Episode Report Card Lauren S: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dance The Night Away
By Lauren S | Season 4 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.05.2007
In Ray's surgery, the alarms are beeping like crazy and the Chief and Izzie work urgently. Mere watches from the scrub room as Richard begs Ray to fight. Hahn is doing begging of her own, telling Jacob over and over that he will not die while Alex watches. In Derek's OR, Rose watches with worried giant eyes as Derek begs Mary not to die. And finally, Mark asks the same of Nick, while Lexie looks on and begs him to please live. Her only answer is the single note as he flatlines.
Night has finally fallen, and the Chief is checking on Ray when Meredith brings in Sarah. Sarah is clearly nervous and notes that he looks bad. Richard admits that his heart and lungs were both hurt, but that he's young and should recover. Sarah goes up to him slowly as Mere watches, and there are many more sets of teary eyes, mine included. Sarah starts to cry and says Ray's name, at which he opens his eyes. She takes his hand and tells him, "I'm here." It's like they're setting up a new love born of tragedy already.
Shane is awake, and he stares dumbly at his tattoo as George explains what happened in surgery but tells him he'll have a full recovery. The tattoo now looks more like a very angled letter "S," with just two arms instead of four. He grumbles menacingly that it won't be a full recovery, and growls that Bailey did it on purpose. George just continues to dress his wound and tells Shane that he doesn't understand, and asks about Shane having a black partner. Shane says he does, asking worriedly how she is, and George just asks if they're friends. Shane tells him he's not the devil: "I'm just a guy with a belief system." He tells George that Mary's nice and that they save lives together. "That's a good time." But he says he'd have a problem with it if Mary wanted to marry his brother, and so would lots of people. He adds defensively, "I'm not that much different than most of the people that you know." I think it's to say that actually, most of the people I know wouldn't ever have a belief system that involves genocide and stark hatred. I have been sitting here, trying to put into words how inconceivable and offensive this all is, but it's beyond me. George does a much better job, so I'll leave it to him. He muses that Bailey just saved Shane's life. "A black woman saved your life at a great personal cost, so maybe next time you're looking at your tattoo and you're thinking how much better all us white guys are than everyone else, you think about that." He puts a bandage on over the incision and adds, "Because between you and me, if I'd been alone in that OR, you'd probably be dead right now." Shane looks both confused and appalled at the idea, like it never occurred to him that a white guy might not be the best person for every job. George adds calmly, "And since we're sharing belief systems, I believe if you were dead? The world would be a better place." And with his quiet voice and a little stutter, he just proved himself to be more of a man than this asshole could ever dream to be.
Izzie pokes her head into Jacob's room, where Alex is doing charts amid all of Jacob's sleeping children, to make sure he's okay. She's happy to hear he is until Mrs. Jacob walks by and demands to know why she's there, adding that they're fine without her. "Do you mind?" Dejected, Izzie walks off. Once she leaves, Alex looks up to see Ava standing there instead with a meek little smile.