Emergency Couple: Episode 11

by LollyPip

We get some questions answered in this episode, in regards to baby daddies and who is having feelings for whom, and all I can say is: It’s about time. Our hero stops fooling himself about his feelings, and our heroine might, just might, be having a few feelings herself.

EPISODE 11 RECAP

While under the sleepy effects of pain medicine, Jin-hee is dreaming of past happy (and sexy) times with Chang-min. In the real world, Chang-min kisses her, then notes the small smile on her face.

Later, Chun-soo comes to check on Jin-hee just as she’s waking up. She tries to get out of bed but he grabs her wrist and tells her to stay and rest. The wrist-grab seems to affect Jin-hee, and she weakly insists that she needs to get back to work, but Chun-soo gruffly tells her that doctors can’t get sick or hurt, because patients sometimes come from very far away to see a doctor, and it’s not right if the doctor is sick or hurt themselves. Jin-hee promises it won’t happen again, and obediently lays back down to rest.

Chang-min tells Yong-gyu about the accident, saying that he’s the best driver ever, so that call “from someone” must have gotten him upset enough to be careless. Yong-gyu isn’t as oblivious as we assumed because he pegs Chang-min as liking Jin-hee, who doesn’t even try to deny it anymore.

Chun-soo examines Jin-hee’s shoulder, which she says seems to be much better. He shows her her x-ray, telling her it’s not a bad break, which is when Chang-min comes by. He watches their conversation, visibly disturbed by their familiarity.

Chun-soo leaves, and Jin-hee reaches for the baggie of medicine that Chang-min prepared for her, but reaching hurts her shoulder and Chang-min jumps in to grab the bag and shove it in his pocket. Jin-hee asks why he threw it away after going to all the trouble of writing it, and asks for it back. He grudgingly does, unable to resist her pleading eyes, and she gives him a genuine “thank you.”

At home, Kwang-soo and Jin-ae talk about Jin-hee and Chang-min working together, and Jin-ae warns Kwang-soo to keep it down so Mom doesn’t overhear. Mom comes in and says she’s going to take Baby Guk to a department store to buy him some clothes, but Jin-ae tells her not to waste money on clothes for a growing baby, and just give her the money instead. Mom grumbles that she’s still begging for money, but Kwang-soo says he’ll take care of the family now as the son-in-law.

Mom gripes that she hates that word “son-in-law” though she admits that Chang-min was at least a medical student from a good family, and handsome. Kwang-soo bristles, saying that a man ought to have a face with character. He slips and refers to Chang-min as “hyungnim,” and Mom demands to know when he ever met the guy to call him that.

Chang-min feeds an injured Jin-hee, enjoying it a bit more than necessary with the baby talk and the grinning, while she shoots eye-daggers at him. She insists she can eat with her left hand but he takes away her chopsticks, using the excuse that “it’s all connected,” so she shouldn’t lift either arm.

Jin-hee asks why he’s so happy — is he glad she got hurt? He says that he is in a way because it reminds him of old times, and starts listing times she got hurt and he took care of her. She notices he’s not eating, and he says he’s tired from staying up all night. Jin-hee asks if he stayed up with her, but he denies it. After eating, Jin-hee insists she can go back to work, but Chang-min tells her she needs to rest at least a week and offers to work her shifts as well as his.

Jin-hee tells Chang-min that Ah-reum keeps asking her what their relationship is, and wants to know what she should tell her. She says she won’t say anything if Chang-min wants to date Ah-reum, but he denies it and asks her what’s going on between her and Chun-soo. He also says he’ll look the other way if she wants to date, but Jin-hee also denies interest.

They follow two nurses, who are taking a dialysis machine in to the patient with the injured leg. It turns out that the patient has MGN (membranous glomerulonephritis, a progressive kidney disease). Chang-min knows this means the patient will need a kidney transplant, and a nurse says his wife is a possible donor.

But Jin-hee remembers that the patient supposedly had no family, and the nurse says they’re not together. Chun-soo says that another hospital that’s treated the patient before has her contact info, and tells the nurse to contact them since the patient may need a transplant soon and need to be transferred there.

Jin-hee muses that it would be terrible if the patient were transferred and then his wife refused to donate her kidney. She asks a nurse for the phone number to the other hospital, and tells Chang-min that she plans to call and talk to his wife herself. If she can’t treat patients because of her arm, at least she can do this.

Chun-soo confronts Ji-hye about the bloodwork she’s having sent to America. Is she sick? She tries to brush it off, but he won’t let her. She admits it’s for a growth hormone test, and Chun-soo asks why she needed to have a test done for a child’s condition.

Ji-hye confesses everything, that she was engaged but when she got pregnant and the man wanted her to have an abortion. She knew then that he never meant to marry her, so she broke things off and had a daughter, who is now four years old.

Kwang-soo brings Baby Guk to the hospital to pick up his antibiotics, and asks to see Chang-min. He apologizes for punching Chang-min; he didn’t know then that he and Jin-hee used to be married. He tells Chang-min to speak informally and calls him hyungnim, inviting him out for a drink later. It’s so cute how he’s all excited to have a hyung, even a reluctant one.

Ji-hye calls her daughter Ji-min and talks to her for a minute, sounding like a very loving mother. When she gets off the phone, she’s startled by someone hilariously trying to hide in a locker. It’s Jin-hee, who heard the whole phone call. It’s pretty obvious that Ji-hye was calling her child (she referred to herself as Mom) and Jin-hee says she didn’t know Ji-hye was married, but she clears that up right away: she’s a single mom.

Ji-hye helps Jin-hee put on a brace for her broken clavicle, and mentions that she heard she got it while in a car with Chang-min. She also tells Jin-hee that Chun-soo asked her to go easy on her, that he’s worried about her. She thinks that’s a good thing, since he used to only worry about patients.

Chang-min formally asks Chun-soo if Jin-hee can have a few days off to rest. He offers to do double-duty to make up for it, and Chun-soo grants his request. Chang-min asks about the patient with renal failure, wanting to know what will happen if his wife refuses to donate a kidney. He admits he’s worried about the patient, but mentions that Jin-hee is more worried and he wants to allay her fears. This pings Chun-soo’s radar, and he asks just exactly how long Chang-min and Jin-hee have known each other.

Yong-gyu gets up the nerve to ask Ah-reum if she had a blind date with Chang-min, and she says there was something like that. Yong-gyu asks why she hasn’t responded to his apology text (about group-texting his video proposal) and she just breezes that mistakes happen, no big deal. But this hurts Yong-gyu because “my feelings aren’t a mistake.” Ah-reum tells him that he’s a nice person, but she has feelings for Chang-min and would prefer to just be friends. She’s still speaking in a light, friendly tone, but Yong-gyu is fighting tears. Aww, I just want to hug him.

Chang-min’s father calls him, surprising him, and says that he heard that he and Jin-hee are working in the same hospital. Dad says it must be difficult, but Chang-min honestly admits that it’s not. Chang-min asks his dad for a favor: don’t sign the divorce papers. He knows it’s none of his business, but he wanted to ask his father just once not to do it. Dad tells Chang-min that mom wants the divorce as soon as Chang-min gets married, which annoys Chang-min that she’s bringing his personal life into their divorce. Dad asks Chang-min to come fishing when he has time, which is a first.

Jin-hee calls the kidney patient’s wife to ask her to please come to the hospital, but the woman hangs up on her without a word. She doesn’t get to call back though, because the kidney patient is having a crisis and needs CPR, and Chun-soo asks if Jin-hee was able to reach his wife. She says that she wouldn’t come, and this upsets Chang-min: “Don’t say that, he can hear everything. He was fine until just now. Maybe without his wife, maybe he gave up.”

After twenty minutes the patient is still unresponsive, and it’s becoming clear that Chang-min is getting emotionally involved as he continues chest compressions and begs the patient, “Just wait, your wife will come, don’t give up. You have to stay alive to see her!” He gets more and more upset, yelling at the patient that he can’t die as everyone else in the room starts to notice his near-hysteria. Then finally, a heartbeat.

Ji-hye goes into Chun-soo’s office to look for some paperwork, and finds some photos of him and her from years ago on his desk. They look too friendly to just be friends, with Ji-hye kissing his cheek.

Chang-min sits and thinks about all the times he’s made mistakes since starting his internship, like prescribing Demerol to Ji-hye when she posed as a stomachache patient, being unable to perform the tracheotomy on the cancer patient, and misdiagnosing Baby Guk. Jin-hee brings him a drink, and he says that it’s the first time he’s felt like he wanted to save a patient, no matter what. But what if the patient’s wife doesn’t show up?

Jin-hee agrees that it’s strange about people—sometimes having a loved one with them can do more good than a doctor. But most people don’t appreciate it when they have it, until they get sick.

Later, Chang-min examines Jin-hee’s shoulder, telling Chun-soo that it’s still inflamed. Chun-soo tells her to take some time off work, even though she insists that her shoulder is better. She starts to get in her car to drive home, but there’s Chang-min again, telling her she shouldn’t drive and that he’ll take her home.

In the car, Jin-hee is reluctant to tell Chang-min where she lives, but then guesses that it’s okay since they’re only colleagues. He asks if she still lives with her mother, and she tells him yes, and that they moved three years ago. He pouts a little that she moved away from the home where they lived, but she scoffs that it wasn’t so great that she’d have to stay. He says he remembers a lot of good times they had there too, and asks if she only remembers the end.

When Chang-min drops her off, he helps her out of the car just as Jin-ae and Kwang-soo are arriving. They invite him in for soju since Mom isn’t home, and ignore his polite declination and Jin-hee’s “shut up shut up shut up” face, and bodily drag Chang-min into the house. I’m starting to like these two.

Inside, Jin-ae and Kwang-soo prepare food and soju, and Jin-hee tells Chang-min to just eat quickly and leave before Mom gets home. Kwang-soo calls Chang-min hyungnim again, and Jin-hee asks Kwang-soo and Jin-ae not to call Chang-min brother-in-law or hyungnim, but grudgingly agrees that hyung and oppa are okay.

Adorable clueless Kwang-soo asks Chang-min how he proposed to Jin-hee, earning dirty looks from both sisters. Chang-min tells the story (which we don’t hear) and his immersion in the memory seems to pull Jin-hee out of her grouchy mood. Soon they’re all laughing and enjoying themselves. The doorbell rings, and Jin-hee freaks out thinking it’s Mom. But it’s just movers, come to move in Jin-ae and Kwang-soo’s things.

Chun-soo finds Ji-hye at the bar, where she insists she’s fine and that he doesn’t need to worry about her. He asks about her daughter, and she shows him pictures of the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen. Ji-hye explains that she was growing slowly and they suspected hypothyroidism, but tests were normal.

She tells Chun-soo that she saw the pictures of the two of them in his office, and he defends himself saying that he wouldn’t just delete everything just because they broke up, since they were good memories. He takes the blame for their breakup, saying that he’s not meant for marriage.

Jin-hee yells at Jin-ae for bringing all their stuff into the house, then Mom really does show up. Jin-hee uses the movers as a distraction to hide Chang-min in her room while Jin-ae distracts Mom from going into the bedroom.

Mom goes in anyway, and hilariously, Chang-min is dressed in the jacket and cap of one of the movers. Luckily it works, and after a few nerve-wracking moments of Mom ordering him to move furniture, Chang-min manages to escape when the movers leave.

He sits in his car, and Jin-hee goes out and sits with him. She apologizes for the situation, knowing that her mother would have a fit if she saw Chang-min in the house, but he doesn’t seem upset. Then he silently reaches over and buckles her in and drives off while she protests.

Chun-soo walks Ji-hye home, and she asks if he was surprised that she had a child with another man while she was gone, and that she’s not married. He asks how she could have dated a man like that, and she laughingly says that she thought the guy was a good man at the time. She admits that she mostly wanted to get over him, and he says he feels like it’s his fault her life is this way.

Ji-hye insists that despite her daughter not having a father, she likes her life the way it is, but Chun-soo doesn’t believe her after how much she wanted to get married. She tells him, “But did I want to just marry anyone? I wanted to marry someone I really loved. And I wanted to have a baby.” She says she’s happy enough that they met again, and that Chun-soo is close enough to see often.

Chang-min has taken Jin-hee to his place and manages to get her in the door despite her protests. She asks why he’s doing this, and he explains that it’s because she’s injured and should rest, but there are too many people and too much stuff at her house. He says that sleeping on the couch and with her mom is too rough for a doctor who has to treat patients daily, and she asks sarcastically if he made her get hurt on purpose.

He says defensively that it was her purse with the chain that caused her injury, but she takes his words the wrong way and asks if he’s blaming her for it. Chang-min tries to explain but Jin-hee cuts in saying, “See? When we’re together, we just fight. And you want me to stay here until I get better?”

Jin-hee gets up to leave, saying that she only came because she was curious about his place anyway. Chang-min stops her and tells her to just think of him as a colleague, like she said. Again she tries to leave, and again he stops her: “You told me, staying with someone who’s sick is sometimes better than a doctor’s care.”

Jin-hee starts to leave a third time, saying she’s not hurt, but Chang-min pulls her into a backhug. “It hurts me. So just stay by my side. Please.”

COMMENTS

I’m glad that we cleared up the whole “who is Ji-hye’s child’s father” question quickly, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s glad that my assumption that it was Chun-soo was wrong. I think that if it had been his child, it wouldn’t have been in her character to keep the knowledge from him, because she’s normally such a straight-shooter. I can keep my respect for Ji-hye as a character, now that we know it’s not Chun-soo’s child and that she came clean about the whole situation relatively quickly. Now I’m just curious to see how this child will factor into the story as we go on. I’m still not getting a feel as to where Ji-hye and Chun-soo are headed… whether they’re meant to be together, or only good friends. I think the show has set up their relationship as one with enough mutual respect as doctors and as people, I would be happy either way.

Last week I was happy about the headway Chang-min was making into realizing that he wants Jin-hee back, but this week I’m a bit more concerned. In a way, it’s difficult to watch Chang-min become so solicitous and caring of Jin-hee, because when he said that he was reminded of past times when she was hurt or sick and he took care of her, my first reaction was “yeah right, buddy.” I have a good feeling that he was not sweet and gentle and making sure she rested and ate, back when they were married; in fact quite the opposite, and if he’s remembering things differently, then that’s a problem.

As much as I’m enjoying watching Chang-min treating Jin-hee the way she deserves to be treated, I’m worried that if he’s still remembering only the good parts of their marriage (which he mentions again later) and not addressing the bad parts, he won’t learn anything. It’s all fine and good to want to do better this time, but unless he knows what caused him to dismiss and belittle her feelings and physical distress before, he runs the risk of slipping back into that behavior again.

Which is why I’m glad we have Jin-hee on the other side of the coin, who is certainly not forgetting the bad times any time soon. Her unwillingness to just easily follow Chang-min into Let’s-Get-Back-Together-Land will be what keeps him grounded and force him to really think about how he treated her when they were married. She’s softening, but still has her guard very much up, as evidenced by her reaction in Chang-min’s apartment when he mentioned it was her purse strap that injured her. Once again she jumped right into “oh, so you blame me for hurting myself?” She’s not anywhere near ready to forgive, or really even to think about forgiving.

But just like I worry about Chang-min’s over-optimism, I worry about Jin-hee’s over-pessimism… You can’t mend old wounds without being willing to be a little vulnerable again, and give the other person a chance. I don’t hold her innocent in their divorce, at all, but I do think a lot of her behaviors when they were married were her way of protecting herself from Chang-min’s anger and verbal barbs. She was defending herself, but she did it in a way that was also harmful to their marriage. She’s going to need to drop some of that defense and let Chang-min in, for him to have a chance at being a better partner this time around.

The show has a long way to go before I’m convinced that they can be a couple again and be successful this time. All the soft lighting, romantic music, and nostalgic longing glances in the world can’t cushion the fact that they are not even close to reconciling in any sort of permanent way. Chang-min needs to do some real soul-searching and admit that things were worse than he remembers, and address his part in that. Jin-hee needs to blunt some of her thorns and realize her part in their failed marriage too, and stop seeing everything Chang-min says and does as an attack, because if nothing else, he actually is making real effort. Really, I just want to sit them in a room with a relationship counselor for the next five weeks, but since that wouldn’t make a very good drama, I’ll settle for seeing some real growth in both of them before I’ll buy into any kind of Happy Ever After.

Still I can’t help but have high hopes for them as a couple, if only because my poor little shipper heart wants to see more moments like this, but in the present day. Can we have that happen? Please? ::backhug::

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