List of Chicago Hope episodes

Note- In 1996 this episode won the Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series.^[1]

Watters' old romantic rival checks into the hospital in need of a heart transplant. When a heart finally arrives, Austin performs the transplant against her will, believing that the wealthy patient bribed the donor family. Aaron and McNeil work together to help a man with a rare disease that is causing his muscles to contract. Wilkes is affected when a gang member violently shoots up the ER. Billy officially asks Diane to marry him. It's mentioned that Nyland is gone, it doesn't say how or why.

Billy removes the kidney of a 9-year-old girl with an extensive medical history, and discovers signs that she's being abused. He suspects the girl's mother may be intentionally harming her daughter to grab attention. Aaron grapples with himself when he loses a patient while performing a simple procedure. Kate can't break away from the hospital to attend her daughter's school carnival. Jack gets caught in a sting at Bart's bar, prompting Phillip to insist that Jack enroll in Gamblers Anonymous.

Aaron announces he's leaving Chicago Hope for a teaching position at Harvard. Shortly thereafter he begins to suffer from a brain aneurysm. The aneurysm sends him into a trance state where he hallucinates several strange fantastical experiences, including Chicago Hope doctors in song and dance sketches and Jeffrey Geiger's advice on life.

The staff worries about Aaron when he has a series of seizures, threatening his chances to survive another operation. Jack refuses to allow a drug addict to go through a super fast detox program, using the knowledge he's gleaned from his attempts to beat gambling. A child molester asks Billy to castrate him.

Dr. Shutt may have brain damage after his aneurysm, so a new neurosurgeon, Dr. Lisa Catera, is brought into the hospital. Dr. Austin gets trapped on an elevator with a sexy electrician.

Austin struggles when a girl with Down's Syndrome offers to donate a lung to her needy brother. Dennis surprises a benefactor with the news that one of his relatives was black. Dr. Grad discovers that she's pregnant, just as Billy announces plans to take a four-month sabbatical.

Billy and Diane are married as Billy rushes off to South America. Diane is horrified by a teenage girl who dumped her newborn child into the trash. Dr. Austin treats a high school basketball player with a bad heart who's reluctant to quit the game. While trying to counsel a male rape victim, Aaron becomes intrigued with the mechanics of the brain. Kate connects with electrician Danny Blaines, but remains reluctant to be seen with him in public.

Jack and Kate operate at 20,000 feet on a pregnant woman while the two are flying to a medical conference in London. Aaron begins his psychiatric residency, getting off to a bad start with his teacher and falling prey to his patients' manipulative disorders.

A 'girls only' weekend getaway at McNeil's cabin goes horribly wrong for Kate, Lisa and Diane, when Grad is assaulted by a native backwoodsman. The three doctors deal with the attack differently. Austin, still affected by an attack in her college days, responds with anger. Lisa remains cool and rational while Diane is paralyzed with fear.

Dr. Shutt counsels the family of a teenage suicide. McNeil and Hancock try to determine whether a young patient is the victim of parental abuse. Wilkes refuses to treat his absentee father after he's admitted to the hospital. Phillip, stinging from repeated rejections from his son, urges father and son to reconcile.

Phillip is disturbed to learn that his accountant has stolen every cent he owns. Watters' pride doesn't let him accept offers to help from both Jack and Aaron. Shutt and Dr. Catera clash over a patient's suggested treatment. Keith is arrested for drunk driving and is sentenced to community service work at Hancock's clinic. Diane's loneliness sinks her Holiday spirits. Jack plays Santa for sick children.

Phillip reconnects with an old flame when her son is hospitalized. Jack decides to pursue a relationship with Lisa, dumping Karen Wilder. Grad is busy with a patient who insists she's pregnant despite evidence to the contrary.

Chicago Hope's doctors struggle with adversity when the power goes out on a blustery, winter night. Keith endures a drunken Irish engineer to try to get a backup generator on-line. Dr. McNeil tries to explain life and death to Sara Wilmette and Cacaci's son when they're trapped in an elevator together. Aaron strives to help a teenage girl found bleeding from her hands in a church. Billy contends with a pregnant (and hormonal) Diane. Kate doubts herself when a very expensive computer program disagrees with her diagnosis.

Phillip, temporarily hobbled with a leg injury, spies a murder through his telescope and tries vainly to convince police he really witnessed a killing. Danny Blaines gives Kate a bird which gets loose and flies throughout the hospital. Diane locates her birth mother and visits her and her extremely strange house.

Diane faces her impending motherhood full of doubts, inspired by an HIV-positive patient who wants to have a child, and the discovery of a mass in her breast. Wilkes and Hancock are swamped with a pregnant teenager who's handcuffed to her abrasive mother. Dr. Catera attempts to remove half of a five-year-old's brain to stop her seizures.

Phillip decides to take a stab at open-mike comedy, to his colleagues horror. Lisa finds herself attracted to Jack's incarcerated brother. Austin and Sara dine with Danny Blaines, leading to a violent confrontation. Billy, worried that his impending fatherhood has made him weak, gets into a midnight bar fight.

Billy treats a family with damaged livers via poisonous mushrooms. The father, the only unaffected family member, must choose which of his two sons will receive part of his liver. Aaron sees a troubled patient who, through hypnotherapy, claims she was sexually abused by her father. Phillip forces Kate to attend a touchy-feely medical conference with Cacaci. Billy gets he and Diane thrown out of Lamaze class. Diane debates whether to tell Billy what really happened at Jack's cabin.

Phillip, Jack, Aaron, and Keith travel to Las Vegas for a medical conference. Jack, confident he's beaten his gambling addiction, runs into an old friend, the father of a boxer. The boxer dies, sending Jack spiraling downward, culminating in another descent into gambling.

Dr. Wilkes treats identical teenagers with the same rare heart ailment, losing one in the process. Kate treats a 10-year-old who nearly died after sniffing glue, and learns her daughter does the same. Aaron interviews a man for inclusion in a study by Dr. Frank. Diane debates taking maternity leave. McNeil isn't sure whether a man has sentiment or politics at heart when he insists life-saving surgery be taken on his sister, over her same-gender partner's wishes.

Diane, several weeks overdue, finally goes into labor. Wilkes tries to keep an abusive man away from his family by admitting him for back pain and doping him up. Jack and Lisa take a ballroom dance class.

Phillip searches for answers after his son is shot in the head and dies. Jack continues his pursuit of Lisa. Sara Wilmette meets a young cancer patient.

Aaron supervises a famous painter when she's admitted with a brain tumor. Dennis treats a young boy who believes himself to be a girl. Dr. Wilder clashes with Kate over the proper treatment for an unborn child.

Aaron and Samara vacation in LA, where Aaron learns a valuable lesson about savoring life. Keith clashes with Dennis when a wealthy woman tries to improve urban life by paying for the sterilization of drug addicts. Billy endures a visit from his flighty mother. Phillip tries to produce an audio tape on surgery.

Raymond Wilkes is traumatized when he's caught in the middle of gunfire at his school's playground. Keith questions his parental instincts when his first thought is to treat the wounded rather than protect his son. With no one else around, Aaron is forced to cut into a patient to save his life, and does it successfully. Kate and Lisa seek counseling for the cabin incident. Jack makes a commitment to Lisa. Phillip reconnects with Stephanie.

Dr. Shutt begins to do surgery again although his future in psychiatry is uncertain. A "suicide doctor" tries to get the hospital transplant committee to use organs that were not harvested properly, and promises one to Austin's patient without her consent. Sarin gas is released in a bank threatening many lives including Hancock's, who risks his own to save others. Wilkes loses it after the incident on the heels of the previous shooting at his son's school, leading him to take a drastic step. Diane returns to work after her maternity leave.

Dr. Shutt continues his work as a psychiatrist, helping a patient who needs to tell his father, who is an Orthodox Rabbi, that he is gay. The "suicide doctor", a friend of Jack's, might need her own services. A cardiologist in NASA's Doctors in Space program, has a heart attack, and Kate wants to take the his place.

Hancock accuses Watters and Austin of racism when they refuse to operate on a black patient. One of Shutt's patients commits suicide when the medicine needed isn't covered by insurance.

Grad accuses a mother are starving her infant to death; Shutt and Catera disagree over a neurological patient; Austin announces her plans with NASA, and Watters takes away her status as Chief of Surgery; Yeats uses his "sixth sense" to diagnose a patient.

The hospital prepares for the Doctor of the Year party, and several old friends drop by; Watters goes into a virus-induced coma and gets some words of wisdom from Alan Birch; Camille Shutt returns for the party and Aaron discovers he still has feeling for her; Dr. Nyland returns to the hospital and reveals that he has really changed his life. Geiger also visits the hospital.

Several doctors make questionable decisions, including Jack ignoring his promise to a patient to not give him a blood transfusion, with serious consequences; Aaron's treatment of a musician who is his hero, and who fears his creativity may be stifled by taking medication prescribed for his bipolar disorder; Keith's behavior towards Cacaci's son, who drives the staff crazy as he "supervises" the ER, behaving exactly like his father.

Gordon teaches Kate how to fly; Hancock accuses a police officer of shooting a homeless African-American; Keith's son starts having breathing problems, and Diane believes that it is related to stress from the school shooting.

A TV star dies in the ER when a needle bursts his gluteal implant, causing cardiac arrest. News crews invade the hospital to cover the story.

Diane is obsessing about having an elaborate gourmet Thanksgiving celebration, when Billy's mother shows up ready to give birth; The delusional star of the road company of "Jesus Christ Superstar", is brought to the ER when he falls ill; The reincarnated spiritual leader of Dr. Yeats is brought to the hospital with chest pains.

Wilkes must face the parents of a child brought into the ER when it becomes clear that Raymond was responsible for the child's injury; NASA interviews Kate's colleagues; One of Aaron's patients is attracted to him.

A girl on the basketball team which Jack coaches sustains a serious injury during a game, leaving him to feel guilty; Drs. Austin and Yeats work together on a case of a man with heart disease and Alzheimer's, and disagree on a course of treatment that causes Kate a lot of agitation; Keith reluctantly agrees to let his son see Aaron to talk about the shooting, but is actively hostile to therapy... for either of them; Dr. Catera's assistant tries to spread holiday cheer a little too vigorously.

Aaron struggles with the loss of a patient; Billy is attracted to Emily's babysitter; A couple asks Bobby and Dennis for help in creating a baby with a genius I.Q.; Joe tries to decide who should go into the hospital's fallout shelter in an emergency.

Kate learns that she has an ovarian cyst which could ruin her plans to fly with NASA. To help her deal with the stress about it, she agrees to go on a Yoga retreat with Bobby; Sara nominates Jack to be her babysitter for the weekend, but she takes something he says too literally when he tries to alleviate her fears about her mother going to space, with dire consequences.

During a C-section on Diane's HIV+ friend, she cuts herself and is exposed to the virus; Jack works through his hurt when he sees Lisa and Bobby kissing, by playing golf through the hospital; A homeless woman harasses a sick Yeats outside his apartment, and he can't get any sleep; The entire team works furiously to save an unidentified man who has been hit by a train saving a child.

When a woman loses her hand, and her mother loses her life in a car accident, McNeil wants to perform a hand transplant from mother to daughter; Kate gets a shuttle assignment from NASA; A childhood friend of Phillip's visits him and asks for one of his kidneys.

Jack returns home to his abusive father after his brother's death; Billy's friend comes to the hospital for a heart transplant, and ends up getting an experimental procedure after the hospital receives the wrong organ; Fearing the impact of HMOs on his practice, Joe begins to sell Doorway products.

Billy ponders euthanasia when his dog Gordy is diagnosed with kidney failure; Lisa tries to help a woman with metastatic breast cancer get into an experimental group even though the woman doesn't fit the study parameters; Aaron's patient confesses to murder.

Kate confronts a world renowned surgeon who's harassed her in the past; Keith has to face his prejudice against fat people when he treats an obese patient; Diane and Billy are waiting for the results of her HIV test; Diane's patient has a flesh-eating bacterial infection.

Diane tries to help grieving parents when their three-year-old child dies; As part of an experiment, Aaron is institutionalized. But when the person who arranges it for him has a heart attack, he can't get out.

A woman gives birth to twins - one black and one white; Unbeknownst to her, Dr. Austin's patient is improperly anesthetized during surgery, and can hear and feel the pain of the entire procedure. But everyone is more outraged about an insensitive - albeit accurate - remark that she makes, rather than his physical ordeal. While Lisa feels overwhelmed, a 13 year old genius stalks her, looking for her help and attention.

The delivery of 8 babies from one mother prompts debate and consternation about their treatment - and their existence; Yeats ends up treating an ailing gorilla; Cacaci threatens Watters' career; Aaron is having difficulty with his depressed dog.

Kate rekindles a relationship with an old lover to whom she was married for two days, with surprising results; Dr. Catera tries to treat a pregnant woman with brain cancer in a way that she's still able to deliver her baby; Cacaci forces Aaron to investigate his charge that Phillip had an affair with a patient.

The E.R. is flooded with teenagers poisoned by an unknown psychoactive rave drug; Kate and Sara are hit by a drunk driver, and Kate's injuries ruin her chance at NASA; Phillip's fate is decided.

Aaron consults Dr. Gina Simon, a pediatric neurosurgeon after being presented with a 9-week old baby suffering from seizures; Jeffrey Geiger returns to the hospital and promptly fires half the staff, whom then sue to get their jobs back.

When a plastic surgeon neglects his patient, Dr. Simon ends up in the position of having to inform the family of his death after what should have been a routine procedure; Jack's Priest raises eyebrows when he is genitally mutilated during a mugging and wants additional surgery to regain sexual function; Drs. Hanlon and Watters unsuccessfully tries to get Geiger to perform surgery on a young boy. But when Jeffrey's daughter befriends him, she insists that her dad performs it, without knowing he had previously refused.

A heart becomes available for transplant, but there are two patients waiting for it, and Drs. Geiger and Watters must choose who will receive it - a potential patron or the hospital's newsstand operator; Jeffrey tries to place Alicia into an exclusive kindergarten class; Aaron tries to hold a welcoming party for the new doctors.

A doctor with Tourette's Syndrome is brought to Chicago Hope to operate on an infant with a severe heart defect; A patient comes into the ER with what he claims to be Albert Einstein's brain, and gives it to Dr. Wilkes; A woman is using plastic surgery to make herself look like a Barbie Doll.

Dr. McNeil goes to magnificent lengths to save the arm of a young baseball star, and is sued when he doesn't succeed; A little girl is brought into the ER after being hit by a car. Although she isn't badly hurt, the situation is complicated because she is unable to communicate at all, and Dr. Shutt has to figure out why.

All of the doctors go to Herculean lengths to fight to save Cacaci's life after he jumps off the roof of the hospital. However, Cacaci's fiancée claims that someone must have pushed him. And when Cacaci's ex-wives show up, they all describe him as the sweetest guy in the world, very different from the Cacaci the doctors know.

A man rushes his pregnant wife to the ER when she starts bleeding profusely, but has a heart attack and dies when he learns she miscarries. Desperate to have his baby, the doctors propose harvesting his sperm to impregnate her. But legal nightmares ensue, and the story is leaked to the tabloids; Dr. Simon treats a young boy with a brain tumor.

The hospital is quarantined after it's inundated with the victims of a mysterious and deadly plague, which spreads to the hospital staff; A five-year-old girl can't be found as she chases the pet rabbit of the first plague victim throughout the hospital; A man with a tree limb through his chest has to be admitted to the ER despite the quarantine if he is to live.

A liver arrives at Chicago Hope---intended for a patient who needs a heart-lung transplant immediately. What to do? Alberghetti has heard of a radical procedure developed by a Sri Lankan surgeon. It is radical, but it has worked on goats and besides, there are no other options. Nor is there a surgeon on hand who knows how to perform it. Meanwhile, details are shared about Hanlon and McNeils' first date - a complete disaster.

On their way to a football game, Aaron and Jack get sidetracked, finding themselves in a hostage situation with 3 wounded patients, a loose gunman, and the police about ready to enter the building. Meanwhile, Alberghetti and Hanlon must be creative: their patient was stabbed 30 times, and the knife is embedded in her heart.

Hanlon tries to treat a traditional Hmong woman with a cancerous lesion that might have metastasized to her lungs. But she and her family are skeptical of Western medicine, and don't believe in surgery; Dr. Peters does his level best to make Jeremy miserable in their department, and annoy Phillip; Alberghetti's patient is a 22-year-old who has a very serious heart infection of unknown origins, and refuses to remove his multiple body piercings; Jack feels left out when he isn't asked to write an article for Chicago Hope's new Web site.

Simon's neurological operation on her mentor goes awry and the man slips into a coma. But his misfortune proves to be a blessing for others, beginning with his deeply religious 79-year-old mother, who suddenly no longer needs her walker after praying over him. Meanwhile, Geiger finds a researcher working on human cloning in a lab in the hospital basement; McNeil's friendship with Alberghetti hits a snag.

A railroad engineer with a drug-resistant strain of TB requires surgery that is not performed at Chicago Hope. This necessitates calling in an expert at it, Wilkes' estranged Aunt Odelia. When Keith also tests positive for TB, he is forced to take an experimental drug to which he has a severe reaction. Meanwhile, Dr. Simon is stumped by a patient who has a wide variety of serious physical symptoms that keeps changing. She believes it's God's revenge for turning away from her dying twin sister.

A biological male has been raised to live his life as a girl after a 'slip of a knife' as an infant. Now a teenager, and desperate to live in his true gender, McNeil goes to court to try to get permission for his transition; Simon and Alberghetti offer a woman with Alzheimer's disease an experimental vaccine.

After two children suffer liver failure, the father learns that he can donate part of his liver... but to only one child. His snap decision upsets Wilkes; Gina and Aaron are dating. However, he wants to keep it a secret. The relationship is tested when Dr. Weber comes back to the hospital; McNeil writes a prescription for a cancer patient that he'll come to regret.

Geiger is under enormous pressure from the hospital board to make drastic cuts, and because his daughter is facing life threatening surgery. He had operated on her when she was born (with congenital heart defects), but that was before she was his daughter. Now he's insisting on doing the surgery again, even though it's not permitted under hospital policy; Dr. Hanlon performs an appendectomy on an uninsured conjoined twin.

A mentally challenged couple enters the hospital because the husband needs open-heart surgery. The wife confides in Dr. Simon that she is having trouble getting pregnant. Simon investigates, and realizes she was sterilized without her consent.

McNeil struggles to be civil to an obnoxious female wrestler known as “The Death Angel”, who scares a little girl on the way to surgery and complicates her treatment. Dr. Shutt needs to devise a new surgical option for her tricky brain aneurysm, and gets help from Drs. Simon and Alberghetti. Meanwhile, Wilkes' son Raymond demands that his father treat his ailing pet tarantula.

Pancreatic cancer affects the conjoined twins that Dr. Hanlon had previously treated. But she cannot convince them to be separated, even though it will mean that both will die. McNeil's Boys Club mentor, whom he hadn't seen in 20 years, is shot, and prevails upon him to not report it to the police.

A smooth talking CEO, Hugh Miller, takes charge of the hospital when it is bought by an HMO, and starts shaking things up; A couple won't terminate a pregnancy when it's discovered that their baby has a malformed brain, so Aaron and Gina come up with a plan to do an experimental fetal operation. Miller gives permission to proceed, in part because he also owns a cable TV network, and plans to televise the procedure. But the parents aren't so sure, and then they accidentally observe Shutt and Simon in an embarrassing situation.

McNeil goes against procedure and red tape and performs a hip replacement surgery; Shutt and Simon transplant a computer into a patient's brain in an attempt to help him communicate; Alberghetti tries to ignore her feelings for Miller.

A coma victim awakens after 15 years; Miller learns firsthand how his cutbacks have affected the quality of care when a heart attack turns him into a patient, and what happens when the man who saves him is denied coverage.

With the hospital proving to be a profit drain, Chicago Hope's new parent company decides to sell, which will mean firing the staff and selling the equipment. So Miller devises a way to pay off the debts and keep the hospital alive. It's a plot that involves a computer whiz who's paralyzed and wants experimental surgery in which a computer chip could help him walk again.