Conrad and his friend Jude (played by Warren Christie) just finished a bike race through the woods when a drunk man falls over a bicycle and fractures his leg. The resident immediately jumps to help, straightening out his limb and getting him into the back of a pickup truck to bring him to the hospital. Back at the hospital, Lily runs into Nic while picking up a prescription. Nic asks if she could use anything, and the cancer patient brushes her off. “Do boys ever grow up?” Nic asks Conrad and Jude as they approach covered in dirt. She shepherds him and Devon to a mandatory meeting. A billing consultant, Barb (Kellee Stewart), is teaching them C.U.T.E. (Code Up To Excellence) when the doctors decide to dip out.
Hank, the injured patient from the bike race, needs an ultrasound. When the results come in, it turns out he has acute hepatitis, which means he’s consumed so much alcohol his liver is temporarily paralyzed. When Jude and Conrad ask him how much he’s had to drink, he confesses to drinking two dozen beers. The doctors warn him that if he doesn’t start cutting back, his liver will stop functioning completely. He’s essentially drinking himself to death. “I know,” he responds. “Help me? I can’t do rehab. I’ll lose my job! I’m ready to quit. I’ve struggled with alcohol my whole life.” Jude tells him that quitting is easier said than done.
Transport worker Louisa Rodriguez (Coral Peña) collapses while taking a patient to a different room. Conrad jumps to her assistance and finds out that she has congested lungs. “I can’t be sick. They’ll send me back home,” Louisa pleads. The billing consultant barges into the room and asks them to check her insurance before anything else. While Conrad is objecting, Louisa sneaks out of the room, but collapses again in the hallway. Her pulse is weak and Nic rushes to prep an ultrasound. Conrad, with Devon’s assistance, injects her with a needle that helps her breathe easier. Barb digs up information on Louisa and finds out she’s an undocumented immigrant and insists there can be no more treatment on the hospital’s dime. But if Louisa doesn’t have surgery ASAP, she’ll die.
Meanwhile, Dr. Okafor is asking a patient questions in the lead-up to his hernia surgery, scheduled for that afternoon. He tells her it was cancelled for an MRI to be on the “safe side,” and Okafor learns this was another one of Barb’s interjections.
Barb brings Louisa’s case to the CEO of the hospital. Worst case scenario, the hospital could be on the line for $2 million if the patient can’t get out of bed post-surgery. If the surgery does go smoothly and she can walk right away, they’d still be set back $500,000. The CEO asks other hospitals if they’ll take Louisa, but they decline. The administration decides they won’t allow the surgery.
Conrad tries to reason with Dr. Bell about following through with the surgery, especially since Louisa works with them at the hospital. “No matter how much we love Louisa, her price tag is not 2 million dollars,” Dr. Bell responds. When Conrad heads back to the patient’s room, she’s starting to crash and bleeding internally. Dr. Okafor agrees to operate on her, and Jude signs off on the surgery. But when Immigration shows up, Conrad and Devon have to distract them as Louisa is shipped off to the emergency room. The surgery happens, and everything goes smoothly. That is, until Louisa tries to walk afterwards and can’t get out of bed. The hospital is now on the line for $2 million in medical costs.
Nic finds out the Dr. Okafor’s hernia patient is about to get an MRI and rushes to stop it. Nic finds Barb and explains that she didn’t check the patient’s medical history. If Barb had, she’d know he has a metal penile implant that would have been ripped out by the machine’s strong magnets. Barb is effectively kicked off the hospital’s roster for what could have been a MAJOR mistake.
Luckily, Louisa and the hernia patient received the medical attention they needed, but there are still some medical issues left unattended. Dr. Bell has started taking medication for his tremor, and it appears to be working, but the side effects are potentially serious. After getting in a fight with the CEO about how his staff will be the one who suffers the financial cuts from Louisa’s bills, Conrad finds Hank, his alcoholic patient, drinking alone at a bar. And Lily, the cancer patient Nic has been worried about, is wheeled in at the end of the episode on a stretcher. Will she be OK?!
HollywoodLifers, what did you think about tonight’s episode of The Resident? Let us know!