As the finale of Five Days at Memorial begins, Dr. Horace Baltz (Robert Pine) meets with the detectives for another interview about the fifth day in the hospital. Horace says it was anarchy because no one knew what was going on and no one was in charge. Decisions were made that shouldn’t have been made. He remembers Susan Mulderick (Cherry Jones) telling him he should evacuate with the next group. Horace left on a rescue boat as they told him. He confesses he has tremendous guilt about not staying there until the very end. True heroism would’ve been to remember why they were doctors. No matter how bad the circumstances are, they should adhere to their oath, “do no harm”. Horace believes people just cast off who they were in all that chaos. He goes on to say blindness swept in and took over everything. In Baton Rouge 11 months after Hurricane Katrina, Butch (Michael Gaston) and Virginia (Molly Hager) attend a press conference by the Attorney General.
AG Charles Foti Jr. (Philip Craig) tells the press that they think some of the patients were allegedly killed by lethal injection. He reveals that Dr. Anna Pou, Cheri Landry, and Lori Budo have been arrested on four charges of principal to second-degree murder. Four patients were injected with morphine and Midazolam. He has to be corrected several times. When you put the drugs together, you have a lethal cocktail. Charles says it isn’t euthanasia since it is plain and simple homicide. The case will go to the offices of Orleans Parish district attorney Eddie Jordan who will decide whether to pursue indictments for murder from a grand jury. Anna’s attorney Richard Simmons Jr. (Jeffrey Nordling) holds a press conference to ridicule their decision to go after his client and the nurses. He accuses the attorney general of trying to bolster his own reputation. Richard says his client is undoubtedly innocent because there was no criminal misconduct.
At home, Anna (Vera Farmiga) asks Vince (Jonathan Cake) what she is going to do and what people will think of her. Vincent says they’ll think she is being falsely persecuted because she is. They continue receiving calls from the press and some people are standing outside trying to hear from them. Anna says she has to surrender her passport and they have to show up with $100,00 in bail by Thursday. Dan Nuss calls seconds later. He tells Anna that it sickens him what they’re putting her through. Everyone is on her side and they’re asking what they can do. He thinks they should set up a legal defense fund for her. Later, Butch and Virginia talk about Foti not being able to get the names right. He believes the only thing that will matter is what the New Orleans district attorney does. They just need to make this case as undeniable to him as possible. Butch says the first thing the DA will want to know is how the experts classify these deaths. They join Frank Minyard (John Diehl) and other pathologists later.
Eddie knows about the meeting, but they aren’t sure if he’ll come. Robert says his lab took a look at tissue samples from 41 bodies. 23 of the samples tested positive for morphine, midazolam, or both. The drug concentrations seemed very high to him. Robert believes they’re valid despite the conditions of the bodies. Then, they begin going through the patients one by one. Michael Morales (Ean Castellanos) finally arrives and says he is there on Eddie’s behalf. He is the lead prosecutor on the case so he wants to hear whatever they have to share. Butch and Virginia talk to him about the toxicology results outside. Butch thinks Eddie should be here because they have the city coroner, two forensic pathology experts, and the director of one of the nation’s top labs. Michael says the attorney general knew they would be the ones prosecuting the case, but he’s chosen to barely involve them. He says they’ll decide how it’ll be managed. Butch argues that they’ve built them a very solid case, but Butch says he’ll be the one to decide if that is true.
At a cookout, Ewing (W Earl Brown) talks to Rene Goux (Stephen Bogaert) and Horace about not talking to the investigators. Horace asks why the staff shouldn’t be willing to talk to the investigators. If they did nothing wrong, they shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Rene asks if he is that naive. Ewing asks if he would comfort a patient and hasten his death or leave him to a slow agonizing death. Horace doesn’t think that was the choice. He says you can comfort people without killing them and no one had to abandon them. Ewing argues there are no right answers when a doctor has to decide who gets care and who doesn’t. Horace says that isn’t what happened, but Ewing suggests otherwise. Horace would like for everyone to sit down so they can find out what went wrong and learn how they can avoid it in the future. Ewing and Rene aren’t interested. 12 months after Hurricane Katrina, Butch tells Virginia they’ve been asked to cease their investigation.
They only requested a summary of their 50,000 pages of work. Butch says they’ll write him a summary and drop the 50,000 pages on him. Later, they go to a pub where they watch an interview with Carrie Everett (Lanette Ware) on television. Carrie says Emmett wasn’t about to die before Hurricane Katrina. Virginia admits this publicity isn’t bad and the lawsuits against Tenet and Memorial will help. Richard tells Anna how families are filing lawsuits and it is creating a less than ideal narrative. It is powerful so he wants to find a way to counter it like Anna going on 60 Minutes. It’ll give her the opportunity to tell her story in her own words. Anna is worried it’ll destroy her, but Richard says it’ll let the world see her how he does. That night, Vince tells Anna that she is innocent so people need to know who she is. Anna does the interview for 60 Minutes. Linda (Beth Malone) tells Butch that she is very compelling while Anna talks about how this ripped her heart out. Virginia watches it at home and Frank watches too. Anna insists she is not capable of any sort of mercy killing.
Anna says she believes in comfort care which means they help ensure the patients do not suffer pain. She admits the most painful thing for her is the thought of never being able to practice medicine again because she loves it. Next, Virginia tells Butch that they got all the final pathology reports. In Baden’s analysis, nine deaths from LifeCare were due to drug poisoning. Wecht analyzed 20 deaths and concluded all of them resulted from drug toxicity. They got additional reports from Dr. Frank Brescia who ruled homicide in nine cases. Dr. James Young thinks it was beyond coincidence for all these patients to die from drug toxicity in a three-and-a-half-hour period. Although Virginia thinks it is irrefutable, Butch isn’t sure about that because they’ll challenge the conditions of the bodies and Foti’s claims about the lethality of the drugs. They get into a spat with Butch telling her that evidence alone isn’t going to get it done here. Virginia doesn’t think the 60 Minutes interview is going to matter.
Butch does because people in the city will wonder why the heroic doctor should go to jail. He goes on to say nobody from any corporate entity got arrested and none of the government officials were arrested. Butch insists this is what they’ll have to overcome. He quickly apologizes while explaining he is just trying to be realistic so they can figure out how to get this done. Butch wants all the forensics evidence sent to Morales. Richard tells Anna that she did great and they’re receiving statements of support from various medical groups. The medical community is lining up behind her. He also got a call from Frank Minyard who wants to talk to her. When she visits Frank, he tells her that he knew her father well and used to come by the house all the time. Anna admits this hasn’t been easy. Frank has some idea what she went through because of what he went through when trying to reach his office during the storm. He was stuck there for four days so food and water seemed precious. He couldn’t sleep because of the sounds of gunshots.
They agree that the people who weren’t here just can’t understand that. Frank tries to understand why things happened so he likes to get a handle on the people involved. He has dealt with over 650 dead bodies from Katrina and that’s just here in New Orleans. Frank thanks God he wasn’t in the hospital and the one having to make all those decisions. Virginia hears on the radio that Frank released a statement saying he found no evidence of homicide in the case of the dead bodies found at Memorial Medical Center. She calls Butch and tells him that she is going to New Orleans. When she confronts Frank, he tells her that a public declaration of homicide would do more than stir things up since there is so much support for Anna at this time. He says it would be bad for their city. Virginia wonders how it is going to be for the city when they learn he swept the truth under the rug. Frank asks what happened during the next hurricane and there are no healthcare workers to fill the hospitals.
He suggests they’ll be too afraid that they’ll be treated like criminals if they do anything wrong during an emergency. He thinks his job is doing what’s best for the first, but Virginia claims it is making judgments based on scientific facts and based on evidence. Butch meets with Virginia at the bar and learns that she is ready to quit. She admits he was right that there is more at play here. Now that she sees where the train is going, she needs to get off of it for her own sanity. Virginia has loved every minute of working with him, but she is done. 18 months after Hurricane Katrina on February 20, 2007, Frank is told that they’re almost ready for him. During a press conference, he explains that he didn’t mean homicide was not the manner of death of patients at Memorial. It will still be determined and will be the subject of further investigation and a presentation he will make to the special grand jury. Anna can’t believe that and wants to do some work. Vince thinks she should rest, but Anna doesn’t want to sit around and worry about an outcome that she can’t control.
He suggests going on vacation. Anna says she has to keep busy because that is how he keeps herself sane. A special grand jury is assembled and given instructions by the judge. Richard tells Anna that they won’t know anything until they’ve decided because everything going on behind closed doors is secret. Anna believes a trial will ruin her regardless of the verdict. She returns to work and performs surgery. One of her coworkers comes up to her later to tell her she was amazing today. Monica (Alexandra Floras-Matic) also reveals that she contributed to her defense fund. She says Anna is the kind of woman she wants to be and she is praying for her. 23 months after Hurricane Katrina on July 24, 2007, the jury comes back. In each of the ten counts, it is noted “Not a true bill of indictment”. Richard calls Anna to tell her that they refused to indict her on any of the charges. Attorney General Foti meets with the press to show them the evidence and what medical experts said about the deaths being homicides. When asked why the grand jury didn’t indict, he says they didn’t hear directly from any of the forensic experts.
He refuses to accept that the conditions were any excuse for the taking of a human life. Foti doesn’t believe the grand jury reached the right conclusion. Linda tells Butch she is sorry this one didn’t go his way. Butch says the hospital wasn’t a battlefield with mortar shells coming in. He complains that they didn’t even try to get them out. Those poor folks had no idea what was happening to them and no way of defending themselves. Virginia visits Carrie Everett so she can give Emmett’s photo back. Carrie says it wasn’t her fault since Dr. Pou and all those people with power lined up right behind her. She tells Virginia how Emmett was her high school sweetheart and the most loving, caring man she ever met. Carrie says there are no statutes of limitations on murder. She has been waiting a long time for justice and can wait a little longer. Virginia runs into Butch when going to pick up the rest of her stuff. She asks what the heck happened in there before learning that they never called Kristy Johnson or any of the outside forensic experts.
The records of the special grand jury are permanently sealed so they’ll never know anymore. Virginia feels like they messed up by just going after Pou, but Butch says it was a river of evidence that flowed a certain way and they followed it. One year later, Anna speaks at the inaugural Disaster Preparedness for the Healthcare Industry. Horace listens in the audience as Anna talks about the chaotic days at the hospital after Katrina. On Wednesday, the evacuations stopped. On Thursday, they were told everyone must be out of the hospital today. FEMA calls saying they were taking all the airboats at noon so everyone had to be out by then. The Coast Guard sent helicopters that didn’t arrive until Thursday afternoon. Coast Guard helicopters can’t fly at night. Anna says they didn’t get the type of support they needed to evacuate the patients. They were left on their own by local, state, and federal governments that totally failed them. She claims they were abandoned. The duty of care sounds easy but isn’t always so in practice.
Anna knows in her heart that everyone in the hospital did everything they could to comfort and care. She insists no one was abandoned, no one was neglected, and everyone was treated with dignity. She doesn’t look upon the circumstances of her arrest with bitterness because God has been phenomenal. He sent her so many people to help her through this. Anna thanks everyone for their support. Although they get up and start clapping, Horace does not. He walks over to her later as she begins saying it has been surreal. Horace reminds her that FEMA didn’t take away the airboats since they were run by volunteers. He says they couldn’t have called to tell them because the phones weren’t working. He also believes she knows that the Coast Guard helicopters did fly at night. Anna is adamant that they didn’t fly at night. Horace says just because she remembers things one way doesn’t make them true. He wishes her well before leaving.
Dr. Ann Pou continues practicing medicine in the greater New Orleans area. Anna and her attorney helped write three bills that protect healthcare professionals in disasters from most legal action. They passed unanimously. Civil lawsuits brought against Pou and others by three families were settled. No one from Memorial was ever indicted for the events in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged that design and construction mistakes led to most of the flooding after Katrina. In 2018, they finished a new $14 network of levees and floodwalls around New Orleans. Due to rising sea levels and weak soils, the system could need updates as early as 2023.
Five Days At Memorial Review
As I said previously, Five Days at Memorial somewhat fizzled out in the last three episodes or so. The investigation aspect of the story likely could’ve been condensed to an episode without losing anything important. While it was great to relive this important story, many of the details were changed for one reason or another. That may possibly leave viewers questioning what was truth and what was fiction. While many details were covered exceptionally well, others were left out.
In a way, it feels like viewers may have to read the book and others to great a better understanding of everything that happened. The story is pretty complex considering how many people were in the hospital with many of them being left out of the series. If the intention was to tell a particular version of Anna Pou’s story, Five Days at Memorial did great.
Sadly, too much time was dedicated to Butch and Virginia trying to come up with evidence for a dead-end case that most already knew the outcome of anyway. Nevertheless, this was a very interesting story that was equally entertaining and informative. The performances were mostly good besides some of the hideous, unnecessary accents, but some could’ve been much better.
The show could’ve done more to get viewers to build a deeper connection with those who died in Memorial. Instead, other characters will likely carry more emotional weight which probably wasn’t intended. Regardless, Five Days at Memorial was a deep, thought-provoking trip down memory lane that usually ticked the right boxes. The first five episodes were good enough to make the last three mandatory.
The finale scores a 7 out of 10. Recaps of Five Days at Memorial can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work at this link.
Jay Skelton is a fan of all television shows and movies. He tries his best to keep up with the latest foreign television shows and movies. Jay loves skinny dipping in the dark too.
