To squeeze every last second out of the special effects, TPTB decided to scotch the "previously" segment and instead assume that if you're just joining ER now, you've been living under some kind of immovable object. So, on we go.
We fade up on a wall-mounted television set in the lobby, flashing the nightly news while drenched people watch, rapt. The newscaster -- broadcasting live from a dramatically wet location -- yells that The Storm has indeed gotten worse. I always feel sorry for news reporters, because inevitably, they're deployed to somewhere close to the center of The Storm in some twisted Emmy bid by the station. We had a small hurricane in Sarasota two months ago, and the reporters were outside in high winds and driving rain, blown horizontal and reduced to asinine on-the-spot coverage like, "Well, Ed, no one is at the beach right now..." while trying not to lose an eyeball. Anyway, on the Warner Bros. lot, The Storm abated briefly, only to be overtaken by an even worse one. "Have they cleared the Eisenhower yet?" Abby "Rainy Day Woman" Lockhart wonders. "Forget about it," grumbles Frank, who has raised "curmudgeonly" to an art form. Abby asks, "Are we doing this thing?" Meanwhile, Nurse Lily empties frantically her wallet and panics that she took forty bucks out of her bank account just yesterday, and now it's gone, and she can't explain it. Lily hasn't been reading the forums. Haleh tells Abby, "She's finishing her last patient." Still no exposition as to who "she" is.
Dr. John "Gamma Gamma Gamma" Carter strolls over and tries to give Haleh some instructions, but she refuses to do anything until after the party. "How long is that?" he sighs. "Five minutes," Haleh promises. "Don't go anywhere." Frank carries out the cake and sets it down on the counter, noticing that it's beginning to melt. "Does she know we're waiting for her?" Abby grumps, eager to junk the festivities because she misses her old pal Misery and the way he used to poke her with thumbtacks all the time. Chuny reminds everyone that the party is supposed to be a surprise. "What surprise?" asks an approaching and extremely hot-looking Dr. Luka "1.21 Jigawatts" Kovac. Abby finally coughs up the last piece of the exposition puzzle: it's Cleo's last day, ergo, it's time for the annual feigning of interest in her. Chuny chirps that Luka owes her ten bucks for the massage and facial they got Cleo, which prompts a frustrated Lily to abandon her search for the missing forty dollars; she promises to pay later.
Luka scans the board, onto which Carter is inking a few more patients. "Getting backed up?" he asks. Carter puffs up that he's actually doing quite well, even after the victims of three different multi-vehicle accidents arrived. A nurse notices on the news that a construction crane toppled into the river, but everyone ignores her. Carter tries to enlist Abby's aid, but Haleh stops them both and insists that they stay until Cleo surfaces, because if she lets them leave, then everyone will want to leave. That's a real testament to Cleo's popularity, which registers somewhere between "ant colony" and "curdled milk on the carpet."
Carter tells Michael "I Love Chicago in the Rain" Gallant to go perform a disimpaction. Cheerfully, he goes. Enter the ever-brisk Dr. Kerry "It's Raining Men? I Hadn't Noticed" Weaver, crutching her way back into our hearts after a two-week absence, Emmy™ snub and an apparent dye job. She tells Haleh that the basement is flooding, ordering the nurse to skip downstairs and help salvage the myriad damp files. Haleh refuses, until Weaver pointedly reminds her that Payroll's paperwork is stored down there, too. "I'll be right down," Haleh amends quickly. Gallant chooses this moment to introduce himself to Weaver and ask that she please consider wiping out the warning he received for skipping "journal club." Oh, that sounds awful. That's fifth-grade creative-writing class awful, like a bunch of adolescents sitting around reading snippets of short stories that have titles like "King Blobbie and the Blobbish Bunch" and "The People Who Lost Something That Once Belonged to Them." Weaver probably agrees with me, but lectures Gallant on attending all the ER lectures because they're a mandatory part of the rotation. He is apologetic, but explains that he had an equally mandatory outside commitment involving his scholarship -- namely, Army Reserve duty. Weaver agrees to tear up the letter and asks for his Army schedule so that they can prevent future misunderstandings. Abby cuts in and informs Weaver that there's a stabbing victim en route, ETA at five or ten minutes depending on weather-related traffic. Weaver kicks into her usual frenzy.
Clad in a dapper suit, Dr. Peter "Reese Lightning" Benton enters and wonders if he's missed the cake already. "Still waiting," Abby tells him. Frank rushes to Benton and hands him an envelope that arrived via messenger from Genetadine Labs. "Are you having yourself cloned?" he demands to know. "That's the cloning place, right?" Benton ignores him and beelines toward the lounge. "Uh, they mainly do DNA analysis," Gallant offers quietly. "Yeah," Frank deadpans. "Cloning."
Benton bursts into the lounge and finds Fast-Fingered Frenchie standing over her purse. Frightened by the glare of the headlights, the deer sinks swiftly into her seat and glares at Benton. "You need something?" she says rudely, reeking of Eau de Anvil. "No," Benton replies, staring pointedly at her. Finally, Neecole gets the hint, gathers up her newspaper, coffee, and purse, and flees. The second she does, Benton tears into the letter and devours its contents hungrily, his face slowly falling until he crumples the rogue paper in fury.
Dr. Mark "I'm Not Bald; It's Waterproof Hair" Greene bickers with a patient about whether he asked about any history of heart disease. It's one of those "nuh-uh/ya-huh" arguments, executed with a signature bitchiness that confirms that Elizabeth's condition can be sexually transmitted. Dr. Susan "Even the Rain is Burberry" Lewis approaches with a procedural question for Mark, but gets waved aside so that the sparring can continue. "How many heart attacks have you had?" Mark badgers the man. "Just one," the guy says. Mark lays into him for going to work and directing traffic instead of finding a doctor immediately. "Now it's too late," he fumes. "What, I'm gonna die?" the nervous man asks. "No, I just mean any damage you did to your heart is already done," Mark snips. Susan watches, stunned, as Crabby McBitchpants basically has his patient on the verge of terror. Mark tells his man to stay overnight for observation, then shepherds Susan away from the riff-raff.
As they walk, Susan gapes, "What kind of bedside manner is that?" Mark sighs, irritated that he has to elucidate the many ways in which he's better than the majority of his fellow man. And if this were some kind of bizarro Chicago, or Opposite Day -- that most fearsome of holidays -- then Mark's attitude would be absolutely appropriate. "The idiot has had an MI after stenting, and he stands in the rain for eight hours," Mark informs her. "I don't think yelling's going to help," Susan suggests. "It MIGHT," insists Mark. Yeah, okay, as much as I dislike Mark, I'd totally be the same way if I were a doctor -- but in the same vein, that's precisely why I'm not a doctor. Well, that and my total fear of blood, guts, mutilation, eyeball injuries and all fluids that aren't meant to see natural light. But the impatience thing is right up there, too. Susan aptly notes that Mark should consider leaving the ER, since he spent a bucketload of money getting his cranky pants tailored and dry-cleaned. "That advice is only nine years too late," Mark brats. Yes. Yes, it is. Susan remains concerned -- but amusedly so -- that Mark's acting like such a prick. "I had an epiphany," he says dryly. Abby interrupts, as is her wont, to notify everyone that the MedEvac is flying their way with an almost-drowned child aboard. "He must be sick if they're flying him in this rain," she decides, handing Mark a slicker to match her own.
Cleo's cake -- a ghastly affair with "Happy Trails" written on it in colored goo -- is melting slowly. Standing over it, staring at it with unabashed disgust, is Dr. Cleo "Don't Rain on My Gleeful Departure Parade" Finch in the flesh. Susan approaches and sorrowfully says, "It was supposed to be a surprise." Cleo can only muster a very tactful and polite "I hate chocolate mint." And instead of shoving Cleo's ungrateful face into the heart of her chocolate-mint archrival, Susan idiotically disavows any association with The Cake Incident. "Think I should stick around?" Cleo whispers. Susan encourages her to stay, just as Carter appears and blurts, "You're not supposed to see [the cake]!" Resigned to her fate, Cleo turns around and says very loudly, "I'll be upstairs. Page me if anyone needs me for anything." What a jerk. The Golden Rule clearly states, "Do unto cake as you would have it do unto you." But here she is, openly disrespecting the cake and without an ounce of consideration for its feelings. That poor, brave cake. I'd like to give it my number. Or better yet, I could fix it up with a carton of ice cream that I know is single and looking.
Susan sidles up to her new love interest. "Carter, isn't it?" she queries playfully. "John Carter?" He studies her. "And you would be...?" he giggles. "The girl by the pool," Susan grins. They banter flirtatiously about her broken answering machine, and whether that's a convenient excuse or total truth. "Hey, I called you," she protests. "I spoke to your manservant, Harry." I swore I'd avoid the dirty jokes this week, but come ON. It's right there for the seizing. This hurts. "[You mean] Henry, the night butler?" Carter asks. "He didn't say anything." Susan arches a brow. "It is the 21st century," he argues teasingly. "You can get voicemail." Spoken by a 21st century man who still has butlers. Susan flirts that he needs to get better help. "Are you volunteering?" he drools. "Any benefits?" she asks, batting her lashes. Carter's staring at the board, or else he'd be licking her face uncontrollably. "Well, there's the outfit..." he begins. "Dream on!" chuckles Susan.
Chuny leads Gallant toward reception and announces that he did very well with the disimpaction. "Couple pounds of stool, and he only gagged once!" she compliments. Weaver charges over and asks Chuny where the ambulance with the stab victim might be, because it's extremely late. Chuny disappears to page the dispatch center. "Gallant, you're with me," Weaver says, trucking outside. Susan sympathetically pats him on the arm. "Don't worry about it," she soothes. "It'll only hurt for a day or two." Yeah, but Kerry's the boss, and Susan has no business throwing scalpels at her back in front of the new kid.
Mark and Abby, clad in yellow raincoats, shuffle into the elevator with an empty gurney. "Do you think I'm mean to the patients?" he muses. No, just the viewers. "Only the ones who deserve it," Abby opines. Mark is more concerned about the ones who don't -- a distinction that, so far, he's apparently refrained from making. Abby thinks for a second. "You're nicer than I am," she finally offers. Mark isn't comforted. Bing! The elevator arrives at the top, opening onto a hellish scene of pelting rain and a loudly whirring helicopter propeller. "I distinctly heard him!" Abby shouts as the set out into the deluge. "[The weatherman] said 'partly cloudy, chance of rain.'" No one believes the meteorologists, though. During our Sarasota hurricane, no one even reported on it until it was practically on top of us. And if any L.A. residents out there think Jillian Barberie knows a low-pressure front from low-rise leopard-skin pants...well, you were watching the weather on mute. With your eyes closed, and without actually turning on the TV.
By the time they reach the copter, they're both drenched. The medic gives the bullet: Daniel is a twelve-year-old boy who fell one storey into a turgid river and is experiencing moderate respiratory distress. "I let go of him," breathes Daniel. He's talking about his brother Joey, with whom he was playing near the river when they fell. "I couldn't hold on to him," Daniel says again. The medic exposits that rescue crews haven't yet found the tot.
Weaver and Gallant wait expectantly in the ambulance bay. They hear noisy sirens, but instead of growing louder, they abruptly fade, and both sag a bit at the false alarm. "Does it usually take this long in the rain?" he asks. "Shouldn't," Weaver replies, masking her worry. He offers to run inside and fetch her a jacket, but Weaver declines, certain that they won't be outside long. Anvil Pete knocks on my door with a bottle of wine and some Ruffles, and we settle in for a long night. Weaver probes Gallant about his military connection; we learn he served a year of active duty before enrolling in medical school. "Working in the ER might not be so crazy for you," she almost smiles. "I think it's a whole different kind of crazy, ma'am," Gallant answers politely.
Cleo greets Peter warmly in the lounge, but he's on the phone yelling at his lawyer, demanding that she see him and Reese immediately or else he'll hire another attorney. "Damn right I'm upset!" he shouts. "You told me not to fight this thing, [but] now Roger's going to try to hang me with it!" With that, he scores an appointment, and slams down the phone. "The DNA analysis shows I'm not Reese's biological father," he breathes to Cleo. She's stunned, insomuch as she utters the appropriate words, with a glazed expression designed by crack engineers to hide yet another Windows XP reboot. Peter rages that he always swore he'd be Reese's father, regardless of the empirical data, and Roger won't ever change that. Cleo insists on going with him to the attorney's office. "I don't give a damn about the party," she says. "Let's go."
"Where the hell is this thing?" Weaver yells, uncomfortable that the stabbing victim still hasn't arrived for treatment. She catches Cleo running out the door. "I'll call to say goodbye," Cleo lies. No one gives her a second look or thought, illustrative again of the impact Cleo had on this show, their lives, and indeed, our own. Frank can't help Weaver locate the missing ambulance because he's been wading through the basement floodwaters scouring for paperwork. "I'm gonna bill you for these shoes," he bitches. Gallant interrupts to announce the ambulance's arrival.
Gallant rushes right up to the open vehicle doors and helps unload the gurney, on which lies a twenty-four-year-old female pedestrian mowed down by a car, and with low pulse, dicey blood pressure and "probable LOC." It's Amy Jo Johnson, a.k.a. Julie from Felicity and the pink Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Gallant gently asks Julie where she was stabbed, but of course, she didn't have time to get stabbed because she was busy doing a mating dance with some freak's bumper. Weaver appears and berates the medic because the dispatchers didn't warn them of Julie's existence, and failed to produce solid clues as to the whereabouts of the stabbing victim. Frank appears with news that the missing rig got slammed by an SUV at a downtown intersection that lost power during The Storm. Bob the Medic panics and asks whether the driver survived. "I don't know about the driver, but it sounds like the pregnant woman's in bad shape," Frank relays. Weaver's jaw drops -- her stabbing victim is pregnant. God, of course she is! Pregnancy problems are a staple of Very Special Episodes. Weaver connects the dots, then bolts for Medic Bob's ambulance, which is about to leave for the crash site. She tells Frank that Carter must handle Julie's case, and orders a confused Gallant to join her in the field.
In the trauma room, Daniel babbles about his missing brother, but Mark wants him to clam up so that he can get a clear read on the boy's breathing patterns. "Couldn't...hold him..." Daniel sputters. Abby announces that Daniel is retracting like so many stadium roofs. MedEvac Man thinks the firefighters got through to Daniel and Joey's parents, but departs to make sure of this. Purple-red blood trickles out through a tiny puncture-wound in Daniel's belly. "Daniel, you've got a hole in your chest that's sucking in air every time you breathe," Mark says. Did Daniel need to know that? It's not like he should therefore stop breathing. Mark vows to plug the hole. "Did they find Joey?" asks the world's most wooden child actor. Mark looks impatient. He doesn't have time for Joey. "Please, you've got to find my brother," Daniel pleads. Unless Joey is hidden in Daniel's abdomen, Mark won't be breaking a sweat trying to find the kid.
At the crash scene, a smashed ambulance tips to its left, the front right wheel raised off the pavement. Sparks fly above it, crackling down the teetering power lines. A small cluster of cars is gathered nearby, but no extensive group of rescue workers yet. Weaver leaps out of Medic Bob's rig and orders Gallant to stay close. A few firemen have the driver on a gurney and into a neck brace; a Carla lookalike explains that both airbags did deploy, but "he has a bad seat-belt sign." They establish that he's conscious and lucid, at which point he moans that Doris is trapped in the back with an open tib-fib and a hemorrhaging patient. Weaver's "go where the action is" radar bleeps furiously, leading her to the Rig of Peril.
Firemen work furiously to open the ambulance doors. Medic Bob shouts at Doris through the broken lower window on the door, and we see that she's maintaining her calm despite roaring pain. "Stand back!" shouts Lopez, a firewoman. Weaver explains that she's an ER doctor. "Good for you," Lopez retorts. "I need you to stand back. We need to open up." If I deem that foreshadowing, does that count as a dirty joke? Doris shouts to Weaver that the woman, age twenty-eight, is eight months pregnant and was mugged -- hence the stab wound. Suddenly Lopez screams, having sliced open her left hand while trying to yank off one of the vehicle's double doors. Gallant steps in at Weaver's behest and one of the doors promptly comes off smoothly. That boy is Midas. Medic Bob and his cohorts turn their attention to Doris, while Weaver calls out to Vicki, the pregnant woman. "Where are you having pains?" she yells. "All over," moans Vicki. Weaver tries to establish whether they're labor pains or something else, but an explosion overhead derails her.
Above the ambulance, a power pole rocks sharply forward, and a fresh wave of fiery sparks rockets along the wires. As a second pole tips, at least one line snaps and treacherously whips through the air. The second the first crackle of electricity flares, Lopez dives atop Weaver to knock her to relative safety. They huddle there, basically spooning on the street, watching the fireworks display above them and dreaming of a day when painfully obvious metaphors won't define their burgeoning attraction. It would be beautiful, and romantic, if not for the carnage and screaming pregnant woman. Agape, they notice a fireman standing still as a tree, grasping the ambulance's metal door-handle with one hand that he can't unclench, because he's being royally electrocuted. Lopez screams. Gallant, spotting the man, boldly sprints toward him. "Don't touch him!" shrieks Weaver. "Galllllaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnttttttt!" Oh boy. We were doing fine until this part. The Practically Slow-Motion Yell of Tardy Warning is one of the first, worst, and overused tools of melodrama. Gallant -- rather than stopping and taking umbrage at Weaver's theatrics -- tackles the fireman in mid-air and frees him from his prison of pulsing electrical current. We fade out on Weaver's concerned face.
If you join the Hair Club for Men, women with big breasts will press against you. The television says so.
The Rig of Peril crackles, sparks flashing around it as it sits sadly on a Chicago street. "Brody!" screams Lopez as everyone flocks to the fallen and unresponsive medic. He's not breathing and has no pulse, so while the available machines are connected to him, Weaver preps for mouth-to-mouth and orders Gallant to perform CPR chest compressions. She orders Lopez to check on Vicki. "He's in my unit!" Lopez protests, but Weaver will have none of it, and so Lopez obliges her. Yeah, that's how to run an accident site, Lopez -- capitulate to whatever white-coated woman shows up claiming to be a real ER doctor. Weaver scolds Gallant for stupidly diving at Brody's sizzling body without thought to his own safety. Sure, the cardinal rule is not to create more casualties, but some people might call Gallant "heroic" for saving the human Lite Brite from a grisly demise. "It's okay as long as your feet don't touch the ground," protests Gallant, but Weaver fires back that, guess what, it's raining, and water is a conductor. I assume she means that if he has water on his hands or anything else that touches Lite Brite Brody, he's at risk. "I'm fine," he insists. "You were lucky," she scolds.
Meanwhile, Lite Brite Brody still doesn't have a pulse, so Weaver bags him and charges the paddles of life to 200. A penetrating rain courses down upon them. Lopez reports that the rubber tires have amply insulated the ambulance from stray electricity, but a hot wire around the area prevents safe entry into the back. Unfortunately, Vicki's fetus has chosen this moment to give the secret knock. Lopez freaks that she's being barred from helping fire up Brody's heart, but Weaver charges the machine to 300 and shocks the hell out of it, scoring a heart rhythm.
Vicki sobs in the back of the ambulance. When she dreamed about the birth of her child, the unbalanced ambulance always had a space heater in it. "Hang in there, honey," Weaver yells. "We're gonna get you out of there." She tells the woman to check for vaginal bleeding that would indicate a birth complication. Trembling, Vicki reaches down, gropes briefly and gasps, pulling a bloodied hand back up. Her own, that is; she doesn't store spare appendages there. Weaver, alarmed at Vicki's condition, prepares to leap inside the ambulance. Lopez stops her. "The first rule of an accident site [is] don't create more casualties!" she shouts. Conveniently, a cop arrives to distract Lopez with bad news about the power grid, leaving a scheming Weaver alone to plot her imminent disobedience -- proving that a firm talking-to is no substitute for a spanking, once you're old enough to enjoy it. Weaver tenses, stares at the sparks, and times her jump for one second after the latest batch dies down. She executes a graceless but effective running leap and lands safely inside the rig. Lopez complains, but Weaver just waves her protests aside and orders her to get the power lines cut. Instead of ripping Weaver a new asshole for interfering with a secure accident scene -- minus the secure part, though, unfortunately -- Lopez trots off obediently.
Carter examines Julie in the green trauma room, quizzing her about the extent of her head trauma. All she can remember is walking into the street and spying Gordon's flattened corpse. "Her dog," Carter exposits for Susan's benefit. Julie babbles about the pooch while her blood pressure falls, but no one really pays any attention until an officer barges in and starts questioning her. Turns out Julie fell victim to a hit-and-run driver. Susan is appalled; the officer wants a statement, and despite the bleeping monitors, neck brace, and harried doctors, he decides this is a pretty convenient time to get one. Julie gets as far as the color of the car -- silver -- before moaning in pain. And on top of that, she learns that poor old Pooch Gordon has been ironed to the pavement. Julie's face convulses. She twitters and twitches and then lets out a wild wail that turns into pained sobs. Julie doesn't eat much since Felicity fired her, so she's going to chew all the scenery she can possibly find. Carter thoughtfully prescribes some morphine to tide her over until the trauma panel results arrive, and Susan sends Haleh door to get the ultrasound machine from Mark. "What kind of dog?" Susan gently asks Julie. "Terrier mix," she blubbers. "Yeah, those are the best kind," Susan says thoughtlessly. Julie just lost her pet and is devastated, so now's probably not the best time to tell her what a rockin' animal she had. It's like comforting a mother whose two-year-old died by saying, "Aw, they're so fun at that age!" Susan tries again. "You know, he probably went really fast," she suggests. Why? Because he's small and fits neatly under tires? Stop digging, Susan. You'll get unseemly blisters. Carter interrupts to note his concern that Julie lacks a dorsalis pedis pulse. I think it means the blood flow to her legs isn't strong enough. Haleh exits the room...
...and swings into Trauma Yellow, where Mark slaves away on Daniel. It seems there's fluid in Morrison's Pouch, which makes for great snorkeling but leaves some skanky debris on the beaches. Mark wants the nurse to page a pediatric surgeon. He tells Daniel loudly that his condition is improving, but that they want to monitor him closely in case something develops that requires surgery. "He's dead, isn't he?" Daniel mourns. "What?" Mark asks, irritated. Daniel is scared for Joey, his little brother, and figures the kid drowned in the river. "He didn't want to go," Daniel explains. "Where?" Abby asks. To Chuck E. Cheese, Abby. Which is why he's DROWNING in a RIVER right now. Sheesh. Pay attention to all the exposition that's been floating around. Daniel restates for her that he dragged Joey to the river, presumably to ogle the fallen crane, and mocked his brother for expressing fear. A nurse pops in to tell Daniel that his parents are on the way. "They're going to hate me now," he broods. Abby promises that they'll be relieved Daniel is safe, but he's having none of it. "It should have been me," he practically yawns, so bland is his acting. Abby and Mark exchange a look that says, "Is Cleo's cake still around? Because somebody wants a pity party."
At the crash scene. Brody departs in an ambulance, leaving Gallant free to check on Weaver's progress. Lopez, staring out her own anus, manages to spy him running toward the Rig of Peril and sort of cautions him firmly against it, but you know, whatever he wants to do is probably also fine. Gallant runs against a wall of firemen, but encounters zero resistance yet again, finally ending up right across an electrified puddle from the open ambulance. Weaver yells that Vicki's having hypertonic contractions, with a blood pressure dipping down to 68 over 40. "That's way too low, right?" Gallant booms. Hearing this, Vicki freaks out that she might be in grave condition; Weaver looks tempted to punish his bonehead lack of discretion by forcing Gallant to pull out the baby with his left foot and some twine. It's always encouraging, while bleeding and birthing a baby in the back of a smoking ambulance, to hear that the doctor not only isn't totally sure about the basics of blood-pressure, but that you are up shit creek without a strong pulse. Weaver quiets her so that she can listen to the fetal heart rate.
Power lines snap and whip through the air in a sadist's storm fantasy. Weaver tries to remain focused as Gallant yells that it's possible the transformer will blow and kill the rogue sparking lines. Vicki screams in pain as Weaver finishes a few diagnostics, then sits back with a slow breath. Her eyes glaze with a distant, distressed expression, betraying her cold fear that she's powerless to save Vicki or the baby. The fire ebbs out of her; without touching her, I know she's clammy. "Dr. Weaver?" Gallant calls, troubled by her silence. Slowly, Weaver unearths a nugget of hope, and makes clear without words that she's about to try something ill-advised, maybe even dangerous, but definitely last-resort. Laura Innes can speak volumes with just a well-paced breath. Turning to Gallant, she gulps, "I need your help. Can you get in here safely?" Why, sure he can! There's no one guarding the accident site, or the supposed puddle of lethal electrical pulses that's pooling politely around the Rig of Peril. So Gallant just backs up a bit, charges at the ambulance and successfully leaps aboard. They cut it so quickly that we never actually see how he heaves himself inside; we see him appear to Weaver in something akin to a base-stealing position, which is ridiculous because if he'd really thrown himself into that narrow space in that basic position, he'd have cracked his kneecaps. But who needs those?
Coolly efficient, but with clipped urgency in her tone, Weaver instructs Gallant to search the Rig of Peril for cardiac lidocaine. Gently, she explains to Vicki that Rex the Wonder Preemie is trying to evict the placenta for failing to pay the cleaning lady and refusing to vacuum. As such, the homeless placenta is detaching and bleeding into the uterus. Vicki starts to cry, scared. Lopez, sickeningly late to this twisted party, screeches that she thought she told Gallant to stay away from the vehicle. Yeah, well sticks or stones might've broken his bones, but words weren't going to restrain him. Weaver harshly points out that Vicki is basically bleeding out before their eyes, and wonders why Lopez hasn't gotten the power deactivated, since she's not doing much else. "The only way to stop the bleeding is to deliver your baby surgically," Weaver informs Vicki, who weeps that it's too early for such action. "No, no, thirty-six weeks is full-term," soothes Kerry. Vicki wails that she wants to go to the hospital right this second. Well, as fun, hygienic, safe and Emmy™-worthy as it is to deliver babies in the back of a crashed truck with only sparking power lines for light, I'm pretty sure they'd have taken her there by now if it was remotely possible. From outside, Lopez belts out something about the power lines burning themselves out eventually, meaning an immediate remedy isn't in the cards. The gravity of the situation now fully revealed, Weaver makes relaxing eye contact with Vicki. "I'm an emergency physician. I'm trained to perform a C-section only after the mother has died. In about fifteen minutes, that's what's going to happen," she begins carefully. "Meanwhile, your baby is in danger. I might be able to save you both if we take the baby now and stop your internal bleeding. Are you willing to take that risk with me?" This is about as close to a legal disclaimer as she's going to get. For someone who's disobeying the rules, Weaver's adhering to logical protocol as well as possible. She never breaks eye-contact until Vicki finally agrees that she's prepared to let Weaver perform the procedure right there and then. Laura Innes is fabulous. You can tell she's scared, but she knows that keeping Vicki calm, being up-front and honest, and still making her feel safe are the most important things. Of course, none of this stops Vicki from choking on her terror.
Gallant confesses that he's never done any obstetrics work before, news that Weaver greets with a wry "Well, you'll be ahead of the curve." His role is to take Vicki's blood pressure every few minutes, find every 4x4 bandage in the rig, and have saline on hand. She takes the syringe of lidocaine and informs Vicki that she'll be getting a shot in her spine to numb her legs and belly. "Find me a ten-blade," Weaver orders Gallant. He doesn't respond. "That's a scalpel," she adds. Hearing this comforts Vicki immensely. There's nothing like knowing one of your doctors doesn't recognize the equipment. Gallant cocks his head. "When's the last time you've done this?" he asks, curiously. Damn, kid! Shut up and learn your scalpels.
Peter, Cleo, and Roma Maffia, Attorney-At-Law, confer in her office while The Storm cranks up the volume on its Bohemian Rhapsody. Roma contends that the DNA test would've happened eventually, so it's better that he consented to it without a judge's order. She reveals that, due to the very rare circumstances of the case, there's no real legal precedent to guide their way. She calls it "Stepfather vs. Stepfather" because neither man is genetically tied to Reese. "I'm not his stepfather," Benton barks, chafed. "I'm his father." Cleo chips in that Roger never questioned Reese's paternity until Carla's death, which seems fishy to her ("That's irrelevant," murmurs Roma), and Peter adds that Carla did actually put "Peter Benton" on Reese's birth certificate as the baby's father. Roma agrees that such an action precludes Carla from challenging the paternity from beyond the grave, but unfortunately, Roger is at full liberty to contest it. "Peter, you are going to have to allow Roger to resume partial visitation," counsels Roma, because Roger's attorney will doubtless draft a pre-trial motion for court-ordered visitation rights until the custody case is resolved. "If you don't stipulate now, you will lose that hearing and be painted as the heavy," she warns. Peter can't believe that he could be painted as the bad guy, when Roger's trying to rob him of his child. I can't believe Benton wouldn't see this as a normal part of the grieving process -- Roger and Reese are the two people most directly affected by Carla's death, and it can only help them to work through it together. Acting like playground foes fighting over a football doesn't help anyone. "You have to stay focused on the endgame, and not let anger, or fear, impede that goal," Roma insists. Cleo looks blankly at Peter, because her dictionary feature is offline. He just sighs and glances sadly at Reese, who is curled up on the couch scribbling merrily on a legal pad.
Weaver shakes Vicki awake just as her blood pressure begins to dip. "Spike another liter," Weaver orders, presumably speaking of saline. "What does 'spike' mean?" Gallant asks. After Buffy last night, I think it means a whole bunch of new and interesting things. Here, though, it refers to a method of administering the saline. "Hey, you -- firefighter," Weaver yells charmingly at Lopez. "I need more light!" Lopez repeats her name huffily, but does get Scotty over there to turn on his brights and point them at the bowels of the Rig of Peril. Gallant shifts to Vicki's left side, with Weaver across the swollen belly from him. Tensely, she lifts the knife for the first incision.
Here, we get a great shot of Gallant flinching and looking pretty sickened by what he's seeing. I totally feel his pain. I kept covering my eyes, until I realized it might hinder the recapping a tad. Vicki tips her head up for a better view; it occurs to me that hospital C-sections employ a curtain blocking the woman from gawking, and possibly puking, at her innards. Yet another reason to pity Vicki. She's all, "Whee! Look how neatly my belly rips open!" Weaver orders Gallant to grab a skin flap and pull, mirroring her technique. Vicki moans, understandably. Cut to a horrible shot of their blue gloves pulling apart a volcanic prosthetic belly stuffed with redness that's anxious to leak out. We hear the sound of parting faux-flesh and gurgling, goopy bodily fluids. Ew. Is there no pleasant way to pop out a baby? "Is that my baby?" Vicki asks, dazed. No, honey, it's your uterus. Lie down. Weaver wants the scalpel so she can cut into the womb and retrieve Baby Tragedy. "You want me to let go?" asks a scared Gallant. Weaver looks up sharply from the Easy-Bake Belly, concerned that Gallant can't one-hand a wall of flesh.
Carter finishes up with Julie, sharing that they're sending her upstairs for a more complete scan to detect any other injuries. "Tell the nurse if you want any more pain medication, okay?" he suggests. Julie is too groggy to realize how royally she can abuse that option. "I'm sorry about your dog," Susan simpers. Once Julie is gone, Carter totally ribs her for all the canine commentary. "It can be traumatic to lose a pet!" Susan protests. "Especially if you see it happen." What follows is a little "Look, we have chemistry!" segment, the most interesting part of which is the reveal that Susan named her pet "Happy." That seems totally Susan to me, whereas Carter strikes me as the type to go for really pretentious names like Archibald or Ignatius, probably after some bonehead doctor who invented the lab coat.
Mark stares morosely at the TV, which flashes coverage of little Joey's search-and-rescue mission. He exposits to Susan that the kid is still missing and restates yet again that Joey is Daniel's younger brother. Got that? Big brother loses little brother? Right-o. Frank interrupts to grouch that his Palm Pilot has gone missing, stolen by a passing derelict. And finally, Alger staggers inside and grabs Carter, panting that he found Gamma collapsed on the driveway in the rain, possibly with a broken hip. I'm not entirely sure why it was safe to pick her up and toss her in the car, but hey, it's not my Gamma.
Carter and Alger dash outside to the car, a silver sedan with telltale black scuff marks on the left front bumper. Alger relays that Gamma took the car out during the storm's recession. Gamma is sprawled in the back seat, crusted blood smeared on the side of her face. She's not in a party mood. "Oh, John, it's terrible, it hurts," she whimpers. Carter checks out her leg and notices that it's shorter and externally rotated, the sign of a broken hip. "I thought it was best if I drove home," Gamma rambles. "I didn't know how much I was bleeding, so I slipped..." Carter, startled, realizes she was in an accident. "I think I hit a dog," she wails. Carter's heart sinks, noticing that this puzzle piece connects a bit too perfectly into the jigsaw of Julie's hit-and-run. "It was supposed to be sunny," Gamma sputters helplessly.
I love the DSL commercial in which the kindly woman learns sign language online, then delivers a fresh-baked pie to the deaf child door and cluelessly signs, "I baked your dog for you." The look on the kid's face is so perfect that it could double as a Mastercard ad: "Pie ingredients: thirty dollars. DSL connection: Fifty dollars. Computer: Seven hundred dollars. Making your adolescent neighbor shit himself with fear: priceless."
We reenter the accident scene from above, noticing that a bunch more emergency vehicles have reported to the scene. Faintly, we hear Weaver dishing out instructions to Gallant -- a nice touch, given that it's in no way clearly audible, so within the context of the shot, it's just another noise in an ongoing catastrophe. Lopez runs over for the Hourly Power Update: The "auto re-closer" is stuck open, so the power gurus are trying to bypass it, but for now, no one's putting out the sparks of Tingly Lesbian Attraction. "I don't care," Weaver shouts over loud rain and zipping sparks. "Just shut it down!" Lopez bellows that it's not quite so fucking easy as all that, even though you'd think a crisis team at the plant would be trained to handle the repercussions of The Storm quite quickly.
A mishap diverts Weaver's attention back to the Easy-Bake Baby Belly. "Dammit!" trembles Weaver. It seems, while groping around inside Vicki, Weaver knocked over Rex the Wonder Preemie's wet bar and the broken glass severed a uterine vein. (I couldn't resist resurrecting Rex; my apologies if I'm using the Preemie in vain, but he's just so damn irrepressible that even my inattention can't keep him down.) Frantically, Weaver demands a clamp and tells Gallant to keep the saline on hand and ready for an infusion. "Doesn't she need any blood?" he wonders. Gallant has failed to notice that they're IN THE BACK OF AN AMBULANCE. "I don't have any blood!" snaps Weaver, frustrated. She wants Gallant to push the baby down toward her from the top of the uterus; just then, an ambulance that isn't incapacitated pulls up in the background. Weaver gets Lopez to call ahead to County General and make them have an assortment of doctors prepped to handle the case. Cut to the Easy-Bake Belly, composed mostly of thick red flaps of skin and pint after pint of goo, all of which have served as Rex's prison. Weaver gingerly frees him, lifting his clammy form from the morass and filling me with a highly rational fear of all things red. Rex looks wan; his nine-month bender has taken its toll. Gallant grabs a bulb syringe and sucks goo from the robot fetus's nose and mouth.
Brody has arrived at the ER and is being wheeled toward Trauma Green. Everyone happily remembers the way electricity lit him up like a Christmas tree during The Storm. Luka wonders where to put Brody, then remembers that anything Mark does is irrelevant, and so kicks the mediocre Dr. Greene out of Trauma Green. As Mark wheels Daniel's gurney to another room, Abby shares that the boy tested positive for marijuana. Her timing is impeccable: Daniel's very angry father overheard, and is irate to learn his oldest son tokes the happy herb but doesn't share his stash. "I didn't smoke today," protests Daniel. His parents don't care. His mother, who thinks it's a crime that she wasn't born Mia Farrow and has therefore tried to fashion herself after Woody's ex, joins the chorus of criticism. They can't believe Daniel took Joey to the river in this kind of weather. They hate Daniel. They rue the day his single helices twined. They lament the day they discovered child-labor laws. And they especially hate when he asks them for things, like food or attention, or something other than a brick for a pillow. Daniel insists Joey wanted to see the river. "Joey's six years old!" yells Dipshit Dad. "So you're going to blame it on him now?" Flatly, Daniel says, "No, it's my fault." Mia is silent and disapproving suddenly, as Mark turns around and tells them to wait right there while he situates Daniel in another room. They, without having gotten an update on Daniel's condition, persist in asking Mark about Joey. Daniel's going to get a Jan Brady complex.
Gallant cuts Rex's umbilical connection to Craft Services. "Is that my baby?" drawls Vicki, semi-conscious but still alarmed that she birthed a plastic robot baby. "Yes, honey, you have a boy," Weaver calls out as Rex starts bawling, proving to the world that he is human, so hear him roar. Gallant gauges the fetal heart rate, while Mighty Lopez Power Ranger yells that the electric company has finally decided it's almost time to consider possibly turning off the power grid, but it wants first to notify all emergency services of their imminent need to switch to a backup generator. I'm beginning to think they fouled up and called the old cast of Electric Company instead of the actual power people. I feel like Morgan Freeman's out there scratching his chin and flipping circuit switches while rhyming and using only words that begin with "A." Gallant pipes up that he thinks the fetal heart rate is 88. "You think, or you know?" snaps Weaver, shedding her cloak of gentleness and allowing some impatience. "It's 88," asserts Gallant. He prepares to wrap up Rex in a Wonder Cloak as Weaver explains that the tot needs fluids, oxygen, and blood. "You need to get him to the hospital," she instructs. Meanwhile, Vicki decides she's had enough of this fluid-retention crap, and exsanguinates all over the place. "I have to clamp off the uterine arteries," Weaver panics. The camera cuts to a shot of the Easy-Bake Belly, the inner-workings of which are strewn all over the place. Seriously, I think Vicki's uterus is sitting on top of her sternum, sweeping on some rouge and waiting for its close-up.
Gallant clasps Rex to his chest and informs Lopez that he'll be leaping out of the Rig of Peril. If she doesn't like it, then she'd bloody well better be prepared to catch a flying baby and escort him to safety. Mighty Morphin Power Lopez isn't totally sure her hand-eye coordination is up to the task, so she just registers her disapproval but does nothing particularly inventive to stop Gallant. "Go," Weaver urges. Steeling himself, Gallant takes his Wonder Leap, landing with a splash on the pavement and huddling there in his Wonder Hush Puppies while a nearby power pole teeters yet more precariously overhead. A giant explosion begets some nifty fireworks overhead; I think that means either Lopez or Weaver is horny. Gallant ducks while the sky blazes. Suddenly, everything falls quiet, except The Storm's pelting rain. "Is he okay?" Weaver yells. "I got him!" Gallant rejoices, then collects himself and flees for the one working ambulance on the scene. It seems the transformer just blew, but no one's entirely sure whether the entire circuit is dead. Weaver stays with Vicki.
Mark stitches Daniel's chest laceration in silence. "You okay?" he finally asks. "I see a lot of fathers who come in here, and they're upset when their kids are hurt or missing." Unlike Dipshit Dad, who's mostly just pining for some Joey and could give a shit about Daniel. Mark clarifies that these distraught parents often say cruel things in the heat of panic that they don't actually mean. Daniel corrects Mark to say that Dipshit Dad is his stepfather, not his father, and sadly says he's just the stepchild nobody wants. Joey's their real kid. If this were Disney's ER, he'd break into song. "And that makes you..."Mark starts to ask. "A pain in the ass," finishes Daniel. I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for him because the child actor is so devoid of passion, but at least it's easy to hate the parents. I'm halfway there with this subplot. Mia barges in and asks Mark whether the chest x-ray is back; Mark says that Daniel's results look fine, and that he's just polishing off the set of stitches. Mia hasn't even looked at Daniel, going to great pains to avoid laying eyes on her son. "Mom?" Daniel whispers. She still refuses to look, asking Mark -- without a shred of real concern -- if Daniel is totally fine. "Mom, I'm sorry," Daniel tries again. Mia glares at him, deeply resentful that her shithead offspring is fine while the sainted one is missing. She scolds Daniel for being out by the river, complaining that he never uses his head. "I should've been the one that drowned," Daniel sighs. "It should've been me." Mia spits, "Yes, but it wasn't, was it? It was Joey." Oooh! Hateful woman. She says it like it's an empirical fact, and as if she wouldn't entirely mind if Daniel floated off down the river and out of her life. I hope her spiteful tubes are tightly stapled shut. Annoyed, Mark ushers her out of the room for a very mild lecture.
Mark clears his throat. "What are you doing?" he demands. "My son is missing," she sniffles. "No one can find him." Mark reminds her that a second child -- the one laid up door -- also got hurt and scared, and needs comfort and love. Mia snaps that this is none of Mark's business. "Do you want him to feel responsible? Guess what -- he already does," Mark fumes. "Do you want him to hurt? He already hurts! Want him to hate himself? Keep it up." Mark doesn't point out that she's an evil, sick bitch for wanting her child to hurt, but one can only expect so much vitriol from a fountain of skim milk. Dipshit Dad interrupts the non-lecture to report that precious Joey has been recovered downriver and is about to be rescued. The parents bolt to a television set.
In a nice bit of editing humor, we cut to Reese playing peacefully in slightly less perilous waters -- his bathtub. Cleo is curled up on the floor, leaning against a cabinet and watching Peter play with his son. "He'll be okay, Peter," she promises. "I see you two together. I know." Reese splashes his father mischievously, and there's brief horseplay before a loud knock on the door interrupts them. Cleo flashes a beatific smile at Reese while Peter gets up to answer the knock.
It's Roger. As soon as Peter spies his archrival, he tries to slam the door on him, but Roger's foot blocks it. "This doesn't have to go any further!" he pleads. "Hear me out, okay?" Both men are panting -- Roger more than Peter, who doesn't even want to look at the man. "Reese lived under my care -- my roof -- for most of his life," Roger notes breathlessly. "All I'm asking for is some kind of arrangement that recognizes that." This sounds totally fair to me, but admittedly, I'm not well versed in the history between these two. Peter just seems more motivated by ego than anything else -- HE wants HIS son, etc. -- whereas I confess I think Roger just wants a meaningful connection to his late wife. That said, I love Peter and Reese together, so I hope Benton wins. But for now, Peter sneers that it's too late for civil chat. "Come on, brother," Roger says, somewhat stupidly. "You really want to put him through a trial?" Peter does. He snarls, "I'm keeping my son." Peter thinks it's time Roger ate paint chips; Peter slams the door in Roger's face. "I guess I'll see you there," Roger says to the peephole. "Yeah, you will," yells Peter.
Abby gets a radio connection to Joey's rescue crew, but can't figure out whether the kid is alive. To give him a reason to be in the reception area, Luka wanders over and makes small talk with Mark about Lite Brite Brody the Burn Victim. He's going to be fine. Sunnily, Neecole bounces to the counter and asks whether Luka wants anything from the store; he wonders if she's noticed The Storm, because it cost an awful lot of money and it'd be a shame if she didn't at least look at the pretty rain. "Malik and Yosh don't like the coffee in the lounge," she smiles. "It hurts their stomachs." Frank begs her for a Grande Vanilla Cappuccino and shells out some cash. "It's on me," the impoverished Neecole says. No one raises an eyebrow.
News arrives of Joey -- he's in the MedEvac, he's PEA, and he should arrive in fifteen minutes. Mark, though, is distracted, grabbing Luka and confiding that Gallant is headed their way with a baby Weaver delivered in the back of an ambulance. Luka is totally startled that Weaver disobeyed the rules and performed a C-section in the field, considering she's a stickler for protocol and has probably fired people for less. And demoted them. Hello, Chen! Mark agrees that she'll have some explaining to do, and as they walk to the camera and out of the shot, Luka's eyes bug out in a totally hilarious, perplexed expression.
Neecole cheerfully asks Abby whether she wants anything -- cigarettes, perhaps. Her lips twitching, Abby declines. An irritating beeping noise permeates the air, which perks up Frank's ears. "What time is it?" he asks suspiciously. When he learns that it's 7 PM, he grabs at Neecole's purse and tries to tear it off her arm. "My Palm Pilot goes off at 7 to remind me to take my Vioxx!" he snarls. Ha! Rock on, Frank, you fabulous codger. Neecole tries to protect her purse, but just as Luka approaches to intercede, the bag drops, splits open and dumps its contents all over the linoleum. The beeping abruptly stops. Upset, Frank grabs his broken Palm Pilot from the messy pile and stares glumly at it. "That's not yours," Luka insists, desperate. "The hell it isn't!" Frank spits. "I'm calling the police." Luka searches Neecole's face, silently begging her to defend herself and prove Frank wrong, but she just lets her lip quiver, looks incredibly guilty, and bolts from the hospital. "It's not just me, pal," Frank continues. "She's ripping off everybody. Ask Abby." Luka briefly swaps glances with his ex, then dashes out after his current project. But as he exits, Gallant glides in with the baby, which forces Luka to continue working his shift. "Weaver says he might need a transfusion," pants Gallant, holding Rex like he's a Ming vase, or a very expensive Warner Bros. prop.
Vicki has been placed on a gurney and wheeled to safety. Lopez helps Weaver out of the Rig of Peril, the latter continually barking out instructions as to how the paramedics should treat Vicki. As she hunches over Vicki, Weaver notices the nasty gash on Lopez's hand and spots an exposed flexor tendon. "You'll need a hand surgeon," she cautions. Lopez won't budge, because all of a sudden, she's ready to "control the scene" of the accident. "Get somebody else," Weaver orders her. I think they're supposed to be identical workaholics, which would be sweet if Lopez had done her job especially well. Weaver successfully intubates, someone bags Vicki, and everyone piles into a fresh, fully working ambulance -- everyone, that is, but the stubborn Lopez. After some yes-no-yes-no banter between her and Weaver, Lopez slams the ambulance door and watches the rig leave. Weaver, for her part, stares through the rain-splotched glass at Lopez's shrinking figure, then leans back against the wall with a sigh, invigorated and fatigued at once. And having some pretty racy firefighter/damsel-in-distress fantasies to boot.
Abby and Mark pack into the elevator again, this time to retrieve Joey from the helicopter. Mark's obviously preoccupied. "People think kids don't listen to their parents," Abby muses. "But they do. If they tell you you're nothing, you think you're nothing." That's true of almost any negative influence, be it peers or parents, but the thought has clearly tweaked a nerve in Abby. I heard a rumor she's neither pretty nor special -- maybe that's bugging her. "How cold do you think that water is?" Mark wonders. Abby guesses somewhere near 40°, to which Mark replies ominously, "Hope it's colder than that." There must be something about body chemistry that I don't understand -- well, besides absolutely everything -- wherein Joey's survival rate will improve if he's been in extraordinarily freezing water. I think Mark's intent is to convey that he wants to save Joey for Daniel's sake, but the line delivery instead gives the impression that he wishes Joey would die a horrible frostbitten death. Given his penchant for playing God, maybe he'll run little Joey down to the river and dunk him a bit longer.
As the elevator doors part, we get a very expensive shot of The Helicopter That Didn't Drop A Hero From 1500 Feet, with rain from The Storm digitally superimposed over it. The EMT bellows that Joey has no pulse and isn't breathing on his own, having drifted a mile down the river and gotten tangled in debris from The Storm and the crane accident. So apparently, Joey wasn't PEA at all -- he was asystole, which is worse and means his heart is taking a long vacation.
Susan silently stitches Gamma's head wound. Carter enters and asks her to assess the pain on a scale of one through ten. "It hurts, John," Gamma sighs, unwilling to play these little doctor-patient games he so cherishes. Carter orders more morphine before confirming that Gamma did indeed break her hip, but will need a much more intensive examination to determine whether it will heal naturally or surgically. Gamma takes a deep breath, opens her mouth and chows down on a nice plate of hash made from her own words. "I should've listened to you about the car," she admits. "I'm sorry." Carter would like very much to revel in his supreme rightness, but he can't, because he has worse news to break. Gingerly, he informs Gamma that she hit more than a dog -- she hit a young woman, Julie, who Carter insists is okay because they've taken good care of her. A clap of thunder hits, along with a flash of lightning that illuminates Foreshadowing making out with Rex the Wonder Preemie in the room. Susan spies a speeding gurney outside the room, and discreetly slips away to investigate ["I think that was Foreshadowing's fraternal twin Dramatic Irony." -- Wing Chun]; Gamma, meanwhile, is horrified. "I hit a girl?" she whimpers. "I drove away! I left, I should've checked to see! Oh my God!" Carter understands how confused she was, then realizes something worse is brewing and brushes Gamma off in order to follow Susan.
In Trauma Green, Susan orders someone to page Surgery and take a hemocue. Carter arrives and wonders what happened to complicate Julie's condition. Apparently, she passed out, and now Susan can't see down her throat without a fiber-optic scope; since Mark's bogarting it right now, she has to wait. She and Carter think Julie's suffering from a pulmonary edema, so Carter orders up all kinds of panels -- trauma panels, wood panels, judges' panels, and even a piece of stained glass.
Mark is trying to thaw Joey in Trauma Yellow. The nurses nuke some saline and Mark yells for something called a "bear hugger," which sounds really warm and snuggly, actually. Mia and Dipshit Dad descend upon the scene and complain about how blue precious Joey looks. "Joey, wake up, baby, wake up!" wails Mia. Mark is all, "Piss off," as he tries to bag Joey and suction out his lungs. Sure enough, Joey burps up a quart of yellow creamy mung, which Mark assumes is river water but which I hope is a cruel commentary on Mia's cooking. Because I hate her. Naturally, Mia and the Dipshit squeal, because it's all very disgusting and parents have no place in the middle of a damn trauma room. Mark wants the fiber-optic scope because Joey's cords are closing up; just then, a side door creaks open to reveal a frightened but fascinated Daniel. "Get back to bed," orders Mark. "I'll come get you." Abby struggles to get a line, which prompts Mark to boot Joey's parents from the room and have Lily escort Daniel back to his bed. Because medicine isn't a spectator sport. And neither, thank heavens, is Mark -- at least not for much longer.
Weaver runs in alongside Vicki's gurney, yelling out orders up until the last second. Dr. Robert "Rainy Days and Thursdays Always Get Me Down" Romano greets her icily. "I have an emergency C-section," Weaver pants. "I can see that," Romano sneers. "Coburn called me screaming when she got the page. I thought she must've heard wrong." Weaver champions her cause, saying she had an abrupted, hemorrhaging twenty-eight-year-old trapped in a virtually untouchable ambulance. Romano regurgitates the policy that ER doctors don't perform C-sections until the mother has gone into arrest. "Well, she will, if we don't get her upstairs," Weaver says calmly, refusing to let Romano get under her skin, especially not the way many of us dearly, fervently, frequently pray that he will. Romano waves her away from Vicki, sending Weaver back to the ER to dry off. "I don't want you dying of pneumonia before your public flogging," he notes, following Vicki's gurney into the elevator bound for the OR. Anxious for a little praise or encouragement, Weaver pipes up rather pathetically that it would've been very simple for her to do nothing and let everybody kick off in grand fashion. "Yeah, well, that would've been the safe way," Romano berates her. "Now, if she lives, you're a hero. If she doesn't, I don't know you." The doors close on Romano, but not on our love. Weaver stares absently after him, then bites off a chunk of her Melodrama Cereal Bar and huskily murmurs, "The baby." Purposefully, she flees to find the child.
Chuny points Weaver in the right direction. "She's pinking up," the nurse notes, pointing through the glass at Baby Tragedy, who got replaced by another actor after Rex's contract expired. Softly, Chuny whispers, "Nice save, Dr. Weaver." Kerry almost smiles, but can't until she's seen the child up close. Entering the pedes ward, she finds Luka treating the child while Gallant observes quietly. The child is completely healthy. ["And huge." -- Wing Chun] "You did it," Gallant says admiringly. Weaver lets slip a beautiful smile -- one built of pure relief and joy -- before realizing she's supposed to be the cold-fish crone and reverting back to her usual inscrutable expression. She tries to stay professional, but even as she suggests a few treatment courses, Weaver can't help looking thrilled. Neecole meekly peeks into the room and pleads for a second of Luka's time, so he leaves to feed the beast that is his subplot.
Susan successfully navigates the path down Julie's throat, even without the fiber-optic device, but Julie's vitals still aren't steady. She and Carter proceed to clear the edema by working together, although I can't fathom how, or why it involves huddling by her throat and twisting in several different directions. This might be a new party game. It's called Intubation, and it comes with all the equipment for safely and hilariously stuffing plastic tubes down your guests' throats. Carter and Susan finally succeed and fix up Julie's breathing; Gamma is momentarily spared a reckless manslaughter charge.
Abby runs the heated saline into the Joeysicle while Mark suggests cranking up the room's thermostat. They want to thaw him and irrigate his bladder. "We're gonna save this one," Mark intones, peeking through the window at the watchful Daniel. Abby follows Mark's gaze, then offers to close the blinds or move Daniel. "No, he can stay," Mark decides, thankful for an eyewitness in case he actually manages to achieve something even half a notch above mundane. They continue flushing Joey with warm fluids until the monitors reflect encouraging vital signs; when Joey exits asystole, painfully obvious rejoicing music blares so that we know a corner has been turned, a grand triumph has been achieved, and flights of angels are perched on Mark's shoulders. They're definitely lost. Mark charges the paddles to 60 and waits for Joey to flatline; he does, so they shock him, up the voltage to 120, and shock him again. This works; the Joeysicle will live to see another winter. Mark gives a wan thumbs-up to Daniel, who probably can't decide if this is a better or worse development in his heretofore tragic little life. Abby peers out the window and metas that The Storm has abated.
But for Gamma, it's just begun. As she lies inside what looks like one of those CAT-scan tubes, Carter is advised against sending her for orthopedic surgery. The doctor spits out the encouraging statistic that one third of elderly patients going in for this type of surgery end up dying within a year from post-op complications. This news clearly terrifies Carter, who's worse than a Mama's boy -- he's a Gam-mama's boy, and he can't bear to live his rich family lifestyle without her there to pay the bills. Suddenly, machines beep wildly, signaling a massive spike in Gamma's heart rate. Carter realizes that she's panicking, and rushes in there to calm her as the machine slowly ejects. "Call your grandfather to come pick me up," Gamma says, her voice quavering. "I want to go home." Carter stares at her, floored. "Grandpa's not here," Carter hisses patiently. "Get him!" snaps Gamma. "Grandpa's dead," he counters, a bit more harshly, but only because he's having an impossible time digesting all of this trauma. Gamma looks lost and lonely, utterly confused and a trifle scared. This totally chokes me. There's something about seeing old people cry and act helpless -- it tugs shamelessly at my heartstrings. During Brooks's last scenes in The Shawshank Redemption, I weep with abandon. ["Oh my god, me too. 'I don't like it here. I don't think I'm going to stay'? I lose it every time." -- Wing Chun] And don't get me started on the actress who plays Jim Lovell's mother in the otherwise saccharine Apollo 13. I know better, but she's so cute and sweet and proud and clueless...God, I have to stop. It's too much. Carter reminds his disoriented grandmother that she's hospitalized with a broken hip. "Oh, yes, of course," she recalls. "I hit a dog. I hit a dog! He was in the middle of the street." It dawns on Carter that his problems here are way larger than he expected. They're Andre the Giant, bottled up in script form.
Abby sips a steaming cup of coffee outside the ER, watching curiously as Luka puts Neecole in a cab and sadly watches it drive away. Abby pretends she doesn't want to stare right at Neecole and do the "I told you so" dance. Carefully, she approaches Luka and asks if Neecole is okay. "Not really," he answers absently. "Is that baby okay?" Abby presses. "Yeah," Luka says. Lordy, is NBC paying him by the word? Abby rambles about how incredible Mark's great Joeysicle save was, how it was a total miracle that Mark ever manages to save anyone's life. I might have over-extrapolated a bit there. Luka is totally unresponsive. "You all right?" Abby finally asks. "What is it?" Luka finally musters the words, "She's pregnant." Sitting glumly on a stoop, he groans and rubs his eyes helplessly. "I see," she chokes, struggling to remain calm. "Is that why she was stealing?" Luka shakes his head. "That's a habit," he explains. "She doesn't know how to trust people." Oh, oh, OH, Luka, you hot but ignorant clod! What does her trusting people have to do with pocketing all their belongings, thereby violating their trust instead? Has Luka always been this stupid? I'm also really bothered by the fact that Luka didn't get to confront Neecole on-screen. I'd care so much more about his side of the story if we'd gotten to see the shock in his eyes when Neecole pulled the wool over them and stuck him with what's probably someone else's baby. It's not like Goran doesn't have fans, and can't act. Talk about trust -- no one at ER is trusting him with any material. Anyway, Abby at least agrees with me that Luka is missing the point entirely. "Her father kicked her out when she was sixteen," Luka says. "She's had to learn to live on her own." Abby winces. "Her father?" she asks, momentarily baffled before slowly figuring out that Neecole's very adept at duping people. She watches Luka cradle his head in his own hands, and listens sadly to his insistence that he only ever meant to help her. "I didn't think I'd be with her," he whispers. "It just happened." Yes, these things do -- I frequently find myself pregnant by guys who just stroll around naked, trip over a power cord and end up having wild sex with me totally unintentionally. It's a hazardous world. And why the hell didn't we ever get to see Luka fall prey to this girl? He's so clearly just a pawn in Abby's storyline, rather than being a full-fledged character with a plot of his own. It's sad that no one gave us a window into this facet of the Neecole/Luka relationship, and I'm not just saying that because I missed out on seeing Goran tear off his shirt. Well, that might be part of it. But, man, rather than retread some hackneyed Carter Has Back Pain story, someone should at least try throwing Luka a bone. Back to the baby scandal. Abby snorts, "You sure it's yours? Or that she's really pregnant?" Luka insists that Neecole isn't that type of person, countering, "You don't know her." Abby groans, "Do you?" I definitely think Abby is obliged to tell Luka about Neecole's lies, relative to her father's non-demise; granted, Luka needs to digest the pregnancy news a bit before finding out his French waif is a dirty liar, but if Abby waits another full week, she'll end up watching him get hopelessly entangled with this girl and Luka will end up resenting her even more for keeping silent. So although I think it's totally unrealistic that Abby was so restrained as to stay quiet, I don't entirely object to it, as long as she sets him straight eventually -- or goes to Neecole and threatens to blow the whistle unless the wench does it first.
Mark calmly tells Daniel that Joey is perfectly fine. "Thank you for saving him," Daniel says. "Is my Mom with him?" Aw. Poor kid. Mark shares that Dipshit Dad and Mia are upstairs coddling Joey, but soon the brothers will share a room. Then, Mark tries to relate to Daniel on a level he imagines to be cool and unusually frank for an adult, but which comes off as insipid and creepy. "I want to tell you something, but you can't tell any other kids, okay?" Mark begins. Daniel is frightened. He's already heard about the birds and the bees. But Mark only wants to share that parents aren't always right just because they're parents. Oh God, don't let this be some kind of Rachel meta -- you are RIGHT, Mark, in her case. She's a tool. Stay strong. Daniel isn't impressed by Mark's revelation. "I want you to promise me something," Mark continues, oblivious. "Don't listen to them. Don't believe that you're not just as good as your brother...One day, they may realize that, but you can tell them it doesn't matter, because...you knew before they did." Daniel smiles and nods, having tuned out about two minutes ago and being all the happier for it.
Weaver clears out her locker for the day. Gallant interrupts with news that Romano is looking for her; Vicki needed a hysterectomy, but survived The Storm and is in stable condition. "He also told me that I should try to stay away from you if I'm going to survive med school," grins Gallant. "Well, nobody actually listens to Dr. Romano around here," she tells him. Ha. I love it when she has a sense of humor. I could actually grow fond of this relationship if Weaver is allowed to be a full-time human again. They have a sweet rapport. Gallant praises her actions that night, flogging himself lightly for being out of his element and slightly unsettled. "You wouldn't know it," Weaver compliments him. Then, in a lovely bit, Weaver suggests that he escort Baby Tragedy up to Vicki's room, which totally delights Gallant. "I was scared out there for a while," he admits, exhaling hard. Weaver smiles wryly. "Gallant, I was scared out there the whole time," she says, adding that he was admirably observant, focused, competent, and cool-headed. After sharing that Brody will be just fine, too, Gallant marvels, "We saved everybody, didn't we?" Weaver notes that sometimes, working in the ER brings a few good days along with the chaos. "I like the good days," Gallant decides. "Enjoy them when they come," Weaver says in parting, opening her fashionable and conveniently placed Burberry umbrella and heading out into the night, alone.