Sumith Prasad
The fifth episode of Apple TV+’s medical drama ‘Five Days at Memorial,’ titled ‘Day Five’ follows the evacuation of Memorial Medical Center and LifeCare Hospitals. Before the evacuation, Memorial’s incident commander Susan Mulderick finds it difficult to witness the struggles of the patients at the place without any essential care. She also takes a pivotal decision concerning the animals in the building. When the evacuation starts, Diane Robichaux gets forced to leave LifeCare without ensuring the evacuation of her patients. The episode ends with an ambiguous development concerning the fates of the patients, making us dive into its ending. Here are our thoughts regarding the same! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Five Days at Memorial Episode 5 Recap
‘Day Five’ begins with Susan contemplating what to do about the animals in the hospital building. She decides to euthanize them and asks Dr. Ewing Cook to take necessary actions. She also adds to Richard Deichmann that they should “make the patients very comfortable.” Dr. Cook proceeds as he discussed with Susan by euthanizing several pets. Ultimately, he euthanizes his own dog Rolfie in the presence of his wife Minnie Cook. Susan meets Diane Robichaux at LifeCare and lets her know that she will not leave any living patient behind. They continue to wait for helicopters after not receiving them for a considerable time.
Mark and Sandra LeBlanc arrive at Memorial in an airboat to evacuate the former’s mother Elvira “Vera” LeBlanc. Despite the opposition of the hospital staff, he takes the mother to the boat with a few other patients. When their boat leaves, Memorial security guard Charles jumps to the same and leaves with the LeBlancs. Helicopters start to land at Memorial to evacuate patients again but LifeCare patients get ignored since Memorial doesn’t have any authorization to evacuate them. Meanwhile, several patients die due to a lack of adequate care and resources. An officer arrives at the hospital with boats and informs Susan that he needs to evacuate everyone in the building on short notice.
Susan realizes that she needs to reduce the headcount of people who need to be evacuated. She meets Dr. Anna Pou, discusses how they need to make patients comfortable, and asks the latter to talk to Dr. Cook. Dr. Bryant King comes to know about the whole affair when a nurse, upon overhearing Anna and Cook’s conversation, reveals the same to him. Angela McManus gets forced to leave her mother Wilda McManus at LifeCare. Diane meets Emmett Everett before she leaves the hospital with her colleagues to let him know about her departure. Emmett starts to think that he will die in the hospital. Karen Wynn leads the evacuation of Rodney, who weighs over three hundred pounds.
Five Days at Memorial Episode 5 Ending: Do Memorial Staff Euthanise Patients?
When officers in boats arrive at Memorial to evacuate LifeCare, Diane leaves her patients as Dr. Anna Pou and a few other Memorial staff members take charge of them. Even though they insist on making patients “feel better,” Diane’s conversation with Emmett and what the Memorial nurse overhears when Pou and Cook discuss lead one to the conclusion that they are doing more than just making the patients comfortable. In reality, Pou was accused of euthanizing patients in the hospital before her evacuation. The doctor had denied the accusations even though she admits using injections.
“The intention was to help the patients that were having pain and sedate the patients who were anxious. That was it,” Anna told Newsweek about administering morphine to patients in LifeCare. In the same interview, she admitted to administering the syringes even though she knew that the same might hasten the death of certain patients. Still, she mad made it clear that euthanasia was not what she did in Memorial and LifeCare. “I do not believe in euthanasia. I don’t think that it’s anyone’s decision to make when a patient dies. However, what I do believe in is comfort care. And that means that we ensure that they do not suffer pain,” she told Morley Safer for ‘60 Minutes.’
Even though Dr. Anna Pou denied that she didn’t euthanize patients, Dr. Bryant King thought differently at the time. As per Sheri Fink’s source text, he messaged a friend that “evil entities” are planning to euthanize patients, After the discovery of the forty-five dead bodies in Memorial, investigators interrogated Susan about the possibility of euthanasia as the cause of several deaths. When she was asked whether she had discussed the euthanasia of the patients, she replied that she didn’t, as per the source text.
Read More: Where Are Ex-Memorial Nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo Now?
