For the doctors at Chastain Park Memorial Hospital, cutting into bodies and saving human lives is actually the easy part.

The tough part? When Conrad, Nic and The Resident‘s other docs are forced to confront their messy personal lives, as they’ll need to do quite a bit in the remaining Season 2 episodes — with potentially fatal results.

“The end of the season is hardcore into our characters and their stories and big crises,” co-creator Amy Holden Jones told us at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “Not everybody does get out alive, and what will happen, I hope, will have people holding their breath.”

As the Fox drama’s sophomore run heads into Episode 14 (airing tonight at 8/7c), we grilled Jones about a possible love triangle for Nic, the still-unresolved fate of Julian Booth (and how it will affect Devon in the long run), Mina and AJ’s increasingly friendly dynamic and more. Read on for her insights.

TVLINE | There’s clearly some chemistry between Nic and Alec Shaw — what can you say about where that’s headed in upcoming episodes?

I’m not going to give you the answers to that. [Laughs] People will have to wait and see.

TVLINE | Will Nic feel conflicted as she gets closer to him?

What I will say is that it’s not going to go anywhere that people think it’s going to go, necessarily. I hope it will surprise them in many ways. Miles [Gaston Villanueva] is a wonderful actor, and at the same time we adore “CoNic,” so…. It’s been a challenge writing that and treading it without destroying any character. As an executive producer, I find the idea that you constantly break people up and put them back together a bit of a trope, a bit of a cliché. I’m instead really interested in something that I think happens in actual relationships, which is that you love each other very much and there are challenges. I’m interested in that story, of how people try to stay together when they may have different goals, they may have different ideas.

TVLINE | How does a potentially jealous Conrad respond?

It may not be what you expect. Where that story goes, believe me, you’re not going to know.

TVLINE | When will we learn about Julian’s fate?

Julian’s fate is coming up. It will be resolved. People get very impatient online.

TVLINE | Will it be in the next episode or a bit further down the line?

A bit further down the line. The next episode is the Valentine’s Day episode, and it’s kind of a standalone. It’s got a big “hashtag #JIrving” [Jessica/Irving] storyline, and a CoNic thing obviously, and there’s a big Mina reveal. And also, there’s a Kit/Bell reveal. It’s a charming episode.

TVLINE | Is Devon putting himself in serious danger now that he’s investigating QuoVadis?

Everybody is in danger with QuoVadis. QuoVadis is a very bad deal. QuoVadis is inspired by Theranos — which is a big company that had a medical device that was a complete fraud and went bust — as well as a lot of other medical device companies. The fate of QuoVadis is shortly to be revealed, and that will be taken care of before the end of this season.

TVLINE | Will Nic’s sister be a big part of the remainder of the season?

Nic’s sister is a big part, indeed. And Nic’s relationship with her sister, and Conrad and Alec, are a big part of the rest of the season. When you have multiple characters you have to balance the storylines, so that everybody has something to do, and Nic didn’t have as much to do this year because she drove things last year. As a result, she is going to have a very large part of the last four episodes — as do Kit and Bell, oddly enough.

TVLINE | Any teasers for a potential Mina/AJ romance? How long will AJ be able to hide his true feelings?

You know, a lot of people don’t want to see them as lovers, believe it or not. They want to have the dream ahead, but they’re a bit like a 19th-century novel couple, where you’re yearning for them to get together and yearning for them not to. She’s not going to graduate yet to be an attending if we get another season, so he’s got a while. AJ is a character, but he’s very moral and he has a very strong feeling in the #MeToo era of not taking advantage of his mentor relationship with the mentee. There’s only so far he can go. But they have similarities and they’re very work-driven, and in Episode 15 you’ll meet Mina’s mother, and that leads to a huge Mina crisis, where AJ provides a very important emotional role. (With reporting by Matt Webb Mitovich)