All bleeding will stop — eventually. This was the theme of the Thursday, April 14, two-hour event on Grey’s Anatomy, which opened in the midst of a possible “Code Pink” (the term the hospital used when a child went missing). Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) and Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) were in the thick of hunting for the missing boy when she made the call to declare the code and therefore put the entire facility on lockdown. The crisis was averted moments later, when Alex found the boy hiding underneath a staircase, but another crisis was just getting started.
Dr. Ben Warren (Jason George) and Dr. Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) were in the midst of treating a pregnant woman when the Code Pink happened, and Warren made the bold call to operate in the middle of the hallway. Unfortunately, his gamble didn’t pay off, and both the mother and her baby died. Making matters even worse, the deceased woman left behind three other children, and a husband who was in critical condition himself. Warren insisted that none of the doors were functioning, and therefore he had no choice, but whether that was true remained up for debate.
Bailey Tries to Outsource Warren’s Discipline
Realizing that she would be the one in charge of disciplining her own husband, Bailey first tried to get Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) to handle it, but he wasn’t biting. “I can’t do that. I can’t take this out of your hands. A surgical resident could be responsible for the death of two patients today. It’s out of my jurisdiction, especially if we’re dealing with a resident who is out of control.” Miranda argued Ben wasn’t a danger, but Dr. Webber replied, “Do you know that?” She looked inside herself and determined that she didn’t.
Her uncertainty only became greater when she came across security-camera footage that clearly showed the elevator doors in the bank nearest to her husband opened before he took his scalpel to the woman’s stomach. That was evidence even a wife couldn’t brush aside.
But what she did know was that she couldn’t be impartial about her husband “and the future of his career,” so instead of enlisting Webber, she set up an advisory committee consisting of Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Dr. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) and Dr. Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreary) to dive deeper into the matter and make a recommendation.
The Committee Meets
As Warren and Bailey arrived at work the morning of his first meeting with the committee, he couldn’t help but comment, “It’s a good thing I’m not trying to save lives, so I can see that the elevator doors are open.” It was a blip on the radar in their relationship, but it marked a dark place for this normally strong couple.
Upon first walking into the room and seeing his colleagues, Dr. Warren was openly relieved, but they made it clear they weren’t there as friends. Warren continued to repeat his story that he hadn’t seen the elevator doors open — even after being shown the footage that depicted him looking straight at the elevator as the doors parted.
As a last-ditch effort to make sure they’d covered all their bases, the committee opted to interview Dr. Nathan Riggs (Martin Henderson), who had operated on the baby that had died. Meredith then admitted that because she now knew the whole story of what happened between Riggs and Owen’s sister (namely, that Riggs was cheating on her when she’d boarded the helicopter), she no longer trusted him. Still, they heard him out anyway.
Then they had Warren back in for what was an unofficial closing statement. They confronted him, again, about the video footage that clearly showed him looking right at the elevator as the doors opened.
“You’re surgeons. You know what it’s like,” he said. “When you control if a person breathes another breath … when you are responsible for that life, you don’t see or feel or hear anything else. The rest of the world just disappears. You know that.” In other words — yes, he was looking at the doors as they opened, but that doesn’t mean he saw them. It was a compelling argument, and it swayed the committee.
Miranda Makes Her Own Shady Call
Meanwhile, Bailey continued to stress as the life of Omar, the deceased woman’s husband and the only living parent of their three children, hung in the balance. Omar’s mother signed a DNR, which Dr. Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) and Dr. Stephanie Webber (Jerrika Hinton) had every intention of honoring. Over the course of a few days, Omar’s condition worsened as it seemed the end was close.
But when the end came, Bailey happened to be in the room — and his mother wasn’t — and Bailey made the call to use a crash cart to try to save him, despite the fact that this went against the direct wishes of the patient. Bailey’s efforts worked and Shepherd was horrified.
When Omar’s mom returned and found out what had happened, she took it as a sign that the doctors thought there was hope for her son’s prognosis. (There really wasn’t.)
But then something miraculous happened. Whereas her husband’s sketchy call resulted in the deaths of two patients, Bailey’s saved the patient. Against all odds, Omar ended up waking up and heading down the road to recovery.
Jackson and April Bury the Hatchet
In the midst of this madness, two people found their sanity — and those two people were Jackson (Jesse Williams) and April (Sarah Drew). After many more meetings with lawyers, a discussion of “an arms race” for custody, and numerous snide remarks to each other over having to stay 100 feet apart (thanks to April’s restraining order), Jackson finally decided to take the situation back into his own hands.
He approached her calmly, as she was leaving the hospital, with a copy of their prenuptial agreement. He said he’d originally been scanning it in search of things to use against her, but it backfired because what he realized was they were fundamentally different, saner people when they’d written it than they were today.
“You were my best friend, April — my favorite person. And I realized that’s who I should be dealing with,” he said. “We should treat each other the way we did on this paper.” April responded by placing Jackson’s hand on her belly so he could feel their baby kick. It was a breath of fresh air from the storm brewing between Bailey and Warren — as well as the one that was about to start between Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) and Callie (Sara Ramirez), because Arizona was going to try to get full custody of their daughter.
Bailey Makes Her Call
After hearing the committee’s thoughts, the task still fell to Bailey to make the final decision on what her husband’s punishment should be. She decided a six-month suspension from work was the right answer. Needless to say, he disagreed, arguing that kicking him out of the hospital for half a year wasn’t discipline; it was a “death sentence.”
Bailey held her ground. “You made an astonishing error in judgment that I am trying to accept and forgive, and it’s going to take me a lot longer than six months,” she replied.
Tell Us: Do you think Bailey and Warren’s marriage can survive this hurdle?
Grey’s Anatomy airs on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.
