Heart Break (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode | Title = Heart Break
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 2
Episode = 8


Airdate = November 30, 2004
Production = 02x08
Writer = George Schenck Frank Cardea
Director = Dennis Smith
Guests = Jessica Steen as Special Agent Paula Cassidy Nathan Wetherington as Ensign Evan Hayes Stacy Edwards as Commander Janice Byers
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = Call of Silence
Next = Forced Entry

Heart Break is the 31^st episode in the TV series "NCIS".

Plot

A Navy commander appears to spontaneously combust while staying in the hospital and recovering from a heart surgery. At the scene, the team meets Dr. Byers, who performed the heart surgery. Ducky is immediately smitten by her and later asks her on a date.

The team discovers that the commander was not well-liked and picked on one shipman in particular, Ensign Evan Hayes. Since Hayes was known to have visited the commander before his death, he becomes a suspect. When Gibbs and Kate confront him at his high school swimming pool, the only place where he had ever felt happy, he admits being suicidal and draws his gun on Gibbs. Kate shoots Hayes before he can harm Gibbs, and Hayes dies.

Later, it is found that Hayes had an alibi for the time of the commander's combustion - he was at the home of his former swim coach, talking about his problems. Kate feels immensely guilty for shooting an innocent man, but Gibbs tells her that it was "suicide by cop" and that she should "get over it".

In revisiting the physical evidence, Tony discovers that the explosion was caused by a cigarette placed in a matchbook 12 minutes prior to the explosion. As the cigarette burned, it eventually lit the matches, which ignited an explosion due to an open oxygen line. The only person in the commander's room 12 minutes before the explosion was Dr. Byers. She appears relieved at this finding and confesses that the surgery was not successful and the commander died during recovery. She had failed at a similar surgery before and believed that another failure would cost her her medical license, so she tried to make the commander's death look like an accident and not due to an unsuccessful operation.

External links

* [http://www.tv.com/ncis/heart-break/episode/378513/summary.html Heart Break on TV.com] - cast and episode information
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0657997/ Heart Break on Internet Movie Database]
* [http://www.cbs.com/primetime/ncis/ "NCIS" on CBS] - official site of the TV show