The Pitt S2E9 - Still Solidly in the Stone Age
- Marielle Bokor
- 7 minutes ago
- 11 min read
How did we get to episode 9 already? It’s 3pm. The day is still young, but the season is mostly over and I’m a little sad. I get that production on this has to be an UNDERTAKING and that’s likely a huge understatement but man. I feel the approach of the end, and there’s so much more I want to see.
Anyway, let’s recap a recap, for old time’s sake, yes?
Ok, right away they remind us we’re in the dark ages, and Robby’s talking about how they did it in the dark ages.
Second on this recap is our central retinal artery inclusion, and that there’s a medication that can help restore some vision but has high risk. Then we flash over to CK of the Jackies, remarking on Langdon’s hotness (which, I mean, right?) and then we’re back with Howard, who they’re reminding us needs the CT and that they had contacted his sis in AZ. He’s out for a ride to the hospital that can do both. We finish with our hospice patient and the doctors talking about treating pain first, regardless of potential side effects, in a hospice situation.
And now, we’re back in it. Dana’s ringing bells and telling everyone to chill out, essentially. We’re taking people's complaints by hands. As per usual Dana’s solving problems left and right. Ogilvie gets snubbed by Robby when he has a question and it made me laugh, but…why?
New patient is a 32 year old with severe abdominal pain and a little kid who blew himself up with a firework, and is already missing 2 fingers. Yikes. Jude. He can’t call his parents but he can call his sister. Aww, he’s scared to see his hand. I get that. Poor little guy. He tried to drop the firework but it went off too fast. And oh, what the hell! He has very little hand left. Yiiiikes. That’s gnarly. Santos is doing a great job empathy wise, and tells him that he’s lost two fingers very gently, but he screams out “I fucked up!” and I surmise there’s more to this story.
Meanwhile, King is in with our suddenly blind patient and zoning out, until the nurse wakes her up. She lights up some when noticing that she can actually see some. She’s got 20/200 vision and the meds are tentatively working. Mel ducks out to get ready for her deposition only for a nurse to tell her she’s got a visitor in chairs - her sister. Oh man, this is no good at all. She takes off running.
Donnie’s got a furry with heat exhaustion who looks unhappy, and McKay is with our abdominal pain person, who also has PCOS. She's in a lot of pain but not too much to ask why they’re writing things down manually. I mean, I do get it.
It’s rough in chairs, and King is not prepared for this. Luckily she finds her sister Becca quickly, and with someone from the inpatient facility. We’ve never seen her in person before so this will be interesting.
Santos is with Jude, and ready to clean out his hand. Man, that hand is … well, half gone. I feel really bad for this kid. Surgery’s already here. They tell him he’s got the important fingers and his thumb. But, plot twist: surgery takes Robby aside and says she smells alcohol on his breath. And the parents were someone he either didn't want to call or couldn’t. This is already getting way more complicated than the mangled hand even implied.
Santos and surgery are keeping it casual badly - and I totally forgot about that, but they try to make time for each other before she hops up to her floor. Oh no, she’s ditching Santos for fireworks. That’s sad. Our sapphic romance was only just blossoming, but it's already facing trouble.
Whit’s just off the phone about Howard and the sister is waiting for information - of which there’s none because Presby’s also very busy.
Becca is back with King, and they’re getting a room ready for her. She meets Dr. Robby, who she deems “cool!” and I agree. Usually. Mel's anxious AF and rattling off the steps she needs to take, and Becca actually succeeds when she tries to help her calm down, reminding her she’s been to a doctor’s office before. Sadly, it's ruined when her phone goes off to remind her it’s time for the deposition in 15. NBD, nbd, cool cool cool. Oh man.
Out at the nurse’s station, Security’s got the prize from the bets on what was going on at Westbridge, and Princess takes the pot - that’s gotta feel nice after she had to be in charge of the chaos for a while. Perlah’s pissed because she says Princess got inside information from a friend at Westbridge. Ooo, tea! She therefore takes half.
Meanwhile, they unjam the fax machine. They need toner, but that’s back in 1988 according to Dana, so now they’re gonna need runners for x-rays and labs. Dang.
Our abdominal pain lady’s relaying an all too familiar tale of doctors not listening to women. She was only diagnosed with PCOS a year ago but had the pain for years. McKay makes an offhanded comment about it taking time to make a diagnosis and she claps back with “that sounds like an excuse for lazy doctoring” and talks about how it’s even harder to get doctors to listen to brown women, and - that’s a sad truth in the American medical system. One that needs to change.
McKay’s doing the exam. Not pregnant, no ectopic, lots of little cysts and one big one. She mentions that she’s looking forward to having a kid one day. Outside the room, they discuss what it could be. Interestingly, Whit’s ready to let her go with naproxen and McKay goes to bat for the patient, saying her pain’s worse than previous episodes and she was bad in triage, so they’re gonna keep her.
Mohan and Ogilvie have a potential kidney stone. He’s an English teacher, and Ogilvie reveals his dad’s an English teacher too, but deflects any conversation with him. He’s pretty sure that it’s a kidney stone based off prior kidney stones, but they’re doing their due diligence. They find a sore spot.
Now Jude’s being rolled by and Hashimi is with …an X-ray tech with a full machine in the middle of the room? So they’re gonna do live “wet read” of x-rays. Robby says it’s a good idea. Barker’s flirting with Princess over the process , or maybe not.
Update on the baby - CYF requested emergency custody authorization so then she can be placed in custody.
King asks for Robby to have him weigh in on her sister. She barely gets out some of her anxiety ramble before a lawyer comes down to pick King up for her deposition. She says she can’t go because of her sister. Actually, she says “Right now?” with big puppy eyes directed at Robby that would be hard to say no to, but Robby’s got this thing down. He says she shouldn’t really be treating family anyway, though he does take a moment to hold her back and reassure her.
Dana calls out Langdon as King rejects Santos. King goes in to introduce them and Becca notes Langdon has nice hair. I mean, yes. They turn out the lights and now she’s gone. Becca lets her know that her sister says lots of nice things about him. It also stings when she pees. Sounds like it may be a UTI. Langdon seems weirdly nervous, even with Perlah with her.
Back in with Roxie, in hospice. She's sorta drifting off from meds or dying, and she briefly admits how much pain she’s been in the whole time to her husband before her kids come on in. They’ve got some ice cream for her, and the quiet moment of truth’s now gone.
Outside in the hall, Princess admires the hotness of our x-ray tech and Perlah snaps her out of it. Meanwhile Robby asks how things are going with that and finds out via Dana that he’s been monopolizing the space. So they get him to download things manually offline and cut the crud.
South 22 is occupied, and it’s Javadi’s but she didn’t put it on there. Or she did and ..something happened. She gets thoroughly scolded.
Jude’s guardian arrives- it’s his sister. She’s the guardian. Ok. She finds out he’s fingerless and gets really pissed. They argue some, but Robby pulls Chantal out of the room to tell her to lay off a little bit, and to mention the alcohol. It means child services has to be called to determine if the drinking and injury indicate a problem, but she loudly refuses and goes back to his side.
Javadi’s filling Whit in on her patient. He was at a BBQ, seems pretty normal given it's the Fourth, but when they get in there, she’s unconscious, so uh-oh. Her abdomen’s distended, she's got a thready pulse and bad breathing. They’re getting a crash cart. She was just in for mild abdominal pain and vomiting and you can tell this turn it took has shocked Javadi.
Our furry friend’s costume stares at Santos from outside the room, but our patient is in a mist and recovering. She was in full fur at Anthrocon, a furry festival that Santos recognizes but says isn’t her scene. Our patient’s trying hard to get Santos to the furry side, and says she’d be a good dragon. Why do I really want to see this? It seems like such a genuine moment between two strangers, and I feel like she'd actually have fun.
Javadi’s absolutely losing it even though the patient who crashed is now revived. Meanwhile no one can find her chart, and x-rays are done but actively moving north. This is chaos, and Dana’s still mad at Javadi. This patient needs surgery ASAP.
Robby peeps our normal social worker and runs into the restroom with him.
Mohan and Ogilvie are working on kidney stone guy. Seems like it’s what you’d think so far - they’re not saying they saw stones though. They’re gonna observe him for a bit. McKay runs by, and asks if Mohan is ok, and she mentions a regular who came by just to talk to her because he’s lonely and she’s wondering if that’s all that’s been going on with her mom too.
McKay mentions that she’s finally ready to date after a long time, and Mohan’s convinced her eggs are dying and it’s too late. Baby girl you are too young for that kind of goofy thought. Hashimi asks Dana how she’s dealing with the chaos just in time to see Monica Peters, a retired clerk that she asked to come back and help them wade through how to do this all manually, as she was retired by the digital revolution, or so she says. She seems nice until she scares the shit out of our clerks from earlier to get her space.
Back in with the sister of Jude, our social worker is talking to them. She works at a shoe store, and she’s not often home enough for Jude. You can tell this isn’t going great considering. She promised her parents he’d never go to foster care. Turns out that her parents were deported 9 months ago, and she was left to take care of her brother. Turns out she was headed to college but that’s on hold for her brother jus finishing high school. Santos isn’t handling this well - and doesn't want to separate them, but this situation is kind of what it is.
McKay’s patient is groaning from the other room. She’s writhing, literally. Says her pain is at 12.
Surgery’s with Javadi and Whittaker and she is PISSED. If they’d read the x-ray an hour ago she wouldn’t have needed major surgery. Surgery calls her a nepo baby and tells her it’s not good enough to be sorry - she fucked up. Woah. Ok, so…woah. She tells her not to trust anything or anybody else when systems are down. I mean, could’ve given that piece of advice without namecalling. Javadi’s absolutely not taking this well.
Whit gets called away mid-soothing her, to McKay’s patient's room.
Meanwhile, Dana’s outside. Emma finds her and tells her Princess is looking for her, and Dana takes the time to mention how well she’s doing, and how well she did with the SA victim. She mentions she told her how to be able to press charges later if she wants to and that she’d rather have the option. She asks if it’s always like this and Dana says , minus the cyberattacks yes, but be proud you made it through so far - you’re almost done with your first day. Aww. Baby nurse does seem to have growed up a lot in one shift.
Back with our Jackies, she’s leaving and on a soft food diet. They’re being weird and thinking they’re flirting and it’s working, but it’s not, and they’re gone.
In with McKay we’re finding out that she’s got ovarian torsion. Intermittent - so they didn’t see it right away. If McKay hadn’t kept her for observation they wouldn’t have seen it and she certainly would have lost the ovary, which Whittaker points out, humbly. Now she’s gotta go for surgery to untwist and tack it down (OW!) and has a chance to lose it, but odds are much better she won’t.
Robby meets Abot in the hall with Howard, who we thought was already gone, but he’s on his way somewhere at least.
Robby tells Javadi to get with him later on the volvulus patient, and they catch Santos and the social worker. The social worker says they don’t have to get family services involved right now during surgery but that they’re going to have to do a home visit in a week and Santos is protesting. I mean, I get it, but let’s hear him out. He’s gonna try to get resources together for chantal to help mitigate the time she’s away from him so she can still work.
Howard’s getting things explained to him and it’s a lot scary. If they don’t operate, he will 100 percent die, but the mortality rate with surgery is still 50/50, because he’s septic. They mention the OR and getting a room and they’re on the move again. Are they not going to Presby?
McKay stops in with Roxie, our hospice patient, and she’s in the dark and alone. Ice cream party is over, and she’s not seeming too chipper. She asks if she needs anything. “A time machine?”
Ugh, it’s hard. She’s thinking about the things she is gonna miss, and the people she’s leaving behind. Fucking lung cancer, and she didn’t even smoke. She’s really struggling, and it’s getting to McKay a lot, too. Roxie asks McKay for advice on death, beause she’s never died before,...and they cut away. Ugh.
Howard is meanwhile outside with his sister on the phone. I have the feeling they haven't talked in a while. They haven’t. Seems like a family issue. She wants to see him for the holidays. And he wants to do it too. I really hope this works out in a way I'm not predicting. He’s gotta go up to surgery.
Monica and Robby say their hellos again and she’s running a tight ship. Abot tells Robby he likes Hashimi. Thinks she’s capable. He also challenges Robby's notion of taking a vacation, especially cuz he’s never taken one before. He’s also worried he can’t handle the self reflection, and wants him to make sure he comes back, and talks to him if it’s dark. Robby…walks away, because of course he does.
Joy’s over the shoulder of radiology catching things he didn’t catch. Because she’s that good. She’s annoying but growing on me.
Robby meets up with Whittaker in the lounge and gives him his doctor's badge. He says he’s proud of him …and then leans into a lecture about Amy, his farm person who the staff worried was taking advantage of him. Or dating him? It’s hard to tell. And that's his point. Robby reminds him to have boundaries. He also asks Whittaker if he’d house-sit while Robby’s gone. “If I don’t come back you got a swingin’ bachelor pad” he says after Whittaker agrees. Ok….what? (which is basically how Whit reacts). I now have hard concerns.
Peters is running the clerks hard. Dana’s smirking.
Our furry’s being released by Donnie. As he’s taking her out, they notice a news broadcast. There’s been a slide collapse at a water park, there’s fatalities and they’re airlifting patients…right to The Pitt. So we’ve got that to look forward to. Next time. Because, well, that’s the end of it, folks.
Damn.