The patient in “House M.D.,” Season 8, Episode 5, “The Confession” is Bob Harris, the owner of a garage, a pillar of the community, and an adulterer. He collapses during sex and has to have his mistress drive him to the hospital.
Spoilers surely follow.
This episode features the return of Chase and Taub, something that mystifies Foreman to no end. But as long as they are there, they might as well spy on House, though only for his own good and to keep him out of jail. Taub also has two daughters, one from his wife, the other his mistress. The paternity is somewhat unclear and this sets up a betting pool throughout the hospital.
Harris goes through a litany of symptoms, including a swollen neck, liver failure, a painful shedding of skin, and a brain aneurysm. He also has another symptom that oddly enough House, with his jaundiced view of human nature, does not catch. Eventually Chase does.
With his liver failure, Harris is able to gather a host of friends and family to be tested to see who would be a good candidate for a partial liver transplant. However, in the spirit of being totally honest, having already confessed to adultery, Harris confesses to a while host of sins, mainly involving cheating his customers at his garage. All but two decide that they don’t need to give up half their livers and three months of their lives after all.
As mentioned before, it is Chase who discovers that these confessions are being induced by a neurological condition. Indeed the confessions are false, for the most part. However, once Harris is cured, he is able to lie again, which means that he is able to tell his wife that the whole adultery thing was just one of those phony confessions. The wife is relieved and House is – well – validated.
Meanwhile House has manipulated Taub into taking DNA from his children to run a paternity test. House gets the results of the test and holds them out for Taub to admit that House was right. However Taub checks to see that everything is there and then puts the results into the shredder.