A chopper comes in with a load of wounded, and Hawkeye sees that one man has a damaged aorta (a large blood vessel coming from the heart). Hawkeye immediately sticks his hand inside the wound to stop the blood loss and declares that if blood flow isn't restored within twenty minutes, the patient will be paralyzed at best. A clock pops up on the screen with the current time, and it will continue to tick down for most of the episode.
As they're taking the patient down, an ambulance pulls up with more wounded. B.J. sees that one soldier is beyond saving and informs his friend (another patient). However, he soon gets word from Hawkeye that none of the arterial grafts they saved are large enough, and they'll need to use the dying man's aorta. This means B.J. needs to wait around for the man to die, which does not sit well with the patient's friend.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye has his patient put in an ice bath to (hopefully) lengthen the time before he's paralyzed, and Klinger calls out to make sure no casualties are expected, so they don't run the risk of using too much blood on one patient.
Eventually B.J. gets the aorta (after giving the man's friend a moment with the body), Father Mulcahy comforts the friend, and Hawkeye, Margaret, and B.J. manage to save the patient. There's a tense moment as they realize they went over the 20-minute limit, but fortunately, when the patient wakes up, he starts wiggling his toes.
Attention, all personnel! You have 20 minutes to save the following tropes:
- ABNegative: The patient they need to operate on requires AB Negative blood, which Charles provides a supply of since they have none in stock.
- Bittersweet Ending: Another soldier had to die for it (granted he would've died anyway) but they were able to narrowly save the patient's life.
- Continuity Snarl:
- Hawkeye has Klinger collect his canvas bathtub and fill it with ice to help induce hypothermia in their patient. However, he traded it at the end of "None Like It Hot".
- Charles offers to be a blood donor since he's AB Negative. However, in "C*A*V*E", it's mentioned that he, Klinger, and Father Mulcahy all have the same blood type, and Klinger's blood type was established in "It Happened One Night" as B Positive. These three statements can't all be true.
- Determinator: Subverted. After donating an excessive amount of blood, Winchester is determined to perform his rounds in Post-Op. This is quickly followed by him giving in to his anemia-induced exhaustion.
- Emergency Impersonation: Klinger pretends to be Col. Potter on the phone while the latter's in surgery, as I Corps will only reveal strategic information (like if casualties are expected) to the unit's CO.
- Exact Time to Failure: The doctors have only twenty minutes to put the graft in before their patient is paralyzed. Subverted, in that they try a few tricks to extend this time limit, miss it, and the patient recovers anyway, so the time to failure was not "exact."
- Given Name Reveal: In The Tag, the focus patient's name is revealed to be George.
- Honor Before Reason: Despite the fact that Harold's death is a certainty, and the fact that brain death has already occurred, B.J. never once brings up the idea of taking the aorta before his heart stops beating, despite the urgency of getting the transplant into the O.R.
- Jumping on a Grenade: Father Mulcahy likens the donation of Harold's aorta to their patient to this.
- Lawful Stupid: Margaret has a moment of this when she insists on first sterilizing the vascular clamps Hawkeye needs for the surgery, despite the fact that sterility is a lost cause anyway given that Hawkeye's non-sterile hand is inside the wound holding the artery closed while they wait for said clamp, which only creates a further delay at a time when they're on an extremely tight clock. That said, they didn't have a graft yet, so there was still time.
- Lost in Translation: Hawkeye's pasta-shape references as to the size of arterial graft he needs ("That one's no bigger than spaghettini. We need rigatoni.") flies over the head of Nurse Kellye, who's half-and-half Hawaiian and Chinese. She requests he use cultural measurements she'll understand, getting in return "a small egg roll."
- Prayer of Malice: Downplayed, as the intent behind the prayer is more about Balancing Death's Books, and the "victim" is already dying.Father Mulcahy: Dear God, I've never asked you for this before, and I don't know what you'll think of my asking it now. But if you're going to take him anyway, do it soon, so we can save that other boy.
- Real Time: A graphic of the helicopter's cockpit clock is shown on the screen to remind the audience of the progression of time.
