Chicago Med season 5, episode 19 recap: Just A River In Egypt

Choi, Crockett and April

April starts the episode learning how to do a procedure in the hybrid OR. But when Choi walks in on her working with Crockett, he immediately assumes the worst. Chicago Med then reveals that Choi has been sleeping on the couch recently, so things are not well in the Chexton household.

Crockett, for his part, is not bothered by any of this. “Every day is great,” he tells Natalie before he, Choi and April all rush to treat a car accident victim. Choi sees glass shards on the victim and realizes that her injuries are related to his latest patient. “He fell off an overpass,” he says, to which Crockett replies, “And landed on her.”

Choi and Crockett immediately butt heads on a treatment plan, and Crockett wins, taking his patient to the hybrid OR. The surgery does not go well, with April struggling in her role as the hybrid OR nurse. “I think you should start training a new nurse,” she tells Crockett afterward. He refuses to do so, and she resigns herself to her fate.

Choi talks to his patient Zach, wanting to know how one falls off an overpass in the first place. “Were you fooling around with your friends?” he asks. The kid refuses to answer the question, saying that his head hurts. Ethan is not buying this, and tells the cop waiting outside the treatment room that he believes Zach jumped off the overpass in a suicide attempt. He has Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) paged for a psych consult after the cop warns that if it is intentional, Zach could face vehicular manslaughter charges.

Chicago Med then introduces Zach’s parents, who are not happy to find out that a psychiatrist is talking to their kid. His father first blames his friends, then a “homeless guy” who hangs out on the overpass. “The last thing he needs is to be interrogated by a shrink,” Dad insists. Charles states the obvious: they’re going to have a hard time with this guy.

Charles tries to interview Zach, but Dad leads him into what to say, and Zach too uses the homeless man as an excuse. He claims the homeless guy pushed him off the overpass. Charles and Choi know that’s not an honest answer, and Choi argues for a forced psych hold “for his own good.” Charles hopes they can get through to Zach’s mom, perhaps with a turkey sandwich?

But by the time he returns with the sandwich, Zach’s parents have called a lawyer. And the police are telling the parents that they haven’t found the homeless man or any witnesses other than the car accident victim. Given all of that, the police want to let Zach go, and Choi begs Crockett to wake his patient up so they can get her testimony. Crockett refuses, starting another argument between the two of them. “If that boy tries to kill himself again,” Choi snarls, “that’s on you.”

Choi later checks on the patient again, and upon hearing that Crockett has since discussed lessening her sedation, decides to do it himself. He asks the woman if she saw Zach before he hit her car. Crockett finds out and starts a whole new shouting match, declaring that the whole situation is really about April. “I want to end this,” he replies, “so what’s it gonna take?” He asks if Choi wants to hit him, and Choi does actually deck him this time.

Charles finds Choi in the doctors’ lounge, telling him that Zach did leave the hospital, but that his mom did take his business card on the way out. He suggests that Zach’s dad may be focusing his anxiety and anger elsewhere instead of looking at “the real problem,” and Chicago Med‘s music swell clearly tell us we’re supposed to apply that to Choi, too.

Natalie treats Crockett and asks if he’s okay; he doesn’t want to answer. And as for Choi, he’s brooding when April gets home that night. “It was so easy for me to see Crockett as the problem,” he tells her. “The real problem was always right here. Between us. April, whatever it is you want, it isn’t me.”

And Chicago Med ends the episode with him grabbing his stuff and walking out of the apartment, telling her to take as long as she needs to find a new place to live. Our last shot is April starting to cry all over again.

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