Gina Torres’ Tommy collapses in ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ preview (exclusive)

Tommy Vega always gives 110 percent — but that all comes to a screeching halt on Monday’s episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star.

Gina Torres’ first responder character was diagnosed with breast cancer in last week’s episode. And in a season 5, episode 7 preview clip exclusive to Entertainment Weekly (below), Tommy is seen collapsing in front of her twin daughters.

“Part [of] why I was so attracted to doing this storyline with Tommy is that she’s the character who least wants to admit that she can’t do something,” executive producer and co-showrunner Rashad Raisani tells EW. “For example, when her husband died in season 2, Tommy was in full-on denial that he was dead. She’s walking around the hospital acting like nothing’s wrong for the entire episode.”

“Tommy is so powerful and has so much agency,” Raisani continues. “And then to see what happens to somebody like that when their agency starts getting taken from them and their ability to determine their own fate is taken from them…. Her first reaction is to say, ‘Well, cancer, this just isn’t a good time for me, so you’re going to have to take a back seat,’ and this is life saying, ‘No, you’re going to have to sit down.'”

Raisani previously revealed to EW that the idea to give Tommy breast cancer came from actress Sierra McClain, who starred as 9-1-1 operator Grace on the first four seasons of the Fox drama but left ahead of its current fifth and final season. “She said, ‘I think that Gina Torres is just such a special actor and she could take on an arc that could be even bigger than anything we’ve ever done for anyone, with more depth and more stakes.’ And she said, ‘I mean, I don’t want to speak for another character, but what if she found out she had breast cancer?’ And I just thought, ‘Wow, that was kind of a genius pitch,'” he recalled.

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The plot development also allowed Raisani and the Lone Star team to work with Stand Up to Cancer again, a non-profit they had partnered with when Rob Lowe’s Owen faced a cancer battle in the first few seasons of the show. “It’s an incredible organization,” says Raisani. “They worked so closely to us, episode by episode, to make sure that we were getting our terminology and our treatments and all of these things correct and plausible and telling them with, hopefully, as much humanity as we could. We’re so grateful to have them involved again.”

9-1-1: Lone Star season 5, episode 7, “Kiddos” airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.