The Nurse follows Pernille, a nurse who befriends a supposedly nice and competent colleague, only to realize that the woman is not what she seems to be. The Danish series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
In Falster, 2012, a man named Arne collapses due to his unhealthy lifestyle and is brought to the hospital by his brother, Kenny. Arne seems to be recovering, but at night, someone enters his room and injects him with something. As a result, Arne passes away.
Kenny requests an autopsy. He is told that his brother overdosed and his heart stopped; a high amount of morphine and diazepam, which were not prescribed to him, are found in his blood. The doctors think that Arne took the medicine himself to take his own life.
Kenny has a hard time believing this, as his brother hated drugs, and he does not think his brother would kill himself, even though Arne had been suffering from depression since his son’s death.
Kenny tries to convince people, but no one believes him. His efforts and inquiries do not bear fruit, and he is not able to prove that his brother did not kill himself.
In 2014, Pernille moves to her ex-boyfriend’s town, Falster, as their daughter, Alberte, wants to live closer to her father. Pernille gets her first job as a nurse at Nykøbing Falster Hospital.
Pernille is to be trained by one of the best, if not the best, nurses — Christina. She has been working in ER3 for three years now and is so skilled that at times, she even knows more than the doctors.
Like Pernille, Christina is also a single mother. She tells Pernille that Nykøbing Falster Hospital is not the best hospital, as doctors who do not get jobs anywhere else are employed here.
While being trained by Christina, Pernille saves a life with her, and the two are referred to as “the dream team” by the doctor in charge. Pernille already respects Christina, but after this, the two start becoming good friends.
In fact, when a young woman unexpectedly dies and they are unable to save her, Christina comforts Pernille and praises her work. So when Pernille finds an injection in the bin of that woman’s room, she does not think much about it.
At the same time, Pernille grows close to the chief physician, Niels Lundén, and starts dating him.
In 2015, Pernille catches Christina lying about various things more than once. She often makes up stories like an elaborate story about how she got into an accident with her daughter, something that Pernille comes to know never happened.
Pernille is even warned by one of her colleagues to be careful around Christina and not to trust her. Pernille also discovers that Christina takes patient records home and that her shifts are always stranger than anyone else’s.
The more Pernille works with her, the more she starts seeing things that she did not see earlier, which makes her uncomfortable. She even notices how certain drugs get used so fast and shares her worries about Christina with another nurse named Katja.
Pernille decides not to work with Christina anymore. While the head nurse agrees to take her off the night shift, she dismisses her concerns about Christina, who leaves a good impression on everyone.
The sudden death of a patient named John, who was stable and had no heart disease, due to cardiac arrest gives rise to Pernille’s suspicions about Christina’s involvement. On top of that, Christina signed off a total of 22 deaths in just the last year and a half.
Pernille discusses this with Katja but is told that no one will believe her, as everyone loves Christina. Pernille even tells Niels about Christina killing the patients, but even he gets angry at her and dismisses this as gossip.
Pernille meets Ida, a nurse who had worked with Christina before she came to ER3. Ida had the same experiences as Pernille, but the head nurse did not believe her when she complained. She also tells Pernille about Arne and how the number of deaths reduced in M130 after Christina moved to ER3.
On the other hand, Pernille’s claims bother Niels, who then looks at John’s death closely. He realizes that Pernille was right all along and decides to join her in exposing Christina.
Pernille and Niels realize that Christina has killed several patients for years. The two of them come to the conclusion that they will need to catch Christina when she poisons a patient.
They need solid evidence against her if they do not want the case to be dropped. If there is no evidence, it will then be Christina’s word against Pernille’s, and Pernille’s life will forever be ruined for framing a colleague.
To monitor Christina, Pernille takes a night shift with her. Pernille keeps a close eye on the patients throughout the night and keeps updating Niels. She notices that Christina gave a patient, Viggo Holm Petersen, diazepam to induce cardiac arrest.
She changes his IV and stores it as proof, but she still needs to catch Christina red-handed if they want to contact the police. Despite her constant vigilance, three patients die, including Viggo Holm Petersen, and Pernille fails to catch Christina committing their murders.
The Nurse ending explained in detail:
Does Pernille save Maggi’s life?
The condition of a patient named Maggi gets worse that night. The nurses stabilize her, but no one can figure out what happened to her. Later, when Pernille discovers that Maggi’s room’s alarm is off, she goes to her room and finds Christina injecting her with something.
Pernille knows that she has caught Christina in the act when Christina tries to hide the injections from her. Pernille leaves, but soon, Maggi’s room’s alarm goes off. When the doctor arrives there, he notes that her heart is still beating and thinks that she had brain damage.
However, Pernille realizes that Christina probably panicked after Pernille saw her injecting Maggi and set off the alarm before the cardiac arrest occurred. She asks the doctor in charge if injecting diazepam could be the reason for Maggi’s unresponsive condition.
When the doctor sees that Maggi’s brain condition did not change at all, he asks the nurses to give her the antidote to diazepam as Pernille’s question had suggested, and Maggi finally responds.
Does Pernille expose Christina’s crimes?
A teary-eyed Christina, who knows that she has been caught, praises Pernille for saving Maggi’s life. Pernille also informs Katja that she now knows for sure that Christina had been poisoning the patients.
Now that Niels and Pernille have proof, Pernille contacts the police to report Christina’s crimes. Christina gets arrested for three murders and the attempted murder of Maggi.
After that, in 2016, Pernille is still working in the same department, but because she filed a complaint against Christina, she is treated like a pariah at work. On the other hand, when Kenny comes to the hospital as a patient, he thanks her.
What happens to Christina and Pernille?
Christina was initially sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Viggo Holm Petersen, Anna Lise Poulsen, and Arne Herskov and the attempted murder of Maggi based on Pernille’s testimony.
However, it could not be ruled out that the victims had died of other causes, and the conviction was reduced to four counts of attempted murder. Christina was then sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Maggi and Kenny are alive and well. All the nurses who worked in the ER during that time have left, but Pernille still works there. She is now Pernille Kurzmann Lundén, which means she eventually married Niels.