| The Restless Remains | |
| Season 01, Episode 09 | |
 | |
| Air Date | January 14, 1994 |
| Previous | Shanda's Song |
| Next | Murder with Mirrors |
The Restless Remains is the ninth episode of Season One which was first broadcast on January 14, 1994.
Summary[]
Still groggy from a visit to the dentist, Dr. Sloan is mystified when a noted fundraiser dies while visiting his home.
Adding to the confusion, the body mysteriously disappears before the police reach his house. Is this all a bad dream, or a horrible real-life nightmare?
Full plot[]
Mark is treating Mr. Clark, a Native American man, with a sinus condition. Mark tries burning sage, a traditional remedy, to make the pain enter him. The problem is, it enters Norman, who reminds Mark that they are running a hospital, not a carnival. Mark is plagued by a tooth ache, and Steve and Delores arrive to drive him to the dentist for a root canal.
Returning home, Mark is groggy and loopy from the nitrus oxide. Steve gets him inside and turns on the TV, where financial guru Robin Westlin is giving one of his "get rich quick" talks. Mark dozes off, but a phone call forwarded from the hospital wakes him up. It is Robin Westlin, calling from a cell phone about two blocks from Mark's house and he is in trouble. Mark directs Westlin to his house, and brings him inside. Westlin says he has been poisoned, but collapses before he can identify who did it. Mark tries CPR, but Westlin dies. Mark goes outside to wait for the paramedics, and notices that Westlin's Mercedes that had been parked in the driveway is gone. Even more bizarre is the fact that when the paramedics and Steve arrive, the body has vanished! Steve suggests that Mark dreamed the whole thing under the effects of the anesthetic, but Mark is convinced...especially when he finds Robin Westlin's diary under his couch.
Mark visits Westlin's office and asks to speak with Westlin. His secretary, Ms. Davis, insists that Westlin is on a conference call and cannot be disturbed. Mark hints that he has read the diary, and knows that Davis and Westlin were having an affair. Mark is introduced to Tim Rutland, Westlin's assistant, who tells Mark that Westlin just went home for lunch. When Mark visits the Westlin home, Mrs. Westlin gets angry and throws him out when Mark suggests that Robin Westlin has been murdered.
Mark suspects all three (the wife, the secretary and the assistant) are in on it, but does not know who killed Westlin. Jack and Amanda do some digging after Mark is barred from the Westlin building. Amanda poses as a newspaper reporter and takes pictures of Westlin's office, including his prize wine collection, and they learn that Westlin is supposed to be giving a seminar that night. They attend, and Westlin is appearing on a TV screen "live" from another location. Mark exposes the seminar as a fraud, but is taken into custody again. Without any way to prove Westlin is really dead, Mark is convinced that the murderer will get away with it.
That night, Rutland and Mrs. Westlin go into Westlin's office and remove a body from the wine cooler in the wall. They put the body under a sheet and on a gurney to take on a boat out to the ocean. As they are about to leave, Rutland gets Mrs. Westlin to confess that she added too much digitalis to Westlin's medicine and induced a heart attack. Mark appears from the shadows and confronts her, and the "body" sits up and removes the sheet...it is Steve! Rutland had gone to Mark to confess and the bodies had been swapped earlier. But what tipped Mark off was the wine in the photographs. For someone to have as extensive a wine collection as Westlin, he would need a place to store it in his office...the wine cooler behind the wall.
Norman, still plagued by sinus problems, comes to Mark for the sage. Mark reminds Norman that Community General is a hospital, not a carnival.