House is skeptical of her independence, believing no teenager can truly be an adult. He spends much of the episode trying to prove she is lying about her age or her lifestyle to justify her "adulthood."
After various theories involving toxins at her factory are debunked, the team discovers that Delaney has a rare condition called Hughes-Stovin Syndrome . This causes multiple aneurysms, explaining her respiratory and cardiac distress. EmancipationHouse M.D. : Season 5 Episode 8
Foreman is running his own clinical trial for a pediatric Huntington’s drug. He is struggling with the ethics of the trial when one of his young patients, Sophia, begins to decline. House is skeptical of her independence, believing no
Wilson decides he needs to stop being House’s "enabler" and moves out of their shared arrangement to find his own apartment. Foreman is running his own clinical trial for
House, feeling abandoned, tries to sabotage Wilson’s new sense of independence by mocking his new "boring" life.
The team treats Delaney, a sixteen-year-old girl who has legally emancipated herself from her parents and works as a manager at a processing plant. She is admitted after collapsing with a swollen heart and lungs.