This was one of those episodes where there wasn't much in the way of light storylines to balance out the dark ones. The lightest one we get is that Richard is having a hard time adjusting to being just another doctor, because everyone still treats him like the Chief and he can't fit in. He eventually tries to talk about how hot one of the nurses is to fit in with the rest of the boys, but it falls flat and eventually, he seems to come to terms (at least somewhat) with his in-between status and he gives Derek some advice on how to better handle being Chief. Earlier that day, when Mere told Derek about an amazing surgery she was assisting on, Derek wound up stealing the surgery for himself and has to later admit that not operating is driving him crazy. Richard gives him some tips, and even offers to become his lunch buddy in the future, so that Richard has someone to eat with and so that Derek doesn't get bombarded by everyone wanting something from him while he's trying to have a sandwich. Awww.
Callie's patients are a couple of guys who were caught in an avalanche while doing some daredevil skiing. She and Mark work on them and all the while, Mark tries to get Callie to admit to Arizona that she wants kids, pointing out that she is going to have to be honest about it because it's not just something one can continue to sweep under the table. She inadvertently gets her daredevils to admit that they don't want to live on the edge and would rather go wine tasting, and their joyous realization that they all feel the same way prompts her to finally talk to Arizona. Arizona freaks because she thinks that Callie is breaking up with her, but when Callie admits she wants a baby at some point, Arizona pulls away and what with all the talk of death in this week's voiceover, it seems their relationship might wind up dead.
Teddy has the bulk of the story this week as she has a terminal patient who has requested physician-assisted suicide. She needs a second doctor to sign off so she grabs Hunt, but rather than sign off he walks out and then proceeds to have flashbacks all through the day about Iraq. We see that he and Teddy were super close friends, and their commanding officer Dan thinks they should just get together already even though Hunt keeps insisting he is with Beth. Just after a bunch of wounded soldiers are brought to their camp for treatment, they have to leave because of a sandstorm; Teddy leaves on a helicopter with his patient while Hunt and Dan take theirs in a Humvee. In the middle of nowhere, they hit a roadside bomb, the truck flips, and the driver and all of their patients die immediately. Dan is seriously wounded and Hunt tries to care for him as best he can, up to and including sticking his fingers in Dan's neck to plug an artery that bursts. After hours out there, Dan knows it's his time to die and tells Hunt he has to let go, and, after much arguing about it, Hunt finally does but the act clearly takes its toll. Back at Seattle Grace he raises a ruckus and tries desperately to convince the patient not to do what she is going to do, but she then tells him why she's doing this and manages to convince him that it's the right thing for her and she's at peace with it. Outside later, the woman's husband finds Hunt as he's totally scared about what's going to happen though he's obeying her wishes. Hunt convinces him that there will be a moment when she's gone that he'll know he did the right thing, and then warns him to hold on to that because there's going to be a whole other shitstorm of feelings as well, which is clearly what has been consuming him all day. That night Cristina realizes he's not sleeping (though she doesn't realize this has been going on for a while) but Hunt manages to convince her that everything is fine and to go back to bed. Clearly though, everything is not, which I'm sure is going to carry us the home stretch of the season.
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This episode, we shake things up and get some Huntover: "Dying isn't easy. The body was designed to stay alive. Thick skulls, strong hearts, keen senses." The clock shows that it's just after three in the morning, and he is wide awake while Cristina sleeps soundly to him. He gets up and proceeds to do a bunch of pushups, make some toast, and watch the news. After chasing the toast with some OJ he gets carefully back into bed at 4:59, so that when the alarm rings a minute later Cristina wakes up and thinks he's been there the whole time. She then proves to be a far better woman than I and, instead of hitting snooze fifteen times and cuddling with her hot boyfriend, gets right out of bed. He stares forlornly at the ceiling.
"When the body starts to fail, medicine takes over." Teddy is at the hospital and walks in to her patient Kim's room and greets her and her husband Sean, asking how they are doing. Kim, obviously a cancer patient with the scarf on her head, pulls her oxygen mask away and tells Teddy that she's ready and today is the day. We don't know yet for what (unless we've seen the title of the episode), but Teddy pointedly asks Sean how he's doing and he numbly and fairly unconvincingly says that he's fine.
"Surgeons are arrogant enough to think that there is no one we can't save." Teddy pages Hunt and explains to him that Kim has stage four lung cancer that has spread to her lymph nodes and liver -- basically, all sorts of bad stuff is happening and breathing is getting really difficult. Hunt asks if Teddy is going to have to intubate but Teddy carefully says that Kim doesn't want that, and as Hunt muses about how he's not sure what else to do, the camera zooms in close to her face so we know she's about to say Something Big. She tells him, "She wants us to help her die." Huntover finishes: "Like I said, dying isn't easy."
He goes back to Kim's room with Teddy but looks troubled as she explains to Kim how this works: The state requires that two doctors sign off, hence her bringing in Hunt. Teddy tells us/Kim that she has less than six months to live, she has informed Kim of all of her options, and psych has declared her mentally fit. Kim just has to make a second oral request to Teddy, at least 15 days after her first request, which would be now. Kim jokes ruefully that it's like she's applying to die, and Sean hopefully jumps in to suggest maybe she's having second thoughts. Kim immediately reminds him how bad she was the night before and how things will only get worse, and then says -- as firmly as someone who can't breathe very well can -- "I would like to end my life through physician-assisted suicide." Hunt can't take it and after a moment, excuses himself and flees. Teddy excuses herself to go see what's going on but Kim calls after her to ask how long it will take to die after she takes the barbituates. I assume the really formal way she asks this is so that all of us learn exactly how this process works, which is actually legal in the state of Washington. Sean absolutely doesn't want to have this conversation yet but Kim assures him that it's time, and Teddy answers that it takes about 45 minutes to die.
Mark, who seems to have gotten Arizona as a bonus confidante now as part of a package deal for Callie, tells the girls that he's been on three dates with Teddy that have involved just talking, and do they have any idea how much you can learn about a person when you remain upright? Callie's not paying much attention and Arizona points out that she's been distracted with making cartilage out of thin air; she tells them she thinks it's hot, kisses Callie and goes. As soon as she is out of earshot Callie blurts out to Mark that Arizona doesn't want kids in any way, shape or form. It turns out Callie didn't say anything when she found this out because she didn't want to mess up how well things are going for the two of them, and she also doesn't want to be seen as crazy and desperate. Mark thinks this is better than actually becoming a crazy, desperate childless woman who stalks others' children, and gently tells Callie that she has to talk to Arizona -- the prospect of which obviously doesn't excite Callie much.
Derek is in the middle of what appears to be a scintillating finance meeting when Meredith bounds to the door. He excuses himself and gives her 30 seconds, so she bounces around and explains how she diagnosed her patient with strange symptoms as having a brain tumor and so Shadow Shepherd (Derek tries to get her to call him "Dr. Nelson", but fails) is letting her do a huge portion of the surgery herself. He asks incredulously if that was it and then goes back in to his meeting which leaves Mere crestfallen at the door. There was nothing on the post-it about him cutting down on his pompous douchiness, unfortunately.
Charles, Avery and Alex are all waiting for an ambulance, and when Mark walks out and sees them all he reaches the obvious conclusion that the ambulance coming must be driven by Nicole, the hot paramedic who we have totally never heard them lust after before but for whom apparently they all do. The Chief walks out just in time to hear Charles comment on her ass and add that he would love to hit that. The guys all get nervous when they realize Richard heard what was going on and apologize, calling him Chief, but he assures them that it's fine and reminds them that he isn't Chief any longer, though none of them seem to really believe that makes it okay. Nicole comes around and tells them that the patient she is dropping off is Nick, a guy who was helicopter skiing and broke his leg and hip. Nick happily tells them all that it was the avalanche, not the helicopter, which did all that, and he's got two friends coming in behind him.
Teddy finds Hunt and demands to know why he just took off while they were consulting with the patient; he shoots back that he thinks as her doctor she shouldn't be pushing for the option that Kim chose. Teddy argues back that she went through all of her options, and that Kim doesn't want to die a slow death hooked up to machines or so sedated she has no idea what is going on anyway. She thinks it's an act of mercy but he takes a totally different view, borrows Derek's soapbox, and tells her that she's killing her patient by writing the prescription. She just tells him she'll find someone else, and takes off down the hall. Hunt watches her go, and this triggers a flashback.
We see him and Teddy in Iraq, playing a game of soccer against two others. When Teddy scores she jumps onto Hunt's back and he swings her around while they taunt their opponents -- one of whom happens to be their superior officer, Dan. They're clearly all close, and it's pretty apparent that Teddy and Hunt are clooooooose. The game is interrupted when a helicopter arrives with wounded soldiers, and they all grab their gear to go get to work. Hunt hangs back and watches Teddy run to the tent hospital they have set up and we fade back to current day and see Teddy STILL walking down what must be the longest 20-foot corridor ever, given how long we've been looking at this shot.
Callie is working on Nick's broken leg, and she's got easy access as his broken bone is sticking right out. Mark is working on his frostbitten fingers, and Avery and Richard are puttering around checking him out as well. Nick's certainly gung-ho about the whole heli-skiing thing and doesn't seem the least bothered by his injuries -- he just wants to be healed by year because he and the other guys are running with the bulls in Pamplona. The doctors all raise eyebrows, given his current physical state, but when Nick's friend Phil is rolled in Nick just calls to him to make sure they fix him up so he can run with the bulls. The third friend walks in behind the gurney -- he was about to jump when the avalanche started and so he stayed on the helicopter and avoided injury. Lexie appears for half a second to comment that they're active guys, and Phil bombasts that once a year they live like men. Alex points out that they nearly died like men, too. When they move Phil from the gurney to the bed, Hunt flashes back to Iraq again.
With the same movement, they transfer a guy with a gaping chest wound onto a bed and someone yells that this was a result of a car bomb that then turned into a firefight when they tried to evacuate. None of the bandages that Hunt needs are available so he improvises with a garbage bag and some duct tape over the wound while Teddy and Dan work on others. After Dan deems one guy too far gone, a soldier runs up to him to say that a sandstorm is coming and they need to move immediately. Dan orders Teddy to take her patient and a couple of others on the helicopter while he and Hunt take his guy in a vehicle. Hunt asks Teddy if she wants to switch, knowing she hates helicopters, but she assures him that she's okay and tells him she'll see him back there, wherever "there" might be.
He's still mentally in Iraq when Bailey tries to ask him questions about the patient, and he has a hard time snapping back into the here and now. Not really knowing what's going on he just hands the patient fully over to Bailey. She asks Tommy how he wasn't hurt and after he tells her Phil chimes in that he missed out, and that it was FREAKING AWESOME! These guys are idiots, and Bailey knows it. Honestly, Tommy seems to know it too.
Cristina is working with Teddy today, and goes into Kim's room confused that she got a message that Kim wanted to lower her pain meds. But that's indeed what she meant -- she explains that they make her "fuzzy" and she doesn't want that today. She then tells Cristina that she's decided to stay and do it at the hospital, rather than at home, since she doesn't want her husband to have to deal with her body afterwards. He's visibly uncomfortable with that kind of talk and assures her it's fine, but she tells him that they can bring things from home to make the hospital room cozy and familiar for her last hours. She also wants wine, and when she asks Cristina if she can have some Cristina points out she can see no reason why not. Sean, with a heartbreaking hopeful lift in his voice, starts to point out that if she needs wine maybe she doesn't really want to do this, but she tells him, gently but very firmly, that she just wants the wine but she thinks he's the one that's going to need it. As Cristina watches discreetly while she works, Kim tries to have a talk with Sean to see how he's feeling about all of this. He says that he's not feeling anything, but she starts to get angry and points out that he has to feel something when they are talking about where she's going to die. Instead of engaging her, Sean just asks if she wants red or white wine and then goes to pick everything up. She wants red, and in a proper wine glass, but throws her hands up at his refusal to actually discuss what is happening. Once he's gone, she rants to Cristina a little bit about how you always have the same fights, even when you're dying. Her theory is that when men don't want to tell you how they are feeling -- when we think they are being difficult -- she thinks they really don't know what they are feeling. The stuff with her husband is clearly upsetting, and her breathing is labored so Cristina comes over and puts her oxygen mask back on and tries to help her relax. It's nice that more and more we do see a human side to Cristina with patients -- she's balancing out!
Teddy, her original love interest having freaked out, finds her new love interest and asks him where he stands on physician-assisted suicide. Mark isn't opposed to it but thinks this is more of their "getting to know you" conversation and decides to also give his opinion on arena football (not real football -- I have to agree) until she stops him and explains that this is a serious question because she could use his help with her patient.
Shadow Shepherd and Meredith are looking at scans and bantering about their upcoming surgery when April runs in for her weekly cameo. She starts pulling the scans down, explaining that Derek's schedule freed up so he decided to do this surgery himself. Mere tries to grab them back, seeing her awesome opportunity going up in smoke, but April won't let go, and though she still has her chirpy voice she shows she's got some muscle and finally wrenches them from Mere's hands and the girls glare at each other before she races out.
Hunt, having handed off his actual patient, goes and grabs a chart -- Tyler the nurse makes his own brief cameo to ask if he needs help but Hunt shoots back a no and stalks off, chart in hand.
Back in Iraq, he and Dan are riding along while the driver tries unsuccessfully to contact anyone. Hunt's gaping-ab-wound patient asks where they are going and Dan and Hunt tell him they're going to the Green Zone, and then he'll go to a hospital in Germany and then home. Hunt then asks Dan if Teddy made it there already -- as if Dan would know more than he does, they are squashed into the same vehicle together -- and Dan just laughs and says he's sure Hunt's girl is fine. Hunt unconvincingly says that they are just friends, Dan tells him to keep telling himself that, and then... they explode.
In the aftermath, Hunt kicks his way out and sees what appears to possibly be an arm on the ground, though I can't be sure and quite honestly didn't feel like dwelling on it. Let's just say shit's bad and go from there. The patients and driver are all dead, but Dan is still alive and yelling to Hunt, trying to figure out what's what. Hunt goes around the toppled vehicle and finds Dan pinned underneath.
Cristina has to call his name a few times to break him out of his trance, and when he asks her what she reminds him that he was the one who paged. Her voice is clearly worried -- this kind of behavior isn't totally foreign and she knows it can be bad. There's no time for possible PTSD issues, though -- he immediately starts interrogating her about if she performed a particular test on Kim when she was admitted the week before. Cristina realizes that he stole Kim's chart but he ignores her and plows ahead, demanding that she answer the question while adding that the test could give a false positive, and then Kim would be killing herself without all of the correct information. Cristina points out that the test in question is routine so she probably did it, and he jumps all over her, demanding to know if "probably" is good enough for her and Teddy -- he's also clearly needled by how unruffled she is and how she seems more worried about him than Kim. She asks him what's going on, but he just storms out with the chart.
Callie is still with the Idiot Brigade, and Nick tells Tommy to call his wife but to downplay his injuries as a simple broken leg. Mark is tending to Phil's frostbitten fingers and when he dunks them in water, Phil starts to holler and says it's worse than when he broke his ankle climbing Kilimanjaro. Apparently Tommy made it to the top while the other two got altitude sickness a half-mile from the summit. Callie laughs that they are hardcore, while I say they are ridiculous wannabes -- don't you get tired of doing this stuff if you wind up with protruding bones each time? But Nick sells insurance, and Phil and Tommy are accountants, and Nick thinks they have to do these things to keep their "blood moving." Then there's a really contrived moment where they tell Tommy to show a picture of him with a rubber chicken (?) on the peak of Kili, but Tommy accidentally shows a picture of his daughter, dressed as a ladybug for Halloween. Conveniently, Mark is able to take that and show it to Callie, asking her to say she doesn't want one of those for herself.
Mere, understandably livid, storms up to Derek to accuse him of stealing her surgery out from under her. Rather than admitting he did it or showing even a shred of remorse, he points out that it was Nelson's surgery, not hers, and then April jumps in to chirp that he said this was below Nelson's skill level, right? She's almost psychotically eager, but also seems to realize that she might have been sent for the scans under false pretenses and doesn't want to believe that her gloriously-coiffed boss would do that to her. Mere just yells back that it was her diagnosis and therefore her surgery, and asks to scrub in at the very least. Derek won't even let her do that, though, lest it look like favoritism. Isn't their tangled romantic history and post-it marriage enough evidence of that already? April tries to jump in but Meredith shoots her down, and Derek tries to get her to be quiet and not make a scene. Instead, she marches off screaming, "He stole my surgery!" repeatedly, just so everyone hears it. Richard has watched all of this and with a drop of amusement in his voice asks Derek if everything is okay. Derek's calm has been seriously ruffled but he lies that everything is fine, though turns down Richard's offer to eat lunch because Derek gets mobbed by people who need things urgently every time he tries to eat in the cafeteria. On cue, Hunt runs up with an urgent matter. Seriously, though, did he really not expect that kind of thing when he took the Chief position?
Richard then heads down to the cafeteria alone. Arizona, Callie, Mark and Hunt are all at the same table, and Mark keeps telling Callie to "say it." Callie tries to get him to be quiet, while Arizona asks what on earth is going on and Callie tries to tell her it's nothing. Richard comes up and says hello, and they all smile back at him, but because they are self-absorbed jackasses no one offers him a seat and he eventually says, "Okay, then," and walks off with his tray. Then lather, rinse, repeat with the Callie/Mark/Arizona bickering. They are interrupted, mercifully, by an incredibly angry Teddy who marches up and demands to know what Hunt's problem is. The cafeteria goes silent for the show as Teddy yells that he has no idea what her patient has been through, and that her pain is only going to be worse when she shoves a tube down her throat for the test Hunt wants them to redo just because, she says, he has a problem with her exercising her legal right to die. He says nothing but just glares down at the table as Teddy again demands to know his problem and finally, he gets up and leaves without a word.
Richard is eating alone in a conference room and when Mark sees this, he pops his head in to gossip about what happened between Teddy and Hunt, since everyone is talking about it. Richard calmly points out that no one is talking about it to him, as when he walks in all conversation stops. I still don't really believe that Mark (or at least someone at that table) would have just ignored Richard's clearly wanting to join them for lunch, but it's good for the story, so Mark explains to Richard that you don't talk locker room talk in front of the coach. Richard tries to insist that he's just a regular player now but Mark quietly tells him that mostly he's still the coach, and that it's a sign of respect. "You'd be wrong to take it any other way." And I believe all that is true, but I still don't believe they'd leave him hanging with a lunch tray in hand like an unpopular seventh-grader.
Despite Teddy's outburst, she still has to run this test on Kim and she explains to her that she knows the procedure already -- she'll be sedated and then they'll stick a tube down her throat. Sean is confused since they already ran this last week, and asks if there is a chance the results could have been wrong. Teddy says that it's unlikely, and tries to shut down the conversation, but he's a desperate man and he wants to know who is asking questions or why they are doing this, because he needs to know if his wife might get better. Cristina finally cuts him off and says there is no chance she'll get better, that this is unnecessary and just the hospital covering its ass. He's stunned into silence and then nods -- I would think this would cause another round of questions but I guess it's all less important when your terminal wife is going to end her life later that day. A shaken Teddy thanks Cristina for the help and she brushes it off as nothing. Thanks, Owen, for making all of this even harder on every single person involved.
The boys and Richard are all getting ready for surgery, and Richard asks a nurse if Bailey is on her way. When the nurse goes to check, Richard makes the unfortunate decision to try out some "locker room talk" and says conspiratorially that if he wasn't happily married, he'd hit her. "I'd hit her hard." There's a monumentally uncomfortable silence both because of what was said and who was saying it, and Alex finally says, "Sir, I think what you meant to say was 'hit that'." As if this weren't awkward enough, Bailey has arrived and chimes in pointedly that she doesn't think he wanted to say it at all. Richard sighs, busted and no closer to being one of the guys.
Meredith is scrubbing in for her lesser surgery when Avery comes out from The Most Uncomfortable OR In The World and comments on Derek poaching her good surgery. She's surprised he heard but she's also the one who made sure she screamed it at the top of her lungs, so wasn't that the point? She admits she's mad, so Avery gives her some advice, turning the tables from when his grandfather was there and she was the old wise one. He tells her to be one of the Whos in Whoville -- even when the Grinch tried to steal Christmas, they didn't let it ruin the day and they came out and sang. Music starts up as they smile and he tells her to go into surgery and sing. "Sing, Cindy Lou, sing!" Please, oh please, oh PLEASE don't be trying to start something between these two. I don't think I can handle another Meredith/Derek on/off situation. ANYTHING but that -- and trust me, I know these writers really will do anything.
Hunt has finally decided to go back to his own patients, and he tells Phil that numbing him to fix the cut on his head would hurt more than just stapling it, and after telling him it won't hurt much Lexie makes her only other appearance to shoot some staples into his scalp. Phil lets out a yell, which triggers another flashback for Hunt.
Dan is screaming as Hunt tries to get off his wedding ring, but he succeeds and good thing as he tells Dan the ring would have cut his finger off soon with all of the swelling. Dan gives Hunt a Look and when Hunt asks what's up, Dan points out that Hunt is trying to save his arm when he really needs to make a tourniquet and tie it off. They argue a while and Dan (the owner of said arm, and therefore the one who I think has far more say in the issue) finally convinces Hunt, so Hunt takes off his belt and yanks it tight underneath Dan's shoulder. Dan yells at the pain but suddenly has far worse things to worry about -- an artery bursts in his neck and he starts to bleed out into the sand.
Owen is snapped out of his war-torn haze by Derek this time, who reports that Kim's test came back and reaffirmed that nothing more can be done, so Mark signed off as the second doctor. He tells Hunt that he did his due diligence but that it's over. Hunt just growls, "You're not going to kill him. I won't let you kill him" and pushes past Derek to go do... who knows what, exactly. Derek, however, actually acts like the Chief as he informs Hunt that the patient in question is a female and that she is in fact choosing to die. He then orders Hunt to go home, and when Hunt tries to say he has a surgery Derek very firmly tells him he's done for the day and to go home.
Back in Iraq, night has fallen and Hunt has Dan use his good arm to put pressure on his own neck since Hunt has to move him. Dan is quite delirious and Hunt tries to keep him awake, but he's only half there -- when Hunt mentions waiting for someone to come, Dan thinks that means someone is on the way. It's sad and terribly desperate, and when Hunt drags him away from the truck Dan yells and begs him to stop, crying like a child. Hunt tries to assure him that it's going to be okay and takes back the duty of plugging his neck, but Dan has realized it's his Time, and he asks Hunt to say a Hail Mary with him. Hunt doesn't know it, so he just repeats the words after Dan as he goes; it calms Hunt a little bit but he is still obviously desperate. As Dan talks about making sure his wife gets his ring, he eggs on Hunt some more about how he should propose to Teddy, despite Hunt trying to argue that he's engaged to Beth. Finally, Dan tells him to move his hand off of Dan's neck, even ordering Hunt to do so when he initially refuses. Hunt absolutely refuses to do so.
In present-day Seattle, Hunt has been standing outside in the rain but turns on his heel and storms back inside.
Callie is updating Tommy on Nick's surgery and tells him that he should probably let Nick's wife know that it's worse than a broken leg. He already did, insofar as he told his own wife and she was going to let Mrs. Nick know, since Tommy is scared of her. Callie is amused that a guy who can climb mountains and jump out of helicopters is scared of his friend's wife but he admits that he was scared during all those trips and hated every minute of them. The thing is, Nick and Phil are his boys, and they love adventure, and he doesn't want to be the one to ruin it because they are a team. Callie comments on his just sucking it up and Tommy tells her how he does it: "Close my eyes and hope I don't die." As life mottos go, it's a pretty unfortunate one.
He snaps out of the memory on his own and warns Sean to hang on to that moment because everything else that will come is just his own baggage.
Nick and Phil are all bandaged up and Callie tells them that with luck they'll be ready for their trip year. Nick and Phil both yell, "Pamplona!!" and after a moment, Tommy gives a wimpy echo. Callie can't help herself and blurts out that Tommy hates it all but does it because they love it and he loves them. Nick and Phil are stunned, and Callie realizes that she not just crossed the line, she blew past with a jet pack fueled by fake cartilage and the ticking of her own biological clock. She apologizes and mumbles that she likes to see people keep their legs, but before she can leave Phil pipes up that starting his own business is enough to keep his blood pumping, and he's on Tommy's side. Nick is aghast, but not because he thinks they are wimps -- he wanted to go wine tasting in Napa all along! Har har har. Callie smiles and calls out "Napa!" and they echo her cheer, even more excited than when they yelled for Pamplona.
Derek heads into his office and is taken aback to see Richard standing there, though he obviously just stopped in on his way out for the night. Derek can't help his pompousness, though, and he asks Richard if he can help him with something ("Because it's not your office anymore it's mine mine miiiiiiiiiiine!") Richard doesn't let it get to him, he just tells Derek simply that he was jealous of Meredith, and that's why he stole her surgery. Derek obviously doesn't want to hear about his unflattering qualities but when Richard suggests he misses doing surgery all day, Derek admits that this is true. Richard decides to pass on some advice: schedule one surgery a day very early before anyone else gets in, because then he'll start his day on the right foot. He awesomely adds that he doesn't have to worry about siging all the paperwork because Patricia is an excellent forger. I'm shocked to hear that Patricia is still there -- I figured she got axed in the massacre a few weeks back, especially since now Derek has his new lapdog April doing his administrative work. Richard also warns him that if he eats alone in the cafeteria he's a sitting duck, so he needs to eat with someone else -- and that someone could be Richard himself! It kills two lonely birds with one sandwich-shaped stone. Derek smiles and thanks him; it actually appears he gets over himself and just appreciates the tips.
Huntover time. "Living is better than dying. Until it's not." Sean shakes the pills into Kim's hand and though she looks sad, she doesn't hesitate to throw them in her mouth and wash them down with some wine (from a real glass). She smiles at him and he puts it aside, and then finally admits that he's scared, so she opens up her arms and he climbs into bed to her for the last time. Teddy watches through the window as Hunt tells us, "But even if letting a person die is the right thing to do, it's not what surgeons are built for.
"We are arrogant and competitive." Mere is reading in bed when her arrogant and competitive post-it husband comes in and rather shockingly, immediately apologizes. He says he knows she is mad, but she just smiles and says she's not mad, she's in Whoville. He's totally confused but instead of explaining the gibberish she just spouted, she giggles and kisses him.
"We don't like to lose." Callie and Arizona are at the apartment, sitting across from each other, and Callie takes a breath and starts off with the worst opening anyone can use on a significant other, that this is so hard to say because she really cares about her. It's no wonder Arizona thinks Callie is about to dump her, but Callie quickly assures her that no, that's not it, and in fact what she has to say isn't bad at all. She clearly knows deep down that it could be bad for them, though, or she wouldn't have been so scared in the first place. She finally tells Arizona that at some point, she wants to have a baby. Arizona's smile melts right off of her face, and she pulls her hands away from Callie's -- unfortunately Callie's assuring her that this wasn't a bad thing didn't really seem to convince Arizona of that. Huntover: "And death feels like a loss. Even when we know it's not. We know it's time.
"We know it's right." Teddy knocks on Mark's door and he answers wearing a fully unbuttoned shirt, like you do. He invites her in and she tells him that she helped her patient die today. Still in his new role as 'gentleman,' he asks if she wants to talk about it but she tells him no and instead kisses him while pulling his conveniently loose shirt right off. He finally thinks to close the door as they get down to really getting to know one another. Huntover: "We know we did everything we could."
Just as we started the episode, Hunt and Cristina are in bed -- she's asleep, and he is wide awake and thinks back to Iraq and again plays Dan's last moments in his head. Hunt crumbles as Dan falls still, and Hunt closes his eyes and stares at his friend as hears a helicopter finally arriving -- his version of the cure for cancer coming the very day. Through the bright lights from the helicopter, Hunt can see Teddy, clearly worried, smiling at him.
He's doing pushups with a vengeance when Cristina walks in, shocked, and asks what he's doing. He's surprised himself but quickly pulls it together and smiles at her, saying he couldn't sleep. Cristina is no dummy and asks rather forlornly if he's okay, and he Huntovers: "But it's hard to shake the feeling that you could have done more." He doesn't tell Cristina that, though, and instead just assures her that he's fine and she should go back to bed. Having heard Kim's theory earlier Cristina asks, "What are you thinking?" But he just smiles and says nothing, again telling her to go back to bed. She doesn't seem convinced but she does seem to know that she's not going to get an answer, and she shuffles back to the bedroom while he goes back to his pushups. And while Kim's theory is that men don't know what they're thinking, I think Hunt knows full well but has regressed a little bit and doesn't want to admit that he's still being haunted by Iraq and possibly also the suitcases full of unresolved sexual tension that he and Teddy lugged back from the desert. I really thought they'd put that to bed a while ago, but it seems awfully like this love triangle is going to rear its ugly head one again since he again imagines the soccer game, before everyone was blown to bits, when Teddy was happily riding around on his back. Tellingly, there's also the sound of a helicopter -- the very thing that set him off the first time when he had to finally confront his PTSD. He's an onion, this one, with layers and layers of issues that still need tending.
Find out who will be guest-starring on the final episodes of Grey's this season.