Tonight’s episode has our doctors of Hope-Zion operating on one of their own: Dana Kinney (Wendy Crewson).

Alex and Dana

We open with Maggie, Alex and Dana checking on a breast cancer patient, Amelia. During the surgery, talk turns to Alex’s breakup with Charlie.

Later, back at Dana’s office, she and Alex seem to be doing some sort of breast cancer study and talk about the next patient. They mention the episode’s title “Nottingham 7”. which apparently is bad if you have breast cancer.

We find out that Dana is the patient and she assumed the tumour in her breast is benign, however that is not the case after a biopsy. Dana wants Alex to be her surgeon but Alex is not comfortable as she has not done that many lumpectomies but Dana has confidence in her and her surgery will be in 48 hours.

After Alex completes Dana’s breast exam, Dana is not being the best patient and refusing any tests be it blood or MRI to be conducted on her. And Alex wants to be sure this surgery goes off smoothly and starts studying her ass off and make sure everything is in its right place the day of the surgery.

But it seems that the rest of Hope-Zion has no clue that the patient that Alex is operating is Dana.

Back at Dana’s office, Alex goes through the surgery with her but with Dana quizzing her. When Alex doesn’t answer one question to her satisfaction, the two get into a debate on her surgery and Dana being a bad patient. This escalates to a personal attack on how their significant others broke up with them because of their personality and thus results in Dana firing Alex as her doctor.

However, Alex doesn’t give up and visits Dana at her home (and what a lovely home it is). A test came back positive and that a lumpectomy won’t cut it as there would be an 80% chance of the cancer returning. Dana realizes the only option is a double masectomy and says while they are at they should take out her ovaries.

Over several glasses and presumably bottles of white wine, the two talk about how a double masectomy is the best option. When Dana goes to answer the door to get the pizza, Alex gets a phone call from Charlie. It is hard for her to talk to him considering their break up and she soon ends their call (more on why Charlie called is below). Dana, who is clearly drunk, comes back with pizza and has scored some pot and she tells Alex how she will mourn the loss of her breasts and the two toast the “Pointer sisters”. Now as a fan of Smallville, if you recall, Oliver called Lois’ breast the Pointer sisters in season 10’s “Fortune” so when I heard that, I thought back to that episode.

Anyways, after the toast, Dana suggests that the two skinny dip. The two do but in a neighbours pool. When they return home, both now clearly drunk, Dana has locked herself out of the house. The police arrive because they swam in the neighbours pool to see what is going on. Alex tries to defuse the situation by saying that Dana lives in the house. However, Dana can’t find the key and just breaks in. This gets them placed on the hood of the police car where the cop finds her pot. Alex tells Dana to say that she has cancer in hopes of getting sympathy. And apparently this works as Dana’s story checks out and he doesn’t arrest the ladies as he had a wife that didn’t survive ovarian cancer.

Alex wonders if Dana will tell her daughter Molly the full truth about her breast cancer. Even though Emily could have the breast cancer gene, Dana doesn’t want to tell her and have her worry. After the police incident gets cleared up, Dana asks Alex to be her surgeon again as she needs a friend in the OR. Alex, of course, agrees.

Back at Hope-Zion, Alex is going through Dana’s pre-op and tells her she has a way to save her nipples (a concern that Dana had) and lower her chance of re-occurrence to 1%. Alex had brought in a doctor from another hospital to help.

When the time comes for Dana’s surgery, the doctors of Hope-Zion come to her and offer her luck in her surgery and their kind words.

In the OR, Alex is there with Dana as she start to go under. We see the surgery and Alex so far is doing a great job and this surgery looks incredibly real that I had to turn my eyes away when Alex took out the breast with the tumour. While the surgery is going on Charlie looks on from the gallery. Melanda is there too and wants to be angry at Charlie but sees that he is as heart broken as Alex. She asks why did he break up with her but Charlie tells her to take Alex out for dinner and be her friend.

When I saw that Dana was going to be the patient in this episode, I was worried that something would happen and Charlie would see her spirit but alas she is okay. Alex tells her that everything went well and looks good. Everyone is relieved.

You remember Amelia from the opening of this episode. The running bit is that the TV in her room wasn’t working and Dana was being a bitch about. However, after the surgery, Dana mellows out and she and Amelia share a room and watch Dana’s large screen TV together. They are soon joined by Molly, Melanda, Maggie and soon Alex to watch a cheesy movie.

Joel and Charlie

Joel visits with a former patient, Paulina (Krista Bridges), a dancer, at a theatre. Paulina had experimental hip surgery and when Joel goes to dip her, she feels some discomfort. At the same time. we see she is a bit confused because she is calling people by the wrong name. After getting checked out at the hospital, her hip seems fine but her confusion remains so Joel wants to do more testing but without alerting her as she seems to think that she is fine.

However, she is not fine. Paulina has collapsed in the hospital’s lobby. Charlie, Zach and Joel try to save her but alas she dies and Charlie sees her spirit. Her husband Carl wants to know how this could happen. Blake, a woman who was the one that sold Joel this experimental hip, tells Carl that they need to perform an autopsy on her.

The results of the autopsy indicate that this hip leaked and poisoned her blood stream thus affecting her heart and her brain. Blake, however doesn’t think it is the hip and wants people on her end to test it hip. Joel on the other hand thinks otherwise and so does Charlie.

While reading a paper in the lobby, Charlie gets a visit from Paulina who wants Charlie to go to this ballet recital where she was teaching a bunch on young dancers and do a ritual so they can dance. At first Charlie doesn’t want to because he feel asleep the one time Alex took him to the ballet. However, Alex tells him (during their phone call) that she was the one that fell asleep and he loved the ballet. After finding Paulina at the morgue, he agrees to go to the recital and do this ritual for her dancers.

Meanwhile, Joel has decided to do his due diligence and has brought in all the patients who underwent this trial hip surgery. Most of them past except for the final patient that we see. Joel brings Blake back in and shows her an x-ray where metal fragments came off and have embedded themselves inside the tissue. Joel blames the design of the hip and tells Blake that her company will not get FDA approval for it while Blake blames Joel for being a crappy surgeon plus she throw him sleeping with her in his face.

We see Joel and Charlie in surgery removing one of the faulty hips and we learn that it is worse than Paulina’s. Afterwards, Paulina’s husband visits Joel with a document that states that the medical device company knew that the hip would fail. This document was pre-dated to Paulina’s surgery. Joel wants to sue the company but Dawn thinks it is a bad idea to take on a company of that size and drag Hope-Zion down with him. However, Charlie backs up Joel.

Joel is committed to this lawsuit so he tells the staff of Hope-Zion who have gathered in the waiting to room to hear about Dana that he is stepping down as chief. Talk then turn to who will be the interim chief. Shahir wants it to be him but Joel wants Dawn to be his successor.

We then see Charlie at this ballet recital and goes through the ritual that Paulina wanted. When it ends, the girls run off and Charlie is alone on stage and we then fade out.

It took a while but Saving Hope is actually growing on me. I mainly love it for Erica Durance but I am also liking the comedy relief that the Maggie and Gavin relationship is taking us. And I’ve become invested in the Charlie/Alex relationship and hope that their breakup is temporary.