By Heathen
Previously on Energetic Romps, Elizabeth rode Dr. Diego's love stallion until it foamed at the mouth. Also, Abby got her ex to co-sign for a loan, and Luka admitted to missing being in the Congo.
The faint strains of African music bring us up inside an El train. We pan across bored passengers, and a man frantically yapping about the stock market into his mobile phone, until we finally rest on an amused Dr. Luka "The African Queen" Kovac. He stares a personal injury lawyer's ad and a poster for The Lion King, smiling a bit condescendingly all the while. Apparently, once you've had malaria, puppets and Elton John songs no longer interest you. ["Sometimes that happens to you even when you haven't had malaria." -- Wing Chun]
Luka enters the new-look County General and accepts Chuny's boring greeting with a smile. "Someone redecorated?" he asks. "Same patients, different furniture," she says. Frank doesn't even give him the kind of warm, racist salutations we've come to expect from the resident mouthpiece of Mephistopheles. He just says, "Call Weaver." Which anagrams to "reveal claw," which I believe further fingers him as a minion, and holy God, I promise that's the last time Frank and the verb "fingers" will appear together in any of my prose.
Malarkey overhears Luka's name and eagerly introduces himself. His first name is Archie, which is so perfect considering he's full of bunk. Chuny tries to get Malarkey's help on something, but he scurries away, muttering something about needing to go on a lab run. "The ducklings could use some guidance -- we're short on Attendings," Frank mutters. Just as Luka's trying to locate the new lounge, a lunatic screaming about coyotes as messengers of evil gets forcibly escorted through the lobby to a room. He's screaming and protesting and fighting them. "All Hallows Eve, and the loonies are on the loose," Frank sighs. Luka resists pointing out that Frank himself is on the loose all the time.
A woman frantically gets Luka's attention. She's cradling a baby who fell out of a cart. "I guess I didn't strap him in right," she blubbers. Except she's holding a baby that doesn't look big enough to fall out of a shopping cart, so unless "didn't strap him in" means "dropped him on the ground," then I'm not totally sure I can picture this. "Did he hit his head?" Luka asks. "I'm not sure," she admits. The serene little boy at her side affirms that the baby did seem to smack his head, but didn't start crying afterward. Luka whisks the baby off to a trauma room; the family follows.
A honey-haired Abby lookalike played by Linda Cardellini is looking for Abby, ostensibly to ask her what precise dye she used on her hair, for optimal matching purposes; Frank brushes her off, because she's just dirty lint on his human experience. Then, either her instincts or the sound-effects editor fails her, because she whips her head to the side to react to a giant commotion that actually occurs a second after her head-swivel.
Chuny and Dr. Greg "The Jerk" Pratt run down the hall, where Malarkey is freaking out, shitting the brick that will lay the foundation for the funeral home at which his career will be cremated. It seems Security locked Wile E. Coyote in one of the rooms so that he could go nuts and rant about evil messengers while everyone watches, eats popcorn, and places bets on how long it'll take for him to choke on his own bile. One of the guards gets the bright idea to shoot pepper spray into the room, because he'd like the chance to use it for something other than seasoning his steak dinner. Scornfully, Pratt points out that it'll cause mayhem when it wafts into other areas of the hospital, so he and Dr. Nick "Wet Hot American" Cooper grab a gurney and a mattress, charge into the room, and pin the man down so that Malarkey can stick him with some calming Haldol. Trouble is, Malarkey's busy shitting the Malarkey & Sons Bereavement Parlor atrium, and so can't do anything but hold the needle and quiver. Chuny just stands there staring at Malarkey instead of doing something useful, like grabbing the needle herself. This, of course, is like handing a cape and tights to the new girl: she charges down the hall, rips the syringe out of Malarkey's hand, and barges into the room with superhero authority. "Uh, the thigh!" Malarkey titters unhelpfully just as New Girl authoritatively stabs Wile E. Coyote's neck and starts injecting. Pratt frowns at her. He didn't remember Abby having such white teeth. From behind her, a newly arrived Dr. Robert "Body Parts" Romano groans, "Please tell me you work here." With a bright smile and an air of competent nonchalance, Linda Cardellini smiles and says, "Sam Taggart. New nurse." We smash into the credits wishing she were Haleh, because we'd love to see Haleh delivering some whoop-ass and a needle to some doomed thrasher's neck.
A kindly African-American woman taps on the window of triage and says, "How much longer, little girl?" Sam is tempted to drop her pants, squeal, "Whee! I'm THIS many!" and hold up her middle finger. But she resists, because that's not the kind of behavior that gets you into the opening credits. "You're twenty down," Sam says instead, politely. "Twenty minutes?" the woman asks hopefully. Sam shoots her a look that clearly says, "Not even close," and promises to do what she can. Romano sweeps through the room like an ill wind. "What's today's excuse for triage being a stinking, overpopulated cesspool of humanity?" he bitches. "The healthcare system?" Sam fires back in a really stilted, obvious attempt to make her look spunky. Quietly, Sam draws Malarkey's attention to the woman and asks him to rush her through, claiming it's just a hangover and will be a very quick exam. Malarkey suddenly decides that Luka needs him in the trauma room and toddles off. Probably to call someone useful.
Romano then wonders aloud which attending should bear the brunt of his daily rage. "I just came on," Dr. Susan "Lovely & Amazing" Lewis offers. Frank exposits that Luka's busy treating a baby. "I thought he was dead," yawns Romano. "Hey, look at that, nice hand!" Susan exclaims. Romano offers to let her see it in action. "Buy me a drink first," she teases. Insert "I think the handicapped toilet needs plunging -- see you in five" joke here. Wait, I just did.
In Trauma Yellow, Luka first asks for a refresher on Neela's name, and then gives instruction as he's treating the baby. Malarkey pops up, all ready to offer assistance simply because he knows he's not needed to do anything more than answer the phone. Luka tells the emotional mother, Paula, that baby Adam may have a skull fracture. Malarkey taps Luka and tells him Weaver's on hold for him in the hallway, so he leaves Malarkey in charge and promises the mother that they'll get a head CT. Neela asks Malarkey to let her draw the blood. "It's not a good student case," Malarkey says, deepening to his grown-up voice. "You're students?" gasps Paula. "She is. I'm a doctor," puffs up Malarkey. Neela shoots him a doleful glare while Chuny watches, frowning.
Romano demonstrates his Utah arm, contracting his biceps and triceps to show how it makes his droid arm work. Pratt calls him RoboDoc, which of course rankles The Mechanical One and leads to him sniping about Pratt's habit of pissing off all the other departments in the hospital. ["It's also a nice shout-out to Paul McCrane's role in RoboCop." -- Wing Chun] "Better oil that thing. Starting to get squeaky," Pratt smarms. "Get out of here," spits Romano. He resumes the demonstration, but a turn of his wrist accidentally causes his rubber fingers to crush the glass vial he was holding. "I wouldn't use that to do a rectal," Susan deadpans. Yeah, but it would add so much dramatic tension to Turn Your Head and Cough.
It's pointed out to Malarkey that baby Adam's sats are dropping, because Malarkey wouldn't recognize dropping sats if they were plunging down a buxom neckline. He does realize, because he has eyes, that the baby isn't moving air, and must therefore be having trouble either breathing or securing a U-Haul. He demands a blade. "You're going to intubate?" gapes Neela. Naturally, Paula panics again as Neela tries to cover for her shock by calmly explaining what that means. Clearing her throat, Neela wonders if perhaps they should fetch Luka.
Outside, Luka snipes away to Weaver about scheduling and the like until Chuny yells, "Luka, the R2 is intubating!" Rolling his eyes, Luka hangs up the phone and charges into Trauma Yellow. "Stop," he says calmly. Then, more forcefully: "STOP." He explains through clenched teeth that the correct procedure is to bag the baby, and it took me several tries with that sentence before realizing that there's no way to avoid the unfortunate other connotations to the phrase "Bag the baby." With grace, Susan escorts a reluctant Paula and her other son, Henry, outside. "Sedated babies get bagged," Luka says firmly. "I thought the airway...." Malarkey begins. "I know what you thought," Luka snaps curtly. Malarkey gulps and shits a bereavement room for the Archie Malarkey Funeral Home: He Kills 'Em And Grills 'Em.
Paula dazedly, and with wild, wet eyes, babbles to Susan that Henry's school had a barbecue and they were late. "We forgot to pick up the hot dogs," Henry says very carefully. This wooden-ness piques Susan's interest, and she punts him to the vending-machine area so that she can probe crazy Paula. "My therapist prescribed Zoloft," Paula sniffles. "Maybe I'm...not reacting well to it?" Susan frowns. "Zoloft?" she asks. Yes, Zoloft: The Antidepressant For People Who Drop Babies. Paula chokes that she's been really down, and bitterly exposits that her husband is divorcing her and suing for custody. "We're together for twelve years and suddenly he wakes up hating me. I don't know what happened," she wails. Perhaps if she started using anti-frizz...? Susan gently apologizes for her question, and then asks if Paula has been drinking. "No!" Paula gapes, completely unconvincingly. "I can smell it on your breath," Susan counters.
Paula and Susan are interrupted by a seventy-one-year-old former sitcom star who got hauled in for vomiting. It's Bob Newhart the way you always wanted to see him: decrepit-looking and befuddled. Oh, wait, my bad, that's the way you always do see him. Paula frantically insists that she wasn't drunk, so Susan asks her to take a blood-alcohol test. "Can you make me do that?" Paula cries. "That's...not the best answer," Susan says, which is Diplomat for "You are so, so BUSTED, beer wench." As Paula quivers and whispers that she just made a mistake, Henry arrives with his mother's bottle of water. Susan awkwardly excuses herself and promises to return with more news, leaving the eerily adult child to hydrate his mother. You can tell from Henry's quiet efficiency that he's mothered Paula before.
Bob Newhart is crabby. He's being introduced as Ben Hollander, but it's really pointless to ask the viewing public to call him anything but Bob, so Bob he will be. Once a palindrome, always a palindrome. Apparently, his neighbors placed the 911 call when he didn't answer the door. "All this over a bad plate of shrimp?" Bob grunts as they recline his bed. Neela points out that some of his levels seem odd, so Susan asks him what medications he's taking. It's a laundry list, ending with Digoxin, which he claims he takes for an allergy but which Susan recognizes as a heart medicine. He's totally acting shifty. Susan puts him on an IV of fluids. "Glenlivet, I hope," he mumbles. "More like Gatorade," Susan winks. She says they're going to check his blood. Bob doesn't like this. "I'd rather go home," he says plaintively. "Not until we know you're better," Susan smiles. Bob sighs and sinks back into the pillow, his flapping jowls swallowing up all the bone structure he had left in his face. God, I hope he's a closet junkie. I would dearly love to see Bob Newhart quaffing pills, tying arm-tourniquets, and dusting the excess gak from his nostrils.
Luka walks up to Michael "The Invisible Man" Gallant and, unlike his colleagues, does not appear startled to see him no longer a student. Yes, the one character with an airtight excuse for not knowing Gallant graduated is the one character who acts like he already knew. Man, this show defies logic sometimes. There's some small talk about what's wrong with Gallant's patient's knee before Luka finally diagnoses it by hand. Gallant is impressed. "No x-rays in the Congo," Luka grins to a passing Susan. Distracted, she whispers to him that she smelled alcohol on Paula's breath. "Didn't seem drunk to me," Luka says, remembering fondly back to his own days of boozy mistakes and concluding that he knows whereof he sniffs. Susan wants to call Social Services, but Luka would rather let something called the floor team deal with the problem. "If they do it, it'll fall through the cracks," she argues. "So, what, you want to turn it into a bureaucratic mess?" Luka snorts. Susan glares at him, taken aback and wishing she could gag him with some of that red tape he so desperately wants to avoid. She snaps that she's more concerned that the kids will come back tomorrow with worse injuries. Luka doesn't seem to care that much, which is annoying.
Neela prepares to present a case to Luka. "She speaks English pretty good," the patient tells Luka. "Better than you, in fact," Nella says smoothly, without missing a beat. Go Neela! The case itself isn't that interesting, so I'll skip it. Romano interrupts them by loudly shouting, "Is that Pratt in there with Lewis?" We see the back of a head. Neela, confused, corrects that it's Gallant. "Oh, I always get those two mixed up," Romano says. "Must be the goatee." Neela winces. So do I. Someone on the forum suggested that perhaps Romano is making an allusion to the fact that Pratt's skills should be more advanced than Gallant's, but aren't, and therefore they're indistinguishable as doctors; if that is the case, it's badly executed, because I doubt most people would look past the surface to see that, and anyway, I doubt the writers put that much thought into the quip. So in sum, TPTB can congratulate itself on the birth of yet another racist-sounding asspump. The focus shifts back to Luka, who tells Neela to discharge the patient and call him if his lab tests come back with anything. Romano -- happy that Luka's clearing triage so quickly -- snarks, "We ought to send the whole staff to the dark continent." Yeah, starting with you and Frank, C-3PO.
Pratt coasts by asking where his surgical consult is. Romano hitches his high horse to the scruff of Pratt's neck and trots them into the patient's room, sassing that the supposed bowel obstruction is nothing more than an ileus that requires no surgery. "Do not pass go, do not occupy another bed, and do not continue waiting for Dr. Godot to come down from Surgery!" he steams. Pratt argues that he'd rather be sure, so Romano starts to perform a cursory and crabby surgical consult until a figure in a white coat emerges from the background. "Hi," says Abby "Old School" Lockhart. "Nice costume," Romano snaps. Abby stops their argument in its tracks by announcing that she's returned to med school, she's on her surgical rotation, and she's here for the consult. The hell? No one in the ER noticed that they were down a head nurse? That "I'd hate to lose you" anvil from Kerry broke my foot, and yet I'm denied watching her head explode when Abby gives notice? I call shenanigans. Romano looks totally appalled. "You waited three and a half hours...for Abby?" he seethes. Abby lets a secret little smile flit across her face. We fade to black wondering why, despite being happy that she's changed her career, she took pleasure in that particular insult.
After the break, Abby and Susan pedeconference about this development. Abby says she never meant to quit med school completely, and that this seemed like the best time to go back, what with the nursing shortage and her total lack of money. Also, fuck this noise -- in "Secrets and Lies" she bitched everyone out about how they were snobs for not understanding that her job was more satisfying to her, and that she chose not to go back, and they should respect it. Way to negate the good that speech did. Essentially, this show stuck up for nurses, then got them drunk and tried to cop a few dirty feels. Classy. Susan asks how she paid for school, and Abby confesses that she made Richard help. "Good for you," Susan glows. Abby informs us that as soon as she paid her tuition again, the school put her right back on rotation. No need to prove she's retained anything from the days of yore. Because it's that easy. Hey, I've recapped a few seasons of this show -- bet they'd let me do a rotation or two, too. ["Sure -- everything but Ophthalmology." -- Wing Chun] Abby exposits that she's still covering a couple of nursing shifts for the extra money, but generally, she's really happy. She smiles and laughs. She looks lighter. Having no Carter, no family, and no frown lines really flatters her. She and Susan joke about mnemonic devices until Sam approaches. "Are you from the OR?" she asks Susan. "No, I'm not, but she is," Susan says proudly. It's a bit sweet. Sam drags Abby to the trauma room to look at an intra-abdominal bleed.
Romano tries to rush Abby and Luka through whatever they're doing to Meat Slab, but like any person, they like to savor their time with a nice piece of beef. "He needs surgery NOW, not when she learns to tie a knot!" Romano snarls, muscles so tense that it's amazing his arm hasn't spasmed clean off the stump. He's called away to meet with Dr. Anspaugh, so everyone gets a breath of non-venomous air. "That is one poisonous one-armed midget you've got running this place," Sam says, amused, ignoring the fact that Romano is her height. Shut up, Sam. Luka gets called away to speak with Weaver. He turns to Abby and asks, "You're fine here?" Then, before she can answer, he smiles reassuringly and gently says, "You're fine here." Abby seems appreciative, and she and Sam work away quietly. Neela's got nothing to do but stand there silently. She's so jealous of Keira Knightley right now. "She'll need some Elastoplast," Neela tells Sam. "I'm on it," Sam rolls her eyes. "If you need any help..." Neela begins. Sam snorts, "Thanks. More likely than not it'll be the other way around." Neela, stranded, looks totally squashed by this rudeness. Sam had better not mess with my girl or else I'm gonna go all Chen on her ass.
Speaking of Chen, she is sitting at the Craft Services table filing her nails and snacking on her own pent-up rage. Eat up, Bitchmaggot. You're going to be sitting there until week.
Dr. Kerry "The 'Cane' Mutiny" Weaver wants to set some scheduling guidelines with Luka. His attention is called away to a woman named Athena -- "Like the goddess," she beams -- who is the hangover case Sam assigned to Malarkey early in the episode. "I'm getting to her," trembles Malarkey, almost passing out from all the bricks dropping out of his trouser leg. Weaver gets back to business and demands thirty-six hours of work per week. Luka offers seventy-two, which completely floors Weaver, to the point that a janitor mistakes her for part of the linoleum and mops right over her. Weaver's convinced that six days a week of half-day shifts will knock Luka out, but Luka loftily mentions that he did more than that in Congo without any kind of a break. He's not counting on the fact that Chicago offers more hookers and speeding Dodge Penis 2003s to snatch away his attention. "Piece of pie," he says. Oh, so he is factoring in the hookers. Weaver snappily corrects, "Cake." Luka doesn't much care.
While Weaver gapes at all this, Luka takes the time to ask Malarkey a bunch of questions he's not equipped to answer, because he has the mental capacity and spontaneous intellect of my living-room wall. Which is really a pretty damning insult to my living-room wall, and for that I apologize, old friend. Weaver, still reeling, decides to demand four weeks' notice the time Luka wants to flee the country. "I'll give you better. I'll give you eight," he says. "Two months from now, I'll be gone again." Damn you, Luka. Damn you and your sense of duty. Whither the consideration for my loins? Weaver looks like she's had her cane rammed into her gut. She can't speak, so Luka chastises Malarkey during her silence, annoyed that he ordered an expensive CT for a patient before performing a complete exam. "To Africa?" Weaver finally squeaks. "For how long?" Luka shrugs, "I'll see when I get there." Sadly for her, Weaver's too understaffed to suggest that Luka take his job and shove it where the medicine fairy don't shine. She finally just demands it in writing so that they can draw up contracts. "You'll be answering to Dr. Romano," she adds. "Oh, then we'll definitely need to talk about a raise," Luka deadpans, allowing his lips to twitch into a smile once Weaver's stalked away.
In a private area, the social worker -- what happened to Adele? -- reads off two prior incidents: Paula left Henry alone and he burned himself; and she didn't pick him up from school. "My husband, Kyle, was supposed to do it," she insists, claiming that the other incident resulted from Henry's trying to make grilled cheese while she was at a job interview. The social worker tells her that this, combined with Susan's suspicion of alcohol abuse, means he's removing her kids and placing them with her husband until they can investigate the matter more deeply. Paula is gutted, and Susan looks guilty. "I'm not a bad mother," Paula begins to weep. "It's just for a little while, until you get back on your feet," Susan consoles her. Paula stammers out a story about how her lawyer had bought her a Bloody Mary at breakfast to celebrate the divorce papers, and Susan looks skeptical and pitying.
Apparently bereft of other duties despite the overcrowding in triage, Neela sits with Henry and kindly makes small talk with him about the drumstick he's holding. (The kind you use to play drums, not the delightful kind you fry up in greasy batter.) Paula enters and hugs him lovingly, but the moment's interrupted by Kyle, arriving in a cloud of irritation. Henry leaps at him delightedly. "Adam fell out of the cart and hit his head on the floor," Henry blurts. Paula hovers adoringly over Adam's crib while Neela fills Kyle in; he then accusingly hisses at Paula that she shouldn't mess up her kids' lives just because she's bent on fucking up her own. Paula whiffs her own excuse, saying now that she was upset coming from her lawyer and was crying. "So it's Adam's fault, it's my fault. How come it's never your fault, Paula?" Kyle asks. Henry just stands there, all, Thank God you don't get lippy, sweet drumstick. Paula inhales sharply, and then dazedly leaves the trauma room.
"Suction, Annie?" Dr. Diego smarms. Well, God, from him that could mean anything. But in this case, he's in surgery, and he's butchering both a patient and Abby's name. Dr. Elizabeth "Cut The" Corday is working with her post-Mark fling in the OR. "You know, Elizabeth, if I had another inch I'd be a happy man," he says. "And I'd be a bow-legged woman," Elizabeth should say. "Slide the distal stick in another centimeter," Diego intones. Elizabeth practically starts fanning herself. Diego announces that he wants them to try to repair six centimeters of Whatever The Hell in thirty minutes. "I'm not sure you have the stamina," Elizabeth flirts. Diego devours her with his eyes, lest anyone in the hospital be unsure exactly where his distal stick is currently being slid. Then nurse Jacy busts in and tells Dr. Diego that his wife is on the phone. Elizabeth is frozen in place, enraged and rather conveniently brandishing some scissors that I believe she'd like to use to make lots and lots of room in Diego's shorts for that extra inch. Abby looks up uncomfortably and silently wonders if she needs to scrub in anew for a castration.
Previously on Energetic Romps, Elizabeth rode Dr. Diego's love stallion until it foamed at the mouth. Also, Abby got her ex to co-sign for a loan, and Luka admitted to missing being in the Congo.
The faint strains of African music bring us up inside an El train. We pan across bored passengers, and a man frantically yapping about the stock market into his mobile phone, until we finally rest on an amused Dr. Luka "The African Queen" Kovac. He stares a personal injury lawyer's ad and a poster for The Lion King, smiling a bit condescendingly all the while. Apparently, once you've had malaria, puppets and Elton John songs no longer interest you. ["Sometimes that happens to you even when you haven't had malaria." -- Wing Chun]
Luka enters the new-look County General and accepts Chuny's boring greeting with a smile. "Someone redecorated?" he asks. "Same patients, different furniture," she says. Frank doesn't even give him the kind of warm, racist salutations we've come to expect from the resident mouthpiece of Mephistopheles. He just says, "Call Weaver." Which anagrams to "reveal claw," which I believe further fingers him as a minion, and holy God, I promise that's the last time Frank and the verb "fingers" will appear together in any of my prose.
Malarkey overhears Luka's name and eagerly introduces himself. His first name is Archie, which is so perfect considering he's full of bunk. Chuny tries to get Malarkey's help on something, but he scurries away, muttering something about needing to go on a lab run. "The ducklings could use some guidance -- we're short on Attendings," Frank mutters. Just as Luka's trying to locate the new lounge, a lunatic screaming about coyotes as messengers of evil gets forcibly escorted through the lobby to a room. He's screaming and protesting and fighting them. "All Hallows Eve, and the loonies are on the loose," Frank sighs. Luka resists pointing out that Frank himself is on the loose all the time.
A woman frantically gets Luka's attention. She's cradling a baby who fell out of a cart. "I guess I didn't strap him in right," she blubbers. Except she's holding a baby that doesn't look big enough to fall out of a shopping cart, so unless "didn't strap him in" means "dropped him on the ground," then I'm not totally sure I can picture this. "Did he hit his head?" Luka asks. "I'm not sure," she admits. The serene little boy at her side affirms that the baby did seem to smack his head, but didn't start crying afterward. Luka whisks the baby off to a trauma room; the family follows.
Bob is using the world's biggest magnifying glass to read the paper. It's got to be some kind of medical equipment that he grabbed from a table, because there's no way he travels with that: "Is that an industrial-strength magnifying glass, or are you and your oddly square penis just happy to see me?" Bob reveals to Susan that he's got macular degeneration, and sadly, none of the new treatments cater to his type of disease. "How far along are you?" she asks, sympathetically. "Far enough," he shrugs. Elizabeth dryly whips out Bob's prescription of Digoxin and notes that it's empty. "Congratulations. Mystery solved," he says pleasantly. Susan doesn't think Bob ingested them all by accident, and worries that he's had suicidal thoughts. "Yes, in the seventh grade. I was a pudgy child," Bob deadpans. Susan doesn't appreciate his humor. "I'm a seventy-one-year-old man who's going blind. I've considered everything. I'd be crazy if I didn't," he sighs. Susan gently threatens to put him on a three-day psychiatric hold unless he speaks to someone about his problem. He has no interest in this, but recognizes that she has his jowls in her vise grip, and leans back against the bed, feeling put-upon.
Paula stares vacantly into Trauma Yellow, and then gets up and walks away like a zombie. Suddenly, Henry notices Adam making eye contact with him, and joyfully runs outside to tell Paula. As he runs around trying to find her, Paula shuffles out to the car, tossing off a flip excuse to Susan, and rummages for a brown paper bag. Climbing inside the car, she cradles it.
Outside, Malarkey rants to Coop that he hates County already. "That's a step up -- you hated your internship after the first day," Coop teases. So they clearly have a history together. They pass Paula in her SUV as she locks the doors, pulls out a bottle of lighter fluid, and dumps it all over herself. The ER Catastrophe Makeup Specialists stand by, hands twitching as they clutch their kits, all kinds of ready to morph Paula into Baked Wingnut. "Mom!" Henry shouts, running outside. Paula can't see or hear him, and strikes a match, dropping it onto her pants. She and the car burst into flames. "OH MY GOD, MOM!" Henry screams, his voice breaking. Luka and Coop immediately grab a gurney and charge toward the fireball while Malarkey flails around shitting a crematorium for Malarkey & Malarkey's Final Resting Home.
Luka and Coop shatter the car window and duck from the roiling flames. Susan runs "toward them," meaning, right at the camera. It's a moment of tinny audio and poor editing that makes it so painfully obvious that she shot this separately. It's the opposite of seamless. It's all jacked up with seams. Susan throws a blanket at the camera lens, and we cut to Luka catching it and fighting the flames to get Paula out of the car. From above, we see Faux-Paula The Fireball Stunt Double roll out of the car and start twitching on the ground as NotLuka and ImitationCoop -- who has straight, coiffed hair, of all ill-matched lunacies -- begin trying to smother the flames. We cut back to an isolated shot of Luka finishing the job so that we feel like Goran was there all along, and clap a little and decide that he's our hero and would be likely to rescue us competently from the immolation of our loins that so often accompanies the sight him and Coop on the same screen. Then they roll Paula onto her back. She is royally barbecued. "Paula, can you hear me," Susan states in an uncharacteristically wooden line reading and another totally detached close-up. We fade to black...well, kind of wanting to hug our mothers, actually.
In Trauma Green, Paula's smoked body is 90% burned. Malarkey is nauseated by the smell. It reminds him of that time in college that they did that thing with the guy, and that other thing, and the sheep. "Don't breathe through your nose," Sam advises him. As they prepare to shoot Paula up with morphine, they finally think to drag a screen in front of her so that her son can't see anything else that might give him twenty years of nightmares. Sam notices that Coop's got a wound on his head, and orders him to dress it before continuing. Reluctantly, he does, because he is the heroic yin to Malarkey's piddling, flaccid yang. "I'm dead, aren't I?" Paula says, her voice distorted from the soot in her mouth and her having few actual uncooked facial muscles. Luka and Susan can't think of anything to say that doesn't involve the words "Holy shit, YES, so dead," so they remain silent. Paula's burned all her nerve endings and has about a 10% chance of living through this. She doesn't want them to intubate because she wants to talk to Henry, and Coop wants to respect that, but Susan thinks the suicidal urges negate Paula's right to refuse treatment. She's agitated and is fumbling things. Malarkey, meanwhile, has thrown up all over the floor, because somebody has to do it, and he might as well step up for something.
Dr. Diego saunters up to Jacy, calls her "Loose Lips," and irritatedly asks her where Corday is. Jacy snatches some films from his hand and promises to pass them along to Elizabeth herself. "I'm in no mood for a demonstration of female solidarity," Diego growls. That's not what he said while he was watching Debbie Does Alice last weekend. Elizabeth chooses this moment to get off the elevator, so Dr. Diego gives chase down the hallway. "She's doing an elective at Boston Children's Hospital," he pants. "She's a student?" scoffs Elizabeth, disgusted. "Things have been strained," he says. Yes -- in his pants. From the tents he's poppin' with all the women at County General. He pathetically continues, "I haven't slept with her in, like, weeks." Elizabeth shoots him the greatest dick-shriveling stare. "Months. I meant months," he fumbles. She theatrically accuses him of hiding pictures of Mrs. Diego in a drawer, not really expecting it to be true, but Dr. Diego is a tool -- a sexy, sexy tool -- so he does in fact admit he'd been hiding all evidence in a cabinet. What a freak. But seriously, wouldn't this wife revelation have happened already? He's been around the hospital, if not on our screens, for roughly nineteen episodes now. Elizabeth storms into the doctors' lounge. "Uh," Diego calls out. "You're not going to call her, are you?" Elizabeth slams the door in fury, leaving him outside to marinate in his own filth and cowardice.
Elizabeth takes out her fury on the coffee machine, which already isn't working, but if it had been, she'd have snapped it like it was Diego's neck. A hand appears at the bottom of the screen, proffering a cup of coffee to be shared; Elizabeth turns to see a sympathetic Abby hitting the books. "At least we had a shot with this guy," Abby says, referring to their patient. "Most die at the scene." Elizabeth snorts, "He would've thrombosed in post-op anyway." So what their poorly encoded medical jibber-jabber is telling us is: at least Elizabeth got some hot sex before the whole thing imploded the way she knew it would. I love medical code. I should start doing that: "Everything was going so well until he couldn't thrombose." Elizabeth shakes her head and gets lost in her own head again. "To think I was worried about it being too soon, when the real problem was I was allowing myself to feel something for an absolute..." she loses her words. "Bastard?" Abby nods knowingly. "Jerk?" She pauses, and then comically whispers, "Wanker?" Elizabeth snorts with laughter in spite of herself, and groans that she totally knew Diego was a wanker. "There's no shame in that," Abby counsels her. Damn right, Lizzie. Get yours. He was hot. It's not your fault he was also a giant clot of sink mold.
Luka tells Susan he's going to wait to intubate Paula until she's seen her children. Luka also offers to tell the family about this, but a distraught Susan insists she'll do it. "I don't know if the kid should go in there. It could traumatize him even further," she frets angrily. "So could never seeing her again," Luka points out. I'm with Susan on this one. ["Seriously. Henry's like, 'Please, please can I see the mother I just watched set herself on fire?' I wouldn't want to see anyone I loved in that condition, and I'm an adult, sort of." -- Wing Chun] Susan berates herself for bringing the social worker into this, but Luka gently insists that her instinct was obviously the right one if Paula was so disturbed as to set herself on fire. Also, Paula can't have been real bright. There was a perfectly good roof and several windows from which to pitch herself and successfully explode her head, but instead she chose to botch a bonfire.
Susan enters Trauma Yellow, where a quiet and in-shock Henry has his head in his father's lap. Susan wants Neela to take him to the family room, but Henry won't go, so Susan pulls Kyle into a corner. "What the hell happened here?" Kyle laments, stunned. "I knew she was messed up, but...I never imagined anything like this." He also reveals that Paula told Henry to lie about the hot dogs: they were at the market for beer. Susan's all, "Whatever, this shit is so Act One." She ignores Kyle and chokes out that Adam seems to be doing fine, but Paula wants to see Henry. "I know it's a difficult time and you're angry, but she's going to die, and you need to think about what's best in the long run for him," Susan says. But Henry toddles up and flatly refuses to see his mother. Tearfully, he clutches at his father and repeats that he doesn't want to do it. Word, son. The sight is messing with my head a little, and I'd never even seen her before.
Malarkey and Coop gossip about Paula at the front desk. "I heard she's nuts," Malarkey says. "I heard we're taking her kids away," Coop says. "That'd make anybody nuts," Sam says. "Enough to do a kamikaze in front of your own son?" Malarkey asks. "I don't know -- I've never been there," Sam says calmly. Pratt offers to take her there. Where? To suicide? Get in line, Sam, 'cause he's already running the rest of us over some mental cliffs. "I bet you would," she snorts, laughing. Coop notes, "Wow, the new girl is pretty intense." Except she totally wasn't acting intense. This is the kind of stupid throwaway line I hate: it didn't need to be there, but someone threw it in so that we could all be like, "Yeah, dude, she ROCKS. Intense! YEAH." Screw that. Malarkey complains that this shift won't end soon enough, so Pratt grouchily suggests that he call it an early night. "Don't want anyone to think I'm some kind of a wuss," Malarkey says. Heaven forbid his reason should be that he doesn't want any patients to go home untreated. Knob. "Too late for that," Pratt scoffs. Coop lightens the mood: "'Some kind of wuss.' Isn't that a movie?"
There's a dumb scene where Pratt makes fun of Romano treating something with the Utah arm, so Romano makes Pratt take over. Believe it or not, it's even less compelling than I just made it sound.
Bob grouches to Chuny that Susan hasn't returned for him, and he's still waiting for a consult. "It's been over four hours now," he complains in that weird unemotional delivery of his. As he peers up at Chuny, he sees nothing but a big blurry spot, so he unplugs himself in frustration and sneaks out of the hospital.
Luka and Sam wheel in a woman, strapped to a gurney, whose left pupil is blown. Luka realizes she was already at County and wasn't treated, and demands that they find her chart. "Does anyone recognize this woman?" he shouts, icy. No one answers. "Both of you, come with me," Luka snaps at Coop and Malarkey. Sam fishes out the woman's chart. "Head lac...and a hangover," Sam says with recognition. "Athena...like the goddess." Malarkey's name is on the chart, but he tries to avoid admitting that he blew it while shitting piles and piles of tombstones for the Malarkey & Co. Final Resting Parlor's adjacent cemetery.
Athena has a massive brain bleed. Luka wants to tube her, but Malarkey sacks up and says, "My miss -- let me try." He then proceeds to botch it. "Watch the teeth," Luka warns him just as we hear the smash of broken enamel. Luka rolls his eyes tiredly as Malarkey struggles to get the tube down Athena's throat, which now probably has an incisor jammed down it. "It's too big!" he complains. Ah, if I had a dollar.... Luka patiently nudges Malarkey aside and completes the intubation with ease. Malarkey watches, terrified. No one touches him. Even his mustache looks like it's trying to run off his face and hide.
Susan and Neela wheel Adam's crib into Trauma Green. "Can I see him?" Paula struggles. Neela picks up the baby and holds him up. "Can I touch him?" Paula asks. Ew! And they're fine with it! Wouldn't her charred, acrid, flaking flesh leave some kind of mark on the kid? Not to mention that he might freak out at the sight of Baked Mom? Sick. Paula reaches out for Adam, and he smartly yanks his hand away, grinning obliviously. Neela tries to patch the painful moment by chirping that Adam is alert and healthy. Paula wails when she tries to cry, and the tears sting, so Susan dabs them dry. Desperately, Paula asks when Henry is coming. "He's pretty upset," Susan begins. "He won't come in?" Paula realizes. Susan shakes her head. Paula looks heartbroken through her demolished, blackened face, but then steels herself and nods slightly. "It's better," she whimpers. She then asks Neela to take dictation, and Neela writes down her message of love as Susan turns away, upset. We fade to black kind of sad for Paula, and really, really wishing they would get that baby out of the room. Also, I still sort of want to call my mother.
Malarkey frantically tries to get a pulse on Athena, but it's been an hour and she's in asystole. "We're done, [Malarkey]," Luka says. Everyone stops. Coop looks distraught. "A five-minute physical exam could've picked up the bleed," Luka seethes. Luka, you've met Malarkey. He could do a five-hour physical exam and not pick up so much as a pulse. Luka adds that Athena might be alive if they hadn't made her wait eleven hours. "This woman had nowhere else to go," he says. "If we can't find a way to take care of people like her, nobody will." And he exits angrily, tossing his gloves with venom into the garbage. Coop stares at the floor, Samantha sighs with regret -- she could have followed up on it, too -- and Malarkey stalks away in a fit of complete insanity.
A man in the hallway is screaming, "Get me out of here!" As Malarkey charges past, tearing off his lab coat, he suddenly is seized by the urge to help and bolts toward the gurney, wheeling it outside at top speed. Once through the double doors, he gives the bed an extra shove and flounces away. "Somebody get that guy back in there," Coop mutters, dashing after Malarkey. "You didn't get this far just to walk away!" sputters Coop. Malarkey screams that he's quitting: he's only gotten this far because Coop carried him, and he's sick of being carried, sick of sucking at his job, and sick of building brick villages in his tighteys every time something at County alarms him. Pratt saunters outside to catch the tail end of Malarkey's rant. "Bailing?" he oozes. "Let him walk. Don't miss your train, sweetie." Fed up, Malarkey glares at Pratt and leaves without a word. Coop shouts that Pratt is just testing him, then turns to Pratt ."You just tested him, right?" Pratt arrogantly shakes his head. "Great," Coop exhales. "That worked out well." ["Seriously, are Coop and Malarkey lovers? I can't think of any other reason Coop would go so far out of his way to cover for Malarkey except that Coop loves him." -- Wing Chun] Pratt shrugs to Coop that not everyone's cut out for this. "Get back to work. Jury's still out on you," he says. Wait, he and Coop are both R2s; it's awfully audacious of Pratt to act like he's Chief Resident, and it makes me want to introduce him to the sole of my boot.
Susan worriedly tries to reach Bob at home, but there's no answer. Neela doesn't have a car, and apparently neither does Susan, so she flags down an ambulance crew and orders Neela to page her if anything happens with Paula.
Cut to the ambulance roaring down a dark street.
Bob is inside his home working away on some miniatures when the medics and Susan bust through his door. He lifts his head, but doesn't turn toward them. "Is there a problem?" he asks, bemused. Susan takes one look at him and vows to wring his old, sagging neck.
Sam sits outside County staring off into middle distance. Abby approaches good-naturedly and introduces Elizabeth. "It's [Sam's] first day," Abby exposits. "You do have that County glaze about you," Elizabeth grins. Sam smiles back that it wasn't as awful as her two jobs. "I'm used to getting hit hard -- MVA, GSW, knife in the [toe]," Sam lists. OW, OW, OW, SWEET MOTHER SHITNUTS, OW. Sam just landed herself on my list, and I swear the writers of this show are trying to wreak their revenge by slowly driving me insane with nightmares. Sam grins that at least County lets her catch her breath. "Yeah, that's what I love about County -- all the quiet time," Abby deadpans. Sam chuckles. "So you used to be a nurse?" she asks Abby, interested. "Still am, I guess," Abby says. Sam nods that being in transition is a good thing, and Elizabeth and Abby invite her to join them for dinner. It's a nice scene: I like to see people bonding rather than acting threatened by each other and all that stupid nonsense. Chen, I'm looking in your direction -- or, I would be, if they'd bothered writing you into this episode. Sam is grateful, but declines the invitation because she's waiting for "[her] guy." Then she jumps up as a car arrives. "Here he is! Have a good night!" she calls out. The car door opens, and out hops a moppet. "This is your new hospital?" he asks, screwing up his nose. "Yep," she says. "It's even crappier than the last one," he notes. Nice language. Of course, my saying that is like the pot telling the kettle that all its exposure to heat has ruined its skin. "Hey, watch it, kiddo," Sam says affectionately, hugging her son to her and walking him inside.
Luka rounds up Coop, Neela -- who is fixating on Paula a little and seems really affected -- and Gallant, not seeming to notice that Malarkey is gone. He then speechifies about providing faster but better care. Then he charges into triage and orders the patients into a line. They'll be treated three at a time so that by 10, a doctor will have seen every one of them.
Bob builds his models and complains to Susan that he waited three hours and nobody came to him. Perhaps he should be thankful he's not Athena. There is classical music blaring loudly, which he says blocked him from hearing the phone. "Is that your job?" Susan smiles at the models. "Now a hobby," Bob sighs. "I made architectural models [but] you need two good eyes for that kind of work." Then Bob spins off on a boring tangent about architecture and design and the union of design and function. Susan isn't listening because she's too busy firing questions at Bob about his pills and offering to set him up with a pill dispenser and a visiting nurse. Bob's last thought about the rules of architecture is, "Always be aware of how the structure fits into the world around it," and that's supposed to be a profound statement, I think, about how people should approach other people. But I'm already a little bored of Bob's slow and steady delivery, so mostly I'm just wishing he'd wake up to Suzanne Pleshette already so that we can write off this story arc as a dream. Susan gets paged. "Boyfriend?" Bob asks. "No, it's a patient," she sighs. "I have to go. She's dying." Susan instructs Bob not to kill himself in the seventy-two hours. "But...Monday would be okay," Bob offers. "I'm off the hook by then," Susan says, a tinge of sarcasm in her tone. "So, this is kind of a career move for you?" he asks. Susan ignores him. Bob blows out his jowls. "Okay, it's a deal," Bob says.
Luka watches approvingly as Neela, Coop, and some extra who looks vaguely like a med student who was on the show last season -- oh, right, it's Gallant -- are buzzing through some patients in triage. I can't wait until this swift system causes misdiagnosis hell. "What are you nutmeats doing?" Romano crabs. "Clearing triage," Luka says serenely. Romano looks around him and seems impressed. The only way you can tell is that he doesn't immediately spit back something hopelessly snarky. "Excellent," he says instead, exiting for the night. We fade to black on Luka's pleased face. Slurp.