Max is set on getting New Amsterdam away from Veronica, while other characters help patients and dive into their personal lives.
A Dream of Fear
Helen is back in London and has recovered from her stroke. She has her mom go to the doctor because she wants to make sure she’s healthy after her stroke brings health issues to her attention.
Helen’s mom wakes up from her procedure and learns that she has terminal cancer. If they would have caught it sooner, it would be a different story.
The pair leave to go to a center where there are women dancing. The dances and the music being played are from her mom’s culture. She loved dancing as a girl and she hoped to be a professional dancer when she moved to London. The pair discuss it before Helen convinces her to come dance. The moment ends with the two embracing in a hug.
Helen wants to make this a regular thing, but her mom wants it to be something that’s always hers and only hers. This upsets Helen because her mom always wants to shut her out. She tells her about how her whole life she tried to get her mother’s love and couldn’t. Her mom explains that she’s always had her love but Helen protests. Her mom keeps explaining it and tells her that she’s her “greatest joy and her deepest pain”.
We return to learn that it was all a dream of her mom’s and she’s actually healthy. Helen’s mom protests the further tests and shows her to the center where the women were dancing in real-time.
Floyd’s Father
Floyd meets up with his sister to talk about their dad. When he shows up in their dad’s car, she’s upset and questions why he’s driving it. He explains that he’s going to be a dad, but not in a traditional way. His sister is upset by the news and is even more upset when she learns that Floyd is looking for their dad. He tells her that he’s going to have to go to their mom about it then and she tells him off some more before telling him to not tell his mom about any of it.
Medical Mix-Ups
Two boys come into Urgent Medicine, Inc straight from school. Max figures out based on their symptoms that their medications got switched up by the nurse at school. He stops by the school to investigate it further and learns that due to cuts, the secretary has been acting as the nurse so the kids wouldn’t be without. He asks if this was reported to the superintendent and she says he signed off on it.
Lauren helps the boys back at the hospital. When she’s talking to one of the boys, Darby, he tells her that the other boy, Kayden, is a bully. Casey interrupts while he’s telling her so Lauren tells him to go somewhere else. When they resume the conversation, Darby says that the other boy treats him like Lauren just treated Casey.
Max finds the superintendent playing tennis and talks to him about what’s going on. He explains what happened with the boys, who were unaware of the situation. The superintendent explains that there are over 400 schools in the district without nurses as well. There have been major budget cuts over the last decade. He’s aware that things are bad, but there’s nothing he can do. It pains him that this is the way things are. He had to choose and keeping as many teachers as possible was what was more important.
Lauren asks Casey if she’s a bully and is upset by his answer. The conversation is cut short by Darby coughing up blood. The bleeding was caused by an ulcer, but Darby will be fine.
Max and Lauren talk to the parents in the waiting area and explains that they can become certified at New Amsterdam so they can start helping their kids and help prevent things like this from happening. They hope the parents can volunteer and help the problem, but none of them agree to the compromise.
Darby leaves the hospital and Lauren sends him off with kind words. His dads tell her that they’re going to volunteer as they offered. After work, Lauren breaks down and apologizes to Casey for bullying him. He brushes it off but she continues to explain that she had a problem with being a bully since she was a kid. Casey laughs at her and tells her that he was messing with her and that while she’s bossy, she’s not mean or trying to hurt anyone.
The Truth Around Trevor
Iggy runs into Trevor, who wants to make sure that he’s fine after the other night. When Iggy tries putting up some walls about it, Trevor reminds him that nothing happened between them.
When Trevor goes to leave for the day, Iggy asks to talk to him. He explains that this all is affecting his marriage and he’s working on himself. He continues to tell Trevor that he can’t work with him anymore and that he’s going to be calling HR. Trevor freaks out at the mention of HR and Iggy tries explaining it all to him. He learns that Iggy didn’t hire him because he’s good at the job. He confronts Iggy about not being the nice guy everyone thinks he is and quits.
Max’s Plan
Veronica tells Max that he’s fired and she wants him and his accomplices out of New Amsterdam. He points out that, per their contracts, she can’t fire any of them.
Max meets with Todd, his former employee who works closely with Veronica. Loyal to a fault, Todd tells Max that because Veronica is the leader and so she has his full support. Disappointed, Max goes to leave and Todd stops him by explaining that Veronica is everything he hates in a leader. He continues to explain that he would support “a regime change” to Max’s excitement. Max passes along financial records from Urgent Medical, Inc that he believes will be the smoking gun to bring down Veronica.
Veronica confronts Max when she receives a notice that FINCEN agents are going to seize either financial records. Max mentions that it could have to do with her buying Urgent Medicine, Inc. When she asks further, Max explains to her that it’s a massive money-laundering scheme that she bought with public funds. She tries to turn it around on Max who explains that he’s just a concerned employee. She offers him the spot of co-medical director if he calls this all off and he declines. After other offers, Veronica offers up that she’ll resign. Max still declines, because he wants her to never run another public hospital again.
Max calls Helen to tell her that it’s over. Todd stops by telling Max that they’re going to monitor the issue instead of doing anything else. Someone called them off and Todd explains that Urgent Medical, Inc is such a big industry that people turn a blind eye to it all. Veronica interrupts the conversation to tell Max to get out of her office.
Life After Recovery
A patient, Pauline, is moved from the Oncology wing to Iggy. He assumes she has a terminal diagnosis based on the reports but learns that she’s actually made a spontaneous recovery. After sharing the news with her family, she feels that they actually wanted her dead.
When speaking to her family, Iggy learns that her family made sacrifices for her because she was dying and they wanted to make the last of her life as best as possible. Now that she’s cancer-free, they aren’t making those same sacrifices and she’s processing it as if they hate her.
Pauline is upset that Iggy is agreeing with her family. Iggy tries to explain how life was before cancer, how they were because of cancer, and how they are now. He continues to explain that things don’t have to go to how they were before, but a compromise has to be made so everyone else isn’t always making sacrifices for her. She needs to make some too so they all can support each other.
Secrets Between Siblings
A patient, Isla, comes in with her brother, Jace. He charms the nurse with a magic trick before Floyd comes to check on them. They thought Isla had an ulcer but it turns out she has cirrhosis. She questions it because neither she nor her brother drinks due to their mom being an alcoholic. Floyd explains that it’s not related to that at all, but she will need a liver transplant. He explains that they can put her on a transplant list but her best bet will be Jace. Jace brushes it off and says they can’t before leaving the room.
When Floyd approaches Jace about it later, he explains that he’s an alcoholic but his sister doesn’t know it. He’s been drinking since he was 13. He’s built such a high tolerance that he can hide it and keep it from his sister. Floyd encourages that they do a test and see if the liver is still viable.
The test comes back that only 15% of his liver is viable so they can’t go through with it. Jace asks if that 15% could be used and Floyd says it could be but it would put him at high risk. A toxin could kill him so he’d have to quit drinking and Floyd doesn’t believe it’s realistic that he’d quit after a lifetime of drinking. Jace swears that he’ll stop if he can save his sister because she’s everything to him.
They operate on Jace and get the healthy liver out for the transplant. His liver dies once they get it out and Floyd realizes he won’t make it.
Floyd checks on Jace in post-op and finds that he had a second liver outside of his liver that shouldn’t be there. He encourages Jace to talk to his sister about his drinking problem because he needs support and keeping secrets isn’t good.
New Amsterdam had a special back-to-back night event. You can find episode 20 on streaming services and episode 21 will be on May 17 on NBC at 10 p.m. ET. Be on the lookout for more coverage of New Amsterdam in the future!