Last Patient of the Night

Doc considers the day. Doc has only saved lives, never taken one, but he’s surprised that he doesn’t feel too bad about killing a man, since the man was trying to kill him. He accepts that he did what he had to do to protect himself.

Meanwhile, Skinny Jeans goes to the ER and interviews Jean, the charge nurse. They ask Jean about Doc, and Jean agrees to speak as long as nothing she says goes in an investigation file. Jean tells Skinny Jeans that Doc was raised by his mother, who had an alcohol dependency, which made Doc independent from a young age. He never drinks, as he saw what alcohol did to his mother. She believes he is intelligent and empathetic. Jean gives an example of Doc’s empathy: A man came in with his son with a broken arm, distraught because he was unhoused after fleeing Pakistan to live in America. Doc took the man and his son to stay in Doc’s house with him and then got the man a job in the hospital’s laboratory. The man still works in the hospital, and his son is now in medical school. Doc views everyone in the ER as his family, which is why he’s so invested in finding out who killed Jenny. Jean promises Doc will be okay after the shooting, but Jean makes Skinny Jeans also promise that they will find the man responsible.

Doc goes to play golf. As he loads his clubs into his car, he chats with Carl, who is back to upholding his goofy next-door-neighbor facade. At the golf range, Doc thinks about Jenny and her murder. He wonders who tortured her, what information they wanted from her, and if Dyyavola ordered it. Doc runs into Squirrel, a frequent ER patient and methamphetamine dealer. Squirrel asks Doc about the shooting and tells him to be careful, and Doc tells him to be careful too, as Squirrel is frequently in fights that injure him.

Skinny Jeans prepares to raid the U as Lenny looks at a picture of Jane and her two young daughters on her desk. They decide to go in with lots of officers and turn the place upside down. Meanwhile, Doc and Tom visit Banshee again and plot how to find out who is in charge at the U themselves.

Skinny Jeans and their officers arrive at the U. Fedir greets them and allows them inside, and Jane demands he take her to his office. There is hardly anything in there except a disgustingly stained couch. There is a cord indicating the past presence of a computer, but Fedir claims it was in the office when he took the job. Jane knows he’s lying and that he’s not the real person in charge, but he claims to have no knowledge of Dyyavola. Lenny interviews the other employees of the U, but they all seem terrified and mimic Fedir’s lies about not knowing Dyyavola.

Skinny Jeans leaves, having found nothing that they can use to tie the U and Dyyavola to Jenny’s murder. They decide to put the place under surveillance. Dyyavola then meets with Fedir, who tells him the cops found nothing and instructs him to have two other men try to kill Doc in a drive-by shooting.

After his day off, Doc arrives at the ER and is briefed by a fourth-year medical student about a teenage patient who was accidentally shot in the chest with a BB gun by his younger brother. The patient seems okay, but Doc guides the medical student to realize that the BB was never recovered, which is the first thing the patient’s father says to Doc when he approaches the family. The medical student says the BB didn’t show up on the X-ray of the patient’s chest. Doc explains that the BB likely penetrated the left ventricle of the patient’s heart, which then healed over, and the BB was pushed through the patient’s aorta and perhaps stuck in the femoral artery. The medical student calls cardiology and thanks Doc for his help.

Lou enters the ER, and Doc tells everyone to pretend to be overly warm. Doc complains to Lou about the A/C, but Lou doesn’t care. Lou again tells Doc that ER numbers are still down. Doc makes another joke. Lou leaves after jinxing the ER by saying that it’s quiet, which is followed by an intoxicated patient falling through the ceiling after attempting to escape by climbing through the vents.

Tom arrives. He tells Doc that Banshee will be able to come home in a week. Tom fills Doc in on what Skinny Jeans found in Jenny’s apartment, which is nothing, as it was torn apart by whoever killed Jenny. Jenny was an only child, and both her parents are dead, so there’s no one to claim her body from the medical examiner. No one at the U talked during the search of the building, so Skinny Jeans doesn’t currently have much to go on.

Deb and Doc go to a meeting with the hospital executives. Doc warns Deb that it will be hot, as he bribed the maintenance man to switch the controls of the A/C for the executive floor and the ER floor. Doc also shakes up the cold orange sodas in the meeting room fridge, knowing Lou will take one during the meeting. Lou arrives late, struggles to close the blinds, and opens his soda. It explodes, to Doc’s satisfaction.

Lou begins the monthly ER overview meeting, during which he always makes a boring PowerPoint about the ER’s financials. However, during this meeting, the numbers seem strange to Doc. Lou claims that billing and collections are up 21.3% from the previous year, and RVUs (relative value units, or numbers made up by insurers to assign value to various medical exams and procedures) per visit have increased from 2.82 to 3.65, which Lou believes will lead to a profit of over eight million dollars in the ER. Doc knows the RVUs have been consistent in the ER recently, and they haven’t added any new services that would account for this increase. After the meeting, Doc plans to speak with Lana, a romantic interest who works in billing, to find out what’s going on.

Doc finds Lana’s cubicle, and she angrily asks him where he’s been. He tells her about his ski trip and his investigation into who killed Jenny, and her anger subsides. She agrees to help Doc find the information, but she tells him that the ER financial data is only accessed by two new female employees, and she’ll see how much she can smuggle to him without being noticed.

Doc returns to the ER, and Deb warns him that there’s a patient who is pretending to be injured to seek prescription pain medication. Doc evaluates the patient, who gives him a long-winded story about falling off a ladder and acts as if he’s in excruciating pain wherever Doc touches him. Doc goes to security and finds footage from outside the ER of the man walking normally before pretending to limp when he gets closer to the door. He shows the footage to the patient and dismisses him before calling the other ERs in the area to warn them.

Fedir chooses Oleksander and Mykta, two young men, to kill Doc in a drive-by shooting. After his shift, Doc heads to IHOP. He notices he’s being tailed by the two Hellcats, and as they pull up on either side of him, Doc guns his Mercedes, leaving them in the dust as they open fire with machine guns.

Doc leads them on a high-speed chase, using his technical knowledge of his Mercedes and fast reaction times to turn sharply, causing one of the Hellcats to fly into an empty bayou, exploding on impact. Doc calls 911 and explains that he’s being chased by a gunman and is coming towards the Elgin police station, warning the police to be ready. The police tell him to come in, park, and get low.

Mykta, enraged that Doc killed Oleksander, doesn’t even realize he’s pulled into the parking lot of a police station until it’s too late and he’s surrounded by armed police. He decides death by police will be quicker and less painful than death by Dyyavola, so he opens fire on Doc’s car before he’s shot to death by the police.

Doc is shaken, and he’s afraid the police may fire on him if they can’t tell he’s friendly. Doc slowly exits the car, following the police’s specific instructions, and they cuff him on the ground before he asks them to call Skinny Jeans. He hears Jane’s voice on the radio, and she sounds upset, but he’s uncuffed and brought into an interrogation room. Jane talks to him and criticizes him for not calling the police as soon as he realized he was being tailed. She asks him if there’s any new information he’s gathered, and Doc says no, that the Ukrainians are probably still after him for poking around Jenny’s murder and then for shooting Bohdan or his accomplice. Jane tells Doc to find somewhere to lay low for a few days and promises that the surveillance of the U and the financial analysis should find Dyyavola soon.

Meanwhile, Dyyavola beats Fedir to death in front of his other men and asks one of them to step up as the new leader. A man named Kyrylo volunteers and instructs the other men to dispose of Fedir’s corpse.

At work the next day, Tom tells Doc he’s disappointed he missed out on the action. Doc is mostly upset that Mykta shot his car 13 times before he died, so the Mercedes is damaged. Doc is staying with Gina, a respiratory therapist, while he lies low. Both Doc and Tom want to keep investigating, and Tom suggests that they follow Linda home from the U after work to see if she’s more willing to talk.

Skinny Jeans returns to the U and finds Kyrylo in charge and Fedir gone, though everyone pretends not to know what happened to him. They search the U again, and this time they find a financial statement from an account they haven’t yet seen with over $300,000. Lenny thinks Fedir is dead, and Jane thinks he’s right.

Tom picks Doc up at 1 AM, then they head to the U to wait for closing time. They see Linda leave and follow her at a safe distance to her apartment complex. Doc gets out while Tom, armed, covers him. Linda is afraid when he approaches her but agrees to talk, but not at her apartment. She gets in her car, and Tom and Doc follow her to an IHOP parking lot. In the IHOP, Doc asks Linda about Dyyavola. She explains that she can’t leave because the Ukrainians will kill her family in sadistic ways. Dyyavola has an office upstairs, and no one knows his real name. All girls have to have a “training” session with him, implying sexual violence, and he can call them up for whatever, whenever he wants.

Doc asks Linda about Jenny, and Linda reveals that Jenny was occasionally sent out on projects outside the U three or four times a month, usually to meet with businessmen in expensive hotels. Linda remembers that Jenny went to meet with a man she called “Giovanni the Italian Lover” at the Four Seasons shortly before she died. Linda also says Jenny was special because she was so warm and optimistic, a rock for the other girls in the darkest times. Linda says she has to go and can’t talk to them again. She leaves and cries in her car, worried that she’ll end up with Jenny if Doc doesn’t stop Dyyavola.

Doc and Tom decide to search for Giovanni without telling Skinny Jeans, as they don’t need a warrant to do their own investigation. Tom knows a guy who can help them.