Unbeknownst to her, however, Ethan died minutes earlier in the season 2 premiere and not for lack of the hospital staff’s trying. Having entered the hospital unconscious and with a POLT (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment), Ethan is allowed to peacefully drift away into death in accordance with his written wishes. Whitaker (Gerran Howell), bless him, uses Mr. Bostick’s passing as a lesson on the fragility of life and the limitations of healthcare to his interns, Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) and Kwon (Irene Choi).
It’s a touching moment for both the healthcare providers and the audience as Whitaker asserts himself as Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wyle) most attentive and empathetic acolyte. But that’s all it is: a moment. Because the thing about moments is that there’s always another moment after them and then infinite more moments after those until the world ends… or at least until one’s brain loses the capacity to recognize fresh moments. Unfortunately, that’s the reality facing Mrs. Evelyn Bostick.
When Whitaker gently informs Evelyn that her husband has died, she responds with all the ache, revulsion, and denial that one would expect. “He died? Ethan? No. No. Are you sure? No, no, no, no, no. Ethan isn’t sick!” Whitaker leaves her to mourn privately but later returns upon her request only to discover that Mrs. Bostick doesn’t recall their conversation from roughly 15 minutes prior. Upon even hearing the name “Ethan,” Evelyn lights up with a girlish excitement and eagerly asks to see her lifelong love, only for Whitaker to have to deliver the grim news a second time. The poor woman’s subsequent reaction is so similar to her first that it very well could have been re-used from the first scene and no one would be the wiser.
The tragic saga of Evelyn Bostick – which culminates in a third moment featuring her still unable to understand her husband’s death despite being in the presence of his body – is heart shredding stuff. “This has been such a long day,” she sighs less than three hours after sunrise. It’s also fair and unpretentious. There’s no narrative trickery or creative flourish here (beyond a simple “rule of three”) to conjure up pathos. It’s simply another very bad hour in a very long day. And yet, even within The Pitt‘s stylistic limitations, it feels as though the show has constructed a meaningful thematic mood for the whole episode. The mood, of course, being “I can’t believe we have to keep doing this shit over and over again.”
The sterile hallways and restless churn of the Pitt appear to have a time-suspending effect on its occupants. Dr. Robby and friends could go their entire 15-hour shifts encountering the same traumas over and over, and never once knowing the hour unless they have to announce a patient’s time of death. It’s Groundhog Day with stethoscopes, which is fitting given that Pittsburgh counts Punxsutawney Phil as a neighbor.
Season 2 episode 2 is filled with instances of doctors and patients confronting the depressingly familiar for the umpteenth time. “You want to jump on this trauma with me?” Dr. Robby asks Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif). When she asks what the trauma is, he responds hopefully “It’s a surprise!” But it’s not really much of a surprise. It’s a gruesome but treatable open dislocation that Dr. Robby knows a creative way to fix. Dr. Al-Hashimi, new and unfamiliar with the rhythms of the Pitt, suggests they bring in ortho immediately. Robby, McKay, and Dr. King (Taylor Rearden) know better, with Robby saying “We’re gonna get this before ortho even answers the page.” And so they do! It’s Groundhog Day, after all.
