When Lucy was stabbed in Season 6, the cliffhanger ending did wonders for the next episode’s viewership. “Almost 30 million people tuned in on Thursday night to watch ‘ER,’ Kellie Martin told Entertainment Weekly. “I was happy and honored, yet at the same time … wondering what I had done to deserve such a big demise. I mean, it was pretty brutal.”

“Be Still My Heart” and “All in the Family” may have attracted scores of “ER” fans, but some agree that the storyline was hard to stomach — even for a gory medical drama. “Lucy’s death traumatized me,” wrote Redditor u/NeverFainted to a flurry of upvotes. u/Copywrites felt similarly, adding, “It really left a bad taste [in] my mouth as a kid.”

To see a doctor in “ER” and experience that horrific level of violence was unprecedented. But as some fans point out, Lucy’s death opened the floodgates for other staff members to die in increasingly outlandish ways, be it a helicopter accident or ambulance explosion. “When Lucy died, it was shocking and tragic,” wrote u/DaveSW777. “By the final season, the show was a bloodbath.”

The shock value never wore off for some “ER” fans. “To this day, I have people coming up to me,” said Martin. “They’ll get ashen when they see me sometimes because it was such an amazing two episodes.”