Off the Map Episode 1.05 I'm Here

After getting clobbered in a beach soccer game by a bunch of local kids, a few of our favorite jungle docs hit the high seas. A man and his 17-year-old daughter were caught in an underwater rockslide. The dad has minor injuries but the girl, Shannon, is still trapped by an underwater rock. Ben and Ryan realize she has a collapsed lung. They need to get her to the clinic. The only way to do that is amputate her leg.

Shannon's dad has never been a real part of her life. Mina helps him with a note for his daughter to read as they're cutting off her leg. It says, “I'm here, Dad.” The guy thinks it's perfect, even though it's not his words. Shannon presses the message up to her goggles as Ben performs the agonizing procedure. The girl is freed and pulled onto the boat. Her dad vomits when he sees her leg. Mina thinks he may have coral poisoning, but Tommy thinks the guy may just be the worst dad ever.

Tommy wants Shannon to look at her amputated leg. The sooner she does this and accepts it as normal, the better she'll be in the long run. But Shannon believes the reason she lost her leg is because her dad made her go on this nightmare trip. That's not normal, and it never will be. Shannon also knows her dad didn't write that note.

Shannon's dad tearfully admits to Mina that he was a terrible father. This trip was an attempt to make up for things. Tommy has a heart-to-heart with Shannon to say that just because her dad has always had trouble relating to her; it doesn't mean he doesn't care. He has some experience with this sort of thing with his own family. At the end of the day, Shannon lost her leg but she got back her father. As for Tommy, he pops a letter in the mail to finally let his folks know that he's fine and somewhere in South America.

Otis is bummed to see that a cultural linguist by the name of Angus Sinclair has returned to the clinic. The guy has an obvious thing for Zee, so Otis makes sure to lay a little kiss on his lady so Sinclair can see that they're together. Angus has larvae growing inside his skin. He doesn't want surgery, so Zee drapes bacon across the patient's chest to draw the larvae to the skin's surface. The pilfered pork product she's using belongs to Otis, who quickly loses his appetite.

Lily gets a visit from Mateo, the handsome man who bought her drinks in San Miguel. It's not a social call though. The guy's been shot. He tripped the wire to a rifle trap used to keep animals away from his family's fields. There's no exit wound, so Lily needs to operate along with Otis and Zee.

The OR chat ranges from bullets to bacon. Zee asks Otis if he knows her middle name. A certain visiting linguist predicted he wouldn't know such a thing. Turns out he was right. The other big news of the operation is the fact that Mateo wasn't shot by a hunting rifle. The bullet Otis pulls out came from the gun of a cop. Uh oh.

When Mateo awakens, Lily tells him it is clinic policy to call the police in situations like his. This sends the wounded man scrambling for the door, but not before laying a passionate goodbye kiss on Lily's lips. Mateo can't get far once his wound starts bleeding again. Guess that wasn't a goodbye kiss after all. As for Otis, Zee doesn't give him a goodbye kiss. But she does let him know that whatever they've been doing is now over.

Lily learns Mateo's gunshot wound came from a corrupt cop who was threatening his sister. Whew. For a minute there, she was worried he might be a serial killer. When a local police officer arrives, Lily says she made a mistake when she reported the bullet. The cop thinks she's lying even after Ben backs her play. A quick search of the clinic comes up empty. Mateo is gone.

Ryan has had shortness of breath all day. It started at the soccer game, continued during the ocean rescue and now she's violently coughing in the clinic lobby. Ryan writes this off as the bends, but Ben suspects it's something else. He may be right.

At the end of the day, Mina awkwardly tells Otis that she's not the type of person who holds hands with people. So, when she did so with him, it was huge. As for Tommy, he learns that Alma just broke up with her boyfriend. He doesn't speak her language, so it's probably best to just kiss her.