- A former nurse in the hospital returns, sick from lung cancer and with a favor to ask of her friend Jackie. Dr. Cooper's mother is wheeled into the ER with abdominal pains - with his other mom at her side. Mrs. Akalitus is once again on the hunt for any wrongdoing.—Peter Brandt Nielsen
- Jackie tries to sell her daughter Grace on private school as she makes a costume for Fiona, her sewing machine on the end of her husband's bar. Grace has heard that the nuns whack knuckles there, she's not too thrilled.
Off to work, where Jackie is greeted by a hacking patient. Paula has lung cancer and is smoking. She knows she shouldn't. "It'll kill me," she cacjles. She used to work there with Jackie. She was just told she's out of options and should check into hospice. But she wants to go out a little sooner rather than later, "with a shred of dignity in tact...with a little help from my friends."
She waits for Jackie to figure out what she means.
Jackie wheels Paula around where she harasses Mo Mo and asks if bed five is still doing its magic, killing people frequently.
She tells Mrs. Akalitis she wants her to know she doesn't hold her years of crappy treatment against her. Mrs. Akalitis offers to help expedite things in hospice, even if it means she has to pull someone else's plug.
Jackie looks at Paula's chest x-rays with O'Hara, explaining they worked together for 15 years. O'Hara asks if she's going to help Paula. Paula would do it for her, Jackie says. O'Hara offers to help but Jackie turns it down.
O'Hara leaves and Zoey comes in, lurking briefly. Then she excuses herself, realizing she's intruding on a private moment.
Jackie's cell rings. It's her youngest, Fiona. She's supposed to be asleep, but is wearing her sunflower costume as her pajamas. Pondering a dying woman's cancer, Jackie's happy to hear from her.
Jackie goes back to contemplating the x-ray.
Dr. Cooper greets a patient on a gurney. It's his mother (Blythe Danner). The paramedics think it could be her gallbladder. His mom tells him Lilly insisted they come to his hospital. He says he can't treat her as a matter of medical ethics, so O'Hara pokes her instead. Lilly (Swoozie Kurtz) comes in. O'Hara takes note as Cooper also calls her mom. He has two mommies.
Jackie tends to Paula on her floor. Zoey asks if she should be going up to hospice. Paula informs her she's not going there. "Like I need more sad s--- in my life."
A patient is wheeled in next to Paula. Jackie recognizes him as Cat Ball Guy, the dude whose cat clawed his scrotum. This time his fingers are bloody and bandaged. The cat flipped the switch on the garbage disposal while he was fishing for a fork.
Paula hears his nom de ER and guesses precisely what happened to him. When she worked there, she says, a guy came in with one ball in a baggie.
Jackie draws Paula's curtains.
In the bathroom she fills a syringe with morphine as O'Hara guards the door. Zoey scurries in, sees O'Hara and scurries back out.
O'Hara tends to Cooper's mom. She needs surgery and wants Cooper to assist in the "opening of my abdominal wall." O'Hara agrees, as long as he doesn't touch anything.
Cut to surgery, where they remove her gallbladder. Cooper asks if they can keep it. But then her machines start beeping -- her blood pressure is dropping. Cooper handles the crisis by grabbing ahold of O'Hara's boob. She pauses, waiting for him to unclench. When he does, she says "that's a good boy" and goes about saving his mother.
Out at the desk, Zoey approaches O'Hara with her best professional voice, asking for a moment of her time. She senses Jackie is going through something and she thinks as her protégé it's her duty to support her. O'Hara tells Zoey her instincts are spot on. O'Hara listens pseudo-receptively, enjoying Zoey, as Jackie listens behind her. Zoey goes on, saying that she thinks because they're both nurses "in the trenches together" Jackie should know she's there to support her.
O'Hara tells her what Jackie needs right now is mountains of hugs, even if she tries to run. Jackie smiles to herself behind her. Then Zoey turns and Jackie says "Boo!"
Mo Mo rubs Paula's feet. She gives him her old subway tokens. Fishing through her purse she finds her apartment keys and wonders who to give them to.
Mrs. Akalitis walks up, wanting to know what Paula's still doing there. Paula fishes in her purse for something for her and comes up flipping Mrs. Akalitis the bird.
At his mom's bedside, Cooper chats with his other mom Lilly about how hard his Tourette's was for him as a kid. He changed his name from Shinehorn. He tells Lilly he loves her more because she taught him how to drive a stick-shift and took him to Duran Duran concerts. But she says that's because his other mom wanted them to bond. She wakes up, asking where the "little f---er" is. Her gallbladder is sitting in a jar by her bed.
"For all the pain, it sure as hell doesn't look like much," she says, then adding that's the exact same thing she said when they cut the cord and put Cooper in her arms.
Jackie preps her morphine syringe then waits as life in the ER goes by.
At Paula's bedside, O'Hara explains about Cooper's boob grab and two moms. Eddie comes to pay his respects. When he leaves, Paula tells them he was her pipeline for Percocet after she had her hysterectomy. Jackie tries to act as if this doesn't bother her at all and suggests going for ice. Instead, Paula tells her it's time. Jackie preps the morphine in the bathroom stall then lays out her 16 granules to snort.
Zoey visits Eddie in the pharmacy. She tells him she thinks the nurses are planning something for Paula. Eddie looks unconcerned. She says she's not sure she can participate in what they're planning. He tells her not to then. But she worries they won't respect her if she doesn't partake in the "right of passage."
He asks if she thinks this sort of thing happens all the time, because he's never seen it happen. He tells her it's a crap day for a lot of good people and no matter what she does, no one's going to judge her one way or the other.
Jackie squirts morphine into Paula's champagne. Mo Mo and other nurses gather around her bed, glasses raised. Zoey steps in, saying she wants to be there.
Paula raises a glass to herself. "Here's to you and here's to me. And if we ever disagree f--- you. And here's to me."
She chugs. Then she asks Jackie for a priest. She interrupts a priest doing last rites for a patient. Checking the patient's pulse she says he's got 10 minutes and she just needs the priest for five.
After the priest blesses Paula and leaves, Jackie repeats Paula's last words. The nurses all giggle. Then Mrs. Akalitis pulls back the curtain, telling them if there's anything funny with Paula's IV, she'll have their asses.
Jackie goes to Paula's apartment. It's filled with boxes, waiting for the end.
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