The Dig (House)

"The Dig" is the eighteenth episode of the seventh season of the American medical drama House. It first aired on April 11, 2011. This is the 150th episode of the series and marks the return of Thirteen, whose whereabouts have been unbeknownst to House's team for the last year. Wilson and Cuddy do not appear in this episode.

The episode starts with House waiting outside Middlebury Correctional Institute in New Jersey. It turns out he is picking up the freshly-released Thirteen who is surprised to see House. As they drive away, House asks her what she did. When she replies that she was in jail for "excessive prescribing", House states that this was only her plea bargain and not the truth. Thirteen avoids the question.

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, Masters presents a case to her teammates: a 36-year-old teacher coughing up blood. House pages the team that he will be away for three days. Chase and Foreman ignore Masters' case. Chase plans to go on vacation to Cabo while Foreman plans to go skiing. House is, however, listening on Masters' phone and forces the team to test the patient. House avoids telling the team about Thirteen. After talking with the patient, Chase diagnoses a Serratia infection which is immediately ruled out by patient coughing up blood.

House mentions he is going to a spud-gun competition. They take a detour to buy fresh clothes for Thirteen and around a residential neighborhood where Thirteen knees an unidentified man (portrayed by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof) in the groin at his house. House tells Thirteen about his relationship with Cuddy and their recent breakup. Thirteen tells House that she killed a man.

Foreman and Taub search the patient's house and find out that he is a hoarder and come up with aspergillosis for a diagnosis. However, this is ruled out as well by Taub and Masters. Chase and Masters search the house again and come up with a diagnosis of Q fever, but also find the patient's wife hidden at the house, who is revealed to be the actual hoarder.

House and Thirteen plan to build a powerful spud gun to defeat House's nemesis Harold Lam, who has already defeated him four times at the same competition. Although initially reluctant, Thirteen throws herself into the project. At the competition, Thirteen indirectly lets slip that she had a brother. House figures out that Thirteen had euthanized her brother who, like her mother, suffered from Huntington's disease. Thirteen admits this and explains that her brother had asked her to end his life in one of his increasingly short periods of lucidity. She tells him that she knows that she will one day reach similar state and that there will be no one to help her in the same way, a plaintive declaration that clearly troubles the silent and pensive House. However, Thirteen takes his silence as a lack of emotional response, and tells him that "it's no wonder Cuddy broke up with you". Back at the competition, House threatens Lam with the spud gun, getting only a warning from the police because of Lam's having put the moves on the sheriff's daughter earlier. Thirteen waits for House outside the sheriff's station in the same manner he waited for her in the opening scene. House mentions to Thirteen that it would have been him and Cuddy's one year anniversary that day.