'Call the Midwife' Recap: Season 12 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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If life gives you grapefruit marmalade, give it away. Sister Veronica has been cooking up jars and jars of the condiment, and the Nonnatans are tired of it—especially Sister Monica Joan. So when Shelagh comes around asking for donations for a raffle to be held during a spring celebration, Monica Joan gives her all the jars. 

The elder sister makes another important contribution to the celebration after the dance teacher in charge of teaching the children the maypole dance goes to the hospital to have an ovary removed, leaving an overwhelmed Shelagh in charge of preparing the dance. When Shelagh is delayed by a forceps delivery to rehearsal, however, Monica Joan takes charge of the rowdy children and teaches them the dance in short order. 

Despite these extracurricular benevolences, Sister Monica Joan does not approve of a kindness enacted by Sister Julienne: a first-time mother’s class complete with breastfeeding demonstration that takes over Nonnatus House’s parlor—the location of Monica Joan’s beloved television. But Julienne is excited about the class—with Sister Veronica’s arrival, she is once again able to devote more time to work with mothers and patients instead of just administration, to her delight.

One pregnant patient in the class needs some extra aid. Lilian has a red, hot rash on her breast, and Doctor Turner immediately sends her to the hospital for testing. Lilian is exuberant and fun, a former entertainment girl at a holiday camp, where she met her handy husband Ronnie, who worked in maintenance. 

Julienne visits Lilian at home after her trip to the hospital for an x-ray and biopsy. Lilian and Ronnie are confused by the doctor’s explanations, but Lilian has cancer. Dr. Turner helps them understand further: it’s a rare form, and requires not a mastectomy but radiotherapy. Treatment should begin as soon as possible. 

This means that Lilian’s baby should be induced a little bit early, at the hospital—even though she wanted to have a home birth and doesn’t feel prepared. She and Ronnie haven’t even decided on a name yet. 

Trixie is familiar with the way cancer can “bully” a life into submission, from her experience watching her godmother succumb to the disease. She wants Lilian to still be able to have the birth she wants—and apparently, so does fate. Lilian goes into labor while Trixie is visiting her at home, and things progress quickly so that Trixie makes the call that the baby will be delivered there, with Julienne’s help. 

A daughter is born, and named Andrea Lilian Reynolds. Lilian has to take pills to stop lactation, lest it interfere with the cancer, despite her desire to breastfeed Andrea. Ronnie voices his worries to Trixie that he’ll lose Lilian and be a single father, and she helps him learn how to take care of Andrea while Lilian undergoes her first round of treatment.

When Lilian arrives home to learn that Ronnie has taken Andrea to her first clinic without her mother, Lilian becomes upset: it feels like Ronnie and the midwives are already treating her as if she’s dead. She lashes out at Sister Julienne, telling her she could never understand Lilian—Julienne voluntarily gave away everything that makes her a woman, while it is being forcibly taken from Lilian. Julienne apologizes, and receives comfort later from Sister Veronica over a cup of tea. 

Ronnie is an eager and devoted father, but he’s forced to call Julienne to his aid when Andrea begins crying and won’t eat, and Lilian refuses to leave her room. Julienne immediately brings Andrea to her mother, and she stops crying. The infant still needs her mother. Lilian apologizes for what she said to Julienne. 

Despair can make you do unthinkable things. Lucille’s depression isn’t getting better. Even well-intentioned gestures, like Cyril’s surprise scheduling of a phone call to her family in Jamaica, make things worse: Lucille learns that her newly married sister is already pregnant, whereas Lucille herself has struggled to have a child. 

Nurse Crane is worried about Lucille, and meets with her church leader Mrs. Wallace to ask Wallace to try to comfort Lucille via religion. But Lucille becomes upset when she hears Mrs. Wallace asking Cyril, the church’s pastor, to pray with Lucille about her depression. The Holy Spirit has failed Lucille—or she has failed the Holy Spirit. 

Lucille envies Tommy Woodleigh, despite the old man’s difficulties, because he’s attached to his home and has family who care for him, even though he says they don’t visit now that they have all moved out of Poplar, a place he refuses to leave. Woodleigh’s eyesight is deteriorating but he refuses to have it examined, even though it caused a fall that required stitches. 

Then, all of a sudden, he can’t see out of his left eye at all. Lucille calls Dr. Turner, who sends him to the hospital in an ambulance. Woodleigh extracts a promise that he will still be able to come home. 

He won’t recover his sight, but is still in good spirits—especially when Lucille brings him a coveted brand of biscuit at the hospital. On another visit, she is surprised to see a granddaughter with him, and learns that his family is still close—he just cherishes his independence and refuses to move out by them. 

Leaving the hospital, Lucille stands at the edge of a busy road and contemplates stepping out into the street of busy traffic. 

She decides to finally get medical help. She thinks Woodleigh saw himself in her, a woman longing for home, and she doesn’t want to voluntarily shut herself off from the world like he has. Dr. Turner recommends medical treatment, given that Lucille has physical symptoms of lethargy and headaches. She asks him to act as a doctor, rather than a friend; friends haven’t been able to help her. 

Perhaps family and home can. Cyril uses some of their savings for a house to buy her a ticket to Jamaica while she is on sick leave. He can’t go, because he has to work, but hopefully the trip will do her good. When Lucille hands over her cleaned and pressed nurse’s uniforms to Nurse Crane, Crane gives her a cardigan she has knitted herself. Lucille and Cyril slip away without saying goodbye—a painful prospect—during the maypole celebration, riding a motorcycle and sidecar just like they did on their first date. 

The raffle at the celebration goes on without anyone noticing Lucille’s absence. Sister Monica Joan wins the basket of grapefruit marmalade.