Chicago Med season 5 finale recap: A Needle in the Heart
Will and Hannah
Once again, Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) wakes up in Dr. Hannah Asher’s (recurring guest star Jessy Schram) apartment. She says she’s on her way to a meeting, but won’t let him drive her; Will then realizes that Hannah left without her phone, but Hannah has left before he can give it to her.
Will treats a patient whom he apparently treated three years ago, but is confused, because he doesn’t recognize the guy. The notes in his file say that this isn’t his first infection, and so Will decides to use the same treatment that they utilized before. Seems simple enough, right? Um, it won’t be, because this is Chicago Med.
But Will moves on to treat a guy named Christian, who is a stereotypical drug addict struggling to even remember his own name. As he’s doing the initial exam, Hannah walks in; she says he’s “an old friend.” She also wants to talk to Will, who would like an explanation.
Hannah claims Christian is her ex-boyfriend, and that she got a call for help from him when leaving her NA meeting. Will tells her they’re “absolutely” fine, but sort of calls her out by handing her the phone she would have gotten the call on.
The first patient has an allergic reaction to his treatment, meaning he can’t be the man whose chart Will has. That gets confirmed when Will’s told the man’s wife has been reached and her husband is at home, with her. So who is the guy at Chicago Med? Because he’s not Roger.
Will meets Roger and his wife, who explain the man Will is treating is Roger’s friend Brian. Roger admits that he gave Brian his insurance card because the other man didn’t have medical insurance—and so Will treated him off the wrong chart. Now Brian will have “permanent scarring” from being treated with something he was allergic to. “Your help could have killed him,” Will snaps.
Maggie tells him that her nurses should have caught the insurance fraud, and reassures him that his wanting to give people the benefit of the doubt is a good thing. A skeptical Will says goodbye to a recovered Christian, who thanks both him and Hannah for their help.
Chicago Med ends this story with Hannah trying to re-explain herself to Will. She says that Christian didn’t call her directly; he had called a mutual friend who was also at the NA meeting. “If you’re telling me that’s what happened, then that’s what happened,” he assures her, and they leave together.
Watch One Chicago on fuboTV: Watch over 67 live sports and entertainment channels with a 7-day FREE trial!
Charles
Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) brings his daughter Anna back to the hospital. Anna says she wants to volunteer rather than go on a field trip to a science museum, which is super-suspicious. Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) has her sent to Pediatrics.
Charles is asked to help Dr. James Lanik (recurring guest star Nate Santana) with a college student who collapsed. Trent has a needle stuck in his chest, and not only does he not want them to take it out, he starts pushing it deeper in. Lanik has him sedated to stop him doing any further harm to himself, then calls Charles.
Trent explains the needles are to make himself feel better because he’s “under a ton of pressure” in college. Literally, as he feels a tightness in his chest. But Charles tells him that his EKG is normal, and explains to Lanik and Dr. Isidore Latham (Ato Essandoh) that this is just a compulsion.
Surgery is obviously necessary, but Latham points out that unless they solve Trent’s mental problem, he could just put more needles back in. He asks Charles to work on getting consent for the procedure, but before he can do that, he has to discipline Anna for not getting off her cell phone. Anna is sent out into the waiting room to work there, while Daniel looks confused.
Trent freaks out when Charles tries to approach him about the surgery, and goes into respiratory arrest. Charles realizes that he fainted and thinks that there might be something else going on, just before he takes away Anna’s cell phone and gets her to admit the real reason she didn’t want to go to school: she got laughed at when she tried to ask a boy out. So, typical teenage problems.
Anna goes to mope in the lounge, while Charles and Maggie discuss the woes of 13-year-old girls texting. If Chicago Med was trying to make us feel sorry for her, it doesn’t work. But it does give Charles the idea to page Latham. Latham looks at the screens and deduces that Trent does, in fact, have a heart condition that he can correct at the same time he removes the needles.
That doesn’t mean everything’s okay, though. Charles points out that Trent still has to learn to manage his anxiety. And he consoles Anna by telling her a story about how he had to fake a limp for a whole year because he once submitted a forged doctor’s note to get out of gym class. Um…good talk, everybody.