Kerry Weaver - Season Eight

Season Eight

Weaver still had not come out to any of her coworkers, except Dr. Romano and Dr. Luka Kovač. Kerry was still quite paranoid about anyone discovering her true status even though her sexual orientation was already known to some of her coworkers. Weaver did, however, begin a new relationship with firefighter Lt. Sandy Lopez (played by Lisa Vidal) whom she met in a rain storm while trying to rescue a pregnant woman out of a crashed ambulance. As the two get close, Lopez told Kerry she refused to date a woman that was in the closet. Lopez forcibly outed Weaver with a passionate kiss in front of her coworkers. What followed was a groundbreaking story for network television as the development of the romance between the two women was treated with the courtship, passion and arguments often reserved for heterosexual couples.

Lopez said, "I did you a favor," after the kiss in the ER; a few episodes later, Weaver admitted to her that she was right. At the season's end, Weaver accepted herself as a lesbian, and became eager to combat homophobia wherever it appeared.

In Season Eight's second episode "The Longer You Stay", Weaver failed to answer repeated pages from Doctors Malucci & Chen when a patient being tended to by them has complications. Weaver is finally hauled in by Dr. Carter when he ran from the ER to get her personally from Doc Magoo's, sustaining a painful fall in the process. But after the patient dies and she flatly barks at the three "You killed him.", she is seen back at Doc Magoo's where she finds the pager she left in the bathroom stall.

Desperate to cover up her irresponsibility when the hospital is sued by the patient's family, Weaver callously fires Malucci in third episode "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic" on a trumped-up charge of misconduct, and by the fourth episode "Never Say Never", she's managed to pin the malpractice on Malucci and Chen, stripping the latter of her authority and she quits, but brings a wrongful termination suit against Weaver and the hospital in the twelfth episode, "A River In Egypt". Chief of Staff Romano, having learned about the pager incident and trying to avoid a scandal, forces Weaver to reinstate Chen.

In "Bygones", Kerry is stunned when she realizes a lonely young woman murdered her roommate because of unrequited love. Kerry then mends fences with Sandy Lopez and the two of them make their first ER-social appearance at an impromptu drinking party after Mark Greene has died. Kerry is visibly saddened by Mark's death and for the first time loses her patience and breaks down in the workplace after hearing the news of his passing. She later tells Sandy she knew his demise was coming but never thought it would affect her as deeply as it did. She realizes she had lost a friend, and regrets the years they spent in bitter competition for various ER posts and promotions. At Dr. Greene's funeral, Kerry is again seen crying, shakened by the loss of a dear friend of 7 years.