Luka Kovac arrives safely at County General and is hospitalized for treatment. His friend Gillian delivers John Carter's letter to Abby.

Confident second-year resident Pratt wants to prove his abilities when he works the graveyard shift (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.), but his heroics sometimes backfire. Pratt shows contempt for a man, Ed Gamble, who presents no symptoms of disease but temporarily loses his speech.

Ben Hollander is a distraught architect whose degenerating eyesight causes him despondent while a spirited new nurse, Samantha Taggart joins the staff. Elsewhere, disaster strikes when the doctors suspect a mother is abusing her child while Dr. Corday learns something shocking about the charismatic Dr. Dorset, and Dr. Archie Morris is overwhelmed by the chaos and grisly conditions of life in the E.R.

Pratt and Kovac clash over a miscarriage-prone young woman, Denny, who arrives to deliver a premature baby. Pratt wants to make heroic efforts to save the unborn child, while Kovac is adamantly against spending vast amounts of money to keep the forever sickly baby alive.

To everyone's amazement, Lewis makes a date to share a home-cooked dinner with the elderly Ben Hollander, her depressed patient who is going blind.

On Thanksgiving Day, a helicopter crash outside the ER leaves several injured, and kills Dr. Romano. Alex tries to bring Sam and Luka together.