From Serial Productions: The Retrievals, Season 2

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susan burton

6:00 AM in Chicago. Of course, the shot starts at the lake. Camera pans over the water, and the magnificent buildings rise from the shoreline, twinkling in the dawn light. We continue across the city, still bird’s eye view, over the grid, over the elevated tracks and wide highways, coming to rest in a Western suburb. Drop down to a brick bungalow where, inside, a woman, late 30s, moves softly past the bedrooms where her children sleep and steps out the front door to meet the morning. Wind chill of 20 below. She hurries to a minivan. And as she pulls away from the curb, we see the streets frosted with salt, the moon shining high and hard. And we see her work ID, where she keeps it on the center console, the words “board-certified RN” and her name in all caps. This is Mindy Figueroa. Mindy says she was made to be a nurse.

mindy figueroa

I think I was just born to be in health care. As a kid, my sister would find all the dolls and the ballet slippers at the Dollar Tree section. But I always got the doctor kit — the stethoscope, the little syringe. Always, always, always. So it was just always a thing.

susan burton

Mindy was the first one in her family to go to college. Her parents came to this country undocumented from Mexico, worked factory jobs, earned citizenship. Mindy paid her way through school, got her degree, started out at a small hospital, and after a few years, transferred up to a big one, UI Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She works on the labor and delivery floor with patients about to have babies.

mindy figueroa

I’ve been told many, many times that as soon as I walk in the room, they know I like my job. And I love coming to work. And I feel like they feel that. So I walk in a room, and good morning, my name is Mindy. I will be here until 7:00 PM.

susan burton

We watch this happen. Mindy stepping cheerfully into a labor room, her face framed by two neat braids. And then we carousel through shots of Mindy at work — Mindy strapping a fetal monitor to a patient’s belly; Mindy at the nursing station, holding a plastic pillow up like show-and-tell, her colleagues doubled over in laughter; Mindy, her face grave, bursting through the door of the OR. Mindy loves the intimacy of labor and delivery and that adrenaline, that switch from it’s calm to, now, it’s time to run.

mindy figueroa

And also, I mean, I just like blood in general. I like —

susan burton

You do?

mindy figueroa

Yes.

susan burton

Like, you mean like, literally, you like blood?

mindy figueroa

Yes. And everyone on the unit knows it. If there is a hemorrhage, if there is heavy bleeding, they know I am the person. I like to weigh it. I like to quantify the blood. I like to clean it up. Blood clots coming out of a — after delivery, and we’re pushing on their belly. And it’s almost like popping a pimple. Like, OK, let’s get it out of there to prevent more bleeding. And I feel like I’m really good at recognizing when we’re trending towards too much blood because I am actually watching. I watch every birth. I watch every C-section. I don’t sit and chart. As soon as the incision starts, I watch it because it’s just intriguing to me. I’ve been doing this for 14 years, and it still amazes me that there’s an incision on an abdomen, but there’s a baby there. So I watch every delivery. [MUSIC PLAYING]

susan burton

This story is going to be about one of those deliveries that Mindy watched, one that changed things for her and for her hospital. There are more than 2,000 deliveries a year at UIC. It’s a public hospital, not a fancy one. And it’s located right in the middle of the city, in the medical district. Establishing shot of the hulking building, dawn breaking open, the sky above. A humble hospital in Chicago, a hard-working nurse, a delivery with stakes — how could we not tell this like a medical drama? A medical drama — its emphasis is on the world inside the hospital, on the heart and the heroism of the people who work there, and their relationships with one another, and how their interactions with patients are shaped by their own stories. But what happens in a hospital also reverberates outside. And on this show, we’re going to see that, too, because this delivery that Mindy watches, it doesn’t just change things at UIC. It could change things for the entire country. And now let’s pull back, get the whole hospital in the frame, and end the opening credit sequence with this image, this boxy building on a subzero morning. But we know that behind that imposing facade, it’s warm. We’re already invested in the human drama inside. Black screen. [MONITOR BEEPING] The action of the episode begins with Mindy in a nearly empty elevator. Closer to 7:00 AM, change of shift, you can barely fit. It’s sardines. But Mindy’s early today. She’s almost always early. She’s the one who will have cleaned the break room by the time her coworkers arrive. At UIC, your coworkers have your back. Mindy could say this about all of the nurses on her crew. One of those nurses is Clara Hochhauser. We see her emerging from the locker room in gray scrubs and a scrub coat. Not everyone wears the scrub coat, but Clara does because it has better pockets and because it covers her tattoos. Clara has large, wise eyes, as if she sees more than other people. She’s a natural at nursing, but it wasn’t obvious that it was where she would wind up.

clara hochhauser

I — I’m like a high school dropout. I really did not do well with school.