As Eddie Novack (Meat Loaf) lies on his deathbed, his wife Charlotte is stricken with respiratory failure.
The team takes Charlotte's case and wheels Eddie into her room, as he seems to gain strength when he sees her suffering.
In the meantime, Taub does a hormone panel on Eddie which turns out normal, so he does an echo-cardiogram on him as well to see if his heart's improving, but it isn't.
Unusually, Kutner does not show up for work, and House dispatches Thirteen and Foreman to check his apartment.
House thinks she could have Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, so Thirteen and Taub run her AAT proteins.
Meanwhile, House finds out that the murderer of Kutner's birth parents died of an aneurysm two months before.
House realizes Charlotte was in Rio without telling Eddie, where she contracted visceral leishmaniasis.
Kutner's suicide was scripted due to actor Kal Penn's decision to accept the position of Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison in President Barack Obama's administration.
Club praised the episode for its surprising twist, but also claimed that the sudden death of a major character for no discernible reason was "a dramatic cheap shot".
[4] Entertainment Weekly commended the show's handling of the death, believing that it was presented in a dramatically effective and realistic manner.