This was a special non-fiction episode which told, in their own words, the real stories of the police officers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency services personnel, and their families in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The regular starring cast members did brief introductions to each of this documentary's segments, which featured the real police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and emergency services personnel who work as part-time technical advisors and cast members, including Billy Walsh, in the production of every regular Third Watch episode. This episode has only aired twice,[as of?] the first time being its original air date and the second being on the first anniversary of the attacks, where it aired on A&E. On March 27, 2002, this episode received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting. Molly Price, who plays Faith Yokas, did not do a segment introduction. Instead, she was interviewed in one of the segments since her husband is firefighter Derek Kelly who was involved in the rescue operation and plays D. K. on the show.

On September 10, 2001, Ty and Sully are in Atlantic City on the eve of Sully's wedding to Tatiana. Kim sinks deeper into depression. Bosco searches for anything to do after someone lets out the result of the Giants game he had taped to watch after shift. Jimmy keeps trying to catch up on some sleep after nursing a sick Joey. What each character was doing the morning of September 11, 2001:*Doc (at 6 a.m.): Starting to renovate his new house.*Bosco: At a girl's apartment in Chelsea. A plane is heard flying over the apartment.*Faith and Fred: In the subway. The train comes to an emergency stop. They are next seen outside the subway, Faith gets a ride in a patrol car after showing her badge and I.D. while giving instructions to Fred involving the children.*Jimmy and Alex: Finishing their double shift, in which the call for the explosion was announced. They are next seen getting the equipment on board their fire truck with everyone from both shifts.*Kim: At home. Her mom calls her and tells her to turn the TV on. She is next seen running toward the fire station.*Sully and Ty: In Atlantic City; they are in a casino. Both see a crowd of people at a bar, watching the TV set. They watch what is going on TV, then immediately start running out.

It is September 21, 2001, and the squads continue to battle through their emotions and their misgivings about their hero status, while working double shifts and spending every free moment at "the pile" searching for the missing. Kim returns to work and teams up with Doc, which allows an emotionally frayed Alex to return to paramedic duty; an exhausted Sully attempts to co-exist with his prospective in-laws while he waits for an opportunity to marry Tatiana.

After a despondent woman steps off an eight-story apartment building, the squad finds themselves in a race to transport both the woman's heart and a dying girl to a local hospital in time to save the youngster's life. The suicide hits home for Faith as she comes to grips with her own ongoing medical problems, while Doc expresses concern over the emotional effects this case will have on Kim, despite her constant reassurance that her accident was not an attempt to kill herself.

Even though his co-workers want to nominate him for the "Paramedic of the Year" award, a pensive Doc is disheartened as he considers his unfulfilled life. He later teams with Kim as they try to save a heart-attack victim while fending off a woman wielding a meat cleaver. In addition, Doc tries to minister to a chronic old drunk and a teenaged girl who attempts suicide in her bathtub. Meanwhile, Faith secretly undergoes a procedure to determine if the lump in her breast is cancerous, leaving an unsuspecting Bosco assigned to a nervous rookie cop; Kim reluctantly consults a lawyer about Jimmy's intention to claim custody of Joey.

During a sweep for prostitutes, Faith and Bosco tragically misjudge a sexual encounter between a young woman and a man in a car to be consensual; the situation spirals out of control when the girl later claims she was sexually assaulted while the cops laughed it off; Carlos considers a willing Ty as a potential roommate candidate.

Bosco runs from the present and his past when he is wrongly suspected of murdering a sexual-assault suspect. As Faith tries to gather evidence to clear him, Bosco turns to his dysfunctional family, including his alcoholic mother, drug-addicted brother and estranged, abusive father. An emotionally rattled Kim virtually kidnaps Joey from Jimmy while Carlos actively solicits Ty to be his new roommate.

Still locked in a custody battle over Joey, Jimmy and Kim meet with a court-appointed evaluator and plead their cases. When Sully and Tatiana visit his mother at her nursing home, Tatiana expresses concern over the quality and cost of his mother's care. Convinced that she can do a better job of taking care of her at home, she signs her out and moves her in with them. Sully is shocked and displeased, and tells Tatiana that it will be too difficult for her to take care of his mother. Alex tries to stay busy to avoid dealing with her feelings about her father's death. Eager to fill empty hours and maintain the brave front her father insisted upon when she was growing up, she works extra shifts and even helps Carlos and Ty move into their new apartment. While Carlos is downstairs unloading the truck, Alex takes Ty up on his previous offer to talk and asks him about his father, who also died in the line of duty. She shows him a chain that she wears around her neck which contains her father's 20-year service ring and the St. Florian medal he gave her the day she passed the department exam. Soon after the shift begins, an immense explosion rocks a local diner and ruptures a gas main. After everyone is evacuated, Alex realizes that her chain has fallen off in the diner, and she goes back inside to retrieve it. Just as she finds it, she sees a little girl trapped under fallen equipment and calls for help. The girl begs Alex to stay with her and she does, even though it means disobeying a direct order from Lt. Johnson to leave before there is another explosion. Johnson and Doherty finally free the girl and Alex rides with her in the ambulance. Ty joins Alex at the hospital as she watches the girl sleeping; she asks him more questions about the loss of his father and finally begins to open up to him about her fear and grief. Doc later takes Alex to task for disobeying Lt. Johnson's order, puts Carlos on the schedule in her place for the double she signed up to work that evening and sends her home to get some rest. Jimmy and Kim cool down and agree to celebrate Joey's upcoming birthday together, even if it is just for one day. Alex goes to Ty's apartment. Sully tucks in his mother, and Yokas tucks in Charlie. In the last scene, Ty is shown holding Alex in the shower.

Alex wants Ty to keep their relationship quiet. When Carlos almost walks in on them, he is so shocked and happy that Ty is straight that he fails to realize the girl is Alex. Carlos lets Ty know that Jason Christopher is the one who told him that Ty was gay. Faith finishes her radiation treatments and is in poor shape, but ignores Dr. Case's advice to take some time off. When everyone notices how sick she looks at the beginning of the tour, she lies and says she caught a bug from her kids. Later, Sully and Ty are called to rescue a family that has been shot and left for dead in the river. When they arrive at the scene, the father, Jared McKinley, tells them that they were abducted, robbed, driven to the river and shot. Hoping to locate some witnesses, Sully and Ty run a check on the license plates of the cars parked along the river and find that one of the cars was registered to McKinley, which makes him their prime suspect in the shootings. While McKinley is being treated at the hospital, a dispatch about holding him for questioning comes through, which he overhears. McKinley escapes by pushing Doc through a plate glass window and stealing a car parked in the ambulance bay. Doc pursues him on foot until Sully and Ty drive up to the hospital and begin to follow him. McKinley leads them on a high-speed chase, and evades them when Sully and Ty become involved in a multi-vehicle accident. Bosco and Faith take up the chase, first by car, and then on foot when McKinley crashes into another car and runs from the scene into a nearby apartment building. Barely able to keep up, Faith repeatedly asks Bosco to wait for the backup she has requested and collapses on the stairs, forcing Bosco to press on alone. Bosco finds McKinley behind an open door; they struggle fiercely until McKinley manages to get Bosco's gun and shoot him in the chest. Faith comes to the open door, tells McKinley that she needs to check on Bosco, and offers to put her gun away if he will put down Bosco's gun. As he raises Bosco's gun to shoot her, the ESU team on an adjacent roof shoots and kills him. Back at the hospital, Bosco is treated for a broken rib and Faith finally tells him the truth about her cancer treatments. Doc has been named one of the finalists in the "Medic of the Year" contest, and is being followed and filmed by a documentary crew from the Trauma Response tv show. The crew is a nuisance to everyone but Carlos, who tries to get on camera as much as he can. At the scene of Sully and Ty's MVA, a young teenager who was a passenger in one of the cars is not breathing; Kim is having trouble intubating him. Since they must do something quickly, Doc goes against regulations and removes the boy's cervical collar to do so. At the hospital, they discover the boy will recover, but is now a quadriplegic. Later that evening when Doc views the documentary crew's footage of the accident scene, he realizes that he caused the boy's quadriplegia when he removed the cervical collar.

Faith returns to work from a few days off. She apologizes to Bosco for hiding her illness and promises never to shut him out again. Filled with guilt, Doc begins to second-guess himself on every call. Kim reminds him that Ryan would have choked to death had Doc not removed Ryan's collar and intubated him. She also tells him repeatedly that everyone makes mistakes, but her words do not seem to have any effect. He begins to visit Ryan daily, clinging to the slim hope that the paralysis may only be temporary. Doc's prayers are answered one evening when Ryan is able to move his fingers. Kim and Doc treat a junkie whose boyfriend maintains that she was injured in a fall. When it becomes apparent to them that her injuries were caused by a beating, the boyfriend flees the scene. Soon after they arrive at the hospital, she dies, and the hunt is on for her killer. With some time on their hands, Bosco and Faith decide to roust some junkies. They make an arrest and bring the perp into the station house, where he collapses. When Doc and Kim answer this call, they discover that Bosco and Faith's prisoner is the man who beat his girlfriend to death. Meanwhile a young firefighter, Kyle Prescott, comes into the station house to try out for the squad. The mere sight of him irritates Alex, who is concerned that his presence means that she will not return to firefighting. Lt. Johnson agrees to take her back on the squad and finds a paramedic to replace her. This eases her anxiety about Prescott, and she later engages him in conversation. He tells her that he worked with her father, and lets her know that her father was very proud of her; she finally softens her demeanor towards him. While Jimmy watches him play in the park, Joey falls from the monkey bars and breaks his arm. Jimmy takes Joey to the ER and seeks to minimize the accident to assuage his feelings of guilt. When Kim finds out about Joey, she becomes very upset, despite being told by Jimmy and Ty and Sully that it is no big deal for a little boy to break a bone. She considers telling her attorney about the accident, but realizes that children have accidents that cannot always be prevented. The squad is called to a burning house where two children and a baby sitter are trapped. Jimmy and Prescott easily rescue the sitter and the infant, but Jimmy gets trapped by the flames when he attempts to rescue Max, a little boy the same age as Joey. Walsh and D. K. get Jimmy and the boy out safely. When Jimmy visits Max in the hospital, his parents are extremely grateful, but Max wants nothing to do with him. After his shift is over, Jimmy goes to Catherine's house to check on Joey and finds Kim there. He visits briefly then leaves. As he stands outside, he calls his answering machine on his cell phone and hears a message from his attorney that the judge is going to award him sole custody of Joey. He looks through Catherine's window with a pained expression on his face as he sees Kim and Joey cuddled up together on the couch.

Ryan is now walking during his physical therapy sessions. Carlos decides to take a ride on the fire pole and falls, losing consciousness. Doc, Kim and Alex bring him to the ER where he is finally awake and combative. Dr. Thomas admits him to the hospital for observation and the nursing staff settles a score with Carlos by putting him in a room with Rodger, a drunk he brought in the day before. Rodger is alternating between screaming, crying, whimpering and non-stop talking ? all at the top of his lungs. He is going through delirium tremens and cannot be sedated because he admits to being drunk since 1987. While Doc is in the ER filling out the paperwork on Carlos, he runs into his old partner, Jerry Mankowitz. Jerry insists upon taking him out to dinner, during which Doc opens up to him about removing Ryan's cervical collar. He admits that he was jealous of all the attention the documentary crew gave Carlos, and wonders if he was playing to the camera when he removed the collar. Jerry tells him that he did the right thing by saving Ryan's life and to stop visiting him and drawing attention to his unusual interest in his case. Doc has Kim and Alex partner up for the day, which works out very well. When they go out on a call to treat a man injured in a bar fight and run into Sully and Ty, Kim notices a vibe between Alex and Ty. When Kim asks her about it later, Alex admits that they are involved. When Tatiana leaves Sully's mother alone for a few minutes to go to the store and get some milk, Mrs. Sullivan gets a bad burn on her arm. In the ER, Dr. Thomas tells Sully that her injury is severe and may require surgery, and is complicated by her previously undiagnosed diabetes. He admits her to the hospital and tells Sully that she needs to go to a nursing home when she is discharged. Sully overcomes his initial anger at Tatiana for leaving his mother alone when he sees how devastated and sorrowful she is over his mother's injury. Bosco drags Faith along to do surveillance on Charlie B, a drug dealer he has been trying to get off the street. Bosco popped him five times while Faith was out sick, but could never find his stash. The surveillance pays off and they bring Charlie and the drugs into the stationhouse. Looking for bigger fish to fry, Bosco convinces him to set up his distributor in exchange for getting the charges against him dropped. Charlie sets up the meet in a parking lot but when the distributor arrives, Bosco is shocked to discover that it is his brother Michael. Unable to sleep, Carlos wanders the floor and sees Ryan saying goodbye to Jerry Mankowitz. After Jerry leaves, Carlos tells Ryan that they worked together until Jerry was shot on the job; Ryan reveals that Jerry is now working as a private investigator for his personal injury attorney.

In his ongoing quest to join the SWAT team, Bosco befriends an embittered but wily squad veteran, Glen Hobart, who instructs him in the art of distance shooting. When Hobart's emotional problems cause him to lose control, Bosco must endure his mentor's self-destructive tendencies. Meanwhile, Carlos is repulsed when he learns about Alex's sexual relationship with Ty. The cops search for an armed and drug-addled thief, and Faith's latest scary incident on patrol prompts her to ponder taking the test to earn a desk job as a sergeant.

Hurt and betrayed, Doc confronts Jerry Mankowitz for tricking him into confiding vital information about a pending malpractice suit by not revealing that his old partner is now working as an attorney's investigator. Doc later responds to an emergency involving a near-frozen, comatose elderly woman trapped in ice and in doing so, is reminded that his job is worth the legal fight ahead. Meanwhile, Carlos worries that he got the wrong telephone number from his latest romantic conquest, Faith thinks that troubled Bosco has lost his enthusiasm for police work and Jimmy struggles to act as both mother and father to Joey.

Bosco is giving Faith the cold shoulder and he teams up with Ross for patrol. They get a call for a drive-by shooting involving C-Note's brother. Faith teams up with rookie Gusler; they investigate a murder perpetrated by the Russian gangsters witnessed by an elderly man; in the next episode he becomes a victim himself after testifying to the police. Tatiana's son is admitted to the ER after being beaten by Russian gangsters. She begs Sully not to confront them. Sully and Davis do so anyway, and get ambushed by C-Note's gang when Davis gets shot.

The police officers sort through the carnage and count their dead in the wake of a shootout between rival gangs. While Faith tries to interrogate Fyodor Chevchenko, a ruthless Russian mob boss, Sully worries about the severely wounded Ty and regrets causing the incident. Tatiana chastises Sully for hassling her injured son. Faith worries about Gusler, her ineffective, frightened rookie partner and a weary Doc gets some unexpected good news about his medical malpractice suit.

During the investigation of the gang shootout, the police officers are questioned and presented with evidence which suggests that Ross was killed by friendly fire. Carlos learns that Vangie is dead and that he is the father of the baby her sister leaves at the firehouse. On the first anniversary of Bobby's death, Kim quarrels with Jimmy over her visitation with Joey and confronts a female gang during a call. Doc is visited by the father of a former patient whose debilitating injury may have been caused by Doc's error during treatment.

Bosco's emotional turmoil escalates when he begins to experience panic attacks and flashbacks, but he denies there is anything wrong. After he has a panic attack while driving the patrol car and nearly causes a crash, Sully insists that Bosco see his friend Brian O'Malley, a therapist and a former cop. Bosco angrily resists O'Malley's suggestion that the panic attacks and flashbacks to the incidents with Shaquana Golden, Jared McKinley and Glen Hobart are the result of September 11 post-traumatic stress disorder, and storms out of the counseling session. His personal crisis comes to a head when he is suspended from duty for a week and ordered into mandatory counseling for punching a suspect already in custody. Shaken, he visits Faith at home and finally breaks down, relating the horror of watching people fall to their deaths from the Towers, unable to help them, ashamed that his fear left him frozen and unable to go back and help anyone else for several hours. Carlos starts an open adoption process for Kylie, but fails to follow through on appointments as he becomes more attached to her. Ty pitches in to help with the babysitting, and saves Kylie's life when she suddenly becomes very ill and stops breathing. Fred invests his hopes for a better future for his family on Faith's passing the sergeant's exam, and reacts angrily when he learns that Faith's preoccupation with Bosco's well-being may have caused her to fail it.

Tatiana is still missing; Sully continues to search for her while grieving her loss. When he comes upon the body of a six-year-old girl in a box on a curb, he becomes strangely unnerved. Haunted by this sight and by thoughts of the mistakes he has made recently, he takes the rest of the day off sick, and winds up in a local restaurant where he finds his parish priest. They ruminate on the nature of guilt, absolution, forgiveness, faith and the intercession of God as they recall the fate of another man who also made mistakes and tried to fix them, and whose life ended tragically at Sully's hand. Sully finally comes to a place where he can forgive himself and go on with life, and seeks out Davis to once again beg his forgiveness and reaffirm their connection to each other.

Hopelessly in love with Kylie and concerned that she will lose her Latina heritage if she is adopted by a white couple, Carlos considers raising her until he realizes that they can give her the sister, grandparents and extended family that he cannot; Kim's preoccupation with her new PDA drives Alex crazy until they are able to use it to save a very sick man, thus redeeming themselves in the eyes of a hypercritical Dr. Peterson. Faith and Fred are still on uneven ground about the sergeant's exam. In an effort to shake Chevchenko's tree, Faith and Sully execute a clever plan to disrupt the Russian's bookmaking operation, which also opens the door to the possibility of the still-missing Tatiana's return. Bosco is cleared for duty, and he and Faith agree to be partners again as soon as he returns.

When Dr. Susan Lewis from Chicago comes to New York to search for the missing daughter of her drug-addicted sister, Faith and Bosco focus their attention on the child's stepfather, a New Jersey cop, after they discover that the girl was taken by a man in uniform. Tatiana returns home; Jimmy spends some quality time with Joey. This episode concludes a crossover with ER that begins on "Brothers and Sisters". Sherry Stringfield guest stars as Susan Lewis.

Rescuers find the body of Alex's father, and he is given a hero's burial. Faith and Bosco tail a convicted rapist released on appeal, certain that he will rape again. Dissatisfied by Tatiana's explanation of her whereabouts the eight weeks she was missing, Sully investigates further and uncovers some astonishing and heartbreaking facts about his wife. After Chevchenko threatens to kill him if he does not roll over on Faith and Sully, Frankie tells Swersky that the raid on Chevchenko's numbers business was a hummer bust, leading Chevchenko to threaten a lawsuit and have another angry confrontation with Sully.

When a blackout strikes the city during a heat wave, Sully prophetically warns the more optimistic Ty that trouble in the streets will swiftly ensue. After Carlos leaves the ambulance running to keep the bus cool while he and Doc are on calls, the engine catches fire and the ambulance is destroyed. A wealthy old man confined to his bed by illness offers them a large amount of money to stay with him until his daughter arrives. Doc insists that they leave to treat others more in need over the protests of Carlos. Bosco arrests a young man, Latrell Griffith, and faces a difficult decision when an immigrant shop owner shoots and wounds a teenage shoplifter. After Latrell uses his training as a medic to save the boy, a riot breaks out and Bosco, Latrell and the shoplifter barely escape. Nightfall brings more unrest as the nervous cops try to keep the peace. Faith and Fred are stuck in an elevator when the power goes out. Faith tries to calm Fred's mounting anxiety about being trapped, and is left helpless when Fred suffers a heart attack.