Return To The Series
In 2008, ER producers announced that Edwards would reprise his role for the series' final season, with Dr. Greene appearing in flashbacks in the episode "Heal Thyself" shedding light on Dr. Catherine Banfield's (played by Angela Bassett) past.
On November 13, 2008, over 6 years after his exit from the show, Anthony Edwards returned as Dr. Mark Greene. The flashback episode took place in 2002, just months before Greene's death and revealed an encounter he had with Catherine Banfield, 6 years before she began working in that same emergency room. He was treating Banfield's son Darryl who had a debilitating disease which turned out to be leukemia. The story appeared to take place at the point in Season 8 when Mark and Elizabeth were reconciling after she learned his tumor had recurred. Mark takes on the mysterious case to save the 5 year old. He has a run-in with Kerry Weaver and Robert Romano about putting this case ahead of his chemo treatment which took a toll on him throughout that day. Darryl dies in the ER but it was Mark's heroic actions that triggered Catherine in the present day to help save a young girl from drowning, and may have also inspired her to work full time at County. During their encounter, Cate kept pressing Mark, who told her to stop being a doctor and to start being a mother. Cate gave the same advice to the young girl's mother.
In the season 15 episode The Book of Abby, long-serving nurse Haleh Adams shows the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees have put their locker name tags. Amongst them, the tag "Greene" can be seen.
Read more about this topic: Mark Greene
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