Episode Report Card Al Lowe: A | 73 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Not a Leg to Stand On
By Al Lowe | Season 10 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.14.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Callie is being sued! Through flashbacks, we find out that it's because she took a chance doing surgery on the hip of Olympic snowboarder, Travis Reed, performing a procedure – at his insistence – she's never done before. He wants the Peterson Hip, a replacement joint currently in clinical trials in Germany, and popular among athletes. During the surgery, things do not go so well. To the tune of: the guy ends up with no legs. She's accused of making a series of faulty decisions resulting in an infection that has moved to his heart, and nobody can figure out fast enough what's going on to save his limbs. It's pretty much the nightmare on all sides. Speaking of nightmares, Callie has to wear pantyhose to court and, like everyone experiences on their worst days, she keeps getting runs in them.
The team, including Arizona, rallies around, taking shifts to shore her up during trial. One friend, though, is not completely on her side: Cristina. They had a difference of opinion when making decisions for his emergency surgeries She believes the snowboarder, also her patient, has a valid case. In the end, Callie wins, but not without a further twist. Before being vindicated by the jury, she discovers a piece of unopened mail behind her bookcase. It's the Peterson people. Three weeks before the surgery, they had advised her not to do it on the grounds that the joint had caused major infections in five cases. Meredith counsels her that the loss of the letter was an accident; that she performed the surgery in good faith with the facts she had on hand. Callie throws the letter away.
Callie's dad is on the scene to show his support and learns about the sad end to her marriage. Callie's having a bad year, man, but we didn't even know how bad until all flashbacks that start dropping like bombs as the court case plays out. It seems Arizona asked Callie four months before all this happened if they could try to have another baby, with Arizona carrying this time. Happiness all around, they go forward and Arizona becomes pregnant. Unfortunately, she was only briefly pregnant and the loss, compounding all the other losses the two have experienced, is too much for Arizona. She stress-spirals and says she cannot go through with the idea to have a child.
Following her win in court, Callie's dad encourages her to give her relationship with Arizona another chance for the sake of her family. He, himself, cheated on her mother, he says, a mistake they were able to rise above. Callie goes to Arizona's hotel and, not seeing that Leah is there, naked, asks Arizona to come home.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Oh, my God, people. WHAT am I doing here? Hello, I'm Al Lowe. Or, hellowe, as one might say. (Only I say that.) Lauren S is off tonight so, on some kind of harebrained whim, I picked up this recap and here we are. Confession, Catholic-style: it's been three years since my last recap. I am rusty. Let us begin.
Speaking of harebrained, Callie is currently on the world's worst errand, and is appropriately frazzled. She's buying pantyhose, and… it appears she's buying them at a…. mall? I relate to Callie for many reasons and without even yet knowing why she would be in this place doing this thing, I feel desperately sorry for her. A Hail Mary attempt to buy emergency department store pantyhose is the sort of situation in which I often find myself, and I always seem to handle it about as well as she is handling it, now. Which is to say terribly. Her first order of business is to knock all the gigantic packages of hose onto the floor, drawing the attention of the poor salesgirl who tries in vain to help as Callie gets more and more agitated.
"Doctors never mean to screw up," Callie says in voiceover as we flash to a hectic operating room where she is frantically sawing and jerking and flinging body parts around while Jo gets all panicky. Back in the mall, she wonders why she can't just get some real pantyhose. The salesgirl makes the terrible mistake of making suggestions – how about the ones that shimmer? And, as we watch things get even crazier in the OR (she commands her reluctant crew to close the surgery with a sponge left in the patient) Callie goes ballistic. "No shimmer! No footless tights or freaky little toe sock thingies!" Right on, girl. She just wants basic nude pantyhose, the kind she used to but in the grocery store. "THEY COME IN A LITTLE PLASTIC EGG!" she screams and is horrified to see the girl's face.
"It's not like we do it on purpose," she says. "It's not like we want to hurt anyone, but sometimes we do. And, when we do, we're sorry." She apologizes, saying she's under a lot of pressure and has a big day the next day. In fact, she says, she'll take ALL the pantyhose. "Even the ones with the rhinestones…?" the girl asks. "Yeah!" Callie says with fake enthusiasm and we hear in VO that apologies, at this point, don't matter. "No apology in the world matters now."
Flashback! (Get used to them!) One month prior to the pantyhose meltdown, Callie is presenting her awesome robotic hand research with McDreamy when a guest comes in. "Dr. Torres?" he asks, handing her a envelope. Girl, you just got served. "Great stuff you're doing here," the guy says as he departs.