‘The Resident’: Is This the Beginning of the End of Cain & Red Rock at Chastain? (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 3, Episode 19 of The Resident, “Support System.”]
We may be witnessing the beginning of the destruction of Cain (Morris Chestnut), Logan Kim (Rob Yang), and Red Rock on The Resident.
The end of Episode 18 revealed that Dawn Long was brought back to Chastain (and died) with the superbug Candida auris — and as Cain was warned, “once [it] spreads throughout a building, it’s nearly impossible to eradicate.” Rather than take the necessary precautions and follow protocol (contact the state health board) to ensure that no one dies, Logan insists that Cain help him cover it up — or he’ll tell the world what happened when Cain was an intern.
“Candida auris is highly dangerous in immune-compromised patients,” Cain warns Logan of the deadly fungus. “Half the people who get it die. We’re lucky it’s not airborne like the coronavirus. The staff is not at risk, but the patients could be.”
“You have to handle this,” Logan stresses. “If it gets out now that we have deadly fungus at Chastain, this hospital goes bankrupt.”
So while they do close the ICU rooms where Dawn was, ostensibly to have new tech installed, that’s only the beginning of all the wrong moves Cain and Logan make. When the EMT who brought Dawn in comes in with non-specific symptoms, Cain guilts Ezra (Eli Gelb) — whose mother was a nurse who helped Cain when he was an intern, and in turn, Cain wrote Ezra a recommendation to get him a job at Chastain — into doing his dirty work.
(Guy D’Alema/FOX)
He shares his suspicion that Sophia has Candida auris, but he insists that Ezra treat her without Conrad’s (Matt Czuchry) knowledge. He has Ezra change the label on antifungals before giving the drug to Sophia. While Ezra follows his orders, he at least still sees the patient as human, and he panics when Conrad wants to give Sophia steroids because he suspects she has adult onset Still’s disease. Steroids could kill a patient with Candida auris. Cain immediately worries about the investigation that could trigger, not the life that could be lost.
Conrad comes to the Candida auris diagnosis on his own — he finds an ear infection, which is how it was discovered — and notifies the health department. Cain orders Ezra to get the bag of antifungals he hung, as the only thing to connect them to it. That’s when he shares what happened when he was an intern.
Laparoscopic instruments got infected by bacteria, and patients got sick just from routine procedures. Four died. Cain suspected the instruments were contaminated, but he never said anything out of fear. Red Rock covered for him, and Ezra’s mother took pity on him. Ezra retrieves the bag.
But Conrad’s diagnosis came too late, and Sophia dies. He thinks they could’ve saved her if they’d figured it out sooner, and that’s when Ezra confesses everything.
Conrad, of course, confronts Cain and urges him to admit he regrets going to Logan instead of the state health board, not going to Conrad, and using Ezra. “How could someone so brilliant, so gifted throw it all away and sell their soul to Red Rock?” Conrad asks. “Is it just the money? The power? Your name on a building? What does any of that mean at the end of the day if you can’t look in the mirror?”
(Guy D’Alema/FOX)
It does look like this has gotten to Cain, but will he change his ways? Will he come forward about Red Rock? Or will he continue to stay silent?
Early on in the episode, a room is set aside to decontaminate machines and instruments, and Cain makes sure that Dawn’s ventilator — easily distinguished from the others by the unicorn sticker — is moved up in line. But what he doesn’t know is that everyone takes a lunch break and an orderly takes the vent out of the room while they’re gone. The vent is moved around the hospital for the rest of the episode, from Kit’s son-in-law Derek’s room to Nic’s patient’s to the hallway.
Sadly, Cain doesn’t notice it and have it decontaminated, nor does it even stay in that hallway. Instead, Derek suffers complications that mean he must go on a vent to help him breathe and give his lungs time to heal – and as the final moments of the episode reveal, he’s on Dawn’s vent. As Cain said earlier, half the people who get the superbug die. Will Derek be the next Chastain patient to suffer as a result of Cain’s mistake?
“[Conrad’s] professional [life] is on shaky ground because Red Rock is still there and the intricacies of how that plays out is a major part for everyone in the show in [Episodes] 19-23,” Czuchry previously told TV Insider. We’ll have to wait to see if production shutting down as a result of the coronavirus pandemic affects that in any way.
The Resident, Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox
