Chicago Med season 5, episode 14 recap: It May Not Be Forever

Charles and Elsa

The psychiatric story of the week actually starts with Elsa Curry (returning guest star Molly Bernard) and our ED boss Dr. James Lanik (recurring guest star Nate Santana). Lanik is quick to be done with their patient, who’s supposed to be in a vegetative state, but Elsa sees the young boy’s leg staying up on its own, which is very odd indeed.

So Elsa calls Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt), which hurts Lanik’s fragile ego. He tells her off and wants to send Xavier home, but Charles steps in. He believes the kid was misdiagnosed; he’s catatonic, and that’s treatable. That gets the parents to agree to stick around, and Lanik to happily pawn the case off on Charles.

Charles has Elsa take Xavier off his ventilator, and the boy begins to breathe on his own. But that still doesn’t answer how he got to this point, and if you don’t know the problem, you can’t ensure it doesn’t happen again. So Charles takes a history, and finds out that Xavier’s stepfather Alvin is a police officer. Chicago Med‘s typical ominous music ensues, as Charles tells Elsa that he “absolutely” wants to look into Alvin’s work.

Elsa decides to take the initiative, placing a phone call to Chicago PD, which reveals that Alvin once had his car blown up by gang members looking for revenge. Charles theorizes that Xavier understands what his stepfather has gone through and that created fear that made him catatonic. Poor Alvin is wracked with guilt, and says that he’ll “step aside” if it means protecting his son. Charles says that might be a good idea, but only until Xavier gets through the worst of it, because he’ll need his family with him to make a complete recovery.

Xavier wakes up in the final few minutes of the episode, with an emotional Alvin watching from a distance. He asks Dr. Charles to send his wife out “when the time is right.” Charles agrees, and he also compliments Elsa on her work.

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