****SPOILERS**** Scheduled by his doctor Benji Stren, Joseph Cotten,to go under the knife for spine surgery at the Saint Mary's Hospital operating room Chief Robert T. Ironisde, Raymobd Burr, fears that his life is in danger. In that the person he got into a tangle with and is the only one who can identity him junkie killer Albee, Don Don Stroud, will make sure he'll never pull through. Little does Ironside know that Albee has an accomplice in what he's planning to do in offing him his drug addicted girlfriend Leslie Prescott, Margaret O'Brian, who's in charge of the hospital drug and medical supply room. Together the two drugged out junkies are planning to switch the oxygen that's needed for Ironside's operation with a tank of deadly cyanide!
Ironside seems to sense that his life is in danger and before he goes under anesthetics he gives out a number of important clues, in his being a guinea pig, to his friends including Officer Whitfeld Det Sgt. Brown & valet Sanger, Barbara Anderson Don Galloway & Don Mitchell, to interpret to be a warning of things, very bad things, to come. All this while Lousie Prescott gets the tank of cyanide ready to be attached to Ironside's breathing apparatus for his operation. It was in fact the chain smoking Louise Prescott's clumsy attempt to cover up evidence that she was messing around with the oxygen tanks that exposed both her and her junkie boyfriend Albee's plans to the police.
***SPOILERS**** Even though the operation was a failure, if it worked that would have been the end of the "Ironside" TV series, it did bring out the best in some people who were in the episode. Including unemployed and listless Earnie Norton, Andrew Prine, who lost his girlfriend who died giving birth to their child. But in return Earnie decided to get a job, for once in his life, and support his newborn child all by himself not let the welfare agency take the boy away from him. There was also the crippled Ralph Fellows, Mel Scott, who with Ironside and the priest on hand in Saint Mary's Hospital Father Dugan's, Troy Donahue, encouragement pull through his operation and would soon be able to walk again even though it, the same operation, didn't work for Ironside. Ironside's stay at the hospital showed him that life is well worth living and not to be so down in what he now finds himself in. Who knows maybe some day he'll be able to walk again if fate, like it did for Scott Fellows, shines on him and deems it so.