Transplant recap: Episode 3, ‘Your Secrets Can Kill You’

Transplant episode 3 sees Bashir contend with a father who is an anti-vaxxer, resulting in his son catching a rare and deadly disease that could have been prevented. 

In Transplant episode 3, Bashir is assigned to the less-interesting, supposedly less-high stakes cases by his attending, Wendy Atwater. She’s not thrilled with his risk-taking practices. She wants to ensure he can follow the hospital’s protocols before letting him handle the serious incidences in the trauma bay again.

He is given a young boy with a fever, but as is always the case with these medical shows, Bashir’s patient has something more serious than the staff could have predicted. We find out that the boy, Tristan (Ever Taylor-Day), and his brother Max (Percy Hynes White), were raised in a strict holistic, anti-vax household by their stubborn father, Jared Abbott (Matthew Alan Taylor). As a result, poor Tristan is diagnosed with dysentery.

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The entire hospital wing has to wear masks and protective gear when handling the child since cases of dysentery are exceeding rare — as they should be since there is a vaccine that takes care of it. Because of the vaccine, the hospital isn’t even fully equipped with the right treatment straight away, putting Tristan’s life further at risk as he’s forced to wait longer to get the right antibiotics.

None of this convinces Jared that his fear of vaccines is foolish and ignorant. It started when Max was a boy and received a vaccine that results in partial paralysis. But as Claire points out, those side effects are very rare and usually don’t last long — as was the case with Max, who is perfectly healthy now. Jared prides himself and his wife on being able to get their sons through illnesses like measles. But his view of that situation is much different from Max’s, who actually had to live with it.

He privately tells Bashir that while his father might think him surviving measles was positive, it caused Max a lot of needless suffering. When he turned 16, he got vaccinated and kept it secret from his dad. The main reason Jared has become so fearful and overprotective is because his wife and the boys’ mother died suddenly in a car accident.

But when the doctors need to deliver a crike to Tristan to open his airway to breathe, Max is determined to be by his brother’s side. Since he is vaccinated, he’s allowed to enter the room, forcing him to tell his dad the truth and stand up to him for the first time. Ultimately, Jared begins to understand why he was wrong and is relieved when the doctors manage to save his son.

Bashir personal troubles grow in Transplant episode 3

In last week’s episode, we learned that Khaled is wanted by immigration and likely going to be deported if he’s found. That doesn’t stop him from getting forged medical transcripts for Bashir, despite him telling Khaled to find more information. Bashir also lets Khaled stay overnight at his apartment while he’s at work, and Amira is staying at a neighbor’s house.

Normally, he would be happy to keep Khaled at his place, but he does have his sister to worry about, so he can only afford to let him stay for one night. Bashir’s landlord notices Khaled there, and it motivates him to send a warning notice to him regarding his overdue rent. While I’m sure the hospital will pay decently, it takes a while for new staff members to get onto the payroll. Plus, there’s also the issue of the medical transcripts.

Bishop warns Bashir that legal is growing increasingly antsy about the lack of a paper trail confirming Bashir’s credentials. They set up a meeting, and while Bashir brings the forged papers, he ultimately chooses not to hand them over. Instead, he tells the legal team member that he is technically an enemy of Syria because he smuggled vaccines into the country.

That’s why he was targeted and why it’s so difficult for him to get his real medical papers. Bishop also defends Bashir’s character, but it’s not enough, and his admission about Syria basically causes the guy from legal to freak out. Before he can return and say, “Well, Bashir is an enemy of Syria,” Bishop says that they will think through that admission and the transcript dilemma a little longer. For now, it remains unresolved, but Bishop is now out on a limb alongside his new hire.

Transplant episode 3: June deals with frat guys while Mags tries to help a patient remember who he is

Beyond the episode’s main medical cases, June and Mags have their own patients, including a frat guy who comes in with a bloody, gaping head wound and a patient who doesn’t remember who he is or why he went to the hospital.

In the case of the frat boys, Ethan (Dale Whibley), a scholarship student and a pledge who is devoted to getting into the fraternity, so he has a chance at getting a lucrative financial job after college, comes in alongside Brett (Stephen Kalyn), the guy with the head wound. June is instantly irritated by their idiotic behavior. Brett’s injury resulted from him taking a lacrosse stick to the head.

They get him stitched up and ready to go home, but then Ethan suddenly faints and goes into cardiac arrest. Unfortunately, neither boy told the whole truth about the pledging incident. Ethan drank an entire bottle of soy sauce to avoid getting hit with the lacrosse stick, and the high amount of sodium resulted in hypernatremia, a metabolic condition in which there is a salt imbalance in the bodily fluids.

We also get to see a hint of June’s softer side as she seems to have a little flirtation going on with hospital security guard, Lou (Eddie G.).

The doctors cannot save him despite their best efforts, and Brett watches helplessly as his friend flatlines. June is forced to tell his parents that he died and even Bashir’s words of comfort to make her feel better about a young adult dying because he wanted to get accepted into a frat. By the way, if you’re wondering if overdosing on soy sauce is a real thing — according to ABC News, it is and has resulted in at least one instance of a teen going into a coma.

Mags is the one who gets the weird storyline this week. She tries to help a John Doe (Danny Blanco Hall) patient get his memory back and develops a way to do it. She notices a big scar on his forearm and realizes it must be from a UCL surgery, typically given to professional baseball players. On her day off, she comes to the hospital to tell Atwater this, but she’s already checked her patient out. He remembered who he was, and his wife came to get him. That’s it. No resolution.

Either it was just a poorly written storyline, or that guy is going to be back later in the season. There is also the possibility that the show just wanted us to feel similar frustration to Mags, but if so, the writing wasn’t strong enough to back it up. We learned a little more about her as a character this week, too. Mags enjoys chilling in her car near the hospital. She’s the workaholic type who can’t seem to go home even when she’s off the clock.

What did you think of Transplant episode 3? Do you think Khaled will be okay at the shelter? How will Bishop and Bashir deal with legal? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

New episodes of Transplant air Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.