10 Heartbreaking Grey’s Anatomy Deaths You Probably Forgot – But Shouldn’t Have

Grey’s Anatomy, and every Shonda Rhimes show, for that matter, is no stranger to breaking fans’ hearts. It was bound to happen, as the entire premise revolves around a hospital and the struggles of surgical residents. But, as it turns out, sometimes the medicine can be much more heartbreaking than a breakup.

No matter whether it’s Seattle Grace, Seattle Grace Mercy West, or Grey Sloan Memorial, the hospital in Grey’s is always buzzing with activity. There’s a code blue in just about every episode, sometimes even on the doctors themselves. While main character deaths get all the attention, some characters only have to show up once for a death scene to rip a heart out.

The Anderson Family Was a Mass-Casualty Incident

Season 8, Episode 10

The Anderson family features some of the only critically injured patients who were introduced to Grey’s Anatomy outside of the hospital without a massive disaster and a Meredith Grey near-death experience. The ninth episode of Season 8 ends with a cliffhanger as Meredith and Alex Karev sit in the back of an ambulance with an unstable newborn baby when it’s suddenly struck by another vehicle. The episode’s final scene features the surgical residents stepping out to see several people lying on the ground beside the overturned van that crashed into the ambulance.

The next episode, “Suddenly,” introduced teenager Lily Anderson as the only member of the family without serious injuries, tasked with manually ventilating the baby as Meredith and Alex tend to her parents and younger siblings near her grandmother’s dead body. Tragically, Lily watches the ER doctors attempting to resuscitate her mom to no avail, and while her sister, Abby, survived a glass shard to the eye and her brother, Michael, survived a liver laceration, Lily can’t catch a break as she makes the heartbreaking decision to remove her father from life support. Lily tragically reveals to Meredith that she became an orphan on her 18th birthday, leaving her the only adult in the Anderson family and responsible for telling her siblings that their lives would never be the same.

Darren Covington Had a Tragic Love Story

Season 4, Episode 14

Season 4 of Grey’s was full of tragic patient deaths as Derek Shepherd and Meredith started a clinical trial. They set out to try to cure inoperable brain tumors called gliomas, so all the patients were out of options before joining the trial. A soldier, Darren Covington, was one of the patients, showing up with his father and a combat medic who had been treating him. But before his surgery, he gets a surprise visit from another uniformed soldier named Todd.

While Mr. Covington assumes Todd is just a friend, it’s revealed that Darren and Todd are in a romantic relationship, but they have to keep it hidden due to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Todd was willing to throw it all away for Darren, telling him that he would skip deployment for him, but Darren unfortunately wasn’t ready for all that. Mr. Covington catches the two of them kissing and kicks Todd out of the room. Darren wanted Todd to just move on and save his career, so he was unwilling to say goodbye on his way to surgery. Todd never left the waiting room and came up to the room for a grand gesture, ready to confront Mr. Covington, only to realize that Darren didn’t make it. Forbidden loves are hard enough, loves that end in death are always tragic, and not being able to say goodbye to a loved one is a nightmare, but all three of them make for a heartbreaking scene, made even worse when Todd gives Darren one last kiss.

Thomas Peterson Never Had a Chance

Season 8, Episode 21

Grey’s Anatomy features doctors of all age ranges and life stages, though there aren’t many interns throughout the show who get pregnant. Cristina was the first, but she suffered an ectopic pregnancy, and then Season 8 featured Morgan Peterson as Alex Karev’s intern, with her pregnancy being announced after having a heart attack. She had to deliver her son at 24 weeks, which is right around when a fetus is considered viable, but the baby, Tommy, was far from healthy. He had issues like a brain bleed, an intestinal perforation, and congestive heart failure, with his father pointing out that he had a mere 13 percent survival and suggesting they just let him go to save him from the pain.

Morgan opted to be as aggressive as possible with Tommy’s treatment, and she stayed with him while he lived in the NICU. Understandably unwilling to let go of her baby, Morgan repeatedly ignored Arizona’s suggested treatments, opting to perform surgery after surgery to delay the inevitable. In the episode “Moment of Truth,” the options came to an abrupt stop as Arizona discovered that most of his bowels were necrotic, and she told Morgan that it was time to let her son be at peace. Morgan held Tommy’s tiny body as he died.

Harold O’Malley Was a Good Dad

Season 3, Episode 12

Harold O’Malley first appeared in Grey’s Anatomy alongside his two sons in Season 2, showing up at the house shared by some of the beloved MAGIC era’s interns, asking Meredith if Georgie was home. They rushed up the stairs, chanting, “O’Malley,” before bursting into George’s room to wish him a happy Thanksgiving and take him on their annual turkey-hunting adventure. He was a very loving dad, making it more emotional when he became a patient at Seattle Grace in Season 3.

What started as a broken clavicle after a fall ended up uncovering esophageal cancer that had spread to his stomach and a leaking aortic valve. He gathered his family for a pre-treatment party, and then he made Dr. Richard Webber promise that they’d take out the entire tumor, even if it had spread, and his wishes were honored. Despite Harold being the patriarch of a family of fighters, he suffered from multi-system organ failure, and his family, including George, was forced to withdraw life support in an agonizing scene.

Denny Duquette Broke Hearts First

Season 2, Episode 27

Denny Duquette was also first introduced to Grey’s Anatomy in Season 2 as a regular patient of Dr. Burke. He suffered from congestive heart failure caused by viral cardiomyopathy and was at the top of the donor list for a new heart. But, something always came up, leaving the available organs unsuitable for transplantation and leaving Denny’s condition to get worse. While Denny hated hospitals, he didn’t mind Seattle Grace that much because of intern Izzie Stevens.

Their relationship was a defining part of his character, as he was so charming, and their dynamic was so inappropriate despite their undeniable chemistry. He was head-over-heels in love with Izzie, letting her make medical decisions for him and proposing to her right after letting her cut his LVAD wire to steal a heart. Unfortunately, his heart transplant doesn’t save him, as shortly after his proposal in the Season 2 finale, during the first scene where “Chasing Cars” plays, Denny suffers a stroke while waiting for Izzie to show him her dress. No matter how many times one watches the episode, the sight of Izzie in a pink prom dress, hugging her dead fiancé, and refusing to move is heartbreaking.

Jen Harmon’s Case Was Derek’s Darkest

Season 5, Episode 16

Jen Harmon’s first episode in Grey’s Anatomy featured her rushing into the Seattle hospital with her husband, Rob, whom she accidentally hit with their car. His injuries are minor, but Jen collapses and ends up being the more critical patient. She had a normal exam, but her blood pressure kept going up, prompting the doctors to try to keep her calm before it hurt the fetus. Jen went from panicking to seizing within moments, and unfortunately, an MRI showed a ticking time bomb of an aneurysm in her brain.

Throughout the entire show, Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd was known for taking risks during surgeries. Nothing was impossible to him, and he took on Jen’s case with optimism. They definitely bonded more than most patients in Grey’s, with Derek telling Jen about his plans to propose to Meredith, and her being a generally pleasant person despite her health issues. He clipped her aneurysm in surgery, and then the fetus went into distress, but they were both stable until Derek took her back into surgery and made the highly contested decision to remove her temporal and frontal lobes, snapping at Addison Montgomery for attempting to deliver the fetus, and requiring Chief Webber himself to force Derek to stand down. Jen’s death was terribly unfair and resulted in a lawsuit. But, unsurprisingly, the saddest aspect of her death was seeing Rob holding a newborn baby, while sobbing and begging for his wife.

Henry Burton Didn’t Have Enough Time

Season 8, Episode 10

Grey’s Anatomy introduced Scott Foley as Henry Burton in Season 7, sparking a conversation with Dr. Teddy Altman in the elevator and asking her to wish him luck in proposing to his girlfriend. It’s just a little polite conversation, and Henry shows up again later in the episode, telling Teddy that he was rejected, but he wasn’t that upset because he just wanted a legal marriage to get health insurance. He unfortunately couldn’t keep a job due to his Von-Hippel-Lindau syndrome, leaving him unable to pay for the necessary medical attention his chronic condition required.

While the then-named Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital couldn’t do much to help Henry, Teddy wasn’t okay with leaving him without care, so she offered to marry him to share her insurance. What started as a fraudulent relationship turned into a real one, and Henry truly made Teddy the happiest she ever was in the show. He also helped Dr. Richard Webber with his clinical trial for diabetes and became a big part of the hospital family in such a short time. After around a 15-episode run, Henry needed emergency surgery, and Cristina operated while Teddy was in another surgery, but Henry didn’t make it off the table. Once Teddy got out of surgery, they had to break the news to her, and the reaction was nothing short of gutwrenching.

Rosemary Bullard’s Husband Couldn’t Let Go

Season 5, Episode 7

Rosemary Bullard is an elderly patient who came into the hospital in Grey’s Anatomy Season 5 with a brain tumor. It had metastasized, with the mets being prone to bleeds, making any surgery really dangerous. But Rosemary decided to take the risk, as she couldn’t live with the tumor anymore, signing a DNR so she wouldn’t just lie around attached to a machine.

Rosemary and her husband Ed were so sweet, with a tradition of saying goodbye before each surgery, only to greet each other again afterward. Tragically, Ed didn’t get to greet his beloved wife again, as she didn’t wake up after the surgery. When she went into cardiac arrest, Ed didn’t understand why no one was saving her and took matters into his own hands, starting chest compressions. Dr. Bailey and Dr. Shepherd stood with him, with Bailey wiping his forehead and eventually taking over when he couldn’t do it anymore, and Derek following her, but he slowly stopped CPR and let her go. Little is as heartbreaking as hearing Ed, an elderly man, trying to wake his dead wife, crying and calling her Rosie.

Wallace Anderson Died on His Birthday

Season 6, Episode 8

The Grey’s Anatomy Season 6 episode starts with an older pediatric patient who fell off her roof and broke several bones. But while Dr. Robbins takes the doctors on daily rounds and stops in her room, they meet the 10-year-old Wallace Anderson. He gets to put on scrubs and go on rounds with Arizona to help study math and science, but he’s a long-term patient, having been in and out of Seattle Grace for two years, with 15 intestinal surgeries. During the episode, Wallace had been living in the hospital for seven months due to his short gut syndrome.

The episode, “Invest in Love,” is set on the week of Wallace’s 11th birthday, which he shares with Arizona, and his parents inform the hospital’s board that they’ll donate 25 million dollars to the SGMW pediatrics program. Unfortunately, Wallace’s condition worsens significantly, and under threat of losing the money, Arizona performs a risky surgery to buy him more time, and then performs surgery once again from complications. Wallace dies of septic shock on the table on his 11th birthday, and when his parents see him in the morgue, his mother heartbreakingly performs Wallace’s nighttime ritual, “bad dreams, bad dreams, go away. Good dreams, good dreams, here to stay.”

Jessica Smithson’s Death Was Devastating

Season 5, Episode 20

Jessica Smithson first showed up in the Grey’s Anatomy Season 5 episode, “Sweet Surrender.” She was one of the final patients Dr. Bailey treated during her pediatric surgery era, but unfortunately, Jessica’s treatment plan was just palliative care. She had Tay-Sachs, which is a genetic, degenerative disorder that kills off nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leaving her with a life expectancy of around four or five years.

Jessica was six years old when she started to die. In the episode, the sweet girl’s dad was frantic, running around and trying to organize a trip to Mexico for an experimental treatment that could buy her more time. He wasn’t ready to let go, so Bailey stayed with Jessica all day, rocking her until the time came and she convinced her father to stop. Jessica’s dad holds her and tells her how beautiful Mexico will be when they get there, telling her to close her eyes and that they’ll be in paradise when she wakes up. She never woke up again.