Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
The season opens with County General under quarantine during a dangerous outbreak, which is eventually identified as monkeypox. Carter, Abby Lockhart, Chen and Pratt are confined inside, while the evacuation leaves other staff to move patients by helicopter. Romano argues with Kovač over an elderly patient and backs into the helicopter’s tail rotor, which severs his arm. Kovač keeps him alive in the emptied ER, and surgeons reattach the limb. The injury ends Romano’s ability to operate, and his struggle with reduced sensation and movement grows through the year.
Carter and Abby begin a relationship during the quarantine, but it is tested by their different views about her drinking and by their responsibilities outside the hospital. Carter’s grandmother dies, and Abby’s bipolar brother Eric returns, deepening the strain between them. Meanwhile, Carter and Kovač join a medical relief mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When militia overrun their clinic, a young soldier recognizes Carter as the doctor who tried to save his brother and spares the staff, though an army patient is killed. Carter returns to Chicago, while Kovač stays behind to continue the work.
At County, Weaver rises to chief of staff, with Romano demoted and later made chief of the ER. His firing and rehiring of nurses disrupt the department, while Carter pushes for improved security after a violent patient attack. Corday struggles with grief over Greene and decides she cannot adapt to the sexism of her father’s London hospital. Romano’s increasingly difficult behavior and failing arm culminate in his decision to have it amputated.