Abby pushes a cart down the hall, but hears Luka's voice and frantically darts into the closest room, slamming the door and exhaling shakily. "Who are you hiding from?" a voice asks. She spins around to see Carter perched on a bed, picking at his foot. Tasty! He cops to stepping on a piece of glass. Abby peers at his foot, pokes at something, and when he yelps, she concurs with his diagnosis. Snapping on her gloves, Abby figures that probing Carter's foot is the perfect way to segue into her news. "Luka and I broke up a few days ago," she tosses off, casually. Carter gulps. Of the many ways he envisioned this moment, none included his bunions -- except the one with the sock puppets, but even then, only indirectly. "Why?" he manages to sputter. "The relationship wasn't working a long time ago, but neither one of us wanted to be the first one to call it," she oversimplifies, forgetting to add that she's closed-off, never happy, not pretty, and not special, but they're just wee details, really. Carter assumes it's all amicable, but Abby coughs, "I wouldn't say that." She begins to explain why, specifically, she's avoiding Luka, but Haleh pops in and says that Chen needs him stat in Trauma One. He limps away.

Two and a half paces out of the room, Carter passes Luka. "Have you seen Abby?" he asks. "Try the lounge," Carter answers airily.

Chen orders a stream of heated, humidified oxygen to help the baby breathe. Carter charges into the room and gets the lowdown. "She needs warm IV fluids, but I can't get a line," moans Chen. The child's temperature is 91.2 degrees, and they worry when she barely responds to tactile stimuli. Chuny can't find a scalp vein. Carter thinks he's got one, and calls for 66 ccs of saline, but it backfires and the child's heart rate skyrockets to 180. "Dammit!" he curses. "Okay, this kid needs fluids right now!" Chen wants to call pedes for a procedure called a "cutdown," which is a direct incision into a minor blood vessel that facilitates the insertion of a catheter. Carter suggests they instead try going through the umbilical cord, which still hangs from the baby's belly. "I can't!" panics Chen. Carter senses that she's lost confidence in her instincts, and instead of encouraging her, decides to snark that he did one during his internship, so the Chief Resident should bloody well be able to do it, too. She freaks that it won't work if the baby is more than a few hours old, which of course they don't know; Carter counters that the complications are fewer. Calmly, he instructs her to get the kit for the umbilical cord procedure, and interestingly, he calls her "Deb." I liked this touch; it's as though he's willing her to trust him based on their history together, which he hopes will then quell her nerves. Of course, it's possible a lazy writer just got sick of typing "Jing-Mei."