In the aftermath of his plan failing, Max tries to figure out how to help save New Amsterdam.
Max Concedes
Veronica holds a meeting with all of the former New Amsterdam employees that were fired and rehired through Urgent Medicine, Inc. She explains that their spots aren’t there for them anymore, but they’ll find a place for them. Per their contracts, they can’t practice medicine anywhere else for the next three years.
Max struggles when Veronica says to him that she isn’t sure what he wants because if he goes back to Helen in London, he can’t practice medicine. He concedes that she wins and asks that they don’t make it personal, which Veronica refuses after all he did to stop her. When Max leaves the room, someone he knows from the hospital asks him to look at something for him. Max replies that he can’t help.
A Sheltered Life
Iggy prepares for his patient that hasn’t left his apartment in 3 years. Their sessions take place via a video game. The patient refuses therapy and doesn’t know that Iggy is a doctor. Things go too far when the kid tells Iggy that he’s the only person he trusts and he wants to meet him in person. Gladys explains to him why this wasn’t a good idea.
The kid is talking about meeting up and Iggy caves and tells him who he really is. He tries telling him that even though he lied to him that doesn’t change the progress that the patient has made. He leaves the game before Iggy can say more.
Gladys comforts Iggy and tells him that he did the right thing. The next patient he has turned out to be the patient he’s been playing the games with. They ask for his help.
Walsh’s ED
Lauren and Casey return to the emergency department to learn that Walsh has taken over as the chair of the department. Walsh has a new system for how the ED works and its much calmer than how Bloom ran it. They take the next patient who comes in who is a man struggling with sharp pains. He tries to convince them he’s fine multiple times because he’s visiting NYU with his daughter that afternoon. He doesn’t want her to know what’s going on but Lauren tells him he’s having a heart attack when he tries brushing it off.
Walsh questions Lauren on her being so nice to him. He thinks its a game, but she explains that she’s just been doing some healing things and has had a more positive attitude because of it.
The patient with the heart attack continues to suffer and when things get bad, Walsh fails to make a decision leading to him asking for Lauren’s help. He asks her to stop being supportive and to react as she would normally so they can save the man. She tells him that she would break the protocol that Walsh is tempted to break.
Later when the patient is stable, Walsh asks Lauren how she knew that was the right call to make. She tells him that she didn’t, but they had to do something and if the call went bad, she would have to live with it. He admits to Lauren that maybe he doesn’t want to make those choices as much as he thought he did. He asks her to take back the ED and she agrees but tells him that if he changes his mind, he’ll be amazing at leading it.
Helpless
A fellow doctor of Helen’s is letting a little boy, Ollie, die despite his parent’s wishes because he’s brain dead. When she sees him coding, she runs in and helps save him. Later she has to face the parents and explain that he’s not going to better. They fight her on it but the fight doesn’t get far before the other doctor interrupts. He tells them that the courts ruled that they have to pull the plug on the boy.
Max and Helen talk about it and Helen admits that she can’t appeal to the courts about it because medically she knows his condition won’t improve. She continues to tell Max that as a parent, she can’t support this system that takes a parent right away like this and if it was Luna, she would fight for her. Max mentions the UK system for handling things and it triggers Helen to realize while she can’t do anything here, if she transfers Ollie to the United States, the government doesn’t get a say. She tells Max she’s going to transfer him to New Amsterdam.
As they’re loading Ollie up, the police show up and tell them that they can’t take him out of the country or they’ll be facing legal troubles. He’s taken back into the hospital where Helen has to pull life support the next morning.
Shocks of Parenthood
Floyd and Elizabeth work on a mom who is carrying babies that have tumors on their lungs. They pull the babies out while they’re still attached to the umbilical cord and operate on them with the plan to put them back in the mother and proceed as normal. This doesn’t work though because the mom has complications and they need to operate on her. When they’re done, the uterus is too small for both babies to go back in. Floyd suggests they put one bad in the uterus and one in the abdominal cavity, which creates an ectopic pregnancy. It would save them all, but could also kill them all.
They get the first back inside safely before closing the uterus and putting the second baby in. After they’re out of surgery, they explain the situation to the mother who handles it well. Floyd mentions that he’s going to be a father himself to Elizabeth’s surprise.
After his shift, Floyd stops by home and talks to his mom. He asks her to help him find his father.
Leila Moves In
Lauren and Leila meet up so Leila can pay her back in another installment. She decides to be fun with it and cracks jokes after they hand it off. Leila tells her that she doesn’t need to borrow any more money because she learned that she doesn’t have a winnable case. When Lauren asks for more, Leila tells her that she doesn’t have a stable address so she isn’t considered to have stability.
Lauren immediately tells her to put her address down and Leila explains that it’s more than just a place to receive paperwork. They’ll stop by for interviews and other things. She tells her to move back in then. Leila voices concern about that because Lauren previously said that Leila triggers her. Lauren convinces her that she’s changed and can handle this.
New Amsterdam is Saved
Max lies to Helen and doesn’t tell her things went wrong with Veronica. After that call, he gets pulled into helping the janitorial staff with rashes and other things. He realizes its the gloves they use and told them to stop using them and gave them remedies before helping with other thing they need.
One of the guys, Jerry, Max helped comes up to talk to him and show him that his rash cleared out. He talks to Max about how it’s great that a guy at the top cares and Max laments that he’s not at the top anymore. He admits to Jerry that he tried to fix it and he couldn’t. Jerry asks if he’s giving up and Max just replies that he’s going home.
Later, while talking on the phone, Max admits to Helen that he lied and things with Veronica didn’t go as planned. He tells her that the case against her got swept under the rug. His call is interrupted by shouting in the distance. As he goes to check it out, Elizabeth wheels a patient into a confusingly filthy OR, Iggy goes to the bathroom to learn there’s no toilet paper, Lauren’s ED is a mess because there are no orderlies and a nurse can’t scrub in because they’re out of clean scrubs. Veronica is seen shouting into her phone wanting to know why all surgeries were canceled while someone in her office tells her that all maintenance is MIA. Karen comes in after that and explains that all minor staff of New Amsterdam is holding a strike. Veronica tells her to leave so she can fix this and Karen tells her this is “the largest single day walk out in the country’s history of public health.”
The chants outside scream that “Dr. Fuentes has to go.” Max greets Jerry outside who tells him that he’s helped them and now it’s time that they help him. Meanwhile, tearfully Veronica turns in her badge. There’s a roof party to celebrate. Karen explains to Max that people didn’t do all of this because they hate Veronica, they did it because they love Max. New Amsterdam won’t be back until Max is.
New Amsterdam will be back next week on May 17 on NBC at 10 p.m. ET. Be on the lookout for more coverage of New Amsterdam in the future!