Summary: Morris is starting what he calls his best Valentine’s Day ever with Claudia. She’s up early to go to work, as she’s trying to show that the precinct made the right decision in making her a detective. She asks him to get her some candy hearts, something he claims he’s never eaten. She has a hard time leaving him behind in bed and getting on with her day.
Neela and Brenner are also in bed, talking about memorable Valentine’s Days past. Hers was with her high school boyfriend, who gave her a tiara because he saw her as a queen; his was with a woman he want to Bali with. He’s pretty sure her name was Nicole. He brings up the possibility of taking a trip with Neela, who says she’d be open to that in a month or so.
Sam’s at work already, talking to Alex on the phone. He dated some girl for a couple of days, but she just dumped him over the phone. On Valentine’s Day, too! Sam, Gates, and Morris meet an ambulance bringing in a guy who got in a fight involving a tire iron, then another ambulance carrying a 63-year-old man named Teddy who developed breathing problems at a wedding. He explains that the couple wanted to get married at daybreak. A woman with him adds that the theme was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Teddy was officiating as Puck.
The first patient, Jackson, has a tire iron sticking out of him. Yikes. Sam gives him medications without consulting a doctor, something she’s allowed to do when she works on the OR floor but not in the ER. Gates chastises her and she, of course, doesn’t handle it well. Sigh. It’s another one of those episodes where the two of them are tense and annoying, AKA all of season 15.
We haven’t seen Banfield in a while, and she and Russell haven’t made any progress deciding how to expand their family, now that IVF is likely off the table. She’s hesitant to adopt, since she’s worried that they won’t love the child the way they would a biological child. She’s open to asking her college-aged niece to donate an egg.
Claudia and a detective named Mallory come to County to question Jackson about the brawl that ended with him getting the tire iron jammed in his stomach. He’s not really in the mood to chat. He also isn’t in the mood for surgery, so he just pulls the thing out by himself. That’s a bad thing to do, by the way. And he still needs surgery, so now he just looks dumb.
Banfield is arriving as Lucy’s foster father drops her off outside. Brenner wanted her to come by because they’ve found a heart for Joanie. Neela just has to go pick it up. Jerry has a girlfriend, Doris, who he met dog-sledding in Alaska, and he’s thrilled when she sends him a giant gift basket for Valentine’s Day. I think it’s bigger than Lucy is. Sam and Gates make up, and he tells her to just let him know what she plans to do in the future before she does it.
The bride and groom from the wedding are making out at the end of Teddy’s gurney. He thinks they had too many mushrooms, and he doesn’t mean the psychadelic kind. He’s an expert mushroom hunter, and the bride, Nina, is a chef. Teddy feels bad that the wedding might not happen because of him, when he’s the one who brought the bride and groom together. Apparently there are mushroom pheromones, and Nina and the groom, Kevin, fell under their power and developed feelings for each other.
On her way out with Mallory, Claudia gives Morris some candy hearts, saying he’s been deprived. Neela gets a package from Ray and goes to the lounge to open it. He sent her a mix CD that starts with Pete Yorn’s “Crystal Village.” Music montage! Morris looks through the candy hearts Claudia gave him, which include one that says “kiss me.” Brenner watches through a window as Joanie gives Lucy her necklace for safekeeping. Gates and Sam sneak glances at each other in a hallway. Across the street at the mini-mart, Banfield meets up with her niece.
Outside, a very familiar face arrives in the ambulance bay. John Carter is back at County, where so much has changed that no one at the front desk knows who he is. He tells Tracy and Grady his name, but it means nothing to them. Gates finds it familiar: “Are you the one that got that nurse pregnant and moved up to Seattle?” Welp, that’s the first and last time Carter has ever been mistaken for Doug.
Teddy offers the staff a bottle he says contains a love elixir. It’s actually mushroom juice. Gates is familiar with the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and knows beter than to drink it. Carter says what happened in the play was a mistake. Teddy notes that without that mistake, there wouldn’t be a play. Carter noses into his case, which Gates doesn’t appreciate. Carter finally sees someone familiar when Zadro brings in a patient. Zadro asks if Carter’s coming back to County, and he says he might, depending on some things.
Banfield’s niece, Laura, wants to donate an egg, but Banfield wants her to be sure that she knows what she’ll be getting into. Laura reminds Banfield of a time when she was a teenager and ran off with an older guy. Banfield and Russell were the only adults in her life she felt she could talk to. They went to get her and took care of her. She stayed with them for a week, getting past her sadness by spending time with Daryl. Laura wants to do something now to repay Banfield’s kindness.
The patient Zadro brought in (who doesn’t have a name, so I’ll call him Guy, because I’m creative like that) was giving the police a statement about the brawl Jackson was involved in when he passed out, apparently from injuries he sustained in the fight. Carter comes in as Morris is tending to him and comments that Morris is all grown up. He’s going to be in Chicago for a while and wants to pick up some shifts. Morris tells him to talk to Banfield about getting privileges. Carter is pleased that Morris followed the advice he gave him years ago – he’s setting the tone.
Brenner checks in with Neela, who’s sent Joanie to surgery for her transplant and is about to leave to get her heart. Neela grabs a motion-sickness patch, since the unsteadiness of helicopters makes her nauseous. Brenner wonders if boats do the same. Morris asks Zadro if his report on Guy’s injury was accurate – it seems like he took more than just one punch to the face during the brawl. Zadro says he’s just going by what the police told him. Maybe Guy hit his head when he fell.
Morris brings up the issue to Claudia and Mallory as well. Mallory clarifies that Guy was hit by someone in his holding cell at the police station. The cops on duty should have been watching more closely. Claudia’s face says that there’s more to the story, but Morris doesn’t seem to notice. Carter wanders around the ER, getting peer-pressured about drinking the mushroom juice. He wisely declines. He reunites with Sam, then Jerry. Jerry introduces him to Banfield, but she doesn’t have time to talk – something’s wrong with Joanie.
Morris goes back to Claudia and Mallory to show them Guy’s scans, which show some major brain injuries. They could only come from multiple blows to the head from different directions. He thinks whoever told the cops the story of Guy’s assault is lying. Mallory says he’s the one telling the story. Claudia looks ashamed that she has to play a part in this.
There’s a national shortage of neurosurgeons, and County’s isn’t currently in the building, since he splits his time with another hospital. Guy doesn’t have time to wait for him to come, so Morris and Sam agree to do a procedure in the ER that will help him. Joanie has some complication involving her LVAD (a device pumping her heart – Grey’s Anatomy fans are familiar with it) and needs to be intubated. Grady finds a pump they can use to make it work manually until they can get Joanie to the OR. Now they just need to keep her going until Neela gets back with the heart.
Morris drills into Guy’s brain with Tracy and Sam looking on. Dawn’s like, “I’m not getting involved,” and flees. The procedure works, and Sam and Tracy both praise Morris for his aggressive treatment. At the admit desk, the mushroom juice bottle is empty, since Jerry drank it thinking that it was something chocolate. He tells Carter he looks great in his jeans. Now that’s a pairing that never got explored in the series!
Alex comes in to mope in the lounge, and Sam tries to assure him that he’ll move on from his breakup. When Carter comes in, Alex is like, “Cool, you can entertain my mom while I go anywhere else but here?” Carter advises Sam not to let him drink what Jerry drank. Heh. He asks after Abby and Luka, who Sam says are doing great. I’m so sure Carter actually cares about Luka.
He finally gets the chance to talk to Banfield, offering to pick up some shifts for free. Since they’ve both done relief work, she knows he’ll need some retraining. He’s up for it, and he notes that his familiarity with County will give him a leg up. Banfield confirms that Carter knew Mark, who Carter says he learned a lot from. Banfield has no other questions, except to ask when Carter can start.
Morris tells Claudia that he probably saved Guy’s life with his procedure, but there’s no way to know yet if he’ll make any kind of meaningful recovery. She’s hesitant to open up, but he can see that something’s bothering her. She confesses that she caught three cops beating up Guy. She didn’t know what to do, so she walked away. Ten minutes later, she checked on him and had to convince the other cops to let her call 911. Morris asks if she told Mallory. She says she didn’t have to, since he was one of the attackers.
Morris tells Claudia that she can’t just sweep this under the rug. She doesn’t know what to do – she’s a newbie and has to follow orders. She wouldn’t even be a detective without Mallory’s help. Morris won’t let up on pressing her not to ignore this. She tells him there’s a code about not turning on one of your own. You can never come back from that.
Neela’s back with Joanie’s heart, telling Brenner about how quickly she was able to get it and get back. She doesn’t think she could do transplant surgery all the time, but there’s a rush to it. Brenner’s shift is over, but he’s going to stick around to make sure Lucy’s not alone. Joanie’s surgeon gives Neela the honor of taking out Joanie’s heart. But seconds later, Shirley reports that a doctor from the hospital where they got the new heart is on the phone and wants them to stop. There’s been a mistake.
Neela gives Lucy, Brenner, and Banfield the news that there was a screw-up with blood types. (The donor’s was mislabeled. I imagine someone got fired for that error.) The good news is that they haven’t implanted the new heart yet, which would have really caused some problems. The bad news is that Joanie currently has no heart. She’ll have to be on a bypass machine until they find a new one.
Morris informs Claudia and Mallory that he’s required by law to report the inconsistencies between Guy’s injuries and the official story about his assault. Mallory isn’t happy, but he can’t exactly object without looking like he’s hiding something. Gates tries to do the paternal thing with Alex, encouraging him to take his heartache and channel it into something positive.
Banfield finds Lucy half-heartedly (ooh, sorry) making paper valentines in the lounge and sits with her. Lucy reveals that she’s always known that Joanie isn’t her biological mother. She found a picture of her birth mother holding her as a baby and figured it out. It never bothered her, since Joanie loved her and they were always happy. She knew that Joanie did for her what a “real” mother would do.
Teddy wants to leave so he can marry Nina and Kevin before sunset. Gates and Sam tell him that he has a condition related to an immune reaction to mushroom spores. It’s pretty common with people who work with mushrooms, and Teddy even knows the fungus that probably caused it. He knew he’d likely get the condition some day.
He thanks Gates and Sam for their work and says that County is nowhere near as bad as people say. That said, he’s not staying for treatment. The only cure is to stay away from mushrooms, and he’s not going to do that. He heads out with the wedding guests, who have been dancing around the ER all day.
Claudia chastises Morris for what he pulled with Mallory. She was going to handle things herself, and she doesn’t appreciate his version of help. Now the cops will know that she told him what really happened. Mallory tells Morris that it turns out there was an incident that some of the cops didn’t want to bring up. They’ll be disciplined, since their “infraction” is unacceptable. Mallory will make sure that Morris gets the proper reports to update Guy’s chart. Claudia leaves with Mallory, glaring at Morris. I don’t think his Valentine’s Day night will be as good as his Valentine’s Day morning.
Carter says good night to Morris and is on his way out when he runs into Neela. He’s happy to see how well she’s doing at her job. She’s apparently kept up with news related to him and knows that his clinic is finally about to open. As he’s leaving, Jerry calls after him, “John! Call me!” He gives Neela a gift Brenner left her, a pink shirt and a map with a location marked with a heart.
Another music montage! Carter goes to the clinic and wipes snow off the sign outside memorializing Joshua. Lucy goes to see Joanie, giving her a homemade valentine. Banfield looks in at her, likely thinking about how adoption wouldn’t be so bad after all. Carter stands by the frozen lake for a while. Sam watches Gates and Alex play basketball together.
Neela follows the map to the water, where Brenner greets her in Italian and says it’s the closest thing they have to a canal. He wants to take her to Venice in the spring. She appreciates the romantic gesture, which he says is just the beginning. Carter ends his day at a hospital that’s not County, in a room of people receiving dialysis. Hmm…
Thoughts: Teddy is played by Wallace Shawn.
If you plan a wedding that starts before 6 a.m., please know that all your friends hate you.
Sam, don’t act bratty when you do something you know you’re not supposed to do.
Baby Ariel Winter (Lucy) crying is a heartbreaker.
'90s Flashback 
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