We’ve got some bad news for Chicago Med fans who were hoping the show might choose to work the real-life pregnancy of star Sarah Ramos into the show. Not only will the show not be writing a pregnancy storyline in for Dr. Caitlin Lenox, but fans will be without Lenox for the better part of the new season.
Showrunner Allen MacDonald confirmed to Give Me My Remote that the writers have chosen not to incorporate the pregnancy into the show before confirming that Ramos will sadly miss the majority of season 12’s early episodes.
“Sarah, because of her pregnancy, will be taking the majority of the beginning of the season off. She will be away for a while,” MacDonald revealed.
MaCDonald did not elaborate on the exact number of episodes fans should expect Ramos to miss, but given he mentioned she’ll be taking the majority of the beginning of the season off, it would seem safe to assume Lenox could miss at least five to seven episodes.
Of course, the question becomes how the show will explain her exit and absence during that stretch of time, but that is an answer we’re apparently going to have to wait for. While MacDonald was transparent in setting the expectations that Ramos would miss a number of episodes at the top of the season, he would not reveal any teases about how exactly the show would explain her absence during that time.
There are certainly a few possible options on the table. First, we could see Lenox decide to take a sabbatical to go on a trip of some kind after finally accepting her diagnosis and opening up about it to Ripley. That would be an understandable choice for someone to make, and the show had planted seeds about her needing to speak with a counselor about the diagnosis. Perhaps Lenox decided to take Abrams’ advice and take some time off to process the diagnosis and work through her feelings about what it means for her future.
That’s a thread that would be understandable, but this is Lenox we’re talking about, and we can’t see her taking literally weeks or months away from the job she loves simply to work on herself and her feelings. What we could see is Lenox choosing to participate in a medical study or drug trial working to find a way to slow the disease’s progression or participating in medical research for Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome.
A storyline such as this could explain her absence, as it’s not uncommon for medical trials and research projects to take place in premier hospitals across the country, so this could take Lenox out of Chicago for a few months.
We do also know that Lenox has a history in the military, so perhaps she was pulled away to assist with an army program or lend her expertise to helping train the next group of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Or perhaps her history in the military led her to the decision to do a bit of work with a program such as Doctors Without Borders that serves those in conflict zones and in countries affected by endemic diseases.
This is all to say there are definitely plenty of possibilities to explain Lenox’s time away from Gaffney at the top of the season. And thankfully, Ramos is not leaving the show; she’s just taking some time away for maternity leave following the birth of her first child.
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