[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Chicago Med Season 10 premiere “Sink or Swim.”]
There’s a new (co-)boss in the ED in Chicago Med Season 10, and she’s not going to be making friends with some moves she makes—though she doesn’t seem interested in doing so, either!
In the time that’s passed since the Season 9 finale, Ripley (Luke Mitchell) has stayed quiet about what he does and doesn’t know about Pawel’s attack; Charles (Oliver Platt) and Liliana (Alet Taylor) have broken up since she thinks Ripley’s guilty of the attack; Crockett (Dominic Rains) has left for Boston; and Ripley and Hanna (Jessy Schram) are on a break (she doesn’t know if it’s “a Ross and Rachel break or a Brad and Angelina break”).
A nearby hospital is closing its doors next week—but one of its docs, pediatrician John Frost (Darren Barnet), who endears himself to Maggie (Marlyne Barrett), will clearly be making the move over to Gaffney—and so Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) announces that there are going to be changes to deal with the daily patient numbers doubling. She wants to talk to Archer (Steven Weber), but he’s not concerned and a mass casualty incident (a commuter ship struck by a smaller vessel, causing it to capsize) draws everyone’s attention. It’s all hands on deck, including Goodwin (which is why she keeps her RN license active)—and Dr. Caitlin Lenox (Sarah Ramos), the new chief of the emergency department who comes in a week early after she heard the news.
George Burns Jr/NBC
As the ED’s current chief, Archer is confused, and that’s when Goodwin explains that she hired Lenox to co-run the ED with him as equals. She comes highly recommended. Archer wonders how old she is, to which Lenox asks him the same question. Archer walks off, and Lenox leaps into action, fixing a dislocated hip.
The co-chiefs then clash when Archer wants to bypass a second wave of patients to another hospital, citing the inability to maintain the proper level of care, and Lenox argues it’s not necessary and throws his words back at him: That diversion could cost some patients time they can’t afford to lose, thereby falling below the proper level of care. She comes up with a solution, to turn the consultation room into a treatment area. (This is also when we get another source of tension for the two—she’s army, he’s navy.)
Ripley then goes up against Lenox when both their patients need blood and supplies are running low. Both plead their cases, but it comes down to who has the best prognosis, and that’s Ripley’s. But after Goodwin apologizes to Lenox, the doctor says she would’ve made the same call because protocol demands it.
When a patient Goodwin and Zach Hudgins (Conor Perkins) are treating goes into V-fib, it falls on the former to shock him because the latter, clearly dazed, walks out. Lenox comes in shortly after and finds out what happened. She then finds Hudgins, who says he’s not usually like that and apologizes. The day got to him; he’d never seen so much blood, he froze up, and he knew the patient would be better off if he wasn’t there. While Lenox sees that as a normal human reaction, a doctor can’t afford to be normal, she explains. They take an oath to be more than that, so their patients can have faith in them. And with that, she fires him.
RelatedLuke Mitchell Says Ripley’s ‘Frayed at the Edges’ in ‘Chicago Med’ Season 10
Archer isn’t happy when he hears what she did and doesn’t think she has the right to make that call, especially without consulting him first, but Lenox didn’t see the need to, plus Goodwin signed off on his termination. She also suggests that he could be worried she’s there because Goodwin has lost confidence in his ability to lead alone. While he may think he was running the ED fine before her, she argues it nearly came apart because there was no plan in place for overflow, space was being missed, they were short on blood, and a doctor walking away nearly cost a patient. With the nearby hospital closing, every day can be just like that, and as Lenox sees it, she’s there for a reason and it’s not to keep the status quo. Uh-oh.
Meanwhile, Ripley finds out that a witness has put him at the scene of Pawel’s attack moments after it happened and he could be arrested. It’s not until the second to last scene of the episode that Ripley finally reveals what happened, in an elevator with Hannah. His friend Sully (Daniel Dorr) called him that day to tell him he and his friends were going to give Pawel “a proper beatdown” on his behalf and offered him the chance to join them; Ripley tried to talk him out of it then rushed over to try to stop it but was too late. He found Pawel unconscious as Sully and his friends walked away. Sully had assured him Pawel couldn’t ID anyone because they all wore face masks. Hannah wants to know why he’s telling her now, and he says that you don’t always get to apologize to those you hurt. He knows he shut her out, jeopardizing what they had, and what they had was really good, and for that, he’s sorry.
What did you think of the premiere? What do you think of new docs Lenox and Frost so far? Do you want Hannah and Ripley to make it work? Let us know in the comments section below.
Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
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