Previously on Grey's Anatomy: Season 1. Also, Dr. McDreamy's wife shows up and ruins everything for Meredith; George clocks Alex for giving him the syph via Nurse Olivia; Chief Webber has brain surgery; and Cristina's pregnant with Burke's baby.
We open at the Emerald City Bar across from the hospital. Mere throws back shot after shot of tequila as we hear her voice-over, "To be a good surgeon, you have to think like a surgeon. Emotions are messy. Tuck them neatly away, and step into a clean, sterile room where the procedure is simple: cut, suture, and close." Joe the Bartender tells her she looks familiar, and asks if she's been there before. Mere: "Once. That worked out really well." Joe says it's got to be one of two things: her boss is giving her hell, or her boyfriend is. Mere says it's both, since her boss is her boyfriend, but that's not as big a problem as the fact that her boyfriend has a wife. Joe gives her a shot on the house for that one. MereVO: "But sometimes, we're faced with a cut that won't heal. A cut that rips its stitches." Mere takes her shot, and we cut to...
...McDreamy, icily asking his wife, "Addison, what are you doing here?" Addison blithely avoids the question, and comments on his longer, dreamier hair. McDreamy asks again what she's doing there. Addison: "What are YOU doing here? You left everything -- your house, your wife, your practice. You had a life. And now you have a girlfriend in Seattle. She seems...sweet." Aw, man, Kate Walsh is so fabulously beautiful and evil here that I can't even hate her. McDreamy says if she came out here to try to win him back, she can forget it. Addison assures him she's just here for work -- the Chief asked her to come. McDreamy can't believe he wasn't informed. Addison leans in close to McDreamy and hotly tells him she really does like his new hairstyle. Yow!
Izzie asks Alex to let her see his new George-given black eye. Alex tries to act all hard about it, and says if he had been ready, he would have kicked George's ass. Izzie's all, "Well, why didn't you, big shot?" Alex: "You kiddin'? I'm riding plastics all the way to the bank." I don't even know what that means. Well, I do, but it's still stupid. Izzie tells Alex he had it coming. Alex responds that George punches like his sister. Izzie totally shuts him down with, "Oh, so by that definition, you got beat up by a girl." Heh.
Cut to George entering Joe's bar to cheers and applause. Cristina tells everyone that George knocked Alex down in one punch. George tries to pretend he's not impressed with himself, but he totally is. They sit down to Mere at the bar. George orders a beer, and Mere asks them to play a game of "Guess Whose Life Sucks The Most." Cristina challenges her, saying she'll definitely win. Mere goes first: "Derek's married." George spit-takes his beer, and Cristina disgustedly tells him to go clean himself up. Then it's her turn; she confesses that she's pregnant. "I win." Yes, I believe she does. Suddenly, there's a crash and a thud behind them. They turn to find that Joe the Bartender has collapsed. Cristina: "Okay, maybe Joe wins." Credits.
When we come back, Joe is awake and complaining that he doesn't need to go to the hospital and get any tests done. Mere insists he needs to go. As they check Joe's vitals, Mere expresses her surprise that Cristina was sleeping with someone and didn't tell her. George stands around and talks to no one in particular about his syphilis. Poor George. Joe wrenches himself out of the doctors' grasp and says he can walk his own damn self to the hospital.
Back at the hospital, Mere asks Cristina what she's going to do. Cristina says she's not switching to the vagina squad or spending her life popping zits -- she's too talented. "Surgery is my life." Cristina will not reveal who she's been sleeping with, despite Meredith's pleas. Mere says she can't just bring something like this up and expect her to drop it. Cristina: " Watch me." She walks off. Ooh, pregnancy really...makes Cristina act exactly the same, doesn't it?
Izzie asks Mere what she's doing back at the hospital, and why she's not on a date with McDreamy. George pipes up delightedly, "More like McMarried!" Izzie can't believe it. Mere says she came to check on Joe. Everyone is wondering if he's going to be okay when McDreamy appears on the scene. Mere rolls her eyes as McDreamy explains that Joe has cranial bleeding and an aneurysm the size of a golf ball. He wants to do something called a "standstill operation," which causes Cristina to nearly orgasm, so it must be pretty cool. McDreamy tries to hand Meredith the chart, but Mere says she's drunk and walks off. McDreamy follows, and is totally cock-blocked by Cristina and Izzie, then George. Izzie whispers, "Bastard." Hee. When Cristina goes to look at Joe's chart, Izzie and George ask her what the hell she's doing. Cristina says she's really on Mere's side, but they're talking about a standstill operation here, so they need to recognize.
McDreamy chases after Meredith as she tries to make a quick exit. He wants to talk, but Mere yells at him to go away and quit following her. McDreamy says he just wants to explain. Mere says that he should have explained the first night in the bar, before any of the rest of it. I am going to have to agree. McDreamy says he understands how she feels, but Mere disagrees. She yells and yells and yells some more, then stomps off into the rain. George appears out of nowhere with an umbrella, and demands the keys to her car.
McDreamy walks in to check on Chief Webber, and finds Addison sitting on his bed and giggling about some story he's telling. McDreamy clears his throat, and Addison hauls ass. McDreamy asks the Chief what she's doing here. Webber: "You and I both know she's the best in the field. Bringing Addie out was a business decision, nothing personal." McDreamy's all, "Oh, well, that's a relief. Not personal. It's personal to me." Webber tells him he doesn't need to be including his private life in hospital business, then he adds insult to injury by saying Burke will be acting as chief of surgery while he's recuperating. McDreamy gets all offended, but Webber makes it worse by asking how long he's been sleeping with an intern. Then he's all, "Close the door on your way out." Damn.
Shots of the city. Rock music. Meredith tosses around in her bed. Okay!
Burke finds Cristina lovingly examining some surgical equipment in the OR. She jumps, and says she'll have everything back where it's supposed to be when she's done. Burke takes this opportunity to ask her to go to dinner. Cristina says she needs some time to think, and he interrupted her alone time. Burke says he gets it, and leaves sadly.
George and Izzie are in the locker room getting dressed, and George explains how Alex just pushed him too far this time. Izzie offers to take care of Alex for him, if he pisses him off again, and George's manhood is threatened. He's all, "No way, man, I'm handling it." Uh huh. Bailey walks in and hands out assignments. She tells Meredith that she must be very popular, because there was a special request just for her.
Burke is walking with Webber's secretary, while she rattles off the huge list of things Webber gets done -- before lunch. Burke says confidently that he can do it all, no problem. Webber's secretary walks off laughing to herself, "Virgins." Indeed. McDreamy walks over and fake-congratulates Burke. Burke: "Don't sweat it, Shepherd, I'll only be your boss for a few days." McDreamy reminds Burke that he was the one who operated on Webber, and Burke says, "Yeah, then he chose me to replace him while recruiting your wife." McDreamy: "Clearly, he has brain damage." Heh. Burke asks McDreamy to clear up the status of his relationship with Addison, and he says they're separated. And speak of the devil, Addison shows up at just that second. She apologizes to Burke for interrupting. Burke: "You're never interrupting." McDreamy: "She's always interrupting." Addison ignores this, and asks Burke if he'd secured the intern she'd requested. It's Mere's turn to show up, and she responds, "He did." Everyone does a double-take except Addison, who's grinning like the cat who ate the canary. Mere tries to look badass, but fails sort of miserably. Commercials.
We return to Addison quizzing Mere on their patient: "Define T.T.T.S.?" Mere says it's twin-twin transfusion syndrome, which is conjoined fetal twins connected by blood vessels in the placenta. Addison: "Meaning?" Mere doesn't know. Addison says it means that one twin gets too much blood, and the other too little, endangering the lives of both. She adds, "I'd expect you to know that, Grey." Oops. The mother of the twins says she thought there wasn't much chance that anything could be done. Addison assures her that she's one of a handful of surgeons in the world who can separate fetal blood vessels, and they'll do surgery tomorrow. She tells the patient to ask Dr. Grey if she has any questions, as she's one of the hospital's most popular interns. Whoa. She also tells Mere out in the hall that she's actually this tough on all her interns, not just the ones who are sleeping with her husband. The mother of the twins overhears this, and rubs her belly in concern.
George grabs the chart of the patient Bailey assigned him, and realizes that -- surprise! -- it's Chief Webber. He walks in all business and starts checking Webber's pupils. Webber swats his hand away: "O'Malley. You're touching me." George doesn't know what to do, so he just stands there while Webber tells him that, as long as he's in this hospital room, he doesn't know what's happening outside it. He orders George to be his eyes and ears today. "I want you to be a sponge. You report anything and everything happening in this hospital to me." George: "I'm an investigative sponge?" Hee. Webber says yes, yes he is.
George walks out of Webber's room and promptly overhears McDreamy and Burke arguing about giving Meredith to Addison. Burke says he knows what he's doing, and asks if he needs something. McDreamy asks if he's ever attempted a standstill surgery. Burke is intrigued, and we cut to...
...Joe's room, where they're explaining that what they're going to do is cool his body enough to stop his heart, then try to fix the aneurysm. The being dead part is supposed to reduce the risk of rupture. McDreamy will have forty-five minutes to perform the surgery, and then Burke will step in and get his heart re-started. Poor Joe is like, "You wanna freeze my body, drain my blood, and stop my heart? In under forty-five minutes? If you go over, is it free?" Hee. Humorless Cristina is all, "No. Not free." Burke tells her to go prep the OR. Joe asks how much something like this costs. McDreamy tells him not to worry about that right now. Joe is worried, though, because he doesn't have any insurance, so he needs a number. The doctors have to break it to him that it will be a couple hundred thousand...at least. George, by the way, has been sponging this whole scene right up.
Alex and Izzie are trying to fix some charts they messed up the night before. Alex can't remember who any of the patients are, and Izzie gets impatient with him. She asks if he ever wakes up in the morning, realizes nobody likes him, and cares. Alex: "Oh, I think somebody likes me." Haaa! Alex really is Dirty Uncle Sal.
Cristina runs into Burke in the stairwell, and he completely ignores her. She's like, "What, you don't speak now that you're chief?" Burke asks her what the hell she wants: she won't go out to dinner, she won't meet him in the on-call room, and she sure won't talk to him. "I don't even have your home phone number! So tell me, what do you want?" Cristina, flustered, screams that she doesn't know. Burke gets close, kisses her hard, and says, "Figure it out." Yes, do, or I will for you. Pan up the stairwell, and George the Sponge is standing there, absorbing it all.
Of course, when he reports back to Webber, he says there's nothing to report -- it's been very quiet all day long. Webber can't believe there's no gossip, nothing new, or anything. George: "You know, not in the halls, or the OR. Not in the stairwells. Especially...you know? They're just stairwells." Aw.
Alex checks in on Joe the Bartender, who begs Alex to get him out of here and get him transferred to County or something. Alex says he doesn't want to go there, they'll kill him. Joe says he can't afford this place, and he's going to lose the bar. Alex assures them they can worry about that after they save his life. Joe: "The bar is my life, man. I'm gonna have to shut it down, or sell it." George, who has clearly figured out how to be in ten different places at once, sponges and looks concerned.
Mere is in the T.T.T.S. lady's room, checking things out on the ultrasound machine. The woman completely inappropriately asks Mere, "What does it take to go after another woman's husband?" Whoa! Mere tries to be cool, but the lady keeps talking. She says it happened to her, three weeks into her pregnancy, and just wonders if Meredith is sorry about it. Mere escapes by saying she's going to check on her labs. What she should have done is slapped that pregnant bee-yotch.
Cristina is on her way to check on Joe when she has to take a detour and puke into the toilet. Joe witnesses this and smiles to himself. "Hey, Sunshine!" Heh. Cristina pretends she doesn't hear this, so Joe says morning sickness must suck. Cristina tells him not to breathe a word to anyone -- not about her, not about Meredith, not about Meredith and Dr. McDreamy... Joe interrupts, "Hey, Dr. Burke!" to stop her from talking. Burke waits for a report on Joe, and as Cristina gives it, Joe realizes that he's her baby daddy. Burke, oblivious to all of this, says to page him if there are any changes.
George is staring through the nursery window and practicing what he's going to say to Webber. "Hey, nothing much going on, except your interim chief making out with an intern in the stairwell. Sponge duty SUCKS." Mere catches him talking to himself. George complains that he's a bad sponge, a leaky sponge, and a bad liar. Mere giggles, and George tells her she looks nice today. Aw. Mere says she wore her new lip gloss, because her ex-boyfriend's wife looks like Isabella Freaking Rossellini, and she's just...her. George has heard only one word, and that's "EX-boyfriend." Mere can't believe she's trying to outdo Addison, when she herself is the evil mistress. George tells her she still looks nice. Mere asks what he's doing there. George is a really bad sponge, because he spills it: "Can you think of any reason at all why Cristina would be kissing Burke?" Mere looks at our little sponge in amazement.
Cut to Mere waiting for Cristina to exit the elevator, arms crossed. Uh-oh. She lights into Cristina: "After all this time, and all your warnings about me sleeping with MY boss? And you're doing the same thing?" Cristina says it's not the same thing -- she and McDreamy are in a relationship. Mere: "And you and Burke are in...?" Cristina says they're in Switzerland -- it's very neutral there, and they make very nice watches. Hee. Mere asks if she's going to tell Burke about the baby. Cristina says there are some things she likes to keep to herself, and not discuss to death. Mere is upset that Cristina even confided in her at all, if she weren't going to tell her the juiciest part. Because pregnant ladies are weird, Mere, and that's all there is to it.
Speaking of weird pregnant ladies, T.T.T.S. Woman is still on Mere's ass about McDreamy. She says when she found out about her husband's little friend, she called her up and took her out to lunch. "I really just wanted to put a face on the bitch that got my husband to throw away fifteen years of marriage." Wow, somebody has issues. Mere can't be concerned about that right now, because she's found something crazy on the ultrasound. Like, perhaps, the undigested remains of her husband's mistress.
Burke leans hotly over the reception desk and asks Bailey if she knows who "McDreamy" is. Bailey looks over at Addison and McDreamy talking, and says, "Me. I'm Dr. McDreamy. I'm tall, and handsome, and I like to lean against things, and ponder the difficulties of dating beautiful women. I'm trying to be a surgeon here!" Meanwhile, McDreamy tells Addison she has a lot of nerve requesting Meredith. Addison says she came highly recommended, so she doesn't know what he's crying about. Just then, Mere comes over to tell Addison there's something she should see on the ultrasound. Addison gives McDreamy a look all, "Okay, then!" and he tries to talk to Meredith after she leaves. Mere: "DON'T." She leaves too. Burke and George look on with interest, and McDreamy takes off the other way.
George reports once again to Webber that there's nothing to report. He says he should go, then remembers that there is one thing. "It's about Joe, the Bartender? Our standstill patient."
Back to T.T.T.S. Woman's room, where Addison is explaining that they've found what looks like beginning heart failure in the twins. They're going to go ahead with surgery right now. The mom asks if her babies are going to be okay, and Addison tells Mere to hurry and prep the OR.
As Joe is wheeled into surgery, he gives Alex a bunch of last-minute orders about the bar. We then cut to Webber telling George he's sorry, but there's nothing they can do -- they operate on patients, then release them, and it's not their job to help them pay their bills. Aw, Joe!
Surgery. Joe has been anesthetized, and ice packs are placed on and around his body. Up in the observation room, Bailey tells George he won't be able to see anything from way back where he's sitting. George says he knows; he's trying to find some kind of a loophole to help Joe with his medical bills. Bailey says she was the only intern her first year. "I didn't know anybody, and nobody knew me except Joe. He knew me." George gets the wrong idea, all, "Oh, really? You and Joe?" Bailey says all he ever thinks about is how to get into somebody's pants, then hits him upside the head. "You nasty. That's how you got syphilis." Heeeee. Alex walks in and slags on Izzie for bringing snacks to watch Joe die. Izzie says it's just a granola bar, and it's not like Joe is going to die-die, it's just for a few minutes. George jumps up and yells, "Dead! That's it!" He runs out of the room excitedly.
Mere, meanwhile, watches Addison start surgery on the twins' mom, and looks at her like she either wants to make out with her or kill her.
Back in the OR with Joe, they've lowered his body temperature to 60 degrees. Burke announces, "Okay, Joe! Time to die." The other doctors watch anxiously as Joe flatlines. McDreamy tells them they've got forty-five minutes. The clock starts, and we go to commercial.
As the doctors operate, they tell Joe stories. McDreamy's goes like this: he went to Joe's the night before he started working at the hospital. He'd only been in town a few days, and he met this woman. "I got drunk and she took advantage of me. Or she got drunk and I took advantage of her. Well, we were drunk, definitely, and somebody took advantage. I like to look at it as my initiation into Seattle. What about you?" Burke says he doesn't actually have one -- he just wanted to make McDreamy tell his. Heh. McDreamy rolls his eyes, and they get back to work.
George is on the phone with someone about Joe. He seems to be making good progress. Up in the observation room, Alex is busy selling himself to Izzie: "I'm really a good guy if you get to know me." Izzie's like, "Uh huh. There's nothing about you that is even remotely human." This conversation is interrupted by McDreamy cursing, saying he can't get a clamp to hold. They've got seventeen minutes left, and Burke says he's going to need at least eight minutes to bring Joe back and warm him up. McDreamy remarks that he better make his last few minutes count, then. I'll say.
George is in Webber's room, explaining that he wants to donate Joe's body to science, at least for the few minutes that he's technically dead. A privately funded grant would cover his bills, and Joe's standstill surgery qualifies for it. Webber says he didn't peg George for the type to ignore his instructions. George, with his typical Georginess, felt that it was worth a shot. Webber sighs, takes the papers, then tells George he can leave. Yay, Georgie!
Eight minutes left for Joe. McDreamy is still working, but Burke says they need to start warming Joe up NOW. McDreamy tries to fit just a little more surgery in, and after a few moments of tension, says he's done. He hands Joe off to Burke, who starts warming Joe back up and turning him back on. It's all very heroic and hot and awesome.
After the surgery, Burke visits Webber in his room. Webber warns Burke about putting his personal life before the job of chief, and he isn't sure if Burke is ready for that. Burke, not to be outdone, immediately goes and breaks up with Cristina. She tries to act like she doesn't even care, but of course she does.
George lurks conspicuously outside Webber's room, waiting to see if he'll sign the papers that will help Joe. Webber tries to ignore this, but he finally calls George in. George walks in uncomfortably and blurts, "Okay, I tried! I really tried! But there's stuff happening out there that I can't tell you. Stuff I won't tell you!" Aw, George. Webber gives George a look, but George just keeps blabbing and yelling that none of it matters, not when there's a guy out there who's going to be bankrupt just because he needed a surgery to save his life. George's dreams come true when Webber informs him that he's going to help Joe. George is all thankful, and takes the papers to leave. Webber stops him when he gets to the door: "O'Malley. Yell at me again and I'll snap you like a twig." George says yessir, then runs off, jubilant.
Addison tells a post-op Twin Mom that her surgery went very well, and her babies are going to be okay. With Mere standing in the background, Addison says Dr. Grey will be back later to check in on her. Twin Mom then bitchily requests that Mere be taken off her case -- she's just not comfortable with her. "She's sleeping with your husband, right?" Addison gets a funny look on her face, and smiles that evil smile again. She tells her patient that she lacks Dr. Grey's class and patience, so she's going to set the record straight. "My husband didn't cheat on me. I cheated on him. So the wronged woman here? Dr. Grey. So, I think you owe her one hell of an apology." Daaaaamn! Addison leaves them both to chew on that for a little while.
Cut to McDreamy and Meredith, sitting outside his trailer. McDreamy tells her that he went home one night, and knew that something was different. He says he stands there for a while, then he just knows what's going to happen . "So I go upstairs, preparing myself for what I'm going to see when I walk into my bedroom. I step on a man's jacket that doesn't belong to me. And everything I know...just shifts. Because what I know now is that when I go into my bedroom, I'm not just going to see that my wife is cheating on me. I'm going to see that my wife is cheating on me with Mark, who happened to be my best friend." Meredith tries with all her might not to jump poor, hot, vulnerable McDreamy. So, he says, he left and came out to Seattle. Mere: "And you met me." McDreamy: "And I met you." Aw. Mere wants to know, now, what she was to him: the girl he screwed to get over being screwed? McDreamy: "You were like coming up for fresh air. Like I was drowning, and you saved me." He says that's all he knows. But Meredith surprises us all when she looks deep into McDreamy's eyes and replies, "It's not enough." She gets in her car and leaves, and the music starts up as a voice-over begins.
"They say practice makes perfect. The theory is, the more you think like a surgeon, the more you become one." McDreamy drinks his beer alone in his trailer. Burke stands forlornly in the on-call room where he broke up with Cristina. MereVO: "The better you get at remaining in control -- clinical. Cut, suture, close." Izzie sees Alex across the hospital and looks at him with...curiosity. Oh, no. MereVO: "And the harder it becomes to turn it off, to stop thinking like a surgeon." Joe tells Alex his good news, and Alex calls George into the room. He walks in with trepidation, but Alex just says, "I heard what you did for Joe." Then -- oh, y'all, this is so cheesy and awesome and made me cry -- Alex gives George a huge hug. Which Izzie obviously sees. MereVO: "And remember what it means to think like a human being." Izzie smiles as George hugs Alex back.
Cristina finds Meredith sitting at Joe's. She sits down and says, "The clinic has a policy. They wouldn't let me confirm my appointment unless I designated an emergency contact...person. Someone to be there just in case, and to...help me home...after. Anyway, I put your name down. That's why I told you I'm pregnant. You're my person." Aw. Mere is so happy she's Cristina's person, but they're both just like, "Whatever." Then Cristina confesses to Mere that Burke dumped her. Mere puts her arm around Cristina and leans her head on her shoulder. Cristina: "You realize this constitutes hugging?" Mere: "Shut up. I'm your person." They both sit there sadly, and we fade out.