- Hospital administrators call on William after a nurse collapses in the O.R. William finds himself going head-to-head with a genius transplant surgeon who contends that his addiction makes him a better doctor. Meanwhile, Melissa takes in the nurse's son while she detoxes, awakening old issues.
- Inspired by a true story ...
The Cleaner wonders if God ever has His (or Her) heart broken. Somehow we doubt it. A hospital administrator visits William at the garage and shares an anonymous letter heavily hinting that someone on the doctoring staff is using drugs. The admin thinks it might be a Dr. Jake. "You think he's using speed?" the Cleaner asks. Bingo.
Cut to Dr. Jake, a devil-may-care heart surgeon who is good-looking enough to appear on TV hawking artificial hearts. Cut back to the garage. "If this gets out, we could get sued or shut down," the admin says. Worse: Someone could die. Cut to the operating room. Dr. Jake finishes up an operation and then injects himself with something. We're betting its not sugar water.
Later, Akani goes undercover as a nurse named Tami. William, meanwhile, poses as an unnamed janitor. He watches as Dr. Jake examines a young girl before taking her worried parents out into the hallway and suggesting a cutting-edge artificial heart. "She'll die without it," Dr. Jake insists. "For now, let's just believe that a suitable donor will come through, but if it doesn't, let's believe in me." Akani reports that she has noticed a nurse named Carrie using. Could she be Dr. Jake's supplier?
An emergency calls comes in, giving Akani and William a chance to search the doc's office. Sure enough, they quickly discover evidence of "good old fashioned speed" (as opposed to that new fangled speed, we guess). William confronts the admin, telling him that Carrie is "high right now." Bad news as Carrie is currently helping out in surgery. Just as the admin is about act, Carrie collapses on the floor of the O.R. "What about my son?" she moans. William promises to take care of the boy, named Aidan.
Back at the garage, William entertains Aidan when Melissa suddenly enters. Turns out William forgot that he was going to help pack up clothes for Goodwill (poor guy gets kicked out of his home and STILL has to do housework?). Melissa can't stay angry, though. She calls Aidan "adorable" and volunteers to take him home for a few hours.
Later, William and the admin confront Dr. Jake, who is defiant. William suggests that the maybe-not-so-good doc take a urine test. "Contact my lawyer and we'll set up a date," Dr. Jake sneers. The admin threatens to file a formal report if the test is positive. Or, Dr. Jake can take the test now and the results will be kept secret. Dr. Jake relents. While he urinates (and William watches, because he "has to"), the doctor tells the Cleaner that he is not an addict. What he does to keep himself operating at peak levels for 96 hours at a time is his business. "These results don't matter ... I matter," Dr. Jake says. "What I do matters." We'll see about that, doc.
William retreats to the admin's office, where the bureaucrat explains that Carrie's husband died in a plane crash some years ago. Since then, Jake is the only one who "has earned her trust," the admin says. A sad story, indeed. William takes a tour of the hospital with Dr. Jake, who explains that the girl from earlier will die if he doesn't operate on her TOMORROW. But uh-oh! Dr. Jakes drug test is positive, meaning he can no longer operate! William looks at the little girl. What a pickle for our Cleaner. Dr. Jake argues that a "drug can retrain the body to do things that nature would not have it do." In other words, speed makes the man a better doctor. No dice, doc. "If you walk out that door, Jake, I will call the AMA and have your license revoked," the admin says.
Melissa, in the meantime, plays Monopoly with adorable Aidan. She gets a phone call. Akani says that Aidan's mom is coming to get him. Turns out the hospital admin can't keep Carrie at the garage against her will. Back at the garage, Akani tries to convince Carrie to stay and get clean. Just then, William arrives with Jake -- her boyfriend! "I'm staying," he says. "We need help." Suddenly, Carrie decides that staying isn't such a bad idea, after all.
The next morning, Dr. Jake is shaking. "The first day is always the hardest," William says. The speed freak can't believe he "was that far gone." Against every fiber of his God-complex being, Dr. Jake asks for help. "You can't know what it's like to take things from a body that should not be taken," he cries. Suddenly: a phone call. The little girl at the hospital is not responding to life support. She needs surgery. "You know somebody else who can put that heart in that girl?" Dr. Jake asks. "I can do this. I can do it, William." Can he? The man's hands are shaking, for Pete's sake.
So what does William do? "It's going to be on my watch and on my turns," he says before injecting the doc with amphetamines. The hands stop shaking and Dr. Jake's bleary eyes focus. William, on the other hand, looks as if he has just made a deal with the devil. Cut to the hospital where the admin doesn't like the plan -- not one bit. But he has no choice. No one else can do the surgery, apparently. Dr. Jake leaves the office to scrub up.
Back at the garage, Carrie awakens to find Dr. Jake missing. Suddenly, she is not so happy to be sleeping in the garage. In fact, Carrie begins to have visions of the plane crash that killed her husband. The poor woman is cracking up. "He's going to need me," she says of Dr. Jake. "He always needs me." Akani assures Carrie that Jake will be back. Akani then correctly guesses that it was Carrie who sent the anonymous letter to the hospital. "I don't want to lose him," she says. "I don't want to lose anybody ever again."
Cut to the hospital. Dr. Jake is scrubbed and about to step into the operating room when he turns to William and smiles. "I'm going to do this on MY terms, with MY drugs," he says. It's always me, me, me with this guy. Dr. Jake, still smiling, then tosses back a handful of hidden pills. William is aghast. So is the hospital administrator. The good doc is now performing heart surgery on speed. Again.
Later, the girl wakes up in the recovery room. It looks as if the surgery was successful. Dr. Jake, the Cleaner and especially the little girl got away with one today. But will the doc return to recovery as promised? "You and I both know that's not going to happen," he says with a feces-eating grin. He then dares the admin to sack him. "You are all so stuck behind God and the 'right thing,' " Dr. Jake says. "In my world, there is no other God than me ... Let me have my flaws for the greater good." No can do. "It's over for him," the administrator says to William. "It's probably over for all of us."
But it turns out that Dr. Jake resigns before he can be fired. And why not? Every hospital in the world wants him. The cocky doc then pulls up to William's garage to pick up Carrie. "She called me," he tells William with a smile. The Cleaner goes inside, asking Carrie to stay. "He's going to marry me," she says. Says William: "The same guy that got you hooked on drugs?" Carrie appears to reconsider. She looks from Dr. Jake to her son to William and back again. Finally, she decides to ditch the doc and stay clean. Dr. Jake pulls away in his sports car. You could even say he "speeds" away.
The team goes 1-for-2 this week -- and that just might break God's heart.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content