Idle Hands
Transitions continued on Grey's Anatomy this week for both the hospital and its staff. We saw the return of the Emergency Room at the newly named Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, while the management team floundered a bit in figuring out how to balance its roles as surgeons with also now being hospital administrators.
As we saw last week, one of the hotly contested priorities of the new hospital management team was regaining their Level One Trauma certification and reopening the ER. And as this episode opened, Owen Hunt gave Cristina Yang her own personal tour of the newly renovated trauma department. The excitement on his face was evident as he showed her one of their new diagnostic tools - an X-ray machine that can take a full body scan in 13 seconds. While Owen extolled the virtues of this new technology which will allow them to more efficiently diagnose emergency patients and better utilize their staff and resources, Cristina smiled and nudged her man into showing his happiness in a way they could both enjoy. Owen quickly took the hint and leaned in to kiss her.
Proud though she was at having contributed to the ER's reopening, Cristina found herself missing medical challenges, even more so after having found out that one of her former Stanford classmates had recently published academically. Her search to better utilize her medical skills took her to cardio chief Jeff Russell's valve replacement clinical trial. Her excitement over the opportunity was soon displaced by her realization he was trying to sell her on it so as to secure funding from hospital management rather than asking her to participate as a surgeon. Yet by the end of the day Cristina had connected the two halves of her professional life by securing funding for Miranda Bailey's research program while in the process convincing Russell to utilize her as a surgeon in his trial.
By the end of the day we found Cristina and Owen together again in the ER. While he proudly surveyed his newly reopened and well-functioning trauma department, Cristina reviewed clinical trial protocols. They stood next to each other, happy to feel they were in it together both personally and professionally. Which in Grey's Anatomy's landscape means the next series of challenges are on their way for our favorite pair of characters.
Elsewhere in the hospital: Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd stepped further into the stresses and possibilities of her pregnancy; Miranda Bailey doggedly pursued funding for her own research interests; April Kepner struggled with telling her boyfriend the truth about her dating history; Alex Karev was inspired by one of his patients to play pranks on an OBGYN fellow who was dating the intern in whom he's interested; Richard Webber schooled Alex in the art of the prank; Meredith treated a teacher who struggled with telling her students about her condition; Arizona Robbins found herself feeling more confident with her prosthetic leg and able to let in her wife Callie Torres; Derek treated a pediatric patient who was injured in an ATV accident; and the interns were antsy with the lack of emergency patients on the ER's reopening day.
