Well, this sternal-reconstruction debacle has certainly spiraled out of control, hasn’t it? When Jules decided to have Mohanty’s back after her sloppy mistake while stitching an omentum flap led to serious complications, she didn’t realize it would be at the expense of her own reputation. And yet, that’s exactly where we find Jules this week. While she’s dealing with one of the most ambitious fellows we’ve seen at Grey Sloan in a while, Bailey and Lucas must grapple with the inevitable outcome of Katie Rogers’ case, Webber has some major realizations on his first day back, and Link’s feeling sad about some babyproofing problems. Okay, some of those things are admittedly more intense than others, but we’ll make room for all of them. Let’s talk about this week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, “Love the Way You Lie.”
Liar, liar, scrubs on fire
In last week’s episode, Jules didn’t mind covering for Mohanty’s screwup in front of Dr. Wright by keeping the details vague, but things take a much more serious turn — a career-damaging turn — when Jules and Mohanty present Mr. Hill’s case at the Morbidity & Mortality presentation.
Now Jules is not just in front of Dr. Wright but also many of her colleagues and supervisors, including the one who makes her the most nervous, for a whole host of reasons: Winston Ndugu. And of course, an M&M is all about the nitty-gritty details. As questions fly at her about what went wrong in the surgery, Jules attempts to continue keeping things vague. She talks about herself and Mohanty as a team. She doesn’t specify who did what. When an exasperated Wright finally demands to know who actually made the stitch, whose negligence caused all the problems and could cost Mr. Hill his life, for a split second you think Mohanty is going to do the right thing and own up to what she did, but instead she apologizes for not supervising her resident more closely and takes “full responsibility as her supervisor.” She throws Jules completely under the bus. Jules attempts to set the record straight by saying she did not, in fact, make that stitch, that Mohanty wouldn’t allow her to take over, but it’s too late. Now she just looks like she is trying to save her ass. Both Wright and Winston take Jules to task for not being able to own up to her mistakes. She gets scorched up there.
After the M&M mercifully ends, Jules asks Mohanty the question we all have on our minds: What the hell, dude? Even worse than Mohanty casting the blame on Jules, she doesn’t feel the least bit sorry about it. Residents are supposed to make mistakes, and she’ll be fine, she explains to Jules. The problem, of course, is that Jules did not make a mistake here, and yet now she’s paying for it. Jules is, understandably, freaking out. She tries to impress upon Kwan why this is so awful and the real-life repercussions it’s going to have on her career and that his girlfriend is an absolute piece of, well, you know what.
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Kwan and Jules have been through some real stuff together — remember when they were in love? — and although it may seem otherwise in the room, he doesn’t take Jules’ distress or accusations lightly. He brings it up to Mohanty, who again has no remorse. Surgery is cutthroat, she says, and people will forget about it in no time. If she fesses up to it now, it could cost her this fellowship in Boston. It’s not a big deal, she assures him. He goes along with it because she implies she might forgo Boston and take the fellowship Wright is offering her so she can stay in Seattle for him, and my man is a sucker for love. But not long after, he watches as Jules’ career suffers because of what Mohanty did. Wright kicks her off her service because she doesn’t want to work with someone so insecure and dramatic. Kwan can’t pretend not to see how bad this is anymore. When he finds Mohanty outside the hospital waiting for him to go to dinner, he tells her that Jules is his friend, and he isn’t going to be a part of this. He tells her that the two of them are less alike than he thought, and then he adds the final blow: He hopes she gets the job in Boston. Those two are done, and that’s called being a true friend right there.
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While Kwan is in her corner and Mohanty might be finally reconsidering her terrible actions, Jules’ reputation has already taken a real hit, especially with Winston. She can’t let that stand. She finds him in the parking lot, which I guess is their place now, and gives him this whole speech about how the saddest part of all of this is that it is confirming his worst thoughts about her. His opinion of her is the only one she truly cares about. She admits to some small infractions and that, yes, she did coach that patient with the shoulder pain to help him get treatment, but she is not lying about Mohanty. She needs him to know she’s not lying. Throughout this whole passionate vomiting of words, she and Winston are getting closer and closer to each other. He tells her he believes her. The amount of yearning pouring out of this man’s eyes should be studied. He goes to kiss her finally, but at the last second, she pulls away. It seems we are still slow-burning Winston and Jules for now.
This is going to hurt
Speaking of feelings yet to be acted on, we should talk about Katie Rogers. In the previous episode, she was rushed into the hospital with fluid in her abdomen, making it difficult to breathe. I’m sorry to tell you this, but … things get much worse. She has carcinomatosis and multiple organ failure. The best they can do for her is make her comfortable. It’s devastating, and making it even worse is, first, the fact that Katie’s mother is full of rage over how cruel it is to watch her mother die from this disease and now her daughter, and second, that Katie is still grasping for a chance to turn things around. She thinks that maybe if she goes home and sleeps in her own bed, she’ll get stronger. All these heightened emotions make Bailey’s job much more difficult.
Bailey knows that Katie desperately wants to go home, but her condition is so poor that Bailey thinks the best way to take care of her now is to have her go on hospice at the hospital. She’ll have around-the-clock care starting right now. There is an option to have an in-home hospice, but that will take at least a week to set up. Katie wants out of the hospital today. If that means she has to leave against medical advice and go home now before hospice care is ready, she doesn’t care. Bailey has to call in the one person she knows can get through to Katie: She’s calling in Lucas.
Our resident Sad Boy Emo King to the rescue! It’s clearer than ever here that these two have caught the most dangerous virus there is on Grey’s Anatomy: feelings. You can tell when she sees him and says they should leave together to go see the houseboats. You can tell when he holds her after she realizes she is in too much pain to even get out of her bed. I mean, this sweet guy is standing there giving her improv Goodreads reviews about Tolstoy. That’s love, baby. And those feelings and the trust these two have built up over the past few months are why Katie decides she’ll wait in the hospital until the in-home hospice is set up.
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Not everyone is satisfied. Katie’s mother, understandably grieving and looking to lash out at someone, chooses Bailey. If this were Bailey’s kid, what would she have done? When Bailey says she would’ve fought, Mrs. Rogers tearfully wants to know why she stopped fighting for Katie. Bailey has no answer, but she does head outside to sit on a bench to do her own raging. Lucas finds her there, and she is beside herself with anger that Katie has to die this way. She isn’t dying because of the cancer; she’s dying because the government cut the funding to a life-saving clinical trial without any thought of the consequences and the real people who would be facing them. It’s not fair. And to top it all off, Bailey can’t even give Katie her dying wish — to spend her last moments outside of a hospital. She has to lay it on Lucas: There’s no chance Katie will survive long enough for the in-home hospice to be set up. She’ll never make it home.
Lucas won’t let that stand. He has an idea: What if they bring Katie to Simone’s house (he reminds Simone that it is technically his aunt’s house) and that way they can provide the 24-7 care Katie will need as she dies? They can administer her meds; they can drain the fluid that is still building up in her abdomen. Simone is in. And Kwan will help too. They present the idea to Bailey, who can’t recommend this as a solution … but she can tell them exactly what they’ll need to get in order to do it. So, Bailey is on board too. Lucas and Simone tell Katie the good news. She takes Lucas’ hand and thanks him for everything. “None of this would have happened without you,” she says. Oh, wow, this is going to be so brutal next week, isn’t it?
A change in perspective(s)
Elsewhere at Grey Sloan, it’s Webber’s first day back since his prostate cancer surgery. He’s feeling good. He’s feeling even better when Ben and intern Meade present him with his first case back: Russell here is in for a splenectomy. But not just any splenectomy — the guy’s spleen is currently so big, it stretches across his entire abdomen. It’s a mega-spleen. A once-in-a-lifetime spleen. Everyone is pretty stoked.
But while they’re prepping Russell, Webber goes to visit Curtis, his friend from the cancer ward. You remember Curtis, right? The young father who is slowly dying of prostate cancer, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it? He’s still in the hospital dying, reminding us all how cruel it is that he won’t get to see his kids grow up. It puts a period on the shift in perspective being a cancer patient has brought him, and suddenly he is much less enthusiastic about the mega-spleen. When they remove it in the OR and Ben and Meade begin taking photos with it and joking about its size, Webber takes them to task — this isn’t some medical miracle; this is a failure of medicine. They shouldn’t be celebrating that someone was so sick, their spleen got this bad. They should be trying to prevent that from ever happening.
Ben comes by Webber’s office later to apologize. Webber explains his new perspective on how he views his job since his cancer. Ben thinks this is a great thing — maybe this leads to a new chapter for Webber. He’s had so many new chapters, so he would know.
Webber’s not the only one who is using a change in perspective for good. Link’s feeling sad since his shoulder is still hurting and he can’t perform surgery — he can’t even babyproof his and Jo’s penthouse, which is the least-babyproof home structure ever built in all of history. Before he can feel too low, Amelia calls him in because one of their patients, who has an arm prosthesis after an amputation, gets into an accident while practicing for a mountain-bike competition.
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Amelia and Link are both at a loss for what’s going on with John. While mountain biking (which is how he makes a living for himself and his growing family), his prosthesis simply let go of the bike, even though that’s not what he wanted it to do. And it’s done this before. But after some tests, Amelia and Link can see that the prosthesis is doing what it’s supposed to, and John’s muscles are getting the signals they are supposed to in order for the prosthesis to work correctly. It’s simply that this robotic prosthesis isn’t built to work with the stress John encounters while mountain biking. Link needs to fix this — he builds and repairs bones for a living! Yes, yes, his crisis of confidence is tied to his inability to fix even small things at home — thank you, Amelia, for pointing that out to him. And thank you again to his ex for pointing out that he needs to let go of expectations for himself and open himself up to other possibilities because that is the aha moment Link needs. They were trying to figure out how to get this bionic prosthesis to work the way John needs it to, but maybe they need to think bigger: Maybe the robotic prosthesis can’t be fixed. Link builds John a new prosthesis, one that attaches to the bike, one that he would wear only while mountain biking.
A change in perspective, letting go of expectations, opening up to new possibilities — Link brings these lessons home with him. First, he finally tells Jo about the pain in his shoulder and how it’s been making him feel. Second, what if they scratch the babyproofing of the penthouse altogether and instead move in to his man cave? It has more space, and it’s easier and more cost-effective to fix up. They are opening their lives up to new possibilities. Goodbye, Jackson Avery’s sweet-ass penthouse apartment! We will miss you and your luxurious but deadly staircase!