Edith Kirky is the 4th patient of the year to be brought to Fisher and Sons from Bay Breeze Hospital where Vanessa works, so David predicts Rico's usual pride over the fact...but no one predicts him, suspicious about her neck-markings, to discover a whole hot dog wedged down her esophagus. When informing the authorities, Fisher and Sons is forced to allow them to bring Vanessa and her partner to be examined since they failed to find the hot dog themselves. Rabbi Ari encourages Nate and Brenda to be honest with each other, but Brenda reacts badly when Nate informs her he's going to be a father (though fails to mention she's unfaithful to him) and he later talks about it with Rabbi Ari, who introduces him to a Jewish client, Aaron Buchbinder, who needs a pre-meet since he has pancreatic cancer. Brenda's reaction after criticizing Nate is to get high and sleep with a pair. At Brenda's bridal shower, Bernard Chenowith asks Ruth what she's done as far as Claire's depression, but when Ruth visits Gray Deitman to see if she is depressed, the answer comes as a different sort of shock. David encourages Keith to stand up to his father when he and his mother ask that Taylor come to San Diego to live with them, and David himself is forced to find some inner strength of his own to get Catherine Collins, supported by Mitzi Dalton-Huntley, not to sue them for "emotional distress" after Nate's showing her husband's mutilated body at her request. He doesn't have any qualms about becoming angry with Ruth, though, after she pays all of Nikolai's debt to Yuri just before David and Nate have need of the money themselves.

Brenda feels the clock is ticking and wants to have a baby sooner rather than later. Nate wants to think about it for a while. A lunch with her mother Margaret doesn't go particularly well - Margaret is rushed to the hospital. The event does give Brenda and Billy a chance to see each other again. George feels they should be preparing for whatever catastrophe may befall mankind. Ruth tells him of the old bomb shelter and he thinks it's just perfect. Claire's latest project gets raves from Billy and several of her classmates but she reacts badly when Russell claims to have originated the concept with her. She's thrilled though when she gets the opportunity display some of her work at a show. David learns that the man whose ear he's bitten is suing him for $500,000. There's one way he can get out of it but it involves Keith. At the funeral home, Rico and Nate deal with a particularly tragic case when four members of the Gorodetsky family - parents and two children - are killed in a car accident leaving only their eldest son to deal with it all. Nate is forced to admit to Lisa's sister Barb that he buried her in the desert.

In 1954 Loretta Smith Sibley committed suicide in front of her son George. With the anniversary of September 9th approaching, George is haunted by her presence enough to distract him at home, repeats his habit of placing unwanted food in his pockets, telling Ruth he was saving it, and confesses to Maggie that he again needs therapy. Ruth also has to deal with Claire confronting her after she freezes her account since she's no longer in school. Billy buys her the camera she wanted to purchase herself as they consider leaving for Spain, but Ruth disapproves of the whole thing. Rico runs into but is rejected by Vanessa at a church dating meet, so dates his former replacement Angela. Brenda befriends a co-worker after her first counseling experience results in a physical attack, and Nate befriends his stepsister Maggie, a divorcée whose son passed away at a young age.