Family

## Episode Chronology

**"Family"** is the thirteenth episode of the fourth season on NBC drama series *New Amsterdam*, and the sixty-seventh episode overall. It aired on January 18, 2022.

## Synopsis

Max and Helen adjust to sharing their lives and their problems, including the challenge of Helen's mother. Bloom and Reynolds treat a family after their horrific car accident lands them in the ED. Iggy and Trevor reach a new understanding in their business relationship.

## Plot

Max and Helen are enjoying sharing their lives together. Or at least they were. They’ve always worked together however things are different now with them as a couple and their shared living space. In a foreign country no less. Luna has adjusted well to the change.

It was just Helen that was struggling with it. She was adjusting to sharing her feelings at all times and so it was good to have Max be supportive. He wasn’t doing it simply because her mother was involved either. He knows that Helen’s relationship has always been tricky and he asked her about it. Helen as it turns out hadn’t told her mother that she moved back. She was worried about her mother’s reaction. And she hadn’t wanted to face judgement.

Max told her that he’d be there for her. He couldn’t wait to meet her mom and so Helen arranged for lunch. They were all supposed to go to the restaurant and talk, but Max got called away by a sick patient. Max had met someone at the park while he was playing with Luna.

He met a guy playing soccer who was suffering from what he thought was jock itch. It wasn’t until after he gave the man a prescription and the man later came back with the symptoms of drunkenness that Max found out this man doesn’t drink. He wasn’t drunk in spite of all the symptoms. He was unsteady on his feet, experiencing nausea, and his voice was blurred. And yet this man doesn’t drink so why would he be drunk?

Max’s diagnosis was an odd one. His prescription to solve it was even odder. He suggested to his patient that he should have some drinks and that it would solve the issue and so his friends brought him to a bar. Max was there in the bar when Helen had the meeting with her mother. She told her mother she moved back and her mother then tore into her about how she’s not a chore. Helen moving back is something she could have said months ago.

Helen’s mother also asked her why she doesn’t just have a child of her own if she’s so set on raising other people’s children and then Helen called her father by his pet name of Baba and her mother went off on her. The woman was still trying to claim that Helen’s father abandoned her as a child.

It went along so well of her other lies about him being a racists. She was being so vile about him that Helen finally snapped. She said she remembers what happened when he left. He begged to stay and he was holding Helen when her mother ripped the little girl out of his hands and told him to leave. She next spent the next few years reiterating how he was a terrible man. A terrible father. Helen believed this lie so much that she hung up on him when he called her on his death bed and so Helen told her mother that the next time she thinks about discussing Baba – learn something and shut up. Helen no longer wants to hear it. Max chose that moment to finally arrive after an hour of being late and Helen told him that if he wanted this lunch so bad that he could have it.

Helen left both Max and her mother at the table. She was so angry that she couldn’t be around anyone. Back in New York at the hospital, a family came in after being in a car accident. The father was in pretty bad shape. He was clearly speeding and he was doing so because he and his wife have a four month old baby girl who was sick. The baby was crying like their first child did. Their first child died at four months old from a condition that no one was ever able to name. He cried the same way as little Tiya up to his death. The parents wanted Tiya to get help before it was too late. Bloom ran tests as Reynolds perform surgery on the father. And at first, Bloom couldn’t find anything wrong with the baby.

All the tests said she was perfectly healthy. Then the baby suffered a seizure and it was a good thing she was in the hospital because they were able to save her life. They just couldn’t find what wrong, though. Bloom went through the baby’s entire genetic coding. She couldn’t find any known diseases and it wasn’t just her. She had an entire team help her. They still found nothing. Bloom was at whit’s end while Iggy was solving an issue with one of the doctors. Iggy was there when Dr. Wilder’s brother came in complaining of a psychotic break. Iggy learned from the family that Wilder has been pretty much taking care of her brother in return for him being neglected growing up because she was deaf and needed special attention from their parents.

Wilder blames herself for her brother’s mental health because she thought Adam would have gotten diagnosed earlier if she had been born without an impediment. But Iggy found out that Adam faked his latest break. He felt guilty for being a burden on her. He faked an episode so that he could live at the hospital. His sister told him that she loves and she doesn’t think he’s a burden. The two just needed an honest conversation. One they were finally having thanks to Iggy. Bloom later found the rare condition that Tiya was suffering from and it was easily treatable. She just needed a medication everyday. And so Bloom considered it a miracle, but Reynolds later informed that Tiya’s father was too severe and that he’s slowly dying.

Bloom was so lost after hearing that news that she decided to leave the hospital.

Max meanwhile returned home with the news that he “fixed” things with his mother-in-law. He told Helen how he arranged a family dinner every week and Helen said she didn’t need him interfering with her family. Which was surprising because Max thought they were a family. And the two later had to put their differences aside because they heard about a death back in New York.

Unfortunately, Vijay is gone.

## Cast

* Janet Montgomery as Dr. Lauren Bloom
* Freema Agyeman as Dr. Helen Sharpe
* Jocko Sims as Dr. Floyd Reynolds
* Tyler Labine as Dr. Iggy Frome

Guest Starring* Amaia Arana as ED Resident Roxana Zamaya
* Shiva Kalaiselvan as Leyla Shinwari
* Conner Marx as Ben Meyer
* Sandra Mae Frank as Dr. Elizabeth Wilder
* Ryan Faucett as Trevor Vaughn
* Keren Lugo as Dr. Diana Flores
* Olivia Khoshatefeh as Dr. Yasmin Turan
* Dierdre Friel as Ella
* Matthew Jeffers as Dr. Mark Walsh
* Nora and Opal Clow as Luna Goodwin
* Becca Ballenger as Paramedic Goodrich
* Ehad Berisha as ED Resident Huxley
* Isaiah Seward as Paramedic Durango
* Jenny Jules as Serwa Sharpe
* Nicole Villamil as Delia Jimenez
* Garrett Young as Adam Wilder
* Jowin Marie Batoon as Trauma Nurse
* Phoebe Dunn as Waitress
* Michael Castillejos as Dion Jimenez
* Richard Crawford as Cabbie Malcom Goode
* Atibon Nazaire as Janitor Carl
* Luke Antony Neville as Duncan
* Griffin Osborne as Ian