In which a drunk person is allowed to practice medicine on a child.
Previously on Grey’s Anatomy: George is in love with Meredith, and everyone knows it. Alex knows Meredith is seeing someone, and told George this! Bailey is annoyed because she ALSO knows it, knows that it’s Derek she’s seeing, and knows the interns are going to be mad as hell when they find out! Yang and Burke are having sex, and Christina refuses to talk about what their relationship is! Bailey tells Derek if she spots any favouritism Meredith will be banned from the OR for a month!
If life’s so hard already, why do we bring more trouble down on ourselves? What’s up with the need to hit the self-destruct button?
No one has gotten any sleep, that seems to be our opening thesis. Derek is sneaking out of Meredith’s house after a night of sex, which apparently was loud enough to keep everyone up! Clearly either Derek has improved in bed, or Meredith is an excellent actor. George and Izzie are commiserating over coffee while also trying to sneak a glimpse of the man in question. Uh-oh. Yep, they’ve found out it’s McDreamy, and they are exactly as pissed as you’d expect – he’s all of their boss, as Izzie points out. She thinks there’s favouritism involved; George doesn’t, but the fact that she kept it a secret isn’t helping. Neither is her immediate lie when asked if she was sleeping with anyone they know.
Karev is apparently the only one awake after a morning job; Christina is wiped out too thanks to the flu. This all translates to some full-on hostility in the locker room at the hospital, with a particularly catty remark from Izzie about warning her the next time so she can get a hotel room and get some sleep. Christina queries (when she and Meredith are alone) if they know it’s Derek keeping them up at night. The prospect is not a good one; Meredith (correctly) surmises they’ll think she’s getting special treatment.
George, Alex and Christina are immediately told to go to the clinic; Izzie’s with Bailey for the day. After some caustic comments about Meredith having had a late night, Bailey commences loading her with work, starting with a patient complaining of stomach issues, but followed by a long list of other tasks. I think we can see how this one is going to go – a mountain of unpleasantness looms for Meredith Grey, because Bailey is aware she hasn’t broken it off with Shepherd. Izzie gets the walk-in – a man who swallowed his girlfriend’s keys to prevent her from leaving. Right, then.
Our stomach pain patient has a fever, a lot of pain in her stomach following her trip to Mexico, and also a pain in her ass (a very overbearing mother). She passed out in the shower that morning, and both her folks are worried. The girl is obviously reluctant to be examined or looked at, insisting that she’s fine. It takes Meredith shooing the parents away to get the girl to consent to be looked at.
On their way through to the clinic, Christina and Alex pick up a gunshot wound case! They immediately pull out all the stops, because when you’re in a country where gun violence is a real problem, I imagine you have rather strict protocols in place to deal with it. However it turns out the patient in question, Digby, “scheduled” it. He gets his friend to shoot him for fun in non-lethal ways, because he likes the scars. What. On. Earth. Cue titles!
We’re immediately back with Digby, who appears to have been shot in the arm through the eye of a skull tattoo he has. His bullet wounds are “his art”, or so he claims, and it requires commitment. Yang describes it as stupid – the bullet went all the way through the arm and bounced off the guy’s ribs. He still has another bullet in his shoulder for some reason. He and Alex get their macho bonding on over various Stoicisms about enduring pain, as well as being wrestlers from Iowa, and both Christina and I are seized with a need to puke.
Meredith’s patient is in definite pain, and when she reluctantly lifts her shirt, we see why – she’s had surgery, and recently, in Mexico in order to avoid her parents finding out. She doesn’t want Meredith letting her parents know. George also has a young patient, but this one is still in diapers – a young girl with a persistent twitch to the foot due to a brain abnormality. The symptoms have worsened since their last visit to a different hospital, so they’ve come to Seattle Grace to get a proper diagnosis and hopefully some treatment. I’m not sure it counts as an episode of Grey’s if there isn’t at least one patient death and I am petrified it’s going to be this kid.
Naturally, it’s a neuro case, so George is going to be forced to work with his new archnemesis on this adorable little cherub, but he does hold it together enough to deliver a double-edged response to the worried parents – Dr Shepherd is good, yes. At just about everything. Oh George, it’s okay, we’re pretty sure he was awful back in episode 1!
The keys have been located in Boyfriend of the Year’s anatomy, so Izzie gets to perform a solo bronchoscopy to get them. Gushing aside, she’s right, she does seem to have been putting more meaningful work in than the other interns, but that might just be because she’s had the B plot more or less solo for a few episodes running. Bailey checks in with Meredith who has handled the Mountain of Work assigned her, and they discuss her main 17yo patient’s mystery surgery. They’ll know more after CT, and in the meantime, a secondary Mountain of Work is thrown at Meredith, who is determined to prove she can handle it.
It is a veritable battle of wills! Speaking of willpower, Christina is trying to beat the flu by sheer power of will, and only manages to convince Burke he might have it too.
After another bitching session with Izzie about Meredith and Derek, George heads into Shepherd’s OR to consult him about his tiny tiny patient. The anaesthesiologist walks in and yes, as a helpful second member of staff points out, that is indeed bourbon on the guy’s breath. But it’s fine, because he does it all the time, it’s how he copes, and it’s not an issue unless he can’t do his crossword. Seriously. George has to get new scans from the kid, which he agrees to order, with a side of snark.
It’s time for everyone’s medical secrets to be revealed by the magic of imaging! They’ve found bullet guy’s old bullet, which doesn’t need removing (but does remind Burke and Bailey that they’ve met him before). Meredith’s patient’s secret is out too – she went to Mexico and had a gastric bypass done (stomach stapling). The girl isn’t overweight, so why is a mystery, but it’s been botched and it’s infectious and needs surgery. Her parents are a study in middle-class shitty – the dad is a weak-willed guy who doesn’t know his daughter; the mother is a high-pressure power woman who fat-shamed their daughter at Christmas. The situation is bad enough that Claire, our patient, may never recover fully.
We’re still unsure where we stand with Derek’s tiny patient, who is definitely having seizures down one side. She now needs an MRI, which George is grumbling about given Derek asked for CT, but agrees to get. Meanwhile the kid starts having a big seizure down one side, and Shepherd reveals why everyone is in love with him. You can’t possibly hate the guy who takes the effort to be this good with a tiny kid. Captain O’Malley of the Spaceship MRI is going to have to accept Derek isn’t a bad guy, and he’s not happy about it.
Quick patient round-up: Izzie’s patient and his ex-girlfriend are still arguing about their relationship while Izzie tries to work out how to remove the keys! Bullet guy, who we learn is Digby, a) knows Burke well enough to know that his hobby is playing the trumpet, b) is running a fever (apparently due to the physiological stress of getting shot, which I can believe) and c) needs a chest tube to remove the blood from his collapsed lung. Unsurprisingly, he wants to watch. Claire, our gastric bypass-ed young adult, doesn’t want the surgery to reverse it – she wants to be thin, because that’s what her mum is focused on. Her parents do the right thing, the wrong way: she’s having the surgery because they say so, without even trying to persuade her.
Back to the tiny human, and it’s mixed news – literally half of her brain is dying. But don’t get your tissues out just yet, because Derek Shepherd just pulled his gigantic balls out from his trousers and showed them off to the parents. He wants to cut out the diseased half of her brain. While there are risks, because she’s so young her brain will compensate. She’ll more or less lead a normal life! Bananas. George (after some snippiness) is asked to scrub in, to which he agrees – he tells Yang he’s excited except for the whole “hating Derek” thing, which leads Christina to let on that she also knows about Derek. He and Izzie are flabbergasted that Christina isn’t annoyed, but she lays it out to them – Meredith works hard, she’s good at her job, and it’s her private life – why should it matter to anyone else?
That’s what they do to get through the day, but George is also concerned about Dr McDrunkFace, and asks the question – should he do anything or tell anyone? YES, George, you big dummy. Go tell Chief Webber and let him know. Go tell Bailey! Tell them you smelled bourbon on his breath and that another member of staff when asked said it was common knowledge. Do it nooooow.
Reader, he did not.
Meredith and Bailey are operating on Claire’s colon, which is highly infected and swollen. Over the patient’s abdomen, they discuss the Meredith/Derek relationship, which Bailey clearly disproves of. Meredith is in absolutely zero mood to explain herself. Her private life is her own, even if half the hospital knows about it. She will take the mountain of work Bailey throws at her, all the hoops she’s made to jump through, but she won’t allow her private life to be a casualty of her job. Which I would understand if it were just some rando she’s dating but Meredith. Come on girl. He’s your boss. He’s Bailey’s boss. He’s a hot-shot surgeon. You KNEW this would be a problem! The infected colon saves me from ranting at the screen by exploding pus all over her face. Ha.
George’s dilemma catches up with him quickly. Dr Taylor aka the drunk anaesthesiologist is in the Very Young Patient’s surgery, and George smells booze on his breath again. As the adorable little girl is being put under, he asks Taylor if he’s been drinking, and Shepherd is right there. For reasons absolutely frigging no one understands, Shepherd sides with Taylor when he denies it, and kicks George out of the OR, despite the fact that there’s a patient on the table. Even if the patient was 80, it would make no odds, but this is a 2 year old! No hemispherectomy for you, George. Should’ve gone to the chief earlier.
Boyfriend of the Millenium is having the keys removed. His ex is ranting at him endlessly while Izzie manipulates the scope down his throat. Unfortunately the trying to argue back and stress has caused him to inhale the keys further down. After a bit of work and soothing, out the keys come! And the ranting and arguing begins again. Exasperated, Izzie finally snaps and suggests the lady leaves with her keys. She may never find her car, but at least she’s out of there. Why Izzie thought that having her there would calm the situation, we will never know.
The big row between Meredith and Izzie finally erupts, while Meredith still smells like (literal) crap. Izzie is convinced it’s karma, the argument ramps up, and Bailey walks in to get someone to replace George in Shepherd’s surgery. Yang has the flu, Izzie’s there and ready to go, though. Bailey says “Grey” and Izzie hits the roof, accusing her basically of sleeping with Derek in return for favourable treatment. Bailey sends Yang despite the flu, breaking up the verbal fight between Izzie and Meredith when the former storms out, and the look on her face says it all. Not content with that, she then verbally says it all. Damn.
There is a lot of Tegan and Sara in these early episodes, isn’t there? As two young lesbians riff about who you might get off with, it’s patient round up time! We visit Alex and Burke, who think Digby might have a secondary source of infection. Then immediately we cut to the hemispherectomy. Yang is in place, and watching Dr Taylor like a hawk, as is emo-style George from the gallery. Meredith explains the complications of Claire’s surgery to her parents – she’ll live, but nutrition is going to be a lifelong problem. The mum seems mostly annoyed by the impact this will have on her, because she sucks, and Meredith goes off at her, because professionalism isn’t a thing at SGH. This does however get the dad, a man I previously assumed had donated his spine to science, to prove me wrong and tell his wife to shut up. Yay?
Digby is in full-blown sepsis, judging by everything we can see. The source of the infection? A spider tattoo that is so swollen, it looks like it could crawl off and come get you. He didn’t say anything because of his whole Stoicism, pain is good ideology. Stupid. Antibiotics time for him. The hemispherectomy is going well – Yang knows her stuff – but there’s a problem. Our drunken physician has fallen asleep and the patient is waking up. Cue dramatic pause and fade to black (the ghosts of commercial breaks gone by!). Shepherd accuses him of being drunk and kicks him out of the OR, acknowledging that George was right.
Remember earlier when I said I wasn’t sure if it’s a proper episode of Grey’s if no one dies? Well hold onto your holsters. Digby is in real trouble here, the infection has spread, his organs are failing and he’s crashed. Burke and Karev are fighting to save him. The hemispherectomy, on the other hand, has ended well (yay!). Christina marvels at the self-healing properties of the OR (she no longer feels sick). Derek still feels tired, but admits that during surgery, there’s a sense of unreality that masks things like tiredness and sickness. Finished, he signals George and finally explains – doctors aren’t supposed to ask each other questions like “have you been drinking?”. But it’s a bad system, and George was right. He’s sorry.
They finish on a handshake, but not before Shepherd confirms it – George saw him leave that morning. He feels he owes George an explanation here, too. He’s not using Meredith, and he’s not giving her any special treatment. But they both agree, she’s pretty great. They go off to give the little girl’s parents the good news, while Meredith breaks the news to Claire. Claire is just happy that she isn’t going to get fat; still groggy from surgery, the explanation probably doesn’t fully take hold. What does take hold is that Meredith is referring her family to social services so they can get the help they need. Life isn’t supposed to be this hard, says Meredith, and I wholly agree. This is a Good Responsible Healthcare Professional Move and it is telling that I am surprised by that!
Digby is our dead patient of the episode, and you can tell that Alex is a little shaken by it. They share some of the same ethos about taking the pain making you stronger, as well as both being former Iowa wrestlers. Izzie is also feeling some feelings, and her method of coping is (of course it is) baking. She offers Meredith some cake, baked choc full of love. Or, full of unrelenting all-consuming rage and hostility, but that apparently doesn’t affect the taste.
They discuss things frankly, and Izzie lets on her own background and her own self-consciousness about being perceived as not good enough. She’s enraged that Meredith is throwing away all her privilege and respect for surgeries, or hot sex. After denials of those reasons, she finally twigs that it’s not about professional advancement or hot sex, Meredith is falling for Derek, and it’s a Problem, because the feelings are getting in the way of doing what would be best for her career (ending their relationship). Oh dear. Meredith gets sympathy cake, Izzie gets some schadenfreude and juicy sex details. We all get to laugh.
“Maybe we like the pain. Maybe we’re wired that way. Because without it, I don’t know. Maybe we just wouldn’t feel real.
We finish on a montage with some big story points! Karev is working out his feelings about Digby on a rowing mean, but quickly gets frustrated – it’s not helping. We see the tiny girl apparently doing great after her surgery, which I mean, thank god. Burke goes to look after Christina given how ill she was feeling, but she’s not in the on-call room – she’s in the bathroom. It’s not the flu, folks. After two pregnancy tests, it looks like she’s pregnant(!) and she does NOT look happy about it (we don’t see the lines, but I mean, who takes a pregnancy test and looks exasperated when they’re NOT pregnant if we don’t see them trying beforehand?!). Meredith and Derek have reached a point in their relationship where they can just sleep.
Sum it up
Another decent one! A bit loose thematically, though. The A plot is arguably the mess around Derek/Meredith, and everyone got in on that. It’s causing professional pain for the both of them (but mostly for Meredith). We now know that the reason she’s continuing this despite all of that is because she can’t help herself, she has real feelings for Derek. Somewhere, the world’s tiniest violin, etc etc. Alex is today’s B plot, where he has his macho sensibilities checked again with the very visible consequences of the “no pain, no gain” ethos. Sometimes smashing yourself with a hammer is just smashing yourself with a hammer, and it might just kill you. Our patients this week were decent, with the decision to refer Claire and her family to social services a particular high point. And what a bombshell at the end (which I’ll admit is what saved it from a 6/10)! Overall rating: 7/10
Hero of the Episode: Derek “look at the size of my balls” Shepherd, saving that girl’s life and also just being adorable throughout.
Zero of the Episode: Cruella De Ville Claire’s mum. But it’s okay, because she seems the type of person who rewrites life in her own mind to make herself the hero of every story.
Literally Incredible: I’d say hemispherectomies, but I know they’re a legit thing that help a small number of people. This idea of a doctor’s “code” where no one challenges alcoholics though, or that George would not have marched right off to a higher authority figure… no. Not buying it, and also if that is true, it shouldn’t be.
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