Last night’s Chicago Med showed us, in no uncertain terms, just how dependent we are on technology these days.
When a hacker takes over the entire hospital system and shuts it down, the team at Chicago Med feels completely lost.
Whoever hacked and took their system hostage is demanding a ransom of 30 bit coins, which Ms. Goodwin absolutely refuses to pay for, saying it would set a bad precedent for similar situations in the future.
“Ctrl Alt” was actually a fantastic study on how much technology has taken over our lives.
Each character deals with it in their own way, but we see a lot of them scrambling to wrap their heads around the fact that there is no internet, there’s no database with patient’s medical history and there are absolutely no machines available to show them what is going on inside a patient’s body. No, X-ray, no CAT scan, no MRI, nothing.
How did we even do medicine without all these tools just a few short years ago is the question on everyone’s minds.
Natalie is one of the doctors who struggles the most. When she sees a little boy that presents with symptoms consistent with cancer and that is deteriorating very fast, she doesn’t know what to do at first.
She needs to do a biopsy, but she can’t go in blind and there’s no way any surgeon can operate without an image.
So she consults with Dr. Rhodes and they decide to go old school, blindly, and hope for the best. It’s touch and go for a second, but they do get enough tissue to send it for a biopsy.
It turns out it wasn’t cancer, but Valley Fever instead, so they pull an epidemiologist into this case, because it’s a highly contagious disease.
So now they really need to have access to the hospital’s database to cross reference any other patients that may have come in with the same symptoms, but the system is still down and Ms. Goodwin still refuses to pay for the ransom.
And this is when Robyn — Dr. Charles’ daughter and Dr. Rhodes’ girlfriend — becomes the first doctor to completely lose it and she goes off on Ms. Goodwin about how she can’t do her job without the system being online and that they should just pay for the ransom already.
In hindsight, this was probably the very first sign that something wasn’t right with her, because Robyn is usually really calm and collected — she is Dr. Charles’ daughter after all.
Meanwhile, Ms. Goodwin’s ex-husband Bert — who walked out on her a few months back without an explanation — comes to the ED with his new girlfriend, a much younger woman, who had been skydiving and “crossing things off her bucket list”.
Will is the one who treats her and her case definitely intrigues him because, even though she seems to be fine, her eyes can’t focus, but they can’t do much about it without a CAT scan.
While her case is interesting and I absolutely love Will to pieces, what we really need to focus here is how Ms. Goodwin reacted to seeing her ex again.
As if she didn’t have enough problems already with the hacking situation, Bert just had to choose her hospital out of several others in Chicago to bring in his new, younger girlfriend to be treated.
I don’t care what he says — that it was the closest hospital or the best — because I know part of him wanted her to see him with another woman and he was just so completely insensitive.
If I didn’t have an opinion on him before, I certainly do now, and Bert just better stay the hell away from Sharon.
Elsewhere, Dr. Choi is treating a GSW victim, who was accidentally shot by his brother in the leg. But the problem here is, the bullet travelled up to his heart, or so Dr. Choi thinks, because they have no way of getting a precise enough image.
But here is where his time in the army and in combat comes in handy. Ethan Choi is used to working in extreme conditions, so he just takes it all in stride and doesn’t panic and makes a kickass diagnosis without any images, pointing Dr. Rhodes in exactly the right direction to get the bullet out of the patient’s heart.
When they are halfway through the surgery, the system comes back online and everyone is relieved. Everyone, except Ms. Goodwin, because someone paid the ransom without her authorization and now she’s on a hunt to find out who it was.
It takes Bert’s new girlfriend asking to talk to her while he is out for her to finally put things in perspective.
She apologizes for being there and that — now that she has told Dr. Halstead what is really wrong with her and why they don’t need to run any tests — she figured the head of the hospital should know too.
It turns out she has a condition called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which is a brain disorder similar to Parkinson’s, and the reason she is telling Sharon about it is because Bert doesn’t know and she’d like it to stay that way for now.
She only has another five years to live with a progressive deterioration of her motor skills and ability to speak and she is terrified of spending those years alone.
That definitely puts things in perspective for Ms. Goodwin, so she decides to just let it all go — the hacking, Bert — and just get on with her life.
Chicago Med: Most jaw-dropping moment
The most shocking moment was definitely the final scene with Robyn. She had mentioned to Connor that she hadn’t been able to sleep because there were rats in the vents of her apartment, so he told her to just crash at his place until hers could get fumigated.
It turns out, though, that she is just hearing things that aren’t there. Connor found her complaining about the rats in his apartment in the middle of the night, and about the racket that they were making, but he clearly couldn’t hear anything.
I don’t know what it is, but something is definitely very, very wrong with her. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope it’s nothing extremely serious because it would break Dr. Charles and Connor both.
Other things to notice
1. Dr. Latham was the one who paid the ransom. LOL.
2. Reese thinking that Dr. Charles only mentioned the open spot in the ED residency program because he wanted to get rid of her.
I am on the fence about this. While I think that being a psych resident has done wonders for her, I think she is excellent in the ED and that’s where she really thrives.
Also, the foreshadowing for this was too on the nose, all the way back when Dr. Wheeler started asking for her help.
I could see her coming back to the ED after Wheeler died from a mile away. Granted, I didn’t think he was going to kill himself — I just thought he was going to quit.
But here’s hoping that she does what is best for her, whether it be staying in Psych or transferring to the ED.
3. The Manstead feels were subtle in this episode, but still so on point. Nina definitely knows something is up between Will and Nat, but I’m not really sure what she was trying to accomplish by leaving Will’s jersey with Nat.
It still had the outcome I was hoping for and it was that adorably awkward conversation in the break room.
Also, next week seems to be an amazing opportunity for a lot of Manstead scenes and I am so ready for it.
Halstead Bros and Manstead and family drama? This is what I am here for. Check out the promo:
Chicago Med airs Thursdays at 10/9C on NBC.