Chicago Med season 6, episode 14 recap: A Red Pill, A Blue Pill

Back to Natalie watching her mother be taken upstairs for another test, before she sneaks off to the lounge to further concel the pills that she stole. She’s almost caught by Dr. Crockett Marcel (Dominic Rains), but he leaves none the wiser and goes to treat gunshot victim Edgar. But he soon discovers Edgar’s baby Ada was also shot…

Maggie asks Doris about what Vanessa and Choi are working on, and decides to insert herself into their case by trading places with the other nurse. No, she’s not being overbearing at all. Moments later, Choi has to go to a budget meeting, and leaves Vanessa alone with Maggie. After Vanessa accidentally hits a lung, Maggie encourages her to deal with the patient’s pneumothorax herself. “This way you can show Dr. Choi that you know how to correct [your mistakes] on your own,” she says. “If you want a permanent spot in this ED, this is how you do it.”

Uh, okay?

Fed up with Charles, Archer pulls Choi out of his budget meeting and asks him to evaluate Neil’s case. Choi tells him that “double doc-ing” Charles is not a good idea (remember when it happened to you, Dean?) and Archer does not take rejection kindly; he goes downstairs and tells April to help him intubate Neil. “You’re just gonna disregard what he wanted?” April says, and she gets her angry face when Archer says that Neil is unconscious and therefore it’s his call. But she follows his orders anyway.

Will meets with Natalie and Carol’s cardiologist Dr. Young to see Carol’s test results. Dr. Young explains that Carol’s heart is showing great improvement, but experiencing a phenomenon where the LVAD is having a problem. (We also get a Dr. Latham reference!) Will puts the pieces together and confronts Natalie in the lounge. While she denies it at first, after he points out that the drugs could also kill Carol, she tearfully admits to everything.

“This is really bad, Nat,” he says. Understatement of the season.

Conveniently Dr. Sabeena Virani (Tehmina Sunny) shows up, so Will asks her opinion on Carol’s case. She tells him if there were any adverse reaction, it would need to be reported; he reassures her nothing like that is going on.

Chicago Med moves to April telling Charles what Archer did to Neil. She suggests Archer over-medicated Neil to induce unconsciousness and thus enable himself to make treatment decisions. Hey, it’s not like things like that haven’t happened around here before.

Choi returns to check on Shawn and is not as impressed as Maggie and Vanessa were hoping. He takes Vanessa to task as neither of them qualify as licensed physicians so they can’t legally have gotten consent. “You put me and the ED at risk,” he says, so Maggie swoops in to help her. As Goodwin coincidentally shows up, Maggie tries to take all the blame. They both wonder why Maggie is so involved with Vanessa, but Maggie doesn’t answer.

Charles goes down to ask Archer what happened; Archer tells him that Neil is recovering in the ICU and that he’d be dead otherwise. He’s had enough today and starts yelling at Charles about “how it’s my word versus Neil’s” before Choi kicks him out of the ED and wants another explanation about that.

If you’re wondering about the baby, Chicago Med has one brief scene of Crockett doing surgery and then he tells Edgar and his wife that their daughter is resting in the pediatric ICU. Natalie decides this would be a good time to tell him something, but Will interrupts and we see that her mom is doing much better. Will explains he turned Carol’s LVAD down and so it appears that the clinical trial drug made a real difference.

Then he does something ridiculously crazy and decides to cover up Natalie’s theft. “Maybe they don’t need to find out,” he tells her, and gives her back the stolen pills, saying he’ll even try to get more. Now he’s in this as much as she is.

Crockett comes by later to ask Natalie why Carol is having her LVAD taken out, and Natalie assures him that’s what she wanted to tell him. Go ahead and lie to the person you love, Dr. Manning.

Charles brings Choi in to see Neil and get his opinion on what happened to him. A despondent Neil says that his red pill was working until Archer “cut me open” and cries about being stuck in the simulation forever. Choi goes to find Archer, while Vanessa has had it with Maggie. Goodwin pops up yet again as Vanessa tells her mom… er, the charge nurse to “leave me alone.” Sharon knows they’re family now and warns Maggie that keeping it a secret is already becoming a problem.

Chicago Med closes with Choi point-blank asking Archer if he forced Neil into surgery, which turns into them talking about Archer’s post-traumatic stress. “If you want to keep working here, you have to deal with your issues,” Choi warns him. Archer’s response is to go outside where we see him tossing out two containers of morphine.

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