S03.E18: This Is Now

[WendyCR72]

After a shooting occurs during a block party, the staff is overrun with victims; Dr. Choi devises a new mass casualty plan; Dr. Manning struggles to stay focused when she realizes her son and nanny might have been at the scene.

[preeya]

And, Natalie, that's NUTTY NATALIE, does it again.

This bitch needs to take a trip.

 

And on a lighter note:

Noah says to Dr. Rhodes: "But I have (only) 3 hours of surgical experience"

Dr. Rhodes: "Now you'll get more"

[LittleIggy]

Great episode except for Natalie.

April carrying that dead little boy was heartbreaking.

Love Dr. Charles. I knew that guy was the shooter. How did he manage to survive though? I though it was stated that he would bleed out and die if he didn’t keep pressure on his neck wound, yet he was able to walk out of the ER and slash his wrists to the bone. Huh? Still a fine episode.

[watcher1006]

It was a funny twist to see Dr. Latham playing subordinate to Dr. Rhodes in the makeshift surgery room, and it helped emphasize the desperate situation everyone was in. And typically deadpan professional of Dr. Latham to understand why it was happening and not have any resentment toward the junior doctor afterwards.

[Reality police]

2 minutes ago, watcher1006 said:

It was a funny twist to see Dr. Latham playing subordinate to Dr. Rhodes in the makeshift surgery room, and it helped emphasize the desperate situation everyone was in. And typically deadpan professional of Dr. Latham to understand why it was happening and not have any resentment toward the junior doctor afterwards.

That was one of my favorite parts.

[CoyoteBlue]

Can Natalie just die? Still makes me want to slap the shit out of her every time she opens her piehole. I really like the surgical team lately. The Brit woman is not annoying any more, Rhodes is still hot and in charge, and Latham's relationship with both of them is interesting.

[sheetmoss]

11 minutes ago, watcher1006 said:

It was a funny twist to see Dr. Latham playing subordinate to Dr. Rhodes in the makeshift surgery room, and it helped emphasize the desperate situation everyone was in. And typically deadpan professional of Dr. Latham to understand why it was happening and not have any resentment toward the junior doctor afterwards.

Yes, it was the verbal "Snap out of it!"

ETA: I was okay with Natalie's angst about her son until she went off on Dr Charles, you know, the guy who identified the shooter

Edited May 2, 2018 by sheetmoss

[CoyoteBlue]

On 5/2/2018 at 12:32 AM, sheetmoss said:

I was okay with Natalie's angst about her son until she went off on Dr Charles, you know, the guy who identified the shooter

I was fine with her being worried until she started treating Maggie like her personal secretary. Bitch, she's running this whole circus; she has better things to do than call your nanny every five minutes.

Edited May 4, 2018 by CoyoteBlue

[gaby4ever25]

I love when the writers emphasize Dr Rhodes’ surgical experience and training. I remember when he was first introduced, they mentioned he trained in Mexico.  While the facilities there, may have been state of the art or of a lesser nature, I imagine he probably dealt with worse situations which prepared him to be cool under pressure, similar to Dr Choi who was a military doctor. 

Dr Manning would benefit from such experiences since she consistently loses her cool in less pressured situations and can be very judgmental.  She doesn’t seem to respect her superiors and every outburst is ignored without consequence.   And while this may be applicable to several other characters, it just seems she’s running her mouth in every episode. 

I’ve also been very impressed with the surgical team.  It took me a few episodes to warm up to Dr Latham, however now I really like his personality.  The British doctor, whom I’ve forgotten her name, has mellowed a bit and doesn’t seem as annoying.  I’m even starting to like Noah, whom I really disliked it the beginning. I think keeping the familial relationship with his sister but cutting the apron strings did wonders for his character. 

[atiyah9369]

5 hours ago, CoyoteBlue said:

I was fine with her being worried until she started treating Maggie like her personal secretary. Bitch. she's running this whole circus; she has better things to do than call your nanny every five minutes.

This scene made me roll my eyes even harder at Natalie. I am over her character. Maggie has her own job to do.

[Guildford]

While the episode was a vast improvement on recent outings a couple of things bugged me..

1. How the hell did Goodwin keep her pretty pant suit & flouncy white shirt spotless?

2. Two hours since the first patient rolled in until they were cleaning up the ED? Really? So say they had 30 patients, that meant approx 4mins per patient. Chicago Med continues to be the miracle of all miracle hospitals.

3. Natalie......( & by extension, Halstead taking off to find her kid...ugh) - then again it was two hours after a mass shooting.

[Ohwell]

52 minutes ago, Guildford said:

1. How the hell did Goodwin keep her pretty pant suit & flouncy white shirt spotless?

I wondered about that myself.

[Poohbear617]

Ok Natalie, how dare u yell at dr. Charles and say that he took people away from saving lives in order to treat the monster. OK hypocrite.

1) Had to run away from your station. Not once but twice to clear your head, one of those times right after will explained having to do double intubations. You really not much of a doctor but better than nothing.

2) left station again to go thru personal effects boxes

3) After Maggie to stop her life/death work to call for your brat

4) tried to get Ray to look for your brat, he was only hunting down a mass shooter

5) cause will to leave his post to finally find your brat. Do us a favor, take it home and Stay There.

[LittleIggy]

Dr. Bekker is South African Not British.

[BooksRule]

Quote

2) left station again to go thru personal effects boxes

I thought it was odd that they were just letting anybody rummage through the personal effects.  I know that family could identify things, but there seemed to be no supervision (and they did catch that one guy looting).  

I like that Goodwin (and I also wondered how she stayed so clean) asked for more than the one scanner, but she might have been a little over the top asking for 'the moon'.  She could get some good upgrades for the department without planning for the worse-case scenario (and, I know that these days it could happen anywhere and happen in one place more than once, but you have to be reasonable.  I do agree that better wiring so that the equipment could be used anywhere in the department sounds like a good thing).  

They sure did throw around a lot of false clues, didn't they?  The suspicious-acting guy might be the shooter.  Nope, just a thief.  The guy that seemed over enthusiastic might be the shooter.  Nope, just maybe odd.  I thought they guy that kept talking about his missing jacket might be the shooter, especially when the cops said something about recovering a hoodie.  But, nope.  I did wonder if the guy with the neck wound was the shooter when he mentioned that his wife and he had just had a fight about him being a hoarder.  And, he was the shooter.  Lots of possibilities, though.  

The only part of the Natalie story that I kind of liked was the fact that her son and the nanny had actually been at the park when the shooting started (and rushed away).  That did add a bit of danger to the storyline.  I thought it was going to turn out that they were somewhere else and the nanny's phone's battery had died or something.

[Ohwell]

I'm sick and tired of Natalie flying off the handle at everything and everybody.  Will needs to dump her ass but, alas, he probably won't.  Hell, I can't believe I'm even warming up a bit to Ava, and would take her over Natalie any time.

Also, maybe I missed something but when did Choi's sister become an employee at the hospital, or was she just volunteering?

I agree that the whole "going through peoples' belongings" storyline was just wrong and I really don't think that that's something that would occur in real life at any hospital.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Ohwell

[Xantar]

1 hour ago, LittleIggy said:

Dr. Bekker is South African Not British.

Supposedly. I feel like Norma Kuhling isn't even trying for a South African accent any more.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Natalie better be firing that nanny’s ass for not calling her asap to tell her they were all right since they were running away from, I don't know, at a fricking mass shooting!!! And Will could leave to find her kid but she couldn’t??? Gah. Chicago Med damsels getting rescued by big strong men.

I knew who shooter was as soon as he said he had lost his wife after she called him a hoarder. Yeah, lost her by shooting her.

All the items from the shooting site should have been treated as potential evidence from a crime scene and locked up imo, not pawed through by random hospital visitors.

Edited May 2, 2018 by MakeMeLaugh

[RedSoxRock]

Two questions: Is Sharon Goodwin a doctor? I thought she was an administrator. And with all the shortage of doctors and nurses why would they have Dr. Reese (she is a doctor right) sorting out people’s belongings in the cafeteria?

[Ohwell]

2 hours ago, MakeMeLaugh said:

Natalie better be firing that nanny’s ass for not calling her asap to tell her they were all right since they were running away from, I don't know, at a fricking mass shooting!!! 

I thought about that and I just figured that she was in too much of a state of shock to think about calling Natalie right after the shooting.   I imagine there was a lot of chaos.

[JustS]

6 minutes ago, RedSoxRock said:

Two questions: Is Sharon Goodwin a doctor? I thought she was an administrator. And with all the shortage of doctors and nurses why would they have Dr. Reese (she is a doctor right) sorting out people’s belongings in the cafeteria?

Sharon Goodwin was a nurse and used to run the ED. I think she said in a prior episode that she used to have Maggie's job. 

[starri]

23 hours ago, preeya said:

Noah says to Dr. Rhodes: "But I have (only) 3 hours of surgical experience"

Dr. Rhodes: "Now you'll get more"

Where did Noah go to medical school?  I've had way more than that, and I'm a psychiatrist.

I really liked Reese's subplot, but I have to question the utility of pulling a doctor away from helping with critically injured patients in order to oversee the return of stuff to their loved ones.

Natalie, who is the worst, really needs to go away.  Like, they've made Bekker at least halfway likable in the last part of the season, how do they keep managing to make Natalie more annoying?

[statsgirl]

No wonder there was chaos.  Reese, good at making quick medical decisions, is looking over belongings and Maggie, charge nurse and former paramedic, is phoning around to find  Natalie's son while April is running triage and patients are helping bandage the wounded.  Will leaves the hospital to go with the police to bring Natalie her son.  Are there no penalties for leaving your job when it's so chaotic? 

Why weren't more medical staff called in? Or at least come down from other parts of the hospital?  Why couldn't Rhodes and Bekker use the day surgery rooms instead of the doctor's lounge? Was there no plan at all to handle a mass casualty? 

Later Sharon says they need multiple CT scanners and lots more ER space.  Does she think they're going to have these mass shootings on a regular basis?

8 hours ago, Xantar said:

Supposedly. I feel like Norma Kuhling isn't even trying for a South African accent any more.

I know. Her accent was never great but it's like she's completely given up trying.  My viewing companion noticed that as she becomes less bitchy, she also became less competent.  Her one saving grace was her surgical skill and that melting away so Connor can save her.

2 hours ago, starri said:

Where did Noah go to medical school?  I've had way more than that, and I'm a psychiatrist.

Well, I've always had my doubts that he actually did go to medical school given how incompetent he was last season.

For a reality check, here's a really interesting interview with Kevin Menes, the doctor who was in charge of Sunrise Hospital ER for the Las Vegas shooting and how he prepared for it (he's from Detroit).  He prepared a plan ahead of time, basing it on the Mumbai shooting and studied ballistics to know how to treat bullet wounds. When they ran out of ventilators, they put multiple patient on each:

Quote

Doing the math afterwards, Menes calculated that he had about 10 seconds to triage every patient.

“Every single person who walked in [to the ER] had the exact same look on their face - shock, disbelief, horror and confusion all mixed and rolled up into one,” Menes said.   Despite the time constraints, he and his colleagues refused to follow normal protocols that would mean "tagging" patients ac...cording to the severity of injury; green tags for minor wounds, red for severe but savable, grey means the patient is alive but beyond hope — black means they are dead. 

They wanted to give everyone a fighting chance, 

"That night we did save a huge majority of grey tags," he said, adding that he and the ER team "were all going to try until we dropped dead ourselves." 

Anyone who could push a wheelchair or gurney was sent down to the ER to help and hundreds of emergency staff were called in. [snip]

"We had about a 100 doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants... and 200 nurses come in. This is a Sunday night at 10 o'clock... for these staff members to first take the phone call, then decide they are gong to come in and help, to this day, still amazes me," he said.

Edited May 3, 2018 by statsgirl

[NYCFree]

7 hours ago, statsgirl said:

 

Later Sharon says they need multiple CT scanners and lots more ER space.  Does she think they're going to have these mass shootings on a regular basis?

I am afraid she wouldn't be wrong to think so. New York City has not had a mass shooting yet, but I bet the ERs are prepared for it. As an aside, I had to go to a hospital in Manhattan on 9/11/01, I was having contractions brought on by the stress and tragedy of the day. I will never forget going into the main entrance of the hospital and seeing the mass of medical personnel assembled there waiting for the victims that we now know were already dead.

[spunky]

I had approximately 5% sympathy for Natalie, until she became her self centered self. First of all she was acting as though Maggie had nothing else to do , but call her nanny every two seconds. Then she acted as though Jay was her personal detective, happy he shut that down quick. The icing on the cake was her going off on Dr. Charles for doing his job. 

I liked the cohesiveness of the team during a mass casualty event. April carrying that little boy was heartbreaking. So was that mother who wanted desperately to hear that her son was okay. Noah is improving as a doctor. Dr. Bekker still gets on my nerves almost as much as Natalie.

[statsgirl]

17 hours ago, NYCFree said:

I am afraid she wouldn't be wrong to think so. New York City has not had a mass shooting yet, but I bet the ERs are prepared for it.

I think every ER should be prepared for mass casualties.  Last week Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto who had a full ER and then got slammed with the victims of a man who was determined to prove his Incel cred by mowing women down with a van. 

But that sort of thing doesn't happen every month or even every year.  Sharon should have a plan to bringing to the ER CT scanners from the rest of the hospital in case of an emergency rather than buy more for the ER and having them sit gathering dust most of the time.

[Reality police]

19 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

I think every ER should be prepared for mass casualties.  Last week Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto who had a full ER and then got slammed with the victims of a man who was determined to prove his Incel cred by mowing women down with a van. 

But that sort of thing doesn't happen every month or even every year.  Sharon should have a plan to bringing to the ER CT scanners from the rest of the hospital in case of an emergency rather than buy more for the ER and having them sit gathering dust most of the time.

How mobile are CT scanners and how many scanners does an average big city hospital have? Not trying to be snippy, you just got me thinking. Our local hospital has 445 beds and is a level 1 trauma. I think it has two CT's. 

[shksabelle]

Thank goodness. 

Finally an episode not focused on Dr. Sourpuss and her daddy issues. 

[RedbirdNelly]

this was one of the better episodes, perhaps suggesting the show would be better with more focus on medical issues and less on the people.

Agree with all of the above on Natalie. Very annoying. I was annoyed to see Will climb out of the cab. Why would he leave the hospital to track down her son?

What is Peter's job? I thought he was hospital legal but in this episode he's the purchasing department. Am I wrong on the legal part and he's always been CFO or something?

[GalvDuck]

On 5/3/2018 at 11:44 PM, Reality police said:

How mobile are CT scanners and how many scanners does an average big city hospital have? Not trying to be snippy, you just got me thinking. Our local hospital has 445 beds and is a level 1 trauma. I think it has two CT's. 

Not really mobile.  Additionally, there's usually the need for a company technician to travel in so they can calibrate the instrument after a move.  During my time working in the ER, we would send non-emergent (urgent care) ER patients to the hospital or outpatient radiology departments for their CTs if we were inundated with traumas and needed the ER scanners for immediate use.  

[SnarkySheep]

On 5/2/2018 at 11:54 PM, statsgirl said:

Will leaves the hospital to go with the police to bring Natalie her son.  Are there no penalties for leaving your job when it's so chaotic? 

This was my biggest WTF. Will was - obviously - needed right where he was. How could he just up and go get Natalie's kid? I could kinda see his reaching out to Jay again after the shooter was caught and having the police track the kid down. But once it was established he and the nanny were fine, couldn't he just relay the info to Natalie so she could relax, and they'd get him later?

I'm sure this is one of those little things that will never again be mentioned, though, mainly because it seems it was necessary to finally get Natalie to forgive Will's little rendezvous. 

[RedbirdNelly]

13 hours ago, SnarkySheep said:

This was my biggest WTF. Will was - obviously - needed right where he was. How could he just up and go get Natalie's kid? I could kinda see his reaching out to Jay again after the shooter was caught and having the police track the kid down. But once it was established he and the nanny were fine, couldn't he just relay the info to Natalie so she could relax, and they'd get him later?

I'm sure this is one of those little things that will never again be mentioned, though, mainly because it seems it was necessary to finally get Natalie to forgive Will's little rendezvous. 

agreed with all of this; the moment he stepped out of that cab was a real downer for me--completely took me out of the scene and brought me back to "this show is so stupid" territory.

[Guildford]

17 minutes ago, RedbirdNelly said:

agreed with all of this; the moment he stepped out of that cab was a real downer for me--completely took me out of the scene and brought me back to "this show is so stupid" territory.

But it had been two hours since the first patient rolled through the door....what else did Wetstead possibly have to do?

[RedbirdNelly]

was his shift over? seemed unlikely. If it was would have been better to toss in a line about being off versus showing up in scrubs in the back of a cab.

[SunnyBeBe]

I'm so over the story of the overrun emergency dept, due to a crisis.  They are my least favorite type of episode.  I'll check it out tonight, though. 

Edited May 8, 2018 by SunnyBeBe

[Guildford]

44 minutes ago, RedbirdNelly said:

was his shift over? seemed unlikely. If it was would have been better to toss in a line about being off versus showing up in scrubs in the back of a cab.

You wouldn't have thought so in a mass causality situation like that. It was ridiculous that he was off running around picking up her kid.

It was just a dumb storyline all round and the episode could have done without it. It didn't add to the tension, there was plenty going on...I was just yelling at the TV 'can someone find her damn kid so she can STFU.' Unless the kid was going to come in bleeding, or the nanny was shot it was just so utterly meh.

[candall]

On ‎5‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 8:29 PM, starri said:

...I'm a psychiatrist. [...]

Yay!  Don't I remember way back when you were trying to decide between psychiatry and emergency?  Congratulations.

 

Back to the show . . .

The writers are not kind to their women characters.  Manning is ridiculous, as is Reese--are we to imagine she'll someday acquire the professional wisdom and maturity of Dr. Charles?  I do not. 

And Goodwin's new goal of retrofitting the ED from the ground up is unrealistic.  Were people shown dying right and left because the department was short of equipment?  The story seemed to be more that the staff was forced to be creative.  So now she wants a budget to cover the possibility of mass trauma conditions for 100? 500? 1000? people sometime in the future.

Do better, writers.

And throw some blood on that snowy pristine white outfit.

[statsgirl]

On 5/7/2018 at 5:14 PM, GalvDuck said:

Not really mobile.  Additionally, there's usually the need for a company technician to travel in so they can calibrate the instrument after a move.  During my time working in the ER, we would send non-emergent (urgent care) ER patients to the hospital or outpatient radiology departments for their CTs if we were inundated with traumas and needed the ER scanners for immediate use.  

Would it be possible to take the patients to CT scanners in other parts of the hospital?  It seems a waste to have them sitting around in the ED waiting for another mass casualty.

On 5/7/2018 at 7:40 PM, SnarkySheep said:

This was my biggest WTF. Will was - obviously - needed right where he was. How could he just up and go get Natalie's kid? I could kinda see his reaching out to Jay again after the shooter was caught and having the police track the kid down. But once it was established he and the nanny were fine, couldn't he just relay the info to Natalie so she could relax, and they'd get him later?

Even if Will's shift were over, surely there was still doctor work to do with all the patients who were hurt.  It's ridiculous that it's all catering to Princess Natalie. 

[GalvDuck]

14 hours ago, statsgirl said:

Would it be possible to take the patients to CT scanners in other parts of the hospital?  It seems a waste to have them sitting around in the ED waiting for another mass casualty.

Even if Will's shift were over, surely there was still doctor work to do with all the patients who were hurt.  It's ridiculous that it's all catering to Princess Natalie. 

Yeah, like I said, that's what we did when things got really busy.  Of course, we rarely had mass casualties, even though we were a Level I trauma center.  Usually it was a multi-vehicle accident, never a shooting (thankfully). 

[Chas411]

Everytime Jay guest stars on this show (which appears to be every single episode) I dislike him a little more. He comes off like such a douche I don't know what it is about him on this show compared to PD.

[Sandman]

On 5/2/2018 at 9:22 AM, Guildford said:

1. How the hell did Goodwin keep her pretty pant suit & flouncy white shirt spotless?

She's Freakin' Sharon Goodwin, baby. (Is that self-evident, or redundant?)

On 5/20/2018 at 1:38 PM, Chas411 said:

Every time Jay guest stars on this show (which appears to be every single episode) I dislike him a little more. He comes off like such a douche I don't know what it is about him on this show compared to PD.

It seems I have the opposite reaction: Brown Halstead turns up, and I think "Finally, someone who isn't a self-enamored troll!" (I pretty much want to slap every character in the combined cast of PD and Fire, 24/7, and Antonio twice on Sundays. Voight and Stohl each get a kick in the slats, just grading on the curve.)