Dr. Mina Okafor answers questions during a mortality conference at the beginning of The Resident‘s fifth episode. “I broke protocol. Things happen,” she explains to a room full of doctors about something that went tremendously wrong during three simultaneous surgeries. The person questioning her then turns to Dr. Bell to ask for his explanation of the catastrophe, and he remembers an incredibly bloody scene in the emergency room.
We head back 12 hours to see just what happened to the three patients. The first patient is a man in his 30s, who’s fairly sure he has cancer. Luckily, he doesn’t have cancer, but he does have an atrophic testicle, which Dr. Conrad Hawkins recommends removing. “Chopping my ball off!?” the patient, Ed, responds incredulously, before he and his girlfriend flood Conrad and Dr. Devon Pravesh with questions. Conrad assures them that they’ll still be able to have kids someday, seeing as how he only needs “one healthy guy for that.” Devon later shows the couple different prosthetics that Ed can choose from after surgery.
The second patient is a woman named Christine, who very much doesn’t want to be at the hospital. Her son, Trevor, and Nurse Nic both convince her to stay. Conrad calls for her to get a CT scan done. They find out she has an aneurism and will need surgery later that day.
Then there’s York Evans (played by Steve Rosen), who’s earned himself a bit of a reputation around the hospital staff. He’s come through many times before, all for the same thing — he stuck something up his rectum and needs help getting it out. This go around, it’s a syrup bottle. Devon, much to his dismay, is assigned to remove it. York seems perfectly happy to talk during the process, but Devon barely responds. “I feel like your mind is elsewhere,” York comments before the intern tells him to exhale and frees the object. However, upon inspection Devon realizes that the top of the bottle is still lodged inside York, and it’ll require surgery to get it out.
As all of these patients are being taken care of, Dr. Bell and his colleagues are arguing over the need to be performing more concurrent surgeries. While practicing surgeries simultaneously is perfectly legal, it can be risky. Dr. Bell is then questioned about why he hasn’t performed concurrent surgeries in over a year and pressure is placed on him to “raise the bar, if not exceed it.” This might be an issue for the surgeon who has been experiencing a loss of focus and blurred vision throughout the day.
Dr. Bradley is about to head home after completing a 30-hour shift, but Dr. Bell tells him he needs to join him in surgery later that afternoon. When Nic cuts in to point out how many hours he’s been on the clock, Dr. Bell humiliatingly asks him if he needs to go home and rest. Dr. Bradley chokes up before saying that he’ll be fine.
Meanwhile, Nic is still worried about cancer patient Lily Kendall. She asks Lily whether or not she’s ever considered getting a second opinion from someone who isn’t Dr. Hunter, but Lily shuts her down. Lily explains that her doctor was the only one who caught her cancer. “She’s the only person that I trust,” Lily says. Hunter later pulls Nic aside and tells her she will no longer be assigned to any of her patients.
All of the doctors are ragging on Devon and sending him past X-rays of different items York has come into the hospital needing to have removed from his rectum. The resident becomes even more enraged when he realizes the patient gave him a terrible Yelp review and blames him for needing surgery. Dr. Bell, however, agrees to perform the procedure.
Ed and York are now both in surgery with Okafor tending to the atrophic testicle and Dr. Bell overseeing the cap removal with Bradley’s assistance. But during the middle of the invasive operation, Bradley passes out, pulling on different internal organs as he falls to the floor. Dr. Bell calls for Okafor, who helps take over after making sure her own patient’s vitals are steady. After they seem to get York’s body back under control, the surgical resident heads back to proceed with the testicular removal.
At the same time, Charlotte’s aneurism bursts. She needs to go into surgery ASAP. Okafor switches over to work on getting her bleeding under control. Once it’s stabilized, she goes back to Ed to finish up the surgery quickly since he’s been under anesthesia for much longer than anticipated at this point. Unfortunately, we later find out that from all of the running around, everything needed to be sanitized over and over again, and at one point, a nurse erased the incision mark on Ed. Under an obscene amount of pressure and Bell’s guidance, Okafor botched the surgery. Instead of removing the atrophic testicle, it was the healthy one that was cut off.
Okafor takes responsibility for what happened during the mortality meeting, but Dr. Bell is roped into questioning since he was the orchestrator of the surgeries. “I pushed Dr. Okafor to exceed my expectations, and sadly on this day she simply wasn’t ready,” he tells the room. “This series of events simply could not have been predicted.”
The surgeon later finds the heartbroken couple in their hospital room and apologizes. He then tells the CEO of the hospital that even though “families settle for 45 to 55 percent less after a formal apology is made” he knew that in this situation they will “be at the higher end of those estimates.” He then sticks up for Dr. Okafor, saying that she’s “one of the most gifted surgical residents” he has ever met and she’s “invaluable.”
But after a dramatic series of events, we can’t help but wonder: what’s Conrad really been up to this episode? While this one didn’t focus much on our favorite resident, the very end promises his storyline has more left in it. After leaving the hospital for the night, Conrad runs into his estranged father, who we know nothing about. Things just got even more interesting!
HollywoodLifers, what did you think of the latest episode of The Resident?