Previously on Everyone's Reproducing: Sandy Lopez had a baby. Susan is having a baby. Kem is having Carter's baby. Sperm! It's what's for dinner. I hope a condom company starts sponsoring this show immediately. Also: Kem's back in Congo, Sam and Luka hooked up, Chen left for China because her parents got in a car accident, and Neela got a bit claustrophobic during her NICU rotation.
Shortly before 5 AM, a woman starts thrashing and moaning in her bed. We can't see who it is. At first, I thought it was Sam, and my heart plummeted, because it sounds like an orgasm crossed with death-by-machete, and if that's the kind of sex noises Luka elicits, then I need to seriously rethink some things. But when the woman sits up and roars, "Nolan, it's happening," I realized with relief that Luka's groin would maintain its reputation. Nolan slumbers through her squalling; the pregnant woman waddles down the hall to her kids' bedroom, and the camera pans down to her feet from her belly. Based on the shot composition, I half-expected to see a gusher of water drop between her feet. I'm relieved TPTB avoided sailing us down the river Labor. Mrs. Nolan prattles at the kids, but they ignore her, the ungrateful wretches, so the mother nudges them -- and realizes they're stone-cold unconscious. Freaking out, she screams their names, and then pads back into her bedroom. "Nolan?" she yells, desperate. We smash to the credits, grateful that the first scene of the show can be summed up in one easy-to-type Onion-esque sentence: "Pregnant Woman Can't Arouse Husband."
An hour later, it actually is Sam's turn to be lying in bed. She rolls awake, takes one look at the clock, and realizes that the alarm never went off. Freaking, she rolls over, and there's Luka, dozing to her. Hooray for them (hands off him, ho)."Time to leave," Sam whispers, throwing Luka's clothes at him. "Hey!" he protests loudly. Real subtle. Sam worries that Alex might already be awake; Luka pulls her down and traps her with a slow and very, very, very sexy kiss. Sam gives over to it for a second as Luka purrs, "I didn't hear the TV." Sam holds strong, though, and boots Luka. That woman is clad in iron, rolled in steel, and encased in the type of black box that survives airplane crashes. But beyond that, since he's naked, she's clearly insane. "Can I at least get a shower?" he laughs. The first time, I thought he said, "Can I at least get a show?," and I had this image of Sam in a burlesque bedroom spectacular with acrobats, a headdress, a bejewelled whip, and some goats. Sam gets up, and Luka smiles affectionately after her, at what we presume is her ass.
Sam creeps into the living room with a private little smile on her face, ostensibly remembering that nailing Luka makes her Chicago's most envied carpenter. The grin vanishes when Alex pops up from his room or beneath a rock or under a piece of peeling linoleum. He brandishes something he announces might be a roach -- and which, naturally, he then eats. Sam is remarkably unalarmed that her son might've just ingested the scourge of the insect world. "Just an old raisin," Alex shrugs, disappointed and vastly more disturbed than I thought. He flips on the TV. Sam uncomfortably plops down on the couch and suggests that perhaps they should talk. Alex hopes it's about satellite TV, but when he hears the bedroom door open, he whirls around and sees Luka buttoning his shirt. Immediately, Alex turns off the TV. It's a bit creepy -- like he doesn't want to be distracted from the view. Luka surveys the scene and articulately states his position: "Oh." No wonder his lectures are so unpopular. Sam turns back around and clears her throat, increasingly mortified.
Cut to Susan and Chuck, our budding nuclear family -- by which I mean, the family from which a mushroom cloud of some type seems most likely to emanate. He wants to pick her up after work, so that she doesn't take the El and risk slipping, falling, and bruising what he calls "the little Martin kid." Susan laughingly refuses to make any surname decisions, announcing that the kid's going to be a Lewis until further notice. "Okay, whatever you say, Mommy," Chuck retorts, snickering. Susan scolds him affectionately for this. As she should -- nothing creeps me out more than parents who call each other "Mommy" and "Daddy." You have real names. Leave the Oedipal fantasies to psychopaths and ancient Greeks, please. Chuck gingerly brings up the idea of her introducing him to her father, and it wasn't until now that I even remembered that her father lives locally. Indeed, perhaps I never knew that in the first place. Susan balks, and it's because she hasn't even told her father she's pregnant. Chuck's entertained and sort of confused, and I love Chuck for being so generally jolly that he doesn't take this as the affront it quite possibly may be. I enjoy affable people.
Susan trots up to County and encounters Carter sitting on a bench, head down, coffee clutched tightly. "Am I late or are you early?" she asks. Carter yawns that there's no point in staying in bed if you can't sleep. Perhaps if he took Gamma's stuffed corpse out of there, he'd have an easier time. What, you don't think that's his body pillow when he's lonely in the dark? You're crazy. He even has her face set to "scold." Susan sympathetically moans that Chuck snores. Some ambulances arrive, and Susan mournfully asks whether this one's going to be a quick job or a depressing one. "The latter. Multiples from the same address," Carter says.
The driver unloads Vicky, our pregnant mom with the family that wouldn't wake up and could now be a fresh garden salad of vegetables. Vicky is screaming, because she's in labor, and I don't imagine the sensation of a baby trying to claw its way to daylight is a very pleasant one. I think the people who call childbirth a blessed miracle are ones that have had plenty, and I mean plenty of distance from the experience. Kind of like when you're in an airplane and you hit turbulence, and the plane jiggles and shakes, and you look outside and the wing seems mighty bendy indeed, and your knuckles turn white, and you freak out the person to you by closing your eyes and breathing heavily in through the nose, out through the mouth -- yet when you arrive two hours later and someone asks how the flight was, you reply, "Oh, it was fine. Great landing." Carter wonders what's up with the others, and when he finds out that they were all unconscious, he correctly suspects carbon monoxide poisoning. Carter and Susan wheel Vicky inside, ceding Nolan's care to the just-arrived Pratt. Nolan is convulsing and his mouth is flapping open, all set for a chunky heave. "Oh, God. I have the worst feeling that something's going to come out of there," I wail to Lauren. But Nolan goes inside without vomitous incident, and I heave a sigh of relief. Malarkey and Abby trot out to treat the kids. "Feeling sick, dude?" Malarkey asks Clay, the boy. The show rewards its earlier restraint by turning the Vomit Comet switch to "bile" and shooting it out of little Clay's mouth and onto Malarkey's shoes. Well, we don't know for sure that's where it ended up, but I cling to whatever hope I can muster. The little girl only has a headache, so Malarkey swiftly assigns himself to her care and pawns Puke Boy off onto Abby.
Vicky's baby is crowning, and I turn my head away due to my fear of all things that require copious stretching of the vaginal cavity. To wit, the word "tear" is invoked, and I shudder. "I hate the word 'tear,'" Lauren whimpers. "This show is the most wonderful birth-control tool," I agree. Susan's in charge of the delivery, while Carter putters around and helps. Susan is brave. She's watching the exact rending of tissue and expulsion of oversized human matter that's going to happen to her in a few months, and she's not even joking about stitching herself shut to protect herself from it. Vicky seems fine, but wigs when Carter explains that they think her family has carbon monoxide poisoning, because it's common in winter when improperly vented heaters are cranked up high. Vicky doesn't understand why she didn't pass out, too. Neela gropes for the answer, runs it through her mental Jargonizer, and recites, "Fetal hemoglobin has a higher affinity for CO." Vicky's all, "Wha? Fertile hobgoblins hire infinity Theos?" Somewhere, Malcolm-Jamal Warner pumps his fist and calls his agent in gleeful anticipation of all that work. Susan sighs that Neela really needs to speak English to the patients. "Sorry," Neela gulps. "Don't apologize, just explain," says Susan curtly, clarifying for Vicky that the baby's blood greedily shoplifted the carbon monoxide, thereby leaving very little of it for her bloodstream. Hooray for Vicky, but boo for her child, which will pop out of the womb feeling like it's spent the last several hours romancing the exhaust pipe on their minivan.
Neela bolts to Trauma Green to get...something...and Pratt's in there treating the convulsing Nolan. "How's the mom?" he asks. "Lucky she was pregnant," says Neela. Malik bursts in and tells Pratt that Malarkey needs him. As Pratt is otherwise occupied holding down his twitching patient, he suggests that perhaps Malarkey should stop trying to find his own spine by peering up his crap chute and treat the damn patient himself. "Let me rephrase that: his patient needs you," Malik stresses. Annoyed, Pratt leaves Nolan with Gallant -- Hey, Gallant! Hi! Smooches -- and skips off.
Malarkey treats the girl in Trauma Colorless while Abby works on Little Lord Upchuck. The girl is moaning about wanting her mommy. Malarkey's like, "Yeah, whatever, hold on." I think he's confusing "bedside manner" with "Mom, don't talk to me while I'm trying to light a bowl." Convinced that he's going to be right, and apparently blind to his track record, Malarkey asks Pratt whether he needs to bother with a blood gas when the girl's pulse ox is fine. You'd think Malarkey would remember that he's an ignorant knobgobbler, but why be self-aware when you can be blissful and dumb? "I told him that," Abby insists. She's referring to the test, not the knobgobbler thing, although I'm sure she is wishing she'd pointed that out, too. Pratt snorts that the two tests show different things, and since carbon monoxide latches to hemoglobin, the blood gas is indeed necessary. "Told him that, too," Abby mutters. "Damn, who's the resident here?" spits Pratt. I really, really don't understand what the show gains from having Malarkey around. With the exception of one scene with Coop, he's shown fewer layers than a sheet of toilet paper in an airport bathroom. I can't understand why the writers think the character justifies the actor's paycheck -- he adds nothing, absolutely nothing, to the show. Did Scott Grimes catch John Wells in a compromising position? Did he threaten to go public with his discovery that the show's actually written by a room full of radioactive turnips? As if to show his disdain, Vomiting Clay fires it up again and chucks some stomach fluid into an emesis basin. "Is my family dying?" he asks pathetically.
Alex sits silently in the back of Luka's SUV; Sam is riding shotgun. Luka stares at her; she stares at him; she peeks at Alex; she stares at Luka; she opens and closes her mouth like a bored goldfish. Riveting stuff. Finally, Sam says, "It just sort of snuck up on us, you know?" She's trying to be light about it, but you can tell she's freaking out that the shock will send Alex straight into the arms of that most evil seductress: Arson. "I...I don't think either one of us planned it, right?" Sam says desperately. "Right," Luka quickly agrees. Alex stares out the window wordlessly. "It happens. People date," Sam attempts. Then she scratches her nose. "Are you okay?" Luka asks. "Yeah," pouts Alex. "Want to talk about this?" Luka asks. "No," Alex says. Wow, that was ham-handed. Luka pats Sam's leg sympathetically as she frowns. Linda Cardellini's hair's gotten so much hate for being curly that I'm not going to bag on it, because I have semi-curly hair, and I also think curly hair is gorgeous and gets a bad rap. It is maybe a bit dry, though, or at least the brassy bad dye job makes it look that way. Hope Luka sends Sam to a salon so he can man-to-man with Alex.
Nolan still hasn't stopped shuddering. Pratt and Gallant are concerned about brain damage, and Gallant thinks he needs the hyperbaric chamber. This means they think Nolan needs to be in a highly pressurized environment that doctors use (and the technology of which is associated with the way scuba divers descend and ascend) in order to help the body absorb a lot more oxygen than it normally would. Here, they must quickly reoxygenate the blood, which is currently poisoned with carbon monoxide. But his level is only 35%, and for hyperbaric therapy, you need 40% or more -- unless there are signs of brain damage. Pratt wants to put him on a drip and wait and see how he is in half an hour. Gallant theorizes that the baby's toxicity caused a distress that probably kick-started labor. "Good thing, too. Otherwise they'd all be dead right now," he intones. Wait -- a baby that saves lives rather than ruining them? Why, hello, Bizarro Rex. How non-repulsive you look.
Vicky is going batshit over there trying to expel the kid from her birth canal. Carter very helpfully suggests that she push harder. If he tries to pull that with Kem, she will no doubt implant a tennis ball in his urethra and then laugh and taunt, "Yeah, push that harder" as he tries to squeeze it out. Vicky gives it the old heave-ho, and out pops her son. They wrap him and take him over to the table where they check him and clean him. "Neela, deliver the placenta," Susan orders. "Me?" Neela gapes. "Yes, you," snaps Susan. She's cranky today. Neela sits down and goes to work as Vicky watches her baby, worried. Carter explains that his heart's not beating terribly well because of the oxygen deprivation. "What about his brain?" Vicky frets. Neela's eyes flicker upward for a split-second, then refocus on her work; Vicky catches this, interprets it correctly, and gasps.
Weaver spouts off some of her arcane Theory of Hospital Management prattle about how an Attending's lateness sends an incorrect message about the amorphous nature of time -- when, in fact, 7 AM is 7 AM, no matter how you dress it up. Did ER just hire some ex-Star Trek writers? That, or someone over there's been at the Irish Mist. Weaver snits that Jerry must send tardy Luka to her as soon as he arrives. Then she orders Jerry not to surf the web on hospital time. Abby sprints up to Weaver , and gets the warning that she's crabby because Henry was up all night with colic and she hasn't sufficiently caffeinated herself yet. God, what are you waiting for, woman? Oh, wait -- wading once more, briefly, through the thorny and pretentious space-time continuum mumbo-jumbo from before, I think what she's waiting for is Luka.
This is one of the sickest things I've ever seen on ER: a placenta, which Neela yanks out of Vicky and drops onto the scale, where it lands with a sickening splat. It looks like someone dumped out a can of tomato paste and stuck a blueberry Twizzler into it for color. Lauren and I shriek and cover our eyes, and I kid you not, it takes us ten minutes to stop moaning, "Oh, NO, sweet holy shit Jesus crap fuck, no!" We're eloquent when we're in agony. This only underscores how ignorant of childbirth and its intricacies I hope to remain, until such time as I'm in labor and so doped up that I won't even be able to lift my head to catch an accidental glimpse of my pasta explosion of an afterbirth. The baby is pinking up nicely, but his carbon monoxide levels are very, very high. Susan explains to Vicky that they need to clear that out of the baby's blood, and she starts to say, "One way of doing that is..." and then as she continues to describe hyperbaric therapy, Carter opens his fat yap and talks over her. "It's kind of like scuba diving," he says. Susan's still talking, by the way, and Carter keeps going with an explanation of how hyperbaric chambers take you down to a pressure that's like being under sixty-six feet of seawater, at which point your blood can absorb three times as much oxygen as it normally would. This speeds up the recovery and counteracts the toxins much more quickly than just hanging out in a trauma room. Susan trails off halfway through this speech; it's not played like she's annoyed at this or anything -- it's just a weird choice on behalf of the writer or director to have them speaking at the same time.
Vicky wants to touch her baby before it gets taken down, so Susan and Carter sigh and wheel him over to his mother. "Ohhh, he's beautiful," Vicky coos. Carter and Susan smile. Then Carter's like, "Yeah, whatever," and snaps back into action, wheeling the baby away. It's kind of funny, actually -- reminiscent of National Lampoon's Vacation, when Chevy Chase has just robbed the till at the Grand Canyon and then runs outside to hustle the family into the car to get away. Beverly D'Angelo's all, "Don't you want to enjoy the view?" So he puts his arm around her and stops, and gives a perfunctory satisfied smile at the view for three full beats, then goes, "Okay," and drags her off into the car. It's like that.
Carter orders Neela to truck the baby upstairs to the chamber. We cut back to a truly hideous long shot of Vicky watching her baby leave, legs still spread and the blue sheet hanging between them, stained with blood. It's profoundly disturbing, like she's just had rough sex gone wrong. And people think Janet Jackson's breast was bad? Susan tells Neela that she needs to do the time with the baby in the hyperbaric chamber, because she's done her NICU rotation and can handle it, and as an Attending Susan can't be gone that long. Neela blanches and asks how long it takes. "A couple hours. Is that a problem?" Susan asks innocently.
Cut to Neela up in the antechamber, getting the rundown from the technician: she can't have any lipstick or hairspray on, nor nail polish, perfume, jewelry, or open cavities in her mouth like metal fillings or unfinished root canals. Apparently, the trapped air in there can expand in the chamber, and...ouch. They hurriedly ask if Neela knows how to clear her ears, and Neela just stands there looking completely floored by all of this. "Pinch your nose and blow," the guy says. He's a weenie-esque nurse who's apparently in charge of taking people into the chamber. "I can't go in there," Neela protests. She desperately asks for a replacement, and Weenie accurately takes this to mean that she's claustrophobic, but there's no time to get anyone else, so in she goes. The chamber looks like a cross between a bomb shelter and a subway car. There's a small chamber in front in which they stand and are brought down or up in pressure (they call it "ascending" and "descending" even though the room itself never moves), and when it's safe to do so, they enter or exit the hyperbaric chamber.
Once they're in, it's loud. "Get used to it," says Weenie. Two seconds later, Neela is wringing her hands and pacing. "I'm sorry -- can we stop now?" she asks. Why, yes! Split-second therapy. It's a miracle! The tech comes in over the loudspeaker to ask if there's a problem. Neela is fidgeting and again begs for them to stop. But they can't, of course, so she rests her head against the glass window and breathes, fogging it up a little. We fade to black wondering why she didn't just tell Susan she was claustrophobic and be done with it. Also, she's from London -- has she never been on the Tube? She should just close her eyes and pretend everything's dirty, and that there's a punk across from her with a nose ring chained to an earring chained to a white mouse crawling around on her shoulder, and Neela will feel right at home.
Vicky is wheeled into a room with her two children and husband. The daughter cries out delightedly. Susan sighs that Vicky ought to be in the post-partum ward: "You're not doing them any favors by not taking care of yourself." "How is he?" the mother asks, distractedly, staring at her husband. Susan tells her again that she shouldn't be there, and Vicky snaps, "If I can't be with my baby, I want to be with them." Susan actually has the gall to look put out by this, and she rolls her eyes and snarks to Pratt that Vicky's nice and crabby. I can't believe Susan's being bitchy instead of understanding that a mother whose newborn is in danger might be calmer and more comfortable making sure the rest of her family is going to survive? Bite your acid tongue, Susan. Somebody throw her some milk to balance out her personal pH levels. Pratt is tending to the dad, who's slowly regaining consciousness, at which point they'll try to identify any brain damage. Malarkey and Abby pop up to share that their kids are worried, but otherwise fine. "Any word on the baby?" they ask. "Samuel," Vicky shouts. "He has a name -- Samuel. Can you make sure whoever's with him knows that?" Susan nods sadly and exits.
Carter bumps into Susan in the hallway and oh, my, she's pregnant. I can't criticize the show for how suddenly she started showing, though, because Sherry Stringfield actually is pregnant and there's not much they can do to pretend she's less knocked up than she is. Even the vertical stripes are defeated here. Carter pats her belly comfortably and asks how she's doing. "Fine. Tired, a little scared," she admits. "About having one?" he asks. "YES," I scream, crossing my legs and shedding a tear for the future of my reproductive organs. "No, [about] what happens after you do," Susan says.
Neela paces the chamber so hard, she wears a groove in the metal floor. By contrast, Weenie is reading. Looks like a nice bodice-ripper, too. The least he could do is offer it to Neela, the one who needs the kind of distraction that can only come from a hirsute, muscular giant of a Scottish landowner and his pliant, fiery servant girl with the milky bosom, eager mouth, and a name made up of vowels liberally sprinkled between unlikely consonants. "And as Lachlan rose above her lily-pale loins, he moaned, 'Oh, Gweyunaecthe....'" Weenie pulls himself away from The Laird of the Fuck-Swings long enough to sigh at the stupidity of it all -- temperatures go down, heaters get turned up, and families asphyxiate before they get a chance to read the scene where Lachlan delicately plucks Gweyunawcthe's virginity like a cherry from a tree. Neela doesn't want to talk. She has no time for words. They waste oxygen. Precious, precious oxygen. Bizarro Rex's machinery beeps, so they take him off the mask briefly to prevent an oversaturation of oxygen. Grateful, Bizarro Rex cures a woman's angina downstairs. His evil-doing alter ego is going to be so pissed. "I can hardly breathe," whines Neela. "How much longer?" She's got a hundred more minutes. Susan knocks on the window and shouts, "His name's Samuel!" Neela couldn't give a shit if she were pumped full of carbohydrates and laxatives. "How are you doing?" Susan asks. Neela tries to play chipper. "See you in a couple hours!" Susan calls out, leaving a miserable-looking Neela, who isn't being terribly helpful as Weenie fusses over little Samuel.
Elizabeth and Kerry confab about a patient we don't care about at all, just long enough for Elizabeth to notice that a zoned-out Weaver isn't listening. "Let me guess," she smiles. "Henry's got colic and you're barely sleeping." Kerry nods and they compare notes on the terrible twos versus infancy. "I hate to say it, but in some ways, it gets harder," says Elizabeth. Kerry commiserates that it must be twice as hard when you're alone: "Any prospects?" Elizabeth stops on the stairs and looks totally privately stunned that Weaver's showing conversational interest. She turns and says, "Uhh...I met a teacher recently. He's a nice man." But she doesn't know what to say after that. "Nice is good," Weaver manages. "Yes, it's...nice," says Elizabeth. They blink. They're either going to part ways, or flop down and paint their toenails while talking about sex and chocolate. In the same second, they choose the former, sufficiently wigged for today that they've just...gulp...bonded.
Sam breezes in a minute before her shift is scheduled to start. Malik appreciatively cedes both his seat in triage and the patient he was seeing -- a little girl. Sam takes a look at her throat and nods that it's pretty red. My screen goes black here, so I can hear Sam saying that they need a throat culture, but I've no idea what's happening on screen. This had better not be the day Luka decides to streak the ER. The father is alarmed -- ah, there's my picture -- to hear that it'll take six to eight hours to get to his daughter; he's got to go to work. "It'll be okay," the little girl says bravely. Sam points them to chairs.
Luka sneaks up behind Sam and whispers in her ear about whether Alex is okay. "I don't know," she says, looking both mortified and tickled that she can feel Luka's breath on her neck. Luka tantalizingly offers to have them over that night to talk, promising to cook and let Alex watch something on the big-screen TV. He's practically licking her ear. Sam looks like she's using every ounce of her strength to resist him. She's a stronger woman than I am. A patient interrupts, so she pushes her chair away and brushes Luka off with a quick smile. Luka looks disappointed.
Weaver spies Luka and berates him for making her late for a budget meeting by not showing up on time. "Look for the deduction in your paycheck," she snipes. Luka totally doesn't care. "It could be worse -- she could have an M16 strapped on," cracks a nearby Carter. Oh, Carter. We get it. You were in Africa, Luka was in Africa, you're wearing big-boy underwear now. But I don't think it's so cute to compare Weaver to the same violent and deeply angry band of African rebels that all but killed Luka. Was The Beard the keeper of your tact? Luka sees an open cardboard box on the table and asks Carter what it is; turns out it's a care package for Kem, plus some stuff for the clinic. "I hear they're really desperate for roses in the Congo," teases Luka, pulling out a box of flowers. Carter blushes and confesses that it's been thirty-four days, sixteen hours, and twelve minutes since they were together. Jerry is listening. "We email each other," says Carter wistfully. "She says she's really starting to show." As Carter leaves, Jerry taps Luka on the shoulder and asks for a Kleenex. "He really misses her," whimpers Jerry. Aw. What a doof.
For some reason, Susan and Abby are talking about Susan's father. All I can think of is, they got the memo about how everything must relate to parenting this week, and they're desperately stretching. Susan sighs that she and her sister were both raised by crazy parents. "Couldn't have turned out more differently," she says. Abby offers that Susan's parents did the best they could. "That's the scary part," says Susan dryly. I feel like they shaved off a piece of this conversation -- about Susan's not telling her father, about her fears about being a parent. And it's irritating to think that TPTB either deemed that irrelevant, or just allowed this asinine fragment of a conversation to stand alone as a scene. I'm not surprised, just irritated. They stop talking because a rig has arrived carrying a man covered in blood. They can't figure out where the wound is; plus, he's twitching and flipping his shit, held down by some restraints. They wheel him inside.
Carter carries the Kem Love Box outside -- not to be confused with Kem The Love Box, which is his private nickname for her. He bumps into another rig, this one with a man suffering from shortness of breath and a bunch of other stuff that goes over my head. Carter blows it off until Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen hops out of the ambulance with the man. Carter's stunned and happy, and backtracks to be with her. It occurs to me that all of this happened while Carter was in Congo, so she doesn't know about Kem, he didn't know about the accident (presumably someone told him), and more importantly, Romano died after Chen had already left. I doubt anyone bothered to tell her, so I wonder if she'll see the memorial plaque and drop her jaw to the floor. "Deb," Carter calls out. She smiles sadly at him; she's with her father, who's got pneumonia. She tells him about her mother's death in China of a pulmonary embolism, and says she only got back a week ago because her father couldn't be transported any sooner. She's been taking care of him herself because he refuses to have a nurse around. When Chen gets inside, Jerry gives her a bear hug and calls her "Deb," and Malik welcomes her back. "Yeah," she says, a grateful twitch to her frown. Okay, so far, I don't immediately hate her again. That's a positive sign.
A woman with an infant pesters Sam to bring her to Dr. Weaver. Sam doesn't realize that this is Sandy's mother, and so tries to send her back to the waiting room. But nepotism waits for no one. "Look. Sandy and Dr. Weaver, they...live together," says Mrs. Lopez, with a knowing twiddle of the eyebrows. Realization dawns on Sam, and she lets them through. Guess it's good to know the office gossip grapevine has graduated beyond Weaver's sexuality.
Abby and Susan's trauma patient is clutching a crystal meth pipe. They still can't find the source of the blood -- he seems to have not a scratch. "DEMONS! All around!" screams Meth Man. Oh dear, did they let the writers on set today? Abby surveys the blood and says, "Let's hope he works in a meatpacking plant." Susan tells her to call the cops, just in case.
Gallant calls Susan to a woman who's vomiting and queasy. Her name's Nancy, she's forty-two, and she's got babies at home or somesuch. It seems her three kids have reproduced, and she's a super-young grandmother. She also wonders if her St. John's Wort is making her ill. Susan asks if she's taking it because she's depressed. "I thought I'd be done raising kids by now," Nancy admits.
Nolan, the monoxide dad, is doing fine. He's regained consciousness and he knows where he is; he also has the presence of mind to utter the promo-worthy phrase, "The baby saved our lives." It's too bad his efforts were all for naught on that front, but hey, it's nice to know he was trying to help.
Neela's panting up a storm in the hyperbaric chamber. Weenie's nose is deep into Her Virtue's Flower, where Lachlan is currently guzzling mead, wiping it from his hearty beard, and pounding his spicy young servant wench on the dining table as she murmurs, "No, I hate you...Yes! Pig. OH!" Weenie looks up and helpfully suggests to Neela that staring at the clock isn't going to make time pass faster. Weenie, the watched pot does boil, eventually, so if Neela wants to stare at the water and will it to froth, who are you to tell her to pipe down so you can focus on the wench's frantic search for her torn underclothing? "If I don't get out of here, I'm going to LOSE IT, do you understand?" yells Neela. Fed up with his not understanding how impossible this is for her, Neela walks into the antechamber, announcing that the baby is stable and she is done. Sighing, Weenie shouts for them to call Dr. Olivera before he sticks the fork into Neela. As they "ascend" her, she peers through the round window into the hyperbaric chamber and notices that the baby is beginning a rather timely struggle with his lungs. Weenie shouts out various things to Neela that lead her to conclude that the kid has a pneumothorax. "You need to reinflate his lung," she says. Bursting with sweat, Neela groans, "Bring me back down." They descend her, and her ear drum promptly perforates, leaking a trickle of blood out of her ear. "OW!" she shouts. "It grows back," Weenie shrugs. This is apparently enough to ease the searing pain, so Neela sprints back into the chamber, they seal it, and we fade to black as she scrambles to help Samuel and BLEEDS FROM THE EAR. What is up with Superwoman here? She can't handle small spaces but she can think and work with a blown eardrum? I would be outside and across the street at NotMagoo's by now, begging Jack Daniels to make sweet love to me.
Chen and Carter sit mournfully by her father's bedside as she comments that being in China and trying to care for her parents there made her appreciate the American system. "I had to wait a week for a chest film," she says. Carteer confirms that her father has pneumonia, but she's afraid it's an embolism and wants a scan. Carter doesn't think it's necessary, but hey, who can argue with a willing patient and a sturdy credit card? "Does he walk?" asks Carter. "He can," Chen admits. "But he won't, and I can't make him. Since the surgery, he's been depressed, a bit demented. Just stares at the TV." She strokes his face brokenly. Pratt passes just then and is shocked to see Chen; Carter astutely gives them a moment together.
Chen fills in Pratt on her father's condition. "When did you get back?" he asks. "Um," she says. "Last Monday." Pratt looks upset that the power of the penis didn't lure her to a telephone. I do think that, as much as I generally dislike Pratt and Chen -- when she's in her Everyday Chen mode -- it endears me to both of them to see Pratt's demeanor change with her, because clearly, he has a soft spot for her. "How are you, Mr. Chen?" he says genially. Chen's dad looks confused, and then says something in muffled Chinese. Chen looks adoringly at her father, eyes welling, and beams at him as she answers him. She pats him, and does a nice job of looking both loving and utterly gutted at once.
Neela and Weenie frantically work to reinflate Samuel's lung, the former because she wants to get out of there and the latter because Lachlan's evil brother Dougall was about to attack the servant wench in the barn, but lo! He doesn't know of her strength with a dagger. Dr. Olivera's face shows up in the window, and he hangs out there yelling instructions at them while he waits to descend to the correct pressure. There's a prolonged shot with the heart monitor in the right foreground and Neela's hands working on the left. It's a very long shot, and kind of boring. "He needs a chest tube," shouts Neela. Olivera promises to get in there as soon as he can. He got there pretty quickly; I wonder why they couldn't have called him before this whole mess started. Oh, that's right -- Contrivance was giving him a foot rub.
Meth Man is conked out. Abby examines his eyes -- easy does it, or face my wrath -- and concludes that he has pretty irises. Abby wonders if he'll tell them what happened. "I doubt he'll remember," says Susan. "Sad," Abby sighs. Susan wonders what she means. "He's somebody's kid," says Abby plainly. Okay, no. There's nothing about that remark that seems natural. It's very, very clumsy foreshadowing, and it's not the type of thing Abby would have said. I might have bought it had it come from the mouth of Susan, who could be excused from the randomness by the fact that she's pregnant and contemplating what it means to be a parent. But from Abby, it was just jarring and weird and totally out of place, unless she's been spit-shining her crystal ball again.
Weaver asks Malarkey where her son is. "Curtain one," Malarkey says. "He's really cute." The latter is delivered with such wholehearted sincerity that it did actually elicit a chuckle from me, especially because Weaver's expression is like, "Oh great, with your judgment, that probably means my kid's a troll." Luka's talking to Mrs. Lopez when Weaver finds them. "Handsome boy, Kerry," he smiles. Weaver takes him as Luka explains that everything seems totally fine. "Just a cold," Weaver nods. She thanks Luka, who takes his cue and goes off to light the set on fire elsewhere. Weaver gives Mrs. Lopez some advice and cuddles her baby. "Will you be home late again, tonight?" Mrs. Lopez asks, putting a very gentle but unmistakable emphasis on "again." Weaver says she won't.
Sam passes by and gawks at the baby, and then moves on toward triage. She notices that the little girl from earlier is sitting there alone, and curiously investigates. The girl timidly says that her father's coming right back after work. "I'm okay," she insists. Sam takes her hand and leads her into the ER.
Neela's all kinds of crabby as she works on Bizarro Rex. Dr. Olivera shouts instructions at her as she tries to insert the tube. "I can't see. Wipe my brow," she tells Weenie. "What?" he asks. "WIPE MY BROW," she shouts. Bizarro makes a mental note to invent a self-cleaning forehead to gift her with when he's out of there, because he's just that kind of infant -- until Rex has him killed, that is. The pressure equalizes and Dr. Olivera enters to help -- which, here, seems to mean that he stands there and watches Neela curiously while she works.
Susan calls her father, but she's too distracted to say anything of import. "Tell him," mouths Abby. But Nolan the Monoxide Dad comes in, so Susan hangs up abruptly. He wants to know how Bizarro Rex is, and she promises to check. Then Gallant grabs Susan and tells her that their young grandmother Nancy has been puking because she's pregnant. "Want me to tell her?" he asks. Susan says she will, and asks him to call the chamber and find out about Samuel. Finally, she meets up with Nancy and breaks the news. Nancy can't believe she's pregnant, because she's on birth control and she's apparently never seen a TV movie in her life. Susan tells her that St. John's Wort can render birth-control pills ineffective. Nancy totally wants to scream "holy shit" and run down the hall waving her hands and wailing, but suppresses the urge.
A trauma comes in: a couple found at home with multiple stab wounds. "It was the drugs," moans the woman. "It wasn't his fault!" They're bathed in blood and get wheeled to separate trauma rooms.
Luka sets a man's broken hand. A creepy old dude shuffles past begging for change. "What do you think you're doing?" snaps Luka. The old guy spies the little girl, Christy, and decides to ask her for cash. Because eight-year-olds are frequently dripping with it. She's not a juvenile hooker, old man. "Leave her alone and get back to your bed," Luka shouts. But he doesn't get up, which is lovely of him, so the old man leans in and horks up something tasty onto Christy's shirt. She freaks, naturally, as one would when aged and reeking lung tissue takes up residence on one's clothing. Sam drags the old doofus away while Luka tries to comfort the little girl. He's appalled to hear that the girl was left there alone, and orders Sam to put her in a room to keep her safer.
Luka tails Sam and asks her for an answer about that night. "I don't think so," she says. He suggests the night, and you can't blame the guy for not being accustomed to being rejected, because he is the second coming. And the third, the fourth...he's that good. He follows Sam into a private room, where she turns around and attempts to be nonchalant as she tells him they should slow things down. Luka blinks. "We're not exclusive, right?" she says. "Just dating, or whatever. No commitments, no strings, no co-parenting. Just keep it casual, okay?" Luka looks hurt by this. I think he was having fun caring about someone other than himself. "Okay," he lies. Sam bites her lip, as if she knows what she just said sucks enormously and is wondering if she should take it back. A nurse interrupts them and calls them to help with the double trauma.
The man and woman who just came in are both really disgustingly covered in blood, the mother being a bit worse, since her throat was slashed. Abby wonders to Susan whether Meth Man did it. "He was bloody and hallucinating," she points out. Meanwhile, Gallant, Luka, Carter, and Pratt are in Trauma Yellow with the man. Carter wonders if this was a personal vendetta, and Gallant says that the cops think the house was broken into by someone. "Doesn't mean [the parents] don't know who did it," Carter replies. Elizabeth jots down a few things on her consult and then jerks up her head, shocked. "How come there's [sic] only men in here?" she asks. Everyone stops for a second and is like, "Hmm," and then they keep going. Sure enough, an all-female crew in Trauma Green is trying desperately not to lose this battle of the sexes, but their female patient isn't cooperating, in that she dies. It's always fun and games until someone goes into asystole, people. Suddenly, Abby and Susan spy the cops arresting Meth Man. "He went nuts and stabbed his parents," says Officer Obvious.
The hyperbaric chamber begins its ascent to normal pressure. "Thank God," pants Neela. They tell her she did really well. "More like Samuel survived despite me," she frets. They fluff her until Weenie notices that her shortness of breath more closely resembles lung problems than the kind of afterglow his kitchen wench is experiencing in Destiny's Lust. Olivera wonders if Neela's blown out some air sacs in her lungs, or somesuch, and worries that continuing to ascend will collapse her lung. Neela moans. "Wimp," cackles Lauren. They want to keep her down there for another hour and are slowing their ascent accordingly. "ANOTHER HOUR?" Neela freaks. We fade to black really pretty sick of the claustrophobia thing, because we get it, and in fact we got it a while ago, and now we'd really rather just open a bottle of wine relax with it in front of The Daily Show.
The cops follow Elizabeth as she wheels Meth Man's father up to surgery. Officer Hurried wants a statement right away; Elizabeth helpfully points out that the eleven stab wounds the man sustained just might preclude him from saying anything until such time as he'd survived them. At the elevator, as she's waiting, Elizabeth spies hot Dr. Lawson, whose hairline is receding a bit more than I first thought but who is still, all in all, delicious. "So what brings you to the ER?" she asks, as he smiles at her. "Transvenusthingyfirstbaseotomy, or some random medical term that Heathen can't figure out, but which rolls off my tongue like velvet love," says Lawson. "That's quite a mouthful," Lizzie smirks, hot under the collar. "You?" Lawson purrs. "Stabbing victim," she replies. "Nobrasecondbasegropemenowotomy." Lawson looks at her like she's edible. I think we've taken care of foreplay, and I need a cold shower. As Lawson starts toward her, Weaver appears and jams her cane into the elevator button, trapping Lawson behind it and effectively cockblocking the hot doctor. He looks startled; indeed, Weaver all but knocked his cock off. And she's totally ignorant of what's going on, prattling on to her assistant about Dr. Anspaugh. Lawson finally figures, "Fuck it," and asks Elizabeth if they can go out. She'd like to, and he gets in the elevator awkwardly promising to call her. "You do that," she says nonchalantly, glowing at the attention. Weaver follows her curiously. "I thought you were dating a teacher," she says nosily. "I am," Elizabeth grins, snickering. Oh, you player.
Susan forgot yet again to update Vicky and her family on Bizarro Rex's progress. That's really about all there is to see here. Meanwhile, Luka wants to use Jerry's computer, but Jerry's busy. We see he's got a web cam mounted on the monitor and his screen is split into four quadrants, each of them with the same image of Jerry being fed from the camera. He's all protective of it: "None of your beeswax," he actually says. Luka doesn't bat an eyelash. Apparently he can butcher common slang, but someone tosses out a phrase as stupid as "none of your beeswax," and Luka doesn't bat an eyelash. Maybe in Croatia, they respect beeswax like it's gold.
Sam tells Luka that the little abandoned girl, Christy, tested positive for strep throat. "We can't treat her without parental consent," he snaps. Sam notices that something's awry, since she'd have to be blind, deaf, mute, and indeed entirely absent to miss it. "I'm okay," says Luka, clipped. "Don't read into things." Before Sam can ask what crawled up his ass -- unaware, it seems, that it's her -- Christy's father returns. Luka lays into him for leaving the little girl alone in the ER. "There are drunks here, junkies, psych patients...." he rants. "Yeah, and also doctors and security guards and nurses," says the father, confused. I see his point, but if he had to leave for work, couldn't he have spoken with Sam and tried to see about protecting his kid rather than just leaving her? He frets that he is a single dad who needs to feed his family: "What was I supposed to do?" Luka's expression is very, very angry, and Sam just watches this happen as if she's sort of sorry about it, but doesn't care enough to intervene. Christy runs up and hugs her father adoringly, and Luka finally orders the treatment. Since he can't withhold sex, I guess he was getting off on withholding penicillin.
Susan wheels Vicky up to the chamber and reassures her that the treatment went really well. Weenie is just bringing Samuel out of the chamber, and Vicky nuzzles him adoringly. "He opened his eyes a few minutes ago," Weenie smiles. That would explain why His Fetish Was Love is lying on the gurney with his wee little hand marking page forty-seven. Weenie snatches his book away with a triumphant smile, and tells Vicky that her son's moving on his own and looking good. Susan says he'll need another round tomorrow, and should be fine to go home in three days. "We didn't plan on a third," weeps Vicky. "Thank God he came along." The music swells as Susan and Weenie swap satisfied That Baby Saved Lives smiles.
Susan turns her head to the right and sees Neela on the monitor, apparently still inside the chamber and looking utterly miserable. Susan asks her what's going on, and Neela rattles off her possible lung problem. "You should've had someone replace you," Susan oversimplifies, crankily, and Neela just gapes at her, as deflated as her lung might soon be.
Alex gets dropped off, and Sam greets him in front of County. She gingerly asks if he'd like to hang out with her that night and talk. "About what? You and Luka having sex?" he asks. Sam gulps. "That's not how I was going to put it, but yeah," she nods. Alex doesn't want to talk, preferring to pretend he's fine and doesn't have anything to say, so he flounces off ahead of her. Sam is visibly concerned.
Susan lovingly pats her tummy, having eaten her vitamin-infused helping of the moral, "Babies Can Be Blessings." She gets off the elevator in time to see Jerry bring Carter over to his computer. Kem is on the screen. It seems Jerry found out that the consulate has a web cam, and somehow, in the span of an hour, got Kem in front of it and hooked up his own. Misty, Carter watches as Kem gleefully stands up and shows off her belly -- which, for one, still looks flat from the front, and for another, is clearly not part of Thandie Newton's body. Susan makes some comment about how some women have little volleyball stomachs and some don't, and she's wistful, clearly implying Kem has a wee little volleyball stomach and looks pregnant rather than fat. But Kem doesn't have a volleyball stomach. Kem has "I ate a sandwich today" stomach. I still look more pregnant than she does. Indeed, were I on ER, I'd be getting a pregnancy test done solely based on that, since people on this show are getting pregnant from sharing coffee cups. But I'd like to point out that Kem was in her second trimester in Episode 11, and it's been thirty-four days since her exit in Episode 14. As such, she should be no more than a month away from her third trimester, which means she should have been showing WAY sooner than now, and should be showing a lot more. I know she's petite, but...I don't know, I just think the least they could've done was sprung for a better belly. Carter tries not to cry as he tells a glowing Kem that she looks beautiful.
Pratt tells Chen that her father doesn't have a pulmonary embolism. She's having him admitted for pneumonia medicine, and Pratt tenderly asks her how much longer she can take care of him alone. "There are assisted living..." he begins. Chen shrugs tearfully and exposits that she was sleeping in her hotel room when her mother died, alone. Pratt understands and watches as a brokenhearted Chen strokes her father's face.
Olivera calmly tries to tell Neela that she'll need a chest x-ray once they ascend. They only have three feet to go. He's trying to tell her to be careful, but the second they can open the door, Neela bolts through it and sprints through the hospital, knocking people over left and right until she gets to a door that leads to a balcony. There, she takes deep, enormous breaths. I find it amusing that, with chest pain and a possible lung issue, she can both sprint and inhale deeply. Lauren begins to laugh and laugh and laugh, then flips off the TV. "Suck my chest tube," she growls.
Susan leads Chuck into a sports tavern, where her father -- Paul Dooley -- is sitting and watching a hockey game. "Hi Dad," she says. He barely looks up, and tells her he already ordered her a beer because he thought she'd be there at 6. She smiles at Chuck as if to say, "See? Insane," and tells Paul she wants to introduce someone. Paul shouts at the game, and then turns distractedly to Susan. "What?" he asks. Susan, still smirking endlessly, introduces Chuck. He offers his hand, and Paul stares at him before accepting it. I yearn for him to call Chuck an oily bohunk. "Boyfriend?" Paul asks. "Yeah," Susan says. "You two had dinner yet?" Paul asks. Susan coughs and breaks it to him that she's pregnant and he's going to be a grandfather. Again. Anyone want to mention Chloe and Suzy? Anyone? You know, considering how Susan raised her sister's baby for a while and was so attached to it, and so broken when she lost it, you'd think we'd get some credit from TPTB for being longtime viewers and that they'd let Susan talk about how much it probably means to her to be pregnant now. Suzy was practically Susan's daughter for a time -- I refuse to believe she'd be so blasé about having a kid of her own, no matter whom it's with, because of what she had to go through with that little girl. This is insane. This is a waste of a beloved character's history. Paul gruffly asks if Chuck's going to marry Susan. "If she'll have me," he beams. Aw. "About damn time," says Paul. Huh? Is he supposed to be an asshole? Whatever. Susan laughs and smirks and blushes, and I have no idea if we're to infer that she's accepting this or is just embarrassed by it all, but we fade to black on the lilting strains of "Stuck In The Middle With You," and it just makes me sad that she show itself doesn't even know how Susan feels about any of this. Dicks.