The Nurse – Season 1 Episode 3 “Take My Heart” Recap & Review

Take My Heart

Christina’s need for attention often sees her take Nanna, her daughter, to the hospital. Even when Nanna doesn’t complain or is perfectly fine, Christina sees a doctor. When she drops Nanna off with her father, he pulls Christina for her continued antics. In a telling blow, he also wishes “anyone else be Nanna’s mother but Christina.”

She shrugs off this heartbreaking remark by getting on with her day. Pernille urges Katja to go to the management or the police, but she refuses to believe anything would happen. Leveling such a grave accusation also requires proof and they don’t have any.

The police enquiries into John’s death at the hospital. When Pernille goes up to them, Christina intervenes by managing the situation effortlessly. She seems unfazed by the police and Pernille. The next morning, she discusses the issue with Morten, but against her expectations, he is not convinced. Morten seems to think that Pernille is not getting her way at the hospital and is complaining. The real reason is that there aren’t many nursing jobs around and since the family is getting closer again, Pernille leaving her job would cause them to move back.

Pernille prints out John’s file from Linda’s office. She and Niels are in a relationship and she decides to bring her suspicions to him. Niels is stumped listening to the accusations. Pernille shows him John’s file but Niels is not ready to listen. Even he seems to think Christina is worth way more to the ward than this accusation. He has worked closely with her for three years and hasn’t noticed anything strange.

He storms out in disgust and drives away but in the car, Niels decides to look into the accusation and goes to the hospital on his off day. Whilst there, he looks through John’s file.

Pernille has a nightmare thinking about Christina and the possibility she is killing people at will. She meets with Ida, a former colleague of Christina’s at M130, whom Christina badmouthed to Pernille in episode 2. Ida reveals she tried to talk to the head nurse but nothing was done. Christina later left the hospital and everything was fine at M130.

It turns out that in 2012, a patient mysteriously died of cardiac arrest at M130. A root cause analysis revealed high amounts of diazepam and morphine in his body. The hospital concluded it was suicide and the patient was none other than Arne.

Back in 2012, we see Kenny trying to convince the head nurse at M130 of looking into Arne’s case again. Kenny is unfortunately met with condescension. The nurse alludes to Arne’s heavy drinking and bad life habits, so Kenny leaves without anything to show for it. He empties out all of Arne’s clothes in the backyard and burns them.

In the present day, Pernille researches the specifics of the case. Niels gets confirmation of his suspicions from his colleague, Adam, so Niels decides to hark back to all the cases Pernille had alluded to see if there is a pattern. And he finds one.

He goes to Pernille with his findings. Niels once again emphasizes that they cannot go to the police without evidence. It will be Pernille’s word against Christina’s in that situation and it will be disastrous for Pernille. Records show mortality rate dropped significantly at M130 after Christina left. Niels theorizes that Christina does it because she feels recognized when she saves a patient from cardiac arrest. She does not plan to kill them, she wants them to get worse so she can then save them and gain the plaudits.

Niels feels the best way is to catch Christina in the act since there is no plausible way of gathering evidence – Pernille will have to entrap her. Later, we see her taking the night shift with Christina. The “Dream team” is back for now and Christina is excited. There is an allegorical reference to Pernille “breaking Christina’s heart” and “ending the monster’s life” as the episode ends. She arrives for the night shift as Christina’s car is already there.

The Episode Review

We are finally at the last turn of this journey as Niels getting evolved with Pernille was significant. Without his expertise and support, Pernille would have been relegated to the shadows. We saw instances of that in this episode. While it cannot be called administrative apathy, their attitude is clearly irresponsible. Turning a blind eye to such wrongdoings can also be a function of truly not believing them to be true.

But in this case, the lack of investigation prior to Pernille and Niels setting a trap resulted in the loss of many lives. It is also a great injustice to the victims that their killer continues to do the same to others as well. We only saw one family grieving – Kenny – in this series. There were so many more who were left without answers and not knowing can eat an individual up and their pain truly would be unimaginable.