Beware the heat everyone. Summers are getting warmer, which produce dangerous conditions for everyone. Sometimes not even the hospitals can keep up with the demand, which is why everyone at Chicago Med is on high alert this week. People and generators are overheating. Add a marathon run to that (who has a marathon during a heat wave?), conditions exacerbated by dehydration, and it’s a recipe for some scary cases.
April and her brother Noah work the Med Tent at a Chicago marathon treating the usual heat stroke and sickness. A biker at the marathon is run over by a truck. The guy needs a chest tube, which neither one of them are authorized to do. In fact they are given explicit instructions from Ms. Goodwin not to do anything, to wait for Halstead who is running the marathon. Their patient doesn’t have time to wait, so Noah makes a split second decision to go through with the chest tube, which only partially helps. It puts Halstead in the terrible position of having to crack the man’s chest open, then put him on portable bypass to save his heart. It doesn’t get any more extreme than an experimental procedure in the street. This is especially dangerous for Halstead since he barely survived his last extreme move with a patient. To be fair, he was merely trying to repair what the car had already done.
April, Noah, Halstead, and Nina had no choice to perform extraordinary measures. Dr. Rhodes is running on fumes after 7 surgeries in 24 hours, so he was in no mood to deal with this. He can fix the heart, but time will tell if the bypass caused paralysis or brain damage. Halstead is devastated that he could have caused irreparable damage, though the majority of the damage was caused by the car. With some time and luck, the patient seems like he’s on his way to a full recovery. Halstead for the win, which he celebrates by finishing the run with new girlfriend Nina. They’re actually really cute together.
Dr. Manning treats a little girl with sudden onset of hearing loss. All the little girl wants is her daddy, but the mother hasn’t shared with her that her father is dead. The doctors try to help, but the mother’s peculiar attitude raises some red flags. Scans of several healed skull fractures on the little girl break open the truth. A mother will do anything to protect her child, especially from an abusive father. The problem is that she wasn’t abused. The little girl has a genetic condition which makes her bones particularly prone to breakage. The hospital is legally obligated to report it, so now this little girl doesn’t have either of her parents.
The heat is not anyone’s friend today. Dr. Choi’s malnourished patient is nearly diagnosed with heatstroke by Jeff, which means she could have received a treatment that would have killed her. The heat merely exacerbated her malnourishment, but the deeper issue is that she overdosed on one of her medications. Dr. Charles’s theory based on her test results is that the sweet old lady has been selling her mecications to make ends meet, going so far as to eat cat food to survive. Dr. Choi figures out that it wasn’t just about making ends meet, but about keeping up appearances with a friend who liked to show off her nice things. It was a wasted effort, since the friend’s only nice things were gifts from her son. Dr. Choi is surprised that pride nearly killed this woman, but I would invite him to look up the 7 Deadly Sins as the origin for this story.
It’s just been a particularly hot and stressful day for everyone. Any hope for Sharon Goodwin’s marriage has deteriorated. She officially files for legal separation. After a difficult, but ultimately rewarding day himself, Dr. Rhodes takes Ms. Goodwin out to lift her spirits. We have Dr. Downey to thank for their destination, a Hawaiian bar right on the lake. That man’s spirit really can lift everyone else up.
Keep cool everyone. It may officially be Fall, but Summer isn’t quite over in some places.
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