01.18 Love's Labor's Lost (sic)

Pedantic aside: as an Englishperson with a grounding in Shakespeare, I have a nigh overpowering urge to put a 'u' into that title.

GSW drop off, whose driver nearly runs down Doug in the process (trauma 1).

Benton's mum is in trauma 2, making this an unusual straight continuation from the previous episode. She is distraught, and Carter has to tell Benton to leave. Mrs Benton doesn't want to be undressed in front of her son. She has a broken hip, and is sent up to OR.

The everyday small cases are a tatttoed guy who tried to remove a name from his arm using an industrial sander, an old guy and an expecting couple.

Benton is waiting for news from the OR. He's pacing the waiting room etc (no viewing room like there is these days) and then scrubs up and enters the OR. The surgeon orders him straight back out.

Pregnant lady bounces back (trauma 1). She's fitting, and Mark realises he signed out someone with eclampsia. The baby is going to have to be induced. They call OB and page Doctor Coburn (who reappears in season 12 as Abby's OB). No-one from OB comes, nor does Coburn. Mark decides to go ahead and induce the baby. Things go wrong and he ends up performing an emergency c-section. Except Mark has never done one before.

The baby is saved. Coburn arrives just as the kid is showing signs of being OK. The mother is bleeding out though. Coburn tears a strip off Mark, and Susan has to assure him it'll be OK. The mother dies. Mark does that thing of continuing CPR even though the patient is clearly dead. Again, it falls to Susan to tell him to stop, this time just though her eyes.

Walking back to the El, Susan is worried about Mark. She asks if Jen is home, and it's suddenly apparent that Mark hasn't told anyone that she's left him. He gets on the El alone and rides off. Out of sight of Susan, he breaks down.

I said things would get a lot worse for Mark. He made a small error of judgement which led to a chain of bad decisions about delivering the baby.

There's very little to say about this episode. It's the first time we get a big focus on one patient and it's pretty much all about Green's confidence collapsing.

Which trauma room is unlucky? A running total of doom...
trauma 1: 4 5
trauma 2: 3