Last Patient of the Night

Doc drives to Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, where he works in the ER. Ben Taub handles over 100,000 trauma patients a year. Doc heads to the ER. He brings in donuts for the staff, and the charge nurse, Jean, is happy to see him, teasing him about his love life. He also checks in with Deb, the co-director of the ER, and Finn, who made a dollar bet, a common practice in the ER, that Doc wouldn’t have romanced anyone in Wyoming.

Two hours later, Lou Gallagher, one of the many hospital vice-presidents, approaches Doc. Doc dislikes hospital administrators, whom he thinks don’t care about patient care. Lou wants to ask Doc about the ER census. The Ben Taub ER is down 2.7% of patients for the week and 3.1% for the month, which worries Lou, who cares about money more than patient health. Doc jokes about asking the hospital staff to hit pedestrians with their cars after work, and Lou doesn’t realize he’s joking and panics until Doc reassures him. Lou also says he’s reducing the A/C budget and locking the ER thermostat at 74 degrees to save 5.3% on electricity, which upsets Doc, as the doctors and staff must wear gowns and work under hot lights when operating. When he leaves, Doc talks to Mike from maintenance and bribes him with NFL tickets to stop Lou’s A/C plan.

Doc’s friend Officer Tom Nocal, or “No Clue” as Doc calls him, enters the ER with his police dog Banshee after bringing in an injured man he caught committing domestic violence. The man lets Tom arrest him after Tom and Doc threaten to have Banshee bite his various extremities.

Doc sees a 22-year-old patient named Tracy Palmer for a broken wrist. Doc asks her about her wrist after noticing her tattoo of a sorceress, which Tracy says she got at a tattoo parlor Doc’s heard of. Tracy also says she’s clumsy and fell when she hurt her wrist, though she avoids eye contact. Doc thinks she’s lying and is possibly the victim of abuse, so he asks Tom and Banshee to check in on her. She pets Banshee and says she needed a guard dog in the past, but she doesn’t elaborate.

Doc looks at Tracy’s X-rays and finds a hairline wrist fracture, so he puts her in a splint and refers her to an orthopedist. He discharges her. Doc assumes he’ll never see her again.

Tracy drives away from the ER and plans her departure from Houston. She intends to go to her apartment and grab a small bag of items and leave. She fantasizes about buying a beach house near the ocean, a convertible, and getting a dog to make her feel safe. She gets back to her dingy apartment and lets herself in before someone punches her in the face and knocks her out.

Doc guides Julie, a second-year resident with an interest in pediatric emergency medicine, through the management of the pediatric airway of a seven-year-old girl who was hit by a car. Julie is nervous, but Doc reassures her. Julie successfully intubates the patient while the rest of the specialists flood the ER to help the patient survive. Doc is proud of Julie and praises her for keeping her cool under pressure.

With an hour left of his shift, Doc has a trauma come in that requires CPR. A man pulled up in a car and said his wife was injured before quickly leaving a woman in her mid-20s at the ambulance dock. The woman is badly beaten all over her body and has no pulse, so Doc and his team try to resuscitate her, but to no avail. Deb calls a code on the patient, and the nurses bag her hands in case her attacker’s DNA is under her fingernails, as everyone in the room recognizes that the patient is a victim of a homicide. One of her hands has the fourth and fifth fingers amputated at the knuckle.

Tom comes in to tell Doc that the guy who dropped the patient off never showed his face and had mud over the license plates of his silver Accord, so the patient is a Jane Doe. Doc, however, recognizes her as Tracy Palmer.

Doc and his group gather around a computer and search for Tracy Palmer. There’s no Tracy with her same birthday, and she gave them a fake address. They only have eight fingers to try to get prints off of, so it’ll take time to identify Tracy. Doc questions why the man dropped Tracy off at the ER, as he clearly beat her nearly to death. Doc theorizes that Tracy had information the man wanted, so he beat her to torture information out of her and then brought her to the ER in hopes that they could save her, since he never got the information. Tom promises to pass Doc’s theory along to the detectives, but Doc wants to remain personally involved. He tells Tom that they have to go talk to Tracy’s tattoo artist the next day.

Skinny Jeans takes Tracy’s case. Skinny Jeans is everyone’s nickname for the duo made up of Lenny Newsome, a tall, skinny man, and Jane Ormund, a short Cajun woman. They are a successful police pairing, and when they arrive, they immediately examine Tracy’s body. Doc tells them about his earlier visit with Tracy and explains how he identified Tracy by her tattoo, but he doesn’t reveal that he knows which studio did the art, as he still plans to investigate himself. Doc tells Skinny Jeans about his theory about why Tracy was tortured. Lenny and Jane promise that they’ll do their best to find whoever killed Tracy.

Doc goes home and finds his annoying, nosy neighbor Carl outside, even though it’s 10:30 PM. Carl asks Doc about his day; Doc lies to Carl and goes inside. Doc struggles to sleep, so he runs through his first visit with Tracy, wondering if he could’ve done anything differently to save her. He grieves that Tracy died horribly and alone, without any family, and he’s haunted by visions of her sad eyes as he drifts off.

The next day, Doc has a late start before heading out. Carl is outside again, and Doc jokes he’s going to a pajama party instead of the ER. Carl plans to trim his trees, and Doc warns him not to end up seeing him in the ER. Carl questions him about the pajama party, making Doc smile.

After Doc’s shift, he meets up with Tom to go to the tattoo parlor. Doc drives his Mercedes even though Tom worries that driving a nice car uptown will make them a target. They arrive at Finnegan’s Tattoo. Doc shows the receptionist a photo of Tracy’s tattoo, and she says an artist named Anne did it. Doc asks Anne about Tracy, and Tom bluntly reveals what happened to Tracy.

Anne says that Tracy said her name was Jen, perhaps another alias, and that she was a dancer at a strip club run by a gang of Ukrainians in East Houston that engages in drug, gun, and human trafficking. Their primary hub is called the U. Doc asks Anne about the tattoo, and she says it was a combination of her and Tracy/Jen’s ideas. Tracy/Jen wanted a sorceress, and she asked Anne to choose a random selection of numbers and letters to be in the sorceress’s spell, a spell that would be cast when the numbers and letters were unscrambled. Doc and Anne flirt as he and Tom prepare to leave, but Tom drags Doc out before he can ask Anne out.

When they get in the car, Doc asks Tom if they should tell Skinny Jeans about the U. Tom wants to wait and go visit the U under the radar.