‘The Resident’ Sets up Nic’s Exit — Plus, Do the Doctors Save Devon? (RECAP)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Resident Season 5 Episode 2 “No Good Deed.”]

One of Chastain’s own is out of the woods by the end of the second episode of The Resident Season 5, just in time for some bad news to come in about another of the staff. And just because we had a feeling it was coming doesn’t make it any easier.

“No Good Deed” appears to be the true beginning of how the Fox medical drama will be writing out nurse practitioner Nic (Emily VanCamp). But before her husband, Conrad (Matt Czuchry), gets an unwanted visitor to his door, we have to find out what’s going on with Devon (Manish Dayal), who ends up a patient after being exposed to some sort of gas.

Meanwhile, Billie (Jessica Lucas) runs into the last person she wants to see at the hospital — the son she gave up for adoption after she was raped at the age of 13. Plus, another busy day might get in the way of Kit (Jane Leeves) and Bell (Bruce Greenwood) discussing that dinner invite.

Putting the Pieces Together

Leela (Anuja Joshi) comes into work, worried when she hasn’t heard from her boyfriend all night. Devon probably fell asleep in an on-call room, everyone thinks…until he’s found unconscious, half-in the elevator. It’s quickly all hands on deck. He’s bleeding from a head wound and has a seizure, and at first, the fear is he was attacked. But the tests suggest otherwise, especially since there’s something going on with his lungs. It’s Leela who notices that his silver watch is now black just before Devon starts coughing up frothy blood. He was exposed to some sort of gas, they realize, with Bell suggesting hydrogen sulfide.

After he receives a potential antidote, Devon wakes, but he can’t remember anything from the day before. That leaves it on the others to retrace his steps to figure out where he may have been exposed and if Kit, as CEO, needs to order an evacuation of the hospital. It’s Conrad who heads down to the casting department after last hearing his friend was going to check on a patient. There, he finds Winston (Stephen Wallem) unconscious. Hazmat seals off the basement, and it’s confirmed to be hydrogen sulfide. Fortunately, there’s no need to evacuate and no one else is exposed.

Guy D’Alema/FOX

When Devon visits Winston in hopes that seeing him will stir his memory, his patient suggests listening to his voice; he’s blind and remembers people that way. It works. Devon remembers finding him and venting the room — which saved Winston by clearing out most of the gas — before going to get help. He fell in the elevator and hit his head.

Not only is Devon going to be OK, but Leela also decides they should move in together.

Dinner Invite, Take 2

With Kit’s day packed, she asks Bell to wait to talk about his dinner invitation the night before. And after Devon is found, adding to her list, Bell offers to take something off her agenda: meeting with the “star” neurosurgeon Dr. Browner (David Christian Wellborn), a possible Cain (Morris Chestnut, now on Our Kind of People) replacement. “I know all about wooing arrogant doctors, I won’t blow it,” Bell promises.

Tom Griscom/FOX

The meeting seems to go well, and the first calls Bell makes to do his due diligence make Browner seem like the right choice. But then Bell calls up a friend, Tina (Maria Charito Martz), who immediately says, “don’t do it” about hiring the neurosurgeon. There are millions in lawsuits against him  for bullying residents and the sexual harassment of nurses. His current hospital is trying to get him off their payroll.

At the end of the day, Bell apologizes to Kit for asking her out. They have a good thing together, he says, and he doesn’t want to mess it up by stepping over the line. But right after he promises it won’t happen again (she looks disappointed!), she asks him to have dinner with her that night. “Yes, absolutely,” he says immediately, and she takes his arm as they leave.

Billie’s Personal & Professional Lives Collide

When Billie sees her son, Trevor (Miles Fowler), in the ER, she assumes he’s there to see her. He’s not, having given up on reconnecting with her. Rather, his friend (and an addict), Janey (Marnee Carpenter), OD’ed on a party drug he created. To say things are tense between the two would be an understatement — Trevor pointedly says he doesn’t abandon people who need him — and AJ (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) picks up on it as he treats Janey.

Guy D’Alema/FOX

Though Billie doesn’t want to talk about it, Trevor tells AJ that she’s his mother, gave birth to him, and then wanted nothing to do with him. While scrubbing in for Janey’s surgery, AJ notes that Billie must’ve been quite young when she had Trevor. He should’ve figured it out, he adds, since “watching you and Trevor go at it is like watching someone fight with themselves in the mirror.” All Billie will tell him is she had Trevor when she was 13, but that seems to be enough for him to put the pieces together.

Later, AJ goes to see Trevor to let him know he gets it, that the defining experience in his life was abandonment. “I was the same way,” the surgeon explains. “I was hurt, I was alone, I lashed out. See, I used my words and my intelligence like a bully uses his fists, and it worked for a while. I felt good, but it never gave me the one thing that I really wanted, which was to belong.” That’s why he’s sticking by Janey’s side, even though, as AJ points out, “that’s not going to end well.”

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'The Resident' EP on the Fight to Save [Spoiler], a 'Vulnerable' Conrad, and Kit & Bell

Almost Home

It’s not until the end of the episode that we get a clue as to what’s going on with Nic. As we see from their text history, she hasn’t responded to the last few from Conrad since saying she’s “almost home.” So, when there’s a knock at the door, he carries Gigi with him to answer it, thinking it’s his wife. However, instead, two cops stand on the other side: “Conrad Hawkins? There’s been an accident.” Uh-oh.

The Resident, Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox