It’s been a while since a Grey’s Anatomy case emotionally leveled me, but folks, I think this season has finally introduced a contender. Remember how I was complaining last week that the patients of the week felt very meh? Maybe that was the quiet before the emotional storm — the conspicuously low tide that predicts a tsunami. All I know is this: When you end an episode with a paralyzed child, the writers mean business.
Dylan Gatlin is an adventuresome 9-year-old who loves camping, and, unfortunately, her broken arm revealed a far more concerning condition; when the doctors ran a CT to check for head trauma, they found a cavernous angioma in her brain stem — a benign cluster of brain cells that will likely take her life within five or ten years. The only treatment is an impossible surgery that makes even Grey Sloan’s resident miracle worker, Amelia Shepherd, nervous. You know it’s bad when even Amelia doesn’t feel like playing surgical chicken.
Like most 9-year-olds, Dylan is terrified of surgery, but after some back-and-forth, Dylan’s nervous parents agree that the risk is worth the potential reward. After a scary brain bleed, the surgery seems to go off without a hitch. But then …
That ending. That sneaky gut punch of an ending. It seems like Dylan is in the clear when she wakes up excited for weeks of rest with plenty of ice cream. Her parents are relieved. Dr. Beltran congratulates Amelia on doing what her brother never could. The doctors award Dylan “The Grey Sloan Badge of Bravery” to join her other Scout badges. Then, out of nowhere, she’s paralyzed. And then she’s coding. And then we cut to black. I’ll admit, I was devastated like I’d never seen an episode of Grey’s before.
Maybe it’s because Dylan’s terror at the idea of surgery hit me in a really soft place, or maybe it’s the pain of wondering how much her mother might soon come to regret telling her tiny daughter that “doing hard things even when we’re scared is what makes us brave.” All I know is, I was not prepared. This week’s episode is all about taking risks, and while some of them seem destined to pay off, some could have catastrophic consequences.
Dylan’s case offers a not-so-subtle prompt for our favorite insecure couple, Griffith and Adams, to talk through the awkward juncture where their relationship is once again stalling. Kwan lets slip to Adams that Griffith had been planning to ask him to move in again right after she decided not to extend that invitation. (As you’ll recall, Adams started talking about the future last week, and that freaked her the hell out, converting her invitation to cohabitate into a much lamer invitation to grab dinner at Joe’s.) When Griffith tries to smooth things over by telling Adams he’s on the “list” for the spare room at the frat house, he understandably gets snarky: “I’m on a list, what, between aquarium and game room?” (For what it’s worth, as someone who once pet-sat a turtle for a weekend, I’d highly advise any busy surgeon to choose the game room.)
It’s easy to understand Adams’s angst. This game is getting old. At the same time, Griffith does present a very good point here: She and Adams have known each other for less than a year. Why skip the fun dating stage straight into the “you left your clothes on the bathroom floor” stage? Considering how much time these two already spend together at the hospital, there’s something to be said for separate living spaces. Sadly, Adams is mostly fixated on Griffith’s poor communication, so he leaves her to think about what (he believes) she did wrong. I’m sure they’ll make up soon so they can fight again.
Griffith is not the only surgeon at Grey Sloan who is feeling a little risk-averse when it comes to love. Dr. Ndugu can’t stop noticing Dr. Webber’s careful glances at him and his new mentee, Dr. Millin, and it’s making him uncomfortable. Millin has that unmistakable intern glow, all enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, and Ndugu seems both enchanted by that quality and also very aware of how painfully predictable his attraction really is. She’s breaking into the frat house to practice her surgical techniques on Griffith’s chicken cutlet (which she hilariously names “Meryl Peep”), and meanwhile, he’s doing everything he can to tell himself that their relationship is purely professional, when on his end, at least, it clearly is not.
That’s what makes this relationship so interesting, though: He’s obviously feeling something, but I don’t think she is. She’s excited to learn, and he genuinely wants to teach her, but he can also tell that his intentions are not purely academic. That’s fascinating! It is also a refreshing departure from where I briefly feared this was going — MerDer redux. I’m genuinely curious to see how this develops.
In the meantime, Ndugu discovers a new level of compatibility with his “will they, they really shouldn’t” crush this week: They’re both scarred from shitty fathers. When a car-crash victim rolls in with a herniated lung, they begin looking for someone to call, and Millin instantly clocks the patient, Spencer’s father, as a deadbeat when he pockets Spencer’s rent money. She’s furious, and she seems even madder at Ndugu for stopping her when she runs to call it out. As she later reveals in the OR, her dad was the type to take her on a drug run at age 10 before making her drive him home because he was high. (Yikes!) Ndugu brushes this personal detail off and asks Millin if she’s too preoccupied to do the surgery (a valid question, to be fair), and at first, it seems like he’s being cold, but it turns out, he has a reason.
Later on, when Ndugu finds Spencer’s dad outside slurping from the liquor bottle he bought with his son’s rent money, Ndugu loses it. Suddenly, Spencer crying when he found out that his father had come and gone out for a “quick lunch” with his belongings made sense. Ndugu doesn’t just snatch the liquor bottle and break it. He doesn’t just berate Spencer’s dad. He throttles him and throws him against a wall, tearing up and laying into him. Interesting.
Of course, it’s Millin who discovers the scene and tears Ndugu away before he does something that could lose him his license. That’s when Ndugu confesses that he, too, had a “difficult” father. But when Millin asks if he wants to decompress over a cup of coffee (decaf — as innocent as it gets), he declines. And when he shows up to work the next day, he asks Webber to take over his cases so he can take a break — both from surgeries and, presumably, Millin. I have a feeling a passionate confrontation is on the horizon.
While Ndugu tries not to court Millin, Bailey is on a quest to do the exact opposite with another prospective intern. Now that Adams is no longer in remediation and rising with his class, there’s a gap in next year’s intern class — which will present as a red flag for anyone considering Grey Sloan for their residency the year after that. So Bailey is on the hunt for fresh, talented blood to fill the empty slot. She believes she’s found it in Dr. West, a very hot prospect who comes with a recommendation from Duke. Not too shabby!
Bailey gives Kwan the enviable task of showing West around, and although he’d spent the morning whining about wanting to help her with a hernia repair, he suddenly forgot about that once he saw her. Turns out, they both went to school in the Caribbean — and from that warm, sandy common ground, the chemistry only intensifies. She even asks him for a “private tour,” which, to their credit, somehow does not end in an on-call room.
Instead, it ends at the bedside of a tachycardic patient — specifically, when Kwan stops West from puncturing the patient’s liver while trying to insert a chest tube without authorization. He yells at her mercilessly, just in time for a dismayed Bailey to catch him. When she finds out about West’s less-than-stellar surgical skills and rogue ambitions, however, she calms down quickly. The last thing she needs is another intern who wants to play the hero without proper sign-off. She still won’t let Kwan help with the hernia repair, but she does at least praise his work with the chest tube. That’s something!
That’s not the only doomed romance this week, either. We’ve also got Mariana and Edgar, “the NICU couple,” immortalized in the hospital newsletter and on its wall for posterity. Their mothers met and became fast friends when they both had premature babies, and Mariana and Edgar have been inseparable ever since. He’s stayed by her side throughout her treatment for aggressive endometriosis, which has now taken over her pelvis and implanted in her pubic symphysis. Sadly, because we don’t study gynecological conditions nearly as much as, say, erectile dysfunction, the treatment protocols are not as robust. Still, Jo and Link partner up to remove the lesions and relieve Mariana’s pain.
There’s just one problem. The surgery might have gone great, but now Mariana has to find a way to break it to Edgar that she doesn’t want to marry him. They’ve known each other their whole lives, and their moms might love this romantic story, but it isn’t hers. Conveniently, their wedding cancellation opens up a beautiful, moderately priced wedding venue for Jo and Link, who’ve been struggling to find a place that both doesn’t suck and won’t leave them with insurmountable debt. But can they pull a wedding together in only … [checks calendar] four days?! Probably — although I’ll just say that if I were a relative or wedding-party member, I would not be wild about this plan (or lack thereof).
