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addictedtostorytelling · 1 year

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er episodes 06x13 “be still my heart” and 06x14 “all in the family” timeline

so in honor of it being valentine’s day yesterday, i decided to rewatch er episodes 06x13 “be still my heart” and 6x14 “all in the family.” in the process, i used time cues within the episodes to work out a rough timeline of the events in them, for anyone who is interested.

as preface to this timeline, i will note that most hospital emergency departments tend to run on staggered shifts so that there is a steady rotation of personnel coming on and off duty throughout the day and night.

in the timeline, i am going to refer to the 7:00am to 7:30pm shift as the day shift, though, in reality, it would probably more accurately be called a day shift, as there also likely would be people coming on and off at 7:30am and 8:00pm, 8:00am and 8:30pm, 8:30am and 9:00pm, and 9:00am and 9:30pm. the same is true of what i refer to as the night shift, between 8:30pm and 9:00am.

the fact that there is a seeming gap between the day and night shift can, again, be explained by the fact that there are actually multiple staggered day and night shifts, overlapping one another on both ends.

while the majority of the main characters in these two episodes—with the notable exception of kerry—work the day shift on 02.14.00, it can and should be assumed that there are many nameless er staffers who cover the gap between that shift and the night shift that goes into 02.15.00, as well.

so, with all of the above in mind, here’s what i’ve come up with.

timeline

02.14.00

episode 06x13 “be still my heart”

lucy, carter, luka, abby, dave, carol, jing-mei, mark, elizabeth, romano, malik, haleh, cleo, chuny, and conni all work day shifts, with most (but not all) of them coming in around 7:00am and being scheduled to go off-duty at around 7:30pm.

lucy takes paul sobriki on as a patient early in the day, around the start of shift, circa 7:00am or 7:30am (when mark and elizabeth are first coming on call). he is seemingly her first patient of the day and will continue to be her only patient as the day goes on, much to carter’s frustration.

lucy and carter have their fight over sobriki’s treatment a while before mrs. connelly’s death. it is difficult to say exactly when in the evening said fight takes place. however, later on, circa 8:00pm or so, it is mentioned that the leg lac patient carter refers to in this scene has been in the er for over four hours already, indicating that a decent amount of time has probably elapsed between the fight and the party. i estimate that the fight ends (with lucy telling carter to “forget it” and angrily storming back into exam #3 to tend to sobriki) at around 6:00pm or 6:30pm at the latest. this point marks the last time any of the main or minor characters seems to have eyes on lucy prior to when carter discovers her after they are both attacked. if leg lac guy comes in around 4:00pm and carter yells at lucy for being slow to see him at around 6:00pm or 6:30pm, only to then realize at around 8:00pm that she still hasn’t gotten around to doing so, then that sequence of events would track with his “four hours” comment.

of course, given that the lights are still on in exam #3 and there are still other people around at the point when lucy and carter part ways, lucy’s stabbing can’t take place in their fight’s immediate aftermath. more likely, sobriki attacks her much later, after the start of the party, hence why nobody hears the attack taking place and why there are no other staff in or around exam #3 to try to save her. i therefore estimate that the earliest time at which lucy might be stabbed is around 7:30pm, though more likely the attack takes place sometime around 7:45pm, once the party has really gotten going/noisy.

we see malik, the lpn working the sobriki case with lucy, at the party from its earliest stages. just knowing his personality and how social he tends to be, he may have even ducked out on her a bit early (i.e., before the end of their scheduled shift) in order to help set up for the party/get things going at admit, leaving her alone from as early as 6:00pm on.

abby pronounces her patient, mrs. connelly, dead at 7:19pm. the party has not yet begun at this point.

if the party starts at the end of the day shift at around 7:30pm, then it’s probably around 7:45pm to 8:00pm when carter finds abby smoking on the roof and they go back downstairs together. at that time, amira mentions that she can’t locate the knife they were going to use to cut the cake in the lounge, cuing us that sobriki has already long since gotten hold of it.

carter is likely stabbed around 8:00pm.

the entire stabbing sequence itself, from the time carter steps through the door of exam #3 to the time when he passes out, takes place over the course of only a little more than two minutes (i.e., less than half of the duration of the song “battleflag” by the lo fidelity allstars).

per what carol later tells kerry, mark and elizabeth leave the hospital at 8pm. my guess is that they actually leave a little before 8pm proper—more like 7:40 or 7:50pm—and that carol is just approximating/saying “eight” for the sake of the rhyme (“left at eight; double date”), hence why they are not present when carter and abby come back downstairs.

when we see mark and elizabeth at the pub with their parents at the end of episode 06x13 “be still my heart,” they have already been off of shift for long enough to have had dinner and drinks and to be several songs into karaoke. by my estimates, it’s probably about 9:30pm to 9:45pm when they are paged back to county after carter and lucy are discovered.

episode 06x14 “all in the family”

to start out the episode, kerry comes on for a night shift, as do lydia and carl deraad from the psych department.

carol tells kerry and abby at the beginning of episode 06x14 “all in the family” that she’s been “on since 7[:00am] and has to come back by 7[:00am].” my guess is that she has stayed at the hospital a bit later than the end of her scheduled shift—at 7:30pm—in order to attend the party/make her handoffs to the night shift personnel coming on duty. by the time she starts getting ready to leave the hospital, it is probably around 8:30pm.

dave remarks that he’s on until 9:00pm when carol informs kerry that mark left early, indicating that it is not yet 9:00pm when kerry arrives.

my estimate is that kerry comes in around 8:30pm or so for an 8:30pm to 9:00am night shift. after running the board and picking up her first patient, she likely discovers carter and lucy at around 8:45pm or thereabouts.

if my timeline holds, lucy has already been down for between twenty minutes to a half-hour by the time carter is stabbed and for between an hour and an hour and fifteen minutes by the time weaver discovers them.

if my timeline holds, carter has already been down for between a half-hour and forty-five minutes by the time weaver discovers him and lucy.

by the time carter and lucy are wheeled in to the trauma rooms to receive their initial treatments, it is likely sometime around 9:15pm.

the clock in trauma #2 shows that it is about 10:05pm when carter is taken up to surgery.

the clock in trauma #1 shows that it is 10:10pm when mark and elizabeth return to the hospital and commence working on lucy.

the clock in admit shows that it’s 10:25pm when luka yells at amira about sobriki stealing the knife. at this time, kerry instructs amira to pull the emergency contact numbers for carter and lucy. however, neither one of their families ever makes it to the hospital while they are being treated. while we later learn that carter’s parents are in europe during these events, we’re never told what lucy’s mother’s whereabouts are. however, the fact that lucy’s mother doesn’t make it to the hospital in time to say goodbye suggests that she is far enough away that she cannot travel to chicago quickly, even perhaps if she gets on a plane.

the clock in the or where carter is being operated on says it is about 11:50pm when shirley shows up to request that either peter or anspaugh go to help cleo with her emergent patient.

02.15.00

carter is seemingly in surgery between 10:15pm on 02.14.00 and about 3:00am on 12.15.00.

peter is intermittently called away from the or between 12:30am and 3:00am to help with cleo’s patient.

lucy’s blood clot situation transpires between about 12:00am and 2:56am.

lucy is pronounced dead at 2:56am.

it is after 7:00am (and therefore the start of the next day shift) by the time carol and mark are standing outside of exam #3, looking at the crime scene. sometime afterward, robert and kerry prepare lucy’s body for morgue transport.

commentary

i've always felt like we’re supposed to read robbie and julia from episode 06x13 “be still my heart” as carter and lucy analogs. something, something about two wide-eyed kids being forced to confront death. something, something about the er staff desperately trying to shield them from that confrontation but ultimately failing. i dunno. maybe i'm reaching, especially because carter and lucy have nothing to do with that case. but it just seems like there’s a metaphor there.

the whole impetus for making this timeline was that i really wanted to get a feel for the last few hours of lucy’s life. just the notion of her being alone and bleeding in exam #3 for twenty minutes to a half-hour before carter comes to find her is devastating to think about. she must be so scared, lying on that cold floor, listening to the blaring party music, knowing that even if she somehow can scream—which of course she can’t because her throat is slit—no one will probably hear her. it must take all of her strength to cling to consciousness for as long as she does. i can’t even imagine how she must feel watching carter walk through that door, only to immediately see him be attacked. the look on her face when he finally locks eyes with her from the other side of that bed will haunt me forever.

having just giffed the scene, i swear to god she tries to say something/reach for carter before she passes out.

i am likewise struck by the fact that, all in all, about seven and some odd hours elapse in-between the time when lucy is stabbed and the time when she dies. in some ways, that’s such a long time. in other ways, it’s such a short one. i suppose that’s somewhat the point: she’s dead within the course of a single night shift.

i guess it hadn’t really occurred to me before—though it really should have—that not only does carter survive while lucy dies because his injuries are ultimately less severe than hers but also because she is down for much longer than he is on the whole. the fact that she may have been stabbed over an hour before she starts receiving treatment is what i think really seals her fate. otherwise, she might have been savable.

going back to what i mentioned in the timeline about lucy’s mother not making it to the hospital in time to say goodbye before lucy dies, it occurs to me that we never actually learn where lucy is from originally at any point during her tenure on the show. the fact that her mother is unable to travel to chicago during that five hour-window between when amira likely calls her at around 10:30 or 11:00pm on 02.14.00 and when lucy dies at just shy of 3:00am on 02.15.00 is just heart-wrenching—lucy is, as far as we know, her only child—as is the idea that lucy dies “alone in a foreign field,” faraway from wherever she grew up and where her family is located. her remains probably have to be flown back to her home state for her funeral.

something that didn’t come through to me when i used to watch these episodes when i was younger but which i can’t help but think about now: how young lucy is and how much how young she is gets to her coworkers as they are working on her. in s5, carter mentions that lucy is twenty-four years-old, so by s6, she’s either twenty-four or twenty-five years-old. when i first watched episode 06x14 “all in the family” back in 2000, i was only thirteen years-old myself, so lucy seemed like just another adult to me, but now that i'm in my late 30s, i realize what an absolute baby she is, and i can see that kerry, robert, and elizabeth all feel that way, too. not only does elizabeth literally refer to lucy as “that poor girl,” but you can just see by how everyone looks at her that they really can’t get over the fact that she is just a kid, far too young to die—which, of course, makes it all the more traumatizing when she does. the way elizabeth strokes her hair to comfort her before the procedure makes me want to bite something.

something, something about how lucy absolutely knows the second she throws that blood clot that she is going to die. you can see it in her eyes. kellie martin offers a masterclass in nonverbal acting there.

lucy’s last words are “i want to stay awake,” which she doesn’t even get to speak aloud—just whisper. somebody please sedate me.

in fact, lucy gets no audibly spoken dialogue in her final episode at all. there is probably a comment to be made about that fact, given how much of a role “not being listened to” plays in the circumstances leading up to her death.

i hadn’t realized before: carter’s surgery is being concluded right around the time that lucy dies. i've long been obsessed with the parallel between the story carter tells in episode 03x05 “ghosts” about how in his childhood he knew, without being told, that his brother bobby had died of leukemia and how in episode 06x14 “all in the family” he just seems to know, again without being told, that lucy has died, too, almost immediately upon waking up from surgery. i think there’s probably gotta be fic one could write there. something about carter and lucy “crossing paths” as he comes out of his temporary sleep and she enters into her final one.

along those same lines, it also strikes me as really tragic that though carter gets some periodic updates during the course of his treatment on lucy’s condition, lucy never, insofar as we see or hear, is told how carter is doing (and, of course, she can’t ask because she has no voice); she may very well die having no idea if he even survived the initial attack.

the found family stuff kills me. i mean, in an episode titled “all in the family,” they really had to make good on that premise, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park: the usually unflappable kerry throwing up in the trashcan after she has to crack lucy’s chest open. peter calling carter “man,” his affectionate nickname for reese, and being so frantic and blustering and almost wild throughout his course of care; just absolutely inconsolable until he knows for sure that he’s safe. the staff gathered at doc magoos swapping “family stories” about carter and lucy before chuny comes in bearing news of lucy’s death. how at the end, robert and kerry are absolutely framed as parents—the dad and mom of surgery and the er—tucking their little daughter lucy into bed as they prepare her body with the death kit. it's just all such a gut-punch and so, so good.

there are just so many wonderful storytelling beats. such stellar acting. superb pacing. such smart uses of silence and cut scenes. these episodes are so fantastic and heartbreaking.

twenty-three years later, and i’m still not over them. never will be.

#nbc er #er #**#my meta #meta: er #meta: lucy #meta: carter #ep06x13 #ep06x14 #let's talk shop

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