TV

“Complications” recap (1.5): Gang Fight Night

Previously on Complications, CJ pulled up to a drive thru expecting nothing but a delicious burger and perhaps some enlightening BSG-related banter. What he got, however, was a bullet in his chest. Poor CJ. We also met Gretchen’s sister Ingrid and I loved her immediately. Lastly, John and Sam:

14 Months Ago

Darius pulls up to a house party already in progress, but he is super not DTH (down to hang). In the backyard, Easy, Antoine and CJ are looking at a drawing Antoine made. Darius wants to talk business, but Easy refuses to do it in front of his son. After Easy sends Antoine off with CJ to get some food, Darius confronts Easy about the plea deal he took. Darius thinks he shouldn’t have taken the deal, because they don’t have enough evidence to convict him. Darius is mad because he thinks the business is going to be absolutely fucked while Easy’s in prison, but Easy is just like, “Hold up, man-I’m leaving you in charge. So you better take care of things.”

Present

John and Sam share some post-coital snuggles, but are interrupted when John’s phone rings. It’s the hospital-there has been a gang shooting and he needs to go in. Sam doesn’t like the idea of John being around a lot of gang members, considering the events of the past few weeks. (Has it been weeks? Or just days? Gonna be honest: I have no idea how much time has passed since Antoine’s shooting.) John says he has to go and he promises to pick up his phone if Sam calls.

There are a lot of ambulances pulling up. There were apparently a bunch of retaliation shootings after the initial situation in the fast food parking lot. John immediately jumps in to treat a patient that flatlined at the scene but is still getting CPR. John finds another bullet wound in the back of the patient’s neck and calls the time of death. They remove the oxygen mask and John sees that it’s CJ! Awww, poor CJ.

It’s pretty much pandemonium in the Emergency Department! (Sidebar: When is the last time John got some sleep?) John is in charge of triage, but it’s bonkers. A detective tells him to try and keep the gang members away from each other-even gang friends should be separated so they can’t change up their stories. John’s like, “Yes, not a problem, officer. I’m a very upstanding doctor with zero gang ties, so that should be a very easy task for me.”

John takes a look at one dude’s injury, it’s just a graze so he tells the guy to hold tight and someone will come to stitch him up. The dude recognizes John from his neighborhood and thinks he should get some special treatment. John shuts him down: he tells the dude that in this hospital, he’s a doctor and this guy is just a patient and STFU.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bridget is just floating around patients, solving problems like a boss. She’s in her element.

Quentin and Gretchen are examining the woman who shot CJ and started this whole damn thing. She says that she feels fine, and she just wants to go down to the station so she can make her phone call. The girl, who got hit by a car after the shooting, also claims that none of the poking and prodding Quentin is doing hurts her. Okay, sure girl. Gretchen takes her blood and is generally sassy and wonderful.

Elsewhere in the hospital, John finds out that his next patient is Darius. He asks if another doctor can take him, but a nurse informs John that Darius asked for him by name. As John enters the room, he overhears the detective trying to get Darius to talk to him about what happened. Darius maintains that he’s done nothing wrong and it’s not against the law to get shot. Valid point. John tells the detective he has to leave while he treats Darius, because policy.

John is mad at Darius for requesting him, but Darius just blows off John’s anger. He tells John he needs him to find and talk to the guy that got brought in with him, Maddux. John tries to ignore Darius and just treat his leg, but Darius threatens him by reminding John that all the dudes know where John and his family live. Darius tells John to find Maddux and ask him what some dude named Spider said, and then come back and tell Darius. John glares the glare of an impotent and angry man, but leaves to run the errand.

After telling Gretchen what’s going on, he describes Maddux’s wounds to her and asks if she knows where he is. Gretchen tells him Maddux’s bed number, but warns John that Quentin is treating him at the moment. John goes over under the guise of wanting to do a neuro eval on the patient, and Quentin’s like, “Sure, bro, go for it! Oh, one little thing: I had to drug him so IDK how well this eval is going to go for you.” Maddux is very sleepy and very useless.

Gretchen goes to check on the shooter, who is still very anxious to get to prison and make her phone call. Gretchen sasses her until the woman explains that the call she wants to make so desperately is to her little seven year old brother to make sure he’s okay. Gretchen is like, “You left him alone? That’s some fucked up shit.” The woman yells that Gretchen doesn’t know what she’s talking about, that everything she does is for her brother! She seems to be in some pain, but won’t say it. Gretchen notices, though, and tells another nurse to pass the message onto Quentin that the patient needs a CT scan.

Meanwhile, Bridget tells another patient that his arm is shattered. The patient recognizes her; she treated him for a football injury six years ago. Bridget seems to remember, and tells him that he should’ve stuck with football. The patient says he tried, but is interrupted by a rival gang member shouting at him and charging over. He throws Bridget out of the way and starts punching her patient in the face repeatedly. Bridget, little bb that she is, is writhing on the floor in pain, but still manages to call out for someone to check her patient’s airway.

Meanwhile, John is still with sleepy Maddux. He is able to get rid the room of both Quentin and the nurse for a few moments, so he injects Maddux with wake-up juice. (IDK what it actually is, but he wakes up, so I’m’a call it wake-up juice.) John asks if he talked to Spider and Maddux tells him that Spider is dead-he was shot in the street.

As soon as John tells Darius the news of Spider’s death, Darius tries to get out of bed even though there is a bullet in his leg. John tells him to slow his roll, that he’ll get him a phone if he needs one, but Darius is like, “NO, I MUST GO. MY PEOPLE NEED ME.” John tells him that he will not let Darius leave just so he can get revenge, but Darius explains that he wants to stop people from killing each other, actually. With Spider dead, there is no one that will be able to prevent his boys from doing murder except Darius.

John needs to get a cop on guard away from the door, so he tells the cop he needs his help to uncuff a patient for a moment. The cop says to hang on, that he’ll radio someone else because he can’t abandon his post, but John throws a little hissy fit. He’s like, “Excuse me, sir, you may be police officer out in the world, but in this hospital I am basically a GOD.” The cop is finally just like, “Okay, okay. If it will shut up your entitled rambling-let’s just go quickly.” While John leads the cop away, Darius, dressed like an orderly, pushes a cart down the hall and makes his escape.

Elsewhere in the hospital, Gretchen sees the shooter being put into a wheelchair, obviously in a lot of pain. She tries to get the girl to tell her what hurts, but the girl still won’t talk and the detective is anxious to get her down to the station. Gretchen runs to ask Quentin to help her stop them. She explains why the girl wants to get to the station, and that if they don’t help her, her little brother might not have a big sister.

Quentin relents, and they stop the cops before they can take the shooter out of the hospital. Quentin does a quick check and confirms that she may have an internal bleed and that she can’t leave. They tell the girl that she needs surgery, but she keeps saying that she has to talk to her little brother because he’s not safe where he is. Quentin calms her down and explains that, first, they need to take care of her. I would like Quentin to be my doctor- he’s a good winker.

Gretchen is obviously shaken by the encounter. She goes outside for a quick cigarette break and calls her sister. Ingrid! I miss you. Ingrid doesn’t answer, so Gretchen leaves a message. What a little marshmallow.

Inside, John sees that Sam is calling him. He might actually be about to answer, but then he sees some blood on the floor and follows the trail. He at least manages to text Sam that he can’t talk, so that’s something. Darius is on the floor, bleeding everywhere. OBVIOUSLY! JESUS CHRIST, I am not a doctor, but, like, John! What the fuck did you think would happen to him with a bullet in his leg?

John takes him to an empty yoga studio (or, I guess more probably, some kind of empty PT room) and says his wound has gotten worse. The bullet is pushing up against his artery and they need to take him back to the ED. Darius is like, “No way, dude. The cops are gonna be all over me.” John’s like, “Okay, FINE, I’ll be a hero AGAIN and operate on you here in this unsterile room.”

John goes to find Gretchen so she can assist him in the surgery, but Gretchen is already busy helping Bridget(!) She dislocated her shoulder and Gretchen is going to help her up to ortho. We are about to get an important scene where Bridget probably leans all over Gretchen and, IDK, maybe they bond about something on the way up to ortho, but then John barrels in and says he can fix Bridget’s arm.

John’s like, “Don’t worry, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m a hero. I’ll just pop your shoulder back in right here!” Bridget tells him that someone already tried, but John just thinks that obviously that person wasn’t as awesome as him. I was really hoping John would fail, but, what do you know, he starts massaging spots on her arm and then- boom, it pops back in! John tells her to put an ice pack on it, but Bridget insists that she’s fine and needs to get back to work. Oh Bridget.

Bridget gone, John quickly fills in Gretchen on what he needs-which includes basically stealing some morphine. The detective interrupts them and tells them they have a missing patient- it’s Darius! Surprise! The detective is super pissed, asking John how Darius could have escaped! John’s like, “Listen, I’m a lot of things: doctor, hero, some would even say God-but I am not a babysitter.” Luckily, Gretchen swoops in and saves John from that conversation. Once they walk away, Gretchen reveals that she (very quickly) got all the supplies John asked for.

John goes back to Darius and starts getting ready to perform surgery. Darius refuses the morphine, because he needs to have his head straight in order to keep the peace. John does inject him with a local anesthetic to numb the area, but that seems like not enough drugs to me. John tells Darius to stay still, because if he hits an artery Darius will probably die. Wow, I do not want to watch this scene.

Darius asks if he’s the hardest patient John ever had, to keep his mind off the pain. John tells him that the hardest was his daughter- he took care of her when he thought she had the flu, but then she got nosebleeds and bruising. It wasn’t the flu and she died of cancer six months later. So no, DARIUS, you’re not the hardest patient. Darius says he’s sorry and then I think John pulls a bullet out of his leg, but my eyes were mostly closed during this part. Darius keeps the bullet.

After Gretchen drops a patient off up in surgery, she asks about the shooter. A surgical nurse tells Gretchen that the doctors are working on the girl because she coded. Gretchen walks in just before they call her time of death. She asks what happened – the girl had an internal bleed and coded before they could finish prepping for surgery. There’s no family listed, so a nurse is just like, “Welp, I guess it’s the medical examiner’s problem now.” Gretchen asks the nurse if she can please do the paperwork instead. After everyone leaves, Gretchen notices a bracelet on the girl that says, “Besos y abrazos, Elio” (which the internet tells me means “Hugs and kisses, Elio”). Gretchen takes it.

John helps Darius out of the building, and tells him that if Darius was lying and more people die tonight John’s going to bring him down. Darius is like, “That’s a cute threat.” But he also agrees with John that enough people have died tonight, and he’s not going to kill anyone. John goes back to clean up his makeshift operating table when Sam calls and he finally answers (for once). He talks to Sam and Ollie, who had a bad dream, for a few minutes.

After hanging up, John goes out to dispose of some of the supplies he used in surgery. Even though he kind of tries to be stealthy, Bridget sees him and is suspicious. After John walks away, she goes into the room he was just in and sees the bottle of morphine on top of a pile of used needles. Ruh roh.

Things are finally slowing down in the ED when the detective from earlier stops John to talk. John asks if there were any other shootings overnight, and the detective tells him that there were not. He also tells John that he just got off the phone with a colleague who reminded him that John was the guy involved in the recent gang shooting. The detective thinks it must have been tough on John being surrounded by those guys all night when he killed one of them. He asks John if anyone gave him any trouble, but John’s like, “Nope, tra la la, everything is awesome!” The detective thinks that is very hard to believe. He gives John his card and tells him to call if he remembers anything.

What did you all think of this episode? Based on previews of upcoming episodes, it looks like things are (somehow) just going to keep escalating! Lots of guns and violence! Gretchen gets a kid (maybe)! Sam finds out the truth (maybe)! Whew, I’m exhausted already.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button