Station 19 Season 2 Episode 14 Friendly Fire Recap: Is Ripley Dead or Alive?

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Thursday’s Station 19. Read at your own risk!]

Station 19 is determined to break our hearts before the end of Season 2. Ripley (Brett Tucker) and Hughes (Barrett Doss) finally made a breakthrough in their taboo relationship and were even tossing around the idea of getting married in order to be able to be together out in the open during Thursday’s episode, but tragedy struck before an actual engagement could be nailed down.

Ripley sacrificed himself to get a captain from another Seattle fire station out of a dangerous coffee house fire. While he initially seemed fine, the Seattle F.D. fire chief collapsed the following morning after picking up flowers to make his engagement to Hughes official. Luckily, Grey’s Anatomy‘s Glasses (Jake Borelli) was at the same flower shop and found Ripley collapsed on the sidewalk.

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The previews for the next episode confirm that Ripley is alive and show that Ripley’s case will be the center of Station 19‘s half of the next Grey’s crossover, on Thursday, May 2. But he can’t reach Hughes to tell her why he missed their breakfast, leaving her to think he was rejecting the proposal she gave him at the coffee house. Making matters worse, he’s warned that if he leaves the hospital his heart could stop.

That’s not something to be taken lightly. In fact, a smoke inhalation-induced heart attack is how This Is Us killed its patriarch, Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia). If Station 19 decides to also go that tragic route, who knows if Hughes will ever recover from that kind of tragedy. Plus, we really love them together. How about let’s not end them with such a terrible tragedy?

Station 19 returns Thursday, May 2 at 9/8c on ABC.

Brett Tucker, Station 19Photo: Mitch Haaseth, ABC