Before Chen can wallow in her irritation, a pretty paramedic dashes into the ER cradling a baby in a blanket. She gives Chen the bullet: newborn female, maybe two hours old, abandoned at St. Anthony's church, cold to the touch, some peripheral cyanosis, clear airways, and a weak cry. Chen sends her to Trauma One.

In a quiet room, while they treat a knocked-out patient, Cleo "Control-Alt-Delete" Finch and Benton discuss Reese's palpable grief for his dead mother. Cleo wonders whether Benton's tried moving Reese back to his own room after he's already fallen asleep. "Doesn't matter, he still cries," sighs Peter. Reese is also suffering from horrible nightmares that he can't remember once he wakes up, and one night padded through the hallways with a flashlight looking for her. Aw! "Poor guy, he's confused!" Cleo coos. Benton morosely explains that it's just dawned on him that Reese will grow up the rest of his life without a mother, "something so basic, such a big part of who he's going to be, and there's nothing I can do about it." He should call over to General Hospital -- people come back from the dead all the time over there. Um, not that I watch, or anything. No. At that second, Dr. Dave "Hoochie-Coochie" Malucci bursts in and tells Cleo that he reduced her prolapsed rectum. Oh, so that's why she's so sullen all the time! Cleo, though, thinks he's referring to one of her patients, and is angry. "You treated my patient?" she gasps. Malucci sanctimoniously says that the girl was in a lot of pain, so he used his sugar trick -- sprinkle it on, water escapes from the mucosa, the edema subsides, and "pop that puppy back in," he explains. Benton frowns that Dr. Dave should've first made sure it wasn't a prolapsed hemorrhoid, but Malucci twinkles, "Trust me, that was no hemorrhoid." Cleo's human interface twitches, which by her standards is a show of rage.

Cleo follows Malucci out of the room and spits, "Don't treat my patients unless I ask you to." He doesn't understand. "Why? I rectified the situation," he says, smug. Cleo snorts that any idiot could shove an anus back in, but Malucci is busy snickering about his "rect-ify" pun. Weaver's Dave-dar bleeps as she notices the conflict; Cleo claims she was waiting for a surgical consult on that patient, but Malucci accuses her of "gabbing with [her] boyfriend." He doesn't know they're on a break. See? Even Malucci isn't watching the show. Weaver politely asks whether there is a problem here. "Yes," Malucci says. "I never met anyone so possessive over someone else's butthole." It's really pretty rotten of him to act like it's no big deal; his intervention does undermine Cleo's authority with her patient a tad, plus after last week, he really shouldn't be assuming his diagnostic skills excel. I know he probably just enjoys the mischief of a good sugar-on-the-distended-anus trick -- who doesn't? But this seems like horribly misplaced boldness after last week's disaster, which means the writers are desperate to make us root for his departure. Oh, and when is that? In forty-five minutes. Far be it from these scribes to give us an intelligent, slow build. Anyway, Cleo snarls for him to keep his hands off her patients, and he waves off her concern.