I had hoped that spending an entire summer away from anything ER would somehow increase my tolerance. Then I remembered that the writers are still dangerous character assassins, so I took up heavy drinking.
Previously on Everyone's Rude, Carter only told his estranged girlfriend Abby that he was leaving for Africa because they bumped into each other at work. Life in Congo sucked, though. Except for Luka's getting laid, Carter and Luka spent their time sweating and being shot at by really angry men in need of happy pills. When he made his hasty exit, Carter instructed Luka not to do anything stupid, like sign a long-term contract. "[Or] get yourself killed," Carter smiled. Luka grinned. Oh, how he grinned. Slurp.
The show picks up exactly where it left off. On a rainy Chicago night, Dr. John Carter gets out of a cab and unloads his baggage -- not Abby, in this case, but in fact actual luggage. Was it raining the last time we saw this? I don't think so. That slapping sound I'm hearing is the heavy hand of Symbolism doing its aggressive work. Carter pauses on the street to contemplate the special mysteries of a pair of keys dangling from his hand. The gentle piano strains of Nervous Nausea in D Minor play hauntingly in the background.
Thunder rolls. Lightning strikes. Garth Brooks sits up in bed with a jolt. Carter steps quietly into a darkened apartment and tiptoes to the bed, where Abby lies sleeping, lit only by moonlight filtering in through the window. It bounces off the orange curtains, casting her in a gold glow that's a shade or fifty too literal for me. Suddenly, I miss Symbolism's bruising caress. And if I'm not mistaken, we should be hearing...oh, yes, there it goes, "Stringy Hair, Shriveled Soul: A Violin Concerto For Broken Lockharts." Gazing at her for a second, Carter touches her gently, then bends over and kisses her. We hear him sit on the bed. This is it, guys. This is the moment of truth. We waited all summer to find out what drama might come from this audacious pairing of ass and bedspread, and now we can release that bated breath.
Abby stirs, and opens her eyes tiredly. Searching the room, they alight on Carter and she wrinkles her brow. God, Abby, don't do that. She looks so old. Maybe she thinks rapid aging is the way to replace Gamma in Carter's heart. "Hi," he whispers. "Hi," she says groggily, trying to regain some mental clarity. It'll be awhile. Abby blinks hard. "When did you get back?" she yawns. "Just now," he answers. Abby frowns, and then immediately rolls over and fishes her pack of cigarettes out of the bedside drawer. Misery is her orgasm, and this is her afterglow smoke. "It's 5:30 AM in the morning," Abby says redundantly. Carter explains that his flight was delayed so that Abby can take a moment to tuck her hair petulantly behind her ears, still trying to stare more at the comforter than at her supposed love interest. "I missed you," he says. Abby gulps, and in that second, you can see her emotional walls fortifying themselves. As annoying as the coldness is, Maura Tierney's true to the character: Abby's trying to make herself invulnerable, freezing him out so he can't hurt her again. "Did you just let yourself in?" she mutters uncomfortably. Carter sucks wind a little on this one and then murmurs tenderly, "I'm sorry about how I left." Abby swallows a lump in her throat, waits until she can muster the fortitude, and looks up at Carter with fogged eyes. "Can I have my key back, please?" she husks, eyes flickering off his face again. Hurt and disbelief flit across Carter's face; he resignedly gets up, tosses the key into a bowl with a clang, and exits with a righteous door-slam. Abby leans against her pillow and begins convulsively twisting her face into a mask of confusion and sadness. She might be having a seizure, though.
In a nice-looking Chicago neighborhood, a woman walks her young daughter out to the sidewalk, where a blonde woman named Denise is waiting to a champagne-colored Volvo. None of these people is a series regular, which can only mean one thing: The makeup artists are about to get called to the set with extra catastrophe kits. Both mothers shepherd the kids -- a girl named Katie, a boy called Matthew, and Denise's daughter Hannah -- into The Back Seat of Certain Doom. "Sorry you got stuck with that Art Institute field trip," Other Mother says. "Luck of the draw," smiles Denise, pulling away from the curb.
Dr. Greg Pratt dashes toward the El station. That's about all.
Meanwhile, the kids laugh in the back seat of the Volvo Death Trap while Denise calls her office and laments that her datebook is full of appointments that can't be pushed. I guess she didn't plan ahead for this car pool thing. Smart, Denise. Maybe a little head bump will reshuffle your priorities. I wonder how we can effect such a thing. "Crap," Denise curses. The kids in the back giggle cutely and faux-gasp at her language. "Not you, the traffic," Denise says into the phone. "I'll call you back, Beth." No, Beth, she won't. You might want to take this opportunity to cancel all her appointments. Oh, and see if you can snag her office -- she has a lake view and keeps a flask of Grey Goose in the third desk drawer.
Pratt muscles his way to the head of the line and hops on an El at the last second. "Just made it, you know," he pants to no one, shrugging off his coat and sitting down to an attractive woman. "If I'm late again, my boss is going to kill me," he mutters. "You're a doctor?" smiles the woman. "Yeah," Pratt sighs. Then he looks at her and realizes that she has breasts. "Yes, I am," he continues smoothly, turning his body toward her and grinning widely so that she knows he's open for business. By which I mean, animal sex. She smiles back at him.
Hannah starts whining in the back seat of the Volvo Crumple Zone. Denise's phone rings, but as she answers it, she faints. "Mom?" screams Hannah. Then she realizes that they're totally and completely fucked, except hopefully she doesn't know that word, unless Denise is delinquent in addition to being potentially narcoleptic. ["Just a side note, here: what we're seeing was my #1 anxiety when I was a kid. My dad was perfectly fit and in excellent health, but I was always afraid, before I learned to drive, that I'd be in the car with him, he'd have some kind of episode, and I'd have to take the wheel. I used to have nightmares about it every week. So this scene was to me as all the toe business is to Heathen. Thanks, ER!" -- Wing Chun] The Volvo Toast Wagon slams into an open car door on the street and then hits an oncoming vehicle, riding up it and then flipping over as Denise tilts to one side, regaining consciousness. The car hits the street upside-down and skids. Just as Denise regains focus, she gazes dazedly out the windshield and sees that a careening Ford Injury is about to slam into her Volvo Insult. Bang. We roll into the credits as twisted metal and sparks imprison our four victims, and we wonder if the good product-placement folks at Volvo are going to mind terribly that their car was depicted as a flipper with no airbags. Which also sounds like a great euphemism for a flat-chested skanky hooker, an image I'm sure Volvo would also dislike.
Pratt flirts up a storm with the extra on the El. Because he's a dog. Remember? All that time they tried to make us like him last season: wasted. Thanks so fucking much. Right as he's blubbering about being an asset to the community, and is about to ask if his community can tap her asset, the train stops due to a blockage up ahead.
Cut to the accident scene. Conveniently, it seems to have happened right at County General. From a distance, we hear Abby exposit that the firefighters should have the woman and the three kids cut out of the wreckage very shortly. Michael Gallant sarcastically but cheerfully notes, "Great way to start a shift." Dr. Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen asks, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be graduating soon?" As they approach the sliding doors, Gallant answers, "Yesterday." You know, I hate when shows try to pick up the new season where the last one left off, yet write exposition so clumsily that the characters all act like they haven't seen each other in four months. Does anyone here really believe that Gallant wasn't glowing with pride in the two weeks before his graduation, grinning to everyone that this fine day was finally upon him? Come on. Anyway, they congratulate him, and Jerry tells that idiotic joke about how a med student who graduates last in his class is still a doctor. "I was fourth in my class," Gallant offers. Aw. Of course he was.
As the group enters the ER, it's chaotic, but not the usual kind of patient-overflow mayhem; it's construction issues. The whole ER's being redone ["again" -- Wing Chun] and the repairs are behind schedule. Everyone bitches about this.
Enter Dr. Kerry Weaver. She screams. It's shrill and painful, and it's all she's going to do for the hour, so get used to it. She's pissed that the total ER overhaul is too noisy, as if there are drills that come with a "subtle" setting and power saws equipped with mute buttons. "DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE SUSAN IS?" Kerry screams. Frank suggests that she's in the handicapped restroom. "Again?" Chen groans. Oh, I hope this is the start of the Susan Lewis Is Incontinent plot we've prayed for lo these many weeks.
A petite girl with a dark bob approaches the desk gingerly, right as Frank's ripping Weaver a new one about their low budget for copy paper. I would recap that for you but I fear it might make my brain bleed. That's how intricate it is. Lots of twists. "Excuse me," the new girl says politely. "BLAH BLAH BLAH," Weaver screams unintelligibly, hightailing it off the set so she can take a shot of olive oil to soothe her throat before her scene. Frank tries to dispense with her until the girl explains that she's starting work there today, and introduces herself as Neela Rasgotra. "Don't we hire Americans anymore?" Frank mutters to Jerry. Oh, piss off, Frank. At least she couldn't hide a small nation in her fleshy jowls.
Neela turns around to see Weaver attacking a workman's ladder with her cane. She's beating the shit out of it. A large part of me likes to think that Laura Innes is using this to take out her anger on the writers, who have given away her screen time to lots of useless nadslices.
Abby taps on the door of the bathroom, and Susan opens it sheepishly. Chuck squeezes past her and the handicapped placard and out the door, tucking in his shirt as Susan shrugs on her lab coat. Oh, Chuck, is that a cane in your pants, or are you just...you know, I'd have liked this scene a lot better if it had been a cane in his pants. And, Susan! Keep your trousers on at work. "I thought you two were divorced," Abby says lightly. "We are," Susan says. There's a pause. "Carter's back," Abby says. "He tried to apologize." Susan rolls her eyes. "Oh, no, did he screw it up? Why do they even bother?" she groans. For the first time, I'm noticing that Abby's hair is really, really long now. Since two weeks ago. Someone ought to point out to Maura Tierney that it actually makes her look not just old, but old and in severe denial. You're not Rapunzel, Maura. Chop, chop.
"I HAVE NOTHING TO DO BUT BE SHRILL AND FLOUNCE AROUND," Weaver screams at some guy in a hard hat.
"Dr. Lewis, you got yourself another TWA," Frank crabs. Neela looks momentarily confused, because she doesn't speak Shitslice. Susan gracefully introduces herself, compliments Neela's lovely outfit, and gently suggests that Nella wear something a little less nice time --something foreign bodily fluids won't mar. And for those of you keeping score, Neela exposits that she's a third-year medical student.
"SOMEDAY I'M GOING TO WIN AN EMMY™ FOR DIRECTING AND THEN I WON'T NEED THIS PART ANYMORE," Weaver shrieks at some poor sod somewhere.
Susan kindly asks whether Neela's seen a trauma before. Does Frank count? "No," Neela says as the medics wheel in Denise. Incredibly, not only is she conscious and with nary a hair out of place, but her head is still attached to the rest of her body. I'm not entirely sure how that happened. Maybe that can be Volvo's new slogan: "We prevent decapitation. We're not entirely sure how, but we're pretty fucking stoked about it."
Denise is complaining of hip and lower back pain. As all injured parents do, she begs the gathered medical personnel to help the kids. Susan instructs Neela to hang close and watch. up is Hannah, who's suffered a head injury and had her legs crushed between the truck and the seat. Ouch. "How many are incoming?" Weaver asks, in a normal tone of voice. "Three," Haleh replies. "You a doctor yet?" Weaver crabs to Gallant. Okay, come on, seriously, I hate this whole lunacy where everyone acts like they were on summer holiday just because the show was. I half expect them to be like, "Wow, Gallant, since when have you had a goatee, even though I have seen you every day since you started working here?" Cripes.
Weaver hits the Pratt warpath. She can't find him and orders Jerry to page him until he responds. As she whirls around to leave, Weaver stops short as she sees what might be the most blatant metastatement this show's ever made: an enormous, pasty ass. It's plumber's crack on one of the workmen, and quite honestly, it looks like a prosthetic. Either that or this extra's ass crack shoots halfway up his back.
Pratt sprints to work and spies the wreckage, shoving through the crowd so that he can get inside. He runs into Carter. "How was Africa?" he asks cheerfully. "Hot," Carter replies. There's some crapulence about Pratt not answering his pager. Hmm, a man after Weaver's own heart. Pratt jogs off to catch the tail end of the paramedic's bullet on the little boy, Matthew, who's being wheeled into the ER. He's got a scalp laceration from hitting the car's dome light, and a fractured wrist. "You're late," Weaver crabs. She tries to scold him, but Pratt ignores her.
This is quite possibly the funniest shot I've ever seen in an episode of ER. Carter strides inside wearing a faded denim jacket with puffy sleeves, a red backpack, loose khakis, and aviator shades. He looks like the Metaphysics Club president trying to attend a high-school kegger, scanning the room with puzzlement as if he can't figure out why "Bad To The Bone" didn't just play during his entrance. I had to pause the TiVo here so I could squeal with prolonged laughter once I rescued my jaw from the floor. Weaver passes. Her welcome: "You bring Kovac back with you?" Carter drifts past her without eye contact. "No," he replies. She stares at him just long enough that a giant pane of glass behind her can tip over, crashing to the ground and making her jump. The writers apparently think that she is Colonel Mustard, and this is Clue. Really, it's hilarious. First the ass, then the glass...if a live jackass walks in (other than Carter, I mean), then we have some really original and special rhyming riotousness in store.
Carter enters the temporary doctors' lounge and scans for his locker. Swinging from the handle is a plastic grocery store bag; with a knowing head-shake, he dumps his backpack and sits down to root through the plastic bag. He comes across two production stills...er, very meaningful photographs taken from afar by an interested well-wisher -- from the night he and Abby went to dinner with pre-disease Eric and his child fiancée. Smiling bitterly, his mouth slightly agape, Carter sets his jaw in disbelief and blows out his cheeks. We fade to black thinking what a bad choice that was, given that it only enhanced how puffy and bloated Carter has gotten in the last "two weeks." Right. Yes.
Matthew -- the lone boy in the Volvo Expensive Special Effect -- welcomes us back from the break with a scream. Gallant is with him, checking his vitals, and introducing himself with his new title, "Doctor Gallant." And because, yet again, the Exposition Fairy went on a drug-and-alcohol bender before passing out in a pool of drool on top of this script, we're reminded that Gallant has graduated since we last saw him. This time, it's Pratt being all amazed and jocular. And you just know Gallant would've been waving his graduation day in front of Pratt's face -- pleasantly, but proudly -- so I feel justified in thinking this continued clumsy writing is insulting to our intelligence. In two words, TPTB, suck it. Oh, and also, Matthew has a broken arm and a bruised belly.
While tending to Matthew, however, Pratt's crotch radar pings and he abruptly catches sight of Neela in Trauma Yellow. He's all, Oooh, fresh meat, and I'm a carnivore. Gallant exposits that Neela's a new med student, and Pratt hastily excuses himself from Matthew's care...
...so that he can subtly peek into Trauma Yellow and insinuate himself into Neela's orbit. "Need some help?" he asks, innocently. Susan welcomes him and resumes explaining to Neela what tests comprise a trauma panel. In sum: a lot. Pratt stares at Neela with a hungry smile. "I'm Dr. Greg Pratt," he oozes. She introduces herself politely. Denise -- because she's so selfish -- decides that because she's the one who's on the slab bleeding and moaning, this medical-care scene must somehow be all about her. "I was driving...and then we were upside-down," she moans. Pratt could not give a shit. "Neela. That's Indian, right?" he pants. Susan notices this, because she is not blind, or deaf, or ignorant, and also she read her stage directions. Like all ER patients, Denise mumbles that she wants them to care for her daughter Hannah first, and like all ER patients, she is shot down by the doctor who is trying to save her life and really wishes she would pipe down for a second.
Neela reads that Denise's hemocue is a low 8.1 so that Pratt can smarm, "We need to find the source of the blood loss." Malik decides it's his turn to notice the flirting, and he duly looks up with a confused expression. Pratt, smooth as silk, makes his move. He sidles up behind Neela and breathes sweet nothings into her ear: "It could be hemothorax -- bleeding in the chest." As Neela nods politely, Susan nixes this diagnosis. Pratt whips out some jargon designed to remove even the most stubborn of pants: "Or it could be an intra-abdominal hemorrhage." How Neela has not thrown him down and taken him roughly on the trauma room floor is baffling to me. Finally, Pratt tries to close the deal. "Or, it could be something else," he says with an eyebrow twiddle. "Like an unstable pelvic fracture, Professor Pratt?" snarks an irritated Susan, jabbing at Denise's pelvis and receiving a gasp of agony in return. Pratt smirks.
Ready for his shift, Carter wanders the ER amid the hammering and crackling-electricity sounds of a construction site. Frank tells him crankily that his grandmother's estate lawyer has telephoned every day trying to reach him. Carter ignores this -- and indeed, everyone else around him -- as he heads into Trauma Yellow. "What have we here?" he asks pleasantly. Susan gives him the bullet, and then adds curiously, "How was Africa?" Carter swallows hard. "It was...great," he coughs. Susan sends him door to help with Hannah, which of course elicits a wail of panic from Denise.
Abby and Chen are holding court with Hannah in Trauma Green. "Welcome home, stranger," Chen says. PEOPLE. IT'S BEEN TWO WEEKS. SHUT UP. Abby tries to ignore Carter, but that becomes impossible when Chen is called away to attend to the third kid from the accident, leaving the ex-lovebirds alone.
Now, in the actual show, this scene appears to be a needlessly unprofessional snitfest about whether Hannah needed traction for her two broken legs, and if so, what kind. But I think we all know what the subtext was. "I'm a bitter, emotionally crippled hag," Abby says. "I'm an oddly boyish-looking prissypants," Carter replies. "You went to Africa without consulting me and now I want to withhold sex," Abby replies. "I love you, or at least, I love who you'd be if you completely changed everything about your personality," Carter says. "You hurt my feelings, but I can't tell you that, because I prefer to speak in subtext or just suck on my cheeks and say nothing," spits Abby. "Well, your brother's insane and he pissed on my grandmother's burial plot and you're completely closed off and unavailable, so fuck off," Carter fires back. "I still would probably nail you, though," Abby allows. "Well, then. Maybe that's okay," Carter answers.
Neela performs an ultrasound on Denise while Pratt hovers over her shoulder. "Morrison's Pouch is between the liver and the right kidney," he whispers. Neela, just so you know, that's not a tongue depressor in his pocket. Chen enters at this moment and stops short, immediately noticing that Pratt has inserted himself into Neela's left ass pocket. "Can I steal a nurse, Susan?" Chen interrupts icily. Pratt turns his head with a smile that's half-sheepish, half-affectionate, and introduces Neela. "Nice to meet you," snaps Chen. Susan's face registers the tension in the room. Pratt turns back to Neela and continues giving a play-by-play on the ultrasound. Chen begins to boil over: "Malik, can you join me?" she barks, exiting. Pratt notices this, but trucks onward with his bizarre seduction. What an ass. I hate Chen and all, but how stupid can one guy be? If you're going to be a prick, be smart about it. Don't hit on someone under your girlfriend's nose. If something happened in the last two weeks -- that monstrously long mysterious two weeks -- to ruin their relationship, then fine, but this random and unexplained asshattery is pretty lame considering he spent all last season wooing her.
In Trauma Green, Carter deadpans to Abby, "I found your present hanging on my locker. Subtle. Very subtle." No kidding. But what's more pathetic is that all the bag had in it was two articles of clothing and two photographs. Clearly Carter was not staking much of a claim.
Denise's pelvis is wrapped in a sheet, with the two loose ends crossed and held taut by Neela -- informal traction for the pelvic fracture. Everyone vacates to accomplish other things, leaving her alone and a little confused, looking around from side to side as if to say, "Uh, now what?" Which...oh, damn. That's the name of the episode. Hang on, I need to wash my hands.
Chen works on the third little girl, who seems to have sustained five rib fractures. "Get help," a passing Susan instructs. She alights at Gallant's curtain and invites him to brief her on Matthew's case. Cheerfully, Gallant announces that there's a scalp laceration, a left wrist fracture, and a bruise from the seatbelt. Susan says, "Rule out an intraperitoneal injury," and it's the weirdest thing -- Sherry Stringfield never stumbles over this stuff, but that line came out like it was Take Thirty and she'd flubbed it too many times or started laughing, and had to force herself to get through the word error-free. Pratt then drops by with Denise's x-rays and Susan sighs. "Call angio. Reserve a room for my pelvis," she instructs someone. I only included that line because...well, you know.
Chen needs help, so Pratt obliges. "Sure you can tear yourself away from that med student for a moment?" Chen sneers. "She's doing fine," Pratt says casually as Chen glares at Neela through the window into Trauma Yellow. Neela notices this and shifts uncomfortably. "Are they together?" Neela asks of a passing Chuny. "Oh, yeah," Chuny grins, her smile dripping with delight at office gossip. Neela digests this impassively. "My hands are starting to cramp," she notices, a pleading note in her voice. Chuny leaves to get some clamps as Neela subtly starts to shake a little. Denise senses that this is her invitation to talk about herself, rehashing that she blacked out before the accident. "How are Matthew and Katie?" Denise asks. "I don't know," Neela says uncomfortably. "Has someone called their parents?" Denise asks, edging into panic. She talks and talks as Neela struggles to retain control of the sheets holding Denise's pelvis in place. It would be kinky if it wasn't a trauma room. Denise catches sight of Carter and Abby frantically starting to work in Trauma Green, and correctly deduces that Hannah's in trouble. Neela has no answers for her, and continues watching Chen and Pratt.
Hannah has started to crash. "Think her T-waves look peaked?" Abby says. "No," Carter replies. Translation: "Are we ever going to converse like humans out of the workplace so that we can avoid compromising patient care here?" "No." Suddenly, Hannah goes into v-tach and they charge the paddles. Denise flips out in the room and starts to fidget. "Ma'am, don't move," Neela says desperately, tugging at the sheets. Denise herself then crashes -- sort of a sympathy v-tach, really, which is so sweet. "Denise? Mrs. Johnson!" Neela shouts, valiantly trying to shake her while not losing hold of the sheets. "I need some help in here!" Neela shouts futilely. No one hears her.
Dr. Elizabeth Corday appears out of nowhere, riding in on her magic carpet of pointlessness. I wish they'd give her something to do. She curtly demands to know who Neela is and what's going on, and gets polite answers to both. "Are you from the East End?" Elizabeth asks. "No, West London," Neela says, confused, and rightly, because Elizabeth appears to be asking if Neela is from the poorer area of the city, which is something she would discern from Neela's accent, which sounds cockney-free to me. Shut up, Elizabeth.
Pratt and Chen notice the brouhaha, and long story short, they go inside and decide that it sucks that Denise's labs aren't back yet. "You," Chen brats, nodding at Neela. "Go pick up her labs." Still holding the sheet, Neela replies in puzzlement, "Right now?" Chen bitches, "No, Thursday," and pairs it with the mightiest of eye-rolls. She is pure evil. I know she's jealous, but seriously, Chen, take it out on the nutlint you're dating and not on the new girl. I think I'd have hated Chen in high school. Kindly, for once, Pratt says quietly, "Take the elevator in the lobby." Guess that's helpful. Neela dashes out.
As Carter and Abby labor to save Hannah, they continue acting hostile to one another, because they are both the least professional people on the planet and the poster children for the perils of workplace romances. Or in this case, workplace deluced-sex-of-convenience. "Her T-waves are peaked," Abby observes smugly. "You should've listened to..." "Can we do this later?" Carter snaps. Oh, what, now he wants to change the subject? Okay. These people are both terrible now. I don't give a whit about either of them. If that doesn't change soon, I'm going to stop watching. I'm going to sit here and recap an hour of my halogen lamp every Thursday. Will it flicker? What setting will it be on? We can only dream of knowing.
In the lab area, Neela impatiently asks who's handling Denise's labs, which still aren't complete. "Dr. Shine," says The Only Male Clerk Anywhere In This Hospital Except For Reception. Over his protests, Neela bursts into a restricted area. "Won't happen again," she says brightly, then roams the lab calling for Dr. Shine. For some reason -- and I honestly have no idea what it is -- the name Dr. Shine makes me giggle a little. I feel like Dr. Shine is Mr. Clean's dorky younger brother who turned to his studies because he just didn't couldn't compete with his sibling's raw muscle and innate tidiness. Also, I haven't slept lately, and I have the generally incomprehensible and deranged mind of a drunk twelve-year-old. Anyway, when she finds Dr. Shine working on the analysis, Neela urgently informs him that Denise is crashing in the ER, so Dr. Shine shows her his slide. Pratt will be so jealous. Not least because Dr. Shine is sporting a spiffy bouffant hairdo.
Neela sprints back into Trauma Yellow just as Elizabeth is ordering a transfusion of two units of type-specific blood. "No!" Neela cries. "She has an auto-immune hemolytic anemia! If you give her type-specific she'll go into renal failure." Chen scowls and demands the lab slip. Neela desperately insists that she went over the slide with Dr. Shine himself. As Pratt smiles, impressed, Neela rattles off a few other factoids while Chen grabs the phone and impatiently tries to contact Dr. Shine. "The anemia could've made her black out," Neela concludes. "Damn, girl," Pratt says under his breath, grinning at her. Neela positively glows. We fade to black hoping Pratt will not become the battery powering Neela's inner light.
Phones ring all over the place. Lines are crossed; no one's getting through to the right desk. Frank is crabby, and this time, he's actually got a good reason. Pratt glides into the scene and points Neela in the direction of the new-patient charts. "Grab an easy one and come find me when you're ready," he instructs with a glib grin. As Neela studies the selection, unsure where to start, Gallant turns from the patient board and watches her with the kind of affection that comes from having been there and, indeed, done that. "Med student?" he inquires. "First day?" She nods with a smile. "Are you Indian?" Gallant then asks. "Yeah, Punjabi," she says. "Perfect," crabs Frank under his breath. Go the fuck away, Frank. He's gone beyond being amusingly cranky and straight into racist and pathetic and an insult to the actor who plays him. Gallant wonders if this is a huge adjustment for Neela, and she puts him in his place by informing him that her family moved to England when she was eleven and she did her undergrad in molecular biology and biophysics at Yale. Gallant has nothing to say. Which he shouldn't. He already kind of put his foot in it, and I'm not sure why this is even a necessary story beat. Couldn't we have conveyed her impressive academic credentials another way? "Let's get you started," Gallant smiles, grabbing a chart. "Oooh, penile discharge. Not your ideal first patient," he groans. Hee. I may not love the facial hair, or the bloat, but I can't stop loving Gallant. He grabs a different chart and escorts her away.
And speaking of penile discharge, it's time to throw Paul McCrane his weekly rotten bone. Dr. Robert "Rocket" Romano shows up for the sole purpose of bitching at Weaver, whose lone function is bitching at air. And Romano's new outcropping of facial hair looks from a distance like a rare skin disease. Not an auspicious start to the season. "Who is that?" Romano asks, glaring in Neela's direction. "The new University of Calcutta carpetbaggers you people insist on hiring," Frank spits, and then goes so far as to imply that Neela's Yale education came from her father being a rich drug lord who donated money for a new building. This is actually just embarrassing. I didn't want to recap that part because I'm so tired of Frank's blatant bigotry, but then I decided it should go down for posterity so that we can all remember it and eviscerate the writers until the end of time. They should have just stuck to the exchange: "How's the arm?" Frank asks. "Gone. How's the prostate?" Romano replies. Heh. "What's with the beard?" Frank says. "I heard the ladies like it," Romano retorts, bored and more eager to rant about the loud, unfinished construction. Everyone blames Weaver for authorizing it. Chen calls out halfheartedly, "Dr. Romano, you're back!" He bites, "Try to hide your wild enthusiasm at my return, I find overt displays of emotion embarrassing." He spits his way off-camera.
In Trauma Green, Carter decides Hannah will be fine and glares at Abby. "Call me if you need me," he says. Abby looks up and meets his eye squarely. "I won't," she insists. Oh, the layers. There's at least one and a half in that exchange.
Pratt corrals Carter to help treat a patient -- an old Hey! It's That Guy! type who has HIV and has a worsening throat infection. Pratt noses around about Carter and Abby, but gets nowhere. "Jing-Mei's pissed off, too," he sighs. "What's Deb upset about?" Carter asks. "Misunderstanding," shrugs Pratt. "What'd you do, anyway?" Carter pauses, then groans. "Oh, I don't know," Carter lies. "I left, I guess." Ya think?
As we cut inside the room, Pratt exposits that this Mr. Williams has had HIV for two years. Williams insists that he's been taking his meds as directed, but that he's not on the triple cocktail for HIV because he can't afford it. Carter takes a look at his throat, and then stiffens and breaks the news that it's oral thrush that's spread to his esophagus. "It's an opportunistic infection, which means you now qualify for Medicaid," Carter begins gently. "[But] it's an AIDS-defining infection." Williams looks sucker-punched. He blinks sadly, and oh, he just has one of those faces...I can't handle old people getting bad news. I'm sure I've said that before. And this one's tugging at me. "I have AIDS," Williams repeats, confused. Carter quietly nods and offers to write him a prescription and hook him up with a financial counselor who can start the paperwork for Medicaid. Williams just sits there, suddenly empty.
Susan and Abby pedeconference about her Carter problems. "He came straight from the airport to your place. That's gotta tell you something," Susan suggests. "What, that he's horny?" Abby retorts. "Or, that he really missed you and felt badly [sic] about leaving you that way," Susan says with a touch of impatience at how obtuse Abby's being. She suggests that Abby do the unheard-of and actually tell Carter how much it hurt her. Fat chance, Sue. Abby and Carter can't have sane conversations. "Give him a chance to make up for it," Susan says. She barges into the women's room, then stops short when she sees it's out of order due to the construction. She's not interested in using the upstairs loo, so she trucks on into the men's room right as Abby's wailing, "He shows up like he never went away and acts like he wasn't a jerk for leaving like that!"
Cowboy Lewis strolls into the bathroom. "Howdy, boys," she says to a mortified Frank and Malik, swaggering over to the hitchin' post and tying up her trusty steed Abby outside the stall door. Malik washes his hands, debunking all kinds of myths about men and their bathroom antics. "Make up for it how?" Abby wonders, making sure her story thread continues as much as possible. "Flowers, a nice dinner...if you're really mad, jewelry," Susan suggests, probably mostly in jest. Abby stares emptily at the wall. "I could use a new transmission for my car," she cracks. "You're a real romantic, you know that?" teases Susan.
Gallant and Neela work up an older woman. It's a bunch of medical hoo-ha that we can boil down to the following morsel of immature delight: Neela feels for the thrill over the graft. It's an infection, basically. The woman oohs and aahs over Neela's skin and its lovely color, and oh my God, we get it. We get so many things about this episode. We even got a few things we didn't want to -- little visual viruses that infected us when we weren't looking. We GET that Neela's Indian. We GET that no one in Chicago apparently has ever seen anyone from that part of the world. We even get that Gallant has graduated, Pratt is a shit, Chen is a bitch, Abby is fucked up, Carter is drifting, Weaver's crabby, Romano's in a bad mood, and Susan's just Susan. We understand these things. All of them were the same last season. Can we move on? Can we? Please?
Gallant orders Neela to check the woman's vitals every fifteen minutes until they can get her to the OR to have her abscess drained. She nods competently, and Gallant smiles proudly, clearly relishing doing for Neela what others did -- or maybe didn't do -- for him.
Susan continues encouraging Abby to talk to Carter. "Haven't you punished him enough?" she wonders. "It's not about punishing him," Abby fibs. Susan pauses because she smells Romano coming and thinks it's funny to threaten to slice off his other arm if he reams her about anything. "Get a saw. I'll hold him down," Abby offers snarkily.
"AREN'T YOU BORED ON THIS SHOW?" Weaver screams. "OH, TOTALLY, THEY'VE MADE MY CHARACTER A BOORISH CARTOON," Romano bellows. "THIS TOTALLY BLOWS. LET'S GO GET DRUNK AFTER WE WRAP," Weaver offers. "RIGHT ON," yells Romano.
Susan hears the phone ringing endlessly; Frank exposits that he and Jerry aren't answering anything except the two lines that appear to be functioning. He then tells an approaching Carter that Gamma's lawyer is stopping by to see him with some paperwork. And you know what? It doesn't matter. He never shows up. Moving on.
Abby and Carter end up near each other, actively trying to avoid acknowledging each other's presence. Susan gestures at Abby to initiate conversation, but Abby resists with a petulant head-shake and scowl. Carter sneaks a peek at her and they both bolt in opposite directions. Then they bump into each other around the other side of the desk. "Hey," he says. "Hey," she says. "Uh, want to get a cup of coffee?" he asks. "Okay," she says. They leave. My God. Efficient communication. Never thought them capable of it.
Williams flags down Carter to tell him that his Medicaid card won't come in for a few weeks, yet he can't afford the prescription without it. Frustrated with the bureaucracy, Carter immediately offers to call the pharmacy himself. I thought he was going to offer to pay it himself, but I guess Ed Asner cured him of checkbook fever. "Why don't we just take him out back and shoot him," Pratt mutters to Carter. "It'd be easier."
Neela's elderly patient natters on pointlessly about her dead husband while Neela takes her blood. She encourages Neela to find a man to marry as soon as she can. "He doesn't have to be handsome. Just make sure he treats you right," the woman advises. Blah blah, Neela promises to return soon to check on her, and exits the room beaming.
"SWEET MOTHER MARY, WON'T SOMEONE GIVE ME LARYNGITIS?" Weaver screams and screams.
Neela finds the drop-off point and deposits her patient's blood for the lab. Pratt oozes up to her and asks how she's doing. "Dr. Gallant's been very helpful," she says. "I'm pretty sure he has been," snickers Pratt. "Need another patient?" Neela nods eagerly and follows a cheerful Pratt. We pan to Chen, who glares evilly at them, and in this shot she just looks so dried-up and old and over-made-up that it's pretty sad. Also, I couldn't care less.
The phone rings. It catches Neela's eye; she answers it and then frowns. "I can't hear you very well," she shouts into the receiver. There's noisy mayhem everywhere. She tells Frank it's long-distance for Carter, and Frank orders her to take a message. "They say it's important," Neela says apologetically. "Someone has died."
Pause. And then, the worst news that could befall this show: "Someone named Kovac," Neela says. "A Dr. Luka Kovac." Chen blinks in disbelief. Chuny reacts as if Neela just told her that her socks didn't match -- which sucks, because all crappy petitions aside, Chuny totally slept with Luka and ought to be pretty perturbed that he's dead, thus removing the prospect of any ex sex. Gallant and Jerry seem a bit sadder and slightly confused, and we fade to black wondering why this show doesn't allow its characters to show much emotion at times like this. I wanted tears.
Abby and Carter stroll with their coffee. "How was it?" she asks softly. "It was...incredible," he admits. "And it was terrible." Carter tells her about the dying, and the disease, the undersupplied and understaffed hospitals. He praises the country's beauty and its ugly realities as Abby listens, focused on his face the entire time they're walking. It's the most they've connected in at least a full season. "It was a life-changing experience," he says. "I just...don't know how yet."
Carter and Abby cross a busy street during a long pause. Abby suddenly furrows her brow. "Where's Luka?" she asks, seemingly confused. I buy it. Carter doesn't. "Is that what this is about?" he asks tightly. "No," Abby spits. "Luka's fine. Luka's more than fine," Carter ill-fatedly sasses. This annoys Abby; she can't discern his meaning and of course Carter insists he means nothing at all by his schoolyard tone. Abby stops walking with a frustrated sigh. "Do you know we don't talk?" she observes at long last. Carter pretends not to get it. "Your mouth is moving, and you give the impression of having a real conversation, but when you finish I have no idea what you're thinking," Abby shrugs. Hey, it cuts both ways, Frown Lines. Carter snaps that he's just trying to tell her about Africa, but Abby doesn't believe this and stalks off toward the hospital. "You knew I didn't want you to go and you went anyway," she blurts, upset. "What were you trying to do? Hurt me?" Carter more or less points out that it's not all about Abby -- except in this case he's totally lying, because I don't think for a second that she didn't play enormously into his decision to flee. Abby reams him for being prepared to vanish without even telling her, and Carter shakes his head and swears he wasn't trying to hurt her -- he just wanted to do something special and meaningful, which is fine and believable because he was grieving. But he's so deluded if he thinks he wasn't hoping she'd be hurt by his gruff departure. The two of them get off on hurting each other and then doing this excruciating dance afterward, and it's completely dull and unoriginal to watch at this point.
Abby sets her jaw. "Did you think about me?" she demands. "Yes," Carter says. "What did you think?" she asks. Carter doesn't reply, so she presses him, and her maneuver is met with silence and wiggled eyebrows. Carter's both avoiding the question and indignant that she's asking it. "I don't know why you bothered to come back," she gripes, spinning on her heel and booking toward the hospital. "Oh, you're walking away?" he accuses. "Yes!" she shouts. "Fine, walk away, it's what you do best!" he actually fires at her. She doesn't appreciate it, although it's not technically inaccurate, and calls him out on his own bullshit. "Want to know what you do best? You make this all about my problems, but you know what, you have some problems, too," she yells. Then she loses steam: "You've got some...really big...problems." She should've quit while she was ahead. Carter starts railing at her and the world about how he shouldn't have returned, because now Luka gets to save the world from all that ails it and all Carter's doing is failing to get a pharmacy to give an AIDS patient a financial break. But he trails off in the middle of his snit fit, at first peeved that Abby's ignoring him, and then concerned because of what he sees. Because while he was ranting, Chuny located Abby and -- muted to us -- whispered news of Luka's death. Abby sucks wind and mouths, "WHAT?" Then she shudders and covers her mouth and visibly crumples a little inside. She turns toward Carter, speechless.
Cut to Carter at the front desk, trying to get Kisangani folks on the phone. Everyone else at the desk is morose: Frank's asking if Luka has any local family, and Susan's quietly to Abby, her hand resting on her friend's back. Neela watches all of this uncomfortably and decides to back away and tend to her patients.
Neela crosses paths with Gallant. "Hey," he says. "You okay?" Neela shrugs that she didn't know Luka, so Gallant fills in that he was an Attending, but sadly, he denies that Luka was much of a friend. I guess that's true, but my God, that would've been a tasty on-screen buddy pairing. I Spy...my loins on fire! Oh yeah. Neela informs him that she's on her way to check on the old woman, and Gallant reiterates that she should check on the woman until the OR folks come claim her.
Neela enters the woman's room, only to notice that she's not there. She bumps into Pratt on the way out, and presents to him another patient he'd assigned her. Chen overhears the bullet and tags along, stopping with them at the patient's gurney in time to hear Neela conclude that the man's constipated from Vicodin use. The predator senses weakness, and moves in for the kill: Chen snottily asks Neela a few statistical questions, then questions whether the correct diagnosis might be to test for colon cancer. And because County is the most professional place ever, Chen brats all of this right in front of the patient. I hate these people. Every last one of them. Neela and Gallant are my only hopes. Pratt watches Chen's jealous, bitter behavior with something close to disbelief, but sticks by her diagnosis and tells Neela to proceed with the test.
"You were pretty rough on her," Pratt scolds Chen privately. Well, in front of Gallant, but that's okay because we want him on-screen. Pratt promises he was simply acting as a teacher and that Chen simply misunderstood whatever she thinks she saw. That's pretty condescending. Pratt has to know that, by now, Chen can fully tell when his penis is at attention. "Come on now, you were all over her," she steams. "It was humiliating and it was embarrassing. Don't make a fool of me." Pratt insists that he wasn't, but this argument is interrupted by Malik's panicking that an old woman is bleeding out in an exam room.
It's Neela's old woman. The patient is crashing, and her blood's pooling all over the floor. You could chlorinate that and host the Olympics. Gallant insists that she's his patient; as Chen scolds him for leaving her unattended, Gallant attempts to help resuscitate her. "She needs a hearse and a pine box," mutters Pratt. Neela rushes in and immediately accepts blame for this, but Gallant insists that she was his responsibility. Neela explains that she thought the woman had been taken to surgery already because her room was empty, and Malik shares that he moved her in here to free some space. It seems that Neela either didn't know or didn't think to check the patient board. Chen's nostrils flare and shoot fire. "It's not her fault!" Gallant booms, borderline obsessively. "It's mine!" He's trying to protect her on her first day, I think, and it's pretty endearing. Neela watches this unfold, horrified.
In the doctors' lounge, Carter tries to reach Luka's relatives in Zagreb, with no success. Abby vacantly shuffles in -- her eyes red and her demeanor that of someone emotionally spent -- and sits down in a daze. "What are you doing?" she asks quietly. Carter smacks his head and remembers that The Alliance would have Luka's relatives' contact information. He then spies a large unclaimed duffel bag, and pilfers it as he tells Abby he's headed for Congo. Busily, he throws hospital supplies into the duffel. "Wait, you're going back there? Why?" Abby panics. "Because I left him there," Carter insists brokenly. "I should've stayed." Abby claims not to understand any of this, even though it's pretty clear to me. Carter completely ignores this, dumping more and more supplies into his bag. "What are you doing, Doctor?" Weaver asks casually. Hey! Weaver's not in all-caps! Congratulations on discovering your lower vocal register, Kerry. A nation thanks you. Carter tells her to bill him for what he's taking.
Pratt spies Neela mourning her first fatality -- the forgotten old woman -- and tries to comfort her. "What's a TWA?" she asks, a flash of anger in her eyes. "The old man at the front desk called me that this morning and I don't know what it means," she says. Pratt scowls, snorting angrily and hesitating. When she meets his stare defiantly, he answers with a rueful tone, "Third-world assassin." Neela blinks, and then smiles tartly. Pratt watches her for a second and then invites her to follow him somewhere.
Sure enough, Pratt takes Neela to the bedside of Denise, whose life Neela saved. This is the predictable moment of redemption for the shell-shocked rookie. It would've been crappy, yet somehow more interesting, if they'd shit all over her for her mistake and left it that way. Pratt leaves Neela smiling proudly at Denise.
Carter bursts out of the ER with a full head of steam. He promises to call her from Paris. Abby pleads with him not to go until it's safer there. "I can't leave him," Carter vows. Abby begs him one last time to go, giving the chase that might've kept him there in the first place had she done things differently back then. And had he not had a giant totem pole up his ass. "John, stay! I can't keep doing this!" she shouts, her voice breaking. Carter slows a little, but does not stop, nor does he look back. The camera pulls out to show Abby standing alone, shocked and hurt and alone.