Split Personalities

S09E05

This week, instead of Meredith and Cristina walking around the halls staring at each other's faces on iPads, they simply talk on the phone like in Olden Days. And they talk basically every waking moment as each goes about her day, though they are briefly interrupted on Meredith's way to work when she comes across a car accident. A young woman named Melissa is trapped under the wheel of a car and her age, brown hair, and horrific injuries are so reminiscent of Lexie that Meredith is compelled to do everything in her power to save her (including rallying the crowd to help her lift the car off of Melissa's neck).

Once they are at the hospital Meredith is so crazed trying to stop Melissa's bleeding that Richard has to repeatedly order her to stop operating and close Melissa up so that she can get strong enough to withstand more surgery. He tries to take the case away from her, but Mere assures him that this isn't anything personal and her judgment is totally not clouded at all even though it's glaringly obvious that she's trying to make up for not being able to save her sister's life. Derek is out of town so she eventually has to go home with Zola but while on the phone with Cristina that night she decides she can't leave Melissa in the hands of her interns. She drops Zola off at Callie's and after a brief moment of intense guilt over that she goes back to the hospital to sleep in a chair just outside Melissa's room.

Back in Minnesota, Cristina is still sleeping with her boss and working with her bestie Mr. Feeny. Sex Friend Parker finally offers Cristina her own surgery but she's excited to be working on a complicated aneurysm repair with Feeny so she turns the other one down. Parker is incensed that she likes the doddering old man more than she likes him and so he stops sneaking around and tries to get rid of Feeny directly. Parker walks in on their surgery just as things go wrong and tries to take over, but Feeny ignores him and manages to save the day. Afterward, though, Parker puts him on probation. Cristina is totally troubled by this and is desperate for their patient to survive the night so that Feeny isn't fired, so she also sleeps at the hospital and she and Mere chat on the phone through the night. The day, the patient is well enough for them to go back in and finish the procedure, but with Feeny on probation they aren't supposed to do so without Parker's permission. Feeny doesn't give a crap and wants to finish what he started and go out in a blaze of glory; while this is usually Cristina's style, this time she's terrified to lose her only friend at Mayo and it takes a lot of convincing for her to go along with it.

Simultaneously, Mere and Cristina both start on their surgeries and we see them at the same time via split screen. Mere's seems to go bad right from the start while Cristina's moves ahead like clockwork and she and Feeny banter about whose name will go first when they publish a paper. Mere's surgery seems to be a lost cause but at the last moment, she and her interns manage to stop Melissa's bleeding and have a 30-second dance party to celebrate. At the same time, just after telling Cristina that she's the best thing that ever happened to him, Feeny goes silent and collapses. This causes all hell to break loose both in the OR and in the patient's innards, and Cristina has to work like crazy to try and save the woman while Parker rushes in to help try to save Feeny.

As all of this has been going on, Zola has been passed from person to person around the hospital since she woke up with a fever and can't go to daycare. Bailey lectures Mere and finally gives her her Special Secret Babysitter List with the admonition that she's an attending now and needs to admit that she can't do everything by herself all the time. Melissa then wakes up and asks to meet Meredith, since she remembers just enough of the accident to know it was Mere who stayed with her and saved her life. Mere is thrilled at first to meet her but then starts to get choked up as it seems to sink in that she can never bring back Lexie.

Cristina finishes her surgery and also manages to save her patient, but it's a hollow victory since Feeny died. Parker tries to congratulate her on a job well done but she brushes past him in a haze and then does some thinking in Mayo's boring locker room, remembering all of the things Feeny told her about focusing on medicine and not bothering with friends who would only get in the way of her brilliance.

As Meredith puts Zola to bed the doorbell rings and she is stunned to open the door and find Cristina, drunk on tequila. She grabs her in a hug and the two take a long moment to relish being in the same place once again. But after a few moments, Mere's face falls and she says that Lexie is dead. Cristina sadly replies that everybody is dead. And yes, that's sad, but it's so, so very awesome that we FINALLLY have Cristina back in Seattle again.

Previously on Grey's Anatomy, they were in a plane crash. You know, in case you forgot. The only reason that I can guess as to why they'd have this long, sweeping, obvious "previously on" is because the new episodes feel like they have been aired kind of sporadically so far this season.

Mere's VO is the deep observation that sometimes things are out of your control. We then hear her inner monologue as she sits in the bathroom, trying to will Zola to pee in the potty. Mere starts singing a song and smiling but the voice in her head says that she's late for work and wants to die.

Cristina, meanwhile, wakes up to the snow outside her window and thinks to herself that she actually, physically can't move on account of being frozen. She also can't roll over because then she'd have to face Parker, who is snuggled up behind her, kissing her shoulder and asking her which spoon she likes to be. Cristina writes this recap for me by thinking to herself that she's not a spoon, she's a knife and she's going to stab him. Out loud, she tells him she wants to get some more sleep so that he'll cut out the canoodling. She's completely grossed out and thinks that she can't even face herself in the mirror.

A little while later she and Mere talk on the phone while each gets ready to leave for work, because despite the two-hour time difference they are conveniently on the exact same schedule. Mere rushes around her fancy new kitchen and I notice her fancy new fridge has a clear door -- do you really want to have your condiments and wine on display for everyone to see? Or do other people have more cinematic contents of their fridge than I do that would justify the clear-door concept? Mere is now a full-fledged harried working mother who burns fish sticks and whose daughter pees on her. As this is happening, she overhears Cristina saying hello to her super peppy neighbor. Cristina tells Mere unhappily that she is neighborly now. After they both do some more griping, Cristina declares that they have to buck up. Mere acts like Cristina just spoke in tongues so Cristina explains that the saying a Minnesota thing. I've been saying "buck up" for as long as I can remember and I've never been to Minnesota, so I'd say that's a TV Minnesota thing. Cristina explains to Mere that people in Minnesota are tough and friendly, but she stops mid-sentence when she gets outside and sees her car buried in snow which causes her to start moaning in a very un-Minnesota way.

By Lauren S

Derek walks into the kitchen and takes Zola and conveniently tells her and us that he's taking a train to go mumble mumble mumble something. I think maybe it's that he's teaching a class, or presenting a paper, or something, but he's so unexcited about it that he's lost all ability to enunciate. Mere grabs a fresh box of fish sticks as she tells him its multicultural day at daycare and she is Brazil. I'm not sure I would have gotten fish sticks out of that but hey, she is trying. Zola begins to cry as she leaves and Mere looks pained, but Derek comforts her and whisks her away as a guilty Meredith finally heads to her car.

Cristina's rescuer shows up in the form of Mr. Feeny in a black land yacht. When he honks for her, it sounds like the horn of a train. Cristina gets in and then sulks as old-timey jazz plays from the radio but when he hands over a box containing a Danish just for her, her cold, black heart melts a little. He then hands over a file and she positively lights up when she sees a scan of a massive aortic aneurysm. When she hears that this is their Case of the Day, she hug-attacks him and almost causes them to swerve off the road.

Her patient Katy, however, is less excited and more massively freaked out when she sees what's going on with her insides. No matter how much she hates being friendly, Cristina really has cultivated a better bedside manner here in Minnesota and she's understanding and calm as she explains that Katy will need two surgeries: one to repair the aneurysm and one to repair the defect that caused it so that it won't happen again. Her boyfriend Will is by her side and she says to him that they thought they were prepared for anything. He tells her soothingly that they are prepared for a nuclear holocaust; they should look at this as just a few days in the hospital. The doctors express mild curiosity at this talk of the end of the world and while Katy tells Will she doesn't want her doctors thinking they are insane, Will assures her it's okay and announces that they are "doomsday preppers." Cristina and Mr. Feeny do a surprisingly good job of keeping straight faces as Will explains that they aren't like those "Mayan nutjobs" but that they are prepared for real things like ozone depletion and global warming. And a nuclear holocaust, it seems. They met at a workshop on making bug-out bags. After I looked those up I realized that I have a couple of them -- one in my house and one in the car -- but that I simply call them "emergency kits" And they don't come from any crazier position than having grown up in earthquake country. I guess I do still qualify mildly as a nutjob, though, since I did buy a separate one for my cats. Anyhow... Katy tells the doctors they really should have one but Cristina smoothly cuts her off and tells her that the first surgery will be that afternoon after they do some scans. Just in case we weren't 100% convinced that they are kooks, Will turns to Katy and tells her that it's okay, because small doses of radiation prepare the body for ozone depletion.

In the time it took Cristina to call Feeny, get a ride to work, and meet with her patient, Mere is still driving to the hospital and the girls are on the phone once again. Cristina's giddy about her giant aneurysm but Mere can't share in her joy because she's jealous that Cristina has a new best friend. The thing is, whether she realizes it or not, she's only half joking. The screen splits so that we can see them both talking, reminding us of the golden days when they used to actually have conversations in the same room. As she drives, Mere comes across the aftermath of a car accident and while she tells Cristina it doesn't seem too bad, she jerks her Mercedes over to the side of the road to help out anyway, getting off the phone at the same time. When she runs over to the car she hears the bleeding driver worriedly tell someone that she thinks she hit a cyclist. Mere runs to the other side of the car and indeed finds a girl pinned under the car with one tire pressing into her neck. With her pretty face and her ghastly injuries, she looks just like Lexie did when pinned to the ground by the plane, and this doesn't go unnoticed by Mere's subconscious. The girl manages to say that her name is Melissa and Mere hollers for the bystanders to help her lift the car. Everyone is hesitant to do anything since the 911 operator told them not to move the victim until the paramedics arrive, but Meredith screams that Melissa's going to die before they get here and they should listen to her because she's a doctor. The crowd is still nervous, though, and they all just kind of gape at her as she grabs the car and angrily hollers at them for help.

Finally, one of the guys comes around and rallies the others to gather together and lift the car enough so that Mere and another man can pull Melissa out of the way. She's stopped breathing but her arm is still up in the air until she remembers that she's out cold and it should be on the ground so she slowly drops it. Mere's internal monologue begs Melissa to breathe and then gasps in relief when Melissa finally takes a choking breath.

Dr. Parker finds Cristina on her way to get a snack and with great fanfare offers her a fancy fistula surgery. She asks him some questions about it but she's less interested in the surgery than she is in choosing the right treat from the vending machine and finally declines the offer, informing him that she's already on a case with Feeny. He's aghast that she's turning him down after all of that morning's spooning but she just gets her snack and repeats that she's unavailable.

Meredith arrives at the hospital with Melissa and the paramedics and when she sees Princess Kate, yells instructions at her and has her also find someone named Dr. Ross. Wait, who? Is this ER? Are we bringing in George Clooney?? Oh, wait, she means Smash. Why didn't she say so? Mere tosses her keys to NotCristina and instructs her to go pick up her car from the accident site and also bring in the fish sticks and heat them up for daycare. Bailey sees this and gripes that Mere just stole her intern but Mere is beyond caring.

As Cristina and Thomas do Katy's first surgery they marvel about how crazy people can be and Feeny says that he personally has no desire to survive Armageddon if it comes, he wants to go quickly. I'd like to survive Armageddon if it meant I got to be romanced by young Ben Affleck afterwards and we got to hang out with our buddy Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP)... oh, wait. Different Armageddon. Their conversation is interrupted when Parker materializes in the doorway, and after Feeny comments that he never even told Parker about this surgery, the spoon calls Cristina away.

Out in the hall Parker opines that the surgery is a disaster waiting to happen and he wants to give it to someone else, but Cristina refuses. He's baffled, and warns Cristina that there's nothing to gain by working with Feeny. Cristina replies that in fact there is, and then she goes back inside leaving Parker to stew in his jealous juices.

Mere and her jolly band of interns get Melissa right into the OR and she walks the gang through what they have to do, which amounts to basically sucking out as much blood as they possibly can as fast as they can. Callie scrubs in but once inside she asks if Mere remembered that it was multicultural day at school. She's upset to have forgotten but what's really getting to her is that Mark was always so good about remembering all of those kinds of things. Mere can't reminisce much with her because she's yelling at Kate to go ahead and just start scooping out blood with her hands.

Back at Mayo, Parker walks back into the OR and he and Feeny trade barbs as Feeny announces that he knows Parker is just waiting to see him fail. Parker gives Cristina a quick look, assuming that she must have told him what was going on. But Feeny and Cristina are quickly brought back to the task at hand when alarms start to ring and blood starts spewing everywhere. Feeny's not too busy to admonish Cristina for swearing as they try to patch things up, though. Parker screams at him that they need to put Kate on bypass but Feeny insists he'll have it taken care of in just a moment. Exasperated, Parker yells that he's going to scrub in too.

By Lauren S

From one overly bloody patient to another -- everyone is still frantically scooping and suctioning blood when Richard walks in to say that they found Melissa's parents and they are on their way. He hears Callie warn Meredith that they've already replaced Melissa's blood four times over (!) and suggests that they pack the wounds and let her body rest since she probably can't take much more. In case we hadn't yet gotten the similarities, he adds that she was crushed by, "two tons of twisted metal. That's a lot of trauma for the body." Mere retorts that she's fully aware of just how much trauma that is. The interns are all getting a little uncomfortable as Mere claims that she's going to fix the patient rather than just do damage control, and there might as well be a neon sign hanging from the ceiling with a flashing arrow pointing at Meredith that says OVERCOMPENSATING FOR DEAD SISTER. Richard finally tells her to stop and when she doesn't, orders everyone to take their hands off the patient. Everyone but Mere complies but when he calls her name again, she finally stops and tells the interns calmly to pack the patient up.

Once Katy's surgery is over Parker and Feeny retire to the scrub room to yell at each other; Feeny reminds Parker that the aneurysm could have blown at any moment no matter who was operating while Parker condescendingly says that he's only butting in at all because he's trying to help. When Feeny turns down this generous offer of assistance, Parker gets his panties in a bunch and orders Feeny to surrender his medical license, claiming he's a danger to patients. And when Feeny shockingly doesn't agree to that, Parker puts him on probation so that he'll have to sign off on every move Feeny makes. Feeny, finally out of retorts, walks out and smacks the door as he leaves, surely picturing Parker's smug face as he does so. Parker then turns to a silent Cristina and implores her to talk to Feeny.

As with Melissa, Kate's few hours are also critical and Feeny and Cristina try to explain to a terrified Will that once she wakes up, if she can speak and move her arms and legs that means their grafts held and she'll be okay. I like to think speaking and moving one's extremities are the preferred result of any surgery... or even of waking up in the morning, really, and Will is understandably freaked out that these things are now not a given. Cristina notices that there is a vase of flowers on the table and gently tells Will and his friends that they aren't allowed in the room. Will replies sadly that when they made their non-nutjob seed bank, he remembered all of the fruits and grains that they would need but Kate was the one who also wanted flowers, so he wants her to have something beautiful with her in case her world is ending. Cristina is as gentle as we've ever seen her as she assures him she'll put them right outside the door where they can be seen.

Outside she frets that what happened is her fault and when Feeny tries to reassure her she claims that if she hadn't been on the case Parker wouldn't have given it a second thought. Feeny thinks this is totally not true since he's well aware that Parker has been gunning for him for years -- he in fact told Cristina that himself when he showed off his cheap gold watch. He adds that he also finds it "unseemly" to worry about his own job when Kate's life is at stake. He informs Cristina that he's giving her a ride home so that she can get some sleep and be fresh for surgery #2 tomorrow, but she looks like she'd never get any shuteye anyway for all of her worry about the situation. I don't think anyone in the entire state of Washington and some parts of lower Canada would believe that this concerned woman is the same one who left Seattle months earlier. She's a shadow of her former self, if shadows also had previously unknown depths of compassion.

Instead of going home to sleep, she manages to get herself to a liquor store to buy tequila for her bug-out bag. In another split-screen conversation she and Mere both worry about their patients since others (Feeny, Zola and her silly need for parental supervision) are forcing them to actually go to their respective homes instead of staying at work. Mere tries to comfort herself with the idea that all of her interns are monitoring Melissa but Cristina thinks that's a very risky situation; her concerns are reinforced when an angry Jackson runs in on his night off, needing to fix a patient that one of his interns managed to make worse while he was out. Mere immediately declares that she's staying as Cristina declares that she is going back.

Mere leaves long enough to take Zola over to Callie's apartment for the night. Callie is thrilled to see her but Meredith looks like she's about to cry after she hands over her baby and Callie immediately tells her to stop, that it's good for Zola to see her mom work and be awesome. She coos to Zola that Mommy works and that's good, and then tells Mere that she'll drop her off at daycare with Sofia the morning.

Split screen time again, now as both Mere and Cristina are sitting vigil outside their patients' rooms. Mere is trying to give Cristina advice about Feeny's potential firing but she's not sure what to suggest besides Cristina giving Parker more sex in exchange for his job, and Cristina is appropriately disgusted at the idea. Not for moral reasons, mind you, but because she doesn't want to have that much sex with him. Both fret about their patients some more -- Mere getting in a gripe about Richard thinking she's too emotional -- and then they go in and check vital signs again. Mere is tied up in knots trying to figure out the exact right moment to take Melissa back in to surgery. Both patients are relatively stable so the girls go back to their chairs. Mere thinks she knows what they both need: a 30-second dance party. But after a moment, both admit to being too tired to dance.

The morning, the split screen shows both of them sleeping in their chairs; Mere's interns are all staring at her, terrified to wake her up. Finally, Princess K pokes Mere at the same moment that Feeny yells at Cristina and they both wake up with a jolt, silently pleading for their patients to still be alive.

Not only is Katy alive but she's speaking and moving her extremities, so they are going to do her second surgery that day. Feeny takes a chance to tease Cristina, who is still trying to process the news through her sleepy haze.

Back in Seattle, Meredith explains to Kate, Smash and that girl Alex was sleeping with who I hear was on Veronica Mars that they need to go back in and do more surgery but right now Melissa is too weak to survive it. Basically, they are waiting for the one perfect moment to jump in and fix her up. I guess that these interns really are here to stay a while so I can make myself remember the last girl by the name IMDB tells me she has, which is Heather. They all hear a knock at the door to the ICU and look up to see Callie, holding Zola and waving frantically.

She's completely apologetic as she explains that Zola has a fever that's probably just from teething, but the daycare won't take her until she's fever-free for 24 hours and Callie has a surgery in ten minutes. As she says this she hands Zola over and then runs off to work. Melissa's blood pressure has chosen this totally inopportune moment to plummet, so Mere looks around for help and sees NotCristina again. Similarly, it looks like she's here to stay for a little while so I will actually call her Stephanie. (Also, after that first scene, she hasn't done enough to earn any other comparisons to Cristina.) I've learned your actual name, Stephanie -- don't waste it now. She protests that she already did a ton of personal errands for Mere the day before and she's there to actually practice medicine, so Mere tells her she can do so by monitoring Zola's fever.

Cristina is still terrified about the idea of Feeny getting fired so she keeps fretting until he calls her out on how gross he finds it that she's sleeping with Parker, especially since it's making her "conventional" and "skittish." She's shocked that he knows but Feeny reminds her that she's the first to point out he's been around for a long time, so he's obviously honed his workplace-hookup-spotting skills. He is adamant that Katie is ready for surgery and they are going to do it that day; when Cristina asks about Dr. Parker Feeny just says airily, "I spend very little time thinking about him." Who knew the man had such claws of his own?

As Mere monitors Melissa, a baby is heard wailing in the background and Bailey comes in to confront Mere about it. She tries to make excuses but Bailey just tells her that the reason men think they can run the world and women can't is because they can ignore crying babies while woman are genetically predisposed to respond to the sound. Mere keeps working and promises that she's almost done but Bailey is trying to teach her a bigger Life Lesson: if women are going to take over the world, they can't have babies crying in the ICU while they try to work. A good point from someone whose sole purpose this season up until now is to clean microwaves and have giggly sex in on-call rooms.

Cristina goes in and examines Katy pre-surgery; Will is there and is completely terrified about the risks. Katy reminds him that she already signed all the scary paperwork so she's going ahead with it, but Will clings to the nugget that she might live for years without this ever being a problem. He admits to Katy that waiting for her to wake up after the last surgery was like the end of the world, and since there's no bug-out bag for that he wants to avoid ever feeling like that again. She points out that living with an aneurysm that could burst at any time isn't actually living and reminds him that as non-nutjob doomsday preppers, they take action, look danger in the eye, "and we do not shrink with fear." She turns to Cristina and asks her to tell Will that she's going to be all right.

Alex finds Meredith just as she is shoving -- and I do mean forcefully SHOVING -- a chest tube into Melissa's side with her interns' help. Please excuse me a moment while I curl up in the fetal position and hyperventilate for a few moments as I relive my own chest tube experiences yet again. FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES, SHOW. Okay. Breeeeeaaaaathe deeeeeeep. I'm ignoring them sewing in the tube. Alex agrees to watch Zola until three but when Mere starts shouting instructions about potty training, he informs her that he's got his limits and that potty training is definitely not on his list. She apologizes, and gets back to work as he goes to get Zola.

Split-screentastic time. Mere is exasperated on Cristina's behalf when she hears that Feeny is going ahead with the surgery, since she knows this means he will be fired. She then worries about finding Melissa's Magical Surgical Window and moans that a month earlier, this would have been someone else's call and she would have just been a resident along for the ride. Cristina suggests she knows what they need, and Meredith very hopefully suggests a 30-second dance party. But that's not it at all; Cristina thinks they both need to buck up, and Mere agrees dejectedly.

Cristina makes one last effort to convince Parker to take Feeny off probation, but Parker refuses to do it since Feeny is a liability who undermines Parker's authority in front of the girl he's hooking up with. Cristina says that what they saw yesterday is that Feeny could repair an aneurysm in under three minutes, which neither of them could even do. But Parker is set, and the more Cristina begs the more sure he is that he wants Feeny gone. He tells her he knows she's in an awkward position and that he put her there when he attempted to rein in her ego by pairing them up. He's sure that once Feeny is gone, she'll see that he's right. So, yeah. He still doesn't know her even a wee bit.

Meredith and Princess Kate go check on Melissa, and find that her vital signs are actually pretty good. Mere orders Kate to run all the tests again to be sure.

Cristina finds Mr. Feeny on a bench out in the snow, taking advantage of a few moments of actual sunlight, and she begs him to let her do the surgery with someone else. She's convinced he doesn't understand how serious the repercussions will be if he does it, but Feeny is fully aware of the situation and is fine with it if this is the end. The problem is, Cristina's totally not fine with it and she cries that she can't work there without him. Feeny needles her like usual, teasing that she's afraid to fly so she won't be going anywhere else. (OR WILL SHE? Could she possibly have any other place that she might go for job and friend fulfillment?) Finally, seriously, he says that Cristina loves him more than anyone has in a long time, and it's clear that means the world to him. But he's also ready to go down fighting for Katy since he thinks that he and Cristina are the best surgeons for the job. He then gets up and goes inside, and after rolling her eyes Cristina trudges in after him.

Richard finds Mere writing Melissa's surgery up on the board and comments obviously that she's decided to go back in. Mere gets her hackles up and defends that this is her window and that Melissa won't survive if they don't stop the bleeding. There's a moment of silence and she finally asks, "What?" But when he starts to answer she cuts him off and warns him not to say that this is just like what happened to Lexie -- this is happening in a hospital with medical resources as opposed to the woods and Mere is going to use the shit out of those resources so that she can tell Melissa's family that she is alive. After more silence she orders him not to say Lexie's name, because this girl isn't Lexie. There is far too much protesting going on here, and even Meredith seems to realize that when Richard is finally allowed to speak and just wishes her good luck. He adds that he thinks she is making the right call, and that's all he was going to say in the first place. As he walks off, Mere considers all of this.

By Lauren S

Meredith and Princess Kate go check on Melissa, and find that her vital signs are actually pretty good. Mere orders Kate to run all the tests again to be sure.

By Lauren S

She then starts to lead the surgeons into the scrub room but pulls up when she sees April, who was supposed to be on Zola duty. April explains that her surgery went long and then goes into a very convoluted tale of the various people Zola was handed off to, including a nurse Meredith doesn't even know named Ted. Meredith's eyes are getting crazy with panic; fortunately April notices this and runs off to go find Zola. Meredith sends Smash after her to make sure that her daughter is found, and then leads Heather and Princess Kate into the scrub room.

Conveniently, it's also just the time that Cristina and Mr. Feeny are starting their surgery, and the screen is split yet again so we have double the view of cracked-open chests. Cristina and Feeny proceed gently, while Mere orders the interns to suction like their life depends on it while also not moving their hands even the tiniest bit since then the patient will bleed out. Meredith yells at Kate as she works, and Kate is as much a sad clown as she ever was with the mean doctors yelling at her. Smash rejoins them, reporting that Zola is the center of attention in the attendings' lounge where she is happily eating gummy worms. Mere starts to freak out about someone giving candy to her child but then realizes that she's got to actually focus on her work for the moment.

When she walks out into the waiting area she is glum and exhausted, so Will immediately thinks the worst. But it turns out Katy is fine, and Cristina tells him she's got a long life ahead of her. Will gives her a giant hug of thanks, and then turns to all of their non-nutjob friends to hug and celebrate. Cristina turns away and in slow-mo she walks back through the door with Feeny's advice to breathe and not be crass floating in her head.

A ton of the hospital staff are hanging around in the hallway and they all watch as a gurney is wheeled past with a sheet covering Feeny's body. Still in slow-motion, Parker sees Cristina and tries to shake her hand -- which is just kind of gross of him after everything he did -- but she brushes past him as she continues to replay Feeny's teachings about how she should stand up and be great.

She sits in the locker room as she contemplates his warning that she won't find any friends there since no one there can really understand her. As she gets dressed his voice continues that if she's lucky, when she's old one day she'll find a young doctor who cares for nothing other than medicine and she can train that doc like he trained her. But until then, she should just read a good book. She remembers him saying she has greatness in her. "Don't disappoint." And while Feeny knew her really well in some ways, he never realized that Cristina still needs her Person in her life in addition to her career.

Once Mere is out of the OR she goes in search of Zola and panics when there is no sign of her in the lounge. But when she rounds the corner she finds Owen holding her and beaming with pleasure. He reports that they read Goodnight Moon and he learned that he's terrible at pattycake. In other words, please, everyone, remember that Owen loves and is great with kids and that this could still be an issue if Cristina were to somehow decide to make her way back to the Northwest. Just as Mere reaches for Zola, Kate calls to her that Melissa is up and asking for her. Owen tells her it's fine to go and so she runs off with no hesitation this time. Zola doesn't seem the worse for wear -- she and Uncle Owen just start doing ridiculously cute high-fives.

When she's not crushed under a tire, Melissa looks very much like a young Jodie Foster and she and Mere smile at each other as Smash introduces them. Melissa can't do much talking but she manages to say that she remembers that Mere was there for her when she was trapped. She then seems to doubt the memory and asks if Meredith really was there. Mere tells her that she was, but is having a hard time keeping the smile on her face since this is bringing her back too much to Lexie.

By Lauren S

Feeny wraps up his inspirational lecture by telling Cristina that she'll be the surgeon of her generation, she's not to take shit from anybody, and he wants it to be known that he helped train her.

Finally, Mere finds the bleed and is able to clamp it off. The alarm mercifully stops, and everyone in their room remembers once again to breathe. Mere then asks if anyone knows what they do now. The interns all suggest the possible surgical steps but Mere tells them that they are all wrong: it's finally time for a 30-second dance party. She starts to dance while they all gawk at her like she's insane so she has to finally order, "Dance or you're fired." Immediately, the interns all begin to boogie and Smash starts really getting into it. Even the anesthesiologist and the scrub nurse join the party. I realized as I was writing this that we're in season nine now, and I have never known the name of the older Asian scrub nurse who appears in almost every episode. It took more work than I expected to learn that her name is Bohkee, and that the woman who plays her may be a retired nurse herself. Nurse Bohkee, forgive me for not knowing your name until this moment and please let me compliment you on your rockin' dance moves.

Since Mere's surgery started chaotically and ended well, we all know that Cristina's surgery is about to go really, really wrong, right? That's a no-brainer. But even though it was obvious that the shit was about to hit the fan, I didn't guess what was actually coming despite a couple of pointed lines I noticed only when writing this recap. Cristina asks Feeny a question but he just stares silently down at his hands so she repeats his name. He finally starts to look up and we see that his skin has gone kind of grey and he seems confused. He drops his tools and then looks all the way up at Cristina before he falls backward with a dramatic jolt of his head. Blood starts to spew out of Katy's body in long spurts that remind me of those decorative water fountains that make it look like the water is hopping from one pool to another.

Two nurses run to Feeny and while Cristina tries to get the bleeding under control she also yells instructions of what to do for him. As she moves to the other side of the table to get a better angle on Katy's heart, they get the paddles ready and shock Feeny. Parker walks in at this moment demanding to know what's going on and why she and Feeny were even in the OR at all. Cristina yells at him not to worry about that right now (seriously) as he runs over to try and help Feeny and begins CPR. When Cristina keeps asking how he's doing, it's Parker's turn to tell her to focus on her patient. In her head, she reminds herself not to hold her breath; once she herself begins breathing again, she pleads with Feeny to do the same.

By Lauren S

Outside, Bailey approaches her with a slip of paper and says that she's passing on a list of "Tucker-tested" babysitters since Mere is now an attending and has to admit that she can't do every single thing herself. Mere gives her a big smile and thanks her sincerely.

She then takes Zola home and puts her to bed; as she walks out of the room the doorbell rings and her head-voice begs Zola not to wake up all while moaning that she can't deal with anything else tonight. But when she opens the door, she finds... Cristina! After a long moment of disbelief, she pulls her into a long hug. Cristina is three sheets to the wind, having drunk a large share of her bug-out tequila presumably to get her through the flight back. (But now is she going to have to fly back again to get her car? I'll just choose to ignore annoying questions like these for now.) The two both laugh, but after a moment they each crumble a little bit. With tears in her eyes, Mere says, "Lexie's dead." Saving Melissa only drove home that she's never coming back, it seems. Cristina gives her a hug as she replies, "Everyone's dead." I totally teared up both times I watched this scene but at the same time, I'm now doing a little 30-second dance party of my own that Cristina is BACK, baby.

Lauren S is a writer who lives and works in Atlanta with her cats, who are very glad she's crazy enough to have bought them their own emergency survival kit. She wants everyone to know: "The views expressed in my recaps and anything else I might write on TWoP are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer."