She asks Lauren if she had anything to do with this, and while she says not and we don’t actually have any confirmation that she did, I think it’s pretty obvious from her face that she has made a risky decision here.
Hank suggests not-so-subtly that the Dean of Medicine might be willing to take a bribe, which Lauren is furiously against given the illegality of it, but when she and Leyla are later enjoying a romantic dinner, Leyla gets a call informing her that she is being offered a residency at New Amsterdam after all. It’s a good opportunity but it’s not quite good enough for Lauren, who, after passing off a girl with flipped-around organs and a dagger in her stomach to Floyd (more on him soon), goes to berate Hank, whose decision this was. Speaking of greasing a few palms, that’s largely what Lauren has to consider when her section of the episode reveals that Leyla was turned down for a residency at New Amsterdam, despite her recommendation, and will instead be going to Spokane, Washington. As it turns out – we don’t learn this until later – she has really bad bronchitis, not cancer, but she didn’t know that at the time!
She’s nasty about Mina, obliquely blames Helen for the fact she’s hacking up claret and doesn’t offer a word of thanks when Helen greases a few palms, figuratively speaking, to get her examined. Helen also runs into her mother while she’s in Blighty, and when she discovers she’s coughing blood she takes her to the clinic where Helen herself volunteered as a youngster.
So, “Death Begins in Radiology” starts with Helen, who is in London parting ways with Mina it’s an unceremonious way to write that particular character out of the show, which I assume is its purpose, but she was a bit whiny for my tastes anyway. That leaves room for several other characters to turn the page on their respective subplots, many of which have been developing for the whole season (or at least several weeks.) (It plays a little weird given the voicemail, honestly, but beggars can’t be choosers.) This means that for once Max is largely side-lined, or at least doesn’t hog the limelight completely. His quest to find it drags him through everyone else’s storylines until he meets Helen in the middle, and we get that big moment of them solidifying their mutual attraction. It picks up a month after the end of the previous episode and starts with Max both leaving a long-winded and weirdly intense voicemail for Helen and discovering he has misplaced his wedding ring. I often divide these recaps up by character, and New Amsterdam season 3, episode 14 does the same thing. How determinedly is he going to try and right all contemporary culture’s systemic wrongs if he has a beautiful woman waiting for him at home? It’s like Marvin Hagler saying how hard it is to get up and run at 5 am when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas. And it opens a lot of potential storytelling avenues, including but not limited to Max no longer being a mopey, idealistic widower. You can’t say it wasn’t built up organically. However you feel about this pairing, it’s a relief to see them get together just to put an end to all the toing and froing.