'90s Flashback

Summary: Luka has worked more than usual over the past few days, and paperwork in the ER is backed up, so he’s not in a great mood when Romano arrives to tell him he has to work another shift. He reminds Luka that the last four letters of “American” are “I can.” Luka wonders when Weaver will be back. Romano says she might not ever come back from her suspension.

Cleo tends to a teen named Eli who was in a car accident. He’s only had his license for a couple of weeks, and the first time he was allowed to drive his father’s car, he crashed it. Cleo tries to assure him that his father will be more concerned about his condition than the condition of the car. Plus, insurance will cover the damages, though Eli says the car is a classic and can’t be fixed. Cleo reminds him that it was an accident.

Luka goes to Doc Magoo’s for a short break and finds Carol there with the twins. Yay, she’s finally taking them to the hospital’s daycare instead of depending on an incompetent nanny! Carol’s having trouble getting Kate to eat, so Luka lends a hand. Another diner coos over the girls, mistaking them, Carol, and Luka for a family. Carol doesn’t correct her.

A woman named Lynn is brought in after collapsing in a grocery store. She has a bunch of kids with her, and Abby guesses right away that her exhaustion from dealing with all of them is probably part of the reason she fainted. Mark takes a phone call from Mrs. Frederickson, the home-care nurse he hired to look after David during the day. David isn’t pleased with the arrangement and has been questioning Mrs F.’s qualifications. Mark’s annoyed, and since David won’t talk to him, Mark tells Mrs. F. to tell him to knock off his behavior.

Randi tells Carter and Elizabeth that the hospital received Lucy’s match letter – no one called the hospitals she was interested in working for to tell them that she died. No one’s sure what to do with the letter, so Carter takes it. Lynn has a hard time keeping control of her four kids, who are all under the age of eight. (There’s also a baby at home with a neighbor. Yiiiiiikes.) Connie saves the day by taking all the kids to the family room.

Eli’s father arrives as Elizabeth examines him to see if he needs surgery. Mr. Emerson surprises Eli by acting exactly as Cleo predicted – he’s more worried about his son than his classic car. Cleo tells him that Eli might need exploratory abdominal surgery, but Elizabeth announces that they’ll just observe him for a while before making that decision. Cleo pulls her out of the room to insist that Elizabeth do the surgery, even if there’s only a small chance that Eli has internal injuries. Elizabeth still wants to wait and see.

Abby tells Mark that Lynn is pregnant, so let’s bump that yiiiiiikes up to a yiiiiiiiiiiiikes. Carol clues Mark in on a game she plays with Weaver, where Carol needs two of something but asks for three, so Weaver thinks she’s managing things. Luka asks her if the girls seemed okay when she dropped them off upstairs. He jokes that there might be chaos in the wake of the Hathaway twins hitting daycare. Carol tells him their last name is Ross. And now she’s going to think about Doug for a while and mope.

Luka examines a man named Simpson who’s having some tightness in his chest. He thinks it’s anxiety from the rough divorce he’s going through. He asks Luka if he’s married, and when Luka says no, Simpson advises him to stay single. “She’s putting me in an early grave,” he says to the man who was, in fact, married for years before his wife was…put in an early grave. Again: yiiiiiikes.

Abby tells Lynn she’s pregnant, which will put her at six kids under the age of eight. She does most of the childcare, since her husband has to work long hours to pay all the bills. Abby asks Lynn if she already knew she was pregnant. Lynn admits that she did, but she hasn’t told her husband yet. Abby starts to suspect that her collapse was caused by fasting in an attempt to starve herself and miscarry. Lynn confirms this, so Abby reminds her that she has another option for terminating the pregnancy.

Carol and Mark chat while tending to a patient together; she confides that she’s thinking about weaning the twins, even tough they’re only a few months old. She tells him that they deserve a father. Doug visits, but it’s not enough. Carol reveals that he asked her to move to Seattle. Before Carol can tell Mark how she responded, Abby comes to get him to discuss Lynn.

He tells her to refer Lynn to a clinic, but Abby wants to make arrangements for her to have the abortion at County today. This might be the only chance she has, what with her hectic schedule. Mark wonders if Abby has convinced Lynn to do something she doesn’t really want to do. Abby says Lynn already wanted to terminate; Abby just gave her a push. She presented all the options, and Lynn chose abortion. Mark doesn’t think she really did, since she was going to force herself to miscarry instead. He cautions Abby to make sure this is 100% what Lynn wants.

Benton comes to the ER to examine Eli for Cleo, who still thinks he needs surgery. But first, a makeout session in the drug lock-up! (Between Cleo and Benton, not Benton and Eli.) Yosh comes in to actually do his job and dryly tells them not to mind him. Benton says they’re just discussing a patient. “I could use a good discussion myself,” Yosh replies. Hee!

Benton starts examining Eli before learning that Elizabeth already saw him and said he doesn’t need surgery. Cleo pretends she didn’t get a chance to tell Benton that he’s offering a second opinion. That opinion is the same as Elizabeth’s – Eli doesn’t need surgery. Cleo bugs Benton, so he agrees to the procedure.

Carter tends to a guy named Fazio who fell while working on a construction site and says he has pain in his back. Carter examines him and tells Haleh that the pain is MU – made up. He thinks Fazio is faking to get workers’ compensation. Luka tells Simpson that he’s probably right about his anxiety, but he should stay for some monitoring, just in case he has heart damage. Simpson is really upset about the divorce, and Luka tries to make him feel better about pouring his heart out. He suggests that Simpson talk to a psychiatrist.

Abby asks Lynn if she’s sure she wants an abortion. Lynn says it’s not what she wants, it’s what she needs. Abby has made arrangements for her to have the procedure right now, so if Lynn really doesn’t want it, she needs to speak up now. Lynn worries that she’s a hypocrite, since she believes abortion is wrong, but she thinks it’s what’s best for her family. She can’t tell her husband, so she wants to do this now before he can have time to find out.

Mrs. F calls back to complain to Mark that David is making racial slurs. Mark is confused, since she’s Swedish. Haleh brings Fazio’s lab work to Carter, which shows that he has leukemia. Dave complains that Carol keeps going on breaks and visiting the girls in daycare. “Who are you, the hall monitor?” Haleh asks. Mark sides with Haleh, telling Dave that he has no idea what it takes to raise kids on his own. Dave says it was Carol’s choice to have the twins, and he shouldn’t have to suffer because of it. Yeah, and when you complain, we all suffer.

Elizabeth goes looking for Eli and learns from Carter that Benton took him to the OR. Ruh-roh! Fazio tells Carter his back is spasming, though his x-rays don’t show any injuries. Fazio says he won’t be able to work in this condition, but Carter tells him he doesn’t need to worry about that now. His more pressing concern is his leukemia.

Chen calls Carter away to help her with a ten-year-old girl in anaphylactic shock. I’m not sure why she wants his help, since she does all the work and won’t let him take over even when she has trouble intubating the girl. Finally, Carter pushes her aside and does the procedure himself. Chen is shocked by his behavior.

At home, Mark dismisses Mrs. F for the day, telling David that they’ll be lucky if she ever comes back. David would prefer being in hospice care and doesn’t want Mark paying for everything associated with his home care. He gets especially upset about the portable toilet Mark has brought home. David says he’s not an invalid and can still make it to the bathroom. His anger makes him wheeze, which doesn’t help him make the case that he’s capable of taking care of himself.

Lynn’s husband arrives at the hospital, and Abby just tells him she’s exhausted and dehydrated. She suggests getting Lynn some help with the kids. I’d suggest birth control, but I guess this isn’t about me. Mr. Parker is curious about the tests Lynn is supposedly undergoing, if, as Abby claims, she just needs fluids and rest.

Elizabeth confronts Benton as he’s scrubbing in for Eli’s surgery, continuing to insist that he doesn’t need it. If Cleo disagreed, she should have kept discussing his care with Elizabeth instead of dragging Benton into the situation. Benton says Eli’s white blood cell count is elevated, information that Cleo didn’t share with Elizabeth, but which might have changed her mind. Elizabeth tells Benton to stop scrubbing in – she’ll do the procedure. As his superior, she’s allowed to take the case from him.

Fazio has undergone a bone marrow biopsy, but the results have come back normal. It turns out the lab mixed up two charts, and Fazio’s fine. The person with leukemia is Simpson. Also, Fazio wants to sue the hospital for the misdiagnosis. Carter isn’t surprised.

Mr. Parker asks if Lynn has been brought back to the ER yet, and Carter, unfamiliar with the secrets involved with the case, just reads on the board that she’s at the GYN clinic and tells Mr. Parker that’s where she is. Oops! Mr. Parker confronts Abby, who tries to get him to go to the waiting area until she can figure out what to tell him. Carter steps in to remind him that medical information is confidential. Mr. Parker guesses that Lynn is pregnant and is having an abortion.

Luka gives Simpson the news about his cancer and his odds at survival, which don’t sound that great. He’ll need a bone marrow transplant, but he doesn’t have many close relatives who would be a match to donate. He decides to call his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Elizabeth tells Cleo she operated on Eli, who didn’t have internal injuries, just as Elizabeth suspected. She tells Cleo not to take advantage of her “special access” to Benton in the future when the patient is Elizabeth’s.

Pablo is back at County, though it’s not clear what his medical complaints are. He’s been drinking, and he gets a little combative and knocks over a tray when Carol tries to insert an IV. Carter calls for him to be restrained, though Carol doesn’t think that’s necessary. Carter injects Pablo with Haldol, telling Carol that he’s violent. Carol refuses to help Carter restrain him, since Pablo has always been very gentle.

Later, Carol asks Carter why he overreacted to what happened. Carter says he was just trying to be careful, but he admits that he might have made a bad call. Carol says she knows what it’s like to have your life change so drastically. A year ago, she was living with Doug; now she lives alone and parents by herself. Yes, this is totally the same as almost being killed while your colleague bleeds to death across the room. Carter tells her that Lucy got her match letter – she was placed in psychiatry at County. Carol says there will always be something that reminds him of her. All they can do is go back to work.

David tells Mark that Mrs. F. isn’t Swedish; she’s Dutch and married a Swedish man. She wouldn’t shut up while they were watching TV, so he told her to shove her thumb in her dike. Mark has made meatloaf for dinner, but he didn’t include the hard-boiled egg Ruth always put in it. He tries to make conversation with David, because he hasn’t learned over the past 40+ years that David doesn’t do small talk.

Mr. Parker apologizes to Abby for his outburst, having been convinced that Lynn didn’t have an abortion. She’s letting him think that she accidentally skipped some meals because of her chaotic life, which led to a miscarriage. Once she’s better, they can try to have another baby. Abby manages not to throw pamphlets about birth control at her.

Connie and Chuny gush over pictures of Carol’s twins in the lounge, and when Connie shows one to Luka, he’s like, “Yeah, I see them all the time, they’re cute, whatever.” After he leaves, Chuny remembers that Luka also had two children. Carol follows him outside and says that she just realized she’s never seen any pictures of his kids. He shows her a picture of his wife and daughter, but unfortunately, he doesn’t have any pictures of his son. Luka can only see him in his memories. He appreciates that Carol asked to see a picture.

Cleo joins Benton in a bed in the on-call room while Carter raids the kitchen in his grandparents’ house. The housekeeper, who calls him Dr. John, offers to make him a snack, but Carter just wants some milk. Who gets up in the middle of the night to drink milk (other than babies, of course)? Over at Mark’s, David has tried to assert his independence by getting to the bathroom, but all the wires and tubes from his medical equipment have made it difficult. He doesn’t make it in time, so Mark has to clean him up. David says Mark shouldn’t have to do this, but Mark wants to repay how David took care of him as a child.

Thoughts: Simpson is played by Dan Lauria. Mr. Emerson is played by Joel McKinnon Miller. Lynn is played by Kerri Green, making her the second Goonies star to appear this season.

Props to the twin who started screaming the second the woman at Doc Magoo’s said the girls looked like angels. That’s impressive comedic timing for someone so young.

Performing an operation because you want your girlfriend to stop bugging you about it is definitely an ethical, safe, money-wise decision.

“Special access” is my new favorite euphemism for a sexual relationship.