Friends, I had prepped this whole intro about how “Drawn to the Blood,” although clearly getting the major players in place for the season finale (you know Grey’s knows how to pull off season finales) was a tad on the boring side, but then the last five minutes happened and my brain exploded inside my skull. Figuratively speaking. Maybe. And now, everyone is trapped. We’re trapped waiting until next week to get some answers, and our doctors are trapped by the most fog I’ve ever seen descend upon a city, the physics behind hyperbaric chambers, and dumb, chivalrous lies.
On a positive note, there is one person who has been trapped for what feels like years, but is finally free: Yes, that’s right — Alex sends Meredith in to see if she has any luck figuring out what’s going on with Jo and it works.
Part of the reason Meredith is so eager to shirk all responsibilities and sleep at Jo’s is because she’s avoiding DeLuca after his big declaration of love last week. As Mer explains, it terrifies her. The last person she said “I love you” to was Derek and well, you know. It’s a big, scary freaking deal. But hiding is not the only reason Meredith is there. She promised Alex she’d figure this out. Meredith tries to get Jo to understand that she’s probably the most qualified person to hear about whatever awful thing happened. She’s been through so many awful things! If you could get a PhD in surviving awful things, Meredith would have four of them. Jo tests that theory out: Does Meredith know what it feels like to know your mother was raped by your father? To know you wear the face of a rapist? Meredith doesn’t know what to say to that, but she lets Jo talk. Jo is finally talking.
Jo believes everything she suffered at the hands of Paul was her “inheritance” — that violence is her birthright. But Meredith, proving that she is for sure the one who needed to handle this, reminds Jo that she’s a survivor. She’s taken the darkness from her life and turned it into something good, into helping others work through their own darkness. It’s a lovely scene and I know it’s about Jo, but I couldn’t help being proud of Meredith and how far she’s come. She brings up that whole ordeal when she fell into the Sound during the ferry boat crash (there are a lot of historical Grey’s callbacks tonight — shout out to the Judy Doll heads!) and decided to stop fighting. Remember that Meredith? This is not that Meredith. She knows that she only survived that because the people who loved her took care of her, and now she’ll do the same for Jo. They are going to tell Bailey and Alex and get her the help she needs. It’s all very healthy and good and it made me very suspicious that something awful was coming because, hi, this is Grey’s Anatomy. Have you two met?
My hunch was very, very right. When Meredith and Jo arrive at the hospital, they find DeLuca and a whole gaggle of doctors standing outside the conference room where Catherine, Bailey, and a bunch of suits have been meeting all day. Everyone has theories, good and bad. Meredith can’t wait around for Bailey to be available, so she leaves to find Alex and puts DeLuca in charge of Jo. As soon as Meredith leaves, DeLuca is called into the meeting and we discover the topic of the day: They know Meredith Grey committed insurance fraud and they want some answers from DeLuca.
While DeLuca is facing the firing squad, Meredith has run downstairs to look for Alex as he heads to the hyperbaric chamber. Remember that old thing? I knew we’d see it again. Alex is down there with Gus, the rare blood kid, who is going into organ failure while waiting on a blood donor. The good news is they found a donor; the bad news is that growing up with rare blood and knowing you will most certainly die if you get injured really messes with a person’s head — the donor, Frances, is severely agoraphobic and is refusing to get off the plane and go to Grey Sloan.
Both Schmitt and Owen sit with Frances on the plane and attempt to convince her it is imperative she get off the plane and into the car. In the end, it takes a video chat with Gus and his mom in which Frances sees that Gus is dying, as well as Owen making a heroic pledge to keep her safe, that finally gives her enough courage to let Owen carry her out to the car. I know I’m forever ragging on Owen, but dang, he should always be carrying scared people around in his arms.
There is, however, a problem. (Isn’t there always?) Once in the car, with Frances safely secured between Owen and Schmitt, they run into an insane amount of traffic. They’re not moving at all. Things escalate (DON’T THEY ALWAYS): A thick, heavy fog rolls into the city and visibility is completely gone. Cars crash all around them, and finally, right into them. This is not good. Not good at all.
At the hospital, Gus’s organs are failing. He needs oxygen and Alex realizes getting him into the hyperbaric chamber is their only shot at keeping him alive until Frances arrives. While he’s wheeling Gus in there, Meredith shows up — she’ll go in with him, why not? If you recall the first time we met the hyperbaric chamber, we learned that once you go in and lock the door, there’s no easy way to get out until the pressure in the room is slowly brought back to normal. So, Meredith and Alex (and Gus) are going to be in there for a while.
That only becomes an issue when suddenly DeLuca shows up at the porthole window of the chamber with Catherine Fox standing behind him. Calmly, almost eerily, he tells Meredith that he’s sorry. He lied to her. When Gabby Rivera came in to the ER, he told Meredith that she had insurance, but she didn’t, and he wrote Meredith’s daughter’s name down on the insurance forms so that Gabby could get the surgery. DELUCA IS TAKING THE FALL FOR MEREDITH. Meredith is horrified when she realizes what he’s doing, but can’t get a word in. He tells her that he’s turning himself into the police and probably going to prison. What he did was “not fair to you and your kids, who need you,” he tells Meredith through the glass, informing us as to why he is doing this. Meredith can’t stop him. She’s stuck in that chamber, left calling out his name to an empty room.
Taken at face value, this might seem very heroic and romantic, but it won’t be romantic when he’s serving time for committing a felony, will it? WILL IT? To be honest, I had my money on Webber taking the fall for Meredith, which I guess could still happen since all bets are off on a Grey’s finale. For now, DeLuca’s just a fool in love, and he might be going to prison for it.
Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Apart From Real Medicine
• Bless Grey’s for finding a new disaster to inflict chaos upon Grey Sloan. Fog! Who knew?!
• Frances, Owen, and Schmitt aren’t the only ones put in danger by the fog rolling in: Teddy, inspired by the paraplegic mom Kari (waiting for her stem cells to kick in) and her child Toby living their authentic lives, realizes she loves Owen and needs to tell him before their baby is born. When she goes to Owen’s house, she finds Amelia and Leo there (Owen’s in the fog!), and then promptly goes into labor. They’re in the car on the way to the hospital as the fog hits. (In case you can’t tell, I am living for this fog storyline.)
• Maggie and Jackson are stuck, too! They’ve been off camping — it has been a disaster — and once Maggie gets paged repeatedly to come back to help with Gus, they decide to call it quits and head back. Unfortunately, a huge storm is right on top of them. They aren’t going anywhere.
• Is it just me or do we think Jackson is going to propose? He really wanted to take Maggie on a hike to a special spot near a waterfall, is all I’m saying. Can’t you just see him asking her to marry him in the middle of a huge storm next week?
• So, Nico is in a bad way. Gus’s dad slips on a Lego and breaks his butt, which everyone, including Gus’s mom, finds hysterical, because, hello, broken butt — but not Nico. He reams out Helm for laughing in his OR. He is angry at everyone and everything and clearly isn’t dealing with that whole “killing a guy on the table” thing from a few weeks ago. Not even a Richard Webber pep talk brings him back from the brink. That’s really bad.
I loved Link and Amelia’s conversation about how optimistic he is. He already faced the worst in his life, so he thinks good things must be in the cards for him, always. Amelia’s look is like, “Oh, honey, have you seen this show?”
The Sob Scale: 4/10
I’m sorry but DeLuca sacrificing himself for another person and delivering a message through a porthole brought me right back to “Not Penny’s Boat,” and I couldn’t help but feel everything.
