When Grey’s Anatomy opened on Thursday night, a few weeks had passed since Cristina (Sandra Oh) returned from Zurich and revealed she would be leaving Seattle in the near future. Before she leaves, she’s tasked with finding her replacement as Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Derek (Patrick Dempsey) determine their next step, Bailey (Chandra Wilson) deals with her daring medical decision and the residents all try to avoid being the one on the chopping block.
Derek has been spending a lot of time in D.C., so Amy (Caterina Scorsone) has been staying on board to cover his surgeries and help Meredith out with the kids. While Derek has been away, Meredith has grown fond of Amy, so much so that she’s taking an interest in her personal life. When Meredith presses her about how things are going with her fiancé James, Amy tells her she liked it better when Mer was the sister-in-law who didn’t care about her life.
Knowing that one of the residents will be dropped from the program, all of them are convinced that they are the surgeon getting cut. Jo (Camilla Luddington) has stress hives, Leah (Tessa Ferrer) has gained eight pounds and Ben (Jason George) thinks that since he was the last one in the program, he’ll be the first one out of it. Stephanie (Jerrika Hinton) thinks it might be best to keep her head down and glide through to safety.
However, Stephanie is involved in Bailey’s case with the bubble boy. It’s now time to get him out of isolation, but in order to do so she needs to tell his parents that she gave him the virus despite their protests. First, she needs to tell the board, so she tells Cristina. All Cristina cares about is that her risky maneuver worked – and it did. Bailey thinks that the parents will be okay with what she did after realizing that she did cure their son. They’re livid. When Bailey goes to relay the situation to Owen (Kevin McKidd), she tries to exonerate Stephanie to no avail.
The parents not only want to file a malpractice suit, they want to file assault and battery charges. If they win, Bailey would never work in a hospital again. Throughout the meeting with the lawyer, Bailey maintains her calm. She’s even poised when Jackson finally convinces the parents that Bailey’s work was successful and that they’re son can come out and hug them and they still vow to take legal action against her. Stephanie won’t stand for it, however, and lies to cover Bailey. By saying she forgot to inform her superior of the parents' wishes, Bailey is out of trouble and Stephanie only gets a week suspension.
April (Sarah Drew) and Jackson (Jesse Williams) ogle their ultrasound picture and bicker about when the right time is to tell their respective parents. As they’re leaving the floor, they bump into Callie (Sara Ramirez) who’s getting checked out so she can carry her and Arizona’s (Jessica Capshaw) next child.
Meanwhile, Jo has been running around like crazy all day, trying to be everywhere and everything for anyone. Callie is getting annoyed by Jo’s yes ma’am behavior and calls her out on it. April calls Callie a grumpus, which doesn’t get so much as a smirk. When Jo yells at April to put her apron on so they can do the x-ray, April is forced to admit she’s pregnant. Later on, Callie cries to April and admits the doctors told her that her accident caused a lot of damage and that she can’t carry another child. When Callie gets home, she tells Arizona the news. Arizona says she’d be willing to carry their next kid, but they agree it might be best to settle for just one.
Earlier in the day, after Arizona gives Ross (Gaius Charles) a job with the tiny humans, Karev (Justin Chambers) drops by and asks Ross about an old patient of his. When Karev finds out he’s not scheduled until Wednesday, he goes and finds the kid and his family and offers to perform the surgery on the spot. Ross knows that Arizona would flip if she found out he was stealing her surgery, but Alex blackmails him into keeping quiet. When Arizona finds out, she’s beyond angry with her former peds pal. After getting out her rage and saving a baby Ross messed up on, she tells Karev that if he needs something to just to ask – not to do things behind her back.
One of the patient-of-the-weeks, Monica, has lost her sphincter control after successfully battling stomach cancer. She keeps involuntarily passing gas, and she informs Richard (James Pickens Jr.) that she goes to the bathroom every 4 hours and 26 minutes. Since she’s still going too frequently, she can’t get a pacemaker so they need to come up with a new solution. Leah ultimately comes up with the idea of using a magnetic sphincter closer, which Richard thinks is a great idea. After they perform the surgery together, Richard lets her down easy. He tells her she’s a great doctor, with a great mind but not a great surgeon. She’s the one getting dropped from the program.
During their surgery, Meredith tells Amy that Derek is coming home tonight, so she can pack up and head back home to James. Amy apologizes for earlier, and says she’ll get out of her way. Meredith clarifies that she isn’t kicking her out, but doesn’t want to keep her from her life. The thing is, Amy doesn’t want to leave; she wants to settle down in Seattle. As for James, she doesn’t feel like she needs him anymore and she’s going to call him and tell him later.
Cristina is having a considerable amount of trouble finding someone to take Dr. Russell’s place as the head of cardio. There’s the guy whose face both Meredith and Cristina didn’t like, and then there was the humble-bragger and the overly ambitious girl who at a young age had already ran a department for two years. Meredith is convinced that Owen is setting her up to find out that no one could do the job better than her so that he can offer her the job.
As the episode came to an end, Owen finally admitted to Cristina that he had initially planned to try to get her to stay. But, he realizes that she has to go; nothing good will come of asking her to stay, so he won’t. He also says that he only wants her to stay with him until he leaves, and kisses her. Meanwhile, at the Shepherd household, Derek comes home to Meredith with a bottle of champagne in hand. He’s met the president and he wants him to take a position at the NIH, running the program for which they’re using his research. Dereks wants him, Meredith and the kdis to uproot to Washington.
When Grey’s returning to ABC next Thursday at 9/8c, it will finally be Cristina’s goodbye.
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