Y’all don’t understand how much the casual reveal that Claire nearly killed a girl is haunting me.
That kind of mistake isn’t normal, or just part of learning to be a doctor. It’s straight up negligence. And it alludes to some hard truths about Fak’s favorite off-brand-Doctor-barbie. This is a long one, because I've discoverd: I HATE This Character with the power of a bazillion black holes.
I thought about putting a pic of Claire being all medical, but nobody wants to see that, so here’s this
Claire said, it was right in the girl’s chart that the patient had an allergy, and yet she just overlooked that, because she was “slammed”. Y’all. She works in an ER. Being busy comes with the job. Basic reading comprehension is all that was needed there. This piece of information is so disturbing because it immediately reveals that Claire is actually a pretty terrible doctor and specifically bad in the field she’s chosen: Emergency Medicine.
This, I think is Such an important reveal in the Claire - Carmy - Sydney triangle. Because I don’t care what anyone says, this show has been comparing & contrasting Claire & Sydney since the former appeared on the scene. (Don’t get me wrong, I HATE that, but it’s the way this show has chosen to go given the regular way they’ll cut from a Claire/Carm scene to Sydney, or from Syd to them.)
Hey, you know what all these scenes have in common? They come before or after cutting to/from Carm/Claire making out or having sex. That's weird. Probs doesn't mean anything. There are more in s3 but I don't feel like getting that.
We’ve talked before about how the ER is transitory, the point of the medicine that happens there is to assess immediate challenges so the patient can either be treated and released, or diagnosed and moved to an appropriate department within the hospital for continuing care. In the ER, long term care of someone isn’t the point. Speedy (And Accurate), diagnosis is needed, then the doctors move on to the next person.
So, think about how in the very first speed bump Claire encounters in her relationship with Carmy: overhearing him say he’s feeling terrible at the moment, while locked in a freezer, & she ups and bails, fast. No trying to find out what happened to oh, get him locked in a freezer? Or why he's having a panic attack around how terrible he’s feeling? I'm saying it right Now: Carmy does Not owe that woman an apology. The End.
But, I forced myself to listen to their entire conversation again s3, when Claire tells us about almost killing a girl. It starts off inane: which day of the week it is. Then which day is their favorite. And which is their least fav. (Side note, so glad we had to listen to this in our 10 episodes of supposedly efficiently curated storytelling) ahem, but they’re talking about the days of the week. We also learn Carmy has a deep burn on his hand that we’ve never seen before. He says he grabbed a really hot pot. She asks him if it hurt so bad that it didn’t hurt at all? He agrees yes. So the whole point of this interminable scene is: Carmy hasn't felt the pain of Mikey's death yet. Alrighty, noted.
Then she shares this odd story about the girl who’s bleeding to death from falling through a glass table. In her chart, it says the patient is allergic to penicillin. But Claire says she "read her chart wrong" - that implies there was something complex there to misinterpret. But really, she just missed something that was quite obviously stated in the girl's documented Allergies. This isn't difficult to interpret. Like I said above, this is just basic reading comprehension. There's nothing more complex to it. Claire fucked up to nearly Fatal result. She gave the patient penicillin. When she says they gave her epinephrin, it’s for stopping the allergic reaction, so more specifically - it stopped the girl’s throat from swelling closed so they could stop her being suffocated. It lowered blood pressure, so she didn't have a stroke or heart attack. (Hey, panic attacks can feel like this.) And a bunch of other things that saved the girl's life, to correct Claire's error, but this mistake of Claire's, isn't even the point of the story apparently. She wants to tell Carmy about how after the girl got out of surgery, the girl couldn't stop laughing... because she didn't feel the pain yet. This causes Carmy and Claire to make out - as you do. Then it cuts to Carmy staring into the dark abyss of his disassociation.
I expected this scene to cut to Sydney, since that's what they do. But you know what they did instead?? They cut to Marcus, grieving his mom. He turns on her unused heart monitor, for some auditory comfort. And am I glad it didn't cut to Syd, because please keep Sydney away from metaphors of Death. That's Claire's bag, got it? Got it.
So all of this is to say - Claire is not peace. Even Carm started to realize that when he agreed she might be haunting him. She represents unresolved grief, death of forward progress, avoidance, familial guilt. It's honestly really clear Carmy doesn't even like her that much, he was just using her as a distraction, and That's what he's sorry for. Also, she's just really bad at her job, which Sydney wouldn't know anything about. Thanks. In contrast, Sydney represents creation, future, tree of life and family. There's a reason Syd has one of the few scenes with Pete - the new father.
really one of the prettiest visual analogies I've seen on this show
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