Recap / ERS 1 E 16 Make Of Two Hearts

Season 1, Episode 16:

Make of Two Hearts

Do svidaniya... it means 'goodbye'.

In a continuous shot, the staff are shown preparing for Valentine's Day, with Nurse Wendy putting up decorations, Jerry playing "she loves me, she loves me not" with a bouquet of flowers, and an irritable Mark (still smarting over the conversation with Jennifer a few days earlier) snapping at Haleh when she tries to wake him up from his rest in the staff lounge. Doug also finds a bouquet of flowers and chocolates, which he wrongly presumes is Carol's before Benton tells him it's his, and Carter is flummoxed when he receives a number of Valentine cards from various female admirers in the hospital.

The playful mood is broken when Officer Al Grabatsky rushes into the ER holding a limp figure in his arms, and begs the staff to help, claiming that he accidentally hit "it" when the figure ran into the path of his car. Lydia, Carol and Carter rush to prepare equipment... then realize that Al brought in a dog. Seeing this, Benton leaves while telling them the dog's condition is fading fast. With the help of an animal anatomy book (and Carter giving the dog mouth-to-mouth until it can be intubated), they manage to ascertain that the dog has a collapsed lung, and stabilize its condition. In celebration, Al grabs Lydia and gives her a long kiss, then decides that he wants to name the dog "Bill".

Soon after, Carol is working at her desk when she's distracted by a "Mrs. Hall", who is holding her daughter, Tatiana, in her arms and asks for "the head pediatrician" (Doug). As Doug arrives and examines the child, Mrs. Hall states that Tatiana is Russian, and that she adopted her from St. Petersburg ten days earlier, but that the girl has come down with illness. When Doug and Carol's attention is distracted, however, Mrs. Hall walks out of the ER without looking back, seemingly abandoning the young girl. In the recovery room, Haleh administers some antibiotics while Doug and Carol struggle to break through Tatiana's language barrier. Revealing that she knows Russian due to her mother's heritage (though not fluent), Carol is able to exchange some words with Tatiana and finds herself doting over the young girl.

Outside the ambulance bay, Doug and Benton are taking a break. Doug asks him who the chocolates and flowers are for, but Benton's explanation (about "a pediatrician he's seeing") is cut short by the arrival of an ambulance. They rush over and diagnose the patient, a teenager who was struck by a freight train after being dared to stand in its way by his friends. They try to stabilize him, but not before he reflexively grabs Wendy's hand, nearly breaking it before they pry it open. Wendy is sent to an exam room and given Demerol shots after being injured for the injury, while the patient succumbs to his wounds soon after

While Doug and Carol deal with a Child Protective Services rep about the situation with Tatiana, who is still recovering alongside the dog, Chen wanders into an exam room where a group of cheerleaders are recovering after they ate acid-laced chocolates offered by a football player earlier in the day. Not being forewarned by any member of the staff, eats several of the chocolates. When Carter asks for her help a short time later, she's shown to be completely spaced out and pats him on the cheek before saying that "everything is fine!" Elsewhere, Susan is embarrassed when Dr. Kayson, having recovered from his heart attack, strides into the ER wearing a tracksuit, holding a bouquet of flowers and listening to music, and awkwardly tells Susan that "you're mine" before asking her out to dinner later, saying he's found a new lease on life. She resolves to avoid him for the rest of the day.

Carol vents about her frustrations over the Tatiana situation with Mark, who decides to distract her by offering her to assist on an incoming trauma case — a meat packer brought in with a hook embedded through his left arm. It's revealed that the victim, Lorenzo, had a fight with his son, Paulie — and during the altercation, a second meathook was embedded in Paulie's chest. Despite an attempt to stabilize him, Paulie dies on the table while Lorenzo shouts his name repeatedly. Carol then realizes that Tatiana is watching the trauma room and freaks out after seeing the horrible injuries, and runs over to comfort her as she cries.

As the day continues, Doug and Carol try to diagnose Tatiana's condition (but come up with few answers), the still-high Deb wanders around the hospital before being tasked with putting a cast on Wendy's hand, an older man named Ed (accompanied by his two girlfriends) is wheeled after nearly drowning in a hot tub and Benton begrudgingly takes on a case involving a senile older woman who slipped and fell.

Meanwhile, Jake Leeds, the boy who played basketball outside the hospital with Doug and introduced him to his mother, arrives complaining of pains in his side and stomach. Doug asks Haleh to call Diane before taking him to an exam room, and afterwards, Diane arrives and reveals to Doug that Jake is faking an illness so that she can spend some time with Doug — part of a long-running gambit where Jake will fake illnesses so that he can try to set her up with various doctors, which she's refused every time. Owing to Doug's status as The Casanova, he charms Diane enough that she briefly lets her guard down with him, but he's distracted when he gets ultrasound results for Tatiana — revealing that the child has AIDS. Afterwards, Doug admits that the likely scenario is that Tatiana will get shipped off to a foster home and given antibiotics, while Carol has a brief breakdown looking at the sleeping girl...

While Benton sutures the arm wound of the senile patient, who reminds him of his mother, Mark, Susan and others diagnose a woman who went into anaphylactic shock after eating shellfish at dinner. Just when they think they've stabilized her, the patient begins bleeding, prompting Susan to realize the woman has enlarged veins (varices) due to apparent alcoholism. Mark congratulates Susan on the correct diagnosis, and they manage to stop the bleeding.

As the evening draws to a close at the hospital, Carol is surprised to find Mrs. Hall sitting in the ER's lobby. Upon confronting her with Tatiana's condition, Hall admits that she already discovered the girl's condition four days earlier and needed to drop her off at a hospital that would look after her. Carol tells her that it's unlikely she'll retain custody after this, and Mrs. Hall leaves — though not without admitting that due to the death of her husband three years earlier, she can't bear to see someone else die under her watch.

Benton heads back home and gives the flowers and chocolates to his mother, who he finds sleeping in her chair after she left the kitchen sink running and refrigerator open, while Mark and Susan go on a fun skate at a nearby rink in Chicago's downtown core and discuss Morgenstern's offer for him to be Attending Physician.

Back at the hospital, Officer Grabatsky arrives to take Bill home with him, while Carol looks at Tatiana and goes over to sit with her, wondering what she can do about the little girl's situation...

Tropes:

• Actually Pretty Funny: As Mark discusses Kayson's ill-timed advances towards Susan with her, Lydia can be seen walking a few feet behind them, smiling broadly as she states that no one else knows about what happened.
• Artistic Licence Medicine: While it fits within the layout of the hospital itself, it's hard to believe that bystanders, particularly a young girl, would be able to have a front-row seat during a traumatic injury and a patient dying on the table, without Child Protective Services being called in. Notably, CPS did appear just a few short minutes before the scene occurs, but are not present afterwards.
• Book Ends: The episode starts and ends with Officer Grabatsky arriving at the ER, to deliver an injured dog in the opening and to take it back home at the end of the day after the ER staff saved its life.
• Brick Joke:
  • The teenage cheerleaders who tried the acid-laced chocolates are seen several scenes after their introduction, absent-mindedly watching a heart monitor in unison.
  • Midway through the episode, Deb (who's high as a kite due to eating acid-laced chocolate) is tasked with wrapping Wendy's fractured hand in a cast. At the end of the episode, Wendy reappears with a comically-large cast (Deb having wrapped it way too much), which Carol promises to fix up as soon as possible.
• Brutal Honesty: When Carol expresses concern over the poor circumstances facing Tatiana due to not having a parental figure, Doug counters that Tatiana will get antibiotics and be shipped off to a foster home, which is the only realistic outcome. As seen later on in the season, despite Carol's attempt to adopt her, she fails and the exact scenario that Doug described occurs.
• Butt-Monkey: Chen, who gets the "comic relief" plot of the episode — a plot in which she gets unintentionally dosed with acid, wanders around the hospital in a daze, does a poor job putting a cast on Wendy's fractured hand, and is last seen licking the icing off a cupcake as several male staff members look on quizzically.
• Chaste Hero: Discussed by Doug, who notes that he doesn't schedule any romantic endeavors on Valentine's Day, stating that it tends to cause "conflicts" with his life.
• Chekhov's Skill: Susan's quest to become more assertive manifests itself when she correctly diagnoses that the patient suffering from rampant bleeding after a shellfish allergy also has a history of alcoholism, and she's able to diagnose the patient in time to prevent further injury.
• Chick Magnet: Carter, naturally, given he's become the focus of attention from several of the female staffers at the hospital.
  Susan: Who are all these women?
  Carter: (exasperated) I don't even remember meeting them!
• Children Are Innocent: Highlighted by Tatiana, a young girl who doesn't understand much English, is left in a difficult situation (her adopted mother abandons her, leaving her at the mercy of the hospital staff and CPS) and she gets a front-row seat to a traumatic injury that results in the death of a patient, freaking out for several moments while everyone else seemingly ignores her (until Carol arrives).
• Continuity Nod: Mark and Susan discuss Morgenstern's offer to make the former Attending Physician towards the end of the episode, prompting Susan to react in surprise that he didn't tell her sooner. Mark points out that they weren't on speaking terms at the time due to the Vennerbeck case.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Implied, as Diane tells Doug that she's resisted her son's attempts at setting her up with other doctors via faking injury... but the conversation ends with her behavior becoming much warmer towards Doug.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The meat packer, Lorenzo, in response to his son flipping out over a comment about his mother, attacks him with a meathook — leading to Lorenzo retaliating by embedding another meat hook into his son's chest.
• Foreshadowing: After saving the dog's life in the opening sequence, Mark comments on the strange events of the day, likening it to, "A full moon, when all the crazies come out." Susan even repeats the same line to Carol a minute later, just for emphasis.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Despite not knowing much about canine anatomy (to the point that they have to pull out a book during an operation), Mark, Carter, Lydia and others manage to save the life of "Bill", the stray dog Officer Al Grabatsky brought in. Notably, Al is so happy that he gives the dog a name, then plants a Big Damn Kiss on Lydia for her efforts, while Carter manages to keep "Bill" alive by giving him mouth-to-mouth.
• Hidden Depths: Carol is revealed to have a working knowledge of Russian, as her mother is Russian, which she uses to talk to Tatiana.
• It's All My Fault: Al Grabatsky is beside himself with grief after accidentally hitting a dog with his vehicle while on-shift, and looks to the County staff for help.
• Kavorka Man: The elderly patient who had a heart attack in his hot tub (while wearing flippers, no less) is brought in alongside two women who claim to be his girlfriends (Doug refers to them as "hookers") who seem oddly set on staying with him the entire time, despite the staff trying to push them out of the operating room.
• Meaningful Echo: Carol teaches Doug and Carter how to say "goodbye" in Russian ("Do svidaniya") to Tatiana. At the end of the episode, Carol teaches Mrs. Hall the same thing... but the latter refuses to do so and leaves out of shame, prompting Carol to go over and comfort Tatiana herself.
• Missing Mom: Mrs. Hall, who flees the ER after dumping Tatiana (herself an adopted child) at the first opportunity. She reappears at the end of the episode to talk with Carol, who admits that it's highly unlikely she will get custody of Tatiana again.
• The Oner: Twice in one episode, including one unbroken shot follows each of the cast members — Doug and Carol discuss Tatiana's situation before he walks into the staff lounge and has a conversation with Mark... who walks back out and acts snarky towards Haleh and Susan... who advises Carol of another case to deal with as she leaves Tatiana with the dog, Bill... and then Carol diagnoses a group of teenage cheerleaders who ate acid-laced Valentine's chocolates.
• Platonic Valentine: Plenty for Carter, befitting his status in the hospital.
• Put on a Bus: Dr. Kayson, who is last seen running on a treadmill before his discharge from the recovery unit, will disappear from the show after this, with no explanation as to why he isn't seen on-screen for another two seasons (even in situations where he, as the head of the cardiology unit, might be needed).
• Shipper on Deck: Jake, for his mother (Diane) and Doug. Diane reveals to Doug that Jake actually has a long history of this behavior, faking illnesses so that his mother can spend time with other doctors, but she refused to take the bait (even moving offices several times to avoid them).
• Ship Tease: Nurse Lydia and Al Grabatsky, complete with musical cue when he kisses her after she and the other doctors save "Bill's" (the dog's) life.
• Time Skip: More than a week has passed since the events of the previous episode, with Mark noting that Jen left the night before Valentine's (Feb. 13, 1995).
• Valentine's Day Episode: The events take place on Valentine's, with various plot threads interweaving throughout (Al kisses Lydia, Deb inadvertently gets high on LSD-laced chocolate, various characters discuss the holiday).
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The high-school jock who dosed the cheerleaders with acid-laced chocolates is never shown facing any consequences for his actions, despite Carol telling him they're going to call the police, and he never appears again after the single scene he shows up in.

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