Tommy wants answers about Charles’ sudden death.
Tropes:
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Tommy is the only person in the hospital that George isn’t hostile toward, mainly because she sympathized with his situation and volunteered to help him save his son.
- Continuity Nod:
- As a nod to Tommy wanting to be a mother in “Everyone and their Brother”, the second flashback shows one such unsuccessful attempt at conception.
- In the third flashback, Tommy goes into labor several hours before she and Charles invite Judd and Grace in to celebrate Izzy and Evie’s births in “Saving Grace”.
- A Day in the Limelight: Much of the episode focuses on Tommy struggling to come to terms with her husband’s death, and figuring out how to inform her daughters.
- Due to the Dead: After changing out of her uniform, Tommy straightens her husband’s clothes, lays his hands on each other, and closes his eyes before he can be transported.
- Flashback: Tommy thinks on three memories with Charles: one where they were purchasing their house; another where he cheered her up after a failed IVF attempt; and the last where he held her hand while she was giving birth to Izzy and Evie.
- Heroic Safe Mode: With effort, Tommy tries to keep a brave face on throughout the day until she can get Charles’ autopsy report and inform Izzy and Evie about their father. She finally breaks down in Owen’s arms after the hostage situation at the hospital is resolved, and George’s son has a Big Damn Reunion with his mother and stepfather.
- I Choose to Stay: Tommy decides to stay with George and wait for his son to wake up after being warned by Owen about SWAT preparing to breach the hospital.
- Internal Reveal: Judd and Grace, on checking the 9-1-1 call history from Dispatch, hear in exact detail how Tommy discovered Charles on the floor and informed EMS of his condition after she failed to revive him.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: From what can be inferred from Tommy’s second flashback, her and Charles’ first couple of attempts to conceive children were apparently unsuccessful.
- Life Will Kill You: Tommy infers to a coroner friend that her husband might have suffered a fatal brain bleed; later on, the latter confirms that it was indeed an intracranial aneurysm, which meant Charles would have gone fast whether Tommy had come home earlier or later.
- Please Wake Up: George’s only motivation as to why he won’t let his ex-wife take their comatose son off of life support is because he believes the latter will recover. It takes an agonizing few hours after he’s reconnected to a ventilator, but he later does.
- Taken Off Life Support: George’s son, by request of his mother, is scheduled to be unhooked from the ventilators after two weeks of no response; George himself won’t have it, forcing her, her new husband, and the entire hospital staff outside at gunpoint. He then reconnects his son to life support with help from Tommy; only Owen convincing them both to surrender makes George relent when his son remains unconscious. A minute after, he does awaken, and George gets in one last moment before SWAT and APD lead him out.
