“We treat what’s in front of us and we move on. This job’s hard enough without making moral judgements on our patients.”

Episode 5 of The Good Karma Hospital begins with Dr Nair treating his fiancée to a surprise breakfast on the beach, but he’s barely sat down at the table before being called in to help deal with casualties from a collapsed building. Among all the injured and walking wounded from the disaster there are only really two patients of any note – Sushma, a distressed confused woman looking for her missing husband who later goes missing from the hospital herself as she tries to find him, and Mohanan, whose arm is badly crushed and trapped under rubble, requiring Ruby to comfort him while Lydia carries out an emergency on-site amputation to free him and save his life.

Ruby is dispatched to track down Mohanan’s estranged brother to facilitate a blood transfusion, but her sympathetic feelings for her patient soon fade when she learns more about his past, causing her to be dangerously distracted during his second operation and to question what she‘s doing with her life.

“I came out here because my old life wasn’t working and I wanted a new beginning. And now things are even more complicated than ever.”

AJ’s offer to pitch in and help tend to the casualties are rebuffed by his father who tells him to simply stick to his menial orderly role. His mood is not helped when a date with Mandeep doesn’t quite turn out how he expected.

“Do you ever feel like you can’t do anything right, like you’re making a series of terrible decisions?”

While Lydia commandeers the beach bar for a staff night out after a hectic day, Greg tries to cheer Paul up by arranging a night out with two air stewardesses, which ends in a drunken late night swim with potentially fatal consequences…

Life moves on quickly in The Good Karma Hospital. There’s no mention of the revelations for Ruby in the previous two episodes, and the main plots tonight are done and dusted by the end of part 3 but, as with all medical dramas, these plots are there to serve the regular characters and the ending, albeit slightly telegraphed by some wistful looks out to sea earlier, still has an impact.

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