Black Hole (House)

"Black Hole" is the sixteenth episode of the sixth season of the American medical drama House. It was directed by Greg Yaitanes and written by Lawrence Kaplow. It aired on March 15, 2010.

House and team try to diagnose a high school senior suffering from blackouts and hallucinations, and are forced to take a controversial approach. Meanwhile, Taub brings his personal life into the workplace.

A high school senior named Abby is sitting during a class discussion in a planetarium with her boyfriend, Nick. Suddenly, she starts drooling blood and sputum from her mouth. At Princeton-Plainsboro, House orders the team to do an MRI. During the MRI, she hallucinates that she is getting sucked into a black hole. Many diagnosis attempts are thwarted by negative tests. While Nick proposes to Abby, she hallucinates a younger version of herself coercing her to "tell the secret." Moments later, she begins seizing.

As a last-ditch effort to diagnose her, House and his team use an experimental procedure called "cognitive pattern recognition" to map the unconscious thoughts of Abby. This yields images of outer space and what appears to be Abby's father who had died in a plane crash. Eventually House reveals that Nick's father, a food importer traveling around the world, contracted a Middle Eastern parasite which he then inadvertently transmitted to Abby sexually, triggering a cerebellar schistosomiasis delayed hypersensitivity allergy.

Meanwhile, Wilson attempts to furnish his new condo. He rents the furniture, much to the dismay of House, who returns the furniture. Then, Wilson is seen in a furniture store trying to buy furniture, but is unable to choose anything. Finally, he hires a decorator and fills the room with furniture, buying House a Hammond B-3 organ. House is pleased with the gift and plays "A Whiter Shade of Pale".