The Surgeon

That same Monday afternoon, Anne sits in the hospital boardroom for her peer-review case analysis, surrounded by superiors including M, the hospital CEO, and Aaron Timmer, the head of legal. She reviews Caleb Donaghy’s case file and is shocked by Dr. Bolger’s statement demanding that her license be revoked for gross negligence. The autopsy, performed by the Cook County medical examiner, exonerates her surgical technique but notes a higher potassium concentration in the heart chambers. Anne finds this strange because she thoroughly flushed the heart with saline, but she decides not to raise the issue.

Dr. Bolger makes sexist statements, claiming that Anne lacks the physical strength for prolonged resuscitation. Anne’s mentor, Dr. Seldon, defends her, pointing out her perfect intraoperative mortality rate before this case, which is far superior to the department’s 15% average. M asks why Anne spent only 23 minutes on Donaghy when she has averaged 43 minutes to successfully restart hearts in similar difficult cases. Anne explains that the heart showed no signs of life after reperfusion. The committee finds no fault with Anne. However, M announces that Dr. Bolger is being placed on administrative leave for inappropriate conduct.

Afterward, in her office, Anne looks at photos of Melanie, reaffirming that Donaghy deserved to die. Two questions trouble her: why his heart failed to restart, and why the SAO is investigating.

Immediately after the peer review, Anne’s surgical team celebrates her exoneration in her office. Anne tells them she’ll continue investigating why Donaghy’s heart failed. She’s then summoned to M’s office, where she finds M, Aaron Timmer, and a man she recognizes as having lurked outside her office with balloons days earlier.

M introduces the man as Adam Costilla, an investigator with the SAO. When Costilla begins questioning Anne about Donaghy’s death, Timmer intervenes, demanding to know why the SAO is interested. Anne confronts Costilla about staking out her office. Costilla admits to the stakeout, calling it a legal procedure. Anne is terrified, realizing that her office or phone could be bugged and that her connection to Donaghy might be known. Timmer demands a formal statement from the SAO, name-dropping Mitch Hobbs as a law school classmate. Costilla leaves without responding.

On Wednesday morning, Paula still hasn’t heard from Derreck. Her assistant, Marie, tells her that Adam has summoned her to a crime scene. At the cordoned-off street, Adam leads Paula to a body: Simon Degnan, the 11-year-old witness, shot dead. Paula feels sick. Adam coldly blames her for the boy’s death, reminding her of her former principle of protecting children. He reveals that he knows about her affair with Derreck and warns that it will be discovered. Paula lies, claiming that the affair is how she learned that Anne killed Donaghy. Adam reveals that Simon was killed two hours after the subpoena was delivered that morning.

When Adam accuses her of being in love with Derreck, Paula threatens to have him reassigned but walks back her threat, recognizing the danger. She apologizes and redirects him to focus on catching Simon’s killer. Adam walks away, disillusioned. While driving, Paula sees a highway billboard featuring Anne, smiling and wearing a wedding band identical to Derreck’s. Filled with rage, Paula vows to destroy Anne’s life.

On Wednesday night, Anne comes home feeling drained and paranoid about surveillance. She decides that she must talk to Derreck somewhere outside the house. She stands outside her late sister’s closed bedroom door, recalling memories, and then retreats to her den and takes out a childhood photo album.

She looks through the photos, reminiscing about her parents adopting Melanie when Anne was 14. She finds her favorite photo of Melanie, taken at the orphanage on adoption day, and removes it to frame for her office. Anne recalls that Melanie was in therapy for post-traumatic stress and experienced night terrors during which she would plead for someone to stop hurting her. She looks at a later photo, the last one in the album, of Melanie dancing with their father at age 13. The rest of the album is empty: No family photos were taken after Melanie died.

Anne puts the album away, feeling at peace with her decision to let Donaghy die. She recalls seeing Donaghy years ago in a park with Melanie and remembers his distinct red birthmark, shaped like an R with three drops falling from the left side. Derreck arrives home, and Anne invites him to a Chinese restaurant.

Over three days, Adam relentlessly investigates Simon Degnan’s murder, tracing phone calls from the jail cell of the man who perpetrated the crime that Simon witnessed. He identifies a prime suspect as an old cellmate of that man. On Friday morning, Adam calls Paula for an arrest warrant. They find the suspect passed out drunk in a filthy apartment with nearly $10,000 in cash. Adam finds the recently fired murder weapon under the sink.

Paula asks Adam for 30 minutes to stage a media event. She texts Derreck the address and alerts media contacts with a burner phone. TV crews arrive. Paula and Adam take the suspect outside, and Paula gives a statement. When a reporter questions her about failing to protect the witness, Derreck arrives. Paula deflects by drawing attention to Derreck. The media attention shifts entirely to him. Adam expresses disgust at Paula for turning the arrest into a political stunt.

After Adam leaves, Derreck confronts Paula, angrily accusing her of staking out his wife and bugging his house. Paula invites him to a hotel, but he refuses. He starts to walk away. Enraged, Paula threatens that destroying him would be easy. She walks away confidently, feeling that she can still win.

The following week, Anne returns to a busy surgery schedule, but she feels constant dread. She and Derreck live in tense silence at home, afraid that their house is bugged. The operating room is Anne’s only haven.

While preparing for a triple bypass on Mrs. Orlowski, Anne has a new personal rule: to look at the patient’s face before making an incision. After the first incision, Anne realizes that the patient’s blood isn’t clotting. The patient’s blood pressure drops rapidly. Anne orders packed platelets and a whole-blood transfusion, which stabilizes the patient. Reviewing the labs, Anne realizes that she missed borderline clotting factors because she was distracted and relied on the computer to bold abnormal values.

Feeling immense guilt, Anne goes to M’s office and confesses that she almost killed her patient. M warns that Anne’s career will be over if she loses another patient while under investigation. In an unusual gesture, M invites Anne to sit on the sofa. Seeing Derreck’s political ad on TV, M asks if the investigation is politically motivated. Anne shares her suspicion that Dr. Bolger likely didn’t make the call to the SAO. M offers to check the hospital’s phone records. Anne begs to keep her surgical privileges, and M agrees but issues a final warning.

After another tense weekend, Derreck takes Anne to a pizza place on Sunday night so that they can speak privately. He tells her investigations like this can take years, and rarely are they officially closed. He again asks permission to speak with SA Mitch Hobbs, but Anne refuses, fearing that it will look like interference.

On Monday morning, still obsessed with why Donaghy’s heart failed, Anne drafts an email to the medical examiner requesting further tests on the body. Realizing that this is reckless, she saves it in her drafts folder. When she looks up, she sees Paula in the hallway. Paula enters her office.

Anne tries to refuse to speak without her lawyer. Paula informs Anne that her office is subpoenaing all of Anne’s surgery videos. Paula misquotes a statistic from the peer review, claiming that Anne’s average resuscitation time before death is 43 minutes, though Anne corrects her that this was the average time to successfully restart a heart in difficult cases. Anne concludes that Dr. Bolger must be Paula’s source. Paula points out that Anne didn’t administer an epinephrine shot directly to Donaghy’s heart, as she had in other cases. Madison bursts in with a fabricated emergency to rescue Anne. Anne flees to an empty treatment room and breaks down.

Monday evening, Anne leaves the hospital feeling like she’s running from Paula. She cries in her car and briefly contemplates death by suicide before dismissing the thought. At home, she retreats to the den, imagining a conversation with her late father. She imagines that his advice would be to figure out the facts before jumping to conclusions.

Anne realizes that as long as her family’s connection to Donaghy remains secret, Paula can’t prove a motive for murder. She opens her laptop to search online for a connection between Donaghy and Melanie, but stops, terrified that her internet activity is being monitored. She worries that if the house was bugged before she confessed to Derreck, Paula already knows everything. She remembers telling Derreck that she knew Donaghy and rushed calling time of death. Anne senses that Paula’s motivation is personal and hateful. Her mother calls her for dinner as Derreck arrives. Anne recalls the drafted email on her office computer, resolving to delete it first thing in the morning.

At 3:37 am, Anne lies awake. She decides to apply her father’s philosophy of making smart bets on probabilities. She concludes the safest bet is that Paula Fuselier has no concrete evidence against her. She resolves to stop acting paranoid and to behave normally to avoid creating suspicion. She remains determined to find out why Donaghy’s heart failed to restart.

Anne gets out of bed and goes for her usual morning run in Lincoln Park for the first time in nearly three weeks. Afterward, she drives to the hospital to shower and change. Her priority is to permanently delete the drafted email to the medical examiner. With time to spare before her rounds, she takes out the red Donaghy case file and begins creating a detailed timeline of Donaghy’s entire hospital stay, planning to investigate every detail (staff interactions, meals, medications) to find out what “crippled” his heart.