Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Feelings Every Addict Rejects
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 03.29.2011
Over to All Saints, next day, to head off the Eleanor part. The part where her job is maybe threatened, where the accusations of last year -- from Sam, the issue with the Pill-O-Matix -- will only lend credence to Eleanor's possible betrayal. Showing compassion for a beloved friend who needs it would be a betrayal in this instance, so she's got to get there first. Still wild-eyed and feral, even with Mrs. Akalitus.
Gloria staples a sign to the hospital chapel's door: PLEASE DO NOT KISS THE STATUES. Paint containing lead is known to cause poisoning. Jackie catches her in the hall, still itchy and babbling.
"This is entirely preemptive, there is nothing to be worried about: I've been doing this for twenty years, Gloria. Parts of my body are giving out. I started leaning on painkillers. It was a couple months, totally self-corrected."
Gloria gives her that owlish look and wonders aloud about the mishaps with the pill machine, before Eddie came back, but Jackie's got her story ready to go. Gloria hangs up her phone several times without answering, as she leads her down the rabbit hole.
"Nothing like that! My husband opened a credit card bill, he saw the pharmacy charges, that's it. But he called O'Hara... I'm fine, but he should not have called O'Hara. Her family? Like, drug addicts. Like pump-your-stomach, die-in-your-sleep drug addicts. So she had a disproportionate reaction. My husband feels like shit, he had no clue what her deal was when he called her... She might come in here. And if she does, I would just ask that you take whatever she says with a grain of salt, that's all."
Gloria's suspicious, but they have that nurse thing they have, that officer-of-the-court thing where if I tell you a thing is true, if I pinky-swear it, then we'll let it go this time because it's something I would never lie about. "Jackie, if a co-worker so much as raises the specter of substance abuse, I am required by law to inform HR, that's just the way it is. Fix it." Maybe just to shut her up, the constant talking, calling everybody into question in whatever way she can; maybe because she wants to solve the issue between her best nurse and her best doctor. Maybe because she loves Jackie Peyton.
Fitch Cooper comes in unannounced, whining about how he doesn't want to work with Sam -- Sam who punched him, Sam whose girlfriend he fucked -- and that since Zoey and "what's his name," Thor, are in Admitting, he needs Jackie. They take off, and Eleanor replaces them.
Coop's patient Pete has a dentist's mirror stuck up his nose because he wanted to see his brain. "I bet you are five," Jackie grins, and Pete asks Coop why his nose is broken. "My friend Sam didn't wanna share," he admits, and gives the mirror a little tug; it's lodged in his sinuses and he doesn't want to pull it out. Zoey appears in the doorway: "Tried to look at your brain, huh? Done that." I would be so scared to see Zoey's brain.
Pete's mom's horrified to hear Coop ask for surgical booties, but he assures her it's just to protect his new shoes; Jackie giggles with the little boy about the quality of his brain, and everything is normal for a second. In an aside, Jackie suggests that they give him a scan, so he can see his brain after all. "Using my powers for good," Coop muses. "Pretty tempting..." And before you know it, he's telling Pete his great idea.
"I've worked desperately to cultivate a remote and heartless persona for this exact reason. Well, no, actually it comes quite naturally. Point being, I suddenly am in the middle of something terribly private between Jackie and her husband." Gloria nods, waiting for Eleanor to blow the gig and force her to pursue the rabbit, but of course Eleanor doesn't. She loves Jackie too. "I would prefer that we didn't work the same shifts," is all she will say, and when Gloria can't help, she suggests she might be looking at other hospitals rather than follow this road with Jackie.
"Do you think he's right to be concerned?" Gloria asks, after a fairly impressive fight with herself, but Eleanor pretends she doesn't know what she's talking about, even after Gloria presses her.
"He called you," Gloria points out, and Eleanor spazzes, eyes latching onto a photo of Gloria's beloved First Lady. "Fabulous, isn't she?"
Gloria lets it go. Please don't kiss the saints.
Thor drops off some "electrolytes and transfats" for Sam's death-defying hangover, and they both stare horrified as Zoey hops manically around like a drunken third-grader, lurching around and talking to herself and staring at everybody in her bunny scrubs before finally working up the courage to tell Jackie she slept with her boyfriend, wonderful Lenny. The boys both scream at the nurse's station, and Jackie just gives a curt, hilarious no before turning back to her patient. Zoey is looking even prettier than usual, and her makeup is insanely great in this scene, by the way.
"Y'all's uptight, that's all I'm sayin'. He's a neat freak. Never saw that coming, because I'm more of a let-it-all-hang-out kind of partner. Smooth, like a gazelle. A very satisfied, sexy gazelle. Who just rolled over and wants a cigarette."
It only gets more and more hilarious and more and more horrifying and the boys are shocked into silence, until finally Zoey leans leering on the counter: "You don't get to stifle me." At the sight of Gloria looming behind her, Sam gets enough of his brain back to grin, and Zoey quickly gets meek again: "Stifle away, ma'am." Gloria nods, curtly. "Oh, I will."