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    Conrad Hawkins 

Conrad Hawkins

Portrayed by: Matt Czuchry
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/conrad_hawkins_season_two_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Conrad's abrasive attitude and massive ego are overlooked by both patients and doctors. Patients like him because he listens to them and looks out for their interests, while the Chastain Park staff tolerates him because he is an incredibly gifted internist and diagnostician.
  • Combat Medic: Conrad's position in the Marines, and where he picked up his preference for quick and personal medicine over relying on tests.
  • Cynical Mentor: Takes a Good Is Not Nice attitude toward Dr. Pravesh.
    • Secret Test of Character: in "Independence Day," Hawkins gives Pradesh a strict order that he knows Pradesh will have to disobey in order to properly treat the patient—and later congratulates him for doing exactly that.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: He has serious Daddy Issues.
  • Deal with the Devil: Conrad feels like he's doing this when he takes money from his estranged father in order to pay Nic's bail, but as it turns out his father is not the bad guy Conrad always thought.
  • Defector from Decadence: Hawkins was born into a very wealthy family, but cut himself off voluntarily.
  • Dogged Nice Guy: To Nevin.
  • Former Teen Rebel: It's been confirmed that Conrad ran wild in his youth, mostly to lash out at his father.
  • Indy Ploy: Conrad often resorts to this to protect a patient's welfare from the cost-control machinations of the hospital administration.
  • Lovable Rogue: Takes on corruption in the medical industry with a wink and a smile.
  • Military School: Conrad mentions having been sent to military school in "Lost Love".
  • Nepotism: Season 2 sees Conrad becoming the unwilling recipient of this after his father becomes Chastain's chairman. His father keeps pulling him into meetings with the CEO and takes any input he offers seriously, despite being a third-year resident.
  • Nom de Mom: Implied. In any event, he doesn't share his father's surname of Winthrop.
  • Open Heart Dentistry: When in the Marines, Conrad would go above and beyond his remit as a combat medic to perform emergency surgery, despite being an internist at best. Justified in that he was a trained medic, had completed at least part of his medical training, and if he did nothing, people would definitely die, but if he intervened, they only might die. His tendency to do this is a civilian hospital goes over far worse, leading to him being disciplined and sued.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hawkins gives one to Cain that actually makes Cain shed a tear of remorse, after Cain negligently lets a deadly superbug spread across the hospital.
  • Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Conrad did this 11 years before the start of the series, cutting himself off from his family money in favor of enlisting in the marines. Notably, his father implies that Conrad can still access his trust fund; he simply won't due to his disgust at how his father made that money.
  • Secretly Wealthy: Conrad Hawkins is a Marine veteran, put himself through medical school, and has nothing but disdain for the rich, which makes it all the more surprising when we learn that he was born into a very wealthy family. When his father tried to buy Conrad's attention, he offered to give him a hospital. It didn't work.
  • Sex for Solace: With Nic after Lily's death. They'd been working towards a reconciliation before this; her death was just the tipping point.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: On the surface, he seems fairly okay, but he has a history of sudden and extreme reactions, varying from claustrophobically intense to violent. Nic and Conrad's first breakup was prompted by his refusal to seek help for his PTSD.
  • Shown Their Work: Conrad's immense skill with setting IV lines, best showcased in "Identity Crisis".note 
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Hawkins' decision to torture a murderous patient for information on a hostage comes back to bite his ass in a lawsuit brought by the victim. Only Pravesh's last-minute lie on Hawkins' behalf saves him.
    • Hawkins lies on behalf of a patient who needs a liver transplant but tried to kill himself. When this lie is discovered, Hawkins is fired.
  • Tattoo as Character Type: Conrad has 3 tattoos: a military insignia over his heart, a caduceus on his forearm, and "Death Before Dishonor" across his shoulders. All highlight his driving forces— his military service, devotion to medicine, and refusal to engage in underhanded tactics common in both.

    Nicolette 'Nic' Nevin 

Nicolette 'Nic' Nevin

Portrayed by: Emily VanCamp
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nicolette_nevin_season_two_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Alliterative Name: Nicolette Nevin.
  • Break the Cutie: Nic was training a nurse fresh out of med school, but after a violent encounter with a meth-head patient she's crying in the medical closet and wants to quit.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Her sister became addicted to opioids.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Guess what happens to her in the episode entitled "And the Nurses Get Screwed"?
  • Former Teen Rebel: Her sister implied that Nic Nevins might be this.
  • He's Not My Boyfriend: Proclaims this of Conrad after he visits her in jail, before saying he might be. A guard then makes a similar claim about her (maybe) girlfriend.
  • Hospital Hottie: She's played by Emily VanCamp.
  • Missus And The Ex: When Conrad's ex-fiancée Catherine is admitted, this dynamic develops between her and Nic, despite both Catherine and Nic being Conrad's ex's at this point. There's no tension between Conrad and Catherine, as they broke up over a decade ago, and Catherine's conversations with Nic open Nic's eyes to just how much Conrad loves her.
  • Sex for Solace: With Conrad after Lily's death. They'd been working towards a reconciliation before this; her death was just the tipping point.

    Devon Pravesh 

Devon Pravesh

Portrayed by: Manish Dayal
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/devon_pravesh_season_two_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Break the Cutie: Stubbornly refuses to let a drug OD patient die but she's left brain dead in the process. He's wracked with guilt afterwards.
  • Lawful Stupid: Is such an adherent to the Hippocratic oath and the medical rules that he will follow them even at a cost of innocent lives. Examples include:
    • He refuses to follow Hawkins's lead in torturing a patient on the hook for murder and hostage-taking, even though said torture would reveal the location of a hostage who could be executed at any minute. This lawful stupid trend is averted however when a lawsuit arises due to the torture, since Pravesh lies on Hawkins' behalf.
    • He refuses to obtain medical records due to his qualms about accessing confidential information, even though getting this patient information would confirm whether a potentially faulty drug was responsible for several deaths. Said information would also save the lives of other people currently on said drug.
    • He refuses to report a pilot to the authorities for his alcoholism for the same reason as above as well as 'patient trust', even though said pilot admitted that he could've been responsible for a lethal plane crash thanks to that alcoholism. He was lucky that said pilot WASN'T responsible for the plane crash that day.
    • Pravesh ultimately steers away from this trend when a patient who tried and failed to commit suicide via drug overdose needed a liver transplant, as suicidal patients were ineligible for transplants.

    Mina Okafor 

Mina Okafor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mina_okafor_season_two_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Everyone Has Standards: Played for drama and lampshaded with regards to Dr. AJ Austin. One doctor criticizing another's bedside manor is one thing, Dr. Mina Okafor saying Austin is horrible with patients is quite another.
  • Everything's Precious with Puppies, so she brings a litter from the animal shelter for the kids in the pediatric wing to play with. When one escapes, it leads to a hospital-wide series of Cuteness Proximity events.
  • The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Mina is hugely (and uncharacteristically) excited to meet Conrad's mentor, Dr. Jacoby, to the point where she prepared a speech to tell her and can't stop smiling for most of the episode. At the end of the episode, she thanks Dr. Jacoby for being her hero.
  • No Social Skills: Her primary mode of interaction is Brutal Honesty.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She's providing medical care to poor people in her neighborhood "off the books."
  • What Did I Do Last Night?: Mina wakes up at a country club golf course in a man's suit and no clue what happened the night before. It's Grayson who shows her photos of how she got massively drunk at a hospital party, did body shots and crashed a bar mitzvah. Everyone else is astounded to realize how the stern and serious Mina turned into an absolute party animal. Mina herself deletes every photo she can find as she tries to shake it off.

    Randolph Bell 

Randolph Bell

Portrayed by: Bruce Greenwood
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/randolph_bell_season_two_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Compressed Vice: Bell's high mortality rate in surgery was a major plot point in season one. After season one ended, Bell never again used Mina to cover up for his deficiencies, and performed all of his surgeries himself without any signs of being unable.
    • Justified as the problem came from a tremor that was stated to be psychosomatic and stress-induced— Bell also spent season one with crippling financial problems. After becoming CEO and launching a successful supplement, his finances cleared up, thus allowing the tremor to fade.
  • Deal with the Devil: Bell sells the hospital to Red Rock to solve their money problems, resulting in a drop in the hospital's standard of care, and a demotion for Bell personally.
  • Elephant in the Operating Room/Open Secret: Bell's physical and emotional deterioration (detailed in the Hiding the Handicap and Tragic Villain entries below) has caused so many sometimes fatal surgical errors that he's been nicknamed "HODAD" — "Hands Of Death And Destruction" — by some of the staff, and they expect a negative outcome any time Bell picks up a scalpel.
    Hospital CEO Claire Thorpe: How did the surgery go?
    • Averted in "The Prince and the Pauper," when Bell performs a complicated "Whipple procedure" on a teenage cancer patient "flawlessly."
  • Due to the Dead: After Simon, the eldest custodian working at Chastain, dies from complications of his illness, Dr. Bell honors him by cleaning the operating room all on his own.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Bell may be greedy, duplicitous, power-hungry and self-centered to the extreme...but even he is horrified when he discovers Lane Hunter (his lover) is giving chemotherapy to patients who have no cancer just so she can get richer. While turning her in is partly to cover himself and the hospital, it's clear even Bell is disgusted by what Lane has been doing.
    • Likewise, in season two, Bell thinks Quo Vadis is a great company to work with. But when a child nearly dies because of a faulty Quo Vadis device, Bell realizes the entire company is a huge fraud and urges the board to cut ties. He openly admits he's driven by guilt that a child nearly died because of the partnership he pushed and can't allow it to happen again.
    • Season 3 has Bell becoming more disgusted at how far the hospital's new owners are going to help the bottom line over patients. He's also appalled as Cain (whose ego makes Bell look humble) blames others for his own mistakes and willing to let a patient die in a low-rent hospice rather than mess up his "perfect" record.
  • A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Nicely subverted for laughs. When Bell discovers a new patient just won $36 million in the lottery, he immediately gives him the VIP treatment and tries sucking up for a big donation. At the end, Bell is thrown when the guys ends up cutting a check for just a few thousand dollars. He explains that rather than accept the entire winnings off the bat, he agreed to annual installments which are taxed less and add up to more money in the end. Bell can only force a painful smile as the guy laughs "Come on, only an idiot thinks it's better to get $36 million all at once!"
  • Hiding the Handicap: The arrogant chief of surgery, suffers from uncontrollable hand tremors that make it dangerous for him to do delicate procedures. Rather than admit his problem (which is already an Open Secret in the hospital), he resorts to trickery (such as having Dr. Okafor secretly operate an advanced surgical instrument in a procedure Bell is ostensibly performing in a live webcast), taking short-cuts that make the procedures easier for him but increase the risk to the patient, engineering blatant cover-ups when something goes wrong, and self-medicating with a drug that has nasty psychological side effects.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Bell is greedy and dishonest and Only in It for the Money, but he's right to point out that the hospital has to be able to make enough money to pay for all the charitable work that Conrad would like it to do.
  • Karma Houdini: By the time the series starts, he's caused so much death and horror in the operating room that the fact he's become a lousy surgeon is an Elephant in the Living Room among the hospital staff, and yet he still is considered one of their best surgeons, has not been sued, and has enormous influence over the administrators.
  • Mock Millionaire: Bell has nice clothes and a flashy Porsche and appears prosperous, but he's deeply in debt.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Late in season 2, Bell reveals to his assistant that the hospital's donations are down over 40%. When asked why, he dryly points out that having one doctor discovered to be behind a massive cancer patient fraud who was then murdered and then partnering with a company that was a massive scam selling inferior devices tended to scare away potential investors.
  • Tragic Villain: Bell, to a certain extent: over the course of the series, we learn that he's just gone through his second divorce, his hand tremors are worsening, the drug he's taking to mask that problem has psychological side effects including paranoia, and he's in sufficient financial trouble that he's selling a wealthy patient's thank-you gift, a 24-karat Rolex, on eBay the same day he got it.
    • At the end of Season 1, he loses "the love of my life" when Lane Hunter is arrested for murder when her medical fraud is exposed.
    • It hits a new low in the opening scene of "The Prince and the Pauper," when he picks up a prostitute who reminds him of Lane Hunter...and she turns out to be an undercover cop who arrests him for solicitation. He spends the night in jail and ends up with a felony conviction.

    Lane Hunter 

Lane Hunter

Portrayed by: Melina Kanakaredes
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lane_hunter_season_one_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Blackmail Backfire: Played with in season 2 as Lane Hunter pushes Bell to secretly help her make bail by threatening to release a tape of them in bed together. Once he does so, Bell thinks that's it, only to find Lane expects him to testify on her behalf at the trial. Bell refuses to risk his reputation aiding her and tells her to just go right ahead and release the tape. Lane threatens to go into some of Bell's shady moves and risky surgeries but Bell just snorts on how, as much as they may dislike him, his staff despises Lane far more and "will back me before they support you." Subverted as Lane threatens Bell with the solicitation arrest he thought he had buried but that's ended when Lane is killed.
  • The Coup: In "Haunted," Hunter recruits Bell to join her in ousting hospital CEO Claire Thorpe, whose new emphasis on "transparency" and increased accountability for medical errors threatens them both. They succeed in the following episode.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Got into trouble with the medical board in Tennessee before moving to Atlanta, probably for the same sort of fraud that, once discovered, leads to her downfall in "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
  • Frame-Up: Hunter frames Nicolette for the death of a cancer patient, and a few other things, in retaliation for Nicolette looking into questionable treatment methods at Hunter's cancer clinic.
  • Villain Has a Point: Hunter complained about lawyers, administrators, and other forms of oversight forcing doctors to practice medicine defensively. Even though Hunter was a murderer who only cared about not getting caught, in another episode the three heroic protagonists were making the same complaints.

    Andre Jeremiah "AJ/The Raptor" Austin 

Andre Jeremiah "AJ/The Raptor Austin

Portrayed by: Malcolm-Jamal Warner
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aj_austin_season_two_promotional_photo.jpg

  • Alliterative Name: Andre Austin.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Might be the greatest cardiothoracic surgeon in the country, but he's such an abusive prick inside the OR and out that he has trouble keeping a permanent position— eventually he hits the point where his skills can't make up for the nightmare of having to be in the same room as he is.
  • Determinator: During "Snowed In", Dr. Austin decides to walk all the way to Chastain in the middle of a massive snowstorm in order to help Mina with a difficult operation. Although by the time he arrives Mina has done the surgery, when complications arise Austin is there to assist.
  • Good Is Not Nice: Practices tough love on everyone, accent on the tough part.
  • In-Series Nickname: Austin begins to be called The Raptor, and he actually likes it.

    Marshall Winthrop 

Marshall Winthrop

Portrayed by: Glenn Morshower
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/marshall_winthrop.jpg

  • Blackmail Backfire: Marshall Winthrop tries to use his power, prestige, and blackmail to force Kim into rehiring Hawkins. However, Kim knows 'where the bodies are buried', and forces Marshall to back down due to how devastating this knowledge is.
  • Fiction 500: Investor in several major corporations, chairman of the Chastain Park board, and can post Nicolette's $100,000 bail with ease.
  • Papa Wolf: Going so far as to personally pay off a patient suing Conrad rather than allow his son's career to be put at risk.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Is shaping up to be one, trying to find a balance between profit and patient care. The question is if this how he usually does business, or an attempt to get back into Conrad's good graces.
  • The Reveal: In the very last scene of the first season finale, Bell discovers to his horror that the new chairman of the hospital board is Conrad's father.

    Barrett Cain 

Barrett Cain

Portrayed by: Morris Chestnut
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/barrett_cain_season_three_1.jpg

  • Break the Haughty: Cain smugly talks to a racist about how he's much smarter than he is despite his race. He ends up paying for it when he realizes too late that he just did an operation to destroy the man's kind-hearted alternate persona and let the racist be in control. The racist even smugly says, "you're not as smart as you think."
  • Everyone Has Standards: Despite causing a superbug, he's disgusted with how Kim is more concerned with covering up the disease than with fixing it.
  • Eviler than Thou: To Bell.
  • Hate Sink: Cain at least may be in the process of a sort of redemption arc.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Cain's arrogance and risk-taking in surgery end up putting a few patients in serious jeopardy while telling residents they shouldn't be afraid of "taking the initiative" in surgery. When he's badly injured in a car accident, a pair of residents don't wait for Kit but start Cain's operation on their own which goes badly and jeopardizes Cain's surgical career, not to mention his life.
    • As further karma, when [ Cain falls into a coma, he ends up being sent to the very hospice he had his own terminal patients exiled to in order to keep his "perfect" surgical record intact.
  • Moment of Weakness: Cain has had two of them in his career. As an intern his unwillingness to speak up cost 4 patients their lives. He has one again later on when he insists on covering up an outbreak of candida auris rather than coming clean and getting the outbreak resolved.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Cain treats a horrible racist who turns out to have an alternate personality of a kind man who's horrified by his other persona leading a neo-Nazi movement. Cain decides to break protocol and perform an operation that will excise the tumor that's causing this alternate persona to exist. It's only afterward that Cain realizes that it was the kind-hearted figure that was the alternate persona. With him gone, the ruthless racist is fully in control and smugly gloats on how Cain did him a huge favor by getting rid of his "weaker" side.
  • Tragic Villain: It's revealed that he was an aspiring football player before he suffered a Career-Ending Injury, forcing him to find a different career instead. This left him the bitter and angry dick we still see as of Season 4. Although his 'all about the money' approach to medicine also makes him very unpleasant, a conversation with Austin shows that Cain too feels the pressure of being one of the rare black surgeons. Later on, his attempt to save lives during a car accident gets him hit and severely injured, endangering his surgical career and very life in the process (his residents puncturing his lung during an operation didn't help). He's currently languishing in the very same medical center that he put his comatose patients into (who'd never wake up), but Austin speculates that it'll be the comeuppance he needs to change his behavior for the better.

    Billie Sutton 

Billie Sutton

Portrayed by: Jessica Lucas
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_resident_jessica_lucas.jpg

  • Remember the New Guy?: When Billie shows up in season 3, it's stated she was once a top nurse at the hospital and an old friend of Conrad and Nic's who they've never mentioned before.

    Logan Kim 

Logan Kim

Portrayed by: Rob Yang
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/logan_kim___season_three___peking_duck_day.jpg

  • Everyone Has Standards: After spending the third season as nothing but a money-loving corporate stooge, Kim surprises everyone in the season 4 premiere when he uses Red Rock resources to get a shipment of much-needed equipment, knowing it can cost him his job but that the lives of the doctors and patients are more important and "maybe I can sleep a little better for once."
  • Hate Sink: Kim is irredeemable thanks to his ruthless profit-or-else attitude.
  • Irony: Kim, who spent all of the previous season making shady deals, trying to remove Conrad, and covering up superbugs, gets fired the first time he does something good.
    • Kim told Cain in a private meeting that 'everyone has an expiration date', as a threat for him to bring up his revenue margins. Come Season 4, Kim hits that expiration date first and is fired.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: When he's pressing the surgeons to get patients to do elective surgeries during the Covid-19 pandemic, it may be to save his job but he does make them face up to how, without the money from those surgeries, Red Rock may decide to simply close down the hospital which would not only put everyone out of work but leave thousands of patients at risk in a medical crisis.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Is finally fired after a season of causing trouble at the hospital and trying to get Conrad fired.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Kim goes out of his way to get the hospital much-needed supplies for the pandemic. He still ends up being fired by the board with Conrad giving him props for that one move but nothing else. When Kim complains, Conrad points out one selfless act (which Kim had to be guilted/browbeaten into) doesn't make up for all the terrible stuff Kim has done which hurt the patients and put the hospital in that bad spot in the first place.

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