Chicago Hope

When a plastic surgeon neglects his patient, Dr. Simon ends up in the position of having to inform the family of his death after what should have been a routine procedure; Jack's Priest raises eyebrows when he is genitally mutilated during a mugging and wants additional surgery to regain sexual function; Drs. Hanlon and Watters unsuccessfully tries to get Geiger to perform surgery on a young boy. But when Jeffrey's daughter befriends him, she insists that her dad performs it, without knowing he had previously refused.

A heart becomes available for transplant, but there are two patients waiting for it, and Drs. Geiger and Watters must choose who will receive it - a potential patron or the hospital's newsstand operator; Jeffrey tries to place Alicia into an exclusive kindergarten class; Aaron tries to hold a welcoming party for the new doctors.

A doctor with Tourette's Syndrome is brought to Chicago Hope to operate on an infant with a severe heart defect; A patient comes into the ER with what he claims to be Albert Einstein's brain, and gives it to Dr. Wilkes; A woman is using plastic surgery to make herself look like a Barbie Doll.

Dr. McNeil goes to magnificent lengths to save the arm of a young baseball star, and is sued when he doesn't succeed; A little girl is brought into the ER after being hit by a car. Although she isn't badly hurt, the situation is complicated because she is unable to communicate at all, and Dr. Shutt has to figure out why.

All of the doctors go to Herculean lengths to fight to save Cacaci's life after he jumps off the roof of the hospital. However, Cacaci's fiancée claims that someone must have pushed him. And when Cacaci's ex-wives show up, they all describe him as the sweetest guy in the world, very different from the Cacaci the doctors know.

A man rushes his pregnant wife to the ER when she starts bleeding profusely, but has a heart attack and dies when he learns she miscarries. Desperate to have his baby, the doctors propose harvesting his sperm to impregnate her. But legal nightmares ensue, and the story is leaked to the tabloids; Dr. Simon treats a young boy with a brain tumor.

The hospital is quarantined after it's inundated with the victims of a mysterious and deadly plague, which spreads to the hospital staff; A five-year-old girl can't be found as she chases the pet rabbit of the first plague victim throughout the hospital; A man with a tree limb through his chest has to be admitted to the ER despite the quarantine if he is to live.

A liver arrives at Chicago Hope---intended for a patient who needs a heart-lung transplant immediately. What to do? Alberghetti has heard of a radical procedure developed by a Sri Lankan surgeon. It is radical, but it has worked on goats and besides, there are no other options. Nor is there a surgeon on hand who knows how to perform it. Meanwhile, details are shared about Hanlon and McNeils' first date - a complete disaster.

On their way to a football game, Aaron and Jack get sidetracked, finding themselves in a hostage situation with 3 wounded patients, a loose gunman, and the police about ready to enter the building. Meanwhile, Alberghetti and Hanlon must be creative: their patient was stabbed 30 times, and the knife is embedded in her heart.

Hanlon tries to treat a traditional Hmong woman with a cancerous lesion that might have metastasized to her lungs. But she and her family are skeptical of Western medicine, and don't believe in surgery; Dr. Peters does his level best to make Jeremy miserable in their department, and annoy Phillip; Alberghetti's patient is a 22-year-old who has a very serious heart infection of unknown origins, and refuses to remove his multiple body piercings; Jack feels left out when he isn't asked to write an article for Chicago Hope's new Web site.

Simon's neurological operation on her mentor goes awry and the man slips into a coma. But his misfortune proves to be a blessing for others, beginning with his deeply religious 79-year-old mother, who suddenly no longer needs her walker after praying over him. Meanwhile, Geiger finds a researcher working on human cloning in a lab in the hospital basement; McNeil's friendship with Alberghetti hits a snag.

A railroad engineer with a drug-resistant strain of TB requires surgery that is not performed at Chicago Hope. This necessitates calling in an expert at it, Wilkes' estranged Aunt Odelia. When Keith also tests positive for TB, he is forced to take an experimental drug to which he has a severe reaction. Meanwhile, Dr. Simon is stumped by a patient who has a wide variety of serious physical symptoms that keeps changing. She believes it's God's revenge for turning away from her dying twin sister.

A biological male has been raised to live his life as a girl after a 'slip of a knife' as an infant. Now a teenager, and desperate to live in his true gender, McNeil goes to court to try to get permission for his transition; Simon and Alberghetti offer a woman with Alzheimer's disease an experimental vaccine.

After two children suffer liver failure, the father learns that he can donate part of his liver... but to only one child. His snap decision upsets Wilkes; Gina and Aaron are dating. However, he wants to keep it a secret. The relationship is tested when Dr. Weber comes back to the hospital; McNeil writes a prescription for a cancer patient that he'll come to regret.

Geiger is under enormous pressure from the hospital board to make drastic cuts, and because his daughter is facing life-threatening surgery. He had operated on her when she was born (with congenital heart defects), but that was before she was his daughter. Now he's insisting on doing the surgery again, even though it's not permitted under hospital policy; Dr. Hanlon performs an appendectomy on an uninsured conjoined twin.

A mentally challenged couple enters the hospital because the husband needs open-heart surgery. The wife confides in Dr. Simon that she is having trouble getting pregnant. Simon investigates, and realizes she was sterilized without her consent.

McNeil struggles to be civil to an obnoxious female wrestler known as "The Death Angel", who scares a little girl on the way to surgery and complicates her treatment. Dr. Shutt needs to devise a new surgical option for her tricky brain aneurysm, and gets help from Drs. Simon and Alberghetti. Meanwhile, Wilkes' son Raymond demands that his father treat his ailing pet tarantula.

Pancreatic cancer affects the conjoined twins that Dr. Hanlon had previously treated. But she cannot convince them to be separated, even though it will mean that both will die. McNeil's Boys Club mentor, whom he hadn't seen in 20 years, is shot, and prevails upon him to not report it to the police.

A smooth talking CEO, Hugh Miller, takes charge of the hospital when it is bought by an HMO, and starts shaking things up; A couple won't terminate a pregnancy when it's discovered that their baby has a malformed brain, so Aaron and Gina come up with a plan to do an experimental fetal operation. Miller gives permission to proceed, in part because he also owns a cable TV network, and plans to televise the procedure. But the parents aren't so sure, and then they accidentally observe Shutt and Simon in an embarrassing situation.

McNeil goes against procedure and red tape and performs a hip replacement surgery; Shutt and Simon transplant a computer into a patient's brain in an attempt to help him communicate; Alberghetti tries to ignore her feelings for Miller.

A coma victim awakens after 15 years; Miller learns firsthand how his cutbacks have affected the quality of care when a heart attack turns him into a patient, and what happens when the man who saves him is denied coverage.

With the hospital proving to be a profit drain, Chicago Hope's new parent company decides to sell, which will mean firing the staff and selling the equipment. So Miller devises a way to pay off the debts and keep the hospital alive. It's a plot that involves a computer whiz who's paralyzed and wants experimental surgery in which a computer chip could help him walk again.