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So if you figured that the helicopter crash at the end of last week's episode would lead to one night full of harrowing triage, you're actually not correct. Ben, Cole and Plastics manage to pull everyone out of the chopper before it explodes, and everyone looks stable enough to take back to the clinic. It's the day, dealing with the complications, that turns harrowing. The pilot has a huge metal shard through his gut, which Ben has to saw his way through. During surgery, the pilot blows an artery, and Cole's hands are shaking (from doing heroin? From NOT doing heroin?) too much to pull the shard out, so it's Charlie (who had earlier been yelled at by Plastics to go home) to provide the steady, medically-unlicensed hands.
Mina thinks she's patching up Julio the appendix patient, but actually (and true to TV cliché), it's his seemingly-well wife, Lynn, who turns out to have spinal cord damage. An unsure Mina performs the surgery (again with a shaky-handed Cole), and it's a success; only Lynn also got an aneurysm from a blow to the head, and when that blows, Mina can't save her. It's heartbreaking, and she winds up breaking down in tears on Cole's shoulder.
The only one missing after the crash is Felicia, Clark's little-girl patient with the deadly bug bite. Clark treks into the jungle alone to find her, and the stress on her diseased heart isn't inconsiderable. After falling down a hill, Clark finds the girl, nearly goes into cardiac arrest, and then, when she does get the girl back to the clinic, she has to convince the girls' mother not to give up on treatment just because the iron bird dropped her children from the sky. Oh, and she finally tells Dr. Ben about her heart condition, and he examines her to find that she's in the stages of heart failure. So: bummer.
Finally, Lily spends a lot of time feeling guilty that she was banging Mateo under the waterfall when the plane crashed. She decides that Mateo's outlaw status makes him too complicated to think about dating, but after a talk with Ben, of all people, she decides to follow her gut and visit Mateo on his farm. His farm where he's growing ALL the cocaine plants in Probably South America.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Clinic robbed. Appendix burst. Cole took Minard (sorry, y'all; I fought the good fight, but this show's insistence on treating everybody like a softball team means we're going all last names) out to his old smack dealer to score something that would keep the patient sedated. While Clark and Keeton loaded the MedEvac chopper up with Julio (appendix), Lynn (wife), Felicia (insect bite with deadly paraside), and Xandra (sister, probably ditto), Brenner and hottie fugitive Mateo did it 'neath the waterfall. And then the MedEvac totally crashed.
Currently, Keeton calls in the emergency, while Clark, Zee, Cole, Plastics, Charlie, and Minard all load up the truck to head out to the crash site. Everybody is admirably calm considering the implications of the crash. After he hangs up, Keeton -- still holding onto some of that condescendingly perturbed attitude from last week -- wonders where the hell Brenner is.
Where Brenner is is afterglowing like a BOSS with Mateo by the waterfall. She invites him to the cantina for a drink, but he's not sure it's good for her to be seen with him, now that he's a wanted man. I'm not the only one who kept thinking we'd find out Mateo was married in this episode, right? They kind of cutely banter until Lily finally looks at her pager and gets the message about the MedEvac.
The rest of the team drives toward the crash site, with Keeton peppering Cole with questions about whether he's using again. Cole is annoyed as hell and denies it. We're spared another spin around this particular merry-go-round when Clark spots the downed chopper. As they disembark, Clark clings fiercely to the belief that everything's going to be fine; after putting those two girls on the plane herself, they kind of have to be. Plastics, meanwhile, orders Charlie to stay in the truck, away from danger but also away from the action. Charlie whines, but come on: who am I gonna side with here? At the chopper, Julio gets pulled out, while Lynn is able to walk away. Xandra tells Clark that her sister was thrown from the helicopter. Finally, the co-pilot is in pain, but he's more worried about the pilot, who he says hasn't spoken yet. He says he's not going anywhere until his buddy is okay, but Zee and Cole say otherwise. When they get to the pilot, Mendez, we see why he hasn't been so chatty, He's alive, but with a giant shard of metal pinning him to the seat. Cole says there's fuel leaking, which means this whole contraption could go up in flames at any time. Mendez orders the doctors to abandon him -- he's already crashed the chopper; he doesn't need three dead doctors on his conscience too. So they leave Mendez in the chopper and head back to the truck; on their way back, the chopper explodes, Mendez dies, and everybody marvels at what a selfless but necessary act that was. EXCEPT NO, because it's TV and everybody's a hero. The doctors are staying.
Minard, Clark, and Zee have set up triage not far from the camp site. Minard bickers with a pacing Lynn, telling her to sit down. Lynn tells her that she's got her husband's guts in her hands so: eyes on the prize. Brenner rolls up on Mateo's motor-scooter, to Minard's incredulous reaction. She looks over to the chopper and notices the dripping fuel begin to ignite. She asks if anyone's still over there, and Clark tells her Keeton is. Before she can race to the chopper and perform some Bruce Willis rescue, Keeton, Cole, and Plastics all emerge from the chopper, carrying Mendez who is still in his seat. The MedEvac explodes, but with the doctors all carrying Mendez together, they can't exactly sprint away, so instead of the usual cool Hollywood visual, it's just three guys short-stepping (scurrying, really) from the blast. Giggle your way into the Title Card.
Suddenly, it's the morning. I guess we can rationalize that it was pretty late at night when the chopper crashed, but this quick transition into daylight really takes some of the urgency out of the situation. Mateo helps the doctors load Julio into a truck to take him back to the clinic, but when he hears police sirens coming closer, he must scurry away, to Brenner's slight annoyance. Meanwhile, Clark is finished bandaging up Xandra and tells Keeton and Zee that she's heading into the jungle to find Felicia, despite the "girl, it's hopeless" looks she gets from the other two. Keeton walks with her on her way, giving her a chance to stumble over her words in relation to Keeton saying he's ready to move on from Abby. All Clark can manage is, "I'm glad you didn't blow up last night." As sentiments go, it's a reasonably kind one. He tells her they can talk later. "We've got all the time in the world, right?" At which point Clark immediately clutches her chest and dies of Ham-Handed Irony Syndrome. Then she heads out for the jungle, only to be waylaid by Cole, who tells her a trek into the jungle is the last thing she needs, what with how sick she is. But Clark is determined to find the kid. She also notices how his hand is shaking like crazy, and after she leaves, Cole pulls out his little balloon of heroin and caresses it for a while. So he hasn't taken any. Yet.
Back at the clinic, Minard turns a corner to find Lynn, who tells her "Something's not right." Minard begins to hurriedly assure Lynn that Julio's abdomen's getting flushed, and he's going to be fine. But Lynn's not talking about Julio, for once. Minard doesn't pick up on it until Lynn collapses into her. "I can't feel my legs," she says, almost more surprised than scared. But, you know, obviously scared.
Clark has caught up with the search party, and just in case we forgot how maniacally determined she is to finding this girl, we see her decide to keep searching while the rest of the party takes a break to not collapse from exhaustion. She texts back to Zee, who is with Xandra and her mother (still played by underrated Scrubs alum Judy Reyes!). Zee relays the no-news-is-bad-news, then goes to take Xandra to the room to get something to put on her stitches, but Judy -- wild-eyed with worry -- says she's not letting these doctors take her children anywhere anymore, not even the room.
Minard is poking Lynn's legs with a needle, and finding awfully discouraging results. She diagnoses it a spinal cord injury that slowly decompressed after the crash, which is why it took a bit to manifest itself. Lynn's going to be operated on, but the Clinic doesn't exactly specialize in that kind of intensive neurosurgery. Lynn puts on a brave face and tells Minard to "filet me like a fish. I trust you." Minard gives her a smile that vanishes once she turns to walk away. "Don't," she mutters.
Keeton and Brenner are patching up Julio's gut incision in the OR. He mentions that he saw Mateo driving her up to the crash site. She apologizes profusely, and he gives her no response. Just instructions for dressing the wound. So he's still taking the path of maximum dickishness, then.
Charlie is out front, applying aloe (from an actual aloe plant, because: jungle) to a burn on his arm. Plastics finds him there and is very upset about the injury, saying Charlie should have stayed in the truck where he told him to. But Charlie is too busy enthusing about how the helicopter rescue was just like something out of CHiPs. Plastics impatiently objects that it was more like Die Hard, but Charlie says that never came to TV down here in Perhaps Brazil or Maybe Chile(?), but that's not important right now. What's important is that this is the part where Plastics, out of fear and concern that Charlie might one day get hurt helping out, gets way too mean about how Charlie's not a doctor and he's not helping, he's just a kid. He calls a nurse over, tells her to take care of Charlie's burn, then put him in a cab and send him home. "Home," he reiterates to Charlie.
Keeton, Cole, and Plastics are consulting over when to operate on the pilot with the giant metal shard in his gut. The pilot is extremely proud and extremely stubborn, so he refuses to be operated on while the doctors could be helping other people. The co-pilot, Cruz, says Mendez is super stubborn, and he should know, since he flew missions with him in the army or some such. Basically: Cruz and Mendez are boys, albeit bickering ones. Mendez looks eternally annoyed by Cruz's devotion to him. Kind of a Jack Donaghy/Jonathan situation, only more bro-ish. The doctors finally agree to wait on Mendez 'til later. I mean, he's not going anywhere, am I right?? Anyway...
Minard catches up with Cole and tells him about her patient who needs spinal surgery. If she doesn't get operated on soon, she could never walk again -- or so says this book she found in Keeton's office. Heh. Cole's incredulous that she would perform surgery from a book, but she tells him HE'S going to perform the surgery. She calls upon the spinal surgeries he must've done while in the service, but Cole brushes it off as a long time ago. "She may never walk again," she repeats. Trump card. Too bad she can't see Cole's hand shaking so bad that he can't hang up his clipboard.
Clark is fighting her way through some seriously thick jungle, alternating extended pleas to God to let her find Felicia as well as extended coughing fits. She finally just starts yelling at God, all "You owe me!" Between the "death sentence" of a disease and Keeton finally being ready just as it looks like she's on the way out, and now the missing girl. She starts to crack on His sick sense of humor when the ground gives out from beneath her and she goes tumbling down a cliff. She lands on her back pretty hard, and she's got a big ol' cut on her forehead. But on the bright side, Felicia is huddled over by a tree, trembling. "Who are you talking to?" she calls out. Clark casts her eyes heaven-ward, all, "Never mind!"
The Gringo Trio are in the supply room, scrounging for instruments for Minard's spinal surgery. No luck so far, though Plastics gets to be adorable trying to clamp his face with some forceps. Minard is getting frustrated, and Brenner says this would go a lot quicker if Charlie were here. Plastics explains how he sent Charlie home, then gets defensive when the girls chide him for how mean that was. Plastics, fairly defensibly, says it's pretty hard to practice medicine with an annoying, unnecessary moppet clamped to your leg. I may have provided some of those words. Keeton pops in with some instructions for the docs, including telling Brenner that "someone" dropped her pager off for her, since she was obviously careless enough to leave it lying around. Okay, what a bitch, seriously. He tosses the pager, which Plastics intercepts and reads the message from "Batman." "That's smooth," he snorts, but Minard is there with the valuable counterpoint that Mateo is also hot. Lily says smooth and hot though he may be, he's also a wanted criminal and thus not ideal second-date material, not that organizing a second date with him is all that easy to do. Instead, she's decided to focus on her medicine; her first success: finding the surgical tool Minard was looking for. Now she can save her patient.
Cut to the OR, where Cole and Minard have Lynn's back sliced open. Cole pulls out a piece of bone, which he says has cut open the vertebral artery. The blood in the spinal column has been causing the paralysis. Minard beats herself up for not immobilizing Lynn sooner, but Cole assures her the damage had already been done. Then, unseen by Minard, his hand starts shaking bad. But rather than admit to anything, Cole proceeds to engage in this elaborate theater where it's Minard who's being too nervous; he makes a huge loud deal about how it's not important what she didn't do last night, or back in the states with that boy she killed; she just needs to "get ahold of [her] biz." Meanwhile, no joke, Lynn is bleeding out. Minard finally is like, "I've got a hold of my BIZ, crazy," so Cole then hands her his clamp and tells her to clamp it off herself then. Look, I don't mind Cole's human frailty and all, but it's shit like THAT that make me hate him.
Plastics is cutting away the upholstery on the chair that Mendez is sitting in, though Mendez is still refusing surgery, at least until the search party finds Felicia. But his resolve does seem to be weakening, and one final "Come on, dude" from Plastics and Cruz gets Mendez to assent to surgery. Plastics is going to prep for surgery, but first he follows Keeton into the hall to ask about Charlie. He gets an earful. Charlie's parents abandoned him when he was nine, he started doing odd jobs around the clinic until Ben started paying him. Plastics is like, "But he seems like such a happy kid." Keeton -- who apparently has no idea anything's amiss and that he's shoving daggers into Plastics' bleeding heart with these statements -- says that only started when Plastics and the other Gringo Warriors showed up. "You've really had an effect on him." Plastics very nearly clutches his heart.
Speaking of which, Clark's out in the jungle, carrying Felicia on her back, because she apparently wants to die in the most lavishly self-sacrificing way possible. She's blowing on a whistle to alert the rest of the search party to her presence, but before they can come, she starts getting severe chest pains. Felicia asks what's wrong, so Clark explains her whole sad cardiac history, all the way back to the bug bite. She has Felicia pull out a syringe of lidocaine from her back, tells her how to assemble it, and Felicia helps her plunge the needle into her arm. When Clark's out of the woods, Felicia asks, "Is this going to happen to me someday?" Clark promises her she won't let it.
The boy doctors have Mendez in surgery, finally, and Keeton is cutting the back part of the blade off. He tells Cole to prepare a dose of morphine, to which Cole cracks that he's apparently "trusted with morphine now." Plastics, enjoying being outside the circle if criticism for the moment, says that the two of them and their bickering-bros nature remind him of Mendez and Cruz. They ignore him as he talks about them growing old, practicing medicine on old people together in Rio. Then it's time to turn the patient onto his back, only when they do, they pop a gusher of blood. The doctors scramble as they have to move fast now -- he's bleeding out. After the commercial break, they've got things stable enough that Keeton calls for Cole to -- carefully -- pull the blade out. Only, duh, Cole's hand's too shaky. And since Keeton's too much of a veteran for Cole to bamboozle with weird power plays, Cole is left with no choice but to come clean. He directs Keeton to his quivering appendage. (I mean ... wow, did that ever get away from me.) His hand! Is shaking! The look of shame in Cole's eyes and a mixture of fury and resigned compassion in Keeton's is pretty intense. Keeton, to his credit, has his eyes on the prize. He can't let go of the aorta, and Plastics is needed to operate once the shard is out. They need another pair of hands -- he sends Plastics out to get one of the other doctors. When he's gone, Keeton asks if Cole's high right now. He says no. Good enough for Keeton. Bros.
Minard is examining Lynn post-op. Her toes respond to stimuli, which is positive. Julio, who is also awake, is joyous that Minard "fixed her." Lynn is rather giggly about it too. Minard tries to be cautious, but Julio wants to thank her all the same. He shows a drawing of a house and says that he's glad he doesn't have to build a new house with ramps on it. Lynn laughs her ass at that. It's cute at first, and the way Minard's looking at her funny could be chalked up to Minard's own puzzlement at human expressions like laughter. But she becomes concerned when the laughing doesn't stop and becomes manic. Julio chalks it up to the pain medication, but she's not on pain medication. She checks Lynn's eyes and tells Brenner she's blown a pupil. Bad news. Julio gets frantic, and Brenner explains that there's blood putting pressure on her brain, from the impact of the crash. She and Minard scramble as Lynn's starts coding. Minard is adamant that Lynn cannot die. Except, well ... it's a two-part Shonda Rhimes episode. One of the two of them is going to die.
Plastics, all in his surgical getup, is racing around the clinic, looking for a pair of hands. Brenner and Minard obviously have their hands full. Apparently for the purposes of this particular plot development, Zee is on siesta. Plastics instead finds Charlie, sleeping under a desk in one of the offices. Plastics is shocked and dismayed that this is where Charlie sleeps. No time for shock and dismay! Cut to the OR, where Plastics shows up with a fully scrubbed-in Charlie. He requests a ten-blade. I hate you, Charlie. Cole's all "Come on, Plastics!" but Plastics vouches for Charlie on the basis of his steady hands that he sometimes uses to deal from the bottom of the deck. He grifts, he leers, he's an orphan -- Charlie's really angling for his own Danny Boyle movie, huh? He steps up on a stool, grabs the blade, and pulls it out. Keeton and Cole are able to keep pressure; Plastics declares the patient to be holding steady. He congratulates Charlie on "rocking [his] first surgery." Oh, don't encourage him.
Meanwhile, Minard has Lynn's head cut open when Brenner runs up with supplies and the bad news that all the other doctors are otherwise occupied. The good news? She found the old-timiest, hand-crankingest skull drill I have ever seen. Any horror movie about haunted mental institutions has used this as a prop. It is both rusty and archaic. Perfect for the jungle. "Better than one from the hardware store," Brenner bright-sides. Minard takes what she can get and starts cranking.
After the commercial break, Minard is sewing Lynn's head back up. She's unconscious, but Keeton approvingly says Minard did everything right. Julio, however, doesn't think Lynn's going to get better, especially after Minard honestly tells him that the swelling could return. She then sits down with Julio to make the case for medical miracles. They happen; she didn't believe it before, but they do. Julio asks how many times they happen -- because he and Lynn finding each other and making it work for 10 years despite all their differences? That was their miracle. Dudes, she is so dead.
Out front, all the locals are marveling at Clark piggyback-carrying Felicia back into town. Keeton rushes to her (she's bleeding from her forehead) while Judy Reyes rushes to Felicia. When Clark says she needs to get Felicia inside to check on her, Judy freaks like she did before: yada yada, you put my girls into the aluminum bird and it dropped them from the sky, all over a mosquito bite. Clark tries to hack through the willful (if understandable) ignorance on Judy's part, but Mama ain't hearing it. She yanks Felicia away and heads back inside, presumably to find her other daughter. Keeton wants to check Clark out -- she's panting and wheezing and all -- but she races after Judy.
Cole and Plastics are examining Mendez post-op. They test the feeling in his feet, but one is not responding. Cole says he probably bruised his lumbar plexus -- the nerves in his leg. It's not a huge deal, but as Mendez pretty immediately understand, he needs two good feet to fly planes. Plastics suggests intensive physical therapy could have him back to normal in a year or two, but this is obviously of no great comfort to him. You won't believe this, given his usually sunny disposition, but Mendez gets despondent rather quickly. That's when Cruz steps up and rather forcefully tells Mendez that he doesn't get to just give up. The two argue about which one of them gets to make the decisions now and which one will carry the other to PT, and which one is the pilot now. You know, fellas, in gay relationships you get all this bickering AND sex. Mendez is reduced to calling Cruz names and swatting away the hand Cruz is extending to him. "Get your own life!" he screams. Still Cruz holds his hand out. "You stupid ... stupid ... stupid ... friend," Mendez rails, finally giving up. "Stupid friend." BROS! Cole takes note.
Night falls on the clinic. Zee approaches Clark and tells her she did a full checkup on Felicia, and all she has is a simple concussion and a sprained ankle. "Es un milagro," Clark says, giving us our episode title. "Except it's not," Clark sulks while Zee tends to her forehead, because Felicia isn't getting the bug bite treated and might need a new heart in 20 years. "Then she will get one," says Zee, unflappable. "Just like you will." Clark looks at her, all "Who told?" Zee's like, "I have magical native powers." Clark says she was actually going to tell Keeton until "he went all commitment-happy on me." Then she couldn't bear to load him up with one more tragedy. Zee reminds that he is going to find out eventually.
Minard and Julio are sitting beside Lynn while a nurse provides manual respiration. That is not a great sign. Julio looks at Minard and says "it's happening again, isn't it?" Meaning the brain swelling, I guess. Minard chokes up and says once the brain stem goes into failure, there's no treatment. She says she's so sorry, and Julio tells her she did all she could. The nurse stops respiration as Lynn flatlines. Man, Minard really needed a win here. That's a bummer. Meanwhile, the lesson continues to go unheeded: if you find yourself in a Shonda Rhimes show, shut the hell up about how in love you are. It could save your life.
Cole finds Keeton in his office, and the two of them bro it out so hard about the drug thing. Cole produces the balloon of heroin and says he had it in his pocket all day. He never used...but he wanted to. Keeton looks slightly freaked out by the intensity of Cole's need, but he's ultimately supportive. He also hands Cole a box of newly arrived lollipops. Cole gives him crap for getting the grape-flavored ones. Cole, don't go hating on grape.
Judy Reyes is leading her daughters to the car when Clark comes running out of the clinic with a bottle of the pills Felicia will need to take. She asks for a moment to speak with the girl, and she hands her a charm bracelet. It was hers from her globe-trotting childhood. She tells Felicia she'll go all over the world too -- first to San Miguel for some tests, then wherever she wants. Wait...so Judy is agreeing to take her to San Miguel for tests? Even though she's already got the pills? The resolution to this storyline is seriously muddled. Muddled like Clark heart valves (probably). (Also, it's been like three days -- could nobody get the swelling on Felicia's eye to go down?)
Inside, Charlie is practicing giving stitches on a banana when Plastics shows up and gives some pointers. Charlie is apparently giving him the silent treatment, even though Plastics totally let him into the OR earlier, because Charlie is an asshole. Plastics begins to tell this story about how he had a hamster when he was a kid, and one day he accidentally left the cage open and it got out and died; Charlie objects that he's not a hamster. Plastics is more concerned that Charlie appears to be homeless. Charlie says he has a place to stay, but Plastics says he need to see it and make sure it's not a cardboard box. "It's gonna make you mad," Charlie says. "I can take it," says Plastics. Cut to: this sweet, modern condo apartment, where Charlie gets to live as a housesitter. You guys, Charlie is an ASSHOLE. Plastics marvels at the sweet deal Charlie has -- not bothering to ask about the under-desk bed, because, again, who needs resolution to storylines when two bros can just play foosball?
Keeton goes to lock up the clinic for the night and comes across Brenner re-stocking the pharmacy. He manages to not be an asshole to her while she talks about putting in some extra hours to make up for ... whatever he's pissed at her for. She talks about how she's over pursuing dangerous sex bombs, but Keeton actually swerves the other way. He tells her that her instincts are sound -- if she thinks this is a good guy, she should go for it. Um, thanks, Dad? After Brenner walks away, Clark appears. She needs Keeton's help.
Minard is still sitting at Lynn's bedside, crushed. Cole comes up and covers Lynn's body. Minard starts to lose it. "It's not the same," he tells her, over and over. Not the same as her misdiagnosis from the States. "You are not the same," he says. She finally breaks down for realsies, doubling over as he catches her. StreepSpawn, you are good.
In the span of that scene, Clark has obviously told Keeton about her condition, because he's performing an EKG exam (...or something). She asks how bad it is, and he tells her she's in heart failure. She kind of already knew. They look at each other, all moist-eyed. "I love you too," she says.
Finally, Brenner has taken a taxi way the hell out to Mateo's farm. He meets her out on the lawn and is clearly very freaked out that she's here. She doesn't notice because she's too busy patting herself on the back for being spontaneous. I'd have put down money at this point that Mateo was married. But no! The sketchiness on display here isn't because of what's inside the house but what's in the field. And what's there is seriously all the coca plant in Probably South America. It's seriously as far as the eye can see. It would take Charlie Sheen, like, three and a half days to clear it out. It's a lot of coke.
week: gettin' Clark that heart!