of her gratitude. The episode ends satirically with House fast asleep in his chair.

The two sub-plots are (firstly) that Cameron had written an academic article about the procedure used in an earlier episode and was waiting for House's approval for the article for months. In that time, Dr Foreman also wrote a similar article and House approved it first. When confronted by Cameron, Foreman coldly tells her that they are colleagues - not friends - and that he does not owe her an apology. And (secondly), in the clinic, a young Chinese American girl wants birth control pills but, afraid to ask for them outright, seeks them for her elderly mother instead, who only has a cold.

External links

* [http://www.fox.com/house/ FOX.com-"House" official site]
* [http://televisionwithoutpity.com/show.cgi?show=151/ Television Without Pity-"House" recaps]
* [http://epguides.com/House/ House Episode Guide at epguides.com]
* [http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/house/100213/ TVGuide's Page: Full list of House Episodes]
* [http://www.housemd-guide.com/ House M.D. Guide]
*imdb title|0765624|Sleeping Dogs Lie
* [http://politedissent.com/archives/1202 Medical Reviews of House: Sleeping Dogs Lie]