Callie is being sued! Through flashbacks, we find out that it's because she took a chance doing surgery on the hip of Olympic snowboarder, Travis Reed, performing a procedure – at his insistence – she's never done before. He wants the Peterson Hip, a replacement joint currently in clinical trials in Germany, and popular among athletes. During the surgery, things do not go so well. To the tune of: the guy ends up with no legs. She's accused of making a series of faulty decisions resulting in an infection that has moved to his heart, and nobody can figure out fast enough what's going on to save his limbs. It's pretty much the nightmare on all sides. Speaking of nightmares, Callie has to wear pantyhose to court and, like everyone experiences on their worst days, she keeps getting runs in them.
The team, including Arizona, rallies around, taking shifts to shore her up during trial. One friend, though, is not completely on her side: Cristina. They had a difference of opinion when making decisions for his emergency surgeries She believes the snowboarder, also her patient, has a valid case. In the end, Callie wins, but not without a further twist. Before being vindicated by the jury, she discovers a piece of unopened mail behind her bookcase. It's the Peterson people. Three weeks before the surgery, they had advised her not to do it on the grounds that the joint had caused major infections in five cases. Meredith counsels her that the loss of the letter was an accident; that she performed the surgery in good faith with the facts she had on hand. Callie throws the letter away.
Callie's dad is on the scene to show his support and learns about the sad end to her marriage. Callie's having a bad year, man, but we didn't even know how bad until all flashbacks that start dropping like bombs as the court case plays out. It seems Arizona asked Callie four months before all this happened if they could try to have another baby, with Arizona carrying this time. Happiness all around, they go forward and Arizona becomes pregnant. Unfortunately, she was only briefly pregnant and the loss, compounding all the other losses the two have experienced, is too much for Arizona. She stress-spirals and says she cannot go through with the idea to have a child.
Following her win in court, Callie's dad encourages her to give her relationship with Arizona another chance for the sake of her family. He, himself, cheated on her mother, he says, a mistake they were able to rise above. Callie goes to Arizona's hotel and, not seeing that Leah is there, naked, asks Arizona to come home.
Oh, my God, people. WHAT am I doing here? Hello, I'm Al Lowe. Or, hellowe, as one might say. (Only I say that.) Lauren S is off tonight so, on some kind of harebrained whim, I picked up this recap and here we are. Confession, Catholic-style: it's been three years since my last recap. I am rusty. Let us begin.
Speaking of harebrained, Callie is currently on the world's worst errand, and is appropriately frazzled. She's buying pantyhose, and… it appears she's buying them at a…. mall? I relate to Callie for many reasons and without even yet knowing why she would be in this place doing this thing, I feel desperately sorry for her. A Hail Mary attempt to buy emergency department store pantyhose is the sort of situation in which I often find myself, and I always seem to handle it about as well as she is handling it, now. Which is to say terribly. Her first order of business is to knock all the gigantic packages of hose onto the floor, drawing the attention of the poor salesgirl who tries in vain to help as Callie gets more and more agitated.
"Doctors never mean to screw up," Callie says in voiceover as we flash to a hectic operating room where she is frantically sawing and jerking and flinging body parts around while Jo gets all panicky. Back in the mall, she wonders why she can't just get some real pantyhose. The salesgirl makes the terrible mistake of making suggestions – how about the ones that shimmer? And, as we watch things get even crazier in the OR (she commands her reluctant crew to close the surgery with a sponge left in the patient) Callie goes ballistic. "No shimmer! No footless tights or freaky little toe sock thingies!" Right on, girl. She just wants basic nude pantyhose, the kind she used to but in the grocery store. "THEY COME IN A LITTLE PLASTIC EGG!" she screams and is horrified to see the girl's face.
"It's not like we do it on purpose," she says. "It's not like we want to hurt anyone, but sometimes we do. And, when we do, we're sorry." She apologizes, saying she's under a lot of pressure and has a big day the day. In fact, she says, she'll take ALL the pantyhose. "Even the ones with the rhinestones…?" the girl asks. "Yeah!" Callie says with fake enthusiasm and we hear in VO that apologies, at this point, don't matter. "No apology in the world matters now."
Flashback! (Get used to them!) One month prior to the pantyhose meltdown, Callie is presenting her awesome robotic hand research with McDreamy when a guest comes in. "Dr. Torres?" he asks, handing her a envelope. Girl, you just got served. "Great stuff you're doing here," the guy says as he departs.
Flashback! Again! Four months before THAT happened, everybody's at Meredith's baby shower. Cristina has cornered Callie to tell her that Travis Reed, Olympic snowboarder, needs a hip replacement. And Cristina has recommended that Travis, who is also her own heart patient, come to Callie for it. Callie is all excited, but they are interrupted by Arizona, who is way more excited than everyone else by the prospect of a onesie decorating station. Cristina dryly informs her that there isn't one, though there is a margarita decorating station. Way better. Arizona is totally disappointed. She had her design all planned. "I was going to have a star and a moon and it was gonna say 'McDreamy!'" Cristina contains her eye roll just barely and goes to help Meredith, who is super pregnant and swollen with sausage feet. To anyone else, this would sound like a nightmare, but not to Arizona. That lady is clearly infected with baby fever. "Let's have a baby!" she announces out of nowhere. Callie: "Wait, wait. What? Are you serious?" Arizona says, you know, they've had such a hard year after the crash. "Wouldn't it be nice to have something new and exciting to think about?" Sweet Callie says YES, yes it would, but… "I could carry this time!" Arizona says. "That way, only one of our feet would be a sausage." Heeeeee. Callie is thrilled and the day she practically skips into her interview with Travis.
And, oh, isn't he a charming, long-haired hippie Zen snowmaster. So beloved and living-by-his-own rules he can lift the ornery Christina off the ground and spin her around in an embrace, joking that it's time she dump her husband and run away with him. Instead of shanking him, Christina goes all coy. "Oh, you've got a girlfriend," she says with a playful tap. "We've got a deal!" he says. "I'm allowed to flirt with hot doctors who've had their hands inside my chest." With this, he turns to Callie, who is getting all moonie over him, as well, and asks if she's the ortho god he's heard about. "I prefer goddess," she giggles. Ladies. Get a GRIP, damn.
In a conference room, Travis's handlers show videos of his snowboard flipping prowess. He needs to be able to do some major stuff by December for the Olympic trials, but due to a crash last year that caused him to contract arthritis, he needs a new hip. He wants, in fact, the Peterson Hip. One of his main rivals had that surgery and was back on the slopes practically immediately. The problem is, Callie has never used that hip joint. "I doubt you'd want to be my first," she says, but Travis, Mr. No Fear, is not concerned. In fact, he's into it (less into it is his sour-faced girlfriend, always by his side). "The reason we are who we are," he intones like a monk, "is because we're not scared of firsts." Callie, under his spell, says she'll research the joint and learn what she can, but she's not making any promises. Travis, human snow angel, is not worried.
Hmm. But I guess he should have been, because: Flashforward! (Get used to them!) Something went wrong-ass wrong. Here's Callie, with her attorney. She refuses to admit that there was negligence or settle. Apparently, during the surgery, there was a minor complication when they thought that Travis had developed a pulmonary embolism. As she goes on to detail that post-op infections are a common, recognized risk, the lawyer stops her. "Aaaand that's when the jury's eyes will glaze over," he says. "What they will see is that you made a mistake and your patient paid the price." But, no, Callie insists that she did not make a mistake and that she will not settle. Reluctantly, her attorney says that the day she needs to have her hair pulled back, be wearing makeup and a skirt suit and pantyhose. "Professional, but feminine," he says. "Do you still have your wedding ring?" Callie's face is sad. "Yes," she says, and he tells her to be wearing it. As he goes on to explain that there will be no bathroom breaks and that she shouldn't drink a bunch of water at the table, she begins a visible internal spiral about the pantyhose. Abruptly, she leaps up to go get them.
The morning, as she's in her kitchen cramming herself into the hosiery with curlers in her hair and yelling at Sofia to hurry in the bathroom, Arizona arrives. As she watches this absurd display, she tells Callie she'll take Sofia that night and do whatever else she can do to be helpful. She stops short, however, seeing Callie's ring on her finger. "They told me to," Callie says, and Arizona looks sad.
In the quiet of the courthouse elevator, Callie twists her ring. "You ready?" Greg, the lawyer, asks. "Sure," she says. She isn't. The lobby is jam-packed with reporters and news crews, so much so that she can't even get through them, becoming separated from Greg. Ah, but have no fear, HOT OWEN is here. I guess he emerges out of the wall, because I can't figure out how else he got there but, whatever, I love him. The superfriends back at the hospital, he says, decided they should have at least one person with her at court at all times, for support. "I had to fight Bailey for this first shift," he says. "Turns out, she punches pretty hard for such a little person." Callie is glad to see him, but so nervous she can't even swallow from the dry-mouth. "You can do this," my boyfriend Owen tells her, adding that he'll be sitting right behind her. She takes her place at the table, grabbing for the forbidden water before being reprimanded by Greg. And, as she looks down to note the inevitable run in her hosiery of fate, Travis comes in. In a wheelchair. He has no legs.
Travis's attorney, who is gnawing the remains of the scenery like he's trying to audition for a one-man show in which he plays all 12 angry men, lays it out. They intend to illustrate that, due to a series of "careless mistakes" by Callie, Travis lost both legs. Can I take the smallest pause here to say that my history with this show is a little weird? I watched it vaguely back in the day when it first came on, but for some reason it fell off my list for years in between now and then. I'd sort of half-keep up with it (gee, I wish there was a website where I could go to read what happened on that show I missed…) here and there, until, um, last season. During a period of funemployment (I got laid off), I started binge-watching Season 9. And, as we WELL KNOW, Season 9 was the Season of The LEG. OMG CALLIE CUT OFF YOUR LEG ARIZONA HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT IT? All the leg stuff was so exhausting, I had to go back and just watch everything I'd missed up to that point to get fully caught up. Then I'd see the LEG episode and start IMing Lauren all mad that she forced me to watch this damn show, which she didn't, but whatever. ANYWAY. So you can imagine my reaction when I pick up this recap and tune in to find out that, this time, someone's mad at Callie for cutting off TWO legs. I had to have a moment of silence.
Ah, but let us flashback (!) now to the fateful surgery, itself. Everything appears to be going smoothly, implant's in place, yadda yadda, when suddenly Travis's heart rate goes wacky. Callie starts throwing bloody sponges around, saying they need to close immediately, when her surgical nurse informs that the sponge count is off. Meaning: one sponge is still in Travis's body. "We can't close until we find it," this ridiculous woman says to the surgeon. All the bells and whistles are binging and beeping as Callie starts digging around for the sponge. She can't find it and says a portable X-ray will take too long. Travis could go into shock because of his heart thing, so she has to make the game-time decision to close with the sponge in there. "We can't do that," the nurse says. "Well, you know, we have to," Callie says, worrying her patient is about to die. She ends up having to yell at everybody in the OR to get them to close.
This is the tale Jo is trying to now diplomatically tell in court. "Are you saying Dr. Torres knowingly left a sponge in Mr. Reed's body, and she didn't care?" he asks, throwing in a lot of exposition for the jury, as all plaintiff's attorneys are supposed to do. Jo gets flustered, especially when the guy implies that a medical sponge is the same as the sponge under his college-aged son's sink. That is stupid, and the judge agrees. With Jo's help, we flashback to two weeks after Travis's surgery. He has returned to the hospital with an infection. Jo is like, taking his temperature and chatting with him casually while his girlfriend stands there looking constipated when Callie strolls in. She listens to his heart and hears a murmur and now, and only now, she takes a look at his incision site. It is completely nasty and infected, like WAY infected, and though he surely was triaged and seen by multiple people before ending up in a gown in this bed, I guess nobody looked under his bandages? Like, even Whitney, the bitchface girlfriend, didn't think "I should check out that surgical incision?"
Callie and Jo have a nervous meeting in the hallway. They need to get him into an OR, stat, and kill the infection before it spreads any further. "Should I call Yang?" Jo asks, worried about Travis's heart. Callie says that unless Cristina is available in the five minutes, they can't wait. She unfortunately adds: "I am not turning an Olympic athlete into a doorstop." In the OR, things go from bad to worse.
Flashing back to court, Jo tries to explain that post-op infections are not unusual. Travis's lawyer asks if they usually result in double-amputation. The dude has a point, but he's a jag and won't let Jo finish and she leaves the stand having not really helped. On a break, Callie runs to the bathroom and, in tears, tries to get on a pair of new pantyhose. Arizona comes in to find her there, crying and frantic, made ill by the way Travis's lawyer is making her look at fault for this whole mess and basically eating her lunch. Arizona pulls out something to make her feel better – a drawing that Sofia did of "a jellyfish and a rainbow mermaid." I have a four-year-old daughter and this is basically what she draws me every day. The children deeply love jellyfish and rainbows. What's it about? The other day, she branched out with a picture of "A big, fat talkin' strawberry," though. She's entering a "talkin' food" period, obviously. There was also a cheese, recently. Anyway, Callie is touched by the picture and even more so by Arizona's presence. "Thanks," she says, and the two begin to laugh in the middle of this madness when Arizona notices that Callie has unknowingly wrenched herself into the rhinestone butterfly pantyhose.
It is good to see them laugh, and in a Big Flashback, we go back to the good ol' days, before the cheating, where they are having wine and going through sperm clinic books to choose a donor for their hoped-for baby. Much amusement is had when Arizona drunkenly wants to choose a dude based on his taste in music. "This one's cute," she says, picking up one guy's info sheet. "He would make cute babies," Callie says but, nope, he's vetoed because he's a college dropout. Uh, two MDs for moms would outweigh the sperm of a dude who got to college but dropped out, surely. Another guy is cut because he's smart, but ugly. More wine is distributed. "Do you think I'll like being pregnant?" Arizona asks. "Oh, it's great," Callie says. "Except for the nausea. And the peeing. And the stretchmarks. And no sleep." Oh, she adds, and the "no booze." Poor Arizona. "I will miss you," she says to her wine, "most of all."
Speaking of booze, flashing forward again, we see Callie drowning her sorrows with wine, a lot of it, after her first day in court. She takes her ring off again, and is staring at it when there's a knock on the door. She thinks it's AZ, but no, it's her dad (the incomparable Hector Elizondo)! "Miha," he says, and she falls into his arms.
Apparently Callie had mentioned the trial like it was nothing, but Daddy was not buying it. "You know how many times I've been sued?" he snarks. "My lawyers' are on speed dial." Callie is glad to see him, but says he did not have to come all this way. Like any good grandfather, he's really mostly interested in seeing his grandbaby, and is confused when Callie says she's not there, that Arizona will be bringing her by later. This forces her to tell him about Arizona's infidelity and their split, and… Pops is pissed. "Apparently I marry people who cheat on me!" Callie says, exasperated. "It's pathetic! I am pathetic." No, says her dad. "When that O'Malley kid cheated on you, I was ready to knock his teeth out. Now, I won't hit a lady, but…" he pauses, "I can make it happen. I know people. Just say the word, okay?" Heeee. Callie laughs, but it's bittersweet. "Miha, look at me," her father says, taking her face in his hands. "Nothing about you is pathetic." Tears.
Aaaaaand, more tears, because we flashback now to Callie coming in from work bringing a pizza to her happy home. She sees Sofia playing and is talking to her while balancing the food, some files, her mail and keys and whatnot, when Arizona screams for her from the bathroom. Hastily, she puts stuff down, dropping some papers behind the bookcase, and rushes in, thinking the worst (the worst being some kind of LEG-related drama). But, no, it's actually the best. Arizona is pregnant! She holds up a test, talks about her sore boobs, and much celebrating ensues, ending with Callie kissing her belly with pure joy. So sweet. Now, why two female medical doctors would assume that a positive pregnancy test would just automatically mean that nine months later there would be a baby is beyond me, but let's be happy for a second, because now we're flashing to:
The hospital board room. Apparently this is after the summons, but before the trial. Arizona walks in to find Callie sitting there and we feel some clear and definite awk. Callie announces that she will personally not be settling the case against her, but that she wants the hospital to settle with Travis, to protect itself from bankruptcy. She walks out and Jackson confirms that the hospital's lawyers advised the same course of action. Meredith, however, takes issue. "If Callie isn't settling, maybe neither should we," she says, but Cristina disagrees. "No, I was there," she says. "I saw first-hand what happened to this patient and he has a case. A good case. I think we should settle. And, frankly, Callie should, too."
Flash slightly forward to court. Cristina's on the stand, describing her own involvement in the Travis dramz. He had been her cardiac patient and she recommended Dr. Torres to him, etc. "Because she was the best orthopedic surgeon I knew," she says. Travis's lawyer jumps on it. "Was?" he asks. "As in past tense?" Ugh, but maybe that's what she does mean, because we flash BACK to the post-op situation after Travis's second surgery, and Cristina is pissed. Basically, his heart is jacked up from the infection in his leg, and she's mad that Callie did not page her sooner. The infection is now eating away at his heart graft and Cristina wants to go in and repair it. They are discussing options when Jo bursts in. "You need to see this," she says, and they rush to Travis's bedside where the find his leg looking gnarly and gray. They can detect no pulse in the leg. People! Where are the NURSES? Why is it that no one is noticing when this guy's legs turn colors that legs are not supposed to be?! Callie immediately orders Jo to get an OR ready. They need to go back in and reestablish bloodflow to his leg, she says, but Cristina takes issue. They have a loud argument about which to fix first, his heart or his leg, and Bailey runs in. "I can hear you two from all the way down the damn hallway," she sasses. They present their cases. If Callie doesn't get her way, Travis could lose his leg, she says. "He can live without a leg," Cristina snaps. "He can't live without a functioning heart." Callie argues that if she goes first, Travis will get an extra day on antibiotics and his heart will be more ready for surgery. "Cristina, this is Travis Reed we're talking about," she says. "Let me try to save his leg!"
Back in court, Cristina summarizes that Callie got her way, despite their professional difference of opinion. "We are passionate about our work," Cristina says, adding that in the end she agreed with Callie. "You agreed?" Travis's lawyer snarks. "Are you sure you weren't bullied?" Oh, shut up. Obviously, Cristina was of two minds about the whole thing, but everything did seem to be going okay. In fact, Callie is downright smug after the third surgery, proud of how smoothly it went. She and Cristina are all smiles as they walk with Jo into Travis's recovery room to find Whitey trying to settle him down. "What aren't you telling me?" he says, clearly in distress, and pulls back the sheets to reveal TWO legs that have now turned BLACK. Were he and Whitney just… hanging out, waiting for someone to come in, or… what? Because I feel like if I woke up and my legs were rotting off, I'd have my lady step into the hallway and attract the attention of a medical professional. "What the hell is wrong with my legs?!" he shouts, and it is seriously obvi that nobody knows.
Flash forward agaaaaain to the halls of justice. Callie is amazed when Kepner strolls up, pushing Richard in a wheelchair. "He insisted on coming," April says. Richard brushes off Callie's protests. "It's a miracle I made it here at all," he says. "Kepner's a terrible driver." Ha!
Moments later, Bitchney takes the stand and recounts the moment when Callie made the doorstop comment. Eek. It proves, Travis's lawyer intimates, that Callie was worried about amputation long before she had to do it. Much rumbling takes place in the courtroom with a lot of gavel-banging thrown in.
At this point I am feeling like Rachel McAdams in one of her MANY girlfriend of a time traveler roles, because yet again we flash back to a Callie/AZ moment, post-positive pregnancy test, but pre-breakup. The pee is hardly dry on that First Response stick, but the ladies are already looking for a new house. Arizona is flipping out about the backyard with the swingset and pool and how she can "just see us, playing with the girls, having picnics and playing on the swings…" Callie, who is busy composing an email on her phone, smiles. "What makes you think we're having another girl?" she asks, all cute. Arizona berates her for being on her phone, but Callie says to wait a second, that she's following up with the Peterson Hip trial people in Germany, trying to get them to send her their data to add to her studies before she does Travis's surgery. "Well, they're not going to send you anything before it's published," Arizona says, and I hear the drums of foreshadowing.
No, sorry, those weren't drums. They were the mechanic drones of the lift used to power Travis's wheelchair into the witness box. It is painful to watch. After some banter between himself and his lawyer where they talk to each other about snowboards as if they're strangers on the street having a random chat and not people engaged in a civil suit with millions of dollars on the table, Callie's lawyer objects. Travis's lawyer joshes that he's just consulting a snowboarding expert on snowboarding, is all. The judge tells him to get to the point and, ouch, he does. He has Travis review the whole thing about Callie having never done the Peterson Hip replacement but going ahead with it, anyway, because he trusted Callie's expertise. He hammers it home: "What you got was a botched surgery, a revision surgery, a heart surgery and… well, look at you, now." Guy's a douche, but he's got a point.
Flashing back to the hospital, we see Whitney begging Travis to let her cover his stumps back up with the blankets. "Why?" he asks. "So you don't have to look at them? There's nothing there." Callie comes in, already crying, but Travis won't look at her. She fumbles around with some papers, trying to give Whitney support group and prosthesis information, but he shouts for her to leave. Back in court, he says that he gets that people live without legs and that it's not the end of the world, "but, it's the end of my world." He says that he has been snowboarding since he was a child, and that it meant everything to him. "Without it, I don't know who I am. And, now it's gone. It's just gone, and it's Dr. Torres's fault." This is not just a feeling, he says. He knows it was her fault… because SHE told him, what with all her crying and apologizing, the day she cut off his legs. Greg immediately leaps to his feet, noting that it's illegal to use a physician's apology against them as evidence of guilt. Ah, but Travis's lawyer is on that. "This isn't about the apology," he says. "It's about everything else she said with the apology." The blood drains from Callie's face as Travis tells the story: "She said that if there was anyone to blame, it was her; she said this never should have happened. She said if there was any way she could change things, she would." With that, Travis's attorney inexplicably remarks that "the prosecution rests." Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have watched 2.5 million episodes of Perry Mason and Law & Order, and um, no one is being prosecuted, here. But, whatever. Details, right? At this point, I am just trying to keep up with the time jumping.
The morning, Arizona is picking up a crying, whining, Sofia while Callie gets ready for her day on the stand and Hector Elizondo glares menacingly from the breakfast bar. "Your dad's making me a little nervous," AZ says, as Callie shoves her out the door. And well he should. "Your mother and I have been married 38 years," he says. "You think it's been easy? You think we haven't had our troubles?" Callie asks him not to start comparing his marriage to hers, but he goes hilariously on. "What happened to that 'good man in a storm' baloney?" he asks, incredulous. "She should be here every day, trying to fix it." Callie begs him to be quiet about it, but he can't. Finally, she tells him that, in fact, Arizona isn't running away and abandoning her, that it was her own choice for them to split up. This only makes Dad more upset. "You chose to break up your family?" he asks. "Did you even try to work things out?" As Callie snaps at him to stop, we flash very slightly forward to court.
She is on the stand, talking about her extensive research into the Peterson Hip. "I knew what I was doing," she says. "I even spoke with the team who invented it. Everyone was in agreement that [Travis] was an ideal candidate." She once again describes the first surgery and the whole thing with his heart rate and the sponge. "And, I would do it, again," she concludes, much to the surprise of the jury. She rushes on to explain that the sponge would not compromise the joint and that it was more important to stabilize the patient. "You weren't being careless or distracted?" her attorney asks, rhetorically.
Well, maybe she wasn't distracted that time. But when we go back to the moments after the first surgery, we find a reason for possible distractions down the road. Arizona comes in as Callie's going over post-op instructions with Jo. "You missed our appointment," she says, her face bleak. Callie, all smiles, apologizes (although, she was in surgery, so… surely they had to have known it was a possibility) and says she knows the ultrasound is "just a picture of a blob" at this point, but, still, "did you get a picture of the blob?" Aw, man. "There's no picture," Arizona whispers. "There's no heartbeat." It's terribly sad.
In court, Callie's voice is flat and says that yes, she remembers the day very clearly and was not distracted. She was 100 percent focused on the patient. They go through the stuff again about the disagreement with Cristina. As Greg talks about emboli, she glances over to see the jury fading. "Do you cook?" she interrupts, and proceeds to explain the decision sequence as follows: Say you're cooking and you start a grease fire in your kitchen that spreads to your kitchen. Which disaster do you tackle first? The metaphor does not work for me, because… isn't she trying to prove that her disaster – the gray leg – was worse than the emboli-throwing heart disaster? I don't know. She doesn't really explain to the jury why her disaster was more extreme, but they all nod as if they are feeling it.
It is time to flashback again, but now I can't figure out when we are. Or, whatever. This show is making me talk like I'm in a Doctor Who episode. Callie and Arizona are having a fight in the doctor's lounge, but I don't even know about what. Something around losing the baby, but it's not clear when it's happening or why they are arguing. I think we are to assume that Arizona has just told Callie that she doesn't want to try to get pregnant again and Callie gets upset. Arizona: "I'm just trying to tell you how I feel." Callie: "I feel like crap, too. It wasn't just your kid!" Arizona says she knows, and is about to go on when Callie interrupts and says they don't have to talk about it, now. They can take a break before they try again. Arizona says no, Callie's missing the point. "I can't take another loss, Callie!" she yells. "It's too hard. It's too hard!" Of course, this is understandable, but Callie reacts like Arizona has just decimated their whole life plan, rather than changing her mind on what was sort of a flip decision at a baby shower three months ago. Not that it isn't completely devastating – I happen to know that it is – it just seems like this particular fight about Arizona not being sure she wants another baby is kind of out of balance to other tragedies they have endured.
It is from this encounter with Arizona that Callie goes to Travis's bedside with her forms and whatnot. Apparently what we didn't see before was that when Callie didn't leave the room fast enough, Travis started screaming at Whitney. This snaps Callie out of her fog. She sends Whitney out of the room and has some Real Talk with Travis. "Don't. You Dare. Take this out on her," she says, no doubt recalling that other time she cut off someone's LEG to save a life and had to endure endless emotional tidal waves for it. "You want to take your crap out on somebody, you take it out on me," she says. "I can handle it." She tells Travis to blame her and makes the apology Travis referenced on the stand. Crying, Callie tells him, that "if there was any way I could magically change things, believe me, I would." She wishes she could fix it, she says. "I tried so hard; I'm so, so sorry."
Back in court, she recounts that, yes, she apologized. "I went through the same thing with my wife," she says. "She lost her leg last year and it's cost us in ways that I can't even begin to understand." She wouldn't wish this on anyone, she says. "Of course I was sorry." In fact, she just goes on and apologizes again: "I'm so, so sorry this happened to you, Travis. But, that makes me human, that does not make me negligent. If I can't feel for my patients without getting sued, then I guess I'm just going to keep getting sued. That's who I am. I won't apologize for that." See what she did there?
Later, Callie arrives at her apartment with Meredith and Baby Bailey. Apparently her dad has taken Sofia and Zola to the park. Now that is some footage I would enjoy seeing. Callie puts her purse down on her bookcase, dropping her keys. As Meredith asks how long she thinks the jury will deliberate, she leans down to pick them up and sees an envelope wedged against the wall. Oh, lord, it's a letter from the Peterson Hip trial people. "Hmm, I thought I never heard back from them," Callie says, a little too casually, for my taste, about a piece of mail that has to do with something over which she could now lose her career and a man lost both his legs! Anyway, she flippantly reads through it only to discover that OOPS, here was the data you requested but, by the way, we're not running our trial anymore because we figured out that the Peterson Hip causes massive infection. Meredith's face looks like she's seen a ghost. "What's the postmark on that?!" she asks. People, it was sent three weeks before Travis's surgery. Hey, Peterson trial! GIVE A GIRL A CALL, or something. Send an email, damn! What the HELL? I mean, we saw her send an email to them! So… did you lose my number, Petersons?! Did my underweardancer78@hotmail.com account bounce back? I mean, they knew she was going to do the surgery, because SHE told them. So, let's just drop this fundamental piece of information in the international post and call it a day. Seriously, auf weidersehen.
Thus ensues much freaking out and pacing. "I have to tell them this, right?!" Callie wonders. Meredith counsels that no, she doesn't. "You didn't ignore any data. You didn't act irresponsibly or maliciously," she says. "You worked off the information you had at the time, and then an act of God happened." Meredith says that the letter fell behind the bookcase, and could have easily gotten lost in the mail. Yeah, because it was in the MAIL. Accidents happen, Mere goes on, and though Callie naturally feels bad, as anyone would, it wasn't something she did on purpose. But, Callie says, it is her fault, because she was distracted and should have followed up with the clinical trial people when she didn't hear back from them. Well, yes, she should have, maybe, but these distractions we now know about happened after the first surgery, so... I don't know. Meredith goes into hyperdrive, hoarsely insisting that the envelope is not a magic cure. It can't bring Travis's legs back, but it could sway the jury against her and end her career. Let's not confuse emotions and the facts. "You did nothing wrong," she says. Callie: "Yes, I did." At that moment, the phone rings. The jury is already back.
In a terrible suit, Callie sits on a bench outside the courtroom and places the envelope beside her on the seat. "We've all done things we're not proud of," she says in a voiceover. "I understand that." She gets up and walks into court and, as she passes a trashcan, throws the letter away. "I know nobody's perfect," she says. "But, how do you live with it?" How do you get up every morning knowing that you could have and should have done better. She wonders if being sorry is enough. "Can an apology actually heal our wounds?" she asks. No, it can't, but apparently her apology did enough to sway the jury in her favor, because she wins the case. The jury foreman actually says the words "not guilty," which… again, all my legal knowledge comes from the Matlock School of Law but, that ain't right. I tend to agree with Meredith that the letter behind the bookcase thing was not Callie's fault, but isn't it inexcusable not to share the info? At the very least, Travis can now sue the inventors of the Peterson Hip.
As all the other doctors celebrate hugely right in the face of their crying, legless patient, Callie continues to reflect on the power of apology. Her father, also, is on that path. At home that night, he tells her she should try to take Arizona back. "You took a vow," he says. "You have a child together, for God's sake." Callie pauses to emphasize her point: "She cheated on me." Uh oh, it's Dad Confession Time. "I cheated on your mother." Oh, shiiiiit. Callie flips. They were very young, he says, and Callie's mom found it in her heart to forgive him. "Why?" Callie snaps. "Why would she do that?" Because, her dad says, they were stronger than any one mistake. He thanks God every day her mom forgave him, "because otherwise, I wouldn't have you." He says that his marriage, all 38 years, started after that one mistake. How will she know if she and Arizona could have a chance if she never tries. Abruptly, we see Callie arrive at Arizona's hotel. "Oh, you're not bringing me extra pillows," Arizona says, arriving at the door in her bathrobe.
Callie starts her speech. Arizona did something impulsive, she says, while only thinking about herself. "I did something like that today," Callie says. These things are not analogous, but okay. "You made a mistake," Callie says. "I would like to know if you'll come home." Wanting to give Arizona time to think about it, she leaves without an answer. Flabbergasted, Arizona walks back into her room and falls onto the bed. "You should get dressed, now," she says to poor Leah, who was around the corner, hiding naked in a sheet. "And leave."