Chicago Med's Most Heartbreaking Scenes
"Chicago Med" has built its foundation on loss, science, and highly-pitched human emotions. The doctors, nurses, and first responders who populate the show constantly battle between life, death, and what lies on the other side of the great unknown. They save lives and protect the weak and innocent, but they're human beings, not robots, and mistakes are made. Friends, relatives, and patients of the show's main characters have died in horrible ways throughout the series' seven-season run on NBC. And it doesn't take a tragic death to break a heart. Break-ups, people moving away, lost relatives, and children all add to the daily heartbreak of everyone's favorite medical professionals. Let's not forget each and every person on the staff has been in a near-death situation.
With all of that plasma and drama flying around in equal measures, it's not surprising that the show's had a lot of heartbreaking moments. Join us as we count down those "Chicago Med" scenes that reached out and shattered its viewer's hearts.
Ava Bekker becomes a murderer and commits suicide
Dr. Ava Bekker (Norma Kuhling) reacts unexpectedly to Dr. Connor Rhodes' (Colin Donnell) romantic rejection — she chooses to kill. And not just a stranger, but his dad, Cornelius (D. W. Moffett), hoping that Connor would turn to her in his grief. Eventually, Connor figures out that Ava is the one who killed his dad — and when he confronts her, Ava admits it but chooses to take her own life instead of facing up to the music. She slits her carotid artery with a scalpel and bleeds out right in front of the object of her obsession.
Connor tries his hardest to save her, but she succumbs to her wounds almost immediately. The trauma he feels at that moment makes him leave Chicago Med, and the fan-favorite doctor departed the series in Season 5. The double blow of losing Ava and Connor in the same episode was not an easy hit for the audience to take.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Natalie dumps Phillip and rejects Will
Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) has quite the unusual experience after surviving a coma caused by a traumatic brain injury after she and Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) are violently attacked during Season 5. She wakes up with an engagement ring on her finger. Natalie is soon informed by Phillip Davis (Ian Harding), her boyfriend and the father of a former infant patient, that she accepted his proposal while she was briefly awake. Phillip insists that Natalie can't remember accepting the proposal because of her brain injury.
Will knows the truth — that Phillip slipped the ring onto Natalie's finger while she was unconscious and has tricked her into believing that she said yes to a proposal that never happened. Will ultimately tells her what really happened, which causes her to blow up at Phillip — whom she had already been in the middle of breaking up with. "In my gut, it just doesn't feel right," Natalie says, returning the ring as Phillip insists that Will is trying to break them up.
One can't help but feel bad for everyone here, but especially poor Natalie, who is just plain tired of all of the male interference going on in her life. She delivers another blow by yelling, "Just please get out of my life" to Will. Double ouch.
April and Ethan's final break up
Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) and nurse April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta) had quite the up and down relationship. The duo always loved one another very much, but they could never make their relationship work. Ethan and April were the constant will they, won't they on "Chicago Med," but when DaCosta left the series before Season 7 rolled around, they immediately landed in won't territory.
One of Chexton's worst moments was their Season 5 break-up. After April confessed to kissing him, Dr. Choi got into a fistfight with co-worker Dr. Crockett Marcel (Dominic Rains). Ethan was deflecting because he knew the real issue was his fading connection with April. "The real problem was always right here. Between us," Ethan says and breaks the audience's hearts with one effortlessly cold look. He tells April he's off to stay in a hotel, tells her to start looking for a new place to stay, and leaves her there to cry and contemplate what might come next.
Natalie tells Will she loves him ... but it's too late
Speaking of will they, won't they, it's not a shock the resident in limbo couple would appear on this list multiple times. It's no surprise that the official end of their romantic relationship would earn a spot here. A few episodes after Natalie tells Will to get out of her life, she finds him on the hospital's roof. She explains that her memory has come back and remembers that she planned to tell him she loved him before their accident. She says she doesn't want him out of her life, but Will responds that it's "too late."
Referring to the relationship as "toxic," he tells her that distance from their connection has made him realize that it's been better for him to stay out of her life. "All we do is hurt each other," he declares, adding that while there was a time he couldn't imagine living a life that doesn't include her, now that they're apart, he feels "free." He leaves Natalie (and the audience) to cry it out on the roof alone.
Dr. Charles leaves a rose for his wife
Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) is the level-headed, beating heart of Chicago Med, so when he cries, the audience cries with him. When his wife, Caroline (Paula Newsome), succumbed to lymphoma, it was devastating to Dr. Charles and the viewers, especially since the then-divorced couple remarried during her treatment.
While Dr. Charles had married other women (Caroline was his first and fourth wife), he is clearly destroyed by the loss of Caroline. In "Guess it Doesn't Matter Anymore," Episode 10 of Season 5, he visits Caroline's grave and leaves her a white rose. He sits on a bench near her crypt and stares into space, clearly grappling with the powerful emotional current running through his being. Holding a cup of coffee in his hand during the icy cold day, he sits, listens to the melting snow drip, and cries. It's a moment that says so much about how he feels about Caroline without saying anything at all. It's incredibly emotional to see the always-calm psychiatrist of Chicago Med break down.