Royal Pains recap: Fly Me to Kowloon

Royal Pains has never been shy about playing up moments with that almost-unwatchable ick factor, but sometimes things look even realer than they have any right to, like with this week’s duo of weird procedure recipients, Boris and Win. Both of these gents are completely willing to sacrifice life and, apparently, limb to get their respective jobs done, and let’s just say they put their money — and, er, arms and fingers — where their mouths are to prove it.

Kudos to these guys for their bravery and willingness to tough through all the rough, but after this double dose of gross we might just need one of Divya’s little sickness exams ourselves. (How many different illnesses could a sudden onset of extreme nausea indicate anyway?)

#1: The white whale claims another hunter

You’d think having a name like Win means he’d be destined to do just that, but our newest friend/patient isn’t so lucky. The Air Force veteran-turned-reclamation specialist (the preferred euphemism for repo man, apparently) spends his days prowling for high ticket items that “uber-wealthy wannabes” impulsively bought but can’t pay for while in the check-out lanes at Yachts-R-Us.

This means he’s always ready with a handsaw to spring a plane from its chains when duty calls, and thanks to his aviation background, he even knows how to fly the thing off into the sunset, quite literally speaking, and then on to the bank where they can be auctioned off to settle those debts.

Problem is, Win’s constant exposure to metal fumes is giving him metal fume fever — which has some rather nasty symptoms, like a high body temp, neck stiffness, and crackling in the lungs. Not good. Divya, while doing her due diligence with the spinal tap, suspects he may even have meningitis and throws a mask on for her safety (and that of the baby BOY inside of her — cue the blue balloons, but shhh, don’t tell Raj!).

Win doesn’t want to go to the hospital — of course he doesn’t. He’s inches from recovering a big, fancy boat he’s been tracking for ages, and he’s not going to let it go that easily, nope. Too bad. Because if he did, he might have been able to avoid having his freaking finger cut off after passing out on the job. It’s his favorite finger, too — ya know, the one that flips birds at all the people he’s just reclaimed property from.

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Semi-good news? Fingers do actually float, it seems, so Div’s able to recover his digit from the sea and pack it on his cooler ice for replantation. Semi-bad news? He’s lost a lot of blood, and now he’s suffering cardiac tamponade, which means Divya’s gotta drain the area around his heart with an enormous (shudder!) needle right then and there on the beach while they wait for an ambulance. It’s a bad day when you lose a phalange and have a giant sharp object piercing your chest at the same time, by anyone’s standards. Price of doing a thrill job?

Needless to say, that slippery sea vessel’s staying put for a little while longer, and he’ll have to chase her down again some other time after he gets his middle finger sewn back in. Yikes.

NEXT: We’ve heard of faking a pee test before, but THIS?!

#2: Hong Kong is for flubbers

Boris has taken Hank with him to Hong Kong because he’s ready to reveal the news that (a) he’s finally found a cure-all for his lethal, genetic disease which has been inherited by his child, no less and (b) that he was patient zero in the experimental trials that proved its clinical efficacy. Being that he’s the head of a giant multinational corporation, coming out with this news of his diagnosis is going to be pretty tricky, though, especially since someone out here has already been rummaging through his hacked hospital records. But whooooo?

Boris has his suspicions, of course. He lunches with an old journalist friend of his named Guy and offers to give him the first-look exclusive on the story, but when Guy is caught trying to nab a sample of his DNA from Boris’ sleeping child (which was actually Guy’s own kid, thanks to some clever switcheroo action in anticipation of his heinous behavior), they know he’s interested in more than just a cooperative headline opportunity.

Instead of fighting his relentless interest, though, Hank suggests that Boris just offer up a blood sample on the spot and put Guy’s curiosity to rest. It all seems on the up and up, and Guy (who looks like a cross between Gordon Ramsay and Liam Neeson and acts like it, too) walks away with his red vial in blissful shock.

As soon as he’s gone, though, Boris proceeds to yank a plastic tube from his arm (SCREAM), which had Hank’s blood in it because they wanted to fake the blood test. Apparently this is some kind of classic med school prank that Hank remembered, which confirms the theory that all doctors are secretly evil geniuses and/or completely crazy. Yech.

In other news, IVF is not a four letter word…

On the non-medical front — because, yes, we officially need a break from the procedure gore — Evan and Paige are ready to take an important new step in their baby-making adventure. Things haven’t been going so well with all of their au naturale efforts (although neither of them is complaining about all the “superhuman sex” they’ve been having to try), so Paige wants to give in vitro a try.

Even though Evan has been a generous soul throughout the process — sensitive, observant, and tireless in his efforts to juggle all the things going on in his life, like a bona fide grown-up — Paige worried that he might feel insecure about the idea of having to throw sperm samples and hormonal treatments into the mix. Which … hello, he does work in a hospital. She should’ve trusted him more to be game for the very viable next step, but alas, she wrangles in Divya and Raj (who went through it before to have his twins with his ex) to talk up the process. Too bad Raj hated every minute of his experience with IVF, so their double date discussion of the subject is more cringe-worthy than Hank’s horrendous date with Jen.

None of Raj’s horror stories change Evan’s perspective on IVF, though, and it turns out he’s really just been waiting for Paige to come around to it this whole time. D’aw. Golf claps for good form, Ev. He deserves some extra frosting on his cake for such good manners.

Meanwhile, Hank, too, is getting a taste of the Cloud 9 waters during his time overseas. He’s met a woman who does, um, something in medical research (it sounded like she said with CHC2 mutations in certain autosomal dominant disorders, but even Hank wasn’t exactly sure what he just heard come out of her mouth). She’s pretty, witty, and ready to ditch the boring conference panels for a 48-hour map-free trek around the city. Even better? She’s a month away from moving to New York. She seems perfect, really — she even checks out with Boris’ invasive backgrounding research — but there is a bummer catch that reveals itself.

See, she’s opening up a new lab in NYC, and her hierarchy of availability gives a distant first to work. Unfortunately, Hank’s no longer in the market for a weekends-and-holidays-style romance. He wants the real deal at long last. “I’m looking for something that’s goes beyond a few hours here and there — adds up to months, hopefully years, and then, well, forever,” he tells her. So close!