The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 6: A Melancholy Noontime
- Marielle Bokor
- 23 hours ago
- 12 min read
Well, it’s high noon. Let’s do our recap recap.
Back with our deaf friend first.
They’ve sure spent a lot of time on combative college kid without us actually knowing why yet, and he’s the second to reappear on our screen.
Then we get a glimpse of our malnourished prisoner and our leg disabled hospice patient before we’re with Louie. Oh, Louie.
Other than the recap there’s no time lost between last time and this, and we’re doing compressions on Louie. Langdon and Robby are both seeming frantic but not getting in each others way. Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Louie’s got lungs full of blood. Dammit.
Our baby nurse is handling lunchers - ones waiting for rooms and ones not admitted, but just as she’s passing by she gets manhandled by someone wanting food. Dana has NONE of it and immediately shoves the assault PSA doc in his face, telling him he’d better comply.
She takes baby nurse by Louie’s room, and it’s just in time for everyone to decide there’s nothing that can be done. This hits everyone really hard, and Langdon asks for a debrief, but a motorcycle accident is incoming, and they’re gonna take a minute to clean Louie up before a little gathering to say goodbye. Alawi wants to do the cleanup but she seems very distressed, so Dana tells her to take ten and takes over.
We’ve finally got a conscious combative kid, and the psych can actually figure out what’s up. Jackson’s saying that there’s people telling him they don’t want him to pass the bar. Jada’s already in hard denial that this may be a mental health issue so they boot her from the room so the psych has room to work.
News of Louie’s spreading, with Alawi letting Nurse Princess know what happened, and Alawi’s going to clean up again. Princess offers to go with her but they’re interrupted, and Alawi heads off alone.
A scream comes from another room and it’s hospice seizer. Every time she moves her leg it’s pure agony. This time it’s only herself and Nurse Princess. She makes mention of her husband’s devotion and she’s not as effusive as she was before. 20 years of marriage, and I’m still kind of suspecting there’s something amiss. She mentions that the light left his eyes, and asks Princess how she handles caring for people day in and day out, as she’s emptying her bedpan.
Princess just says she goes home and leaves it behind for Love Island. McKay comes in and gives her some ketamine to help with the pain. Our patient asks after her husband, who’s not back yet, and seems relieved to hear he’s not, saying it’s good to have space sometimes. Curious and curiouser.
Out on the floor Princess is scolding Donnie for his caffeine intake…and spreading the news. It’s taking down the whole staff, as he was such a frequent flier. Debrief in the viewing room is planned for later. Princess tries to fix it with news of a birthday party for Javadi, put on by her and Perlah.
Hashimi’s on task, discussing the prisoner’s condition with King and Mohan. They talk about reasons for the presenting malnutrition up to and including just getting out to medical. The differential for malnutrition is interesting with causes ranging from cancer to adhd meds and more.
Robby checks in on what’s where, and we find out there’s 10 Westbridge patients they’ve taken on so far, with more potentially in the waiting room. He wants to kick the prisoner out after two hours if nothing more happens but Hashimi wants a CT result first.
This could be major fireworks since Robby’s in A MOOD, shall we say, but Dana.
Can we talk about how Dana basically holds the entire place together? Not only does she route things back to front, regulate dysregulated docs, and look after patients, she also battles dueling egos and handles every major crisis given with the proper amount of smarts and sass. The entire ER would fall apart without her. She delicately gets our prisoner his time in a different room, though it’s closer to the front and has no privacy. Hashimi balks at treating him like a monkey in a cage, but Dana’s got a little more history with it and they err on the side of safety - in sight.
Ogilvie gets the news about Louie and it takes him two seconds to shrug it off as just another alcoholic, and it’s just about then that Whitaker comes back…to check on Louie. “He croaked” quips Ogilvie, and I’dve punched him could I have reached him. Whitaker takes off running to the room, and Alawi curses him under her breath. Whitaker’s broken by this, but Langdon’s in the room to help him through it. They find a picture of his wife, and Langdon, being an absolute angel, offers Whitaker the job to call the wife - which I think is actually really nice, but Whitaker declines.
He calls the number he has but it leads to Dana’s desk, sadly. They were his family. Alawi’s still about to go in and get his body ready, but Dana’s back to taking her off the job, offering up our baby nurse instead to learn.
The interpreter’s at the desk too, saying it’s too busy and she’s gonna need a hand. Apparently there’s a girl who’s been here 5 hours who never heard her name being called because deaf. We find out here that Princess knows six languages, one of which is rusty ASL, but she’s not sure she can help. After a little back and forth in a few languages to brag to each other, we’re off to work.
Dana’s super mad when she sees a bunch of donuts coming in, despite everyone else’s excitement. At one point she even calls them blood donuts, so when Donnie comes at her with one in his teeth she’s quick to quip “et tu, Donnie?”
I mean, I get her point. They’re not paying more, they’re not protecting more, but they will send donuts. It’s the pizza party problem we all know too well in our day job desk lives.
With Dana at full crank, we get a stunt biker in costume who fell off a pyramid, and Dana’s recruiting Robby to join his circus since there’s an opening. My god I love this woman. He was wearing a helmet and seems bothered to be fussed over, but that’s usually when they start bleeding and dying rapidly, so let’s just wait and see.
Robby asks for Whitaker to pull him out of Louie’s room for a while and give him a break from the trauma and now we’re seeing a glimpse of the doctor we know instead of the one we wanted to slap in the face last episode. Santos is half asleep trying to hear Whitaker out, but it’s better they both get the boot.
Dana and baby nurse are about to get to cleaning Louie up. I can’t say I’m looking forward to this, but again, Dana’s three thousand percent the person you’d want to help you through something like this. Katherine LaNasa pulls off subtle emotion beautifully and you can see the sorrow bleeding through the instructions and steady working hands. Baby nurse asks the questions no one usually does - does he have family? What happens if no one claims him?
When they go to roll him he makes a noise, scaring poor babynurse, but it’s not a miraculous resurrection -just a fact of life. Or a pain in the ass, as Dana characterizes it in this particular instance.
Santos and Whit and Joy and Alawi and …well, most everyone, is busy with motorcycle guy and so far he’s a good teaching case but nothing catastrophic seems evident.
Back with the prisoner, the jaw is broken but everything seems straight other than the malnutrition. He won’t be able to eat anything solid for a few weeks and you can see why that’ll be a huge issue. The guard is still in there while they’re quizzing him about nutrition and yet another system falls apart in front of u s.
Once we roll motorcycle guy we find a big gash. So he’s off to surgery. This gives Robby the chance to check up on leg lady, and unfortunately, she’s getting an above the knee amputation. That.sucks.
Robby also uses this moment to check in with Whitaker on Louie, and Whitaker tells him about some past trauma with people like Louie - an uncle who drank himself to death. This is gonna be rough on him. He offers a listening ear and I’m gonna hope Whit takes him up on it.
We find ourselves in a break room, as if anyone takes a break, and Langdon’s there with Dana, who’s avoided blood donuts but is after a drink. Langdon’s depressed as hell, and says he basically got nut punched on his first day back, but Dana says it’s not his fault. He asks if she was gonna quit, and you can see he’s thinking about it. He’s also thinking about amends, and Dana makes it blissfully easy on him, reminding him of his good wife and worth. Dammit. Someone peeling onions.
I see a bowl in front of our new patient Rocky so I’m intentionally looking away, because no to that. He’s evidently been in a hot dog eating contest and like, no, I do not want to see this happening. So, you watch that at your own leisure.
Al Hashimi’s up with King and Santos and they want to keep the prisoner in a bed for a few days to help with malnutrition. Robby’s uncharacteristically cold towards this. He says with Westbridge, full beds and psych full they can’t take him on, but they compromise with having Robby call the prison doctor to discuss.
Princess catches Dr. Al up on our combative college kid and it’s as bad as you’d think. He’s been experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions for months, and they’re calling his parents while his sister tries to talk with him and come to terms with what’s happening herself.
Back with Mrs. Hamler, who we’ve been calling the hospice seizer, we’re checking on her pain. They’re saying they can let her go back into home care, and she’s resisting, saying the husband needs a break. I really hope that someone’s taking the hint I think she’s giving. She even tries to send him ahead to get the house ready. The death doula receives what she’s relaying and he actually does get out. And we leave this room for Donnie with a hallway patient. They love the in-episode cliffhanger.
Princess is all over this episode, and now she’s in with our deaf friend, trying to sign with her. Her name is Harlow, and she has a headache, stomach ache and may have passed out. But we’re not 100 percent because she can’t quite grasp it all.
Back to motorcycle acrobat and Robby’s bonding over bikes. He’s got a collar coming off, and they’re doing further assessments. A nurse walks through casually dropping the knowledge all the other little doctors were gonna have to fight to come up with, and who is that girl.
Back with our barfing boy, it just keeps coming. This is not my episode. You guys watch it.
Santos escaped the room with our biker, and they’re injecting the open lac on the biker’s nee with fluorosceine, which, COOL! It’s glowing! If stuff glows there’s a leak. Nurse knows all the things is on the case and they debate a little about giving him penicillin as he’s had a reaction to amoxicillin in the past, but they go with the nurse and hang it anyway, with benadryl and epi on standby.
Babynurse and Dana are having Louie looking much better, but there’s more work to do, something that surprises babynurse. But dried blood on the face, neck and hands can be triggering and as Dana notes, “if anyone comes, they shouldn’t have to see that.” She mentions that local unhoused sometimes come to pay respects and gives more instruction including to leave out one arm out of the sheets, so loved ones can hold their hand. Again with the onions.
Turns out Robby and the death doula are thick as thieves, and the morphine pump is delayed. McKay asks if they should keep her a little longer, but Robby says they can give her a BIG PILL and send her on her way.
Surgery’s down on the ER floor and angry. They’ve got an ileus that had an appendectomy no one reported and now they they’re headhunting Santos. She blames the AI tool for hallucinating a false appendectomy and now Hashimi’s taking the heat, but surgery is PISSED with a capital...well, you can see.
Dr. Santos is easy breezy despite it all. Perlah comes by with a 5 hour energy but I don’t think sleepiness i gonna be what gets her in the end.
Whitaker is teaching on stitching and procedure, but Donnie has a recommendation, and he gets out of the way to let him shine, since as a triage nurse, he does more stitches a day than probably any of the rest of them. Up close stitching. Another thing I’m trying not to see. Donnie was an early favorite, and it’s really nice to see them tapping him in as an expert for the doctors in training to learn from.
Back with another consummate professional, Dana’s helping babynurse get Louie to his “sorta” final resting place and baby nurse asks the big question: “What’s the hardest part of this job?’
I think, probably, she’s staring it down, but I’m not the literal best person at this job ever, so let’s see what Dana says.
She mentions it being thankless, and that’s something we can pay forward as viewers to the real world nurses who feel unthanked, so let’s make that a takeaway.
Maybe it wasn’t the hardest question. She asks why she keeps coming back, and Dana can’t answer. Listen, my entire world folds if Dana leaves this show, so…let’s hope she has an answer eventually.
Back on the floor, Robby and Hashimi are having it out over our prisoner. The med staff is saying everything’s great, but she doesn’t want to send him. Hashimi doesn’t keep her cool when Robby says it’s not about social justice, and I honestly am on her side on this. THe prison hasn’t taken care of him and the difference can be made if he stays. She even brings up Digby. I hope this isn’t over, for this prisoner’s sake.
Jada’s talking to Princess and Javadi about her brother, and I guess his girlfriend got in touch, and wants to see him. Jada’s parents have a ton of questions and she's melting down. Javadi makes the mistake of saying that something’s wrong with him, and she loses it. Princess takes her somewhere quiet and cradles her while she cries. This is a truly tragic case.
We’re finally back with abandoned baby, who’s smiling and taking formula. Hashimi almost kills the mood when she says the kiddo’s too young to smile, but then concedes parents report kids as young as 4 weeks smiling socially. It’s a nice give.
Meanwhile, Dana meets prisoner, and they’re from the same part of town, and even know the same bars.
Donnie ducks into the room with our motorcycle guy, and Joy and Whitaker get props for a great job finishing out the stitches, and a little advice to add a neoprene sleeve. Love to see the teamwork. He reveals to our guy that they’re first week, and while Ogilvie effusively blurts out that he thinks he was born to do this, Joy literally buzzes out and says she wants to do pathology cuz she likes medical mysteries but isn’t great with people. I mean, we did notice. But now I’m gonna miss her a little.
Motor acrobat wants a smaller splint so he can ride. Don’t they all. Whitaker’s like “no.”
He promises not to fall again but Whitaker’s not buying it.
Robby’s called in because his pulse ox is down to 85%, and he’s gonna have to stay. Who was there? Not Dana the whole time. Definitely. It’s fine. Don’t dwell.
Our hospice seizer is about to leave. She can’t leave. She wants to stay. FINALLY. She said the words.
Robby did catch Dana, and he’s really pulling at her to tell him what she did, but again, SHE DID NOTHING.
Babynurse and Langdon meet up and he asks how it’s going. She says pretty good, hasn’t killed anyone yet…and then realizes who she’s talking to and what he’s been through today. Well, we all learn about sticking our foot in our mouth. Luckily Langdon’s easygoing about it, cuz, and I reiterate, I don’t think he’s a bad guy. She also admits she’s a little afraid of Dana, but Langdon assures her she’s just tough on the outside, and warm and gooey inside. I mean, aren’t we all? But like, literally?
It’s time for the debrief for Louie, and I’m not emotionally prepared. Dana stays back but most everyone else heads in. Ogilvie’s just hanging outside the door. It's a decent memorial service, with everyone sharing memories of him. We find out Robby knew his wife. Or at least knew of him, and knew a lot more about him to boot. Turns out, he did change his ways for a bit, when his wife got pregnant, and when she and the baby died in an accident, went back down. It’s a horrible story, and one that goes to show you never know what’s going on behind the scenes, or what someone’s struggling with.
With that said, if you’re struggling, you’re not alone. Remember to reach out. Remember that you deserve help, and have worth.
And that’s our show, until next time.