Episode Report Card Wing Chun: D+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT April Showers
By Wing Chun | Season 7 | Episode 18 | Aired on 04.18.2001
Post-credits, Mark pulls up at County in the Milquetoastmobile. It's raining fairly hard as he dashes from the car to the ambulance-bay doors. Why? It's not like he needs to worry about getting his hair wet. Weaver is already standing there with a suitcase -- waiting for a cab, I think it's safe to assume -- and she asks him in a friendly enough tone what he's doing at the hospital. He tells her about his wallet and, indicating her bag, asks rather lamely whether she's going somewhere. She tells him she's on her way to a conference in Las Vegas, adding that she missed it last year and thought her attending would be the best way to put a dent in their deficit; she totally fails to add, "And to save face and have a good cover story for why I wasn't at your wedding, although now that the nurses know the real reason I hardly need bother." Mark awkwardly tells her to play a hand of blackjack for him, and she says she will. He starts to walk off, but she calls after him and says, pretty sincerely, "I want you to know how happy I am for you and Elizabeth." Mark nods perfunctorily, smiles tightly, and mutters, "Thanks." He takes off. Weaver looks at her shoes.
Inside, Mark runs into Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen, who also marvels that he's at the hospital. ["I marvel that she's at the hospital. How many weeks has it been since we've even seen her?" -- Sars] Mark, mock-warningly, tells her she never saw him. She whatevers and makes for the desk. Okay, Ming-Na? Looks great. She's back to her pre-pregnancy figure and her hair is up in this adorably jaunty ponytail on top of her head. In her cute fuchsia top she looks like she could walk right out of the hospital and onto the set of Sailor Moon. And she should. Lisa hands her a chart and tells her something about another patient we'll never see. Lisa moves on, running into John "Snitty Snitty Bang Bang" Carter, who has his arm around an indigent, bearded gentleman in sunglasses. Carter asks Lisa to give the patient, Mr. Tuttle, a sandwich: "The unborn twin inside of his stomach is hungry." Lisa agrees, chuckling, and sends Mr. Tuttle to chairs. A call comes through on the radio, and Lisa goes over to take it: it seems that there's a multi-vehicle trauma resulting from a prison van that went over a highway embankment. Multi. Trauma. Prison. Phew -- for a second, I thought that maybe, in light of the wedding plot line, the writers might not find a way to wedge a whole posse of patients into the ER all at once. But then, this isn't Gideon's Crossing, and I should have known better.