The Pitt Recap: Just One of Those Days

Full disclosure, friends: I tried to avoid writing this recap for as long as possible. I avoided rewatching this episode for as long as possible. What happens in the 2:00 P.M. hour is so deeply upsetting, I don’t think I stopped crying during the last twenty minutes. Now, you may read that and be like, get a grip, woman. To which I’d say, hey! You’re right! I totally should! But I am who I am, and who I am is a person who would love to never have to sit through a child-drowning storyline on television ever again. This episode is so traumatic, and I should get hazard pay for this job.

Perhaps that makes it sound like I disliked this episode, but it’s the opposite. The Pitt finds a way to make this episode — written by Joe Sachs and directed by Amanda Marsalis — to be both moving and harrowing without ever veering into schmaltzy territory, which it easily could’ve. Again and again, The Pitt is driving home that for the doctors and nurses treating each patient who comes in, regardless of how intense or traumatic or weird the case is, is just another part of their day. This is their job, and once one patient is dealt with, they move on to the next patient. (I mean, ideally, that’s how it works; This lack of discharging patients is, of course, one of the things Robby is riding his doctors about.) This case with our six-year-old drowning victim Amber is a good, impactful reminder that just because this is their job doesn’t mean some patients aren’t going to rattle these medical professionals.

Six-year-old Amber is brought in after being found in a pool in cardiac arrest and hypothermic. They need to warm her up before they can even attempt to use a defibrillator to get her heart going. (As many medical dramas have taught us, you’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.) You know the moment I knew this storyline would be emotionally scarring? When I knew this was going to go dark? When Whitaker asks if they could use the LUCAS on her instead of the doctors switching out doing manual compressions and, he’s told they can’t use it because Amber’s too small. The oh no I audibly released at that moment really set the tone on my couch. Amber’s grandma and younger sister, Bella, arrive. Her grandma was babysitting the two girls and was vacuuming at the time of the accident — she didn’t notice the girls climb over the fence to get their soccer ball out of the pool, and she didn’t hear them yelling for help until it was too late. If you think that’s bleak and get where I’m coming from with the crying and the being dramatic, um, just you wait.

It’s not long before Amber’s parents show up, and they are horrified to learn things are even worse than they were told. The trauma room is packed with people — Robby, Collins, Mel, Whitaker, and Mateo are all in there — working to keep Amber alive. Robby, as is his way, is so kind and gentle with Amber’s mom, walking her through everything they are doing to try and help. And yet, even at this point, as Amber’s mom kisses her daughter and tells her that everything will be okay, none of the professionals in that room believe it to be true. And when they get word that Amber’s blood labs say her potassium level is 12.2, they all know there is no saving her. Everyone in this scene plays it so well, each immediately realizing what this means and letting that tragic reality sink in without giving too much away to the parents. No, that’s a job for Dr. Robby. He walks over to Amber’s parents, still at their daughter’s side, and calmly tells them that no one has ever survived cardiac arrest with a potassium level over 11. “Amber has died,” he says. You can feel the heaviness in the room. And hearing Robby’s simple, quiet “Okay, we are going to stop now” means none of us will ever know peace.

Oh, did you think that was going to be the most devastating part of this thing? That is so cute.

Collins and Mel go to see Grandma and Bella in the family room. It’s here that little Bella tells them that her sister saved her. Bella fell in the pool trying to get the ball, and Amber got her out but wasn’t able to get herself out of the water. Tracy Ifeachor and Taylor Dearden are so good here — again, able to show us exactly how devastating this information is while still keeping their emotions locked down. They aren’t supposed to express their own feelings, this isn’t about them, but you can wager a guess. (My guess is just a lot of internal screaming.) I mean, Mel has to leave the room after she hears Bella’s story. When she returns, Collins takes Grandma over to Amber’s room to ruin that woman’s life, and Mel brings Bella a teddy bear. She tells the little girl that since Bella can’t go see Amber just yet, Bella can tell this bear everything she wants to say to her sister, and the bear will tell Amber. Mel is, no doubt, thinking about her own sister. Anyway, if you weren’t weeping by this point, you must be once Bella tells this teddy bear all about how she won’t ever touch Amber’s toys without asking and thanks her for saving her life, and tells her sister she is her best friend. “Amber’s going to be so happy,” Mel tells Bella when she’s done. There are so many reasons I could never be a doctor, but shit like this is at the top of the list. I’d need thirty minutes in a dark room in the fetal position to even remotely recover from something like this.

Mel and all of the other doctors and nurses involved in Amber’s case simply have to move on … to an honor walk for Nick Bradley, who is being transferred to an organ transplant center because his parents have finally agreed to donate their 18-year-old son’s organs. Cool, cool, cool! We are all doing just fine, aren’t we?

You feel for everyone involved in Amber’s case, but it’s Dr. Robby who does the most bouncing around from Amber to the Bradleys. When he sighs and says, “Just one of those days,” it is such an understatement of what’s happening. It’s laughable. But the Bradleys’ storyline wraps up just as emotionally affecting as it started. With the Bradleys’ family and friends and hospital staff lining the hallway, they take Nick’s body — draped with a Steelers blanket — out to an ambulance for his transfer. John and Lily thank Robby for everything and lament that they can’t do this next part with him at their side. When Robby tells them that a lot of the staff here would like to attend Nick’s funeral, they are genuinely taken aback by the gesture. This scene could easily swing cheesy, but it’s calibrated perfectly. A moving little send-off for the Bradleys. Samantha Sloyan and Brandon Keener were so great in every scene they were given and will be missed but, like, John and Lily, though fictional, should never have to see the inside of a hospital ever again.

Now that we’re all emotionally devastated, let’s find some happier notes to end on. Hey, Rita, the burnt-out caretaker to her mother, Ginger, returns! She did not bail on her mother, as Mel feared. The second-year resident’s relief when Rita explained that she fell asleep in the car when she went to park was palpable and raised my spirit for about thirty seconds. Mel and Kiara also explain some of the options they have available through Medicare to help ease some of Rita’s workload. She is visibly moved. The Pitt does give us some wins, look at that!

Another one: Dr. Mohan is right about the beauty influencer using a face cream with dangerously high mercury levels, and Robby, whose anger with Mohan’s speed (or lack of it) has been growing, is impressed. He doesn’t even mind when he and Dana catch Mohan helping her patient record a new video for her social media. (She will be letting her followers know not to use that specific moisturizer.) I’m a fan of Mohan and I’m also a fan of Dr. Robby being able to admit when he’s wrong.

Oh, and we get to see the inside of someone’s finger, and it is about as disgusting as you’d imagine! So, there’s that. The only thing that soothed me during HVAC maintenance man by day, psychology student by night, Rocco’s amputated fingertip situation is that while McKay and Santos are performing a V-Y Flap procedure, Rocco is hitting on Heather, who is overseeing the whole thing. His finger bone is exposed to the elements, and this dude is still trying to get a date. That’s multi-tasking, right there. Of course, Heather shuts this flirting down immediately — when he asks what she does when she doesn’t work, her quick, efficient response is “sleep.” I imagine she would’ve shut this man down regardless, but especially has no time for it today of all days, this hour of all hours.

Agh, sorry, I’ve brought us back around to emotionally devastating. (It is not hard to do on this show, and you know it!) Remember, at the end of the one o’clock hour, Heather miscarried in the bathroom. This episode starts from that point, as she tries to pull herself together enough to get back to work. Before she does, she finds an empty room to give herself an ultrasound and confirm what she already knows. Robby walks in, thinking it’s an open room they can move a patient into and catches a glimpse of what she’s doing, but you can see he’s a little confused by it. He can tell something is really up with her, but she shrugs it off when he tries to ask her about it. All of this leads me to the most important question I have about The Pitt: Is anybody gonna kiss on this show? Specifically, Robby and Heather? I know everybody’s busy, but, come on, after everything we’ve been through, we deserve it.

Discharge Papers

• I’m going to need more details about Victoria Javadi and her mother’s tense relationship. Javadi winds up working on one of her mother’s Crohn’s patients and realizes this woman isn’t suffering from a perforated bowel but rather from a black widow spider bite. It could be a nice moment for the mother/daughter duo, but it is not! They are not a duo!

Okay, this is interesting: Just when Trinity gets Garcia back on her side, she presents her theory that Langdon is stealing pain meds from his patients (her evidence is that Lorazepam vial and now some suspiciously missing Librium pills) to the surgeon and Garcia will have none of it. “I insult the shit out of him, but he’s a great doctor.” She reminds Trinity that she’s been here for all of seven hours and she should mind her business.

Dr. McKay sees an 18-year-old patient named Piper who has come in because it burns when she pees, and she’s brought her boss, Laura, to sit by her side. It doesn’t take long for McKay to suspect that this is a sex trafficking case, but when she and Dana finally get Piper alone, she acts like everything with Laura is totally normal. They invent a reason to keep her in the hospital longer.

An 81-year-old named Willie comes in when his pacemaker stops working. He has some dementia but also pulls out a lot of medical knowledge from nowhere — he also knows Dr. Adamson. When Willie’s son Eli arrives, we learn that Willie was a member of the Freedom House Ambulance Service. Founded in Pittsburgh in 1967, they were the first paramedic service in the country, and they were made up of an all-Black staff. It’s a nice moment to see Robby and Langdon give Willie his flowers in an otherwise harrowing episode!

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