Props, for one damn time, to the writers, to the cast, and to Thomas Edison [Sars: RIGHT?] for inventing the television. Further props to humblepie and Kim. Mad props to my girl Sars, who was there on the other end of the Not! Line to talk me down from my roof during the commercials.
Previously on ER: Lucy treated a patient named Paul Sobriki, who showed up with a bad headache. As part of her treatment, she tapped Paul's spine while Carter held him still; Paul really didn't take it so well. Carter blew off his supervisory duties and wasn't adequately attentive when Lucy told him she thought Paul might be schizophrenic. Finally, Carter noticed that Lucy hadn't attended to a leg laceration as he'd asked her to do; when he went looking for her in Paul's room, Paul stole up behind Carter and stabbed him in the kidney. Carter fell on the floor, trying (and failing) to call for help, and saw Lucy staring back at him, gasping ineffectually for breath, having had her throat slit.
Kerry "Nation" Weaver crutches through the ambulance bay toward the hospital. An ambulance pulls out, and a paramedic leans out the window to yell at her to hurry up, or she'll miss the party. She pretty much ignores him, and runs into Cleo "Patra 2525" Finch coming out from the ER. Weaver asks Finch if she's off; Finch replies that Luka gave her fifteen minutes to pick up her dry cleaning before the shop closes. Weaver pointedly asks, "We're slow, I take it?" "We are now," Finch calls back, already on her way. Weaver yells after her, "What's that music?"
Before we can hear Finch's response (if any), we're inside, where the Valentine's Day party is still going on, and the stereo is, admittedly, on pretty loud. The revellers...revel, and Malik holds his hand out to Carol "Don't Mess With a Missionary, Man" Hathaway and Luka "On a Wing and a...Well, That's All, Actually" Kovac in the manner of a newly engaged woman showing off a diamond ring. It seems that Malik got a manicure on the assumption that "that's what the ladies like," and that women check out men's hands before any other body part. "I check out the butt, myself," Lydia remarks. Malik holds his hand out to Lydia, turns it palm up, then palm down, and mutters, "You know what I'm sayin'?" Pfft. Conni's with me, and says, "Oh, that's a myth -- I tested it." Luka asks, "Tested what?" and Carol says, "It's so not worth explaining." For once, we agree. Luka and Carol notice that Weaver has appeared in the doorway, and Luka calls out his Valentine's wishes. Instead of leaping into his lap at that invitation, as nearly anyone else would, Weaver passive-aggressively yells back, "Isn't it a little loud?" Malik apologizes, and lowers the volume on the stereo a tiny bit. "Dr." Dave Malucci, dancing with Randi, protests, and then sees Weaver in the door and shuts up; Randi lets go Dr. Dave's hands and scurries off. Behind the desk, Weaver opines that "someone went a little overboard with the hearts." Amira, eating some blue cake, asks what's wrong with the hearts, and Weaver says that nothing's wrong with them, turns down an offer of pizza from Chuny (mmm...Chicago piiiiiiizzaaaaaaa), and asks whether Mark isn't still on. Carol, passing through, chirps, "He left at eight -- double date." Dr. Dave drawls, "I'm on 'til nine -- mighty fine." Carol turns back long enough to look disgusted, and keeps going. As Weaver starts to doff her winter gear, Luka explains to her that things slowed down; there's no one waiting to be seen, and he took over the board. Weaver loudly tells everyone they can continue the party for five more minutes, and then go back to work.
Weaver crutches into the lounge, where Abby "Lisa" Lockhart is on the phone, saying, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Manir; it was a mistake." It seems that she's unwittingly bounced a cheque, having expected funds that never arrived. I'm guessing it has something to do with the husband who wouldn't remember he was married -- the one she mentioned to Mrs. Connelly last week. Lisa hangs up, looking annoyed and tense. Weaver quietly asks if everything's okay, and Lisa says, "No, but I'm sure it'll work out." Carol comes in, complaining that she's "beat," and starts putting on her coat and scarf. Lisa asks if Carol's leaving, and she says that she is, and that all she wants is to "go home and hug [her] girls." Way to smuggify in front of the two singletons, Carol. Weaver asks whether Carol lost a patient, and Carol and Lisa answer in unison, "Yes." Weaver closes her locker door, and comments, "It's nice to have someone to go home to."
Weaver crutches back to the desk, where Chuny is telling Conni that she and "Alex" broke up. Conni says she thought Alex was "the man," and Chuny snorts, "Yeah, so did my neighbour." "Ouch," says Yosh. Hee! Weaver offers to take any patients Luka wants to hand off, and he hands her a set of films on "Cupid -- a singing telegram, slipped on some ice." Randi says that she needs a doctor to go to radiology over a patient named Rodriguez; Lydia says she thinks that patient is Carter's, and Weaver, crutching off, calls, "Okay, find Carter." From chairs, Haleh is pushing a wheelchair containing an indigent-looking patient named Pablo. In a nice bit of continuity, he's a homeless patient we've seen before; two seasons ago, Carol was bathing him, and he was complaining that she was doing it instead of Haleh, when she got the idea to open the clinic in the ER. Weaver recognizes him and asks how he is; he says, "They put me on a bus," and explains that it was "a green one." Haleh fills in the blanks that Pablo was in Mexico, and she figures he was deported. As Haleh pushes the wheelchair down the hall, and Weaver crutches along beside, the camera is parked right beside the door leading to the curtain area where the viewer knows -- as no one else does -- Carter and Lucy are possibly bleeding to death. As Haleh takes Pablo off to check out an injured foot and bathe him, Dr. De Raad from Psych comes off the elevator and wishes Weaver a happy Valentine's Day -- "or night, I guess." She reciprocates pleasantly enough. He asks if she knows where a patient names Sobriki is. She looks at the spelling of the name on De Raad's clipboard, and, failing to recognize it, tells him that she just got on, and suggests that he check the board. He goes off to do so, and Weaver crutches around the corner of the Death Room, where Cupid is sitting on a bench nursing his injured ankle. As the Hum of Foreboding starts up on the soundtrack, Weaver puts Cupid's film up on a light box in the hall; the box seems to be on the fritz, so she asks Cupid to wait and goes toward the nearest curtain area in search of another one. At the door, Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen stops her to ask about a patient who's swallowed something called "Bare Butt Booty Oil," and I suffer my first of several cardiac arrests because the tension is. Too. MUCH. Weaver takes the bottle and promises to speak to Toxicology about testing it; Chen thanks her and takes off, and the camera pans down to the threshold of the door, and a single bloody print of a bare foot. Weaver frowns at the footprint, and pushes open the door to the curtain area. She pauses for a moment, getting her bearings in the dark, and then screams.
The rolling of the credits gives me time to put both Sars and the Kids Help Phone on speed dial.
Back at the piano bar, Mark "Mt. Baldy" Greene and Elizabeth "Broken English" Corday are very tunelessly singing Billy Joel's "Piano Man." If this is the calibre of "comic" "relief" I can look forward to, I'll be the one with a pulmonary embolism before the hour's out. At the table, Isabel "Mama" Corday and David "Holling" Greene quietly dis their progenies' complete lack of musical talent. Fortunately, we don't have to suffer through much of the doctors' performance, as first Elizabeth's, and then Mark's pager goes off.
Back at the hospital, Lucy "Last" Knight is being rushed into a trauma room; Weaver yells orders while Lily bags her. As the camera follows Lucy's stretcher, it passes Haleh, who is yelling into a phone, "No, I can't stay on the line!" Down the hall, a male voice (possibly Malik's) yells, "That guy could still be running around here!" and Haleh concludes her phone call: "Just get 'em here! Every cop in the city knows where we are!"
As Haleh hangs up, the camera cuts to the team attending to John "Upset the Apple" Carter, which includes Luka, Chen, and Lisa. Chen is yelling at him to answer whether he can hear her, and Luka assesses him at "Glasgow coma scale seven." Cut to Carter's face; his lips are moving weakly, but no sound is audible. Lisa asks whether anyone knows how long he and Lucy may have been lying in the Death Room, and Chen says that it was long enough for each of them "to lose a couple of litres" of blood. Lydia brokenly says, "I can't believe nobody saw anything," and Luka snaps, not unkindly, "Let's talk about it later."
In the trauma room, Lucy is transferred to the bed. Weaver calls out a couple of meds orders, and Dr. Dave observes that Lucy's sustained stab wounds to the left neck and chest, and "two more in the belly." Weaver demands a blood pressure reading; Haleh tells her to hold on because Lucy's pulse ox is low, and Weaver barks, "That's why I'm tubing her! Get me a blood pressure!" Dr. Dave quietly calls for a chest tube tray, and Weaver shouts him down, saying instead that they should start a central line. Haleh announces Lucy's blood pressure; Weaver calls for O-negative blood for the rapid infuser. She struggles a bit while intubating Lucy, but is ultimately successful. They continue their efforts to stabilize Lucy as Weaver bitterly remarks, "People were having parties while these two were in there bleeding to death." Well, Kerry, it's not like they were having a party because Lucy and Carter were bleeding to death, because if they were, Sars would have been invited. ["Sars would have brought the beer, even. Sars feels pretty guilty about that now." -- Sars]
Back on the second floor (not) with Luka, they've determined the location (left flank) and number (two) of Carter's stab wounds. Lisa asks whether the stabber hit Carter's spinal cord, and Luka replies that it depends on the angle. Everyone yells out Carter's vital signs; Chen asks whether they should intubate, and Luka tells her to give him ten litres of oxygen by mask for now, presumably because that's more dramatic-looking. As they toil, Lisa tells Chen, "I was just talking to him."
Elsewhere, Conni is leading a uniformed cop to the Death Room; she tells him that the patient presumed to have done the stabbing is gone. The cop peers inside and, instead of turning on the overhead light, shines his flashlight over the puddle of blood and the Valentine from Yosh (aw!). Uniformed Cop mutters, "Oh, boy." Uniformed Cop 2 asks the patient's name, and De Raad appears and says, "Paul. Paul Sobriki." UC2 asks what Paul looks like, and De Raad says that he doesn't know, since he hadn't seen him yet. Conni makes to go for Paul's chart, but UC1 stops her and says that no one should go into Death Room, because it's a crime scene. Inside, he walks over to the far wall, both to flick on the overhead light, and to allow the camera an easy pan....
....to Peter "First and Last Month's" Benton, who comes tearing down the stairs, sprinting through the hall (and smack into UC2, who tries to stop Benton before Conni yelps, "It's okay! He's a doctor!") , and straight for Carter's bedside. ["This is where I started crying." -- Sars] In fact, before he's even in the room, he's yelling, "Is he conscious?" Luka starts to tell Benton that Carter's hypotensive, with two stab wounds, but Benton just snarls again, "IS HE CONSCIOUS?!" Luka says that Carter isn't conscious, but that he's responding to fluid resuscitation. Chen tells Benton how this happened, and that Lucy was injured as well, but Benton really doesn't have his best listening ears on, and tells everyone to roll Carter so that Benton can get a look at the wounds; when he does, he groans at the sight and they gently lower Carter back down. Benton asks why the patient wasn't in restraints; Chen says she doesn't know, but I think it probably has something to do with the fact humplepie pointed out on the forums, which is that a patient -- even one with possible psychological problems -- can't be put into restraints until there's some evidence that he plans to harm himself or others, which wasn't the case with Paul, of course, until it was too late. Anyway, Benton asks where the foley is, and Luka says that's , so it's really kind of a good thing that Carter isn't conscious.
Weaver and the rest of the crew continue to work on Lucy when Randi comes in and, in a quavery voice, tells Weaver that the police are sealing off Curtain Three (a.k.a. Death Room) and that they need to speak with anyone who dealt with Sobriki right away. Weaver snaps, "Handle it, Randi." Dr. Dave starts yelping, "God, look at this, look at this, Chief!" It seems that Lucy has a tracheal laceration and requires a "crike," according to Dr. Dave; Weaver disagrees, and thinks Lucy needs a tracheotomy instead. She tells Haleh to go get Benton.
Haleh pushes open the door and tells Benton that Weaver needs him. He tells her to hold on. Luka observes that Carter's "toes are down-going," which indicates that there's no spinal injury; he tells Lydia to hang two more units on the infuser, but she protests that it's not set up. "Get it set up," he barks, and Lisa says she'll do it. Benton, still examining Carter, says that the stab wound "probably got the descending colon." Haleh says, "Peter, Dr. Weaver needs you right now; she needs to trach Lucy." This stops everyone in their tracks for a second, and Benton calls out some final pre-surgery orders -- including asking, again, after the status of the foley -- before pushing into Lucy's room.
Lisa rushes out into the hall. She starts rifling through a rack full of equipment and asks Conni, standing nearby, where the infusor is; Conni tells her it should be there. As she continues flicking through all the shelves and drawers, the camera slowly pans upward. Lisa calls to Conni that she still can't find it, and Conni suggests that she try the top shelf. By now the camera has come to rest at a point just above the shelf, treating the viewing audience to a clear shot of the butcher knife from the lounge with which Paul stabbed Lucy and Carter. Oblivious to the location of this piece of evidence, Lisa shifts boxes around; she finally pulls one down, and the knife falls with it. Lisa shrieks; UC2 comes over to check it out, warning her not to touch it. Suddenly, we cut to KnifeCam; Conni approaches the knife on her hands and knees and identifies it as the knife with which they'd planned to cut the cake. Lisa breathlessly regards the knife for a moment, and then manages, "I -- I have to go find some tubing." She goes around the corner to a large storage closet and starts pacing with her hand over her mouth, valiantly trying not to burst into tears. Yet another uniformed cop (UC3) appears at the screen door that gives out onto the hall and asks her whether she's working on one of the victims. She pulls it together enough to confirm that she is, and starts going through the drawers looking for tubing to avoid the officer's eye. The cop asks if Carter's going to make it, and she says she doesn't know. He asks if Carter's awake, and Lisa, having located the required equipment, yells, "Got it!" and takes off back to Carter's trauma room. The camera and the cop both follow her in. Chen by now is shining a light in Carter's eyes and reports that his right pupil is five millimetres and reactive. She moves on to the left, and Carter flinches away. "John!" Chen yells. He huffs a couple of times, and casts terrified eyes about the room. "John?" Chen says again. "Deb?" he squeaks. At this point, I start crying. Chen tells Carter to look at her, and asks him whether he knows where he is. His eyes flick around a bit more, and he grunts, "My back...." Chen tells him he was stabbed, but they've got his pressure up. Carter groans, "Lucy...." but before Chen can tell him anything about her, UC3 introduces himself as Officer Bad Timing -- I mean "Bernini," and asks Carter whether he saw the man who stabbed him. Chen exasperatedly asks whether they "need to do this right now," and Carter weakly moves his head back and forth, indicating that he did not. Bernini (formerly UC3) makes some noises about securing a statement, but Chen gets rid of him. Carter says, "What?" and Luka tells him it's nothing, and that the stabber missed his spinal cord. Carter arches his back and screams with pain at the insertion of the foley; the motion turns him over to his side, and he sees through the glass door into Lucy's room, locking eyes with Benton as he works on her. Carter's gaze then falls on Lucy's face. The dark roots of her hair are quite visible; she has a tube in her throat, and a lot of blood on her neck. Carter chokes, "Is that Lucy?" and Lisa tells him it is, and that she's alive. Just then one of the machines attached to Carter starts chirping, and not happily. Chen quietly calls Luka's attention to a bag full of bloody urine. Carter is no dummy and demands, "What is it?" No one answers. Luka tells Chen to get Benton (heh) back in to attend to Carter.
Benton seems to have just completed the trach because he tells the room at large to "get ready to bag" Lucy. Chen appears at his side and tells him Carter needs him. Weaver and Benton both yell orders, and Chen manages to get a word in edgewise: "Carter's got a bad renal lac." Benton checks on Lucy's pulse ox, and asks Weaver, "You got another surgeon coming?" "Go, go!" Weaver yells in response.
Greene pulls up to the hospital in his Milquetoastmobile -- oops! I mean "mini-van." He and Elizabeth leap out, but not before Mark tells Holling to wait for them inside. Elizabeth and Mark jog up to a cop manning the security check; after the few moments it takes for them both to locate their hospital IDs, they are allowed to enter, on the condition that they move the mini-van. Mark seems to take his sweet time going back to the van to tell Holling to move it, and then hurries back toward the hospital. Holling asks to where he's supposed to move it, and Mama Corday replies rhetorically, "You're asking me?"
Carter is lying on a gurney on his way up for surgery, looking very groggy indeed. Chen is exhorting him to stay awake. Elizabeth catches the gurney as it rounds a corner and asks how he is; her coat is tight enough that the bulge of her body mic is visible at her back, but regardless she asks Benton how Carter is, and Benton tells her what's happened so far, and that they're "redlining him for the OR." Elizabeth asks Carter's blood pressure, and Benton tells her that he's got Carter, but that Weaver needs her. Now in the elevator, Benton tells Carter to hang on.
Luka has moved in to help Weaver with Lucy, and observes that Lucy's belly is distended, which probably indicates "an intra-abdominal bleed." Weaver asks why Paul wasn't sedated, and Luka snaps, "I don't know. Get ultrasound in here!" Weaver's like a dog with a big old bone, though, and demands, "Was he on a hold? Was there a sitter?" and Luka exclaims, "I don't know, Kerry! I never saw him!" Weaver squeals, "What?!" but before Luka can answer, Mark and Elizabeth are at the door getting gowned and Dr. Dave is pushing up the ultrasound machine and giving them the bullet. Elizabeth asks about blood loss, and Weaver says there's four hundred in the Thoraseal, and possibly as much as 2,000 before anyone found her. Cut to Lucy, whose throat wound still looks just as nasty as ever, if not nastier. Mark asks how long the blade was, but before anyone can answer, Haleh yells that Lucy's pressure's dropping. Mark says she needs pressure, "Now!" Elizabeth says it could be "tamponade" and they need to open a thoracotomy tray; Weaver shouts her down with an order to check Lucy's CVP, but Luka says it's too late, and that they've lost Lucy's pulse. Dr. Dave says they're in "PEA," and Luka starts compressions. Elizabeth says that they need to "crack her," and calls to anyone to prep Lucy's chest. Weaver asks Lily for the sternal saw; Elizabeth makes an incision down the length of Lucy's chest, and Weaver visibly screws up her nerve to use the sternal saw on Lucy. Because she's Weaver, she steps up and does the job; everyone else watches, their faces clearly communicating their gratitude that they didn't have to do it. Mark cracks Lucy's chest with the rib spreader, and Luka makes with the ultrasound. Lucy goes into v-fib, and Mark starts internal compressions. Weaver calls for internal paddles, and Mark notes, "We've got a major hemorrhage, here." Weaver says that it looks like the proximal aorta, and Mark tells her to keep her finger on it. Elizabeth calls for a needle. Luka, watching the ultrasound monitor, says that Lucy's belly is "full of blood," and that Paul "probably got the spleen." Dr. Dave confidently declares that they've got to "cross-clamp the aorta," and Elizabeth firmly replies, "One thing at a time." Weaver calls for the paddles to be charged. Elizabeth draws a thread upward and yells, "Cut! Cut!" Luka snips it. Weaver leans in with the internal paddles and shocks Lucy's heart, but she's still in v-fib. Luka calls for another amp of epi, and Weaver shocks her again. They get a regular rhythm for a second, then, according to Dr. Dave, "sinus tach." Elizabeth announces that they're "moving her to the OR now." They start to push the gurney out, but Lucy's still attached to the pulse ox monitor, which Weaver quickly unplugs. Mark asks whether Lucy's making urine, and Dr. Dave says there's only fifty cc's in the foley. Mark opines that that's "better than nothing," and Elizabeth yells at Lily to call the OR and tell them they've "got an open chest." Weaver crutches along at the head of the gurney, calling out last-minute orders. Luka asks whether they'll need anyone else, and Elizabeth, in the elevator with Haleh, Dr. Dave, and Lucy, yells, "I hope not." The doors close. Mark, Luka, and Weaver stand in the hall, still in their yellow gowns, looking shell-shocked. Mark pulls off his gloves and says, "I can't believe this," because that's constructive. Luka says, "I think we got it in time," and Mark agrees, "She has a good chance." Weaver takes a few deep breaths, and then quickly walks away. Luka calls after her, but you know she must be really traumatized because she actually doesn't answer him.
Around the bend, another Uniformed Cop (UC4) asks if she's Dr. Weaver, the doctor who found the victims. Weaver breathes, "Excuse me?" and keeps walking. Malik runs up to tell her about a problem with the med-evac helicopter, which is bringing in a victim of an industrial trauma, but she waves him off with a "try to divert...whatever."
Outside, the doors to the ambulance bay swing open and Weaver staggers outside. She takes a few deep breaths that nearly look like sobs, and then lurches over to a garbage can and vomits into it.
In a phenomenal display of bad timing, the CTV station ID features a very spry Carter jogging purposefully up to the camera.
Donald "Tubby McFats" Anspaugh marches over from the nearby set of The Others and straight into anaesthesia, where Benton and Dr. Snackwells are prepping Carter for surgery. Anspaugh says he "just heard" and asks what happened, and Benton says he isn't sure, and then harasses the scrub nurse about the blood being used for Carter's transfusion. (Turns out Carter's type actually is O-Negative.) Anspaugh announces that he's going to scrub in, and tells Carter to "hang in there" as he departs. Benton checks the blood again, and Carter asks how many units he's had. Benton admits that this is the fifth, but that Carter "shouldn't be counting." Carter murmurs, "It's bad, isn't it?" Benton and Dr. Snackwells exchange a glance, and Benton further admits that they're having trouble keeping Carter's "crit up," but they attribute that to Carter's renal laceration. Dr. Snackwells dopes Carter up some more. Carter suggests that it could be the aorta. Benton adds, "Or the vena cava, or the mesenteric vessels..." Carter mumbles, "Oh, God," but, since he's anaesthetized, says it without much affect. Benton very seriously tells Carter not to worry -- that he's going to explore the abdomen. Carter says simply, "I'm glad it's you," and I start crying. Again. Benton promises he's going to get Carter through this. Carter's eyelids flicker, and Dr. Snackwells says that he's ready to intubate. Benton says that he wants to be ready to cut in two minutes, and stomps out....
....just in time to see Lucy being pushed into an adjacent OR. Elizabeth and Robert "Rocket" Romano are both in scrubs, following close behind. Benton asks what happened, and Elizabeth tells him. Romano tells her he'll take care of Lucy's anaesthesia, and tells Elizabeth to go scrub. She and Benton go in together; Anspaugh's already there, and they all exchange anxious looks as they scrub.
And now it's time for The Blame Game, which we join in progress. Down at the desk, Luka is asking Amira, "You need a six-inch butcher knife to cut cake?" Amira tells him that she didn't bring it; someone just told her that's what they use. Luka says, "Yes, and we just leave it out?" Amira insists, "I didn't!" Mark steps between them to ask whether it was at admit, or in the lounge. Amira says that someone said it was in the lounge, but that when she went to get it, she couldn't find it. Weaver rounds the corner and tells Amira to go upstairs and get security to open up the personnel office, so that Weaver can get emergency contact numbers for Lucy and Carter. Mark leans against a doorway beside her as Weaver tries to retrace steps: "Okay. He presented with a headache --" and because Mark is such a genius, he asks, "Who?" Already exasperated, Weaver snaps, "Paul Sobriki," and then, her voice breaking with strain, adds, "Mark, please, tell me that you saw him." Mark says that he did, and that Lucy worked Paul up, and Carter supervised him. Pointedly, Weaver asks, "And who supervised him?" Luka, by now, has turned around in order to eavesdrop. Instead of answering Weaver's question, Mark says that "the LP came back negative." Weaver tells him that if he wanted to leave early, he could have at least "rounded." Mark deflects: "I ran the board with Dr. Kovac." Weaver demands, "For how long? For thirty seconds?" Mark insists that Luka was up to speed, but Luka disagrees: "Hold on. You didn't tell me he was psychotic." Point to Croatia. Mark replies that he didn't know Paul was psychotic himself, and asks, "Did he present to you?" referring, I guess, to Carter. Luka says he didn't see Paul, and that he thought they were waiting for a Psych consult. Weaver desperately yells, "Unless his status changes!" Luka says, "Someone should tell me that! I was managing the whole board!" "You were having a party!" Weaver screams. Point to the U.S. Mark tries to play peacemaker by saying that both he and Luka thought that Lucy and Carter "had it covered," which is a profoundly stupid thing to say under the circumstances, since, in fact, they actually did have "it" covered -- they had "it" covered with their own blood and viscera, so, way to supervise, Mark. Weaver says, unnecessarily, "Well, they didn't, did they?" Chuny comes in and yells, "Excuse me!" but no one's interested. Mark crosses the floor to stare Weaver down in his most condescending, I'm-a-tall-man way, and tell her, "Look, we both know we use the residents to keep us informed." Incredulously, Weaver asks, "Are you blaming Carter, Mark?" and Mark loses it and shrieks, "No, I'm not blaming anyone -- are you?" Chuny yells, "Excuse me! I have Samantha Sobriki with me. She's looking for her husband." A pregnant belly -- oh, God -- comes through the doorway, attached to a young woman who, if they ever lose Lisa, could play her in a pinch. She says she got a message from Lucy that her husband was at the hospital, but that it didn't say why. The doctors look at one another, and finally Weaver nods at Luka, the Empath-o-Matic, who wearily steps forward and takes her away. Malik tells Mark and Weaver that the med-evac containing the industrial-trauma victim is landing. Mark tells Weaver to go change, and that he'll take it.
Mark walks out from behind the desk and runs into Finch, who asks him if there was a bomb scare. Oh, right -- she's missed all the excitement. Mark says, "I wish," and they pass by chairs....
....where the closed captions read, "...husband may be involved," but we don't actually hear it. Samantha says, "No. I don't believe you. Where's Paul? I want to see him." Luka very patiently but with great exasperation says, "He isn't here." "Paul wouldn't hurt anyone. He couldn't," she insists. Luka replies, "Your husband needs help, Mrs. Sobriki." She tells him there's been some kind of mistake, and he tells her that they think Paul may be schizophrenic. She stares back unblinkingly and finally asks, "What?" Luka tells her that a first psychotic break can happen in a patient's twenties. She tells Luka very anxiously that he's wrong, and he starts to deny it but apparently realizes there's not much point arguing with her just now, and shuts up.
In the OR, Benton and Anspaugh operate on Carter. Naturally, there are complications. Benton starts getting crazy and prematurely calling out orders, but Anspaugh essentially tells him to chill, and overrules him.
In Lucy's OR, Elizabeth is saying that there's too much bleeding for her to identify the source. Elizabeth notes that the spleen's still bleeding, and that Lucy is losing blood as quickly as they can give it to her.
Finch, Mark, and one paramedic push the industrial-trauma victim about whom no one cares out of an elevator. The paramedic gives the bullet and Mark's like, "Yeah, whatever." They get to the door of a trauma room and Holling appears at the end of the hall, calling to Mark and asking him what's wrong. Mark comes over and briefly tells Holling what happened; as he's doing so, Lisa tells Mark that an auto-vs.-pedestrian accident victim is on his way on a five-minute ETA. Holling asks what he should do with Mama Corday, and Mark asks him to wait half an hour, at which time Mark will drive them home. Yeah, I'd want him driving right now. He's already attended several patients after enjoying (as we saw last week) some fermented beverages; now he's all upset and traumatized, on top of that? Hey, Mark, there's this great new invention that I think they may have in Chicago by now. It's called a cab. Although, now that I think about it, maybe that's not the greatest idea. I'd hate to think how Mama Corday would react to finding herself in the back of a cab chauffeured by a very recent immigrant begging her, "Guide me, please." I remember how Sars, maggie and I reacted when we found ourselves in that position, and let's just say there's a confused recent immigrant who doesn't know the Evanston Holiday Inn from the downtown Days Inn who has, since August, been driving his cab with half a head and a strip torn off his back. I suspect that Mama Corday would likewise find herself playing either Bad Cop, Worse Cop, or Devil Cop, exactly as we did. But I digress. Holling asks Mark whether his "friends" will be okay, and Mark says he doesn't know.
In the lounge, Samantha is still telling Luka -- now joined by a non-uniformed man I can only assume is a detective -- that Paul is innocent, and that the cops don't know anything for sure. The detective agrees, but says that they really need to find him anyway. UC2 comes in to tell everyone that Paul isn't at his home address, and no one's seen him at the diner he told Lucy he'd come from. The detective asks Samantha whether there's anywhere else he might go if he wanted to feel safe. Evasively, Samantha tells Luka, and not the detective, that just because Paul's been "a little depressed, it doesn't mean he's crazy." Luka has no response other than to stare at her. The detective agrees to that too, but tells her that they have to assume that, at the moment, Paul may be a danger to himself and to others. Samantha says that doesn't make any sense, and once again directs her remarks to Luka: "If he was that dangerous, why did they leave him alone?" The detective delivers a pointed look at Luka, who instead of yelling, "I didn't even see him! I was working that mom and dad who both died in the car crash, remember? And then I had to go tell their freaking kids that both their parents were dead! So don't even think about blaming me for your batshit husband, lady -- if you ask me, you are the one who should go home with the Chrysler LeBaron and the trip to Acapulco for winning today's installment of The Blame Game, so you can see how your continual obfuscation is really chapping my sweet, sweet Croatian ass!" says, "I understand. This doesn't make much sense to any of us. But if Paul's in trouble, he needs help, and it's better if we can find him now." Samantha sets her jaw, and reluctantly admits, "Sometimes he goes to the roof when he wants to be alone." Luka asks, "The roof?" and she adds, "Of our apartment building." UC2 takes off, and Samantha repeats, "He didn't do this." Yeah, I've heard that tune. And you know what? I didn't request it. I wanted to hear "Sledge Hammer."
Upstairs, Romano and Elizabeth continue working on Lucy. She seems to be stabilized, and the camera starts at the foot of her bed and keeps pulling further and further back, which, at the time, I thought was the director's really subtle way of representing Lucy's soul being pulled out of her body. Or something.
Then the camera is closing in on Carter's face as Benton and Anspaugh wrap up his surgery. It turns out that Benton was freaking out over nothing before, and he freely and graciously admits that Anspaugh was right. Things must be looking up for Carter, because Anspaugh jokes, "He could have lived without a kidney. I just didn't want to tell him." Of course, I spoke too soon; a hematoma is forming...somewhere...in Carter's guts. Benton asks if it's forming in the lumbar area, and Anspaugh says he hopes so. Benton says, "You hope so? If we tie it off, it could paralyze him!" Anspaugh says, "It's better than his aorta!"
In chairs, Mama Corday and Holling each enjoy a cold drink. Holling tells MC that Elizabeth's great, and MC says she wishes she could take the credit, but that "the boarding school raised her." Holling makes a disappointed noise, and MC says she was teasing. Holling asks whether Elizabeth's father is deceased, and MC snorts, "He was still alive the last I heard." Holling perks up a little (God knows why) and says he's sorry. MC tells him not to be, since "it wasn't [Holling's] fault." They both look up to see....
....Lisa and Chen hurrying out the ambulance bay to meet the pedestrian victim of the car accident. As they go, each asks the other about Lucy and Carter, but neither has heard anything. At the ambulance, the paramedic gives them the bullet: He's a John Doe hit while running across Michigan Avenue; he's suffered no apparent head trauma, but he's "repeating questions." When the gurney emerges from the ambulance, it's shown to contain Paul, and I have to say, I did not see that coming AT ALL. He's telling everyone there's a cab waiting for him. Lisa and Chen look meaningfully at each other over Paul's stretcher as the second paramedic tells them that the patient was "buck naked in the freezing cold," and Chen yells to Lisa, "Get Weaver, now!" Lisa takes off running.
In a trauma room, Paul is saying, "You're not allowed to be doing this to me." Yosh asks Malik, "Are you sure it's him?" and Malik replies in the emphatic affirmative. Weaver, now in scrubs, enters as Chen yells meds orders; Chen concludes by saying, "He's combative. He's agitated. I'm not taking any chances." Paul is still babbling incoherently. Weaver yells for someone to bring in the police detective. Paul yells, "I won't talk! I won't talk! I made promises to people!" and in his paranoid, delusional state -- coupled with his dark eyes and hair and prominent nose -- he really looks a lot like one-time West Wing recapper Sugar Larry. Weaver leans in to ask, "Paul, do you know where you are?" Paul demands, "Who told you my name?! I don't even know you!" Weaver asks, "Do you remember what happened?" Struggling with his restraints, Paul yells, "You can't trick me! I don't even know you!" Weaver leans back. Malik, conducting the physical exam, calls out, "No deformities," and Paul yells, "I'm not deformed!" Lisa, with a thermometer in his ear, calls out his temperature, and Paul manages to rear all the way up and growl, "Don't stick me!" Lisa jumps back a bit. Paul yells, "Don't stick me! They wouldn't stop sticking me!" Yosh comes forward and asks whether Weaver wants Haldol, but she's backed all the way to the door and doesn't say anything. Lisa watches her, looking alarmed. Yosh says Weaver's name again, and she orders both Haldol and saline and then pushes through the doors into the adjacent trauma room, where Mark is working on the industrial-trauma victim about whom no one, including Mark, cares. Because he isn't doing anything important, Mark asks Weaver if she's okay, and she tells him that the stabber is in the room. They both look up to see Paul, still so juiced-up on adrenaline that he looks like he could easily break his restraints. Mark starts to ask her what's wrong with Paul, and she very firmly asks him to take it. Mark's patient is going to surgery, or somewhere -- whatever, so Mark goes in to work on Paul, who is still begging everyone not to stick him, and not to cut him.
This station ID features Carol Hathaway. Oh, so that's why this episode is so good! She's not in it!
Elizabeth sits on the floor in the hall, looking wrecked. Romano emerges from an OR and makes a Valentine's Day joke. Lucy is stable, and he congratulates Elizabeth on her good work. She asks how Carter is, and Romano tells her it took a while for the surgeons to stop the bleeding, but they ultimately salvaged his kidney, and are now working on a colostomy. Down the hall, a blonde woman we've never seen before tells Romano that the county supervisor's on the phone, having just heard what happened. Romano instructs her to the tell the supervisor he's in surgery, but she says she already told the supervisor he was out of surgery. Romano sarcastically yells, "Thank you! Appreciate that!" and she totally gives him the hand. Heh. He goes to take the call, and Kit opens the door to tell Elizabeth that Lucy's waking up.
Okay, even when Lucy was in surgery, I knew she wouldn't die, because she still hadn't made any dying declarations and the last thing we'd heard her say was a whole week ago, and it wasn't anything profound at all -- just proof that she cared about her patient, and that Carter, as always, was a really terrible teacher. So when Kit told Elizabeth that Lucy was waking up, I figured that it was in order to deliver her poignant final speech.
Elizabeth hurries in and sits down to Lucy's bed. She asks whether Lucy knows what happened to her. When they cut to a shot of Lucy, we can see a large blood stain on her chest. Lucy makes no response, so Elizabeth tells her about her wounds, and what they did to fix them -- a bunch of different operations involving her throat and liver, and ending with the removal of Lucy's spleen. After this, Elizabeth says, "I'm sorry" as mournfully as if she'd just told Lucy she'd miscarried or something. I mean, if Lucy can live without a spleen, it can't be that big a deal, right? It's not like it's a limb or even a finger. Anyway. Lucy closes her eyes, and opens her mouth to speak (and I'm thinking, "Here it comes!"), and Elizabeth quickly tells her that because of the tracheotomy, Lucy won't be able to speak, but that if Elizabeth plugs in the trach, Lucy will be able to whisper audibly. Lucy licks her lips, pauses, and breathes, "Thank you."
For once in my life, I am happy to have been wrong.
Carter's still getting a colostomy. Once again, Benton and Anspaugh are congratulating themselves over a job well done, like they didn't learn their lesson the last time. Shirley appears at the door to tell Anspaugh that someone needs to operate on the industrial-trauma victim. Like everyone else, Benton doesn't care, and tells Shirley he's not finished with Carter yet, and asks where Elizabeth is. Shirley asks if Benton wants her to page Elizabeth, and he says he does, and that Shirley should tell Finch to stay with her patient until Elizabeth gets there. Since Finch doesn't -- and, in fact, can't -- care about anyone, this is the perfect job for her.
Elizabeth hangs up the phone in Lucy's room, and tells Kit that she has to go to the OR, and then assures Lucy that she'll be back. Of course, as soon as Elizabeth puts her hand on the door to open it, Lucy's sat starts dropping. Elizabeth asks her if it's "chest pain? Sudden onset?" but of course Lucy can't talk and doesn't say anything. Elizabeth calls out orders, and Lucy deliberately mouths, "P-E?" Elizabeth tells her that PE (pulmonary embolism -- I guessed that one right!) is a distinct possibility, and Lucy makes a "fuck!" face as they anxiously, but gingerly work on her (what with the bleeding, cut-open chest and all). Romano runs in just in time for them to start wheeling Lucy out of the room for a CT-scan. Elizabeth calls for a heparin drip, and Romano pulls her aside and tells her not to thin Lucy's blood if they don't have to. Elizabeth points out that Lucy's "just thrown a massive clot in her lung," and that if it is a PE, she could throw another. Romano argues that Lucy's just had massive surgery, and that they don't want her to bleed out. They finally decide that they won't "heparinize" for at least two hours, and Elizabeth confidently declares, "I won't need that long."
Mark walks up to the desk, where Samantha is standing, and waiting. Because we all know how much pregnant women enjoy spending time on their feet. When she sees Mark, she asks whether he was working on Paul. Mark tells her that Paul was hit by a car, and sustained a collapsed lung, which they fixed. He suffered no head trauma, and he's seeing a psychiatrist right now. Samantha nods, because -- unlike the experience of being summoned to a hospital to learn that the husband with whom you share a life and an unborn child is the only suspect in a double attempted-murder -- these are events she can understand, and she asks whether she may see him. Mark tells her she may want to wait a minute, because they gave him a drug "to calm him down." Mark walks off, and Samantha yells after him, "I really need to see him!" Mark holds up a single finger (not that one) to indicate that she needs to wait.
Back up in CT, Elizabeth has confirmed that Lucy has, in fact, thrown a pulmonary embolism. Romano tells Elizabeth to take Lucy down to angiography, and that he'll meet her there. In the room, Kit quietly tells Elizabeth that Lucy's abdominal dressings are "soaked through from the incision" -- and we see that they are, in a nice straight line down her torso. Elizabeth tells Kit to send off a hematocrit, and tells Lucy that it's "just a little oozing," due to the heparin; she adds that Lucy's blood pressure is fine, she shows no major hemorrhage, but that she's got a pulmonary embolism. Lucy winces, but Elizabeth tells her that they're taking her to surgery for a "Greenfield filter," and will reverse the heparin. Lucy may, however, require another transfusion. Lucy nods quickly. Elizabeth asks, "Lucy, are you with me?" Lucy nods again. Elizabeth says, "I'll get you through this," and Lucy nods. Again. Elizabeth, the girl can't talk. Have a conversation with Kit, if you need human contact.
Chen and Dr. Dave bust into Doc Magoo's and order coffee. They glance over at the nearest booth, where Lisa and Luka are nursing drinks of some kind. Lisa and Luka admit that they didn't want to go home, and that the day's events are "pretty scary." Lisa adds, "I was complaining about my day." Dude, it was bad enough you had to play Mrs. Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar -- you've suffered, too.
Elizabeth and Kit take Lucy into an OR prep room. Elizabeth orders drugs, and explains to Lucy that it's just to relax her during the procedure. Lucy mouths something, which Elizabeth correctly interprets as her wish to stay awake, and she agrees. Elizabeth explains what she's about to do, and goes off to scrub. Romano heartily says, "Don't worry, Ms. Knight. We've put far too much time and energy into your training to lose you now." As he blusters on about how many Greenfield filters he's done, how easy they are, and that he'll even talk her through it if she likes, the camera zooms in on Lucy's face, as she blinks quickly a few times and moves her head very slightly to and fro. A machine starts chirping, and Romano determines that she's thrown another clot. He starts doing compressions, and says that they'll have to cut her open here. By now Elizabeth's come back in, just in time to hear Romano call for wire cutters. "Wire cutters?" Kit repeats, and Elizabeth explains that they wired the breastbone together when they were finished operating. Ow. If this hadn't happened, would Lucy have had to walk around with wires in her chest forever?
Benton is still working on Carter when Shirley comes in to tell him that Elizabeth never answered the page. Benton asks Anspaugh if he can take the industrial-whatever-whoever, like, insubordination, much? but Anspaugh points out that he's in the process of suturing. Benton protests that he still has "to run the bowel again." Anspaugh tells Benton that the other guy -- whoever -- needs something, or whatever, and promises to page Benton if anything with Carter changes.
Benton pulls off his gown and strides into another OR, where Finch is waiting with some guy. There's another patient in the hospital? I'm sorry, but they could have mentioned that before, because it is news to me. Benton very quickly --and obviously inadequately -- assesses the patient as normal, tells the nurses to prep him for...something, and tells Finch to wait for the surgeon. "You're not going to stay?" she yells at his departing figure, and he says he's still working on Carter.
Elizabeth and Romano are into Lucy's chest up to their wrists. They start sucking things out; apparently, there are a whole bunch of clots in there.
Finch's patient -- who? what? -- starts crashing. In the absence of an actual surgeon, she tells the scrub nurses to prep for a thoracotomy. They remind her that he actually needs a laporotomy, but she says she doesn't know how to do one of those, and that a thoracotomy will hold him for the time being.
Lucy's condition is getting way worse way fast. Presently, she's in v-fib, and Elizabeth gets the internal paddles and shocks her six times, to no avail.
Benton walks in on some guy Finch seems to have found somewhere, whose chest is wide open. He starts giving her shit for giving the patient a totally unnecessary thoracotomy, but she reminds him that he left her alone with him, and that the patient would be dead right now if she hadn't done what she did. He gives her more shit, and she defends herself some more, until he snarls, "Dr. Finch, you better step the hell back, now." She gives him a "whatever" look (which for her means raising her right eyebrow three microns), and stomps out. Hey, I know Jeanie's on tour with Tina Turner, but does anyone have her phone number? When she comes through Chicago, she and Finch should really go for coffee or something.
Elizabeth is still shocking Lucy with the internal paddles, and Romano is still doing internal compressions; Lucy's asystole. After one more shock, she goes flatline, and Romano, still massaging her heart, says, "That's it. We've done everything we can." Elizabeth holds the paddles aloft, as if she's about to toss a large, bloody salad; her eyes well up with tears. "Holding compressions," says Romano. Elizabeth lowers the paddles a bit, and the machine continues to flatline. They both stand still for a moment, holding their arms up, and then Romano mumbles, "Oh, dammit," and throws a tray of instruments at the wall. Elizabeth cries silently, and gazes into Lucy's open chest cavity. "Son of a bitch," says Romano, and then, "No. No. Let's give it a minute for the last epi to circulate." He plunges his hands back inside Lucy's chest and starts massaging her heart again, yelling at Elizabeth to charge the paddles to thirty. She doesn't move, and he yells at her again, still to no response. After a few seconds, he pulls his hands out of Lucy's chest, and says, "Call it." Elizabeth turns around to see the clock, and calls Lucy Knight's time of death: "2:56."
Paul is sitting up in bed, in restraints. Mark is doing something to his left foot as Paul meekly asks, "When can I go home?" Mark replies that he doesn't know. Paul, sounding very sad and frightened, says, "I want to go home! I -- I need to feed my dog." A uniformed cop posted outside the door opens it for De Raad, who tells Paul he has a visitor, and steps aside to allow Samantha to rush in to Paul's bedside. At the sight of her, Paul starts crying, and she gently strokes his cheek and cries a little, too. She asks if he's okay, and he tells her that he wants to go home. She asks what happened, and he answers (sort of), "They took my clothes, and they took my shoes." De Raad asks to whom Paul's referring, and he replies, "Them." De Raad asks to whom "them" refers, and Paul says, "They had a -- a blue cake." De Raad asks, "Is that where you got the knife?" Paul turns to Samantha and says, "They were going to open me." Realization that the charges are true comes to rest on Samantha's face, and she tries her best not to cry openly.
De Raad asks, again, about the knife, and Paul tells Samantha, "They were going to take my organs!" De Raad asks, "What organs?" Paul finally turns to De Raad and, growing belligerent again, yells, "My internal organs! Don't you understand? I had -- I had to protect them. Don't try to tell me I don't know, because I know. They were trying to take them, and I had -- I had to stop them!" Samantha weeps. Paul turns to her, and she tries to maintain, with moderate success. De Raad asks, "Is he ready?" and Mark says that he is. Paul glances from Mark to De Raad and back again, looking completely terrified. Mark asks, "You're going to take him upstairs?" and De Raad nods. Mark leaves as Paul starts up again about wanting to go home, and needing to feed his dog.
Mark steps out in the hall, and walks to the desk, where Weaver is sitting, looking down. When she hears Mark's approach, she looks up at him, and it's apparent she's been crying. Neither of them says anything.
Benton walks out of an OR as a passel of scrub nurses pushes out some guy's gurney. Finch is standing out in the hall. Benton walks up to her and asks whether Carter's out of surgery. She says that he's extubated and in recovery, and that his vitals are stable. Benton makes relieved noises, and then miraculously apologizes for his earlier behaviour, admitting that it was unprofessional of him to leave her alone so long with a surgical patient. When she doesn't say anything in response, he asks what's wrong, and she tells him there was a complication with Lucy.
At Doc Magoo's, another table has been pulled up and Lydia and Haleh have joined Lisa, Luka, Chen, and Dr. Dave. Haleh and Lydia are telling a story about a time Carter played a prank on Lucy by sending her in to perform a pelvic exam on a well-known (around County, anyway) drag queen. Just as Chen's saying, "You gotta hand it to Vanessa; he's got a better figure than I do," Chuny comes in and stands in the doorway for a moment until everyone looks her way. When the laughter and conversation stop, she says simply, "Lucy."
We get a shot of a bare leg, and an instrument, and Benton's voice telling the leg's owner to tell him when the vibration stops. Of course, the leg is Carter's, and Benton is performing various tests of Carter's reflexes, to make sure he wasn't paralyzed. Carter asks about his pancreas, and Benton tells him it was totally intact, and that Paul only got Carter's descending colon. Carter asks how long he'll have the colostomy, and Benton tells him it'll be a month. Carter says, "Now," and Benton tells him that his sensation's intact, and that he was lucky. Carter agrees, "I know. Thank you." Benton says he's welcome, and then starts another test on Carter's leg. Carter asks how Lucy's doing, and Benton ignores him, telling him again to lift his leg. Carter does so, laboriously, and says it hurts. Benton is pleased with the results of this test, too. Carter says his back is killing him, and Benton tells him about the spinal hematoma, tells him he'll give him some morphine, and adds that he wants Carter up and walking in twelve hours. Carter settles back in bed, and then suddenly says, "Lucy's dead, isn't she?" I start crying. AGAIN. Benton blinks, and doesn't answer. Carter looks away, and joins me in crying.
Mama Corday is in bed, kind of smiling. I cannot tell you how certain I was that the shot would be of an equally happy-looking Holling in bed with her, but again, I was wrong, and happy to be so. She starts at the sound of a door closing, and steps out into the living room, where Elizabeth is sitting, looking stunned. MC asks if everything's all right, and Elizabeth replies, "No." MC asks whether Elizabeth wants to talk about it, and she says she doesn't. MC bustles off to make tea. Elizabeth's face slowly softens into tears.
At the hospital, Mark steps off the elevator and smack into Death Room, where police tape has been pasted over all the doors, and crime-scene photos are being taken. He walks to the nearest open doorway and looks inside at the puddles of blood, and the cops gingerly stepping around them. Behind him, we hear Carol's voice -- about as welcome as a root canal -- ordering Malik to get her various supplies. When she notices Mark, she stops, and tells him she just heard. She asks how it happened, and he asks if they may talk about it later. They walk together down the hall, and he asks what's coming in. She says it's a multi-victim trauma -- an assembly-line accident. Yeesh. She says she told the dispatch they could take two majors and six minors. Mark asks their ETA, and she says, "They're rolling up, but I just realized we're down a doc and a med student." I'm sure Carter's very sorry he's fucked up your day, Carol. Why don't you page him and let him tell you himself? And I'm sure Lucy would apologize -- if she could -- for so recklessly getting in the way of Paul's knife, but hey, look on the bright side: At least you know you won't have to start any more IVs for her, right? GOD, Carol sucks! Lisa walks by, on her way to the lounge I'd guess, and Mark asks her if she's off. She says she is, but agrees to cover when he asks. Carol thanks her, and Mark moves off to the desk, where he takes a deep breath. He doesn't get to pause for long, though, as we hear Doris's voice give the bullet on one of the assembly-line accident victims. He turns around and goes to meet the gurney.
Weaver crutches into Lucy's OR. Romano is standing over her body, stitching, and explains, "I had to close her chest." Weaver picks up a pair of scissors to cut the thread; the camera cuts to a shot of Lucy's face, as the thread appears and Weaver snips it. Romano quietly thanks her. Weaver looks into Lucy's immobile face, and reaches down for the top of the sheet. Romano reminds her, "The nurses can do that," and she replies, "I know." Weaver draws the sheet over Lucy's face.