Laurette faces an important audition with laryngitis. Beckett battles the pressure of racial prejudice and financial coercion when he discovers someone has been using the body bags in his GRU. Dr. Richard returns from R&R in Hawaii disillusioned by the perceived changes in his wife. Dodger finally finds Rick, Cherry's long-lost brother.

Beckett faces going home when his tour ends in April 1968, as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr polarizes black-white relations in the nation and at China Beach.