Warning: Spoilers ahead for Season 4, Episode 5 of The Resident, “Home Before Dark.” Read at your own risk!
It’s hard to not get attached to characters of a television show and it’s hard to not cry when something happens to them. In the latest episode of Fox’s medical drama The Resident, one of Chastain’s own became a patient, and the waiting game was an emotional one. Executive producer Andrew Chapman revealed the very real and scary truth behind the terrifying storyline.
As Chastain Memorial was getting ready to shut down after Red Rock sold the hospital, Nic (Emily VanCamp) and Mina (Shaunette Renée Wilson) were confronted by a man who demanded to be looked at. When they denied him due to the hospital closing, he got violent. Mina tried to calm him down but it only escalated the situation and he took a knife to her arm. When Nic stepped in to help, she got the worst of it and was stabbed in the abdomen. Andrew Chapman told Entertainment Weekly why the story was important to tell and why Nic was the perfect person for that storyline. Chapman explained:
It's a huge, unspoken thing. Every nurse you ever talk to in every hospital in the entire country has at least one episode or more where a patient has attacked them. It's a constant thing and we wanted to show that. Nic is our No. 1 nurse, so she was the perfect person and this was the right moment to do it because we also wanted to show that when hospitals close down, people suffer and patients suffer. Hospitals are closing down all over the country, and it's an issue.
Andrew Chapman went on to say that these episodes are interesting because they also showcase Conrad (Matt Czuchry) in a different light. As he and Nic are preparing to welcome a baby girl, the realization that he could lose both Nic and their baby hits him hard. And while Nic is the most vulnerable in the newest episode, the executive producer says Conrad is the most vulnerable that the audience has ever seen him, especially with the hospital closing down and lack of resources, something that is also sadly common to hospitals around the world.
The Resident is not the first medical show to involve a patient attacking a member of the medical staff, and it certainly won't be the last. In 2000, the long-running medical drama ER shocked fans when Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) and medical student Lucy Knight (Kellie Martin) were both stabbed by a schizophrenic patient. In 2016, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy had an episode where the often unlucky Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) was brutally attacked by a patient. As Andrew Chapman said, it’s a very real and terrible thing that happens.
The episode did end on a high note, as both Nic and Baby Hawkins pulled through after what seemed like an eternity. Nic woke up from her surgery and not wanting to wait any longer, she and Conrad did an ultrasound. When a heartbeat couldn’t be detected, they finally found it, strong as ever. And, thanks to Georgia's newest Governor and former Chastain patient, the hospital will also most likely be saved and turned into a public facility, rather than private.
With The Resident tackling both COVID-19 and now this storyline, what could the next one be? The series definitely shows just how strong nurses and doctors are, no matter what happens, and they are heroes because of it.
