How NBC's Chicago Crossover Put Several Major Characters Through The Wringer
45 minutes ago
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the crossover episodes of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med and Chicago P.D. Please head over to one of our other lovely articles until you've caught up with all three shows!
The major crossover this season between Chicago Fire, Chicago Med and Chicago P.D. didn't disappoint when it came to drama and outright tragedy. And, the three shows managed to put some major characters through the wringer in some truly unexpected ways. Let's start with Jay and Will Halstead. We found out yesterday that one of the major plots of the crossover would involve the brothers looking for their dad, Pat, who they just so happened to have moved to the downtown high rise which became an inferno during the event. Well, the drama kicked off early for the two when the call came in for fire crews to head to Pat's building.
Jay arrived on the scene early, and informed Boden that his dad, who just had a quadruple bypass a few weeks ago, lived in the building in apartment 23C, but neither Jay nor Will had been able to get in touch with him. While Boden relayed the information to his crew, who were searching the building to get people out, Jay called Will to say that so far there'd been no sign of Pat. It wasn't long before Casey got the chance to search Pat's apartment, and saw that it was empty, leaving the brothers wondering where Pat could have been.
Meanwhile, Cruz helped a young woman named Chloe and her dog, Rizzo, get out of their apartment and sent them to go with Otis and the group of people he was leading out of the building by way of a stairwell. In Otis' group is a young mother holding her baby; she questions the slowness of leaving this way, noting that there's also some smoke in the stairwell, and asks Otis if it would be better to take the elevator. Otis offers to carry her son for her, which she declines, and tells her that the stairs are the only safe way out of the building. But, when Otis and his group get to the lobby, he and Chloe realize that she and her son aren't with the rest of the group, leading Otis to tell Boden they have a missing mother and child and that they need to look for them.
As Casey does his search, he realizes that fire is traveling along the wires in the building, meaning that it's moving faster that they thought it would. This leads Boden to call for everyone inside to get out of there ASAP, and, soon after, the stuck elevator that Otis is trying to call to the lobby finally comes down. Unfortunately, when he goes over to it, it opens on a smoky, charred scene with the missing mother and her baby huddled in the corner, where they were burned alive. When Otis tells Boden about it, he's near tears, and takes off his gear angrily to head outside.
Cruz and Severide are about to heed Boden's warning and leave the 23rd floor when Cruz hears yelling. They realize that a kid is stuck on the 20th floor, where the fire started, and he's yelling through the vents for help. While they head down to find him, Herrmann and Kidd get to 20 and help the crew with the hose try to tamp down the fire enough for Severide to get the boy out of the apartment he's stuck in. The fire is getting worse, though, and Severide decides to take the boy out the window in a risky move. Just as he radios out to Herrmann and Kidd that they should leave and meet him down a few floors, Kidd runs out of oxygen and passes out.
Casey, meanwhile, is on the 25th floor and manages to find Pat in an apartment with a friend of his, and both men are still awake, but incapacitated. It turns out that Pat had gone up to try to get his friend (who uses a wheelchair) out, but the smoke overtook both of them. So, Pat and his friend are safe now, and Severide gets the boy to safety, but when they get Kidd outside, she's not breathing and has to be intubated. At the hospital, Severide takes out his frustration over Kidd's condition on Herrmann, who says she was just trying to save him. As April and Ethan work on her, she wakes up briefly and then passes out again, with Ethan realizing she's begun bleeding into her airway.
Connor tells Severide that the only way to stop Kidd's bleeding is to take one of her lungs, but Severide says she can't be a firefighter anymore with one lung and that would destroy her. But, Connor says since they can't get in touch with her family, the doctors have the right to do it anyway and Severide gets belligerent, with Ethan calling security (against April's wishes) and having him escorted out.
Pat is being checked out at Med while Will and Jay give him a hard time for trying to be a hero while still recovering from bypass surgery. Pat tells Jay this was all his fault for putting him in that building and says he had no right to sell his house and he just wanted his money, which leads Jay to reply, "You don't have any money, you thankless old prick," and leave the room while Will stands by and doesn't say a word. Later, Pat crashes, and with no other doctors available, Will goes to work on him. He does get his pulse back, but it takes five minutes, and when they consult with a neurosurgeon they find out that Pat is brain dead and has only a 1000 to one chance of coming back to them. This leads to Will and Jay arguing, because Will wants to let him go while Jay wants to give him a chance to wake up.
To Will's surprise, Gwen comes to them and says the hospital is willing to use their resources to keep Pat alive as long as the brothers want. This gives Jay some hope, but when Will looks into it, he realizes that Pat had his surgery 29 days ago, and if he dies right now, the hospital will have to count it as a fatality, so Gwen is just trying to keep Pat alive long enough to keep his death out of their records. When Will tells this to Jay and says they have to let Pat go, he punches him, but later agrees, saying that he knows Pat isn't going to get better.
If you think Otis is alright after losing that mother and son, you'd be mistaken. Dr. Charles sees him trying to get something out of a vending machine, stumbling and shaking, but Otis says it's just because he hasn't eaten. Later, Otis is talking to Maggie when he falls out and begins hyperventilating. When Dr. Charles checks him out, all his vitals are fine, leading him to tell Otis that, because he got shot earlier this year, and from the stress of the day, he probably has PTSD. He says he'll keep it out of his chart if he comes in a few times a week for therapy, but Otis tells him to put whatever he wants in his chart because he can't be a firefighter with PTSD who needs therapy, and notes that even though he can't stop seeing the mom and her baby in his head, every firefighter has something like that and they all just cope with it and keep working.
Connor is ready to operate on Kidd, but after Severide and April galvanize the firefighters to try to talk him into trying anything else to stop the bleeding, he decides to try locating the bleed and only removing a small portion of her lung, much to Ava's disapproval. After some trouble in the OR, though, the procedure actually works, and Connor reveals that Kidd should be back to work relatively soon.
If you are stunned at the amount of difficulty many of our favorite characters were put through during the crossover, I can bet you're not alone. And, I won't be surprised if repercussions from the events of the crossover continue to linger in the weeks to come. You can catch Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. every Wednesday on NBC, starting at 8 p.m. EST.
