It’s been a fun few weeks on Chicago Med following the returns of Nick Gehlfuss and Torrey DeVitto as Dr. Will Halstead and Dr. Natalie Manning. It was amazing getting to see Will and Natalie back, but with their guest arc complete, season 11 settles back into a more normal pacing in episode 4 with a return to the medical case of the week format.
As the episode opens, Ripley arrives for his shift and comes into the on-call room looking for his phone charger. He’s surprised to see Frost asleep in the room and asks him if he slept there last night. Frost assures him that he had just gotten in early and decided to get some more rest before his shift began, joking about having a gift for falling asleep quickly.
Frost heads out to see his patient, Cora, a young girl who is battling immunodeficiency and has to stay in a fishbowl, so to speak, to keep her healthy and safe. When Cora opens up to him about feeling sad and trapped, he suggests she decorate the room, proving again why we love him as he has such a special way of making his young patients feel safe and protected.
Sadly, Cora is getting worse with a fear that sepsis is setting in and she needs a stem cell transplant. As he waits for the mom’s test results to come back, Frost begins pulling some supplies for Cora to decorate her room which is when Casey and Doris ask about poker night. He brushes them off and notes that he can’t host, acting weird when they mention it’s his turn to host.
Shortly after, Cora’s mom’s test results come in. Not only is she not a match, the test proves she may not be Cora’s biological mother. Goodwin questions whether there was a mix-up at the IVF clinic as another woman happened to receive an embryo the same day Vivienne received hers. They point out that there is a 25% chance Cora’s genetic mom could be a match and Vivienne allows Goodwin to reach out to contact the other woman about getting tested.
Goodwin contacts the woman, whose name we learn to be Billie, and she agrees to be tested. She comes to Med and wants to meet Cora right away, but Vivienne holds off on it at first.
While working his case, Casey comes to see Ripley to ask if he’s noticed anything off about Frost after noticing he’s been a bit cagey and dropping out of things lately. She worries his behavior is a sign he’s on drugs, but Ripley assures her that’s not the case. Still, it creates a mystery about what is happening with Frost.
Frost helps introduce Billie as a friend of his to allow her to meet Cora without telling her the truth. When Billie notices a dark streak in her hair like one her mom had, Billie blurts out that Cora is her daughter.
As tensions rise, Goodwin plays mediator and reminds them to think of what’s best for Cora. Meanwhile, Cora asks Frost about Billie and whether it’s true that she could be her real mom. Frost tells her that his parents didn’t take care of him, but no matter what happens, her mom is going to love her and be there for her.
When Frost goes to see Billie, he overhears her on the phone with a lawyer and confronts her. She opens up about the struggles she had trying to conceive and explains she can’t walk away having already missed so much of her life. Frost assures her he understands how easy it is to feel robbed, but ponders that perhaps these circumstances were the only way she could become a parent and suggests she find a way to work together with Vivienne.
The pair take Frost’s advice and agree to figure things out together as we learn that Billie was a match and is able to donate stem cells to Cora.
As the episode ends, Ripley bumps into Frost on the elevator and tells him how Casey believes he’s on meth as he’s been acting weird and asks him what’s going on. Frost explains that he was kicked out of his sublet as the apartment owner came back sooner than expected. He explains that he was forced to file for bankruptcy due to the debts his parents racked up, which makes it hard to get a place now. To his surprise, Ripley invites him to move in with him and Frost accepts the olive branch.
Charles and Archer help a man who cuts off his own hand
Elsewhere in the episode, we meet Dr. Theo Rabari as he presents his research on FMRI – functional magnetic resonance imaging - to treat psychiatry patients to Dr. Charles and other doctors at the hospital in hopes of continuing his research at the hospital. His hope is the technology can help in treatment of patients, but Charles is worried it would take away the personal touch that helps them connect with patients when they come through the doors in need of help.
Following the presentation, Charles is called in to help consult on a case involving a man who is brought into the ER after a saw accident severed his hand. When Archer mentions prepping for a reattachment surgery, the man reveals that he cut the hand off on purpose – thus why Charles is called in.
Archer brings Charles up to speed on the case and the pair speculate about whether the man could be suffering from body integrity disorder, a rare psychological condition in which a person has a persistent desire to be physically disabled through amputating a healthy limb.
Charles speaks with him about his furniture making and asks the man why he’d want to get rid of one of his most important tools. To Charles’ surprise, the man tells him he’s a bad person and he’s going to hurt someone. While he’s never hurt anyone before, the man says he could control it before. Now he keeps picturing the same thing over and over: wrapping his hand around someone’s throat and killing them. He was going to do it, but now he can’t because he cut his hand off.
At first, Charles believes the man has OCD as, at its heart, OCD is about intrusive thoughts that compel people to behave a certain way. In the patient’s case, it was to harm. Charles asks Archer for help keeping the hand viable longer as he chases down a lead.
Charles brings in Dr. Rabari to help. Using his research, they scan the man’s brain to see what they’re dealing with. The team-up proves successful in identifying the root of the man’s problem. Charles shows him a picture of the brain that processes love and reward where he holds personal values, it lit up when he thought of his sister. When they asked about hurting his sister, the part of the brain processing fear lit up. He says if he enjoyed hurting people, it wouldn’t have lit up as he’d be experiencing joy thinking of hurting someone.
Essentially, there is a part of his brain not working which was causing the thoughts he’d been having. They were able to reattach the hand and prepare a plan to treat the man’s brain injury.
As the episode ends, Charles thanks Rabari for his help, and he mentions enjoying working with him. He lets know Rabari that the tech has a lot of potential as today showed and lets him know that if he’s willing to put people before tech, there could be a place for him at Gaffney – something Rabari accepts hinting we’ll be seeing more of him this season.
Lenox works to help a domestic abuse patient
Elsewhere in the episode, Lenox and Ripley work together to treat a couple who come into the ED in need of sutures after a kettle explosion. Things seem innocent at first; however, when one of the nurses finds a urine cup with a red sticker on it in the bathroom where the woman was collecting her sample, red flags are raised.
We learn that there are signs in the bathrooms of the hospital which encourage patients experiencing domestic abuse to place a sticker under their sample cups to signal to the hospital they need help. Lenox goes to speak with the woman and assures her anything she tells her will remain between them. She asks about the kettle story and inquires as to whether her husband has hit her. The woman doesn’t want her husband to get into any trouble, but it quickly becomes clear that things are far worse than they thought when Lenox discovers bruises all over the woman’s abdomen.
These injuries cause the woman to begin to hemorrhage, but Lenox and Ripley are able to stabilize her. They go to speak with her husband and Lenox questions whether the husband knows what might have happened as the injuries his wife sustained are typically associated with blunt force trauma. This is when he claims his wife fell during the kettle explosion, an excuse Lenox sees right through.
Thankfully, the woman pulls through, but she sadly does not take Lenox up on her offer for help. Before leaving the hospital, the man confronts Lenox, hinting that he knows what she was trying to do in probing for details earlier before leaving.