Holby City: Patient X

(Series 15, ep.19)  Good old Dr Oliver Valentine. He’s only gone and found someone in Baltimore who can possibly sort out Dr Tara Lo’s brain tumour. Hurrah! Problem is, the Baltimore expert has only had good results on tumours that have behaved themselves and not got any bigger for a long time – and apparently Tara’s has started getting bigger. Oli doesn’t know this, because she doesn’t tell him very much. He hasn’t noticed, either, that she’s gone a bit absent-minded (he’s used to Elliot Hope) and when she passed out in the washroom and bashed her head on a basin, he was content to accept her explanation that a slippery floor was to blame. Meanwhile, Tara has included herself in her own study of “The Psychology of Mortality in the Young” (it’s going to be a gripping read when it’s finished) as Patient X.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one evening, we had Dr Gemma Wilde in deadly danger. Remember Dean,  who’d been in the war in Sierra Leone and who forced Dr Luc Hemingway to start getting to grips with his past? He was back. His estranged wife was a patient and because Dean is more than a bit disturbed, he wasn’t allowed to see her. It all culminated in Dean, Mrs Dean and Gemma locked in a room together and Gemma having to intubate the wife with the aid of Sacha on speaker-phone. Gemma did well with the intubation bit, but she was more than a bit daft to get locked in the room in the first place. She was right by the door and had ample opportunity to either leave or yell for security when it looked like Dean was getting a bit agitated. I can’t imagine Charlie from Casualty making such a basic error. She’s young, though, is Dr Gemma, and hasn’t seen quite as many crazy people as Charlie has. Another piece of her background arrived at the end of the episode in the form of her son, Finn (Finn Wilde – excellent name).

On Keller, Malick (who’s passed his consultant exams with an obscenely high score, apparently) was dealing with a stroppy American patient who was very dismissive of the care offered at Holby until Malick discovered that her American surgeon had left a small plastic beaker inside her during previous surgery. Hurrah for the NHS! Malick was more bothered about keeping his relationship with oncologist Nathan Hargreave a secret. This is not because Malick has decided to do a Dull Dan and get back in the closet, and not because Nathan Hargreave is an embarrassment to be seen with – he is so not. It’s more about Malick getting to grips with the idea that he’s in a steady relationship and might even be a bit in love. We saw in the episode when Malick’s first love, Paul, turned up that Antoine is actually a bit of an old softie. He just hides it well.

The best line of the episode was from Mo. She and Sacha are on the Holby Fit Club Diet (aren’t we all?) and neither of them is finding it easy. In fact Sacha is cheating and Mo is stressed. “If you say ‘hungry’ once again,” she warned Dr Tara Lo, “I’ll deep fat fry you, one limb at a time.”

Next time: Serena’s mum is back for her operation; Gemma is back after her hostage ordeal; and Mo finds a new friend in Sacha (yay!).

Posted by PLA More Holby City here