Wheelchair bound lawyer, Hunter, comes to see the doctors with a herniated disc, but when Dr. Neil Melendez is feeling around his back, Hunter jumps in pain, that goes down through his legs — a part of his body he hasn’t been able to feel since his motorcycle accident years prior. Confused, Dr. Claire Brown (Antonia Thomas), Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) and Dr. Alex Park order an MRI of Hunter’s back, but not before Claire’s mom shows up in the hospital unannounced and sings for the staff until Claire tells her to leave. Claire reveals to her colleagues that she once saved up thousands of dollars to purchase a laptop, which her mom stole and went to Palm Springs and purchased a designer dress, with her money.
In the meantime, Dr. Marcus Andrews, along with Dr. Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu) and Dr. Morgan Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) deal with a woman who underwent facial implants and a breast augmentation. Her facial implant is infected and needs to be removed, but she and her husband are concerned about the outcome and what she’ll “look like.” Obviously, Dr. Andrews is the best of the best, and removes the infection and replaces the implant. However, Dr. Reznick finds another infection the patient’s back and Dr. Andrews wants to remove all of her implants. The woman is incredibly distraught and explains her lack of self confidence since she has grown old, she suggests trying antibiotics before removing the implants. However, after days of antibiotics, her condition worsens, but she still won’t allow Dr. Andrews to do the surgery and wants to get a second opinion.
Across the hospital, the doctors find that Hunter has a spinal arachnoid cyst, that is sitting on the section of his spine connected to brain function, and if removed, he would be able to walk again since his severed spine healed. However, Dr. Neil Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez) warns against the surgery, telling Hunter there was a 15% chance he wouldn’t make it out alive. He takes the time to think it over with his new wife, before asking her to get Melendez. She lashes out at the idea of him dying instead of keeping things they way they are, which she enjoys. “If you want to selfishly gamble your life away, I’m not going to stand by and watch,” Hunter’s wife yells at him before storming out.
Hunter goes on to confide in Shaun, asking him if there were a cure for autism, if he’d do it. “Why would you risk losing the person who loves you for the way you are? You may not find another one,” Shaun responds. “Losing this chair now, won’t make it lose the lessons it gave me,” Hunter replies. Whoa.
Side note, Dr. Park did a background check on Shaun’s new neighbor, Kenny (Chris D’Elia) and found several misdemeanors in his name.
Morgan figures out that the woman doesn’t want to remove her implants because she thought her husband was unfaithful. After approaching the husband, she convinces him to tell his wife the truth — that he was a gambling addict and that’s why he was so absent. After talking, the woman agrees to get her implants removed. With Morgan’s success in getting the woman into surgery, Andrews asks her to be his assistant in surgery. After hearing this, Kalu takes Morgan up on her offer to call her friend at Denver hospital to set him up with a job following his residency.
Before going into surgery, Shaun asks Claire if she’d ever date someone with a disability, to which she replied “Yes.” “You could choose the ideal mate, Claire. Why would you want the unnecessary burden?” Shaun asks. “Everyone’s dealing with something, Shaun,” she says back, before looking over at the dying flowers her mom brought her.
Both patients go into surgery. Hunter has second thoughts before going in, but his wife is there to convince him to take a chance. While Andrews is removing the woman’s implants, his patient has an embolism and it’s too late to save her. She dies on the table and Morgan calls the time. In the other OR, Hunter’s brain activity begins to go down while Melendez is trying to get one final piece of the mass off of his spine. He wakes up from surgery, and while we don’t know what the results will be, he is alive and well! Phew.
Andrews reflects on his loss after a day of work, and reveals to his wife what happened. “I met a couple who lost their way. I don’t want to be like them. I want to be fully committed to you,” he told his wife, Dr. Isabel Barnes before revealing that there is a surgery he could get that could make him fertile, but could also make him impotent. “I draw the line at anything that risks our sex life!” Isabel responded.
Claire has dinner with her mom and is excited to hear how she’s doing, until her mom asks her for money for a house and furniture. At Shaun’s house, he comes home to find Kenny opening Chinese food at his table and ready to play a new video game with Shaun. Shaun puts away the info Alex gave him about Kenny’s past and is excited to have a new friend.
Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of The Good Doctor on Monday at 10 PM ET!