Simone’s in the intern hot seat this week. When she first arrived at Grey Sloan, we saw how much she was affected by being at the very hospital where her mother died giving birth to her, and while it’s come up a little bit since, this week she really has to confront those feelings. While she’s doing that, Grey’s Anatomy also does a nice job of reminding us how insanely disproportionate the maternal mortality rate is for Black women in this country; not only must Black pregnant women and their families live with that fear on a daily basis, the fear exists in the minds of Black doctors treating them as well. Grey’s fights some of its traditional impulses to simply preach statistics at us and instead gives us a patient story line that really shows us that pervasive fear. That moment with husband Miles when he learns what has happened to his wife Lauren? Have! Not! Recovered!
Simone’s mother is at the top of her thoughts when we find her — she, her father, and her older sister have just moved Simone’s gran into an assisted-living facility. It’s a morning full of Gran talking to Simone as if she were her daughter, looking at old pictures of her mother, and just generally being reminded of what she lost. A very cool way to start your day. When she is assigned to a patient named Miles who fractured his wrist, she doesn’t clock the similarities between her mother and Miles’s very pregnant wife, Lauren, a young Black woman with a 4-year-old daughter and her second on the way. She does, however, notice Lauren is in some pain — she complains of Braxton Hicks and also some indigestion — and Simone decides to have Lauren get checked out in O.B. while Miles gets X-rays.
When Jo gets a look at Lauren, she realizes she is dilated enough that she needs to stay at the hospital — this baby is coming. Lauren’s blood pressure is slightly elevated, and Jo orders some blood and urine labs, but it seems like business as usual — until it is very much not. Lauren’s nose starts bleeding and then she starts seizing. It becomes clear that Lauren had undiagnosed preeclampsia. They rush her into an OR where Carina (hey, it’s nice to have her back on this side!) performs a c-section. The baby is fine, but Lauren is hemorrhaging. Like, guys, it is so, so much blood. Carina and Jo call Bailey in to assist, but things look dire. They need to perform a hysterectomy but even that doesn’t stop all the blood loss.
While all of this is going on, Simone’s been helping Miles get set up with a cast and talking about how exciting it is that their baby will be here soon. She has no idea what is actually going on. When she walks into the OR, she is horrified. Bailey calls her over to assist, procedure logs be damned, and it’s not long before Simone looks down at Lauren’s face and sees her mom on the operating table. Simone is frozen. She slowly backs away, unable to say or do anything else. Not the most helpful way to be when a woman is just dumping blood onto the floor, but we’ll cut her some slack.
The good news is Lauren survives the horror show. Less bright of a silver lining: Jo finally gets those labs back and Lauren very much tested positive for HELLP syndrome (considered a variant of severe preeclampsia). If Jo had put a rush on those labs or paid closer attention to Lauren’s symptoms, there was a chance she could’ve caught this before Lauren had to be subjected to what happened to her. Jo feels like part of the problem — she wasn’t asking the right questions or paying attention to her patient. She decides then and there that splitting her time between O.B. and general surgery is too much. From now on she’s focusing on O.B.
It’ll certainly be a teaching moment for her. And if the bloodbath and chaos of what befell Lauren isn’t enough to do it, surely Miles’s reaction when Jo and Simone tell him about his wife will really burn it on her brain. Miles is beside himself. They did everything they could to avoid being just another statistic. They read all the books, stayed up-to-date on doctor’s appointments, made all the plans, and still, everyone missed what was happening to his wife. It’s awful … and Simone reacts like any human being who sees her father in a distraught man’s face, and goes to the bar to pound back a wild amount of shots.
Bailey finds Simone at Joe’s and takes her home, where Simone finally opens up about why she’s been reacting this way. She can’t believe she didn’t catch it, she should’ve known. All she can think about is how doctors missed a similar thing with her mother and it cost her her life; now she is the doctor. The two women have a heart-to-heart about how important it is that women who look like them are in the medical field to make sure women like Lauren don’t slip through the cracks. None of it is fair, they are trying their best, and all they can do is keep fighting the good fight. I’m very here for this budding mentor/mentee relationship and also for Simone as a character on this show. She remains such a welcome addition.
Speaking of! Can we shift gears into this very sweet little story line about Lucas and Mika’s friendship? Twenty seasons in and I love that Grey’s Anatomy continues to pay the same amount of attention to friendships as romantic relationships. I’m a sucker for cute friend pairs, sue me!!
The two former roommates are still on the outs but find themselves working on Dorian the engineer-turned-fisherman patient, who, mercifully, can finally move out of the ICU. There’s a whole situation with Dorian’s friends coming to visit after 51 days and constantly talking about what Dorian has been missing that really sets Lucas off. He is a sad boy through and through, we know this, so he can’t help but project his own feelings of being left out by the other interns — I mean, they all sit at a table in the cafeteria right next to him and ignore him, that is insane — onto his patient, even though it actually isn’t the case with Dorian at all.
It is certainly a bummer when Dorian ends up with a fistula and gets sent back to ICU — the guy can’t catch a break — but the way Lucas gets so unhinged after learning the news is wild. He screams at Dorian’s friends in the hallway, only stopping when Mika is like, what the actual hell, dude? The two continue their argument back in the locker room and it quickly turns from Lucas’s lack of bedside manner to who let Kwan move into his room. Mika thinks this is still somehow related to Simone, but it turns out it isn’t at all — this is about Lucas missing his friend Mika.
Lucas seems to be polarizing at the moment, but I am a Lucas defender through and through, so get over it. When he starts giggling because he missed bickering with Mika so much? When he was so happy to hear her call him “Skywalker” again? It’s all very endearing. Look at these buddies making up! More of them, please.
The OR Board
• Grey’s takes time to address how weird it must be for Webber and Winston to work together now that Maggie is gone. It’s not like Winston and Maggie were together all that long and now he’s working with her dad on a daily basis. Also, I can’t believe this nurse is the first person to hit on the guy — hot, very good at his job, kind of sad? I just described the perfect man.
• I was surprised to hear Webber say Winston and Maggie were “talking about divorce.” Aren’t they divorced officially? Can we put this to bed? We need to get Winston more ingrained in Grey Sloan drama, stat, or I fear he’d be too easy to cut out if Grey’s is looking to shave down its enormous cast.
• Jules and Kwan make a bet over who can finish their procedure log first, but really it’s an excuse for them to go on a date without someone having to ask. And also to have sex in a car. I don’t know guys, you’re adults, go have sex in a car if you want! (They really want to — did you see their horny eyes before Mika interrupted them? Even I was blushing!)
• I don’t think I could care any less about Owen’s ennui when it comes to work and, apparently, his sex life — call me heartless if you must. Although it was nice to see Grey’s remind us that this man did watch his wife flatline and that could really screw a person up, but lumping that in with his lack of enthusiasm for, well, everything at the moment muddles the point.
