'Stitchers' recap: 'Fire in the Hole'

The opening scene this week was quite intense. Kirsten walks into the Stitchers lab to find an alarm blaring and everyone running about frantically. Cameron gets her and tells her she has to hurry to help him and she goes running after him into a room full of people waiting to wish her a happy birthday. Obviously, she’s not very impressed, but then a real alarm goes off. Perhaps there will be some excitement after all.

It’s a new case. A woman who did research on deadly viruses suddenly killed herself, and the team is instructed to find out why. While prepping for the stitch, Kirsten inadvertently discusses Liam’s proposal with Camille over the lab radio. Oops! Now everyone knows and Cameron is obviously upset she didn’t tell him.The, Fischer shows up under special instructions that he’s not even allowed to tell Maggie. So, she’s not happy either.

When this case was first introduced, Camille mentioned that it probably wasn’t a good idea to bring in the corpse of someone who works with deadly viruses. Seems like she was right. The woman evidently injected herself with the highest potency of mutated version of Spanish Flu from a vial that was labeled “temperature controlled.” It is probably also significant that her body was found in a scalding hot shower, and the heat in her apartment was cranked all the way up. She also left a suicide note that instructed whomever found her to cremate her body within 24 hours. This is not looking good.

While Kirsten was in the stitch, lab sensors picked something up. Maggie then puts the lab under emergency lockdown. The only problem is that she previously cleared the lab of all nonessential personnel AFTER the body was brought in. Kirsten remarked that the woman’s body just then went symptomatic. So, my guess is that she tried a vaccination that didn’t work, then killed herself and asked her body to be cremated in an attempt to keep it from spreading. Too bad nobody followed her instructions.

Maggie reaches out to Turner (her boss) but only gets roundabout “I’ll see what I can do” responses. He then tells her that no matter what, Kirsten must survive and to put her in isolation. Kirsten expectedly refuses, and insists on being stitched back in so that she can find the formula to the vaccination the woman created. The hope is that they can build upon it to make it effective. Magically, Maggie agrees.

In the stitch, Kirsten watches the woman draw out the chemical composition of the vaccination. When she comes out, she recreates the drawing, but it may be too late (or would be if the show hadn’t just been picked up for a second season). Linus breaks out in a fever, and their research indicates that death can follow the onset of symptoms within hours.

It turns out that the only way to work on the vaccination is to have a blood sample of a person infected, but pre-symptomatic. Fortunately, they got a blood sample from the woman, but unfortunately it is in the medical lab which is sealed off. There is, however, an old ventilation shaft that leads into it. Now Kirsten is feverish, so Camille is the one who goes through the shaft. Just when it seems as though things might work out, something else goes wrong. It seems that they’ve lost communication with Camille, but really she just freaked because she saw a rat. She eventually makes it through the shaft, opens the door from the inside, and they get started on testing. However, time is of the essence. They finally get the information input into the supercomputer, but instead of providing a miscalculation, it indicates that the vaccination was correct. So, why didn’t it work? Maggie tells them it’s time to say their goodbyes.

Since Maggie thinks they are all dying anyway, she gives Kirsten the other half of the picture of her mom and Ed. If you don’t remember, it was Maggie that had been torn out of the picture. She admits to Kirsten that her mother and Ed were some of the original designers of the Stitchers technology. Ironically, Kirsten isn’t happy at receiving this news since it basically undermined what she believed about her parents and what little she actually did remember.

Cameron keeps harassing Kirsten to call Liam and tell him “goodbye,” but she stubbornly refuses, insisting that it will waste valuable time needed to figure out how to keep them alive. It finally dawns on them that it was the heat that activated the vaccination serum, and putting her corpse in the chilled container for stitching allowed the virus to survive and spread. They cranked the heat, and called in Fischer to get the serum from the woman’s lab. Thank goodness he was able to get it. Despite the fact that he almost died trying to get it to them, everyone ended up ok. Her serum worked and the high heat killed it off. In the end, Kirsten says it was the best birthday ever. The only think is, who knows if she was being serious or joking!

Top image courtesy of INFphoto.com