Chicago Med Review: Scary Merry Holidays

Chicago Med got a late start this year, but has nevertheless pushed the Emergency Department into a good place to pick up in the New Year. Perhaps not good, but at the very least, compelling and authentic. I’d call it a jolly holiday, but Santa and a priest dying in the E.D. is not a good sign of things to come. Nevertheless, we do our best to be hopeful during the holidays. We can be grateful for Chicago Med‘s new relationships, for every patient healed, and for the stories that represent the struggles currently going on in the healthcare community.

April and Noah treat a brother and sister, basically the older versions of themselves.  The brother ends up having a bacterial infection, one that is commonly contracted from rats, but seems to be spreading between random patients. Watching the siblings go through what they have is sobering for both April and Noah. As much as April is criticized for babying Noah, he himself has a problem with it. How can he expect to grow as a doctor if his sister is constantly checking his work? By getting to know the siblings, they not only figure out the source of the infection, they find a greater balance between themselves.

Unfortunately, now that she is back to work, Robyn is assigned the case April and Noah work on. Add on to that the strange sounds coming from the walls of her office, and there are just two too many mentions of rats. It’s not as if Robyn isn’t already anxious. I am getting really, really sick of Nurse what’s-her-name. You’d think people in the medical profession would have a modicum of compassion toward a coworker who went through hell to survive and be well again. I’m not usually an advocate for this, but in the New Year, could we please have this not-so-caring nurse thoroughly reprimanded? Long story short, Robyn is fine, the patients are fine, and Robyn’s office was just directly under a heater that needed maintenance. That’s the type of thing someone should have told her before she wasted time, money, and anxiety on more tests, but all’s well that ends well I suppose.

Speaking of infectious diseases, Halstead and Manning have a doozy to deal with. Despite ample risk to the fetus, the rules of Zika haven’t been updated like the rules of HIV. This is actually really interesting to consider, with one major difference. In both cases, the disease can be passed from mother to the fetus. In both cases, the disease can be sexually transmitted. In both cases, it should be required by law that a partner be informed that they may have been infected. The problem is, the laws regarding Zika have not been updated to the level of the laws for HIV. Considering that an HIV positive mother can carry a child full term now without passing the disease onto the fetus, and there are no such drugs for Zika, it seems ridiculous that the law hasn’t caught up. This puts Halstead in a tough spot when a cheating husband would rather risk spreading the disease onto his child than informing his wife of his affair. Luckily, there was one loophole. Zika is very closely monitored by the CDC, so any potential case has to be reported. It’s doubtful that pregnant patient will have a good holiday season, but at least she’ll have the proper information at hand.

When we talk about stories that will leave us with a new place to start in the New Year, we should go to Dr. Charles. After all, his horrific attack is what kicked off the season. The man who attacked Dr. Charles is murdered in prison, which is what he most feared. Goodwin is right to worry that Charles would have a bad reaction to the news, especially against Reese. For the most part, Charles is fine, but only because he’s going about things logically. When you do that for so long, you don’t let the raw emotion out. There is no doubt that Charles needs the time off, but he should be fine once he takes it. Reese is a different kind of clinical, but in a much more dangerous way. She is afraid of her patients. That can’t happen when you’re a doctor, when you’re responsible for people at their most vulnerable. We shall see if she can work through this fear in 2018.

Also on Chicago Med‘s 2018 agenda are the increasing budget cuts in the medical community. For more on this, check out my interview with Marlyne Barrett. Until 2018, Chicago Med fans.