This was such an exciting episode as we see severe weather, and the good and bad sides of people and technology within the Gaffney Hospital.
Dr. Charles, Goodwin, Maggie, Dr. Marcel, Felix and Heidi
There is a terrible storm outside and Goodwin has opened the doors to allow people to come in and warm up. They are setting up more cots in the main lobby and Maggie is working to try and move people over there, to clear beds in the ED. Dr. Charles is speaking to Felix, a bipolar patient that they are treating for frostbite on his foot who also is not compliant with his psychiatric medications and Maggie tells Dr. Charles his patient is stable and needs to move to the lobby. However unfortunately when they go to check on him later, he has been stabbed 3 times in his abdomen.
Maggie is riddled with guilt for having moved him, and the security team and Jack Dayton want to call a code silver and move everyone out of the hospital until they can identify the assailant, but Goodwin outright refuses, because if they send the people out, they will freeze to death. This was such a classic Goodwin move, trying to balance the critical concerns with what is best for patient outcomes. Honestly, Chicago Med would not be the place it is for patients without this wonderful woman.
Dr. Marcel says he suggests using the 2.0 so that they can use the imaging to scan the 3 tracks in Felix’s damaged liver and find where the retained piece of knife is. All of the staff have been working extremely long hours, and while performing the surgery to remove a retained piece of the knife, OR 2.0 locks out Dr. Marcel because it detects he is only moving at 74% of his usual efficiency. Crockett tells them to override it, but they tell him that Dayton prevented any override, and he has to transfer the primary role to Dr. Tanaka-Reid, and has to supervise. For the first time we see that Dr. Marcel may not be as big of a champion of the OR 2.0 as he previously has been. After the operation, he goes to speak to Jack Dayton, but Dayton says he will not change the programming and that sometimes people do not realize how tired they are, and this will prevent possible liabilities. This created some of the first real friction we have seen between Dr. Marcel and Dayton since they first met.
In the meantime, Maggie is so upset over not having heard from Ben during the storm and she is exhausted and in typical Dr. Charles style, he tells her to take a rest. As she is walking by a door after calling Ben again, she hears someone outside a door banging. She finds a woman, Heidi, who slipped on the ice, and Maggie helps her down to the ED. However, the woman begins to get upset and says Dr. Hudgins smiling is creeping her out and she suddenly pulls out a knife to try to stab Dr. Hudgins and Maggie jumps in to restrain her. She gets cut on her arm but prevents the woman from stabbing Dr. Hudgins. Afterwards, once she is medicated, Dr. Charles tells them that Heidi has paranoid schizophrenia and has been unmedicated and that Felix would not stop talking and was getting into her personal space in the main lobby so she attacked him. Dr. Charles says that without proper treatment, she could be very dangerous, and everyone is happy to know she is in custody and hopefully she will get the help she needs in the future.
At the end of the episode, Ben shows up at the hospital and he and Maggie hug. It was wonderful not only to see Maggie find some resolution with what happened to Felix, but to be able to start to have some reconciliation with Ben after such a difficult few weeks. And I am sure the Maggie and Ben shippers were able to breathe a sigh of relief to see this embrace.
Dr. Archer, Dr. Asher, Dr. Hudgins, Sean Archer, Clint and Katie
The storm means that everything is almost impassible and Katie comes in to the ED, concerned she may be in early labor because she is having contractions. Dr. Archer feels it may be false labor or perhaps preeclampsia and Dr. Archer tries to consult Dr. Asher by phone, and she gives him some suggestions of medications to give while he waits for her to arrive. She is stuck and the National Guard is helping to drive her in. It is so enjoyable to see that the relationship between these two is growing, and the level of professional trust but also personal concern that is evident between them.
Sean arrives at the hospital to bring in his friend Clint, his roommate from the reentry center, who has a facial fracture. Dr. Hudgins consults Dr. Archer and he goes in to see them and Dr. Archer tells Dr. Hudgins to add a toxicology screen. Dean asks Sean what he is doing and Sean says that his friend needed a ride and his truck could make it through and that he couldn’t leave his friend in need.
The toxicology comes back with tons of medications on board, and Sean tells Dean that Clint relapsed and got into some trouble, and Sean swears to Dean he is clean and tells him if he doesn’t believe him, to give him a drug test, and Dean says maybe he will. Clearly Dr. Archer is still not trusting Sean’s judgement and is also being very protective to ensure he does not make a mess of his parole. While he means well, in typical Archer style it is coming across angry and harsh. We can only hope that he will learn to soften his approach and develop some trust, just like he did with Hannah.
Hannah and the National Guardsman, Corporal Parker, are on the way to the hospital and stop to help a man in a car accident and suddenly the car explodes. The vehicle they are travelling in is damaged. Parker is hit with shrapnel and Hannah has to help him by applying a tourniquet to a big bleed in his leg. The man in the car, Paul, has injured his chest and Hannah gets them both back into the vehicle, but she demonstrates the amazing ED skills she has learned by making a make shift dressing for a collapsed lung with duct tape and a plastic food bag, and also being able to monitor and treat the bleed in Parker’s leg. Clearly there is way more to Hannah Asher than just her OBGYN skills and she is ready to flex them when needed.
Dean hears that Hannah is stuck and says he is going to get her himself before she freezes, but then Katie begins to deliver her baby and Dr. Hudgins needs his help. Sean overhears and goes out in his truck and brings them in to safety. When they arrive Hannah tells Dean that Sean is a good kid and asks if he knew that he was a snow plow driver in Alaska.
Katie delivers her baby and she is fine and her baby boy is healthy though small, and goes to the NICU to be evaluated. Dr. Hudgins is so excited after completing his first delivery, and despite Dr. Archer’s continued grumpy demeanor, it is so adorable to see the enthusiasm that this young resident brings to learning new skills.
Dean apologizes to Sean and asks him if he would give him a lift home. This was a nice turning point scene, where we get to see Dean show his softer side, which seems to be how he wants to be with his son, but just seems to fail to succeed. Well, hopefully with Hannah’s positive influence on his demeanor and attitude, we will continue to see growth and development in Sean and Dean’s relationship as the season continues.
Dr. Halstead, Dr. Song, Nina Simmons and Lucas
On the other side of the technology battle, Nina Simmons, 53, comes in with a fractured pelvis after falling from a third story window. She was trying to let in fresh air by opening the window when she fell and also has carbon monoxide poisoning. Although the statistics do not support it and interventional radiology bails out on the procedure, Dr. Song agrees to do the procedure to try to stent the vessel in her pelvis, even though her odds of survival are only 7%. They have to use a large amount of blood but they are able to save Nina and reunite her with her young nephew, Lucas, who had been blaming himself because she had lit the stove because he was cold.
Afterwards, a cardiac surgeon reads them the riot act about using the blood, and Dr. Song has a real crisis of conscious and tells Will that she should have followed the statistics, but Will reminds her of the good outcome for the patient and for Lucas, and she says that does not matter. So while Dr. Song has a good patient outcome, she is not happy for not following what the data informed, which is the polar opposite to what Dr. Marcel experienced. It was wonderful seeing Dr. Song show some humanity and be willing to think outside of algorithms, and sadly, this looks like it might be the last of this new compassionate doctor we have been seeing. We can only hope she has a change of heart, since we were clearly shown in this episode that she has a good one.
Considering that this episode showed some polar weather, it seems only fitting that each of our character stories seem to also show some polar opposites. We are definitely being treated to some excellent stories this year from our One Chicago writing team.
What did you think of this episode of Chicago Med? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
