It's time to get Athena and Hen back to Earth, but how is that possible with satellites literally crash-landing on the ground? Take a look at the events in 911 season 9 episode 3.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from 911 season 9 episode 3.
The first thing everyone needs to deal with is the fire in the spacecraft. To deal with the fire, they need to vent the oxygen, but they need oxygen, too, so they need to put on the space suits in the craft. Plus, it’s a huge risk to open the door to space, but there’s too much pressure in the space craft to do that.
Well, Athena sees the escape hatch at the top, but doesn’t think of the vacuum on the outside. Fortunately, Hen thinks of it quickly enough to grab Athena so she doesn’t end up in space. With that emergency over, now they need to hope that Tripp finds a way to save them before they run out of oxygen in their suits.
Emergencies everywhere in 911 season 9 episode 3
Back on Earth, a couple argue just as a piece of debris falls out of the sky and hits a car. They should be getting out of the way of the debris, but of course, they just have to continue their argument. A piece of debris doesn’t hit the guy, though. Instead, it hits the ground, causing a ricochet into the subway where his wife had headed at the end of the argument.
Meanwhile, in space, the five civilian astronauts have to just sit, wait, and hope. They’ll be in the next area for communication in an hour, but they only have an hour and six minutes of oxygen. Now that is if there is an attempt to reconnect with the crew, because Tripp shares to the world that a rescue mission is impossible right now. He’s getting ahead of the story, while dispatchers and Karen need to figure out how to help the crew.
The 118 can’t focus on Athena and Hen, though, as they have their own emergency to deal with. They’re head to the subway to help everyone trapped underneath the rubble. I do have to question how the wife, Lori, had time to get on the train, but this is 911.
Of course, Lori is the last one trapped, and she happens to be trapped under the most rubble with a threat of the train collapsing on them. To make matters worse, her husband has come down to the train rather than following orders to stay on the platform. And on top of that, the 118 is on their own, handling yet another impossible problem.
Karen figures out how to save Athena and Hen
As dispatch attempt to find other locations that could get in touch with everyone in space, the 118 continue to get Lori out of the train. With water on the tracks, the situation has become more dire. There’s a chance that Lori’s femur has broken and that break caught an artery, leading to a much more serious situation for everyone. Oh, and a pipe bursts into the train. Great!
We get our first 911: Nashville crossover, with Cammie getting in touch with Athena and Hen as she’s now in the communication circle. Maddie has even caught up with other areas to make sure they can keep communicating. Everyone gets caught up with the bad news, but Karen has a new idea. If the team keep going up, they can get to the International Space Station. It will be a tight connection, but it’s possible.
Back on Earth, Buck leaves Cal, the husband, with Harry in the truck. The two can relate on a lot of things, and it means that Buck and the rest of the 118 can deal with the current situation.
As for Karen, she follows up with her children and May to make sure they’re up to date with the situation. Of course, they end up with an emergency of their own when a woman walks in bleeding from the head.
Chimney has to make an impossible choice
May decides to call Maddie to get some help with the situation. It is a head wound, which means there will be a lot of blood, but Maddie isn’t too concerned just yet. What she is concerned with is the amount of blood loss that could help, and May needs to figure out a way to close the wound. This is where life experiences come into play, as May realizes that she can braid the hair tight to help close the wound.
In the train, the water keeps rushing in. It doesn’t help that the city says that the water is shut off. Well, maybe a city worker needs to get down there and see the problem for himself, because that water is definitely not shut off.
Up in space, Athena passes the controls for the ship to Parker since it looks like a PS5 controller, and now it’s time to head up to the International Space Station. There is a small problem that the ISS has no idea that they’re coming because NASA lost contact with them, so it’s going to take some work to connect once they get up there. On top of that, they’ll all likely lose connection. Great!
Harry and Cal certainly have a moment to connect, but it’s more of a moment of Harry realizing that the 118 does a brilliant job on their own. Only they can do the job of saving people, and they will do everything they can to do so.
As for the 118, they need to make some difficult decisions. One of those is Eddie’s thought to take Lori’s leg to save her, but Chimney doesn’t like that. The problem is there doesn’t seem to be any other options. Chimney wants to think like Bobby, but he doesn’t see a way out either, and so he sends Ravi back to the hospital to find a surgeon for a field amputation.
Maddie has an idea thanks to May’s situation
May’s situation gets a little trickier when other patients start turning up at the firehouse. Their patient put something online, and now more people are coming in. This does give Maddie an idea for where to send patients who are trying to get to the hospital. They could send more people to neighboring firehouses.
As for Chimney, he still doesn’t want to do a field amputation, and he needs to speak with Cal about it to get his permission. It all comes back to the age old saying of you’d rather someone be alive to hate you than dead, and Cal makes it clear that he needs Chimney to do whatever he needs to do to save Lori’s life.
Back in space, there’s an issue, but not with the team. It’s about the ISS, who still has no idea the crew is coming. That means Karen needs to prep them for the docking procedure. Kern is more than happy to do it after doing it in simulators, but then there’s another problem. The ship isn’t designed to dock with the ISS, so they need to get close to an outer air lock and then step into it. Of course, they lose connection just as Karen explains it.
The 118 make the difficult choice
As ISS comes into view, Kern realizes that there’s a hatch. He can get them to about 30ft from the hatch so that they can jump into ISS. Just as they get close, there’s a bash on the side of their ship. Remember the astronaut from the 911 season 9 premiere? Well, he’s still floating around outside.
Chimney still doesn’t like the idea of amputating Lori’s leg, but he decides he will take on the job himself, making a comment about the interim captain job coming to an end. I honestly though that he was going to get a last-minute reprieve from doing it, but that’s not the way 911 season 9 episode 3 goes. Chimney has to go through with the amputation, and I adore the cuts to Harry comforting Cal through all of this. Part of me hopes that Cal realizes the best way to honor Bobby’s legacy in all of this is to join as a firefighter, even though Athena is sure to hate that idea.
It's not the idea of a save that the 118 wants to have, even if it was the right call. Chimney will shoulder this blame, and not just for Cal’s sake.
A trip to the ISS in 911 season 9 episode 3
With the dead body outside, Parker starts to panic. Tricia tries to calm him down, but it’s Athena who manages to knock some sense into him. Now that the oxygen is saved, Kern can get up to the ISS to tie the tether to the door to get everyone else to the ISS. As Parker runs out of air, he panics again, and Athena is forced to knock him out of the ship up to the ISS.
Surprisingly, everyone gets into the ISS, and now it’s time for Hen to save Parker’s life once more. Well, maybe Athena, since she decides to slap him away. Whatever works, I guess. Now everyone is on the ISS, so what’s next to save them?
Back at the firehouse, the 118 return to find plenty of people there. May has also managed to keep everything in order, and this is the first chance May has been able to tell Harry that Karen made contact with Athena and Hen.
How safe is the “safe place,” though? It’s hard to tell, but now it’s clear why NASA hasn’t been able to make contact. The woman who was inside the ISS was knocked out and has bruises everywhere and potentially a punctured lung. Hen gets her chance to use her medical skills, but in space. Hen manages to help, and now it’s time to get more bad news. The ISS has already been hit by the debris field three times, and she probably can’t withstand a fourth. But that fourth is coming.
And just has you thought the three-part arc was finished, it’s really not, and it’s turning into a four-parter. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how it all plays out.
911 airs on Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.