Contains spoilers for this episode and earlier episodes.
The search for earthquake survivors reaches two workers trapped in the power plant's wreckage. Manager Jin keeps pressing the soldiers to reach his office, but Shi-jin refuses to put documents ahead of lives. The rescue creates an impossible choice for Mo-yeon: moving the rubble to free Manager Go will endanger an impaled worker nearby. Shi-jin needs her to decide which patient has the better chance, even when she asks him to share that responsibility. She chooses the impaled worker, who survives surgery, while Go dies beneath the wreckage. The loss leaves her shaken after the immediate emergency has passed.
Elsewhere, Myung-joo continues an operation in the field, and the medical team treats injured people in conditions far removed from their hospital. The soldiers collect the dead and finally receive orders to rest, with food arriving from local people. Dae-young admits how much he would have regretted losing Myung-joo and embraces her. Mo-yeon returns to the disaster site and imagines the victims going about their ordinary lives before the earthquake. When she later stitches Shi-jin's injured shoulder, they acknowledge what working together meant to them. He tells her that he missed her and asks her to reconsider his feelings. Mo-yeon listens as his usual joking manner becomes unexpectedly direct.