Pulse: What Happened to Harper’s Legs?

In Netflix’s ‘Pulse,’ the doctors of Maguire Medical Center face one challenge after another, treating patients for whom it is often a matter of life and death. While several residents are central to the story, the main focus is on the journey of Danny Simms, a talented third-year resident who is going through an upheaval in her personal and professional life after accusing the Chief Resident and her mentor, Xander Phillips, of sexual harassment. Her accusations lead people to choose sides, and while not everyone may be in her court, she continues to have the support of her sister, who is a second-year resident in the same hospital. At the same time, the sisters also have a lot of past stuff to deal with, especially when it comes to their father. Danny, especially, feels for her sister due to an incident that left her wheelchair-bound for life. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Danny Blames Herself for Harper’s Accident

By the time Harper is introduced to the audience, she has been in a wheelchair for a major part of her life. The reason behind it is not revealed until Danny decides to have a heart-to-heart with a patient who refuses to go into surgery. The patient in question is the coach of the team, who got into an accident that led most of the team to be hospitalized. Feeling responsible for his team, he refuses to go into surgery, which he immediately requires, until he has found out that all of his students are safe and sound. Even though the circumstances that led to the accident were beyond his control, he still blames himself for everything that happened, and Danny can relate to it. To connect with the coach, she tells him about Harper. She reveals that when they were children, they used to fight.

One day, things escalated when Danny pushed her younger sister down the stairs. She never intended it to be so bad, but the push was so hard that Harper didn’t even touch the stairs and fell straight on the landing. She had a permanent spinal injury that rendered her unable to walk. Danny still carries the guilt of this act that permanently changed her sister’s life, and she beats herself up for this every single day. Through her story, she tries to connect with the coach’s guilt and get him to understand that he will not be able to make amends or take care of his students if he dies. At the end of the day, the students themselves show up to encourage their coach, and he eventually goes into surgery. Danny’s plan works, but this is also when we discover that her story isn’t entirely true.

Related: Who Plays Harper in Pulse?

Danny and Harper’s Father is the One Behind the Accident

While Danny harbors guilt about what happened with Harper, she is not the one who pushed her sister down the stairs. It was their dad. Danny and Harper grew up in a difficult home where their mother walked out on them when they were young, and their father grew increasingly unstable. He and Danny would clash on a regular basis while Harper tried to mediate between them. One day, she was doing the same thing, defending her sister in front of her father. However, the argument escalated, and their father, who had a problem with alcohol, pushed Harper down the stairs, which led to her injury.

Harper claims that her falling down was an accident, and she never blames her father for it. Danny, on the other hand, knows that Harper is simply trying to protect the man, and she hates their father for never owning up to his mistakes and learning from them. At the same time, she also blames herself for being the reason behind their argument. This leads her to be extra protective towards her sister, but she doesn’t realize that her hanging on to the incident and Harper’s injury has led her to infantilize her sister and reduce her to the one incident in her life that she herself moved on from long ago. It takes a while for Danny to realize this, following which she decides to do better by her sister.