Audrey Lim

Audrey Lim
Biographical Information
Born:	Late 1970s to early 1980s
Age:	Early 40s
Status:	Alive
Alias:	Dr. Lim
Profession:	Attending Trauma Surgeon Chief of Surgery(Formerly) Co-President of St. Bonaventure Hospital (Formerly) Chief of Surgery in Ukraine
Workplace:	San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital Ukraine
Title(s):	M.D. F.A.C.S.
Relationships
Family:	Eileen Lim (mother) Unnamed father Unborn child †
Significant Other(s):	Kashal (ex-husband) Neil Melendez † (ex-boyfriend) Mateo Rendón Osma (ex-boyfriend) Clay (boyfriend)
Affiliation:	Salen Morrison (enemy)
Appearances
Portrayed by:	Christina Chang
First appeared:	Not Fake
Last appeared:	Goodbye

“	I have dealt with men undermining my authority my entire career. We shouldn't do it to one another, too.	„
	― Audrey Lim

Dr. Audrey Lim was the Chief of Surgery at San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital, previously an attending trauma surgeon who replaced Dr. Jackson Han as the Chief of Surgery and Dr. Marcus Andrews after Salen Morrison gave up the hospital’s ownership. She soon became co-president of the hospital alongside Dr. Aaron Glassman when Andrews left to travel the world. Dr. Shaun Murphy eventually succeeded her as Chief of Surgery.

History

Early life

Little is known about Lim's early life, though she was said to have grown up in Taipei, Taiwan to Eileen Lim and her husband. She was married to a man named Kashal at one point, but ended up getting divorced which was supposedly because he was secretly in contact with his ex. She also had a goth phase as a rebellion against her parents and had a strong rivalry with Dr. Neil Melendez, with whom she did her residency with under Dr. Aaron Glassman. According to Neil, Lim dressed strangely and he competed against her until he realized that she was so brilliant that she wasn't competing back. Ultimately, they had a close friendship and frequently watched the Spiderman movies together.

In med school, despite being on birth control, Lim got pregnant and - not ready to be a mother - had an abortion. By the twenty-first century, she became one of the best trauma surgeons in America.

On Trinity Sunday 2011, a sick baby was left at the hospital. Lim saved her and had hoped to take her in, but was unable to for reasons unknown.

Season 1

After a shooter in an armed robbery and a young woman he shot were brought to the hospital, Lim came into conflict with resident Claire Browne for taking things personal with the shooter's racist behavior. This caused Lim to publicly berate Claire and assigned her to watch over the patient, while annoyed again when Claire kept getting frustrated with him. After the man almost suffocated when Claire was away, Lim oversaw Claire save him. When Claire did apologize, Lim not only accepted it but also told her that she did good and shared her distaste of having to save him.

Lim and Neil ended up in competition against each other where they both chose residents for them to do surgery with. Lim chose Shaun Murphy and Jared Kalu to help her with Quinn, a girl with stomach pains whom Shaun realized was assigned male at birth. Lim justly got frustrated when Shaun kept referring to Quinn as a boy instead of a girl, which does not follow medical practice of treating transgender patients. Shaun struggled due to his black and white thinking due to his autism diagnosis. The team was able to work with Quinn’s parents in treating Quinn, who needed one testicle removed to treat her testicular cancer by Dr. Andrews.

Lim was the lead surgeon on Spirit, a young girl whose heart was born outside of her ribcage and so she couldn't touch anyone. Although it was believed that they could only stop Spirit's heart from growing (which she was upset about), Morgan suggested an experimental procedure which Lim accepted and they were able to help Spirit.

Season 2

After being passed over for the position of Chief of Surgery by Andrews for secretly trying to help Mara (a young girl who was circumcised), Lim ended up in court due to a moving vehicle violation on a Ducati she had. While at the sane time she attempted to help Shaun and Morgan with a surgery they were struggling with during a 36-hour shift Lim supported, Lim ended up arguing with the judge presiding over her case which led to Lim getting fined, her license on her Ducati suspended for a year and imprisoned until the judge decided to let her out and she returned to the hospital to help Shaun and Morgan.

During her work on Santiago Benitez (who needed a kidney from his brother Armando) and Dawn Williams (who had cheating problems with her husband Todd), Lim and Neil began a burgeoning romance, starting with drinks at a bar after Andrews decided to remain Chief of Surgery which ended with them sleeping together. Eventually, Lim was working at the hospital over Christmas when she locked down the ER after a deadly virus killed two passengers from a flight from Malaysia. Lim, Shaun, Morgan and two nurses were left as the only medical personnel inside of the lockdown, particularly after Morgan's love interest, Tyler Durness, fell ill with the virus. Lim worked with Morgan to treat Tyler unsuccessfully and tried to comfort her after he died. Lim too somehow was infected and isolated herself, leaving Shaun and Morgan to treat the patients trapped in the quarantine by themselves while having to help Morgan with a bowel obstruction until Lim collapsed. Thankfully, Lim was saved and later visited by Neil.

Lim continued to recover from the virus when she found that she was facing a possible license suspension for sedating a man who wasn’t a patient during the quarantine, as were Neil and Shaun for actions they too had done. She then tried to maintain a professional distance from Neil which frustrated him, especially since she rebuffed even his friendly concern as a friend and colleague. Lim eventually admitted her own feelings for him for a long time, but feared acting upon them due to her previous failed relationship and divorce. Neil admitted to feeling the same and they decided to begin a secret relationship with each other. When Lim was finally released from the hospital, Neil picked her up and they drove off together.

Lim and Neil were soon involved in performing a face transplant from a brain dead patient onto a patient with a destroyed face. The fact that Neil chose to defer to her judgment in their initial treatment of the brain dead patient caused Lim to question their relationship, but she decided against ending it. Lim soon worked with Shaun, Claire and Doctor Jackson Han, the hospital’s new Chief of Surgery to treat a baby with severe birth defects. After Shaun's troubles with empathy led him to get into trouble with Han, Lim defended Shaun and tried to keep him out of farther trouble while at the same time, advocating that they withdraw care from the baby whom Lim feared couldn't be saved and would only die slower from their attempts to help. Though Lim was able to fix the baby's bowels, her main concern was the heart and lung troubles which caused her to apparently be beyond their ability to save and the parents agreed to discontinue treatment. However, at the last moment, Shaun came up with a way for the team to successfully save the baby.

While dismayed that Han saw that Shaun’s autism made him better suited for pathology and may have felt saddened when he eventually got fired by Han, Lim continued to refuse to disclose her relationship with Neil, even after Han's intervention cleared them both and Shaun with the medical board. Lim even panicked at the thought that Shaun witnessed them together though this proved not to be the case. At the same time, Lim treated her old friend Laura’s newborn baby who displayed signs of being abused. Despite Laura's insistence that she never harmed her baby, Lim called the police until the tests proved otherwise. Shaun ultimately exonerated Laura, determining that the baby actually had Shaken Baby Syndrome. Lim apologized to her friend for not believing in her, to which Laura made Lim realize her inability to open herself up to anyone. This made Lim decide to tell Andrews about her relationship with Neil, finally committing herself to it.

Lim and Neil soon made their relationship public by kissing in the middle of the ER, all the while she treated a patient who attacked Shaun at a bar. After Shaun collapsed from his injuries, Lim joins Neil and Claire in trying to figure out what Shaun had been trying to say about the patient's condition and rejected Claire's suggestion of waking Shaun up as it could’ve put his life in danger. At the end of the day, Andrews fired Han and rehired Shaun, leaving the position of Chief of Surgery open. It was soon given to Lim, making her the hospital’s first female Chief of Surgery, but her and Neil’s relationship continued.

Season 3

Lim's new job as Chief of Surgery made her and Neil see that they had to break up. However, the HR director recognized that they were merely pretending to do so and in reality intended to continue dating in secret as they did before while telling them that it would’ve been harder than they thought. Lim later held a staff meeting announcing the new changes she would be making, including overtime for the nurses which neither Han nor Andrews allowed. Lim also announced that third-year residents would now be able to lead surgeries instead of waiting for their fourth year of residency. Lim began to experience problems when Nurse Petringa gave her attitude when Lim couldn't afford to hire new nurses to help out. Overwhelmed, Lim sought advice from Andrews who was fired from the hospital for his actions in firing Dr. Han. His advice worked, while she offered to rehire him as the new attending surgeon, filling the vacancy left by her own promotion, and he accepted it.

At the same time she had Morgan and Park try to get her to make them the first resident to have their first lead surgery which she ultimately gave to Claire, Lim and Neil clashed when the parents of Braden Cantrell (a baby Neil had previously operated on) accused Neil of messing up Braden’s previous surgery and causing his current issues. Lim herself led the second surgery on Braden where she, Morgan and Park uncovered a second unrelated condition with the same symptoms as the first Neil fixed, exonerating him as they worked together on it. She also had Andrews trying to get her approval on an experimental procedure he considered for a patient who had the side of his face destroyed while saving a young woman on the subway which she reluctantly agreed to.

When Claire’s first lead surgery was approaching, Lim had to be there to support her but also regrettably kick her off it when Claire was trying to help her patient Michelle was having trouble with her home life but then let her back on it. She also got Shaun what was supposed to be his first lead surgery; Beth, a woman diagnosed with esophageal cancer which was supposed to be Park’s first. She was still accused by Andrews for handpicking the world's most genial patient for Shaun. She also had to deal with Beth not wanting Shaun to do her surgery, but was able to convince her still and it went ahead. Unfortunately, Shaun appeared to suffer a meltdown which turned out to be he was having trouble communicating to them a method that he had found out. He was still able to guide Lim and Andrews through it as they did the surgery, all the while Lim had to defend the fact that it was a team effort when Andrews saw it a disaster.

When Shaun was given a second chance at a lead surgery, Lim got angry at him after the surgery as he felt it necessary to kick off one of the nurses on his team, Nurse Hawks, due to his perfectionism and who would end up making a complaint against Shaun which got him into trouble with Lim (to his dismay). Lim would also have Neil perform a surgery on Patty, a pregnant woman who wanted a risky surgery to keep her baby. The baby survived, but Patty didn’t and Neil completely blamed himself for it. Although Lim constantly tried to offer comfort that he wasn’t at fault, Neil soon believed that they were both to blame as he saw that Lim only had him do the surgery because they were together. It even caused fighting between them while they were trying to help Wren, an aspiring astronaut. They were able to work together, but Lim saw that their relationship couldn’t continue and she broke up with him.

After constantly avoiding Neil, Lim informed him that an anonymous favoritism complaint had been made against him. She then became annoyed when he tried to apologize for whatever he apparently did as he told them that they could come to him which sounded to Lim like Neil was telling them not to tell her. She also worked with Shaun and Morgan on a surgery for Cory, a mute boy who needed a tube to breathe but they worked to see that he didn’t need it. She also supported an experimental surgical idea Shaun thought of to help Cory speak, all the while realizing Morgan made the complaint to try and save herself from possibly getting fired for reasons Morgan wouldn’t reveal.

Lim soon started repeatedly seeing a young girl around the hospital. Cornering her, she introduced herself as Trinity and claimed she was the daughter of a mother on the maternity ward. She then ran away from Lim who soon realized this wasn’t the case, while Trinity was soon found and confessed that she wanted to see Lim again; she was the baby Lim helped treat all those years ago. She now has a family, but Trinity had been having a hard time as she had recently gained a baby sibling and wanted to ask if Lim could take care of her. However, Lim was able to get Trinity to go back to be with her mother all the while Lim soon called Eileen.

Lim worked in trying to help Tyson, a farmer who had his arms torn off by a combine harvester. Tyson hoped that his arms would be reattached to him which Lim supported, but had to concede to a suggestion from Andrews to give him robotic replacements. She gave Morgan the lead on it after finding out that Morgan has rheumatoid arthritis and this was supposed to be her last surgery. Lim later led the HURT team to help the victims of a building collapse at a brewery. Following a failed attempt to help a boy Park had bonded with, she returned to the hospital when Claire informed her of devastating news; despite their attempts to help him, Neil had suffered internal injuries from the building collapse and he was dying. Lim soon said goodbye to Neil as they made up for how their relationship worked out. The next morning, Lim and Claire comforted each other over Neil’s passing.

Season 4

Lim and Claire Brown regularly met to mourn for Neil, but was then kept very busy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Following a spinal injury that wrecked her Ducati, Lim put it into storage and stopped riding it.

Season 5

In “expired”, a baby died due to Salen Morris’ cuts in the pharmacy department. Lim tries to help the family of the baby find justice (via lawsuit). She tries to get doctors on her side and testify against Salen. Salen demotes Lim from Chief of Surgery to an attending.

In "Sons," while retrieving more glasses for Shaun's wedding, Lim is stabbed by Villanveva's stalker Owen, leaving her fate unknown.

Season 6

Lim managed to call Andrews for help and he initiated a lockdown of the hospital. Andrews, Glassman, Shaun, Jordan and Lea rushed to the two women's aid. Shaun and Glassman argued about Lim's treatment with Glassman wanting to remove half of her liver while Shaun saw that they could save it all, arguing that Lim would’ve lost ten years of her life expectancy otherwise. When Glassman left, Shaun disregarded his orders, much to Glassman's fury. However, Shaun proved to be right and he was able to save Lim's entire liver. She later regained consciousness and thanked Shaun for saving her, but experiences complications with the damage to her heart. With Owen also needing bypass after attempting to commit suicide by cop, Andrews and Shaun were forced to operate on Lim without it. Shaun was ultimately able to help her, but it appeared that Lim's injuries had left her paralyzed from the waist down.

In "Change of Perspective," three months later, Lim returns to work where she struggles to adjust to working with her new limitations. Lim eventually finds a solution that allows her to continue to operate and receives support from Glassman who is able to empathize with her due to his own struggles following Glassman's return to work after his brain cancer. Lim later suffers an emotional breakdown over her condition, blaming Shaun and declaring that she hates him, Shaun's risky surgery to save her liver having likely caused her paralysis.

In "A Big Sign," Lim performs her own investigation into her paralysis which was likely caused by her collateral vessels bleeding during the surgery, causing Lim's blood pressure to bottom out, leading to her cord ischemia and her paralysis. Glassman finally admits that he's not fine with Shaun's decision and is actually angry at him, but Shaun did what he thought was best and Glassman doesn't want it to be a mark on his career as a surgeon. Glassman is haunted by the what if's and admits that if he'd returned in time, he would've gone with the original surgery. Lim is thankful that someone sees her side of things, but Glassman suggests that it's not either or. However, Lim isn't so sure. Lim later confronts Shaun about paralyzing her and declares that while they can maintain a professional relationship, she can no longer be friends with him.

In "Shrapnel," Lim enjoys a relaxing day off, having apparently found some peace after her confrontation with Shaun. She also grows closer to the neighbor that she had vented to about her troubles with Shaun. At the same time, although Shaun claims to be fine with Lim ending their friendship, Lea believes that he is more hurt than Shaun lets on and Glassman accuses Shaun of isolating himself and running away rather than facing his mistake. Shaun insists that he did the right thing, although he genuinely does appear to be bothered by having likely paralyzed his friend and the fallout from it. At night, while thinking about the difficult treatment of his patient who almost required an amputation, Shaun has a sudden epiphany and tells Glassman that he knows how to surgically fix Lim's paralysis.

In "Growth Opportunities," Shaun reveals that Lim's paralysis comes not from damage to her spinal cord but rather from a spinal column deformity. Shaun believes that if they can fix the deformity, Lim's cord can heal, and she will regain her ability to walk. Andrews assigns Shaun and Glassman to come up with a solution while Lim prepares for a date with her neighbor with Morgan's help. However, while she has fun, Lim discovers that her neighbor had never thought of her that way. After Shaun and Glassman come up with a solution, Danni encourages Lim not to undergo the surgery and try to get her old life back. Ultimately, Lim takes Danni's advice and rejects the surgery, devastating Shaun.

In "Sorry, Not Sorry," with the encouragement of Glassman, Shaun finally speaks to Lim about her surgery, admitting that while he's not sorry for what he did, he is sorry for the pain that he caused her and Shaun misses Lim. Lim admits that while she's still angry and trying to work through it, she does miss Shaun as well. Lim later thanks Glassman for getting Shaun to talk to her and Glassman notices signs of movement as Lim adjusts her position in her wheelchair. As a result, Shaun and Glassman realize that Lim could potentially walk again.

In "Broken or Not," after Glassman sees signs of movement in Lim, he and Shaun come up with another, less risky surgery to restore her ability to walk. With Clay's support, Lim accepts the new surgery and thanks her friends for not giving up on her. Clay also gives her an open marriage proposal.

In "Quiet and Loud," three months later, Lim is able to walk again, albeit with the help of a cane, although this is suggested to merely be temporary as Lim mentions that she is relearning how to walk after her paralysis. She is now on good terms with Shaun once again, expressing concern for Lea when Shaun approaches Lim and Glassman for help with a surgery to fix some of the issues coming from Lea's previous miscarriage, although both are annoyed by Shaun's constant hovering during the surgery. After Lea experiences complications, Glassman and Lim are forced to rush her into emergency surgery, but they are unable to find the bleeding and nearly have to perform a hysterectomy. At the last moment, Glassman finds the source of the bleeding and he and Lim are able to save both Lea and the baby, determining that the bleeding was a result of complications from the previous miscarriage that would've always occurred. However, Shaun's insistence on having the earlier surgery and then on closely monitoring Lea in the hospital afterwards had saved her life. As everyone celebrates, Shaun and Lim share a hug with each other. During this time, Lim struggles with whether or not to accept Clay's marriage proposal. Although Lim ultimately decides to table the proposal for now, she asks Clay to move in with her instead.

In "The Good Boy," Lim becomes concerned by Danni's strange behavior, only to discover that she is performing an unauthorized surgery on her friend Vince in her apartment with Asher's help after Vince got shot in the leg. Citing her advice to Lim to not take Shaun's first surgery, Danni convinces Lim to help her, explaining that Vince, who is on parole, was the first one at her side when she lost her leg. Vince explains that he came back from serving in Afghanistan with PTSD, leading him to assault a man in a bar, but he's been getting help. Lim shows sympathy for Vince's situation, likely motivated by her own experiences with PTSD. When Vince's condition drastically worsens, they are forced to rush him to the hospital where the doctors are able to save Vince's leg.

In the aftermath, Lim recommends probation for both Asher and Danni, but Andrews advocates for Danni to be fired, citing her history of disobedience going back to Danni's first surgery while Asher has acknowledged his mistakes and didn't actually do anything until he had Lim supervising him. Andrews suggests that, having almost lost Shaun as a friend this year, Lim is acting out of fear of losing another friend. Lim later places Asher on probation and she reluctantly fires Danni for her actions. However, Lim has seen to it that the bullet was "misplaced" so that Vince's shooting doesn't have to be reported to the police. Lim urges her friend to learn how to compromise sometimes, warning Danni that, if she doesn't, it will hurt her not just as a doctor, but in life as well. Although Lim is sorry that things worked out this way, Danni isn't as she has saved Vince from either dying or going back to prison, both of which would've destroyed his family. Sure that she did the right thing, Danni is willing to live with the consequences.

In "Old Friends," Lim joins Morgan and Jordan in treating Sonja, a young woman with a pregnancy that is risking her life. Morgan urges Sonja to terminate the pregnancy which will kill her otherwise, causing her to clash with Jordan who has actually had an abortion. Lim reveals that in med school, she got pregnant and had an abortion as well when she wasn't ready to be a mother. Ultimately, with the pregnancy risking Sonja's life, Jordan convinces her to have the abortion as the baby will never survive and trying is only going to kill Sonja. Afterwards, Lim offers Morgan her help with Morgan's third round of IVF rather than letting Morgan do it by herself.

At the same time, Jared returned to the hospital, now a concierge doctor and seeking Shaun's help with his client Roland Barnes. With his passion for surgery reignited by the case, Jared approached Lim as the Chief of Surgery about getting his residency at St. Bonaventure back. Lim didn't have any openings for third year residents, but did have one for a first year resident which Jared accepted and joins Shaun's team as his new resident.

Season 7

Lim treated Morgan's adopted daughter Eden and another baby who both needed the same new heart while both she and Glassman were considered for the role of hospital president following Andrews resigning from the hospital. Shaun was able to come up with a solution to save both babies while Lim and Glassman, following their attempts to get each other made hospital president, were made Co-Interim Presidents instead. Unfortunately, they both kept fighting over the workload.

In "Who At Peace," Lim and Glassman have to deal with mutual awkwardness after Glassman slept with her mother. Glassman helps Lim to see her mother in a new light and admits that Clay had broken up with her and taken a job in Chicago after Lim couldn't commit to marrying him. However, Lim insists that she's fine with her situation and her career.

In "M.C.E.," Lim decides to spend the day in bed rather than attending Asher's memorial service before getting called into the hospital for a mass casualty event. With half of the staff away at a medical conference in Cleveland, Lim places Shaun in charge with Villanueva's help while she focuses on operating on the victims of the event. However, Lim loses multiple patients despite her best efforts, including one who resembles Asher, emotionally devastating her. Eileen reveals to Lim that Lim's father had secretly suffered from clinical depression and expresses a concern that Lim may have inherited it from him given her recent behavior. Following her mother's advice to not isolate herself, Lim bonds with a patient as she treats his injured arm and joins the rest of the staff in sharing fond memories of Asher at the end of the day.

Personality

Lim had to deal with men constantly undermining her and so had a no nonsense attitude in the hospital. She is also very independent and will get frustrated and lash out against others if it's threatened, even if they're trying to help her. She won't even admit to problems she might have (including her PTSD from the Covid pandemic) for fear that she will be undermined. All throughout when she and Neil knew each other, they had a competitive attitude which Lim was able to challenge Neil with. It even got to a point where she found it weird when he stopped.

All the same, Lim made good friends with a lot of the staff; alongside Neil, these included Dr. Glassman, Shaun, Claire, Nurse Villanueva and Danni. Despite these friendships, she still had issues opening up to others but being both confronted by Laura over this and informed of her father’s depression by Eileen who thought Lim had inherited it convinced her to open up. She also likes playing the video game "Rocket League" and was stated by Neil to have had a liking for comic book t-shirts and always eating the same lunch.

Lim had some right to be angry with Shaun for the surgery he performed on her that made her disabled, but also was wrong a lot; she never appeared to think about Owen, who caused what led to Shaun doing the surgery on her. As a former trauma surgeon, she should've known that there are post-op complications but the impact she suffered caused her to see Shaun as a scapegoat. Nonetheless, she did miss Shaun and was strong enough to accept what he told her when he said he was sorry for causing her pain. After Shaun and Glassman fixed her paralysis, the two fully reconciled their friendship and Lim thanked her friends for not giving up on her. It’s also been noted that in the case that Glassman was Shaun’s father, Lim was his mother.

Trivia

• She is left-handed.
• As seen in Xin, Lim speaks fluent Mandarin.
• It's never made clear how Lim became infected with the virus in Quarantine and Quarantine: Part Two when it turned out not to be airborne. Tyler Durness became infected due to a ripped mask, but Lim had clearly been taking precautions right from the beginning to avoid infection.
• Popular theories concerning the pilot for The Good Lawyer suspected that Lim was going to sue Shaun for medical malpractice concerning his surgery on her.

Appearances

Ep.	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
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S3	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔			✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
S4	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
S5	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
S6	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
S7	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔

Gallery

Promotional Photos

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Episode Stills

Season 2

Season 3