"No, it's funny. Really." -- Wing Chun
Thanks to Djb, the a-t-e summarizers, and the crew on the boards -- and as of season, Wing has this beat to herself, so especial thanks to her, as always.
No previouslys this week, since the producers probably assume we've all locked it in for sweeps and don't need reminding about what went before. A guitar twangs ruefully as the ceiling-cam pans along John "Sleepless In Lake Forest" Carter's bedroom floor, and Bush's Gavin Rossdale begins musing on "dark" and "pain" as we cross the parquet floor and the Oriental rug and the silk robe at the foot of the bed and up to Carter himself, attired in The Dick Van Dyke Show-era pajamas and staring dead-eyed at the ceiling. A fade to Carter wandering around the darkened grounds of the estate; another fade to Carter lighting a cigarette by the pool. Hey, Carter started smoking, just like Mark did after he got attacked! So I suppose cigarettes = emotional turmoil. In other news, we get it.
Yet another fade, accompanied by Gavin singing, "Whatever you say, it's all good / Whatever you do, it's all right," to Carol "Saint Elsewhere" Hathaway awakening to the sound of one of the twins crying. She drags herself blearily out of bed and goes into the nursery, and she rubs Kate's tummy and tells her to go back to sleep before hoisting Tess out of her crib and soothing her: "What happened, did you have a bad dream?" She shuffles towards the kitchen with Tess in her arms, murmuring, "Oh, man, Tess, you're killin' me."
Fade back to ceiling-cam, this time twirling above Abby "She's a nurse! [slap] She's a doctor! [slap] She's a nurse! [slap] She's a doctor! [slap!] She's a nurse and a doctor!" Lockhart sleeping on a gurney. "Forget It" Haleh "It's Chinatown" Adams wakes her with the news that the paramedics are bringing in a twenty-two-year-old woman with pelvic pain. Abby says "okay" without opening her eyes. Haleh asks if she's getting up; Abby says yes, but she clearly isn't. Only when Haleh asks if she should wake Malucci does Abby sit up and pull herself together. She pads out into the hall with Haleh and asks how long she slept. About twenty minutes, Haleh tells her, and Abby says dryly, "Well, that must be why I feel so refreshed." Lydia joins them, and the three of them go out the ambulance-bay doors; Abby asks, "So is this a med-student hazing thing, or do you guys just hate me?" Haleh tells her, "You're younger than us, prettier than us, and skinnier than us," and Lydia chimes in, "We hate you." Um. Okay. The sound of a siren gets closer as Abby smoothes her hair and says, "Thanks for the candor." Then Abby -- mirabile visu -- puts. Her hair. Up. Total shout-out, thank you very much. Abby comments that it's cold, and Lydia snarks that she should go back in: "We don't need you to help us push a gurney." Abby dons a pair of gloves and says placatingly that she never thought she'd even get into med school, she "was just looking for a change," but Haleh won't have it and tells her to stop talking "before one of us hits you." Hee! Haleh rules. As they walk over to the ambulance, the camera pulls back up to sky-cam . . .
. . . and we fade to Greene Acres, where Mark "Captain Picard" Greene sorts photographs. As the camera swings back down, we see partially packed-up medical equipment behind him. He picks up a silver-framed black-and-white photo of young Ruth and Holling; Holling has on a Navy uniform. Mark looks at it for a long moment and nods, then walks into his bedroom and sits on the bed beside a sleeping Rachel. He strokes her hair and tells her he loves her: "Do I tell you that enough?" Then he whispers "I love you" again and brings us to credits.
More overhead-cam as a basketball hits a backboard; drop-down shot to "Use The Force" Luka Kovac shooting hoops. Carol, pushing one twin in a stroller and carrying the other, says "hey" from behind him, and he says "hey" back. She says didn't know he played basketball, and he says self-deprecatingly that he doesn't. He leans over to greet Tess and asks the baby, "Did you let your mommy sleep for a change?" (Oddly, the captioning of that line read, "Did you let yo mama sleep for a change?" "Yo mama"? Heh.) Carol says no, she didn't, and she joggles Kate and gives Luka a self-conscious smile. Luka, still holding the basketball, asks, "Did I make you angry? With the flowers, on your birthday?" My god, man. How many kicks in the ribs does it take? Carol says patronizingly, "No, they were beautiful," but she looks down and tucks her hair behind her ear. "But they weren't animal crackers, huh?" Luka says. Oh, BURN! Carol, caught off-guard, parries with, "Oh, you heard about that, huh?" but doesn't seem disposed to say anymore about it; she looks down again and pushes the stroller back and forth. To his credit, Luka cuts to the chase: "Are you still in love with him?" Caught by surprise again, Carol says she doesn't know; she thinks she's "still too angry with him to think straight." Angry -- about what? The clinic getting closed? Doug not staying when she told him to leave? I know that sometimes, when a big upheaval happens in a relationship and too much time passes, the resentment can damage it beyond repair, but a year has gone by and he's come back to see the twins -- what exactly is she still angry about? Anyhow, a cop car honks at them, and they get out of the way as Luka says, "I would think so." "Why?" Carol asks, and when Luka gestures towards Kate, Carol says, "No, it wasn't like that -- Doug didn't know I was pregnant when he left." Luka says that Doug didn't come back when he found out, and Carol admits that "it wasn't all Doug; I could have gone with him. He asked me to." She looks wistful. Luka asks flatly, "Why didn't you?" Carol thinks for a second before saying, "Pride -- I wanted him to stay here for me. I thought I should be at least that important to him," and she adjusts the product-placed Gap hat on Kate's head. Luka, reluctantly: "I still love my wife . . . but it's time to get on with my life." Carol thinks this over; Luka scoops Kate out of her stroller and heads inside with her as she babbles happily. Lucky baby. Halfway to the door, Luka turns to smile at Carol as if to say, "Look at the handsome picture I make, carrying your baby," but Carol just looks pensive.
Inside, Abby pulls a speculum out of a bowl of water and asks the girl with pelvic pain to slide towards her a bit. Pelvic Pain Girl scootches down the bed and rolls her eyes: "God, I hate these." Amen, sister. Abby asks how many partners PPG has had in the last year and whether she uses condoms; PPG says one, and "most of the time." Worried, she asks if Abby thinks she's pregnant, and Abby says no, the urine test came back negative. PPG says, "Wow, that didn't hurt at all," and Abby says, "Warm water. I know a few tricks." Yes, Abby, you used to work up in OB. I do believe we get it, and by the way, you really shouldn't introduce a skillet into a sterile environment. More warming-up-the-speculum banter. Abby tells Haleh to send cultures, and when Haleh confirms that Abby wants "G.C. and chlamydia," PPG asks in a panicked tone, "Do you think I might have chlamydia?" Abby reassures her that they check everyone for STDs, then tells Haleh that "there's a purulent discharge around the cervix," and PPG kvells that she's "been with [her] boyfriend for over a year" and if he gave her a disease, she'll kill him. Abby reminds her that they haven't made a diagnosis yet and continues the pelvic exam; PPG winces and groans when Abby palpates her cervix and ovaries. Abby finishes her exam and says everything looks fine and PPG probably has PID -- pelvic inflammatory disease. She'll give PPG antibiotics via IV and pills and "throw in something for the pain." She tells PPG to get dressed. PPG looks disgusted.
Out in the hall, Abby massages her neck and orders antibiotics for PPG; Chuny and Haleh write the orders down. Chuny asks if she should get Malucci to sign off, but Abby says all casually that no, she's seen "more of these" than Malucci has, so "let him sleep." I feel a sudden penetrating chill as Foreshadowing stands between me and the life-giving warmth of the sun. Chuny offers to find Weaver, but Haleh says that she "wouldn't go there" -- Weaver is in the middle of her second double shift of the week. Abby adds that Weaver got called upstairs for a code in the CCU, and she trudges out of the shot as Chuny tells Haleh that she heard Mark's coming back that day, and Haleh says, "Thank God -- if Weaver gets any nastier, we're gonna have to call Animal Control." Heh.
Cut to a floor-cam shot of black pants-clad legs and a cane booking down the hall. "Straw" Kerry "Shortcake" Weaver, wrung out and make-up free, screams for Amira but instead gets Frank, a retired cop sent down by personnel. Kerry wants to know what "all those people [are] doing" out in chairs, and Frank says mildly, "Sick, I guess," which earns a snarly comment from Kerry; staring angrily at the board, she asks again why doctors haven't tended to them. Frank doesn't know, he just got there. Lydia pipes up, "No docs," adding that Abby's in sutures and Malucci's sleeping in exam one. Frank contributes that Luka came in with Carol and went upstairs to daycare with the twins. "Dr. Chen, Dr. Carter?" Kerry blares, and when Frank says he thinks they're in the lounge, Kerry asks at the top of her voice if there's "some sort of natural disaster that I'm unaware of -- an earthquake, or half of Chicago's been swallowed up by a giant sinkhole?" and Frank asks her to stop yelling at him: "I was here on time." Lydia says Mark called to report that he'd come in by ten, but he had to stop by the mortuary. Kerry asks for "that rape whistle thing" and tells Lydia to phone everyone "who's supposed to be here and scream on their machines that they're late, and if they answer tell 'em they're fired." Kerry storms into exam one, bellows, "Rise and shine, patients are waiting!" and fweeps the whistle while clicking the light on. "Sunshine" Dave Malucci sits bolt upright and clocks his head on a lamp (like, ha ha -- not); Kerry tells him that if she doesn't see him standing over a sick patient acting "compassionate and engaged" in the thirty seconds, he'll spend the year dealing with nothing but disimpactions and yeast infections. Dave hauls his carcass out of bed. Kerry hurtles through the desk area on her way to the lounge. Frank mutters to Lydia, "She uses a whistle?" and Lydia shrugs.
In the lounge, Carter and "Ka" Jing-Mei Chen stand at their lockers. Carter looks like he's moving underwater. Chen shoots him a concerned glance and tells him he looks "terrible." "Thank you," Carter says quietly. Kerry knocks on the lounge window, then comes in to ream them for their tardiness; she leaves, and Chen and Carter make with the snide (tm Buffy).
Outside, Kerry writes up the board and assigns patients. When she lumps Dave with a bleeding hemorrhoid, he objects, only to get shouted down and reminded to keep an eye on Abby "for a change." She gives Carter a "pyelo" lady and Luka a rule-out M.I. and someone with a nail through the hand, and Malik reports that EMS is on the way in with a terminal cancer patient. (Captioning translated EMS as "Eunice." Who inputted this ep, Helen Keller?) Done carving up the workload, Kerry heads off with Carol in tow. Dave grumbles good-naturedly that he went to medical school for a "butt boil," and Carter points out flatly that "it could be worse, there's an explosive diarrhea out there," and anyone wondering why I had absolutely no interest in pursuing medicine need look no further than this exchange. Dave observes that Carter doesn't look "so good," and Carter replies with not a little asperity that yes, everyone keeps telling him that, and adds in an if-you-must-know tone that he's "having trouble sleeping," a problem for which Dave prescribes "reading the annals [of emergency medicine, I presume] at bedtime," which usually puts him "right out." Malik comes up behind them and asks Carter if he wants a urine dip on "our pyelo," and a suddenly preoccupied Carter says yes, and that Malik should go ahead in; he has to use the bathroom first. Carter asks if Dave's on all night, and Dave says yes, he swapped with Cleo because he has Rage Against The Machine tickets for Saturday. Dave goes on to say that he thinks Weaver "has it in for" him, adding that he doesn't know what he ever "did to Festus to get her so pissed." Carter: "Maybe it was calling her 'Festus.'" Dave: "Well, never to her face." Like, ha ha. Not. Carter laughs as he pushes open the bathroom door, but as soon as he's out of sight of Dave, he lets his face fall. He goes to the sink and pats cold water onto his face, then whips around when he hears a toilet flush behind him. A maintenance man comes out of the stall, and they exchange greetings; Carter waits for him to leave, then leans on the sink and stares at himself in the mirror with a look of utter exhaustion. In voice-over, we hear a man say, "I couldn't wake her up," and Carter continues to squint at himself.
Cut to the hallway and a paramedic giving the bullet on the terminal cancer patient to Kerry and Carol. Apparently, the patient -- a Mrs. O'Brien -- hasn't eaten anything except ginger ale in a couple of days; her husband reports that she had an operation for a bowel obstruction the month, at which time the doctors discovered that the cancer had spread to Mrs. O'Brien's liver and diaphragm. They wheel Mrs. O, wearing an oxygen mask and a blue skullcap, into a trauma room, and Kerry explains to Mr. O (who, by the way, is played by the same actor who played Mr. Debbie on Popular a couple of weeks ago) that Mrs. O's liver might not be removing toxins from her bloodstream, which could be why she isn't waking up. Mr. O frowns. He has one of his daughters in his arms, and she stares sadly at her mother; his other daughter stands beside him, holding a box. That's two daughters he's got. Got that? Two of 'em? Okay, just checking. Kerry orders tests as the camera pans around the O family; Kerry tells Mr. O that his wife's breathing "is very slow," and they'll have to decide whether or not to intubate her. "Oh god," Mr. O sighs. Carol asks gently if Mrs. O has a do-not-resuscitate order. Mr. O says she does: "She doesn't want any machines." He asks if they can do anything to help Mrs. O. Kerry says they'll give her fluids and see if that makes her more comfortable, and she asks Carol to take the Os to chairs. Carol offers to find the younger daughter crayons and coloring books, and the younger daughter waves and says, "Bye bye mommy." Mrs. O doesn't open her eyes. On her way out of the room, Carol spots the older daughter staring at her mother and tries to lead her out, and the older daughter says without taking her eyes from her mom, "I brought her things. That's my job when we go to the hospital. She likes to have her things with her." We see a picture of mother and daughter sticking up out of the box, then a shot of the nurses working on Mrs. O. Carol asks if Older Daughter can hold onto the box for a little while longer, because there's nowhere to put her mom's things in the trauma room; OD nods absently. Carol shepherds her out of the room; they both turn to look wistfully at Mrs. O as they go out into the hallway.
Back from commercials to Carter entering the room of Mrs. Wyatt -- "pyelo lady" -- and asking how long she's "been experiencing the burning." A couple of days, she says; usually she just drinks cranberry juice to get rid of it, but it didn't work this time. Carter asks Malik about fever, and Mrs. W does have a slight temperature; Carter takes a look at her throat, and just then Yosh wheels in a man who's having an asthma attack. Carter asks Mrs. W to excuse him, listens to the asthma guy's chest for about five seconds, then tells Yosh to put Asthma Guy in bed and give him Albuterol. He goes back to Mrs. W and asks her if it hurts when he touches her lower back, and when she gasps in pain, Carter diagnoses pyelonephritis (a.k.a. kidney inflammation); she asks if that's serious, and Carter makes a "nah" face and tells her she'll be fine. Chen comes in; she heard Carter had two patients, and she offers to help, but Carter says he's got it and asks Asthma Guy if he's gone on steroids before. "Last year," AG says, "for a few weeks," so Carter orders prednisone and continuous nebulizer treatment, then turns his attention back to Mrs. W, asking her when the symptoms started. Chen again offers to pitch in, but Carter says he's fine and asks if Mrs. W has any allergies, and she says she gets hives from sulfa; then Carter leans over to AG and asks which inhalers he uses. Chen looks worried at this juggling act, but she leaves the room, only to stop at the window and look in on Carter; from Chen's POV, we see Carter asking, "Any chance you're pregnant?" and when AG answers, "No," Carter laughs, and in the foreground of the shot, Chen looks apprehensive.
In Mrs. O's room, Mr. O tells Kerry that he got scared when his wife wouldn't wake up, so he called 911. Kerry reassures him that he did the right thing: "She's dehydrated." Mr. O tried to get Mrs. O to drink more, but "sh-she's so weak she can't swallow, she can hardly hold a straw." Carol enters with a chart and hands Mrs. O's labs to Kerry, who tells Mr. O that Mrs. O's liver isn't making clotting factors; when Mr. O asks what that means, Kerry tells him, "It's a sign of severe liver failure." Mr. O, fighting tears, asks if there's anything they can do. No, not really, Kerry says, besides make her comfortable. Mr. O covers his eyes with his hand and struggles to control his emotions before saying, "So this is it?" Kerry waits a moment before answering quietly, "I think probably so." Mr. O covers his eyes again, heaves a sigh, and asks where his girls have gotten to; Carol says a couple of nurses are minding them in the lounge. Mr. O says, "Do everything you can -- I, I don't want her to suffer, please." "Of course not," Kerry murmurs.
In the hall, Abby gives Pelvic Pain Girl discharge instructions, adding that, if PPG wants to wait a minute, Abby will get her a list of clinics that treat STDs. PPG asks to wait outside because she's "dying for a cigarette." Okay, if that's not a shout-out, show me one. Abby says okay, then adds pointedly, "But you're going to quit really soon, right?" "Absolutely," PPG says, rolling her eyes. Abby goes behind the desk, gives Dave a super-short synopsis of what's up with PPG, and hands him the chart to sign, which he does without comment. Lydia asks Conni if Benton's on: "Kovac has a hot belly." Conni says, "And a hot everything else, sister." Oh wait, I said that -- or Wing Chun did. Anyway, Conni says that Benton is off; he traded with Corday, "and Cleo just happens to be off, too." "Shocking," Lydia says. Snort. Meanwhile, Frank corrects Abby on the date on a chart, saying it's actually the eleventh, and after a brief quibble, Abby remarks that she expected that day "to be a really awful day, but it seems to be turning out okay." Just then, I hear a smacking sound that can only mean that Foreshadowing is once again eating my peanut butter straight from the jar. , we have some un-comedic non-relief in the form of Frank listing all of Jupiter's moons, but before I can send Frank a telegram reading "I KNEW JERRY MARKOVIC STOP JERRY MARKOVIC WAS A FRIEND OF MINE STOP AND YOU SIR ARE NO JERRY MARKOVIC STOP STOP STOP," Chuny runs up to tell Abby that PPG "collapsed in the bay." Everyone runs outside to find Yosh hovering over PPG; he can barely feel a pulse. In the foreground we see PPG's still-burning cigarette. Abby gives orders and calls to PPG to wake up, and Lydia suggests that maybe PPG had an ectopic pregnancy, but Abby says no, the urine came back negative, and Lydia asks, "Who's her doctor?" Chuny says with a meaningful look, "Malucci," so Lydia goes to get Dave, and they hoist PPG onto a gurney.
Inside, Abby continues to give orders, and she squeezes goo onto PPG's belly and looks at the ultrasound; at first, everything looks normal, but then Abby spots a mass and free fluid, which means a tube-ovarian abscess, and she explains that when such an abscess ruptures, it gets septic and makes the patient hypotensive. Chuny asks if she should page GYN, but Abby says no, instead telling Chuny to dial a specific extension and hand her the phone. When Chuny does so, Abby identifies herself and tells the person on the other end that she needs "to redline a ruptured TOA -- set up the OR and page a chief resident, thanks," and she hands the receiver back to Chuny. Dave barrels in a moment later to ask what's going on, Abby tells him that "my patient had a syncopal episode, dropped her pressure," Dave demands, "What patient? Abby, what patient?" and Abby snaps, "The PID I just had you discharge." Chuny calls out that PPG's pressure is up to 100, so Abby says they should move her, and Dave looks dismayed and wants to know why Abby didn't call him, "maybe it's a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst," but Abby says it isn't and lists the reasons why, and Dave expresses admiration that she made the pick-up of the TOA: "I wouldn't know one if it bit me on the ass." The team wheels PPG out towards the elevator and passes Carter in the hallway, whistling and twirling his stethoscope.
Singing, Carter goes into Mrs. Wyatt's room and looks at her chart, saying, "You haven't gotten your antibiotics yet." Mrs. W, who has a sheen of sweat on her face and looks like she's in a lot of pain, grunts, "I don't think so." Carter goes over to Malik at Asthma Guy's bedside and nags him about it, saying he ordered the antibiotics forty-five minutes ago, and Malik says Carter also ordered continuous nebulizers for Asthma Guy and he'll get to it when he's finished with AG. "Forget it," Carter sighs, telling Mrs. W, "I'm gonna get your antibiotics myself," and as he leaves the room, Malik gives him a strange look.
Out in the hall, Carol sees Mark on the phone and stops to chat with him, asking when he got back and saying she's "so sorry" about Holling. Mark thanks her, and she says she tried calling a couple of times and left a few messages to see if she could do anything. Um, writers? After Carol gave birth to the twins, you pretty much forgot that Mark and Carol even knew each other, much less had a long-standing friendship; that horse is out of the barn, so don't bother trying to shut the doors now that Julianna Margulies has forty minutes left on the show. Anyway, Mark is on hold with someone, but he tells Carol he appreciated the phone calls, but Rachel came up from St. Louis and "we're just hanging out." Then Mark says into the phone that yes, he's still there, and he wants to find out how to get his father into a VA cemetery. They put him on hold again, and he tells Carol, "Transferring me to yet another department." Carol pinches the bridge of her nose and asks if Holling didn't want to be buried with Mark's mother in San Diego; Mark says ruefully that he doesn't know what Holling wanted: "Said he didn't want to be any trouble. Suggested I put him out with the trash." More banter about Holling hating "mortuary vultures" and getting put on hold, and Carol pinches the bridge of her nose again. Mark takes the seven-ton hint and says, "You look beat." Carol doesn't hesitate to make it All About Her: "Yeah, well, Tess hasn't been sleeping." Mark murmurs that she's probably teething, and Carol sighs, "Yeah, that's what Luka said." "Well, he sees them enough to know," Mark says in his patented "What Do You Mean 'What Do I Mean'" Voice Of Passive Aggression, and Carol gets defensive and says in her best poor-me tone, "Hey, don't give me a hard time about that -- I'm struggling enough with this as it is." Yeah, boo hoo. Not. Mark says he thinks it's great: "I want you to be happy." Carol, not meeting Mark's eye, asks, "So why do I still feel so -- unsure?" Mark suggests that maybe Carol fears making herself "vulnerable again." Carol puffs out her cheeks with a sigh and doesn't answer, and Conni appears a moment later to tell her that Mrs. O is waking up.
Carol tells Mark to let her know if he needs anything and follows Conni into Mrs. O's room to find Mrs. O moaning weakly, "Where -- where am I?" Carol asks Conni to get Kerry as Mr. O tells Mrs. O she's in the hospital, and Mrs. O moans that no, she doesn't want that. Carol introduces herself to Mrs. O and explains that Mrs. O had to come in to the hospital because she'd gotten dehydrated; Mrs. O whimpers that she wants to go home. Mr. O tells her gently that they have to get her admitted "so [she] can feel better," but Mrs. O repeats that she wants to go home. Enter Kerry, who asks Mrs. O, "You want to go home?" Mrs. O nods feebly. Kerry asks, "And you don't want to be put onto any machines?" Mrs. O shakes her head: "No, please -- no machines." Mr. O tells his wife that "they can help you if we stay -- they'll give you something for the pain," but Mrs. O continues saying "no" and "home," and when Mr. O says, "Please, sweetheart," Kerry pulls him aside and tells him that she'll start a morphine drip on Mrs. O, but she thinks he should consider home hospice care for his wife. An ambulance will take Mrs. O home, and a health-care worker will take care of the meds and IVs: "It's clearly what she wants." Mr. O doesn't think Mrs. O can decide for herself, but Kerry thinks she can: "She was very clear. Don't you think she deserves to die where she wants to, at home, with her family, in her own bed?" Carol, listening in, looks down uncomfortably. At last, Mr. O nods, and Kerry says, "Good. Why don't you go tell her? I think it'll help calm her down." Mr. O goes to do just that, and Kerry makes to leave, calling Carol to her side; she mutters that she really didn't need this today and tells Carol to call Social Services. Carol says that "maybe the husband's right" and they could admit Mrs. O for a couple of days to "get her buffed up," but Kerry covers her eyes and groans, "No, no, Carol, please -- not today." "She would go home eventually," Carol argues, but Kerry doesn't want to hear it and tells Carol that Mrs. O wants to go home to die, and they can't keep her there: "I know it's not pleasant, but we have to respect her wishes." Carol contends in a fairly snotty tone that Mrs. O "is in excruciating pain, and we didn't even try to explain the options to her," but Kerry puts paid to that: "Just call and set it up." She crutches away. Carol can't believe that the rays of her halo didn't touch Kerry's stony heart. She makes a sulky face and turns to look at Mrs. O.
Carter comes back into Mrs. W's room with an IV supplement bag and hooks it up, telling her that it should take about twenty minutes and that she'll start feeling better in a couple of days. She nods, and Carter asks Asthma Guy how he's doing; AG reports that he's feeling much better. Carter starts to say something else when he hears Mrs. W gasping behind him, and when he asks if she's okay, she chokes out, "Hard -- hard to -- breathe!" Carter listens to her chest and asks if she's having chest pain; she says no. He asks if this has ever happened to her before, and she pants, "When I -- when I got -- Bactrim." "Bactrim?" Carter repeats, and Mrs. W wheezes that she told Carter she's allergic to sulfa. Carter jumps up and examines the IV bag, then rips the IV out of Mrs. W's arm and rushes over to a cabinet to prepare an epinephrine shot as Mrs. W continues to puff and pant. He calls over his shoulder for Mrs. W to lie down; AG asks if Carter needs some help, and Carter finishes preparing the shot and says shortly, "No, everything's under control," and whips the curtain between AG and Mrs. W closed before administering the epinephrine. Malik bursts in a second later: "What happened?" Carter dissembles, but Malik says, "Somebody hit the call button!" and Carter points in AG's direction as AG pipes up from behind the curtain, "I did!" Malik asks why, and AG points at Mrs. W: "She was having trouble breathing!" Chen comes in through the other door and also asks what happened, and Carter lies that Mrs. W had an attack of hives, so he administered a subcutaneous epi. Malik asks where all the blood's coming from, and as we see a shot of the trickling wound on Mrs. W's arm, Carter says disingenuously, "Look at that -- she must have pulled out her IV." Chen asks why Mrs. W would have done that, and Carter yells, "How the hell would I know that?" and although he tries to temper it with a smile afterwards, his cover is basically blown; Chen takes a step back and eyes him suspiciously. Carter keeps up the phony chuckle for another second or two; Malik gives him the stink-eye. Carter tells Malik to start another IV and give Mrs. W antihistamines, and he listens to Mrs. W's chest and tells her in a falsely confident voice that she "just nodded off for a second there" before reporting "good pulse, good respirations" and preparing to flee the scene. Malik adopts a "whatever" tone and asks Carter's disappearing back if he wants to order fluids, and without slowing down, Carter tells Malik in a strangled voice to give her a liter over an hour. Chen watches him leave, and turns to Malik to say something . . .
. . . but we cut to Carter bursting into the men's room, tie askew, hair Alfalfa-ed, and slamming into a stall. He shoots the bolt home, slumps down on the toilet, and begins sobbing into his hand while rocking back and forth, horrified at himself. He tries to calm himself down, running his hands through his hair, as we go to commercial.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I love the Sonicare tooth fairy. Something about the fact that he has little gossamer wings on and a pen clipped to his shirt pocket just cracks my shit up.
Fade back up to Abby and Dave in an OR scrub room, wearing scrubs and watching PPG get prepped for surgery. When Elizabeth "Briton To The" Corday spots them at the scrub-room window, she stalks out of the prep room and over to where Abby and Dave stand: "Why was a critical patient like this discharged from the ER?" Abby gives the excuse that PPG "wasn't critical at the time" and had stable vital signs, and says she thought PPG had PID. (Say that five times fast.) "You didn't appreciate the mass on exam?" Elizabeth asks. Abby admits she didn't. Elizabeth asks Dave if he felt the mass, and when he says that he didn't catch it either, Elizabeth sneers, "What were you wearing, oven mitts?" Abby comes clean about the fact that Dave never actually examined PPG, and when Elizabeth suggests that the two of them take a moment to "get [their] stories straight," Abby confesses that Dave didn't examine PPG because Abby didn't ask him to. Elizabeth sarcastically wants to know if Abby has recently graduated from medical school, and Abby delivers her customary Unapologetic Apology, saying she thought her OB/GYN experience qualified her to handle the patient on her own, but "obviously I was wrong." Elizabeth reviews the facts -- that Dave discharged a patient he hadn't seen, a patient examined and diagnosed by a mere medical student -- and near-shouts, "This woman could have died," adding that Abby is "years away" from having the knowledge "to make these decisions." Abby, aiming for "contrite" but taking a wrong turn at "petulant and sulky," says, "I know," and Elizabeth thunders, "Well, good!" An uncomfortable silence, during which Elizabeth glares at both of them; then Elizabeth dismisses Abby so she can speak to Dave alone. Dave braces for impact and asks if he can "say something" in his own defense, but Elizabeth, staring intently through the window at PPG, thinks aloud that he'd do better "by keeping [his] mouth shut." We see Abby waiting nervously in the room as Elizabeth turns away from the window and launches into a quiet and deliberate airing-out of Dave. She tells him that, when residents arrive at County, the doctors size them up; they want the residents to succeed, but after awhile, they form opinions about their prospects. Elizabeth asks coldly, "Do you want to know the staff's opinion of you?" and we cut to a shot of Dave, arms folded tightly across his chest, beginning to see where she's going. Elizabeth goes on, "You're lazy, sloppy -- and your careless attitude towards your responsibilities as a physician endangers patients' lives, as witnessed today." Dave looks at his shoes -- it seems evident he's heard this kind of speech before -- but when Elizabeth spikes him in the end zone by finishing, "In other words, none of us thinks you're much of a doctor," he flinches. The woman's got a point, but she also nearly killed a patient herself during her days as an intern, and after her moral- and common sense-free interaction with serial rapist Dean Rollins, I don't know that she should mount that high horse in such a hurry.
Downstairs, Chen describes Carter to Mark as "all over the map emotionally." Mark asks if she's talked to Carter about it; she says that Carter "isn't very forthcoming," and she asks Mark if Carter is "seeing anyone." Mark motions her into an empty exam room and asks Chen if by "anyone" she means a therapist, and when she nods, Mark says he doesn't know. "Well, don't you think he should?" Chen says, and Mark says he isn't a psychiatrist. Chen says she got out the DSM-IV -- only she calls it the "DMS-IV" -- and looked up Carter's symptoms, and long story short, she thinks Carter is bi-polar. Mark tells her to slow down, reminding her that Carter nearly got killed and feels partly responsible for Lucy's death: "My moods would be all over the place too." Chen wants to find out one way or the other; Mark purses his lips and looks irritated, and I don't blame him. Like, Chen? Keep reading up through "post-traumatic stress disorder." Because a five-year-old who lives under a boulder could tell you that's what Carter is suffering from.
Carol goes into Mrs. O's room and asks how Mrs. O's doing. Conni murmurs that Mrs. O's resps have gone down to seven, and Mr. O asks Carol, "So she's not getting any better?" Carol allows that she isn't, saying that they've done what they can to rehydrate her and they've arranged for the hospice care; then she asks, "Where are your daughters?" Mr. O says they've gone to the cafeteria with a couple of the nurses. He begins talking about how peaceful his wife looks, telling Carol she should have seen Mrs. O two years ago and describing his wife as "alive and vibrant, always laughing." Carol smiles beatifically, but the smile fades as a hail of bricks begins to rain down on the trauma room and Mr. O says he wishes he could get back the time he missed with his wife, "traveling for work, late nights at the office, all the weekends I was prepping for trial." Tears closing his throat, Mr. O says that he kept working when Mrs. O was first diagnosed: "Do you believe that? Instead of spending time with her, I kept working." Carol mulls this over; Irony comes over and sits in my lap. After a close-up of Mrs. O's wasted face, followed by a close-up of poor sad Mr. O, Carol says she'll call social services and hustle them up.
She makes to leave, but at that moment we hear a machine flatline, and Conni says tensely, "She's not breathing." Carol comes back to Mrs. O's bedside, and she and Mr. O both call "Sheila!" into her face, as if that would actually have an effect, and then Mr. O says, "Please -- the girls aren't here -- I, I, I didn't think it was gonna happen this fast," and Carol looks around wildly for a moment before making a decision, then puts her hands on Mrs. O's shoulders and saying, "Um, Conni, can ya help me?" Conni reminds Carol gently that "she's a DNR," and Carol says that doesn't mean they can't stimulate Mrs. O's breathing; Mr. O pleads that his daughters didn't get to say goodbye. Conni offers to get Weaver, but Carol says firmly, "No. I want you to go and get Kovac, tell him I need him, and then go downstairs and get the daughters."
Oh, man -- what a manipulative bitch. Why doesn't she just tell Conni to tell Kovac the patient got hit by a Serbian smart bomb while she's about it? Jesus. Conni looks skeptical, but she goes anyway as Carol bags Mrs. O and says "come on, Sheila" a few times, and Mr. O says "please, God, not yet." Enter Luka, who gets the bullet and asks, "Why are you bagging her? Let's intubate." Carol confesses that they can't, the patient is a DNR, and when Luka tells Carol to let her go, Carol fixes him with a meaningful gaze and says, "The daughters are downstairs, they haven't said goodbye yet." Luka approaches the table with a furrowed brow; Mr. O begs them, "Please, I, I thought we had more time." Carol asks Luka, "Can't we use a nasal trumpet?" Luka physically pulls back at this suggestion, but Carol turns the Manson lamps (tm Tony Soprano) on Luka again, and just in case, she locks it in by saying, "The children have to have a chance to say goodbye to their dying mother. It's not a ventilator. Please?" Luka's face practically screams, "It's unfair to ask this of me," but Carol has him where she wants him; he moves around to take over the bagging and grouches, "Where are the trumpets?" and Carol hustles to get them as Conni and Mr. O look on. Luka inserts the nasal trumpet, and Mrs. O starts breathing again. Seconds later, Kerry crutches in and wants to know what's going on. Carol tells her. "She's DNR," Kerry says in disbelief, and as Luka listens to Mrs. O's chest, Carol says they didn't intubate; they just helped keep Mrs. O's airway open. Kerry won't have it, interrupting sharply, "You resuscitated her." It dawns on Luka that he's been had: "She's your patient?" "Yes, Dr. Kovac, she's my patient," Kerry snaps. Luka sets his jaw and gives Carol a "thanks a lot, asshole" look, but Carol won't meet either his or Kerry's eye, repeating smugly, "His daughters weren't here to say goodbye." Kerry asks Mr. O (referred to in the captions here as "Mr. Brown" -- um, these captioners have got to go) to excuse them for a moment, and all three of them go door.
Kerry turns to face the other two and snarls at Carol, "You deliberately violated a patient's wishes." Carol folds her arms and corrects her, "No, I did what I thought was best under the circumstances." Um, same thing, Carol, so get over yourself. Oh, and by the way? Just because you still love Doug doesn't mean you can get away with acting like him. Kerry squawks that "it's not [Carol's] decision to make!" and when Luka breaks in to tell Kerry he's sorry, Kerry barks, "Damn right, you should be!" and finishes bitching Carol out as Luka hangs his head: "You're a senior member of this staff, Carol. We discussed this earlier; we disagreed [Carol actually has the gall to roll her eyes at Kerry here], I listened to your point of view, I told you exactly what I wanted done! If you can't respect my authority, then you shouldn't be working here." Tell it, girlfriend. Carol raises her chin insolently at Kerry. Kerry lowers her voice and tells them that, if Mrs. O codes again, she doesn't want either Carol or Luka "touching her -- is that clear?" and crutches off. After Kerry leaves, Carol rolls her eyes again in a getting-busted-for-a-high-school-dress-code-violation way that's completely inappropriate to the situation and says perfunctorily, "I'm sorry, Luka," but he's already leaving. She rolls her eyes YET AGAIN and whines, "Luka, don't just walk --" but trails off when he throws his gloves in the trash and keeps going out the door, and then she heaves a put-upon sigh. I know I've ridden Carol pretty hard in my recaps, and a lot of people think I give her too much guff, but really -- everything I cannot abide about the character is right there in the scene I've just written up. She's arrogant, she's self-righteous, she's full of herself, and if a woman in my employ rolled her eyes like that at me, I'd hand her face back to her on a plate. Defend her to me till you turn blue, but she used what she knew about Luka's tragic past to get her own way. We've got a word for people like that where I come from, and it isn't "nurse."
Elizabeth finds Mark in the hall. He expresses surprise at seeing her down in the ER, and she says she came down to discuss Dave with Kerry; when Mark asks what Dave did "this time," Elizabeth says she doesn't want to get into it right then, and she asks if he got his dad "sorted out." Mark says he did. Elizabeth asks, "Where is he now?" and Mark confides that actually, he's in the trunk of Mark's car: "I didn't have time to go home." After determining that Rachel is at her grandparents' house, Elizabeth draws the pearls from her pocket and hands them to Mark: "I thought you might like these back." She doesn't feel right about keeping them, she says, and when a slightly offended Mark points out that Holling gave them to her, she says she knows, and she appreciates the sentiment, but Mark should keep them to give to Rachel instead: "I was twelve once, I know what they'll mean to her." Mark's face falls, and Elizabeth tells him not to overthink it; it doesn't bode ill for their relationship that she's given the pearls back. Lydia tells Mark that they've got an acute MI on the way in, and after she walks away, Mark asks if Elizabeth still plans to come over that night. Elizabeth doesn't think so, what with Rachel staying there, but Mark tells her to come anyway and they'll figure something out: "I'll leave the light on."
Carol pads down the hall and spots Luka in a semi-darkened room, examining an x-ray. She goes in and stands beside him and tries to get him to acknowledge her, but he won't at first; after a minute, he tells her she had no right to put him in that position. "I know," she says, in the faux-contrite tone of voice children use when feel sorrier about getting in trouble than about what they actually did wrong. Luka says that Kerry is his superior, and he doesn't want to lose his job; Carol tells him he has "every reason to be mad," but Luka isn't finished: "You took advantage of our personal relationship." "I did what I thought was right," Carol pouts, and Luka snorts, "Yeah, damn the consequences," and Carol comes back with, "In this case, yes." Luka says she had every right to decide that for herself, but not for him. His voice is stern, but Carol can tell that she's got the hook in good and tight, because she leans on her forearms and peers at him flirtatiously, and then she laughs, "You're really mad!" Hey, Carol? You jeopardized his career; please stop acting like you gave him a hotfoot or put fake dog poo in his locker or something. Oy, I hate her. Anyway. "Yes, I am!" Luka says, but he's softening as he asks, "Why are you smiling?" Carol giggles, "I guess I thought I was immune." Man, I really, really hate her. "Well, you are not," Luka tells her, but with mock sternness now. Carol apologizes again; Luka, lip twitching, prompts her, "Yes?" and she apologizes some more and says it'll never happen again, and Luka nods, "Good." Damn, I can't believe he forgave her just like that. She thanks him for helping Mrs. O, and she stares into space, not noticing that Luka is giving her The Look. He draws closer to her, and she looks up, and they kiss, but chastely; Carol drops her head away after only a moment and closes her eyes, looking pained. "What?" "Nothing," she says, willing it to be true. "You sure?" he asks, regarding her gently as The Right-Man-Wrong-Time Piano plays in the background. "Yeah," she nods, smiling sadly.
Wing Chun: Not! Line.
Sars: WHY IS SHE STILL HERE?
Wing Chun: Oh, I know. Leave already.
Sars: I can't take much more of -- oh, it's back on.
Back from commercial and into the homestretch. Carol goes out into the hall to find Frank reading Goodnight, Moon to the O'Brien girls, and she tells them their mother is ready to see them. Looking scared, the older daughter doesn't move, so Carol gestures with her chin for Frank to take the younger daughter in, and she sits down beside Older Daughter: "Don't you want to see your mom?" OD, taking a page from The Big Book Of Plaintive Overenunciation: "She's going to die, isn't she?" Carol: "Yeah." OD: "It's not fair." Carol shakes her head sadly: "No, it's not." On a red rock ledge high, high above my apartment, Wile E. Coyote shoves an Acme-brand anvil into place; OD, barely audible over the scraping of iron against sandstone: "I don't wanna only have a dad. I want to be a family, like we used to be." Meep-meep! Pachoooooo screeeeeeee BLAM! I get flattened by a half-ton of corrugated iron, and Carol adopts a mien of mild parallel-plot panic -- or perhaps she's just puzzled by the "ding!" freeze-frame of an anvil sitting in a Manhattan studio, with two size nines sticking out from underneath and an italicized legend reading "recapperus pancakus" -- and says, "Come on, we should go, okay?" and leads OD towards Mrs. O's room with her hand on OD's back as The Piano Of Pointed Poignancy plays (say that five times fast). The two of them stop at the door; I shove the anvil off of me and pop back into three dimensions as Carol asks, "You ready?" OD nods. They go in. OD goes to her father and says, "Hi Mommy," and she takes her mother's hand. Mrs. O has woken up, and she asks, "How's my girl?" Carol sets her face impassively and takes in the tableau of the family, the whole family, a mother and a father and two daughters, all of them together, in one place, as a family, gathered around the bed. Maybe I just have a concussion or something but I don't know if I get it. Oh wait, I do. I get it.
Mark walks into a darkened exam room to find Carter huddled at a desk. Carter comes out of it and tells Mark he's "gathering [his] thoughts"; Mark leans against the desk and leads the witness by observing that "Haleh says you've been in here for awhile." Carter wanted "a quiet place to hang out" and asks if that's a problem. Mark quickly says no, and after a short pause tells Carter that "some of us are just a little worried about you." Carter says softly that they "don't need to be." "How are you?" Mark asks evenly, and Carter quickly responds, "Fine." Mark asks if he's seeing anybody, like a therapist, and Carter shakes his head and leans back against the wall, looking bone-tired as he sighs, "No." Mark asks if he needs a referral, and surprisingly, Carter says, "Sure," and Mark is surprised too: "Yeah? Because Nadio [the Sugar Ray guy who wound up on the cutting-room floor] gave me some names." He fumbles some pieces of paper out of his pocket. Carter says flatly that "that'd be great" and takes the notepaper from Mark, who says that "it might help." Carter doesn't seem inclined to say more, and Mark sort of bobs his head awkwardly for a moment before saying, "Okay," and making for the door. He leaves Carter slumped against the wall, the shadowy stripes from the blinds cutting across him.
Conni strips Mrs. O's bed as Carol sits nearby and fills out Mrs. O's chart. She's left-handed, of course, and as I always do, I watch her writing for just a second before getting back into the scene. As a little girl, I found my father's left-handedness utterly fascinating, particularly because, as a child of the forties and fifties, he underwent numerous attempts by my grandmother to "correct" the left-handedness and as a result does most other "handed" things, like using a knife and fork, as a rightie, but I always loved to watch him write, and in school I had a left-handed friend who made it her mission in life to bring discrimination against lefties to the attention of the proper authorities, and who would pointedly troop all the way up to the biology lab to use the sole left-handed pencil sharpener our school provided rather than submit to the tyranny of the rightie ones in the other classrooms -- well, I've yawed way off-topic here, but Carol's left-handedness is one of those little things that has historically given the character depth for me, or used to, back when I liked her, and for the first time in a season and a half I start to feel like I might miss her a little when she has gone. Anyhow. Mournful piano plays as the camera dollies around to Carol's right, and Luka enters the frame from the other side -- well, from the shoulders down, anyway, which makes me laugh, because the DP probably tweaked the shot about a dozen different times so that Goran Visnjic would actually fit into it and couldn't find a way -- and asks, or rather his tie does, if Social Services got Mrs. O home okay. Carol says no, she died. Luka tells her he's sorry, and Carol says sort of dismissively, "She was end-stage." Luka draws nearer and says he's off in a couple of hours: "Would you like to get some dinner?" "Sure," Carol says absently, not looking up, and after a pause, Luka prompts her, "We don't have to," and she looks up at him sort of apologetically, then says firmly, "Oh, no, that would be nice." Just then, a large skillet enters the room in the form of Mr. O: "Excuse me, Miss Hathaway?"
Luka tells Carol he'll find her when he gets off (no comment) and leaves her alone with Mr. O, who sighs heavily and, as the younger daughter looks on from his arms, asks, "Do you believe that we have soulmates?" Oh, criminy -- I don't recall seeing Kevin Williamson's name in the credits. Mr. O goes on, "That there's only -- one person we're supposed to find, you know, only one person we can really love?" Carol doesn't answer, just looks to the side, but the wheels have clearly started to turn. Mr. O didn't used to believe that, he says, but he does now, and Carol tries to smile comfortingly while her mind takes the parallel access road and races down it ahead of Mr. O, and Mr. O says that "she was -- the love of my life, and I'll never love anyone again the way I loved her." He nods to himself and turns to go; OD is standing in the doorway, holding her mother's box of things, and she gives Carol a knowing look before following her father.
Cut to a tight close-up of Carol, utterly elsewhere. She seems about to say something, and her lips move, and slowly she gets up from her stool and leaves the trauma room, picking up speed as she passes Chuny, and Chuny tells her she needs more atropine but Carol makes a shushing gesture with her hand and doesn't answer, and Chuny tries to get her attention again but Carol is still accelerating towards the desk and she calls out, "Haleh! Where's Mark?" Haleh, no dummy, asks her if everything's all right, but Carol just repeats, "Where's Mark?" and Haleh makes a "the hell?" face and says, "Exam one," and Carol ducks behind Haleh to grab her coat and purse, and when Mark materializes near the desk Carol tells him that she has to go and he should tell Kerry that she "won't be in tomorrow," and Mark asks, "Twins okay?" and she shrugs into her coat and says she'll drop them off at her mom's and call Mark "from the plane," and Mark says, "Whaaat?" but she doesn't answer him and rounds the corner and asks Malik, "Where's Kovac?" and he tells her, "Curtain three," as he wheels a patient past, and she goes into curtain three and stands in front of him: "Luka, I can't have dinner with you tonight." Luka gives a sort of facial shrug and says, "Okay." She realizes he doesn't get it and says softly, "I'm so sorry," and from that he begins to get an inkling, and he searches her face and says, "For what?" Carol takes a breath, and then she smiles, because at last she can say it out loud and not have to carry it around anymore: "I have to go find out." Luka, although he already knows the answer: "Find out what?" "If he's still in love with me," she murmurs, and Luka drops his head as she goes on, "Because -- I'm still in love with him. I am. I've been in love with him since I was twenty-three years old," and her voice cracks with what's probably relief: "He's -- he's everything to me, he's my life, I feel complete when I'm with him, and I feel empty, when we're apart." Ouch. But when we cut to a shot of Luka, although he looks sad, he seems to understand what she means, and to empathize. Crying now, Carol says, "He's the father of my children -- and he's my soulmate." The corner of Luka's mouth twitches as if to say, "I remember." Carol had me up until this point, even with the soulmate business, which I won't hold against her because really, Dawson killed that for me, not her, but then she has to ruin it by telling Luka a bunch of shit (tm gwen): "You'll find someone, Luka, you will [insert small but telling eye-roll by Luka here], you're such a wonderful man. She's out there, I know she is." Luka closes his eyes in The Blink Of "Please Stop It With That," but she doesn't, saying he'll find a woman to love him the way his wife loved him, like, Carol, quit while you're behind, and for god's sake stop patronizing the man when you don't know the first thing about how he feels, or care. Carol wipes the tears from her face and whispers through a smile, "You'll find her, you will," and I know she's just taking care of unfinished business here and feels all happy that she's going to find her true love, but enough with the buck-up-little-camper business, please -- just go already. She goes to him and kisses him on the forehead and both cheeks, and he makes a "this is it, might as well enjoy it" face, and she leans her forehead against his and holds his face in her hands and whispers again that he'll "find her," like, Carol? Get. On. THE FREAKIN' PLANE already. Luka bites The "My Life Sucks" Lip. Carol rushes out. Okay, y'all know I'd tune in every week to listen to Goran Visnjic read selections from the tax code, but the guy can act like hell. He owned that scene. That face is a recapper's dream, people, and not just because it's beautiful; everything is right there, all I have to do is type.
Cue the Don Henley as Carol walks down the hall in the ER, smiling to herself. I don't like Don Henley, except for "The Boys Of Summer," but I guess I can gut it out for five minutes, and as he sings that he "had a good life," we fade to Carol rushing through O'Hare and finding that the flight to Seattle is at final boarding, and she dashes past various gates and gets her ticket ripped and runs onto the plane, and she flops into her seat and the attendant tells her to fasten her seatbelt, and her neighbor turns to the camera and says, "Hey Sars -- hope you're wearing a mouthguard," and whacks me in the face with a frying pan before telling Carol, "You almost missed it," and Carol sighs, "Yeah. I almost did," like, for the love of god, we get it, we've BEEN getting it, CONSIDER IT GOTTEN. Carol leans against the headrest and smiles to herself.
Cut to Mark and Rachel at the lakefront and Mark telling Rachel, "This was your grandfather's favorite spot." "It's beautiful," Rachel enthuses. Mark folds his umbrella and tells her he has to go to San Diego week to bury Holling's ashes to Ruth, and he invites Rachel to come. "Sure," she says, happy that he's including her as a fellow grown-up, "I'd like that." Don Henley shuts up for a minute so Rachel can ask her father, "You miss him, huh?" and Mark looks out onto the lake and says, "Yeah. I do." Me too. Mark goes on, "It's kinda funny," and when Rachel asks why, he confides that he and Holling "didn't like each other much for a very long time," and Rachel makes a "the hell?" face and asks, "How come?" Mark says he can't remember now, adding, "Probably mostly my fault." He says he has something for Rachel and presents her with the pearl box: "These were your grandmother's . . . do you like them?" Rachel says, "They're beautiful," and Mark puts them around her neck and fastens the clasp, and he admires his daughter: "You -- you look lovely." "Thank you," Rachel smiles. "Promise me you won't grow up too fast, okay?" Mark says, tears lurking in his voice. Rachel, a bit puzzled, nods, "Okay." They put their arms around each other's back and look out on the lake.
Don's singing again, and Carol pulls her rental car into a driveway as Don wails, "But I kept on believing this day would come," and she gets out, and Doug's house is huge -- I mean, a three-car garage? Note to self: move to Seattle. ["That's what I said, too! Kim was like, 'Dude, he is a doctor,' but still, that is one big-ass house -- and right on the water, too. Go Doug. Because, uh, the size of his real estate really is the point of this scene, not." -- Wing Chun] Carol walks to the front door and knocks, and she looks around as she waits for him to answer, and Don says that this love is like nothing he's ever known, like, good for you, Don, and also, we get it. Cut to Carol in the backyard, folding her pleather coat around her; the camera pans around her smiling face and behind her, and we see a pier, and on the pier a Doug-shaped figure leaning into a motorboat, and Carol comes down the yard towards the pier and the figure freezes and straightens up, and as we get a bit closer we see that it is in fact Doug "Famous Original" Ross. ["Kim yells, 'Look out for that tidal wave, Doug! Nooooooooooo!' And I giggle." -- Wing Chun] He stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks towards her; she stops and smiles apprehensively, and he comes right up to her and stops and smiles, and he looks like he's trying not to cry, and then he nods in that "okay, let's do this" way he always used to have and asks, "Where're the girls?" "They're with my mom." Flip to a shot from behind Doug; he's standing much closer to her now, and she's looking into his eyes, but she looks away to take in her surroundings and remarks, "It's beautiful here," and then looks back into his face, and we cut back to over her shoulder as he bites his lip and tries not to grin, and she looks down and smiles, kind of embarrassed, as Don sings, "Take my hand," and Doug takes her face in his hands and at long last they kiss -- woo hoo! -- and then they both laugh happily, and we cut to a long shot of them holding each other tightly, and as we fade out, Doug hoists her off the ground, and Don croons us into the end credits, and so endeth Carol. My congratulations to Julianna Margulies for doing a wonderful job with this character for so long, and for realizing that the time had come to put her to rest. Adios, amiga. See you in syndication.
In week's season finale, Benton and Luka deal with a school shooting, and Carter loses the tattered remnants of his shit. Sars out.