'90s Flashback

Summary: Carter wakes up in his new home, which is also Weaver’s home, to the sound of Grace Jones covering Johnny Cash. Weaver’s up bright and early and doesn’t get how loud her music is. She tells Carter he can borrow any CDs he wants, but he’s not allowed to touch her sound system. Weaver’s in a great mood now that she’s ditched the interim-chief position and can just focus on medicine. Carter asks her advice on teaching Lucy, wondering if he should lay off of her and let her turn things around on her own.

Mark goes to what I guess is a firehouse the EMTs and firefighters both use as home base when they’re not out on runs. He wants to do another ride-along, and also wants to spend the night since his apartment is being fumigated. Elizabeth has been on call all night, but Romano has Doyle give her another patient just as she’s getting ready to leave. Elizabeth yells at Doyle about it, but Doyle knows Romano is scarier than Elizabeth, so she needs to do what he said.

Jerry and Chuny discuss what their porn star names would be (their middle name plus their street name). Jeanie tells them that’s their romance-novelist name. Their porn name is a pet name plus your mother’s maiden name. Hers is, hilariously, Nibbles McGee. Anspaugh has taken over as interim chief, but he’s not familiar with all the administrative parts of the job. Weaver declines to help.

Carol runs into Lucy in the bathroom, where Lucy’s going over what she wants to say to Carter about how their teacher/student relationship has declined. Carol warns her not to be confrontational, since that’ll just make Carter defensive. She suggests chatting with him over a meal instead. Carol is disappointed to realize that she’s started her period – her and Doug’s baby-making attempts haven’t been successful. (Yet.)

Elizabeth tells Benton how horrible her night was, and how out of practice she is at working long shifts. She mentions that she ran into Dr. Kotlowitz, the doctor who restored Allison Beaumont’s voice. She thinks Benton should talk to him about Reese’s hearing. Benton doesn’t appreciate her involving her in the situation.

Weaver has gotten her sternal saw – despite Romano’s insistence that her proposal wouldn’t go anywhere, it sped through the approval process and she’s already reaping the rewards. The ER will be sharing it with the OR. Carol tells Doug that she’s not pregnant, which he says is just an excuse to keep trying. She claims that the more they do it, the lower their odds of getting pregnant, which…really? Huh.

Doug joins Jeanie to examine a baby named Sun who hasn’t been feeling well. His mother, Mrs. Everly, is slightly hippie-ish, which explains why her children are named Sun and Skye. She’s not great with remembering the details of caring for her son, but Skye, who’s six, is a big help. She even reassures her mother that things will be okay when Doug says he wants to do a spinal tap on Sun.

Mark accompanies Rosales and Pam to an apartment where a man insists he’s fine even though his head is bleeding. A woman there called 911 because her bleeding husband let someone drill a hole in his head. The driller explains that he used a surgical drill to perform a trepanation, which is supposed to increase the brain’s blood volume. He himself had one done in 1968.

The bleeder refuses to go to the hospital; he knew what he was getting into. Mark agrees to clean the wound and leave him alone. The bleeder’s wife smashes his computer, since that’s where he got the idea for the trepanation. The bleeder tells Mark he had to do something. Mark agrees again to just prevent infection and leave the weirdos to their weird procedures.

Babcock the anesthesiologist isn’t pleased that Doug and Jeanie are using general anesthesia on Sun during his spinal tap. He’s not happy that Doug is just making up his own rules. Babcock, where have you been these past five years? Lucy tries to present a patient to Carter, who diagnoses the man without looking at his history or talking to him. Lucy tries to tell him there’s something more, but Carter ignores her and tells the patient he has an STD. Lucy tells him the rest of the story, which indicates another illness. Carter interrupts her again when she tries to call him out for interrupting him.

Doug and Babcock try to talk to Anspaugh about their disagreement, which makes him resent his new position even more. Weaver prepares Lily and Chuny for their first trauma using the sternal saw. They’re expecting a gunshot victim whose heart could stop, requiring his chest to be cut open with the saw. Instead, they get a guy who was shot with a BB gun and could have walked into the hospital without help from the paramedics.

Lynette finds Carol trying to draw some of her own blood to find out if she’s anemic. Lynette offers to draw her blood and have it tested through the clinic so her name doesn’t have to be attached to the tests. Carol asks to have her hormone levels checked, too; Lynette guesses she’s worried about fertility issues. Anspaugh tells Mark that he’s rescheduled an interview with a doctor he hopes will be the ER’s next chief. Carter tells Mark that he wrote a student evaluation for Lucy but tore it up because he’s not sure it’s fair. Mark tells him to just evaluate her work.

The paramedics make themselves at home in the lounge, where Jerry, Yosh, and Connie are talking about their porn names. Yosh says Jerry’s criteria are for your drag name, at least according to RuPaul. Jerry chastises Rosales for taking a bunch of cookies, which Yosh brought in for hospital staff. Rosales calls Yosh the “cookie fairy,” which Connie takes offense to. Then Morales insults Jerry’s weight, as if that’ll make things better. Mark breaks things up before they can escalate.

Benton gives Elizabeth some instructions, trying to find the balance between talking to his girlfriend and talking to a colleague who works under him. He offers to cover her time in the surgical ICU so she can take a shower, but Elizabeth doesn’t want any special treatment. Anspaugh diverts her from her shower by asking her to scrub in on a procedure.

Sun’s spinal tap was negative, so Doug isn’t sure what’s wrong with him. Jeanie suggests taking Skye out of the room while Doug talks to Mrs. Everly, partly so Skye doesn’t have to hear all the medical talk and partly so Mrs. Everly will stop leaning on her. Skye wants to stay in the room, so Jeanie asks her to help put away some toys.

Elizabeth appears to need a nap more than she needs a shower, because she dozes off during surgery with Anspaugh. He sends her away to get some sleep. Carter has trouble with a diagnosis and asks Yosh, who’s using Lucy’s Palm Pilot-ish thing, if he can borrow it. He accidentally presses a play button and hears a recording of her practicing what she was going to say about their horrible relationship.

Mark hangs out with the paramedics, who present him with his own personalized EMT jacket. Then they haze him by strapping him to a backboard, which they all did as part of their training. This triggers something in Mark related to his attack, and he yells for them to free him. Back at County, Malik comes up with a unique, memorable porn star name: Satan Monroe. Jerry wonders whose mother’s maiden name is Satan.

Lynette asks Carol to help her with a patient named Maria who’s in a lot of pain from a possible ectopic pregnancy. Mark meets up with Anspaugh, Kayson, and the rest of the search committee to interview Amanda Lee for the chief position. They love her résumé and the work she’s done at her previous hospitals. Carter tells Lucy that if she’s so worried about him being adversarial, she can fill out her own evaluation. Lucy says the conversation she was working on had nothing to do with her evaluation.

Skye plays with a doll, the kind of toy she gave up when she became a big girl at the age of six. She feeds the doll with a spoon, just like she sometimes lets her brother lick her spoon. This makes something click in Jeanie’s head, and she asks if Skye ever gives Sun honey. Mark tells Anspaugh that Amanda is fine, though he’s not overly enthusiastic about her filling the chief role.

Carol and Lynette give Maria an ultrasound, which shows that the baby is most likely a girl. Carol feels a pang of jealousy over another woman’s pregnancy. Now showered and hopefully rested, Elizabeth tries to pump herself up for the last few hours of her marathon shift. Benton has changed his mind about meeting with Kotlowitz and asks Elizabeth to keep an eye on his service while he goes to see him.

One of Elizabeth’s discharged patients, Mr. Ramos, has returned with a wound infection and asthma attack. Elizabeth is less than pleased to have to…you know, do her job and treat someone. Jeanie’s theory is correct, and the honey Skye has been feeding Sun gave him botulism. He’ll be fine, but Jeanie’s worried about how much Skye has given up of her childhood to take care of him. Doug says it’s better than abuse and neglect, at least.

Mr. Ramos isn’t getting better, so Elizabeth decides to give him magnesium. Mark asks Carter about Lucy’s evaluation, which makes him think Carter has something personal against her. He asks Doug if he can spend the night at his (really Carol’s) place, since he clearly doesn’t want to be around the paramedics right now. Doug tells him he’s always welcome. Elizabeth gives Mr. Ramos magnesium, but it makes him worse. Thanks to Kit the nurse, she realizes she gave him 50% instead of 5%, which means…I don’t know, but it’s bad and he could die.

Kotlowitz tells Benton to talk to people who have been in his position and patients who have gotten cochlear implants. He has no respect for people who are anti-implant, since he doesn’t see deafness as a culture. He thinks people who disagree with improving their hearing are beyond reason and just lazy. Deaf people can function in the hearing world, but some of them don’t want to do the work required. They’re standing in his way. Kotlowitz then brings up Elizabeth, wondering if she’s seeing someone. Benton says he’s pretty sure she is.

Back at County, Elizabeth finally stabilizes Mr. Ramos, though he may have had a stroke. She takes responsibility for the medication error, though she’s sure she looked at the label before administering the magnesium. Lynette gives Carol her test results, which don’t indicate any hormone deficiencies. Carol says she’s been trying to get pregnant for a few months, but Lynette doesn’t think she should worry until six months have passed without a pregnancy. Maybe she and Doug should have more sex.

Weaver tells Carol that she went to examine Maria, but Maria’s about to leave. Lynette is shocked that she’s well enough to walk out after supposedly being in so much pain earlier. Maria admits that she just wanted to know the baby’s sex. Carol realizes she plans to have an abortion because the baby may be a girl. She confronts Maria loudly, saying that the ultrasound wasn’t conclusive. Weaver makes Carol back off, and Maria leaves, saying girls are just trouble anyway. Carol yells after her, wondering what’s wrong with her.

Anspaugh calls Elizabeth and Benton in for a conversation about her medication mistake. Benton admits to leaving Elizabeth unsupervised while he left on a personal matter, but Elizabeth notes that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been in the hospital. The good news is that Mr. Ramos’ condition may not be as serious as it could have been.

Anspaugh recognizes that Elizabeth is above the intern level she’s been placed at, but that doesn’t erase the hospital’s liability. He warns her and Benton not to discuss the situation with anyone. Elizabeth asks Benton if they can get together after work (and not discuss the situation), but he has to pick up Reese from Jackie’s. Plus, it would be better for Elizabeth to sleep.

Mark has his own discussion with Carter and Lucy about Lucy’s evaluation. Apparently she thought Carter wanted her to give her self-evaluation to Mark, while Carter thought he’d told her to give it back to him. Lucy says she put herself in his shoes and was as critical as she thought he would be. This mix-up about who should get the evaluation is another example of how Carter gives incomplete directions. Mark decides he’s done mediating and tells them to work things out by themselves.

Weaver has another shot at using her sternal saw, and everything goes perfectly. Anspaugh helps out, pleased with Weaver’s work. Amanda runs into Mark and tells him she felt like they didn’t connect during her interview. It made her worry that she wasn’t making her best case for herself. She asks to chat a while so she can give it another try.

Weaver tells Anspaugh that she felt stung when it became clear that Anspaugh didn’t want her to run the ER. Now, though, she’s happy to return to medicine and has no hard feelings. Anspaugh tells her he values their friendship and extends an olive branch, inviting her to have dinner with him and Amanda. Weaver isn’t quite there yet.

Roxanne visits Carter at his new place, ready to help him forget his horrible day with Lucy. He wants to teach her a bunch of stuff, but it’s not happening. Roxanne’s like, “How about we not talk about another woman while we’re trying to be romantic?” Carol, who also had a bad day, drinks some alcohol at home, because she’s not pregnant, so why not?

Benton picks up Reese, chastising Jackie for letting him play with a toy phone when he can’t hear. He admits that he feels like he’s in the middle of a battle and isn’t sure which side to take – implant or no implant? He doesn’t have anyone to talk to. Jackie suggests Elizabeth, and Benton doesn’t respond. Elizabeth takes a bath at home, finally able to take a moment to rest, but it won’t change the mistake she made and the consequences she might face.

Thoughts: Maria is played by Octavia Spencer. Amanda is played by Mare Winningham, who deserves a lot better than the junk she ends up with here.

It’s almost like having a doctor work 24-36 hours straight is a…bad thing. Like, maybe it’s…not safe? Is that a crazy thought?

I hope Sun grows up really muscular and intimidating-looking so no one teases him about his name. Actually, I feel like Skye would stick up for him and people would be too scared of her to go after him.