Season 2, Episode 10: ‘4:00 P.M.’
Compared to life in the E.R., death can seem almost peaceful. That’s the case with the scene that ends this episode of “The Pitt.” Roxie, the cancer patient who can no longer bear her pain, is given a dose of morphine by Dr. McKay, one that will ease her pain but also possibly cause her to stop breathing.
As McKay administers the drug with Roxie’s family looking on, the screen cuts to black. The implication is that Roxie’s struggle with pain is at an end.
Despite his earlier insistence on bringing his wife back home, Roxie’s husband has accepted her wishes. At the last moment, when she asks him to go tend to their sons, he demurs, saying her bedside is exactly where he needs to be. “The Pitt” has shown us the strain death and dying can place on the living; it does the heart good to see this woman’s loved ones feel able to give her what she needs in the end.
For several members of the staff, however, family is a source of conflict rather than comfort. Javadi’s big-shot surgeon mother, Dr. Eileen Shamsi, descends to the Pitt to chew out her daughter for the life-threatening mistake she made earlier in the day. Shamsi says this kind of error is par for the course for the “street-level medicine” they teach in the E.R., and that Javadi ought to be better than someone who counts on the pros upstairs to clean up her messes. She can be one of those pros herself.
Mohan’s mother is even harder to deal with. She spends the episode bombarding both Mohan’s cell and the E.R.’s landline with hectoring phone calls her daughter refuses to answer. She is too busy fixating on how hard it will be to find a job now that her mom’s impulsive decision to sell her house and travel the globe has thrown her own plans to move back home for a job into a tailspin.
Eventually Mohan snaps under the pressure, staggering into the sweltering waiting room in the midst of a sweat-dripping, heart-pounding panic attack. Kwon orders her into a wheelchair and takes her back for examination. When Dr. Robby, who is called in to deal with the emergency, realizes she isn’t having a heart attack but rather “mama issues,” he erupts and sends her home.
Then it’s Dr. Al’s turn to chew out Robby for this ugly display. The two chief attending physicians have been getting along well — Robby looks at Al-Hashimi after she performs a slash tracheotomy as if he were falling in love — but his lack of empathy with Mohan has greatly disappointed her. Her angry words are enough to convince him to apologize to Mohan, sincerely. Mohan isn’t his biggest fan at that moment, but she accepts. This is how grown-ups get along.
If only Robby always acted his age. In this episode we finally meet his motorcycle-engineer buddy Duke (Jeff Kober). Robby ensures that he receives the V.I.P. treatment when he arrives to get a nagging sore throat checked out. Dr. Whitaker, whom Robby showers with praise, believes Duke’s enthusiasm for booze and cigarettes is the culprit. Both men feel Robby’s plan to set out immediately on his road trip at the end of the day’s 12-hour shift is borderline dangerous. Maybe Dr. Al should yell at him about it — she seems to be the Robby whisperer.
In other family matters, Mel returns from an apparently brutal malpractice deposition — her lawyer assures her it went fine, but she won’t utter a word about it to anyone else — to inquire after her sister, Becca, who was hospitalized with what turns out to be a urinary tract infection. Judging from the epic journey upon which her face subsequently embarks, Mel is none too happy to learn that the U.T.I. was caused by Becca’s apparently vigorous sex life.
At least someone around here is getting some. That seems increasingly unlikely for Santos, whose relationship with Garcia has hit the rocks. Because of an influx of patients from a local water slide collapse, Santos has been forced to work with — and speak with — Langdon for the first time since his return. She is none too subtly outraged that Langdon can simply walk back into his old job instead of getting fired, while she has been made to feel like “a pariah” for busting him.
Garcia, who lets Santos have it over her rudeness to Langdon, asks if her feeling shunned might be the result of her brusque demeanor with colleagues instead. That is about all the advice Garcia is prepared to give on the matter. “Sex and eating ramen in bed” are her specialties, the surgeon says. She isn’t interested in playing therapist.
The week’s big crisis, the water slide collapse, provides the E.R. with three cases so far. A boy with a crushed larynx receives the slash trache from Dr. Al. Dr. Garcia is rude about Al-Hashimi’s handiwork, but she can’t argue with the probability that it saved the boy’s life. A man nearly loses his finger while trying unsuccessfully to keep his child from falling. The finger is saved, along with the wedding ring that gruesomely “degloved” it, and the boy is found thanks to Nurse Emma’s digital detective work.
The third water slide casualty is both the episode’s most gruesome case and its funniest. A young woman is helicoptered in with her leg severed clean below the knee. Because she has been strapped to a gurney, she has not yet seen that half a limb is missing.
“Is it broken?” she asks.
“Um, I wouldn’t say it’s broken, exactly,” says Ogilvy, cradling the detached lower leg in a bag full of ice. Robby shuts him up before he can put his foot, or anyone else’s, any further in his mouth.
The case also brings in one of the most eccentric hospital staffers we’ve met yet: Dr. Park (Lou Ferrigno Jr.), also known as “the Shark,” an orthopedic surgeon who makes Santos look like Miss Congeniality. He is hilariously mean to poor Whitaker, but he can save the woman’s leg, so I suppose his attitude is worth putting up with.
Or is it? Throughout this episode, the staff’s personal issues repeatedly affect their job performance. Javadi retreats from Roxie’s room in tears. Monica, Dana’s clerk friend, has to take a smoke break to keep a nic fit from derailing her work. Mohan’s mother drives her into a panic attack that takes her out of action at a crucial moment. Santos’s swipes at Langdon worry their patient. Robby seems angry with anyone who stands between him and his sabbatical.
They’re all doing the best they can, but that’s different than doing their best.
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