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The residents are all on edge with it being their fifth year, and all are trying to score surgeries that will look impressive for their boards and which will only have positive outcomes. Alex works with Teddy in cardio, Cristina with Callie in ortho, April assists Bailey with the mice for the clinical trial, Lexie assists Derek, and Jackson... is largely not in this episode. Since Mere is off neuro and no one really wants to work with her, she winds up in OB wearing pink scrubs and delivering babies. In doing so she gets a patient who conveniently has an inoperable brain tumor. She realizes that because of the nature of this particular "inoperable" tumor the Brilliant Dr. Shepherd might be able to remove it after all, and she also wants to see Derek happy since he's really bored with nothing but routine cases. However, she's trying very to play by the rules and not talk neuro with Derek so she enlists Lexie to tell him about the patient in case he really might be able to remove the tumor. Unfortunately Lexie does a horrible job selling it, so Mere has to orchestrate her every little move from behind the metaphorical curtain to get Derek to take an interest in the case. Oh yes, I forgot to mention: one of the reasons Mere really wants to play by the rules now is because she and Derek are kind of inexplicably back to being all kissy and cute, to the point where I feel like we somehow missed an episode in which their relationship turned around. Regardless, with her behind-the-scenes scheming Derek winds up operating on the woman, saving her life, and is so excited he wants to tell Meredith about it but she actually tells him not to and distracts him with nookie.
Cristina is also distracting someone with nookie -- actually, three someones. The first two distractees are she and Owen, because they still can't really find anything to talk about since they haven't addressed the abortion, but they've managed to start filling in all of the awkward silences with sex all over the hospital. Richard keeps managing to accidentally stumble upon them in the act, and he yells at Owen to pull himself together and act like the Chief now; that means no more sex in conference rooms. He tells Cristina, but when they then encounter another awkward silence they just go home to drown it out with yet more sex. When she's not indisposed with Owen, Cristina and Callie are working on a tricky case that involves rebuilding a guy's spine. They run into some problems and Cristina keeps insisting that they do a less risky procedure instead even though that won't leave the guy with full mobility. When something goes wrong she freaks out and pulls her name off of the case so that she doesn't get a bad outcome on her record, but when it turns out that it was just a loose wire and the patient was fine, Callie refuses to let her back on and later lectures her that she has to start taking risks again if she wants to be great. Alex also gets the same lecture from Teddy when his patient insists on experimental surgery so that he won't have a big scar -- Alex researches it and ultimately decides not to do it because he feels it's too risky (he has a number of negative surgical outcomes on his own record already so he's trying to avoid more) and so Teddy goes ahead and does it anyway without him.
Callie is on edge in general because Mark and Arizona have managed to become BFFs, and the way they bonded was through cooking. She admits she wanted them to get along but now that they are together all the time acting like little Martha Stewarts and it's killing her own sex life with Arizona. Finally one evening she kicks out Mark and orders him to start having some sex of his own again so that he can focus his energies elsewhere and give her and Arizona some much-needed alone time again.
Bailey picks April to help her out on the islet cell clinical trial, and they are both stumped as to why some of the mice are once again diabetic. April has been failing miserably at delegating because no one will listen to her; when she tries to get Alex to do something he winds up yelling at her that part of her problem is that her voice gets all squeaky and ridiculous and no one will ever listen to her like that. She tries out a new, deeper, authoritative voice (and threats) on Meredith and miraculously, it works and she has Meredith do some research on the mice. Richard has been dying to know how the trial is going but Bailey refuses to tell him, so he and Meredith wind up working in secret, doing research to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. Bailey then catches Mere assisting and blows her lid; April takes full responsibility for delegating the task to Mere but that only gets her fired from the trial too. Meredith finally yells back at Bailey to just take a look at the research and against her will, Bailey realizes that it's good and that Meredith (and Richard, though she doesn't know that yet) might have solved the problem.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!What is a girl to do when her daughter has been taken away and her marriage is crumbling? Why, deliver other people's babies, of course. It's not shocking that she seems to be struggling a little to keep the smile on her face with each new crying infant. She VO's something about how babies cry when they need something but how, as adults, we become more difficult and start to hide our feelings. These voiceovers have been really reaching a few times this season; I would argue that even though babies cry you don't always know what they mean by it, but I suppose babies are cute and thematic with Mere's current problems, so we'll shoehorn this VO in.
Callie is in bed and woken by a kiss from her wife. She's happy and from her voice thinks maybe this is going to be an extra-special, va-va-voom kind of waking up but they are immediately joined by Mark, who happily plops down and puts a tray of food in front of her. She's much less interested in eggs than smooches. I'm a little bit interested in the idea of jalapeno-infused bacon which Mark and Arizona are serving with their eggs Benedict, and Mark happily announces that tomorrow they are having short ribs infused with cabernet. Callie does not share their culinary joy and just wants coffee so she can prepare for her big surgery that day.
Mere continues her VO to say that when we grow up we start to hide our feelings and put up walls. Very literally, Bailey has put up a wall -- or rather, a door -- to the research lab and changed the locks so that Richard can't get in. He finds it unfair, but she doesn't really care.
Or rather, she cares so much that she wants to keep him out of the lab to prevent him from finding out that something has started to go wrong with the trial -- 20% of the mice with the implants are now diabetic again. April is now assisting Bailey and both are freaking out about it, but while April wants to tell Richard, Bailey forbids it. Bailey tries to tell April that she picked her to assist on the trial because she's great at working on challenging projects, but April knows full well that Bailey picked her because everyone else turned her down. Bailey insists that April is a problem-solver anyway, but April seems more scared than inspired by Bailey's panic.
Owen has gathered the fifth-year residents in the locker room to drive home just how hard this year will be, and how everything they do will go on their record. Mere runs in late sporting pink scrubs and is ruthlessly mocked by the guys for having to work in OB. Alex's balls seem to be re-growing since he even gets in a dig about how she misses Zola so much that her uterus hurts. That's pretty ballsy (I'm sorry, I couldn't help it) for a guy who just last week was discussing their diminutive metaphorical size. Cristina yells at them on Mere's behalf but then quietly advises Mere that slumming it in OB is fine, "But wearing the Vagina Squad's scrubs in public is not." I don't know if the very room in which she'd have to put them on and likewise take them off is actually considered public but I think Cristina just means, "Anywhere that anyone they might possibly know might possibly see her."
Back to Owen, he reminds them all that they need to have as many good outcomes as possible in their surgeries and explains that to motivate them he has started a system where he'll get an email at his personal traveling office if anyone winds up with over ten bad outcomes. When April also runs in late, Owen makes an example of her by announcing her two bad outcomes. When Alex (balls ever growing) mocks her Owen brings up that he's leading the pack with five. Alex grumbles that he's just got dud patients. I'm sure the people whose lives ended on or right after being on his table greatly appreciate the tender concern their surgeon feels for their lives. Cristina starts texting with a sassy smile and then Owen's phone beeps; he asks her if she's getting all of this info down and she uses it as a chance to brag about the fact that so far she has a perfect record which will stay so during her ortho rotation that week.
With Meredith out of neuro and Jackson staying devoted to plastics, Derek's newest trainee assistant is Little Grey, and she so far is proving to be the Lesser Grey when it comes to working with him. She's desperately apologizing for not doing something and promises she's not making an excuse by blaming it on the scrub nurse; basically, the more she talks the deeper she digs herself into a hole and Derek orders her to leave, presumably before his head explodes. If the neuro god's head explodes, after all, there won't be any one left who is brilliant enough to fix it!
She walks over to Mere and begs her to have sex with Derek so that he'll be nicer. In addition to visiting her sister, she must have been spending a lot of time living in a dream world where Meredith and Derek are even remotely considering taking off their clothes around one another. Meredith just laughs and warns her that she has to learn all of his quirks, which makes Lexie grumble and leave. Mere then saunters over to her husband to ask about his day, and he grouses about how all of his cases are boring; Meredith adds a bit wistfully that he also can't tell her about it because he can't talk about neuro, almost like maybe he will cave and change his mind. And then something weird happens. He agrees, but then leans in and kisses her and suggests with a smile that he knows something that they can do instead of talking. [Insert sound of a screeching record here.] Wait, what? Mere warns him that there is no kissing in the hospital but they are all smiley and flirty with each other, and he only lets her leave to answer a page once he kisses her one more time. Did we miss an episode? Did ABC air something out of order? Because the last we saw of these two, Derek 1) told Owen he can't bring himself to forgive Meredith yet and is still totally angry; 2) finally was able to rub Meredith's back when they found out their daughter would live and Mere was sobbing with relief, and that physical contact was the most they had had in weeks; and 3) they still went to bed fully clothed, on top of the covers, not looking at each other. Now we've suddenly arrived back at sexy sexy funtimes? I... am very confused.
Cristina has joined Callie for ortho week; Callie is crabby and moaning that while she should be grateful that Mark and Arizona are getting along, she is really just bitter about it. Cristina is texting, laughing, and totally ignoring Callie as Callie complains about how Mark and Arizona now cook together all the time and that all of their time is consumed with talking about, making, or watching shows about food. When she realizes Cristina hasn't heard a word she said she snatches the phone away but quickly regrets it when she reads a text that describes what Owen wants to do to Cristina on a conference table. Cristina brags about Owen not being able to get enough of her but Callie readily admits to being jealous since she's never even alone with her wife anymore. She then decides to change the subject to their actual case, and when Cristina asks what kind of joint they will be replacing Callie points out that this is the first time they are "co-piloting" a case and asks if Cristina thought she would choose something boring. Cristina looks a little worried.
They walk into the room where a man is sitting on the bed with his wife to him, and Callie introduces them as the patient's parents. When he husband doesn't stand up, his wife smacks him and yells at him for his bad manners. They are already charming. Then their actual patients walks in from the bathroom -- his name is Tyler, and Tyler is staring downward with his neck almost at a 90-degree angle; he apologizes for staring at Cristina's boobs and promises he's not doing it intentionally. He's as sweet as his parents are grating. Callie explains that he has a degenerative bone disease that was aggravated by a car accident two years ago, so what they are going to do is build him a new neck in a three-day, three-part surgery. Not so much the easy-peasy hip replacement that Cristina was looking for, as it turns out.
Up in OB a stereotypical TV couple, Clay and Mary, comes in: Mary is in labor and screaming at her husband like a she-beast not to film her like all good television and movie mothers-to-be while Clay ignores her since he's too excited about the birth of their child. Meredith walks in and Mary demands drugs, so Meredith goes to take a look down south and see how things are progressing. What she sees is the baby's head, so she gets gowned up immediately to get to work. When Clay ignores Mary's repeated screams to stop filming, she finally yells, "Brain tumor!" I thought this was just their personal kinky safe word but as it turns out, she actually has one, and Meredith is a little annoyed that they didn't let her know when she arrived but doesn't have time to dwell on it because the baby is coming. Now isn't it lucky that Mary's water broke early and she was brought to the nearest hospital that just happened to have the universe's most brilliant and talented brain surgeon?
Now that the baby has arrived, Mary no longer seems possessed by the devil and Meredith and Lexie watch through the window as she and Clay cuddle with new baby Emma. In ten years, the number of Emmas running around is going to equal the number of Jennifers that I knew when I was growing up, when everyone had to tack on at least their last initial to know who the teacher was actually calling on in class. Meredith explains to Lexie that Mary has a butterfly tumor, so called because it is in both sides of her brain. Lexie thinks it was fairly selfish for a woman to choose to have a baby when she knew she was going to die, but Mere's not worried about this for Little (Future) Orphan Emma's well being -- she got Mary's scans and wants Lexie to take them to Derek so that he'll have an interesting case. Lexie has no interest in doing so and points out that Meredith is using her to get around the "no talking about neuro" rule but Meredith just counters that if Derek is happy and inspired, he'll probably stop yelling at Lexie. Meredith is a regular medical Cyrano de Bergerac. Or, if we're talking about my Jennifer-heavy school years and the movie that was a must at every slumber party, she's Steve Martin in Roxanne.
Cristina runs down Alex in the hall and tries to talk him into trading surgeries, but he already knows what's up and thinks she just wants an easy case. Teddy walks up behind them and hears them arguing, so Cristina very maturely tries to tattle on him that he said her service is easy. This just leads to another conversation about Alex's less-than-stellar record which he again blames on "dud patients." He and Teddy walk in to meet their patient and lying in bed is the Six Million Dollar Man himself. I guess when he got all those bionic limbs they forgot to reinforce all of his aortic valves, so he now needs open heart surgery to fix one. Today, Col. Steve Austin is going as "Chuck." Chuck is sporting silk pajamas, like you do when you're in the hospital, and gets worried as Alex describes the surgery. It turns out, though, that he's less worried about the procedure than he is about the scar -- he is a playboy of the senior pool scene and he thinks once he has a scar the ladies will suddenly see him only as unhealthy and will also figure the sex will be bad. Alex tries to argue but Teddy cuts him off and tells Chuck that they will see what they can do.
Owen is sitting in the conference room, surrounded by work but instead clearly composing a saucy text message to his wife. It doesn't really count as not having an office if you just regularly set up shop in a conference room, Owen. If there is one room in which you always do your work and your things are spread out all over the table, that's pretty much an office. Derek comes in moaning about how much the residents suck and how good he had it with Meredith. Owen just asks him about expense reports and as they commiserate over their rough jobs, Mark comes in and throws down a container full of homemade ginger maple scones. He looks like that and can make ginger maple scones? Sign me up. They both turn down the baked goodies and then interrupt his describing how difficult they are to bake so that they can talk about manly things like building houses. Mark gets it; he's boring. He complains that Jackson is doing all of his surgeries so he has to cook to keep his mind sharp. Derek calls bullshit on this excuse, but then is pulled away when a nurse tells him that Lexie needs him. Mark then intimidates Owen into trying a scone.
Since she couldn't give the surgery away, Cristina is working with Callie on taking the old hardware out of Tyler's neck. Callie is using a giant drill and more elbow grease than any of the boys ever used on the deck. She explains that the day Mark will take out all of the scar tissue and she and Cristina will put in a cage to keep everything in place until they give Tyler his new neck. She's excited, but Cristina is uncharacteristically nervous -- she doesn't want to use the force needed to really break stuff up with the drill, and asks Callie about the possibility of doing a fusion instead, pointing out that it's safer. Callie replies that Tyler has had four already, so now they want a long-term solution. She also points out that, "Only lame surgeons do fusions," and they aren't lame, they are badass. Cristina looks about as un-badass as she ever has, all nervous, but the conversation is broken up when her phone starts to ring with some loud, obnoxious techno music. Callie knows exactly what kind of text must be coming through and is disgusted that Cristina and Owen couldn't wait until surgery was over. As payback, she tries to get the nurse to read it out loud. As Callie and Cristina yell orders at her back and forth, the poor nurse looks like she's watching a ping-pong match and seems unsure of what to do. Cristina finally has her just turn the phone off. I believe this is the same nurse who taught Cristina how to do an appendectomy; I can't imagine Cristina is ever going to have any measure of respect from the woman ever again.
Once surgery is over, Cristina goes to find her husband in his not-office they flirt a bit and then get right down to business; Owen promises to be quick so that Cristina can go check on her patient. They disappear behind the table so all that can be seen is his work and a half-eaten ginger maple scone. We hear zippers unzipping but then Richard walks in, and Owen's head and then Cristina's head appear from down below. She pops up while yanking up her pants and runs out of the room, just letting Owen know he should keep his phone on. Once she's gone, Richard can only exclaim, "In the conference room??" He warns Owen to act like a Chief, exclaims over the locale once more, and then leaves, shaking his head. Seriously, I have no idea how the conference room became such a popular venue this season.
Derek is not happy to learn that Lexie still hasn't found a particular article he asked her for two days before. Isn't she the Lexipedia? I'm surprised she didn't read it once and now have it memorized. Regardless, she wants to show him the butterfly tumor scan. Derek isn't interested because of its being known as inoperable, but Lexie tells him that the woman just had a baby and this is a very sad story, so she thought maybe he could do a consult. Even a bleeding heart like me thinks she did a crappy job selling this, so a hardass like Derek certainly isn't going to be swayed. He tells her to remind the patient that this is inoperable, and then orders her to find the article ASAP.
Lexie passes April as she leaves and calls out that she can't cover the ER as planned since she has to do research for Derek. April can only sputter, which is also an ineffectual way of convincing somebody of something, and she certainly doesn't get Lexie to agree to honor her work commitment. Bailey then finds her and asks about the mouse labs she was supposed to get. April tells her that she was in surgery all day trying not to fall behind; the excuse goes over about as well as you would expect. She orders April to take care of the labs now and then adds that it's hard to be a team when only one of them cares about what they are doing.
Tyler is out of surgery and lying flat on a bed with big foam pads all around him like some sort of 3D corpse outline. Callie tells him that they will be installing the cage the day and advises him to get some rest. His parents then each offer to stay but then start to fight with each other about who will do it and finally, Tyler pointedly asks Callie if visiting hours are over. She happily tells them they are, and ushers them out. She then comforts Tyler that surgery brings out the worst in people but he stares at the ceiling (with nothing in his neck right now he doesn't really have a choice) and sadly says that marriage brings out the worst in them. While he's grateful for their help, he plans to move out the second that he's well enough to do so. She obviously feels for the poor guy and tells him that he can at least get some rest now and pulls up the blanket. The thing he knows, however, is the rude awakening of Cristina running something over his toes to make sure he still has no nerve damage. He's not happy at all to hear that she's going to be doing this every 30 minutes all night long.
Mere is home and brushing her teeth when Derek joins her -- she's surprised that he is home so early but he just grumps about his boring cases. She asks some really broad questions to try and figure out if he learned about the beautiful butterfly tumor but when it seems like he didn't, she excuses herself.
She then goes and confronts Lexie while she is taking a shower. Lexie isn't super excited to have this conversation while naked and wet, but Meredith is so wound up that she doesn't notice, and manages to find out that Lexie tried to show Derek the scans but did a pretty pathetic job of it. Meredith tells her all the things she has to do and say to get Derek the "tumor junkie" to take notice, and then realizes she's going to have to write this down because for some reason, a naked and wet Lexie isn't totally focused on what she is saying at the moment.
April finds Alex waiting for test results and chooses to talk to him even though he's already pissed off from the waiting. She tries to tell him that he's got to cover the OR but Alex turns her down flat and frustrates her so much that she finally screams down the hallway, asking him if he can, "just be a person for a second." Of all of the things Alex has gone through lately, this is what seems to push his buttons the most, and he turns and gets right up in April's face to tell her how horrible she is at her job. He informs her that she's too frantic and has no authority, and then raises his voice to really badly try and imitate how nasally and high hers gets. His voice goes back to his own as he yells at her to deal with her own crap, and she's left standing alone in the hallway, looking positively adrift.
Cristina has stayed vigilant and is testing Tyler's reflexes yet again. Apparently she has also tried to get some shut-eye between check-ins and Tyler informs her that she snores. Cristina knows and answers that she has been told it's adorable, but Tyler counters that it's very much not. He's a little bit annoyed by sleep deprivation but generally good-natured... at least until his parents arrive in a cloud of arguments. She insults him for not checking traffic, he insults her for offering Tyler a doughnut for breakfast. Cristina jumps in and informs them that he can't eat before surgery, so Tyler's dad gloats about being right. Cristina pulls the doughnuts away from all of them (what do you want to bet she'll wind up eating one even though she used the excuse that they are unhealthy?) and Tyler just stares straight ahead, eyes glazed over, trying to will himself out of the room.
Lexie accosts Derek by the elevator and before he can actually strangle her for not having found the requested article she pulls out Mary's scans and shouts, "Look! Butterfly tumor!" The sprawling tumor is enough to make Derek forget about Lexie and a smile starts to grow on his face.
Cut to Mary's room, where Clay can't really wrap his head around what Derek is saying, since they've seen lots of surgeons and all have told them that surgery would likely put Mary into a coma or kill her. Derek tells them that he just wants to take a new scan, and Mary is all for it and manages to convince Clay to at least let her do that though he's not happy about it. Seriously, isn't it amazing that they have seen so many surgeons but happened to skip over the world-renowned brain surgeon that happens to work where they live?
April, stressed (as usual), stretched too thin, and desperate for help, grabs Meredith to assist her with mouse research. Cristina is hanging out in April's office, doing research on Tyler's surgery and feeding a piece of confiscated doughnut to a Mouse Q who doesn't know that he's diabetic and it might kill him. April does, though, and in her harried state she can only shriek and grab his cage away from Cristina. When it comes out that April wants Meredith to run some tests on Q, Cristina thinks April is just giving her grunt work while Mere points out that grunt work or no, Bailey hates her and holds her responsible for Richard losing this trial so would never, ever let her participate. April answers that this is why she'll be doing it in secret, and Cristina says what we are all thinking: this is the worst idea she has ever heard. When Meredith agrees, April realizes that she's again facing residents who just blow off any of her orders and so she takes what Alex said to heart and switches up her approach. She puts on a strange, deeper, kind of growly voice that sounds like it might hurt her throat after a little while, honestly. She threatens that if Meredith doesn't do this, she'll make her life hell, putting her on call every night and assigning her only the most disgusting patients. Meredith doesn't get scared but she does agree to do it, maybe just so April stops her "mean" voice, and Cristina actually seems a little bit impressed. When April asks if Meredith really agreed just because she changed her voice, Cristina warns her to leave before she can embarrass herself more, and April does. Cristina's phone then goes off and she leaves to go answer her call of duty. Mere asks suspiciously if they have talked yet but they seem to have just replaced talking completely with sex. Cristina still isn't interested in talking and points out that Meredith has her own issues, spending her fifth year delivering babies and playing with mice. Meredith has no comeback for this, and Cristina skips off to her husband.
I have to tell you guys that my notes -- which are written quickly and with no regard for spelling, grammar, or punctuation -- sometimes don't even make sense to me when I read them. In this case, when I skimmed what I first wrote about this episode, for a second I thought that Alex was showing someone pictures of his buff cheese, which made me picture a big, muscley chunk of gorgonzola. In actuality, he's showing Chuck pictures of buff chests that look rather like he took them from a Calvin Klein underwear ad. They are to show off how he and Teddy can do a minimally invasive procedure with a much smaller scar than initially thought. Chuck isn't much interested in the sculpted torsos and noodles around on his iPad for a moment before pulling up a close-up picture of some very hairy, folded skin. Apparently this is his buddy's groin, and he had a procedure called a TAVI where they replaced the valve through a catheter in his groin. Everything about that sounds unpleasant. But unpleasant or not, it left him without a giant visible scar, so that's what Chuck wants. Alex starts to argue with him, pointing out that there is a safer option and all but calling him stupid and vain for not just doing it. He adds that a rash guard can cover a scar. Chuck just gives him a withering look and tells him he's obviously never been to Palm Beach. "Only fatties wear rash guards." Alex turns to Teddy and says he can't get through to Chuck but Teddy tells him to look into it and see if Chuck is a good candidate. He turns back to Chuck and tells him this as if the conversation he and Teddy had wasn't right there within earshot. Chuck, whether he heard them or not, congratulates Alex for finally giving him the right answer.
When Meredith walks out of the mouse lab and locks the door, Richard is lying in wait for her. She tries to act like she knows nothing but he catches her blinking and pulls her into a darkened room to quiz her about what is happening. Once he promises he won't tell Bailey and points out that Bailey won't even let him be involved at all, she admits that some of the mice are hypoglycemic and so they are running tests to find out why. Richard suggests that she run some tests on healthy mice to do some comparisons and knows she'll be able to handle April to get the healthy mice she needs. He tells Mere that he's on call, so to page him when she gets the results. She leaves, and he waits a bit so that no one realizes that they were talking. I imagine he had a lot of situations like this with her mom back in the day. However, a light turns on and a very confused and sleepy patient, who he didn't know was in the room, is staring at him so he wishes her a good day and flees.
Callie is back at work on Tyler's neck and is having some trouble getting the cage to fit. Mark is in the OR and asks if she needs help, but she tells him she's fine. Cristina has become a surrender monkey and immediately suggests that they do the fusion instead. As they argue, Arizona runs in to discuss dinner with Mark; there's a crisis since no one has time to go to the butcher! If looks could kill, Callie would have vaporized them both over her surgical mask. She finally yells at them to shut up about dinner and declares that she's closing Tyler back up so that she can come up with a new, non-fusion solution. Between Mark's elation that this now gives him time to go to the butcher and Cristina suddenly displaying less spine than even Tyler has, she might just need time for her blood pressure to lower a bit before she gets back to work.
With Mary's scans up in 3D on a screen in the room, Derek talks to them excitedly about how her tumor is different from any others he has seen before: it has smooth edges, so would be easier to cut around. Mary, cradling Emma, stops and asks Derek if he's really saying what she thinks he's saying. If he's saying he wants to go dig around in her brain with a sharp implement, then yes! Mary is elated but Clay is wary, and Lexie's telling them that Derek is great just isn't enough to cut the mustard. They start to argue and finally he yells "Emma," just like she yelled "brain tumor" earlier. Her face falls, knowing that this means he's serious. He's terrified that she might die and Emma wouldn't even have the promised six months with her mom. He pleads with her, and as she sadly looks at Derek we crash to commercial.
Meredith is working hard on her mouse research when Alex comes in, but she doesn't seem upset and admits she would be annoyed that April dumped the work on her but it turns out she's good at it. She also shows Alex the secret snack drawer she discovered and, well, everything is better with snacks. Personally, though, I'd rather have Brenda's snack drawer in The Closer because hers is filled with chocolate and other unhealthy delights while April has peanuts and granola bars and the like. April comes in and has the gall to moan at how messy Mere has made her office, so Mere points out that she's doing this to help April and orders her to get a healthy mouse. April moans about how she can't pull a mouse out from under Bailey's nose which makes Alex mock her voice once again so she puts on her creepy deep voice, congratulates Mere on a job well done, and leaves to go get a healthy rodent. Cristina comes in and moans about her case, asking the others what would happen if she took her name off of it. Alex thinks she should do it and then mentions the TAVI procedure, which Cristina immediately tells him is a giant risk. Lexie then runs in to tell Meredith about how she finally got Derek to look at the scans and he can get the tumor, but they aren't doing it because Clay is too nervous and convinced Mary not to. Mere asks her questions about how she tried to help and when she realizes that Lexie might not have been super convincing, she gets up and leaves to fix things, mumbling about how she has to do everything herself. Over on the sofa, Alex looks over Cristina's shoulder at her phone and compliments her on how hot the texts are. Coming from Alex, that's high praise from a master.
Bailey apparently hasn't left the lab for two days but she's still alert enough to realize that April is up to something; in addition, April is talking to a mouse and Bailey points out that her voice doesn't whisper. April can't win vocally to save her life. She tells Bailey she needs the little guy to run some tests and when Bailey asks why, since he's healthy, April's smooth improvisation is to squeak that she'll let her know what's going on once she figures it out, and then she sprints away leaving Bailey rather confused. Fortunately for April, she's probably somewhat delirious from lack of sleep and doesn't have enough brain power to dwell on it. That, and April is always kind of a little bit weird and skittish so this isn't super unusual.
Back in Chuck's room, Alex tells him that he talked to some other surgeons about the TAVI and isn't going to do it for him. That's a little half-assed, even for Alex, since his opinion seems just to be Cristina's flippant remark that he was asking for another bad outcome. Chuck and his silk pajamas aren't very impressed with him and just ask if that is his final answer. Alex tells him it is and that he'll give him time to decide. Chuck just replies, "Here I took you for a guy who had a pair on him." There has been an awful lot of talk about the size of Alex's berries these past few weeks. Alex finally loses it a little and points out that it's just a dumb scar, and does Chuck really want to die because of it? When Chuck just thinks instead of answering, Alex shoots him a look that clearly says he's a vain moron.
Callie gets home and is very happy to see Arizona and to hear that Sofia is already asleep. She grabs her wife and kisses her but as soon as they fall together onto the sofa Mark throws open the door and walks in holding a pan of braised short ribs and roasted potatoes. Arizona jumps up and begins to exclaim over how amazing the food looks, while Callie tries to control herself having a short-rib-induced tantrum; Arizona and Mark are too enamored of the dinner to notice.
Cristina and Owen finally decide to rip each other's clothes off in an on-call room like normal doctors, but just as they are getting down to business a pager goes off and they realize it doesn't belong to either of them. Richard calls down from the top bunk that it is his, and then jumps down, unamused by the shenanigans. The two of them quickly pull a blanket up over their conjoined midsections and then giggle like naughty schoolchildren as he leaves.
Meredith walks out to the parking lot (still in pink scrubs, which really does look kind of weird, and I say that as someone who has a closet full of pink clothes) and finds an aggravated Clay trying to snap the car seat into his car. Meredith offers to help and it takes her approximately two seconds to get it set. That's kind of like last Christmas, when me, my mom and my dad all couldn't get the base of the borrowed car seat out of the car after twenty minutes of struggling, but our friend came over and did it in half a second. Now at least we know a baby isn't going anywhere in one of those. She casually mentions that she heard they talked to Derek, and Clay immediately opens up to her. He is scared because Derek's the only surgeon to think this is possible, and that he just wants his little family to have a few months together rather than nothing, even if that makes him the bad guy. He says that they made the decision months earlier, knowing they'd be too emotional after the baby came. I got the impression there wasn't much of a decision to be made and that no one but our own Wonder Surgeon thought this was operable, but let's go with it. Meredith gently points out that now that Mary has met and held her baby, she wants more time. Clay wants that too and cries that he's not ready for Mary to die; Meredith tells him that Mary feels the same way, but that's why she wants to fight. I don't actually think that Lexie was incapable of having this sort of discussion, but then we wouldn't get to see Meredith work all of her magic behind the scenes.
And she definitely works that magic well, because the thing we see is Derek and a team wheeling Mary down the hall. She's holding Emma and having a conversation with Clay about what women they know who he might be able to marry, but Clay's having a pretty hard time playing along. Before they wheel her past the point of no return she thanks him, and they cry as she promises to see him soon. Emma starts to cry, so now the whole family is in tears, and Clay takes her and stares sadly after them as they take Mary to surgery. Derek turns and looks back through the window to give Clay a nod of assurance. "I'm awesome. I've got this," I like to think is his inner monologue.
Tyler is back in surgery and Callie is still having a hard time. Cristina is super worried and as things get more and more tense, she announces that as the co-surgeon on the case, she recommends they abandon this and do the standard fusion. Callie is sick to death of this and yells back that they aren't quitting, and the two keep yelling at each other until alarms start to blare. That's it for Cristina, and she announces that she's taking her name off the case. But wait, the nurse points out that an electrode popped out. Callie reaches down and reattaches the wire, and everything goes back to normal. Then, after a pointed moment, Callie tells Cristina fine, her name is off the case. She then decides to try a different approach entirely and Cristina is shocked that there's another option, but Callie points out that she shouldn't care since she's off the case now. She then yells at her to go, and Cristina looks rightfully subdued and ashamed.
Mere and Richard meet for another secret mouse conversation and throw around a few more possible ideas until they come up with what they want to do . It's all very medically and I'm not entirely sure what they decided on but they seem happy about it; so happy that Richard has Meredith give him a slightly awkward fist-bump.
Meredith then takes all of the research she compiles and explains to April (who still doesn't know that Richard is secretly involved) what she thinks the problem is and what she should tell Bailey to look for. Unfortunately, Bailey has walked in and heard all of this, and she flips her lid. If this were a cartoon, steam would be shooting from her ears as she begins to yell at Mere for thinking she is God, and for touching another trial after already ruining one of them. April tries to tell Bailey that she was the one who delegated this work to Mere and Bailey first ignores her but then fires her from the trial. She then tries to take her mouse back but Meredith slams her hand down on the cage and, using April's scary gruff voice, orders Bailey to read her research. Bailey finally snatches it up and then takes her mouse and goes, and Mere turns to April and laughs that changing her voice really did seem to work. But April seems too consumed with what just happened and doesn't seem to entirely care about the voice trick. Please, please, I just want another April storyline that isn't entirely about her incompetence as a leader. She's downtrodden. We get it.
Lexie and Derek are in surgery and Mere was right -- he's totally engaged in the work and so not yelling at Lex. He's gotten it out of one side of the brain but vessels are covering the other side and making it hard to get to. Even though Lexie's not a fifth year she rolls over and gives up like one, telling Derek that at least Mary has six months, and they did all they could. Derek realizes what she's saying and says with almost a laugh in his voice that they aren't stopping. The tumor may be smart, but they are smarter. Uplifting music seems to say that this crazy plan might just work.
Cristina finds Callie in the scrub room after Tyler's surgery and immediately starts to try and rationalize her cowardice by reminding Callie that she'll have to defend every decision she makes in surgery in her boards. Callie's unimpressed and just tells Cristina that she picked her to be co-surgeon because Cristina takes crazy risks. This week she just played it safe and boring, and while Callie knows how competitive and scary this year is she warns Cristina to be careful not to lose herself. As happens so often among the Seattle Grace surgeons, though, she keeps talking and suddenly she's talking about her own life and griping about people who like to talk about food as if it's an orgasm. A confused Cristina snaps her out of it and Callie just orders Cristina not to let fifth year get to her. Cristina just heaves a sigh as if she's not sure how to prevent that, but that's so ridiculously far out of character for her that I firmly believe she can kick her own ass somehow back into being awesome.
Meredith sees Clay waiting with Emma and asks to sit with him, which he happily accepts. Emma is doing a great job keeping up the tradition of ridiculously cute Grey's Anatomy babies with her little button nose. We then get the Serious Surgical Montage, that shows them waiting as things start to get tense in the OR. A vessel started to leak and Derek has to drain the tumor, so he asks for a needle. Lexie is shocked to see that he's going in blind but Derek tells her he doesn't have a choice. This show is full of cliched, overdramatic medical moments but usually I still get kind of sucked in; unfortunately something about Lexie's exclamation and Derek's tough but take-charge answer just made me laugh this time.
Dramatic Drums then play as Derek walks out of the OR with a serious, unreadable race. We follow him into the elevator, watch him heave a sigh, and then follow him to the waiting area where he finds Clay. After a moment Clay begs him to spit it out and Derek announces that they got the entire tumor. I really like Clay and for all of the OR dramatics, he tugs at my cold, black heartstrings a little bit as he smiles yet crumbles into sobs of thanks. Mere stands and watches them from afar and like their benevolent pink guardian angel.
Alex walks up to Teddy and Chuck in time to hear her tell him that once he's prepped, she'll see him in the OR to do his TAVI. Alex is stunned but Chuck just genially informs him, "Look. The lady had a bigger pair than you. No hard feelings, OK?" He then turns and tries to charm the young nurse helping wheel him to the OR. You know how you can get so frustrated with someone and then you realize it's because they are exactly like you? I think that Alex could easily be Chuck in 40 years, though he probably won't be wearing such natty silk jammies. You know he's going to be the stud of the retirement home, though. Alex demands that Teddy give him his patient back and insists she can't punish him for being cautious. She points back that she totally can because he's now scared after too many bad outcomes. "The only thing worse than a bad surgeon is a scared one." Alex has no comeback to that. He'll have to work on his snappy replies if he really wants to Chuck it up, though.
Tyler is back in his room, sporting a brand-new neck, and Callie jokes with him that now he'll actually be able to look girls in the eye. He's got a big bandage on his neck, probably from a breathing tube during surgery, and can't speak that well. But once his parents start hollering at each other again he searches for what little voice he has and whispers at them to get a divorce. They don't hear him and continue to holler at each other so he keeps trying and finally manages to put on his own version of April's scary voice to order them to get a divorce. This shuts them up long enough for him to say he understands that they stayed together until now, but that now that his neck is okay they can leave each other. Both assure him everything is fine but he yells that they hate each other so they need to go get a divorce. He then holds on to his neck, sore from the yelling, and Callie manages to politely shoo them away. Once they are gone she asks him how it felt, and he smiles and tells her it was awesome.
We're treated to some more Dramatic Drums but they slowly come to a Dramatic Halt as we see Bailey reading over Meredith's research. Richard walks in, responding to her page, and rather hilariously feigns surprise when she admits that some of the mice are hypoglycemic. "Whaaaaaaaaat?" Grudgingly, she admits that Meredith seems to be the one to have figured out what went wrong. She's also overwhelmed that now she has several weeks' worth of tests to run on the mice along with, oh yes, her actual patients. Before Richard can suggest it she reiterates that there's no way she's going to use Meredith, and for once he lets that be and just tells her instead that help will show up. He then orders her to go home and get some rest. After she leaves, he looks at Mouse Q and tells the little dude, "Don't worry kid, I got your back." The two people dismissed from trials working together in secret on one of those trials when one of those people has been having issues with her husband stemming from her secretly breaking rules? This is a super sound idea, guys.
After work at Joe's, Jackson has miraculously reappeared so that Lexie can exclaim over how amazing it was to watch Derek operate. Alex is moping about what Teddy said to him when April walks up, snatches his beer away, and begins to lecture him. She only gets as far as telling him that what he said to her was awful before he starts to yell at her again, so she puts on a serious voice -- a little more refined and less uncomfortable than her first attempts earlier in the day -- and gives them all their work orders for the rest of the week. She then adds that if they argue, she'll take them off of the surgical board indefinitely. Finally, Alex has no comeback, so April chirps that since she got fired from the trial, she's going to spend the night drinking and flirting with boys. She chugs the rest of Alex's beer and skips away while the others stare after her, kind of shellshocked.
Outside, Cristina runs up and practically tackles Owen and they make out. He finally peels her off of him for a moment to tell her that he really does have to start acting like the Chief, so they can't Do It anymore in the hospital. She tries to act cool as she agrees but it's immediately evident that now they don't know what to say to each other. He asks if she wants to go to dinner and she agrees, but then she suggests they can go home and have sex instead, and he grins and takes her up on that offer. Meredith VO's that it's not always easy to speak your mind, so sometimes we need to be forced to do it.
Arizona and Mark are once again at work in the kitchen when Callie arrives home carrying a pizza and a six-pack of beer. Both are surprised since Mark made Coq au Vin (and he puts some extra French flair into his pronunciation) but Callie just calmly opens the trash and dumps it in, pan and all. She silences both of their exclamations and then explains that while she loves Mark very dearly and thinks he's an amazing father to their daughter, he needs to get out so that she can have an evening alone with her wife to eat pizza and drink beer in bed while she brags about her surgery, followed by lots of sex. Arizona lights up at this suggestion and seems to be immediately over the demise of their feast. Mark gives Callie wounded puppy-dog eyes as she informs him that his new hobby is ruining her sex life and then begs him to have his own sex again instead. But she adds that he's not to start tonight, because they need him to babysit. At his request she gives him one sad little piece of pizza and then ushers him out so that she and Arizona can pounce on each other.
Meredith is reading in bed when Derek comes home and he looks like a new person, grinning like a fool. She VO's that sometimes it's better to keep things to yourself even when you're dying to come clean -- so you keep the secret and find other ways to be happy. Derek falls into bed and tells her that his day was so great, he wants to break the rules and tell her about it. She looks skeptical, but not as skeptical as I do at home. Seriously, I have whiplash from his change of attitude. I mean, I'll take it, because I was sick of Wronged Petulant Derek, but I still don't understand how this came about so fast. Mere tells him not to, which I don't think he was expecting, and he grins and asks if she's sure. She just pulls him over to her and they cuddle and wind their legs together, taking the Cristina and Owen approach to talking instead. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to ice my neck.
Lauren S is a writer and gal-about-town who lives and works in Atlanta and would love to eat some of Mark's homemade ginger maple scones. She wants everyone to know: "The views expressed in my recaps and anything else I might write on TWoP are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer."