The "Braveheart" episode of House (Season 6, Episode 5) begins with a free running demonstration as a police detective chases a suspect thru an industrial complex with climbing, jumping, running, obstacles, and other free running elements. When the detective decides to jump from roof to roof in between buildings, the detective follows, blatantly ignoring suggestions not to from his partner. The officer falls and is gravely injured, which places him in the hospital. But a mere fall is not going to pique the interest of a diagnostician like House.
Initial Symptoms
While being examined in the emergency room for numerous broken bones and a collapsed lung, the injured officer is anxious to be released and sent home. His partner, on the other hand, reports that the jump may have been due to a short life expectancy, not exactly a suicide attempt but rather a lack of conscientiousness based on a sense of impending doom. The officer reports a family history of heart attack at roughly age 40, which is a birthday that is perilously close, a week away. Numerous visits to cardiologists have revealed no defects, but if anyone can find a problem with a heart, it is House.
House is not anxious to run tests on the officer because he feels that there is nothing to look for. Chase has flashbacks of the patient that he killed. Lacking a significant starting point, Foreman and Chase run an autopsy on the remains of the officer’s father and grandfather. Making things more interesting, a woman arrives at the hospital, refuses to see the officer, and tells House that the officer has a son.
Foreman and Chase decide to get a bone marrow sample from the son, but the child has never met his father. Meanwhile, House is running rounds with a few other doctors, intent on making their lives as miserable as possible.
House Diagnosis
House takes Chase up to the ICU to convince the officer that he is fine. Giving the patient a fake diagnosis of a non-existent genetic condition and candy as medicine, House discharges him. Four hours later, the officer collapses and dies.
While House is sleeping, he hears voices, and then when he awakens to Foreman knocking on the door, he finds out that the officer died. Now he is starting to question his diagnostic abilities and his sanity.
Chase decides to drive two hours to tell the mother of the officer’s son that the officer is dead, and Foreman and House perform the autopsy and the officer starts bleeding. After jumping back in terror, House announces that the autopsy will have to wait a little bit. Once the officer is patched back up and is back in the ICU, House, Foreman, and the team tries to figure out what caused the victim’s heart to slow enough to be declared dead.
House has his hearing checked because he is hearing voices. Then he decides to give up his relicensing because he thinks that he is not psychologically ready to be a doctor again.
The officer feels such intense pain in his jaw that he pulls one of his own teeth out. Now just about out of options, the team begins to look at a rare form of bone cancer as the cause of both the pain and the heart appearing to not work. In a Hail Mary attempt, House considers the problem being a nerve disorder. House makes Chase take the medication up to the ICU where the officer is just so that he will confront his terror over the death of the dictator. Chase finally goes to confession in an attempt to assuage his guilt, where the priest tells him to turn himself in to the police for the murder of the dictator.
Final Clue
House and Cutty are arguing about his considering not being a doctor anymore, when House gets an inspiration and finally figures out what is wrong with his patient. There is an aneurism in his brain that is causing everything from the rage to the slow pulse. He performs surgery to correct the aneurism in the officer, and repeats the surgery to remove the aneurism in his son. Once again, House saves the day at the last minute.
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