Sumith Prasad
The fourth episode of Apple TV+’s medical drama ‘Five Days at Memorial,’ titled ‘Day Four,’ depicts the fourth day of the isolation of the Memorial hospital building, where thousands are stuck due to the flood that happens after Hurricane Katrina. Memorial’s incident commander Susan Mulderick deals with the lack of resources to evacuate the people in the building, which also includes the staff and patients of LifeCare Hospitals. Chaos starts to ensue in the hospital and the city of New Orleans, as people find it difficult to survive the flood without any assistance from the government. The affecting episode ends with ambiguous developments and here’s our detailed take on the same! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Five Days at Memorial Episode 4 Recap
‘Day Four’ begins with real-life footage that shows the people’s distress over the incompetence of the government bodies, that had seemingly ignored the population of New Orleans’ misery during the flood. The interviewers talk to Karen Wynn, the head of Memorial’s ethics committee and the nurse manager of the ICUs. When she gets asked whether patients were killed, she replies that the patients were helped to reduce their pain. On the fourth day, Dr. Anna Pou administers morphine to a patient in the presence of Dr. Horace Baltz, who doesn’t completely accept Anna’s action. She makes it clear to Horace that she cannot see patients suffering from unbearable pain and heat.
Memorial doesn’t receive adequate helicopters to evacuate all their patients. LifeCare’s Diane Robichaux meets Susan and gives a list of her hospital’s patients’ names to include them in the evacuation. Michael Arvin, a Tenet employee, gets informed that the company hasn’t requested the Coast Guard to evacuate LifeCare’s patients. Diane confronts Susan concerning the same, only for the latter to not give a satisfactory reason behind the decision. René Goux instructs security guards to not accept anyone seeking shelter in the hospital. The guards scare off a group of people who pleads with them to allow a few children to be in the hospital by firing a gun into the air.
Mike Bowles from the state department of hospitals arrives at Memorial and promises the availability of boats for evacuation from the next day. He instructs Susan to prioritize evacuating patients who can easily move rather than the sickest to speed up the evacuation procedures. He also asks Susan and other administration officials to categorize patients who “can’t be saved,” a group that includes Emmett Everett. The people in the hospital building get woken up by a false announcement that states boats are coming to rescue them. While they wait for boats, several individuals’ personal belongings get stolen.
Five Days at Memorial Episode 4 Ending: To Whom is Dr. Bryant King Messaging?
Dr. Bryant King is a newly joined doctor at Memorial when the hurricane and the subsequent flood isolate the hospital building. As an “outsider,” he gets shocked witnessing the hospital authorities’ actions, especially René’s decision to not allow the public to enter the hospital for shelter. Although René tries to justify his decision by making it clear that the hospital’s depleting resources cannot accommodate new additions, King fails to tolerate guards scaring off children with gunfire. He believes that the hospital should be an institution that offers help to the needy and not something that closes its door to the most vulnerable section of society.
In addition, René’s decision that certain staff members should carry guns further startles King. He considers the same as “descent into evil” since he believes that doctors and other hospital staff are supposed to comfort the patients and their family members instead of scaring them with guns, that too amid a flood. He explains the predicament at Memorial to an unrevealed person through text messages and adds that “evil entities” are present in the place. In reality, King messaged his best friend while he was at Memorial after the hurricane, as per Sheri Fink’s eponymous source text, to explain whatever was happening at the hospital.
In one of the messages, as per the source text, King even wrote to his best friend that “evil entities were planning to euthanize patients.” The friend took the messages to National Public Radio and reporter Joanne Silberner talked about the texts on air. “King said some of the staff was starting to panic, even talking about helping some of the long-term acute care patients, those close to death, die,” Silberner said, as per Fink’s book.
Does Mark Evacuate His Mother Vera?
While the government bodies fail to adequately evacuate patients from the Memorial hospital building, several patients and their bystanders start to suffer severely. Jill reveals the situation of the patients at LifeCare, which includes Mark LeBlanc’s mother Elvira “Vera” LeBlanc, to the authorities, only for an official to reply that evacuating the Memorial hospital building is a secondary priority. Infuriated at the official’s response, Mark and his wife Sandra LeBlanc set out to save Vera on their own, even if it means walking to the hospital. Meanwhile, a small group of people offers to help Mark and Sandra by taking them to the hospital on their boats.
In reality, Mark and Sandra had led a flotilla of airboats driven by volunteers from the Louisiana swamplands to Memorial to save Vera. The 82-year-old Vera at the time was getting treated for a urinary tract infection. Sandra saw her mother-in-law without IV support to hydrate her. When Mark and Sandra tried to evacuate Vera, according to Sheri Fink, a staff member blocked the couple and several doctors told them that they cannot leave with the patient. Ignoring them, Mark and others carried her to an airboat to evacuate her.
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