Natalie Manning

**Dr. Natalie Manning** (née Conte) is a former attending physician in emergency medicine with a specialization in pediatrics at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center. She was portrayed by Torrey DeVitto.

## Biography

Natalie was born in Seattle, Washington to Lou and Carol Conte. She later moved to Chicago, where she met and married Jeff Manning and became pregnant with their son Owen. Jeff was killed in action during an overseas deployment a few months prior to the start of the show.

After six years of working in the Emergency Department, Natalie is fired at the end of season 6 after she confesses to stealing medication from a drug trial in an attempt to help her mother who is suffering from heart failure. After she is fired, she and Owen decide to leave Chicago and they are seen moving out in You Can't Always Trust What You See.

## Season 1

### Derailed

Natalie is first introduced along with her coworkers at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Emergency Department (which was presumably redone after the explosion in the backdoor pilot). She assists in treating an influx of patients from an elevated train derailment. One of her patients is brought in with a brain injury for which she needs surgery, but her legal guardians initially refuse because the woman is carrying their baby as a surrogate.

Natalie is a pregnant single mother to be, and later in the episode she is revealed to be the widow of a soldier who was killed in action. Her friends and coworkers are very supportive, especially April and Maggie, who are shown at the end of the episode helping her put together a crib.

### iNo

Natalie and Will battle over which of their patients should receive the hospital's last nitrous oxide tank; Will claims that his patient, a father of three, is more deserving and has a better chance of survival than Natalie's patient, a very weak and sick infant. It ends in Will accusing Natalie of being blinded by her "motherly instincts" and leaving with the tank. Natalie was understandably furious and refused to speak to Will for over a week, ignoring his repeated attempts to apologize. Although she eventually began talking to him again, she did not accept his apology or forgive him until the end of the following episode.

### Fallback

Natalie helps examine Will's patient, a violinist with hearing loss and vertigo. Natalie reveals that she had aspirations of being a violinist and bonds with the patient; later, when Will tells the patient that she needs surgery, she refuses to consent until she speaks to Natalie. Natalie comforts her, explaining that even if she loses her hearing, she will always be able to play through muscle memory, and the two of them play a violin piece together before she is anesthetized. The patient loses her hearing, as expected, but is able to cope with it because of Natalie's advice. At the end of the episode, Natalie finally forgives Will for what he said, and Will tells her that since he lives close to her, she should call him when she goes into labor so he can drive her to the hospital.

### Mistaken

After watching them interact, April comments to Natalie that she sees something between her and Will, but Natalie vehemently denies this, maintaining that they are just friends. The conversation is interrupted by news of a shooting at a movie theater; Natalie suspects that her patient, a teenage girl with an extremely controlling mother, is suffering from an eating disorder and enlists the help of Dr. Charles. He gives the girl a hamburger, and when she eats it, determines that her condition was physical and not mental. They treat and release her, but Natalie is shaken about the mistake she made, as she was so sure of her diagnosis.

### Malignant

Natalie goes on a tour of a birthing facility with Maggie, who is acting as her birthing buddy; later, Natalie speaks to the pregnant girlfriend of a patient who died after getting hit by a car, as she is in a similar situation. Meanwhile, one of Natalie's patients, an older woman on chemotherapy presenting with high fevers and poor kidney function, is placed on dialysis; however, she is too weak, and Natalie intubates her while she attempts to figure out what's going on. After Will and Dr. Charles tell her about two similar cases they've seen that day, Natalie runs some tests, and discovers that her patient had no tumors and was suffering from an overdose of chemotherapy.

### Bound

While working on a young boy's case with Sarah, Natalie's water breaks and she goes into labor (leaving a terrified Sarah to inform the parents of the boy's terminal diagnosis). When Maggie, Natalie's birthing buddy, has to leave her side to return to work, Will keeps her company; however, while getting some ice chips, he runs into Natalie's mother-in-law Helen, who orders Will to leave Natalie alone, as she can tell he's interested in her and Natalie's husband died only seven months before. Will leaves, although Natalie asks for him while she continues to struggle through labor.

As Natalie's labor progresses, it becomes apparent that there are complications with the birth and the doctor assisting Natalie advises she get a c-section, as the baby is not turned properly. Natalie is vehemently opposed to this and decides to let Maggie, who is a midwife, turn the baby. She is successful and Natalie is able to give birth without surgery, but the baby is initially not breathing and has to be resuscitated. However, the baby is successfully revived and determined to be a perfectly healthy boy, who Natalie names Owen. Her friends and coworkers, including Will, come to visit her and her newborn son, sharing a toast to Owen.

### Saints

Natalie remains a patient in the hospital, still recovering from giving birth to her son. Her parents come to visit from Seattle, and Natalie mentions that she does sometimes consider going back home to Seattle to be near her parents, but would want to finish her fellowship first; this upsets Helen since as her ex-husband remarried and her only son died, Natalie and Owen are all the family she has. When Will comes to visit Natalie for the first time, bringing with him a basket sent for her by Radiology, Helen privately tells him that she has changed her mind about him dating Natalie, since she knows that if they are together Natalie won't leave Chicago. Selfishly, she gives Will her blessing to date her daughter-in-law because she wants to be a part of her grandson's life.

At the end of the episode, Natalie is finally discharged, going home with her son.

### Reunion

Natalie's maternity leave ends, and she returns to work, much to the joy of both her and her coworkers, although she misses Owen. Her first patient, a 13-year-old girl diagnosed with mitochondrial disease by her father, has some inconsistencies in her symptoms that suggest she's been misdiagnosed. Natalie becomes more suspicious when she learns that the girl began feeling sick after the death of her mother from cancer, as well as the fact that the girl has not had the compulsory muscle biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. She and Will enlist the help of Dr. Charles, who watches the two from a distance and speaks to the girl without her father present. Although Natalie strongly disagrees with how they are handling the case, Dr. Charles concludes that the girl is being overmedicated by her father and CPS is called, separating the two.

### Choices

Will assists Natalie with Jennifer Baker, a cancer patient who collapsed in a coffeeshop. While looking through her charts, Natalie comments that she's "been through hell"; they discover that Jennifer has a DNR order, which Will sees as selfish and unfeeling due to the fact that she has a husband and daughter. Will tries to convince Jennifer, who simply wants to go home and die in peace, to enter a clinical trial, but Jennifer is vehemently opposed to this. Natalie doesn't back Will up in front of the patient, angering Will, who believes that their duty is to heal no matter the patient's wishes. Jennifer later codes, but Will violates her DNR order and resuscitates her anyway. Natalie is furious and takes over the case, refusing to give him any details about Jennifer's progress.

### Clarity

Natalie, still very angry with Will about violating Jennifer Baker's DNR, confronts him about his treatment choices on one of his patients, claiming that he's going overboard with the tests he's running and he is putting the patient through hell for nothing. Will tells her that he's not dismissing her, but as it's his case and she has no authority, it's not her call; however, when the tests come back negative, Natalie intercepts the results and conceals them from Will, instead ordering a different treatment plan for the patient. The patient later codes and dies, despite Will's desperate attempts to resuscitate him. As Natalie calls time of death, Will pores over the patient's chart, looking to see what he could have done wrong, and finds Natalie's treatment change. He confronts her about it, accusing her of being the reason the patient died. She attempts to justify her actions and it escalates into a massive fight, after which Natalie asks Sharon to change her shift so she doesn't have to work alongside Will. Sharon refuses, citing the fact that Will is under scrutiny due to the lawsuit over Jennifer Baker's DNR, but gives her advice about the situation. After Will investigates the patient's cause of death and realizes it wasn't Natalie's fault, he tracks her down in the break room and apologizes. Natalie asks him why he always takes things out on her and uses her as his "punching bag", to which Will replies don't you know, before kissing her.

### Intervention

Natalie works on a case with Will, who she has not seen or spoken to since they kissed the night before. They treat a young girl with meningitis-like symptoms, but after seeing her test results, Natalie quickly realizes that the girl is suffering from *Haemophilus Influenzae B*; she and Will later discover that the girl was infected because her parents refused to vaccinate her or any of their other children, putting both their children and everyone around them in grave danger. Will asks Natalie if she's planning to just "let them [the parents] off the hook" for their decision; Natalie simply says that they're terrified and now is not the time to punish them for their mistakes.

Accompanied by Will, Natalie visits the girl's school to give her classmates and teachers prophylactic treatment for the disease. While at the school, a teacher collapses with Will in a different room, forcing Natalie to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the woman, which doesn't work, forcing her to treat the woman with improvised methods using the school supplies in the room. Because Natalie had mouth-to-mouth contact with an infected person - performing a procedure that didn't even end up working - she cannot come into any contact with Owen until her tests come back negative, as he is still a very young baby and susceptible to disease. When they return to the hospital, Will lashes out at the girl's parents, since it is because of them that Natalie cannot be near her own son, not to mention the suffering they caused for their daughter and everyone around them.

After the girl has been treated, Will and Natalie finally talk about their kiss. Will confesses that he feels like a little boy pulling the girl's pigtails on the playground because he doesn't know how else to get her attention; Natalie, although touched by this, tells him that she's going through a lot and isn't ready for a relationship, and they go back to being friends.

### Guilty

Natalie treats an infant who was brought into the ED by her mother, a single woman who smokes. While the baby is getting a CT scan, the mother leaves for several minutes, apologizing when she comes back and telling Natalie that she just needed a smoke. Natalie is instantly judgemental of this and admonishes the woman for not considering the health of her baby, citing the dangers of secondhand smoke.

The results of the CT scan combined with the baby's symptoms point very clearly towards the baby having suffered abusive head trauma, a form of child abuse colloquially known as "shaken baby syndrome". Natalie informs Sharon, who warns her that once CPS has been contacted, the case is mostly out of their hands. Because the symptoms are so characteristic of abuse, Natalie goes ahead with contacting CPS, who remove the baby from the custody of her mother, who insists that she didn't hurt her child.

However, Natalie then receives an email with the baby's medical records, and, after reading through them, realizes that she made a terrible mistake and the baby's illness was caused by a previously undiagnosed injury in utero, through no fault of the mother. She immediately tells Sharon and rushes to inform the baby's mother, who is justifiably outraged, correctly accusing Natalie of judging her the moment she entered the ED. She refuses to allow Natalie or anyone else at the hospital treat her baby and demands to leave, but before the conversation can continue, the baby has a seizure and nearly dies. Natalie manages to save her, and the woman is reunited with her baby. As they watch the woman play with her daughter in the nursery, Natalie admits to Sharon that she did judge the woman, because as a single mother raising a baby alone, she sees herself in her. She confesses that she was so quick to jump to conclusions because she can imagine it (hurting her child) when it's the middle of the night and "Owen is crying and I have *no one* to hand him to". Sharon assures her that the difference is that Natalie would never actually do it, and Natalie adds that "neither did she [the woman]".

### Us

Natalie faces pressure from Helen to get Owen baptized. Helen claims that it's what Jeff, who was Catholic, would have wanted; when Natalie mentions this to Will, he immediately tells her that he can help her out with the baptism. Natalie tells him the same thing she told Helen, that she'll think about it, but Will begins to arrange the ceremony anyway.

Natalie and Connor treat Eric, a young boy who has swallowed two magnets. They present Eric's father, Tate, with two options: they can either surgically remove the magnets now, or wait to see whether they cause damage to Eric's digestive system. Both options have significant drawbacks, and Tate is overwhelmed by the decision he faces. Connor pushes for the surgery, but Natalie tells Tate that he can take some time to decide before pulling Connor aside, angrily telling him he has no idea what it [making huge decisions about your child by yourself] is like. Soon after, Eric begins coughing up blood and he is rushed into emergency surgery, where Natalie and Connor are able to fully repair the damage. Afterward, Natalie apologizes for snapping at Connor and explains that she's on edge because of the decision she faces with the baptism, asking his opinion. Connor tells her that he always envied kids who went to church, because they were part of a community.

Affected by what Connor said, Natalie decides to go ahead with Owen's baptism and tells Will that she'd like his help if the offer still stands. He is happy, but tells her that he only wants what's best for her, adding that while he still is interested in her, he needs to move on. The episode ends with Owen's baptism, attended by the entire Chicago Med staff.

### Hearts

While treating Bo, a young boy with a broken wrist, Natalie notices discrepancies in the story about how Bo hurt himself, as he claimed he fell on gravel but has no skin abrasions whatsoever. She notices that his mother also has a bandaged hand, but the mother dismisses it; however, when Natalie takes an x-ray of Bo's arm, she notices several unhealed fractures and suspects child abuse. She and Sharon bring in Dr. Charles, who shares Natalie's concerns and tells Sharon to call CPS. Eventually, Dr. Charles figures out that it was Bo's brother Griffin who was abusing his family members. This shocks Natalie, and she is deeply disturbed by it, as well as the fact that Griffin's parents decline to remove him from their household, even though he is hurting his brother.

## Season 5

### Never Going Back to Normal

Natalie suffers a traumatic brain injury when she and Will are attacked in Will's car by Tim Burke. When she wakes up she is confused about having an engagement ring on her finger. She doesn't remember getting engaged to Phillip, but blames it on her short-term memory loss.

### We're Lost in the Dark

Natalie arrives back to the ED for her first shift after her TBI. She confides in Maggie about not remembering getting engaged to Phillip. Dr. Lanik wants her to work a half shift while she recovers, which she deems unnecessary. When Will welcomes her back, she apologizes for the way he found out about her engagement. She claims that is what she came to tell him the night they were attacked, but that she isn't entirely sure. Before they can continue their conversation, she is called away to treat a teenager who is brought in with a gunshot wound. When she offers to help stabilize the patient, she is sidelined by Dr. Lanik and ordered to transport the patient up to surgery, which is normally a nurse's job.

While in the elevator, the power goes out and she and the patient become stuck. Matthew Casey makes contact through the roof of the elevator with a plan to lift the patient out, but Natalie deems him too unstable to be moved, and asks Matt to bring her blood instead. She experiences a short but intense flash of headache which she initially shrugs off, but she continues to experience dizziness and blurry vision. When Matt returns and informs her that no blood is available, the patient's oxygenation stats drop and she is forced to intubate him. When she struggles and is unable to get the tube in, Matt takes over and performs the intubation. Natalie asks for Dr. Lanik to be brought in, but when he is unable to make it she and Matt attempt to perform an emergency thoracotomy to clamp his aorta to direct any remaining blood to his heart and brain, a procedure she has never performed before. She successfully manages the procedure, and as the power returns the elevator moves again and the patient is able to be taken to the OR.

When Dr. Lanik learns of her success he congratulates her, but adds that he is still keeping an eye on her. As she is getting ready to leave, Will tells her that he doesn't think that she came to tell him that she got engaged when they were attacked, but she deflects. When he asks her whether she is sure she loves Phillip, she becomes angry and replies that her relationship with him is the only stable thing in her life at that moment.

### In the Valley of the Shadows

Natalie treats a young girl who is brought in for a second degree leg burn. She mistakenly tells nurse Monique to administer etomidate as a sedative, causing the girl to go into a coma. Will continues to call her mental capacity into question, and after he pulls her off the case she realizes she should have administered ketamine instead, and that the etomidate is masking the girl's adrenal insufficiency. Despite the patient's recovery, Will decides to personally supervise all her cases going forward. He claims this is for her own protection, but Natalie retorts that she feels instead that he is punishing her for something.

### Infection: Part II

Natalie and the rest of the ED staff deal with the influx of patients infected with the flesh-eating bacteria.

### Got a Friend in Me

Natalie continues to be annoyed by Will's close scrutiny. She diagnoses a toddler who is brought in with severe seasonal allergy symptoms with a bacterial sinus infection, but his parents refuse antibiotics as they only trust holistic remedies. When she suspects the infection has progressed to pneumonia, she is unable to convince the parents to let their son have a chest X-ray, and Will is required to step in in order to convince them. He reminds her that this is the second time in a month that parents of a patient have lost faith in her. When the parents threaten to take their son out of the hospital, she locks herself in the room with him and administers the antibiotics against their wishes.

## Season 6

### When Did We Begin to Change

Natalie moves into a hotel to protect her son Owen from infection with COVID-19. She and Dr. Marcel treat a young patient who is in heart failure due to the chemotherapy medicine she is taking for leukemia. Her work with Crockett is put under strain due to Crockett's personal history with leukemia.

### Those Things Hidden in Plain Sight

Natalie attends to a pregnant inmate who is brought in from Cook County Jail. She is displeased to see the patient is still in handcuffs, which becomes a problem when the patient has a seizure. Natalie, Goodwin and the doctor treating the patient attempt to secure a compassionate release but are ultimately unable to affect the outcome. When the corrections officer returns saying he has to cuff the patient and have her baby taken away to the nursery as per protocol, Natalie refuses to let him in and shoves the officer, for which she is placed under arrest. She is quickly released after Peter Kalmick pulls some strings, and no charges are pressed. Natalie and the doctor who treated Aisha lament the unfairness of the criminal justice and penal system.

### Do You Know the Way Home?

Natalie and Crockett have become increasingly flirtatious with each other. Natalie has several video calls with an elderly patient who lists several incoherent symptoms. After repeated requests by Natalie to come in for tests, the woman eventually confesses that she is not actually suffering from any of the symptoms and instead called the hospital because she was feeling lonely due to being isolated at home. At the end of the episode, Natalie and Crockett share an intimate moment on the rooftop balcony.

### Letting Go Only to Come Together

With Natalie and Crockett becoming closer, Crockett officially meets Natalie's mother. They also begin to work on a so called impossible case in order to relieve a patients pain. Crockett makes a side comment saying that "opposites attract but they don't stay together", which caused concern for Nat as both she and Crockett are opposites. At the end of the episode, Natalie and Crockett cure the patient of her pain through surgery, which brings up the relationship compatibility question. As the patient believed that her pain was untreatable, Crockett assured Natalie that his bad luck changed as soon as he met her. That in turn allowed the couple to share their first "I love you"s.

### A Red Pill, a Blue Pill

Natalie brings her mother into the ED with heart problems. Will assesses her and asks about any medication she's on. Carol mentions the blue pill that Natalie had put her on and tried to leave to get it from her bag. Natalie hides the pills in her bag when she goes to move her car. Natalie hides the pills in her locker when interrupted by Crockett in the staff room. Scans show that Carol's heart condition has improved. Will questions Natalie about her mother's improvement and goes through her mother's bag looking for the trial drugs. He confronts Natalie about giving her mother the drugs and takes the medication off her. Will turns down Carol's LVAD which sees her condition improve. He then returns the trial drugs to Natalie so she can continue giving them to her mother.

## Season 7

### You Can't Always Trust What You See

Natalie and Owen are seen moving away from Chicago, sent off by Will.

## Season 8

### Does One Door Close and Another One Open?

Natalie and Owen welcome Will to Seattle after he resigns from *Gaffney*. Natalie tells him she plans on never letting him go, implying that they are picking up their romance where they left off.

## Relationships

### Jeff Clarke

Natalie and Jeff begin dating in Season 2, but things start falling apart after he stands up for her in front of Dr. Stohl, which she finds humiliating. Some time later, Jeff admits that he and Natalie's late husband Jeff Manning had a fight when he was still alive because Jeff revealed that he had feelings for Natalie. This upsets Natalie to the point where she breaks up with Jeff, telling him they aren't right for each other. They remain friends until Jeff is transferred to Hawaii.

### Will Halstead

Natalie works closely alongside Will Halstead on many patients, and as a result they grow very close. Will has feelings for Natalie since the start of Season 1, and he tells her as much in Clarity, after which they share their first kiss. Natalie, however, is not ready to be in a relationship, so they leave it be and continue as just friends.

After Generation Gap, they begin to get close again, which makes Will's girlfriend Nina Shore jealous. In Deliver Us, a small disagreement between the three leads to Will apologizing to Natalie for Nina's behavior towards her. Natalie says that if she was Nina she would be jealous too, which Will doesn't understand given that they are just friends. Natalie becomes upset about Will's "just friends" comment, indicating that she feels more for him.

In the Season 3 premiere Speak Your Truth, Natalie has just returned from a three-month sabbatical where she took the time to think things over. Will reveals to Natalie that his feelings for him are still present, and they kiss. Their relationship develops slowly but steadily from here on out.

At the end of Crisis Of Confidence, Will asks Jay for their mother's engagement ring, planning on proposing to Natalie.

At the start of Be My Better Half, Will and Natalie are engaged, after it took a week for her to answer. They soon begin to squabble over their wedding plans, with Natalie wanting it to be a small event because she has already been married before, and Will wanting a more elaborate and religious affair. In the end they agree to do the planning together.

    In Death Do Us Part, just as they are about to get married, Ray Burke finds out Will is working with the Chicago P.D. in order to bring him down and Will is kidnapped and held at gunpoint. After being rescued by Jay, Will rushes to the church where he has only a few seconds to tell Natalie he has to be put into witness protection before being whisked away, leaving Natalie behind on the church steps confused and in tears.

After returning from witness protection in All the Lonely People, Will starts keeping a gun with him, which Natalie heavily disapproves of. She demands Will get rid of the gun, which he says he will, but he hides it in the trunk of his car instead. When the gun is stolen from his car and subsequently used in a crime, Natalie finds out Will lied about getting rid of the gun and she breaks up with him, giving him back his engagement ring.

Some time later, Will has a brief relationship with FBI agent Ingrid Lee. Ingrid soon realizes Will is still stuck on Natalie, and pushes her to take Will back, saying she would be a fool not to, but Natalie instead meets and starts a relationship with Phillip Davis, whose daughter Sophie she treats on several occasions. Will immediately dislikes Phillip, and eventually learns from Sam Abrams that Phillip slipped an engagement ring onto Natalie's finger while she was unconscious, taking advantage of Natalie's memory loss. Refusing to believe Will at first, Natalie eventually regains her memories and realizes she has been extremely unfair to Will. She finds Will on the rooftop balcony of the hospital and tell him they should get back together and that she was very wrong for treating him the way she has, but Will apologizes and tells her he has moved on.

Eventually they are able to return to being good friends, and they initially continue to work along side each other without any further romantic involvement. When Will resigns from *Gaffney* at the end of Season 8 he follows Natalie and Owen to Seattle and they appear to resume their relationship, with Natalie saying she plans on never letting him go.

### Phillip Davis

They met with Natalie being Phillip's daughter [[Sophie]] doctor when she is rushed into the ER. This romance began just after Natalie and Will ended things and their relationship progressed quickly, in fact too quickly. Throughout the relationship Phillip's actions are questionable for example when looking after the kids he would bring both Sophie and Owen Manning into the emergency room and he also lied to Owen about owning a Ranch in order to get him to like him. This is only the tip of the iceberg as later Natalie sustains a TBI after a car crash when going to tell Will Halstead that she still loves him, in which minutes before was Phillip going to propose before a FBI agent took her out to talk about Will . As a result of this and Natalie's memory loss due to the TBI in amidst of Natalie being treated from the car crash by Crockett Marcel he slips the ring onto her finger and convinces Natalie the they got engaged and he proposed. Later on Natalie begins to lose feelings for him and this is also when Will Halstead is informed by Crockett about the incident, and Will goes to inform Natalie in which before this she ends the relationship with Phillip. Some time later, Sophie is brought to the hospital by David's sister and brother-in-law, who reveals Natalie that David abandoned his daughter and that is a pathological liar, who has no qualms about skipping town whenever things don't go his way. Despite Phillip putting on a DNR order into place, preventing Sophie from being revived should she go into cardiac arrest, dr Latham is able to performe the surgery, curing Sophie from her heart disease. The experience allows Natalie to remember what happened while she was unconscious.

### Crockett Marcel

Natalie and Crockett develop a relationship during Season 6, which ends when Natalie is fired and decides to leave Chicago.

## Notes and Trivia

* She reveals in Fallback that she plays the violin and wanted to become a professional violinist when she was young. Becoming a doctor was her fallback plan;
* She has a small tattoo on the inside of her left wrist;
* She used to have a nail biting habit;
* She broke her left arm in college when a girl named Lisa Gates ran into her on her bike. (The Things We Do)
* She is prone to get angry when people act in a way that she perceives as a desire to protect her, because she firmly believes that she can take care of herself. Too bad that, of the entire main cast, she is the one who most exhibited a tendency to make bad decisions and believe the wrong people, from whom she was saved by sheer luck.

## Gallery

*For a full gallery of Natalie Manning, see Natalie Manning/Gallery.*

## Appearances

### Chicago PD

* S3E10 Now I'm God
* S3E19 If We Were Normal
* S3E20 In a Duffel Bag
* S4E12 Sanctuary
* S4E16 Emotional Proximity
* S4E19 Last Minute Resistance
* S7E4 Infection, Part III

### Chicago Fire

* S5E15 Deathtrap
* S7E2 Going to War
* S8E4 Infection, Part I
* S8E13 A Chicago Welcome