'Chicago Med' Season 5 Episode 3: Dr. Natalie Manning questioned as her patient goes into a coma as rumors about Maggie circulate
Season 5 of 'Chicago Med' premiered two weeks ago with the first episode being largely underwhelming. The episode featured the exits of Colin Donnell and Norma Kuhling as Dr. Connor Rhodes and Dr. Ava Bekker. The episode revolved around them and Natalie being unconscious from head trauma after an accident. The second episode picked up three months after the events of the first episode and was much better, wherein the doctors had to perform when power goes out at the hospital, with Natalie and Marcel both performing high-risk procedures successfully.
The third episode, "In The Valley of the Shadows", will air this Wednesday and viewers are waiting to see how the events unfold. The promo is centered on Natalie administers help to a young child who has been brought in with burns. According to the synopsis released for the episode, the parents of the child believe in only using holistic remedies. It also seems like Natalie may still be suffering the after-effects of her head trauma - she is shown getting confused between medicines prescribed to the patient, and is told at one point by Will to stay away from the patient. We also see him telling her that the child is now in a coma.
Of course, this might just be an attempt at misdirection by the showrunners and we do not know whether Natalie's troubles are as threatening as the promo makes them out to be. We've seen Will face the repercussions of disobeying a patient's DNR request for nearly a whole season, but those travails are over now.
Will Natalie have to go through the same thing and could this be what brings Natalie closer to Will again?
Elsewhere in the episode, it looks like Ethan and Marcel do not "see eye-to-eye over the treatment of a patient's chronic pain". In the last episode, Marcel's methods seemed controversial, something with which quite a few viewers agreed. Ethan is possibly the best doctor in the ED, and if there's a tiff between the two, it's something that we can expect to see through the season.
The synopsis also hints at rumors beginning to circulate about Maggie's condition. If you recall, her cancer was confirmed in the season premiere, and she preferred being treated in another hospital as she didn't want her colleagues to see her as "the sick person".
Of course, it would be difficult for Maggie to carry this out completely, especially if her cancer gets worse. Maggie has gotten so used to being the nurse in charge of the ED (and then the Hybrid OR), that she possibly can't see herself in a position of vulnerability.
'Chicago Med' airs on Wednesday nights on NBC.