ER Episode 12.01 Canon City

Samantha (Linda Cardellini) and Luka (Goran Visnjic) are at the police station at 1 a.m. Her son, Alex, ran away because he wanted to buy a ticket to Colorado to visit his father. The only problem: Sam never told Alex that his dad was in prison.

Sam is even more concerned because Alex is diabetic and needs his insulin or he could die in 24 hours. She's a nervous wreck, but finally goes home with Luka to wait for the police to call.

Sam wakes up later in the morning to an Amber Alert being issued for Alex. She begins frantically making calls to anyone who might know anything, when her house phone finally rings.

The cops call Sam and Luka back in to tell them they have news. They report an unidentified kid in a coma in Davenport, Iowa. The child meets the basic descriptions of Alex.

Not wanting to wait for a picture to come in, Sam decides to drive to Iowa. Luka joins her. They finally arrive at the hospital, only to find out that the child isn't Alex. Sam flips out in the parking lot. She doesn't know what to do. She's at her wits end and thinks Alex is never coming home.

She asks Luka for the keys to the car — she's driving to Colorado.

Luka and Sam drive to Canon City, Colorado. He asks Sam what she and Alex were fighting about. She says they were fighting about her relationship with Luka. Luka then tells Sam that he once lost his own son. He took him to the beach back in Croatia, and left to find stuff to build a sandcastle. When he got back, his son was gone. He was missing for two hours, but when he was found, Luka cried. He assures Sam that Alex will turn up.

They drive into the night and try to avoid falling asleep at the wheel. Sam can barely stay awake as Luka sleeps in the passenger seat. She falls asleep for a moment and something smacks the windshield. They get out to look and find blood all over the windshield. She hit an antelope.

Another man stops on the side of the road and shoots the antelope, so it won't suffer any longer. The car however, is wrecked.

Sam and Luka get their car to a repair shop in the middle of the night. They can't get anything fixed till the morning, so Sam decides to hitchhike. She and Luka hitch and discuss their lives in the back of a truck. She tells him that he can't replace Alex's father and she doesn't want more kids.

The next day, in Colorado, two police officers on patrol spot a young boy sitting alone on a park bench. It's Alex. Sam rushes into a hospital to meet him. But when she finally comes to him, Alex stoically sits by as Sam hugs him. He couldn't find his father anywhere.

Knowing it's the right thing to do, Sam finally tells Alex where his father is — jail. She takes him to the prison and gives him the option of seeing his dad. He decides to go in and visit.

Waiting outside, Luka asks Sam what she's running from. Sam turns and tells Luka that she's not running from anything and that when she needs to choose between Alex and Luka, she will always choose Alex. Sam tells Luka that she simply doesn't want the same things that he wants.

At the hospital, the new interns are getting their lessons from the second year residents. First up is Dr. Ray Barnett (Shane West). Being supervised by Susan (Sherry Stringfield) and Gregory (Mekhi Phifer), Ray is argumentative, impatient and overbearing with the interns. They tell him he needs to teach them, not belittle them.

Because Ray won't let any of the interns do the work on their own, the board begins to clutter up due to the inefficiency of his micromanagement. When his shift finally ends, Neela (Parminder Nagra) takes over and tries to teach the interns the technicalities of everything, setting the ER back even further. However, a stab wound interrupts her lessons. She lets Ray take over but he screws up, so she has to perform the operation on her own.

Neela's intern remains with her through the night, but he misdiagnoses every patient he sees. She yells at him and tells him he needs to be thorough, systematic and meticulous. He's missed everything and she's been correcting him all night. She makes him cry.

As day breaks, Abby (Maura Tierney) takes over for Neela. She teaches a new batch of interns but the board is completely filled by this time. Abby tries to clear the board because Neela's interns weren't able to handle the load. She does a quick round and makes everyone's lives easier.

Gregory tells Abby that although she cleared the board, she still needs to teach the interns instead of doing everything herself.