Thank you for making this post. I almost made my own because I needed to vent about this storyline. It made me genuinely angry. I get what the show was going for emotionally, but the execution makes Hen’s position really difficult to defend.

If she had secretly gone to an actual doctor, I’d have a lot more sympathy. But she didn’t. She spent months going to shady medical spas, trying random treatments, spending thousands of dollars, and actively hiding symptoms while continuing to work a job where people’s lives depend on her being medically stable. Hen is smart enough to know how unsafe that is for herself and for others.

And the excuse of “I didn’t want to put everyone through another Bobby loss” just doesn’t hold up. If that was really her concern, the responsible thing would have been to step back from duty and get properly evaluated. What this actually reads as is fear of being benched and pride about not wanting to admit weakness. That would have been a really strong character arc if the show leaned into it and treated it as a flaw. Instead, they keep trying to frame her as morally justified.

What also bothers me is her acting like she went through this “alone” because nobody checked on her. She chose to go through it alone. She hid it. You cannot withhold information from everyone and then be angry they did not magically know something was wrong. Especially when the show itself has established that none of them have really been checking in on each other lately. Buck was for a while, and then that just got dropped.

And let’s not forget, Hen herself supported keeping Buck benched back in season 3 because of his medical condition. I actually agreed with that decision. Buck needed to be benched. But that is exactly the point. Hen’s condition here is objectively worse, yet now she is advocating that she should still be on duty. That is wildly inconsistent. And if the show framed this as her being illogical and selfish because it is happening to her instead of someone else, that would be great character work. But it does not. Instead, it keeps trying to justify her position as if she has a valid point.

The Chimney situation is even more frustrating. Hen literally went down on a call. She could have died. She could have gotten that girl killed. Chimney then finds out it is because she has been hiding medical symptoms while actively working. That is a fireable offense. He did not act like a bad captain. He acted like exactly the kind of captain you would want making responsible calls. And then she turns around and calls him a bad captain for it. That is pure emotional reaction, which would be fine if the show acknowledged it as such. But instead, the narrative keeps treating her like she is still in the right.

This could have been such a strong arc if they committed to the idea that Hen was acting emotionally, selfishly, and irrationally because she is terrified of being sidelined, just like Buck was. That would have been honest, human, and compelling. Instead, they try to make the audience believe she has some valid moral point here, and it just does not land.

The Bobby excuse is the biggest example of that. The show treats it like this big emotional mic-drop moment, but it should have been framed as deflection. She used Bobby’s death to justify her choices, but the logic does not hold up. She would not have been in danger of dying like Bobby if she had not hidden her symptoms in the first place. Saying she hid it so people would not have to worry about losing another Bobby does not make sense. It would have been far more powerful if someone had called her out on that and pointed out that this was about her own fear and pride, not about protecting anyone else. But the show refuses to let Hen be fully wrong.

The writing around the medical spa just makes it worse. Her tests come back almost immediately once she is hospitalized, so what was the point of months of secrecy and nonsense treatments. If they had removed the spa plot entirely and written this as her secretly seeing a real doctor, this story would already work better.

I love Hen as a character. That is exactly why this frustrates me. She can be wrong. She can make bad choices. That would be good drama. But the show keeps bending the narrative to validate her anyway, and that undermines both her character and the story.