Watters steps in and asks Geiger to take on Austin's transplant patient as she struggles with her ex husband for custody of their daughter. Sutton brings a brain-dead woman into the hospital to deliver her baby.

Tommy places a bid to buy out the hospital with the intention of firing Kate as soon as the deal goes through; as Valerie continues her affair with Danny, Jack lets Danny know that he's aware of their relationship; Elizabeth is readmitted after Andy beats her again, and Andy takes his revenge when Dennis attempts to help his sister escape the cycle of spousal abuse; a mysterious biohazard accompanies a patient admitted to the E.R., and immediately begins to fell the staff; after Kate pleads the hospital's case, Jack agrees to counter Tommy's offer, but only if Phillip fires Danny; Kate and Tommy threaten to expose each other's secrets; after Diane's work for the last two years is called into question and her grant money is suspended, she decides to go to Africa to do research with a colleague; Tommy courts Aaron's support; feeling under-appreciated and ill-respected, Camille resigns; realizing that Tommy will stop at nothing to destroy her, a desperate Kate flees with their daughter an

Kate returns to Chicago to face possible arrest and her ex-husband, as well as suspension at work. Aaron ponders Philip's bitterness over Aaron's apparent support of Tommy Wilmette. Dennis struggles to regain his health. Dr. Nyland returns to find a new doctor in charge of the trauma service. Kronk and Grad continue to quarrel as he prepares to leave Africa.

Kate cares for her dying father and gets some words of wisdom from Tommy when he brings Sara for a visit; Philip recruits Dr. Jack McNeil to head up orthopedics; Diane returns, only to find that Billy has remained in Africa and that her lab has turned into a storage room; Keith places himself in legal jeopardy when he decides to help an injured drug courier evade arrest; Aaron persuades Tommy to give the hospital six months to turn itself around with Philip at the helm.

Aaron and Jack join forces in operating on a man who sustained multiple fractures in a parachute jumping accident; Diane rejoins the staff as a teaching attending in internal medicine, and quickly draws a demanding and manipulative patient who's making the staff miserable; Kate's grief over her father's death is compounded when she's carjacked on her way home from his funeral and his ashes are not recovered with the car; Diane unsuccessfully seeks some moral support from Dennis and Philip; after Tommy tells her some hard truths about creating her own misery, Kate decides to take responsibility for the choices she's made, and starts by telling Peggy Harrod the truth about her daughter's death; Jack takes one on the chin when he gives the parachutist's would-be bride some bad news; Kate returns home to find the carjacker has returned her father's ashes while burglarizing her home; Philip has it out with Aaron and reaffirms his intention to keep Tommy from closing the hospital.

Austin's cystic-fibrosis patient is just one of four patients needing transplants who have to wait in fear and hope when a potential donor appears but is prematurely pronounces dead and entered into the donor system by the inexperienced Eggert.

Austin and Underhill both have to face the consequences when they tell the truth. McNeil contemplates surgery to prolong a jockey's career. Kronk lies to a teenage smoker with a cough.

Diane is faced with a dilemna when she has an opportunity to examine a 500-year-old Incan mummy temporarily in town for an exhibition. An accident victim loses his memories but gains a much nicer personality, presenting Shutt and McNeil with a dilemmna.

Wilkes saves a motorist who was attempting suicide. Austin falls for a politician.

An old friend of Austin's asks for help in getting pregnant. A cancer patient needs marijuana for her well being. Shutt's friend returns from Italy without his wife.

Kate flies to Washington with Tommy to speak to Congress about health care. Back in Chicago, her friend Marina makes a decision about adoption. McNeil's patint Harriett Owens is hospitalized again.