“Five Days At Memorial” Episode 6 begins to unfold before our eyes, with Dr. Horace grisly acknowledging the dire consequences of some inappropriate decisions made by the staff of Memorial Hospital. The damage and the deaths are still apparent in the streets of New Orleans, which are put forth on the television channel. We see the real footage of the storm-ravaged Orleanians, grieving their hearts out in front of the camera, and now the President has arrived, in his incoherent response, talking about taking sober decisions that should have been taken a long time ago.
Spoilers Ahead
The Investigation Begins: How Does The Memorial Raise A Red Flag?
The light shines brighter in the city of Atlanta on September 11, 2005, thirteen days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. An investigator from the Louisiana State Medical Fraud Unit, Arthur Schafer, who might have lost his daughter due to severe disease (possibly), amid his recovery from the trauma, received a command from the attorney general to investigate the precipitously found forty-five dead bodies in Memorial Hospital and the fraud committed under their superior authority.
Schafer tries to name them just an accident, but red flags arise when Schafer asks the attorney of the Tenet general council demanding a list of the deaths, including the cause. The officer takes a roundabout way, asking him to fax. Although Schafer sends all his quarries in writing, he only gets corporate and medical work in return, instead of medical records of the dead, as they cannot locate any of them. But out of their sight, from a LifeCare attorney, Schafer acquires some information about LifeCare patients who were not evacuated but rather injected with Morphine by Dr. Anna Pou, a non-employee of LifeCare Hospital.
Schafer or often known as Butch, later meets a forensic accountant, Virginia, with whom he needs to be working to have her analytic intelligence in this case. The scene slowly shifts into Anna’s meet-up with a man who asks her favor to join their hospital, LSU, as the Memorial is closed for almost a while. Anna categorically accepts the offer in order to get rid of her leisurely life. Finally, we learn about Vince, her husband, who got out of danger and has now settled with Anna in uptown on high ground.
The Questions are Asked: How Are They Going to Face The Families?
Meanwhile, Susan and Karen are seen in the office of the Tenet Medical Council, where an employee, Callie Fredriks, instructs them to call each of the deceased patients’ family members to acquaint them with the bad news. They proceed with the information packets, leading each caller to inform in general terms and rather suggest that the patients might have died due to a lack of essentials during the havoc of the storm. Some patients are rigid, asking questions about how their lost ones are not evacuated or what might be their risk. We see each caller, including Susan and Karen, reading out the given instructions, as they are strictly forbidden to give any personal opinion. It seems to be harder to deal with the parties than it is to deal with a dying patient. The families are devastated, as expected, and it becomes difficult for Susan and Karen to cope with the grief of these unfortunates.
Anna Pou’s Attorney: How Is Anna Going To Defend Herself?
Anna gets a panic attack after receiving a call from the producer of CNN, Liz Jarvis, who wants to know about her medical professional statement about the death of 45, as they have heard the state is investigating the reason for the death. Anna immediately connects with Susan to get a way out of this. Susan assures her of sending a Tenet officer on her way. But an anxious Anna talk to Ewing later that night. Ewing is worried too and has drunk to be diverted. He suggests she should talk to Tenet, concluding with his best proposition to “hide.”
In the meantime, when Anna has shortly started working at LSU, she receives another call, this time from the communication director for Tenet, Steven Campanini, asking her to talk to their Assistant General Counsel, Audrey Andrews. She suggests hearing her narrative about the turn of events, and Anna elaborates with patience what she might have done before a lot of time. But Audrey is specific about the last and D-day, which Anna finds a little dangerous for herself to express without any defense system of her own. So, she remains mute unless she finds a lawyer. Anna runs towards a lawyer to discuss her further steps, and she receives the utmost assurance that her case will be taken care of by the attorney, but she has to box up every word, even if that means keeping her husband in the dark. She has no choice left, but still, to be clean, she utters with confidence that she didn’t do anything “wrong.”
Were All The Evacuees Terminals?
The events are getting darker and more irritating when the dead bodies are revealed to be not only terminal ones but also include a conscious and electrically equipped patient of Horace, which proves how insensitive and incognizant the doctors had become on that evacuation day. After Horace was left, nobody even knew who was handling her care, or else she was just pushed to her unnecessary death.
How Does The Investigation Continue? How Did Butch Lose His Daughter?
Here we see Butch and Virginia constantly analyzing the expressions of Dr. Pou’s TV appearance on channel 2 and her talking about the patients of Memorial. Butch cannot afford to believe that a doctor or a nurse can take any measures to euthanize their patients, but Virginia has the heart to accept that. So, giving her doubts a shot, she even suggests going to Memorial to check on the records by themselves. But driving all the way to Orleans doesn’t get them lucky, as the security guard at the hospital strictly overplays his part in blocking them from entering inside. While investigating, Butch finds a former nurse of Memorial whom he saw on TV rescuing the neonates. Butch gets emotional as his daughter could have survived if her doctors had been heroic and noble, like the nurse he is talking to. We get to learn that Butch lost his daughter due to overprescribing medications by the doctors.
Did Anna Pou “Euthanize” Her Patients?
Finally, the elephant in the room is exposed, and the revealer is nobody but Diane from LifeCare. She acquaints the investigating team, Butch and Virginia, that on the last day, when Anna took it all over to take care of the LifeCare, she took the responsibility so that nobody could lose their license, informing Diane that some of her critically ill patients were not going to survive. Diane doesn’t claim that the word “euthanize” was ever used, but she believes that was what Anna and a pair of nurses had done to the patients of LifeCare. Butch is still in denial that a doctor could ever kill any of her patients, whereas his own daughter was one of the victims of such callousness. To emphasize the evidence, he decides to talk to more people from LifeCare. They later, one by one, interrogate each of the LifeCare authority members, starting from the Nurse Executive, Ms. Mendez, to Kristy, the physical medicine director of LifeCare.
Both of them state the dimmish truth, saying that they heard from Pou that the patients would be given lethal doses of Morphine. But none of them had seen Dr. Pou administer those drugs. Eventually, the investigation team stumbles upon a witness, Mr. Nakamaru, who is a pharmacist at the hospital. Finally, he gives his recollection that he was asked by Pou for the supplies of lethal doses like Morphine and the syringes and sterile water. He did what she asked, but instead, he witnessed Pou, and her nurses draw up the drugs in the syringe and go inside the patient’s rooms, and while he saw her out, she discarded those empty syringes in a clear plastic bag. Although Nakamaru didn’t watch them administer the drugs, yeah! His statement almost sounds like “euthanasia.”
One of the most controversial problems in medical history was Memorial’s aptly named Eutheneshia, but apparently, it was a murder. Such murders, which were completely indiscreet only in the hope of rescue, were carried out on even conscious and alert patients who repeatedly pleaded for their lives. But Dr. Anna, who was known as the biggest surgeon in this state, what was the reason for her indiscretion? Or does she believe it to be ethical? What might be the part of Ewing’s here, as we knew he was the brain behind this? Still, Anna’s character is very fluid in the series and has many shades, which is shown throughout the episodes that we may find difficult to understand until the final episode arrives.
