Big ups to Wing Chun and the crew on the ER forums.
Previously on ER, something extremely portentous happened, but I don't know quite what, because my stupid tape cut off the previouslys.
My stupid tape also cut off the beginning of the first scene, plopping me down in medias Greene, where, at what seems like a rather early hour of the morning, David "Oscar" Greene has busted out the cha-cha LP. We find out that Mark's dad played the Oklahoma! soundtrack for Mark "Felix" Greene about a thousand times as a kid. Holling says that Mark won't mind hearing it once more, then; Mark says no, as long as it puts a stop to the "cha-cha-cha." Mark goes to shave. Holling bellows, "Go ahead! Don't wanna be late!" Huh?
Chez Corday, Elizabeth "Briton With A Whip" Corday slogs out to her living room in a bathrobe and bedhead. Isabel "She No Rocket Sci -- Oh, Wait" Corday comments that she thought surgeons had horrible hours, "up very early." "We do," Elizabeth pouts. "I was up very late." She slumps into a chair, and her mother hands her a mug, and they discuss tea; Mama Corday packs up her files and makes to leave, asking, "When's your angioplasty?" Elizabeth doesn't understand why she's asking, and it turns out that Mama Corday thought she might "observe" Elizabeth. "Why would you want to do that?" Elizabeth asks suspiciously. MC says that since her own work is so . . . "esoteric?" Elizabeth finishes for her, but MC corrects her, "Romantic," and says she thought she'd come see "the practical approach." Elizabeth looks decidedly unenthused and says she doesn't think the hospital allows it. MC points out that Elizabeth is Associate Chief of Surgery, and that as such she could probably "make arrangements." MC dons coat and gloves and says she'll call to check, "or perhaps I'll just drop by," and bustles out as Elizabeth calls frantically after her that she doesn't think that's such a good idea.
Back at the Greenehouse, Mark shaves and sings along with "Surrey With The Fringe On Top." Holling appears in the doorway and says he'd hoped to drop by a pharmacy for some refills. Mark says brusquely that, as he's already told Holling, he can't write him scrips. Holling ignores this and says he only needs two out of the three drugs refilled. Mark says, "Dad, you have emphysema." Wow, the writers remember that? Holling protests that he hasn't needed his oxygen in over two months, but Mark points out that he hasn't seen a doctor in over six months, and that he needs to go to a pulmonologist in Chicago. Holling crabs that doctors "ask a million questions when all you need's the medicine," and more back-and-forth on the subject ensues, with Mark refusing to write the prescription and Holling giving him a bunch of shit about it. It ends with Holling padding disgustedly out of the bathroom. Mark goes back to singing and shaving.
The credits, which now contain so many damn people that all the faces go by at strobe speed.
Fade up on the front desk area, where Luka "Sars Attacks!" Kovac asks Amira to give a handful of charts to Dr. Weaver; Amira, struggling to pin up Valentine's decorations, tells him Weaver's off that day, then in the same breath gasps, "You're tall, hold this." Luka doesn't understand what the decorations mean. "Hearts! Valentine's Day," snarls Amira. Enter Carol "Snoot Of Thy Womb" Hathaway to explain further about Valentine's Day, "you know, when you give people flowers, candies, cards, telling them how much you love them," and she gives that last part a Barry White-style inflection. Yosh comes up and gives Carol a big hug and a valentine, and Carol asks if they don't have Valentine's Day in Croatia. I'd have smacked her upside the head and pointed out that they have electricity and running water in Croatia too, and that it's Croatia, not Narnia, for god's sake, but Luka confines himself to saying that they do, and that they also have the little Necco hearts. As Carol fusses at the desk and warns him away from eating them, Luka reads a few of the candies: "Be Mine, Dear One . . . Cutty Pie?" "That's 'Cutie Pie,'" Carol corrects him. "Oh, thank you," Luka says sort of sarcastically, shooting her a strange look. What just happened there?
The paramedics wheel in a Mrs. Connelly; Yosh and Abby "Lucy 2: Newsradio On Patrol" Lockhart walk alongside. Mrs. Connelly asks for the young doctor who helped her husband the last time she came in, and Abby figures out that Mrs. Connelly wants to see John "Trust Fundies" Carter and says she'll try to find him for her. As they prepare to transfer her from the gurney, Yosh reports that Mrs. Connelly has a thready pulse, and Abby asks her if she has a cough, or belly pain, or any aching, and Mrs. Connelly tells her that she's eighty-one years old, so she aches "all over," and she moans as they hoist her onto the bed. Abby asks if she has any pain when she urinates, and Mrs. Connelly doesn't, but she seems to go "all the time." Abby tells her they'll run some tests and she'll try to find Carter for Mrs. Connelly. She orders the tests, and Yosh asks about antibiotics, so Abby tells him to "dip" Mrs. Connelly's urine and she'll check with Carter.
Mark and Elizabeth meet at the El station in the snow. Ew, kissing. Elizabeth tells Mark to promise her they'll go out to dinner alone that night, and Mark says he wouldn't miss it. Elizabeth crabs about her mother threatening to come visit, "this is the woman who didn't even phone me when she got into town," blah blah blah fish-and-chips-cakes. Mark asks why Elizabeth invited her mother to stay with her, then. Elizabeth tells him not to "go there" or she'll shove him into a snowbank. Mark goes there. Elizabeth shoves him into a snowbank. Woo hoo! Then they get into a snowball fight. Inside, Lucy "Do Not Go Gently Into That Good" Knight calls a patient named Paul Sobriki, played by the same guy who played the head elf Bernard in The Santa Clause -- and yes, as a matter of fact, I DO want to kill myself for knowing that -- and as he gets up and says, "Yeah," Mark and Elizabeth come snowball-fighting in through the ambulance bay doors, and Sobriki yells, "Watch out!" as an icy missile sails past Lucy's head, and Lucy makes a "whatever" face at Mark and Elizabeth as Elizabeth calls for a truce and makes Mark swear, and as soon she falls for it, Mark stuffs a big handful of snow down the back of her jacket. I know the writers really really want us to believe these two have chemistry, but a dorky snowball fight in a sterile environment does not chemistry make.
Anyway. Sobriki makes a snide comment about the snowballs, and Lucy apologizes and says, "So you've got a bad headache," and he says he does. Lucy and Sobriki establish that he's had headaches before, but he's taken aspirin for them; that the pain centers around his right eye; that he's nauseated; and that light sometimes bothers his eyes. Lucy says they'll find him a room and check him out.
Elsewhere, Jing-Mei "I Got A SAG Card For This?" Chen and Dave "Toga! Toga!" Malucci bicker over a patient played by a Hey, It's That Guy! I can't identify. Mark comes in and asks who's got the patient. Chen and Dave both say they do at the same time; Mark looks exasperated and asks Chen for the bullet. Chen gives Dave a "nyah nyah nyah nyaaah nyaaah" look and relays to Mark that the HITG, a.k.a. George Hudson, got into a fender-bender and now suffers from neck pain. Hudson says that "actually, it's Dr. Hudson." Mark looks even more exasperated and wonders aloud if either resident asked Dr. Hudson his specialty; Dave and Chen both look down, chastened, so they clearly didn't. Dr. Hudson says that he's a family practitioner from Philadelphia, only in town for a few days, and adds good-naturedly that he seems to have landed "a couple of eager residents." He says that Dave and Chen have asked all the right questions so far, but "they don't exactly wait to hear the answers." Mark apologizes on their behalf, but Dr. Hudson doesn't mind: "Let them continue." He finds it amusing, he says. Mark tells Chen and Dave to continue, and he'll come back to review their work-up; as he says this, he has to yank the chart out of Chen's hand to give it to Conni. "Scream if you need me," he tells Dr. Hudson wryly.
Out in the hall, Abby tries to refresh Carter's memory as to Mrs. Connelly, but Carter points out all Mr. Voice Of Experience that he's probably seen a couple hundred patients since then. Shut up, Carter. Lucy flounces out of a curtain room and asks kind of rudely if he has a minute; Carter says no, he has to see a patient, and doesn't even slow down. Lucy takes an antagonistic tone: "This won't take long." Carter half-rolls his eyes and sends Abby on ahead and walks back to Lucy, who tells him Sobriki has had right periorbital headache pain for two days "associated with nausea and photophobia, no fever, no stiff neck, no history of migraines, but this one seems classic." She says she thinks she should give the patient "six of Imitrex, sub-q," and Carter agrees and starts to book. ["As a migraine sufferer who recently took Imitrex for the first time and found myself, half an hour later, writhing with headache pain and nausea worse than I had ever experienced in my life -- pain that lasted six hours until I finally popped a couple of regular old Excedrins and recovered nearly immediately -- I object to Lucy's diagnosis almost strenuously enough to want to start an anti-Imitrex letter-writing campaign. Imitrex made my head way worse! Run away, head elf!" -- Wing Chun] Lucy snaps wearily, "You don't want to examine him?" and Carter, walking away, says just as wearily that he trusts her and she should let him know how Sobriki does. Lucy just stands there, shoulders slumped, as Carter takes off. Anvil-icious!
Abby helps Mrs. Connelly get a little more comfortable as Carter walks in and greets Mrs. C with his Voice Of Booming Condescension. Mrs. C says happily, "Oh, here you are," and remarks that Carter probably doesn't remember her. Carter lies, "Yes I do," and asks how she feels, and Mrs. C says she doesn't feel too bad, and "they're taking very good care of" her. Yosh reports that the urine dip came back positive for nitrates and leukocytes, so Carter asks Abby which antibiotic she wants to order. "I was thinking amp and gent [ampicillin and gentamycin, if anyone cares]," she says, but Carter suggests 500 milligrams of levaquin via IV, which is a once-daily dose and not as hard on the kidneys. Abby nods and asks to talk to him for a second, and he says sure, but first he takes Mrs. C's hand and booms much more loudly than he needs to that he'll stop back and see her later. New Carter really gets on my nads. Every time I see Carter Classic on a TNT rerun, I dislike New Carter even more.
Anyhow, outside in the hall, Abby tells Carter that Mrs. C's pressure is dangerously low. Carter agrees that Mrs. C is "septic" and has bacteria in her bloodstream, so Abby proposes driving Mrs. C's pressure up with fluids and inotropic support ("inotropic" means "affecting muscle contraction, especially the heart muscle"). Carter, starting to walk away, asks if Abby's sure Mrs. C "wants all that." Abby, sounding puzzled, says they should do everything they can; Carter clarifies that they should do everything Mrs. C wants them to do, "and that may not include machines and tubes." When did every damn plot on this show turn into a public service announcement? Who decided that the audience couldn't figure out the inherent issues in a situation? Why do the writers think we need everything explained to us by Carter in his vice-principal voice? She's old, she's sick, she's widowed. We get it. God in heaven, we get it. Abby says in a tight voice that, when she worked in OB, "doing everything was pretty much automatic." Carter shrugs, "This isn't OB." He walks away. Abby looks sad and goes back into Mrs. C's room.
In the hall, Mark asks Carter if he's following Lucy's patient. Carter makes distracted yeah-yeah noises, and Mark tells him that if he's going to supervise, he should "do it more closely." Yeah. And start with her hair. Which still. Is not. UP. Anyway, Carter enters Sobriki's room with an accusatory "What's going on?" and Lucy immediately goes on the defensive with, "I was just coming to get you." Carter asks the patient's name and how he feels; meanwhile, Malik mills around the bed, and we see fresh vomit on Sobriki's gown. Lucy tries to clean Sobriki up as he rambles about his wife not liking something or other, and she explains to Carter that Sobriki just started babbling. Malik adds that "he's puking." Whoa whoa whoa, slow down -- a patient puked? On this show? Wow, I don't believe it. The thing you know they'll have a pane of glass shatter all over the place or something. ["Maybe that already happened, in the part of the episode you missed at the
very beginning." -- Wing Chun] So Carter wants to know why Lucy didn't come get him, and she says, "I was on my way," and as Sobriki continues blathering, Carter says exasperatedly, "This could be encephalitis, or meningitis," and he scribbles on a chart and tells Lucy that she should have told Carter that when she presented the patient. Lucy starts to argue -- and I think she has grounds, partly because Lucy did mention the nausea to Carter, and partly because nausea does go with migraines a lot of the time, but mostly because we've seen this plot already, way back in the first season when Susan Lewis faced off against Dr. Kaysen, Kaysen claiming Lewis "killed" a patient because she didn't present said patient to Kaysen adequately, and Lewis responding that she'd tried to point out various things in her presentation but Kaysen hadn't listened to her -- but she changes her mind and just says, "He seemed fine, and I was coming to get you." Carter rolls his eyes and orders an Ativan IV push, tells Lucy to run various tests on Sobriki, and goes to get a lumbar puncture kit.
Dear reader, if you seek proof beyond any doubt that ER has jumped not only the shark but every other fish in the Monterey Bay Aquarium as well, and that the show's writers have taken to smoking crack through a pipe the size of the Alaska Pipeline, look no farther than the ludicrous subplot introduced in this scene, in which Robert "Fiddling While" Romano "Burns" and Elizabeth scrub in and discuss the patient, "Gretel." Elizabeth finds it odd that Romano seems to care so deeply for this particular insulinoma-suffering patient, and when she follows him into the prep room, we see that "Gretel" is in fact a dog -- Romano's dog. You can take this as a meta-statement about the sixth season of ER to date, you can take it out back and shoot it if you like, I don't care. I won't recap a fucking shaggy-dog plot, and you can't make me.
Back to Sobriki, who has passed out in the fetal position. Carter comments that the Ativan knocked Sobriki right out, and he leans over Sobriki and gets him in a half-nelson while quizzing Lucy on the fine points of lumbar punctures. Lucy preps the kit and answers everything correctly. Carter tells her to switch to a 27-gauge needle, and she cuts him off to say that she always does. "Very good," Carter says. Lucy begins the tap, and when she presses the needle in, Sobriki comes to with a caveman-like howl of pain and begins kicking and struggling. Malik hustles over to help restrain Sobriki as Lucy panics and asks, "What do I do, what do I do?" Carter orders more Ativan and tells Lucy to keep going. She doesn't want to, saying that "it'll be a traumatic tap, there'll be blood in the spinal fluid," but Carter says that it won't get any easier so she'd better just finish. Lucy perseveres, trying to stay cool, and says she feels some resistance and can't get any fluid; Sobriki continues to flail about and choke in pain, and Carter tells her to keep going. "I can't," Lucy says. "Yes, you can," Carter says firmly, as Sobriki begs them to stop. Finally, Lucy gets the tap in and starts extruding the fluid while Carter tries to soothe a sobbing Sobriki. The fluid comes out "crystal clear," and Carter compliments Lucy on a "good job" as she heaves a sigh.
Did Ben Affleck sign some sort of deal with the Devil whereby Old Scratch would make him famous, but only on the condition that Affleck's hair look like a pouf of Brillo in all of his movies?
OR. Romano's dog. Nope, not gonna do it. Sorry.
Mark confirms with Chen and Dave that Dr. Hudson has oat-cell carcinoma. Chen says they asked Hudson about hospitalizations; Dave pipes up that Hudson has had six cycles of chemo and achieved remission for fifteen months. Chen and Dave continue to interrupt and talk over each other regarding diagnosis and treatment of Hudson and his intracranial pressure, and as they follow Mark into the lounge, they argue over whether to nuke him with radiation (Dave) or zap him with chemo (Chen). Mark asks, only half-listening, what Dr. Hudson wants to do. Silence. Mark ratchets around in his chair, shocked: "Did you even ask him?" After a beat, Laurel and Hardy-Har-Har-Not start up again with the finger-pointing until Mark shouts over them to knock it off and says that he's going to see another patient, and then he'll go see Dr. Hudson and "present him with his options." "Well, what are we gonna do?" Dave brats. "You are going to watch me, and say nothing," Mark says tersely, and departs the lounge. I assume a kneeling position in front of St. Clare, patron saint of television, and pray fervently that these two don't pull a Dave & Maddie on the viewing audience, because I just can't take it, I really and truly can't. Oh, and Dave, shut up.
Abby checks on Mrs. Connelly, who has one of Yosh's valentines in her hand. Aw. Yosh rocks. Abby comments that the fluid regimen is making Mrs. C feel better, but Mrs. C thinks "it's this young man here," and she proudly shows Abby her card from Yosh, which Abby calls "thoughtful" before asking if she can get Mrs. C anything. Mrs. C says she's a bit thirsty, so Yosh goes for some ice chips, and then Mrs. C says she's a bit chilly, so Abby helps her on with her sweater. Mrs. C says she "didn't expect a card this year, what with -- Barry gone," and describes her late husband as "awfully sweet about these little celebrations," adding that he always remembered, and that some of her "lady friends" had to remind their husbands every year. Abby remarks wryly that she had to remind her husband that he was married in the first place. "Oh, that's not good," chuckles Mrs. C, and Abby agrees, "No, he wasn't." Mrs. C asks if Abby saw her pin, which Barry gave her last year, and says she didn't bother to tell Barry that he'd given her the exact same pin the year before. Abby responds politely that that's very kind of Mrs. C, and Mrs. C bores Abby a bit more about the loveliness of the pin, and I can't see the pin very well, but I'd bet American money it's in the shape of an itty bitty little iron skillet. Call me crazy. "'Be still my heart,'" Mrs. C sighs. "That's what Barry would say. And I -- I still am." She looks sad. Abby looks pensive and uncomfortable. I look for a cold compress for my forehead.
Cut to Sobriki, sitting in bed unhappily as Lucy tells him that she tried calling his wife but got the machine. Sobriki says, "Well, when she goes shopping with her friends . . . I think she's getting me something for Valentine's Day." Lucy doesn't respond to this, telling him instead that his spinal tap came back negative; when Sobriki bitches that they stuck him "for nothing," Lucy says that they had to rule out meningitis. Sobriki looks annoyed but makes "whatever" noises and says he has to go back to the diner and get his books. Lucy asks which diner, and whether other students study there, and Sobriki says sometimes, but most of them go to the library because of the muggings from a couple of weeks before. Lucy asks if someone tried to mug Sobriki, and he says someone could have, because it's a long way from where he parks, "and there's a lot of bushes where they could hide." High above Manhattan, a pilot drops a copy of the DSM-IV out of a prop plane, and it zooms downward, bonks me on the head, and falls open to the "paranoid schizophrenia" page. Anyway, Sobriki says sourly that he'd like to leave soon, and Lucy says regretfully that they still have to give him a CAT scan, and when Sobriki expresses delusional para -- oops, I mean, "concern" about the radiation, Lucy reassures him that it's just a low dose, "not enough to do any harm." Malik pops his head in to tell them that CT's ready, and Lucy thanks him; then she looks at the chart, and at Sobriki, and back at her chart, and she looks like she's about to say something, but she doesn't.
OR. Romano's dog. Romano's dog, tachycardic. Elizabeth, shocking the dog. Sars, wondering what she did to deserve this.
Dr. Hudson leans back on his pillow and repeats, "Superior vena cava syndrome," then says in a more choked-up voice, "That gives me what, a, a year?" Mark tells him gently that "radiation is the standard of care." Hudson mentions chemotherapy, but Mark says that could take several days to resolve Hudson's symptoms, and he's worried that Hudson's headache indicates elevated intracranial pressure. Hudson comments that he thinks he got the headache from "listening to your residents argue" (word) and when Chen, Dave, and Mark all shift uncomfortably, Hudson reassures them, "That was a joke," and they all laugh politely. Mark says they can start the radiation therapy right away, but Hudson says he had a patient with SVC who went with radiation and developed a bad case of esophagitis, with "pain, bleeding, couldn't eat for two months," and he adds that if he's "only got a year, I at least wanna be able to eat." Mark nods as Hudson reiterates that he'll go with the chemotherapy.
Lucy, wearing a gigantic coat, comes in through the ambulance bay clutching an equally gigantic coffee as a tall guy tells her that Sobriki told the waitress at the diner he was coming to County General. Lucy asks if Tall Guy studies at the diner, and he says no, "we're in a group that meets at the library, but the last couple of months -- I don't know." Lucy asks, "Well, did something happen?" TG says that Sobriki has gotten "so weird, I'd swear he's wearing the same clothes all the time." In an airfield in the heart of Jersey, the top-secret anvil-deployment team fires up their engines and takes to the sky as Lucy asks about Sobriki's grades, and TG tells her that he and Sobriki went to college together, and Sobriki did really well, "but he's been cutting classes right and left since September." Lucy then wants to know if TG socializes with Sobriki and Mrs. Sobriki, and TG says, "Not so much anymore -- he keeps picking fights with me about nothing, keeps accusing me of stealing his parking place, stupid stuff like that." As the hail of cast iron begins from above, I have to strain to hear the dialogue, but here's the gist: Lucy and TG pull up to Sobriki's room and look in on him, and he's curled up in the fetal position and sleeping again, and TG asks, "Is it something serious?" and Lucy says they don't know enough yet, and TG asks to see Sobriki, but Lucy wants to let him sleep.
Abby rushes into Mrs. Connelly's room; Yosh says Mrs. C's pressure has dropped quite a bit and he's paged Dr. Carter, and they lie Mrs. C down flat as Abby tries to revive her by shouting "Mrs. Connelly!" into her face like she's Resuscitation Annie or something. Yosh asks Abby what she wants to do, then immediately asks again: "Abby, what do you want to do?" Hey, haven't we seen this scene before as well, when Carter yells at the nurses to get a doctor and Carol snaps, "You are the doctor"? Why don't they just buy the rights to the reruns back from TNT? I like the old ones a lot better anyway -- no cyborgs, no pets in the OR, Mark didn't have a sex life -- the good old days. Okay, so Abby makes a big show of Deciding What To Do, and then she listens to Mrs. C's heart with her stethoscope. Way to grab the bull by the horns, Ab-ster.
Cut to Carter running down a hall and shoving people and carts out of his way. Lucy runs out of Sobriki's room and tries to get his attention, and Carter tells her "not now," but she gives him an update anyway, namely that Sobriki doesn't have a CNS infection and she thinks his problem "might be psychiatric." Carter tells her, "All right, I just said 'not now,' okay?" and bursts into Mrs. Connelly's room, asking Abby, "What happened?" Abby tells him that Mrs. C's pressure dropped, so she started Mrs. C on dopamine, and as Yosh reports that Mrs. C "still isn't making urine," Carter repeats, "Dopamine -- I thought you said she didn't want any heroic measures." "She's in septic shock, I had to get her pressure up," Abby explains, and Carter says, "Dopamine's a resuscitation drug." Jeez, Carter -- why don't you just hold a pillow over the old woman's face already? Abby clarifies that "she said no tubes or machines -- dopamine's okay." Carter asks Abby what she'll do if the dopamine doesn't work, and Abby says she'll give more fluids; Carter points out, "She's on her third liter of saline," and says that more fluids will put Mrs. C into congestive heart failure. Abby doesn't answer or meet his eye. He continues, "Then what, you're gonna intubate?" and when he gets no response, repeats, "Are you going to intubate?" and Abby snaps that she'll watch Mrs. C closely and stop the fluids if she has to. Carter says smugly that that means Mrs. C will end up in the ICU. Just then, Yosh reports that Mrs. C's pressure has risen and "she's started to make some urine," and Abby, vindicated, says the word "good" several times and looks at Carter for approval: "It's working." He doesn't give it to her, shrugging, "Yeah, maybe."
We come back from commercial to find Sobriki whirling an axe around his head and chasing Michael Michele down the -- oh, sorry, must have dozed off for a moment. Sobriki's actually out in the hall in his hospital gown, arguing heatedly with Tall Guy. Mark breaks it up, and Sobriki accuses Tall Guy of "messing with" him as Carter arrives on the scene and pulls him away. Mark asks Carter if Sobriki is his patient; Carter corrects him that it's "Lucy's patient," and Mark says pointedly, "Right, you're 'supervising,'" and Sobriki accuses Tall Guy of following him down to the hospital, and Tall Guy explodes, "No, I didn't! I was just concerned when I heard he was here." Malik joins the party, asking, "What's he doing up?" about Sobriki, and Carter adopts a resigned tone and says, "I dunno," and Sobriki fumes that he just wanted a drink of water. Conni runs up to tell Mark that Chen and Dave need him because Dr. Hudson has "gone sour," and Carter tells Malik to get Sobriki back in bed, and Sobriki flails at TG and shouts, "I don't want him to come," and Carter shouts back, "He's not coming, don't worry," and Malike drags Sobriki back into his room. Carter asks TG if he's all right. TG says yeah, and announces disgustedly that he's got to get back to school, asking, "You'll tell that other doctor?" "Yeah, sure," Carter says distractedly, and TG lugs his anvil off down the hall.
In Dr. Hudson's room, Chen describes Hudson as "altered, unarousable," and Mark shines a light in Hudson's eyes and orders Conni to get a radiation oncology fellow down to the ER. The machines beep madly. For the benefit of the radio audience (tm owen), Chen announces that Hudson didn't want radiation, he wanted chemotherapy, but Mark overrules her and says Hudson won't make it; they have to treat his elevated intracranial pressure. As he removes the pillow from under Hudson's head, he says they'll have to intubate, and both Chen and Dave say, "I'll do it," and they move in from opposite sides to shoulder Mark out of the way. Mark says flatly, "Why don't I do it?" Chen and Dave stop in their tracks.
Carter goes into Sobriki's room and calls Lucy outside. They troop out into the hall. Carter dons The Mantle Of Blame and demands to know what's going on with Lucy's patient; Lucy raises The Shield Of Defensiveness and says she tried to tell Carter, but he interrupts her to say that Mark just had to pull Sobriki out of a fight with TG. Malik happens by to tell Carter that Abby's looking for him. Lucy sighs and says, "He might be schizophrenic," and she starts to say that Sobriki meets the DSM-IV criteria, but Carter interrupts her again to ask if she paged Psych, and she says she wanted to wait and present Sobriki to Carter, and Carter interrupts her again and tells her to page Psych and hand Sobriki off: "You've got medical patients waiting." Carter leaves, and Lucy storms back into Sobriki's room.
Mrs. Connelly is having trouble breathing. Abby listens to her chest. Carter comes in and asks how Mrs. C is doing, and Yosh reports that Mrs. C's pressure is down again even on maximum dopamine; Abby says in a frustrated tone that Mrs. C has "rales all the way up to the apices." Carter, not bothering to keep the I-told-you-so out of his voice, diagnoses this as "pulmonary edema from all the fluid; you flooded her lungs." Mrs. C gasps for air as Abby says defensively, "She was hypotensive." Carter, smugly: "Still is." He tells Abby that Mrs. C's pressure is too low for nitroglycerine or morphine, and suggests Lasix instead. Yosh murmurs that Mrs. C's pulse ox is only 79 on a hundred percent oxygen. Abby announces her intention to intubate, and when Carter says no and moves to stop her, Abby snaps, "She has an infection we can treat," and says that Mrs. C would only have to go on a vent for a couple of days until the infection clears up. "You don't know that," Carter says patronizingly, going on, "She's an elderly woman with multiple organ failure -- you may never be able to extubate. And then what, she spends the two months up in the ICU, hooked up to every machine known to man?" Abby sputters that she just wants to make sure, but Carter interrupts, in a tone so condescending that Dawson Leery should sue him for trademark infringement, "It's not about what you want." Abby doesn't answer. Behind them, Mrs. Connelly struggles to inhale, then abruptly falls silent. "What happened, why'd she stop breathing?" Abby asks. They approach the bed, and L'il Kevorkian explains, "It's called Cheyne-Stokes respiration. It's associated with heart failure." He strokes Mrs. C's forehead in an unconvincing approximation of caring about anything besides feeling superior, and comforts her, "Shh, shh." Mrs. C moans a little. Abby glowers at Carter.
Carol lugs a box down the hall and asks Luka if he changed his shirt. Luka, now kitted out in a scrubs top, says he saw four six-year-olds whom he suspects of eating "too many of those little hearts you warned me about," and the kids yacked all over him. "Welcome to the ER on Valentine's Day," Carol laughs. Haleh calls down the hall that they have a multiple trauma coming in, "five minutes out," and Luka calls out, "Prep the trauma room," and Carol says she'll meet him there.
OR. Romano's dog, out of surgery. Mama Corday, running into Elizabeth and the rest of the surgical team in the hallway. Discomfort all around, especially in my abdominal region. Elizabeth gets paged to the ER.
Downstairs, a gowned-and-goggled Carol runs out to meet the ambulance, followed by Cleo "Now With 256MB Of RAM" Finch. Carol tells Cleo they have an MVA, a mom and dad and their two kids. The paramedic with the braids gives Luka and Carol the bullet on the mother, who got thrown twenty feet from the car, and describes her as "pulseless and apneic"; meanwhile, Doris hands off the kids to Cleo and Haleh. Both kids -- Robby, 11, and Julia, 5 -- avoided major trauma in the back seat, but Robby has a wrist injury and Julia has multiple facial abrasions. Julia, looking disoriented, wanders into Haleh's arms and wants to know, "Where's Mommy?" Haleh tells her to come on inside.
In the hall, Peter "The Professional" Benton asks Elizabeth what they've got; she briefs him quickly and tells Mama Corday to stay out in the hall. They pass Cleo leading Robby and Haleh with Julia in her arms, and Robby asks if the paramedics will bring his father in, and Cleo says she's sure they will, and Julia asks again where they took her mother, and Haleh says, "They're helping her, don't worry." Cleo herds them into a room and says, "Let's get help for the two of you."
Trauma room. In an aerial shot, we see the mother hoisted onto the bed. I won't bore you with the jargon, but it doesn't look good. Someone mentions that the driver, the family's father, required extrication from the car. Luka tells the team to set up for bilateral chest tubes.
In a neighboring room, Cleo unwinds the makeshift sling from Robby's arm. Robby peers around her, trying to see his mother. Cleo asks him if he can tell her what happened, and Robby says absently, "A car hit us, it was going really fast," and wanders towards the window of the trauma room. Cleo pulls him back, saying they need to get him checked out. Julia, clutching what looks like a coloring book, tells Haleh something about hitting her head on -- all together now -- some broken glass; Cleo asks Robby if he hit his head or passed out, and he says shortly, "No," still trying to see into the trauma room. "What about you, Julia?" Cleo asks, as Robby once again walks in a trance towards where his mother's getting worked on. "Can I go see my mom?" Julia wants to know.
The father comes through the ambulance bay doors with Elizabeth astride him, doing compressions; the paramedic says that the father got crushed by a "passenger-space intrusion" (a nice way of saying that the steering wheel skewered him) and that he lost the father's pulse about a minute away from the hospital and didn't have to time to tube him. Mama Corday looks on in wonder as the gurney rolls past her. They get the father into a trauma room, and Peter identifies a tension pneumo on the left side as Elizabeth prepares to intubate; as she goes around behind the patient's head, she gets distracted by the sight of her mother watching worriedly from outside. Elizabeth begins to introduce the tube, but keeps glancing up to check her mother's reaction as she does so.
Cleo urges the kids to sit down so she can examine them. They keep asking questions about their parents as Cleo orders x-rays for Robby's wrist and Julia's knee. Cleo and Haleh exchange a "what should we tell them?" look.
door, the mother's condition goes south. Out come the paddles. Luka keeps ordering higher voltage; Carol asks snottily, "What's your plan?" "Two chest tubes and a pericardiocentesis," Luka answers brusquely.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Peter work on the father, preparing to insert a chest tube and hook him up to a vent. Peter asks of the mother, "How're they doing?" while making an incision. Elizabeth looks through the double doors and says quietly, "It doesn't look so good."
While Cleo and Haleh work on Robby's wrist, Julia slips stealthily down from the bed she's sitting on and walks out into the hallway. It doesn't take her long to find the room her father's in, and as she approaches, we hear Elizabeth and Peter yelling that the father is bleeding out and they've lost his pulse. Julia goes up on tiptoe to see in, and just then Cleo scampers around a corner and picks her up, and she says soothing "come with me and get fixed up" things and tries to turn a mesmerized Julia's head away from the sight of her father dying on the table. She hustles away with Julia in her arms.
Luka and Chuny report massive fluid loss. Carol asks Luka if he wants to keep auto-transfusing. Sounding out of breath, he says, "No. Hold compressions." A shot from above shows several pairs of hands retreating from the mother's body. "Asystole," says Carol as the machines flatline. "That's it," Luka mutters. "Time of death, 15:35." Someone unhooks the vent from the mother's bloody face and closes her eyes. "Make sure she's cleaned up," Luka says. Chuny nods. Luka grimaces, shoots Carol a quick glance, and leaves the room. Carol follows him door and they ask after the father. "He's bleeding out through his chest," Peter says flatly. "His wife's dead," Carol whispers. Elizabeth looks shocked. Luka asks if they should prep for a thoracotomy on the husband. Elizabeth says the husband has gone into full arrest from a blunt trauma and a thoracotomy won't help. "Isn't there something else we can try?" Carol bleats, the light from her halo blinding everyone else in the room. "He probably tore his aorta," Peter says sadly. "We can't save him." He tells Lily she can stop compressions. She stops. Elizabeth squeezes the ambu bag a few more times, then stops also. The machines flatline. "Asystole," she says numbly, and Peter calls the time of death at 15:37. Luka makes weird emotional movements with his mouth. Carol looks like she might cry. Elizabeth heaves a sigh and asks, "What should we do about the children?" Luka steps up: "I'll tell them." "I'll go with you," Carol says, then stops and asks, "Lily, can you make sure --" "Yeah," Lily assures her that she'll clean the husband up. Carol and Luka leave, and Peter and Elizabeth exchange a mournful look. Lily tenderly begins to wipe blood from the dead husband's forehead.
Luka and Carol strip off their trauma gear and walk over to the kids' room. Cleo spots them and comes outside to ask how it went. "Both their parents are dead," Carol chokes out. Cleo shrugs her shoulders in order to convey "nonplused" and says, "Oh God, uh -- what are we gonna do?" You'd think that as a pediatrician she'd have some experience in this area, but I guess they haven't downloaded Condolence 2.1 onto her hard drive yet. Lydia calls Cleo just then to see to an asthma patient, and Luka and Carol tell her they'll deal with the Edelstein kids; Cleo stops to tell them the kids' names. They enter the room as The Piano Music Of Bereavement plays in the background and introduce themselves to the kids. Haleh says she'll wait outside, and Carol, as if she's doing Haleh a big favor, says benevolently, "No -- please, stay." Carol says they need to talk to the kids about their mom and dad, and she begins hesitantly, "As you know, the accident was pretty bad." "The car was going really fast," Robby says quickly, and he has that heartbreaking look on his face that kids get when they know they have to hear bad news but they don't want to believe it until the words actually get spoken, and Luka sort of wheezes, "Yeah," and forges ahead, explaining that he and Carol and the other doctors did everything they could to help the Edelsteins, "but their injuries were very, very serious." Cut to a reaction shot of Julia and Robby, bracing for the worst, then back to Luka saying, "And -- despite everything we tried to do, we were not able to save them. And they died." The munchkins look shocked. Carol tramples the moment with, "But I know they would be so relieved to know that you're both okay." Julia looks to her big brother to find out what to do. Robby breathes out like he's just gotten hit in the solar plexus, then says in a determined tone, "I want to see them." Carol looks away from the kids. Luka murmurs, "Okay, okay, then I'll tell you what to expect when we go in the room." He warns them that their parents will still have breathing tubes in their mouths, and other tubes below the collarbone and in the arm, and also that "they had a lot of scrapes and bruises from the accident." Luka makes that strange motion with his jaw again; clearly, having to deal with this situation causes him emotional pain, but he doesn't seem to feel he has a choice. Carol looks at Luka and then looks at the floor, properly chastened by the presence of a genuine martyr.
The two of them follow the kids down the hall as The Oboe Of The Recently Orphaned moans in the background. They approach the entrance to the trauma room. Julia stares inside, then bursts into tears and runs into Haleh's arms; Haleh comforts her. ["If both my parents died in a horrible car accident -- and I was the age I am now -- I'd want Haleh there to give me a hug. She's a great hugger." -- Wing Chun] Robby barely seems to notice, going to his father's bedside and staring at his lifeless form. Once Luka and Carol make sure Julia's okay, they follow Robby in to where his mother lies. Robby stands by his mother's body for a moment. Reaction shots of Carol and Luka, looking ashamed of themselves for watching such a private moment. Robby's face crumples, and he lies down on his mother's chest and begins to weep.
You know those old ladies on the Stove Top Oven Classics ad who spend the whole commercial bitching, and then one of them grumbles, "We need a martini"? You've just glimpsed me and Wing Chun in fifty years. ["True. True." -- Wing Chun]
Enter Randi, blowing on her hands. Amira comments, "You're early," and Randi says she didn't want to miss the Valentine's Day parties. She answers a phone as Amira sneers, "Seeing as how you missed the decorating -- ?" and Randi grumbles, "Luck of the schedule." Conni tells Mark that Dr. Hudson has starting making "purposeful movements," which Mark calls a good sign, but Conni puts paid to that by telling him that "Drs. Chen and Malucci are with him." "Doing nothing, I hope," Mark mutters. He comes in to find Chen shining a light into Dr. Hudson's eyes, and he shoos her away while preparing to extubate Dr. Hudson. Mark then does that magic trick where he "pulls the tube out" of his hand, and Hudson coughs dramatically and asks what happened. Chen fills him in and says they treated him with radiation, and Mark says they'll send Hudson upstairs and oncology can take it from there. "I guess I owe you my thanks, for going against my wishes," Hudson observes dryly, and Mark allows as how it set a bad example for the residents, "but you're welcome." All three of them pat Dr. Hudson and leave the room, and as they go, Chen and Dave get into it again over which treatment would have worked best, and Mark breaks it up again by asking in an annoyed tone if they know why he only had one child: "Because I didn't want to listen to two of them arguing in the back seat of the car." Like, ha ha. Not. Mark erases Hudson from the board; Elizabeth comes up and asks him if he's seen her mother, even though he doesn't know what she looks like. Mark says that in fact he's met Mama Corday, "we had a nice little chat, she's delightful, and we're all going out for dinner tonight." Elizabeth doesn't sound too happy about that and wants to know how it came about, and Mark shrugs that Mama Corday has "a certain way about her" and says he's leaving in a few minutes to pick up his father, who's at Magoo's having a coffee.
Elizabeth finds her mother on the front steps of Magoo's and runs up to her, saying she thought she'd lost her. Mama Corday says she knows the place like the back of her hand by now, and mentions that she "met your Mark." "And?" prompts Elizabeth. Mama Corday says that Mark "has a way about him, doesn't he?" and makes a snide comment about Mark's arranging the dinner so that Mama Corday and Holling could meet. Elizabeth tells her not to be silly, and MC says she doesn't mind. Then MC tells Elizabeth that she "had no idea" about Elizabeth's work, thus giving Elizabeth the maternal approval she craves, and then MC pours her weak coffee out and makes a funny remark about drinking gin.
Lucy finds Sobriki in the lounge and asks sort of absently what he's doing there. Sobriki rambles that he wanted a cup of coffee; Chuny and Lydia give him strange looks as they get ready for the party later. "You're having a party here," Sobriki says, looking shifty. "Yeah. Come on, let's go," Lucy says tersely, herding him out. Lydia looks at the blue heart-shaped cake Chuny has just put in the microwave and asks, "Shouldn't it be bigger?" "Shouldn't it be red?" Chuny says.
Holling doesn't want to go to dinner with the Cordays. He doesn't like getting set up, which Mark denies doing, and he blames it all on Elizabeth, which Mark refuses to dignify. Mark threatens to go inside and leave Holling to freeze. Holling observes that they should have had the Cordays over to their house, "we could have played that Tom Jones album." Ha! I love Holling. Mark storms off. Holling stares after him and makes curmudgeonly faces.
Carter once again pulls Lucy out of Sobriki's room and asks what happened to the Psych consult. Lucy sets her jaw and says, "I called them twice, they're backed up." She doesn't look directly at Carter. Carter says that he doesn't want to "get on [her] case" -- yeah, sure you don't -- but she has to see other patients. Lucy doesn't let him finish, bitching that she just found Sobriki in the lounge, but Carter doesn't let her finish and wants to know if she's sutured the leg lac yet, and she huffily shows him the chart and says she's on her way to do it right now, and Carter talks over her again and says to "let Malik stay with this guy," and he breezes off. Lucy says, "Malik -- just -- forget it, Carter!" and flings herself back into Sobriki's room. I round up a few hundred feet of Christmas lights and a really long extension cord, spell out "WE GET IT" with the lights, and drape them out my window.
A piano bar/restaurant. Mark says Holling thinks Elizabeth thought up the dinner; Elizabeth tells him Mama Corday blames Mark. Elizabeth has her hair up in a Scary Spice-esque 'do, which sounds really fugly but looks quite nice on her. The two of them walk back to the table with their martinis as their respective parents brag on them and try to one-up each other with tales of their children's medical exploits; they don't even notice Mark and Elizabeth return to the table. Elizabeth breaks in to ask if they're "getting on well," and they both say yes. Then an extra bursts into song at the front of the room, and Holling says in a very funny tone of befuddlement, "What the hell?" Mark explains that it's modified karaoke. "It's too bad they couldn't get someone good," Holling comments. Mark looks taxed. Mama Corday titters.
Oh, for god's sweet sake. Romano, Shirley, dog, scuffle over post-op dog biscuit, whatever, whatever, WHATEVER.
Holling belts out "They Call The Wind Mariah," complete with hand motions. The Cordays comment on Holling's lovely voice. Mama Corday asks if Mark can sing too; he says he can't, and that Holling used to do this kind of thing to embarrass him when Mark was a kid. MC remarks that parents don't try to embarrass their children, because it's too easy to do by accident. Holling continues to gnaw the scenery, but he does have a pretty good voice. "He is pretty fearless," Mark admits. Holling ends the song, and everyone in the bar applauds loudly.
Mrs. Connelly's room. Abby sits silently by Mrs. C's bed. Carter opens the door, leans on the doorjamb, and tells Abby patronizingly, "She's not in any pain." "I know," Abby says, then sighs and says, "And I know you were right." "She was right," Carter says. "Let me know if you need anything." Abby thanks him, and he leaves. As the door closes behind him, the monitors go flatline. Yosh materializes from the other side of the bed and says softly, "Asystole." Abby looks up at him with tears in her eyes and says bravely, "Time of death, 19:19." She looks at Mrs. C. The actress playing Mrs. C blinks by mistake, ruining the scene, but Abby touches her face anyway and whispers, "Be still my heart." Oh, don't worry -- her heart has an anvil sitting on it. It can't move around much. Trust me.
Holling and Mama Corday sing a show-tune while Elizabeth deconstructs the movie the song comes from. Mark tells her please to stop, because he can't handle "this evening getting any more bizarre." Both of you, shut up.
Abby smokes a cigarette on the roof. Carter brings her a coffee and tells her the hospital has "warmer places to be alone." They have a bit of non-funny banter about Carter fitting into a NICU incubator. Abby starts talking about how, as an OB nurse, "ninety-eight percent of what you see is just pure joy -- you know, it's the happiest day of most people's lives." Carter nods sympathetically as Abby goes on, "And the tragedy is horrible, because it's a life cut short, it's a mom with a baby." "Sure," Carter says. Abby tells him, "Today was the first day I saw an old person die, and I guess I'm just not used to it." Carter asks if she wants the good news or the bad news first. Abby asks for the bad news. "You never get used to it," Carter tells her ruefully. "The good news is, you never get used to it. At least I haven't. So, you may have come up here to be alone, but -- you're not." Nice try, New Carter, but survey says -- EHHHHHHH! Abby changes the subject to the Valentine's party and asks if Carter thinks they started without them; Carter certainly hopes not: "Heads will roll." Yeah, starting with yours, Jonas Sulk, so shut up.
Downstairs, music blares. Luka wanders with an amused smile through people dancing and eating candy and hollers in Peter's direction, "So, this is your Valentine's Day party!" and Peter says, "Don't ask me, man, it's my first one," and smiles wickedly. He walks over to Cleo and hands her a cup of punch (ew) as Lydia tells Amira she thinks they have a bigger knife in the lounge, and as an anvil just misses her, Amira sing-songs back, "Couldn't find it!" Abby notes that it's a lot more fun than OB, and Carter tells they "like to party" in the ER. As he removes his scarf, something catches his eye, and he grouses, "Oh, Lucy didn't suture that leg lac yet? That guy's been here for four hours. Where is she?" Lily tells him that Lucy's still waiting on a Psych consult. Carter takes off. Luka sits down to Carol and says, "I wasn't sure you'd make it." Carol says glumly, "Yeah, well, who could resist blue cake." She stares at a forkful of it for a long moment, which leads me to believe that Maura Tierney didn't hit her mark on time, because , Abby comes up to them and asks, "The patients don't mind this music?" and Carol and Luka both say, "What?" and then they all laugh.
Music blaring behind him, Carter walks down the hall, fiddling with his cuffs. He opens the door to Sobriki's darkened room, looks puzzled for a moment, and bends down as the door swings closed behind him to pick up one of Yosh's valentines from the floor. Carter straightens up to admire it, smiling indulgently, and as the camera follows him up, we see Sobriki skulking behind him in the corner. Sobriki steps forward, puts a hand on Carter's shoulder, and stabs him twice in the back with the other hand. Payback time for the spinal tap, evidently. We don't see Sobriki again in this scene. The look on Carter's face changes from amusement to puzzlement to intense pain and fear in about four seconds -- nice acting job by Noah Wyle -- and he groans and grabs his midsection, and the camera cuts to a shot of his hand covered in blood, then back to his face as he begins to go into shock. Carter staggers over to lean against an equipment tray on his right hand while holding his left arm against his side to stanch the wound, and as he shouts through clenched teeth, "Somebody!" the equipment tray gives way and he falls to the ground; of course, nobody can hear him because of the loud music. Carter rolls to his side, clutching himself and gasping, and then he tries to push himself up from the ground, but he can't, and he wilts back onto the floor, his face lying to one of his own bloody handprints. He looks wildly around the room, panicking, and then focuses on something straight ahead. Horror registers in his eyes. Cut to a truly gory shot of Lucy on the floor on the other side of the bed, in a pose that mirrors Carter's -- half on her stomach, half on her side, hand by her face -- and her neck and chest drenched with blood. Sobriki has slashed her throat. Cut back to Carter gasping, "Lu -- Lucy." Cut again to Lucy, staring pleadingly at him, then appearing to lose consciousness; back again to Carter, freaking out, then passing out as well. We fade out on the pulsing music. Well-acted, well-shot scene -- I can't convey very well how quickly and nightmarishly it unfolded, but suffice it to say that I knew in advance what would happen and I still gasped. Nice job by the director.
week on ER: the ER has never fought harder to save two people, but based on the grey levels in Lucy's make-up, it doesn't look too good for her.