Simone-Elise Girard

In the Emmy Award-winning series' landmark 200th episode, an innovative dual storytelling device contrasts Pratt's night shift with Carter's day shift. On the night scheduled to be his last in the emergency room, Pratt treats a woman whose unborn child was brutally cut out of her, prompting a search for the baby. He also takes care of a burned firefighter and victims from a mass cult poisoning related to the day's unnerving solar eclipse. Pratt relays the patients to Carter, whose frustration grows as he treats two of the cult members, a wounded gang member, a dying Buddhist nun and a heart attack victim. Meanwhile, Romano experiences what it's like to be a patient when he undergoes surgery.

In a special episode, Carter travels to the war-torn Congo as part of a voluntary medical program. He finds primitive Third World facilities, a few heroic staffers and woeful patients overflowing the tiny hospital while a bloody civil war threatens to engulf them all. After Carter ventures deeper into the jungle to reunite with Kovac, they risk their lives manning a crude outpost used for a vaccination campaign--and soon find themselves in the line of fire between the warring tribes.

A frustrating day for Abby gets even worse when she receives an upsetting letter from Carter, who is still in the Congo. Her fellow nurses protest work conditions, and her opinions are ignored. Abby is chastised for trying to inform a teenaged girl, Ellie (Stephanie Lineburg), whose heart and lungs are failing, that Ellie's life is in grave danger. Meanwhile, Romano's mood gets nastier when he tries on a prosthesis with an antiquated hook to replace his missing arm. Enraged, he terminates several much-needed nurses. Three new second-year residents, including self-assured Dr. Nick "Coop" Cooper (recurring guest star Glenn Howerton), join the staff. An apprehensive Pratt meets Chen's old-fashioned parents for dinner. And the playful Dr. Dorset (recurring guest star Bruno Campos) makes a positive impression with his style and substantial skills.

Confident second-year resident Pratt wants to prove his abilities when he works the graveyard shift (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.), but his heroics sometimes backfire. Pratt shows contempt for a man, Ed Gamble (Paul Cassell), who presents no symptoms of disease but temporarily loses his speech. As Weaver decries the "incompetence" of her staff, she also makes a grievous error. A screaming man with a broken leg waits several hours for treatment, and Neela deals with a little girl who arrives with her beloved grandmother whose status is DNR ("do not resuscitate"). Meanwhile, Abby is desperate for money and credit. Later, she meets both Kovac and his new girlfriend. And Corday begins to appreciate Dr. Dorset (recurring guest star Bruno Campos).

Carter returns to the Congo to search for the body of a fellow doctor and reunites with several associates from his previous trip. But the chaos, stench and hazards of the country's long civil war threaten to curtail his efforts, and Carter is placed in immediate danger. Meanwhile, still in the strife-torn country, Kovac is seen in flashbacks as he battles debilitating malaria while he ministers to the sick and dying.