Fire Country Season 1 Episode 15: False Promises

Sharon's surgery is going ahead: she is going to get a new kidney from Jake. Jake is like a son to her and his mother was a great friend, so it is a happy situation all around. Her actual son is not even angry, and he gives Jake his blessing to go ahead with the surgery. Bode wants his mom to live more than he wants to save the day; he is in prison and will be for a while, so he could not have donated a kidney himself anytime soon, and Jake is the next best thing — he does not drink in excess and is in the prime of his life.

Bode is not worried about the surgery, and neither is Sharon. It is Vince who is afraid, dwelling on the what-ifs: what if something goes wrong during surgery, what if Sharon never wakes up during post-op. He hates that Sharon is not thinking about those things, because Sharon is off making jokes and signing off on the paperwork for the surgery. She agrees not to sue if she dies, and she signs paperwork explicitly stating that she does not want to stay on a ventilator if something goes wrong.

Sharon watched her own father kept alive by machines long after the soul had left, and she does not want that for herself — nor does she want to put Vince in a position where he has to decide when to take her off life support. But making jokes about it is too much for Vince, and he is glad to get called into work.

He is called to the docks, where Gabriela and Manny are. Manny came in on a fishing boat, and it turns out he is a deckhand on it. Manny has money troubles — he is a gambling addict who owes a lot — and although he does not owe loan sharks, he did borrow from his friends and his own daughter. He has been trying to pay off his debts by joining a fishing boat, and he had told no one; they only learn about it when they see him on the boat. His daughter had been worried he was gambling again and had even left a threatening message to cut him out of her life if he was, and then she saw him.

She wonders what he is doing on that boat and does not like that her father, a fire captain, lets the boat's owner talk to him however he likes, so she tries to tell him he is better than this. He tells her he did not raise her to look down on an honest day's work: he is working to get out of debt, not for fun, and he just needs the extra money. He would not have known anything about the boat either if another deckhand had not caught his hand in the shredder.

Manny assists the firefighters in helping his friend while leaving his usual crew in Eve's hands. Eve takes over the fire camps, which are supposed to be doing some deforestation; the trees are unsafe because of a recent fire in the area. They are walking among rotting trees when one falls on Eve. Bode does his best to rescue her, and to fully free her from the tree Rebecca has to climb under it to reach Eve's leg. Rebecca frees Eve, but she is hit when the tree moves, and her life is in danger — she is bleeding internally.

They use up their only board on Eve, so Bode radios it in and gets his mother; Sharon delays her surgery to navigate a rescue team for Bode, and the helicopter cannot land because the trees are in the way. The tree that fell had only fallen because another team cut it and had not marked it; had they marked it, Eve would have stayed away from it and Rebecca would not have been hurt.

Rebecca, aware that she could die, tells Freddy that she has handed his case over to the Innocence Project; they are still reviewing it, but she thinks he might get the chance to fight his case again. The EMTs eventually reach them, but by then Rebecca has lost consciousness. She starts to code, and they lose her: Rebecca dies. She had helped Bode apply for a furlough before her accident, and his furlough does come through — which only reminds him of his loss, since he lost a great friend when Rebecca died.

He is tempted to do something stupid when he hears about the furlough and that he could be with his mom during her surgery, but he buries his pain to go be there for her.

Only the surgery never takes place. Jake reacts badly to the anesthesia and almost dies — a miracle that he does not — and he can no longer be approved to do the surgery, so Sharon has to wait for a new donor to get her kidney. Sharon is tempted to give up: she does not want to get her hopes up again only to be disappointed, so she stops telling jokes. And Manny later learns he is a person of interest in an arson investigation.

The reforestation rescue ends in loss: Eve is freed, but Rebecca dies of internal bleeding after being struck by the moving tree. The planned transplant also fails to happen — Jake reacts badly to the anesthesia and nearly dies, so he can no longer be approved as Sharon's donor.

The episode leaves several threads unresolved. Sharon must now wait for a new donor, and she has stopped telling jokes, suggesting she is close to giving up. Bode's furlough has come through, but how he uses it — and how he carries Rebecca's death — is left open. Manny has learned he is a person of interest in an arson investigation, a development whose consequences are not resolved within the episode.