In this Bailey-centric episode, Bailey narrates the classic phrase ‘On your deathbed, no one wishes they’d worked more.’ Of course as someone who loves their work, Bailey disagrees.
Driving Tuck to school, Bailey and Ben laugh with Tuck as he talks about the presentation he is doing in school. Once Tuck is out of the car, Bailey turns cold about Ben’s career change. He tries to tell her about his upcoming day, but she’s annoyed and pops an antacid. Passing Seattle Presbyterian Hospital, she asks her husband to drop her off because she has a meeting. She walks inside and sees Mr. Nelligan, a hypochondriac we saw earlier in the season. She cuts him off and tells the nurse that she believes she is having a heart attack.
An intern tells her that she isn’t having a heart attack, but she asks for her charts. She instructs him on where to place the electrode pads and has him run the EKG again. He says the results still look fine.
Flashback to little girl Bailey being called home at night by her mother. She had been reading in a tree, of which her mother disapproves due to the unnecessary danger involved.
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Bailey calls in sick to Webber at Grey Sloan Memorial. He overhears an announcement over the PA system at Seattle Pres, and thinks that something is off. Bailey rushes to hang up the phone. Chief of Cardo, Dr. Maxwell, at SPH approaches Bailey and jokes about how SPH must be a better hospital than GSM if this is where she chose to go for treatment. However, he agrees with his intern that Bailey is not having a heart attack. He asks about stress, making it clear that he thinks Bailey is just mistaking her symptoms. She assures that she is having a heart attack and that she will not leave until a full test has been run.
The woman in the bed next to Bailey asks why she’s in the hospital. She explains that she is having a heart attack and that she is chief of surgery at Grey Sloan. We find out the woman had broken her leg after crashing her motorcycle. The two are polar opposites: Bailey is more work oriented and careful, while unnamed woman is reckless and usually unemployed.
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When Dr. Maxwell still isn’t buying that Bailey is having a heart attack, she comments how his Ivy League education at Yale must not have taught that heart attacks manifest differently in women than men. Asking about prescriptions, Bailey has to admit that she’s on antidepressants to manage her OCD (a storyline that I, personally, forgot ever happened). Maxwell pauses, as if having a mental illness writes off all of her other symptoms. She just wants him to run a cardiac stress test. He refuses, and she asks for a second opinion from a non-Yale grad.
A consult comes to talk to Bailey, but he isn’t a cardiologist. He’s a psychiatrist. With that failed attempt, Bailey calls Chief of Cardio at Grey Sloan, Maggie, and asks her to meet her at Seattle Pres.
Bailey calls Tuck to see how his history presentation with. He tells his mom that he got a standing ovation, which makes Bailey so proud, she tears up. After hanging up, she heads the woman next to her struggling with chest pain. Bailey calls for help.
Maggie and Webber run into each other in the halls of Seattle Pres. They try to not let the other know that they’re here for Bailey, but when the nurse asks why they’re here, they say it at the same time. They pretend to be family so they can go back to see her. When they get to her bed, she’s gone, but they hear the heart monitor from the other side of the curtain. Once the woman is revived, Bailey loses consciousness.
Grey’s Anatomy on ABCMaggie scolds Dr. Maxwell for not taking Bailey more seriously when she’s been here all day with these symptoms. He argues that her EKG results were different earlier. Awake in surgery, Bailey asks why men will only listen to women after they mess up.
Post-op, Webber tells Bailey of their plan to transfer her to Grey Sloan to be under Maggie’s care. Bailey doesn’t want to be at their hospital because everyone knows her there. As the first woman chief of surgery at Grey Sloan, Bailey has no interest in showing any weakness. Maggie asks if they can at least call Ben and tell him what happened. She doesn’t want to take any time off from work, and says she’ll be back tomorrow and no one has to know. Right on cue, Bailey’s heart rate skyrockets and Webber gets her an oxygen mask.
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In a flashback, we learn that Bailey’s mother was so overbearing and desperate to keep her daughter safe because Bailey had a sister, Danielle, who died of SIDS at two months old.
Maggie yells at Maxwell for not giving Bailey a cardiac stress test. If he had, he would have seen that his stent would fail. She demands to join Maxwell in the OR. He plans on doing a repeat angio and sternotomy. Maggie disagrees with opening Bailey’s chest, and presents the idea of a keyhole procedure instead. She quickly realizes that Maxwell doesn’t know how to do a keyhole procedure. Webber recommends giving Maggie privileges to operate at Seattle Pres, and eventually Maxwell gives in. Right before surgery, Bailey asks Maggie to call Ben.
Ben is buying hot dogs from a hot dog stand when Maggie calls. He drops his hot dogs on the ground and starts running. At SPH, Webber fills Ben in on his wife’s condition. Catherine walks in with brisket sandwiches and garlic mashed potatoes.
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Maggie tries to teach Maxwell how to do the keyhole procedure, but he’s annoyed, since he’s chief of surgery and not an intern. Maggie retorts that Bailey deserves to have such a better doctor than one who refuses to even learn something new. Bailey goes into vfib, and Maggie used the internal paddles on her heart.
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Webber checks on the woman who had been in the bed next to Bailey because he knows Bailey will want to know what happened with her. She feels like she ‘got charged by an angry rhino.’ She acknowledges that Bailey saved her life, and notes that Bailey needs to work on her addiction to work.
Bailey wakes up in her hospital bed and Maggie tells her about the operation, saying Bailey will be back to bossing them around in no time. Bailey looks over and sees her husband. With tears in his eyes and his voice seemingly panicked and angered, he says that Bailey needs to call him when things like this happen.
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He then says that he quit his job at the fire station. Bailey has had a change of heart and says that life is ‘too precious to do anything less than what makes us happy.’ All she asks is that he builds her a treehouse to read in. (I’ve went this entire episode without getting emotional, but this freaking treehouse line gets me!?) With her husband’s support, Bailey calls her mother to tell her about the heart attack.
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