Mark goes to San Diego to visit his mother who broke her leg.  His dad meets him at the airport and Cynthia flies in also on a separate flight.  Ruth, Mark's mother, is in the hospital and is on morphine.  This makes her act very strange, but Mark thinks she is acting stranger than usual, and it is not the morphine.  Mark asks if maybe she has had a head injury, but she hasn't.  The doctor at the Naval hospital thinks that she may have had several small strokes.  Mark's dad, Davis, stays at home and works on a wheel chair ramp.  Mark has several test ordered for his mother.  She goes to have an M.R.I. done and freaks out, but Mark is there to comfort her.  Mark smokes a lot while he is there.  Mark tells the doctor at the Naval hospital that he wants a second opinion and from a civilian doctor.  This angers Mr. Greene.  Mark finds out that his mother has been seeing a psychiatrist without the knowledge of his father.  David tells Mark to go back to Chicago and to mind his on business.  They begin to argue and David goes into respiratory distress and ends up in the ER.  They both agree that Mark's mother need not know about it.  Mark is told by the doctor that she will never be the same as she was before.  While Mark is in the ER with his father, 2 men are brought in from a helicopter crash.  He explains to his father what the doctors are saying.  David comforts one of the guys and tells him not to worry, that he did all that he knew to do.  As he is talking to him, the guy goes unconscious.  Mark starts working on the man and David watches him save his life.  Mark's mom gets to come home.  Mark tells Cynthia that he is not in love with her, but that she means a lot to him.  She takes a flight home.  Mark and his mom talk.  She says more now than she had said prior to her mental status.  She tells Mark that she never wanted a baby.  She was too young.  She also tells him that his father had a shot as Admiral, but he lost it because he had to come home and take care of Mark when he was having trouble in school.  She feels like she is to blame between Mark and his father not getting along.  Mark later sees how well his dad cares for his mother and how well he takes care of her.  David takes Mark to the beach where they use to go when Mark was a child.  David tells him that he has given up smoking for Mark's mother.  David tells him how proud he is of Mark and what he has done with his life.  Mark thanks him for helping him get there.

  Reviewed by Tony Conner on 09-15-2000