How The Sausage Is Made
Episode 6 of This is Going To Hurt begins with Shruti bumping into the husband of the triplets she delivered earlier in the season. He’s working behind the deli counter at the supermarket. It seems Shruti can’t escape from work even if she wants to. Eventually she abandons her cart and heads home. Meanwhile, Adam ends up staying at Greg and Emma’s place, but of course she’s not exactly happy about his mannerisms. It’s been over 34 days and tensions are high. Adam is savings up for a deposit on a flat, and in order to do that he’s accepted a gig at a private hospital. He also doesn’t have a date for his tribunal yet either, which continues to hang over him like a black cloud. It’s a very different environment too, with a ridiculous amount of luxuries and only one patient to deal with per nurse. This is a direct juxtaposition to Shruti at the NHS funded hospital, with broken vending machines, unenthusiastic trainees and juggling multiple patients. Shruti is the only doctor on-call and her trainee, Al, is less than knowledgeable. Even worse, he ends up fainting at the sight of blood. Shruti has come a long way and working the ward has certainly toughened her up. She’s not in the mood to deal with trainees and despite actually testing his knowledge, his constant jokes and quips only work to wind her up and cause her to become more impatient. There is a really nice moment here though with a patient that mentions Shruti is “a great doctor” and that the NHS are lucky to have her. The thing is, that’s a drop in the well for what’s otherwise an overwhelming amount of stress and impatient, unhappy patients for her to deal with. One of those patients happens to be a woman named Briana. Shruti pulls some strings to get her a scan after-hours, where she notices a lot of blood in her abdomen. This means her pregnancy is ectopic and it’s also ruptured too. With her life hanging in the balance, Al is tasked with phoning the theatre and Vicky to come in and help, while Shruti is left with doing surgery. While this is going on, we cut across to find Adam delivering his patient’s baby. Everything starts off okay but when she begins losing a good deal of blood, Adam is forced to earn his money as he scrambles for the midwives to rally around him and help try and save Kathleen’s life. The thing is, the private hospital is not equipped to deal with this emergency, given there’s not enough blood stocked there. So as fate would have it, the aforementioned new patient showing up at the hospital happens to be Adam’s private patient, Kathleen. This really puts into perspective the divide between the rich and poor, which has been at the forefront of this chapter. As night turns to day, Shruti actually ends up passing her exams but she’s completely nonchalant toward Adam, who tries to talk to her but to no avail. She’s understandably still unhappy with him, but uses the pretenses that she’s tired. When Adam shows up at work the next day, the place is a mess and all the staff are distraught. So what’s happened? Well, it turns out after her shift, Shruti emptied her locker. As police show up at her parents’ door, the worst thing has happened – Shruti is dead.
The Episode Review
What a powerful episode. Out of all the chapters in this series, this is the one that simultaneously shows the harsh realities of life as a doctor and pays tribute to the amazing work our staff on the NHS achieve. Seeing this portrayed through the juxtaposition of the private hospital and how ill-quipped they are to deal with emergencies, and how nonchalantly Shruti moves between patients, saving their lives with little aplomb or grace, just goes to show that our real heroes are those wearing nurses outfits, not those kicking a ball around or prancing about taking selfies. How the hospital will recover from what’s happened remains to be seen but this, coupled with an undercurrent of drama and a beautiful visual motif, makes this one of the best dramas of 2022 so far – and a damn good episode on its own.
