Season 2, Episode 3: ‘9:00 A.M.’
“When you see hoof prints, look for horses, not zebras.” This well-known medical aphorism is sound advice for any field: When presented with a perplexing phenomenon, seek out the obvious explanation before leaping to an exotic one.
Sometimes, however, there’s a zebra stampede.
That’s certainly the case in this week’s episode of “The Pitt.” Dr. Santos, for instance, is fully convinced that the bruises on the young girl in her care are the result of paternal abuse. On the contrary, they’re the result of a rare blood disease. But Santos’s suspicions are enough to end a romantic relationship: The girl’s dad (Patrick Mulvey) — no prince, to be clear — and his girlfriend (Ino Badanjak), have an angry, shouting breakup over the incident right there in the Pitt. Santos is left lamenting catching a “zebra” case, as she specifically describes it.
Sometimes the obvious explanation becomes obvious only in retrospect. That’s the case with Michael, the patient whose frightening mood swings have perplexed Dr. McKay. Test results determine that a possibly tumorous mass in his brain is the likely culprit. When McKay explains this to Michael’s ex-wife, Gretchen (Amanda Schull), still listed as his emergency contact, she realizes with a mix of grief and horror that Michael’s anger, which caused their split and estrangement, may have had the same medical cause. The realization all but physically staggers her as she leaves.
Other times, “obvious” is in the eye of the beholder. A campus security guard named Tony (Kurtis Bedford) is convinced that the disturbed student (Zack Morris) he tasered in the neck is a drug-fueled subhuman. The man’s racism, and the us-against-them mentality he equates to vigilance in his job, are written all over his diagnosis as he tries to buddy-buddy the two real cops who arrive on the scene. When the young man’s blood tests come back completely clean, the cops turn against the guard. It isn’t a terribly convincing moment, but it’s a cathartic one.
The episode’s centerpiece case is a zebra, all right, and a perilous one at that. Mark (Eugene Shaw) and his wife, Nancy (Angela Lin), have been in a car accident, crashing into a motorcyclist who dies of his injuries. (Dr. Robby lies, saying that unlike the victim, he wears a helmet while riding.) Mark, who appears to have been rendered quadriplegic by the crash, is in fact suffering from a rare potassium-storage disorder that has sapped him of nearly all his physical strength. With treatment, he’ll be back to normal in a matter of hours.
His wife may not be so lucky. She was cleared by medics at the scene, refuses tests at the hospital, and appears to be fine, so Dr. Robby and Dr. Al-Hashimi — who are taking a more hands-off approach to each other’s work this episode — are both caught by surprise when she passes out. The accident caused damage to her spleen that no one had detected. Both attending physicians feel personally responsible for the oversight. It’s worth noting here that when she and Dr. Robby aren’t butting heads, Dr. Al-Hashimi has excellent bedside manner.
Elsewhere in the E.R., Dr. Langdon and nurse Donnie (Brandon Mendez Homer) treat a little boy with beads up his nose, bonding with the boy’s dad about fatherhood along the way. Dr. King helps a family of professional racecar drivers determine which prescription out of their pooled hoard of dozens caused the blood pressure of their patriarch (Sam Hennings) to plummet. Dr. Whitaker continues to oversee the treatment of the Pitt’s favorite patient, Louie, whose distended belly and bad tooth run neck-and-neck for his most unpleasant affliction. Dr. McKay finds herself the recipient of semi-flattering, semi-uncomfortable flirtation from her patients, including a Wal-Mart greeter (Michael Nouri) who serenades her in French with “La Mer” as he dances her around the E.R.
In the episode’s most politically salient case, Dr. Robby treats an elderly Jewish woman (Irina Dubova) who burned herself when the noise of fireworks caused her to drop her samovar on her leg. It’s the result, we learn, of post-traumatic stress she still carries from the 2018 massacre at Tree of Life synagogue; she was on her way into the building when the shooting started.
She bonds with both Dr. Robby, a good Jewish boy she chides (justifiably!) for being a foolish middle-aged man riding around on a midlife-crisis motorcycle. But the woman is even more grateful for the help of Nurse Perlah (Amielynn Abellera), who is Muslim, reflecting on the tremendous outpouring of aid that came to her congregation from local Muslims after the massacre.
As that scene makes clear, “The Pitt” is not a show for the cynical. The show is full to bursting with heartfelt declarations of devotion, moving rapprochements between estranged loved ones, copious tears of both sadness and joy, and celebrations of cooperation and community. This sweet stuff can be hard to swallow when you’ve been weaned on a bitter diet of prestige antihero dramas like “The Sopranos.”
But “The Pitt” is not a show about normal circumstances. Every patient who arrives in the E.R. introduces a new set of potentially life-or-death stakes for the core cast to handle. Even cases that aren’t potentially fatal often reveal some horrible defect in the American health care system.
The friends and family members by the bed sides of their loved ones are alternately terrified, furious, confused, devastated and grateful beyond belief. Why wouldn’t they be? A group of competent medical professionals just healed the person they care about — or failed to. Emotions run hot and close to the surface. Apply enough pressure, as circumstances in the Pitt do, and those emotions explode with volcanic force.
In essence, the hospital setting of “The Pitt” is a cheat code. It allows us to access our deepest, most profound emotions without embarrassment because those big emotions match the scale of the triumphs and tragedies we witness on an hour-by-hour basis.
It’s just as Mark, the accident victim, says to Dr. Robby: “Is this how it works? You think things are important, that everything’s so important, and then you end up here and see.”
“Yeah,” a solemn Dr. Robby replies. “That is how it works.”
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