As we all saw in the billion promos, the Very Special Event of the season is that one ambulance crashes into another in the bay. The good news is, this V.S.E. is done so much better than last season's that there's no comparison. No doctors nearly dying is a good thing. The bad news is that all four of the paramedics involved are in bad shape. One ambulance flipped over, pinning both of its occupants -- Ray and Stan -- inside. Stan is clearly going to die when they move the vehicle, so they wait to do so until Meredith can get his wife, an x-ray technician, over to say goodbye. After that, the firefighters start to move it until Stan starts yelling for them to stop, since he can now see that Ray has an oxygen tank (or oxygen something else metal) embedded in his back, and if they move him, they'll kill him. Richard tells Stan he's a hero, but sadly, he doesn't hear it, because he's dead. Richard and Meredith realize that they need to work on Ray inside the vehicle, hanging upside down, and skinny Meredith can fit in there, so she needs to crawl over Stan's body to help him, and that's where we leave off on that story for the week. The patient that they were bringing in is a guy who has gotten a chest infection after major heart surgery, and needs his sternum removed. Things go from bad to worse with him when a piece of shrapnel from the accident pierces his leg. Callie, Izzie, and Cristina are all working on him, Izzie and Cristina fighting for face time with Hahn. They don't end up working together for long, however, because Bailey requests Cristina's help. The male paramedic in the other ambulance, Shane, clearly has internal injuries, but doesn't want a female, black, or (worst of all) female black doctor working on him. Bailey grabs Cristina to help her out, so Cristina is the first one who gets to see the giant swastika tattooed on Shane's abdomen, even though he's still mad that Cristina's not a white male. Bailey decides that she's a better person than Shane is, so she gets George to talk him into signing his consent form, and slices straight through the tattoo to begin his surgery, and announces that no one is ever to call her "the Nazi" again. As if this wasn't bad enough, because of the surgery, Bailey's going to miss lunch with her husband. He's mad that she's never home, and this was where they were going to talk it out, so you know this is going to get ugly and awful, because no relationships on this show can be functional. The cause of the accident is that the fourth paramedic, Mary, had a seizure while driving into the ambulance bay and lost control. It turns out that she's got a brain tumor, so Derek goes in with a scope, after a long explanation about how the computer will help guide the scope through her brain to fix everything. He gets in some good flirting with Rose throughout the day leading up to the surgery, so it's a bummer for her when the very computer showing him the way through Mary's brain crashes and she can't control-alt-delete it back to life for him. He's left standing with a scope in Mary's brain waiting for a technician. Also a bummer is that Meredith thinks she's ready to tell Derek not to see other people, but chickens out of doing it first thing that morning, so of course this is going to get sticky. Meanwhile, in the other OR, Alex is working with Sloane on the sternum removal. He's got a special guest watching in the gallery -- Ava, who showed up to surprise him and got him to break the rules so that she could see him work. It's bad timing, since that morning Alex was making out with Lexie and acting like they might maybe sorta be a couple. Lexie ends up talking to Ava, who tells her that she is seeing Alex, so Lexie heads back, dejected, to her patient. That would be Seth Green, who has spent the day hitting on Lexie. Just when he's laughing, realizing that she's suddenly single and maybe he has a chance, an artery in his neck bursts, covering Lexie with blood. So in summary -- it's a seriously, seriously no good, very bad day for everyone.
So, Meredith, what is this week's theme? "We go into medicine because we want to save lives. We go into medicine because we want to do good." Cristina is dancing awesomely in Mere's bedroom, something which I didn't realize until now I missed so much. It's totally reminiscent of the party from Season 1, in such a good way. VO adds, "We go into medicine for the rush. For the high." Cristina is shaking it -- kind of like I do when I'm alone in my apartment getting ready to go out for the evening, actually. Meredith leans on the doorframe, watching the show. Her disembodied voice continues, "For the ride." Cristina sees her and, without missing a beat, accuses her of not dancing. Meredith whines that she's too tense to dance but Cristina counters, "Which is why we're dancing!" This doesn't inspire Mere; she just goes on to explain that her problem is that she's sleeping with a guy who is dating. And she doesn't care about him dating Sydney, but rather the person he dates after Sydney. So she must mean Rose, the nurse who has actually been around the whole time and helping on surgeries. And don't worry, I'm not giving away any future plots, since I don't actually know any -- I just think it couldn't be more obvious why we've all "totally coincidentally" just noticed Rose for the very first time. Mere continues babbling, now about how she should probably stop having break-up sex, but mercifully, Cristina tells her to shut up and dance. Her voice-over doesn't shut up but says, "But what we remember, at the end of most days, are the losses. What we lay awake at night replaying is the pain we caused, or failed to cure." Mere starts dancing, rather forcedly at first, but she's soon into it as her voice continues, "The lives we ruined or failed to save." Meredith then comes to a decision, but it's not exactly what I thought it was going to be, which was fully breaking up. She declares that she's going to tell Derek she doesn't want him seeing other people. She declares, "I'm going to tell him, and I feel good about it." Cristina yells, "Dancing makes you brave!" Izzie comes out of her room, sees the dancing, and puts on a classic Izzie stinkface while Mere's VO concludes. "So the experience of practicing medicine rarely resembles the goal. The experience too often is ass-backwards and upside-down."
Izzie flounces over to George, who appears to be sleeping in the library in a sleeping bag these days, and declares angrily, "I'm so sick of Meredith and Cristina and their stupid love affair with each other." Sorry you hate actual best friendship, Izzie. It turns out that the lasting ones aren't all about breaking up marriages, and are more about being close and there for each other, which you don't seem to grasp. She continues to rant about them rubbing it in others' faces and how stupid they are, and George chuckles at her and says it's too early to be ranting. If I were him, I'd worry about her stepping on my face for that, since she's got no sense of humor at all about herself. But she just says that she and George should be the happy ones, and asks why they're not dancing. Insert one of a million things I've said about how dumb it was for them to even get together in the first place, and how they're not at all right for each other, here. George asks, confused, if she wants to dance, but she just blows him off and says she's going to go in early. She declares that she's going to get on Hahn's service and be kick-ass at cardio, which will piss off Cristina -- a really good reason to focus on a branch of medicine, really -- and stomps her way out the door.
The scene shows a super-cute baby in a high chair...in Bailey's house! But if you guessed that seeing her at home means that there are problems at home, you're sadly right. Tucker keeps reminding her she's never home, and when she protests that, he points out that she's at the hospital from midnight to 6 AM. Well, he points it out once she tears her attention from that week's rotation schedule. She reminds him that she's Chief Resident and he yells angrily, "And I'm loading the dishwasher!" A few moments of tremendously awkward silence, and Bailey looks over at Tuck, who just might be in the running for Cutest TV Baby. She very, very calmly reminds him that he volunteered to stay home with "T-U-C-K." Because Bailey is awesome all the time, not just at work, she clearly tries to not get angry or use her son's name in an argument that he might absorb. He asks who else would have done it. We never saw any of these personal conversations before this, but even so, I feel he's hitting below the belt, when clearly she was and is working on her career, and by the way, that career helped save his life. He tells her they need to talk, so she tells him to meet her for lunch. When he asks why they can't talk at home, she reminds him she's only home from midnight to 6 AM. Touché. They seem to relax just a hair, and she kisses his cheek and leaves for work.
In the supply room, Mere and Derek seem to be pulling their clothes back on while she's talking to him about her father and how he's not her problem. I guess since Bailey told them that they weren't to lock the on-call room door, they needed to find another venue. She repeats that she doesn't care about him or Lexie, and Derek points out, "You talk about them a lot for someone who doesn't care." He then takes her face in his hands and tells her, "You care. Because you're you." Now would be a good time for her to tell him about the not-wanting-him-to-sleep-with-other-people thing, so of course she doesn't. She pauses, she thinks about it, and then she heads to a meeting with Sloane, causing a lot of brow-furrowing on Derek's part.
Alex catches up to Lexie in the hall; it turns out they're both late for that same meeting with Sloane. Lexie informs Alex that she's not talking to him, so he pulls her into a room and plants an awesome kiss on her. She takes a deep breath and musters up all of her self-control to tell him she's still not talking to him, but he's not fazed, just tells her she doesn't have to speak and goes in to kiss her again. Meredith breaks it up by walking by and telling them they're late.
Sloane looks like he's gathered half the staff of the hospital, or at least everybody he can fit into a patient's room. That patient is Nick, played by Seth Green, whose father Dr. Evil is nowhere to be seen. He looks pretty ill -- I know, duh, but he's a shade of yellowish grey with a giant bandage on his neck. Mark removes the bandage to show a giant scar and explains that he just removed a giant tumor from Nick's neck, and compliments himself on his fine, fine job of doing so. When Alex congratulates him, he's told to shut up. Will these people never learn to stop sucking up? Mark goes on to explain that he also had to remove a number of lymph nodes, which means that the only thing between Nick's carotid artery and the world is his neck skin. Sexy. Nick looks a little stunned by the whole spectacle, but he's calm. Mark asks what they should be worried about, and Cristina says that there's a possibility his artery could blow. She actually pauses for half a second before announcing that, giving the impression that she does actually think about what she says in front of patients sometimes. Lexie looks a bit uncomfortable, but Nick says not to worry, since he's heard all of this before. Lex smiles at him and then drops her eyes -- a sure sign in the Grey's Anatomy world that he'll be in love with her within five minutes -- and then Mark explains that if Nick's artery bursts, whoever is in the room needs to stop the bleeding, and then page him. They all nod their understanding, and Nick notes that they look scared. Mark just tells him, "They're medical professionals, Nick. A healthy level of fear is encouraged." Given that reassuring tidbit, Nick turns back to the gang and tells them, "If I do die, it will have been lovely meeting you all." Mark tells them that the patient is confident, so they should be confident, though it should be noted that Mark himself is the only one who really seems confident. They're dismissed.
Callie, Bailey, Cristina, and Izzie head into the ambulance bay, where they get a patient, Jacob, who had bypass surgery two weeks earlier and now is having pain at the site. But it seems worse and more urgent than I can make it sound, given the fact that I didn't catch a lot of the actual medical stuff that came out of the medic's mouth. This is a good example of why I never become a doctor -- that, the idea of med school, biology classes, and the level of girly screaming that comes from me having to watch fake surgery with fake blood on a television drama every week. The other medic then asks if the docs can take it from here; they need to get back into the vehicle to create the maximum drama from what's about to happen. I mean, "they want to go help at a big freeway accident." Cristina and Izzie simultaneously say they'll page Hahn, which leads to more bickering as Cristina asks Izzie when she'll realize that she can't handle cardio. A siren gets louder through all this and comes careening around the corner into the bay. Everyone except Meredith is too busy yammering to notice what's happening and she finally screams for them to all get out of the way as the ambulance tears through the bay and crashes into the other one that's about to leave, causing it to flip over on its roof.
It's certainly not Jacob's day, as a large shard of metal flew from the collision and pierced his leg. Izzie and Cristina run him inside while Mere and Callie run to the overturned ambulance, and Bailey calls for the fire department and for gurneys. Callie looks inside the window and sees Ray, one of the paramedics who was just about to leave, pinned into his seat and hanging upside down. Callie asks if he's okay. Instead of answering he pleads for Stan, his partner, to say something. Stan doesn't look to be in good shape, since he's got part of the vehicle pinning him through his abdomen to the roof, which is now essentially the ground. He manages to take a breath and open his eyes, and Meredith can only watch, looking panicked and nauseated. She gets hold of herself and tells the medics that they'll get them out, but Callie warns her to wait for the fire department, since the doors won't move as they are. Bailey calls for Callie's help at the other rig, so she leaves Meredith with instructions to page someone for help and keep the guys talking. Stan turns to Meredith and begs her not to leave, and she calls for the Chief.
Bailey pulls open the doors to the other ambulance, where one of the paramedics is clutching his stomach, clearly hurt, but says he's better than his patient. The patient had started coding and then Mary, the driver, had a seizure and the ambulance went out of control. The patient is dead, so Bailey goes to check the medic's injuries, but he tells her not do and asks if Mary is dead. Callie says she's not, but she looks post-ictal (sounds bad) and has a weak pulse, and she holds up Mary's arm to show a grossly dislocated elbow. In the back, the guy medic explains that Mary was talking and then just had a seizure and they crashed, and he recoils when Bailey tries to get near him. She says he knows that she has to stabilize him, but he assures her that his c-spine is clear and he can move fine, so she lets him climb out, and he says that his abdomen is hurt. He climbs onto a gurney, and as he's whisked away he asks, "Listen, I know this is gonna sound weird, but do you think you could get me a guy doctor?" Bailey looks like she smells something rotten, since his question wasn't "weird" so much as "ragingly sexist."
Lexie is in Nick Evil's room, listening to his heart. He can't stop staring at her, and when she says he sounds "strong and stable," he laughs that those words have never been used to describe him before. Then, like he's spitting it out before he can stop himself, he tells Lexie, "You're a pretty girl." She looks a little surprised (because Lord knows it's a foreign idea around here, patients crushing on doctors and vice versa) and he goes on to say that he doesn't mean any offense; it's just that he hasn't been allowed to notice pretty girls for a while. They banter a bit, him awkwardly, and it comes out that he's now single. It's a tale as old as the hills: boy meets girl, boy gets giant neck tumor, girl leaves boy because of it. He then asks Lexie if she's seeing anyone, but insists it's just conversation, not flirting, because "My artery's exposed; it kind of limits my game." She tells him, stuttering, that she kind of is, and Nick asks if he's a nice guy. She says he is, but then backtracks to explain, "He's kind of a nice guy disguised as a jerk." Nick tells her he knows the type: "My girlfriend was a nice girl disguised as a vapid narcissist. But then, it turns out she really was just a vapid narcissist." Lexie commiserates, "Ouch," and Nick seems to see a bit of an opening and asks her, "So you really like this guy? Even though he doesn't have a super-cool exposed carotid artery?" She laughs, but tells him sincerely that she does like Alex.
Rose is hacking away at a piece of licorice, and I really want to make fun of her, but it's totally the animal chewing that I do with licorice myself, so I have to contain myself. He asks her what's going on since the surgical board is half empty, and she explains about the accident -- rather cavalierly, which I guess is a necessity if you work in medicine, but wow -- and that she's moving all elective surgeries. Instead of responding to that, Derek asks if they are friends yet. Thankfully, it's not just so that he can flirt; it's also so that he can tell her she's got a big wad of licorice stuck in her teeth, much to her embarrassment. But it's totally also because he's in McDreamy McFlirty mode.
Jacob's family arrives, and his wife freaks out at the metal sticking out of his leg, while he -- clearly sedated and also clearly used to this -- tries to calm her. She's told that the ambulances crashed and she gets very shrill, while Jacob tells his daughter to calm her mother. There's nothing worse than the patient having to take care of his or her visitors. The daughter relays the message, also sick of this, but a younger daughter tugs at Izzie's gown to ask, "Is my dad's heart okay?" in the most doe-eyed, manipulative, pathetic way ever. Izzie leans down and introduces herself and promises she'll help the girl's dad, while Cristina looks on in obvious contempt. Hahn comes in to provide a stark contrast to Izzie's gooey manner. Cristina gives her initial diagnosis of a sternal infection, and Izzie jumps on tiptoes to chime in to get some of the credit. It's not working very well, which makes me a bit warm and fuzzy inside. Cristina also mentions the metal in his leg, just in case seeing it sticking a foot out of his shin wasn't self-explanatory. The child starts whining, and Izzie turns to smile at her right as Hahn starts to give her orders. "Stevens, when you can tear yourself away, page Torres about the shrapnel in this man's leg." She then informs Izzie that she can also work with Callie since she only needs one person today. Looks like Izzie's little revenge plan for the dancing isn't quite working out.
Sexist Paramedic (seriously, guys, remember to work their names into the episodes a little bit earlier, will you?) is squirming around on the gurney and despite Bailey's best efforts to convince him to let her examine him, he still refuses. He moans and groans, but when she finally puts her hands on him he jumps and growls, "Do NOT touch me." The Chief pulls back the curtain just then to find out what is going on, and after Bailey explains, he takes the chart and introduces himself. Shane! He has a name. Shane looks awful and turns over, but the second he sees Richard, he again starts yelling before Richard can touch him, saying he wants another doctor. He and Bailey are confused, Richard having the requisite twig and berries, until Shane reiterates that he wanted a male doctor, but now he wants a different male doctor, and will wait. Bailey is blissfully confused, but Richard calls him out on wanting a white doctor, and to Bailey's horror, Shane doesn't correct him. Richard doesn't conceal his disgust when he growls, "I have paramedics hanging upside down. Can you handle...this?" the last word heavy with disdain. Bailey tells him she absolutely can.
The stranger thing to consider is that we know his partner Mary is black. It's never brought up, but I imagine it will be something that's dealt with in the episode. Derek comes in where Callie is holding a now-conscious Mary's arm, in a stance that says she's just about to yank it back into position. Mary seems terrified and asks Derek why she had a seizure, especially since she's never had one before. She also seems to be a bit shell-shocked at the thought that she caused the accident. Derek orders George to book an MRI, and Mary asks how Shane is doing. Probably better than he'll be when she finds out his beliefs, that's for sure. Callie readies her to fix her arm; she asks if it's going to hurt, and George starts to admit that it will, but Callie shushes him, so he just grandly tells her that Dr. Torres is the best. Derek tells her he'll let her know when he finds anything out, and as he leaves, Callie makes a jerking motion, there's an excruciating pop, and Mary yells.
The fire department has arrived at the accident scene, where Meredith is still waiting with the guys. Richard leans in and asks how they're doing -- clearly, it's a relative question. Both are breathing in jerks, clearly trying not to panic, and Stan requests that they get them out, but Ray chimes in to say he thinks Stan should get out first. Richard tells them that, for now, they have to stay still, and that they will get them pain meds. Stan then asks Richard to say if his legs are broken. He answers that he can't see them, and they come to the horrible realization that Stan can't feel that he's being pinned by a door through his abdomen. Ray also notices that Stan's ears are bleeding, which I think is never, ever a good sign. Stan asks them to go get his wife, who is an x-ray technician, and Ray demands that Stan not die on him -- a requisite line for all manly professionals stuck in horrific life-threatening situations. Richard pulls Mere aside and orders her to get Stan's wife. She's pretty panicky and tries to ask questions about what they can do, but there isn't anything to do, as Richard explains -- as soon as they move Stan, he'll bleed out. Richard then sends Meredith to find Stan's wife.
The firefighters are swarming around the rig, preparing things so that they can pull it off of the guys, and Richard leans back in the window to check on them. Both are looking about as bad as you'd expect guys pinned under a giant vehicle to look, but Stan turns his head to Ray and orders Ray to start talking to him. He wants Ray to help him hold on until Sarah, his wife, gets there, but Ray tells him he's not helping since Stan's not dying. Richard quietly but urgently orders Ray to talk to Stan, and after a moment where Ray absorbs what the order implies, he starts talking to Stan about the night he met Sarah. Stan's clearly struggling, but they remember and start to sing the song he sang that night -- "I Can See Clearly Now." They sing while Richard looks stricken, and when they can't remember the line, he prompts them, "'I think I can make it now, the pain is gone.'" Ray looks like he's starting to cry, but Stan saves the moment by marveling that Sarah fell for the line. He then tells Ray that when he gets out, he should tell the story of the accident, including how his best friend died there, since the girls will eat it up. Ray's not ready to laugh until Stan orders him not to tell Sarah that right before he died, he was talking about getting his best friend some action. Richard breaks up the laughter by telling them to hold on until Sarah gets there. Way to be the buzzkill, Chief.
Hahn tells Sloane and Alex about Jacob and his infection, and Sloane helpfully concludes that Hahn's going to remove his sternum. Okay, this is just getting too funny now, and I'm starting to suspect that someone at the show must know me, because I dated a guy with no sternum. And how often do you really find sternum-less guys? Just be careful and don't go tossing them anything that might accidentally hit them in the chest where, you know, there's no bone covering their heart. Killing your date can ruin an evening. She then helpfully explains in detail that she needs Sloane to manipulate his pectoral muscles so that Jacob won't have a big hole in his chest. When she asks if he will make time, Sloane, always thinking, asks if she'll make time for a drink. She's a bit different from his usual conquests, though, and doesn't find him funny or charming, but just keeps getting madder as they keep going back and forth. Finally, he relents, apologizes, and says that he'll do it without the promise of a date. And then Mark, in a rare moment of goodwill, tells Alex that he can scrub in, much to Alex's delight. Alex apologizes to the patient he's working on for the scene, and then needs to apologize again, as none other than Ava appears at the doorway and he heads out to talk to her.
She asks him to coffee and he says, somewhat uncomfortably, that he can't. She wheedles him a bit, clearly a tad surprised that he's not jumping at seeing her or spending time with her. He tells her that he needs to finish up and scrub in to a surgery he's never seen before, so she asks if she can watch. My response might have been to ask if this means that she was single, or now living in Seattle, or anything that might indicate why she's back yet again to see him, but he just stutters and says he can't. She plays him like a fiddle by telling him he's never been one to follow rules, and cites the gallery and all the people usually hanging about watching. And instead of pointing out that quite a number of people at the hospital would totally recognize her, as she was a patient there for weeks who had tons of attention...well, the scene cuts, so we don't see the outcome yet, but my guess is that her batting her eyes at him could get her just about anywhere.
The firefighters tell Richard they're ready, but he tells them to wait until Stan talks to Sarah, who arrives just then. For a brief, terrifying moment, they can't wake him, but then he comes to. Richard watches sadly as she gets down and sees her battered husband.
Callie tells Jacob that she'll be working on his leg while Hahn and Sloane work on his chest. He's clearly overwhelmed and starts to get panicky himself, but not in the shrill manner of his wife. Instead, he gets emotional about how he shouldn't have to worry his kids like this. Izzie, the go-to gal for actually being sensitive to patients, calms him down by assuring him that his wife and kids are fine, and will be fine, and that she'll keep them updated. In fact, they're in the cafeteria right now. Dad's having his chest cut out -- let's get some tuna casserole!
Bailey finds Hahn and asks if she can take Cristina. Hahn asks Callie if she can have Izzie -- did that really need to be asked -- and when Callie assures her that that's just great, Hahn says it's fine. Bailey leaves; Hahn calls the girls over and tells Cristina to find Bailey and Izzie to take over with Jacob. Cristina starts to protest, but she's hit on Hahn's last nerve (and it's not really following Callie's advice to chill out, either) and Hahn just yells at her, exhausted to be dealing with it, to take it up with Bailey.
Derek joins George in the MRI room, and while they wait for the scans to come up, out of the blue Derek asks what's up with George and Izzie, explaining, "Just because I don't sleep in your house anymore doesn't mean I don't hear the gossip." Yes, but it does mean you probably have lost the privilege of inserting yourself into the situation. George asks, confused, why they're talking about this, but then immediately a light goes on over his head and he says knowingly, "Oh, you miss Meredith and you're clinging." Derek suavely tries to say he's just making small talk. Where I come from, small talk is more like a comment on the weather, but maybe L.A. and Seattle really are that different. George questions his explanation hilariously, but before they can get into it, the scans come up and they see that Mary has a brain tumor.
Bailey's hanging out on a stool to Shane's bed, while he writhes and moans about how hurt he is. Maybe he should remember that he said he'd wait for another doctor -- he's not being terribly patient about it. Bailey dryly tells him, "You just lie there and try not to die. Someone will be here soon to save the master race from extinction." Cristina comes up and asks to talk to her, and asks what her extremely important reason was for pulling her off of Hahn, starting to launch into a monologue about how hard she's fighting to make it work with her. Bailey just tells her, "You're not black." But with a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth, she adds, "But you're not white either," and she happily turns and introduces Cristina to Shane, who can't believe it. Bailey just tells him that he's got medical training, and asks how long he'll live with no treatment for internal injuries. He sulks like a thwarted little kid but he's silent, and Bailey answers, "Exactly." She then turns him over to Cristina, telling her to give him the best medical treatment possible. "It's the law," she adds flatly as she leaves. Cristina, upset, goes to lift his shirt, but he grabs for it. She gives him a death stare and he lifts his hands, saying, "I just didn't want her to see, I thought she might take offense. You know?" And why on earth "might" a black woman -- or anyone else, really -- take offense at the GIANT swastika tattooed across his stomach? Cristina looks ill, and he's clearly surprised that she seems to be upset about it too.
Everyone in the bay is silently watching Sarah, who is crying and reassuring Stan that she's not going to leave him. Mere comments to Richard that she had never seen Sarah before, and that before today they were strangers, but he just tells her, not unkindly, that it's a big hospital so it's understandable. But Mere answers, "I've never met her before and yet I'm the person who handed her the worst day of her life. In her story, that's who I am. That's who I'll always be." Richard puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her, "That's the job." She repeats it glumly, and he makes her look at him as he tells her, basically, that what has happened makes all the times the doctors can save someone worth it, and that Meredith should take all of this in and learn from it. She thinks about it as Sarah sobs, and then looks away as a fireman gently escorts Sarah away so that they can work. Richard quietly tells Meredith it's time.
Cristina's putting Shane into the CT machine, silently and not entirely gently. He has the gall to tell her to go easy on him, and she just informs him he'll have morphine and be fine. She mutters, "It's not like you're in a concentration camp or anything." He tries to brush it off as a young, dumb, drunk mistake that anyone could make and then regret, and so she pointedly asks him, "Oh, so you regret it?" Annoyed that he didn't win her over with that offensively cavalier explanation, he growls back, "You've got to treat me like anyone else." He then lies his head back and adds, "That's the beauty of this country." She just replies, "Oh, yes it is," and sends him into the machine.
Derek and George have just told Mary the news and explained her surgery, and she's trying to absorb the idea that they'll be drilling into her skull. George explains how the surgery works, that there will just be a tiny hole made and that they'll go in with a scope and it will be minimally invasive. She tells them how weird it is to be on the other side of this conversation, and then asks how the three guys are doing. And then her eyes roll back in her head as she has a seizure.
Jacob's surgery is about to kick off when Izzie looks up and sees Ava in scrubs in the gallery, smiling as she watches the surgery. She mutters to Alex, "I always knew you were an ass but seriously? You brought Jane Doe to the gallery? Are you trying to get yourself kicked out of the program?" First two sentences of that admonition and I'm totally with her, but then it comes to a screeching halt, because I don't think Izzie should be one to throw stones about someone possibly getting thrown out of the program for an infraction. Involving a patient. Seriously, give his money away and slap his name on a clinic, and then the patient who proposed to you and whose LVAD wire you cut to try to save his life becomes a distant memory, huh? Alex tells Izzie that Ava wanted to see what he does, and when Izzie reminds him of Lexie, he just says he's a popular guy, at which point they're shut up by Hahn.
The aforementioned Lexie, meanwhile, has gone to Nick's room at his request. She foolishly thinks he might have a medical problem, but he tells her (charmingly, I must admit) that his book is bad, he hates daytime TV, and all of his friends are at work. She reminds him that she's at work too, and they banter a bit, and she agrees to stay, but takes his vitals to make it seem at least a tiny bit legit. Once that's settled, he asks if she wants to help him plot his revenge against his ex-girlfriend, and he explains a plan of luring her there and then showing her the artery. Unless he means the actual artery itself, I don't think a neck scar is quite the level of revenge he's really looking for. Compared to some of the other things we've seen in this hospital, his neck is about as vengeful as a basket of kittens.
The firemen get out the equipment and Richard explains to Ray and Stan that the second the ambulance is lifted, they'll get them out. Ray wants him to promise to take Stan first, but Richard tells him firmly that they'll assess and see who needs to get out first. Ray is having none of it and orders them to take Stan, who turns and tells Ray that he's feeling better and he thinks he'll be okay. Ray's not having any of that, either, and tells Stan not to screw with him. Stan insists he's not, saying he could get out and just be paralyzed, and he turns to ask Richard if that might happen. Richard's silence is deafening; Meredith can't take it and, her eyes red from tears, too-confidently says that it could be possible. Ray has a ray of hope and accepts it, and Stan makes sure that Sarah is inside and won't see what's about to happen. He also makes sure Meredith will be where he can see her, and she promises. The medics clasp hands, and Stan declares, "Let's do this." Ray tells him he's going to live and Stan manages to say, "You too," and then the jaws of life start to pull the metal apart. After a moment, though, Stan looks up and then starts protesting for them to stop. Meredith screams at them to stop with a voice hoarse from crying.
Richard's confused, but when he hears it's Stan, he rushes over. Stan manages, through labored breathing, to say that something's in deep, and that Ray will bleed out if they move him. Richard looks and sees the oxygen regulator embedded in Ray's back. He calls to Ray, who can barely talk, and while Stan adjusts his head as best he can, Richard runs to Ray's side of the rig and calls out to Meredith that he's sweating and breathing fast. Mere replies, "It's cardiac tapenade." I know that whatever she actually said wasn't something comparing his heart to a delicious olive spread, but it's all I hear each time they say it, so I'm going with it. And now I'm wishing I made it to the deli before they closed to stock up on recapping snacks. They explain to each other -- rather needlessly, except that the audience needs to know -- that if they move him, the tear could get bigger, and Ray replies, "Please let's don't flood my heart." Richard says they'll stabilize him there, and then calls to Stan to tell him he's a hero who saved Ray's life. Sadly, Stan didn't live long enough to hear the praise, and Mere begins to cry again looking at his lifeless face.
Bailey joins Cristina in the CT room, and they note that Shane's liver is ruptured. Bailey notes that hopefully the surgery will be straightforward, so Cristina jumps out of her chair hoping to get back to Hahn, and is pissed when she realizes that's not going to happen. Bailey tells her that if she has to work on the guy, so does Cristina. But Cristina argues that she doesn't need him. After a moment, she tells Bailey about the tattoo and adds, "My stepfather's parents died in Auschwitz." Bailey is stunned, takes a deep breath, and shakes her head as she looks at Shane through the glass, and then tells Cristina, "You and I will do this. We will do this and we will consider ourselves having risen above. We will rise! Above."
Callie pulls the metal out of Jacob while, up above, Lexie sits down to Ava in the gallery. Izzie turns and laughs at Alex snidely, "You're busted." Alex looks up, and both girls smile and give little waves, and he tells Izzie to lay off. Inside, Hahn compliments Mark on his technique, and he launches into an explanation of how he learned it from his mentor, whose death wrecked him. Sincerity of that type doesn't suit him. Hahn asks curtly, "What, are we on a date here? I was complimenting your surgical skills, Dr. Sloane, not looking for a window into your wounded soul." Callie doesn't try especially hard to hide her giggles.
Bailey and Cristina push Shane down the hall; he seems to be trying to get out of his bed and is declaring that they can't operate on him, he won't sign the consent form. Bailey exasperatedly tells him that he'll die without the surgery, and maybe with it, but his chances are better with operating. He asks if it will be just them in the room, and when Cristina tells him yes, he yells that he needs at least one white doctor there. "So you don't kill me on the table. No offense." I've always thought that term was used too much and too easily to excuse someone saying things that were rude and/or offensive, but this use is out of the ballpark in its audacity. Bailey asks if he really just said that.
George and Derek come down the hall, and Bailey runs up and says she needs George. Derek says they're going into surgery, and she stresses, "I NEED O'Malley." Her cool is wearing a little bit thin, and when George asks if she's okay, she orders him not to cross her. George says he wasn't, and she closes her eyes and chants, "I'm rising above, I'm rising above, and do not want to be crossed while I'm busy rising." She takes a moment and explains, "I have to operate on a white supremacist and he has requested a white doctor to watch me, to make sure that I don't kill his crazy white behind. Now, I need O'Malley, can I have him or not." Derek hands him over, and Bailey sends George to have Shane sign the consent and go into anesthesia. Once George leaves, Derek tells her she's well within her rights to give this to someone else. She turns and, on the verge of angry tears, cries, "Well, that would make me like him! I'm not like him." And she turns and walks back.
Rose is prepping the OR when Derek walks in, and there's some cutesy banter about who's late and who's early that doesn't warrant actual recapping. When they stop, there's a moment, and Derek looks down until Rose notes that he's staring at her chest. He's caught off-guard, and she allows that he's probably looking at her ring (which she's wearing on a chain a la Carrie Bradshaw) but that it's coming off like he's just staring at her chest. He apologizes, then notes the obvious, that her engagement ring is on a necklace. She replies that when she was engaged, it was on her finger. And that is enough right there for me to say, "Run, Derek! Run!" She explains that she doesn't want to lose the stone, which was her grandmother's. I think that would be the reason that most people would, say, oh, get a safe deposit box? Have the stone removed from the ring, and store it somewhere safer than a chain that could break? And that is politely ignoring the fact that it's downright creepy, since she's not actually engaged to this man anymore.
Derek asks when it ended, and after she admonishes him for the personal question, and he bantering back about the friends/licorice thing ohmygodjusthavesexalready, she says they broke up a year ago and that it was never going to work out. I repeat, and with extra repetitions, for emphasis, "Run, Derek! Run! Run! Run!" But of course, because they have some sort of magical flirty attraction, that isn't the point; the point is that she needed to have some sort of vehicle for saying that she and her fiancé didn't work out because "I was always very clear about what I wanted and he...wasn't. There's no way to build a future on that." And now I can actually look through my floor and wave at my downstairs neighbor, after the anvil came plummeting into my living room with such force that it tore straight through the building.
Ray looks at Stan and starts to lose it and panic, but Richard yells at him to calm down and stay completely still. Meredith then orders Ray to look at her instead of Stan. (It would probably be better, then, if she came around to the other window instead of crouching just beyond Stan's body.) She orders, "You are not going to die today." Richard tells her they need an ultrasound to determine something about the tapenade, and she tells him that she can fit inside and do it.
Shane's in the OR, and Bailey comes in and closes her eyes as she stands over him. George calls her name but she replies smoothly, "I'm calling on Jesus this time; don't bother me when I'm calling on Jesus. I don't do it very often. He might not hear me." Everyone waits until she's ready and calls for the scalpel, and after a look at his face, she slices slowly straight down the center of his tattoo.
And what could make this appalling, horrific situation worse? Tucker shows up for their lunch, but she's nowhere to be found and not answering her phone.
In the gallery, Ava starts commenting on how amazing and technical the surgery is. I guess it wasn't enough for her to be up there against all of the rules and putting Alex at risk; she also needed to draw attention to the fact that this is something completely new and awe-inspiring for her. When they rebuilt her face, it's a shame they couldn't have installed just a tiny bit of common sense into her head. Lexie, however, eats it up because she's in a love haze. Ava then asks her if she's a surgeon, and Lexie says she's an intern, and asks Ava the same. Ava doesn't even hesitate before admitting that she's not supposed to be there but that she wanted to see the guy -- she stutters a lot and can't put a label on him -- operate. Lexie accepts this and guesses that it's Sloane, but Ava corrects her: she's actually with Alex. Lexie stares blankly, and when Ava asks if Lexie knows him, Lexie replies, "No, not at all."
Bailey sees her pager buzzing and calls to George that she's supposed to be having lunch with Tucker. "I'm supposed to be having lunch with my husband and instead I'm elbow-deep in a Nazi gut." George just replies, "Yes, ma'am." Bailey looks up after a moment and orders, "No one better ever call me 'Nazi' again." George again replies, "Yes ma'am," and Cristina raises an eyebrow.
Derek's working on Mary in the other OR, but just as he gets the scope in, the monitor on which he was watching his progress goes black. Rose realizes the problem is the computer, and tries to control-alt-delete it back to life. While I realize this would be the first logical thing to do with a computer program, it just seems so silly and futile in the context of brain surgery. And futile it is, as nothing brings the system back up. Derek starts freaking out; he can't remove the tool without navigation and avoid causing massive damage, and he orders someone to call the manufacturer to come immediately.
In the ambulance, Meredith climbs in and whispers an apology as Richard hands her the ultrasound. But Ray starts to mumble and Meredith screams that they're losing him; Richard orders her to get in there and not to worry about Stan (whose body she's going to have to climb over).
Nick's rather pleased that Lexie comes back in to check on him, but since she's Captain Obvious about every feeling she's having at any given moment, he realizes something is wrong, and asks if she's okay. She actually says, "What makes you think something's wrong?" but she's so upset she can barely open her mouth and enunciate -- seriously, does she have no self-awareness at all? Wait, don't answer that. As she gets some supplies ready to change his bandage, he babbles about how he's observant from boredom, so she gives in and asks, "Remember your girlfriend who just turned out to be a vapid narcissist?" Nick follows up that her boyfriend turned out to be a jerk. She concurs, and he apologizes, but looks a little bit excited, too, as he asks if she wants help plotting revenge. She takes his bandage off, and he happily jokes about how she could go out with him as revenge. He cracks that what he's got that Alex doesn't is an exposed carotid artery, and manages to get her to laugh, but the moment is ruined when he starts to laugh too, and suddenly his artery bursts and blood starts spewing out of his neck and all over a stunned Lexie. Worst. Date. Ever. Well, worst. "Date." Ever. And with that, we're "To be continued."