Previously on saving hope
Alex was stabbed, had Heart surgery, went into a coma and was woken with amnesia by Joel’s kiss (I will always remember this). Charlie despite being asked to do so would not leave Alex alone, whilst Joel gave her what she needed a friend and not a carer. Maggie was having a hard time dealing with her emotions when her first period since the miscarriage starts and has to deal with closure and properly say goodbye and we now know that Reycraft and Dawn have a little thing going on.
Season 3 episode 4 Stand By Me
We open with Alex lying in bed and Charlie bringing in breakfast for her, he places it down and she turns to look at him (or maybe his toned Biceps) she goes to get up and get coffee and he insists he gets it as he is in charge of her recuperation, as he walks out the room she looks a little frustrated and not as happy as you would think. At the hospital Dawn is checking over Alex’s stitches and Alex mentions that they are rubbing on her Bra, after this they talk about the fact dawn is to shadow Alex on her first day back for 4 hours in the ER.
Joel walks into Gerrard Community Church, it seems to be used as a homeless and poor community centre with soup station and clothing areas, people all sat at tables, he walked up to the queue for the clinic and asks for Dr Selena Quintos as he has an envelope for her, he is approached by a man asking if he is a doctor and he says yes but he doesn’t work there and then spies blood on the man’s hand, the man explains that his brother needs medical attention, Joel goes to look and as he removes a bandage he sees that the man has been shot. Charlie is in the café getting some coffee and spies a mature lady in the queue looking at the pastries, he tells her to go on and get one and she looks at him and says that her eating days are over, she died last night and that she is hanging around waiting for her husband to join her.
Dawn and Alex are in the ER they are to treat a man who is being rolled in screaming to keep a woman away, as we see him more clearly he has a pair of gardening shears in his side, Alex starts to check the wound and the area around it and hesitates, both dawn and Zach look at her, Alex says she can continue. Alex checks him over with an ultra sound and dawn says the shears are deep what about the surrounding area, she mentions it being fatty tissue and the man says did she just call me fat, (bedside manner kind of missing here), Zach says he can take the shears out and Dawn says he is Alex’s patient, Alex then takes a breath and Yanks the shears out of his side, she then moves on to her next patient with a take no prisoners vibe to her.
Joel bursts into the clinic with The brothers Gabriel and Paul, Selena isn’t too happy (she is played by Lexa Doig, Michael Shanks wife and she is great in this episode) Joel explains he is a Dr, she chucks him a pair of gloves and he starts to look at the wound, she looks as well and mentions the size and gun it could have come from and says she was a field medic in Afghanistan hence her knowledge of the type of wound. They both know that with there being no exit wound they need imaging to find out where the bullet has gone, Paul isn’t happy and says hospitals mean police, which means immigration, he takes Joel’s phone and then pulls out a knife on them and shouts for them to fix his brother now. Joel starts by injecting the wound and Selena talks to Paul letting him know she treats anyone here no matter their circumstances, as it’s a safe place, Paul says he isn’t safe their home was broken into and his brother was shot. Selena looks at Paul and asks if he was hurt, she says he has blood on him and when he looks she is able to take the knife from him and push him to the ground, something that surprised Joel, Paul is not happy and tries to take his brother mentioning that they are from Uganda and that Gabriel is Gay, Joel knows that this means if he was sent back he would be killed so sets about getting the bullet out.
Charlie knocks on Gavin’s office door, Gavin looks a bit worse for wear as he slowly makes it to the door with a toothbrush in his mouth, Charlie mentions they were supposed to have an appointment (Gavin does not seem to have taken the break up to well) Charlie hands Gavin his coffee and Gavin turns shutting the door on Charlie behind him. Alex is looking at a man who has breathing difficulty and is coughing, he is Glen and is a keen bird watcher and as they want to run tests due to his high temperature and crackly lungs he will miss his bird watching this weekend, his wife goes to get him a few things. Alex walks out and dawn is waiting with more cases for her to do and walks over to the desk, Maggie notices she is bleeding and offers to help, she puts a dressing on top of the stitches as they are rubbing on her bra, Maggie mentions that Alex has friends and she can talk to them.
Charlie is talking to Gavin’s boss about how Gavin is missing meetings and seems a little different, he says he will see him and see if he can help. Gavin is in his office drinking the coffee he shares an office with someone I would like to call Dr annoying as he really does annoy me, this doctor is going on about reasons to be the way Gavin is at the moment, Gavin does not have any of these reasons, Dr annoying leaves the room and Gavin finds some sugar to go in the coffee and make it sweeter (remember his sweet tooth), Dr annoying comes back in and says that his trial in to placebos and drugs uses LSD which is in the sugar, he asks Gavin how many he took and Gavin says 3, he says Gavin will be high very soon.
Alex is looking at glen as his breathing has gotten worse and Dawn comes over to see how she is doing, Alex is checking the heart and cannot find a pulse or heart beat in the patient. Joel and Selena are taking out the bullet from Gabriel, when it is removed blood spurts out, Joel has to try to fix the artery that the bullet was sitting in and make sure that they don’t stop the supply from getting to the hand, which means it will be tricky, Paul has to hold Gabriel down whilst they do this as it will be painful, as they begin and cut into his arm, he is yelling and screaming, Paul says it is too much for him to take, Joel says they need painkillers and Selena walks out of the room, saying she is going to buy some drugs. Alex tells Glen that he has a rare condition called Situs Inversus Totalis, this means all of his inner organs are back to front, which is why Alex couldn’t get a heartbeat as his heart is on the right not the left, they say that he has had a heart attack and they need to monitor him and see what course of action they need to take.
Gavin who is now most certainly high, is hiding under a table wrapped in an orange blanket, he is upset and says “I’m an Orange, everyone wants to peel me!” (Gavin in this episode is epically awesome I love him) his boss and Dr annoying are talking and end up using him as an experiment more than treating him when they agree how to treat him. Selena was able to get some lorazepam to calm down Paul as he is jittery and some Ketamine for Gabriel, when asked how she got them she simply answers with Don’t Ask (Lexa is awesome in this episode I’m so glad to see her and hope we see her again). Glen isn’t doing too well and they decide to operate on him, as they do this Dawn says her 4 hours are up and she is back on the board, Dawn mentions because of the rare condition that this will be a tricky surgery and asks Alex who is a left-handed surgeon how she copes with all the right-handed tools and procedures, she says she does the opposite of what Dawn does. As they scrub in Alex looks to the operating theatre and gets flashes of herself in the operating room on the table, Alex panics and says she isn’t ready and Dawn sends her home.
Dr Annoying and Gavin are having a conversation about his feeling and Gavin says that he wasn’t passionate enough for Maggie, which is to do with when she was pregnant and then miscarried, he then dodges a question aimed at whether he was his true self around Maggie and then runs off. Dawn and Reycraft start the surgery on Glen, she looks at the heart and tries to figure out how to approach the situation as it is all backwards, she moves to try to get a better angle from the other side and still has problems, she checks his vitals and then goes to get help.
Charlie walks into a room where a family are playing folk style music to an old man in a bed, Melinda says that they thought his wife Dee would hold on for him but she passed the previous night, as Melinda walks away we see Dee watching her husband talking about how the grandchildren are giving him a proper send off, that over 70 years they never spent a night apart, how he used to sneak in after she had given birth and still spend the night with her, you can see Charlie loves hearing this and is thinking about how romantic and true it sounds. Gavin is having a trip whilst walking about the hospital, the walls are moving, we have freaky music and sounds as he is staring at things we would normally not stare at, this includes his own hands looking at them as if they were new, he walks down the corridor and stops as he sees a woman walking with a baby towards him and then he smiles.
Dawn finds Alex and asks her to help on the surgery as she can’t see what she needs to and with Alex being a left-handed surgeon she would be used to doing things abnormally to how they feel, Alex says she isn’t ready and she knows that the last time she was in the operating room she was being operated on, dawn says she knows that as she was the one operating on her, she mentions that she held her heart in her hand and she lets Alex know about the mistake she made and that made it the most scariest surgery she has ever had to do, Alex reluctantly agrees and they start the surgery and Alex makes the comment that even for a leftie this surgery is weird.
Joel patches up Gabriel and starts to talk to Paul about where they are from as he has been there himself, Gabriel is muttering the name Daniel and Paul says that Daniel was Gabriel’s Boyfriend, that both their names were on the list and Daniel was arrested, they had to leave him and the country before they were caught, Paul has said he tries to let his brother know he can find love again and Joel says that love is a complicated thing, they close up and the hand starts to pink up knowing that the surgery they just did was a success. Gavin is now slowly coming down from his high and is sitting talking with Dr annoying, as they talk he doesn’t see Dr annoying he sees Maggie and a baby (a big baby) and he doesn’t want to talk about her, how he tried everything to make it work for her, did everything she wanted, they talk about how his mother left him at the age of 7 to go and find herself and he is told that he is ok to go and find himself, that when your life changes its time to change your life, Gavin is feeling all the emotions he denied himself before, anger, surprise and even love.
Alex has finished the surgery and they have to get the excess air out of the heart and the best way to do this is shake the patient, they all together start to shake the patient and Alex starts laughing and thanks Dawn for this, as you can see she needed that push to let herself know she can do this, Dawn replies with ‘welcome back’. Dawn talks to Glen about the fact that his condition is so rare there is a lot they can learn from the video of the operation and that it will only be used for medical purposes and that he should maybe sign up to be a donor as his condition means that he would be very helpful if needed, Glen is wary he is used to being normal and worshipping the ground his wife walks on as she is special and he doesn’t want that to change, as he discusses this with Alex you can see her take it all in and think about how she has changed since she got her memory back.
Joel has changed out of his blood covered scrubs and has a top on he got from the lost and found which says ‘Zero to Horny in 2.5 beers’ (I love this top, suits him) he starts to talk to Selena about why he went to the clinic in the first place, he hands her the envelope and says it was from Ray Wilson who died, she looks at the envelope and smiles it seems he was giving her back money he stole from her, it was a thing they had, Selena hands the envelope to Joel and asks him to give it to Gabriel and Paul. Charlie walks in to see Gavin, Gavin talks about how the clear picture he had for his life has gone, his fate has changed and he is going away for a while (I am actually upset by this, I love Gavin and how sweet and caring he is, why does he have to go) Charlie hugs him and leaves, Gavin walks up to Maggie and has an orange, he peels it in front of her and hands her the inside, he announces he is leaving and then walks away.
We now have our slow music playing as we move to a close, Gavin steps out into the fresh air and smiles as he is starting a new, Glen is surrounded by doctors as they talk to him about his rare condition and his wife stands and sees how much people are paying attention to him, you can see a look in her face that shows she is not used to him getting the attention. Charlie looks at an empty room and sees Dee and her husband reunited just before they disappear. Alex gets home after a day at work and Charlie is waiting with large glasses of red wine, he asks her to sit and he starts to talk about how she is what he wants and how he wants to be with her, he pulls out a ring and says “I’m Marrying you!” (he doesn’t ask he is saying it) she looks sad and eventually says that she cannot pretend anymore, she can’t pretend that she is the same as she was, she has changed and she doesn’t think she loves him anymore, it settles in for her as she says it again “I don’t love you!” and that is how it finishes.
So at the end of Stand By Me, Gavin has left to find himself ( will miss him) and Alex knows she is different and doesn’t love him anymore (well he was acting like she belonged to him and no one else, which helped in pushing her away) so thank you and stay tuned for another episode recap soon. xxx
