This week marks the debut of the SOAPnet series, "General Hospital: Night Shift."
The Night Shift starts with Patrick and Robin in the
shower starting to get intimate until their pagers go
off. Epiphany isn’t fooled when both doctors show up
at the nurse’s station with wet hair. She tells them
that there’s a patient en route with a head injury.
Both doctors head out to greet the ambulance. Patrick
tells Robin he can handle it, but she decides to go
with him anyway. Outside, Max is dropping Jason and
Spinelli off due to Spinelli shooting himself in the
foot. A mysterious man also walks toward the hospital
entrance. The ambulance comes screeching towards the
hospital, causing a pregnant woman to fall as she
rushes to get out of the way. The two ambulance
technicians get out of the ambulance laughing
hysterically, must to everyone’s dismay. Patrick
opens the back of the ambulance to get the patient out
and smells gas. He starts to tell everyone to get out
of the way, but the mysterious man lights a cigarette
and the ambulance explodes knocking Patrick to the
ground. Everyone springs into action and Patrick is
brought into the ER. Meanwhile, Jason pulls the woman
out of the ambulance and puts out the flames on the
gurney. Inside the ER, Robin panics and starts
ordering all kinds of tests for Patrick when suddenly
he starts talking to her. She is relieved when he
asks her for some external stimuli. She decides to
admit him for observation and still run some tests.
Leyla takes some of the test results to Patrick where
he starts to flirt with her, blaming his behavior on
the drugs. Robin interrupts them and bites Leyla’s
head off. Patrick tells her he loves her and she
shouldn’t be so jealous. When Robin leaves, she finds
Dr. Lee and Dr. Winters and tells them how Patrick was
flirting, once again. They tell her the next time she
sees Patrick flirting, she should jump him!
Robin goes back to the ER where Dr. Lee asks her to treat one of her patients that was knocked down when the ambulance exploded. The patient, Stacey Sloan, tells Robin that she is HIV positive before Robin starts any treatment. They both talk about being HIV positive while Robin treats her injured knees. Robin is intrigued about her willingness to get pregnant with her illness. They do an ultrasound and everything appears to be fine so Stacey leaves. Robin goes and tracks down Leyla and apologizes for yelling at her earlier.
A new nurse, Jolene, helps out Spinelli with his foot injury while Jason stays with him for moral support and to pay the bill. Mac comes in with Coop and Rodriguez to investigate the ambulance explosion. They ask Jason if he remembers anything, but he doesn’t. Jason is upset when he learns the woman in the ambulance died. The nurses are trying desperately to track down her personal information from the hotel where she was staying. They had sent her to the hospital with food poisoning. The only thing they can come up with is that her last name is Barrett. When they finally do get some information on the mystery woman, a student nurse, Regina, takes it down to the morgue and notices the “dead” woman’s hand moving.
Rodriguez also asks about Spinelli’s shooting. Its hospital policy to file a report every time someone comes in with a gunshot wound. Spinelli starts explaining how he accidentally shot himself when Rodriguez tells him he’s going to be charged with negligence, among other things. Jason decides to cover for him and tells Rodriguez that he was cleaning his gun and accidentally shot Spinelli. Much to Spinelli’s delight, Jolene comes back to take him for an x-ray. While he’s gone, Robin comes in and talks to Jason about the pregnant HIV positive patient she just treated while she bandages his hands. Meanwhile, Dr. Ford is in Patrick’s room yelling at him for treating a patient uninsured. Patrick decides he should stop wasting the hospital’s money and gets out of bed and back to work. While he’s in the locker room, he overhears Lainey and Dr. Lee talking about how Jason and Robin were just talking and reminiscing.
Robin walks Jason back out to the waiting area. An older woman has been waiting for quite some time. According to one of the nurses, she comes in every weekend because she is lonely. They seem to be putting her off. She asks Robin when she’s going to get treated, but Robin also puts her off and tells her a nurse will be with her soon. Jason sits down and talks to the woman while he waits for Spinelli to get back. She’s cross-stitching for the children at a downtown daycare. She doesn’t have any grandchildren of her own. She asks Jason if he has any of his own children and he tells her none that live with him. She talks about how nice and caring Robin is and how she cares for him. The old woman recognizes Jason as the man who tried to save the woman in the ambulance. She says how sad it is that the woman died alone and how no one knows who she is. The old woman starts to stand up and collapses. Jason sees that she’s bleeding and calls Robin over. They rush her into the OR. Spinelli comes out just as Rodriguez is arresting Jason. He starts to protest, but stops. Jason tells Leyla that the cross-stitch and supplies belong to the old woman and asks her to return them to her when she gets out of surgery. Robin goes outside on the heliport pad with Patrick to watch the sun rise. She tells him how she put the old woman off and now she’s in surgery.
Mac is kept very busy when he hears a hospital administrator scream. He rushes to help and finds Coop and Maxie in a compromising position in a supply closet. Maxie makes excuses and tells him that it’s her fault so she should be the one punished. Their punishment turns out to be emptying hospital bed pans!
The mystery man who was lingering outside the hospital and lit the match to start the ambulance explosion gets seen by Lainey after Epiphany finds out he’s suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He asks for Percidan. Lainey doesn’t want to prescribe him drugs so he rushes out, upset. He hangs around the lobby and overhears Epiphany calling out a prescription for the same drug for another patient. When it arrives, he grabs it and walks out when everyone else is preoccupied.
Throughout all the drama in the ER is the night janitor, Toussaint. He sings songs while he mops the hall floors and seems to be the only one with any patience. He also seems to be the only one who knows how to work the elevator, explaining to all who will listen that they must be gentle with the buttons.
