"This Be the Verse" is the fifth episode of the fourth season on NBC drama series New Amsterdam, and the fifty-ninth episode overall. It aired on October 19, 2021.
Synopsis[]
Dr. Fuentes continues her quest to remake the hospital in her vision. Max goes the extra mile to help a patient in need. Dr. Sharpe and Iggy find themselves at odds over a very serious issue. Reynolds discovers the importance of personal obligations. Bloom comes to a shocking realization about her mother.
Plot[]
Max walking down the street, listening to music when Iggy stops him, Max revealing he is turning over a new leaf, done complaining about Dr. Veronica Fuentes and stop making others miserable, including Helen. He says the next time he freaks out he will just breath through it, but he begins to lose his temper when he sees the new signage for the hospital, saying NAH. His tree has been moved, his plaques have been moved and everything he worked so hard on in the hospital is being painted over.
Max barges into Veronica’s office, who says the logo is hideous, but she has 4 more people commissioned to do it. Max learns that Veronica is redoing all the art in the hospital as she would like to treat their patients who have heart attack's rather than them getting heart attacks from the art. She is creating a space for everyone to enjoy as Max confronts her feeling it is for the donors. She admits it is going to cost about 50 grand to do so and he wants to know which department she stole from to do this; he is shocked to learn it is from the burn clinic. They disagree on what she is doing, causing Max to put his headphones back in and zone out from what she is saying.
Floyd patches up a patient who wants to make sure she can use her pen before she leaves the ED. She searches through her purse as Floyd eagerly watches the clock. She is quite happy that she can use the pen, him joking that he needs to get her a punch card after all this is the 8th time this year he is helping her. Floyd rushes to meet Lyn in the hallway, giving her plenty of compliments. He knows they are supposed to tell Claude about them, but he asks if they can wait until after today to do so.
Dr. Reynolds is showing the artificial heart that can save many lives, super excited about it but they are interrupted when Dr. Reynolds is informed that he is pulled off the surgery by Dr. Baptiste. Meanwhile, Lauren finds Leyla the hallway, expressing how angry she is that Veronica spent all that money and only informed her by email. Lauren is excited to have dinner with Leyla that night but their plans are disrupted when her mother is sitting in the hallway. Lauren tells Leyla to stop trying to treat her mother because she is only trying to score pills. Lauren shines her light into her mother’s eyes and she can tell she is high and she threw months of being clean away. She says her mother needs a shovel so she can finish the job.
Sharpe is in court, testifying about one of her patients who had been sexually assaulted as a teenager. She suppressed the memory but when she had her arms pinned above her head for a scan, everything came out; Helen believes every word that her patient said. Helen is excused from the stand and Iggy is called to the stand, shocking Helen.
Back in the hospital, an elderly woman is screaming about one of the artifacts on display in the lobby. She is insistent that the piece belongs to her and it was stolen; the incident is being recorded and causing a huge scene. Veronica orders security to get everyone out of there as Max questions her on the branding of the hospital. Mrs. Khan and her grand daughter are in Veronica’s office, explaining how it is her piece but Veronica says the story doesn’t prove anything; but Max says there is an inscription inside the harp and they want to know if she knows it. She says it is her mother’s name and her birthday. Max shows Veronica the proof.
Lyn tells Floyd she got his message and learns that he is not implanting the artificial heart because her husband pulled him off the surgery and he knows about them. She thinks it is impossible that he knows but admits he was a little distant this morning and she didn’t want everything to happen this way. Floyd feels this was all wishful thinking and of course Claude is lashing out. He is concerned what Claude is going to do next.
Casey follows Lauren, who is in a rather nasty mood; their talk stops when she hears her mother’s voice and finds her behind a curtain. Casey is happy to see Genie Bloom but Lauren said she told her mother to go and calls Leyla out, saying she is using her for pills. Leyla says she admitted her to do a rapid detox so she can make an informed decision about her pain. Lauren allows her to treat her mother because she will say whatever she wants to get those pills but Leyla thinks they will find out what the real issue really is.
Veronica tells Max the harp is not hers to give back to Mrs. Khan as he reminds her how the board is going to react over her first job as Medical Director was to make New Amsterdam the face of someone else’s scandal. Veronica doesn’t think they will care about a harp but Max insists they can fix it but Veronica apologizes, saying the harp stays.
Iggy explains memory and how our brains try to recreate the past, leaving Helen shaking her head in anger. Iggy looks at their patient, explaining that asking about recovered memories is like asking your brain to draw a chair you haven’t seen in like 20 years. He thinks recovered memories are unreliable and he wouldn’t send someone to jail based solely on them. Helen storms out of the court room.
Floyd finds Veronica at the food truck, she admits that she is the one who took him off the surgery and he has a patient who takes precedence. Floyd says he took care of the patient she is talking about this morning but she informs him about the policy of taking care of a patient for the next 30 days and she returned within 13 minutes and he would know that had he looked at his pages. Floyd is furious and tells her he has a problem with her disrupting a life changing surgery over fixing a woman’s papercuts. He feels he earned the opportunity to be in the surgery so she tells him if he treats his patient in time, he can certainly scrub into the procedure.
Max speaks to someone from the Manhattan museum about Mrs. Khan, they have their sympathies for her, but says their hands are clean. Max threatens him to call the Times magazine to see what their art desk feels about these claims. Max is told if he does this, dozens of other people will bring claims forward. He implies they could skip the legal PR fiasco and give it back in a heartbeat. He gives him an NDA, guaranteeing her silence if he does the right thing. He takes the paper and says, “very well.”
Helen stands in Iggy’s office when he returns from court. He had no idea she was on the other side of the case until he walked into the court room; she tells him there is no case because thanks to his testimony a monster is now going to walk. He is sorry, but she wants to know why he would attack a victim of sexual violence. She mocks him about not being believed as he says he gave scientific testimony about recovered memories. She asks about herself, recalling when she was in university caught in a rainstorm, She pictures her being 5 years old and the day her father left the family and right when he reached the door, she begged him to stay, he pushed her away and the beads ripped. She wants Iggy to look her in the eye and say that memory is not credible; Iggy says that in the court of law, it isn’t. She tells him it is a good thing he is no longer practicing because any woman who would come his way, she would tell them to run away as quickly as possible.
Lauren walks in, ripping out Genie’s IV and chastising Leyla for giving her pills. Leyla says she didn’t give her narcotics, she was giving her medication to calm her down to do an ultrasound as her mother has Lyme disease. Lauren says she knows about the enlarged spleen because of her alcoholism and she played Leyla. Both mother and daughter throw barbs at each other about their addictions, Genie saying it doesn’t matter that she is working the program because it doesn’t work. She tells Leyla that she will be over Lauren by Christmas as she is just a nasty person. Lauren screams for her mother to leave and writes her a prescription, encouraging her to take them with vodka and have a party because she doesn’t care.
Veronica barges into Max’s office, who admits that he brokered a deal between Manhattan and Mrs. Khan. She says the deal is currently breaking down in the lobby. Max and Veronica rush to the lobby when he defends his patient as they insist the harp belongs to the state as she abandoned it. Max says she was driven out of the country by gunpoint. Max was sent the paperwork as it was already signed off but Max begs him not to do this to her again. He is told just because you don’t see the gun pointing at me, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Dr. Reynolds meets with his patient again, confused that she never mentioned her symptoms before. She reveals that she knows he has more important things than take care of her as she noticed he looked at the clock 5 times already. He apologizes and when another doctor comes in to take over so he can make the surgery, he excuses himself with a smile on his face.
Leyla brings the tablet to Lauren who says Lauren is giving subservice of care as Lauren says she is way out of line. Lauren is mad that Leyla didn’t even ask if she was okay after that awful event. Leyla reminds her that she is being a doctor tending to her patient and if she doesn’t want her to tend to her feelings she would be looking at the ultrasound. Yes the spleen is enlarged from alcohol, but when Lauren takes a closer look they realize that Genie has endometriosis and her mother was telling the truth about her pain.
Iggy comes to see Helen, feeling they need to talk although she has nothing to say. He says it was not raining the day her dad left. There was a heatwave and historically there was no rain in London that summer. She insists it rained because she was there. He says maybe it wasn’t London as it was a bank holiday and she thinks it was another place, but he again says there was no rain. She pauses, he says now that she is wrong about the location and the rain; they truly don’t know. He hates this part about his job, sexual assault victims are almost always telling the truth and deserve respect and sympathy and above all else, believe but recovered memories are not accurate. He says he is not playing God as Helen says he is only playing executioner. He pushes Helen harder, saying a string of beads doesn’t get ripped from a push but rather a pull. She flashes back to the day and realizes her mother pulled her away from her father. She cries and tells Iggy that her mother broke the beads and she flees her office.
Floyd is in surgery, performing on his current patient, rather than doing the artificial heart, saying this procedure was too important.
Max offers his apology to Mrs. Khan, offering their legal services and it won’t cost her a cent. She tells Max that the past is gone and the only thing is to live for now. She is working in the PT room with her prosthetic leg. Max says they are going to give her the prosthetic and Manhattan is going to pay for it and take care of her medical expenses from now on; she is eternally grateful; Max surprised she understood everything he said.
Floyd talks to Lyn, revealing that Flores got to do the surgery. He was looking forward to the surgery but for the wrong reasons. He would have been the first black surgeon to perform an artificial heart transplant but she thinks it is cool that he put his patient first; something he thinks he should do more often with the people he cares about the most. He feels it is time they tell her husband. Lauren sits with her mother, saying endometriosis is hard to diagnose and there is no easy fix. Genie says in 30 years, no one has ever believed her, saying it was her period or she was crazy as Lauren admits she judged her her whole life and thought awful things, but as a doctor and her daughter she is really sorry.
Helen knocks on Iggy’s door, who was trying to leave her a voicemail. He hates that he did that to her as Helen hated him for doing it as it was violating but he was right and she is about to cross an ocean to be close to her mum but she has no idea who she is any more. She always thought her dad was a coward but he was holding her like he waned her and he tried to reach out so many times but she never answered and she was okay with it. She cries out worrying that she could have been wrong, and he died knowing that she hated him and there is no way to make that right. Iggy says the good news is that he would never accept that memory in court either. He says we care about memories and those are our truth but we can’t base that story on fact, we base it on memories and memories are nothing, so maybe try not to define herself by them. He encourages her to rely on the present and what makes her feel safe, pleasure and what makes her feel love.
Veronica finds Max on the roof, hoping he is happy that Manhattan will never display art in their halls again. Max confronts her, saying he hates the word brand because it implies that she won’t do what she is doing unless the cameras are rolling to see it all and that is not New Amsterdam, it doesn’t have a brand, it has a creed; where they help people. She is angry that he has issues with the lobby, but he says the hallway tells patients that the hospital isn’t hers nor his, but theirs. He feels she is erasing the patients by removing plaques and murals. She says if that is the way he feels, maybe he shouldn’t be leaving and he says if leaving the hospital in her hands, than maybe he won’t; that is something Helen overhears and looks very sadly at Max.
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