MBTI Type: ESTJ

Bell is logical and tactical in how he goes about things; he runs a tight ship and is concerned mostly at first with the level of care, and how much it costs to take in uninsured patients. He tries to do what he can to increase their billing, including wooing rich potential patrons. He’s good at spotting opportunities for business and taking them on, such as his various investments in start-up companies, his entrepreneurial side, his television show, and his selling of products. He knows having a shaky hand will impact his stats, so he does what he can to self-diagnose and solve the problem with medication, before turning to another surgeon for help. He works all day long, every day, sometimes doing six back to back surgeries in a row, and when he stops for a time to be a television doctor, Bell admits that he misses “cutting” (surgery) and goes back to it. This has caused him problems in his personal life; he is a workaholic, who neglected his wives and their kids, so he has a string of failed marriages in his wake. It only hits him after he sees a woman surrounded by her family at the end of her life that he has done nothing to ensure that for himself, and that causes him to reach out and try to reconnect with his abandoned stepson. The boy lashes out at him, accusing him of only wanting to reconnect out of selfishness, and Bell admits that to some extent, that is true. His low Fi does have a limited capacity for emotional connection, but he also refuses to do things that go against his conscience multiple times; he lectures another doctor about taking on surgeries and turning people into vegetables to keep his stats high. Once he does decide he cares about someone, he works hard to make sure they know about it, but he still tends to shut down on an emotional level and push people away; after his MS diagnosis, he says he is going to quit being a doctor and finds it hard to confide in Kit. His Si is strong. He specializes in a particular kind of medicine, and is known for it; he takes an interest in medical advancements and keeps up with them, but prefers to rely on what he knows. Bell also trusts what seems proven, sometimes before he should; he gets involved with medical companies and people who turn out to be deceiving him, but in his eagerness to trust them and make money, he forgot to ask questions about their ethics. He trusts what statistics and reports tell him, including almost pulling his funding from an all natural remedy that turns out to have been “okay.” When he misses family, he goes back to people he used to know and tries to reconnect to them rather than starts over with someone else.

Enneagram: 3w2

Bell starts out a toxic 3 in that he puts his reputation ahead of everyone and everything else, including the safety of his patients; he kills someone with a mistake in the operating room, then covers it up to protect his OR record. But as the series goes on, Bell has the biggest growth arc of any of the characters. He continues to be aware of and attentive to his reputation (he’s mad when he gets accidentally put in coach by a new assistant; since “I don’t fly coach”), but he also grows a sense of moral responsibility to others and chooses numerous times to do the right thing, even though it gets him demoted or looks bad. He enjoys being in front of the camera and is a likable doctor with his own television series. After stepping down as the head surgeon, he later competes with AJ for the same position. Both of them, hilariously, do a surgery together in which they are patting themselves on the back the entire time for being “so good.” But Bell also has an ability to adapt and a desire to improve his performance; when an outside consult tells him he could learn to stitch with both hands other than just his left, he practices and then employs the tactic in the OR to improve his speed, and he also relies more on the nurses like she told him to. (A 3 seeing what improves performance and doing it.) Part of this is him growing into his 2 wing and caring about people on a genuine level, rather than just telling himself that he’s a good person with pure motives. Bell struggles a lot from 3 related problems as well, including multiple failed marriages and divorces, having fallen out of contact with his stepson, etc. But he sets out to make most of those things right.

Interested in finding out your type? Get 16 Kinds of Crazy: The Sixteen Personality Types today! Or learn all about your Enneagram type in 9 Kinds of Quirky: The 9 Enneagram Types!