Chicago Med season 4, episode 2 recap: When To Let Go

Chicago Med fights for the life of a Chicago Fire character during the crossover. Here’s what happened in Chicago Med season 4, episode 2.

This week’s Chicago Med episode continued the Chicago Crossover event with a firefighter’s life at stake, among many others injured in a massive apartment building fire. Who would survive?

Picking up where the previous hour left off, “When To Let Go” opens with the hospital continuing to process fire victims. Chicago Fire‘s Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) is being worked on while Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) is worried about his father.

Stella comes to while half of Firehouse 51 hovers outside, before alarms start going off because she’s bleeding into her airway. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Meanwhile, Will hears from his brother Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) about how their father Pat (Louis Herthum) tried to be a hero at the fire scene.

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Pat, for his part, just decides to complain about every possible thing he can. He’s still upset that they sold the Halstead family home, even though Jay reminds him that the house was a “wreck” before calling his father “a thankless old prick.”

Ouch.

Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell), having assured Pat that he doesn’t get to leave the hospital that easily, comes to help with Stella. He easily spots a hemorrhage in her right lung, and it’s Connor into action.

Of course, with any mass patient event, Chicago Med gives us the scene where someone says they don’t have enough resources. Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) is pressed back into nursing service, as Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) is working through the waiting room.

There he runs into Otis (Yuri Sardarov) and notices tremors in the other man’s arm that indicate our previously injured firefighter may not be okay. Otis continues to insist that he’s fine, even after he collapses in the ED.

But first, Will and Jay have a fight about Jay having to be “the bad guy” in their relationship with their father. After arguing over which one of them does more, Jay tells Will that he can find Pat his next apartment.

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Goodwin, Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) and Dr. Ava Bekker (Norma Kuhling) try to help a girl who is burned over almost 80 percent of her body, but her parents decide to let her die rather than go through months of treatment. Ava, in particular, is incensed.

That’s not even the worst of it. Will hears alarms going off in his father’s room. Pat’s lost consciousness and there is no pulse, as Jay and Will exchange that look that audiences know means bad news. Will calls in Dr. Sam Abrams (Brennan Brown) to tell them that their father is braindead.

"Abrams: If I had to calculate the odds, I’d say a thousand to one against."

In his usual blunt manner that Chicago Med fans know well, Abrams’ very next sentence is to say that the ventilator keeping Pat alive could be “put to better use.” Needless to say, Jay is angry as he’s had maybe a minute and a half to process his father’s state. He storms out, leaving Will with Pat.

Elsewhere, fans get a Stella update: she’s still bleeding badly, and Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) wants to remove her lung, but that would mean the end of her career. Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) gets mad himself, and then physical with the doctors, before Choi has him escorted out of the ED. It’s not Severide’s choice to make.

Then Chicago Med cuts to the mystery man from the previous hour—the one who wouldn’t get out of the stairwell—just strolling into the hospital like it’s a Starbucks. He claims that he has a headache now; are we sure he doesn’t mean he is a headache?

Removed from the action, Jay and Will debate what to do with their father. Jay wants a second opinion; Will knows their father’s previous health issues and isn’t so optimistic. Just as they’re starting to fight again, Gwen Garrett (recurring guest star Heather Headley) shows up. She tells the brothers they have the hospital’s full support, and gives Jay her cell phone number. Jay won’t give up.

Goodwin has the burn victim’s parents sign the paperwork to take her off life support, and after dealing with that, Natalie comes to check on Will, as April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta) comes outside to try and comfort her ex-love interest Severide. There’s a lot of kind words and sad looks.

Dr. Charles gets Otis’s test results back. and is convinced his symptoms are due to an “emotional reaction.” The term PTSD gets invoked again—after it was already used last season in relation to Dr. Sarah Reese (Rachel DiPillo) and her reaction to Charles being shot. But Otis still swears that he’s fine.

Everyone else is upstairs confronting Connor about Stella’s operation, having been rallied by April. Connor points out only family can make that decision; they pull the “we are her family” card. That doesn’t really apply here—not in the legal way that Connor is speaking—but they somehow are able to change his mind. He proposes a Plan B, over Ava’s objections.

But this is Chicago Med, and Connor Rhodes is kind of a superman. While he operates, Choi has a word with April about exerting pressure on him on Kelly’s behalf. He is also not enthused. But he also has a surgery in the doctors’ lounge to attend to.

Meanwhile, Will has found out why Gwen was so supportive: because Pat Halstead’s last surgery was less than a month earlier. She’s only trying to keep him alive another day so it looks better on the record books. When he passes this information on to Jay, his brother’s already broken psyche can’t take it.

Otis tells Dr. Charles about the mother and child who died earlier in the crossover, but still refuses help, even off the record. And Choi realizes his patient wasn’t just burned; she was also beaten.

Is there good news in here somewhere, Chicago Med? Well, yes! The burn victim taken off support is still alive, so her parents finally agree to surgery. The rest of the story has to be told on Chicago PD.

Next. Who could return in Chicago Med season 4?. dark

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