Previously on ER: Michael Gallant was deployed to Iraq. He and had Neela had flirted but never got together until he kissed her as a farewell. And Luka fell in love with a courageous young recapper named Heathen, but their passion could never be -- her workday wouldn't allow it -- so she set him free. Incidentally, I didn't watch a single episode after I stopped recapping, so please forgive me for any massive ignorance of the nuances of what's happened since that day.
We pick up the episode with Susan, Pratt, and Neela. As they pop out of the ER doors, Susan is in the act of asking whether Neela has heard from Gallant. Immediately, I'm struck by how much this feels like the script's second scene, like a real beginning piece was trimmed somewhere in the edit. The question comes out of nowhere and feels clipped, like we're in the middle of a conversation. Neela says that she and Gallant have exchanged emails, but that his internet is down now. God, she's so calm about it. I would be running around smacking my head against the wall, hoping it created visions of web pages before my desperate eyes. And when I say, "would be," I mean, "If the welt on my forehead was any indication, I did that once at work." Pratt asks if Gallant is okay, and Susan asks Neela to pass along their regards. Neela smiles.
Across the world, it's daytime in Iraq, and one Michael Gallant has grown himself an extensively groomed mustache. I am unspeakably disappointed in him. He still looks cute, but...unless you're Tom Selleck and your mustache is a more beloved actor than you are, or you're Ned Flanders and the mustache is a jungle of godliness, then mustaches are not your friend. Gallant is watching an ambulance drive away. "Another bad guy saved, huh?" asks a nurse. She looks like a cross between Lili Taylor and Cate Blanchett. I'm going to call her Lili, since Cate Blanchett is way too busy to participate in this recap. Gallant does something with his gun that is kind of hot -- our boy is all grown up! -- and tells Lili that the aforementioned "bad guy" got dispatched to a local hospital. "Need me to re-dress that?" Lili asks, putting her hand on Gallant's arm. We pan down to see that he's got a big bandage on it. Her hand lingers there, which seems a bit like treating someone's wounded knee by grabbing it while saying, "Does it hurt when people grab it?" The Mustache is frowning. "I'll get it," Gallant says, leaving. Lili looks all drooly. Yeah, drink it in, girlie.
Neela tiredly enters her apartment, which I understand she shares with Ray, and tosses her bag on the couch. This wakes up a loiterer who has been snoozing there while clutching his guitar. Deep. "Hey, Dr. Neela," he yawns. "Hey, Bret," she says. If only it were Bret Michaels. A girl can dream. "Girlfriend kick you out again?" Neela snarks. He quickly tells her that they've broken up, and in the same breath offers her a mix CD he burned for her that's entirely blues music. Apparently he knows she's ignorant of that genre and wants to teach her all about it. Just then, Ray flushes the toilet and emerges from the bathroom, confirming my worst suspicion that Shane West is still being paid to participate in things. When Bret disappears into the bathroom, Ray apologizes for the human throw pillow he left on the couch. "I'm getting used to finding random rockers passed out in our living room," Neela snaps. Ray defends Bret's coolness, which to me is like Charles Manson calling to get me to lay off O.J. Simpson, already, because the guy has a cuddly soul and baby-soft hands. Ray thinks Bret likes Neela, and points out that it's hard to meet people, and life is rough, yada yada, but Neela isn't having it and silences him with a look.
At her desk, Neela puts pen to paper, and we hear her voice-over read aloud the words she writes: "Dear Michael: It's been months since I heard from you. I've been reading the paper and watching the news, and it's hard not to worry. But I'm sure you're taking care of yourself."
Cut to Gallant writing Neela a letter. His voice-over picks up, along the same theme: "Sorry I've been so out of touch. They keep me pretty busy here, with all the parties." Sand orgies! I knew it!
Back to Neela: "Everyone here asks after you. I think about you often, even at odd moments." We see her turn around after buying a cup of coffee, at which point she is confronted by the sight of a shmoopy couple feeding each other and making kissy faces. She looks like she wants to dump her coffee over their heads so it will scald and disfigure their love. "I wonder how you're doing," she VOs.
Gallant VO, while he tends a wounded man: "You probably don't even remember what I look like. I'm the tall, good-looking guy with the best bedside manner in the place." Pause. "Tell Pratt I said that." But who will judge? Tell you what, I'll do the selfless thing and volunteer myself for a bedside-manner-off. Whoever pampers me the most wins. I'm giving Gallant a one-year head start and some clippers.
"Tell everybody I'm still here, still doing the doctor thing," Gallant finishes as Pratt interrupts Neela during her rounds to tell her that a MedEvac copter is en route with a double amputation. Her eyes out-glaze any sweet, delicious donut. Man, it's a bad sign if you're a doctor and amputations bore you. "I try to imagine what your days are like," Neela's VO says. "How different your life must be." Here, we cut to Gallant, doing boring old sutures until he finds out a patrol got ambushed and the wounded are incoming. GVO: "Days go by, some are slower than others, but I'm doing fine." Cut to an Army chopper landing. GVO: "Sometimes, in the middle of everything, I kind of wonder if what I'm doing here..." Cut to the MedEvac copter landing. NVO: "...Is maybe the same as what you're doing over there." Ouch! My face hurts from the sound slap that this scene's heavy hand just delivered. GVO: "It's good to believe it is." NVO: "It makes me feel you're not really as far away as it seems." GVO: "That maybe it won't be so hard to get through this." NVO: "And that sometime soon we'll see each other again." We smash to the credits as I exhale in relief that two actors I like are the focal points of this episode. Because, as you know, it could have been so much worse. For everyone.
At County, a woman is suffering. This is a shocking twist. The woman has actually just been unloaded from the MedEvac copter, and she is covered in red. Pratt exposits that she has lost a lot of blood. And I'm glad he said that, because until now I thought she was just a rabid Chicago Bulls fan who'd gone body-paint crazy. Neela VO: "As for work, some things continue to be a challenge for me. I know I'm good at some of it, but I have some deficiencies. A certain...ambivalence." I can't believe I've been gone for eleven episodes and she's exactly where I left her. Well, not exactly -- last I saw her, she wasn't holding two plastic bags with dismembered hands inside. But I'm sure she would've been if she could've. "You can put them back on, right?" the woman asks. Neela just stares at her, mouth agape. Pratt notices this and takes the time to shoot Neela an irritated glare before encouraging the woman, saying she'll be just fine. "What's your name?" Neela shouts above the din of the copters.
"Private Thomas Perry, sir!" We're back in Iraq, and Gallant is helping a victim of an explosion. He's got shrapnel and some AK-47 rounds in him. "I thank God for my years at County," Gallant VOs. "They prepared me for this, as much as anyone can be prepared." Considering he survived a crazed loon hijacking a tank and driving it through Chicago, I'd say he got some unexpectedly apt training.
We go from Perry's mangled leg to a shot of Neela's patient's wrist, which is spurting blood as realistically as the dismembered Black Knight did in Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail. Oh my God, I wish he were here. Even without limbs, he'd be better than Malarkey. Susan and Sam are tending to the woman -- Doris -- as Neela applies pressure to the wound. Can you really call it a wound when it's a severed hand? I feel like "wound" sounds so small-scale compared to that horror. Doris tells them that she was inside a bookbinding machine trying to unjam it, and someone turned it on while she was there. Books: They kill. Pratt calmly tells her that it was a clean slice, so there's a great chance they can put her hands back on, which...thank God for medical science, you know? Or super glue, depending on how stretched County's budget is.
A new kid enters Trauma Yellow to join the fray. His name is Rosales, and he's Neela's med student. Neela VO: "I'm not even confident in my own decisions half the time. Now I'm supposed to help orient students?" Sam pops up to call Neela the resident brainiac, which prompts her to write to Gallant that it kills her that everyone thinks she knows all the answers, when she in fact doesn't. Susan basically assumes control of things and keeps Neela in a smaller role because she's never seen this procedure done -- the reattachment? The prep for the reattachment? The reawakening of her soul? Not sure -- and Susan doesn't think it's a good idea to let her participate. So Neela sticks with tying tourniquets around the woman's biceps. Neela VO: "Still, I feel like after all this time, the people I work with should have more confidence in me, but how can they, if I don't?" Rosales is all excited and eager to see how this case plays out, but Neela confesses to Gallant that she feels like she's been sleepwalking through all of it since med school. And nothing is more interesting to watch than a bored, jaded girl. "Woo" and "hoo."
Perry is understandably upset about the amount of ammo in his body. Evidently it doesn't jibe with what his plans were for the day. I can relate -- I stubbed my toe the other day and I was pissed. Life is hard. Gallant VO as he works on Perry: "I have a lot of responsibility here." Interestingly, the closed-captioners had it as "authority." They roll Perry over, and he screams accordingly. "And I've gotta admit, I don't mind it," GVO adds. Again the captioners diverge here; they had, "I kind of like it." This little factoid is brought to you by a very boring part of me. As they wait for morphine, an assisting Lili tries to distract Perry by getting him talking about his home state of Vermont. Unfortunately, all he has to say about this is, "AAAAAHHHH," so...not something about which the state tourism board will be entirely thrilled. Some beefy guy cracks that Perry should thank God he's not out in the Vermont cold right now. "God, or Don Rumsfeld?" Perry pants. "Gotta go with the Sec Def we've got, not the one we wish we had," Beefy replies cheerfully. Ever the patriot, Gallant shoots Beefy a withering glare that shrinks him from Porterhouse to Steak Diane in under two seconds. Then they putter around the wound for a while. "I'll keep the leg, right?" Perry asks. Gallant says nothing. Well, not to Perry. In VO: "Of course, responsibility cuts both ways." Gallant's crabby superior arrives to take the case into the OR; Gallant gives him the bullet, and Crabby introduces Captain Whitley, a new staffer who needs to be shown the ropes. GVO: "It's strange after just eight months to feel like a veteran." He watches Crabby take Perry into the OR. (The setup, I should mention, is a large tent-like room -- or a tent-like tent, I suppose -- with a clear plastic curtain leading to...a piece of hall, I think, that has typical swinging double doors that go to the OR. It's basically that T-intersection-like place outside the trauma rooms at County where people stop and talk before continuing down the hall; the difference is the massive pieces of plastic sheeting that are hanging from the ceiling, acting as curtains between that area and the rest of the hospital.) Gallant and Whitley get acquainted. "How long have you been here?" she asks. "Since last spring," he replies. "How long did it take you to get used to it?" she follows up.
"I'll let you know when I do," Neela is telling Rosales as they wheel Doris down the hall to the elevator. Rosales says the ER seems rough, and confides that he's had other things on his mind lately. Apparently, his wife just had a baby -- on January 21; Celia; seven pounds two ounces. Rosales is an over-sharer. Neela is surprised that he's having a family at twenty-four, to which he responds that he and his wife want three kids before they're thirty, and to which my ovaries respond by cracking open a Heineken and toasting their sedentary existence. This gets Neela all self-conscious about her own social life, or prodigious lack thereof; "I have some catching up to do," she says sheepishly. Rosales marvels at how hard it must be to balance a social life with ER work. As the doors close, Neela whispers, "Yeah." Pratt, the expert, should take her under his wang -- er, I mean, wing. Wing. Sorry. ["Can't say I'm wild about the correction, either. Hee." -- Wing Chun]
Upstairs in Surgery, Neela and Rosales hand off Doris -- as if she hasn't been handed off enough today. Cue the cymbals! Thanks, thanks! I'll be here all recap. Dr. Dubenko shows up to claim the severed hands and tells Rosales and Neela to join him. "I'll be late for board rounds," Neela protests half-heartedly. Dubenko doesn't much care. He explains that Dr. Lieberman, their plastics guy and the world expert on burn management -- you know, a piece of info that doesn't have any relevance...YET -- is getting the consent paperwork done, so they're going to take a look at the hands to see how uphill the battle is. Dubenko's eyes have a turned-on gleam at the idea of handling these dismembered limbs. I love his perpetual look of arousal. "Two forceps and a Kelly," he orders, inspiring some sort of pornographic fanfic somewhere. Neela blinks at Dubenko's order and offers to get him a nurse. "No, you'll do fine," he condescends. Then Dubenko caresses the hands. "Supple, resilient limbs," he purrs. "Clean, straight amputations." Wow. I'm almost uncomfortable enough to turn off the TV for a while in case he needs a moment alone. This hand job seems to get him as hot as an actual handjob. Then he pokes at where the wrist would go while sharing that Dr. Lieberman used to be in the military, and that's where he got so good with burn care. Hmm. I just don't see how that applies here. Perhaps something will come up later that would make this information relevant. Neela VO: "I find myself both proud and jealous at times, Michael. You have a purpose and a role to fill. Most days I don't feel like that at all."
Gallant tubes an Iraqi kid whose bowels appear to be out in the open. Everyone seems okay with leaving them there for now, as if sometimes, bowels just need to see the light of day. Our boy goes off to find Dr. Crabby, Military Surgeon, while Whitley gushes that she's impressed by Gallant's skill. He tells her he worked for a county ER in Chicago for three years. "Who do you have back there? Wife, girlfriend?" Whitley asks. "Not really," Gallant replies. Whitley takes the hint. They forge ahead into the OR, and are immediately acquainted with the lower half of Perry's leg, which has been liberated from the tyrant knee. GVO: "I know what a lot of people think about this war, but when you're here, you have to believe you're fighting for something that's real. Something that matters." I'm sure Perry feels that his leg matters very much. Gallant narrates that they all want to believe that the people they can't save, or the ones they sew back together, are all heroes rather than victims. I suspect they are both. Gallant tremblingly asks Crabby if he can tend to the kid with exposed bowels. "Good Iraqi, or bad Iraqi?" Crabby asks. "He's on our side, sir," Gallant says diplomatically. "Send him in in ten minutes," Crabby replies.
As they leave the OR, a curious Whitley wonders about the good/bad comment, so Gallant stops in the staging area between the swinging doors and the plastic curtain -- so convenient for blocking -- that one unit in Kirkuk lost a lot of people when a patient came in and blew himself up on the operating table. Gallant VO: "It's crazy what your daily concerns become." Yes, safe to say no one would fault you for feeling like you live in Bizarro World if, suddenly, your primary concern is whether people will explode randomly in your vicinity. GVO: "You end up missing the littlest things." Cut to him shooting hoops with a wee basketball set -- kind of the size of the ones that go on people's wastebaskets. He misses twice, then makes one, and then takes aim and shoots...
...and we're at County, seeing a ball swish through the hoop. Through the netting, in a lovely shot, we see Neela standing upstairs in the hospital talking to somebody until she catches sight of the hoop. Thoughtfully, she wanders downstairs, and we see that it's Pratt doing the balling. As if there were any doubt he's the primary baller in these parts. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Neela and Pratt make idle chatter until she asks him whether he misses Gallant. "You were good friends," Neela says. They were? "We still are," Pratt says. They are? I know they made a show of bonding when Gallant left, but now I feel like I have entered Bizarro World. Is my couch about to swallow me? Or worse, is my Diet Coke about to turn into...God, I can hardly say it...Diet Pepsi? Hold me.
Neela admits that she can't stop thinking about Gallant. "Nothing wrong with that," Pratt grins, amused. Neela asks if there's any message Pratt wants to send to Gallant. "Tell him to hurry up and get his ass back here in one piece," Pratt says airily, heading back inside. "I'm tired of waiting for my rematch." Neela smiles fondly after him, probably because she's got Gallant on the brain and not because she harbors any particular affection for Pratt, because...wow, Heaven help her if that came to pass. "Pratt says he misses you," Neela says as we fade to black.
Gallant and his mustache go about their shared daily life. Gallant comments to Neela in his letter that, even over there, in something so big, the small stuff can knock people out. Like, say, stray pieces of food stuck in the massive hair trap that is your upper lip, eh, Gallant? I guess he's specifically referring to the mess officers, who caught a virus and are all wiped, contrasted with Perry and his lost leg. The kid is lying bitterly in his bed. Gallant asks if he can get him anything. "The hell out of here?" spits Perry. Gallant is taken aback. To Neela he observes that it's hard to see the young kids get dismembered, or the reservists who never thought they'd see action at all, but who showed up as requested and kept getting their tours extended. GVO: "A weekend a month, my ass."
Then we're treated to the gang unloading supplies from vans. Gallant is buddies with a driver named Jackson, who affectionately calls our boy "Chicago" and asks for news on the Bulls. "Flirting with .500," Gallant says ruefully. "Think Jordan's got one more comeback?" Jackson teases. A guy who wants quick help for a scorpion bite corrals Gallant and Whitley. She's all, "Um, scorpions?" Yes, dear. You're in the desert. Try to keep up. I feel like she is to this episode what Carter was to the Africa series. And Gallant is the Luka -- expert, caring, accustomed, adorable. Mmm.
Rosales and Neela wander through the lobby as he peers with disbelief at Triage, which is clogged beyond belief. "Is it always like this?" he gapes. Neela gives him a "sassy" answer that is long and winding and uttered at light speed, basically likening this backlog to "Hell frozen over," except that would imply it never gets like this, but it does, so...it would appear my issues with this show are alive and well. Neela and Rosales treat a woman with scabies, and then she checks in on a kid with vomiting and diarrhea, and my goodness, he doesn't barf all over himself! Maybe hell has frozen over. Bizarro ER, I'm telling you. As she deals with the mundane, Neela voices-over in her Gallant letter, "I know I shouldn't complain to you. My troubles seem pretty minor. But I spend 99% of the time waiting for the 1% where I feel like I make a difference." Frank bogs Neela down with the order from Susan that they start dispo-ing people from Triage. Neela mutters, "We're on it." Dear TPTB: Please cheer up Neela. Having someone shuffle her way through life in perpetual ennui is really not that interesting week after week after week. She's a televisual yawn.
As Gallant treats the scorpion victim, a beeping sound emanates from Beefy's direction. Gallant busts him on having what I think is a satellite phone, and makes Beefy stop using it, in case the enemy can track them. "Come on, sir, you really think these insurgents have homing technology?" Beefy complains, but he obeys.
Neela boredly deals with morons in Triage, including a woman who claims her son has a fever of 112 degrees. "Fahrenheit," she nods curtly for dramatic emphasis. Tiredly, Neela explains that if her claims were true, her child would be dead. Or, I suppose, the spawn of Satan. Which might at least be interesting enough to yank Neela out of her unending doldrums, earning this kid my eternal gratitude. The woman is unfazed, so Neela hands her a thermometer with a dark expression, and tries to leave. A guy with back pain stops her; out of pity, she examines him and tells him it's a simple ache. He wants to wait for a full write-up. Neela calmly sighs that he can either wait twenty hours to see a doctor, or go home, pop ibuprofen, drink some merlot, and get some rest. Good, solid advice there about taking medicine with booze. Susan watches all this with what I imagine has become her trademark look of pinched disapproval. As Neela's patient leaves, there's a curious moment in which he forgets his red gloves, and when Neela points them out, he gets all wiggy, grabs them, and then leaves by throwing the doors open violently. Um, okay. Either he's coming back week with back cancer, or that was just a long excuse for Susan to stick her nose further up in the air.
Indeed, as soon as Neela reenters the ER, Susan gets on her case about procedure. It seems Neela took her order about discharging people straight from Triage a bit too literally. Yawn. We know. Neela's disgruntled and disconnected Luckily, a girl runs in and interrupts this reprimand by screaming that her sick brother is out in the car.
Gallant and Whitley are on a van toward The Perimeter, where they're going to dabble in a little reckless triage. I think. It's all badly explained, and later I sort of felt like this scene should've come before the one in which we met Jackson, but...I can't think about this stuff or my brain will fold in upon itself. Gallant explains for Whitley, who is a hopeless exposition addict, that anyone who is wounded or loses life, limb, or eyesight -- um, through...kissing; yes, gentle kissing -- because of U.S. military action wins the right to come on down to the Army hospital and convalesce in style, or spin the wheel and play for a showcase. Otherwise, they're turned loose to the streets or local hospitals. "Hey, if we treated them all, we'd run out of beds and supplies in half a day," Gallant says. He learns that Whitley speaks Arabic and can translate for him, because she was inside The Pentagon on September 11 and the day started studying the language, figuring that if death was going to rain down again from above, she'd like to be able to shout disapprovingly at it in its own dialect.
Neela retrieves the young boy from his mother's car; the mother speaks only Spanish and frantically hands over a note that Rosales says she got from the free clinic. It tells them to check the boy for meningitis. Neela appreciates this lovely little Post-It about as much as she would embrace getting meningitis herself.
Gallant treats a girl whose mother explains that she can't keep anything down, and that her belly hurts; Whitley translates. Gallant diagnoses dehydration, but not by a large enough factor to keep her there, so instead he gives her something that looks like Gatorade and prescribes one cup her hour. Aw. Gallant is so cute. I spent the whole hour afraid his face was going to get blown off (spoiler: it doesn't) and fearing that it would prove my coping skills inferior.
As the girl and her mother leave, Jackson's supply truck pulls away, too -- I have no proper idea where they are right now, that the supply truck would be there too, suddenly, and ditching them -- but Jackson cheerfully offers to bring Gallant something from Kuwait. "Think you can score me some citrus?" Gallant grins. He's been craving mangoes. Jackson isn't sure a mango counts as a citrus fruit, so they settle on orange and part company with a merry wave. Jackson is clearly going to die. It's good to know that the old rules of foreshadowing at County General also prove true in the Middle East. The young Iraqi girl loses her scarf and starts running after it. Her mother starts screaming, "Jamila!" as if the world were coming to an end, which seems a bit premature since all she's doing is scampering after some cloth. But she turns out to have been prescient; Jackson's transport truck abruptly explodes -- well, I guess that's redundant; nothing ever quite casually or slowly explodes -- near Jamila. Gallant immediately sprints over to them...
...as we see Neela back with Meningitis Kid, screaming for them to intubate him. "This kid's burning up," she yells.
Cut to Jamila, who actually is burning up, and oh my God, we got it before, but by now we have gotten it, taken the antibiotics that cured it, and then been exposed to a mutant strain that is resistant to those outdated drugs. Jackson is wailing as they drag him from the flaming truck. And then he's joined by a chorus of shrill screams from both Jamila and her mother. It is a piercing back-and-forth, as if they are communicating in a language of agonizingly high-pitched bursts, with an occasional harmonized chorus. And they will not stop. They sound like broken dog whistles. I swear, I am trying to recap this with a sympathetic eye, but my temples are pulsing and my roommate is seriously shouting, "Oh my God, is everything okay in there?" And I'm seriously considering Neela's remedy of mixing pills and wine. As they try to treat both of them and get transports to the hospital, we cut to a very expensive aerial shot indeed of the desolate surroundings in which the van exploded. The wreckage flames impressively as we fade to black.
Back in Iraq, Jackson and the girl are both being treated; Jamila is charred, and wailing, as is her wont. Which I do understand. Gallant scrambles to intubate her before her throat swells shut. He tries to explain it to Jamila's mother as he goes. Back at County, Neela begins to tube Meningitis Boy. Pratt enters and she gives him the bullet; Pratt establishes with the mother that he's been like this for about two days. Neela misses with the first tube and needs a different one. Pratt offers to do it. "No, I'll try it," she says. In VO, she tells Gallant that she has moments where she can cast aside all her worries and silence the voices, and focus completely on one task: "That's when I know what I'm doing. Who I am."
Jackson is stabilizing, but there's some bruising in his lungs. Still, they plan to send him home because it may take weeks for his chest and his fractures to heal. "Your family will be glad to see you," Gallant says sincerely. Jackson is sort of shocked at this news -- he doesn't want to leave like this. I know what he means, but since there's a kid in the room who's down to a leg and a half, I think Jackson should feel rather okay with the terms of his departure. Gallant checks Jackson's x-rays and sees that both Jackson's lungs are deflated; when he turns to leave, he sees Jamila's mother praying while they peel strips of charred flesh off her arm. Wow. That's nasty. I used to get a kick out of it when my sunburned skin peeled, but now I kind of want to stay under shelter until the end of days.
Neela's patient, it turns out, has a raging bladder infection that turned septic. Or so they think; Neela wants to rule out meningitis anyway, but Pratt wants her to chill, because why be thorough when you can spend that time strutting around oozing your designer-imposter charisma? He leaves Neela with some instructions, and Rosales wonders what happens if nothing they try works. Neela remembers a treatment involving a high-frequency oscillator that they used in the NICU, but isn't sure it works on older children. So she swallows her instinct with a "Let's wait and see what Pratt wants." Exactly the approach Pratt prefers the ladies to take.
Gallant approaches Crabby, who is firing away at a shooting range. Gallant explains that there are no facilities in Iraq to care for Jamila, and so he doesn't feel right discharging her. Crabby urges him to let it go and move on, because they've done what they can; Gallant is appalled that his superior doesn't care. This leads to the expected grizzled veteran vs. first-year captain comparison, and with a jaded growl, Crabby warns Gallant against giving wide-eyed lectures. Gallant exhales so hard that seven mustache hairs are torn from the root and drift to their deaths. He asks for permission to check facilities in Kuwait, Jordan, or Egypt, and mentions that there's a plane already coming to pick up Jackson and Perry -- why not put it to use? But this sort of ruthless efficiency doesn't suit a government operation, so Crabby tries to spit all over it, but grudgingly allows Gallant to make a few phone calls. He read his copy of Humoring the Eager: No Harm, No Foul, and since he's never watched TV or movies before, he's pretty sure that none of this will go anywhere terribly inconvenient.
Pratt wheels a high-frequency oscillator into Meningitis Boy's room. He starts to explain it to Neela, but she of course already knows what it is and how it works and what it does. I don't, but where's the news in that? Pratt acts asshattishly impressed with Neela -- that unique blend of mockery and admiration that only he can drip. Neela pulls him aside and asks if they're going to call the state medical board to report the clinic doctor. Pratt doesn't understand why they would do that. Neela is horrified that anyone sent the boy there instead of checking him out immediately, so Pratt drags her further away from her med student and hisses that busting a clinic doctor won't do anyone any good, because those people are still a great line of defense. The kid's vaccinated, so he reasons that it's not like the clinic was always wholly negligent. Neela fumes.
Gallant frantically tries to find room for Jamila, but no one will take her. Lili watches him with a combination of fascination and concern, and I'm sure, no small amount of lust. But maybe I'm projecting; maybe she just has the Sally Hansen Home Waxing Strips and is itching to save Gallant's lip from its tyrannical follicles. See? I wasn't kidding about the mustache hate. I once ate at a restaurant in New York called Moustache, and I actually had to enjoy it in spite of myself. Gallant slams down the phone in frustration. "It's sweet, what you're doing," Lili gushes. "Yeah, what I'm trying to do," he mourns. He feels frustrated that if the girl stays there she will certainly die, and it doesn't help that as soon as he goes out to see her, the mother thanks him profusely. "God keep you for what you are doing," Whitley translates. Gallant is deeply affected, because he's adorable. This is so the Season 11 version of The Africa Chronicles, wherein one man similarly waged war against the conditions around him, while I fought an important battle against that man's facial hair. Aren't all the Carter fans out there thrilled I'm not required to recap him here? Wait...don't answer that. Please.
Neela decides to vent her anger at the clinic by calling the doctor and yelling at him, threatening to report him if he does it again, and ordering him to sit in the corner with his dunce hat on and think about what he did. Pratt rolls his eyes and asks if she's discharged whatever rabid wolf died up her ass on this shift. Neela spits that she's sick of being treated like a god of medicine one second and a loser the : "If you trust me, then give me room. If you don't, say so." "I don't," Pratt says. Neela stops short. "You could be the best doctor here -- everyone knows you're five times smarter -- but most of the time you're in your head," Pratt clarifies with brutal truth. Neela swallows and admits that he's right: "I blow things out of proportion. I obsess." Wait. I thought she was dispassionate and zoned, and a little uncertain. Which story are they telling, here? "I come here, I do my shift, I go home, I sleep," she prattles. "I can't believe this is my life." Pratt urges her to reclaim a social life and go out on a date. Neela: "Why does everybody seem to think I need to get laid?" Because you so won't be sorry if you do. Pratt giggles and agrees with me. Again: Satan is down there strapping on ice skates.
Gallant approaches Crabby, who gazes disconsolately on the sleeping body of a soldier. "[He] woke up with someone's arm draped across him. Took out his dagger and stabbed it," Crabby says vacantly. "It was his own arm. It'd fallen asleep and he took it for the enemy." Gallant informs El Crabass that he's coming up against some resistance in his quest to help Jamila, and begs Crabby to extend her stay. The Crab won't; they can't spare the beds. Hi, Weaver! I didn't recognize you until you dropped the army talk. Crabby orders that Jamila must be gone by morning. When Gallant spies Beefy, he gets a cunning idea.
Cut to Neela grouchily taking a phone call at County. Her frowning face slowly registers warm delight as she listens. "Michael," she finally breathes, smiling sweetly. We fade to black so relieved that NBC cancelled Hawaii before this show did anything horrible like kill off Gallant. He and Neela are so cute. Please let him stay. Or at least keep him whole. Or, oooh, send him to Las Vegas so he can join the parade of hotties on that show.
Neela tries to keep her conversation with Gallant simple amid the buzz at the front desk. "What's going on?" Sam asks. "She's talking to Gallant," Malarkey says. I'm happy that Scott Grimes is still employed, but man, did I not miss this character. Luka makes his big appearance of the episode to exposit that it sounds like Gallant is asking Neela for help. He pretends he doesn't see me here, because anything else would be too painful and dredge up old feelings. It stings, but I understand, and I will always love him even if he didn't want to stay friends after the breakup. The County Gang asks questions and sends love to Gallant, Frank grouching that they've been yakking like teenagers, and that it's going to be covered by the poor, innocent taxpayer. Suddenly, Neela hangs up and leaves. Pratt's dumbfounded. He and Luka start to give chase, asking how Gallant is and expressing disbelief that she just ended the conversation like that. But Neela is on a mission, charging down the hall.
On his end, Gallant hangs up the satellite phone with a happy smile. After savoring it for a minute, he goes back inside the tent to check up on Jackson. "It's time to go home," Jackson nods. The right side of his face is bloodied still. And therein the scabs start to spell, "ALL BUT DEAD." Gallant smiles at how happy his friend's family will be to see him. Jackson points to a little figurine on his night table. He got it for his daughter a while ago. "She's gonna love it," Gallant says affectionately. The figurine gets up, crosses the room, and wraps itself in black gaffer tape it stole from the tech room -- figuring that it might as well get dressed for the funeral now, while it has time. Jackson chats idly about his hometown of Joliet, until Gallant's eyes begin to twinkle and he conspiratorially whips out the phone. "Make it quick, 'cause if you get caught I never knew you," he grins.
Neela barges in on Lieberman and Dubenko as they examine Doris, who presumably has had her hands reattached already. Neela wants to speak to them, but they point out that they're a little occupied right now, what with the massive sewing job they just had to do. Gripping a needle is just murder on the ol' carpal tunnel. "I'm sorry, this can't wait," Neela says firmly. Except it probably kind of can, Neela. The woman HAD NO HANDS a few hours ago. So sorry that she's in the way of your personal favor.
Gallant tries to make conversation with a quiet Perry, telling him that his flight will leave either that night or the day. Perry remains silent, bitter. How could you be bitter in the face of someone so earnest as Gallant? Beefy arrives with a bottle of maple syrup for the Vermont-born Perry -- he raided some pantry or other to get it -- and Perry actually swigs it right from the bottle. That's my kind of man. The mailman arrives with a pile for Gallant, and the syrup seems to have spurred Perry into chattiness, so he asks who wrote Gallant. "My folks," he says. Then he smiles privately and adds, "And a friend." Perry acknowledges how valuable those letters can be.
Crabby interrupts to tell Gallant that his scheme worked, and that Dr. Lieberman at County General is underwriting Jamila's care. I wonder how the hell they got him to agree to that: "What? I ought to? Well, my tee time isn't until 11, so I guess you're right, I can probably take on a charred Iraqi girl. Put it on my black Amex!" Crabby pulled some strings to get the State Department and the Army to approve it, and makes sure Gallant knows it. But you can tell he secretly admires Gallant's resolve. As does Lili, who watches him with lust dripping from her lips and eyes. Delighted that Jamila will leave on the chopper, Gallant tries to compose himself. "Good news?" Lili asks. Gallant lets out a whoop, runs over, and hugs her tightly. She is thrilled. Biting her lip suggestively, she purrs that she has two Heinekens under her bed, and would he like to crack one to celebrate? Presumably before they collapse on top of the bed and get foamy their own special way. "We're here, you know?" she drools. "Gotta hold onto the good stuff." Gallant is clearly the good stuff Lili wants to cling to, and I must say I applaud her taste. Gallant sort of starts to process what she's probably asking, and agrees. But they're interrupted with news that Jackson is crashing.
When Neela gets home, she hears loud blues music playing on the stereo and tosses her mail on the table before investigating. There is a letter from Gallant. I had thought they abandoned the letter construct to symbolize that they were starting to live their lives where they are and not through writing to each other, but it turns out I overthought it, and really, they were just done writing and had to pop it in the mail. Makes sense, except for how fast those letters got where they were going. I know from experience dating a Navy boy that the military isn't so good at getting mail back and forth on time. Ray's friend Bret wanders out of the bathroom in a towel and claims that the hot water is out at his place, so Ray told him to shower there. He then turns the music down and offers Neela a drink. In her own apartment. She refuses, but then thinks better of it and accepts the cute shirtless man's offer of sweet, sweet alcohol. Well played, my girl, even if the booze probably belonged to you in the first place. Bret starts up some small talk about music as he slowly buttons his shirt, which...well, I'm sad to see his chest go, especially since I only saw Luka once this hour and it was so quick and he wouldn't look me in the eyes.
Jackson is struggling. His belly is blue and his lungs are filling with blood. He has no pulse. I know it's been a while, but I believe I remember enough to know that these are bad things.
Cut to Neela and Bret, as she's charmed by his urban legend about blues musician Robert Jackson. She admires Bret's passion about his art. He's surprised she doesn't feel that way about her work, since he's in awe of it. Neela waves off her moment of introspection. "All I meant was..." Bret begins, taking their drinks and putting them down on the table, using Gallant's letter as a coaster. "...You seem pretty passionate to me." He and Neela lean in slowly and begin kissing, and then sure enough he backs her down onto the couch. I'm torn. He's a decent booty call, but Gallant is Gallant, although he did puss out of doing anything with Neela when he was around... Still, I'm rooting for him. Can't help it. Damn you, show. I'm right where you want me.
Gallant compresses Jackson's chest while Neela and Bret make out and breathe heavily. Jackson hits asystole. "You can't reverse this," Crabby tells a desperate Gallant just as Neela and Bret start to take it a step further with unbuttoned shirts and breast smooches. She's just lying there letting him go for it. But as Gallant tries one more time to save his friend, Crabby calls out, "Dr. Gallant," yet we hear that over a shot of Neela's face. Her eyes fly open and she looks thoughtful. Then she giggles. Just as Jackson is, for all intents and purposes, dead, Neela puts on the brakes and sits up. She attempts a metaphor in which she basically calls Bret a wee Band-Aid that can only thinly, temporarily, patch up the gaping hole that's been left in her life. And if she stays out there with him, she won't be able to take it back -- or, reverse it, to use the parallel dialogue from Gallant's world. Bret's a little wounded that Neela likened him to a tiny weak plaster. "I'm in a weird place," she explains. "And I don't want to do something just because I'm lonely." Bret considers companionship to be a spectacular cure for loneliness, and Neela cocks her head. "That is so totally reasonable," she says happily. Then she gets up, retrieves Gallant's letter, and carries it into her bedroom. Alone.
Gallant watches them load Jamila into the copter that will ferry her to a transport plane. But the pilot is vexed that she's not stable enough to make the trip. Gallant argues with him desperately. "Sir, you're not the one who'd be coding her at five thousand feet," the pilot says plainly. Gallant is crushed until Crabby pipes up, "Would you take her if a doctor went?" He looks pointedly at his charge. His book told him that, if encouraging the eager leads to accidental results, you have to run with it and pretend you secretly believed in him all along. "You've got seventy-two hours, son," Crabby says. "Get her there." Gallant is thrilled that his Crabby boss has the stereotypical Crabby Boss Heart Of Gold. Lili watches him leave with open admiration, and probably more than a little sexual frustration. Gallant salutes enthusiastically and boards the chopper.
Neela lies on her bed reading Gallant's words: "I try to be positive, Neela, but the truth is, it gets to you, even if no one sees that. Even if I never admit it, sometimes I wish I could just get out, wear civvies, drink beer, and clear my head for a while. Then I'd come back, and finish the job I started." Oh, Gallant. Sooner than you ever thought. Neela smiles proudly at her brave, hot man.
As the chopper takes him high above the ground, Gallant reads Neela's letter: "There are things I can't say to anyone except in a letter -- except to you. Be safe, Michael. I know I worry a lot about everything, but most of all I worry about how long it will be before I see you again." Oh, Neela. Sooner than you ever thought. Gallant gazes out at the view, en route to her without her knowing it, as I let out a little "Awww." Because they're totally going to hook up, and that makes me happy, and if they don't, I will be so very upset that I will...I will...uh...switch off my television. Yeah, take that, show!