'Call the Midwife' Recap: Season 15 Episode 7

Call the Midwife premieres Sundays at 7:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream for a limited time. Recap the previous and following episodes and other seasons.
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It is a time of hinge moments, when lives change. Beryl, also known as Sister Veronica, is staying with Geoffrey while she evaluates whether she wants to leave behind her vows. To help her decide, Geoffrey encourages her to make a list of things she wants to do that she can’t as a nun. She’s already sleeping in, enjoying breakfast in bed while Geoffrey sleeps on the couch; learning to cook; drinking; and trying out make-up and a manicure with Trixie. She wants to make money, so Geoffrey hires her as his secretary at his osteopathy practice. 

Rosalind is pregnant and trying to hide it with Joyce’s help until she and Cyril get engaged. Of course, she lives in a house with midwives, who all guess her condition, even if they don’t remark on it. They happily celebrate her and Cyril when the couple announces their engagement and a wedding in three weeks. 

Rosalind’s parents are less accommodating. When she calls them to inform them about the wedding, they make her cry. They have already told her they disapprove of her relationship with Cyril. Rosalind doesn’t tell them she’s pregnant.

She joins Cyril when he tells his own authority figure who might disapprove: Mrs. Wallace. But she, too, has guessed at the pregnancy. She knows Cyril and Rosalind feel their own guilt and leaves off from chastising them. She later meets with Nurse Crane to plan how to make the wedding special and the couple happy.

Sister Monica Joan has chronic kidney disease that will slowly kill her. She is confined to bed and on diuretics, but refuses to have a commode in her room and instead must ring for help to go to the bathroom. Fred and Sister Catherine worry that she is giving up on life and want to bring her outside, but Sister Monica Joan lashes out at Catherine when she brings her a wheelchair. The nuns argue, sending Sister Catherine out in a huff. 

Because the maternity clinic is being closed by the board of health, Sister Julienne is called to the mother house to discuss missionary work and plans for the future, leaving Sister Catherine the only mobile nun at Nonnatus. She has no one to turn to when Sister Monica Joan refuses to take her diuretics, a decision that will kill her more quickly. Shelagh finds Sister Catherine crying; she feels alone and lost, uncertain about what will come next for both Monica Joan and Nonnatus House.

Shelagh calls Miss Higgins, Nurse Crane, Rosalind, and Joyce to join her and her girls as Sister Catherine goes to chapel. Sister Catherine is not alone.

Violet is doing her best to prevent the maternity clinic from closing, even if Dr. Turner’s general practice will continue. She and the midwives organize a petition, and she calls a journalist and photographer to follow her and the midwives through a day of their work. Nurse Crane reluctantly agrees to the publicity stunt.

At the next board of health meeting, Violet presents the stack of signed petitions and the newspaper article, but Threapwood dismisses them with barely a glance. 

Trixie is making plans to continue providing at least some care outside a hospital once the maternity clinic closes, even if she can’t do so in Poplar. She has agreed to become the head of the Lady Emily clinic where she once worked, even though it is expensive and so only serves wealthy clients. She has yet to inform Nonnatus House. 

The loss of the maternity clinic means the loss of the kind of wraparound service that has helped a family like the Mullucks through difficult circumstances, like the disabilities of their daughter Susan caused by the drug thalidomide and the alcoholism of the father Bernie. The Mullucks still have their problems – Susan has to wear artificial limbs at school that give her blisters instead of her preferred wheelchair, and the mother Rhoda needs her gall bladder removed – but they are doing well, with their eldest, Belinda, in college. Bernie goes to AA meetings and has found fulfilling work with an undertaker. Rhoda is involved in a campaign for restitution to victims of thalidomide that seems like it will be successful.

Rhoda has twice cancelled her gall bladder removal when a spot opened up, because she is too busy, between Susan’s needs and her young son. But she is eventually overwhelmed by pain and has to go to the hospital for emergency surgery. Bernie can’t handle everything on his own since he works, so he calls his daughter Belinda to come home from college and help out. She refuses, knowing that Rhoda wants her to stay at college.

But after Susan falls down the stairs when she tries to climb them while home alone, Rhoda begs Belinda to come home. Belinda reluctantly agrees, and reveals the source of her resistance once back: she’s eight months pregnant, and was hoping to have the baby without her parents knowing. 

The difference between the care of the midwives and that in the hospital is on display as a cohort of junior doctors arrives to train at Nonnatus. Among them is the Turners’ son Timothy, who has an extensive knowledge of obstetrics and has already been chastised at the hospital for calming a colicky baby: doctors are supposed to treat, not care for, their patients. That’s a job for nurses.

When Timothy sets out with Joyce on a call, the benefit of home visits becomes clear. A Bengali woman is in labor in a slum house with only one tap for the whole building. The husband has nowhere to go, since they live in a single room, but believes because of his Hinduism that he should not be present, so Timothy rigs up a screen with clothesline and blankets. As the husband prays, Timothy coaches the wife through labor. 

On their way into the building, Joyce was stopped by a woman she has seen at the clinic. Her baby seems ill, but she doesn’t have bus fare to return to the clinic. Joyce promises to check on her later. 

During the labor, however, someone calls for Joyce: the other baby has stopped breathing. Joyce rushes downstairs to try to resuscitate the baby while Timothy continues the delivery. 

Two ambulances end up arriving, one for the non-breathing baby, which Joyce managed to save, and another for the new mother, who suffered some bleeding. Everyone is safe, thanks to the tireless efforts of Joyce and Timothy.