One Chicago crossover ‘death’ explained after dramatic episodes

The One Chicago crossover was a dramatic and tense three-hours of television that saw Desk Sergeant Trudy Platt “die multiple times” as she was in the operating room.

The first crossover in five years saw the teams of Chicago Fire, Med, and PD come together after an explosion in the basement of a public building leads to mass casualties, evacuations and a tunnel collapse that left first responders trapped on the L train.

The episode began with Chicago Fire, as Firehouse 51 was called to the scene after a gas explosion. Chief Battalion Officer Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) was the incident commander and Squad 3 and Truck 81 were brought in to clear victims and discover the source of the incident.

It became clear that the data center, located in the basement, was the source of the explosion, and PD’s Sergeant Voight (Jason Beghe) and his team soon realized it was a planned attack when Lieutenant Severide (Taylor Kinney) and Captain Hermann (David Eisenberg) discovered oxygen tanks.

Trudy was on the scene with the team, and she was tasked with chasing after the offenders after Severide discovered them hiding in a locked room and posing as city employees. As she apprehended one of the attackers, Trudy was shot twice in the back and in the front by a second masked assailant, and viewers saw her fall to the floor.

Trudy has never been a character to go quietly into the night, and she managed to make a call over the radio, leaving Officer Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger), Trudy’s husband Lieutenant ‘Mouch’ McHolland (Christian Stolte) and former officer Lauren Bates (Jennifer Regan) – whom we met at the beginning of the episode as a peer of Trudy’s who retired from the Chicago police force but was working private security to make ends meet – to look for her.

© Lori Allen/NBC

Mouch was the one to find Trudy, but what made it even more heartbreaking was that the pair were in a fight because he had forgotten her birthday, and assumed she had wanted to go out to celebrate his promotion. 

He had attempted to apologize earlier in the episode but Trudy was so hurt that she had blown him off. 

© Peter Gordon/NBC

She was rushed to Gaffney Medical where Doctors Ripley (Luke Mitchell) and Lennox (Sarah Ramos) were tasked with saving her life. Trudy coded several times in the emergency room, until Lennox decided to make the bold decision to stop transfusions and cool Trudy’s body to give them time to perform surgery.

In the operating room, Mouch discovers Lennox was actually performing experimental treatment, and Trudy crashed again as they attempted to bring her internal temperature back up.

© Elizabeth Sisson/NBC

As Voight returned to Gaffney to check on Trudy, Mouch and Voight were given the news that “she died multiple times,” during the operation, however the beloved Chicago PD character made it through – was there any doubt?

“The procedure worked and it was a success,” Lennox told Mouch, before taking him in to see his wife, who was able to tell Voight what had happened before she was shot, and revealed she had found a hotel key for the Crescent Moon hotel, which gave them a break in the case.

© Peter Gordon/NBC

As Mouch sat with Trudy to care for her, she told him to get back to the scene and “do your job,” and he returned to help extract Lieutenant Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo), Ruzek and victims from the tunnel collapse.

Later, as he returned to Gaffney to check on Trudy, we saw her complain as she was told that she would undergo months of recovery and rehabilitation, to which Mouch joked: “Is there something you can give her for the attitude?”