Dr. Ethan Choi quotes from Chicago Med

Dr. Daniel Charles

You were in the, uh, what, the navy, right?

Dr. Ethan Choi

Still am. Naval Reserves.

Dr. Daniel Charles

Doc I did my residency with was on away leave from the Navy. Tough as hell practicing psychiatry with you guys. Couldn't get anybody to open up.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Could be a sign of weakness.

Dr. Ethan Choi

[after Reese caught the brunt of a collapsing patient] Anything hurt?

Sarah Reese

Not really. Gonna be stiff tomorrow, though, aren't I?

Dr. Ethan Choi

Yeah, but pain builds character.

Sarah Reese

According to who, exactly?

Dr. Ethan Choi

Bret still needs an LP. You good?

Sarah Reese

Uh... fourth period, bottom of the ninth... put me back in, coach.

Dr. Daniel Charles

Butchered hockey, football, and baseball in one sentence. Impressive.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Got a patient, seventeen year old hockey player.

Dr. Daniel Charles

I heard. Bret "Bear" Cooper. Dad was a heavy. Hear the kid's even better.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Wouldn't have taken you for a jock.

Dr. Daniel Charles

Oh, come on. Sport's the oldest form of group therapy. We yell, we scream, testosterone spikes. Every now and then, we even get to believe in a miracle.

Dr. Ethan Choi

I've been talking to Dr. Charles, the hospital psychiatrist. Shared some things about my service, tough things.

You don't have to explain.

Dr. Ethan Choi

I know. I thought if I didn't think about it or talk about it I'm here. [pauses] My dad was Navy.

That why you enlisted?

Dr. Ethan Choi

It just always seemed like that was what I was gonna do.

There's a room full of kids in there who are gonna ask you about your service. What are you gonna tell 'em?

Dr. Ethan Choi

That I'd do it again.

Dr. Ethan Choi

I got a patient who wants his LVAD removed. He got what he wanted. [deep breath] Now his dead.

Dr. Daniel Charles

[having had to witness a colleague's termination for medical misconduct] Huh. I guess I took out an LVAD myself today.

Dr. Ethan Choi

How do we ever know what we're doing is right?

Dr. Daniel Charles

It's tricky. The first part of Hippocratic oath is clear, right? "Do no harm." Then it goes on to say, "I'will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science." So it's tricky.

Dr. Ethan Choi

It ever get any easier?

Dr. Daniel Charles

Hope so.

Nurse? Nurse? Hey, nurse!

Sarah Reese

Are you talking to me?

Hello? Been here for two hours with snot pouring out my nose.

Sarah Reese

I'm sorry, but we need to see patients in order of urgency.

And I'm dying of a sinus infection. Maybe if you got off that iPad and did a little work, things would go faster.

Sarah Reese

Maybe you just need to wait your turn. And I'm not a nurse.

Dr. Choi

Handled like a true pathologist.

Sarah Reese

I know, I'm sorry.

Dr. Ethan Choi

My match day, I threw up six times and passed out, so I'd say you're doing fine.

Sarah Reese

You did not throw up and pass out.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Wanted to, though.

Sarah Reese

Was emergency medicine your first choice?

Dr. Ethan Choi

My only choice. All I ever wanted to do.

Sarah Reese

[referring to an obnoxious patient] Even though it comes with a lifetime supply of angry snot guys?

Dr. Ethan Choi

Has its downsides. Then again, how many jobs are there where you literally get to save lives?

Dr. Daniel Charles

[describing a patient with body integrity identity disorder] These people believe that one of their limbs, part of their body, is not their own. His sense of self does not extend to the fingers on his left arm. It stops at the elbow.

Dr. Ethan Choi

[bemused] Sorry, it sounds a little out there to me.

Dr. Daniel Charles

I mean, who are any of us to say where we end, right? Or begin. Physicists will tell you there's no physical self at all, right? Just waves of energy. A mystics will say that we're one big soup.

Dr. Ethan Choi

I'm not a physicist or a mystic, I'm a doc who spent his career treating wounded soldiers who begged me "Save my leg", "Save my arm". You don't think I should commit this guy?

Sharon Goodwin

Dr. Choi, we're gonna need some of your Navy-inspired discipline today.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Sorry, I'm with the paramedics today. Resident ride along.

Maggie Lockwood

And discipline, that a nice way of saying I'm a tight ass? [laughs] Oh, yes. Tight.

Sharon Goodwin

I didn't say that.

Maggie Lockwood

And getting the docs in line, isn't that the Chief Resident's job anyway?

Sharon Goodwin

Wonderful, the guy who's enforcing the rules is the one always breaking them. [looks over at Dr. Halstead]

Dr. Daniel Charles

Parrots are highly intelligent, and very socially attuned. There is, in fact, a program at the VA in San Francisco that matches vets with PTSD with similarly afflicted birds.

Dr. Ethan Choi

So he can help me?

Dr. Daniel Charles

Possible. [Parrot squawks "Don't touch that" repeatedly in the background]

Dr. Ethan Choi

What do I do?

Dr. Daniel Charles

Eh, take care of him. Talk to him. Hang out with him. For starters, teach him something else to say.

Dr. Natalie Manning

Remember when you were a kid and you lost a tooth and you kept running your tongue over the gap? Without my wedding ring, it's like the same thing. Something's missing.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Well, I don't know if it's any consolation, but what do they say? "One door closes and another one opens."

Dr. Ethan Choi

Dr. Charles, Dr. Reese. Thanks for coming down.

Dr. Daniel Charles

What's up, Ethan? What do you got?

Dr. Ethan Choi

Amanda Kendrick-Dobbs. Seven months pregnant, gravid belly, history of fetal movement and Braxton Hicks contractions; all signs of a normal pregnancy.

Dr. Daniel Charles

So what's the issue?

Dr. Ethan Choi

[handing over a tablet] There's no baby.

Dr. Ethan Choi

I knew it wouldn't help and so did you. I figured we had safety in numbers.

Dr. Natalie Manning

I know. But if we'd had an alternative plan to save his life, yeah, I would've held firm with you. But we didn't. So we tried the Hail Mary. And Goodwin knows that we did everything we could for her.

Dr. Ethan Choi

For her? Goodwin's not our patient, Reggie is. Right now, he's suffering. Best thing we could've done for him is to let him die with dignity.

Dr. Daniel Charles

Spoke to your patient, Mr. Wallace.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Let me guess, not a suicide risk.

Dr. Daniel Charles

Garden variety sociopath. He's an opportunist. Knows all the buzzwords. Not a sincere bone in his body.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Good enough for me. [to an attending nurse] Let's start discharge paperwork on Treatment 4.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Chalk one up for the good guys.

Jeff Clarke

Hey, don't let those ass-wipes get to you. Just trying to be tough guys.

Dr. Ethan Choi

No, Jeff. It goes deeper. Not many families with the last name Choi where I grew up. Know the type all too well.

Dr. Sarah Reese

You just get good news or bad news?

Dr. Ethan Choi

My coma patient this morning, he mentioned a Qur'an verse: Surah Al shura 40. "The recompense of an evil deed can only be an evil equal to it; but whoever pardons and makes reconciliation, their reward is due from God."

Dr. Sarah Reese

In the psych world, it's called complementarity. You know, kindness begets kindness. Hostility, hostility.

Dr. Ethan Choi

Yeah. An hour ago, those two hated each other, but then his father extends a hand.

Dr. Sarah Reese

Dr. Charles calls it "flipping the script".

Dr. Ethan Choi

Don't know if I could've done it.