[The following story contains spoilers from the The Pitt season two, episode six, “12 p.m.”]
When Katherine LaNasa‘s charge nurse Dana Evans is showing her young wide-eyed trainee Emma (Laëtitia Hollard) the ropes at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center in the season two premiere of The Pitt, she mentions some best practices to help nurses protect themselves from overly aggressive patients, like the one who punched Dana in the face in season one, leaving her not only with some bruises but also with some doubts about whether she wanted to continue working in the hospital.
But a few hours later, as seen in episode six, she’s walking Emma around the emergency department and sharing more instructions about patient care when one patient suddenly reaches out and grabs Emma’s arm. Dana rushes to her defense, frees Emma’s arm and scolds the patient, ripping a sign off the wall and shoving it in his face, loudly noting that aggressive behavior toward health care workers is a felony.
Despite these laws and guidelines, LaNasa says Dana doesn’t feel like they’re going to protect her.
“I think she feels like she has to enforce that herself,” LaNasa tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I think she definitely feels vulnerable.I don’t think Dana ever saw coming what happened. You know, I remember one time I read an article about Aretha Franklin, and they were asking her, like, ‘Are you worried about wearing your fur coat, that people are gonna throw paint on it?’ And she was like, ‘Nobody’s gonna throw paint on Aretha.’ Do you know what I mean? She was not worried about it. And I think Dana never thought that Dana would get punched. Do you know what I’m saying? So I think it really shattered her whole world view.”
LaNasa says that while Dana is back at PTMC, she no longer feels secure. “I don’t think she really probably feels safe anywhere,” she says. “It’s one place she thought she would be protected, respected, and she’s not. And so I don’t think she feels that she’s safe, anyone’s safe. And I think the protective measures that she’s taking towards Emma and wants Emma to take towards herself are really a way of trying to right the wrongs done to herself.”
And, LaNasa says, Dana will continue to deal with the effects of the first-season punch throughout the July 4 holiday shift shown in season two.
“I would say that Dana is bit on edge. I think she’s still reeling from the punch. I think that took a big toll on her,” LaNasa says of Dana’s mindset at the beginning of the shift and day. “I think she’s kind of defensive, a little hyper vigilant, a little more short tempered, not taking any crap, you know. I think she still has her warmth, and in some ways she’s still the same old Dana, but I think we’ll definitely see a changed Dana, and I think it’s not even really so much about where she begins, but like what happens to her throughout the day, and how the effects of that punch affect her and her behavior, and how that plays out throughout the day. We see that she’s still affected by it.”
New episodes of The Pitt drop Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on HBO Max ahead of the season finale on April 16.
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