Chicago Med Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Got A Friend in Me
Jack Ori
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Doctors take an oath to do no harm.
Chicago Med likes to question what that means by pitting them against patients who don't cooperate with treatment for a variety of reasons.
On Chicago Med Season 5 Episode 5, almost everyone had to grapple with tough choices, and not everyone made the right decision.
Choi spent most of the hour resenting Marcel for wanting to do surgery on his patient.
Scratch that. Choi spent most of the hour resenting Marcel for... I don't know what. Talking loudly about removing a tapeworm, accepting Noah as his intern, and insisting that Choi's patient needed surgery all seemed to be on the list.
Related: Chicago Med Season 5 Episode 4 Review: Infection Part 2
Whatever was going on didn't seem to have much to do with the patient's best interest.
Choi claimed he wasn't sure surgery would solve the patient's problem, but his reluctance seemed more ego-driven than anything else.
He was mad that Marcel "poached" his patient, mad that Noah suggested Marcel take a look, and mad that the test results suggested Marcel had a point.
God only gave us so many heartbeats, no sense in Carl's running out early.
Marcel
If Goodwin hadn't stepped in, Choi's argument with Marcel would have gone on endlessly. Goodwin resolved it by giving the patient the facts and letting him decide which treatment he wanted.
That seemed like Hospital Medicine 101. There was no reason Choi couldn't have done that in the first place instead of getting into a pissing contest.
Choi might have won the award for dumbest choice if Natalie hadn't decided to be even more ridiculous.
Natalie: I'll do the intake then pass it off to Terry. This has med student written all over it.
Will: No no no. Lanic wants you to take it.
Natalie: I have charts from pediatrics to catch up on.
Will: I'll take care of it.
Natalie: Are you kidding? I am late because traffic sucked, not because of my TBI.
Natalie is desperate to prove herself. I get it. She's a talented doctor who isn't allowed to work anywhere near full-time because of her brain injury.
Related: Chicago Med Season 5 Episode 3 Review
Has she considered the possibility that as painful as it is to admit, she might NOT be ready for a full caseload yet?
She mixes up words, is short-tempered, and her diagnostic skills are sometimes questionable.
And now she's made an impulsive decision that was worthy of Will Halstead circa Chicago Med Season 1.
Back then, Will was so convinced that he knew what was best for his patients that he ignored a DNR order and did other stupid things that left his ability to get a residency at Med in serious doubt.
Natalie's decision to medicate a young child against his parents' will wasn't any different.
There was no compelling reason to think little Lucas had pneumonia.
Will: This is the second time in a month that parents have lost faith in you.
Natalie: I'm telling you, he has pneumonia.
Will: Yeah, well, you'd better be right, because these labs look like a sinus infection.
Natalie had diagnosed him with a sinus infection hours before, Will said the symptoms made her original diagnosis more likely, and the chest x-ray was inconclusive.
One could hardly blame the parents for thinking Natalie made up a new diagnosis when the original one wasn't serious enough to force them to give their son antibiotics.
There are ethical questions surrounding parents whose religious beliefs include not allowing their children to take medicine for conditions that could be fatal if left untreated.
But that only applies in this case if the kid has pneumonia -- and there's a 50-50 chance that Natalie is delusional when it comes to this.
Besides, even if her diagnosis is correct, this isn't the way to handle it.
She alienated a set of parents who already distrust doctors, terrified the kid, and most likely broke the law by giving the child medication against his parents' will.
Sharon is going to have a lot to say. No way Natalie gets through this without a suspension, if not a lawsuit on top of it.
Will might not be too happy with Natalie either. He didn't get to call his patient's fiancee before the patient's death because he got distracted trying to do damage control with Lucas' parents.
That wouldn't have happened if Natalie hadn't got it in her head that the parents were neglecting their child's serious health concern without any evidence whatsoever.
Man: That's not a normal calf, right?
Will: No, it's swollen. And you didn't injure it?
Man: No, nothing. Went to bed and it was normal, woke up and it's a grapefruit.
Will: Press against my hand. 1 to 10, how bad's the pain?
Man: Maybe a 7 or 8.
Will: That's in line with what I'm thinking. Blood clot. It's called a DVT. Deep vein thrombosis.
Man: Seriously? Me? I exercise a few times a week, I don't sit for long periods of time.
Will: Unfortunately, not fitting the profile doesn't mean you can't develop one.
Will's case was tragic. The guy went from healthy and active to dead in a matter of hours.
Will is going to be blaming himself for this for a while no matter what Dr. Lanic said about it not being his fault. If nothing else, he'll regret not being able to reach the man's fiancee sooner.
Maggie and Cici made more personal choices.
Maggie couldn't keep her cancer secret forever, and Cici was the best person to discover it.
Only Cici could convince her that she needed to let her friends support her. Sometimes knowing someone else went through the same thing makes their advice more valuable.
April and the other nurses' wordless support of Maggie as she took off her wig was a beautiful, understated scene that was easily the most emotional scene of the evening.
Too bad Cici followed that up with a ridiculous attempt at playing matchmaker.
Dr. Charles was on a high after his patient decided on her own that she needed help, after all, only to come crashing down when he realized his wife had invited Sharon and her ex to dinner to try to force a reconciliation.
There is no way this is going to go well, and Sharon is probably going to think Dr. Charles was in on it and lash into him.
What did you think, Chicago Med fanatics?
Was Natalie's decision bold or stupid?
Should Choi have got into that argument with Marcel?
And how is Sharon going to react to coming face-to-face with her ex-husband?
Share your thoughts in the comments, and don't forget you can watch Chicago Med online if you missed anything.
Chicago Med continues to air on NBC on Wednesdays at 8 PM EST/PST.
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Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on X.
