From outside Valerie's room, Lucy watches Peter examine Valerie as ominous strings hum in the background. Romano bustles around a corner; Lucy begins, "Dr. Romano," but he blows her off tersely: "Just a second, Ms. Knight." He goes into the room to talk to Peter. Lucy heaves a sigh. Although we can't really hear what they say on the soundtrack, the captioning says, among other things, that Romano asks, "Spontaneous respiration?" and Benton answers, "No. No brain stem activity." Romano thanks Peter and leaves the room, and before he can even close the door behind him, Lucy says flatly, "It was a stroke." Romano says yes, and that their attempts to open up the blocked vessel failed. Lucy asks if Valerie can recover. "The truth?" Romano asks, then says more gently than usual, "She's in a permanent vegetative state." Angry with herself, Lucy says, "It was the L-VAD, wasn't it? Threw a clot to her brain," but Romano tells her not to blame herself: "This was not your fault. I'm the one that put the thing in, remember?" Almost tenderly, he continues, "We make these medical decisions all the time, nothing's risk-free." Lucy stares at him for a moment before casting her eyes downward and muttering, "I'd better go talk to her mother." Shouldn't a doctor who's actually graduated from med school talk to the family? Just wondering. Romano tells Lucy to hold up a minute: "UNOS has identified a potential recipient in Milwaukee." Lucy, softly: "What are you talking about?" Romano explains, "A domino heart procedure -- we take out Valerie's new heart and give it to someone else who needs it. You need to get consent from the family." He hands her Valerie's chart. Lucy looks downright disgusted by this and says numbly, "But she'll --" Romano cuts her off as he hands her a pen: "She is already dead, Ms. Knight." Lucy stares at him, mutely takes the pen, and zombie-walks out of the room.