Selfish jerks -- Episode 204, "TB or Not TB"

Clinic patients:
Woman with cat allergy
Cecilia "That's Mrs. Carter, to you" Carter, who has lump in breast

Cecilia's purpose in the episode is neatly laid out with her last scene and the exchange between House and Cameron that leads up to it.

House: "We are who people think we are. People think he's a great doctor, so they give him stuff."
Cameron: "He is a great doctor."
House: "The reality is irrelevant. [He spots Cecilia in the clinic.] I'll prove it. People who know me, see me as an ass, treat me as an ass. People who don't know me, see a cripple, treat me like a cripple. What kind of selfish jerk wouldn't take advantage of that fact?"

Then he goes into the clinic, crushes her foot with his cane, looks apologetic and makes her feel bad, thus proving his point. Then again, his point was already made earlier in the cafeteria, when Cuddy first asked him to apologize to Cecilia for how he treated her, "he" of course being Foreman.

Cuddy: "She was just in my office, crying, because of the way you treated her."
Wilson: [sarcastically] "That doesn't sound like you."
House: "Then it probably wasn't"
Cuddy: "I get that you like to shock people, stun them out of complacency, out of stupidity. But this woman thought she had cancer. She had a lump in her breast. What were you trying to accomplish?"
House: "Let me ask you something. If this were another doctor. If the patient were complaining about ... let's see, I don't know ... Foreman. You'd just dismiss this as the paranoid bitching of a paranoid bitch ..."

What these two scenes also do is create links between House and Sebastian and Foreman. In the first scene, House's point that "we are who people think we are" applies to him and Sebastian. And House was mocking him when he said the selfish jerk line, which Sebastian had said earlier in the episode (a line, by the way, that I still don't get). The second scene continues a running theme about how Foreman is like House (or as Paul says in his House blog, "Evolution is real!").

And all of it comes together in the scene in the coma patient's room where House and Wilson are watching Sebastian's press conference. Foreman comes in and tries to explain himself to House, who teases him in his House way about how he insulted a woman with breast cancer but is "years away from mad skills like that" -- insinuating, of course, that House already possesses such mad skills. Then:

House: "I need you to apologize."
Foreman: "Cuddy's only doing this because she thinks it's you."
House: "Welcome to the world. Everyone's different, everyone gets treated different. You try fighting that, you end up dying of TB."

So Cecilia was busy. Cat allergy woman? I don't know. Space filler.