In which we meet the nasty tumour lady who deserves what’s coming to her.
Previously on Grey’s Anatomy: Derek and Meredith! George is in love with Meredith AND keeps telling patients about it rather than Meredith herself! Christina and Burke! Meredith is legally in charge of Ellis and all her stuff now! Bailey knows about Derek and Meredith! So basically, inappropriate sexy times, George’s unrequited love (not helped by table dancing last episode), and Meredith’s mum still has Alzheimer’s. Congrats, you’re all caught up! No need to read the previous 5 (I kid, I kid).
I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d say it had a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision. Because, what if you’re wrong? What if you’re making a decision you can’t undo?
We open with a classic rainy Seattle day, and George is struggling to navigate the hallway while carrying two cups of coffee, conveniently looking straight past the flat surface on which to pop one of those cups down in order to knock on Meredith’s door and opting instead to spill both cups all over himself. Izzie rightly calls him out on the fact that he should just ask Meredith out and find out one way or another. George insists that he’s not into her, but we all know that’s hogswash. They leave without Meredith, which is what she planned all along – she’s trying to get to work late to avoid Derek, only for him to also arrive late.
The whole Bailey thing from last episode is weighing on both of them, and she doesn’t want to talk about it – “I experienced it, naked!” (heh). Meredith is aware that the perception will be she’s sleeping with him to get ahead, and that’s going to cause difficulties. And heck, she’s not wrong. Derek says if he was a better man, he’d walk away – he seems startled by the idea that that might be what she wants (this adds more credence to my “he’s bad in bed” theory…).
Speaking of inappropriate sexual shenanigans – Christina and Burke are performing a rapid dress-and-exit manoeuvre after a hookup in… a lab? Something lab-adjacent? I really hope he at least tells one of the porters so they can sterilise anything. Seems an odd place to choose in a building literally full of beds, but maybe the smell of formaldehyde really does it for them. Yang and Grey arrive at the same time in the locker room, discussing Meredith’s woes, and we learn that the consequences may indeed fall largely on her – she’ll be “edged out of surgery, passed over”. Christina isn’t volunteering to share about her newfound love of laboratories, but she does tell Meredith quite forcefully not to end it with Shepherd, obviously seeing that her own situation is the same.
They run slap bang into Bailey and crew, and all of our interns get a stern warning about behaving like doctors and not assholes (good luck with that one). We walk into the room and meet Ms Connors! She looks like she has basically an entire human sticking out of the side of her, the mass is colossal. George asks what it is, and Yang gives him a withering glare. “Tumour.” Cue titles!
Karev appears to have developed a good relationship with a patient, in a shocking display of competence. The patient even defends him for calling her “Annie” instead of Ms Connors, saying she prefers it. We walk through what’s wrong with her and unsurprisingly, it’s the giant “mass of unknown origin” – it’s pressing on her diaphragm, and she’s having difficulty breathing. She’s been housebound with it for a year. After originally assigning Stevens, Burke reassigns Karev to Annie’s scans and prep work instead at the patient’s request. His new-found smarm is clearly a ploy to get in on the patient’s surgery, but for now it seems to be working for the patient too, so no judgement here (at least not from me; the other interns are 100% onto his game).
Bailey lets slip that if Annie’s surgery goes ahead, the interns are going to have to essentially work unsupervised for the day. These interns. Someone should warn the good people of Seattle. Christina takes a moment to accost Burke – she wants IN on the cool tumour surgery, and she’s not above leveraging her secret relationship with him for surgeries. This one, I have judgement for – it’s unfair, and if anyone finds out, it puts both of them in a very awkward position. Dick move, on both their parts!
Patient round-up – Annie’s taking up most of the surgeons, but we also have Mr Harper (Izzie’s patient), who has a chest tube in following a coronary bypass the night before. He has some complications, but Bailey is not worried and Izzie has a plan to monitor it. After a brief interlude where George tries to deny he’s infatuated with Meredith, we get to Shepherd’s patient. Edward has a very pronounced and persistent tremor due to Parkinson’s disease, and he wants treatment for his spinal pain. Meredith is the first one to pipe up with a treatment plan, and Shepherd hands her the patient.
Oh boy, is Bailey pissed about that. The interns are told to make themselves busy, and Bailey heads off to go drop hammer the on Derek in the elevator (it’s always the elevator!). He starts by calling her “Miranda” (mistake #1), tries to be charming (mistake #2), tries to defend himself (mistake #3), and then points out that he’s her boss (mistake #4, maybe a lawsuit). Bailey makes herself clear – she’s not going to report them. But anything that could in any way be seen as favourable treatment will result in Grey being disadvantaged by Bailey, “for the sake of balance”.
I have a lot of love for Bailey, but that is a bit far – and her argument that it’s for the sake of balance doesn’t feel true. If you’re that convinced it’s wrong, go to the damn Chief, Bailey! Get Derek punished instead somehow! Christ. Either way, Meredith’s predictions about things potentially going horribly wrong for her if this relationship continues are coming true, and now everyone is going to have to do some thinking about what the best course of action is.
“You could be ten foot tall, AND the President, and we both know I’d still be the one in charge.”
Over to the MRI machines and Annie is about to have her scan. Alex spends a bit of time with her beforehand, making sure she’ll be okay during the scan, and basically doing some top-notch reassuring. It’s a glimpse of the kind of doctor he could be if he wasn’t intent on being a dick. His pager dies and he’s looking for a replacement battery when the radiographer remarks that Annie’s case is unbelievable. Karev takes this as an opportunity to absolutely unload all of his judgement about the patient. The tumour is a whole load of nasty, and no matter what the reason she didn’t come in sooner to get it looked at, there’s no way to justify it in his eyes. She’s a sick, warped individual, and he doesn’t know how she lives with herself. Unbeknownst to him, Annie hears every word.
Speaking of inappropriately judgemental doctors, we go to Christina. She takes a history from Annie’s mum and we find out that it was a combination of fear and shame that kept Annie away from the doctor until now; particularly as she never really had any symptoms. Yang is at least straightforward, but still inappropriate. Annie’s fears she leaves to one side, but she tells the mum outright that the right thing to do would have been to call a year ago. What’s overlooked by both Christina and Alex here is that it doesn’t matter why it took so long, unless the reason is medical. It’s already done, and all they have managed to achieve is to make their patient and their patient’s family feel bad. Who trained these people to be doctors?!
We rejoin Meredith, who is making Eddie comfortable in his room. She heads out to get some supplies and Eddie’s daughter stops her. One of the other interns (Izzie) earlier mentioned Deep Brain Stimulation as a possible treatment for her dad’s Parkinson’s disease, and she wants Meredith to try and talk to him about it. Eddie is known to be scared of it, but his daughter wants him to have some quality of life, and wants him to be able to walk her down the aisle next month when she marries. Meredith admits that she knows what it’s like to watch a parent deteriorate right in front of you, and agrees to help. I think this might be the first time she’s admitted her mother is ill to someone who isn’t dying!
The attendings, and Bailey, are clustered in a room looking at Annie’s scans. The lungs and the spine are both compromised; they can’t agree on where to start. More importantly, they don’t know if they should even operate – Annie’s survival chances are very low. But she will die without the surgery either way, and Bailey’s not sure if Annie even wants to live. It feels less like a judgement here and more like a genuine question – does Annie not coming in have something to do with her state of mind? Is allowing a tumour like this to grow without taking any action tantamount to a very slow suicide?
Outside the room, Meredith is waiting for Shepherd to ask him about DBS for Eddie. He performatively dresses her down and kicks her out of the surgery, under the watchful eye of Bailey. No time for any more reflection, though, as we immediately go back to Annie’s case. Burke is walking her through the surgery, discussing the risks. Annie’s under no illusions – she’ll die if she doesn’t have the surgery, and she may die if she has the surgery. She’s initially ambivalent (lends some weight to Bailey’s thoughts around why she never came in), but her mum is unequivocal – she’s having the surgery. Annie acquiesces under one condition: Alex isn’t in the room. “That’s how I live with myself” she snarks at him.
This forces Alex to tell Burke what he said once they leave the patient, and Burke is not impressed – not least because if you offend the patient you are 60% more likely to be sued. Karev is off the surgery, and banned from any OR for a week. Christina rushes up with the patient history, and calls Annie fatally lazy for not having it looked at for 18 months, but isn’t banned from surgery. Alex is pissed, and folks, that is what favouritism looks like. The end result is George is taking Alex’s place.
George here gets to reclaim his spot as my favourite. He’s doing his usual patter, trying to reassure the Annie and walk her through what he’s doing now, as well as talk up the surgical team. Annie is despondent, and clearly still hurt, telling him he doesn’t have to talk to the “fat nasty tumour lady”. After all, she let it get this bad, she’s clearly not deserving of sympathy. George being who he is is the first one to ask why she did let it go this long without getting it looked at. The truth is just plain sad – everyone she knew who went into the hospital never came out, including her baby sister. She was scared, so she put it off, and now it’s 18 months later and it’s probably going to kill her.
Nope not crying. Just chopping onions. Hrng.
George tries to reassure her that she’s not the only one to put things off, he does it too. After a little prompting, he tells her about the fact that he’s in love with Meredith and keeps putting it off. What is it with this guy and telling rando patients about his lack of a love life?! Anyway, Annie isn’t having any of this. He just compared his inability to ask a girl out to her life-threatening health condition. She spend a minute mocking him, and it may be dawning on him that his problems suddenly seem very small now!
The gang meet up for lunch, and Christina makes the point that Derek giving Meredith a case doesn’t necessarily mean he’s favouring her – she’s good at her job. (I mean is she? That’s a different conversation, though). She’s concerned about the optics of it all, and insists that she has to end it. Christina is as skeptical as we all are. The rest of the gang join, and Karev is still salty about Christina getting to still scrub in. Meredith complains about Shepherd behaving like a jackass, and George attempts the most awkward asking-out I’ve ever seen on television. Good lord. Saved by the pager.
The page is from Shepherd, to Eddie’s room – he’s raising DBS as an option after all, and explaining that there’s a very short window of opportunity. Eddie’s adamant that he doesn’t want it, so Shepherd lets it be. Grey’s still there while the old man argues with his daughter about it, though, still refusing to have the surgery. His daughter walks out, and Meredith explains that yes, it’s his life, but it’s his daughter’s life too. He has an opportunity to get better, not forever, but for a while, and his daughter just wants him to try. Because awake brain surgery (potential risks: death!) is easily equatable to being told to “just try”. Sure.
Despite that ridiculousness of that argument, it clearly works, because Grey runs into the scrub room to pull Derek out before he starts on Annie’s surgery – Eddie is willing, but only if they do it more or less right now. Burke’s fine with it, it’ll be hours before they get to the spine, leaving Meredith alone to talk to Bailey. She explains that she didn’t know Derek was her boss when they met, but Bailey could not care less. She doesn’t want to be talking to her intern about that intern’s relationship with her boss, and she doesn’t want to deal with the fallout when the rest of the gang learn about that relationship either. It’s selfish and a little petty, but the point about the wider group is fair – no one will believe there isn’t favouritism.
With everyone else on a surgery of some description, Izzie and Alex are left to do basically everything else. Did I mention someone should have warned the good people of Seattle?. He bails to change after a patient throws up on his crotch, which I believe it is impossible to see without laughing, and Izzie says she’ll page him if she needs him. She’s talking to Mr Harper’s wife (chest tube guy!), who is clearly upset and in need of someone to talk to. Unfortunately Alex isn’t answering his pages, so Izzie has to run off and perform a central line instead. But she’ll be back, she promises.
Meanwhile Alex is half-naked, and making inappropriate comments to women in the locker room. He’s so distracted by his own attractiveness that he doesn’t see that his pager is out of battery. Clearly distraction is a problem; he must have gotten so distracted laying into Annie earlier in radiology that he forgot to change it then too.
All of that is irrelevant to Eddie, who is ready to blame Meredith for anything going wrong. She’s keeping him as calm as she can while Derek drills into his skull. Izzie on the other hand finds this highly relevant, because she’s on her own doing the work of two people due to Alex’s pager issues. He’s chilling in the gallery of Annie’s OR, watching George and Christina struggle with the weight of the tumour they’re retracting. George’s retractor slips and he gets chewed out by Burke, while Bailey notes that they’re going to need a lot more blood based on the size of the blood vessels in the tumour.
Eddie’s surgery goes well, and he has control over his hands again! Afterwards, Meredith gives Derek a stern talking-to – he can’t protect her or lay into her when it’s unwarranted. No special treatment. She’s still undecided about whether they should carry on, but even if they do, she doesn’t want favouritism. He’s paged away, but not before she lets him know she called him a jackass, multiple times. Even if everyone else seems to disapprove, Eddie’s all for their relationship. Heck, he’s willing to marry Derek himself!
Alex’s failure to change his battery has its most serious consequence yet – Izzie isn’t just overworked, Mr Harper is in serious trouble and Izzie is going to have to perform surgery bedside to remove a clot, on her own. She successfully scoops out a clot the size of her fist (!) and then performs cardiac massage on the patient. Mr Harper lives! Izzie 1-0 Death. Betcha that ratio won’t last! But it’s nice to see Izzie kicking ass. Karev is oblivious and sidelined up in the OR gallery still as Shepherd walks in to start his part of the proceedings. Annie is losing blood fast and the tumour is more complex than they thought.
Meredith settles in to watch, complete with a pick-up attempt by Alex, because of course. She admits she’s seeing someone, which is another step forward or her – she’s clearly making her mind up to continue seeing Derek. Izzie walks in to let Burke know she had to open Mr Harper up, leading to a double-take from practically every surgeon and intern in the OR and the gallery. Alex is furious, but not as furious as Izzie is, stamping his pager into the ground when she finds out it’s out of battery. Just at that moment, the tumour’s big artery blows, and there isn’t enough blood to infuse her while they make the repair. Karev sprints to get the blood while they try to save her but it’s too late – Annie’s gone. *sob*
We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug, until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves before what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.
We do a quick round-up of our remaining patients and relatives – George and Bailey breaking the news to Annie’s mum, Eddie practising walking his daughter down the aisle, Burke noting that Izzie’s work was “messy” but saved Mr Harper’s life. Burke tells Christina he’s never doing her a favour again, to which she responds that what he did today wasn’t a favour given what it actually entailed. He wants to know what they’re doing, and she mocks him for it a little. Just sex for now, then, it seems. George is looking for Meredith, and Alex lets him know she’s taken, which George denies. But when he pops his head into her room later with some booze, he finds her gone – she’s stood out in the rain outside the hospital waiting for Derek and proposes a date involving a bottle of wine and sunrise over the ferryboats.
Sum it up
Hoo boy. I’m still crying a little bit. I *liked* Annie, damnit. She makes the object lesson against procrastination quite forcefully, and her interactions with our doctors really brought out their prejudices. Everyone judged her, even George a little bit. Even herself. The story about Eddie was quite touching, so that’s a plus. We see Izzie’s story again hived off on her own away from the main theme, but she’s developing some mad skills over there at least. As for the rest of the choices people made, well, mixed bag. Bailey’s response is understandable but crappy, Burke and Christina are an incomprehensible mess, and as lovely as George is, he needs to grow up and stop mooning over Meredith. Maybe now he will. Alex has started to join the interns as a group a bit more, even if they do all hate him, it’s a little less antagonistic. Overall rating: 7/10
Hero of the Episode: Take a bow, Izzie, that clot was gigantic.
Zero of the Episode: I really struggled here between Alex (obvious), Burke and Christina (REAL favouritism) and Bailey (for going off on Meredith), but if I’m being fair there’s no question – it’s Alex yet again. I need to start a league table of some sort I think.
Literally Incredible: As awesome as it is that Izzie got to do that surgery bedside, there are more than four surgeons in this hospital. In the time it took to get the patient open, ribs spread, suction in place, etc, another surgeon, ANY other surgeon, could’ve made it to the ER to perform that procedure. Sorry, Iz, but I don’t buy it.
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