Dr. Lauren Bloom, M.D. is a main character on New Amsterdam. She is the head of the Emergency Department at New Amsterdam Medical Center and a respected doctor both at the hospital and in her field.
Shortly after Max Goodwin is hired as Medical Director at New Amsterdam, it is revealed that Lauren is dependent on Adderall, perhaps even a drug addict. This begins complicating her work, while also causing tensions with fellow doctors, particularly Dr. Sharpe. She eventually seeks help for her addiction after an analysis by Iggy, who determines that her childhood trauma have increased her dependency on the drug.
History
Early Life
Lauren was raised in New York City in a wealthy, upper class, Jewish family. Her mother Jeanine, whom Lauren refers to as "Hurricane Jeanine," was a New York socialite. Her father, ran a Dermatologist clinic, eventually turning it into a million dollar business. He was often away from the house leaving Lauren to look after her alcoholic mother when she was as young as seven-years-old.
A year before Lauren went to college, her father passed away. Lauren attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, rather than attending NYU as she had promised her family. After Lauren left home, her sister, Vanessa, was left to look after their mother. Lauren blames this ā and herself ā for being the reason her sister has been to rehab four times.
Throughout New Amsterdam
Adderall addiction
As a doctor, Bloom works tirelessly to maintain her diagnosis of ADHD, including how she manages it. She has been on Adderall since the age of 12 to manage the effects. She does, however, become addicted to the Adderall and needs it to function. This leads to her hiding this fact by storing her Adderall in an ibuprofen bottle.
Bloom eventually becomes weary of her addiction and how this impacts her ability to do her job, leading her to passing off patients to other doctors. Sharpe eventually confronts Bloom about her situation in Six or Seven Minutes and she reveals her addiction. Bloom tells Helen that she is going to take time off to figure things out. The conversation continues and in Anima Sola, Sharpe realizes that the situation is no longer viable. Sharpe eventually reports her to Max, the Medical Director, and he orders that she is evaluated by Dr. Frome.
During the evaluation in The Blues, Bloom reveals information about her past, including about her younger sister and how her decision to go to medical school impacted her. At the end of the episode, Bloom agrees to go to rehab for treatment, and Max allows her to go on leave ā with the rest of the hospital under the notion that she is taking regular time off.
Rehab
Rehab is difficult for Bloom, and things are slow going. When a patient needs medical attention in the room nearby, a nurse asks for Bloom's help. Having lost faith in her ability as a doctor, Bloom tells the nurse to find a doctor, however it is clear that there isn't one to be found. Bloom eventually realizes that she is the only hope, and helps stabilise him. She notices a pill bottle nearby and steals this, however she never takes the pills. When Floyd hears of her situation, he goes to visit her, which seems to make things better.
After leaving rehab, Bloom returns to New Amsterdam Medical Center to meet with Max. She wishes to tell him that she will not be returning back to the hospital, however he has already been sent home on medical leave. Instead, she visits his apartment and finds him covered in blood as Georgia's placenta has ruptured. She tells Max that Georgia has lost too much blood and the baby needs to be delivered, but he must choose between the baby or Georgia as it is unlikely both of them will survive. Max is unable to choose, so Bloom makes the difficult choice for him and delivers the baby.
Ambulance crash and leg Injury
Right after delivering Luna, once the ambulance arrives they all start going to the hospital as Georgia is losing a lot of blood. Sadly their ambulance is T-boned by another ambulance driven by a high patient that escaped New Amsterdam. Lauren was standing talking to the paramedics which lead her to get ejected through the windshield. From the survivors she's the one who sustained the most serious injuries. Her left tibia presents a rather impressive compound fracture.
In the first episode of season 2, three months after, we see that she made it but is still wearing a walking boot and laying on a cane to walk. Her injury actually is a big part of her arc in that season. Because of her addiction, she decides to go through it without painkillers. We see since her first day back that the pain is excruciating and she tries several ways not to think about it without much success. Beside her pain, we see that as a ED doctor, she's frustrated, she is unable to run and be quick which is important in the Emergency Room.
After trying multiple things to deal with the pain she ends up having sex with her Physical Therapist, Dr. Zack Ligon. It goes on for a while until she understands that she's not dealing with her pain by doing that but trying to deal with being sober so she decides to stop it and deal with the issue by going to an NA meeting. She then discovers that Dr. Ligon is actually also a recovering addict.
In the seventh episode she gets good news about her leg, her orthopedic surgeon tells her she's cleared for her second surgery, Tibia reconstructive surgery. Even if it was great news, she's informed that the pain will be unbearable and that she'll have to take pills. She refuses but is told that not doing could make her recover less and therefore keep her from being an ED doctor. She tells Helen who instantly proposes to support her and deal with the pills but Lauren ends up doing to Ligon and asks him for help as he knows what she's going through.
On surgery day, she is expecting her mother , who doesn't show up. Floyd shows how much he cares by being there for her after and checking on her during the surgery. After 12 h on morphine they take her out and a few hours later, as she is about to take her painkiller after one hour in agony she realizes it's not there anymore. Of course everyone thinks she took it and is asking another so no one falls and she stays this way in excruciating pain. There is a code grey at the hospital which leads to lockdown. Her and Ligon end up confined together in a room with a suffering patient with acute appendicitis. Lauren notices that the organ is about to burst so she has to operate. The only way is by standing on one leg while Dr. Ligon holds her since putting any weight on her injured recently operated leg could be fatal. She succeeds to do the surgery and once back in her room resting, Zach reveals he took the pill along with others. She tell him to cut all contact with him.
After a few weeks she returns to work wearing a knee brace but free of any other walking aid. The surgery went well which leads her to have a relatively easy recovery. She makes a full recovery.
Relationships
Leyla Shinwari
At the beginning of season 3, Leyla Shinwari drives a patient to New Amsterdam, where she offers her opinion about the woman's condition to Lauren. Skeptical, Lauren flippantly assures Leyla that she doesn't need her help and Leyla departs. However, she must return when she realizes that the patient forgot her wallet in her car. But, after returning the wallet, the patient goes into acute respiratory distress with no one except Leyla around to help. Since no one else in the ED is available, and because time is of the essence, Leyla takes actions into her own hands and performs a risky procedure in order to save her life. Lauren is furious about the situation and kicks her out of the ED, but later comes to the realization that Leyla was right, and without her skilled observation or timely intervention her patient would have died. This leads her to go apologize to Leyla whom, as it turns out, was a pediatric attending who practiced medicine in Pakistan. In addition to that information, Bloom also discovers that Leyla's living in her car so she offers her to shower at the hospital and that evolves into sneaking her into the supply closet to offer her a real bed to sleep in.
We see their friendship evolve as they slowly get to know each other. The plan couldn't last forever though and Leyla is caught in the closet. She is taken by security and Lauren rushes there to make Leyla's case even though it ended up not being necessary. Leyla doesn't have anywhere to sleep anymore so Lauren asks her to stay with her and Leyla ultimately agrees.
They get along fine as friends and roommates. Leyla even purchases a giant tree. Now that Leyla is in a safe environment, she has time to study for her board certification exams. After doing so, she passes the medical board which means that she can train in the US. Grateful to Lauren she kisses her.
Lauren is surprised and leaves the house as soon as possible but as she comes back that night, after having had the whole day to think about it, she reveals she's been thinking about Leyla all day and that her reaction was due to her surprise since she's not used to normal or real. Lauren then kisses Leyla. They are currently in a romantic relationship.
Jeanie Bloom
Jeanie shows up at the hospital to try to make amends with she daughter by getting her to dinner. At the restaurant, Lauren tells her mom her first memory, and opens up a bit about the trauma she provoked her. Her mother then tells she doesn't remember any of this which is surprising to the daughter. She doesn't think it's true but Dr. Kapoor confirms that in fact it's totally possible that the long term substance abuse lead to that memory loss. Once she knows it's true, Lauren decides to reconnect with her and make new memories with her mom..
In a matter of seconds Jeanie tries to put effort into their relationship by organising a surprise birthday for her with all her colleagues including Casey. But ultimately got her birthday wrong. After Lauren realises though that this was the reason she had met up with Casey she ends up forgiving her and sharing the cake out saying they can't let perfectly good cake go to waste.
Not long after we soon see Jeannie in This be the verse when she comes to see Lauren for pills to help her with extreme pelvic pain. At first Bloom gets annoyed saying her mother is high and only wants more pills and tries to kick her out, but Leyla feeling sorry for her mother admits her to the ER anyway agitating Bloom even more, due to the fact that she believed Jeanie was faking a condition to try and coerce Bloom to prescribe her more drugs. This causes Jeanie to tell Leyla about Blooms past addiction to adderall, enraged she slams a prescription down and storms out. Later though Leyla brings Bloom the ultrasound and she reluctantly looks releasing her mother has endometriosis. This causes Lauren to apologise and Jeanie tells her about how hard it was living with endometriosis and being told she was just being dramatic. They later make amends.
Gallery
Trivia
- Lauren has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) and manages it with stimulant medication. She is ashamed of it, and of how much medication she is taking leading up to her admission of addiction, dependency and abuse. Because of this she keeps the pills in an ibuprofen bottle as a disguise.[1]
- She has a small tattoo of a star on her right hand.
- When she was a kid her first crush was a "one eyed meteor beast" from the comic Sandstorm.
- Lauren tends to put her left arm on her hip.
- She describes herself as an "interesting child".
- She says that people don't like her but tolerate her.
- She is a pisces