Thanks to Coco, opal, Wing Chun, and Stedman's Medical Dictionary.
Previously on ER, Kerry thinks Hawkeye "seems to be settling in"; Hawkeye chews out Dr. Dave; Corday encourages Elaine after her mastectomy; St. Carol gets on Meg's case about smoking during pregnancy; Hawkeye busts on Lucy for questioning his orders; Jeanie gets to take Carlos home; Hawkeye wigs on a patient's father and Mark tries to calm him down.
Morning. Dave "Petit" Malucci purposely tries to run over Mark "Lame Doc" Greene on his bicycle. Mark gives Dave grief for not wearing a helmet, and Dave says he's "been hit three times, nothing worse than road rash." A pity, that. Dave changes the subject: "Have you always been at County?" Mark says a bit ruefully that yes, he has, going on ten years. Dave says that guys who "kill their whole families don't get ten years," and Mark says defensively, "It's not a prison, Dave." Dave does a snotty sideways move with his head and says he doesn't know about that -- "Dr. Weaver sure acts like a warden." He adds, in that compassionate and mannerly way we've all come to love over the past few episodes, "Hey, what's with the leg? She lay her Harley down in traffic or something?" Mark says pointedly that he doesn't know, he never asked her. Dave shrugs, then offers Mark a lift the rest of the way to the ER; Mark declines, saying he hasn't ridden double since the age of eight, when his bike had "a sissy bar and a banana seat," and Dave says, "What?" and Mark grumbles, "Forget it, before your time. Thanks anyway." I think the writers meant this as foreshadowing of some sort, but if so, it fails. Dave mounts his bike and says, "See you in the trenches," and he pedals away; immediately afterwards, we hear a horn honking and some guy yelling, "Watch out!" I tire of you, Dave. Go away from me, and go in silence.
Awww. Cut to Carlos, a.k.a. The Cutest Baby In The History Of Primetime Drama, and Jeanie "Peek-a" Boulet waving a rattle over his head and cooing at him. Reggie rushes in late and apologizes, and Jeanie says, "Daddy's home," and they have a cute little "bye-mommy" moment before Jeanie leaves for work, and Reggie pretends to be Carlos and says in a high voice, "Daddy and I are gonna watch some ESPN," and Jeanie giggles. She gets ready to go, and then she nags Reggie about the meds schedule and wearing gloves to change the baby, and Reggie tells her not to worry, he knows all that stuff, and Jeanie says, "Okay. Love you." Reggie says, "Love you too. Have a good day." Oh, man -- do they have to leave the show?
At the hospital, Kerry "Nation" Weaver and a one-armed crossing guard argue over whether he can get a prosthesis; she says no, he has to go to the VA, and he says yes, he needs it for work so he can hold his stop sign in one hand and his whistle in the other. Kerry sticks the whistle in his mouth and says acidly, "Here. Problem solved." Heh. The man fweeps at her testily, and Kerry asks Randy to "help this gentleman," i.e. get rid of him, and she crutches away. Enter Dave, unfortunately. Kerry warns him not to park his bike in the lounge, which he says he didn't do, and reminds him about the bike rack in the ambulance bay, which he says he knows about; he obviously parked his bike in the lounge. Everyone who cares about jerky Dave and his jerky bike, raise your hands. No? Nobody? I didn't think so. Anyway, Kerry hands him a chart for "Jesse Keenan," who apparently has severe abdominal pain, and Dave introduces himself to Jesse and asks, "What seems to be the problem?" Jesse promptly hurls on himself with much dramatic hacking and gasping; Dave greets the speeyack, which is bright yellow, with, "Well, that's -- colorful," and tries to fob Jesse off on Lucy "Fright" Knight, who says firmly, "Not my patient." Dave whines that he has to go move his bike out of the lounge, and as he and Lucy round a corner, Dave spots the one-armed crossing guard on his bike, fweeping away on his whistle and, shortly thereafter, crashing into an equipment cart, and Lucy makes a "the hell?" face while Dave says, "Ooh. That's gonna leave a mark." Great -- I say that all the time, and now I have to stop saying it, because I don't want to sound like Dave.
Credits. The producers really need to use more recent footage for a lot of the characters; Anthony Edwards has about three times as much hair in the credits as he does now.
I don't know what to say regarding Mary, Mother Of Jesus, except that, coincidentally, I muttered those very same words when I saw the promo.
Jeanie shows the nurses baby pictures. Haleh asks how Reggie digs the whole fatherhood trip, and Jeanie says he loves it. Hawkeye stomps up and wants to know "who took" a chart he's looking for, and grouses that every time he turns around, a nurse takes one of his charts; the nurses give each other "um, not" looks. Malik hands Hawkeye the chart and tells him he left it in the suture room. Hawkeye gripes, "I wasn't in the suture room!" Malik says dryly, "You're welcome." Heh. Hawkeye strolls over to John "Tout Le Blonde" Carter, who invites Hawkeye to a hockey game, and Hawkeye says, "Trauma on ice -- who could say no?" He peers over Carter's shoulder, drops a pearl of folksy-wolksy wisdom on the subject of DermaBond, and tells Carter to update the patient's tetanus. Kerry comes up with a chart and complains that she can't read Hawkeye's "illegible" writing, and Hawkeye says, "You're not supposed to be able to read a physician's handwriting. Didn't I teach you that in med school?" From behind them, Carter cackles, "Ha! You were his student?" but they both take a cue from Brassy and ignore him completely. Even Hawkeye can't read his writing, which Kerry busts him for, and he jokes that "that's for, you know, security purposes." Kerry suggests that he enter his notes into the computer. Hawkeye says that the computer crashes, but his notes don't, and Carter offers to insert his nose into Hawkeye's rect -- oh, sorry, he actually offers to help Hawkeye learn how to use the computer. Kerry thanks Carter, but Hawkeye resists, reminding them of the old saying that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks," an adage the ER writers have proven about a thousand times already this season, but anyway, Kerry calls Hawkeye "stubborn" and leaves the desk just as Elaine "Brassy" Nichols comes up. Carter introduces Hawkeye and Brassy to each other, and Brassy asks Carter if he has a minute. Carter adopts a grim face and leads her away.
Meanwhile, at the desk, Dave asks Hawkeye if he knows what happened to Kerry's leg. Hawkeye doesn't know. He wants to know why Dave wants to know. Dave shrugs, "Just curious." Dave turns to look at Randi, who smirks, "Don't look at me -- ask Carter, he lived with her." Dave says, "Really," and Randi says, "Mm hmm."
Cut to Carol "Sanctimommy" Hathaway quizzing Meg about her eating and sleeping habits. Meg, eager to please, reports that she "even gave up caffeine." She apologizes for the cafeteria-job fiasco and says she got another job and gave Carol's name as a reference; she goes on to say that she told her boss she'd known Carol for a couple of years. Carol examines Meg's eyes and doesn't respond, and when Meg asks if there's something wrong with her eyes, Carol asks in her crispest I-will-catch-you-in-a-lie-and-then-act-all-smug-about-it-later voice, "Are you taking any medications?" Meg says all shiftily, "Just, um, pre-natal vitamins?" Carol says, "Good," then tells Meg she'll come back, and Meg smiles nervously.
Out in the hall, Carol waddles along holding her back with one hand and Meg's urine sample with the other. Haleh offers to spell her, and Carol gratefully accepts the offer; Mark approaches, and Carol complains to him about her swollen ankles and threatens to "wrap them in duct tape," an idea Mark doesn't recommend. Mark goes to meet Doris, who is wheeling in a car-accident victim, a kid with cystic fibrosis, who reports that "it hurts to breathe," and Carol waddles after them wearily.
Jeanie, on the phone to Reggie about Carlos. After she hangs up, Kerry asks her about some blood work, and when she doesn't answer right away, Kerry notes that Jeanie seems "a little distracted." Jeanie mentions that Carlos is still a bit sick, and that Reggie "is still getting used to the dad routine." Kerry suggests calling, and Jeanie says she did, and "everything's fine -- I just hate being away from him," thus setting in motion The Iron Skillet Of Impending Departure.
Peter "Big" Benton strides into the trauma room and helps Mark with the CF kid. Mark asks the kid when he was last hospitalized for CF, and the kid gasps, "About a year ago," and yelps in pain when Peter massages his abdomen. Mark orders tests; Peter orders more tests and tells Carol to call up to the OR. In the background, we see Carol bend over and hold her womb, and after a moment she groans, "Oh!" Mark asks after her, and she says, "I think I'm having a contraction," but it passes, and she muses that "it must have been a Braxton-Hicks [a painless uterine contraction that occurs with increasing frequency during gestation]." Mark orders her to go sit down, and says that if she has another contraction, she's "going on a monitor."
Lucy orders a bunch of tests on Jesse while poking his stomach. Lily says, "Coming right up," and raises Jesse's bed while escorting his puked-on t-shirt out of the room. Lucy asks Jesse in a conversational tone, "So, Jesse, how much paint did you eat?" Jesse doesn't know for sure -- maybe half a tube. Lucy asks if he eats paint often, and Jesse says just this once: "I had a pretty bad day." Lucy: "Are you depressed?" Jesse, embarrassed: "Creatively challenged." Jesse does a bit of pretentious blithering about how he can't call himself an artist compared to people like Francis Bacon, and then he wants to leave, but Lucy says he has to stay until his tests come back, and Jesse says Lucy must think he's "pretty stupid, huh?" and Lucy says, "Not compared to Dr. Dave." All right, so she doesn't say that. She does say, "No -- creatively challenged." She leaves the room. Jesse admires her ass. At that moment, an anvil with the words "LUCY = THE NEW CARTER" emblazoned on the side crashes through my ceiling.
A doctor comes down from genetics and asks a few questions about the CF kid. Chuny sticks her head in to announce that the kid's father has arrived. Mark asks Peter if he's "got this," and when Peter says yes, Mark goes door and asks Carol, "Any more contractions?" No, she says. Mark urges her to get off her feet for awhile; Carol protests that she's fine, except that the twins keep using her bladder "as a soccer ball." Mark suggests that she "back off the big traumas" and take it a little slower, and Carol says she doesn't need Mark worrying about her, and Mark -- sort of tactlessly, in my opinion -- says, "Somebody's got to worry about you," and Carol mock-glares at him and announces, "I've gotta pee." Yeah, me too. If only I could wriggle out from under The Grand Piano Of Difficult-Birth Foreshadowing and get to the bathroom . . .
Peter goes out to talk to the CF kid's father and brother, explaining that Ben has an excellent chance of survival, but he'll need surgery. The father, Mr. Hearn, asks if he and Brother Hearn should donate blood, and Peter explains that they need to operate immediately, and they'll use a cell saver to give Ben's own blood back to him, but should they need any extra, their blood supply has been screened; Mr. Hearn would rather Ben get their blood than that of "some stranger." Peter asks Chuny to type and screen the Hearns.
At Doc Magoo's, Brassy apologizes for not returning Carter's calls, and for standing him up. I don't quite see what she has to apologize for -- besides, of course, her miserable acting -- since she did ask him several times to leave her alone, but anyway, across the table, Noah Wyle tries to arrange his face in a lovelorn shape but winds up just looking headachey. Brassy says, while doing a weird half-parrying half-hand-holding thing with Carter's hand, that she needed some time to sort things out; she clutches the neckline of her coat tighter around her. In the background, Smokey Robinson sings, "And maybe you'll go away and never call / And a taste of love is worse than none at all." Hey, I don't get that. Oh, wait. I do. I GET IT. Jesus. Carter asks dourly if she succeeded in sorting things out, and she knits her brows and says, "I think so," and she tells Carter he doesn't have to worry about her anymore. Carter asks about her follow-up in the same dour tone, and Elaine says she's seeing a plastic surgeon the Wednesday, and after that, "I'm thinking about going to Europe." "For how long?" Carter asks. Elaine says she doesn't know, a couple of months, maybe, "just to do a little soul-searching." Well, Elaine, if you find a clue in there, please don't hesitate to FedEx it back to the States, because Carter seems to need one pretty badly; he puckers his face and says, "So this is goodbye." Elaine sighs, "This is thank you. For everything." Carter's gaze doesn't leave her face. Elaine scoots out of the booth, kisses him condescendingly on the forehead, and starts to leave. Carter, who has obviously gotten "caring and attentive" confused with "obsessive and desperate," asks her if she'll call him when she gets back, and Elaine dismisses him with, "I'll send you a postcard." One printed with a restraining order, I hope, or I would hope so if I cared about this subplot, which I don't, because the writers have not bothered to develop this so-called relationship, or Carter's so-called feelings for Elaine, in any way at all, choosing instead to fly over my apartment building in a cargo plane and drop yet another anvil through my roof.
Okay, Annabel Gurwitch? Shut up.
Oh, for the love of Pete. Carter comes back to the ER, and Dave continues his tact-free questioning about Kerry's leg; Carter joins the rest of North America in saying, "Go away, Dave," and walks off, and Lucy breezes by, but when Dave tries to ask her something, she snaps, "I'm not talkin' to you." Dave looks miffed as Jeanie answers a radio call for a multi-victim casualty incident; EMS asks how many County can take, and Kerry tells Jeanie they can take two major and eight minor traumas.
[Okay, sidebar before we cut to the scene. I went to college with a kid named Jesse who, because the kid had a twee little goatee and a pretentious 'tude and wore a lot of turtlenecks, the Biscuit dubbed "Art Boy," and nine years later, we still yell, "Art! Booooy!" at the mention of his name, like when we read in the alumni magazine that one of his ex-girlfriends had gotten married, and I phoned up Ernie and said, "Check out page 23. Damn, I hated that girl," and Ernie said, "Word. Total beeotch. Hey, didn't she used to go out with," and we both howled, "Art! Booooy!" and cracked up, so henceforward, Lucy's patient is now "Art Boy" also. End sidebar.]
Lucy lectures Art Boy on the myriad side effects of eating paint. She fails to include "Technicolor speeyack" as one of the side effects, but nevertheless, Art Boy admits that she's made her point: "I won't eat any more paint." Lucy pulls up a stool and asks, "And what about the cocaine?" Art Boy makes a "busted" face as Lucy explains that his tox screen tested positive, and he says loftily that on occasion he has used "some mind-expanding chemicals to facilitate my creative process. I'm not the first artist to do so," and his smug tone of voice reminds me a great deal of the original Art Boy. Lucy wants to put Art Boy 2: On The Rocks into rehab, but Art Boy demurs, saying he's been under a lot of stress lately because his work "sucks." Lucy suggests that the sucky work stems from the cocaine use, rather than the other way around, and when Art Boy makes an "I already have a mother" face, Lucy says that he came in for medical help and should let her help him. Art Boy slumps back on his bed and asks if "these programs" would allow him to paint; Lucy says she thinks "arrangements could be made." Art Boy isn't sure, and can't promise anything, but he'll "check it out." Lucy says, "Great."
Cut to the hallway. Over the sound of approaching sirens, Kerry briefs Mark on the incoming trauma, the result of a high-school chem class explosion. The first patient to arrive: the science teacher, who the paramedic says is "the worst" of the criticals. Mark says the teachers lungs "are wet," and Hawkeye says they'll have to tube him. I took another look at the teacher, who Coco insisted is George "Norm" Wendt, but it looks more like Wayne "Newman" Knight to me. Kerry and Mark wheel the teacher into a trauma room, and Kerry asks Hawkeye to keep an eye on the residents. A seventeen-year-old with head trauma comes in. The paramedics brief Hawkeye, who orders Carter to run certain tests. Hawkeye grabs Dave and they take a look at a girl with burns to the hands and face who also "sounds wheezy," according to Carol, and then another girl comes in the ambulance-bay doors with "penetrating abdominal injury," and then Cleo "Extra With A Speaking Part" Finch asks Hawkeye's advice on a laceration and he instructs her. I don't want to catalog every single trauma, so suffice it to say that the ER has become chaotic very quickly and residents come at Hawkeye with questions from all sides, and he has a little trouble remembering who has what patient, but he keeps it under control at first.
Slowly, though, the Alzheimer's which the viewing audience could see coming all the way from the Rocky Mountains begins to overtake Hawkeye. He can't remember which residents go with which patients go with which traumas; he gets testy when the residents prompt him for information or explanations; he barges into Art Boy's room by mistake, and Art Boy informs him sullenly, "All I did was puke." "You weren't in the explosion?" a befuddled Hawkeye asks, and Art Boy says no, and wants to know what happened: "It sounds pretty crazy out there." Hawkeye absently says, "Yeah," and looks out at the turmoil through the blinds of Art Boy's room, then forces himself back out into the thick of things. An anvil marked "Disorientation Symbolism" smashes through my ceiling just then, so I can't say for sure, but I believe that the slo-mo kicks in and the sound becomes rather faraway and echoey, and I believe also that Hawkeye stands in the hallway and desperately tries to get his bearings while looking fearful and watching other ER personnel doing their jobs quickly and without hesitation, and he doesn't snap out of it until Chuny yells, "Coming through!" and bumps him out of the way with a crash cart or something, and I extricate myself from beneath the anvil, scribble, "We get it, thanks," on a piece of paper, roll up the piece of paper, attach it to the leg of a small passenger pigeon, and release the pigeon from my window. Because we get it.
Hawkeye plunges into a trauma room where Kerry "could use an extra pair of hands" to deal with a pulmonary edema, and he prepares to do a procedure; Lucy pesters him about another patient, and he tells her to "do an echo," and when she continues to question him, he snaps, "Just -- just do the damn echo!" Kerry gives him a look. Lily hands him an equipment tray, and he wants to know "what the hell" it is, and Kerry explains that it's a percutaneous lavage kit and advises him on which technique to use with it. Hawkeye apparently can't remember the Seldinger technique that Kerry mentioned, and he balks: "No. I wanna do an open lavage." Lily and Kerry look surprised, but Kerry says patiently, "No, it's a new kit, they work well." Enter Mark from door looking for the drug box, and Hawkeye orders a scalpel, towel clips, rakes, and -- well, he wants a hemostat, but he can't come up with the word "hemostat" until Lily guesses it, at which point he shouts, "Yeah, yeah, come on, hurry up!" Mark makes an "ohhh-kay" face. Kerry tries again to sell Hawkeye on the new kit's ease of use, and she attempts to explain how they work, but he interrupts her: "These are unreliable. Half the time you wind up in the pre-peritoneal space!" Kerry again points out that maybe he should just try it, and again he cuts her off: "I said no, dammit!" I don't mean to sound like I've missed the point, because the writers have driven it home in an eighteen-wheel Peterbilt, I assure you, but how did Hawkeye get this job if he doesn't know how to use current equipment? Anyway. Kerry looks taken aback; she shuts right up and drops her eyes. Hawkeye goes on about always doing an open technique, calling it "the gold standard," and he announces his intention to do just that, and then he picks up the percutaneous tray and hurls it against the opposite wall, snarling that "these are crap." Everyone else in the room freezes. Hawkeye stands there, head bobbing. Haleh comes in and says in her best you'll-have-to-act-out-worse-than-that-to-impress-me voice that the finger-amputation patient "is ready for his wrist block." Hawkeye says faintly, "All right," and then informs Kerry in a tone of false authority that she seems to have everything under control there, and "another patient needs me." Dear writers: Message. RECEIVED. Signed, everyone currently living on earth.
Those eToys commercials are sort of sweet. I like the one with the fish.
Hawkeye sits in the back of an empty ambulance, brooding. Kerry crutches up to him and he apologizes to her, calling his behavior "unprofessional, and totally uncalled-for." Kerry asks if he wants to talk about it, and Hawkeye says there's nothing to talk about: "I screwed up, I lost my cool." He says he hasn't had multiple traumas like that in a while, and Kerry tells him, "If you were in trouble, you should have asked for help." Hawkeye says that Kerry had her hands full, and that he just got overloaded, that's all. He segues into a story from Kerry's third year of med school when a double-decker bus crashed on a bridge, and everybody lost it except Kerry. Then he says, "I don't know if I should be telling you this." "What is it, Gabe?" Kerry asks softly. Hawkeye says that, as a student, Kerry drove him nuts asking questions, but that it paid off -- she was "great in there," and he's proud of her. He adds, "Damn, I was a good teacher." Kerry says that he was, and that he still is, "according to Carter." Well, according to Carter, "go away" means "please pester me some more," so let's not go by Carter's opinion, shall we? Anyhow, Hawkeye agrees grudgingly to use the new lavage kits, but says that his way "may be older, but it's still faster and better -- kinda like me." Kerry, blinded to his symptoms by the folksy-wolksy banter, smiles tolerantly.
Carol busts into Meg's room, whips back the curtain, and demands of a sleepy Meg, "Are you taking any pain medication?" Meg murmurs, "No, why?" Meg's urine tested positive for opiates; Meg pretends not to know what she means, but St. Carol says Meg knows full well what she means -- Meg is taking drugs, which means her baby is taking drugs too. Carol snaps, "What is it -- codeine? Heroin?" Meg again denies using. Carol warns her about the adverse health effects of needle-sharing, and Meg denies sharing needles. Busted! A self-satisfied Good-Cop Carol tells Meg she knows Meg cares about her baby and doesn't want to hurt it, so she has to stop taking drugs, and Meg rolls her eyes and says, "I'm hardly using -- just a little, so I don't get sick," and Carol thunders, "You can't use at all." She offers to get Meg into a detox program. Meg nods shamefacedly. Carol says, in the you-don't-deserve-my-beneficence tone that has become all too familiar, "I'll see what I can do."
Dr. Myers from Psych tells Lucy that Art Boy can come into the program under voluntary admission, and that he'll call down when the bed opens up. She goes in to tell Art Boy the news, and he says they won't let him paint, but he doesn't mind -- "they said I could sketch." Art Boy thanks her for helping him and says he "really needed it." That, and a shave. ["I know I'm alone, but I thought Art Boy was fine." -- Wing Chun]
In the hall, Dr. Myers glances at his notes. Carol speed-waddles up behind him and flags him down, asking him if Meg can get a bed. Dr. Myers says he just gave away his last bed. Carol reiterates that her patient is pregnant. Dr. Myers suggests an outpatient program, and Carol suggests that maybe the guy he just gave the bed to could do the outpatient program, because "we're talking about the welfare of an unborn child here." Convinced by the halo of saintly light that has sprung up around Carol's head, Dr. Myers agrees to see Meg.
Peter wants to talk to Brother Hearn privately. BH asks if something is wrong with Ben, and Peter says no, Ben will be fine, but when he screened BH's blood, he tested . . . "HIV positive," BH finishes for him. "You should have told me," Peter says quietly, and after a long pause, BH says, "I didn't know for sure, until now." Peter says awkwardly, "Well, I -- I'm sorry," and BH says he should have known this would happen sooner or later, and when Peter asks if he didn't practice safe sex, BH says with a bleak chuckle, "Apparently not." Peter offers to direct BH to a clinic to start treatment as soon as possible, and BH worries that Peter will tell his parents, and Peter says that's up to BH, but that "family support is very important with HIV." "'Support'? Are you kidding?" BH snorts. Apparently, Mr. Hearn is a virulent homophobe, and when BH tried to come out to his father in a roundabout way, Mr. Hearn made bigoted comments. Peter says again that it would help BH's treatment "if your family knew the truth." BH says, "No. Forget it. Every family has their secrets anyway, right?" Peter looks disappointed.
Carol asks Hawkeye if he can see a patient. He tells her to ask Carter so that he can finish charts. Lucy comes up behind Carol and snipes, "You took my spot." "What?" Carol says. "My patient's detox spot," Lucy reminds her, and Carol says amiably that Dr. Myers said Lucy's patient could go into an outpatient program; Lucy grouses, "Yeah, after you convinced him." Carol plays the pregnancy card. Lucy plays the "you can't do that, you're a nurse" card, and Carol sneers, "[And] you're a what? You're a med student!" She takes a deep breath and goes on to apologize and say that Art Boy will get the bed, and Lucy snaps, "That's easy for you to say, you got the bed." Strictly speaking, Carol's right, but her sanctimonious attitude has really got to go.
In the lounge, Mark asks Kerry what happened with Hawkeye's "meltdown in the trauma room," a description Kerry calls "a little melodramatic, don't you think?" Mark makes "whatever" noises. Kerry points out that other doctors have lost their tempers "in the heat of the moment" before; Mark asks snidely, "Over a lavage kit?" Kerry, who would never miss a chance to point out how long Hawkeye has practiced emergency medicine, admits that after thirty years Hawkeye is "set in his ways" and resistant to the newer equipment. Instead of confronting the issue directly, Mark busts out the passive aggression with, "I know you two are close . . ." but Kerry cuts to the chase: "What are you trying to say, Mark?" With a wimpy clear of his throat, Mark observes that "he's acting a little strange. I don't think he's setting a very good example." Kerry responds, "Yeah, he's eccentric. He's also one of the best doctors I've ever worked with." Mark answers this dig by telling Kerry not to get defensive, and she snaps, "I'm not," although, clearly, she is, and she continues, "You don't like that I hired Gabe, but I did, so deal with it." Although Kerry's got a point, I wish she'd made it three weeks ago when Mark was tagging crash carts with his own urine instead of waiting until Hawkeye began exhibiting obvious signs of senile dementia, but whatever.
Peter briefs Mr. Hearn and BH on Ben's condition, saying that Ben lost some blood during the operation and they transfused him, "but I expect him to make a full recovery." Mr. Hearn asks if Peter used their blood, and Peter says he only used Mr. Hearn's blood; he "couldn't use" BH's. Mr. Hearn wants to know why not, and Peter covers for BH by saying that BH's minor antigens could have caused an adverse reaction to the transfusion. Mr. Hearn swallows that as the truth and goes in to see Ben. BH looks relieved and thanks Peter before following his father.
Carter, begoggled, snaps on gloves and asks a redheaded kid (who starred in The Sandlot) why he came in an hour after the other explosion victims. The kid, Howie, lies that he didn't think his cut "was so bad." He asks about his teacher, Mr. Sutherland. Carter says he hasn't heard, and asks, "What kind of experiment were you guys doing?" Based on my dim memories of high-school chemistry, one of which involved blowing the lid of a heating mortar clear across the lab and cracking the blackboard, I'd have to go with "the kind in which somebody fucked up big-time." Howie more or less seconds my motion, quavering, "The wrong one." Carter smells a rat: "What does that mean?" Howie dissembles. Carter points out that, if Howie knows "what happened today," he should 'fess up; he'll feel better about it, and it might help Mr. Sutherland's treatment. After trying to make Carter swear not to tell anyone else, which Carter pretty much declines to do, Howie gulps.
The hall. Kerry briefs Mr. Perez -- a minor-league Hey, It's That Guy! seen in fine films such as Clear And Present Danger -- on the damage to his son's eyes; evidently, he got bits of glass in his right eye, and a shard sliced right through the lens of his left eye. Ouch. Mr. Perez wants to know "how long before they can fix that," and Kerry terms it "a difficult repair job." Mr. Perez yanks the curtain aside and peeks under the eye bandage, muttering, "Jesus." Nathan, his son, wants to know what's wrong, and Jeanie reassures him, leading Mr. Perez away from Nathan's bed and trying to chill him out. Mr. Perez begins raving that "they can't fix that" blah blah blah "going to be blind" blah blah blah Nathan has an athletic scholarship blah blah first in the family to go to collegecakes. Jeanie tries to interrupt him a few times to tell him about the ophthalmologist, but he won't hear her, and finally she brings him up short and reminds him, "What's important right now is that you're here for your son. He needs you. Okay?" Mr. Perez takes a deep breath and goes in to comfort Nathan, as The Iron Skillet Of Caring Parenthood whizzes past my head with millimeters to spare. Right then, Haleh summons Jeanie to the phone: "Reggie's on line one, says it's urgent." Jeanie speaks to Reggie briefly, and when Kerry asks if everything's okay, Jeanie tells her that "Carlos is sick; I think his pneumonia might be coming back." She says she has to go, and Kerry says, "You do. Go on." Jeanie takes off. Kerry crutches back over to the Perezes. Mr. Perez asks her if paramedics brought in a Howie McMurtry, and Kerry says she doesn't know; when she asks why, Mr. Perez snorts, "Tell her," and Nathan says that Howie caused the explosion.
Meanwhile, Howie explains sadly to Carter that a bunch of jockstraps convinced him to change the chemicals. "It was only supposed to be a small exothermic reaction," he mutters, but Mr. Sutherland changed the experiment, and Howie "didn't have a chance to warn him" about the switch. "This wasn't supposed to happen," he protests miserably, "it was just a joke!" At that moment, Mr. Perez materializes in the doorway of Howie's room and greets him with, "You little son-of-a-bitch." Carter tries to warn him off, but Mr. Perez snarls that his son "is blind because of you." Howie argues that it wasn't his idea, "Nathan and his friends told me to do it," and Carter gets up to remove Mr. Perez from the room, but Mr. Perez doesn't like that idea and he throws Carter into a window to illustrate his point. Every single week, glass gets broken in the ER -- shoot-outs, fistfights, med students kicking their advisers into walls while practicing Tae Bo, vengeful relatives of patients slamming doctors into mirrors -- and yet we never see either a glazier or an empty mirror or window. Did you ever notice that? Well, now you will. Anyhow, Mr. Perez gets Carter down on the floor and starts throttling him, and Mark runs in and tells him to get off, but Mr. Perez pushes Mark away, and Mark morphs into Mean Mark Greene and yanks Mr. Perez away using a choke-hold. Carter leaps to his feet, only to hear Chuny yelling, "Sir? Sir!" at Mr. Perez. Looks like Mark morphed into Justin Volpe instead, because Mr. Perez isn't breathing. They lug Mr. Perez to a nearby bed and prepare to intubate him, and Carter thanks Mark for "pulling him offa me," and Mark says grimly, "Just get the tube in, Carter," as a worried Howie looks on. Carter and Mark try to intubate, but it isn't working and they can't figure out why; long story short, Mark broke his larynx, so Mark does a tracheotomy instead, which works. Carter compliments him, "That a nice save," and Mark makes an "I doubt the legal department will agree with you" face and says, "Yeah."
Dave informs a teenage girl, Quinn, that he has good news -- he spoke with a plastic surgeon, and her burns "shouldn't leave much scarring." Quinn folds her lips and says nothing. Dave, uncomfortable, makes to leave, but Quinn has questions, lots of them, about her scars, and Dave answers them awkwardly while shifting from foot to foot and saying that the plastic surgeon would know more and trying to leave. Dave deems her "lucky." Quinn says she looks like "a hideous freak" and says she'd "rather be dead than look like this." She begins keening. Dave bolts.
Outside, Carter asks if Mark is okay. "Peachy," Mark says tersely. Carter tells him, "You were trying to protect the patient, you did the right thing." Mark says Mr. Perez might "feel differently when he wakes up." Carter says, "I was a witness." Kerry pulls Mark aside, saying they need to talk, and Carter turns and spots Howie sitting by Mr. Sutherland. He goes into check on Howie, who asks after Mr. Perez. "He's gonna be okay," Carter tells him. "But not Mr. Sutherland, huh?" Carter sighs deeply and says he doesn't know. "A lot of kids thought he was a geek," Howie says, "because sometimes he'd mess up the experiments, but I think he did it on purpose, just to make class a little more fun." Carter nods sympathetically as Howie goes on, "He was a really good teacher." After a long pause, Howie asks, "There's still a chance he might recover, right? Like a long shot or something? Like one in a million?" Carter says, "Yeah," but the look on his face says, "Don't count on it." Howie looks like he might cry.
BH approaches Peter and says that he told his father. Peter puts down his paperwork and says, in a more heartfelt manner than Peter usually says these things, "Good for you." Mr. Hearn kicked him out, BH reports, and Peter says that Mr. Hearn might just need "a little time to deal with it," but BH chuckles ruefully (or so the captioning tells me, since I couldn't really hear the dialogue, what with the precipitous and noisy ingress of The Anvil Of Significant Comparisons Between Paternal Situations) and says that Mr. Hearn no longer considers BH his son. Peter says slowly, "I'm sorry." BH shrugs, "At least he knows the truth now. Screw him if he can't handle it." Peter seems genuinely saddened by this, and I wish they'd done more with this storyline.
Lucy breaks the bad news about the detox bed to Art Boy. Art Boy, getting dressed, tells her, "Don't sweat it," and when she says that she can get him into an outpatient program and he needs help, Art Boy snorts, "I need a real job." He says he watched Lucy today, Lucy and all the other doctors and the cops and the paramedics, and they're saving lives while he's "in here for eating paint -- it's pathetic." Lucy tries to get him to stay, but he says that he doesn't need a shrink to tell him he needs to get his act together. "I'll see you around, Lucy," he says as he takes off. Good for you for getting over yourself, Art Boy. Now if you wouldn't mind, Carter needs to borrow that stepladder. Anyhow, Dave barges up to Lucy and asks her to speak to one of his patients. Lucy speaks the magic words -- "go away, Dave" -- and says she doesn't want any more patients, but Dave begs her to speak to Quinn; he explains the situation and adds that "nothing I say seems to be the right thing." Lucy looks at him and says all sarcastically, "Really." Heh.
Carter's forehead, pressing on the glass of Elaine's front door. Carter, Carter, Carter, for god's sake, drop the chalupa, will you? Elaine opens the door in her robe and asks in an exasperated tone of voice, "What are you doing here?" He asks if he can come in. Elaine tightens the neckline of her robe for the umpteenth time since the storyline began. Um, Ms. DeMornay? The character didn't have her sternum removed, okay? That bit of blocking bites. Stop doing it. Thank you. Anyway. Elaine lets Carter in; he gives her a scary stare, and then he leans in and kisses her. She breaks the kiss and walks quickly away, and Carter shuts her front door, still fixing her with that eerie leer that tries for "sympathy" but takes a wrong turn at "unhealthy fixation." Elaine leans on a wall, pressing a hand against the top of her chest and looking, basically, like she has a bone in her throat, which I suspect she soon will if Carter gets his way; Carter comes up behind her and puts his hands around her waist and says -- get this -- "if you want me to leave, just say so." Oh, because the forty-seventh time you'll actually obey her? Whatever, Carter.
He starts kissing her hair, and as he begins to peel her robe away from her neck to kiss her there, she says queasily, "I don't want your sympathy." Carter nuzzles her and says nothing, and she starts hyperventilating and touching her side, and she turns around and stares into his eyes while letting her robe drop away a little bit to reveal a flagrantly fake scar. She half-sobs and grabs the place where her breast used to be to hide the scar, and as opal pointed out, Elaine would still have drainage tubes attached to her surgical site after a few weeks, never mind slapping her palm down on it like she can't feel anything. Carter peels her hands away from her chest, and he kisses her again, and she wraps her arms around him and starts kissing him back, and I would like to know exactly how the writers expect us to stomach this portrayal of a post-mastectomy woman. I have not had breast cancer, thank God, and neither has anyone in my family, thank God, but I have known a number of women who have survived breast cancer, and never mind the numerous medical inaccuracies involved in this plot -- never mind the fact that Elaine went home from the hospital one day after a major invasive procedure, and never mind the fact that we have not heard anything about her receiving treatment with radiation or chemotherapy, and never mind the fact that, when you have had a breast removed, you do not wear form-fitting suits or heavy coats or what have you a mere two weeks after the surgery, because it hurts too much. I would not presume to speak for breast-cancer patients or breast-cancer survivors. I feel sure that, if I had to have a radical mastectomy, I would feel a bit insecure about my single-breasted post-op appearance too. But I would feel much more concerned about my hair falling out, and about radiation making me sterile, and about possibly getting an infection at the wound site, and about the possibility that I MIGHT DIE OF CANCER, and I find this entire plotline, and the characterization of Elaine as a needy, vulnerable vamp who only needs the love of a good man to heal her psychic wounds, extremely simplistic, patronizing, and offensive, and if the man in my life got all condescending on me and said, "I still love you and want to have sex with you even if you only have one breast," I'd be like, "Well, bully for you, pal, because I'd have let them take my whole damn leg and a couple of fingers if it meant I would live, and by the way, I don't really feel like having sex right now, because I have A TERMINAL ILLNESS, so save the Dr.-Feelgood routine for someone who DOESN'T value herself as anything other than a sex object, thank you very much and GOODBYE."
Yes, I know it is only a television program. Pardon me while I jam my nose back into joint. [Crack.] Okay, let's move on.
Parking garage. Hawkeye thinks his car got stolen because he can't find it, and he jokes feebly to Kerry about it until she points out gently that he's on a different level than he thought. Alzheimer's sufferers can't read? More weak jokes from Hawkeye about forgetting his head if it weren't attached. Instead of going to the correct level, he continues to wander vaguely about. Kerry, concerned, offers to help him find his car, but he says not to bother and he'll see her tomorrow. As soon as she turns away, Hawkeye looks quietly terrified and strikes out in another direction; Kerry pauses and watches him go, and she looks puzzled. I don't think they've handled this plot particularly well either, but I'll give Alan Alda snaps for doing a fine job as a man who sees what's happening to him and can't deal with it. Fade to black.
week, Hawkeye's marbles continue to get lost, and Jeanie blows the County General pop stand.