Dr. Charlotte Lukaitis is a third year med student at San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. Years later, she would become an attending surgeon at the hospital.
History[]
Early life[]
As stated in Who At Peace, Charlie grew up with her parents who both had differing decisions of what was best for her daughter due to her autism. Because Charlie's mother did not want her to be different, she objected to her receiving accommodations at school, thinking that this would stigmatize her, but her father convinced her otherwise. She is also a fan of Taylor Swift, using some of her songs to help her with operations.
Season 7[]
In "Skin in the Game", Charlie meets Dr. Shaun Murphy on her first day with Dominick Hubank and excitedly introduces herself to him, having been inspired by him because of the viral video of the boy he saved at the airport. However, she starts making a lot of mistakes. When she treats a man named Rich with silicosis alongside Shaun and Dr. Jared Kalu, Charlie learns how to do the turban technique through a tutorial video, which visibly annoys his daughter Grace. Later on, while she is having lunch alone inside her car and is approached by Jared, they randomly encounter Grace, who turns out to be a sex worker, singing Happy Birthday with her bra out to a client she addressed as "daddy", and has been lying to her father about owning a prestigious company. As he is about to undergo surgery for new lungs, Charlie ends up revealing the truth to Rich due to her not understanding the word's different terms, despite Jared's efforts to hide it. Because of this, Rich refuses to talk to Grace and rejects the surgery. Shaun punishes Charlie by putting her into scut work as a result. After Rich finally agrees to the surgery thanks to Shaun talking some sense into him, Charlie gets to join the OR to operate. But when Charlie gets overexcited and touches her earring, Shaun kicks her out for contaminating the OR. Dom later finds Charlie, who is depressed that she didn't impress Shaun, to which he cheers her up by playing Taylor Swift's "Bejeweled" for her and they sing along.
In "Critical Support", Charlie behaves very unprofessionally, constantly interrupting Shaun when he is talking and asking a lot of invasive questions to her coworkers, all of which Charlie refuses to take accountability for and just expects them to get used to her by using her autism as an excuse. Despite his efforts, Shaun fails to keep Charlie in line, even when he follows differing advice from Glassman, who thinks Shaun should be patient with her, and Lim, who thinks Shaun should be more proactive. While they are doing surgery Phipps, a college student, who injured his head during a fraternity party, Charlie asks to feel the gall blader and finds a sharp item stuck in it, which leads to the realization that Phipps has metals in his body. Even though Shaun acknowledges her breakthrough, he bluntly tells Charlie that she would fit better as a pathologist, but Charlie refuses because she wants to be a surgeon like Shaun. In response, Shaun says Charlie that she is nothing like him. Hurt at his words, Charlie leaves in tears and is found standing alone inside the elevator by Glassman and Lim, who fail to convince Shaun to give Charlie a chance at being a surgeon, reminding them of past disagreements he had with his former bosses Drs. Neil Melendez and Jackson Han, who had previously transferred him to Pathology because of his inabilities to communicate. Charlie is later seen crying inside her car.
In "Date Night", Charlie is assigned with Dr. Alex Park, another attending surgeon, instead of Shaun who chooses to work with Dom instead as he still distrusts her given her previous behavior. Along with Jared and Dr. Jordan Allen, she treats Nathan, a friend of Jordan's church choir whose hearing he risks losing due to the removal of a benign brain tumor. Unlike the two other times she worked with Shaun, Charlie is not as intrusive and unprofessional as she was before (albeit asking invasive questions to a small degree), only presenting possible suggestions to Jared and Jordan about what is the best approach for Nathan. Charlie eventually finds the solution to remove Nathan's tumor without affecting his hearing through an AI research she made and reports this to Park, after interrupting him and Dr. Morgan Reznick trying to get intimate. After finishing the surgery, Charlie asks Park to tell Shaun about the achievement, to which Park encourages Charlie to have faith that she has a future as a surgeon. Charlie replies that she does have faith, only that Shaun is the one who is not seeing the potential she has.
Trivia[]
- Kayla Cromer, who plays Charlie, is on the autism spectrum in real life.
Appearances[]
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