To say it’s been a rough few weeks for Ripley might be an understatement. His best friend died and he didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. Disaster then struck the city of Chicago giving him a brief distraction before he began a downward spiral that has cost him his relationship with Asher and just might end up costing him his job as well.
Then came the promo for Chicago Med season 10 episode 15, “Down a Hole,” which found Ripley putting his life on the line to help a mother and her daughter trapped in a well immediately sent fans into a panic after we saw the walls around him collapsing and a shot of Ripley lying unconscious in the dirt seemingly buried under the collapse.
As the episode begins, Ripley is driving through the woods at night when a call from Frost distracts him and he ends up hitting a car. When he gets out of his car, he finds the vehicle is abandoned and explores the nearby area calling out to try to find the driver. He begins to hear a voice calling back to him and comes upon a mother and her daughter who have fallen into an abandoned well.
Sadie, the mother, tells Ripley her daughter, Emelia, needed to go to the bathroom so they walked out into the clearing which was when Emelia fell into the well and Sadie fell in after her when trying to save her daughter. Emelia’s arm has been injured and Sadie’s mom is twisted up pretty badly and she’s begun losing feeling. Ripley assures them both he’s going to do everything he can to help as he heads back to the road to call 911 for help.
Firehouse 128 arrives on the spot and the chief taps Ripley in to help serve as their point person with Sadie and Emelia. He’s quickly greeted by a familiar face in Chicago Fire’s Mouch, who is working with the 128 team to pick up some extra shifts to get experience under his belt as he waits for a lieutenant spot to open at 51. Up on the ground, the team begins to put a plan into place to save Sadie and Emerlia but down in the well, Emeilia is beginning to panic as is Sadie but Ripley helps to talk them down.
13 hours in, news crews have gathered to cover the recovery efforts. Mouch is in a rescue tunnel trying to clear a path to reach Sadie and her daughter. When he reaches the well, Mouch begins breaking through the well wall cleaning a path to the trapped victims, and reaches Sadie. Sadie is in bad shape and she can’t feel her knee. We learn Sadie snapped her femur in the fall which ended up helping prevent her from falling further into the well. As Mouch relays updates on Sadie’s condition, Ripley informs the Chief her leg is going to need to be amputated before she’s pulled out of the well. She tells him he’s not qualified to go down and Mouch vouches for him and prepares to head down into the well.
Ripley makes his way down the rescue tunnel to Sadie who insists that Emila be treated first. He checks out her arm and realizes her arm is broken, but she’s otherwise unharmed. Emilia is scared and doesn’t want to leave her mom but after Sadie helps to push through the fear, they start the pulley to lift Emilia out of the well into reach where Ripley is able to help pull her out of the tunnel and get her safely to the surface.
Back down in the tunnel, Ripley lets Sadie know Emilia has made it to the surface as he tells her they need to talk. Sadie has some fun flirtations to break the tension as it becomes evident that Ripley needs to amputate her leg. He assures her it won’t hurt and that when she comes to, she’ll be back up on the surface with her little girl. He tells her about crashing into her car and she laughs it off as a small price to pay as it helped him to find them.
Ripley administers some medication to help with the pain which causes Sadie to drift off and gives Ripley the chance to tend to her leg. He begins the amputation process and when we next return to the well, he’s successfully amputated the leg and Sadie has regained consciousness as the firefighters begin to lift her up to safety. As they lift her, she becomes stuck and Ripley leaps into action to help free her jacket from the metal rod which it has become snagged on. Just when it looked like they were in the clear, the well collapsed on Ripley.
At Med, Goodwin gathers the doctors of Med who relays to the team that it was Ripley who called 911 and was assisting with the rescue. She’s been informed the tunnel collapsed and his condition is currently unknown with CFD trying to regain contact. Charles heads out to the site as Archer asks about Asher’s’ location so he can make sure to tell her the news personally.
Back at the site, Mouch is able to regain communication with Ripley who tells him him that he’s in an air pocket at the moment. He has some mild pain in his ankle but he’s buried up to his chest. Ripley wants to try to dig himself out, but Mouch asks him to wait for them to dig him out and not overexert himself. It quickly becomes clear that Ripley is in a really bad spot as Mouch tells him to conserve his air.
We return to Med as Archer breaks the news about Ripley to Asher, before cutting back to Ripley who is starting to fade and seems to be starting to give up. Just then, Charles comes through over the radio to coach him on the need to slow his breathing to conserve his oxygen. Ripley tells Charles that he’s okay with whatever happens and this is probably what he deserves after always letting people down. Charles gives an impassioned speech assuring him he needs Ripley and he’s not the only one. Ripley tries to respond but loses consciousness, as Charles calls out over the come trying to get a response.
As the CFD races to get to Ripley, Ripley hears a voice and is greeted by Sully who tells him that Ripley doesn’t get to die. He tells Ripley he needs to save himself. Sully recalls the moment he heard Ripley was in med school and how happy it made him as he thanked him for being there for him at the end. Sully tells him that he owes him because they’re brothers and that doesn’t change because he’s gone, as Ripley tells him how much he misses him. Sully tells him he understands that being angry is his thing and tells him to channel that anger into something positive instead of giving up as he shouts at his friend to fight, just as we hear calls from Mouch as he gets to Ripley and pulls him back to the light.
The CFD gets Ripley to the surface but he loses consciousness while being pulled out and needs emergency treatment to restart his heart. Just as things are looking dire, Asher arrives and tells him she loves him too. In the final moment of the episode, Ripley’s eyes finally open as he gasps for air, surviving the ordeal and hopefully marking a major turning point in getting his life back on track.
Elsewhere in the episode...
Glee’s Jessalyn Gilsig guest stars as former costar of Frost’s child star days
Elsewhere in the episode, Glee’s Jessalyn Gilsig drops in as Ainsley, the actress who played Frost’s mom on Nick of Time. We learn she’s in town filming a new movie where she’s playing a nurse, and Maggie quickly offers to allow her to shadow her at Med for the role. Frost and Ainsley agree to grab dinner, but as Frost leaves, it’s clear something is off.
He heads to the bathroom where we see him panicking before throwing up in the sink, suggesting that something dark might have happened between the two during his child star days.
Back at Med as they prepare for Emilia to be brought in for treatment, Maggie and Frost begin chatting and Frost mentions that he owes Ainslet a lot. He mentions to Maggie that as a teen star, there aren’t always a lot of people who have your back and hints that Ainsley was there for him when his parents were not.