The Pitt episode 3 recap: pain management

The Pitt episode 3 unfolds between 9 am and 10 am, and begins where the last episode ended — with Whitaker (Gerran Howel) giving CPR to his patient Milton, but to no avail. After 10 minutes, Robby (Noah Wyle) tells Whitaker to pronounce Milton dead. He initially refuses, but after another minute, Whitaker finally accepts that Milton is dead.

Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) is forced to recognize a reality of her own when the Nepalese woman whose leg was crushed by a train asks when Collins is due to give birth. This startles, Collins, who didn’t think she was showing, and prompts her to change her cardigan. It seems this is something she still wants to hide, including from Robby, as their history remains complicated and unsaid.

What else will the medical staff of the Pitt try to tackle? Here’s our recap of The Pitt episode 3.

Whitaker takes a minute

Whitaker tells King (Taylor Dearden) Milton was his first patient to die. In a debrief, Whitaker says Milton shouldn’t have been in the hall when he went into cardiac arrest. But Robby notes there was nothing that suggested they should have been monitoring him, with Collins and Langdon (Patrick Ball) backing up Robby and Whitaker’s treatment. Robby tells Whitaker no doctor on the planet could have caught Milton’s heart attack, meaning it wasn’t his fault. Robby pats Whitaker on his back and tells him he’s doing great.

Even so, Robby asks Dana (Katherine LaNasa) to keep an extra eye on Whitaker; he doesn’t want Milton’s death to throw him off his game. Dana is surprised that Robby thinks Whitaker has game, but Robby believes Whitaker deserves the opportunity to find out.

Slow-Mo

Robby asks Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) why she’s spending so much time with Joyce, the sickle cell patient? She should be seeing two patients an hour, not just one.

Mohan brushes off that her nickname is Slow-Mo, but Robby scolds her, saying she wastes time and money on unnecessary tests, she’s missing out on working on other patients and she’s keeping sick patients waiting too long. He tells her if she can’t be quicker, she should look into another position. Mohan promises to be quicker.

Then when a scared Whitaker takes too long to pick his next patient, Mohan helps him, saying he needs to confront his fears and treat the one who is most likely to die. The pair head off to treat the next patient together.

Patient updates

A quick summary of the other goings on in the Pitt. Javadi (Shabana Azeez) subtly quizzes Langdon about McKay (Fiona Dourif), hoping for answers regarding her ankle bracelet. He doesn’t have any. Javadi is then is put on the sport by Santos (Isa Briones), who apologizes for calling her Crash, but ultimately asks if she could get a letter of recommendation from Javadi’s mother, Eileen (Deepti Gupta), for surgery. That looks unlikely, as Santos clearly still infuriates Javadi.

One of the new patients of this episode arrives with a nail in his chest. They can’t take it straight out, otherwise he’ll die. They have to perform surgery to open his chest and take the nail out as smoothly as possible. Santos excitedly watches and contributes to the gory surgery. When the patient is wheeled away for additional surgery, Santos boasts to King she just held a beating heart in her hand.

King, meanwhile, asks Kiara (Krystel V. McNeil) for an update on Tyler, the kid who overdosed on cannabis gummies. Kiara says he’ll be fine. The parents are a different question. While Tyler won’t be taken away from them, they might need counseling.

After Robby gives Jack’s (Shawn Hatosy) letter to the sister of the patient he couldn’t save overnight, McKay asks Robby for an update on David, the kid who was found with a list of women’s names from his school that he wanted to hurt. She wants Robby to do more to find him, but David didn’t go to school, so one is sure where he is. What Robby can do is ask Theresa (Joanna Going), David’s mother, to try to remember the names on the list.

Acceptance

Robby tells Nick’s parents they are conducting another test to confirm if their son is indeed braindead. When he’s still unresponsive, there’s only one more test they can do, regarding the blood flow to Nick’s brain. If that comes back negative, then he’s dead.

Elsewhere, an unconscious Jenna arrives at the hospital. Javadi can’t find her pulse, but suddenly Jenna rises up. Jenna reveals she took half a Xanax. It turns out, Nick and Jenna knew each other, with Jenna saying Nick gave her the drugs. Nick’s dad calls Jenna a liar and blames her for Nick’s death.

Later, when they’re alone, Nick’s parents finally understand what Robby is saying, and they sadly accept that Nick is dead.

Another difficult situation remains with Mr. Spencer, who is still unconscious with an intubator in his mouth, even though he signed a do not resuscitate order. His daughter Helen (Rebecca Tilney) wants Robby to do more procedures to keep her father alive, but Robby says each one will be more invasive. When Mr. Spencer struggles again, Robby says the only way to stop his pain is to take out the intubator. Helen knows that will kill him, so she briefly refuses. She ultimately accepts her dad’s fate when Robby reminds her that her father will no longer be in any pain.

The Pitt streams exclusively on Max, with new episodes releasing on Thursdays.