Grad accuses a mother are starving her infant to death. Shutt and Catera disagree over a neurological patient. Austin announces her plans with NASA, and Watters taked away her status as Chief of Surgery. Yeats uses his ""sixth sense"" to diagnose a patient.

A member of Jack's basketball team sustains a near-fatal injury during a game; Bobby disagrees about the need for his patient to have heart surgery.

Aaron struggles with the loss of a patient; Billy is attracted to Emily's babysitter; a couple asks Bobby and Dennis for help in creating a baby with a genius I.Q.; Joe tries to decide who should go into the hospital's fallout shelter in an emergency.

Kate loses her control and her compassion when her father is admitted with an operable surgical condition but refuses it on religious grounds. Geiger turns up again at the hospital, this time as part of a clown troop there to entertain the patients. Sutton delivers a baby with ambigous genitalia whose parents are equally ambigious about they feel about their offspring.

Jack returns after his brother's death; fearing the impact of HMOs on his practice, Joe begins to sell doorway products; Billy's friend comes to the hospital for a heart transplant, and ends up getting an experimental procedure after the hospital receives the wrong organ.

McNeil offers his cabin to Drs. Austin, Catera, and Grad, whom each want to get away from the city for a while. While at the cabin they receive a visit from an unexpected and deadly visitor.

Kate flies to Washington with Tommy to speak to Congress about health care. Back in Chicago, her friend Marina makes a decision about adoption. McNeil's patint Harriett Owens is hospitalized again.

Billy's mother shows up at the hospital and announces she is about to give birth. The star of the road company version on ""Jesus Christ Superstar"" comes to the hospital when the star is ill. Yeats former teacher comes to the hospital with chest pains.

Watters steps in and asks Geiger to take on Austin's transplant patient as she struggles with her ex husband for custody of their daughter. Sutton brings a brain-dead woman into the hospital to deliver her baby.

Billy ponders euthanasia when Gordy is diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis; Lisa tries to help a woman with metastatic breast cancer get into an experimental group even though the woman doesn't fit the study parameters; Aaron's patient confesses to murder.

Gordan teaches Kate how to fly. Hancock accuses a police officer of shooting a homeless African-American.

Diane goes into labor unexpectedly and when no one can find Billy she reluctantly asks Kate to be her coach. Wilkes must get a family to safety from an abusive husband/father. McNeil and Catera take dance lessons (with special guest star Kenny Ortega, who choreographed ""Brain Salad Surgery."" Billy arrives at the hospital and discovers that Diane is having a c-section after her and the baby have gone into distress during the labor.

Kate discovers that a patient is using Viagra to cheat on his wife; Jack gives a blood transfusion even though it's against the patient's Jehovah's Witness religion; a musician fears his creativity may be stifled by the medicine Aaron prescribes for his bipolar disorder; Joe's son drives the staff crazy as he roams the hospital behaving exactly like his father.

After a little too much holiday cheer Wilkes is charged with a DUI and must serve a community service in Dr. Hancock's clinic. Watters discovers that his accountant has left the country with Watters money. Shutt turns over a patient to Catera, and the two clash over whether she should perform a dangerous surgery on the patient. Dr. McNeil is elected to play Santa and is a huge hit in the childrens ward. Grad receives her Christmas present a little early.

An explosion sends a dry cleaner to the ER. Dr. Kadalski is pressured to change his unorthodox methods when he treats a man who compulsively pulls out his hair. A fearful Birch lets off steam at Jeffrey as baby Alicia's condition worsens.

A poisonous gas is released in a bank and the doctors try to contain the gas, that is threatening many lives including Dr. Hancock.

During surgery to resolve an HIV-positive woman's post-partum complications, Diane accidentally cuts herself and is exposed to the virus; problems arise between Jack and Lisa when he discovers that she's been seeing Robert; a homeless man takes shelter in the hospital's main entrance; an unidentified man is hit by a train after trying to save a child; Jack takes up golf in the hospital.

Austin's cystic-fibrosis patient is just one of four patients needing transplants who have to wait in fear and hope when a potential donor appears but is prematurely pronounces dead and entered into the donor system by the inexperienced Eggert.

Austin operates on a pregnant patient with a damaged heart and learns that she had taken the controversial diet pill Phen-phen. An accident reunites Watters and an old flame, the woman he had an affair with. Shutt has his first breakthrough. McNeil and Catera grow closer.

Shutt has his first group counseling session with a family, and tries to help a young man whose brother commited suicide. Wilkes father comes back into his life. Hancock and McNeil try to treat a boy whom he suspects is abused, even though the child and his father deny the abuse.

Kate is stricken when she realizes that her negligence due to exhaustion caused the death of a young woman during surgery, and considers assuaging her guilt by informing the woman's parents of her error; Billy and Danny decide to help a teenager running a unlicensed clinic for indigent patients; Judge Aldrich retires from the bench and comes to work at the hospital as Alan's replacement; Camille's drug seeking behaviors continue; Diane has second thoughts about her research project when she realizes that she's become attached to the orangutan that she's successfully infected with AIDS.

As Dr. Wilkes takes his son to school gunfire errupts. The victims are brought to Chicago Hope and Wilkes finds himself having to deal with his sons post-tramatic distress. Kronk also finds himself viewing the situation in a new light, due to the recent arrival of his daughter. The situation also brings back memories of his son to Dr. Watters. Catera had to operate on the shooter, and feels conflicting emotions. Dr. McNeil pops the question to Dr. Catera. Austin is still turmoiled over the incident at the cabin.

A famous artist has an inoperable brain tumor. She convinces Dr. Shutt to run away to California with her.

White supremacists on the run following a failed assassanation attempt against the President hole up in a grocery store with an injured member and demand a doctor from Chicago Hope to treat him.

Kate confronts a world renowned surgeon who's harassed her in the past; Diane's patient has a flesh-eating bacterial infection.

Dr. Kronk's mother visits. Aaron spends time with Samara in California. A woman offers Dr. Hancock money to sterilize some of his patients.

A woman may be making her daughter sick purposely. Kronk wants a child. Shutt's patient dies, and McNeil joins gamblers anonymous.

Aaron and Phillip announce that they are buying the hospital from Wilmette, although their plans for keping the solvent do not please any of their colleagues. An HMO lawyer obsessed with ""patient responsibilty"" holds the reins on some lucrative coronary-bypass business. A patient with private insurance receives test after test for all of his petty complaints.

Aaron proceeds with Eric Dipretto's psychosurgery while Austin campaigns for the position of chief of surgery and Bix continues to lose control. Kronk is determined to perform a controversial intestinal bypass on Nyland's former boss and good friend, a restauranteur who just wants to enjoy a good meal again.

Kate discovers that she has developed an ovarian cyst which could destroy her plans with NASA. After Kate hears this news she agrees to go to a retreat... that Yeats is leading.

Shutt finds himself revitalized by a frustrated MS patient who refuses to quietly accept that Aaron can't help him. Dr. Sutton comes up with a way to exorcise Geiger's spirit from the hospital. Watters finds solace with a special visitor.

A cardiologist in NASA's Doctors in space program has a heart attack and Kate takes the doctors place in the program. Dr. Shutt has a patient who needs to tell his father, an Orthodox Rabbi, that he is gay.

Catera and McNeil cross roads when her facination with his brother becomes personal. Billy begins to feel ""in over his head"" with the impending birth of his child, so at a desperate attempt at freedom he becomes involved in a bar fight. Austin introduces Danny to her daughter. Watters moonlights as a stand-up comic.

Dr. Shutt may have brain damage after his aneurism, so a new neurosurgeon, Dr. Lisa Catera, is brought into the hospital. Dr. Austin gets trapped on an elevator with a sexy electrician.

The E.R. is flooded with teenagers poisoned by an unknown rave drug; Kate and Sara are hit by a drunk driver; Phillip's fate is decided.

Dr. Hancock's patient, who was using fertility drugs, gives birth to 8 babies.

Following Dr. Joseph's witnessing of Dr. Geiger's actions, the medical board suspends him until his case can be reviewed. However, there is some disagreement among the hospital's staff as to whether or not the suspension is in their best interests.

Austin and NcNeil fly to London for a conference and are forced to perform lifesaving surgery with only an airline medical kit. Shutt begins his psychiatric residency.

Aaron's practical joker college roommate arrives for a visit and announces that he wants Aaron to marry his widow, Aaron's former girlfriend, when the malignant and inoperable tumor in his brain finally takes his life in a few weeks; Keith and Danny continue to clash; Aaron runs into an old friend as he stumbles home after a night of drinking with his college roommate; Gina has a miscarriage, but a grieving Keith wonders if it wasn't deliberate; Karen suspects that Jack's gambling again, an accusation which he denies; Maricela puts the moves on Aaron; Karen is wary when Jack finally comes to her for help.

A widow wants to be impregnated with the sperm of her former husband. Rats take over the hospital.

Arthur nearly fires Danny for failing to adhere to triage protocol, thereby delaying the treatment of a critically injured prostitute with AIDS; Phillip becomes the acting chief of staff after Hackett suffers a fatal heart attack during a little afternoon delight with Angela in the MRI room; Jeffrey and Arthur argue over the future of a baboon with the potential to prolong the life of Jeffrey's patient with heart failure and Arthur's patient with AIDS.

Judge Aldrich's tenure as Alan's replacement is cut short by illness; Amy, an old friend of Danny's from medical school, joins the nursing staff and clashes with Camille over the care of a terminally ill patient; Kate and Billy hook up, but decide that they won't repeat the experience after they clash professionally during experimental laser surgery on an elderly cardiac patient; Amy rebuffs Danny's advances.

Camille serves Aaron with divorce papers; Phillip benches Arthur from further surgery when Arthur's resting tremor begins to endanger patients; Aaron removes a brain tumor from an elderly patient; Jeffrey and Aaron separate conjoined twins.

McNeil's friend is shot. Pancreatic cancer effects one of the conjoined twins that have entered the hospital.

A mother gives birth to twins, one black and one white. Kate is threatened with a lawsuit after making a rude comment.

After Karen begins having seizures, Aaron discovers that she is terminally ill from the multiple brain metastases of a melanoma; Jeffrey resents having to perform surgery on a mobster about to enter the witness protection program; when the residents attempt to pull a practical joke on Jeffrey, they unwittingly provide comfort to a dying Karen.

Jeffrey strongly objects when his old nemesis is hired into the plastic surgery department, but they are able to set aside their differences to bring some peace to the mother of a young girl who dies during surgery; a nurse impedes Aaron's plan to allow Karen to die peacefully.

Camille has an innocent and unavoidable mishap in the operating room during a heart transplant on the rabbi who performed her wedding ceremony to Aaron, and blames herself when the rabbi dies later, even though her mishap had nothing to do with his death; an inexperienced new nurse stands up to Arthur; wracked with guilt, Camille reveals the operating room mishap to the rabbi's widow, and only Alan's ingenuity in demanding an autopsy keeps the hospital from a major lawsuit; Aaron and Camille have it out over his lack of emotional support after the rabbi's death, and each of them admit to the hurt caused by their divorce.

A heart-transplant patient returns to the hospital with chest pains and emotional and personality changes that challenge the notion of what really is exchanged in a transplant. Shutt is approached by a direct, self-confident psychiatrist who insists he perform psychosurgery on a 12-year-old boy with an obsessive-compulsive disorder that severely limits the life he can lead.

Dennis and Jack clash over the best mode of treating the arthritic knee of a world class cyclist; Aaron makes a new friend when he takes on a new research assistant; Kate and Danny have their suspensions reviewed by the board; Phillip plunges back into patient care by performing an experimental procedure on a woman who exhibits unusual complications from a liver tumor; Caroline discovers that orthopedics are not for her; Dennis faces an emotional struggle in the aftermath of his shooting.

Kate finds herself in a no-win situation when a child is injured during one of Sara's softball games. Phillip's Colonel from Vietnam is admitted with rheumatoid arthritis but refuses treatment. Nyland is suspended again. Shutt get a TV gig.

Aaron consults Dr. Gina Simon, a pediatric neurosurgeon after being presented with a 9-week old baby suffering from seizures. Jeffrey Geiger returns to the hospital and promptly fires half the staff, whom then sue to get their jobs back.

Dr. McNeil goes to magnificent lengths to save the arm of a young baseball star. A little girl is brought into the ER after being hit by a car.

A hepatitis scare forces Dr. Geiger to call for outside help; Dr. Simon's misdiagnosis causes her to doubt herself.

Gang warfare breaks out in the E.R.; Kate refuses to perform a heart transplant; Billy and Diane get back together.

Watters blames Birch for their poor showing after they're ambushed by a state senator during televised health-care hearings. Sutton operates on a pregnant woman's unborn child. Laurie remarries and asks Geiger to attend the ceremony, which will be presided over by ""Evita Peron.""

Wilkes saves a motorist who was attempting suicide. Austin falls for a politician.

Shutt and Simon invent a procedure and use it to save the life of a girl. McNeil treat a wrestler who's been using steroids.

After the mysterious death of a seemingly healthy 15 year-old Dr. Wilkes decides to investigate. A lesbian wants her lover to die with dignity and fights her family to get her wishes.

McNeil performs a hand transplant on the patient, and uses the patient's dead mother's hand. Kate is accepted by NASA. An old childhood friends visits Watters and asks for one of his kidneys.

Kronk puts himself and Grad into a difficult position when he treats an old hockey pal who turns up after just being released from jail with a bullet in him. Wilkes and his wife face some basic decisions about their lives when they must decide what sort of neighborhood to move to.

Dr. Alberghetti performs a surgery with another surgeon, who is in Sri Lanka.

Phillip is unable to save a promising young boxer who succumbs to the fatal effects of steroids his father gave him to enhance his performance in the ring; a pregnant young teenager carrying a baby with a heart defect seeks Alan's help when she is unable to find adoptive parents for her infant; Aaron fires Angela after his tax audit reveals that she's been embezzling money from his pension plan.

After a gang member dies in the ER, the boy's mother claims that one of the doctors suggested they ""Let him die"" so a prosecutor calls in Wilkes, Nyland, McNeil and Watters for widely varying statements about what actually happened during the crucial time period.

A family eats poisonous mushrooms and the mother and two sons must receive a liver transplant. A donor is found for the mother and the father is a match for the two sons. The father decides to have a live donor transplant, but is told by Kronk that only one of his children can receive the organ. Austin and Cacaci have to attend a sensitivity seminar, which only makes Austin worse. With Shutt's help a patient remembers a sexual abuse that happened during childhood, but the parent vehemently deny it ever happening. Drs. Grad and Kronk get kicked out of lamaze class.

Austin and Underhill both have to face the consequences when they tell the truth. McNeil contemplates surgery to prolong a jockey's career. Kronk lies to a teenage smoker with a cough.

Diane is faced with a dilemna when she has an opportunity to examine a 500-year-old Incan mummy temporarily in town for an exhibition. An accident victim loses his memories but gains a much nicer personality, presenting Shutt and McNeil with a dilemmna.

Gina operates on a surgeon who's been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

A hit-and-run victim escapes serious injury but her infant twins face a desperate crisis. Hancock faces testifying in court against his brother-in-law. Patient Linda Fortin's heart continues to grow weaker as her pregnancy progresses, endangering herself and her baby.

Jeffrey runs afoul of the trustees when a grieving husband has second thoughts after allowing him to test an artificial heart on the body of the man's newly deceased wife; Alan comes to the rescue when a patient's HMO refuses to cover Aaron's operating on her very complicated and potentially fatal brain tumor; Jeffrey visits his wife Laurie, a straitjacketed patient in a mental hospital who apologizes for drowning their son Joey; Arthur's refusal to remove his wagging finger from Jeffrey's face during an argument leaves him with a bitten digit, and enables Jeffrey to diagnose the curable medical condition that's causing Arthur's resting tremor.

Phillip's religious beliefs and Jeffrey's grief over the death of his son put them on opposite sides of whether to convince a young mother to remove her infant from life support so that her daughter's organs can be donated to save the life of another baby; Karen deflects a flirtation from Jeffrey, but romantic sparks fly between her and Aaron.

Geiger second-guess Austin's choice of a non-surgical treatment for a heart patient. Grad gets a surprise visit from an old beau. Hancock asks for Camille's help in coordinating a new home health care program.

Aaron is baffled when a seizure lands Camille in the ER. Nyland's holiday vacation plans are suddenly sidetracked by a delivery of supplies to Ricky's makeshift clinic with a Santa'-clad Hancock. A promising teen athlete fears that an operation could cost him the chance to play major league baseball. Grad meets a sweet but shy veterinarian.

On the way to a football game, Aaron and Jack get sidetracked... after they find themselves in a hostage situation with 3 wounded patients, a loose gunman, and the police about ready to enter the building.

A father is told he can only donate his liver to one of his children, after both go into liver failure. Rose Webber comes back to Chicago Hope and finds that Aaron has started a new relationship -- with Gina.