Grey’s Anatomy, fresh off of Cristina Yang’s Harper Avery loss, picked up with Meredith and Owen heading back to Seattle without Cristina, whose feelings of failure materialized in some kind of a shutdown.
When Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) gets to the hospital, she runs into April (Sarah Drew), who she warns not to talk to her today. April, ignoring Meredith’s warning, starts up a conversation that ends with Meredith chastising her for now being a part of the Avery family that robbed her "person." Currently, neither Meredith nor Owen (Kevin McKidd) has any idea where Cristina (Sandra Oh) is, which is problematic since Frankie McNeil and her sister Ivy are both going to be in need of a heart transplant.
Frankie is the sister in worse shape and currently being kept stable with an LVAD until her heart transplant. Thankfully, there’s a heart in Oregon that’s a perfect match for her sister. Arizona (Jessica Capshaw), after learning from Alex (Justin Chambers) that he’s considering leaving for the private practice after his fellowship is over, asks that he come along with her for the ride. He thinks she wants to use the opportunity to keep him from going, but really she’s just being sentimental and wants one last big memory with him before he leaves. By the end of the day, Alex gives the board his notice, and Jo (Camilla Luddington) couldn’t be happier for them and their richer future.
Bailey’s (Chandra Wilson) patient, the boy with no immune system, is also looking worse for wear – so much so that his mother wants all of the procedures to stop. Unaware of the parents’ changing attitude towards her experimental enzyme treatment, which uses the HIV virus, Bailey continues to enthusiastically work on the project. When Bailey learns of the mom’s doubts, she realizes that she already has her signed consent.
Making matters pressing for Bailey is the reality that Jackson (Jesse Williams) claims he needs to trim the fat where the research trials are concerned. If a research project is eating up hospital resources, but not providing any tangible results, he’s going to suggest it get cut. Bailey, Derek (Patrick Dempsey) and Callie (Sara Ramirez), and Meredith are all worried that it’ll be their trial that’ll have to go.
When Callie wasn’t fretting over her and Derek’s trial, she was working on a patient that got hit by a truck while making a cross-country trek on foot. His femur was destroyed, so it was all hands on deck. Owen, Jo and an emotionally fragile April were all with her in the OR. April, however, decided to also use the time in which no one could escape her to take about her and Jackson’s marital woes – specifically about how they’ll never agree on religion. Callie dips out of the OR as soon as her work is done, as that’s all she’s been hearing since April moved in with her and Arizona.
Eventually, it’s just April and Hunt in the OR. April admits to Owen that she fears that their fight over religion is the fight, the one that’s going to irrevocably damage their relationship. Owen reassures her that they can get through it. They’re going to have a lot of disagreements as a married couple, and that this one isn’t the one that’s going to ruin them. When April stops by Jackson’s apartment later to grab her iPod, it doesn’t seem like she believed much of what Owen said. Jackson says they can work through it since they have the same values, but April worries about how he’ll feel when she talks to their kid about God. Jackson suggests they leave out hypotheticals, but then April reveals that she’s pregnant.
Happier married couple Derek and Meredith are finally getting alone time – a date in the OR with a big tumor. Derek reveals that the kids are with his sister Amy, so they don’t have to worry about dropping any balls today. Following the surgery date, the two head to the on-call room for some more alone time. When they get home, expecting to find Amy with dinner made and a clean house, instead they find her huddled in the corner with toys strewn all over the place. She cries to them about worrying that she’ll never be able to have kids and a career. Meredith tells Derek to “fix” his sister while she orders some takeout.
It turns out that Meredith and Owen need not have worried about Yang going MIA as she shows up at Grey Sloan memorial just in time for Frankie’s surgery and takes over from the head of cardio, who rubs her Harper Avery loss in her face. Things only get worse for Yang when she realizes that the heart doesn’t start beating and that Frankie will have to stay on bypass, but she’s already acidotic and bleeding.
When Yang rushes to the bedside of Ivy, she tries to coach Ross (Gaius Charles) and Leah (Tessa Ferrer) through a cross-stich. They succeed, but Frankie is still in poor shape. Cristina basically tells their parents that the heart is a match for both of them, but that it might be a waste for it to go to Frankie, who they might be able to fit with a mechanical heart until another one becomes available. The parents refuse to make the decision and put it on Yang’s shoulders. Though Owen offers to help her, she resists and makes her call. In the end, Ivy ends up doing well, but they can’t save Frankie.
After they inform the parents, Owen can’t find Cristina. Eventually, he finds her in the shower, her scrubs still on as she stares blankly ahead. “I did everything I was supposed to; I did it perfectly. What’s the point?” she asks. Sensing that she’s also talking about the Harper Avery, Owen tells her what he just learned from Richard (James Pickens Jr.). When the former chief went to visit Katherine Avery (Debbie Allen) with the intention of proposing, he learned from her the real reason why Cristina didn’t win the coveted award – she worked for an Avery-owned hospital. She had the work, she had the votes; she had the wrong hospital. With that revelation, Cristina shut off the water and walked out of the shower.
Grey’s Anatomy returns next Thursday on ABC at 9/8c with the return of Isaiah Washington as Preston Burke.
– Chelsea Regan
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