‘New Amsterdam’ Recap: Season 4 Episode 17 “Unfinished Business”

Nova
14 Min Read
Will Hart/NBC

Helen’s Clots

The episode opens with Max running to his apartment. Once he gets in, he finds Helen collapsed on the ground. He tries to wake her up but gets nothing. When they get to New Amsterdam, he tells the ER staff that she has shallow breathing and a weak pulse.

Later, Helen wakes up with pain everywhere. Max reveals to her that she has drugs in her system. The conclusion has been made that her drink along with many others was spiked at the bar the night before. When she complains of pain in her leg, Max looks at it to find the leg is swollen in places. Her charts raise concern and they do a body scan. The scan shows Max that she has multiple clots in multiple places. Helen has to beg him to tell her more. It tells her she needs five surgeries including a hysterectomy. Helen refuses to get the hysterectomy. Max tries to convince her because of her health. Helen cries because it’s going to change her and her future. Helen begs Max to be her partner, not her doctor, in this situation.

They end up needing to do a procedure because her lungs are failing. They don’t have to open her up, so Max holds her hand as Lyn works on her. This leads to Max telling Lyn to do a risky move that could stop Helen’s heart while he waits on standby ready to restart her heart. Everything goes fine, but when removing the catheter, her heart stops and Max has to bring her back.

Tools of Life or Death

Lauren calls the VA for Ronnie’s contact information. Ronnie is woken up from the call. He’s sleeping in the back of his car and gives Lauren scattered information. He confirms that he and Casey almost got into an accident but managed to avoid it. While on the phone with him, Lauren runs into Leila. She asks what’s going on and tells Lauren she’s going to help her look for Casey. They find Casey’s bloody hospital ID. They find him around the corner in an alley with a screwdriver lodged in his neck. When Lauren tries waking up Casey, he bumps the screwdriver which reopens the wound. Leila finds a caulking gun and cardboard to seal up the wound because he’s bleeding out. Leila leaves them to call 911.

Lauren rides with Casey in the ambulance. Casey tells her it’s good to see her and Leila together again. When he tries pressing further, she gives a blanket answer. In response, Casey tells her that the last thing she says to him won’t be a lie. He points out that he’s not doing good.

He’s brought into surgery to remove the caulk and repair the wound. Later, Lauren cries at Casey’s bedside waiting for him to wake up. After he does, she folds and cries into his chest as he gently holds her.

Iggy’s Infidelity

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Iggy tries calling Trevor and gets a voicemail. Later in his office, he tries again and Trevor answers. He’s okay for the most part but in another hospital. He got picked up by paramedics after passing out on the train. After learning he’s okay, Iggy asks him if anything happened last night. Trevor confirms that nothing happened. Iggy tells him to keep him updated before hanging up the call. He turns around and sees Martin in his doorway who heard the whole conversation.

When walking together on the sidewalk with their daughter skipping ahead of them, Iggy tries defending himself to Martin. Martin tells him off about hiring Trevor at all before telling him he doesn’t want to have this conversation with their daughter right there.

Later when they’re at home, Iggy and Martin fight as their kids listen outside in the hall. Iggy tries saying he never accuses Martin of cheating as Martin points out that what Iggy did was emotional infidelity. Iggy tries claiming that it’s harmless that he’s been happy about some hot guy flirting with him. Resigned, Martin tells Iggy he’s been happier lately and he thought it was just things getting back to normal for Iggy and their family, but now he realizes it was Iggy flirting with another man that brings him that joy.

At the end of the episode, Iggy watches as his family sadly eats dinner. His stare lingers on Martin who returns it.

Asking for Help

While out looking for Casey, Leila reveals that there was a glitch in her immigration paperwork. She didn’t get the letter telling her about the issue because she was homeless and her agent got changed. Leila can’t seek help besides lawyering up, but she financially can’t afford to. She asks Lauren for help while explaining she doesn’t know where else to go.

In the ambulance with Casey, at his request, Lauren opens up about Leila struggling and asking her for money. She tells him that their whole relationship will be transactional if she does give the money. He points out that Leila leaving the country won’t help either though.

Later, Leila and Lauren watch Casey’s surgery. During it, Leila grabs Lauren’s hand. She then starts apologizing for asking for the money. Lauren tells her its okay and that she’s in awe of Leila and her strength. She tells her she loves her as a person and that she wants to do whatever she can to help her be that person. At the end of her speech, Lauren tells her she’ll give her the money and Leila hugs her while she cries.

Floyd’s Fatherhood

Floyd and Lyn finally get a chance to talk about their baby. Floyd insists they raise the baby together, but Lyn refuses to leave Claude. She asks if there’s any way for all three of them to raise the baby together. After Floyd lists why that wouldn’t work, Lyn tries saying they can raise the baby without him and Floyd disagrees. This leads to Lyn mentioning she could end the pregnancy instead so they didn’t have to deal with any of this at all. When he asks if that’s really what she wants, Lyn admits that she doesn’t want that. This is followed by her telling him that the baby is a miracle.

Floyd comes to see Lyn later. They comment on their saves from the day, avoiding the conversation needed to be had. Floyd tells her that his dad wasn’t around and his mom raised him. Because of his absence, his dad made him who he is, and because of that, he wants to be a good father. He continues by telling her that there’s no way he could abandon his own child because of this. He feels that if the child had both Lyn and Claude, he wouldn’t be abandoning the child though, because they would have two parents that loved them and raise them. He does ask that when the time is right, he gets to be in the child’s life and tell them who he is.

Elizabeth’s Hope

Zach Dilgard/NBC

Karen and Ben find Elizabeth on the floor of her apartment with a head wound. They bring her back to New Amsterdam where she gets patched up. She says what she was drugged with is like “a roofie on steroids.” She asks her translator to get in touch with her brother while Karen calls the police about the incident. When Karen comes back, Elizabeth is gone.

Elizabeth goes to the bar to tell off the bartender. In her anger, she starts yelling, signing, and throwing glasses. The bartender tells her about how he blames the doctors for how, in his opinion, COVID was handled badly. In his experience, when he had COVID he was fine, so the extreme precautions were unnecessary. He was out of work for 18 months and struggled financially because of it. Elizabeth collapses after his speech.

Later, Elizabeth wakes up from surgery. Karen and Ben tell her off for confronting the bartender. She asks what happened. She continues by talking about how people used to thank the medical workers, but now the hospital is full of unvaccinated people who hate them. Elizabeth transitions into talking about how she used to wear her scrubs home from work but now she doesn’t, because she doesn’t want people to know she’s a doctor. She questions how she can have hope for the world and Karen responds that she is the hope.

At the end of the episode, Elizabeth puts her scrubs on and walks home in them with a proud smile.

Mia’s Near Death

Floyd looks for Mia with a search team. They find her bike at the overlook which leads them to her lying on the ground below the overlook. There looks to be no external injuries besides being extremely cold. They bring Mia back to New Amsterdam and work on heating her up.

During the process of heating her up, Mia’s heart stops. Floyd instructs them to give her a medicine that she’s allergic to to warm her body temp so they can start her heart again. Walsh fights him on it but caves after Floyd keeps insisting. The allergic reaction starts to heat her body up. Walsh insists on reversing the reaction but Floyd fights him on it again because her body temperature isn’t high enough for them to get her heart to start.

Once the temperature is high enough, they try shocking her heart back. After a few attempts, they get her back and administer an epipen which works fine.

The Future of Max and Helen

Will Hart/NBC

When in her hospital room and stable, Helen watches the screens of an ultrasound next to her that show how the clots are doing. Max enters the room and tells Helen that what they’re doing is working. She responds by telling him that this isn’t what she expected for their first ultrasound. Following this, she cautiously brings up having a baby and Max is quick to tell her that he does want to have one with her. Helen questions the idea with their prior medical history and how Luna would react. Max tells her not to work about all that and Luna would be happy to be a big sister. They continue to go back and forth and talk about how they already have all the baby stuff.

After a pause in the conversation, Max tells Helen that he had this big plan to propose. He proceeds to ask Helen to marry him while in her hospital room. Helen happily accepts. She asks about the ring, which Max runs off to get.

When he gets back, he finds them wheeling her off for the procedure they had to do on her lungs. After it, Max waits with the ring for Helen to wake up. When she does, he tells her that they got all the clots before showing her the ring. She happily cries as she looks at it and he tells her he got it made just for her. In the middle of her happy crying, Helen starts sobbing and struggles to choke out the word “pecans” to Max.

New Amsterdam airs Tuesdays on NBC at 10 p.m. ET. Be on the lookout for more coverage of New Amsterdam in the future!

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