We couldn’t be happier that the latest 9-1-1 episode — the first of a two-parter, “Contagion” — starts with some joy for Chimney (Kenneth Choi), Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and Hen (Aisha Hinds) considering where it ends for all three of them!
They, along with Karen (Tracie Thoms) and the couples’ kids, celebrate — and a cake is supposed to also reveal if Jee’s going to have a brother or sister. The problem? We know Maddie and Chimney are having a boy … and the cake says they’re having a girl. The bakery gave them the wrong order. Oops! The only other happy/calm moment comes when Athena (Angela Bassett) and Bobby (Peter Krause) show their new dream house-in-progress off to the kids.
Besides that, it’s non-stop action that results in every single member of the 118 being in life-or-death situations at one point. First, a bus crashes into cars, causing a pileup, and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) thinks he’s cleared the cars, only for a baby to be missing. Bobby re-checks and finds her … then is seemingly caught in an explosion. Fortunately, both Bobby and the baby are okay. But Ravi beats himself up about it, to the point that he’s considering quitting the 118. Buck (Oliver Stark) refuses to let anyone else quit this month and assures him he’s a great firefighter who just needs to get back on the horse, like he has many times before. You have to push the doubt away because the second you let it in, it’s like a virus and will eat you alive, he warns.
Speaking of viruses, in a lab designated for lethal and exotic viruses, Moira (Bridget Regan, wreaking havoc on two ABC shows, since Monica’s back on The Rookie) modifies a CCHF (Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever) strain to shorten the incubation period to 90 minutes, even as her coworkers in the lab, Allen (Brian Knoebel) and Roz (Sadie Kuwano) argue it’s too dangerous. The good news? She created an anti-viral, too. Director Banting (Sean T. Krishnan) fires her for what she’s done, and she returns to the lab, using Allen’s badge (after knocking him out) to regain access. Then, the 118 is dispatched when there’s a fire in the lab.
Banting meets them on scene and tells them about CCHF, “Ebola’s nastier cousin,” as Hen puts it, “super contagious and fatal, usually from uncontrollable bleeding.” With two employees (Allen and Roz) still inside, despite the protocols and their equipment possibly not sufficient, the 118 goes in. “When lives are at risk, we risk ours,” Bobby explains.
Maddie directs the 118 through to the lab — they find Allen along the way, and he mentions Moira’s name — then into the hot zone, where the fire is. There, Roz is trapped in the cry-room, and in order to rescue her, Buck and Chimney climb up into the vents and cut their way into the one adjacent to theirs. (“At least you won’t catch encephalitis this time,” Buck remarks, referring to what happened before Maddie and Chimney’s wedding. “Encephalitis sounds quaint compared to this stuff,” Chimney replies.)
When Buck takes Roz out of the lab, however, the rest of the 118 finds another fire and is caught up in an explosion (isobutane). The lab goes into lockdown as a result, with Buck unable to get back in to the rest of the team. What’s worse? The lack of responses to his “118, sound off!” He’s determined and desperate to find a way back in, but Maddie stops him. They can’t risk him injuring himself or anyone inside. Fortunately, she has someone on scene to help figure it out: Athena. Banting has the nerve to suggest that he should be dealing with someone else upon hearing that she’s married to the captain inside. “You’re dealing with me,” she makes it clear. But he can’t risk the very dangerous virus in the lab, that could have been aerosolized in the explosion, getting out by opening the door. All they can do, he says, is wait for the filtration system to recycle the air in the lab, which takes a day or longer.
Inside the lab, Bobby’s okay, as is Ravi. Hen, however, is trapped under a table, and Chimney’s breather isn’t on because his face mask got blown off and is now broken. Maddie, over the radio, immediately tells her husband to grab any PPE he can find before he takes another breath.
Outside the lab, Buck (once he’s been decontaminated) and Athena have Banting detail how they’ll know if he’s been infected: fever, bleeding, confusion, and tachycardia, progressing to death by organ failure or blood loss, whichever comes first. The typical incubation is three to seven days, Colonel Hartman (Rick Worthy) from US Army Infectious Diseases, says as he joins the scene. He and his team are there to get the 118 out, by building a tunnel of modular clean rooms, submicron filters, and FPM air showers from the isolation unit to the front door of the lab.
The only problem? That will take about two hours — and Hen has a collapsed lung. She needs a chest tube in the next 10 minutes or she’ll stop breathing. Chimney preps “to do thoracostomy on my best friend in a biological dungeon,” but Maddie calls him and checks on how he’s feeling. If he’s infected, he can’t risk spreading it to Hen. And so all he can do is separate himself from the others and direct Bobby into doing the chest tube. He’s successful, and Hen’s breathing clears, only for Chimney to then start coughing up blood and bleeding from the nose! “Hey, honey, not sure I’m going to make it home for dinner. I think I picked up a little bug at the office,” he tells Maddie, who immediately knows what he means and begins tearing up.
Once Hartman hears that Chimney’s showing symptoms and Roz reveals that Moira sped up the incubation period, he terminates the extraction protocols and instead orders an evacuation, including of all civilians in an eight-mile radius. (This is also when Banting reveals he fired Moria, and so the 118 spent time in the lab looking for someone who wasn’t even there.) It’s a pandemic in a bottle, and they can’t risk it getting out. As for the 118? “I’m very sorry,” Hartman tells Buck and Athena. “So what are they?” the sergeant asks. “Canaries in a coal mine?” Hartman call them “heroes,” adding, “We are thankful for their sacrifice.”
Then Roz alerts them of the anti-viral in a freezer in a lab, and Athena fills Hartman in, only for him to refuse to let them use it (so they can then use the only dose to create a vaccine). He’s willing to let the viral disease die. “Let them die, you mean,” she corrects him. But she also wasn’t asking him permission: Buck’s already directing Ravi to the freezer. Hartman orders him to stop, and when Bobby intervenes, warns that if Ravi opens the freezer, both will be facing charges of domestic and international terrorism and have beds waiting for them in a super-max prison. Bobby tries to get Ravi to stand down so he can go instead, but the younger firefighter is already there. “If you want to stop me, Colonel, come and get me,” he says to Hartman, looking right into the camera. But when he opens the freezer, it’s empty. Moira took it. And Chimney’s getting worse… Uh-oh!
