'Call the Midwife' Recap: Season 14 Episode 2

Call the Midwife is available to stream for a limited time. Recap the previous and following episodes and other seasons.
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Arlene Brewer arrives at the maternity clinic with a suitcase, about to move into a new flat. The reason for the move becomes clear when the clinic sends for her medical records and discovers that she was just released from a psychiatric hospital. She was there for four months, being treated for manic depression that seemed to be jumpstarted by the death of her sister.

But now she is on a new drug, lithium, that seems to be helping – but her birth must take place at the hospital so that lithium’s effects on everything can be monitored. She will stay there for two weeks, and her baby will have to be fed by bottle, the hospital doctor tells her: they don’t yet know the effects of lithium and don’t want the baby exposed to it through Arlene’s milk.

Worried that she is harming her baby in the womb by being on lithium, Arlene stops taking the drug.

Zeta Demir also worries that her medical condition could harm her baby. She has gonorrhea, which could infect the baby’s eyes during delivery, so the clinic puts her on antibiotics. She has never had sex with anyone but her husband and insists that the same is true of her husband, Mehmet. They’re both from Cyprus, but he is Turkish and she is Greek. His parents sent him to London because they disapproved of their relationship, and Zeta eventually followed. Mehmet angrily denies to Zeta that he has been with anyone else.

A teenager who comes to the clinic for a vaccine complains of pain in the bathroom; he tests positive for gonorrhea, too. Shelagh, Miss Higgins, and Sister Veronica set out to trace everyone in the area who has gonorrhea as well as their sexual contacts to try to prevent further spread. Mehmet demands that Miss Higgins leave his house when she approaches him with questions.

The boy with gonorrhea admits to going to a brothel during his brother’s stag night. Miss Higgins visits it and finds a patient from the clinic working there. Miss Higgins assures the woman that she is a good mother, always on time for her children’s vaccinations, and convinces her to get tested. The woman says the other prostitutes won’t go to the clinic, so Miss Higgins decides to bring testing to the brothel.

The women working there don’t know the names of all their clients but describe some of them. One man is mentioned frequently; he’s a foreman who brings groups of his workers with him to the brothel. He has a distinctive scar that Dr. Turner recognizes as from a splenectomy, allowing the clinic to track him down.

Shelagh and Miss Higgins confront the man and tell him that what he’s doing is illegal, in order to make him help their cause. He reluctantly tells any of his workers who went to the brothel to get tested. Miss Higgins is surprised to find Mehmet among them.

He admits that he went to the brothel once, thinking he would never see Zeta again. Then she appeared in London and they got married.

He returns home and finds Zeta in labor. She didn’t call for him because she no longer trusts him. He admits his brothel visit to her and brings her to the clinic to give birth to a son – with no eye infection. After the birth, Zeta tells Mehmet that she is returning to their home as a mother but not a wife, because that has to be earned. He says that he will try to become the man she deserves.

Arlene doesn’t have a husband to help her with her coming baby. The midwives invite her to their mothercraft class – and she shows up on a manic high, worrying Trixie. Arlene becomes immersed in painting a mural for her baby in her flat.

When Trixie next visits, Arlene pushes her away when she tries to examine her. Trixie realizes she has stopped taking her lithium. Arlene seems to be in labor and confused by reality, so Trixie goes to call Dr. Turner. Arlene locks and bars the door when Trixie leaves.

Dr. Turner rips boards off Arlene’s window from the outside and he and Trixie climb in through a broken pane covered with cardboard. Arlene fears that they will put her in a psychiatric hospital again, in between talking to her dead sister and obsessing about her mural. The delivery is difficult, but a healthy girl is born. Arlene asks to hold her, knowing that she will likely be separated from her at the hospital.

Trixie visits her later at the hospital and explains the doctors’ plans. Arlene is distraught that her daughter will go into foster care for a time while she returns to the psychiatric hospital. Trixie brings in her daughter so she can again hold her and tell her she loves her.

Violet’s term as mayor is coming to a close, and she’s ending it with a flower festival. Various organizations in Poplar have been invited to contribute floral arrangements, but Rosalind points out that the homeless shelter where she volunteers with Cyril wasn’t asked.

After Cyril breaks up a fight there, Rosalind treats the wounds of one of the men, Ted, warning that he won’t be allowed back to the shelter for a meal. She asks about his life and learns that he was once a window dresser at Harrod’s, but lost his wife and child in a fire.

Rosalind convinces the shelter director to let Ted return so that he can use his talents as a window dresser to help her with a floral arrangement for the festival. He sketches a design featuring wildflowers, but simply leaves it and the flowers for Rosalind without showing up himself. Cyril had warned her that doing the arrangement won’t change Ted’s life and she insisted that she wasn’t doing it to make herself feel better. Now that Ted has flaked, however, she admits to Cyril that she was trying to save Ted. She and Cyril put together the arrangement, and romance sparks when they brush each others’ hands.

But when Cyril delivers the flowers to the festival, Mrs. Wallace talks to him of his loneliness and his wife Lucille, whom he hasn’t seen in a long time. He decides to go visit Lucille in Jamaica, to Rosalind’s disappointment.

Violet makes a speech at the flower festival announcing that, despite some internal debate, she will continue on as mayor. The candidate elected to succeed her has fallen ill, and the council has asked her to stay on. Even though she is exhausted, Fred has pointed out that she has made tangible improvements – and promised to support her through another term.