While coping with his wife's death from cancer, Dr. Ben Gideon deals with an arrogant cancer patient who dares him to cure him.

Gideon tries to help a breast-cancer patient who doesn't trust Western medicine. Meanwhile, Ollie attempts to treat a middle-aged man who has daily headaches from his job and Cooper has a patient with a rather embarrassing condition.

A cleaning lady Gideon has known for years comes to the hospital with leukemia.

The mayor of Boston, a patient of Gideon's, is diagnosed with cancer, so he has to consider his treatment options before his planned race for the Senate, as well as treatments that could have an effect on his sex life.

A man comes to the hospital on a Saturday morning, gets treated by six residents and dies on a Sunday night. His case his examined on a Monday morning at an "m and m" conference, and has a profound impact on those involved.

Gideon has developed a drug that could revolutionize treatment for melanoma. The drug is given approval for trials and he offers it to one of his patients before learning that trial subjects must be chosen by a lottery.

A rich woman with a blood disease picks on the staff, including Gideon and Cabranes. In the meantime, the residents set out to fulfill a dying patient's last wish to be mummified.

During the holidays, Gideon attempts to treat an anemic astronomer who disagrees with the hematology chief. Also, Cabranes volunteers to sing for the hospital's "holiday extravaganza", but Stiles doubts his talent.

A man whom Gideon once treated for cancer comes back to the hospital with a fever and a son who has a chip on his shoulder. Meanwhile, Boies is unable to determine what caused a 35-year-old woman to have a stroke.

Staffers look for bacteria that are causing infections in patients who have no connection other than the fact that they're sick.

The flirtatious daughter of the hospital's psychiatry chief commits suicide - after she leaves a note accusing Cherry of sexual misconduct. Also, Boies grows more anxious as preparations for the Porter malpractice trial heat up.

A deaf 14-year-old girl asks for a cochlear implant, but her parents, who are also deaf, are against it. A lawyer for the hospital asks Gideon out and a patient Sid pronounced dead turns out to be alive, but in a vegetative state.

A frequent drug-test volunteer to whom Ollie has gotten close is diagnosed with leukemia. He responds to an experimental treatment, only to get arrested for robbery, but the bright side is that he can't be treated in jail.

Boies' father comes to the hospital as a visitor, then ends up as a patient after coughing incessantly in front of Sid. In the meantime, Gideon wonders how a teenage hemophiliac has developed a resistance to the clotting factor.

Cabranes has a psychiatric session with a multiple-personality disorder patient who threatens the hospital with a gun.

Ellenor Frutt is brought to Metropolitan General after collapsing and tells Ben that her baby comes first if anything happens to her.

Two patients are in desperate need of a liver transplant when a brain-dead accident victim shows up at the hospital, so Brucie must convince her parents to donate her organs. In the meantime,

Gideon is having a bad day. His son Eli has hit another boy in the head with a brick at school and one of Cabranes' patients wants a fetal-cell transplant that Ben is strictly against.

Gideon gets severe heartburn and faints in an exam room. His EKG results are "ambiguous," but he refuses to believe there is something wrong with him, even as Cabranes says it could be a heart attack.