The Good Doctor – 45-Degree Angle

By starrymag | November 11, 2019

By: Ujjyani Banerjee

 

 

Dr. Andrews (Hill Harper) is puzzled upon finding the nurses station empty. He learns from Nurse Villanueva (Elfina Luk) that Shaun (Freddie Highmore) has engaged all the nurses for rehearsing his first lead surgery. Shaun is micromanaging from getting the nurses to adjust the overhead lights at 35⁰ angle to handing over the 10-blade correctly. Morgan (Fiona Gubelmann) substitutes for Claire (Antonia Thomas) who’s supposed to be Shaun’s first assisting but got delayed because of a dental appointment. Suddenly, Andrews walks in asking Shaun to release the nurses,but Shaun says he’s gotten permission from Dr. Lim (Christina Chang). Claire, meanwhile, hurriedly gets out of a car in an exposing dress and clocks in for her shift at the hospital.

 

Patty (Tiffany Daniels) and Andre Fields (Quentin Plair) are here for surgery involving the removal of her ovarian tumor that’s growing dangerously close to her fetus. According to Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez) the procedure would need a three weeks recovery period, but Patty cannot have it be more than a week as the couple is amidst opening a kids toy store. Andre asks Patty to only focus on the surgery at the moment.

 

Andrews doesn’t like Lim’s partiality over Shaun as Claire never got the advantage of a full blown rehearsal with the whole nursing staff at her disposal. Lim believes that their residents aren’t homogenous and that each needs different training and approach. She wants Andrews to let her learn but also be ready to apologize when he finds himself doubting her ways for no good reason.

 

While rehearsing Morgan repeatedly asks Shaun about his dating life and how he and Carly (Jasika Nicole) spent his last day off. Shaun doesn’t like this distraction but she’s simply being Claire. He mentions how Carly didn’t come hang out with him as she was busy but he’s sure that she had friends over as he’d heard voices in the background. Nurse Hawks (April Cameron) thinks that Carly still doesn’t see him as her boyfriend as she keeps him out of her social gatherings. While some nurses start to comment on how it might still be pretty early to introduce him to her friends others feel it could’ve just been the television. Nurse Hawks asks Shaun if she’s ever addressed him as her boyfriend. She has not. He gets upset and wraps up the rehearsal.

 

Finding Claire at the lockers Morgan updates her on her “dental appointment” cover up story. She’s baffled at how slutty she’s becoming but Claire never knew that she’d care. Morgan apparently does care as she had to cover her for an hour and so she’s got to return the favor for two hours. Park (Will Yun Lee) finds Shaun who’s starring at Carly from a distance. He learns about the issue but is sure that physically talking to her would be far more effective than staring Shaun decides to do so later. Debbie (Sheila Kelley) meets Aaron (Richard Schiff) who’s drowning in patients and says that she wants to have lunch with him. Turns out, she’s been fired because of giving away extra coffees and that she needs him to listen to her while she bitches about her ex boss during lunch.

 

While operating Melendez realizes that it’d be hard to remove the tumor without killing the baby. He asks the residents for ideas. Morgan suggests sending the mass for biopsy while embolizing the tumor-feeding uterine arteries. Park adds that it’d help arrest the bleeding whilst allowing the baby to grow to term and two months later they could remove the tumor. Morgan wants to fill Lim in on the protocol change, but Melendez says that it’s not necessary. After the surgery Lim calls Melendez in to her office. She’s hurt that he didn’t give her the due respect or importance but Melendez, who hated their rapport with Andrews, didn’t see it to be that big of a deal and didn’t know that it was in order.

 

Morgan asks Claire to drop off Shaun’s open appendectomy bloodwork samples to prevent his surgery from getting rescheduled and also to speak to Carly while she’s at it. She explains how he’s worried about his boyfriend status and that Carly needs to know. Claire agrees and soon she meets Carly explaining how she and Shaun might need to talk things through. Carly isn’t very happy at seeing her interfere.

 

At home during lunch Debbie pines to Aaron about how she loved working at the hospital and how she’d love managing his office from here on. Aaron doesn’t think it’s good for couples to be together 24/7 as it draws them apart. Back at his practice Aaron is busy taking a bee out of a patient’s (Alistair Abell) eye when Shaun storms in. He is affected by his unclear romantic relationship status with Carly, which is effecting his work and he needs to compartmentalize his brain. Glassman asks him to see Carly as a colleague when she’s in her white lab coat and that romance does not matter at that time as they are being doctors. Shaun gets clarity and walks out with confidence while the patient reminds Glassman to resume being his doctor. Soon Claire and Morgan find Shaun out of scrubs in the hallway starring at Carly. He is now dressed as a civilian and needs to talk to her. Worried that he’d get upset prior to his lead surgery, Claire lies to him that she talked to Carly earlier and that the background voices were from a podcast she was listening to and it wasn’t a missed get-together after all. Shaun believes her and is relieved. Morgan appreciates Claire’s quick witted lie.

 

Park informs the Fields about the tumor being non-malignant and that they’ll excise it in two months. Patty suddenly loses consciousness and is rushed into the OR. The surgeons realize that the bladder rejected their embolization and that the tumor is seeping blood. They need to reopen her to prevent death from hemorrhaging. Park suggests delivering the baby prematurely, but Melendez mentions how even the best NICU support would render 15-20% survival rate for the baby. Morgan suggests arresting the bleed using an Argon beam coagulator and letting the baby grow to term. Melendez takes the options to Lim who supports Park’s idea. Melendez doesn’t want to terminate Patty’s pregnancy and wants to get the couple’s opinion on it. Lim allows him to make his case. While Andre wants to keep Patty safe thus prefering Park’s idea, his wife wants to go with Morgan’s as she cannot imagine killing her baby while trying to save her own life. They finally go with Morgan’s suggestion.

 

Shaun is ready for his first lead. He walks in and the whole surgical team starts off as rehearsed. As the surgery progresses successfully, Claire and Andrews remain in awe of how well he’s managing the OR. Towards the end Shaun nicks an artery causing the nurses and Claire to attend to the bleed. Shaun asks Nurse Hawks to hand him the straight clamp. She hands it over to him, but he finds it done wrongly and doesn’t take it. He repeatedly asks her to hand it to him in the correct way, but she doesn’t understand. She curtly asks him to take it. Insulted, Shaun asks her to scrub out immediately. The OR gets tense while Andrews silently observes him carry on with the procedure.

 

After the surgery Andrews and Shaun go to Lim’s office. Shaun explains how he needed the straight clamp handed to him at 45-degree angle to prevent his hand from going off the surgical field but Nurse Hawks didn’t do it right. Lim wants him to apologize as he didn’t do the right thing either. Shaun is reluctant to apologize, but agrees to do it. Lim wishes Andrews would’ve stepped in before things got escalated but he says that he’s got his own ways of dealing with him.

 

In the OR the surgeons are struggling with Patty’s hemorrhage. Morgan feels that they’ve at least have to take the baby out. Melendez asks a nurse to page the on-call neonatologist about an incoming 23-weeks old girl.

 

Debbie comes to meet Aaron at his office and reveals that she got a job offer but she’s going to turn it down to work for him as his office manager. Aaron repeats his qualms that he had earlier, but she wants to give it a shot and promises to quit or get even get fired by him if things didn’t go well. Aaron agrees and they make out after he hangs his white lab coat on the stand and shuts his office door.

 

Shaun approaches Nurse Hawks while she’s having lunch and says that he’s come to apologize. He starts explaining why he was right as per historic precedence and that he doesn’t need to give an apology. She gets pissed and after repeatedly asking him to stop she leaves.

 

Patty has developed Ventricular tachycardia and the surgeons are trying their best to get her normal heart rhythm back. After failed attempts of defibrillating and administering epinephrine, Melendez resorts to the last option of cardiac massage but she flatlines. The baby’s heart rhythm still remains stable. After a brief pause the surgeons begin to deliver the baby. Melendez informs the heartbreaking news about Patty’s death to Andre. He breaks down. He is soon allowed to visit his 23-weeks old daughter in the NICU where he weeps as he brushes his finger against her tiny arm.

 

Lim goes to meet Shaun and is angry that he couldn’t say a simple “Sorry” to Nurse Hawks who has now filed a complaint against him. She lets him know that one more incident like this will cost him his residency. Shaun is scared. She asks him to genuinely apologize to her and then to Nurse Hawks. He does as said. Morgan informs Claire that she made matters worse for Shaun and Carly by burying their problem instead of eliminating it just like she’s been burying issues of her own lately. Claire approaches Shaun at the lockers to inform him that Carly is mad at him and that he needs to sort things out.

 

Shaun goes to meet Carly where he learns that she’s upset because he doesn’t share his problems with her. He asks her as to why she didn’t invite him to her get-together. Carly reveals that it was just a drinks and poker party and that her snarky friends would’ve made it an odd environment for him. Upon recollecting how his dad’s poker friends made fun of the way he talked, Shaun asks if it was the same issue that Carly was thinking about. She says no and adds that when dating and friendships are mixed it often ends in disaster. Shaun asks if it has been disastrous for all her previous dates. Carly admits that some fit right in and that she made a wrong assumption. She agrees to not have been a good girlfriend and hopes that he’ll forgive her. Shaun implies that it means he’s her boyfriend. Elated he immediately forgives her saying that he doesn’t want to meet her friends. Carly starts to laugh and they soon make out.

 

Melendez is at his home having a beer, devastated at the outcome of his surgery. Lim walks up to him and rests her head on his shoulder as tears drip down his cheeks.