Meredith enters Katharine’s office.
Callie is brushing her hair, but walks to the living room when she hears the noise of a vacuum cleaner. Cristina is cleaning the apartment and she tells Callie to move her stuff off the floor.
Alex serves Rebecca breakfast at Joe’s bar, but she says the baby doesn’t like the breakfast. She throws up in a can.
Meredith wants to leave therapy, but Katharine finds it a strange timing to quit as Meredith finally talked about her feelings last time. Meredith says she’s not a quitter, but Katharine disagrees. She quit her boyfriend and she’s tried to quit on numerous occassions. Quitting is what Meredith knows how to do. Meredith tells Katharine she’s fired and leaves. Katharine tells herself they’re getting somewhere.
Richard is clearing his schedule as much as possible with help from George. Walter Tapley is coming today and Richard wants to show him around. He finds Erica and asks her if there’s anything special that Walter can scrub in on. Walter is Richard’s old mentor. Richard wants to get things moving on his current patient so he can be out of the OR by 10:00. Richard asks George if Patricia got any messages, but Patricia wanted him to tell Richard not since the last time he asked, which was 20 minutes ago.
Meredith and Derek are doing some paperwork. Derek feels confident about the new viral cocktail. He thinks they’re going to open the bottle of champagne soon. He notices she’s a bit off and says he can do this one on his own, knowing clinical trials can be a grind. Meredith says she’s not a quitter, so she doesn’t need him to rescue her.
They enter the patient’s room. Greta, the patient, asks if the surgery can be pushed back because her boyfriend’s flight got cancelled and she wants him to be here, because he has some questions. She’s reconsidering the procedure. She and Andre just got so little time together as they only met in January. She’s thinking about spending her last few months with Andre. She asks if Derek knows how precious time with your loved one is. He understand that and agrees to wait until 3:00, when Andre will be there. Greta starts working in her sketch book.
Rebecca is at the nurses station, asking for Dr. Sloan. Izzie sees her and pulls her aside, saying she’s left her like 50 messages. Rebecca says she seems upset. Izzie tells her she’s not pregnant, and Alex is turning his life upside down for her. Also, she can’t tell Alex that Rebecca is not pregnant because of confidentiality. Rebecca says she can tell Alex anything because she wants him involved, and she just knows she’s pregnant. Izzie asks if she can do another test just to make sure Rebecca is not trying to trap Alex with a fake pregnancy. Rebecca thinks she’s out of her mind. She really wants this baby, as she’s always wanted one. Izzie reminds her she has one. Rebecca corrects herself and says she wants another. She agrees to run another pregnancy test, but she wants Izzie to help her find Sloan.
Greta’s sister approaches Derek and Meredith and tells them that Andre does not exist. Her sister is not a woman who has boyfriends and then she went on a cruise and suddenly met Andre, right around the time her symptoms started. No one has ever seen Andre, or a picture of him. She asks that they talk to her and ask not to wait for Andre, since they could be waiting for a very long time.
George is guarding the door to a conference room. Alex figures out Tapley is in there. Callie drags Meredith and Cristina along and tells Meredith something’s wrong with Cristina, as she cleaned the apartment. Meredith says people don’t have to be happy all the time in order to be mentally healthy, but Callie adds that Cristina doesn’t care about Walter Tapley. Meredith admits this is bad. Cristina tells Callie to mind her own business. Callie walks off and Meredith asks Cristina if she’s in the dark place. Cristina says yes, and so is Meredith.
Richard introduces Walter to Erica. Walter says he’s not here for a visit. He has aortic and mitral stenosis with tricuspid regurgitation, so he needs a double valve replacement and a tricuspid repair. He gives them everything they need for his case and says that his colleagues won’t touch him because he has chronic atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension, and a clot. They think that they’ll kill him if they operate. Walter says his colleagues can say no to him, but Webber can’t.
Erica says absolutely no. She doesn’t want to go down in history as the surgeon who killed Walter Tapley. Richard tells her to sit down. He tells her that he wants to tell her a story, but she figures out that it’s about him being a struggling black med student who only is where he is now because Walter gave him the chance that nobody else would give him. Still, she doesn’t want to operate.
Rose finds Derek and tells him she found the sex mindblowing, but since he’s been avoiding her, she thinks he doesn’t feel that way. He says that he lost a patient, so him not calling her after sex is him being a dedicated lifesaver. Rose asks to meet up later. He agrees and she walks off. Mark has overheard the conversation and mocks Derek, who asks when the last time was that Mark called someone after sex. Mark says he’s turning over a new leaf. Richard comes over and tells them that Erica refuses to operate on Walter, but Derek says it’s her choice. Richard also asks what it means if a woman doesn’t call you back the day after you had sex with her. Derek says he doesn’t have to call that woman as it’s new and casual and fun, but Richard reveals it’s his wife. Richard doesn’t know if he should call her again, but Derek and Mark suggest a confident e-mail to ask her for dinner.
George informs Richard that he’s prepared everything for Walter Tapley’s admission. Richard tasks him with sending an e-mail to Adele, saying he should include a line about the train leaving the station and her better getting on it.
Izzie wants to talk to Alex about Rebecca. She says Rebecca is not pregnant, but Rebecca thinks it’s a false negative. They ran the tests twice, so they’re not wrong. Alex says he witnessed pregnancy symptoms and yells at Izzie to mind her own business and stay out of his life.
Meredith knocks at Katharine’s office and asks for her chart back since she fired Katharine. Katharine says she didn’t fire her, Meredith quit. If she’d like to unquit, she can schedule an appointment. Katharine closes the door, but Meredith busts in, only to see Erica sitting on the couch. Erica tells her to make an appointment. Meredith leaves.
Bailey is instructing her residents on the care for Walter Tapley since no surgery has been scheduled yet. She gets paged by the daycare center, but Richard sends George there since he needs Bailey to focus on Walter. Cristina instructs Lexie to place the central line for her and walks off, but Lexie has never done one.
Meredith asks Derek how it went with Greta, but he hasn’t talked to her. Meredith says she already mixed the virus with the IL-2, so they only got six hours. Derek wants Greta to be able to enjoy the idea, if nothing else, of Andre for a little more time. Once they remove the tumor, it’s all gone. Meredith doesn’t believe Andre exists. Derek says Greta may be a lonely person, but she found a way to have love. Meredith says real love isn’t like a delusional fantasy. He says good to know and walks off.
George is carrying Tuck and tells Bailey he punched a child over a graham cracker. They wanted Bailey to talk to him, but Bailey doesn’t really know what to say to a 14-months-old about nonviolent conflict resolution. She walks off with her baby as Lexie comes over. She asks George for help on a central line, but he says it’s a big day for him since he’s Richard’s intern and close to Walter Tapley, so he can’t help her. She mentions it’s Walter’s central line, making George want to do it. Suddenly Cristina cheers and asks him if he thinks that kissing Richard’s ass enough by taking care of Walter he’ll magically become a resident. She says that’s not going to happen. He’s stuck. The only way to get out of this miserable situation is if Burke were here since George was his guy, but unfortunately, Burke isn’t here. George ignores her and walks into Tapley’s room.
Derek asks Mark if he was happy when he was with Meredith. He thinks he idealized it. He says Mark wouldn’t hold on to an unavailable woman. Mark tells him to give it some time with Rose, build memories together. This is the new leaf. Derek says it needs work.
George has put in the central line. Walter says he’s a good resident, but George admits he’s just an intern. Lexie adds he’s the best intern of the year. Richard comes in and orders amiodarone, which Walter doesn’t understand as it’s not a med for someone who’s about to have open-heart surgery. Richard sends out George and Lexie. Walter understands Richard was unable to convince Hahn to do the procedure and he says Richard is not the Chief he thought he was. He starts unhooking himself from all the tubes. Walter wants to go, but Richard tells him to get back in the head. Richard says he’ll talk to Erica again.
Cristina is not going to watch with Tapley, because she wants five years with him instead of five minutes. Watching the surgery would be like giving an alcoholic a sip of wine. Meredith says Lexie is coming over and tells Cristina to keep the carnage to a minimum. Lexie asks Meredith to talk, but Meredith says later. Lexie wants to insist, but Cristina jumps in and tells Lexie that Meredith hates her. She won’t say it to Lexie’s face, but Meredith finds her annoying and her showing up like the good little girl daddy didn’t abandon is the worst thing that has happened to her in months. And that’s saying a lot coming from Meredith Grey. Lexie is hurt and walks off. Cristina and Meredith continue their lunch.
Mark sits down with Callie, who wants to go have sex again, but Mark says he turned over a new leaf, so she’s either getting the whole package or nothing. Erica sits down with them and she and Callie pretend to be lovers to turn on Mark, who has a really hard time not to think about a threesome like the old Mark would. He grabs his lunch and leaves. Richard comes over and tells Erica that he’s the Chief of Surgery. She says that doesn’t make her want to kill Walter. Richard is hurt that all the women in his life seem to be ignoring what he says. He tells Hahn to review the case again.
Meredith and Derek tell Greta that maybe Andre may not be real. Greta knows this is coming from her sister and says her sister likes to be the successful one, while she’s the pathetic one. Greta says she’s finally found someone and her sister can’t deal with that. She shows them drawings she made in her journals, but Meredith is not convinced. She thinks all the writing and drawing is hypergraphia, which is another symptom of the tumor. Derek tells her to leave Greta alone. Greta says Andre is real. Her sister asks Greta to tell them how they met. The story sounds an awful lot like a modern version of Cinderella. Greta yells this is a stupid conversation. Meredith says the serum expires in a few hours. She asks if it expires by 3:00, and Derek says no. They can’t wait all day, but they can wait until 3:00. He angrily leaves.
Rose sees Derek walking off and she tries to talk to him, but he’s too angry to hear her.
Mark is checking out Rebecca’s face. She’s not sure it goes with the body and opens up her gown to show him her boobs. Her body doesn’t match her face or her personality. Mark tells her to close the gown. She wants him to finish what he started.
Meredith follows Katharine into the bathroom and again demands her chart back. She refuses to make an appointment for that. Katharine wants to go to the bathroom in peace. Meredith asks why she said that Meredith is a quitter and a coward. She thinks Katharine is trying to make her feel bad about her life so she can fix Meredith. Katharine says they’ll talk about it in therapy. Lexie walks in and tells Meredith that she forgives her for her and Cristina treating her like crap. Lexie honestly doesn’t know how Meredith gets up in the morning. Their dad abandoned her and her mother was the meanest person ever and she can’t let Derek love her and it all really sucks, but Lexie has had this fantasy about her big sister and Meredith has completely failed to live up to the fantasy. But Lexie stills loves her, whether Meredith is capable of letting her or not. Lexie leaves and Katharine asks if 2 o’clock works for Meredith, who says yes.
Erica tells Richard she’ll make sure the press knows it was him who insisted on the surgery if Walter dies. Walter says he’ll be fine. Erica leaves and Richard says she has impeccable judgment. Walter admits another surgeon wanted to do this, but he wanted a friend in case he didn’t come out of the OR. He wanted an old friend to say goodbye. Richard says he’s honored. Walter wishes he had a family so he wouldn’t have to track down Richard to have someone by his deathbed.
Mark finds Izzie and asks what she’s treating Rebecca for. Izzie replies to a pregnancy she doesn’t have. Mark says she asked him for breast enhancement. Mark says they may be looking at acute stress disorder, which can happen when people have massive plastic surgeries and major trauma. They don’t recognize themselves in the mirror, which can lead to really odd behavior. Mark wants Izzie to make it clear to Rebecca that she’s not pregnant, then get a psych consult.
George has finished the e-mail, but Richard wants him to read it out loud. It’s not how Richard imagined it, so he takes his phone and says he’ll do it himself.
Callie again tries to get Mark into an on-call room. He asks if she ever thought about why she needs so much sex. She claims it’s to clear her head. He brings up the threesome again and tells her about his fantasies with Erica, but she doesn’t want to hear about Erica.
Erica is about to operate on Walter. She needs a minute before slicing one of the founding fathers of cardiothoracic surgery open. She takes the scalpel. Richard tells her not to screw it up.
Meredith is talking to Katharine about Greta and Derek being all broken up about it. Katharine says he wasn’t ready to give up their relationship, but Meredith says he went and kissed Rose when she wanted to give them another try. So he messed up. Katharine says people make mistakes in relationships. She thinks Meredith just stands back and waits for Derek to make a mistake so she can say “aha!” and quit. Meredith says it wasn’t working. Katharine asks if her life wasn’t working when she almost let that slip out from under her. Meredith asks when she’s gonna stop acting like she’s suicidal. Katharine replies when she starts acting like someone who wants to be alive. Meredith asks for her chart, because it’s wrong if it says she’s suicidal. Katharine reminds her she almost drowned and that she put her hand in a body cavity with a bomb. People usually run away from the line between life and death, but Meredith appears to be standing on it, waiting for a strong wind to sway her one way or the other. She’s careless with her life, probably because her mother told her she was a waste of space. The problem is Meredith believed her, and one of these days Meredith is going to die. Meredith now strongly demands her chart. Katharine gives it and Meredith tells her to never talk about her mother again.
In the OR, Walter has a leak so he needs to go back on bypass. Erica says this was a mistake as she tries to fix it. She says her reputation is going down the toilet. Richard wants to calm her down, but she says it’s not his good name they’re destroying. He points out her repair worked.
Greta, her sister, Meredith, and Derek wait for more than two hours in Greta’s room, but Andre still doesn’t show up. Greta says maybe his phone is off and the plane got delayed. She’s certain Andre is coming. She then starts sobbing. She believes her head did this, but Derek says it was the tumor. She can’t believe he was never there. She breaks down. Derek says he’s sorry.
Tucker brings his son to Bailey, who informs them that their son has been punching other children. Tucker knows as it happened before. Bailey says she had to bribe the director of the daycare center and she wonders why he didn’t tell her. He wants her not to judge how he deals with the baby, but she says he didn’t deal with it as the punching’s still happening. Tucker thinks that spending entire days in the day care instead of being with his father all day is throwing Tuck off. Bailey and Tucker start arguing and George comes in to take Tuck away. Bailey starts lecturing him, but he says he’s not one of her students, although he knows it’s hard for her to differentiate that sometimes with all the time she spends here. Bailey yells she’s here so they can have a life together because she doesn’t have the luxury of taking a year off and have her career waiting for her when she’s ready to get back. Tucker says taking care of a baby all day is not a luxury. She says he’s taking it for granted. As they continue to argue, George tells Tuck that it’s going to be okay.
Izzie is giving Rebecca an ultrasound and shows her there is nothing in her uterus. Rebecca says it’s too tiny to see. Alex comes in as Izzie shows Rebecca a picture of a fetus that’s six weeks old. The fetus is small yet visible, whereas there’s nothing to see on the ultrasound. Rebecca looks confused and Alex throws Izzie out of the room. Alex reads the chart and says there’s no baby. She wasn’t pregnant, there never was a baby. Rebecca starts crying and mumbles she’s sorry she lost their baby. He comforts her and says they’re going to be okay.
Derek and Meredith insert the virus into Greta’s tumors. Greta gets bradycardic. As Derek orders meds, a nurse comes in to tell Meredith sometimes. She tells Derek that Andre is here.
George runs into Walter’s room in the ICU. Walter asks if he runs all the time or if he’s scared of him. George says he tries to stay on top of things. Walter says he’s doing impressive work. George asks if he can mention that to Richard as he got held back as an intern because of personal stuff. Walter says Richard doesn’t make decisions lightly. He says learning is like healing, it happens over time. He tells George to keep running, not to cut corners, but because it makes him a better doctor. Richard comes in and says Walter is not supposed to be talking. Richard sends out George to go check Walter’s post-op echo.
George takes a breath before running off.
Lexie finds Cristina sitting in the hallway. She wants to ask if Cristina’s okay, but Cristina won’t let her. She says Lexie makes her sick. She tells her to have some fire, be unstoppable, a force of nature. She has to be better than anyone here and she shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks, as there are no teams here. She’s on her own. Lexie says she scrubbed in on Walter’s surgery. That’s what she got to do while Cristina was charting, so Cristina can rain down all the crap she wants on Lexie’s head because she can’t take away that moment from her. Cristina says okay.
George finds Bailey sitting in a lounge with Tuck. He gives her Tapley’s chart and asks if Tucker didn’t take him. Bailey wanted the evening with her son. He asks if she got to the bottom of it, but she shakes her head. George suggests he take Tuck for a couple of hours so Bailey can go talk and fight with Tucker. She won’t be able to fix it all in one day, but it’ll give her time to try.
Izzie finds Alex stealing clothes from her room. He needs clothes for Rebecca as she’s staying and she didn’t bring enough stuff. She asks if he called her husband, but he replies Rebecca didn’t want to talk to him. Izzie asks if he got a psych consult, but he didn’t. She reminds him Rebecca had a hysterical pregnancy. She wants to say that Sloan thinks she has a stress disorder, but Alex cuts her off and says Rebecca is fine. He can handle it. He walks into his room and starts taking off Rebecca’s clothes and helping her to put Izzie’s on.
George enters Richard’s office and gives him documents. Richard asks what he’s doing with Bailey’s son. George jokes he and Bailey are in love and getting married in Vegas once his divorce to Dr. Torres is finalized. Richard says they need to write another e-mail to Adele as she replied with just a typo. George says it’s not a typo, it’s a wink. He tells Richard to told his phone sideways and that this means Adele is flirting with him. Richard tells George he did good work today.
George tells Tuck this was an exhausting day, but he’s got the attaboy. He’s turning his life around. He tells Tuck to get the punching under control. George says it make take them a while, but they’ll get there.
Meredith and Derek inform Andre and Greta’s sister that there was swelling in Greta’s brain. It caused a lot of damage, so it doesn’t look like she’s gonna wake up. Meredith tells Andre that they’re sorry. They should have waited, but she didn’t think he was coming. The whole story sounded so incredible. Andre admits the story makes them sound crazy, but he really found her shoe as she running to get back on the cruise ship in time. He thinks she’s gonna wake up as it’s been a fairy tale since the start. They always wake up in fairy tales, but a teary-eyed Derek shakes his head. Andre starts sobbing and Meredith gets emotional as well.
Mark ends up on an elevator with Callie and Erica. Callie says he’s been thinking about a threesome all day. Mark finally admits he has. Erica says he couldn’t handle the two of them. He says he won’t, but he could. Erica thinks he’d find it intimidating. Erica leans in and kisses Callie. He’s dumbstruck, and Erica says it indeed is too much for him. She gets off the elevator. Mark now tells Callie to go to an on-call room with him, but she’s frozen for a while.
Derek finds Rose and asks to go have dinner, but she says she can’t. He vanished after their night together. She wishes she was secure enough to handle that without a bruised ego, but she’s not. He wants to make this easier. He has done complicated and he doesn’t want to do that again. He wants this to be easy and fun. They don’t need a fairy tale, they just need a little happy. They hold hands and leave together.
Meredith enters Katharine’s office and sits down on the couch. She’s still emotional. She says her mother tried to kill herself when she was a kid after the love of her life disappeared. She never told anybody that before. Meredith tells Katharine to fix her if she thinks Meredith is broken because Meredith is not a quitter.
